05.07.2012

Taking membership seriously

Michael Copestake reports on the debates at the CPGB weekend aggregate

June 30 saw CPGB members come together in central London for one of our regular aggregates. On the agenda was the question of the workers’ government, introduced by comrade Mike Macnair - a question which has become particularly relevant, given recent discussions on the left regarding the slogan, its meaning and its applicability in relation to Syriza in Greece. As readers will know, the CPGB has been completely against Syriza forming a government and has advocated the necessity of the working class constituting itself as a party of extreme opposition.

Also up for discussion and voting was a proposal from the Provisional Central Committee to introduce a six-month period of candidate membership for new recruits. During this time comrades would take on the duties of full members without voting rights, and go through an induction process involving study of the Draft programme. It is a condition of CPGB membership that comrades accept (not necessarily agree with) the Draft programme, but the PCC felt that some had not sufficiently understood our politics and this had contributed to recent resignations.

As always, comrade Macnair gave a highly knowledgeable and wide-ranging talk. For him the nub of the matter is the conditions in which the communists will participate in a government. This is a question with a history that goes back a long way - all the way back to Louis Blanc, Alexandre Millerand and so on, and continues to animate the debates and practice of the left today.

Comrade Macnair noted that the Italian Partito della Rifondazione Comunista had wrecked itself through participation in the government of Romano Prodi, and that in Germany Die Linke is implementing cuts in regional governments alongside the Social Democratic Party and the Greens. But what are we to make of the slogan, ‘For a workers government’, as used by, say, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty and others? How does this differ from the Italian and German examples of coalition with social democratic parties? In the case of the AWL, what is meant is a government ‘based on the trade unions’ - which dodges the question of the Labour Party.

Comrade Macnair said that this debate has been aided by the historical work of John Riddell, who has translated and annotated important documents such as the stenographic minutes of the month-long 4th congress of the Communist International (as well as putting forward his own views on the question). Comrade Macnair himself has also discussed the question in his book Revolutionary strategy, whose second edition is due very soon.

For him the workers’ government slogan, as developed in the Comintern, represents the loss of the idea of the minimum programme and of the democratic republic, which left the communists without a clear set of criteria guiding the conditions under which communists ought to be prepared to participate in government. This also touched on the question of ‘soviet power’ as the unique route to the dictatorship of the proletariat - comrade Macnair engaged in some vigorous myth-busting on this issue: soviets were not viewed by Lenin as the prerequisite for each and every working class government.

Comrade Macnair pointed out that following World War I it was assumed that revolution and working class power were on the immediate agenda, which is hardly the case today. In the wake of the Russian Revolution it was possible that by joining a social democratic-dominated government the communists might be able to access weapons in order to arm the workers, who - in Germany, for example - would soon be aided by the arrival of the Red Army through Poland.

The debate that followed was largely without controversy, and tended to focus more on the state of the left as a whole than the workers’ government slogan. Comrades pointed out that the left’s simplification of such slogans and those relating to soviets were a reflection of its abandonment of the need for an open Marxist programme and patient revolutionary work for what comrade John Bridge dubbed “anarcho-Keynesianism” - a combination of the worship of spontaneity with illusory or even dangerous Keynesian reformism.

One comrade commented that in relation to Greece the workers’ government slogan is used in conjunction with the fetishistic demand for withdrawal from the EU that takes no account of the devastating effects this would have on Greece’s economy, for which the left would then be held responsible. The idea was that this or that spontaneous action, if sufficiently militant, could be “the spark that lights the prairie fire” that somehow brings the working class to power. But the working class is in no shape to assume power, in Greece or anywhere else.

More contentious - although in the end it was overwhelmingly carried - was the PCC motion proposing that henceforth there will be a six-month period of candidate membership for new recruits. This would involve the individual fulfilling all the duties of membership (attending party events, paying appropriate dues, accepting the Draft programme, etc), although candidate members would not have the right to vote during this period.

The motion, introduced by PCC member John Bridge, also included the proposition that candidate members undertake a guided course of study based on the Draft programme to ensure that future members took seriously and had a good grasp of our central precepts - not least the need for democratic left unity within a party based on Marxism. Comrade Bridge proposed that the length of this period of candidate membership could be reduced or even dispensed with entirely if the PCC thought that an individual comrade already had sufficient experience and understanding.

The specific motivation that had led the PCC into formulating its proposal was the recent more or less apolitical resignation from the CPGB of three comrades, who either failed or were unable to articulate their political differences; they rarely or never attended important CPGB events, such as decision-making aggregates and our annual Communist University, and failed to pay regular dues. In other words, they had not taken CPGB membership seriously.

Comrade Bridge said that the CPGB had always stressed the rights and freedoms afforded to its members compared to the bureaucratic-centralist groups on the left, but he felt that in recent years we had perhaps not placed enough emphasis on membership responsibilities. He explained that the six-month period would benefit prospective members, enabling them to test out the politics of the CPGB and experience the responsibilities they would be expected to undertake.

Comrade Bob Clark broadly agreed with the motion, but was curious as to why the very specific period of six months had been settled on. He asserted that it is best for members to be “self-activating” rather than requiring central direction in every aspect of their work, but that the party had had a blind spot for identifying members who were not sufficiently engaged in such work to feel properly “involved” in the organisation.

Comrade Jean Hooper agreed that people were attracted to the CPGB because its internal life was more democratic than the sects and stated that the CPGB must continue to attract new, young members, who would most often, by definition, not be experienced activists, and continue to try and educate them - even though this had not worked with the recently departed young comrades.

Part of this process, she continued, must be an education in philosophy so that comrades are capable of making arguments and dealing with new phenomena rather than just going back to what they may remember having read in the Weekly Worker at one point or another. In addition, she said, it is important that party work is more evenly distributed in the organisation for two reason. First, to take the burden off the few members tasked with the bulk of it and, secondly, to give all members a “sense of ownership”.

Comrade Sarah McDonald thought that a tighter discipline throughout the whole of the organisation was needed, perhaps including measures such as making attendance of Communist University a condition of membership, while in Alex John’s opinion the PCC’s own amendment to its motion was redundant. The amendment stated that the duties of members included the undertaking of party work under the guidance of the relevant party bodies or individuals was redundant, but comrade John said that this was all already included in the rules of membership.

Comrade Simon Wells expressed doubt about some of the formulations in the motion. He thought that it was phrased “bureaucratically” and worried that we would have members working under the constant eye of “shady figures” dishing out orders. He also queried the six-month duration and disputed comrade McDonald’s idea that comrades should be obliged to attend Communist University. For her part, comrade Ellie Lakew said she was “totally against” the motion, characterising it as “bossy” and “authoritarian”. She asked who were we, as a communist collective, to judge another’s commitment to communism? Comrade Phil Kent was firmly against that view and in favour of “coherence and organisation”.

Maciej Zurowski noted that the CPGB had previously had a category of ‘candidate member’, which was extremely vague - so much so that when he applied to join the CPGB his candidate status seemed to have been forgotten about. He questioned why exactly some comrades thought that, for example, Chris Strafford should never have been a member of the CPGB. Was it his politics? Would the CPGB now reject, say, left communists, he wondered?

Responding to some of the criticism and doubt expressed by members, comrade Macnair explained that the motion is not “bureaucratic” and that the whole thing is flexible. However, the motion represents the “default settings”, as it were, for future circumstances. He also agreed that the CPGB has had a internal life and attitude to membership which has been too liberal and that it was necessary to reassert the basics of common action and membership.

Replying to comrade Zurowski’s concerns about the motion being used as a barrier to communists with differing politics, Jean Hooper stated that the motion is not a “purity test” designed to keep people out: its role is simply to aid mutual understanding between the CPGB and the candidate member.

Comrade Alex John reiterated the view of John Bridge that some recently departed members should not have been members in the first place. He commented that it is not a matter of “ideological cleansing” when we insist that members have to accept not only the accompanying responsibilities, but the organisation’s programme, decisions and practice.

Replying to the discussion, comrade Bridge described how the motion contained, in fact, very little that was new - it was mostly composed of a restatement of already existing membership responsibilities. He agreed with comrade Hooper that party work needed sharing out more and disagreed with comrade McDonald that attendance at Communist University should be mandatory - it was quite acceptable for comrades not to come to every session, for example, although we would normally expect members to make every effort to attend the event.

Comrade Emily Orford proposed that, instead of the PCC having the final say on a candidate member, the matter should instead be brought before one of the regular party aggregates for the membership as a whole to decide. Comrade Bridge suggested a modification to this: that PCC decisions on membership should be carried in our regular internal members’ reports and comrades could discuss or challenge any such decision at an aggregate if they wished. In the end this amendment was overwhelmingly accepted and the amended notion was then carried with one vote against and one abstention.