CPGB Gone mourned by few......

dodger
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CPGB Gone mourned by few...... Aug 8, 2013 9:21:00 GMT

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Post by dodger on Aug 8, 2013 9:21:00 GMT

Useful study of the last years of the CPGB, 24 July 2012

www.amazon.co.uk/Endgames-New-Times-Communism-1964-1991/dp/0853159912/ref=cm_aya_orig_subj

This Will Podmore review is from Endgames and New Times: The Final Years of British Communism:, 1964-1991 (Paperback)

Geoff Andrews, a Lecturer in Politics at the Open University, has written the sixth and final volume in Lawrence & Wishart's history of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Andrews claims that `Stalin endorsed the main features' of the revisionist 1951 CPGB programme The British Road to Socialism. But the only evidence for this seems to be party General Secretary Harry Pollitt's unsupported claim that Stalin endorsed it when he met Pollitt in Moscow in 1950.

Before Pollitt's trip, the CPGB's Central Committee had not discussed the need for a new programme, nor had it produced a draft. Pollitt acted behind the Party's back. He alleged that he showed a document to Stalin, who, allegedly, approved it as a programme. Pollitt then returned home claiming Stalin's backing, to bounce the CC into backing the new line.

The CPGB's 1956 attack on Stalin led inevitably to its attack on Lenin, which led inevitably to its attack on Marx. Each led not to renewal but to dissolution. Its final attack on Marxism was an attack on the trade unions: its 1989 Manifesto for New Times accused trade unions of acting `against the interests of society as a whole'.

Marxism Today, like the Labour Party, embraced Thatcherism while pretending to oppose it. Marxism Today wrote of the `failure of the left to understand Thatcherism' - true, it didn't understand Thatcherism.

The CPGB never defined class clearly. It rejected the truth that all who work for a living are working class, the vast majority. Instead it fostered a false split between mental and manual workers - which split not the class, but itself.

It also embraced the divisions of race, gender and sexual orientation, so-called identity politics (in fact, disunity politics). It set up separate committees for each identity, dividing itself till it fell apart.

It also rejected materialist analysis of events. It fell for romantic nonsense about new social movements and about the `New Left'. It enthused over Gramsci, who opposed the primacy that Marx gave to economics, and backed his consequent `cultural' strategy.

Finally, it rejected democratic centralism. Its liberalism in the face of threats to party unity caused its unlamented demise.

Last Edit: Sept 26, 2013 13:34:53 GMT by dodger

There are only two classes in Britain — those who work and those who exploit those who work.

dodger
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CPGB Gone mourned by few...... Aug 9, 2013 16:18:37 GMT

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Post by dodger on Aug 9, 2013 16:18:37 GMT

Thought-provoking study of Communist policies 1927-32, May 13 2003

This Will Podmore review is from: Class Against Class: The Communist Party in Britain Between the Wars (Hardcover)

This fascinating and thought-provoking book closely analyses the CPGB's policies between 1926 and 1932. It raises many of the questions facing workers today - industrial decline, unemployment, the relationships of work and politics, and of class and party, the treachery of social democracy. However, Worley never raises the question of who was in the working class. Was it just industrial workers? What of the white-collar workers, who were increasingly joining trade unions?
After World War One, unemployment and the destruction of industry, due to the increasing rapidity of capitalism's decline, damaged the working class. By 1933, 61% of Party members were unemployed, and only 10% were in trade unions, so the Party failed to focus on work in the trade unions and never created a correct trade union policy.

Instead, it created separate rank-and-file organisations, like the National Minority Movement, and followed for too long the Profintern folly of splitting the working class through creating red unions, as opposed to 'reformist unions'. It wrongly supported 'industrial unions', one union for each industry. It launched 'merciless' attacks on trade union 'bureaucracy'. It did not focus on working with every worker at the workplace, and tended to denounce fellow-workers who did not do as the Party told them. Trotskyists denounce the 'New Line', while repeating these mistakes.

The Party urged entering the Labour Party, as if the only place to talk with workers was a Labour Party meeting. It urged workers to vote for the Labour Party, and wasted huge amounts of time and effort working for Labour and Party candidates in elections.

The Party ran party training schools, which were separate from branches, adding to the endemic Party split between thinkers and doers. It needed to have education within its branches, in order to maintain itself as an independent, revolutionary party in a non-revolutionary time. Without this grounding in education, it was prone to illusions. For example, in 1927, it consistently hailed workers' 'movement to the left', and called for a General Strike against the Trade Union Bill. Parties need constantly to seek and tell the truth.

Last Edit: Sept 26, 2013 13:35:29 GMT by dodger

There are only two classes in Britain — those who work and those who exploit those who work.

dodger
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CPGB Gone mourned by few...... Aug 9, 2013 16:27:43 GMT

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Post by dodger on Aug 9, 2013 16:27:43 GMT

Interesting study of the CPGB's Industrial Organiser, 6 Feb 2013

By William Podmore
This review is from: Revolutionary Communist at Work: A Political Biography of Bert Ramelson (Paperback)

This is a thought-provoking biography of Bert Ramelson, who was the Communist Party of Great Britain's National Industrial Organiser from 1965 to 1977. Ramelson always followed the CPGB line. The two authors clearly support Ramelson's politics.

After the infamous CPSU Congress of 1956, and Khrushchev's lie-filled speech, the CPGB opposed `Stalinism', scorned all the Soviet Union's achievements since the 1920s and opposed the Soviet Union's use of the state machine that the Soviet working class had created.

Ramelson, in line with CPGB policy, always saw the necessary struggle for wages as economic, as non-political, as if the economic was not political. The authors approve of 'Ramelson's long-running campaign to end the dominance of economism'.

The CPGB's strategy was based on the view that "the Labour Party could be won for socialist policies" "if it contained left-wing activists and was put under pressure from rank-and-file movements." These conditions have always been met, but the conclusion has never followed. The Labour Party has always contained left-wing activists and it has always been `put under pressure from rank-and-file movements'. But it has never been won for socialist policies. So real life refuted the CPGB strategy.

The Labour governments of 1964-70 and 1974-79 cut wages and spending, using incomes policies (including the Social Contract) to cut workers' standards of living. The CPGB tried to build bridges between the working class and the Labour governments that attacked the working class, but you can't build bridges to those who would destroy the working class.

What did the class learn from these struggles? Too many learnt that the struggle against incomes policies did not win permanent economic gains, but they did not learn the vital lesson that the true gains of struggle are in political understanding. The key insights are - capitalism's ceaseless drive for maximum exploitation; the central issue of class power; the Labour Party is an arm of the capitalist state; and perpetual defence is permanent subjection.

The incomes policies however failed to break the working class. So the ruling class brought in a new weapon, for which Labour's attacks on the working class had paved the way - Thatcherism. The CPGB's infamous parliamentary road led not to socialism but to the Thatcherism we have endured ever since 1979, and Thatcherism is a huge step along the road to fascism. Ramelson and the CPGB always underestimated the novelty of Thatcherism, which was indeed a continuation of previous capitalist governments' policies, but was also a significant new development.

The CPGB policy of eschewing `economism by campaigning on political as well as economic issues', opened the door to the single-issue politics of the Marxism Today faction. This faction saw the novelty of Thatcherism, and saw that the CPGB's strategy would not defeat it. But they then embraced Thatcherism in the form of `New Labour'.

During the 1980s, the CPGB proceeded to destroy itself. The authors lament, again, "Ramelson's attempt to build bridges failed." But you can't build bridges to those who want to destroy the party. The authors write of Ramelson and his colleagues, "They had defended the Party rules and democratic centralism like pre-1956 Bolsheviks, only to be out manoeuvred by the Marxism Today tendency and led down a cul-de-sac of extra-labour movement single-issue politics." But they hadn't defended democratic centralism. They opposed it, so legitimising factions and opening the door to `identity politics'.

The CPGB opposed `dictatorship' and the use of `administrative methods' - using the power of the workers' state or of the party organisation to build socialism. So they let themselves be defeated by even such feeble opponents as the Marxism Today faction.

The CPGB pursued the will of the wisp of `left unity', which always adds up to living with capitalism. In trying to build bridges (yet again), this time to Trotskyists, Ramelson went so far as to write that the traitor Trotsky was a `great Marxist'. The CPGB's liberalism towards its would-be wreckers ended by wrecking it.

Last Edit: Sept 26, 2013 13:36:06 GMT by dodger

There are only two classes in Britain — those who work and those who exploit those who work.

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CPGB Gone mourned by few......

Post by dodger on Aug 8, 2013 9:21:00 GMT

Post by dodger on Aug 9, 2013 16:18:37 GMT

Post by dodger on Aug 9, 2013 16:27:43 GMT

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