CPGB Lurching into Oblivion

Last November the Communist Party of Great Britain held its 41st Congress in London at which dissolution and/or liquidation were on the agenda. It wasn’t a sombre preparation for a funeral but more of a Wake – the corpse is dead, long live the corpse! It will leave a number of descendants who will fight over the inheritance as if the mantle should descend upon their shoulders, such as the New Communist Party, The Leninist and the Communist Party of Britain. But what of the parent body? Well, anything could happen. It could be transformed into a brighter, newer, greener party, made more fashionable for the arriving generation of opportunists, or then again they may get into the Labour Party at last! It does not matter which option to pursue because all avenues are open to discussion, their politics are up for grabs, and nothing is excluded from the agenda.

Central to the discussions was the strategy document entitled New Times which expresses a conviction that times have changed (yet again) so new policies and a new outlook must be adopted. In reality it is really a continuity of all the nonsense put forward by the CPGB for decades now wrapped up in a new parcel. But this time they declare themselves to be the “cutting edge” of historical developments instead of trailing behind them; this time they will lead the next phase of bourgeois change which they elaborate in the phrase of “New Times”. The essence of this position was summed up in six points by Martin Jacques, the Designer Socialist of this new strategy, in his speech to the Party Congress, which were:

1. The old system of mass production was breaking down and would be replaced by Post-Fordism (expressing the decline of that mass production system introduced by Ford motors), with a shift to service industries, different working patterns, more flexibility, with different categories such as women and members of minority groups drawn into the productive system, etc. There would even be a change in the attitudes to consumerism. Sounds very exciting, except for the fact that the bourgeoisie does this in an attempt to arrest the decline in profitability. Under Post-Fordism, exploitation will be intensified and organisation of workers undermined. Anybody who does not know much about politics may be surprised that somebody calling themselves Communist could praise such a concept. On top of that, consumerism can be fun! No wonder Mr. Jacques’ opinions have been courted by the capitalist media.

2. The grip of the nation-state over their own affairs has declined in favour of international markets, industrial conglomerates, the interdependence of the various bourgeois countries, etc.. But all this is an expression of the internationalising of crises spreading across the globe, uprooting sections of populations here, starving millions there, wars and military dictatorships in other places, and this is supposed to be progressive? But Lenin and the Bolsheviks had different notions of internationalism, such as calls for a United Socialist States of Europe – light years away from this nonsense!

3. The existing system of “Communism” is in crisis. “This is the end of the road for the communist system as we have known it: the central plan, the authoritarian state, the single-party system, the subjugated civil society. Stalinism is dead, and Leninism – its theory of the state, its concept of the party, the absence of civil society, its notion of revolution – has also had its day”. It is not at all surprising that is what people like Jacques believe, but now they have come out with it openly. We will not join in any condemnation of this “new” line of the CPGB, preferring rather to celebrate their abandoning of the term Communist. We Communists jealously defend not only Marxist principles and policies, but also the integrity of the term Communist as well.

But that is not all. Jacques does not merely preside at the funeral of stalinism but also declares that what “we are also seeing is the beginning of the reunification of the socialist movement, which has been divided ever since 1914 into its rival socialist and communist traditions”. What we are about to witness is a panicky stampede into the rotten edifice of the Second International, the very one which the Third one was set up to fight. Lenin, during the First World War, declared that it was necessary to abandon the discredited name socialist and take on a new name, in the same way that people change their clothes from old smelly ones to clean linen. Here we have the spectacle of the CPGB preparing to swap the stinking rags of stalinism for the even more putrid tatters of social democracy. The Second International is dead, long live the Second International!

4. The extremely fashionable issue of the environment. Of course we are all concerned about this but Jacques really goes overboard on this one. International action is need to counteract the ecological dangers, together with a change in personal habits and lifestyles. First we are told by Jacques and his side-kick Stuart Hall that consumerism can be alright and even fun, then we are told that the damage to the environment is all our own personal fault and what we should do is alter our own consumption patterns. No criticism of capitalism here, of production for its own sake and for profit. Perish the thought! Jacques goes in for soul-searching instead and declares “There is no getting away from the fact that the Marxist tradition is productionist at its heart… the conquest of nature, the forces of production, the commitment to economic growth”. But that is not Marxism Mr. Jacques, but bastardised stalinism, calling for relentless economic growth while people starve and go unsatisfied, all in the name of “building socialism”. We Marxists are for the abolition of production for its own sake, producing rather for people’s needs, which in reality may very well lead to a certain amount of de-industrialisation. We refuse to take the rap for this problem instead of the capitalist class.

5. Equality of the sexes was next. Here we have a strange explanation as to the source of the sexual division of labour – it was the result of a deal between capital and labour in the postwar period which confined women to unpaid domestic work. It is the Marxist view that the patriarchal structure of society and family is the product of the division of the human race into classes based upon property and ownership of the means of production, distribution of the products of labour and of consumption. It is this division which foists upon real living people ideologies over which they have little or no control. The propaganda of the ruling class, its schools, religions, means of communications, political parties, reinforce all this. It goes without saying that life-styles and opinions are formed, reinforced and are a reflection of this class division.

Who does Mr. Jacques think is responsible for this. He says that “Our culture remains deeply masculine, public life is still dominated by men”. We question this “Our” when referring to culture, in the sense that this culture belongs to the ruling class and is imposed upon all of society. Some classes do have a positive interest in preserving this domination while others suffer it. We understand the attacks upon sexual inequality, as well as upon all the filthy attitudes of bourgeois society, but regulating the inequalities will not end exploitation but merely institutionalise it.

6. Society and the relationship between civil society and the state are undergoing change. The CPGB wants to get into the centre of this change and looks for a means of accomplishing this. At present it is by-passed by events, hence its growing crisis, declining membership and extremely tarnished image. It is time to bite the bullet and accept the logic of the situation.

A Crisis Ridden Party

That was the gist of what Martin Jacques put forward, with our own comments. The CPGB are certainly a Party in crisis. Membership has declined to a derisory figure of 7,000, many of which exist on paper only, the same as with their youth movement, and they have even lost their daily paper, the Morning Star, to the break-away Communist Party of Britain. (It is worth noting that the Morning Star had voted away any formal connections with the working class at a share-holders meeting some years ago) Things are not going well at all for the CPGB. Their once powerful grip on the leadership of a number of trade unions (mainly a legacy of collaboration in the Second World War) has largely dissipated. The best part of seven decades of faithfully toeing the Moscow line, diligently following every twist and turn of the cominformist policy and they have ended up with nothing, not even a seat in any cabinet. Mr. Jacques recognises that the Party represents a dying constituency, so a new one is looked for. Find a likely section of the population to orient to and build a programme to appeal to them with? No wonder a revision of politics, and loyalties are called for. If they can’t achieve it by the stalinist road, then any other fashionable option will do.

We do not care what new name they adopt (the sooner they cease libeling the name Communist the better) or where they go in their new orientation. Liquidation into the Labour Party is one option, or liquidation into trendy “radical” circles is another. But there is one difference between the CPGB and the other stalinist parties undergoing similar crises. Jacques and Company are looking for the next stage of bourgeois development after Thatcherism so they can jump on the bandwagon, while others are jumping on to the coat-tails of Thatcherism. Some of the Stalinist parties are so enamoured by Thatcherism and by the style of the British Prime Minister, that is sabre-rattling, strike-breaking and free market economics, that perhaps they should adopt the name Conservative Party. Some have already adapted the name Social Democratic, which is near enough anyway.

The breakaway Communist Party of Britain will still keep calling itself Communist and defending the stalinist legacy – an allegedly fighting tradition. The CPB represents the “tankie” wing of the stalinists in Britain, that is those who defended the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Also this party represents the dying constituency which Mr. Jacques referred to, that is those who have unswervingly defended the Russian policies and interests over the decades. They have possession of the daily paper, Morning Star, which only keeps going with heavy subsidies. After the Second World War, with the name of Daily Worker, it had a circulation of 100,000, but these days it has an official one of 12,000 and approximately half of the copies are sold in Russia and Eastern Europe.

How have the Russian leadership reacted to their continuing fan club in Britain? Have they continued to nurture these slender forces of Russiophiles? Not in the least as now the Russians have heavily cut the numbers of copies of the Morning Star they take for circulation… and pay for quarterly in advance. In the past Stalin got rid of people through purges, prison camps and assassinations. Today they just get rid of those who have outlived their usefulness by cutting them adrift and saying “your on your own lads”. Oh well, may be these are the few Times Mr. Jacques talks about.