The Future of the Forums

[p005] The Future of the Forums N our last issue we published a provisional analysis I of the Special Congress of the Communist Party held at Hammersmith. It is now several weeks since the delegates returned home and reported back to their branches. The full significance of this Con- gress is only now beginning to reveal itself. In estimating the best way of handling this Special Congress the old leadership of the Communist Party had to choose between two methods. Soon after the Congress was called it appeared as if the leaders had -decided to bend to the storm which had been raging inside the party ever since Khrushchev made his famous speech, and which had been much intensified by the Polish events and the Hungarian revolution. They appeared to be prepared to allow more demo- cracy for the rank and file of the party, to permit more freedom of discussion of political policies and of the leaders’ activities and not to insist rigidly upon public kotowing to certain Stalinist political dogmas. If such a decision was ever taken in King Street, it was soon abandoned when it was discovered how far- reaching the revolt had become among the members. -It- became. increasingly evident that the leaders of the Communist Party, trained in the Stalin school, had, — finally, only one method of political debate—the big ‘stick. At Hammersmith, Pollitt and his protégés ap- plied those very same - bureaucratic methods of. con- ference ‘fixing’ which they had so often denounced when used by Labour leaders at the Labour Party conference and Trades: Union Congress. They afso showed themselves quite prepared to lose another five to ten thousand members—those very members) who had for long been the real prop of King Street—the honest, principled, active members of the party, who at this new stage were not prepared to obey the old demagogic call ‘Close the ranks’ without a thorough- going political examination of the real causes for the Communist Party finding itself in this sorry state of affairs, ‘No Concession’—that was Pollitt’s remedy for the Congress and, formally, his faction recorded an overwhelming victory. But on closer examination, what a victory! To adapt a famous general’s remark 97 “Another victory like that and there will be no Com- ‘munist Party’. Every single dissident amendment was either not called or defeated.! Every single nominee for official positions and for the new Executive Com- mittee put up by the old Political Committee was re- elected. Even the few old EC members who had dur- ing the previous year made mild nuisances of them- selves were removed from office. What an. extraordin- ary affair it was. Twenty-five per cent of the members Tesign in protest against the party’s policies, dozens of illegal factions spontaneously come into existence to fight those policies, the intellectuals of the party re- sign almost to a man, the party experiences the great- est theoretical upheaval of its existence, a Special Con- gress has to be called, thousands of loyal members express their opposition by adopting something like 3,000 critical resolutio.s and amendments ... and ‘the final result is—the reinstatement of the old leader- ship, the election to office of not a single critic and a blanket endorsement of official Stalinist policies. But no sooner had the delegates returned home than the Pyrrhic nature of this victory became appar- ent. The crisis inside the Communist Party, in spite of the new wave of resignations, remains unresolved. On the other hand, the regroupment of a new, non-Stalin- ist Left took, during the same period, certain impor- tant steps forward. In striking contrast to the Ham- mersmith Congress, one week later, another and, we venture to say, more important conference took place at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield. Here were gathered together for a week-end of frank discussion, exchange of views and re-estimation of the future of -Marxism in the British Labour movement, a substan- 1The Standing Orders Committee- deliberately selected the - Most ‘extreme’ amendments for discussion, so as to mini- _mize the minority vote. Thus one delegate was asked to move an amendment calling for complete abolition of the ‘panel’ system. He protested that he did not agree with the -amendment, but would willingly move one which had been submitted by his own branch, calling for changes in the system. He was told that he had missed the point—what was wanted was a demonstrative defeat for the ‘revisionists’! ’ Some delegates estimated that this tactic reduced the poten- . tial average opposition vote from about 150 to about 50.

[p006] tial number of Marxists, former members of the Com- munist Party, Left socialists and members of various anti-Stalinist groups. The main thing that this confer- ence achieved was to demonstrate that communists, released from the strings of King Street, can indulge in real discussion, can give and take hard-hitting cri- ticism and, as a result, resolve their different opinions. Not that this resolution of differences was achieved at this single conference—far from it. But steps were taken and will continue to be taken, in that direction. Ideas were expressed at Wortley Hall which we think were ‘confused’—but it is also certain that what we thought ‘confused’ others thought ‘clear’ and vice versa. But we all learned a great deal. All of us had some of our own confusions made clearer. It was a conference which began a new stage in the education of a Marxist movement. And how vigorous and healthy it all was compared with Hammersmith. Prophecy written down in editorials is notoriously a dangerous practice, but Labour Review believes that, when the history of socialism in Britain comes to be written, it will be recorded that Wortley Hall, small and insignificant as it may now appear against the jamboree of Hammersmith, was a milestone in the creation of a Marxist movement. For Wortley Hall represents a movement which is growing and will, ac- cordingly, prove invincible. Hammersmith was a phenomenon which is dwindling and decaying—i-e., is already pronounced on by history as bankrupt. Labour Review also considers that the local Socialist Forums which have sprung into existence in most large towns in Britain to discuss, develop, and apply to particular problems of today the Marxist method of examining society, are helping forward the time when it will be possible to unite the genuine socialist forces in Britain into a powerful whole. As we see it the Forums serve the purpose of bringing together into creative discussion all those who have a positive contribution to make in applying Marxism to elucidate the problems and prospects of the British Labour movement. At Wortley Hall it was heartening to note that most ex-communists are now well past the phase of breast-beating and have entered into a new, positive phase of political activity. Yet at the same time it is necessary to say that we cannot afford to be complacent; we cannot assume that now everything will automatically become clearer to every- body. COMMON mistake which the Forums seem to make is to confine their discussion to too gen- eral and desultory a treatment of important sub- jects, such as a brief lecture on the Soviet Union one evening and an entirely different subject the next, and so on. While all this is understandable, such sketchy appraisals without serious and detailed study are lead- ing to considerable confusion and even frustration. The feeling is gaining ground that everything is being left very much in the air and none of the real political problems is being tackled properly. Supplementing this state of affairs are those ele- ments who call for an all-inclusive unity in some new political party among various trends on the non- 98 Stalinist Left, before any serious attempt has been made to resolve fundamental political differences. The slogan of unity is always an attractive one, and it is true that until the working-class movement is united in action socialism will remain a dream. But, because of its attractiveness, it is not difficult for the unscrupulous to use the slogan of unity to divide rather than to unite—to use it as a stick to beat those who refuse to sacrifice principles for expediency. The Communist Party’s unity campaigns are excellent ex- amples of this and, unfortunately, it is a practice not unknown elsewhere. It is well known that the thief who joins the pursuers in order to hide his identity cries ‘stop thief’ the loudest. The strength of a political party, as the history of the Bolshevik Party showed most clearly, is not estimated simply by counting party cards. A party’s strength is estimated best by the aptness and truth of its political programme and by the degree of real agreement among its members on the main lines which the party’s activity should follow. How strong would a ‘united’ party be, for example, in which (however much overtime the computer might be working, adding up the membership contribution each group had brought to the party, and however devoted these mem- bers might be to certain abstract principles of social- ism) half the members were convinced that any form of electoral activity is a betrayal of socialist princi- ples, while the other half beiieved that the party should actively campaign to get a Labour Govern- ment elected at the next General Election? Formal unity in one party would hide, for a time, the real existence of two parties within a party. The activity of one half of the party would cancel out the activity of the other. Such a ‘united’ party, to say the least, would have little impact upon the country’s political life. Lenin of course was always in favour of real unity, but on an issue of principle apparently one hundred times narrower than the principle we use in this example, was prepared to split the young socialist party of Russia into two, and later, reflecting this same split, the whole of the Second International. Was he wrong to do so? Every sincere socialist wants unity of the Marxist Left, but it must be a real unity, unity on principles —not a false, illusory, negative, and even positively harmful type of formal, organizational unity. There- fore unity must grow organically; the pace cannot be forced. Time and time again, experience shows that unity cannot be won by signing unity documents. Often such unity has to be declared void before the ink is dry on the signatures. Unity must grow out of discus- sion which resolves fundamental disagreements. This is, as everyone knows, the raison d’étre of the Forums. But unity comes from agreement on principles, pro- gramme and strategy, not because we like the colour of each other’s eyes. In the opinion of Labour Review the Socialist Forum movement should set up small study groups which would investigate, prepare papers and recom- mend suitable reading material on important problems. This approach would help to avoid ‘free for all’ con- fused discussion. It would concentrate the discussion on the most important issues, in an atmosphere where a genuine, principled agreement can be reached. A study of the practical tasks of today suggests to

[p007] us a list of discussion topics for the Forum movement which we thing will bring the richest harvest: (1) What is the character of the social system of the USSR and the bureaucracy which dominates it? How do bureaucracies arise in all sections of the Labour movement? (2) What effect had the development and growth of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union upon the com- munist parties outside the USSR? (3) Should Marxists stand for the defence of the Soviet Union against imperialist attacks, and if so, why? The New Phase of DT since the world’s communists woke up one fine morning in 1929 to discover that three eminent members of the Soviet Communist Party’s Political Bureau, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, were engaged in ‘anti-party activities’ has there been a crisis in the Kremlin so severe as that announced on July 3. The removal of Molotov, Kaganovich and Malenkov from the Central Committee and from their Government posts eclipses even the Twentieth Congress revelations in the light it sheds on the internal stresses that rack the Soviet bureaucracy, and in its potentially unsettling effects on Eastern Europe and on Communist Parties. Molotov, Lenin’s ‘best filing-clerk of the revolu- tion’, Stalin’s “comrade-in-arms’-—and accomplice in the murder of Lenin’s colleagues—the man to whom any dirty job could be safely entrusted, at last falls victim to a veritable coup d’état. A generation’s faith- ful service to the bureaucracy is rewarded with a piti- less indictment of his narrow-mindedness, conservatism —and ‘anti-party’ activities. In the whole voluminous compass of Molotov’s speeches there occurs but one striking and memorable phrase: ‘All roads lead to communism.’ Perfectly true; but with a little foresight he might have added that for the major obstacle on the Russian path to communism, the Soviet bureau- cracy, all roads lead to convulsions, intrigues, shocks and tumbles. This is the destiny which the bureaucracy cannot escape. Those who try to hold back historical progress always find their most cherished dreams and illusions turn into their opposites; and the more these men who cling to the power that by right belongs to the Russian workers shout about ‘collective leadership’ and ‘party unity’ the faster does the monolith crumble into war- ring factions. Stalin was able to hold the privileged upper stratum together, not because of any exceptional personal powers he possessed, but because the period of his dominance was the period of the Russian work- ers’ weariness and apathy, reinforced by the defeat of the revolution in the West and the terrible sufferings of the Second World War. But this is a new historical epoch. The old incantations and formulas no longer _ work. The cracks are widening rapidly as the whole structure is shaken from below by the still inarticulate, 99 (4) Have post-war economic developments discre- dited Marxism, and what are the prospects before capitalism, especially in Britain.? (5) If Marxists join the Labour Party, is this tan- tamount to ‘liquidationism’? Does it necessarily follow that any socialist who works as an active member of the Labour Party has thereby abandoned Marxism and set out along that road which the one-time Marx- ist John Strachey has found so easy to travel? These are some of the more important questions which, as it seems to us, the Forum movement should tackle. For our part we intend to give this discussion all possible help. the Stalinist Crisis but immensely strong, Soviet proletariat. July 1957 is the outward and visible sign that the crisis of the whole Stalinist régime has entered a new stage. The face of the waters has suddenly become troubled; massive and irresistible currents are stirring in the depths. The bureaucracy is now acting as an unbearable fetter on Soviet life. Its chains bite into the living flesh of Soviet society at a hundred and one points. In in- dustry and agriculture the tail ends of a series of un- fulfilled plans litter the planners’ desks. In literature, music and historiography administrative methods de- signed to compel conformity and stifle creativeness succeed only in revealing the bureaucracy’s philistinism and fear of the truth. Not least of all, in the sphere of ideology, the ruling caste can only mutter that it has nothing to learn from Mao Tse-tung. The bureaucracy is actuated by two economic im- pulses. It must protect the nationalized property rela- tions; it does so in its own way, of course, but do so it must, since these are the soil that gives it life. And it must safeguard its own privileged position. As with every parasite, this latter is its primary consideration. The discussions in the Kremlin have not been about improving the conditions of the Soviet workers, but about how best the bureaucracy can defend its posi- tions: whether to give concessions, what concessions to give, to whom to give them, and so on. This was a fight behind closed doors, at which the contestants could hear the first premonitory tappings of the giant outside. They did not take the discussion outside the Central Committee—not even into the ranks of their heavily bureaucratized party, for that would have exposed their real motives. The views of those expelled have nowhere appeared in documents from their own hands. After one preparatory article in Pravda a fait accompli is presented to the Soviet peo- ple. Yet this is supposed to be ‘inner-party democracy’, and these men have the audacity to refer to the Tenth Congress to support their strictures on factional activity. Lenin, however, never intended the proscription of factional platforms as anything more than an extra- ordinary and temporary measure during a critical period. Open groupings and open discussion had been

[p008] the tradition of the Bolshevik Party from its inception; the Stalinist parties cannot tolerate them because they cannot tolerate the clash of opinion. The crisis of 1957 is fundamentally different from the crisis of 1921: then an infant workers’ State was menaced by foreign in- tervention; now a bureaucracy is menaced by an awak- ening people thirsty for knowledge about the past of the movement. The reference to the Tenth Congress may therefore boomerang back at its authors. The gravity of the crisis is shown above all by the tone of the document issued on July 3. This is no pro- duct of a calm academic dispute between ‘liberalizers’ and ‘anti-liberalizers’. Its harshness is the barometer of the mass pressure. The dominant faction is speaking not only to its ousted enemies, but also to the masses et the people. There is a threat between every two ines. Can the struggle be seen simply as one between ‘Stalinists’ and ‘anti-Stalinists’?? By no means. The lines are not drawn so simply and neatly as that. Neither the Khrushchev faction nor the Molotov fac- tion nor the Malenkov faction is homogeneous. It may well be that each of these factions has chosen to adopt as its own various popular demands. We should be- ware of over-simplified interpretations of a conflict whose outlines are in many ways still misty. The im- portant thing is that the motive force of this cataclysm, and of those which will certainly follow it, is the re- suscitation of the Russian working class. For this class, new magnificent opportunities are opening out. The essential feature of this new stage of the crisis is that the workers will more and more come on to the arena. It is not ruled out that they may tem- porarily use reactionary members of the bureaucracy as instruments, before they reach the stage of building their own new, revolutionary leadership. But no threats, no terror, no concessions, no manoeuvres can prevent the discussion coming into the factories, can prevent the emergence of political trends, can prevent the Russian workers from organizing, can prevent the rise of a rejuvenated Marxist movement in the USSR. The Labour movement of the West must rebuff all attempts by imperialism to take advantage of the crisis, and must rally to the support of the Russian workers. The night has lasted for a generation, for three long, dark decades. Now it is ending. The bankruptcy and impotence of a leadership torn by internecine strife are the clear signs of an approaching dawn.