Day meeting on building a mass communist party Saturday 8 February
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Then and now trade unions *do* engage in campaigns to change the law, get certain MPs elected etc. Saying we can support trade unions because they operate only in the ‘economic’ sphere, and not the ‘political’ just doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t seem like the right way of putting it.
Yes, that’s true what you say. But we are talking about what should be the attitude of the SPGB towards trade unions. Obviously, we support the principle of militant trade union struggle in the economic field even if, as a political party, we don’t get directly involved (it’s for individual members to get involved). Trade unions do get involved in reform campaigns and there is not a lot that we can do about that, obviously.
However, support for the principle of trade unionism on our part does not have to extend to supporting trade union involvement in reformist activity – only militant activity in the economic field and along sound democratic lines. Which reminds me – is there still a political levy in the UK whereby a part of your membership dues goes to fund the Anti-Labour Party? I don’t know what the situation is now (having left the UK 20 years ago) but I sincerely hope this practice has been discontinued. I remember vaguely there was an opt-out arrangement forced on the unions by the Tory government at the time but maybe things have moved on since then…
For the record, Robin has a short letter in this week’s Weekly Worker correcting someone who had written that we thought trade union activity was reformist. Scroll down to the end.
Most of the other letters are about the “mass communist party” idea.
There’s another good letter from Robin in this week’s Weekly Worker:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1528/letters/
The immediately preceding letter from Moshé Machover makes a couple of valid points on a different issue.
In this week’s Weekly Worker Mike Macnair accuses some of his critics of SPGBism:
“This was a friendly discussion in spite of the significance of the differences. However, I think – and this is merely my own opinion – that there is some danger of a ‘negative dialectic’ in which we in the CPGB understate the radicalism of our Draft programme, while, on the other hand, the TAS comrades drive themselves, in opposition to it, towards the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain that all that can be done is to make propaganda for socialism until there is a clear majority for immediate general collectivisation. We need at least to try to avoid this dynamic.” (https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1532/minimum-demands-are-maximal/)
If you read TAS’s (Talking about Socialism) own account of the meeting you will see why Macnair made this criticism:
The WW are criticised for not saying that, on winning control of political power, the working class will immediately abolish capitalist ownership of the means of production and for drawing a misleading distinction between socialism and communism.
Let’s hope that the “Talking About Socialism” group do see where the logic of their criticism should lead them. I doubt that Jack Conrad and Mike Macnair will agree to drop their basically Leninist position.
In the latest Weekly Worker, out today, they again accuse TAS of “Spgbism”.
TAS apparently argues that the proposed new “mass communist party” should have as its stated aim the winning of political power to expropriate the capitalist class and end working class exploitation, and should not have a programme of immediate demands but should simply say that it supports workers struggles to improve or protect from getting worse their conditions under capitalism.
In his article Jack Conrad says of this:
“… it seems, that the TAS comrades reject the idea of a minimum-maximum programme tout court. I say “seems” because at the moment it is more implied than explicitly stated. Nonetheless, comrade Wrack does provide us with this telling statement:
‘I see the programme … as being a programme for government – a government by the working class. It is a statement of intent, a series of policies that the working class will implement to change the way society is organised, to break the power of the ruling class, to end for ever the exploitation of the majority of the world’s population.’”.To which Conrad comments:
“If the programme is based on the ultimate destination, but fails to map out the route needed to get there, then what we have is an attempt to combine the SWP’s minimalism with the utopian impossibilism of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its ‘Our object and declaration of principles’.6”
The 6 is a footnote reference to our website where we set out and explain what our object and declaration what they mean. Conrad evidentially considers that “you are like the SPGB” will be a killer argument that will floor TAS and get them to change their position. Let’s hope that some readers of the WW follow the link that Conrad provides.
Conrad also writes:
“TAS … propose a Bakuninist leap from today’s capitalism to the communist future, where there is no state, no classes, no money, no markets.”
(Actually, Bakunin didn’t propose “no money, no markets”).
Earlier he had set out what the WW holds:
“ … the centrality of programme, the necessity of having a minimum (or immediate) section of that programme, of socialism being the transition period between capitalism and communism, or of socialism beginning as capitalism, but ruled over by the working class …”
This of course is pure Leninism which TAS seems to have moved beyond in accepting that socialism and communism are just two different words to refer to the same system of society “where there is no state, no classes, no money, no markets”.
The prospects of the two groups uniting seem slender if they can’t even agree on what socialism means. We shall see.
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1533/rediscovering-our-words/
Missed this second reference to us in last week’s Weekly Worker:
“However, the danger is that the negative dialectic induces the TAS comrades, in attempting to avoid the danger of insufficient political/moral distance from Stalinists, to take the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain – nothing happens now except propaganda for socialism, until billions agree – then you can introduce full communism on a world scale.”
In this article:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1533/unity-in-three-parts/
Clearly the WW people are trying to press home their perceived advantage in being able to accuse the other side with SPGBism.
Another letter from us published in yesterday’s Weekly Worker. It’s the second one down.
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1534/letters/
To be fair, despite being Leninists, they do open their letters page to all-comers.
And in one of the other letters in yesterday’s Weekly Worker, the Party is mentioned too (albeit in a less than flattering way). It’s from Andrew Northall, a former SPGB member, I believe. As below:
‘As a long time reader and subscriber to the Weekly Worker, I have long understood this basic approach to minimum or immediate demands is core to its basic approach and that of the rather tiny group which exists behind it. I was pleased to see this basic approach clearly reiterated by Jack Conrad (‘Labourism without Labour’, April 3) – and, I have to say, in vivid contrast to the voluminous confusion and obfuscation of Mike Macnair, who, in far too many self-indulgent wordy confusing and obscure articles, reveals no real communism at all, but more a throwback to 19th century social democracy, and two of its later key outputs – the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Mensheviks in Russia.’
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