First Published: Vanguard, Vol. 4, No. 6, November-December 1967.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba and Sam Richards
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Dear Comrade Editor,
The great Chinese proletarian cultural revolutionary has seen among other things, the confrontation of two lines on inner-party struggle. Liu Shao-chi in his book “On Inner-Party Struggle” gives no guidance what to do when the party leadership is bureaucratic and rotten. By this he, in effect, supports rotten bureaucratic leaderships.
Mao-Tse-tung on the other hand, says “Dare to rebel!” And when the revolutionaries rebelled against the former Peking Municipal Party Committee which was taking the capitalist road, chairman Mao supported them.
It is in this light that we must see the great significance of the 1963 statement issued by the C.D.R.C.U. Here were comrades with a completely unsignposted choice to make, whether to attempt to transform a bureaucratic revisionist party by inner-party struggle or to rebel against that party. That the comrades rebelled makes them the forerunners of the great proletarian cultural revolution.
One cannot help wondering why this rebellion has been ignored by so many people who should know better; why a conscious effort is now being made to present those who were slavishly engaged in “transforming the party” in 1963 as the leadership of the anti-revisionist movement.
Ivor Kenna, Sec.
Finsbury Communist Assn.
* * *
Above is a letter to Vanguard from a reactionary group of communists who broke away from C.D.R.C.U. and now see fit to sow confusion on the history of our movement. To which the editors reply:
* * *
Comrades,
In answer to your most provocative letter containing your appraisal of the significance of certain events. We have no desire to comment on the first two paragraphs in spite of the most obvious errors contained therein, but will proceed directly to the issues raised in paragraph 3 etc. which relate to the revolutionary struggle in Britain, of which we are much concerned. Here you refer to “statement”. Presumably you are referring to the ’Appeal to all Communists’ printed and distributed 9/11/63 (for we know of no other like document).
To begin, we must correct you. These were not comrades with a “choice to make”.
Here were comrades who had already made a choice in no uncertain way, as the ’Appeal’ shows:
In short democratic-centralism has been replaced by bureaucratic-centralism within the C.P.G.B.
It is no longer a Marxist-Leninist Party.
UNITE TO SMASH REVISIONISM
To remain silent in the face of this treachery by the revisionists is to aid and abet their treachery.
Communists must act now. We, the under-signed Communists, representing cadres throughout the country, have therefore met to issue this Appeal.
We call upon all Marxists, all Communists, to unite in condemning the revisionist faction which controls the C.P.G.B.
We call upon all Marxists, all Communists, to work for the defeat of this faction, and the establishment of a genuine Communist Party, based upon the principles of Marxism-Leninism, which will lead the working class and all working people in their struggles against monopoly capitalism and for its final overthrow.
We call upon all Marxists, all Communists, to unite around the principles of the i960 Statement of the International Communist Movement.
A decision to openly struggle against revisionism, and calling all Communists to unite for this purpose.
A decision to rebel had been acted on. No, comrades, it was in fact the London Conference that presented comrades with a choice to make. The ’Appeal’ was the objective outcome of that meeting. It therefore naturally follows that the real significance here lies in the Conference itself. It was here that British Communists rebelled against the C.P.G.B. and broke with the transformists who wanted to work within the confines of the old party and led by dogmatists who by now were a mere appendage to that party. The rebellion against the old party was quickly followed by a call for a new party. This was the significance of events involving C.D.R.C.U. in 1963. We cannot permit you to obscure these events with vague talk of “forerunners of the great proletarian revolution”. Whatever that means is anyone’s guess. We view it as just another attempt to blur the class struggle that has been taking place in Britain and is a slur on the forerunners of a Marxist-Leninist party. For such they were. The proof of this we find in the publication of the first issue of their journal ’Vanguard’, Feb.64. V. l. No. l. which contained ’The Way Forward’ clearly calling for a new party and announcing the establishment of the committee as follows:
COMMITTEE ESTABLISHED In November 1963 the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity, was set up in Great Britain by Communists who had come to recognise, in the course of struggle against the policies of the Communist Party of Great Britain, that to transform this Party from within, by accepting rules operated by men such as Gollan, Dutt and Matthews, was an impossibility. This Committee is now organising a public campaign to expose revisionism, and win the militant industrial workers and intell0ctuals, to understand that a genuine Communist Party must be established before advance can be made against monopoly-capital in Britain. We shall, before long, achieve this goal.
What could be plainer? No talk here of cultural revolution for this was a revolt against petty bourgeois political leadership of the working class.
We read with amazement in your letter “One cannot help wondering why this rebellion has been ignored by so many people who should know better”.
Well, comrades, first let us explain who the people are who “should know better”. These people are the comrades who, being part of the above mentioned committee both past and present, do in fact know better. But some choose to ignore such a rebellion, (or even suddenly remember it, whichever is the more convenient to them at a given moment) for very real political reasons. Secondly, as for the present C.D.R.C.U. members and supporters who have not chosen to ignore these events and most certainly know better than to do so. Now surely it must be they who are left wondering if perhaps you comrades have been potholing over recent months or put off in some other similar way from the Marxist-Leninist Movement. How else can it be explained why it is you have just come to be aware of the “significance” of an action of C.D.R.C.U. some three years and more ago? The more so since these comrades have spent many months propagating publicly these truths in their Journal ’Vanguard’.
You comrades were among those who knew better but chose to ignore, you were part of that rebellion, your reason for breaking eventually from the rebels are political and will emerge for all to see. As is happening with other groups who are involved in this struggle for leadership capable of establishing a genuine Marxist-Leninist party. In such a protracted development we cannot but help to struggle and rebel with and against one and another of the aspects of the movement accordingly for our own decline or growth. This is essential, this is a universal law.
As for your statement: “A conscious effort is now being made to present those who were slavishly engaged in “transforming the party” (Pages 11 & 12, Cont. at back of Bulletins 1 & 2, respectively) in 1963 as the leadership of the anti-revisionist movement”.
Here we would like to clarify some points for you. Prior to the London Conference in 1963, for a comrade to be struggling for the transformation of the party, he was taking objective action. To be engaged in this struggle was commensurate with Marxism-Leninism. It was only after the greater number of Marxist-Leninists found through their practical struggles that this was an impossible task, they subsequently united and stated this objective fact. Then re-charted the way forward to the only possible way for the establishment of a Marxist-Leninist party. Which was to build a new one.
Comrades who thus engaged in attempts to transform the party will reject your reference to them being “slavish”. And as to the anti-revisionists, who then organised to continue with their subjective ideas for transformation after the 63 Conference. In spite of the objective truth proved by the practice of so many comrades who had tried to conduct inner-party struggle but who had been disarmed by the bureaucratic control of the revisionists. Subjective as these were, with their continued efforts doomed to failure. Surely the term “slavishly” is inappropriate and nothing more than an exercise in phrase mongering of which your letter is a patchwork.
In regard to your allusion to:
A conscious effort is now being made to present those who were slavishly engaged in transforming the party in 1963 as the leadership of the anti-revisionist movement.
When will you people learn that the Anti-Revisionist movement as such no longer represents objective Marxism-Leninism. Whereupon we cast your references and fears of such “efforts” back down to the subterranean labyrinths of clandestine obscurity, from where such gloomy talk of reincarnation can only emanate.