Communist Party
History of the Communist Party of Great Britain 1927-41. Noreen Branson. (Lawrence & Wishart). Two Steps Back. Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson. (Calverts Press). THE "official" history of the Communist Party was first commissioned by the Executive in 1956. Because the Party's attitude to its history kept changing according to the needs of the moment, it is no wonder that it took James Klugman until 1969 to complete the first two volumes, covering only as far as 1926.
It is even less surprising that -even with the death of Klugman - il took a further 16 years to write this third volume, which covers a much trickier period for the CP to come to terms with, involving many twists and turns.
Klugman's volumes were teresting in that he covered much of the detail of the early agitational work of the CP. In dealing with the CP's treacherous (Moscow-influenced) line of All power to the Genera Council" in the 1926 General Strike, Klugman admitted some of the errors pointed out at the time and subsequently by the Trotskyist movement - but presented these as his own assessments, and played down their significance.
Branson's book seems altogether more conscious cover-up on the history of the period writes as a Eurocommunist, able to distance herself from Stalin and say that certain mistakes were made, but then goes on to excuse each of these mistakes as understandable in the conditions of the day.
She attributes all the "mistakes" to the influence of the Communist International (Comintern) which had been set up by Lenin and Trotsky in 1919 to further the international revolution, but which by the late 1920s had been transformed under Stalin and the rising Moscow bureaucracy cynical tool for Kremlin foreign history in- policy.
which Branson strongly agrees with is that of the Front", after 1935. Ignoring the ways in which this search for alliances with the "anti-fascist", capitalist Stalin's foreign policy requirements after the Nazi takeover in Germany, Branson claims that the Popular Front policy was forced on Moscow by the British and other CPs! In this way she an tries to keep in with many ageing CP members who went gamely along She with the Popular Front as one of many abrupt turns, as well as defending her own, position. of a basically sionally *making always fighting for the working class. This avoids any analysis which points to the rise of a bureaucracy in the Soviet Union (and the British Party) whose policies became directly counterposed to the Marxism of Lenin and the Bolsheviks into a and the interests of the international working class. Socialist: Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986. Page 32
(Left to right) Molofov, Mikoyan, Stalin, Kamenev and Voroshilov in 1929.
Thus the one period of policy cross-class
"Popular opportunist
"democratic"
classes conformed to degenerating
But in and the CP's current political ic/political
In this way Branson paints a picture
"honest"
party, occamistakes"
but and motivations possibilities excluded.
By TONY RICHARDS The "Third Period"
Klugman's volumes dealt with the attitude of the CP up to 1926, with its attitude to the TUC General Council and particularly its "left" elements. This had not simply applied in Britain: internationally the
Comintern had embraced any trade union leader, social democrat or nationalist leader or government (Chiang Kai Shek in China!) prepared to show a friendly lace to the Soviet Union
1928 came an abrupt change. This was the start of what was known as the "Third Period", referring to the third phase of economdevelopment since the 1917 Russian Revolution. According to the Stalinist view, the first period had been one of widespread revolutionary upsurge; the second period one of relative "stability" - in which the opportunist line of seeking un-
Pri pled all tea revolitionary
argument that revolutionary were temporarily
The opening of the "Third Period" was marked by cataclysmic predic.
tions that the stabilty had broken down, and that the final phase of all out struggle of "class against class had begun. It was linked in this way with a sharpening economic crisis in the capitalist countries, and a lurch towards ultra-left, sectarian politics by the Communist Parties. main starting point had needs of Stalin and the bureaucracy to rationalise an abrupt *about-turn in domestic policy within the USSR.
Stalin's former supporters chosen allies, the rich Kulaks, had developed their wealth and power within the economy - while industry had lagged behind. Trotsky's warnings of the dangers this posed, and the need for a rapid industrialisation, had been ignored and then suppressed.
But in 1928, the Kulaks' more or less open threat to the economy finally forced Stalin into a belated, and brutal, switch of policy
Stain began calling to the Tet
From urging the peasantry to rich" quidation of the Kulaks as a class". In their thousands and were driven from their land
A panic programme of massacred. crash industrialisation was begun with dire consequences for Russian workers. This was the real basis of the "Third Period": and the Communist Parties were forced to ice the same line.
Social democrats, uncritically supported until 1928, were suddenly denounced as "social fascists", than fascists because they operated under cover in the labour movement.
The same union leaders tail-ended in the British General Strike, together with their unions, were branded "social fascists". All kinds of ultra-left "Red Unions" in various countries.
In Britain the policy of forming new only carried
Miners' union in Fyfe and a Garment workers'
However, the same sectarian attitude prevailed and affected CP work in all
The Minority Movement of leadership, led by the CP but initially embracing independent became a meaningless rump.
CP members were already being expelled from the Labour Party in the period following the General Strike.
But many Labour Party branches had refused to expel, and were being disaffiliated in a major fight with the leadership. The resistance had formed up in a "National Left Wing Movement", which was strengthening CP influence in the Labour Party.
The switch to Third Period politics brought all this to a grinding halt. CP members were told
Labour Party even if they had not been expelled. The
Wing Movement was disbanded, and its supporters told simply to join the
CP. The CP also dropped its demand
But its been the
Soviet and peasant
Russian planned millions they for affiliation to the Labour Party.
and because it shows much of what the CP actually did do. Branson reveals this quite clearly because she is opposed to the CP policy in that period. The internationally material is also interesting because it shows many similarities between the
Third Period CP antics and the more politics of
Revolutionary Party and other ultra-
• worse left groupings today.
however is interesting:
introduction of the new line with the equally were formed separate tion, the symptoms of century since 1928 that you reveal itself."
"explained"
from the right wing to leave the what changes
National Left such an anti-Leninist line.
OPUIAR FRONTS REVISITED
LESSONS A celebration event in London with photos, archive films and discussions 18-12.38 Workshops 2-5 Rally with COMMUNIST PARTY • MUTA EV
This chapter is well worth reading
International.
Branson's explanation of the turn
"Most writers tend to associate the
There is certainly evidence that Stalin agreed with it; there is little that he was responsible pressure, an isolationist and ultra-left posture has often been the outcome. In the late 1920s it had become clear that the previous strategy had failed. The majority of the workers acepted democrats, who had betrayed them and in every country were hounding the Communists as enemies, in practice, defeating them. In such a situawhat Lenin once referred to as "Left Wing Coman infantile disorder" only too likely to appear. It has been times in the need a Stalin for this disorder to
In other words, Third Period ultra simply as an understandable response to attacks movement. But though Branson mentions that the line was imposed on the Communist International, she fails to social Comintern made it possible to impose said, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986, Page 33
RNED
The old rotten policies live on today!
EN fought against such ultra-leftism in a similar period. Now Stalin was imposthe degenerating
The conditions of isolation of Communist Parties like that in Britain are well described: but this only explains why the Comintern line once adopted was imposed relatively easily. It does not explain how it was adopted in the first instance. In fact it was a line which took no notice of the conditions of party-building in any of the countries where CPs were operating. It took no notice of their development,
The biggest problem of all for Branson in accounting for this period bureaucracy under Stalin; its opportunist and conservative line of foreign policy in the second period; its short-sighted economic policy of appeasing the peasantry and the contradictions it produced; and switch to ultra-left sectarianism, were opposed within the all consistently Soviet Union and the Comintern by Trotsky and the Left Opposition, who counterposed at each point a Marxist line of policy to the positions adopted by Stalin and the bureaucracy.
The most crushing indictment of the Third Period line came in Germany, where the policy was carried out to extreme lengths, dividing the best organised working class in the world in the face of the Nazi attack.
Denunciations of the mass social
"social fascist" blocked any fight for a United Front between the CP and SPD against the actual fascists. Indeed the CP even went so far as to stand on joint platforms with the Nazis against the democrats. The Nazis were openly described as the "lesser evil"
to the social democrats who were
"Nazis in disguise". In this way it was
argued it did not matter if Hitler did take over, because he would soon be exposed and "After Hitler it would be our [the CP's] turn."
Of course this was not the case. When Hitler did take power in 1933 the working class was there was hardly any action against him. He moved ruthlessly against the whole workers movement; the first people arrested and murdered were CP members: SPD militants were not far behind.
If the Cominern had been a genuine Communist International at this point, their reaction would have been to analyse this catastrophic failure and admit the ultra-left errors. The clearest indication that Lenin's International had become bureaucratised under Stalin was the fact that it continued to defend the Third Period line and its record everywhere, including Germany!
It was this which led Leon Trotsky and the International Lett Opposition to call for a break from Stalin's parties and the building of a new, revolutionary Fourth International to retrieve and revitalise the heritage of the Bolshevik Revolution.
The Popular Front
The turn from hysterical "class against class" sectarianism to the abject cross-class politics of the Popular Front did not take place 1934-35, embodied in the decisions of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, whose fiftieth anniversary is today being celebrated by CPs the world over.
The Popular Front line is one of seeking to ally the Commuist Parties with anyone and everyone who will verbally denounce fascism. In place of a united front of workers' parties, each retaining their independence but agreeing to strike together on a common limited objective, the "unity" is between "democratic" forces, and the programme reduced to those demands which the most vative elements will accept. Anyone who raises class politics within a Popular Front is denounced as a "sectarian" or an "ultra left"*.
Branson presents the switch to this line as a reaction to the lessons of the Third Period. This is a downright lie. Not a single Comintern party of all the British CPI - drew a single negative conclusion OI criticism of the Third Period. Nobody said they had been wrong. And far from the national CPs piling on the
Pressure for a change in Comintern
was changed response to the needs of policy, and national CPs again obliged to swing into line.
Branson describes CPs suddenly feeling the need for joint actions with others (social fascists"?) fascism. She writes of demonstrations spontaneously taking place. Of course there is no doubt that Hitler's victory did create new material conditions: but the Period policy had never matched real conditions before!
intern adopted the Popular Front as its new official policy. The answer is that
Stalin and bureaucracy endorsed it, as a line which fitted their new foreign policy so divided requirements: if not, they would hve continued with their old policy.
once Hitler had established himself he might (as he kept saying) invade
Russia.
allies against Hitler — and turned not to the European working classes, but democratic the to capitalist wanted to ingratiate these bourgois politicians: but this was impossible with the Third Period completely
"class against class' policy: the policy had to go — and with it any line of class independence or working class action. Enter the Popular Front - a line which, with incidental interruptions, has become the stock in trade of every Western CP since 1935.
weakest sention of Branions bok:
l'his episode is and yet it is the best part of the book by Bornstein and Richardson. In the chapter describe how the British CP policy emerged to the right of the Labour
NEC right of the Liberals!
until the main enemy. They were for supporting any candidate in elections who was to Chamberlain.
is a struggle for its very existence as a democratic and people.
Bornstein highlight the CP's infamous suport to a dissident sistent CP didates against or who opposed a Popular Front. The conserin Aylesbury.
it was, rejected the appeals of the CP, including requests to affiliate, on the
- least basis that the the CPI) was a class party.
explicit name "Chamberlain" to day's CP
Kremlin
"Thatcherism"
ав and looks
Toryism, who oppose her.
had all
Branson against joint
She also defends
Third
The main question is why the Comthe Kremlin
Stalin certainly recognised that
So Stalin began looking for European governments! Stalin himself with "Showing the Flag" they - and on some instances to the
The CP presented Chamberlain as progressive" and opposed
"The struggle of the British people against the Chamberlain government unconquered and Richardson Tory, the Duchess of Atholl in an election. They show consupport for Tory canthose Labourites whom they considered could not win most notorious of these instances was
The authors also show how the CP worked inside the Labour Party to force upon it a non-class Popular Frontist line. The NEC, right wing as
Labour Party (unlike
None of this is shown up by Branson. The reason is clear: switch the
"Thatcher" and you can see an almost exact echo of the Popular Front policy today. To-
Executive has presented new type of alliance again for an alliance of all, from whatever party, the material workers* available. She must have deliberately chosen not to reveal the full logic of sabotaged the present CP Executive's position.
completely the decisive disastrous application of the Popular Front policy in Spain, which brought the eventual defeat of the Spanish Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986. Page 34 iNO®
• PA
EL FASCISMO QUIERE CH
MADRID •SERA LA THI
The Popular Front brought disaster in the Spanish Civil war. working class. In the search for an with the "anti-fascist" capitalist class in Spain, peasants were forced to hand back land they had seized to the old landlords, control and class action against France and the capitalists was and broken up, and the bourgeois politicians were given the voice in running the civil war. But Branson and her co-thinkers would do it all just the same again if given the chance.
ASARAN:!
CINQUIS TAR MADRID
TOMBA-DEL FASEISMO•6
Trotskyism
The period of the Popular Front of class politics in and the crushin parties was also the the Comintern of the period notorious
Trials, in which Stalin crushed almost all the survivors of the old Bolshevik
The majority leadership
Central Committee was framed up and death, along put to countless other Soviet class fighters.
Branson doesn't defend
Moscow recent claims in that British CP leaders did
Moscow - only they did private"!
did the CP accept everything that happened been their personal friends
Petrovsky?
Trotskyists from treated like fascists.
that concede class enemy was cupboard.
The War
Hitler's Germany.
it, showing the Comintern.
When war broke out, intern declared it was an "imperialist war", in which neither side should be supported. The British CP was a bit slow off the mark.
Comintern's previous line of cross- class alliances against fascism they had declared by the "democratic" British
This imperialists.
changed when the Cominern intervened, and from 1939 until June
1941 when Russia was invaded by
Hitler's troops the British CP denounced the war as an war"
CP favoured the continuation of the class struggle in Britain. From 194] to 1945, support for the chill and the National Government, with its strike-breaking, and speed.
up.
Moscow view, much of this part of the book is a repeat of the book "The Communist
Party and the War"
of Lenin's published last year. Both take the with view that the "class war" period was wrong. Both explain this line the resulting from outside intervention.
Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986. Page 35
Moscow Trials: but she does defend
Branson the CP for its attitude at the time. She problem claims that Communists had seen the disruptive actions of Trotskyists, and
In this was why they accepted the Trials.
A former British CP member disappeared in Russia at that time. Rose revolutionary
Cohen was the wife of a leading Rus-
"own"
sian CP member, Petrovsky, who had been the Comintern's representative in Britain. Petrovsky was executed as a "spy". Branson goes to great trouble to claim that British CP leader the expense
Harry Pollitt raised Cohen's case in
- but she uses as evidence a letter by Stalinist veteran R. Palme
Bornstein
Dutt... to the Times Literary Supplement in 1966! This is the equivalent of the Morning
Star class
-Taise criticisms of what was going on in
"in so
Why then did the CP never menis that:
tion the Cohen case at the time? Why a at face value the in
Trials? Why did they not even question the execution of people who had
- like handful
They went further than this - and called themselves for the expulsion of the labour move.
ment, declaring that they should be
Branson does this treatment of a "mistake"
political opponents as agents of the
"horribly misguided". But, fearful of falling skeletons, she does not venture too far into that
In 1939 Stalin signed a pact with
Branson defends no connection between this squalid deal and the politics of
Comthe
Trotsky
Following the backward at first supported the war promptly and 1930s.
was sciously it
"imperialist and the
During this brief 2-year period, the however, they reverted to
"democratic" Churuseful
From the Eurocommunist point of extensive which was the early as
Viewpoint).
goes on to argue that this was resolved by the dissollution of the Comintern in 1943.
reality, the war was an imperialist war from start to finish. The job of Marxists was to fight for the overthrow of their capitalist class within that situation. Once Russia entered the war, Marxists should have aided its war efforts and speeded material aid by class struggle means, but not at of surrendering their own political independence to their own capitalist class.
and Richardson detail this period of the CP's history very well, showing the lengths to which collaboration went in the 1941-45 period.
History - for them and for us
Branson's summation of this period
"The British Communist Party had considerable list of past achievements to its credit during the 23 years of its existence."
This sums up her attitude. The CP has to explain how it got where it is today. It is no answer to point to a of "understandable" mistakes in isolation from the politics of the Comintern and the emerging bureaucracy of the USSR. It is even less of an answer when one of these periods which many would regard as
— the Popular Front - is singled out for support because that represents the present politics of the
For us, history must be seen as a way of understanding a changing world. We are opposed to today's politics of the CP: we understand that these politics of class collaboration did not arise yesterday: but neither are they the politics on which the CP was founded or on which Lenin and led the first successful workers' revolution. They emerged as the politics of a rising bureaucracy in an isolated, encircled, economically workers' state. They developed as part of an international Stalinist movement and became ossifed in a party in which all Marxist culture was crushed in the late 1920s
The more a party swallows abrupt twists and turns, the less it examines mistakes and betrayals, the more conmust begin lying and distorting its own history to cover up.
more it must school its members in lying and distortion.
Branson's history is well suited to such a method and such a Party.
As an excellent antidote, the book by Bornstein and Richardson is a contribution, laying bare many lies and distortions. Any reader concerned for an accurate picture of CP history is also recommended to study Robert Black's presentation of source material - in Stalinism in Britain and the essays on
CP contained in : Communism in Britain by Woodhouse and Pearce (both available from Socialist