In the Enemy Camp: Using Their Parliament for Our Revolution PDF
Preview In the Enemy Camp: Using Their Parliament for Our Revolution
Workers of the world unite! Dedicated to Lt-Col John L’Estrange Malone J T Walton Newbold Shapurji Saklatvala Willie Gallacher and Phil Piratin Jack Conrad Additional material from Tom Bell, JF Hodgson, William Paul and TA Jackson In the ENEMY CAMP Using parliament for revolution NOVEMBER PUBLICATIONS LTD Published by November Publications Ltd BCM Box 928, London WClN 3XX © 1993 November Publications Ltd ISBN 1 874123 04 7 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by November Publications Ltd Printed by The Book Factory, London N7 7AH First edition 1993 CONTENTS Preface Introduction Parliament Working in the enemy camp 18 Bolsheviks and Mensheviks 2 1 Third International 35 British ‘exceptionalism’ 4O The logic of opportunism 47 Nature of Britain’s revolution 50 Election 92 55 By way of a-conclusion 71 Appendix I. CPGB 1st Congress and parliament 82 Appendix II. Affiliation, for and against 86 Appendix III. Lenin on Labour 95 Appendix IV. CPGB’s first election battle 101 Appendix V. Communist manifesto 1992 111 Appendix V1. Statement: Daily Worker banned? 116 References 119 Index 138 ? ” . 7 9 9 1 9 9 3 0 9 9 Preface The world is in the midst of- a period of reaction and Britain is not in the midst of revolution. Nevertheless. as Jack Conrad explains, this does not mean that when it comes to elections we must limit ourselves to choosing between bourgeois parties. choosing which appears to be the lesser evil. To suggest we must is to follow consciously or unconsciously in the footsteps of the Mensheviks: they imagined that in Russia the party of liberal capitalism, the Cadets, was the key to progress. Our comrade tellingly shows that today the opportunist left in Britain has assigned that role to the Labour Party. The organisations of the opportunist left in Britain have one main overriding priority — getting the Tories out. For them that can only be done by supporting the Labour Party. So when it came to the April 1992 general election they turned a blind eye to Labour's rotten anti-working class record. its open and unashamed commitment to run capitalism. and loyally acted as Kinnock’s footsoldiers. Genuine Marxists do not foster illusions in Labourism. What Britain needs is socialism. To get that means fighting for independent working class politics, and that means reforging the Communist Party of Great Britain, winning for it — not the Labour Party — the position of the natural party of the working class. It was with that aim we entered the April 1992 general election. Our campaign represented a highly significant and necessary stage in the struggle to reforge the CPGB; it provided an invaluable opportunity to challenge Labourism and present, in a truly mass way. the case for communism. Details of all of this. above all the theoretical and historical background to communist work in parliament and parliamentary elections, will be found in comrade Jack Conrad's pamphlet. Given the present ideological confusion on the left, we believe it will act as a breath of fresh, revitalising air. Provisional Central Committee Communist Party of Great Britain December 1992 Introduction For communists, that is real as opposed to ‘offlcial’ or fake communists, elections to the bourgeois parliament are a secondary question. We do not consider elections the motor of history, the driving force behind the political movement of nations and peoples. As Marx and Engels made clear in the Communist Manifesto, it is “class struggles”, up to and including revolution, which are the motor of history.‘ That does not mean we are indifferent to elections. As long as important sections of the working population entertain illusions in the possibilities of parliament. we “consider it obligatory for the Communist Party” to stand candidates “because we want to use every avenue to propagate the ideas of communism.”2 It has to be said that many on the left in Britain only pay lip service, if that, to the Marxist-Leninist approach to elections. This is very significant. Indeed, in the conditions which pertain today the “election question’ delineates the main divisions within the working class movement in our country. The attitude towards elections not only defines the revolutionary and reformist poles of our working class movement; in a different way it also defines the soggy ‘Menshevik’ centre. which exists and vacillates between them. To understand why this is the case, why we consider it necessary to stand communist candidates, including in competition with those of the Labour Party, why we put reforging the Communist Party and the consciousness of advanced workers before the question of who administers Britain, why we do not give a hoot about the ‘you'll split the vote' outrage of centrists, we can do no better than begin by examining parliament and elections in the light of both Marxist theory and communist history. 8 In the Enemy Camp It has to be said that while some boast about their disdainful attitude towards theory and history. we take a different view. Without Marxist theory there can be no Marxist movement. That is a dictum most would accept. But what of history? It goes without saying that we are not interested in creating a rosy image of the past. No, for us historical experience is our movement’s teacher. Understanding history is learning from past advances and setbacks. in order to guide us towards our final self liberation. As the great Franz Mehring3 once said: “The proletariat has the advantage over all other parties of being able to constantly draw new strength from the history of its own past, the better to wage its present-day struggles and attain the new world of the future.” By examining the history of our movement's attitude towards and utilisation of parliament and elections in this pamphlet, we seek to draw new strength for the battles to come. JC 1. Parliament We can best begin our discussion on the ’election question’ with parliament itself. Like the French états-generaux, Sweden’s n'gsdag. the landstande of Germany and the Spanish cortes, the English parliament had its origins in feudalism’s endemic contradiction between what was later called the “divine right” of kings and the barons’ “right of resistance”.4During the 13th century this “right of resistance“ grew to the point where baronial magnates could. through concerted rebellion or collective pressure. require “their kings to promulgate acts of self-limitation”.5 The Charter of Ottokar in Syria. England's Great Charter. the Golden Bull in Hungary. the Pact of Koszye in Poland all had the common purpose of ‘restoring’ the supposed ‘ancient freedoms’ of the nobles. and thus a greater share of the meagre surplus squeezed out of the downtrodden peasants. Dual power. though sealed and sanctified in meticulously drafted charters, proved inherently unstable. Between the irresistible barons and the immovable king there ran the everpresent threat of civil war. Both sets of heavily armoured thieves therefore had a pressing interest in courting the nascent merchant and guild class. The wealth and power of these parvenus had grown such that they deemed contributions to state coffers “aid that they had conceded rather than a tax imposed upon them”.6 This swelling self confidence fully explains the famous decision in 1265 by Simon de Montfort's baronial party to summon to council for the first time representatives from the cities, boroughs and cinque ports. namely “the more upright and discreet citizens or burgesses”.7 Ironically the passive entry of the burgesses into the political arena worked to the eventual advantage of the “strictly individual aspect of the state”.8 With central power. with the profane reins of
The list of books you might like
