The State of the British Communist Movement

The state of the British communist movement is disgusting. From deep revisionism to blatant bigotry, and chauvinism, to unchecked sexual assault and misogyny. This is not the basis for a principled movement that fights for the betterment for the working classes.

This was not always the case. The Communist Party of Great Britain stood at the forefront of a lot of struggles for working classes in this country, most notably the 1926 general strike. The party, however, had a weak ideological base. It was formed from a range of socialist organisations with various muddled and confused ideas. Many of the party’s correct lines came after prodding from the Comintern, or the Communist International. Unfortunately, many of the Comintern’s ideas were wrongly interpreted by the party, such as the united front (against fascism) policy. This policy was only to be used in countries where the communist party could play a leading role, which the CPGB could not. The elements guiding the party in forming the united front aligned them with Labour, a far stronger party, and led to them being subordinated to Labour leadership. They became deeply reformist, following the “British Road to Socialism” - a social-democratic line. This occurred in many parts of Europe, as part of a phenomenon known as “Eurocommunism” - the idea that Europe is unique on the world stage, and that peaceful transition to socialism is possible. In this attempt to make the party “mainstream,” they ruined any chance of guiding real revolutionary struggles, and eventually collapsed in 1991. The French Social Democratic Party also joined the Comintern, becoming the Parti Communiste Français. They too, took the reformist line of Eurocommunism, and collapsed in 1991.

This all lead up to the formation of a party called the Communist Party of Britain, who uphold the British Road to Socialism. They have gone further, and developed a terrible Anglo-chauvinist (nationalist) line.

These are only a few parties. We see a lot of so-called communists such as the Socialist Appeal, the Socialist Workers Party, Red Fightback and so on who have not managed to master the dialectical method and thus fall into the traps of class reductionism, petty reformism and the false notion of “multi polarity”.

That is not to say this is without push back. There have been attempts at building an anti-revisionist organisation on these islands. From parts of the Irish Republican Movement, notably The Irish Republican Socialist Party under Seamus Costello, to the Committee to Defeat Revisionism or Communist Unity (CDRCU) ¹. The latter being an interesting organisation standing on what we would call Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-Tung Thought.

Formed after the Sino-Sovet split, out of disagreement over the “British Road to Socialism” policy, especially the notion of “Peaceful Transition”, this organisation did a proper analysis, engaged in agitation amongst the British peoples and published periodicals trying to frame the class struggle in an anti-imperialist lens. But this organisation was short-lived as after their leader Michael McCreery’s death the organisation fell into rapid decline, in part due to organisational and political frameworks relying too much on McCreery’s leadership. The group tried to overcome this by forming the Action Center for Marxist-Leninist Unity and later the Marxist-Leninist Organisation of Britain. These groups continued the legacy of the CDRCU but in the end the organisations lost their zeal, supporting the rightist lines of Liu and Deng over the Cultural Revolution and Mao, sputtering out into obscurity and inactivity.

These ideas have not laid dormant. We have seen rises and falls of true anti-revisionist and anti-imperialist actions on these islands ², all which teach us lessons on how to move forward. It is up to us to fully learn these lessons and take these lessons even further.

What to do next.

We no longer have time to waste keeping our theory useless. The imperialist system is in decay as markets become exhausted. Climate change ever quickens and is now destroying lives and homes in many parts of the world, with these countries not able to respond as most of their wealth is extracted though the imperialist system. We see the advent of new inter-imperialist conflicts with heightened tensions over resources. We watch as the very sheltered population of the imperial core, who has enjoyed the material and social excesses of imperialism, now are faced with a fraction of the exploitation faced by the colonies and thus lean into reactionary ideology to preserve the status quo. This turns the imperial oppression inwards onto lumpen (de-classed), migrant and queer populations in the UK.

We must come to the conclusion a labour aristocracy makes up much of the population. A socialist revolution cannot take place up and until these excesses are returned and imperialism is destroyed.

We now know of the suffering that is caused. We now must struggle against it.

This struggle must be on many fronts. From working with actual oppressed sections of our society, to engaging in a policy of revolutionary defeatism ³.

We must work with migrants. We must get involved in their day to day life, learning from them, their struggles, and their ideas. We must take these ideas, struggling against the wrong, and raising up the right, taking their work into the political sphere. We must organise for their demands, and struggle against the state that keeps them in poverty. Ties must be made between the workers' movement and students' movement.

We must work with lumpen people, finding their problems, defending the rights they currently hold. We must fight for safe working conditions and develop programs of survival. We must live alongside them.

We can draw out a general progression of world revolution using the Chinese Revolution’s path. The communists first engaged with peasants in the countryside, where the contradictions of imperialism, bureaucracy, and feudalism were the strongest - the chains holding these systems together were also at their weakest. Support was amassed to take land, eventually surrounding and occupying the cities. Looking at the global perspective, we can compare the imperialised countries to the countryside, and the centres of imperialism, like England, to the cities. We are not the centre of the revolution and we should not think so. We should note that we still have important work to do here.

Our Principles

As discussed earlier we need to not repeat the same mistakes of past communist movements. We must be basing our theory and work on a solid understanding and a set of concrete principles and goals, as such we have come up with these.

A formation of our politics around the understanding given by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism

The reason we use the term Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is to differentiate our group and our understanding from otherwise revisionist organisations that use the terms of Marxism-Leninism or Marxism. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism represents the current highest understanding of Marxism today, pulling not only from the lessons of Marx, the Russian Revolution and the Chinese experience but also all people who came after and built upon the updated political theories of scientific socialism, political economy and dialectical materialism.

To stand against bigotry and chauvinism in all forms

This should go without saying. It is not only antithetical to a movement trying to help the oppressed but it is also anti-materialist to reject the struggles based in race, gender, sexuality and ability as something not important for building a communist struggle. To, at best, reduce these struggles to a by-product of class, rejects how these struggles are deeply woven into our society, both economically and socially. If someone in our group or otherwise engages in queerphobia, misogyny, racism or any other kind of bigotry they will not be welcome in our group.

To stand in unity with principled organisations

There are organisations which, while not sharing our political line, do engage in action that is overall beneficial to the struggle. Their work should be supported and we should be sectarian. We should try to raise the political level of their struggle and bring them into a wider anti-imperialist network. For an example of this see Palestine Action and their work. ⁴

To stand against revisionism and dogmatism of Marxism

Revisionism is to revise marxism, against its core principles, to fit an opportunistic goal. This should not be confused with updating Marxist lessons as conditions change. Revisionism represents just as much a threat to the struggle as any other opportunism and will lead the struggle towards wrong conclusions. It is important to constantly struggle with ideas and prove them through practice instead of relying on book worship. ⁵

To use that understanding to inform a creative application of Marxism to British society

All of this discussion is useless without actual analysis of the surrounding conditions. We must see where work can be done and engage in that work. This involves a deep analysis of British society and the rectification of past work that engages in revisionism and anglo-chauvinism.

To use that application to engage in true and widespread anti imperialism

As imperialism represents the primary contradiction within the world at the moment, to ignore it, like many other British parties do, is to fall into the same mistakes we wanted to avoid in the first place. We need to engage in struggle to make the work of the global south easier. To end this imperialist wealth that is covered in blood, not to work to spread it more evenly.

Final thoughts

if you agree with this message and/or wish to discuss it further please email us at portmarxists @ proton.me. if you wish to read more on the matter consult our book guide. if you are able, attend our meetings. consider raising this struggle in your organisation, school, or otherwise. together if we dare to struggle against imperialism we are daring to win!

The need for a new communist movement in the UK