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With the pablication in January of the first new draft of the "British Road to Socialism' since 1968, the Communist Party of Great Britain has launched the second round of an "open debate' on its programme.
Throughout the previous year, a major discussion took place inside the party around John Golian's article "Socialist Democracy some problems", which appeared in the January 1976 issue of Marxism Today. It purported to outline the problems of developing a theory and practice of socialist demociacy in the Light of the experience of the Communist Parties in the twenty years following Kruschev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956.
Ralph Miliband aptly described Gollan's effort in the 1976 Socialist Register: "It is in fact a lamentable document, written In the familiar wooden style associated by long usage with such productions, mealy-mouthed, full of careful ambiguities and euphemisms, and generally content to repeat what have become the most commonplace formulas in the world communist movement concerning Stalinism and its consequences".
Gollan's document, however, was written with a specific purpose. It appeared at a time when the two biggest of the Western Europeun Communist Parties were embarking on their parallel perspectives of the 'historic compromise with Christian Democracy in Italy and of "Socialism in the cours of France through the Union of the Left in France. And it was written shortly after Gollan's retirement as the General Secretary of the much smaller CPGB which, despite a miserable 17,426 votes throughout Britain at the last General Election, is equally firmly wedded to an electoral road to political influence.
Its object was to gauge the strength of opposition inside the ranks before the leadership openly put its weight behind a redefinition
of the British Party to bring it into line with the concepts of Eurocommunism" of the French and Italians.
The central beadership of the party had already concluded that the way to break the isolation of the CRB was to follow the example of these European parties in distancing themselves from the Soviet bureaucracy and moving in the direction of a more social democratic form of party. In common with their French and Italian comrades, they saw the key to acceptability within the political order of the ruling class as stripping off the few tatters of Marxist theory which have survived the era of Stalin and its aftermath: above all, it was necessary, once and for all, to dispense with any association with Leninist concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In terms of the CP's programme, the problem Is somewhat academic. Already in 1951. Stalin had imposed the concept of a "national" road to socialism through the state appuratus and "democracy" of capitalism, No reference to the dictatorship of the proletariat" is to be found in any edition of the "British Road" since its first publication in the same year. The problem lies rather in the public image of the Communist Party, which is still largely identified with sucit aims, not least because it is a commitment to the aim of Lenin which holds many of the Party's best militants in its ranks.
Despite the publication of 42 contributions to the debate on "Socialist Democracy" in Marxism Today and a special supplement in the course of 1976, the "open debate" became a great deal more closed almost from the outser. The tour of public meetings throughout Britin to launch the debute hit trouble when Gotlan spoke in Glasgow in February last year, What was ostensibly a public meeting was in practice transformed into a Glasgow CP membership uggregate as 250 members packed into the AEUW Halls.
Gollan made to bonesa bout the proposed conclusion of the discussion: *The possibility now exists of bridging the historic split which has existed in the world labour movement since the First World War".
For much of the audience, however, the prospect of life as radical social democrats did not appear attractive. Gollan's chairman was hard put to find a handful of supporters for his views, whilst the floor was taken by numerous leading Glaspow CP activists. There was little "mealy-mouted" in the attitude of those who attacked Gollan for *elevating and exagerating the cult of bourgeois democracy" and compared him with Karl Kautsky, From then on, the debate, both in Glasgow and in Britain as a whole, became largely internal.
The British CP has had, for many years, a tame opposition of hide-bound Stalinists in the Surrey District Committee, which complains of "betrayal of the Soviet Union" in cach Congress discussion and obligingly retires in between. For the Party leadership, the prospect of an opposition in its membership stronghold of Glasgow, embracing many of its most able and active ideologues and campaigners, is neither attractive nor acceptable.
As the second round of debate commences, moves are being made by Glasgow CP apparatchiks to ensure that oppositionists play 10
the game according to Mr. Gollan's rules, or not at all. Whilst content to ccho the "Morning Star"'s muted criticism of the Soviet exchange of the right-wing dissident Viadimir Bukovsky for the Chilean CP leader Luis Corvalan, CP and Young Communist League officials had no hesitation in publicly closing a meeting called by the YCL's Clyde Shipbuilding Branch to discuss the question in December last year. Since then, several YCL branches have been wound up by full-timers.
Then there is the case of John Foster, a leading member of Glasgow CP and a well-known Labour historian. Despite being an originator of the Scottish CP's annual "Festival of Marxism' and the city Party's education programmes, Foster, who has opposed Gollan' views inside the Party, has been removed at this crucial point in the debate - from the Glasgow CP cducation committee.
Closely guarded membership figures for the 1977 card issue reveal the most dramatic decline in ten years for the CP. In Scotland, their membership last month stood at just under 6000; a drop in one year of more than 1200. The YCL has suffered an even greater proportional fall from some 500 to 300, reflecting the increasing age of the party and its failure to attract young people.
The loss of leaders in the top echelons of the Trade Unions the most dramatic since the ETU ballot-rigging scandal, and possibly even since Hungary — continues apace. No Jess than seven national figures in the AUEW. including Jimmy Reid, most of them leading Party functionaries as well, have left some for management posts, some for positions as top union officials, some for the political wilderness. Then there was Dave Bowman, NUR President, who left for the Labour Party; Peter Kavanagh, TGWU builders' organiser and Tormer YCL leader - destination unknown; Max Morris. former NUT President, now hiring himself out as a red-baiter to the Sunday rags.
The bureaucratic measures launched in the Glasgow CP merely indicate the Party's endemic failure to break free from Stalinism and the solution of political differences by administrative means. The actions of the party leaders which reflects the political bankruptcy and cowardice of the Glasgow loyalist" leadership even in defending their own politics will only accelerate the decline of their forces. They will require redoubling every time a Bukovsky is exchanged for a Corvalan, every time a Wolf Biermann is expelled, every time aCharter '77 is brutally suppressed, every time Polish coal breaks a Spanish strike.
But the most glaring contradiction is the stark contrast in which the CP's internal regime stands to its pronouncements about democrucy. For all the attempts at dispensing with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the CP lenders have no intention of doing away with the dictatorship of the apparatus; in stark contrast to The democratic norms of the Bolshevik Party under Lenin, in the CPGB today no debate is launched until the leaders are satisfied it will be resolved in their favour.
They control the political balance of contributions to the debate through their control of the editorial boards of the Party Journals in which the debate takes place: Marxism Today, Comment and the Morning Star.
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And they disarm their opponents at conference time throush the ban on factional activity" whereby one can be expelled for discussing minority pusitions with members of other brunches or privately circulating documents not printed in the official journals.
The political instincts of those who seck to oppose the social democratisation' of the Pare in many ways good ones. Their opposition to the CP leadership's opportunist criticism of the Soviet Bureaucracy is based on their desire to defend the homeland of the world's first socialist revolution; their fight against the new draft of the "British Road" is based on an assesment that it marks the final break with the Leninist concept of proletarian as opposed to bourgeois democracy.
Their political conclusions we may disagree with: Their uncritical support of the Soviet Bureaucracy in the suppression of dissidents is not such a tenable position for people who are starting to get the "dissident" treatment in their own party; and as we noted carlier, the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat' has hardly been a crucial concept in the CPGB these last 25 years!
In their opposition to the 'new liberals of
the CP leadership, those who would stand against the tide in the Party have tended to look back to the most accessible tradition which can provide coherence for their opposition the tradition of hard-line Stalinism in which they were politically moulded. We believe that history has revealed the counterrevolutionary churacter of this tradition, that it offers no future for serious militants in the CP. In future bsues of Scottish Socialist we intend to consider in greater detail the political issues raised by the debate in the CP within a third framework that of revolutionary socialism us practised by the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International in the days of Lenin and Trotsky.
STEVE KENNEDY STEWART MeLENNAN
Scottish Socialist invites a reply from the Scottish Committee of the CPGB on the questions raised in this article: Our pages are futher open to contributions on the "British Road" draft from Communist Party members denied a proper hearing Through their party press or from any other of our readers.