Workers' Liberty

In the mid 1920’s the leaders of the British Labour Movement not only sold out the General Strike, but also sided with British Imperialism in its intervention against the Chinese Revolution. The same Trade Union leaders and even more right-wing elements formed the leadership of the Labour Party, a Party which in Government had shown itself still completely tied to capitalism, and a Party whose leadership at a time when Communists were being imprisoned just for being Communists, when even Communist Labour MP’s like Saklatvala were being denied entry to the USA, decided at its Liverpool Conference to ban Communists from membership. The leaders of the TUC General Council were part of a political bloc with the Soviet Trade Unions, the Anglo Russian Committee. What was Trotsky’s attitude in these circumstances to the position that British Communists should adopt?

Despite the fact that Trotsky had no illusions in the Liberal reformist nature of the leaders of the General Council, including its supposed “Left” elements, he had been in favour of the establishment of the Anglo-Russian Committee. He sets out the position clearly in the Resolution he submitted, in July 1926, to the Politburo on the General Strike.

“ ‘With the masses – always; with the vacillating leaders sometimes, but only so long as they stand at the head of the masses.’ It is necessary to make use of vacillating leaders while the masses are pushing them ahead, without for a moment abandoning criticism of these leaders. And it is necessary to break with them at the right time when they turn from vacillation to hostile action and betrayal.”

See “Leon Trotsky on Britain” p255.

The Soviet leaders wanted to maintain their bureaucratic/diplomatic relations with the General Council in order they hoped through them to avoid British intervention against Russia despite the fact that these leaders had betrayed the General Strike, were betraying the continuing Miners Strike, and were supporting British Imperialism in China. Trotsky argued that at the time of the betrayal of the General Strike the ARC should have been broken up, and the reasons explained clearly to British workers.

At the same time some ultra-Lefts went further than this. They argued that it was necessary not only to break with the General Council, but with the Trade Unions and Labour Party over which these leaders exercised power. The Stalinists attempted to tar Trotsky with this ultra-Left brush, but Trotsky was as opposed to this ultra-Leftism as he was to the Opportunism of the Stalinists as he makes clear in the Resolution. At the time the British Communist Party had perhaps 20,000 members, and it exercised considerable influence over around half a million active Trade Unionists through the rank and file Minority Movement. It was able to draw on the support and influence of the Soviet Union, and the experience of the October Revolution, which still exercised considerable sway on workers throughout the world. In short, its influence on the Labour Movement was at least 100 times greater than the micro-sects of today be they in Britain or in Venezuela.

Yet despite that difference Trotsky was adamant that the British Communists had to stick with the masses not just in the unions, but in the Workers Party supported by the workers despite its bourgeois leadership. He reiterated the position first outlined by Lenin:

“(1) the necessity for Communists to work in the most reactionary Trade Unions in order to fight to win over the masses under conditions of all kinds; (2) the necessity for British Communists to enter the Labour Party and to fight against being expelled from that organisation, since the experience of the past five years fully confirms what Lenin said on this question at the Second World Congress of the Comintern and in his Left-Wing Communism an Infantile Disorder, and (3) the necessity for a struggle against the right opportunist deviation as well as against the ultra-left.”

(ibid p257)

In Left-Wing Communism Lenin had warned against the danger of ultra-leftism which failed to make the distinction between the recognition by Communists of the bankruptcy of political institutions and organisations, and the continued support for those institutions and organisations by the masses of workers. The workers could not be convinced of that bankruptcy simply by the Communists ignoring these organisations and institutions, standing outside them denouncing them, attempting to set up their own sectarian alternatives, but only by sticking with the workers in those organisations and institutions and demonstrating carefully, calmly and patiently every mistake, every setback, and every betrayal in practice. In short the Communists form a United Front with the masses at a rank and file level in these organisations despite their leaders.

In Venezuela 5 million workers have joined the PSUV. The independent socialist party Paul talks about is in reality nothing more than a neo-Trotskyist micro-sect better known outside Venezuela than inside it, and even the members of this organisation voted against the recommendation of its leader Cirino, and left en masse - to the extent that their can be an en amsse from such a small organisation - to join the PSUV, just as the members of Cirino's union Federation the C-CURA had voted against him, and decided to join the PSUV.

It is unfortunate that nearly 100 years after "Left-Wing Communism" these same ultra-left mistakes and deviations continue to be encountered, now in a more absurd form via organisations that are less than a shadow of the Communist Parties of the beginning of the twentieth century, both in Britain and in Venezuela, and consequently even less a realistic alternative for workers to turn to.

Arthur Bough