CPGB-ML’s reply to the lies and slanders of the CPB

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For

quite some time, the CPGB-ML has attempted to be included in the annual

International Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties (ICCWP), based in Athens. Our attempts in this regard have drawn a blank from the working group of the ICCWP.

This

year, in response to our request and acting on behalf of the working group of

the ICCWP, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) asked the Communist Party of

Britain (CPB) and the New Communist Party (NCP), as the ‘recognised’ parties in

Britain, to report on the eligibility of the CPGB-ML for membership of the

ICCWP. In response to this request, John Foster, the International Secretary of

the CPB, wrote what claims to be a report on the CPGB-ML but is in fact a sly

and scurrilous attack on the latter.

We

have never been asked by the working group to submit any evidence in our

defence; nor have we been officially sent a copy of the CPB’s ‘report’.

Fortunately, we came to have possession of a copy of this report, and we have

sent our observations on it to the working party. Hitherto we have received not

even an acknowledgement.

In

the circumstances, we have no option but to go public and expose the arbitrary

and unjust modus operandi of both the working group and the CPB. In order that

nobody accuse us of misrepresenting the CPB, we are publishing that

organisation’s report along with our reply.

Report

prepared for the working party of the ICCWP by the Communist Party of Britain

September 2008

What qualifies a party

for membership of the International Conference of Communist and Workers

Parties?

All existing member

parties possess:

A living Communist tradition: a significant core of members

deriving from communist parties formed within the period of the Third

International.

A working class base: influence within the trade union

movement and other mass democratic organisations of working people that enables

the linking of immediate struggles to wider class alliances and an

understanding of capitalist or imperialist state power.

An ability to develop Marxism in the

circumstances of their country:

a democratic process that can generalise this experience, draw lessons and

creatively develop Marxist-Leninist practice through Congresses and

programmatic documents.

Our conclusion is that the CPGB-ML

does not possess these characteristics.

Origins

CPGB-ML

was formed in 2004 when a group of members associated with Harpal Brar were

excluded from membership of the Socialist Labour Party. The group was less than

40 strong. Few if any had been members of the original Communist Party of Great

Britain. The CPGB itself was founded in 1920. It provided leadership in the

historic struggles of Britain’s working class from the 1920s to the 1970s and

gave birth to both the New Communist Party and the Communist Party of Britain.

The Socialist Labour Party emerged from the Labour Party and has never claimed

to be either a Marxist or a democratic-centralist party.

The

leadership of the CPGB-ML has its political origins in a ‘Naxalite’ trend in

the Indian Workers Association in Britain. The predominant trend in the IWA is

led by the Association of Indian Communists in Britain, affiliated to the

Communist Party of India (Marxist). Between 1991 and 2004, the Association of

Indian Communists tried to maintain unity with the Naxalites. This proved

difficult because a Naxalite branch insisted on maintaining its own

publication, Lalkar, edited by Harpal Brar, and projecting its own rather than

IWA policies, by, for example, denouncing the reforms undertaken by the Communist

Party of China and welcoming India’s nuclear tests.

In

2001, Lalkar applauded the September 11 attacks. The thousands of workers who

died in the Twin Towers were all dismissed as ‘bankers’ and ‘stockbrokers’. All

Communists, socialists and progressives who disagreed with this position were

accused of siding with imperialism (Lalkar, November/December 2001). In 2004,

the overwhelming majority of the IWA re-established that organisation without

those who published Lalkar. Those excluded today lead the CPGB-ML.

A

working class base

The

membership of the CPGB ML is not published but it is understood to be less than

50. The CPGB ML produces a magazine, Proletarian, once every two months.

It has no other publication – although Lalkar is still produced by the CPGB ML

chairperson Harpal Brar. It runs a website cpgb-ml.org. This reproduces the

content of Proletarian, the thirteen leaflets produced by the CPGB ML since the

end of 2006 and summaries of eight pamphlets written by Harpal Brar. There is

also an Events page: ‘Events

organised by CPGB-ML, plus events at which CPGB-ML comrades will be attending’’. For July and August 2008 (a

period which saw mass strikes across Britain’s

public sector and preparations for the Trades Union Congress and the 20

September demonstration against the war) this page remained entirely blank.

The home page states that the CPGB (ML) was formed because “there was no existing party in Britain that carried a consistently Marxist-Leninist, anti-imperialist, anti-social

democratic political line.”

The

Communist Party of Britain is also very small by international standards. The

CPGB was re-established as the Communist Party of Britain in 1988, all its

members having previously been members of the CPGB. Currently the CPB has a

registered, dues paying membership of 1,050, representing an increase of around

20 per cent over the past three years. It continues to sustain the only English

language daily paper which follows a Communist editorial line and which

currently has the support of all major British trade unions, the Morning Star.

The

style of work of work of the CPB contrasts strongly with that of the CPGB (ML).

The CPB is active throughout the trade union movement from the workplace to the

executives of most major unions and the General Council of the Trades Union

Congress. Our comrades participate directly in the debates among working people

that formulate policy and ensure that policy is carried into action on the

ground in day to day struggle. Our party and the Young Communist League are

also active in the women’s, tenants, pensioners, youth and students movements.

We are not aware of a presence by the CPGB-ML in any of these areas of

political and ideological struggle, particularly the trade union movement.

The

political practice of the CPGB-ML involves denunciations of precisely those

left-wing and anti-war trade union leaders and Labour MPs who have fought

against the imperialist policies of the current New Labour government.

In

the view of the CPB it has been this mass-based struggle that has represented

the key fulcrum for change within British politics over the past six years.

The CPB itself has sought to win the trade union and labour movement to oppose

the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to demand the withdrawal of British troops

and secure an end to Britain’s foreign policy subservience to the US, particularly in relation to Star Wars and the renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear missile

system. To this end our party has helped develop the Stop the War Coalition and

the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in which our comrades hold leading

positions. Our party’s influence in the trade union movement has been used to

win almost all individual trade unions and the TUC itself to oppose Britain’s imperialist foreign policy – as well as mass demonstrations involving millions of

people. This in turn has led to a significant and growing section of Labour MPs

to oppose the government’s war policies. In 2003 over 140 Labour MPs voted

against the war.

The

CPGB ML has taken no part in this work. It describes those trade union leaders

who have led the fight against the government as’ opportunists’,’ traitors’ and

‘apologists for imperialism’. CPGB-ML

propaganda denounces the socialist and CPB leadership of the Stop the War Coalition

for ‘political cowardice of the worst kind’, while the Campaign for Nuclear

Disarmament (CND) with its the progressive and CPB leadership is condemned for

following a ‘narrow bourgeois-pacifist agenda’ (see for example, Proletarian,

February, 2007). It

describes the Morning Star as a ‘revisionist rag’ (Lalkar, January/February

2006). In

the main movements in solidarity with Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia, in which CPB members are prominent at every level and have been instrumental in winning

wider trade union backing, the CPGB-ML plays no part. Its main involvement

outside the CPGB (ML) has been in the establishment of front organizations

controlled by the CPGB (ML), notably the Stalin Society.

An ability to develop Marxism in the

circumstances of their country

The CPGB (ML) has held four annual conferences or

Congresses since its formation in 2004. We have examined the resolutions

passed. Most are declarations on international issues. A minority are on

specific national issues such as housing or immigration policies. None has had

a programmatic character. There is no evidence of any pre-Congress discussion

having taken place to enable the membership to generalize and draw lessons from

their political engagement. At no Congress has there has been any attempt to

define a CPGB strategy for political transformation or any attempt to assess

and test the party’s political practice.

The CPGB (ML) would therefore appear to lack the

essential requirements for a Marxist Leninist Communist Party: a political

strategy for intervention in the organized working class, the size and weight

to do so and the democratic centralist structure required to develop its

political practice.

A case study in sectarianism: the

campaign in Britain against the banning of the Czech Young Communists and

state-sponsored anti-Communism

Where such an approach can lead was revealed in the

recent campaign against the attempt to ‘criminalise’ Communism in the

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and to outlaw the Czech

Communist Youth Union.

In 2005 the CPB took the initiative in contacting trade

unions and MPs to mobilise opposition to the motions before the Assembly.

Numerous articles were published in the daily Morning Star and elsewhere,

defending Communism in theory and practice. We galvanised MPs who were members

of the European Assembly to provide internal information and to vote against

the anti-Communism motions. At the same time, the CPB was also engaged in

solidarity with the Czech Communist Youth Union and organising speakers to

address meetings in Britain. It arranged for MPs to table and sign a motion in

the British Parliament condemning the banning of the union. A protest at the

Czech embassy in London, where a deputation of CPB and trade union leaders made

verbal and written representations, received wide publicity in Britain and

internationally.

The contribution of the CPGB-ML to this struggle was a

belated statement reprinted from Greece in Proletarian —and a long article in Lalkar

(January/February 2006) attacking the CPB leadership for ‘Khrushchevite

revisionism’. The CPB, in taking its arguments against anti-Communism into the

trade union movement, had briefly sought to assess the errors made during the

Stalin period in the context of defending the wider historic record of the Soviet Union and contrasting it with the crimes of imperialism. For the CPGB-ML, accusing

the CPB of ‘doing imperialism’s dirty

work for it’ was far more important

than taking part in any campaign to defend the CCYU or defeat the Council of

Europe motion. Their chief contribution to the fight against anti-Communism was

to launch a lengthy assault on the CPB—the leading force in that

fight in Britain.

Concluding assessment

The CPGB (ML) lacks the essential requirements of a

Marxist Leninist Communist Party. It was set up without roots in a living

Communist organization. It has no base in the organized working class. It

shows no evidence of a democratic centralist practice capable of developing a

Marxist strategy appropriate to the conditions of its own country.

The hallmarks of its public interventions are

sectarianism and attacks on other existing Communist parties in Britain and elsewhere.

We believe that this itself is an important issue for

the Working Party. A key principle of the Communist movement today is

non-intervention in each other’s internal affairs. The CPB has on no occasion

made public criticism of the CPGB (ML). The CPGB (ML) made repeated public

attacks on our party and has also sought to interfere in its internal

affairs.

The editorial in the June/July 2008 issue of Proletarian

and an article in the August/September issue have sought to use our party’s 2008 pre-Congress discussion and

the debates at our 50^th Congress to claim that CPB ‘revisionism’ is

in crisis, that the party is divided into two sections who are at war with one

another and to call on our members to join the CPGB (ML). While we can expect

such an approach from some Trotskyist and other ultra-left enemies of the

Communist movement, we consider it unacceptable from parties which want to be

considered as part of that movement. The claims by the CPGB (ML) leadership

betray its political failure to understand the practice of democratic

centralism and the role of debate in the formulation of policy and the forging

of party unity. We ourselves are proud of the healthy vigour of our Congress

discussion and see it as stemming precisely from our members all-round

involvement in mass struggle.

Capitalist propaganda dwells on divisions within the

Communist movement and on the multiplicity of communist organisations.

Encouraging the formation of additional very small organisations styling

themselves Communist will, we believe, hinder the development of the Communist

movement, nationally or internationally. In Britain, recognition of such an

organization as the CPGB (ML) would itself undermine the wider standing of the

International Conference.

CPGB-ML’s

reply to the lies and slanders of the CPB

October 2008

In

his letter to all the members of the Working Party of the International

Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties, dated 1 September 2008, John

Foster, International Secretary of the CPB (Communist Party of Britain) stated

that the International Department of the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) had

requested the CPB, as “one of the two recognised Communist parties in

Britain, to draw up a report giving our assessment of the application of the

CPGB(ML) for membership ahead of the meetings of the working party this autumn

at which the issue will be discussed”, adding that “this report is now

attached”.

Before

proceeding with our detailed treatment of the CPB’s said report, let it be

remarked in passing that it is a grotesquely bizarre procedure whereby our most

deadly opponents are given the decisive say on whether or not our party be

admitted into the ranks of the International Conference of Communist and

Workers’ Parties. Be that as it may. Let us now proceed with a detailed

rebuttal of the CPB’s report, which is nothing more than a craftily concocted

cocktail of malice, distortions, half-truths, and downright lies, attesting

more to the dishonesty and pharisaical hypocrisy of the CPB than a “factual

and objective assessment” of the ideological physiognomy of the CPGB-ML,

its connection with the tradition of the Third Communist International, its

influence within the working-class movement, its “understanding … of

imperialist state power”, and its ability to apply and develop

Marxism-Leninism in the concrete circumstances of Britain and the world around

us.

Qualification

for membership

The

CPB, in its report on the CPGB-ML, lists the following three pre-requisites for

membership of the International Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties

(ICCWP hereafter), which, it boldly asserts, “All existing member parties

possess”.

• 
  A
  
  living communist tradition: a significant core of members deriving
  
  from Communist Parties formed within the period of the Third International;

• 
  A
  
  working class base: influence within the trade-union movement and other
  
  mass democratic organisations of the working people that enables the linking of
  
  immediate struggles to wider class alliances and an understanding of capitalist
  
  or imperialist state power.

• 
  “An
  
  ability to develop Marxism in the circumstances of their country: a
  
  democratic process that can generate this experience, draw lessons and
  
  creatively develop Marxist-Leninist practice through Congresses and
  
  programmatic documents”.

Having

listed these qualifications for membership of the ICCWP, the CPB – surprise,

surprise! – says: “Our conclusion is that the CPGB-ML does not possess these

characteristics” on which characteristics it then goes on to elaborate in

an attempt to show their absence in the case of CPGB-ML.

Origins

Having

correctly stated that the CPGB-ML was formed in 2004 after Harpal Brar

(currently its chairman) and a large number of his comrades were “excluded

from the membership of the Socialist Labour Party [be it said in

parenthesis that excluded is hardly the apt expression for the illegal and

arbitrary expulsion of these comrades by Arthur Scargill and his hatchet men

and women] … Few if any had been members of the original Communist Party

of Great Britain”, which had “provided leadership in the historic

struggles of Britain’s working class from the 1920’s to the 1970’s”, whose

offspring were both the NCP (New Communist Party) and the CPB, whereas, states

the CPB report with smug scorn, the Socialist Labour Party (SLP hereafter) “…emerged

from the Labour Party and has never claimed to be either a Marxist or a

democratic-centralist party”.

The

CPB, with characteristic selective amnesia, ‘forgot’ to make even a cursory

reference to some of the most important facts and points of principle which

have direct bearing on the question under consideration. First, the most

important thing is not whether many or any of the members of the CPGB-ML had

been members of the original CPGB (although some had been) for, after all,

there were plenty of members of the original CPGB who became rotten to the core

liberals, hundreds of whom went on to liquidate the CPGB, having condemned the

Great Socialist October Revolution as “a mistake of historic proportions”.

The important thing is whether the CPGB throughout its existence, as well as

the parties such as the CPB and NCP, stayed loyal to the principles and

traditions of the Communist International.

With

the adoption in 1951 of the British Road to Socialism (BRS), the CPGB

had stepped on to the slippery slope of opportunism and had been rolling down

to the bottom at an accelerating pace, which culminated in its liquidation in

1991. The formation of the CPB in 1988, far from resulting in a clean break

with the rotten parliamentarism and peaceful road to socialism advocated by the

BRS in 1951, as well as by its several subsequent and even more wretched

versions, with its utopian – not to say revisionist – schemes of reforming the

bourgeois state out of existence through a combination of securing a

Labour-Communist majority in parliament and extra-parliamentary mass pressure,

merely served to continue, albeit with some insignificant changes of

formulation, the revisionist ideology and programme of the BRS.

What

unites the CPB and the old CPGB as from the mid-fifties of the last century is

the central thesis that socialism can be achieved in Britain by peaceful means

and without resort to armed struggle and civil war; that through the winning of

a parliamentary majority by the Labour and Communist Parties, the British

parliament can be made to serve as an instrument for ushering in socialism;

that the resistance of the British ruling class can be overcome by filling the

top posts in the government, armed forces, police and judiciary, etc., with men

and women loyal to socialism, a measure which – it is claimed – would ensure

that socialist measures enacted by parliament are carried out in practice and

that the state machinery serves as a servant of the people and their needs.

The

above propositions constitute a total departure from, and a complete break

with, the fundamental teachings of Marxism and the traditions of the Communist

International, discarding as they do all that is unacceptable to the

bourgeoisie, that is, the use of revolutionary violence for the overthrow of

the capitalist state machinery and its replacement by a state of the working

class – the dictatorship of the proletariat.

As

early as 1852, on the basis of the concrete historical experience of the French

Revolution of 1848-51, Marx reached the conclusion that, whereas all previous

revolutions had perfected the state machine, the task of the proletarian

revolution was to “smash” the “bureaucratic-military machine”. Further,

in the aftermath of the Paris Commune of 1871, Marx declared: “one thing

especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that the working class cannot

simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own

purposes”.

Historical

experience has since fully confirmed the teachings of Marxism. In defiance of

these teachings and flying in the face of reality, the old BRS, as well as the

CPB’s own programme, Britain’s Road to Socialism, peddle the illusion

that the proletarian revolution in Britain would not have to bother about such

things as overthrowing the capitalist state and smashing it; that, on the

contrary, the British proletariat could simply lay hold of the ready-made state

machinery and wield it in its own interests; that it could get by without

establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. And yet this gentry desire

to be treated as Marxist-Leninists, ‘forgetting’ that “only he is a Marxist

who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of

the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most

profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big)

bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and

recognition of Marxism is to be tested … opportunism does not extend

the recognition of the class struggle to what is the cardinal point, to the

period of transition from capitalism to communism, to the period of the overthrow

and the complete abolition of the bourgeoisie. In reality this period

inevitably is a period of an unprecedentedly violent class struggle in

unprecedentedly acute forms and, consequently, during this period the state

must inevitably be a state that is democratic in a new way (for the

proletariat and the propertyless in general) and dictatorial in a new way

(against the bourgeoisie” (V I Lenin, State and Revolution, Aug-Sept

1917).

Only

those who suffer from the incurable malady of “parliamentary cretinism,

which holds those infected by it fast in an imaginary world and robs them of

all sense, all memory, all understanding of the rude external world” ^[i],

can subscribe to the BRS thesis of there being a peaceful parliamentary

road to socialism.

Only

those who forget that “there can be no peaceful development to socialism” ^[ii]

can mindlessly propagate the twaddle about there being a peaceful road to

socialism. In the conditions of capitalist imperialism, of unprecedented

militarism, the strangulations of oppressed nations and weak countries, the

wholesale furious struggle between the imperialist countries for the redivision

of the world, “…the very thought of peacefully subordinating the capitalists

to the will of the majority of the exploited, of the peaceful, reformist

transition to Socialism, is not only extreme philistine stupidity, but also

downright deception of the workers, the embellishment of capitalist wage

slavery, concealment of the truth. The truth of the matter is that the

bourgeoisie, even the most educated and democratic, now no longer hesitates to

resort to any fraud or crime, to massacre millions of workers and peasants in

order to save private ownership of the means of production. Only the violent

overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the confiscation of its property, the destruction

of the whole of the bourgeois state apparatus from top to bottom –

parliamentary, judicial, military, bureaucratic, administrative, municipal,

etc., right up to the very wholesale deportation or internment of the most

dangerous and stubborn exploiters – putting them under strict surveillance in

order to combat inevitable attempts to resist and to restore capitalist slavery

– only such measures can ensure real subordination of the whole class of

exploiters”. ^[iii]

In

view of the above, it is firstly clear that even if one were to accept for the

sake of argument that a ‘significant core’ of the CPB membership is derived

from the old CPGB which was “formed within the period of the Third

International”, neither the CPGB after the mid 1950s, nor the CPB from its

very inception, have been loyal to the principles and traditions of that

International.

We

in the CPGB-ML, on the other hand, deeply honour and cherish the fundamental

principles which underpinned and guided the activities of the Comintern. We

have deep respect for the fidelity to Marxism-Leninism displayed by the CPGB

between 1920 and the mid-1950s, for the selfless spirit in which its membership

engaged in the noble task of the liberation of humanity from the clutches of

imperialist exploitation, war and oppression. Precisely for this reason we

adopted CPGB as the name of our Party, adding the suffix ML to distinguish

ourselves from a tiny clique of counter-revolutionary Trotskyites who had

rushed to grab this name at the time of the CPGB’s liquidation by its

eurocommunist leadership of renegades.

Second,

the leading core of our party has been active in the communist, anti-war and

anti-imperialist movement in Britain for over four decades. If these comrades

did not join the CPGB, it was mainly because the beginning of their political

life happened to coincide with a time (the mid-1960s) when the CPGB was already

in an advanced state of degeneration and decay. There was nothing to be gained

from joining a party with which one had violent disagreements because of its

propagation of the peaceful parliamentary road to socialism, the jettisoning of

the dictatorship of the proletariat, the glorification of social-democracy, and

acting as an obedient servant of Khrushchevite revisionism and a conduit for

propagating the anti-proletarian filth against three decades of proletarian

dictatorship in the USSR, during the time that J V Stalin was the leader of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as against the Communist Party of

China led by Comrade Mao Zedong – unless, of course, one was possessed of an

incurable desire to join for the sole purpose of being expelled, as a great

many good and honest comrades already had been.

Third,

the SLP, unlike the CPB, the NCP and myriads of Trotskyite outfits, was

distinguished by its correct and bold assertion that the Labour Party, far from

being the instrument of socialism, was actually a capitalist party, just like

the Tories and Lib-Dems. In this stance, it was closer to the CPGB of the

1920s and 1930s and way ahead of all other organisations and groupings on the

left, including the CPB. We have little reason to be ashamed of our membership

of the SLP, which at the time seemed to offer an opening to develop a vibrant

working-class party, unfettered by the reactionary motley crew, including the

CPB and NCP, who continue to regard the imperialist Labour Party as the Party

of the British working class which can be reclaimed for the British working

class to usher in socialism.

That

Arthur Scargill, through the establishment of the SLP, made an organisational

break with the Labour Party is, and always will be, to his credit, putting him

head and shoulders above the Troto-revisionist fraternity – including the CPB.

That he proved unwilling, or incapable, of taking the next necessary step (that

of making a political breach with social-democracy), that he and his hatchet

men illegally hounded out of the SLP those who had methodically worked for the

SLP to make such a breach, not only revealed the shameful limitations of

Scargill’s political and ideological horizons, but also effectively killed the

SLP. Those who had fought for the SLP to follow the traditions of the Comintern,

in matters of organisation, politics and ideology, on being illegally expelled,

regrouped and founded the CPGB-ML, which is unashamedly proud of the glorious

heritage of the Third International, as well as of the CPGB from 1920 to the

mid-1950s, and strives with all its strength to rescue and carry forward that

heritage in the present difficult conditions of colossal renegacy, when many of

the communist parties are communist in name only.

CPB’s

exercise in deception

The

CPB in its report goes on to spread some fairy tales about the political

origins of the CPGB-ML, asserting that these lie in a ‘Naxalite’ trend in the

Indian Workers’ Association (IWA) in Britain. Let the CPB speak:

“The

leadership of the CPGB-ML has its political origins in a ‘Naxalite’ trend in

the Indian Workers Association in Britain. The predominant trend in the IWA is

led by the Association of Indian Communists in Britain, affiliated to the

Communist Party of India (Marxist). Between 1991 and 2004, the Association of

Indian Communists tried to maintain unity with the Naxalites. This proved

difficult because a Naxalite branch insisted on maintaining its own

publication, Lalkar, edited by Harpal Brar, and projecting its own rather than

IWA policies, by, for example, denouncing the reforms undertaken by the

Communist Party of China and welcoming India’s nuclear tests.

“In

2001, Lalkar applauded the September 11 attacks. The thousands of workers who

died in the Twin Towers were all dismissed as ‘bankers’ and ‘stockbrokers’. All

Communists, socialists and progressives who disagreed with this position were

accused of siding with imperialism (Lalkar, November/December 2001). In 2004,

the overwhelming majority of the IWA re-established that organisation without

those who published Lalkar. Those excluded today lead the CPGB-ML.”

We

are not convinced that the CPB, let alone the people to whom this report is

addressed, understand the meaning of the word ‘Naxalite’, or know much about

the history of the Association of Indian Communists (AIC) as well as of the

IWA, how these two organisations came to be split, resulting in two AICs and

two IWAs, how and why the two IWAs were reunited and how, finally, they split

again. It would take a small pamphlet to explain all this. What is clear is

that the CPB is either ignorant of the facts or is engaged in a deliberate

exercise in deception, secure in the belief that the recipients of this report,

being quite legitimately not acquainted with the politics of the proletarians

of Indian origin in Britain, would swallow this fictional account hook, line

and sinker.

Space

and time do not allow us to deal now with these questions of history. We

shall, however, say this: It is not true that the leadership of CPGB-ML has

its origins in a ‘Naxalite’ trend in the IWA, as is the assertion of the CPB.

The political origins of the CPGB-ML’s leadership lie in the trend represented

by the Comintern throughout its existence – a trend the CPGB followed

faithfully during that entire period. In the leadership of the CPGB-ML there

are only two Indians, and they by no means represents the ‘Naxalite’ trend.

The CPB’s assertion to the contrary is a product of its fevered imagination.

It

is not true that the predominant trend in the IWA is led by the AIC in Britain, affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM). As a matter of fact

there are two IWAs (since 2004), one of which is led by the AIC

affiliated to the CPM, and they are both equally strong, or, more

correctly, equally weak presently.

It

is not true that it became impossible to maintain unity in the IWA because,

according to the CPB, a Naxalite branch insisted on maintaining its own

publication, Lalkar, edited by Harpal Brar, and projecting its own policies

rather than those of the IWA. This assertion too is the work of the not

inconsiderably fertile imagination of the CPB. For one thing, there was no

‘Naxalite’ branch; all the branches of the IWA had a common membership.

Second, no branch had a paper of its own. When the two IWAs were united in

1991, Lalkar, which was the organ of that IWA which had no political

ties with the CPM, became at the unity conference the organ of the united IWA

and continued to be so for several years. The problems with the paper did not

arise because the alleged, but actually non-existent, ‘Naxalite’ branch

insisted on projecting its own rather than IWA policies. In fact, the boot was

on the other foot. It was the CPM leadership, and its followers in the IWA,

who wanted Lalkar to represent and reflect CPM policy rather than that

of the IWA – a workers’ organisation functioning in Britain.

As

to the examples of Lalkar’s alleged deviation from the line of the IWA,

the matters stand as follows. When India (and a few days later Pakistan) conducted nuclear tests, the Executive Committee of the IWA (the majority of whom

were people with very close ties to the CPM) unanimously passed a

resolution in support of these tests. Subsequently, at the behest of the

leadership of the CPM, the latter’s followers demanded the rescission of this

resolution. It is clear that it was a foreign party’s interference in the

internal affairs of the IWA which was the source of troubles in the latter –

not Lalkar failing to reflect IWA policy.

As

to the substance of the issue, it had long been the position of Lalkar

that the world needed to be rid of nuclear weapons but on a universal,

comprehensive and non-discriminatory basis. The reality, however, was that

imperialism, especially US imperialism, while arming itself with more and more

up-to-date and deadly weapons, including nuclear weapons, was attempting to

disarm socialist countries and oppressed nations. In the circumstances,

threatened as they were with the nuclear arsenal of imperialism, some of the

oppressed nations and socialist countries had no other option but to develop

these weapons as a means of self-defence against imperialist threats and

predatory wars of aggression.

Unless

one took a Christian or petty-bourgeois pacifist line, one had no option but to

support the decision of such countries to go nuclear and thus break the

monopoly of imperialism in the field of nuclear armaments. It is in this

context, and for this reason alone, that Lalkar supported India and Pakistan taking the nuclear option – a decision which had the unanimous support of the

Executive Committee of the IWA. If the CPB wants to opt for the policy of

petty-bourgeois pacifism, that is its problem. The shameful policy of petty

bourgeois pacifism can, however, never be the policy of the revolutionary proletariat.

It

was for similar considerations that Lalkar supported the detonation of a

nuclear device by the DPRK – a position of which we are very proud. If after

1949, the old Soviet Union was never attacked by imperialism, it was because

she possessed nuclear weapons and was in a position to deliver a crushing

retaliatory blow to imperialism. It was Soviet weapons that kept peace for

more than four decades and spared the use of these weapons, for when US imperialism had the monopoly of these weapons, it did not hesitate for one moment before dropping

them on the sleeping inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, murdering several

hundred thousand people and maiming many more.

If

today US imperialism does not attack the DPRK but is in occupation of Iraq, it

is because the DPRK is well-armed and well-prepared to deal with imperialist

aggression, whereas Iraq had been effectively disarmed before being subjected

to a devastating predatory war, which has killed over a million Iraqis,

displaced another four million, and destroyed its entire physical and social

infrastructure. It might suit the CPB, considering its close ties with the

traitorous Iraqi Communist Party, to disapprove of the DPRK’s nuclear weapons,

but friends of Iraq and Korea, lovers of genuine peace and disarmament, of

freedom and sovereignty of nations, cannot possibly condemn the DPRK for taking

measures of self-defence by way of maintaining her sovereignty and her social

system.

As

to the question of China. Lalkar wrote two very important articles, the

first of which appeared in the August-September 1989 issue. This was in the

aftermath of the Tienanmen Square counter-revolutionary incidents. On the one

hand, this article gave full support to the Chinese government for suppressing

the attempt at counter-revolution; on the other hand, it attempted to reach for

the reasons, the underlying causes, which had led to that eruption – the

economic reforms which expanded the role of the market and commodity

production. Lalkar stuck its neck out in defence of the actions of the

Chinese authorities at a time when the entire might of the imperialist media

was busy baying at the Chinese communists, and in the wake of which most of

what passes for the left in the centres of imperialism was swept along vociferously

to denounce the Communist Party of China, as indeed was the case with the

leaders of the CPB, the Morning Star, and the New Communist Party.

Instead of being denounced, Lalkar’s services in defence of communism in

China deserve nothing short of praise.

The

second article, entitled ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’, appeared in

the August-September 1992 issue of Lalkar. This article is a lengthy

explanation of the reasons behind the eruption of the June 1989

counter-revolutionary events in Tienanmen Square, and we have absolutely no

regrets about expressing our comradely concerns to the Communist Party of

China about the dangers inherent in the expansion of the market. Although

written after the two IWAs had been united, it said nothing new or different

from that which had been hinted at in the earlier article. Consequently it

ought not to have offended the CPM-affiliated comrades in the IWA, who were

fully aware of the contents of the 1989 article and had never protested against

it.

As

far as the 11 September attacks are concerned once again Lalkar did no

more than explain those attacks by asserting that they were the response of the

oppressed Arab people to the incessant barbarity practised on them by US

imperialism over a very long period of time. This viewpoint now, if not in the

immediate aftermath of the attacks, is accepted by the overwhelming majority of

humanity, including vast numbers of people in the imperialist countries. If

the CPB has a different take on these attacks, which it clearly does, it is

more a reflection on its own political and ideological orientation than a slur

on Lalkar. This does not surprise us, knowing the support that the CPB

renders to the imperialist British Labour Party, which has the blood on its hands

of a million Iraqis and tens of thousands of Afghans, butchered in

Anglo-American imperialism’s genocidal and predatory wars against the people of

Iraq and Afghanistan; knowing the efforts it has made in cultivating friendly

relations with the traitorous Communist Party of Iraq which supports the

imperialist occupation regime in that country, as well as the lengths to which

it went to make it possible for a representative of that party to propagate his

capitulatory and pro-imperialist views in the Morning Star.

Comrades

of the CPB ought seriously, sincerely and honestly to look at their own

political and ideological complexion, rather than sit in judgment on us. They

ought to remember V I Lenin’s dictum that “Honesty in politics is the result

of strength; hypocrisy is the result of weakness”. ^[iv]

Working

class base

The

opening salvo of this section of the report asserts that, though “not

published”, the membership of the CPGB-ML “is understood to be less than

50”. Since it is not published, what, it may be asked, is the basis of the

CPB’s assertion? The answer is: the CPB’s assertion. The report then goes on

to list our party’s publications and website, although it singularly fails to

make even a cursory reference to the literature associated with the leading

members of our party on a wide range of matters of crucial and programmatic

significance to the development of a revolutionary movement of the proletariat

in Britain and elsewhere (of this, more anon). By way of criticism of the

events page of our website, the CPB’s report says that for July and August

2008, a period of strikes of public sector employees and preparations for the

then impending Trades Union Congress and the 20 September demonstration against

the war our page remained blank. The truth is that our party supported the

public sector workers and distributed leaflets at various places; our party had

the largest contingent of all the communist parties in Britain at the 20

September anti-war demonstration in Manchester, where unlike the CPB, we sold a

lot of literature and distributed vast numbers of leaflets exposing the

predatory wars waged by Anglo-American imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan and

the dirty role of the imperialist Labour government in those barbarous and

criminal wars.

The

CPB goes on to boast a membership of 1,050 and claim credit for sustaining “the

only English language daily paper which follows a Communist editorial line and

which has currently the support of all major British trade unions, the Morning

Star”.

With

regard to membership, the CPB claims that its present membership represents “an

increase of around 20 per cent over the past 3 years.”, only forgetting to

add that in 1990-91 it had a membership of 1,500. By our calculations, the

CPB’s present membership represents a decrease of 30 per cent since 1990-1991.

For a party making the boastful claim of being a mover and a shaker in the

British labour movement, this is progress indeed – only in the reverse

direction. In passing, if its claims of a 20 per cent increase in membership

are correct, then its membership in the autumn of 2005 would have stood at 840,

which would have been the equivalent of a 44 per cent decrease between 1991 and

2005!

We

are not inclined to play this stupid numbers game any further; we were

compelled to refer to it because of the CPB’s insistence. The truth is that

every party in Britain claiming to be communist is pitifully small, including

the CPB, ourselves and the NCP, which practically, if not clinically, is dead.

What is important is the quality of membership and the political line of each

organisation at the present. Whereas of the 1,050 claimed membership of the

CPB, no more than 200 are active, our membership in almost its entirety is

composed of activists. To use the words of Mae West, “It is not the men in

your life. It is the life in your men”!

Yes,

it is to the credit of the CPB that it sustains the Morning Star. It

is, however, a blatant untruth to assert, as does the CPB, that this paper “follows

a communist editorial line”. The Morning Star is not funded by the

CPB or its membership. It gets its funding from the trade-union bureaucracy.

Since the defeat in the recent local government election of the former mayor of

London, Ken Livingstone, the Amicus section of Unite, led by Derek Simpson,

is the single largest provider of funds to the Morning Star. Precisely

for that reason, most of the coverage in the Morning Star is either

non-political or is left-social democratic. With its support for the

counter-revolutionary and imperialist Labour Party, combined with the

ever-present threat of withdrawal of funding hanging over its head should it

take a consistently proletarian and anti-imperialist line, the Morning Star

cannot, and does not, follow a communist editorial line. Instead its line is

plainly that of a left-social democratic paper, precisely for which reason it

has the support of “all the major British trade unions”, according to

the highly exaggerated claim of the CPB.

Far

from being instrumental in formulating policy through debates among working

people and putting that policy into effect in the daily struggles of the

working people, the CPB, to the extent that it has any presence on the ground,

merely carries out the policy formulated by the trade-union bureaucracy and its

political wing, the Labour Party. Its members merely do the menial job of

being the hod carriers for social democracy.

‘Rebellion’

of 140 MPs

The

CPB accuses our party of denouncing “precisely those left-wing and anti-war

trade union leaders and Labour MPs who have fought against the imperialist

policies of the current New Labour government”. By contrast, claims the

CPB, its own work in the anti-war movement has won “almost all individual

trade unions and the TUC itself to oppose Britain’s imperialist foreign

policy”, which “…in turn has led to a significant and growing section

of Labour MPs to oppose the government’s war policies. In 2003 over 140 Labour

MPs voted against the war”.

The

facts are at variance with the bold and dishonest claims of the CPB. Let us

take the case of the 140 Labour MPs who in 2003 allegedly voted against the

war.

On

18 March 2003, 140 Labour MPs voted for an amendment to the resolution in

support of the government’s war policy. This simply stated that parliament

“…believes that the case for war against Iraq has not yet been

established, especially given the absence of specific UN authorisation, but

in the event hostilities do commence, pledges its total support for the British

forces engaged in the Middle East, expresses its admiration for their courage,

skill and devotion to duty, and hopes that their tasks will be swiftly

concluded with minimal casualties on all sides” (our emphasis).

The

‘rebels’ who voted for this chauvinist and imperialist amendment included all

those ‘left-wing MPs’ so beloved of the CPB who have allegedly “fought

against the imperialist policies of the current New Labour government” – including

among others Alice Mahon and Jeremy Corbyn – the very scoundrels who need to be

exposed for what they really are: socialists in words and imperialists in

deeds. Instead what we get is opportunists outside the ranks of the Labour

Party, such as the CPB, the NCP and Trotskyite organisations, protecting

counter-revolutionary social-democracy, in particular the ‘left’ wing of this

stinking corpse. It is precisely the likes of Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, etc.,

who spread the dangerous illusion that the Labour Party can be rescued from the

likes of Blair to serve as an instrument for the emancipation of the

proletariat. It is precisely these ‘left’ charlatans who bring kudos to this

out-and-out imperialist party, just as the ‘left’ of the Labour has always

done. The main function of this ‘left’ is to serve as a cover for the Labour

Party’s hideously naked imperialism.

Prior

to the commencement of the war against Iraq, Anglo-American imperialism made

strenuous efforts to get a second UN resolution so as to gain ‘legitimacy’ for

the predatory war it was bent upon waging. In the period immediately preceding

the start of the war, as the anti-war movement mushroomed in preparation for

the 15 February 2003 demonstration, the largest ever in Britain, the ‘left’ wing of the Labour Party, as well as the LibDems, opportunistically jumped on

the anti-war bandwagon, but with the hope that a second UN resolution would be

forthcoming. Such a resolution, while helping them ease their consciences, at

the same time would have enabled them to support the then-impending imperialist

slaughter in Iraq. Any anti-war movement worth its name would have been duty

bound to expose such people. Instead of that, the Stop the War Coalition

(StWC), whose pictorial leadership ^[v]

is jointly shared by the CPB and the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party (SWP),

betrayed the interests of the British proletariat and the oppressed peoples by

appending its signature to the following letter to the then Prime Minister of

Britain, Tony Blair, in December 2002 on the occasion of UN Human Rights Day:

“We

urge upon you as prime minister to give a clear undertaking not to engage in

military action against Iraq without the explicit authority of the United

Nations, and without the explicit decision of the House of Commons to do so”.

The

signatories to this resolution included Jeremy Corbyn, Carol Naughton

(chairperson of the CND at the time) and Lindsey German, a prominent member of

the Trotskyist SWP and the convenor of StWC. No one with even a pretence of

socialist principles could have signed this letter, for it implied that the

signatories were not opposed to the then-impending imperialist war against the

Iraqi people as long as the war had been anointed with the holy water of a UN

resolution and the blessing of a House of Commons authorisation. Instead of

enlightening the anti-war movement about the imperialist nature of the war,

which in no way could be changed through either a UN resolution or by approval

on the part of the House of Commons (this legislative body representing one of

the most cunning, cruel and bloodthirsty of bourgeoisies ever known to the

world), the leadership of the StWC, capitulating to the interests of the

imperialist Labour Party and out of its tender concern for the careers of the

‘left’-wing MPs, made so much fuss about the ‘rebellion’ by 140 Labour MPs on

18 March.

None

of this comes to us as a surprise, for both the Trotskyites of the SWP (as well

as of many other such outfits) and the CPB are programmatically committed to

defending the imperialist Labour Party as “the party of the British working

class” – even if this party has the blood of a million Iraqis on its hands,

even if during its 11 years in office it has dropped more bombs on the

oppressed peoples than did the previous Conservative government during the 19

years it held office; even if it is viciously attacking working people at

home. For all its crimes over the nearly 11 decades of its existence, to the

CPB and the Trotskyites the Labour Party remains the only hope for the British

proletariat, the only reliable instrument for ushering in socialism – peacefully

through winning a parliamentary majority.

No

one who has the slightest acquaintance with, and sense of fidelity to, the

principles of Marxism-Leninism could even for one moment entertain the thought

of supporting such an anti working class party and its ‘left’ luminaries. We in

the CPGB-ML are proud that we expose the Labour Party as an imperialist party

representing the interests of British imperialism and the privileged sections

of the working class, the labour aristocracy. We are equally proud of exposing

the ‘left’ representatives of social democracy. It is a measure of the

degeneration of this allegedly left, allegedly socialist, fraternity that not a

single one of them had the courage to resign their membership of this party on

the question of war. Their jobs, their careers, mean everything to them; their

alleged socialist principles mean absolutely nothing (be it said in passing

that George Galloway did not leave the Labour Party but was expelled, and he

actively fought to try to prevent his expulsion).

‘Left’

trade unionists

Now

let us turn to the ‘left’ wing of trade unions, in exposing whose phony

opposition to the war we have incurred so much of the CPB’s ire. Here too the

facts are discordantly at variance with the assertions and pious wishes of the

CPB. This is the truth.

At

its September 2004 conference, the TUC passed a motion against the war, which

undoubtedly pleased every opponent of the war. Two weeks later, in the debate

on Iraq at the Labour Party conference at the end of September, the truly

imperialist affiliation and credentials of the cynical and cowardly bunch that

goes under the name of the ‘awkward squad’, whom the CPB describes as “left-wing

and anti-war trade union leaders” – Messrs Curran (GMB), Woodley (TGWU, now

part of Unite), Prentice (Unison) and Hayes (CWU) – were on display in all

their glaring obscenity. Fresh from the TUC Conference where this hypocritical

gentry had passed a motion against the war, and wearing their Labour Party

hats, they rallied round Blair and helped defeat, by a majority of 6 to 1, a

constituency motion calling for an “early date” for the withdrawal of

British occupation forces from Iraq. They even managed, as if to show hero

worship of a war criminal, to stage a standing ovation for Blair.

More

than that, they backed to the hilt an Iraqi quisling, Abdullah Muhsin of the

Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, which was set up under the protection of US

guns in May 2003 and is led by the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) and supports the

occupation. Invited to the Labour Party Conference by the British state,

through the Labour Party and Unison, this disgraceful Iraqi traitor, having

condemned the Iraqi resistance as “shadowy sectarian forces”, canvassed

the delegates and begged them not to vote against Blair on Iraq. In an open letter to the Labour Party Conference, this apologist for imperialism wrote: “All

my life I have fought for political and social freedom in Iraq, and for the first time, we have the chance to achieve it. I know some of you were against the

war in Iraq but be in no doubt – the fall of Saddam has given my country a

chance of freedom and progress … The multinational force is there to help our

democracy … [A]n early date for the unilateral withdrawal of troops …

would be bad for my country, bad for the emerging progressive forces, a

terrible blow for free trade unionism, and would play into the hands of

extremists and terrorists.” This is the sole reason why he was invited by

the TU bigwigs. After all, the TUC has been busy raising cash for the Iraqi

Federation of Trade Unions, for it supports the latter’s view that the

occupation forces must stay in Iraq to prevent the break-up of Iraq and forestall the establishment of a fundamentalist state – a danger which has only

arisen because of the imperialist invasion and occupation.

The

behaviour of the trade-union leadership, including its allegedly left section,

does not surprise us, for this leadership, representing as it does the

privileged sections of the working class – the labour aristocracy – is obliged

to come to the defence of imperialism, as without defending imperialist loot,

the interests of the labour aristocracy cannot be defended.

StWC

in a fix

For

once, the proceedings at the 2004 Labour Conference put the StWC in a fix. It

was forced to choose between its trade union and Labour friends, on the one

hand, and the rank and file opponents of the war on the other hand. In the end

fast-moving events in Iraq and the Iraqi resistance to imperialist occupation

compelled it to condemn the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions for the latter’s “political

collaboration with the British government, exemplified at the Labour Party

Conference and its view that genuinely independent trade unionism in Iraq can

develop under a regime of military occupation – including the daily bombardment

of major Iraqi cities – by the US and Britain” (‘Bring home the troops’, Morning

Star, 11 October 2004).

The

above statement, along with a sentence in a previous draft, which recognised

the legitimacy of the resistance in Iraq “by whatever means … necessary”

to end the occupation, upset all the carefully laid plans of the StWC. It

infuriated the TU leaders and supporters of Labour Friends of Iraq (LFIQ).

Mick Rix, former general secretary of the train drivers’ union, ASLEF, resigned

from the Steering Committee of StWC. Other TU leaders threatened to do

likewise. Harry Barnes, the allegedly anti-war Labour MP was incensed enough

to put down an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons condemning as ‘scurrilous’

the statement put out by StWC backing “the legitimacy of the struggle of the

Iraqi people, by whatever means they find it necessary” to end the

occupation, adding that it implied acquiescence in the murders of such people

as Ken Bigley, as well as that of ordinary Iraqis.

The

SWP and its junior partner in the StWC, the CPB, came to this sorry pass

because they tried to build an anti-war movement in a thoroughly opportunist

way through enlisting the support of the very elements who are the driving

force behind the war – the so-called left and the labour aristocracy. They

have run StWC in such a way as to bring succour to the Labour Party. They have

kept away all those elements, like the CPGB-ML, who favour a consistent

struggle against imperialism and believe in developing the anti-war movement

along anti-imperialist lines. Their pretext for this behaviour has been that

they do not want to disrupt the unity of the labour movement, that they do not

want to alienate the trade union leadership and those Labour MPs who nominally

oppose the war.

But,

as the saying goes: Man proposes, God disposes. The reality in Iraq and the

hammer blows of the Iraqi resistance put severe strains on this cosy alliance

between the Troto-revisionist fraternity on the one hand and the union bosses

and Labour MPs on the other hand – to such an extent that even Robert

Griffiths, general secretary of the CPB, was compelled to whine: “…

however well-intentioned their motives, the unions and the Labour Party now

uphold … a military occupation … which involves the daily bombardment of

civilian areas and the illegal imprisonment and mistreatment of thousands of

Iraqis” (‘Forward March’, Morning Star, 8 October 2004).

How

is this different from what we have been saying all along – only more

consistently, clearly and resolutely? Why is it that we are singled out for

condemnation for saying the same as Cde Robert Griffiths – only more clearly,

consistently and resolutely?

In

view of the foregoing, were the CPGB-ML really in the wrong in characterising

these trade union leaders who, according to the CPB’s assertion, “have led

the fight against the government”, as traitors and apologists for

imperialism? And, were the CPGB-ML really off the mark in denouncing “the

socialist [i.e., the Trotskyite SWP] and CPB leadership of the Stop the

War Coalition” for “political cowardice of the worst kind”? Even

Cde Robert Griffiths’ observations, noted above, would seem tacitly to accept

what we have said in this regard.

Be

that as it may, the above statement of Cde Robert Griffiths, instead of

reaching the only logical and correct conclusion that the imperialist Labour

Party and its trade union stooges must be exposed, opposed and defeated, went

on to deliver a cretinous homily to the effect that “…there has to be

clarity over the need for a Labour victory as the least worst outcome of the

forthcoming general election”.

Every

friend of Iraq, every enemy of imperialism, every class-conscious worker and

every proletarian revolutionary, can only be repulsed by such nauseatingly

opportunist capitulation to imperialism – all in the name of alleged

working-class advance and unity. We in the CPGB-ML were quite right in

exposing communists of this type for what they really are, namely, agents of

the bourgeoisie and purveyors of the latter’s influence in the working-class

movement. For “the fight against imperialism is a sham and a humbug unless

it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism”. ^[vi].

Why

should we in the CPGB-ML be condemned for saying the same thing as that said by

the great Lenin, especially by people who profess to be Marxist-Leninists? If

they have any problems with what we are saying, in all honesty they ought to

direct their criticism and attacks at Lenin rather than his latter-day pupils.

Lies

about our work

Not

content with hurling abuse at us for our principled fight against the ‘left’

charlatans from the trade unions and the Parliamentary Labour Party, and our

exposure of the cowardly and opportunist capitulation of the leadership of StWC

to the dictates and needs of the imperialist Labour Party, the CPB report

utters the total lie that the “CPGB-ML has taken no part in this [anti-war]

work”, that it takes no part in the movements for solidarity “with Cuba,

Venezuela and Colombia”, and, that our “main involvement outside the

CPGB-ML has been in the establishment of front organisations controlled by the

CPGB-ML, notably the Stalin Society”.

The

truth is that we work on all these fronts – and many more. Our comrades are

very active in StWC, where they face every form of discrimination from the

likes of the CPB and the SWP. Notwithstanding this, they continue to work. We

do a considerable amount of work expressing solidarity with Cuba (and the Cuban comrades know this), Venezuela, Colombia and Bolivia.

We

also work in solidarity with the revolutionary democratic government of ZANU-PF

in Zimbabwe, which the CPB shamefully attacks in concert with imperialism and

its stooges in the British trade unions and the parliamentary representatives

of all the bourgeois parties, including the Labour Party.

CPGB-ML

initiated in July this year the Hands off China campaign in response to the

wave of anti-China hysteria launched by the imperialist propaganda machine to

coincide with the Beijing Olympics and for the sole purpose of disrupting the

Games and maligning China. The campaign has gone from strength to strength.

Although, for understandable reasons, neither the imperialist press nor the Morning

Star and such other publications report its activities, the 1.3 billion

Chinese people well know about its work, thanks to the honest and accurate

reporting by the New China News Agency (Xinhua), and through it millions of

people in countries around the world. This in turn has forced even some of the

imperialist propaganda arms to refer to our activities. We do not see the CPB

comrades on that front, not because we exclude them, nor because Hands off China is a front organisation of the CPGB-ML. They are not there either for reasons of

sectarianism or because they are unwilling to defend the People’s Republic of

China and thus choose to stay aloof from this exceptionally important and

vibrant anti-imperialist solidarity organisation.

We

note in passing that the Morning Star published, without editorial

comment, an article by one of the CPB’s favourite ‘left’ Labour MPs, Jeremy

Corbyn, where he said in relation to the Beijing Olympics: “What a

fantastic wake-up call it would be for the whole world if the Olympic Games had

to be suspended to allow the air to clear to make it safe for athletes to

compete” (3 July 2008). Such is the extent of CPB’s support for China!

As

to the Stalin Society, it has been in existence since soon after the collapse

of the erstwhile USSR. It long predates the founding of the CPGB-ML and is

composed of people from many organisations and from various political

complexions. Several prominent members of the CPB over the years, including

the present time, have taken an active part in its activities. In no way can

this Society be described as a front organisation of the CPGB-ML, although the

latter plays a prominent part in it.

What

unites the members of the Stalin Society is their love for the old Soviet Union

and her earth-shattering achievements in the fields of socialist construction,

industrialisation and collectivisation; her unrivalled achievements in the

fields of the arts, sciences and culture; the wonderful example she set in the

area of fraternal harmony and friendship among peoples from dozens of national,

religious and racial backgrounds; the selfless internationalist support to the

proletarian revolutionary and national liberation movements throughout the

world; and her signal contribution to the defeat of the allegedly invincible Nazi

war machine, smashing therewith the anti-Soviet plans of international

imperialism.

If

many more comrades of the CPB stay aloof from this Society, sneeringly

characterising it as a CPGB-ML front organisation, this can only be explained

by their own dodgy and wobbly ideological foundations and their total inability

to discharge their proletarian internationalist duty towards the first state of

the international proletariat, nothing better than which has existed in the

world.

CPB’s

revisionism

The

CPB’s cynical attitude to the glorious Soviet Union and her crowning and

world-historic achievements, its revisionism, its hostility to

Marxism-Leninism, is all too evident from the following lines taken from its

programme ‘Britain’s Road to Socialism’:

“…

From the late 1920s, onwards, decisions [in the USSR] were made which led to serious violations of socialist and democratic principles. More

specifically, there developed an excessive centralisation of political power.

State repression was used against people who failed to conform. Bureaucratic

commands replaced economic levers as an instrument of planning. The Communist

Party of the Soviet Union and the trades unions became integrated into the

apparatus of the state, eroding working class and popular democracy.

Marxism-Leninism was used dogmatically to justify the status quo.

“Theoretically,

the working people of the Soviet Union owned everything. But in fact they were

masters of very little. Society was actually run by the party leadership,

issuing orders from the top down” (p.6).

Whereas

the first paragraph quoted above is a rehash of the attacks on Joseph Stalin in

renegade Khrushchev’s secret speech at the 20th Party Congress of the Soviet

Union, the second paragraph parrots the lies propagated by the

counter-revolutionary Trotsky in his Revolution Betrayed and elsewhere –

albeit without naming Stalin. The intention behind, and the effect of,

Khrushchev’s secret speech was to defame the dictatorship of the proletariat,

the socialist system, the USSR, the international communist movement and, of

course, to malign Stalin – all as a pretext for departure from

Marxism-Leninism, and a wholesale revision of its fundamental tenets, by

putting forward erroneous theses such as the peaceful and parliamentary road to

socialism, the negation of the road of the October Revolution, violation of

Lenin’s teachings on imperialism and war, and a distortion of Lenin’s principle

of peaceful co-existence among countries with different social systems.

Trotsky

and his followers pursued similar aims, as revealed by the Moscow trials.

In

repeating Khrushchev and Trotsky’s lies in their programme, the CPB is merely

attempting to use them as an excuse for pursuing its anti-Leninist programme of

the peaceful parliamentary road to socialism, hand in hand with the imperialist

Labour party – all in the name of democracy. Like Khrushchev, the CPB, too, is

busy propagating the virtues of the market economy (“economic levers”,

if it pleases the CPB) by negating the system of central planning of the

national economy on the pretext of fighting “excessive centralisation”

and “bureaucratic commands”. Like Khrushchev, the CPB too stands for

the negation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the name of fighting “serious

violations of socialist and democratic principles”. Like Khrushchev, the

CPB stands for the negation of the leading role of the party of the

proletariat, allegedly so as to safeguard “working class and popular

democracy”. Like Khrushchev, the CPB, too, stands for the ideological

disarming of the proletariat under the guise of fighting against dogmatism.

If

from the late 1920s, the Soviet state system and the CPSU were as dreadful,

bureaucratic and unrepresentative of the Soviet proletariat in particular and

the working people in general, how is one to explain the truly miraculous

achievement of the USSR in every arena, including the crowning Soviet victory

against the fascist hordes during the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet

people? How, in that case, is one to explain the prestige of the Soviet

leadership and the high regard in which it was held by the Soviet people, nay,

by proletarians all over the world?

And

how, indeed, is one to explain the post-war recovery and reconstruction of the Soviet Union (and other socialist countries in eastern Europe) after four years of a most

devastating war? For 20 years after the war, the rate of economic growth of

the Soviet Union and its allies in eastern Europe was far higher than that of

the capitalist world. This fact is admitted to even by the CPB in its

programme, for in the very next paragraph after the one quoted above, it states

eclectically and completely contradictorily:

“After

1945, the centralised planning of nationalised economies … enabled the Soviet Union and its socialist allies to rebuild their war-torn countries and, for 20 years

to outstrip the capitalist world in economic and social development” (pp.

6-7 ibid.).

Suddenly,

in the course of a couple of paragraphs, to suit the convenience of the CPB,

what was denounced in the earlier paragraph as “bureaucratic commands”

has been transmuted into “centralised planning of nationalised economies”.

From

the mid-1970s, however, “… the USSR and Eastern Europe began to fall

behind capitalism … in the quality and the rate of growth of its productive

forces”, says the programme of the CPB.

The

reason? Unable, or unwilling, to point out the real reasons for the USSR and

eastern European socialist countries’ economies beginning to falter and lag

behind those of the imperialist countries – especially those of Japan and

Germany – the CPB reaches for the convenient weapon of the “bureaucratic

command system”, which “proved unable to utilise the post-war scientific

and technology revolution and develop society’s forces of production more

effectively than capitalism”.

This

is not an explanation but a mockery of an explanation. If what the CPB, in its

keenness to defame centralised socialist planning and a planned socialist

economy, dubs as the “bureaucratic command system” proved such a potent

weapon for the development of productive forces in the USSR, for its

accelerated economic and social development, from the mid-1920s till the

mid-1970s (in the case of the eastern European countries from 1945 till the

mid-1970s), how come that it suddenly became a factor retarding the development

of the productive forces? “The bureaucratic system”, which had, far from being

a hurdle to the development of productive forces, served during several decades

as a powerful lever for their accelerated development and had shown its

superiority in mastering and using the latest techniques in production,

suddenly, according to the sages of the CPB, proved unequal to the task of

facilitating their further development. Add to this the allegedly “authoritarian

form” of Soviet socialism, with its lack of “democracy”, one has got

an explanation – à la CPB – for Soviet economic failure, ending in the collapse

of the USSR. This is not science but sorcery.

The

real explanation is that, as long as the Soviet Union followed faithfully the

teachings of Marxism-Leninism, it made gigantic progress in every field. Its

downfall began with the assumption (more correctly, usurpation) of the

leadership of the CPSU by modern revisionists at the 20th Party Congress of the

CPSU. Khrushchevite revisionism, through its wholesale revision, and downright

distortion, of Marxism-Leninism in the fields of political economy, philosophy

and class struggle, began the long process, which over a period of more than

three decades, resulted in the emergence of the Gorbachev leadership and the

restoration of capitalism.

On

top of their thesis concerning the peaceful and parliamentary road to

socialism, which led, and continues to lead, a lot of parties astray, the

Khrushchevites disarmed the Soviet proletariat, as well as the proletariat of

east European countries, through their violation of Marxist-Leninist teachings

on the significance of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leading role

of the proletariat. Instead they put forward the theses of a “state of the

entire people” and a “party of the entire people”. Even a novice in

Marxism knows that the state is nothing but an instrument of class rule, a tool

for ensuring the dictatorship of one class over another, the subjugation of one

class by another. The moment the state comes forward as a representative of

the whole of society, it becomes redundant and superfluous, and disappears as

such. However, the proletariat needs its own state – the dictatorship of the proletariat

– for the “entire historical period which separates capitalism from

‘classless society’, from communism” ^[vii].

The dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary to make possible the “expropriation

of the expropriators”, to crush the inevitable resistance and attempts at

restoration of the former exploiting classes, to organise the economic

reconstruction of society – in a word, to prepare the material and spiritual

conditions for the transference of society from the lower phase to the higher

phase of communism.

Since

classes, and class struggle, continue long after the overthrow of the

bourgeoisie, and for an entire historical epoch, during this period not only is

the dictatorship of the proletariat needed, so also is the party of the

proletariat, the only class under whose leadership is it possible to negotiate

the long, difficult and complicated journey from the lower to the higher stage

of communism. The proletariat for its part cannot accomplish its world

historic mission except through its vanguard party.

By

negating the dictatorship of the proletariat, and by negating the role of the

party of the proletariat, the Khrushchevite revisionists ideologically disarmed

the Soviet proletariat and created the political conditions for the restoration

of capitalism.

In

the economic sphere, the first act of the Khrushchevites was to hand over the

Machine and Tractor Stations to the collective farms, thus throwing billions of

roubles worth of the means of production into the orbit of commodity

circulation. Accepting the bourgeois argument that without the market it is

impossible to have an efficient economy, and that, since socialism aims at the

abolition of the market, it cannot but result in ever increasing inefficiency

and bureaucracy, which in turn are bound to produce conditions of an incurable

crisis in which the market will assert itself, the revisionists put in place

economic ‘reforms’ which step by step expanded the sphere of commodity

production, restored profit as the regulator of production and all the concepts

of value, profit and prices of production. ^[viii]

Since

this restoration of capitalist norms of production was taking place in a

relatively protected market, sheltered against too much foreign competition,

the managers in charge of enterprises, with their gaze firmly fixed on

producing the maximum of profit, neglected the updating and renewal of the

instruments of production, in the process becoming less and less efficient,

resulting in decreasing productivity of labour. This is what caused serious

economic difficulties and slowdown in the rate of growth of the economy. With

the parallel developments in the political and ideological sphere, which

brought Gorbachev to power, the Soviet revisionists were ready, and able,

openly to declare themselves in favour of a market economy, on the alleged

ground that socialism had failed! From then on, it only took a short time for

a couple of dozen thieves, known as the oligarchs, to grab the Soviet people’s

property and begin the open and ruthless exploitation of the peoples of the

former USSR.

Ability to develop Marxism

In

view of its utter political and ideological bankruptcy, briefly outlined above,

it hardly becomes the CPB to sit in judgement over the CPGB-ML and to assert

that the latter lacks the ability to develop Marxism in the concrete

circumstances of Britain. Far from the resolutions on international issues

passed at our most recent Congress being mere “declarations”, as the CPB

alleges, these are concrete and to the point. Let the CPB prove in what

respects our resolutions, for instance on the question of wars in Iraq or

Palestine, or on socialist countries such as China, the DPRK and Cuba, are mere

declarations and not a concrete analysis of the concrete situation in each

case, a correct presentation of the balance of forces, and our attitude towards

the contending parties. If there were more resolutions on international

questions, that was simply because of the slaughter taking place in several

predatory wars waged by imperialism, especially Anglo-American imperialism.

Further, Britain being one of the imperialist countries waging these wars,

these wars abroad are as much a domestic question and a matter of concern for

the British proletariat as any other question.

In

addition, our Congress passed resolutions on several other issues, including

the NHS, education, pensions, housing, immigration, etc. – all matters of vital

concern to ordinary working people.

Our

party has a programme, which in broad terms outlines our strategy for political

transformation. It is a revolutionary programme, unlike that of the CPB, which

chases after the mirage of a parliamentary and peaceful road to socialism, hand

in hand with the imperialist Labour Party – in violation of the fundamental

teachings of Marxism-Leninism.

On

the penultimate page of its report, the CPB, by way of pointing out the

CPGB-ML’s alleged sectarianism, refers to the attempt to criminalise communism

in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and to ban the Czech

Communist Youth Union. While exaggerating out of all proportion the activities

of the CPB’s own work in this connection, it asserts that the “… contribution

of the CPGB-ML to this struggle was a belated statement reprinted from Greece

in Proletarian – and a long article in LALKAR … attacking the CPB leadership

for ‘Khrushchevite revisionism’”. Yes, we did attack the CPB for “doing

imperialism’s dirty work for it”, not because it was for us “… far

more important than taking part in the campaign to defend the CCYU [Czech

Communist Youth League] or defeat the Council of Europe”, as the CPB

assert; on the contrary, we attacked the CPB as a part and parcel of our fight

against anti-communism, for by peddling the Khrushchevite lies about the

alleged “crimes and violations committed against socialist democracy in the

Soviet Union” during three decades of Stalin’s leadership of the CPSU, by

approvingly citing Khrushchev’s 20th Party Congress secret speech as being a “…

really detailed and largely accurate account” of these alleged “violations”,

Robert Griffiths, the General Secretary of the CPB, whether he liked it or not,

whether he willed it or not, had effectively joined ranks with those attempting

to criminalise communism, for in doing so he ended up by not only defaming

Stalin, an intrepid defender of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also

maligning the dictatorship of the proletariat, the CPSU, the USSR, and the

international communist movement.

We

did not, however, confine ourselves to criticising Robert Griffiths. We took

part in the campaign to defend communism to the best of our ability. Our

representative attended, and participated in, an important international

conference on this question in Brussels. This conference was attended by

representatives of several communist parties, including the Communist Party of

Greece (KKE). Although the CPB was absent from it, it has never occurred to us

on that account to accuse it of doing nothing on this issue.

We

sent a comrade to take part, on 13 December 2006, in the protest outside the

Czech Embassy in London called by the CPB. We could not send more as it was a

weekday. In addition to our comrade the protest consisted of eight comrades

and supporters from the CPB/Morning Star. They cannot have failed to notice,

in this crowd, that we were the only other organisation that responded to their

call and took part in the protest. They took a picture, which appeared in the Morning

Star of the following day. In this picture, our comrade was nowhere to be

seen, it must have taken the Morning Star photographer a lot of trouble

to get this picture at a moment when our comrade, wearing our party tabard, was

out of the frame. More importantly, our comrade distributed, on that occasion,

our party’s statement condemning the actions of the Czech government for

outlawing the Czech Communist Youth Union (KSM).

Conclusion

Having

enumerated a host of lies about us, and having made several boastful claims

about itself, the CPB report complacently concludes thus: “The CPGB-ML would

therefore appear to lack the essential requirements of a Marxist-Leninist

Communist Party …”, that the “hallmarks of its public interventions

are sectarianism and attacks on existing communist parties in Britain and

elsewhere”.

In

fact, just the opposite is the case. In view of what has been said above in our detailed treatment of the CPB report, it is

the CPB which “lacks the essential requirements of a Marxist-Leninist

Communist Party”, for it long ago adopted revisionist positions on a number

of important questions notably on the question of state power, and the

relationship of proletarian revolution to the bourgeois state, as well as on

the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat – all in flagrant violation

of the fundamental tenets of Marxism-Leninism.

The

CPB report goes on to assert that a “… key principle of the communist

movement today is non-intervention in each other’s internal affairs”,

adding that while the “CPB has on no occasion made public criticism of the

CPGB(ML)”, the latter has made “repeated public attacks on our Party and

also sought to interfere in its internal affairs”.

We

in the CPGB-ML do not accept the proposition that we shall keep quiet while

organisations like the CPB have free field poisoning the minds of the working

people with the ideology of revisionism, which is, in the memorable words of

Lenin, one of the chief “… manifestations ob bourgeois influence on the

proletariat and bourgeois corruption of the workers”. ^[ix]

The

question is not one of maintaining calm and cultivating good manners, but of

defending the fundamental interests of the working class. Without exposing

revisionism, which converts a party of social revolution into a democratic

party of social reform, it is impossible to build a proletarian revolutionary

movement for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism and

the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was Lenin, in his brilliant work, Imperialism,

the highest stage of capitalism, who said that “the fight against

imperialism is a sham and a fraud unless it is inseparably bound up with the

fight against opportunism”.

In

any case, comrades of the CPB protest too much. What they accuse us of, namely

attacking them and interfering in their affairs, they are guilty of the same to

an even greater degree. The only difference is that whereas we openly state

our differences with them, we openly criticise them, they do their dirty work

dishonestly in private malicious gossip in the dark corners of smoke-filled

rooms in Britain and abroad. They do their best to prevent us from being

represented at various international forums, which is what their ‘secret’

report on us is aimed at – something of which we have never been guilty.

Comrades

in the proletarian movement need to honestly and openly discuss their

differences. There is nothing wrong, unusual or new in that, for “… only

short-sighted people can consider factional disputes and a strict

differentiation between shades inopportune or superfluous”. ^[x]

One

of the hallmarks of opportunists, while departing from the fundamental

principles of Marxism-Leninism, is their unwillingness or inability to settle

accounts openly, honestly, explicitly, resolutely and clearly with the views

they have abandoned.

Those

who realise the profundity of the crisis in the international communist

movement ever since the rise of Khrushchevite revisionism, especially since the

collapse of the USSR and the east European socialist countries, cannot but

intensify their efforts to defend the theoretical foundations of

Marxism-Leninism, which are being attacked and distorted on a daily and hourly

basis by the bourgeoisie and its revisionist, Trotskyite and social-democratic

agents in the labour movement.

At

a time of colossal renegacy, when petty-bourgeois opportunism, rejection of

revolution in favour of reformism, jettisoning of class struggle in favour of

class collaboration, fetishisation of bourgeois legality, and bourgeois

chauvinism instead of proletarian internationalism are wreaking havoc on our movement

– at such a time to make the demand, as does the CPB, that communists stop all

open criticism of each other is “like wishing mourners at a funeral many

happy returns of the day” (Lenin, What is to be done?).

We

continue to insist that there can be no strong communist party without a

revolutionary theory and that there is nothing wrong in defending such a

theory, which we firmly believe to be true, against unwarranted and vitriolic

attacks and attempts to distort, corrupt and vitiate

it. We continue to insist along with Lenin, that “without a revolutionary

theory there can be no revolutionary movement”, that the “… role of

vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most

advanced theory”, and that this “thought cannot be insisted upon too

strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in

hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity”. ^[xi]

The

CPB report goes on to condemn our observations in the June/July 2008 issue of Proletarian,

on the crisis within the CPB by asserting that while “… we expect such an

approach from some Trotskyist and other ultra-left enemies of the communist

movement, we consider it unacceptable from parties which want to be considered

as part of the movement”. The truth of the matter is that our exposure of

opportunism is in the finest traditions of Marxism-Leninism, which is not

averse to settling accounts with its opponents openly and honestly. It is the

CPB which is at one with the Trotskyite enemies of the communist movement in

attacking the basic teachings of Marxism-Leninism and attacking the

dictatorship of the proletariat in the erstwhile Soviet Union, and which has

struck a cosy relationship with these same enemies of the communist movement,

as for instance with the SWP in StWC, whom it characterises as “socialists”

on page 3 (paragraph 4, third line) of its report on the CPGB-ML.

If

the CPGB-ML is to be condemned as enemies of the communist movement for

defending the cardinal principles and teaching of the science of

Marxism-Leninism, we are happy to share this fate with other such ‘enemies’,

viz., Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. No amount of opportunist abuse and

whining will prevent us from performing our duty in the service of the proletarian

movement.

Referring

to his struggle against opportunism over a period of more than two decades, and

the hatred of the opportunists that that struggle had earned him, Lenin in his

letter of 18 December 1916 to Inessa Armand wrote thus:

“Such

is my fate. One battle after another against political stupidity, vulgarity,

opportunism, etc.

“It

has been that way since 1893. And it has earned me the hatred of philistines.

Well, I would not exchange this fate for ‘peace’ with the philistines.”

If

little things may be compared to big, we, too, have earned the hatred of the

philistines for our relentless exposure of their political stupidity, vulgarity

and opportunism. Following in the footsteps of that remarkable revolutionary

genius and inspirer of the Great October Socialist Revolution, to wit, V I

Lenin, we, too, would not exchange this fate for peace with the philistines.

We continue to fight against opportunism relentlessly for we believe that

opportunism “… helplessly surrenders to the bourgeois psychology,

uncritically adopts the point of view of bourgeois democracy, and blunts the

weapon of the class struggle of the proletariat”. ^[xii]

In

the last paragraph of its report the CPB issues to the Working Party of the

ICCWP this dire warning against recognising the CPGB-ML:

“Capitalist

propaganda dwells on divisions within the communist movement and on the

multiplicity of communist organisations. Encouraging

the formation of additional very small organisations styling themselves

communist will, we believe, hinder the development of the communist movement,

nationally or internationally. In Britain, recognition of such an organisation

as the CPGB(ML) would itself undermine the wider standing of the International

Conference”.

Opponents

of communism have always gloated and grimaced over disputes within our

movement, and they will doubtless continue to do so. They always have, and

always will, use shortcomings in our movement, as well as disputes among us,

for their own ends. That is no reason for the continued toleration of

opportunism amidst our ranks. On the contrary, we must, undisturbed by these

pinpricks, continue with our work of self-criticism and a thorough and ruthless

exposure of our own shortcomings, which will without question be overcome with

the growth of the working-class movement and the building of a truly vanguard

party of the British proletariat based on the fundamental tenets of

Marxism-Leninism.

It

is not a question of encouraging the formation of additional small

organisations styling themselves communist, but of concretely analysing the

reasons for their emergence. After all, the CPB itself was a relatively small

organisation, which emerged in 1988 out of a relatively large CPGB that became

thoroughly rotten through the domination of the revisionists of the

euro-communist variety. The only pity is that the CPB at its birth did not

make a clean break with the revisionism of the party it had split from. Had it

done so, it would have become a pole of attraction for revolutionary communists

like ourselves and spared us, as well as the British proletariat, the spectacle

of “the multiplicity of communist organisations”. Had the CPB, for

instance, not reconstituted itself on the ideological foundations of the

revisionist BRS, had it not parted company with the cardinal teachings of the

science of Marxism-Leninism on the question of the state and the relationship

of proletarian revolution to the bourgeois state, had it adopted an attitude of

irreconcilable hostility towards counter-revolutionary social democracy (Labour

Party in Britain) instead of characterising the latter as the mass part of the

British working class, there would have been no need for the likes of us to

have been in the SLP in the first place, let alone forming the CPGB-ML after

parting company with it.

Because the formation of the CPGB-ML, far from being driven by

sectarianism or an incurable desire to add to the multiplicity of communist

organisations, is firmly grounded in strict adherence to the principles of

Marxism-Leninism and the traditions of the Comintern, as well as of the CPGB up

to the mid-1950s, its recognition as a legitimate participant in the work of

the ICCWP would, instead of undermining the latter’s standing, as is the

assertion of the CPB, serve to enhance its prestige and the quality of its

deliberations. What

undermines the standing of the International Conference of the Communist and

Workers’ Parties is that, while the Iraqi Communist Party, which supports the

imperialist occupation of Iraq, and such other outfits, are allowed

participation, others like us are excluded from it. What really, too,

undermines the standing of the International Conference is that, while the CPB

and the NCP, both of whom support the imperialist Labour Party in Britain, are

allowed in and, hilariously, given a veto over us, we in the CPGB-ML, who have

waged and continue to wage, a principled struggle against social democracy, are

kept out. There is surely something terribly wrong with this state of affairs,

comrades.

We conclude our refutation of the CPB’s slanderous, sly and

underhand campaign against our admission into the ranks of the International

Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties by appealing to the Working Party

to overrule the objections of our opportunist opponents and accept out

application to join it. Any other course will be wrong in theory and harmful

in practice. Failing that, everyone must realise that, while we can be

excluded from the proceedings of the ICCWP, we cannot be excluded from the international

communist movement. We express the hope that the Working Party will make the

right decision.

With fraternal greetings

CPGB-ML

FOOTNOTES

^[i] Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire

of Louis Bonaparte.

^[ii] V I Lenin, The Deception of the

People by the Slogans of Freedom and Equality, May 1919.

^[iii] V I Lenin, Theses on the

Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 4

July 1920.

^[iv] Polemical Notes, Collected

Works, Vol 17 p.166.

^[v] The actual leadership belongs to

the Labour Party, the perpetrators of the war.

^[vi] V I Lenin, Imperialism the

Highest Stage of Capitalism.

^[vii] V I Lenin, State and Revolution.

^[viii] For a detailed treatment see Perestroika

– the complete collapse of revisionism by Harpal Brar

^[ix] V I Lenin, Hasty Conclusions,

May 1914.

^[x] V I Lenin, What is to be done?

1901.

^[xi] V I Lenin, What is to be done?

^[xii] V I Lenin, One step forward, two

steps back.