Lenin and the British Communist Party
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPhil HearseTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
The biggest and most influential revolutionary party to have existed in Britain was the Communist Party founded in August 1920. Despite rapidly succumbing to Stalinism, the CPGB represented strong roots in the working class and immense potential. Here PHIL HEARSE explains how the party was founded and why, despite very different conditions today, the story of its foundation has many lessons for Marxists.
WITHOUT the Russian revolution of 1917, and without the active intervention of the Communist International founded by Lenin and Trotsky in 1919, the formation of the Communist Party in 1920 would have been impossible.
The Comintern and Lenin's personal intervention created the conditions for the unity of warring socialist groups, and a political clarification of fundamental problems. This involved the fight against passive propagandism and against ultra-leftism towards the Labour Party.
By far the biggest organisation involved in the foundation of the CP was the British Socialist Party (BSP). The BSP came out of the old Social Democratic Federation, Britain's first Marxist party, founded in 1893.
Pro-imperialist
Changing its name to the BSP in 1911, this party had been marred by the pro-imperialist positions of its founder-leader HM Hyndman. Fierce debates broke out in the BSP with the onset of the First World War, with the majority adopting an anti-war position, and Hyndman leading a minority out of the party.
The tradition of the BSP was however highly propagandistic, in line with much of the British socialist movement. The idea of active intervention as a party in workers struggles was almost absent; the tradition of passive Sunday school-type propaganda for abstract 'socialism' was very strong.
It was however in the BSP that the idea of forming a unified Communist Party took root after the Russian revolution. But the BSP had to deal with several other socialist formations, more or less committed to Marxism.
Scotland
The Socialist Labour Party (SLP), strong in Scotland, had been formed under the influence of the American De Leonist semi-syndicalist tradition. James Connolly and John McLean were its most famous members.
This tradition rejected both unpolitical unionism and political action involving standing for parliament. It was in fact a combination of syndicalist ideas and the propagandism typical of the British socialist movement.
The third main grouping was the Workers Socialist Federation (WSF) led by Sylvia Pankhurst, the revolutionary member of the famous suffragette family. Sylvia Pankhurst had a formidable reputation for organising among the working class in the East End of London, and had links with the South Wales Socialist Society, an informal organisation of working class socialist propagandists.
Sylvia Pankhurst's organisation was determinedly revolutionary, but also very ultra-left.
The fourth major factor to be taken into consideration was the Shop Stewards Movement, and especially its Clydeside component, built out of the wartime struggles of 'Red Clydeside' and including some of Britain's most famous socialist leaders.
Many in the Shop Stewards Movement were deeply influenced by the Russian revolution, but opposed to the idea of building a revolutionary party. They sought affiliation to the Communist International, but opposed Bolshevik ideas about organising the working class vanguard in a separate party, seeing revolutionary change coming through 'industrial' rather than 'political' action.
Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership insisted on the fight for unity among the different revolutionary groups. However overall Lenin insisted on a combination of the fight for unity and a fundamental political clarification against both ultra-left and opportunist ideas.
The issue of affiliation to the Labour Party, favoured by the BSP, became a touchstone debate, a central point of clarification for the unity process.
The SLP eventually split over the question of unity, a minority going on to join in the Communist Unity Convention in August 1920 and eventually the formation of the Communist Party itself in September. Some of the party's most prominent leaders, such as Tom Bell and JT Murphy, came from the SLP.
Sylvia Pankhurst, bitterly opposed to work in the unions, standing in parliamentary elections and affiliating to the Labour Party, jumped the gun and formed her own Communist Party (British Section of the Third International) in 1919. Lenin fought her political ideas, and insisted that the 'BSTI' go into the unified Communist Party.
Lenin's answers to Sylvia Pankhurst and Willie Gallagher in the Shop Stewards Movement, on the question of the revolutionary attitude to parliament, the Labour Party and work in the unions remains among the classics of Marxism (1). His fundamental point was that revolutionaries have no illusions in parliament or the union leaders, but seek every platform to influence the working class masses.
More than that, the Communists should seek to influence reformist workers on the basis of creating united fronts in the struggle against capitalism.
Bourgeois politics
Lenin argued that Labour Party was a party based on the working class but politically bourgeois. As he put it: 'Of course, the bulk of the members of the Labour Party are workers; however whether a party is really a political party of the workers or not, depends not only upon whether it consists of workers but also upon who leads it, upon the contents of its activities and of its political tactics....
'From this point of view, the only correct one, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although it consists of workers it is led by reactionaries, and the worst reactionaries at that, who are fully in the spirit of the bourgeoisie.'(2)
But he insisted that the Labour Party, at that stage, was a 'very peculiar party' and in some ways 'not really a party at all', because of its federal structure and the affiliation of all the unions. Thus he argued it was possible for the Communist Party to formally affiliate, but only on the basis of open action as the Communist Party, agitation for the dictatorship of the proletariat and open criticism of the leadership of the Labour Party on that basis.
It is important to stress that this debate was conducted between all sides on the issue of the formal affiliation of the Communist Party as a party to Labour, considered possible because of the kind of federal structure of the Labour Party at that time. Thus it was a very different debate to subsequent debates among Marxists about the usefulness of working in the Labour Party. The political basis had to be full freedom of criticism and the right to build the Communist Party openly within the Labour Party.
Insufficient
Lenin was however particularly attentive to the question of the Shop Stewards Movement, and its fundamental role in the building of a Communist Party. Lenin insisted that the 6000 or so members of the BSP were an insufficient basis to get a real hearing among the masses.
Hence his detailed attention to the debate with the Shop Stewards Movement over whether a revolutionary party was necessary or whether the workers could rely on purely industrial strike action.
At the Second Congress of the Comintern he answered Jack Tanner in the following way: 'If comrade Tanner says he is opposed to parties but at the same time in favour of an organised minority of the best organised and most revolutionary workers, then I say there is no difference between us...an organised minority, if it leads the masses, if it is capable of answering every question of the day is essentially a party.' .
Founding the Communist Party required the unity of the majority of the existing socialist organisations, a clarification of the basic questions of the political independence of the party combined with the correct united front labour movement tactics and the existence of the post-First World War political radicalisation. But bringing all these conditions together required the determined intervention of the Communist International.
(1) Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder
(2) Lenin on Britain p 538
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