Communist Students opposition statement to LRC affiliation

[Markyb]

Hey everyone, some members of the UK based Communist Students group have issued a statement in opposition to the decision to affiliate to the Labour Representation Committee.

I hope this is the correct section, I post here to help debate.

I don't have enough posts to post URLs but the statement is on the front page of the CS site at communiststudents.org.uk

Many thanks.

[Q]

Here is the article (http://communiststudents.org.uk/?p=6000).

I think it makes some good points, but my impression of the CPGB position is to just open up a space for making the communist case. The article complains that this move is "at best a distraction" for a group of "meagre resources", but what kind of resources are committed to the LRC exactly, besides the occasional visiting of their meetings?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'd like to learn more about this myself.

In light of e-mailed material on proportional representation, though, even occasional visiting is a waste. The LRC doesn't want PR.

[Markyb]

On 'distraction' for 'meagre rescources'. It costs £50 to affiliate. I think that is over 1/3 of our bank balance gone.

We also need to understand this as a move by the CPGB majority to impose their line on CS. The motion that the pro-LRC CS people want to put forward is calling for all trade unionists to join the LP.

By looking at the theses published in Weekly Worker we can see that the CPGB want to undertake long term work within the Labour Party, they probably have similar things in mind for CS.

[Serge's Fist]

Mark,

Whilst I do not agree with the manner the debate has been kicked off, it will be for CS conference to decide on our long term perspectives with regard to the Labour Party not the CPGB. The motion does not simply calling for all trade unions and trade unionists to join Labour but for the end of proscriptions and bans against communists and the left. There is nothing wrong in joining the LRC in itself, it is the approach that is being suggested that is wrong. Our orientation should not be Labour work but building within the anti-cuts movements where we have a wider audience and complete liberty to disseminate our views openly. We should also work with LRC and other Labour members wherever it is advantageous to the movement.

There are wider political issues also being discussed around the united front and whether Labour can be won for Marxism etc.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You're better off doing entry work in and cooperating more with the IWCA on one extreme and the Greens on another.

[Serge's Fist]

You're better off doing entry work in and cooperating more with the IWCA on one extreme and the Greens on another.

The IWCA doesn't really exist and the Greens are not part of our movement. It would be like joining the Liberal Democrats.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have more to say about popular fronts, united fronts, populist fronts, and communitarian populist fronts, but that may be the topic of another thread.

[The Idler]

For all the good joining Labour will "give Communists a platform" - Communists might as well join parties like the Lib Dems or the Greens. At least the Lib Dems and Greens don't pretend to be necessarily acting in the interests of the working-class.

[Q]

For all the good joining Labour will "give Communists a platform" - Communists might as well join parties like the Lib Dems or the Greens. At least the Lib Dems and Greens don't pretend to be necessarily acting in the interests of the working-class.

That's a bit simplistic, to say the least. While it is true that the Labour party leadership is thoroughly bourgeois, the party does organise vast layers of the working class as workers (albeit in a trade unionistic sense). The LibDems or Greens don't do this.

[The Idler]

In what ways do the Labour party organise the working-class as workers that Lib Dems or Greens don't?

[Die Neue Zeit]

That's it: I have to flip-flop re. "that may be the topic of another thread."

All those organized to the left of the Labour party should work in a *populist* front with the Greens, rank-and-file Lib Dems, and an unnamed populist minor petit-bourgeois party to the right of the Lib Dems on the question of properly proportional representation and on some other democracy questions.

[Palingenisis]

The IWCA doesn't really exist and the Greens are not part of our movement. It would be like joining the Liberal Democrats.

Yes they do....They are the only worthwhile grouping on the left in the UK which is why they steer clear of it and actually focus on working class realities as opposed to the still unionized labour aristocracy and students.

[Zanthorus]

I have to say I have never heard of any action being undertaken by the IWCA. And I tend to pay attention to all the comings and goings of the small groups of the left. From what I've seen their work consists of criticising the rest of the socialist movement as being students and not working-class people. They also believe that the Mondragon co-operative in Spain is a model for socialism, nevermind the way that Mondragon treats it's polish employes (http://libcom.org/forums/news/mondragon-capitalists-exploitation-repression-poland-20072008). To be honest, I'm not sure what the difference is between supporting Mondragon and supporting Mondragon and supporting any other capitalist enterprise which pretends to be 'socially responsible', or some other such drivel. Certainly, the IWCA is not focusing on the 'working-class realities' of workers' in Poland working to increase profit for Mondragon.

To back up what The Idler is saying, I would note that in the latter part of the 19th century the trade-unionists supported the liberal party, and this was one of the reasons for the dissolution of the First International.

[Serge's Fist]

In what ways do the Labour party organise the working-class as workers that Lib Dems or Greens don't?

Through the trade unions and its traditional base in working class communities. This is a link that has not been broken despite new Labour. It remains a bourgeois-worker's party.


Yes they do....They are the only worthwhile grouping on the left in the UK which is why they steer clear of it and actually focus on working class realities as opposed to the still unionized labour aristocracy and students.

Of course they do. In your imagination.

[Palingenisis]

Of course they do. In your imagination.

Blah, blah, blah....They arent students or school teachers so maybe you dont come across them but they are very active in their local communities though not under the banner of IWCA. What makes them better for all their faults than the irrevelvant trendy left is that they dont start off from some "ideal" or wanting to re-live some historical long gone period but from the real needs of fellow working class around them both in the workplace and the community. Their website is one of the few in the English language that has interesting and informative articles about the world today. http://www.iwca.info/

[Die Neue Zeit]

Through the trade unions and its traditional base in working class communities. This is a link that has not been broken despite new Labour. It remains a bourgeois-worker's party.

Care to explain, then, how the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Democratic%E2%80%93Farmer%E2%80%93Labor_ Party) had its origins in a bourgeois workers party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Farmer%E2%80%93Labor_Party)?

Communitarian populist fronts, or even lesser populist fronts for limited issues - and not Trotskyist United Fronts with social-corporatists or "Marxist-Leninist" Popular Fronts with liberals - are the way to go.


What makes them better for all their faults than the irrevelvant trendy left is that they dont start off from some "ideal" or wanting to re-live some historical long gone period but from the real needs of fellow working class around them both in the workplace and the community. Their website is one of the few in the English language that has interesting and informative articles about the world today. http://www.iwca.info/

They need to become a national party, and this is my main criticism of them. I suggested in the CWI user group:


How about Chartist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) or Left-Chartist Party of Great Britain (LCPGB)?

My preferred label would be:

Commonwealth (literally speaking, not the British Commonwealth of Nations)
Chartist (denoting working-class orientation)
Left (imitating Die Linke)

Party.

[The Idler]

Through the trade unions and its traditional base in working class communities. This is a link that has not been broken despite new Labour. It remains a bourgeois-worker's party.
Isn't this something trade unions do ie. affiliating to Labour, sponsoring candidates (to much criticism about the usefulness) rather than the Labour party? You could say the trade unions that affiliate are represented, but even the Lib Dems have internal organisations to represent trade unions. Is it just a matter of what party unions choose to affiliate to (didn't the BNP set up a front trade union once)? Traditional base in working-class communities is rather vague and can only be taken to mean tribal loyalty at elections. Working-class people in working-class communities who vote Tory/Lib Dem do this tribal voting too.

[Palingenisis]

They need to become a national party, and this is my main criticism of them. I suggested in the CWI user group:

I have other criticisms of them...They tend to fetishize democracy, they have a knee jerk anti-Leninism (which is understandable given that authoritarian Trotskyite personality cults have dominated the British left for so long) and while their hands on realistic "mass-line" approach is what makes them head and shoulders above the rest of the left they take it to almost an extreme where it becomes limiting.

I dont think they would have any interest in touching the CWI with a barge-pole though.

[Q]

James Turley wrote a reply (http://communiststudents.org.uk/?p=6067):


Against the politics of purity

James Turley takes issue with comrades who oppose our affiliation to the LRC

A number of comrades – including some self-identified left-communists – have raised objections (http://communiststudents.org.uk/?p=6000) to the decision of the Communist Students executive to affiliate CS to the Labour Representation Committee (http://www.l-r-c.org.uk/), a grouping of leftists operating in the Labour Party, but open to affiliates and individuals who are not LP members.

This is in fact a relatively minor tactical matter – in practice it amounts to a decision on whether or not to send delegates to the upcoming LRC conference. There will be no three-line whip to get comrades to London to do so, although they are encouraged. Yet the underlying argument is an important one, and indeed an old one – the issue of Labour Party affiliation was the principle sticking point in the debates that led to the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920. Unfortunately, the comrades’ statement on the issue falls at all the same hurdles as left-communism always has, and attempts to dig its way out of this predicament with logic-chopping and diversions.

Engagement and affiliation

The comrades see as an animating force in the executive’s decision the adoption by the CPGB of a number of theses on the Labour Party at a recent members’ aggregate (not without controversy). This is only half-true – Communist Students was an affiliate of the Socialist Youth Network, the short-lived youth section of the LRC, throughout its existence. CS members Ben Lewis and Nick Jones even sat on that organisation’s leading body. It was a SYN motion to LRC conference that won the latter to affiliate to Hands off the People of Iran, among other things.

That said, affiliation to the LRC is in line with the CPGB’s approach to the Labour Party and engaging with other currents on the left more generally. We argue that standing aside from organisations of even the most craven opportunists amounts to the ‘politics of purity’ – all that is achieved by such a stance is a state of splendid isolation, untroubled by the need to win other militants over to principled communist politics.

The opposition argue that this is to conflate engagement with affiliation – it is quite possible to engage with others without becoming members of their organisations, which supposedly implies political support. Indeed, it is possible – however, what refusing to countenance affiliation amounts to is reducing considerably the range of approaches and tactics available to us in doing so. An LRC affiliate body, for example, can move motions at LRC conferences, opening up debates and with them the potential for greater influence. Without the political will to hold our noses and go into opportunist political formations, the only manner in which we can realistically engage with opportunists is haranguing them on demonstrations, or occasionally cajoling them into organised debates.

As for affiliation amounting to political support, it simply isn’t true. The CPGB – and, one hopes, CS – have certain aims in common with the LRC vis a vis the Labour Party. We share the aim of ousting the current, entrenched rightwing leadership and transforming Labour into an organisation that will fight for the interests of the working class. We have very, very different ideas as to how to do this, it is true. The same is true, however, of the Stop the War Coalition, for example. The CPGB has been an affiliate to that body since its inception – throughout its innumerable and very public political errors, from adopting the slogan “time to go” (as if there was a time when troops should have been in Iraq!), to building up illusions in the institutions of ‘international law’, to cosying up to odious apologists for reactionary regimes…

Are our opposition comrades seriously suggesting that our criticisms of these errors were hampered or compromised by the fact that we paid a nominal fee to STW central office, or indeed that we pushed to get CS and Hands off the People of Iran affiliated? The question answers itself. We said – and continue to say – to STW that if they are serious about stopping war, they need to go about it in a different way. Why can we not do the same in the LRC – or, indeed, Labour itself?

Other arguments fall in exactly the same way; thus the comrades write: “Those present at LRC conference will either be members of various socialist groups or similarly committed followers of social democracy. While it is necessary to win people away from such politics – it is idealist to think this can be achieved through work within the LRC because it fails to understand that its membership corresponds to particular ideas and consciousness that expresses the politics of a certain section of the labour bureaucracy.”

I fear that they do not realise how pessimistic a conclusion this really is. After all, every ideology has some material basis – from the ‘average Joe’ who believes that radical change is impossible to the Stalinist hard-liner who believes that Trotsky really was a spy for Hitler, ideologies are sticky things, and if it is impossible to convince left and far-left Labourites of the errors of their ways, mutatis mutandis, it is equally impossible to convince anyone else. There is little left for us to do except, as the saying goes, go home and dig our gardens.

Instead of adopting this grim outlook, it seems our comrades believe some shelter can be found from the corrupting influence of the labour bureaucracy elsewhere. “The LRC members who are most likely to be won to Marxism are those whom we shall meet on demonstrations or work with in anti-cuts groups, LRC affiliation does not affect our contact with these layers.” Which demonstrations will these be, then – the March 26 TUC march, perhaps? The recent student demos, which have been organised in part by the UCU, the NUS and various students’ unions? As for anti-cuts groups, would this be the Coalition of Resistance, headed up by various union tops and Labour grandees, propped up by the willing lieutenants of Counterfire and the CPB – or perhaps its junior competitors, Right to Work and the national Shop Stewards Network, even more reliant on and desperate for the patronage of union bureaucrats? Even local alliances are reliant on trade unions, trades councils and, often, local Labour figures.

In any case, it seems to have escaped the comrades’ notice that the LRC is an anti-cuts group. Its forthcoming conference, which our oppositionists are so keen to avoid, is titled “Resist the Cuts, Rebuild the Party”. The labour bureaucracy’s hand weighs heavy on its shoulder, yes – so what else is new?

Against this, the comrades allege that London LRC councillors plan to roll over and “implement the cuts agenda”. No source is cited for this, although it would not particularly surprise us or change the fundamental issues at stake. The principled conclusion to draw from this would be to make a stink about it in the LRC, which certainly doesn’t fancy itself in command of the butcher’s knife. It would be a very good subject for a motion to LRC conference. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the subject being avoided, given the significant numbers of Marxists and other far-leftists involved in the LRC.

The conclusion the comrades draw, however, is very different: “The CPGB thesis implies that the labour left wing is an ally. This is an error.” Here, we should be with Trotsky – it is quite permissible to ally with the devil, so long as one does not portray him as an angel. If the comrades are serious about going on demonstrations, as they no doubt are, they will have to reconcile themselves to marching with the Labour left – and not-so-left. Likewise with anti-cuts groups. These amount to limited alliances around particular goals. It is perfectly permissible to ally with the Labour left in order to overturn bans and proscriptions in the Labour Party, and to oust – and eventually expel – the openly pro-capitalist wing. These are matters of mutual interest, and there is no point in refusing such united actions because they are, like all alliances, shaky and temporary at best.

The opposition statement, however, seems somewhat concerned that the CPGB isn’t simply operating in its usual critical manner with regard to the Labour Party, but instead has adopted some variant of soft Labourism. The authors rather peculiarly interpret the CPGB theses as recommending that we “[put] the Labour Party into office in order to expose its leadership”. This isn’t anywhere in the document – though there is a certain history, going back in some ways to Lenin, of leftist ‘exposure’ in this manner, it is clear that illusions in social democracy do not go away unless people are won to communism, as they are generated by the very existence and social role of the labour bureaucracy.

What we are proposing is a root and branch reconstruction of the Labour Party that will allow it to serve the purpose it claims to uphold, but betrays at every turn – to be a genuine united front of all working class partisans. This does not entail going soft on Labour, or rewriting history in such a way as to imply it was ever truly working towards this aim. Quite the contrary – it means breaking the Labour left’s illusions in its own history and its present, and transforming Labour into something utterly different to its existence hitherto.

The left and the class

There is another underlying dispute of some significance. The comrades write: “Those who support affiliation argue that Marxists should use the LRC to argue for communist politics, as they have attempted previously. This is a typical position taken by the Weekly Worker, that of an orientation towards ‘the left’” (emphasis in original). They conclude: “The LRC makes up some of the working class, but not all of it. Our immediate aims should be to engage with our peers and work colleagues, newly politicised students on demonstrations and workers on picket lines. Affiliation to the LRC is at best a distraction from this struggle.”

This points to a significant strategic difference between the CPGB and most other currents on the left – while most consider it a prime duty to go directly ‘to the class’, and build support among the broad masses as a matter of priority, we consider the divisions and disunity among the left to be a serious obstacle which needs to be overcome before the Marxists can truly punch at our weight. This means we prioritise, as the opposition statement rightly points out, an orientation towards the left – though we see no need to put self-aggrandising scare quotes around ‘the left’.

In practice, of course, one has to walk and chew gum. CS turns out at freshers’ fairs to recruit directly; CS and the CPGB produce materials for demonstrations targeted at a broader audience than the existing far left; and so on. But the perspective of orienting towards “our peers and work colleagues, newly politicised students on demonstrations and workers on picket lines,” without the perspective of serious engagement with other left tendencies, is wrong-headed for two reasons.

Firstly, nobody is ‘newly politicised’ in a vacuum. If a student is not talked into activism by an existing group (many of which have a far more extensive recruitment apparatus than we do), then they will be provoked into it by the dominant ideas in society. These include the ideas of the labour bureaucracy and other bourgeois forces; breaking the existing militants from these forces reduces their power, and enables us to fight for communism more successfully. There is no shortcut to doing so; only long-term and determined struggle will do the job. Taking principled politics to LRC conference is a very small part of this larger fight. If we counterpose throwing ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ into anti-cuts work, strike solidarity and so forth to winning over the existing militants, including in the Labour Party, then it will be our slender forces against the state, the capitalist class, the labour bureaucracy and every faulty notion entertained by existing left groups. To imagine we will win that struggle certainly is idealist.

Secondly, the existing left – and more broadly, trade union militants and so forth – is, for all its faults, the best and the brightest of our class. Its revolving-door roster of student recruits aside (for the most part), the Socialist Workers Party is an organisation of militants steeled in the class struggle. The same is true of Unite, PCS and so on – and the LRC. This experience is tragically misused, but it need not be. Winning the vanguard of the class is not a precondition to ever recruiting the newly politicised, strike solidarity and so on. It is, however, a precondition for doing it on a scale that will take us measurably closer to revolution. (It is certainly a precondition for the strategy marked out in the CPGB theses on Labour to have any large scale success.)

“In response to our opposition to LRC affiliation,” the comrades complain, “we are characterised as taking as taking a sectarian position, not wanting our revolutionary credentials to become muddied by mixing with the dirty reformists of the LRC.” Unfortunately – both in its implicit denigration of seriously orienting to the existing left, and its reticence about using all methods of engagement in relation to the LRC and Labour – the logic of this statement is, precisely, sectarian. Communists should not be afraid to get their hands dirty – in Labour as in anywhere else.

Nor should we be afraid to play the long game. In the end, overthrowing capitalism for good is the work of mass communist parties – numbered in the millions of members in Britain, and hundreds of millions in the most populous countries. These will not be built overnight, and they will not be built primarily through the primitive accumulation of ones and twos. We need serious long term strategic approaches to the major material obstacles we face on the road. In Britain, Labour is just such an obstacle.

The CPGB theses are an attempt to produce such an approach. There is certainly the possibility that they are wrong. To establish that, however, the oppositionists will have to do more than counterpose strategic political work to the immediate tactical tasks of fighting the cuts here there and everywhere, and instead produce some indication of an alternative strategy for overcoming Labourism. There is certainly no way around Labourism, as the history of the last century attests.

[Zanthorus]

I suppose next the CPGB will have us all joining the Green party in order to give the Communist movement better opportunities to win over their members, after all they are a 'left' party and it would be 'sectarian' of us not to bring 'principled' politics to the discussion tables with them. At least the Green party do not line up behind the Imperialist murder machine.

[Q]

Turley describes the issue as a "minor tactical matter" as it mostly means having a say on the upcoming LRC conference. I'm still not sure how this is a major problem in the eyes of the opposition.

Zanthorus: While you normally make quite intelligible posts, this one is silly. The LRC is exactly opposed to the pro-war rightwing leadership.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I suppose next the CPGB will have us all joining the Green party in order to give the Communist movement better opportunities to win over their members, after all they are a 'left' party and it would be 'sectarian' of us not to bring 'principled' politics to the discussion tables with them. At least the Green party do not line up behind the Imperialist murder machine.

No comment on my front tactics post earlier? The Greens would be an OK Populist Front partner, but I don't like the idea of entering such a party.


Turley describes the issue as a "minor tactical matter" as it mostly means having a say on the upcoming LRC conference. I'm still not sure how this is a major problem in the eyes of the opposition.

Why did the LRC charge $$$ if they wanted to pursue united action?

[Q]

Why did the LRC charge $$$ if they wanted to pursue united action?

I think they charge £££ ;)

But I don't know. It's probably a rule designed to keep out "hoppers".

[Zanthorus]

Zanthorus: While you normally make quite intelligible posts, this one is silly. The LRC is exactly opposed to the pro-war rightwing leadership.

Apologies, at the time I wrote that I had only glossed over the Turley article and could not bring myself to write anything more in depth.

Anyway, the traditional objection by Left-Communists to the Communist International's proposal for United Front's with the Social-Democratic parties, pur forward by Bordiga, was that the Comintern would not be able to survive the damage wrought on it's political programme by the maneuveur intact. By turning whole sections of Social-Democratic organisations into orgnisations affiliated to the Communist Party, instead of admitting the left Social-Democrats into the party on an individual basis of acceptance of the party programme, Bordiga argued that the unstable new recruits would drag the Comintern back towards centrism. In actual practice, the new recruits brought in by the United Front served as the social base for Stalinism, which I think gives Bordiga some plus points in terms of the accuracy of his predictions at least.

The basic problem I have here with Turley's proposal is essentially the same. He seems to be envisioning a scenario where sections of the Labour party and the wider organised labour movement will either affiliate/give political support to the hypothetical future Communist party, or adopt a geniunely Communist programme, and that these conversions will provide the basis for a social revolution with majority political support by the working-class. But there is no gaurantee, as history shows us, that the recruits gained by such a method will have properly assimilated Communist principles, and it could turn out that the seeming majority political support either quickly dissipates when push comes to shove or creates some kind of new centrist formation. I agree with Turley that political support for Communism will not come from admitting members on an individual basis in 'one's and two's' either, but this seems to me to be the point of participating in the day to day struggles of the class. He points out that many of these struggles are organised by the 'labour bureaucracy', but I'm unclear as to why this means that Communists should actually participate in this bureaucracy. Surely if the bureaucracy has interests antagonistic to communism, the task is not to join them and become instruments of it ourselves, but rather to stand with the class for the self-management of struggles and against the bureaucracy.

He claims that those opposed to affiliation with Labourism do not have a clear strategy for surpassing it. This is true enough, at least in my own case (I can of course only speak for myself and not the CS members opposed to the LRC or other Left-Communist groups), but I feel that Turely does not have a viable strategy either. I will go and reread the Comintern debates over the labour party and see if that gives me any more insight.

[Q]

And it appears a third side has opened (http://communiststudents.org.uk/?p=6084) up in this debate, from the Manchester branch:


Below is a statement in response to the article by James Turley ‘Against the politics of purity‘ (http://communiststudents.org.uk/?p=6067) and the statement by Manchester comrades ‘No support for Labour – No support for the LRC‘ (http://communiststudents.org.uk/?p=6000).

It is important to place the current debate in Communist Students in its proper context, politically and organisationally. The decision to affiliate to the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) is a small tactical issue which comrades on both sides would do well to remember not to elevate into a principle. The change is being made in order to move CS in line with the political shifts of the CPGB majority. We need to be careful to ensure that CS is not simply an appendage of the CPGB, as implied by the way the affiliation was rushed through. It is also important to remember that members of the CPGB within CS are not united on this issue. Currently CS has no policy on Labour work and has sporadically worked with Labourites since our formation in 2006. What is being proposed is completely new: an orientation to Labour as something that can be won for Marxism. Some comrades want us to fight for Labour to become a “permanent united front” with Labour general committees playing a role akin to Soviets. This is the argument of Jack Conrad and his supporters within the CPGB. For CS this must be an issue to be decided on by the autonomous conference of CS and not just an automatic re-orientation in line with the CPGB.

In their quest to legitimise this turn some comrades have resorted to denying this re-orientation.‘The party line has changed, comrades; this has always been the party line.’ It is not true that LRC affiliation and subsequent work is nothing new. The recent adoption of new theses on the Labour Party by the CPGB represents a political and organisational re-orientation on the part of that group. The theses are deeply flawed and inaccurate, and yet out of this vague text our organisation is stepping up Labour work in a direction never undertaken by either the CPGB or CS.

Just as in the CPGB, the comrades for a reorientation to Labour work comrades seek to place themselves in the tradition of the early Communist Party but then only tell half of the story. It is common on the left to have learned about Lenin’s advice to Marxists in Britain and the decisions by the Second Congress of the Communist International (Comintern): to try to affiliate to the Labour Party, expose its leaders, and win workers in Britain to a socialist programme. A united front was proposed to defend the interests of the working class. The preconditions of such an approach were spelled out by Lenin, Trotsky and the Comintern: there must be complete liberty of agitation and organisation within Labour and a unified communist organisation of serious number to carry out the work. Democracy is a distant memory in the Labour Party and CS is a small organisation with few resources which must choose its priorities wisely. It is a mistake to listen to only half of the lessons and advice from our history. Just as a serious, active intervention within the ranks of the Labour Party is not possible for today’s CPGB, it is even less likely to be so for CS.

No section of this debate is seeking to isolate CS and to not have comrades engage with Labourites and the left generally. The same comrades who produced the opposition statement opposing affiliation to the LRC have also worked with Labour Students in anti-cuts committees and are part of a branch that backed Labour Students members who were against cuts in Students’ Union elections. The pro-affiliation comrades are conflating engaging Labour members and organisations, and working within Labour. Understanding the Labour Party as a site of struggle does not automatically lead to work inside Labour. We must consider the preconditions stated above, the balance forces, what can be gained and, most pertinently for our organisation, where best to expend our energy and devote our time. The opposition statement (http://communiststudents.org.uk/?p=6000) mistakenly confuses joining the LRC with accepting and fighting for Labourism. Under some circumstances it is permissible, even advisable, to work within Labour. There is nothing necessarily unprincipled about doing so.

“The LRC is an anti-cuts group” we are told by our pro-Labour comrades. But it seems to have escaped them that the LRC is not just another anti-cuts group. These comrades note that the LRC is holding its conference under the slogan “Resist the Cuts, Rebuild the Party” and yet neglect to comment on the second half of the formulation. The LRC is a campaign to defend and strengthen working class political representation through the Labour Party. It is a group which, according to its constitution, is “committed to the election of a Labour government” – i.e. another government of cuts. This does raise political questions for CS to decide upon. Are we for a Labour government, or do we contest this aim of the LRC? What forces are there within the Labour left that will be open to our ideas? Can comrades both work within Labour and promote communist organisation? Do we think the Labour Party can be won for Marxism?

The comrades who are for a reorientation to Labour also claim that it is simply a matter of CS doing more than one thing. A simple division of labour. Yet they have stated that they hope this will be part of a long term engagement without providing any plan beyond affiliation to the LRC and an intervention at its upcoming conference. We must not fall into the same trap as many left groups: trying to do many things whilst failing to do any of them well. It makes sense that our organisation puts most of its forces where we can gain the widest audience and suffer the least censorship. We have been part of many successful interventions and actions over the past year and our organisation has produced twice as much material as previous years (including a campus-based bulletin for workers and students called Educator, which was snapped up by hundreds in Manchester). Our orientation should be, as agreed at our last conference, primarily towards the burgeoning anti-cuts movement. Within this movement we need to be unambiguous in our promotion of communist ideas and organisation.

Signed by:

Caitriona Rylance (CPGB and CS Executive)

Chris Strafford (CPGB and Manchester CS)

Dave Isaacson (CPGB and Oxford CS)

Liam Conway (CPGB and Manchester CS)

Alex Allan (Manchester CS)

James O’Leary (Manchester CS)

Sinead Rylance (London CS)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Some comrades want us to fight for Labour to become a “permanent united front” with Labour general committees playing a role akin to Soviets. This is the argument of Jack Conrad and his supporters within the CPGB.

At least somebody agrees with the notion of working councils being organized internally inside a political party. Too bad they've got the *wrong* political party.