Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the Challenge of Left Unity

[Die Neue Zeit]

As I write this, I am re-reading CPGB comrade Mike Macnair's profoundly true, important, and free ( :D ) Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the Challenge of Left Unity.

http://radicalebooks.blogspot.com/2009/07/revolutionary-strategy-by-mike-mcnair.html (see the Mirrors there)

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=205 (book reproduced here)

[Q]

The book currently online has a pretty low quality layout in my view.

You can also download a PDF version at lulu.com over here, for a pretty low price (http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/revolutionary-strategy/17517394).

If, for whatever reason, you cannot dig up that price and are still interested in reading the book, please PM me as I can just give you the PDF then (but I won't just post it here, as the price is really low and the CPGB can use the support).

[TrotskistMarx]

Wow, cool, I think i will check it out. I think that the left needs unity.

The lack of unity, that's one of the main problems of the left, the excess of division and sectarianism, which is an impediment for socialism to rise to government power


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As I write this, I am re-reading CPGB comrade Mike Macnair's profoundly true, important, and free ( :D ) Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the Challenge of Left Unity.

http://radicalebooks.blogspot.com/2009/07/revolutionary-strategy-by-mike-mcnair.html (see the Mirrors there)

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=205 (book reproduced here)

[Grenzer]

Interesting, I was meaning to ask you about this recently. The CPGB and its affiliates never fail to impress.

[Q]

Interesting, I was meaning to ask you about this recently. The CPGB and its affiliates never fail to impress.

Which affiliates do you mean? As far as I know the CPGB is, so far, constrained to the UK. Unless you're referring to persons and such of course. Then again, the CPGB, despite its name, is not really a party but a campaign for one, so I guess it would make sense to refer to likeminded persons.

[Q]

You can now download the book from their own website (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/books/revolutionary-strategy-2008), so my offer in post 2 is now redundant :)

More books (many of which also as PDF) available here (http://cpgb.org.uk/home/books).

[Positivist]

I am curious, does this party offer an innovative strategy to draw people into the communist movement, or does it hold to the popular strategy of "the workers will come to us in time"?

[Q]

I am curious, does this party offer an innovative strategy to draw people into the communist movement, or does it hold to the popular strategy of "the workers will come to us in time"?

I guess you really have to read Revolutionary Strategy to get a grasp of the logic behind it all, but in a nutshell the CPGB does not consider itself to be a proto-party of the future (in which it is pretty innovative already compared to many other groups) but instead be a committed campaign for left unity around the acceptance (not agreement) of a common programme, to become such a party.

They also have a concrete proposal for how such a programme should like which is called, fittingly, the Draft Programme (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/about-the-cpgb/draft-programme), because it is only a draft proposal for a future Marxist unity convention. Likewise their leading organ is called the Provisional Central Committee.

You can read their summarised positions on this page (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/about-the-cpgb/what-we-fight-for). They also recently brought up a FAQ over here (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/about-the-cpgb/faq).

Another way to get a hang of their politics is to follow the Weekly Worker (which you can read online and has a new issue each Thursday) for a while and, even better, write letters to it asking questions, criticising articles, etc. If possible, consider coming to the Communist University which is held next month (http://www.revleft.com/vb/communist-university-2012-t169094/index.html), or otherwise watch the lectures of CU's of past years (http://vimeo.com/cpgb/channels).