Old Stalinists Fight "new'

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gress debate, the Communist Party of Great Britain faces deep internal divisions and draft of its long-standing programme, the British Road to Socialism. It brings to light issues which were first publicly discussed as early as January of last year, following the appearance in the Party Secretary John Gollan's article on 'Socialist Demimposed by the Party leadership. In an attempt to fragment opposition to the new draft, they have restricted written contributions to 900 words in the he foringhai Moming To jange bo we als most daily letters and contributions there has been an eager response to these small opportunities to alternative to the draft programme by longstanding Party member Charlie Doyle has been quashed by a ban onthe distribution of his self-produced pamphlet. Members in several areas have been sused open rally of oppositionists, held in South London on 6 June. This opposition current, named the 'Frenchites' after the Surrey District Organiser of the CP, veteran Stalinist Syd French, was able to attract an audience of near to a thousand, who heard a platform, including Jack Dash, catalogued the areas in which the CP's influence had declined, pointing to a falling paper circulation, the collapse of electora! support and the disappearance of factory branches. He went on to accuse the Executive Committee of failing to try Half-way through its period of pre-Conwidespread predictions of a split.

The controversy surrounds the Party's new journal Marxism Today ocracy' The discussion has broken out of the limits participate.

However an attempt to produce a coherent pended for selling it.

Of far greater significance was the unprecedentlay down a challenge to the present leadership.

Along the lines of earlier statements, French to correct this situation.

In a sentence he sketched out the differences that seperate one faction from the other, and the different solutions that each present to the crisis in the Communist Party: "The EC has done nothing but put the blame on the Soviet Union - and the USSR is the strongest card that CPGB members have.

HOSTILE For a number of years now the leaderships of several European and some other Communist Parties have taken an increasingly hostile stand towards the traditional Stalinist line of uncritical support for the hureaucratically degenerated workers states, and have moved to strike out the call for the "dictatorship of the Proletariat" from their programmes.

This has led to major splits in the Stalinist parties in Greece and more recently in Sweden, while in other countries - most obviously Italy, France, Spain and Japan -the new line has been adopted with much less resistence.

This seemed to have been the state of affairs in Britain too, where Parliamentary road' conceptions have been central to the CP programme since it was rewritten ander the watchful eyes of Stalin as the British Road to Socialism' in 1951. The new draft embodies little I. the way of political change from =3at programme.

'ORTHODOXY' Yet now the Frenchites, donning Ine mantle of self-proclaimed "Marxism-Leninism" have begun to pose as defenders of Marxist orthodoxy against the CP leadersip.

French even refused to tell EC member Mike Higgs whether he would be bound by a Congress decision to accept the draft (a sergin outcome), putting a split on *he agenda as an unofficial last item With a we sizeable minonity in the Party. French's implied threat is = 5201345 072 A sit aruld and the Morning of former CP General Star as a daily, and result in an unstable period of political ferment in both the wings of the Party.

It is worth examining what is at stake in the dispute and looking at the implications of the arguments.

The Frenchites see the issue of defence of the Soviet regime, as the necessary rationale for a seperate 'Communist' organisation. From this angle they have formally begun to defend the revolutionary theories of Marx and Lenin in relation to the bourgeois state, the necessity for revolutionary violence and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The leadership faction, like parallel tendencies in Italy, France and Spain, has the common characteristic of having drawn very close to the open defence of the bourgeoisic, along the lines of social democracy.

French Democracy - Some Problems' put forward similarly the positions of the CPGB leadership centring on a critique of the USSR and promises:

"Our aim is the construction of socialism in Britain, in forms which would guarantee personal freedom, the plurality of political parties, the independence of the trade unions, regious treedom, and freedom ot research, cultural, artistic and scientific activities."

In response to this article Frenchite Fergus Nicholson said:

"The main ideas of Marxism-Leninism which are under attack today are the dictatorship of the proletariat, internationalism, the Vanguard Party and Democratic Centralism. If these are not the main points on which the revolutionary Communist Parties were distinguished from the reformist and revisionist social democratic parties, what are?"

Neither of these positions can form the foundations of a genuine revolutionary organisation.

One faction rejects Marxist theory of the state, which denies the possibility of socialism being achieved through Parliament, whilst the other supports completely the counter-revolutionary actions of the Soviet bureaucracy and its strategy of peaceful coexistence with imperialism which means in practice it is just as prepared for class collaboration on a national or international scale as the openly reformist wing.

RENOUNCED

It is not without significance that French has been a member of the CP since considerably before the adoption of The British Road to Socialism in 1951, but that it has taken him until now to notice that every draft from the earliest edition has explicitly renounced the 'Russian road':

"We are not claiming that Britain should copy others exactly in the way it advances to socialism and establishes socialist institutions. On the contrary we have outlined a British road to socialism." (1968 Edition p.71).

It is only because the very independent existence and justification of the British CP seems to be threatened by the reactionary policies of the leadership that French opportunistically discovers Marxism-Leninism.

French still supports the reactionary Stalinist notions of broad "anti-monopoly alliances' of import controls as a step on the road to ing the he "Lefts" to the Left in socialism and the strateev of nash- sura alliance with the Communist Party, which are the real political essence of the CP's practice in the class It is impossible to prefer one wing or the other of the CP from a revolutionary point of view.

ANTI-COMMUNIST

They each put forward reformist programmes, one tailored to vulgar anti-bureaucratic often outright anti-communist feelings, the other supporting the regime of the Soviet Union and exploiting the appeal of the October revolution.

The important requirement for a clear analysis of the conflict in the CP is an understanding of the political questions at stake.

Contrary to the opinion of the International Marxist Group, as expressed in Socialist Challenge, the question of democracy in the British CP is not the principal issue.

If honest militants of the Communist Party are to be won to the revolutionary positions oi Trotskyism, it will be as a result of the clearest possible political criticism of both sides in the CP debate.

Of course we say clearly that French's faction should be free to organise: but even if French won the leadership of the British Communist Party, the cause of revolution would be taken not an inch further forward.

The fight is crucially to force CP members to reassess the basic Stalinist concepts of 'socialism in one country' , and 'peaceful coexistence' . and that wav break them from Stalinism.

JULIU