The first issue of The Communist, subtitled ‘Towards A Revolutionary Communist Party’ appeared on 24 January, the day Lenin died a hundred years ago.
A picture of Lenin appears on seven of its 16 pages. There are also articles by and about him. Trotsky gets only one mention and no picture. It is not clear on what basis they have calculated that they will do better calling themselves ‘communists’ with Lenin, hammer and sickle and the rest rather than posing as left-wing ‘socialist’ members of the Labour Party from which they were expelled – against their will – in 2021. Their paper used to be called Socialist Appeal.
Strange, because their origin is the part of the Militant Tendency that stayed in the Labour Party when the other part left and tried to steal our name but ended up being known as SPEW. Their late leader, Ted Grant, had always taught that Trotskyists should stay in the Labour Party until the revolution started as that’s where workers would, apparently, turn when they began to become more radical.
Maybe his successors feel that ‘the revolution’ is imminent. Some of the articles and headlines suggest that they might.
We are told:
‘It is becoming increasingly clear that capitalism has reached its limits … the deepening crisis of world capitalism …Under capitalism we are heading for disaster.’‘Capitalism is in a profound crisis. Millions of workers and young people are drawing revolutionary conclusions, and are looking to the ideas of communism.’
Millions?! Nobody else seems to have noticed this and they themselves claim only 1,100 members.
The editorial ends:
‘We need a fighting communist leadership in the working class. That is what we are building.’
No thanks. The working class needs that as much as a hole in the head.
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