Letter: The Tragic comedians (1966)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sir,

I should like to comment on one or two points raised by your reviewer (June, Socialist Standard):—

(1) He gives the impression that I write as a Communist sympathiser. What 1 said in my Introduction was “I have approached it (the CPGB in the twenties) from the point of view of an informed British socialist of the nineteen twenties, accepting the principles of Marxism, sympathetic to the aims of the Communist Party, but aware of its shortcomings" (p. 11).

(2) Any reader who believes that 1 have made "an uncritical acceptance of the grandiloquent claims made by the Communist Party" should read the book itself (especially the sections on "the New Line" 1928-1929) or Palme Dutt’s review in the Daily Worker (7th April, 1966).

(3) Your reviewer may have been convinced by reading The Communist that the Council of Action set up in August, 1920, "had no perceptible effect on the actions and policy of the British Government," but this was not the view of the Government itself or of the whole Labour Movement. The Cabinet Minutes for 9th August. 1920, refer as follows: "In the subsequent discussion great stress was laid on the very strong public opinion against intervention in the Russo-Polish War, and during the meeting information was received to the effect that several Parliamentary Labour organisations were meeting, and it was apprehended that Labour might endeavour to prevent the intervention of Great Britain by declaring a general strike." A visit to the Public Record Office is recommended.

(4) Mr. H. by insisting that as far as I am concerned "we are all socialists" seems to imply that I see no essential differences between the Labour Party, ILP, Guilds Movement, and the Unemployed Workers’ Movement and is good enough to inform me that most of them were not really revolutionary bodies. Again space requires me to refer your readers to my book itself. It is worth mentioning that I pointed out how events led the Communists in the Unemployed Movement "to present the organisation more as a movement of social protest and less as an instrument of revolution" (p. 129). This should please your reviewer.

(5) Mr. H. complains that I do not criticise Lenin’s estimate of revolutionary prospects in 1919. If he will refer to p. 278 he will find the criticism he is looking for.

(6) While it may surprise H. that I do not refer to the internal conflicts in the Communist Party on the issue of religion, it will not surprise those who were active in or knowledgeable about the activities of the CPGB in this period. Religion was not an issue which confronted either the working class or any but a small minority of the Party’s membership.

(7) I did not refer to the establishment of the SPGB in 1904 because the history of that Party is irrelevant to my theme which was the British Communist Party. I was not unaware of the birth of the SPGB—it appeared as a footnote in my original doctoral thesis!

(8) I should be happy in future editions of my work to amend the "extraordinary statement" which offends your reviewer to read "Was it surprising that the overwhelming majority of Marxists and socialists everywhere should turn to the leaders of the revolution (of October. 1917) for inspiration and guidance."

L. J. Macfarlane, 

Ruskin College, Oxford.

P.S.—I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the SPGB for the loan of certain pamphlets while I was carrying out my researches.

Reply:

The most important issue raised in Dr. Macfarlane’s attempt to answer our criticisms is his statement in paragraph (7) that the history of the SPGB "is irrelevant to my theme which was the British Communist Party."

Dr. Macfarlane claims that he accepts the broad principles of Marxism, that the Communist Party is Marxist and that he is sympathetic to the aims of the Communist Party. Those aims included the suppression of Parliament by Workers Councils, direct action, the general strike and armed uprising to get power, a spurious "dictatorship of the proletariat" and urging workers to vole for the Labour Party and other perpetuators of capitalism. If he wished to treat his theme seriously he was under obligation to justify this travesty of Marxism and meet the Marxist case against it. In the years covered by the book the one solid body of opposition to Communist Party theory was the SPGB (sufficiently successful for the Communist Party to issue a directive telling their members not to get involved in arguments with the SPGB). What Dr. Macfarlane did was to make a brief reference to “some Marxists” who pointed out that according to Marx and Engels a socialist revolution was impossible in Russia (see p. 12). Here was his opportunity to seek to justify his and the Communist Party’s claims about being Marxists, but that, of course, would have required meeting openly the SPGB case. All he did in his book to meet this case was to refer to the answer to it by the Russian Communist leaders, which was that they relied on extending the revolution to Europe, where, according to Dr. Macfarlane, "this call to arms was eagerly taken up by revolutionary Marxist groups.” Now he comes back (see his para. 5) with the statement that he thinks the Russians were wrong and that “there was no possibility of working class revolution in Britain at this time” (p. 278). All the more reason therefore why he was under obligation to meet the SPGB case as part of his theme.

In reply to (4) he did in his book (pp. 12 and 123) describe all of the organisations he names as being socialist, including the unemployed movement

In (3), dealing with the failure of the 1920 Council of Action, he offers us a couple of red herrings. The claim he made in his book (p. 24) was that the Council was “to arrange for the whole industrial power of the industrial workers to be mobilised . . . " He tells us that some members of the Cabinet took note of strong public opinion against intervention in tho Russo-Polish War. Of course large numbers of people, wearied of four years of war, hated the thought of another; but what has this to do with industrial action to stop munitions going to Poland? The second point is farcical. Some Labour MP's were giving off hot-air about calling a general strike but did not even attempt to do so! The munitions went to Poland in a flood. The Russian armies were driven back and the Russian government was forced to accept peace on terms which allowed Poland to annex great areas of Russian territory. When the Communist journal admitted in October, 1920, that “the National Council of Action has failed" they were right.

Pressure of space prevents going into other questions, but if the SPGB had been mentioned in Dr. Macfarlane’s book a number of other statements made by him would have been shown to be incorrect, only sustainable by treating the SPGB as if it did not exist.

One small point, probably not known to Dr. Macfarlane, is that a small number of members of the SPGB left and joined the Communist Party at or soon after its formation.

Editorial Committee

The tragic comedians (1966)

Book Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Communist Party: Its Origins and Development until 1929 by Dr. L. J. Macfarlane Macgibbon & Kee, 63s.

In his book Dr. L. J. Macfarlane painstakingly traces the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in all its muddled and conflicting reformism, syndicalism, and anti-parliamentarianism in 1920, through its chequered career of alternately supporting and opposing the Labour Party, sometimes both supporting it and opposing it at the same time, with its playing at armed revolt, splitting the trade unions, marching the unemployed up and down, fancying itself leading the 1926 General Strike on to revolution—down to 1929 when “the Party was in a bad state, its membership was falling away and those who remained were engaged in bitter dissension and dispute.”

The CPGB started as a mixture of antagonistic elements; the resolution to seek affiliation to the Labour Party was carried by only 100 votes to 85, and the minority believed that they would have won if some of their supporters had not kept away from the founding congress. It has remained divided ever since, united only in one thing, the pathetic belief that victory for Socialism had been achieved in Russia.

Sometimes one faction gained the leadership and sometimes another. So its opposition to Labour Party candidates at Parliamentary elections in 1921 was followed in 1922 by a call to the workers to vote Labour. This was continued in 1924 but in 1929, when they coined the phrase “the third capitalist party” the Communists were telling the workers to vote for Labour Party candidates in some constituencies but elsewhere to abstain from voting.

The author, who describes himself as “sympathetic to the aims of the Communist Party,” admits that “there was little enough to show for nearly 10 years of devoted work by thousands of ordinary party members,” and he can claim for the Communist Party nothing more than that “for all its faults” it had “helped to keep alive a spirit of resistance to the meek acceptance of hardship and poverty as economic facts of life.” He should have remembered also the thousands of workers who, having been caught up by the emotional prospect of an impossible “revolution round the corner,” ended in apathy and cynicism after experience of Communist Party political trickery and deception.

The chief value of this book is that it brings together in chronological order a mass of detailed information, with references to sources, which will be useful to anyone wanting to follow up particular developments, but beyond that there is little to commend it. The major fault is the author's uncritical acceptance of grandiloquent claims made by the Communist Party and others without any attempt to examine them against the evidence. A case in point is the myth about the Jolly George and the campaign to stop the British Government intervening against Russia in the Polish-Russian war.

Dr. Macfarlane reports anti-war demonstrations, the formation of a Council of Action, the calling of a 24-hour strike in which “it was claimed that thousands of South Wales miners answered the call” and that the dockers of East London “refused to load the Jolly George with munitions.”

He concludes: “It now appeared that all these efforts had been effective—direct action to save the revolution had been taken at last”.

In fact it all had no perceptible effect on the actions and policy of the British Government, and this was admitted by the Communists in their journal. The Communist (7 October 1920):

Frankly, the National Council of Action has failed, and its failure is all the more disappointing when one remembers the unanimity and enthusiasm of the great Central Hall conference held at the beginning of August last. It was formed to prevent the supplies and munitions being sent in support of the attack on Soviet Russia, which it is quite obviously not doing. Somehow and from somewhere in this country, those supplies are being sent—a Moscow report alleges that England has sent seven steamers of munitions, three tanks and twelve small steamers with provisions in aid of Poland and that these have been unloaded at Danzig.

Dr. Macfarlane is uncritical in his approach because he obviously has no clear idea of what is the nature of the problem of replacing the capitalist social system by Socialism. To him “we are all Socialists”: Marxist and anti-Marxist, Labour Party, ILP, the defunct National Guilds movement, the Unemployed Workers Committee Movement of the Nineteen twenties; etc., etc. The fact that these bodies were fighting each other most of the time and that most of their aims were no more revolutionary than those of the present Labour Party passes him by.

He is able to report without comment that “as a revolutionary socialist party the British Socialist Party welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia” and that the Leeds Convention in 1917, with “rousing speeches from Phillip Snowden and Ramsay MacDonald” was “amazingly successful”—what exactly did it succeed in achieving?

He tells us that Tom Quelch went away from the Convention convinced that “the hour of the Social Revolution is close up on us”—why no criticism of that piece of silliness, or of Lenin's statement in March 1919 that “The victory of the proletarian revolution all over the world is assured”?

What was going on in those years was that the Communist Party of Great Britain, lacking any real understanding either of the strength of British and American capitalism and the capitalist outlook of the majority of workers, was dreaming of a non-existent Socialist victory in Russia, while Lenin and others in Russia were dreaming of a non-existent revolutionary working class in Britain, America, France, Germany and elsewhere about to come to the aid of the Bolsheviks.

Dr. Macfarlane has some surprising omissions. He does not tell us about the curious attitude and internal conflicts of the Communist Party, torn between its nominal acceptance of Marx's “Religion is the opium of the People” and the desire to get the votes of the workers who had a religious outlook. He briefly mentions Francis Meynell, who was editor of the Communist, but not that he was a Catholic!

Another omission is that he is able to describe the breakaway of the Socialist Labour Party from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903 but he does not mention the breakaway of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. Perhaps this is not surprising. Had he thought fit to state the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain he would have had to justify his extraordinary statement: “Was it surprising that Marxists and socialists everywhere should turn to the leaders of the revolution for inspiration and guidance?”

He tells us on the same page that “to socialists everywhere the Russian Revolution of October 1917, came as a revelation”.

The reader of the book will look in vain to find out what it was that was revealed except confirmation of what Socialists knew already, the impossibility of Socialism without Socialists, and of imposing Socialism from above.

Edgar Hardcastle