A Trouble-Saver for Communists (1936)

From the June 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the moment we are receiving a steady stream of letters from Communists and their sympathisers explaining why the case for joining the Labour Party is absolutely unanswerable. In 1929 the same people-were proving that it was absolutely necessary to oppose the Labour Party. In 1923 they proved why it was absolutely necessary to support the Labour Party. To save trouble when the Communist Party stands on its head (or its feet) at the next somersault, we print below brief extracts from their statements of policy of 1923 and 1929. 

From the Communist Party General Election Address, 1923: —

  Therefore our immediate object in the present struggle must be the establishment of a Labour Government. . . . Vote Labour and Communist. No Divided Ranks!

From the Communist Labour Monthly, January, 1929: —

  Until a comparatively recent period many revolutionary workers still believed in the possibility of a constitutional conquest of the Labour Party and its eventual transformation, as the workers became disillusioned in the reformist leadership, into a revolutionary party by a change of leadership . . . To-day, however, the facts are clear to all. The Labour Party is . . .  a machine of reformism, devised by reformism, for the control of the mass organisations, and which is prepared abundantly to protect itself against any danger of transformation. The decisive fight of the revolutionary workers is and can only be outside that machine and against it . . . The conception of a Socialistic transformation of the Labour Party needs to be denounced, not only as a Utopian dream, but as a reactionary deception and misleading of the workers, and passive support of MacDonald. With this goes equally the conception of the advance of the workers through a Labour Government, or a Left Labour Government, or Left pressure from within the Labour Party upon a Labour Government. The path of advance lies through the independent leadership of the revolutionary workers.

1936. (Same as (1923.)

193—?. (Same as 1929.)

P. S.