A battle royal is in progress between the Labour party and the Communists for the leadership of the trade unions. The Socialist Party, being concerned with the spreading of socialist understanding and the destruction of the idea that leaders can solve the workers’ problems for them, is not on either side. But we are not lookers-on for we are directly concerned with the task of exposing the non-Socialist aims and activities of both of the combatants. On this occasion we are interested in a charge made against the Communists that it is their intention to set up here a totalitarian state. The charge was made in a Daily Herald editorial on December 23rd, 1947.
“Communism wants to establish in Britain a system under which no Party except the Communist Party is allowed to appeal for votes, and under which no man dare open his mouth on political subjects except in praise of the One Permitted Party,”
The Daily Worker could not afford to let such a grave charge pass unanswered and the next day it published a leading article accusing the Herald of deliberate lies. “Communism in Britain,” said the Daily Worker, ”does not advocate a One-Party system as the Daily Herald pretends.”
The Worker concluded its article by quoting from Marx’s and Engel’s ‘‘Communist Manifesto” of 1848 the words: ‘‘Communists, scorn to hide their views and aims,” and fiercely declared that “with these words . . . we fling back the monstrous charges of the Daily Herald. . . ”
It will be noticed on examination that the denial does not squarely meet the charge. The Worker denies that the Communists "advocate” a one-party system; but the Herald's charge was not that they openly advocate it but that they want it, a very different proposition when you are dealing with a Party that habitually conceals its real aims. After all, are they not good disciples of Lenin who in his "Left-Wing Communism” told them that the way to carry on Communist, propaganda in the trade unions was to resort to “strategy and adroitness, illegal proceedings, reticence and subterfuge, to anything in order to penetrate into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on Communist work inside them, at any cost.” ("Left-Wing Communism" by N. Lenin. Published by the Communist Party of Great Britain. P.39.) Is it not legitimate to suspect that the political jesuits may adopt the subterfuge of being ”reticent” about their real aims?
Next it will be noticed that the Worker only makes the denial on behalf of Communism "in Britain.” If we find a Party defending the suppression of all other political parties by the Communists in Eastern Europe, may we not be more than suspicious when they beg us to believe that they do not intend to do the same thing here?
We can also find enlightenment by observing what the Communists in Russia said on this question before they got power and what they did after they got power.
For years the Russian Communists agitated for the setting up of a democratically elected Constituent Assembly in place of the Czarist Autocracy. They were still agitating for it a few weeks before they actually got power. They took part in the elections along with the other parties (” We participated in the elections to the Russian bourgeois parliament, the Constituent Assembly, in September-November, 1917.” Lenin, in Left-Wing Communism,” p.42.) But when the Assembly met the Communists discovered to their consternation that the delegates of the Social Revolutionary Party, representing the peasants, were in a large majority. So the Communist Government dissolved the Assembly by force. Stalin in his “The October Revolution” remarks about it: “At the beginning of 1917, the slogan of the Constituent Assembly was progressive and the Bolsheviks espoused it. At the end of 1917, after the October insurrection, the slogan of the Constituent Assembly became reactionary, for it ceased to correspond to the relationship of the contending political forces in the country.” (Martin Lawrence edition, p,22.)
Another Communist writer, Maxim Litvinoff, defended the suppression on the ground that the views of the peasants had changed between the time they voted and the time the Assembly met—“had the Constituent Assembly been elected a couple of months later it would have shown a large majority for the Bolshevik policy.” (“The Bolshevik Revolution.” Maxim Litvinoff, 1918, p.49.) Mr. Litvinoff’s guess may possibly have been correct but on that assumption why did not the Communists put it to a test by holding another election? No election to the Assembly was ever held again and the Communists, soon carried out the suppression of all political parties except their own; so that today, in Stalin’s words, ”Only one party, the party of the workers, the Communist Party, enjoys legality.” (Stalin, Interviews with Foreign Worker’s Delegations. Published in Moscow, 1934. P.13.)
In the course of defending the act of dispersing the Assembly Litvinoff himself summed up the case against it. We can hardly improve upon his statement.
“It may certainly appear as a monstrous crime against democracy on the part of a regime which regards itself as Socialist to have suppressed an institution which had been the dream of generations, which the Bolsheviks themselves had been championing ever since the first revolution of 1905 with more enthusiasm than any other party . . . . What better proof could have been furnished that the Bolsheviks were trampling on the people’s will in a manner hitherto exhibited by the worst tyrants in history, that they were afraid of the verdict of the nation gathered through its representatives in the highest assembly known to democracy . . . ?” (The Bolshevik Revolution.” P.15.)
The British Communists, who defend every suppressive act of the Russian Party, deny now that they intend to suppress all other parties; but the Russian Communists who did, in fact, suppress all other parties likewise waited until they had got power before they showed their hand. At present in their efforts to gain popularity the British Communists pose as friends of democracy and parliamentary government. They were not always so reticent about their real aim. In a report to the 12th Congress of the Communist Party in 1932 they said: “ Any party which accepts parliamentary democracy, however revolutionary its phrases, is an instrument of the capitalists.” Another passage read: "We must expose the sham of parliamentary democracy, and show the positive results of the workers’ dictatorship based upon the Workers’ Councils.” (Report on the Crisis Policy of the Labour Party. Published by the C.P.G.B.)
We therefore repeat the charge that the Communist Party always intended, if they got the chance, to suppress all other political parties, though at present they choose to conceal their aim.
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