"Revolutionary Political Action" (1921)

From the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communist Brand.

In the leading article in the September Socialist Standard the Communist Party’s Caerphilly Election Address was quoted from as follows:

 Pledged as it is to Political Action the Communist Party is enabled by this opportunity to demonstrate just how far and in what way Revolutionary Political Action differs from the creeping thing the worker has learned to know and to hate as Parliamentarism.

The article went on to say: "If the election has provided the Communist Party with an opportunity to explain the meaning of Revolutionary Political Action, then that Party has certainly failed to take advantage of this opportunity."

If the Communist Party failed on this occasion to make clear what they mean by revolutionary political action, there have been other occasions when they have taken the opportunity. On the Poplar Board of Guardians sit two members of the Communist Party, A. A. Watts and Edgar Lansbury. On June 22nd, at a Board meeting of the Poplar Guardians, the General Purposes Committee recommended a list of reductions in wages of men employed by the Board, building labourers, women sewing machinists, and bakers. What did our two exponents of "revolutionary political action” do? They voted for the reductions!

It was only when the following recommendation was made, viz., “That our action be approved and confirmed and that the wages of the above-mentioned officers be further reduced by 2s. 6d. per week each for every fall of 10 points in the cost of living under figures below 120,” that Edgar Lansbury said, "I’m not opposing the reductions. We’ve already agreed to it, but I don’t like us pledging ourselves to do it in the future.” (Quoted by "Workers’ Dreadnought,” 2/7/21.)

Who have been louder in their denunciation of this principle of the cost of living basis of wages, that the workers should for ever be tied to one bare level of subsistence, than the Communist Party? Yet here we have two of its members lending it their support.

In the "Industrial Notes” in the "Communist” (28/5/21) occurred the following passages:

  Will somebody explain what has happened to the committees set up by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress to consider joint action against wage reductions.
   One explanation offered is that the members of the sub-committees have been so busy negotiating reductions for their own members that they have had no time to meet.
   Agreements, even, are being broken and strikes are resulting. Aggression by the boss class is seen on every hand.

Clearly a case of the "pot calling the kettle black.” Even Councillor Charlie Sumner, not a revolutionary Communist, but just a Trade Unionist who believes in "a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” said, “Yes, but d’you see, the baking trade has always been a terribly sweated trade, and it isn’t to say that we should join in just because everyone else is coming down on them.” The same is true, of course, of women sewing machinists. Even this failed to move our “revolutionaries”; Sumner, as a matter of fact, voted for the reductions.

A. A. Watts was himself, as Chairman of the Sub-Committee, the signatory to a recommendation to reduce relief to the poor (excepting widows and aged persons) by 10 per cent. The Communist Party’s “revolutionary” Caerphilly Election Address demanded “for the unemployed work or maintenance at full Trade Union rates.” The case of Poplar illustrates how the Communist Party deals with the unemployed when it has the power. Evidently there is little to choose between the Communist Party and those ancient adepts in the art of “piecrust” promising, the Liberal and Tory Parties.

And have Watts and E. Lansbury been expelled from the Communist Party for violating their “principles”? Not a bit of it. Only Miss Sylvia Pankhurst has been expelled for not handing the paper, which published the information, over to the control of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party, of which Watts is a member.

Another occasion is taken advantage of by the Communist Party to show what they mean by revolutionary political action. In the “Communist ” (17/9/21), under “Notes of the Week,” occurs the-following:

  We, as Communists, welcome Poplar’s action for two reasons. The first is that work or maintenance at full trade union rates is a demand which the Communist Party has always pressed, for the revolutionary reason that capitalism can neither refuse it with dignity nor concede it without suicide. Secondly, and more importantly, because the Poplar Council has carried out the advice of the Third International: To capture the machinery of bourgeois administration and use it for revolutionary ends. (Communist’s italics.)

In regard to the first reason, imagine, if you can, capital committing suicide to save its dignity. The idea is too ridiculous to need serious refutation. The Communist Party has been in existence over a year now, and so far capital has refused this demand, which the Communist Party “has always pressed,” and risked its dignity. As for committing suicide—— 

And what is the revolutionary end that the Labour Party has captured the “machinery of bourgeois administration” to effect? The Poplar Borough Council has refused to levy the precepts of the L.C.C. and other outside authorities as a means to bringing about the equalisation of rates. I take it then, that if this revolutionary end is achieved, the system of society advocated by the Communist Party and called by them “Communism,” will have been inaugurated? Let us see.

Prior to the Rent Restrictions Act the effect on the working-class of equalisation of rates would have been nil. There was an excess of supply of houses over demand and rents were competitive. Higher rates in one borough had to be compensated by lower rents, so that the total amount paid for a house was the same all round for the same class of house. Cases have been cited in the Socialist Standard where rent has even fallen while the rates have been rising. But under the Rent Act the amount of rates in excess of the rate levied in 1914 is added directly to the rent allowed by the Act. This fact gives credence to the idea that the working-class is affected by high or low rates. But what would naturally take place if rates were reduced in working-class boroughs as a consequence of equalisation? Wages, especially in the state the labour market is at present, would almost immediately reflect the reduction.

But, apart from the benefit the capitalists who exploit the workers in London would derive as a consequence of the reduction in the latter’s cost of living, who would really benefit by the change? The big factory owners and other Capitalists who have premises in Poplar and other boroughs whose rates would be reduced. And it would be pertinent to ask who is paying for the floods of literature, some of which is sent to voters in stamped envelopes, with which Poplar is being deluged? No working-class organisation dependent on the pence of its members and sympathisers could afford it at the best of times. The whole thing, so far as the working-class is concerned, is simply summed up: it is yet another red herring serving the purpose of diverting them from their real interests and from what should be their only goal, Socialism.

T. D.

A Socialist Searchlight: Where Are The "Reds" of Yesteryear? (1930)

From the October 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party has finance, positions, a large following, and is popular and respectable. That explains its attraction for those elements which were so busy a little while since supporting Bolshevism, insurrection and similar gospels. In the official "Labour Magazine” for June there are three “converts” writing for it. Walton Newbold, late Communist M.P., Peter Petroff, the late Communist official in Russia, and R. M. Fox, late follower of Larkin. In the political arena crowds of one-time Communists have climbed on board the "Labour” engine of Capitalism. When it was apparent that Communist membership was a hindrance to adoption by the Labour Party, they dropped their Communist association. The Third International, faced with declining membership and the need for peaceful commercial relations with Capital, spent less money on propaganda. Thus, many left the Communists for the party they had denounced. Newbold, Whitehead, Windsor, J. S. Clarke, Ellen Wilkinson, R. Williams, Wall, the Secretary of the London Trades Council, Colyer, late Treasurer of the Communist Party, Mellor, now Editor of the "Daily Herald," all sought the genial circles of the Anti-Socialist Labour Party.

The Communists boosted new leaders for Labour, like Sam Elsbury, of the Clothing Workers, Alex. Gossip, of the Furnishing Trades, and Cook, of the Miners. Now they are mostly denounced as enemies. "Making" leaders and then pouring venom on them is a special feature of Communist work. It attracted the would-be leader to the party by its programme of "Down with the old leaders,” and then sobbed because new leaders got the jobs with their assistance and then kicked the party overboard.

Edgar Lansbury has faded out of the Communist picture. Ashleigh, once on the staff of the Communist Press, has stopped "preparing for the Revolution.” The Russian Oil Products, Argos, and other Soviet firms, were a happy hunting ground for those with the 'Communist ticket,' and once safely settled in the jobs, the noisy slogan-slingers forget all about 'the Revolution round the corner.” You don’t run after a ’bus when you have already caught it!

The conflict in the Russian Party resulted in 'New Lines” and new deviations being send round to Communists' Parties of the world. Then sprang up the various sections of the C.P. here and abroad, such as Trotskyists, Left and Right Wing Deviators, etc.

The contest for positions resulted in many of the 'Early Fathers” or Pioneers getting ousted, and the new Political Bureau saw that their opponents lost their old positions. Hence names like T. A. Jackson do not now adorn the pages of the Communist papers. These sheets are now left with less philosophic contents, such as 'Prepare for August 1st," and "A Boon for Ladies," "How to get a paper pattern for a shirt,” etc. , Soviet Russia has had a very poor advertisement in the parties she adopted. In spite of all the enthusiasm and inspiration Russia aroused, the Communist Party has declined from 20,000 in 1921 to 3,500 in 1929.

#    #    #    #

LABOUR NOT A CLASS PARTY.

To those simple folk who believe that the Labour Party is a party based upon working class interests, we quote the following from the final Election address of the Labour Party broadcast by Ramsay MacDonald during the General Election of 1929 from Newcastle B.B.C. Station (May 28th, 1929).

It shows the appeal of "Labour ” to all classes, and repudiates any class aims.

    Another charge is that we are a Class Party because the Party was created for the purpose of bringing the life experience of the great mass of our people to guide political and economic policy. Against us our opponents say that they stand for national unity and such-like. You cannot talk of national unity unless that unity embraces all classes and functions which give services to the whole varied life of the community. I cannot understand how it is that intelligent and honest people can continue to think that Labour is a Class Party. If I had time to-night, and if it were profitable, I could prove to you not only the contrary, but I could turn the tables upon our Conservative antagonists and show that on their minds, on the composition of their Party, on their funds, on their appeals, and their achievements class and sectional interests are deeply stamped. One of the great reasons why I belong to the Labour Party and hold the Socialist views of what a wise and just social structure is. is because I detest class politics, and want to end them in real national unity.

Adolph Kohn.