Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Statement from Yorkshire


First Published: Vanguard, Vol. 1, No. 8, September 1964.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba and Sam Richards
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THE world’s Communist Parties, the working class the world over and their allies, the world wide movement for peace, democracy and Socialism, have developed in recent years to unprecedented proportions, are striking hammer blows at imperialism, colonialism an neo-colonialism and the war plans of the imperialists. The broad anti-imperialist front of all progressive humanity to defeat the feverish war preparations and nuclear blackmail of imperialism, to end forever the rapacious and blood soaked system of imperialist exploitation, aggression and war, and to win the world wide triumph of Socialism and Communism, is hourly and daily being forged anew in unbreakable unity through the resolute struggle and unflinching self sacrifice of the anti-imperialist fighters, led by the working class and toiling masses of the world, at whose head stands the invincible World Communist Movement. Imperialism, led by the most predatory and voracious power, U.S. imperialism that the long history of capitalist exploitation has ever seen, is more and more losing the historical initiative on a world scale, is losing its ability to harness idle world’s peoples behind its foul system of plunder and improvement. All the objective conditions exist for winning further mighty victories of the working people and toiling masses of the world in the struggle for peace, democracy and national liberation, for the final triumph of socialism and Communism throughout the world.

The blood-soaked imperialists system is nearing its end; a whole third of humanity, comprising the peoples of the mighty Socialist Camp of Nations, have already removed themselves from the orbit of capitalism and imperialism, and are taking giant strides in peaceful Socialist construction, on the road towards the full freedom and creative emancipation or communism. A further third of humanity, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, is locked in fierce, uncompromising revolutionary struggle against the last bastions of colonialism and neocolonialism and the most vicious and determined enemy or all progressive humanity, U.S. Imperialism. It is against this background of this objective world situation as analysed and commonly agreed upon at the Moscow conferences of the world’s Communist Parties, in 1957 and 1960, and defined in the Moscow Declaration and Statement, that the Great Debate in the International Communist Movement between the forces of Marxism-Leninism and modern revisionism must be seen and understood, for Marxism-Leninism teaches, and the entire experience of the international working and its Communist vanguard confirms, that it is precisely at moments of decisive historical change in the balance of class forces on a world scale that the forces of decaying and moribund capitalism and their reactionary political representatives of all hues most desperately need to find allies within the working class movement, amongst the forces of peace, democracy and Socialism, and particularly within their Communist Vanguard Parties, in order to create a last ditch support for their disintegrating and parasitical system, in the face of the ever-increasing exposure and isolation of imperialism before the peoples of the world, its ever-declining bases or economic and political power, its ever-dwindling ability to deceive the working people and to mobilise them behind its desperate schemes for aggression, colonial domination, impoverishment and war. The modern revisionists headed by Khrushchov and the leadership of the C.P.S.U. are actively seeking to nullify and reverse the revolutionary theses and agreed policy decisions of the Moscow Declaration and Statement; in open violation of these basic programme documents binding upon all Communist Parties of the world, they are feverishly seeking to rehabilitate the renegade Tito revisionist clique of Yugoslavia, and are openly adopting the Tito programme of class collaboration and appeasement of imperialism in all fields, internal and external. Within the mighty Soviet Union itself, the most powerful bulwark of Socialism and peace, the solid base and prime achievement to date of the working people and toiling masses of the world in their historic struggle against imperialism and capitalist exploitation, the economic base of Socialism is being actively undermined, particularly in the crucial sphere of agriculture; the proletarian dictatorship, indispensable political framework and vital weapon of the working people in the building of Socialism and for the transition to a full Communist society, is being liquidated and “peacefully transformed ” into a “state of the whole people” and a “party of the whole people.” The modern revisionists have abandoned proletarian internationalism and democratic centralism, and are seeking to impose their own revisionist line of “peaceful co-existence,” “peaceful economic competition” and “peaceful transition,” i.e., all-round co-operation with imperialism, upon the Communist Parties of the world and to erect a colossal edifice of class collaboration upon the basis of the world Communist Movement.

Wherever their erroneous line and policies have won a foothold, the result has been the weakening and disunity of the Communist vanguard party and, in some instances, its actual immobilisation and dispersal, as in Iraq; all over the world they seek to hamper and restrict the revolutionary struggles of the people, and to contain those struggles within the framework of imperialism. By means of the fraudulent Test Ban Treaty, they seek to promote and perpetuate the nuclear arms race, the threat of nuclear world war, and imperialism’s strategy of nuclear blackmail, and to prevent fraternal Socialist nations and peoples from acquiring the weapons they need for the defence of their Socialist Motherlands and Socialist construction.

In western Europe, and especially here in Britain, the struggle against modern revisionism is a prime necessity and basic responsibility of every true Communist. Ever since capitalism began to develop into its imperialist stage, social democracy has been the main base and support of capitalist exploitation and the bourgeois dictatorship, seeking to permeate the broad working class movement with capitalist ideology, to harness the broad organisations of the working people, which were formed originally as organs of struggle against capitalism, into instruments for applying policies of ”class peace” and class collaboration, for disarming the working people from struggle, for the creation of a reformist and parliamentary-constitutional base to form the main prop for the bourgeois dictatorship and its chief embellishment, parliament. The class-collaborationist teachings of modern revisionism on the international plane, emanating from the Tito clique and the Khrushchev leadership of the C.P.S.U., find a ready-made base in these social-democratic and reformist traditions and ideas always present in the working class movements of the advanced monopoly capitalist countries; and forming an ever-constant source of surrender and betrayal of the fundamental interests of the working class. Here in Britain, the leadership of the C.P.G.B. began to fall back into social-democratic theory and policies with the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943. At the time of the 1945 general election campaign, for instance, the C.P.G.B. leadership adopted a policy of calling for “a coalition government of progressive Tories and Labour with Communist participation,” this at a time when the broad popular movement for peace and fundamental social change was at its highest level since the general strike of 1926! Then again, in 1946, the EC. of the C.P.G.B. adopted a resolution disbanding all factory branches of the Party, and ordering all industrial comrades to organise in their locality branches; this measure was taken because it was recognised by the right opportunist leadership that locality branches are better suited than factory branches for implementing their social-democratic theories of making “electoral struggle” the primary form of activity and leadership in industrial and other mass struggle the secondary form. In 1948, the leadership went so far as to order all industrial cadres in the Shop Stewards Movement, which the Party at that time controlled to 90 per cent, to join with representatives of the employers in forming “Joint Production Committees” to help the capitalist class raise production, and hence exploitation and profits, for the export drive. By means of this act of betrayal the powerful National Shops Stewards Committee was dealt its death blow, the Shops Stewards Movement as a whole deprived of its national leadership, and the task of tying and subordinating it to the reformist and right wing dominated Trade Union Movement prepared and facilitated. Then, in 1951, the revisionist leadership felt their position sufficiently consolidated and entrenched as to make possible the foisting upon the Party of an open and systematised revisionist programme, “The British Road to Socialism,” they took the unprecedented step of releasing the full text to the public in pamphlet form a whole year prior to the Congress of 1951, thus presenting that Congress and the whole Party with a “fail accompli.” Time and again, the revisionist leading clique has demonstrated its contempt for Marxism-Leninism and democratic-centralism. Ever since the adoption of an openly social-democratic programme, “The British Road to Socialism,” in 1951, the degeneration of the C.P.G.B. has been steady and continuous, until today a situation prevails where almost the entire apparatus of the Party is given over to “electoral activity,” leadership in mass struggle is almost completely abandoned, or at least subordinated to the parliamentary constitutional line and thus ultimately betrayed–witness the role of the C.P.G.B. leadership in the St Pancras Tenants movement in 1962 and the Fords Shop Stewards strike against victimisation in 1963. With the adoption by the revisionist dominated E.C. of the notorious Resolution on the International Communist Movement of September 18th, 1963, in which the Marxist-Leninist line and policies of the Communist Party of China were publicly attacked and misrepresented, and after special Branch Meetings had been called in order to gather bogus votes, by purposely falsifying and suppressing the Marxist-Leninist line, democratic-centralism may be seen to have finally disappeared from the life and work of the Party. The Party press has now been closed to all opponents of modern revisionism, thus effectively isolating Marxist-Leninists within their respective branches, preventing the Marxist-Leninist alternative from being placed before the whole Party membership, and thus rendering the domination of the clique of rightists and revisionists permanent and self-perpetuating. Democratic-centralism, indispensable norm of organisation and structure of all Communist Parties, has been finally transformed into bureaucratic-centralism, and the degeneration of the C.P.G.B. into a “left” social-democratic type of Party with a revisionist, parliamentary-reformist programme (The British Road to Socialism), and fully integrated into the official Labour movement and the parliamentary facade, is complete. It is now ’ a Marxist-Leninist, a Communist Party in name only.

Within the situation outlined above, representing a crisis of unprecedented proportions and intensity within the International Communist Movement and within each Communist Party–a crisis engendered by the fact that revisionists, organisationally concealed but ideologically open agents of imperialism and monopoly, capital have penetrated into and gained control of a number of Communist Parties including the CP.G.B., the basic class duty of all who stand firm by Marxism-Leninism and the struggle for Socialism is clear: the open attacks of the modern revisionists upon the fundamental truths of Marxism-Leninism, upon the world-wide struggle for Socialism and Communism, and upon the Programme of the International Communist Movement as expressed in the Moscow Declaration and Statement, must be repulsed and defeated. Only by means of an open and fearless struggle can both the concealed and open agents of the class enemy within our ranks be exposed and eradicated, the unity of our great World Communist Movement be restored, and the final triumph of Socialism and Communism all over the world be ensured.

We, the undermentioned Communists of the Dewsbury Branch, therefore pledge our firm and consistent resolve to work in unity with the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity, for the final defeat of modern revisionism and for the formation of a new and genuine Communist Party in Britain, based on Marxism-Leninism and democratic-centralism. Only thus may the fundamental long- and short-term interests of the working class be promoted and the final victory of Socialism and Communism in Britain achieved.

We call upon all true Communists, all who stand firm by Marxism-Leninism, the class struggle. Socialist revolution and the proletarian dictatorship, to break, in practice as well as in theory, with the revisionist and right-opportunist leadership of the C.P.G.B., and to unite with us and the nation-wide forces of the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity.

Our Cause, the cause of victorious Socialism and Communism, is invincible, and will most surely triumph over all open and concealed traitors of the working class, of the international Communist movement.

Norman Stringer, joined C.P.G.B. 1953 Arthur Stringer, joined C.P.G.B. 1953 Edith Stringer, joined CP.G.B. 1963 George Worthington, joined C.P.G.B. 1955 Jack Rayner, joined C.P.G.B. 1962

The above statement was passed unanimously as a resolution at a meeting of the Dewsbury Branch held on August 31st, 1964.