FCU – dealing with differences

The parties to the Forging Communist Unity (FCU) project met for an hour and a half via video link on Sunday 30 March 2025*. The FCU project is to discuss the possibility of fusing three small groups – the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), Talking About Socialism…from a Marxist point of view (TAS) and the Unity faction of the Editorial Board of the Prometheus online journal (PUF) – into one. Present were Jack Conrad and Mike Macnair (CPGB), Ed Potts and Nick Wrack (TAS) and Sam Turner (PUF). Cat Rylance sent her apologies (PUF).

This was the seventh meeting in the FCU process. Previous meetings were on 14 December 2024, 11 & 23 Jan, 9 & 23 Feb, 8 March 2025. The meeting on 8 March was an all-day in-person meeting in London. The others have all been 1.5 hour video link meetings.

We have come together in this process because the three groups share many ideas. We are all communists who want to see the abolition of the capitalist system and the creation of a new society based on the democratic common ownership of the resources of the world, planned and managed in the interests of all. We all share the view that the creation and building of a mass communist party, based on the working class, is a vital necessity for the working class to come to power to usher in that new society.

We all share the view that the defeat of the capitalist class and the overthrow of the capitalist system can only be carried out by the working class itself, acting consciously in its own interests, to emancipate itself from exploitation by the capitalist class. We do not see this being achieved by any minority group or party. It requires a mass party of millions. We reject the sect model of organisation that predominates globally on the revolutionary Marxist left. We believe that a healthy and genuinely democratic, working-class communist party would inevitably have differences, disagreements and debate. That should be encouraged, not suppressed. Such debates would be about how best to build the party and achieve our shared goal – the creation of the new communist society.

Importantly, at a time when there is much discussion on the left about the need for a new party, we also all reject what can be described as the ‘broad left’ approach to working class politics. The working class needs its own party. But the most common approach on the left, by those who call themselves socialists, including many who call themselves Marxists, is to build a party based around the mildly reformist programme of Corbynism, offering only a set of pious platitudes, seeking only to tinker with the system, rather than getting rid of it.

Instead, we advocate a clearly defined communist party, one that emblazons on its banner and in its programme a clear commitment to abolishing the capitalist profit system. Nothing less!

We are all, therefore, committed to building communist unity, that is unity of the existing communist left – that means unity of groups and of individuals into one party. At the present time this is not the attitude of most of the Marxist left, which is split into a multitude of groups, each one devoted to building itself as the one true path to communism and condemning all the others. This is not only disappointing; it is indefensible. We believe that this state of disunity is damaging to the cause of the working class and must be overcome. We look forward to a time – hopefully not too far into the future – when the serious militants of other Marxist groups will also see the need to bring all Marxists together in one party. We hope that our small groups discussing seriously, with a view to fusing, may help to change things. From this fusion process we hope to achieve a stronger – albeit still small – force, aiming to work with all who share our determination to build a mass communist party.

It appears to me that there are others points of agreement between the participants, which should make the fusion process a more realisable objective. We appear to share an approach over the war in Ukraine – opposition to both the USA-Nato imperialist side and to the reactionary capitalist Putin-led Russia. We all appear to stand for an independent working-class, internationalist approach, which understands that to end war, we have to end capitalism, with its ultimately violent competition for resources, markets and strategic advantages.

Similarly, we all appear to broadly share an approach to the question of the Middle East, as elaborated in many articles from Moshé Machover in the pages of the Weekly Worker and, more recently, in TAS meetings and articles on the TAS website: that the answer lies only with the working class of the whole region overthrowing not only the Zionist exclusionary colonial state of Israel, but also all the reactionary Arab regimes, along with Turkey and Iran, and the establishment of working-class rule throughout the region, laying the basis for a new communist society developing.

It strikes me that there is also a generally overlapping approach on these questions of war and peace with the RCP, the Socialist Party and Socialist Alternative at least, which should lead to greater collaboration and ultimately to being in the same mass communist party. I do not want to gloss over differences, but in my opinion, they are differences that could and should be accommodated in the same democratic organisation.

I have argued for a long time that there is no justifiable reason for the division on the Marxist left. Any serious Marxist, facing the developing economic crisis, rising inequality, the rise of the far-right, the erosion of hard-won democratic rights, impending climate catastrophe, and the growing threat of world war, should be arguing for all serious Marxist groups and individual Marxists to forge a united communist party. The reasons for separation do not stand up to scrutiny.

Some of the reasons for separation are simply about secondary issues, such as where to conduct work. That should not lead to separation into competing sects. Some splits have been about the inability to hold leaders to account, that is, the lack of internal democracy. The lack of a healthy internal culture, in which debate is ordinary, differences are encouraged, where divisions form but members come together around agreed objectives is guaranteed to cause resentment, dissatisfaction, splits, resignations, or just the demoralised or burnt-out drifting away of members. It will certainly not encourage serious workers and youth, who want to have their say, to join. If they do join, they won’t stay long.

We will have to ensure that a healthy culture and internal democracy is built into the fabric of any new organisation that does emerge from the FCU discussions.

At the in-person meeting on 8 March, we discussed a set of propositions presented by TAS for consideration as points of agreement. As can be seen in this report from Ed Potts, there was a great deal of agreement on some basic issues, as one would expect when Marxists discuss together.

However, there were also points of disagreement, that require further discussion. Before going into some of these areas of disagreement, I want to set out my approach to them. I have also argued for a long time, and on many occasions, that Marxists from different groups, from different backgrounds, with different education, more often than not speak in different ways about issues. We use words and phrases in different ways, to mean different things. We may agree on something, but we express it differently. These barriers of language and interpretation need to be overcome before it is possible to understand what each of us is saying.

We have all grown up and developed as though we have lived on different islands, like Charles Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos islands, with the result that we use language differently, we have different methods of work and ways of presenting our ideas. Each party or group inevitably thinks that its way of doing things is the best, if not the only, way to do it. We duplicate each other’s work; we compete for the same recruits. At protests, on demonstrations, in the various arenas of class struggle, the working class is confronted with a confusing plethora of competing leaflets, papers and voices, all saying broadly similar things.

Meanwhile the capitalist class can shrug its collective shoulders and laugh at our stupidity, while the working class, which  cries out for a clear, strong, confident, united party, pulls its hair out in despair.

I do not at all want to minimise the differences in method, terminology, orientation and so on. But these can be resolved through discussion and agreement within the same united communist party. There are also more serious differences, such as how to approach the national question in the Middle East, or whether to participate in parliamentary elections, and on what programme. But, again, I argue that these discussions between communists should be conducted within the same communist party, where the differences are placed in the context of a joint struggle for the new communist society.

I approach these discussions in the FCU process in the same way.

It is promising, then, that there is at this early stage of the process, a large degree of agreement on basic issues. To those issues set out above, I would add that there is apparent agreement – though not yet discussed in detail – on the need to have an internationalist approach. We all agree – as does any Marxist – that communism has to be international; it cannot be achieved in one country.

However, we appear to share an important corollary to that basic Marxist point: the importance of having a perspective for fundamental change – or revolution – taking place on a continental scale, that is, for us, on a European scale. This implies building strong links and co-ordinating, as much as possible, activity with the working class in the rest of Europe. I think that I am correct in saying that we all rejected the arguments of the Lexit (left-wing Brexit) advocates, who argued that by leaving the European Union it would be easier to establish socialism in Britain. Unfortunately, this included sections of the British Marxist left. For me, at least, Lexit was just the flip side of the idea (propounded by the Morning Star – Communist Party of Britain and echoed by many on the reformist left in the Labour Party and trade unions) that there is a British road to socialism. There is not.

So, on to the FCU discussions themselves. I do not have space or time to detail everything. But in this article, having laid out the apparent areas of agreement, it is important now to set out some of the differences.

It is important to understand that it was TAS that suggested that the parties involved, instead of just discussing a joint educational project, should discuss a concrete objective of achieving a fused organisation. This was on the basis, as outlined above, that we seem to agree on a broad array of issues and especially on the need for communist unity. We believe that the objective of communist unity places in context previous disagreements or current differences.

Having said that, it is clear that the CPGB want its draft programme to be the basis for the programme in any fused organisation. We do not agree with that.

The programme that the new organisation that is formed from these discussions (assuming that we arrive at that point) should, in our opinion, set out the essential points in succinct, easily understandable points, so that any worker or young person can readily grasp what our organisation is about. It should be bold, confident and set out its proposed programme clearly and unashamedly. We are aiming to fundamentally change society and we should not be afraid to say that.

Capitalism, and its insatiable drive for profit, is the cause of all the problems that we face. It has created a massive working class that is exploited to produce that profit. The working class is separated from what it produces. The working class is the only force that can resolve these existential crises.

We stand for the abolition of the capitalist profit system, the exploitation of the working class through wage labour, the complete eradication of the private (capitalist) ownership of the means of production (the land, the waters, rivers and seas and the minerals contained therein, the factories, transport, science and technology) and its transformation into socialised democratic common ownership, managed and planned democratically in the interests of all.

We aim at a society in which everyone is freed from arbitrary rules and laws imposed on them by a minority ruling class. We aim at a society in which everyone works and contributes to the new society according to their ability to do so, and everyone receives what they need.

To achieve this, it requires the working class to come to power, to become the ruling class and to institute policies that will lead to the abolition of classes. When there are no bosses, and when everyone works, there will be no working class or capitalist class. There will be no need for repressive institutions to impose the rule of one class over another.

The programme of the mass communist party of the future should set out both what might be called democratic and economic policies. I do not see a separation between the two. Both are equally necessary. The extension of democracy – what might be called extreme democracy – must include full democracy in the economy. By that I mean that the undemocratic, private, capitalist ownership of the means of production, must be replaced by the complete, democratic ownership, management and planning of the means of production. That entails the expropriation of the capitalist ruling class and the socialisation of the means of production, that is replacing capitalist ownership with democratic common ownership. There can be no full democracy in society if we do not have economic democracy, if we do not have democratic common ownership of the resources of society.

I do not call these programmatic policies ‘demands’ in respect of the period when the working class has come to power because when the working class comes to power it will not be ‘demanding’ that anyone else, not any other class, implements these policies. It will implement them as a class, itself, acting collectively.

However, these policies also act as ‘demands’, around which the working class can struggle in the here and now. We fight now to implement better and free health care, better and free education, better and free housing for all, shorter working hours, and so on. In the struggle to achieve the political consciousness, cohesion, strength, organisation, and international reach required to achieve power, the programme will therefore be both a way of setting out what the tasks of the working class are when it comes to power, but also what it should seek to force from the capitalist class now, without ever losing sight of the reality that any reforms won under capitalism can also be taken back by the capitalist class, as we have seen in Britain and internationally over the past seventy years.

So, the party we want to build does not aim to manage capitalism. It aims to abolish it. This is agreed by all the parties to the FCU process. (See point iv. of the TAS ‘Heads of Agreement’)

I see the programme, therefore, as being a programme for government – a government by the working class. It is a statement of intent, a series of policies that the working class will implement to change the way society is organised, to break the power of the ruling class, to end for ever the exploitation of the majority of the world’s population. It will not manage capitalism but abolish it.

All parties in the modern world set out their programme for government in their manifestos. Mostly they are works of fiction, promises that are made to be broken. The working class is used to seeing these manifestos, or party programmes. “What do you promise to do in power?” we will be asked. We say, “when the communist party comes to power it will be you, the working class majority, that will implement our programme.” Our programme will have become the programme of the working class. It will have reached every home, workplace, every public and private space. It will be known by everyone and agreed with by most. The party will facilitate the coming to power of the working class and facilitate the working class carrying through its own programme in practice once in power.

Here, I think – though discussion may prove me wrong – there are differences with the CPGB. I set them out briefly in this article, with the aim of elaborating on them in future article [I hope readers appreciate that due to work commitments we do not always have time to set things out in writing, certainly not in sufficient detail].

There appears to be a strange contradiction between the agreement achieved on point iv. of the TAS ‘Heads of Agreement’, and the lack of agreement over point iii. Point i says, “Our aim is communism.” Point ii. says,  “We aim for a world-wide system in which the capitalist profit system has been abolished.” Point iii. says “This requires a fundamental break with capitalism. Point iv. says “Our party does not aim to manage capitalism but to abolish it.” There is agreement on points i, ii, and iv, but not on point iii.

I am not yet completely clear what the objection to point iii. is. But clearly there is one. When we came to point iii. in the discussion, comrade Macnair expostulated, “A fundamental break with capitalism. What the fuck is that?”

It appears that there is a difference in respect to what the working class would do on coming to power. Would there be a break with capitalism, or would it continue? In my opinion, the point of the working class coming to power is precisely to abolish the capitalist system that exploits it. It must break with it. The only way to do this is to remove the means of production from the ownership of the capitalist class by socialising it. The working class in power could not limit itself to implementing only the democratic parts of the programme – abolition of the standing army, police, penal system, monarchy, House of Lords; the introduction of election to all posts, subject to recall, etc.

While this would achieve a situation in which there would be a complete upheaval in the institutions running society – smashing the old institutions of capitalist state power and replacing them with institutions of extreme and direct democracy, it would, without more, leave economic power still in the hands of the capitalist class, or at least sections of it.

We would have the unacceptable situation in which workers would appear to have control of the [new] state but continue to be under the arbitrary and tyrannical rule of the bosses at work. The situation would be intolerable. That power would prove to be only temporary. The economic power would inevitably be in the hands of the capitalist class, which would be continuing to make its profit from the workers it continues to exploit. In my opinion, the working class would not accept this. “What was the point of our struggle,” they will rightly ask, “if we are still told what to do by the boss? Aren’t we supposed to be in power now?” There would be the danger of demoralisation and of support for the new working class regime dissipating, opening the door for the capitalist class to make a come back.

Inevitably, the capitalist class would use their continued economic position to undermine, sabotage and ultimately seize back the gains that had been made by the working class coming to power. We would be in danger of the undoing of everything that had been won.

This is why I argue that we must state clearly in our programme that we must have a fundamental break with capitalism. And we must carry out that fundamental break when we come to power. We cannot hope to inspire the working class by proposing to them that we will aim to come to power but not to end capitalism.

Only by saying that we will take the necessary step of expropriating the capitalist class can we inspire workers and youth to support and join our party and prepare them for what needs to be done. No half measures.

I agree that any such revolutionary steps would be challenged by the international ruling class. So we need to coordinate as much as possible the processes we undertake. We should seek to act in consort with the working classes of other countries.

But taking such a decisive step in one country, after careful consideration of the timing – the strength of the working class in Britain and elsewhere, the level of consciousness in the working class here and abroad, the disaffection with the existing state of affairs, the weakness of the ruling class and its inability to solve the various crises facing society, among other factors – any failure to act decisively when in power will only dismay workers here and abroad. On the other hand, decisive action against the capitalist class in one significant country will without doubt inspire the working class elsewhere. Revolutions are infectious; one only has to look at the events of 1848 and 1917.

It does seem to me that the comrades in the CPGB see things differently. In their draft programme, they talk about ‘winning the battle for democracy’, with which I agree. But winning the battle for democracy must include in the economy as a whole. I think there is a difference here.

In the introduction to the draft programme it says this:

Following on from here are the immediate political, social and economic measures required for winning the battle for democracy and ensuring that the market and the principle of capitalist profit is subordinated to the principle of human need.

It appears that the CPGB see the working class taking power and instituting democratic changes but ruling for a considerable period of time while presiding over capitalist property relations in the workplace and the economy as a whole.

In an article by comrade Mike Macnair from 2007 he writes,

Forced collectivisation of the petty proprietors is to be rejected. This implies a substantial period of transition between capitalism and socialism which begins with the overthrow of the international capitalist state system.

I do not agree with this. Leaving aside the issue of ‘forced collectivisation of the petty proprietors”, which nobody has advocated and which I will have to deal with in another article, Mike clearly sees the period of workers’ rule as being “substantial”. This approach does suggest that the comrades envisage a long period in which the working class does seek to manage capitalism, rather than abolishing it. I do not see how it is possible for the “market and the principle of capitalist profit [to be] subordinated to the principle of human need”. Capitalism and the principle of human need are irreconcilable. The two are in permanent conflict with each other.

I cannot see the working class being in a position of power only to sit on its hands and allow exploitation to continue in any section of the economy.

We cannot separate out the need to establish extreme democracy from the need to socialise the means of production. We need to do both, at the same time. Communism cannot exist without democracy. Communism cannot exist without the social ownership of the world’s resources. We can’t have either without the other. We need both.

Modern capitalist society has spread capitalist production to every part of the globe. Modern forms of production, science and technology exist to transform the lives of every individual on the planet. We can feed the world. We can eradicate poverty, inequality, disease. The working class internationally is an overwhelming mass force.  The modern working class is educated and familiar with technology. We have recourse to experts in every field – engineering, medicine, farming, computing. There is no need for the working class to come to power and preside over the continued development of capitalist production, as though we are not ready to run things ourselves. We simply need to socialise production and plan for need, not for profit.

It may be that the differences over what might be called the ‘transition’ from capitalism to communism can be catered for in the programme. My own opinion is that questions of perspective and timescale should not be in the programme. They are better dealt with in commentaries on the programme, in which different comrades can espouse their own views. For my part, I do not see a long transition if the working class is powerful enough to come to power and clear enough about the programme it is to carry out. The important task is to prepare the working class internationally in advance.

I will also raise here, prompted by the formulation in the quote from Mike’s article, that there is a real difference in the use of the terms ‘socialism/socialist’ and ‘communism/communist’. I use the terms to mean the same thing. The CPGB programme specifically rejects the idea that socialism is the same as communism. It states,

Socialism is not a mode of production. It is the transition from capitalism to communism. Socialism is communism which emerges from capitalist society. It begins as capitalism with a workers’ state.

I don’t agree with this. For me, there is no justification for this formulation to be found in Marx or Engels. For me, socialism is the same as communism. I accept that words can change their meaning. But I see no reason at all for CPGB’s definition, . It does serve to confuse our discussions. When the CPGB refer to socialism, they are not referring to the same thing as I am, and vice versa. I will return to this point in another article.

Most revolutionary Marxists today, as far as I can see, use the term socialism or revolutionary socialism to mean the struggle for what I have in this article called communism. I doubt that there is much, if any, difference between the ultimate goal that I have and that to which the comrades in the RCP, the Socialist Party, Socialist Alternative or the SWP aspire. There is of course the problem that many left-wing reformist socialists also use the words socialist/socialism but mean something else entirely. That is something we have to engage with and win them to the fundamental change we require.

Lastly, I want to flag up what for me is an important point. We have to ensure that there is nothing in our programme that gives the slightest opening for an accusation of Stalinism – that somehow our communism has anything to do with what existed in the Soviet Union. The lack of democracy, the gulag, the suppression of differences, the absence of the working class in running society has nothing to do with communism (or socialism, as I use the term interchangeably).

That is why I support point xiv. in the TAS ‘Heads of Agreement’.

Communism is democratic. We reject the idea that what existed in the former Soviet Union and similar states, or that exists today in China or North Korea, was or is in any way communist or a transition to communism. We oppose all forms of dictatorial rule.

Again, briefly, it is vital that we dissociate ourselves from the tyranny of Stalin and similar regimes. I see nothing wrong at all in stating that communism is democratic. Comrade Jack Conrad has argued in articles and at the CPGB Online Communist Forum that under communism there would be no democracy. In my opinion this argument is so abstruse and arcane as to be counter-productive and leave us unnecessarily open to the accusation that communists are not democratic.

We have to understand how words are understood today; how they are perceived; how they are used. Democracy is understood to mean the right of everyone to have their say. We advocate the most extreme democracy, and direct democracy. But it is democracy. If Jack can come up with another word that conveys what we are, then let’s discuss it.

The same applies to the last sentence “We oppose all forms of dictatorial rule”. Again, Jack objects to this because Marx and Engels used (on very few occasions) the term “dictatorship of the proletariat”.The same argument arises. We have to be attuned to how words are used and understood. This is extremely important given the historical legacy of the Soviet Union, which was a dictatorship, but not the dictatorship of the proletariat. When Marx and Engels used the term, it meant nothing more than ‘rule of the working class’. The phrase is now an anachronism. We should not use it. It creates the wrong impression. Of course, I do not suggest that we hide what Marx and Engels wrote or seek to pretend that they did not say it. If we are challenged by our opponents with the phrase, we simply reply – correctly – that when they used that term they meant a period of workers’ rule, nothing more.

The coming to power of the working class and the overthrow of capitalism will be the most democratic event in history. It will be an event involving many billions of people taking control of their own destiny, acting consciously to change the world. It will be the first time in written history that we will have the majority, as opposed to a minority, in power. We should not make a rod for our own back by allowing the suggestion that we are in any way anti-democratic or have any truck with dictatorships.

The very last point for this article deals with the middle sentence in point xiv. This is important for the reasons I have already set out. We must not give any ground to those who would accuse us of aiming to create what existed in the Soviet Union or its satellite states. We do not. Nor can we soften our criticism and rejection of what existed there in order to attract workers who may have allegiance or affiliation to the ‘official’ communism of the Stalinist hue. We can only win them to our programme by explaining why we reject the Stalinist road. It is not the road to communism.

Due to time, I have not been able to set out everything that I wanted. I will return to these points and deal with others in future articles.

I remain committed to the FCU process and want to see it succeed.

* This article was completed before I read Mike Macnair’s report in the Weekly Worker of the 30 March FCU meeting. It was not intended as a full report of the meeting on 30 March. That will follow. It was intended to place the differences which have surfaced into the context of the shared objective that we are all signed up to. I am unable to respond to Mike’s article at this time but will do so. For the moment I just need to correct one thing in Mike’s article. I did not say that Marc Mulholland’s description of the minimum-maximum programme seemed “close to Trotsky’s idea of the transitional programme as a programme of revolution”.