TAS contribution to the Forging Communist Unity process – 23 February

We welcome the progress made so far in the four discussions of the Forging Communist Unity (FCU) process.
While we are keen to see a successful fusion of groups to emerge from this process, the process will inevitably take time. We should give it all the time it requires.
While we are discussing between the groups involved, there are others who are observing the process with interest. We want them to join any fused organisation.
So far, the discussions have been somewhat tentative, while we find out what common ground we share.
Inevitably, differences will emerge as the process continues. We have to do what we can to ensure that such differences that do emerge do not derail the process.
We have to have a sense of proportion. The most important missing factor in working class politics in the Britain and elsewhere is a united, democratic mass communist party that is committed to the abolition of capitalism and achieving communism. Any differences must be measured against our shared objectives.
It is worth trying to set out what it is that we agree on; and what we, perhaps, do not.
Where we do not agree, we need to establish whether that disagreement is a fundamental barrier to fusion, or something that can be accepted/tolerated in a fused organisation.
We set out below suggested “Heads of Agreement”, which we consider to be essential ingredients which members of any fused organisation should agree:
1. Our aim is communism.
2. We aim for a world-wide system in which the capitalist profit system has been abolished.
3. This requires a fundamental break with capitalism.
4. Our party does not aim to manage capitalism but to abolish it.
5. This requires the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production – the land and the minerals within it; the seas, lakes rivers and waters, the factories and means of transport, science and technology -and the establishment of the common ownership and democratic planning of the resources of the world.
6. This means expropriating the wealth of the minority capitalist class and transferring it into the collective ownership of the majority working class.
7. It requires the abolition of the exploitation of labour to make a profit.
8. In the new communist society, everyone will work and contribute towards enhancing the conditions of life to the best of their ability, and everyone will receive what they need.
9. To achieve this, the world’s massive working class – the overwhelmingly decisive majority on the planet – must come to rule with the clear aim of eradicating completely the profit system and all institutions of power and privilege that defended it.
10. The working class in power will establish new forms of democracy at all levels of society which will enable everyone to participate in the running of society.
11. We aim to build a mass, working class, communist party in Britain that, together with similar parties across Europe and the rest of the world, aims to unleash the latent power of the world’s labouring billions to achieve all this.
12. Our party stands for the unity of the working class. We fight against all divisions that weaken that unity.
13. We reject nationalism. There is no national road to communism.
14. 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.
15. In the struggle to end the present system our party bases itself on the working class, the only force in society that has the size, strength and potential power to change the system.
16. The act of transforming society will require the conscious involvement of the working class to implement a programme for fundamental change.
17. We reject the idea that tiny groups/parties can bring about the fundamental change required. The challenge requires a mass party.

In our opinion, anyone who agrees with that can be and should be in the party.
We believe that these are fundamental principles, that all members should agree with, not just accept with a view to seeking to change at some future moment.
We also believe that a statement in respect of the current inter-imperialist rivalry between the USA and its subordinates and the rising power of China should be part of our programme. Specifically, our position is that we do not take sides in the battles/rivalries, whether economic or military, between rival capitalist/imperialist powers, but point out the need for the working class to impose its own solution. [This position would be supported broadly by other groups, including the RCP, SWP, Counterfire, Soc Alt and maybe some others.]
In respect of point xvi. above: The act of transforming society will require the conscious involvement of the working class to implement a programme for fundamental change:
1. We are of the view that the CPGB draft programme is not a good basis for the fusion process.
2. It is important that a new organisation is the result of the process.
3. There are people watching who have not joined, and will not join, the groups involved in the discussions. They are waiting to see if something new – and different – emerges, which might encourage them to join. It will not assist in encouraging them if the process produces a slightly bigger version of groups they have already rejected.
4. We think that the draft programme is far too long. It covers the history of the CPGB, capitalism, imperialism, World Wars. None of this should be in a programme. It may be relevant to a commentary on the programme, or in one of several commentaries on the programme which support the programme from different points of view or perspective.
5. The document is over 13,000 words, not including the final parts covering organisation, methods of struggle and rules etc.
6. It does not get to the point.
7. Even after reading it through, it is difficult to follow the key thread, which is contained in the section on what is referred to as ‘the minimum programme’.
8. It is confusing about what is being argued for. Is it a programme for the working class to achieve reforms under capitalism? This appears to be the case in the section ‘Immediate Demands’. On the other hand, sometimes these seem to be similar to aspects of the minimum programme.
9. We believe that we should have a programme for government [while explaining that it is the working class that will implement the programme].
10. Therefore, we should set out briefly and succinctly, the outline of the steps we will take on the working class coming to power.
11. In our opinion, this is not just the implementation of a democratic programme, or of implementing reforms under the continued existence of the exploitative profit system, which is explicitly stated in the draft programme to continue in some form for some time.
12. We should state in outline that full democracy must be extended to the property question, i.e ownership. It is not enough to state that we will e.g. Abolish the Monarchy & HofL, election of all officials, recall, or payment of the average wage to all officials, etc. We must state that we will expropriate private (capitalist) property. We will not have bourgeois or petit bourgeois exploitation. In place of the latter we advocate and will implement co-operative work.
13. In answer to the argument that we cannot impose our solutions on the currently self-employed, we must remind ourselves that by the time we have reached the point at which there is the possibility of the working class coming to power it must mean that we have reached a position in which our programme has become the accepted programme of the majority of the w/c. It will have permeated the middle-class, the self-employed. Co-operative work will be far better for them than is currently the case.
14. There appears to be a very big difference between the CPGB and our own view on what is called ‘the transition’. Our view is that if the working class comes to power, it must not only take state power, but economic power. That, in our opinion, means expropriating the capitalist class as a whole, not leaving some sections of it still owning their particular part of the means of production. Which workers will continue to be exploited for profit? And why would we accept that?
We regret that we have not yet had the time to draft a proposed alternative. We will do so.
Lastly, we believe that the issue of ‘agree’ vs ‘accept’ needs more discussion. We have understood this to mean that there will inevitably be differences of theory, analysis and interpretation of events and ideas within the ranks of a genuine, healthy communist party, and that these would be accepted and not only tolerated but encouraged. From difference comes greater clarity.
We see little reason, at this stage, to include anything in the programme which goes beyond what we would expect any communist to agree with. The basic principles set out above [para. 9] – and there may be some more – should require agreement.
As we develop and have the time and ability to discuss further, it may be that there are issues which are considered necessary to be included in the programme which cause division. This would require a careful assessment of the issue and its importance to the programme as a guide for the party to act.
This may leave a minority, after democratic debate, having to accept something which they don’t agree But the minority would do so because the overall project of achieving communism, which requires a united party, is paramount. They would retain the right to continue to argue for their position.
We do not agree with the theoretical position expressed in the CPGB draft programme that socialism is not a mode of production, and which seems to equate it with the period from the working class coming to power right up to what Marx referred to as the higher phase of communism. We do not agree with that and see no reason why that should be in the party programme.
As we stated at the beginning, these points are raised from a position of commitment to the process of fusion between those of us involved in FCU, and with the view of creating something which will appeal to other individuals and organisations.

Talking About Socialism…from a Marxist point of view

your right to say there is no wall between economic and political struggle. The class struggle of the 1970s, framed through price and income policies in a situation of a falling rate of profit and so investment/accumulation, expresses this fusion of the political and economic moments raising class consciousness. The 1980s, in this light, is the attempt to reverse this fusion through the range of attacks on the labour movement, deindustrialisation, while presenting capital with the political and economic power to redesign the modes of exploitation of workers labour power. The more recent waves of strikes after years of austerity are as you say, examples of the state intervening in wage bargaining and working conditions, thus expressing the ‘political’ moment. However, the context is very different today. The Tory government sought to prevent the movement of strikes and work to rules from becoming political and they were successful at this, as they remained firmly economistic (supported in no small way by the trade unions themselves in the way the conducted the strikes/actions). I suppose this tells us that the context (state of class struggle and specific regime of capital accumulation – within which the working class must be managed) influence the dialectics of the economic and political.

On the other hand, it depends on how we define transition. My understanding of transition is a society that is inherently unstable, reactionary, and in which democracy of any form is intolerable. Like you, not a society communist parties can claim to take the reins per-se and smooth out the edges of via the state.
My view is that socialism has been co-opted and corrupted within the development and senility of capitalism, as capital has become just as social as the power of labour. The socialisation of production inherent to capitalism has dovetailed with versions of socialism ‘on behalf of the working class’: as the categories through which capital rules labour decline under the impact of socialisation, they are bolstered by co-opting socialism as it aligns with the socialisation of production and the inherent necessity to administer capital on a larger scale. The classical view of a shift from capitalism to socialism (first stage of communism) to communism has been shattered. The struggle is for communism and the ground for this struggle is not the state per-se (there must be an alternative source of worker power as a basis for taking on the state), but instead what Marx saw as the first form of workers power – communes.
In this respect, the socialisation of capital and labour and developments in technology create firmer and firmer ground for communes. This socialisation is of course purposely fragmented and atomised by finance capital (supply chain global capitalism, break up of large firms into independent units, hybrid organisation of public goods (health, education and so on) into ‘mixed markets’ (the worst of hierarchical control and budget controls over workers). This regime of accumulation is one that manages the necessity to make profit but in ways that prevent the collective power of labour to express itself across the economic and political moments and so raise itself from class in itself to class for itself.

Obviously in this format it all looks abstract and speculative, but the fuller explanation (and historical hindsight) bears the above out more concretely.

All the best.

3 thoughts on “TAS contribution to the Forging Communist Unity process – 23 February”

barry biddulph says:
28 February 2025 at 1:01 pm
In Vol 1 and vol 2 of Capital, Marx discusses the higher and lower phases of the same Society-Communism. In both phases there is non market production for use. Associated or co-operative production is not about the production of commodities, collective production is not commodity production. In the Gotha programme, Marx argues that a society of common ownership there would be no exchange of products on a capitalist basis. This view rests on the assumption of an advanced Capitalist Society or a society with the material prerequisites for Communism. The CPGB model for a transitional society between Capitalism and Socialism or Communism seems to be based on an interpretation of the Russian Revolution and an isolated USSR which was not ripe for communism. Lenin made it clear to Bukharin in 1918 that Russia was out of historical time for the Commune withering away of the state and a classless society. The transitional society then became something between Capitalism and Communism or Socialism, based on developing the means of production on the basis of capitalist technology and organisation, Ernest Mandel, in the Trotskyist tradition, summed up the transitional society as nationalisation of the means of production by a so called workers state. So even where there was no socialisation of production or the power of associated workers in the society it could still be seen as transitional or the basis for a future Communist or Socialist society.
peter kennedy says:
7 March 2025 at 2:13 pm
your right to say there is no wall between economic and political struggle. The class struggle of the 1970s, framed through price and income policies in a situation of a falling rate of profit and so investment/accumulation, expresses this fusion of the political and economic moments raising class consciousness. The 1980s, in this light, is the attempt to reverse this fusion through the range of attacks on the labour movement, deindustrialisation, while presenting capital with the political and economic power to redesign the modes of exploitation of workers labour power. The more recent waves of strikes after years of austerity are as you say, examples of the state intervening in wage bargaining and working conditions, thus expressing the ‘political’ moment. However, the context is very different today. The Tory government sought to prevent the movement of strikes and work to rules from becoming political and they were successful at this, as they remained firmly economistic (supported in no small way by the trade unions themselves in the way the conducted the strikes/actions). I suppose this tells us that the context (state of class struggle and specific regime of capital accumulation – within which the working class must be managed) influence the dialectics of the economic and political.
On the other hand, it depends on how we define transition. My understanding of transition is a society that is inherently unstable, reactionary, and in which democracy of any form is intolerable. Like you, not a society communist parties can claim to take the reins per-se and smooth out the edges of via the state.
My view is that socialism has been co-opted and corrupted within the development and senility of capitalism, as capital has become just as social as the power of labour. The socialisation of production inherent to capitalism has dovetailed with versions of socialism ‘on behalf of the working class’: as the categories through which capital rules labour decline under the impact of socialisation, they are bolstered by co-opting socialism as it aligns with the socialisation of production and the inherent necessity to administer capital on a larger scale. The classical view of a shift from capitalism to socialism (first stage of communism) to communism has been shattered. The struggle is for communism and the ground for this struggle is not the state per-se (there must be an alternative source of worker power as a basis for taking on the state), but instead what Marx saw as the first form of workers power – communes.
In this respect, the socialisation of capital and labour and developments in technology create firmer and firmer ground for communes. This socialisation is of course purposely fragmented and atomised by finance capital (supply chain global capitalism, break up of large firms into independent units, hybrid organisation of public goods (health, education and so on) into ‘mixed markets’ (the worst of hierarchical control and budget controls over workers). This regime of accumulation is one that manages the necessity to make profit but in ways that prevent the collective power of labour to express itself across the economic and political moments and so raise itself from class in itself to class for itself.
Obviously in this format it all looks abstract and speculative, but the fuller explanation (and historical hindsight) bears the above out more concretely.
All the best.
barry biddulph says:
8 March 2025 at 9:32 am
I agree, Peter, that the socialisation of production inherent in capitalism dovetailed with a version of communism in which the party substituted for the class and the basis of power was the state rather than communes or mass democratic participation in economic and political decision making. As you say, the classic view of the shift from capitalism to socialism as the lower stage of communism does not have credibility, but only for comrades who have a critical view of the history of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism.

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