Talking About Socialism…from a Marxist point of view is currently engaged in a series of discussion with the CPGB and a section of the Prometheus Editorial Board, with a view to seeking fusion into one organisation. The process has been called Forging Communist Unity (FCU). While the discussions are going well, we are still a long way from agreeing to any fusion, let alone what to call any such fused organisation, an issue which has not yet been raised for consideration. We carry this article from Lawrence Parker as a contribution to discussion about the FCU process.
Members of Talking About Socialism…from a Marxist point of view (TAS) recently discussed the Forging Communist Unity (FCU) process and, as part of that discussion, debated naming conventions around a future communist organisation. There was perhaps a general consensus that names are, in a certain sense, secondary, given that people don’t care too much what a future party is called so long as we achieve one. Nevertheless, the discussion did open up some interesting avenues of debate. What follows is my personal view.
There are no innocent names available to a future group or party and there are no signifiers without history and a host of signifieds with positive and negative connotations. ‘Labour’ either has signifieds around Keir Hardie and the cause of working-class representation in Victorian Britain or, more likely these days, around the negative experience of reformist failure and accommodation with the British imperialist state.
‘Communist’ has the positive associations of the manifesto of Marx and Engels; the ‘scientific’ name that Lenin chose to adopt for his party; and the unity process that gave birth to our own Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1920. ‘Communist’ for many also has entirely negative connotations from ‘official’ communist regimes in the 20th and 21st centuries.
‘Revolutionary socialist’ was one of the means by which Trotskyist sects could hedge around having to use the term ‘communist’ but since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 it has been used to dance on the grave of communism (i.e. the Socialist Workers Party and its offshoots); and, latterly, has been thoroughly dragged in the mud by pro-Nato ‘revolutionary socialists’ calling for more arms for Ukraine. There is no purity around names and no means of starting afresh. All such ceremonies will involve reclaiming some name or another and cleansing it of assorted historical muck.
Sometimes, groups pick up names they can’t shake off. ‘Bolsheviks’ is the obvious example, capturing a moment when Lenin’s faction won a majority at the 1903 RSDLP congress. Bolshevik was from the Russian word bolshinstvo, or majority. In Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, Bolshevik was term of abuse in polite society, indicating a disapproval of the young CPGB and any ‘unpatriotic’ sections of the labour movement deemed sympathetic to the Soviet Union. CPGB members hurled this back at their accusers in an act of positive appropriation. Faced with brutal policing of unemployed demonstrations in the early 1930s they sang (to the tune of the chorus of ‘John Brown’s body’):
We will Bolshevise the police force
We will Bolshevise the police force
We will Bolshevise the police force
When the rev-o-lu-tion comes I
Nowadays, ‘Bolshie’ is less commonly used by the common people, having lost its political connotations and indicating someone who is merely a bit uppity about life in general.
So, while, in one sense, it doesn’t matter what you are called and others may decide the issue for you anyway, names do have an impact on a group’s identity and contain (or should do) narratives as to what an organisation wishes to strive for. It’s far better to make this process as conscious as possible and subject it to some kind of rational, authorial oversight.
Working on the assumption that the current FCU process will lead to a larger campaign for a Communist Party in Britain (i.e. not the party) representing a merger of TAS, some of Prometheus, and the Weekly Worker’s CPGB-PCC, it seems appropriate to think about what the name of a new, fused organisation should be. None of the current groups involved have a very apposite name. Talking About Socialism is a good description of the process TAS comrades have initiated: talking about the problems and possibilities associated with re-founding a CP in Britain. But that name would not suit a fused group moving on to a higher stage of unity. Prometheus is a good title for a publication but would sound a little esoteric and unfocused if applied to a political organisation. CPGB and Weekly Worker are currently bound up with the hubristic misfortune of what many of our target audience sees as a failed small-group enterprise.
This conception of audience is key. The FCU process currently has a circle of awareness around the three above-named groups and their sympathisers. While focusing on this immediate circle it is also worthwhile thinking of turning other circles: among those with some kind of intellectual commitment to a multi-factional Communist Party; and even beyond that to a circle who self-define as revolutionary Marxists and have enough fortitude to oppose Nato’s (and Britain’s) war in Ukraine. A future identity based upon the existing names in FCU is highly unlikely to turn either of those larger circles of awareness.
A fused FCU body should be named the Communist Unity Group (CUG). This acknowledges the process from which it was birthed; recognises we are not indulging in the solemn tomfoolery of declaring ourselves a ‘party’; and is an apt summary of the direction in which we are headed: a place for all communists. To that end, the CUG’s future digital publication (and print spin-offs) should be named, simply, Communist Unity.
There was a previously short-lived CUG in 1919-1920 founded by members of the doomed De Leonist Socialist Labour Party to undercut the sectarianism of the SLP’s leadership towards the emerging CPGB. I am not advocating copying the 1920s but the CUG name has a positive heritage of casting off old habits and embracing the new. It was a provisional body established so that it could be quickly broken up as the CPGB flowered.
If a process of communist unity results in future moves towards a proper party i.e. one that comprises important sections of the advanced part of the working class, then the scientific name of that organisation is: Communist Party of Great Britain. That, however, is a future debate. Communist Unity is a banner for today.
- See Edward Upward In the Thirties London 1978 p97[↩]