Stalinism in the coming period¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter argues that the British Communist Party’s trajectory in the post-war period is defined by a fundamental contradiction: its accumulated influence among industrial militants, built through years of self-sacrificing activity, is being squandered by the leadership’s class-collaborationist line. Unlike its continental counterparts, the CPGB never secured mass working-class leadership, but it did win over the most courageous trade union activists. This capital, however, was eroded by the party’s abrupt policy switches, strikebreaking during the latter part of the war, and its pro-Churchill electoral stance. These experiences, the chapter contends, created the first real bridge between disillusioned Stalinist militants and the Trotskyist movement, as theoretical critiques of “socialism in one country” that had previously failed to gain traction were now vindicated in practice.
The chapter identifies the 1945 general election as a watershed. The CP’s argument that a Labour victory required support from ‘progressive’ Tories and Liberals disgusted its worker base; the subsequent Labour landslide demoralised them. Many backward petty-bourgeois elements drifted to Labour or inactivity, while the best elements lapsed into apathy. The party survived only through its formidable machine, factory and union bases, and a core of loyal militants. A further blow was the overwhelming rank-and-file defeat of union affiliation to the Labour Party, even where executives supported it—notably in the AEU and Mineworkers.
Facing decline, the Stalinist leadership is forced to manoeuvre leftwards, though the chapter insists this turn depends on the Molotov-Bevin agreements and its content remains unchanged. The likely course is a withdrawal from Labour Party factional work and a concentration on capturing the industrial movement in competition with Labour. This will pose a tremendous obstacle to the revolutionary party. Yet common action in the industrial field will also fuse Trotskyists with CP rank-and-filers, creating conditions to counterpose a consistent revolutionary policy to Stalinist manipulation.
The chapter’s central polemic is against the notion that Stalinism can be defeated by theoretical criticism alone. It insists that only the workers’ own experience of Stalinist betrayal—strikebreaking, class collaboration, electoral opportunism—opens them to Trotskyist ideas. It also polemicises against any underestimation of the coming swing to the CP. Drawing on Trotsky’s law of uneven and combined development, the chapter predicts that the processes seen on the continent will repeat in Britain with a delay. Mass unemployment coinciding with rapid Soviet industrial growth will precipitate an enormous swing towards the CP, especially as the Labour Government’s overwhelming majority dissipates reformist illusions. The chapter notes with grim satisfaction that Eden, Churchill, and Quintin Hogg already dread this outcome. The task of the Revolutionary Communist Party is to prevent this revolutionary sentiment from being dissipated by Stalinism and to turn it into a real struggle for communism.