Pollitt Prepares for Right Turn¶
Core Argument¶
In this editorial from Socialist Appeal (Vol. 7, No. 1), the chapter delivers a blistering polemic against Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), following his report to the party’s Executive Committee. The core argument is that Pollitt has abandoned Marxism and is preparing a decisive rightward turn, one that aligns the CPGB with the imperialist powers and the suppression of revolutionary working-class struggle.
The chapter’s central claim is that Pollitt’s endorsement of the Yalta (Crimea) Conference decisions represents a betrayal of fundamental Marxist principles. Pollitt is quoted hailing the conference as profoundly affecting “the whole future of mankind” and stressing the need for “close and continuing collaboration of all peace-loving people” to remove the political causes of war. The author counters that the causes of war are rooted in imperialist antagonisms inherent to capitalism, and that only the destruction of capitalism can remove them. Yalta, far from a peace settlement, is characterised as a secret agreement to parcel Europe into spheres of influence between Stalin’s bureaucratic regime and Anglo-American imperialism, with the explicit aim of maintaining capitalism and crushing any revolutionary movement by the European working class and peasantry. The chapter insists that Pollitt knows this, having taught it himself for decades, yet now deliberately obscures it.
The historical context is the closing phase of the Second World War and the emerging post-war settlement. The chapter draws on the Marxist tradition of Lenin and Trotsky, particularly their analysis of imperialist war and the necessity of revolutionary defeatism. The polemic is directed squarely at Pollitt and the CPGB leadership, accusing them of following the path of Earl Browder in the United States, who dissolved the Communist Party and declared the class struggle off the agenda. The author warns that Pollitt’s call to “strengthen and broaden national unity” and secure a government “pledged to operate the Crimea policy” means the CPGB will become a party of class collaboration, not communism. Any workers’ organisation seeking to destroy capitalism and sweep away the “robber Crimea agreement” will be denounced.
The chapter concludes by appealing to rank-and-file CP members still loyal to their class, urging them to heed Pollitt’s statements as a presage of further rightward degeneration, and to take the alternative road of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Fourth International. The prose is dense, accusatory, and rooted in a Trotskyist critique of Stalinism and the Popular Front strategy.