Beware of His Majesty’s ‘Communist’ Party¶
Core Argument¶
Here the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) launches a blistering polemic against the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) on the eve of a general election, accusing it of abandoning revolutionary politics for a strategy of class collaboration. The chapter’s core argument is that the CPGB’s call for a ‘Labour and Progressive Government’ is a trap designed to lure workers into supporting a coalition that would include not only Liberals but even Tories like Churchill and Eden. The RCP seizes on a CPGB pamphlet featuring an imaginary dialogue between ‘Mr. Clever Dick’ and ‘Mr. Sensible’—the latter a stand-in for CPGB leader Harry Pollitt—in which it is argued that a new House of Commons with a strong Labour, Communist, and Liberal majority should form a ‘national government’ and invite Tories to participate. This, the RCP insists, is a policy to the right of the Labour Party itself, making the Stalinists worse deceivers than the reformists.
The RCP counterposes a strategy of class against class. Workers are instructed to vote Labour—but only as a tactical measure, placing no trust in Labour’s leaders. The real task is to build independent working-class organisation and prepare for the ‘stormy and stern battles’ that will follow the election, regardless of its outcome. The chapter warns that the ruling class is preparing a major offensive against living standards, and even a Labour government must be forced from below to act against capital. The RCP pledges to join a united front with all workers’ organisations to fight for any demand, however small, in the interests of the class.
The theoretical context is the Trotskyist critique of the Popular Front strategy adopted by Stalinist parties in the 1930s, which the RCP sees as a betrayal of Leninism. The polemic is directed not only at the CPGB but also at reformist illusions in parliamentarism. The chapter insists that only a mass revolutionary party based on Marx and Lenin, leading the working class under the banner of the Fourth International, can achieve the final overthrow of capitalism. The closing slogans—‘Vote Labour!’ but ‘Down with the Capitalists!’—encapsulate the RCP’s dual approach: tactical electoral support for Labour combined with relentless class struggle against the entire capitalist order.