Statement of the Central Committee¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter is a tactical statement from the Central Committee of a Marxist organisation, dated 17 June 1945, analysing the class character of the British political grouping Common Wealth and prescribing the correct approach for the labour movement towards it. The core argument is that Common Wealth is an organisation of the lower-middle class, a stratum incapable of independent political action, which is currently evolving in a progressive direction, turning away from big business and towards organised labour. This evolution, the statement argues, is a direct consequence of the Labour leadership’s coalition policy with the Tories, which frustrated and alienated middle-class critics of conservatism while simultaneously failing to provide a militant, independent working-class pole that would have drawn these elements directly into the labour movement. The chapter thus situates its analysis within the specific conjuncture of wartime coalition politics and the impending 1945 general election.
The key claim is that Common Wealth’s existence as a separate, pseudo-independent organisation is a symptom of Labour’s opportunism, not a sign of middle-class political autonomy. The Central Committee makes a sharp polemical intervention against the Stalinist characterisation of Common Wealth as a fascist organisation, dismissing it as false. Instead, it offers a conditional warning: if the workers fail to provide a militant lead and the labour movement suffers a defeat, then Common Wealth or its splinters could indeed become a fascist tendency. At the present stage, however, its evolution is progressive, and the duty of Marxists is to help integrate it into the working-class movement.
The statement outlines a differentiated tactical line. During the war, when Common Wealth supported the coalition, the Marxists opposed it electorally but maintained limited united fronts on specific issues. Now, in the changed conditions of 1945, the Central Committee advocates an electoral bloc or agreement between the Labour Party and Common Wealth, directed against big business. This is justified on the classical Marxist grounds that an alliance between the working class and sections of the middle class is permissible and obligatory when directed against the main capitalist enemy. Where no such electoral agreement is reached, and Common Wealth stands against Labour, the instruction is critical support for Labour. The ultimate strategic aim is not to preserve Common Wealth as a separate tendency but to eliminate it by integrating its members into the mass organisations of the working class. The chapter is thus a precise exercise in applying class analysis to a specific political formation, arguing against both sectarian rejection and uncritical embrace, while grounding its tactics in the material interests and inherent limitations of the lower-middle class.