Stalinism in the coming period

Wellred

Core Argument

This chapter analyses the internal condition and future trajectory of the Communist Party of Great Britain in the immediate post-war conjuncture, arguing that beneath a façade of monolithic unity, the party is riven by deep contradictions that present both obstacles and opportunities for revolutionary Marxists. The core narrative thrust is that the Stalinist party, despite its formal growth, has undergone a profound qualitative decline. The old hard core of militant, politically educated activists, recruited on an anti-war platform, has been depleted through expulsions, apathy, and absorption into the opposition. Numerical increases are dismissed as largely “on paper,” consisting of nominal dues-payers, non-participants, and recruits from “backward strata” lacking political education or willingness to sacrifice. The party’s rightward turn, particularly after the Yalta Conference and the suggestion of a post-war coalition with the “progressive wing” of the Conservative Party, has provoked “profound dissatisfaction” among working-class rank-and-file members, leading to open opposition and votes against the party line for the first time in years. The leadership is forced to disguise this class-collaborationist betrayal behind the innocuous formula of a “Labour and Progressive Government.”

The chapter draws on the historical context of the wartime alliance between the Soviet Union and the Anglo-American imperialist powers, the “United Nations,” and the fissures already emerging beneath its surface unity. It argues that the Stalinist party’s policy is not fixed but contingent on the relationship between British imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy. An intensification of differences between the Soviet bloc and the Anglo-American powers could provoke a sudden leftward swing, with Harry Pollitt once again denouncing Labour leaders as “lackeys of imperialism” and the party adopting demagogic “revolutionary” phraseology to appear as an alternative to Labour. Such a turn would make winning the best elements away from Stalinism more difficult in the short term. The chapter’s central polemic is directed against the Stalinist leadership itself, exposing its bureaucratic degeneration, strike-breaking role, and betrayal of working-class interests. It also implicitly argues against any sectarian abstention from work within the Stalinist party, insisting that the Fourth International must adopt a “bold, revolutionary, yet comradely” approach to win over the best rank-and-file elements, who are increasingly sceptical of slanders against Trotskyists and developing a “watchful sympathy” for revolutionary communism. The conclusion is that splits within Stalinism are “on the order of the day,” creating a more favourable opportunity for revolutionary work than at any previous point in the history of the Stalinist tendency.