The Growth of the Labour Party¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter Digest: The Growth of the Labour Party
This chapter examines the contradictory development of the British Labour Party, situating it within Marx’s strategic thought and the broader international workers’ movement. Marx’s 1868 judgement that the workers’ party would emerge from the trade unions was confirmed for Britain, where the Labour Party was built on trade union foundations. Yet this very origin has produced a party of betrayal: led by figures such as Henderson and Clynes, the Labour Party functions as a British Menshevik formation, whose leaders act as the political agents of the bourgeoisie. When compelled, the ruling class moves leftwards, governing the masses through intermediaries like MacDonald and Henderson rather than traditional Conservatives such as Curzon. The bourgeoisie now regards Labour’s inevitable accession to power as unavoidable within a year or two, and is accommodating itself to having its interests represented through these Mensheviks rather than its old acknowledged leaders.
The chapter argues that communist influence within the Labour Party will grow, sharpening the struggle between the masses and the bureaucratic leadership until the latter are driven out. This trajectory is confirmed by the Morpeth by-election, where left Labour leader Robert Smillie won a large majority over a Conservative-Liberal bloc by advocating maintenance of the agreement with the Soviet Union and full diplomatic recognition of Soviet Russia. British politics now stand under the sign of Labour’s coming to power, with the Conservatives holding office, the Liberals reduced to third-party status, and Labour forming the immediate opposition.
However, the chapter insists that Marx’s judgement was never intended as a supra-historical law. In Russia, the opposite occurred: the Communist Party preceded and created the trade unions. Other European countries fall between these two poles; nowhere except Britain and partially Belgium has a proletarian party emerged organically from the unions, and no communist party has developed from them. Marx demanded trade union independence from all parties to oppose bourgeois parties and prevent absorption by socialist sects, yet he also founded the First International in 1864 to guide the labour movement. He did not wait for an international party to form from the unions but worked to strengthen scientific socialism’s influence within them. For Marx, the International was the class-conscious working class, represented by a small vanguard.