Raising the Red Flag, Marxism, Labourism , and the Roots of British Communism 1884–1921
Tony Collins , Haymarket Books 2024
“The problem of the British working-class was not one of organization of which there was plenty, but of politics..”
This book is a detailed and fascinating account of the intersection of political organizations and the class struggle in Britain. Some of the story is well-known such as Engels’ disgust at the chauvinist Social Democratic Federation ,William Morris’ loss of the Socialist League to the anarchists and the prominent role of Eleanor Marx in socialist and labor organizing.
The author dissects the weaknesses of the various organizations that led to the Communist Party in 1921. Some of the groups were just focused on propaganda, hoping to convince workers to be socialists one at a time through education. These included the Socialist Labor Party and the SDF. These groups, especially the SDF disparaged class struggle. They often dismissed the importance of strike gains for example.
Syndicalism
On the opposite side, syndicalism dominated other socialists. Syndicalism ignored the need to the need to build political organization and directly take on the capitalist state. It also focused on workplace organizing around economic issues to the near exclusion of social and political issues such as oppression.
The positions of many of these groups on war, racism and sexism were often horrible. The SDF supported imperialism. The Independent Labor Party took a semi-pacifist position. The author notes that there is “no inherent contradiction between syndicalism and social-patriotism”.(78)
“The only two voices of consistent revolutionary opposition to the war from its start were those of James Connolly and John Maclean” (85)
Some Russian exiles from the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party tried to intervene in British socialist politics in a positive direction, but their influence was limited.
The Labor Party Question
The attitude to the Labor Party and electoralism was often confused. The Workers Suffrage Federation which became the Workers Socialist Federation was ultra-left on elections and the Labor Party. It did not see the need for either. On the other hand, the British Socialist Party the successor of the SDF saw itself as loyally working through the Labor Party.
Lenin’s intervention on the Labor Party question was between the ultra-left and reformist stools. He favored communist affiliation to Labor if the CP could be open about its politics and use intervention to break workers away from social democratic reformism. When the CP did finally try to affiliate with Labor it did not follow Lenin and downplayed its revolutionary politics.
The syndicalist orientation without clear politics led to accommodation to the left wing of the labor leadership. This orientation persisted after the formation of the CP.
Collins argues that perhaps the key weakness of socialists in this period was failure to engage in the class struggle. He feels that socialists would have been more effective and the working-class movement would have been stronger had there been more engagement. However, as the weaknesses of syndicalism show, to be effective, that engagement would have needed to be political as well.
None of the pre-CP socialist groups had a clear conception of what a revolution would entail. There was often a combination of electoralism, syndicalism and propagandism.
These weaknesses are not surprising. Even Lenin did not develop a clear strategy for revolution until 1917. When Bukharin argued that a socialist revolution would have to smash the state, Lenin at first called him an anarchist! Lenin only made his fully revolutionary position clear in his classic State and Revolution written in the Summer before the October Revolution. Revolutionaries today should not succumb to the “enormous condescension of posterity” that E.P. Thompson warned of. However, revolutionaries still need to learn from the successes, failures and mistakes of previous generations of socialists.
The development and refinement of revolutionary politics is one sign of the scientific nature of Marxism. The theory of gravity was a foundation of relativity theory centuries later. However, no one would disparage Newton for not discovering relativity. Just as later physicists built on Newton, revolutionaries today critically build on the work of previous generations of socialists. Successes and failures in practice lead to changes in theory. Changes in theory further refine later practice.
The political problems of the predecessor organizations persisted after the CP was founded. The base of the CP was the British Socialist Party which was the right wing of the communist movement. In stressing this the author puts forward a different perspective than is usually put forward by Leninists examining this period.
The usual idea is that through experience and intervention from the Comintern, the Communist Parties developed a Leninist position by the early to mid-20’s. The Stalinization of the parties that took place in the late 20’s moved the CPs from Leninism to ultra-leftism in the Third Period from the late 20’s to early 30’s and then the reformism of the Popular Front in the late 30’s. This was the view of many Trotskyists in the U.S. for example. Trotskyists such as Cannon believed that the CP had been carrying out Leninist politics before the Trotskyists were expelled in 1928.
Tony Collins disagrees with that view. He says that the CP in Britain never achieved a Leninist synthesis even with the intervention of the Comintern. The politics of the predecessor organizations continued to dominate even after the CP was formed in 1921. The author believes that the Stalinization process already started by 1924 after Lenin was incapacitated and then died. Even though there was turnover of personnel, the political problems of the pre-CP period persisted.
The author sees the attitude of the CP toward labor leaders as an important part of its inability to become Leninist:
“The belief that the left-wing labour and trade union leaders were well-intentioned but prone to go astray — a mark of the CPGB’s politics for its entire life — meant that the party was unable to present a coherent alternative program to the lefts.” (219)
This view of the British CP should cause at least a critical re-evaluation of the development of other Communist Parties including the U.S. party.
One of the key lessons of this book is the need for clarity of ideas as the basis for the most effective strategies and tactics. As Lenin said “without revolutionary theory, there is no revolutionary movement.”
As the author puts it:
“The problem of the British working-class was not one of organization of which there was plenty, but of politics…even the most left-wing of trade union leaders were not prepared to pursue the class struggle to the extent of overthrowing capitalism.” (147)
This is a very interesting book that adds to the understanding of the development of the British Communist Party and the foundation of the Comintern. It provokes reconsideration of Communist history in general.