5oth Anniversary of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

Vanguard March 2014 p. 3
Nick G.

March 15, 2014 marks the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist).

The founding of our Party marked the formal reconstitution of the Communist Party of Australia as a genuinely Marxist party after it had succumbed to revisionism.  The former CPA was founded on October 30, 1920.

The break between modern revisionism and Marxism-Leninism in Australia occurred within the context of an international struggle over the correct direction of the communist movement.

That led to opponents of our Party labelling us as “Peking-liners”, “pro-Peking” and “Maoists”.

The impression was conveyed that the rupture in the Australian communist movement was merely a reflection of external events with the respective sides in that dispute having allegiance not to the Australian working class but to one or other of the two main centres of the international struggle.

Australian conditions determined the need to break with revisionism

In fact, the basis of the rupture within the ranks of Australian communists was a set of contradictions internal to the former Communist Party of Australia.

Organisationally, politically and ideologically those contradictions had become antagonistic by virtue of the revisionist position of the main leaders of the former CPA.

Had there been no differences in the international communist movement, those Australian contradictions would have still existed and had their own life and their own process of development and resolution.

Organisationally, the former CPA practised open membership and had party branches based on suburban and regional localities.  This lent itself to involvement in local, state and federal election campaigns, to a blurring of the distinction between the parliamentary and revolutionary purposes and goals of organisation. 

Politically, the former CPA tended to view the ALP as a working class party by virtue of its ties to the trade unions and its mass electoral base.  Equally erroneous was the view that the ALP was a “two-class party”, which could simultaneously exist as a bourgeois and a proletarian party.  This lent itself to the pursuit of joint membership between the two parties, to support for the Labor party as a reform party sharing a socialist objective, to not wanting to “embarrass” Labor in office by pursuing the independent agenda of the working class.  It lent itself to minimising the differences in the demands of the two parties so as to facilitate their cooperation and unity, and always at the expense of the demands of the CPA rather than of the ALP.

Ideologically, the former CPA tended to embrace peaceful transition to socialism, placed undue emphasis on the position held by certain big Australian families and monopoly groups in the Australian economy and state, and lost its clarity on the decisive questions of the state and revolution. It took on board the ideas of a number of pseudo-Marxist and even anti-Marxist  theoreticians in preference to continued study of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and ridiculed and rejected the great contributions to Marxist theory of Mao Zedong.  This lent itself to the vulnerability of the former CPA to the revisionism of Khrushchev, and at a later stage, to the revisionism of the so-called Euro-communist movement.

Reconstituting the Communist Party
 

(Above: Ted Hill and Norm Gallagher were two of the founding members of the reconstituted Party in 1964).

In order to reconstitute the former CPA on a firmly Marxist-Leninist foundation, and in order to enable Australian communists to continue the great work begun in 1920, Comrade E.F. Hill and others in the early collective leadership of the CPA (M-L) consciously proceeded to set themselves apart from the revisionist organisation, politics and ideology of the old party.

Apart from a small number of leading comrades, the majority of members were advised not to disclose their connection to the Party.  This served a two-fold purpose.  One was to enhance Party members’ personal security in the event of a fascist crackdown on communists.  The other was to enable members to more effectively conduct political work without the encumbrance of a label that was often rejected out of sheer ignorance or fear.

Instead of large location-based branches, members would be organised as far as possible into workplace or industry and occupational cells of around three or four people.  This was designed to lend itself to the organisation of advanced workers at the point of production and to enable informed leadership of the developing class struggle.

Politically, the correct characterisation of the ALP as a party of capitalism emerged.  This freed the new organisation from the tailism of the old party and placed initiative and leadership squarely on the new party’s agenda. Thus, amongst other things, the great battle to defeat the penal powers led by Party vice-chairman and Victorian Tramways Union leader Clarrie O’Shea unfolded after thorough preparation by leading comrades.  There was clarification of the distinction between parliamentary reformism and revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist class.

Ideologically, the new party adhered to the essentials of the revolutionary theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, with proper acknowledgement of the great significance of Mao Zedong Thought.  The pacifism that had come to characterise the old Party’s approach to the peace movement was rejected in favour of support for anti-imperialist people’s struggles; the dominant position of US imperialism within the Australian ruling class was identified and the subsequent characterisation of the Australian revolution as a two-stage revolution under direct working class leadership was developed.

Importantly, there was a thorough exposure and rejection of the bourgeois ideology of trade unionism which sought to impose on the struggles of the workers an acceptance of the permanence of capitalism. Trade union ideology tended to lead to the structural separation of the great body of trade union officials, through the lurks and perks of office and the daily grind of working within the legal and political circumstances of the prevailing industrial and political system, from the grass roots members of trade union organisations.

To have survived for a half century is a testament to the founding leaders of the CPA (M-L), to their courage and wisdom in moving to reject revisionism and uphold correct revolutionary Marxism.

To be able to look back on those fifty years is a testament to those members and adherents of the CPA (M-L) who took up its cause in the years since its founding, including some of the excellent young members of today who cannot yet count their membership on the fingers of one hand.

Our comrades of the past may be gone, but they live on in the work of our Party and in the enthusiasm of our members for the great cause of anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

All power to the working class!

Workers of all lands, unite!