A comment on an historical document.

Written by: Central Committee, CPA (M-L) on 18 July 2020

The July 13, 2020 edition of the Communist Party (CPA) newspaper “The Guardian” continues their practice, in this, the centenary year of the Communist movement in Australia, of reproducing articles from years gone by that reflect some of the movement’s history.

In the main, the articles have contributed to an awareness of the achievements of the Communist movement in Australia, and the great struggles in which it has been involved.

The July 13 edition, however, reproduces a July 1963 Statement by the CPA Central Committee Secretariat on the resignation of “sixty-two members of the Communist Party in Victoria … (in a) planned move in the campaign of disruption and factionalism by a group led by E F Hill.” Hill and others would go on to establish our Party, the CPA (M-L) in March 1964. 

The lengthy statement rebukes Hill and others for leaving the CPA, describing it as a “desertion of Marxism-Leninism”. In capitalized letters, which we reproduce here, it states: “THOSE WHO DESERT THE PARTY THEREFORE DESERT THE CAUSE OF SOCIALISM, THE CAUSE OF THE WORKING CLASS, HOWEVER LOUD THEIR PROTESTATIONS TO THE CONTRARY MAY BE.”

The original statement is a product of its times reflecting the then CPA leadership’s position on the intense political and ideological struggle within the CPA at that that time.  It’s a useful resource for anyone wanting to study the history of the Communist movement in Australia. However, ignoring the local and international ideological and political environment that this statement was made in does little justice to Marxism-Leninism and the struggle for socialism..

It is disappointing for this document to be published without any contemporary contextualization. The publication of this document without putting it in the historical context of immense political and ideological struggle locally and internationally fundamentally ignores immense changes that were taking place in the former Soviet Union which was abandoning Marxism-Leninism and socialism after the death of Stalin and the ascendency of new revisionist leadership under Khrushchev.  Further, it was during a period of years of growing concerns by many in the CPA with the direction the Australian leadership was taking, moving away from Marxism-Leninism.  The statement reprinted in the Guardian is graphic illustration of this. 

Apparently, the irony is lost on the editor of the Guardian that what is known today as the Communist Party of Australia is in fact, the renamed remnants of a group that itself “deserted” the CPA only a few years later in 1970-71 and went off to form the pro-Soviet Socialist Party of Australia (SPA).
Workers want cooperation between Parties

The Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) has for many years sought to create a working relationship with the Communist Party of Australia.
We can trace this back to a speech made by the founding Chairperson of our Party, Comrade EF Hill at a History of Communism in Australia Conference, in Melbourne in August, 1980.  Whilst not apologising for his part in the campaign to oppose Khrushchevite revisionism in the CPA, Hill conceded that he had “personally said some things I would not say today”. Directing his comments at the CPA members in his audience, Hill concluded:

We are concerned to develop in every possible way the unity and integrity of the Communist movement. There must be exchanges of views and the deepest possible study of Marxist-Leninist general principle in order to guide actual struggle in Australia.

Hill’s offer of an exchange of views led to a meeting on 18 September 1982 between the two parties, with Hill, Charlie McCaffrey and Marcus Clayton representing the CPA (M-L) and Bernie Taft, Mark Taft and Rob Durbridge representing the CPA. One outcome of the discussion, on Durbridge’s suggestion, was that each party, together with the Socialist Party of Australia and the Socialist Workers Party, contributed a full page to a four-page supplement carried in each parties’ paper.

The Socialist Workers Party was a Trotskyite party. It commanded a certain following and was included on that basis. 

The Socialist Party of Australia, to which reference has already been made, comprised ex-members of the CPA who rejected the emerging Eurocommunist revisionism of the CPA leadership and wanted a strongly pro-Soviet party. They left the CPA in 1971 and formed their new party.  Ironically, the leading authors of the 1963 reprinted piece later liquidated the CPA, embraced social-democracy, and became leaders of trade unions promoting the Accord and selling out the working class. After the Taft-Durbridge CPA leadership gave up the Communist ghost by shutting the party down in 1991 (they took its money and established the social democratic Search Foundation), the SPA took back for itself in 1996 the name of the party they had rejected – the Communist Party of Australia.

Our Party has continued to try and develop a working relationship with the CPA and it was on our initiative that a joint parties’ statement was issued to celebrate the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in 2017.

Since then, the CPA has further fractured, with General Secretary Bob Briton resigning to form the Australian Communist Party (ACP). 

In recent times, we have endeavoured to work with both the CPA and ACP, party to party, and in the mass movements.  They, like us, proclaim an adherence to the goal of Communism in the name of their organisations. However, the existence of separate Communist parties has disappointed and confused those among the advanced sections of the working class for whom unity is the key to all progress and success. We believe we can acknowledge the continuing political, organizational and ideological differences we have with those two parties at the same time that we promote cooperation on practical matters that serve the working class. 

Regrettably, the publication of the 1963 document without explanation or comment, raises questions about the current enthusiasm of the CPA for mutual respect and to find ways to work together in the interest of united working class struggle. There is no immediate prospect of a single Communist Party existing in Australia. However, there is definite scope for cooperation between our members and followers in a united front against fascism and imperialism.

Post Script 

Perhaps some in the CPA have had time to reflect on the negative impact of their publication of the historical document mentioned above. A post on their Facebook page this morning (Sunday 18 July) carries the Guardian article which carries the belated contextualization below:

The Guardian's history section marks a sad, but significant moment, for the Australian and world, communist movement. In 1962, what became known as the “Hill group” decided to resign from the CPA. The following year, these ex-members would form the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) (CPA-ML).

The split was reflective of a larger ideological fracturing of the international communist movement centred on what became known as the “Sino-Soviet split” – a breakdown in the political relations between the USSR and PRC over ideological differences, starting with Khrushchev’s secret speech. As a result, many Maoist parties around the world sprung up, co-existing with Soviet-aligned Marxist-Leninist groups.

The Sino-Soviet split caused irreparable harm to the international communist movement from which it never truly recovered.

The CPA today does not harbour the same resentment expressed in the article presented here for historical purposes. The CPA is committed to fighting on a united front against capitalism and welcomes all organisations that are committed to this struggle.

We must remember that we are stronger together, weaker apart.

We welcome the CPA’s reassurance that it “does not harbour the same resentment expressed in the article”. 

This is the centenary year of the Communist movement in Australia. 

The CPA and the CPA (M-L) have both grown out of the original Communist Party of Australia, dissolved in 1991. 

We are indeed stronger together, weaker apart.

Humphrey McQueen on 3CR Radio: The Communist Manifesto

This talk was delivered by Humphrey McQueen on 3CR Solidarity Breakfast as part of the celebration of Marx’s 200th birthday.

As part of our celebrations, this morning we’ll look into another of the works he wrote with his lifelong comrade, Engels. We began with their German Ideology from 1845-6, and now we’ll enjoy The Communist Manifesto from 1848.

Now for The Manifesto, which was written in the heat of a revolutionary upsurge. The Chartists had rocked the United Kingdom throughout the 1840s. The years 1848 to 1851 see uprisings across Europe, from Ireland to Poland. Engels is on the battlefront in south-west Germany. Richard Wagner is heaving a piano onto the barricades in Dresden.

Marx is a political exile because of his writings. In July 1847, he organises the Communist League which commissions The Manifesto.  It is published in February 1848.

 

Poetry in motion

Parts I and II are a prose poem – perhaps the world’s first prose poem.(1)  The energy of Marx’s style captures the power of his subject matter. In preparing these notes, I found myself reciting The Manifesto aloud. It lends itself to declamation. Indeed, Berthold Brecht shaped The Manifesto for a cantata with music by his fellow Communist, Hanns Eisler. 

 

The opening pages are a paean of praise for capitalism. They could be called ‘A capitalist manifesto’:

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part …

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.

A dialectical approach reveals that capitalism makes possible its opposite in communism.

 

Speed traps

One trap in approaching The Manifesto is that its pace sweeps us along so that we can miss much of what Marx and Engels are saying. We need to apply the brakes. To show why, I’ll unpick the opening paragraph. 

 

Who doesn’t know the first sentence?

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Stirring words. But wrong. Forty years later, Engels adds a footnote. Not all history is class struggle – only ‘all written history’. We had been remaking ourselves for tens of thousands of years before classes emerged. For instance, there was no class struggle on the Australian continent before the late 1700s.(2)  

 

Engels’s correction doesn’t go far enough. What he calls ‘written history’ came after the emergence of classes. Evidence about that earlier epoch is from archeology, not written records. Objects tell us next-to-nothing about what their makers thought or how their societies were organised.

 

To continue our examination of the first paragraph:

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, Guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another,

 

What divided them? The pairings are of economic categories, which is what we might expect. But Marx and Engels sum them up in terms of oppression, which indicates a broader set of power relationships. Although they do not say so, we can sense the long arm of the state as the means to enforce oppressive economic relations. 

 

They describe the conflicts as ‘constant’ which means that they go on all the time. They then introduce a vital qualification. The struggle might be relentless but it takes different forms:

carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight,

 

The crux of being an historical materialist is to reject all explanations that impose an ‘eternal, natural and universal’ order on human activity. Our task is to answer the question ‘how exactly?’ for each time and in every place.

 

There’s one more point to take from ‘uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight’.

The class struggle is not a pantomime dragon which stirs for the final act but otherwise sleeps through the drama. Too often, people equate ‘the class struggle’ with big events – 1848 or 1917. Those revolutionary upsurges are, of course, expressions of class conflict. Under capitalism, however, the struggle goes on every second of every day – and throughout the night. Working longer, working harder, working broken shifts, being out of work – all impact on the quality of our sleep, and of our dreams. 

 

As we reach the end of the first paragraph, Marx and Engels have a further shock in store. We expect to hear that the class struggle is 

a fight which each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large

That’s the outcome to which Marx and Engels devoted their lives. What happens if we don’t have a ‘revolutionary reconstitution’? The Manifesto’s answer is grim. We suffer

the common ruin of the contending classes.

 

Progress is not inevitable. Marx and Engels never fell for what is called ‘the Whig interpretation of history’ in which things get better and better. They knew too much about the Ancient World to suppose that life always improves - more or less– and sooner or later. 

 

The glorious socialist future is no sure bet. Like every other advance, its likelihood depends on how each side wages the class struggle. 

It’s also worth pausing to consider the phrase ‘revolutionary reconstitution’. Too often, Marxists think in terms of ‘a transition from feudalism to capitalism’. Transition is a long way from any kind of revolution. 

 

A fighting program

The Manifesto sweeps across thousands of years to spell out ten current demands. They ‘will be different in different countries.’ Once more, there can be no eternal, natural or universal.

 

We don’t have the time to examine each point in detail. Yet it’s worth noting that four of the ten relate to agriculture, which might be a bit of a surprise. Marx always included agriculture under his treatment of industrial. He didn’t restrict ‘industrial’ to steam-driven factories. 

 

Their final proposal comes as a total shock. After Marx and Engels insist on the

Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form.

they call for the

Combination of education with industrial production, etc. etc.

 

How does that differ from the current bleats out of employers and so-called education ministers for schools to turn out students who are ‘job-ready’?

 

The demand in The Manifesto is one more expression of historical materialism. Recall our discussion of The German Ideology and ‘Thesis Eleven’ about interpreting the world and changing it. They are parts of a whole. They are not choices. Here, Marx and Engels apply that insight to formal education. We learn by doing. That Marx and Engels did not know how exactly that precept should be put into practice is clear from their lapse into ‘etc. etc’.  

 

Today  

How do we put The Manifesto into effect in 2018? Above all, we must follow its lead with demands related to everyday life. We can think in terms of ‘Five Pillars” of immediate and ceaseless concern for working people: housing, transport, work, health and education. 

 

The sixth element is to link the environment inside each of those. Our bio-system is not a thousand miles away from our daily doings, not a wilderness, but backyards, front streets and worksites.

 

The seventh pillar is to defend the freedoms that our class has won the capitalists so that we can keep advancing all our needs.

 

Deciphering the text

Slow reading alone is not enough to savour all the ingredients that Marx and Engels stir into the rich pudding of The Manifesto. Their text is a short course on Western thought since the Greeks. 

 

We’ve time for only the most notorious example. Marx and Engels praise capitalism because it has

rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. 

 

The phrase ‘rural idiocy’ is not a swipe at people who live in the countryside for being naturally stupid. The phrase combines Aristotle and Rousseau. 

 

‘Idiocy’ is not an IQ score. Aristotle is the source for the term ‘idiocy’ in contrast to his view of humans as ‘political animal’. The Greek notion is that only the active citizen could be fully human. This view links to The Manifesto’s call to even up urban and rural life.

 

Four years later, Marx recognises that the French peasants are a class-in-themselves but not yet a class-for-themselves. He pictures them like potatoes in a sack, lumped together but with no interaction. That weakness allowed them to be manipulated by Napoleon III. 

Their ‘idiocy of rural life’ is also a whack against Rousseau for whom the ‘state of nature’ is good, happy and free while society corrupts us. No. As Marx puts it in Capital: even if we are not Aristotle’s political animal, we are ‘at all events a social animal’.

 

Which edition?

Helen Macfarlane did the first English translation in 1850. Engels supervised an English edition in 1888, with adjustments and corrections. As we have seen, a few of those changes are highly significant.

 

All the editions on offer today include these improvements. If all you want are the thirty pages of the text, it won’t make any difference which version you pick. Go for the cheapest – download from Marx Archive. 

 

To locate The Manifesto in its historical context, however, two other considerations come into play. First, how insightful is its introduction? Secondly, how much supporting material is included? On both those criteria, I rely on the 1971 edition from International Publishers in New York. The editor was the remarkable Dirk J Struik. Struik was a Dutch-born Marxist, a mathematician and an historian of mathematics and of technology. He provides a seventy-page Introduction and ninety pages of related writings by Marx and Engels. 

 

By all means read The Manifesto at full belt for its excitements. But then go back and ponder it sentence by sentence – even phrase by phrase. We’re richly rewarded every time we do.

 

(1) See Marshall Berman's chapter on The Manifesto in All That Is Solid Melts into Air (1982)

 

(2) By January 1848, Marx still had not distinguished 'labour' from 'labour-power'. That breakthrough came years later as he slaved his way towards finishing Das Kapital in1867. Marx was not born the author of Capital. He got there through study and struggle - interpreting and changing the world.