The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) proclaims an agenda shared with all of Britain\u2019s pseudo-left groups of joining and supposedly imparting a revolutionary character to the new party announced by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and MP Zara Sultana. <\/p>\n
Unlike its competitors, it has the additional task of reversing its claim, barely a year-and-a-half old, that Corbynite reformism is a dead letter in the working class and among young people. This was the basis for the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) relaunching itself as the Revolutionary Communist International.<\/p>\n
Their U-turn was so abrupt, following immediately on Sultana\u2019s July 3 resignation from Labour and declaration of a new party, that even Corbyn was still insisting at the time that discussions were \u201congoing\u201d.<\/p>\n
Screenshot of “An open letter to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana: ‘Now is the time to be bold'”<\/p>\n
On July 4, the RCP\u2019s public face and national campaigns coordinator Fiona Lali issued \u201cAn open letter to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana: \u2018Now is the time to be bold\u2019\u201d. <\/p>\n
A brief excursion into the \u201cLessons of the past\u201d and \u201cthe mistakes that threw the Corbyn movement back\u201d were \u201csummed up by the following: the left leaders tried to accommodate our movement to the representatives of the capitalist system\u2014the Blairites and the establishment.\u201d But Lali immediately insisted, \u201cNow is not just a time to look backwards, however. We must also look forwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Acknowledging that she has been directly involved in some of the discussions on \u201cwhether and how to set up a new party,\u201d she proposed that what she referred to as \u201cOur party\u201d should be based on an \u201canti-capitalist\u201d and \u201crevolutionary programme\u201d. \u201cMy appeal to Jeremy and Zarah is this: now is the time to be bold\u201d.<\/p>\n
On July 24, the RCP responded to the actual announcement of a new party by Corbyn and Sultana with a declaration, \u201cThe RCP is getting on board. Fight for real change! Fight for revolution!… We will be mobilising our members to help make a success of this new\u2014much-needed\u2014party.\u201d <\/p>\n
Joining the RCP was now officially recast as subsidiary to joining \u201cCorbyn and Sultana\u2019s new party\u201d and building \u201ca revolutionary communist force\u201d within it. Its members would play the role of \u201choping to fill in the details of the rough outline already sketched by Jeremy and Zarah.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back to the future with the RCP<\/p>\n
The turn towards Corbyn based on the transparently spurious assertion that he can be persuaded to adopt a revolutionary perspective is a return to political form for the RCP.<\/p>\n
The group, now led by Alan Woods, was founded by Ted Grant. He broke from the Fourth International following the Second World War and subsequently built his entire perspective for decades on the argument that the postwar restabilisation of capitalism, made possible only by the suppression of revolutionary struggles by Stalinism, had disproved Trotsky\u2019s revolutionary prognosis. Instead, for a protracted historical period, independent revolutionary action by the proletariat was impossible thanks to the completion of the \u201cdemocratic counter-revolution,\u201d necessitating extended entry into the Labour Party in Britain while advocating an essentially left reformist programme of achieving socialism through Labour\u2019s nationalisation of the top 200 monopolies.<\/p>\n
The entire activity of what became known as the Militant Tendency, and continued by its splinter led by Woods, was based on the assertion that entry work in Labour\u2014justified above all by its base in the trade unions\u2014could push it to adopt a socialist programme. Woods and Grant stuck rigidly to this scenario throughout the leadership of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. And no tendency was more enthused when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of Britain\u2019s Labour Party in 2015.<\/p>\n The IMT and its British affiliate Socialist Appeal had also joined the rest of the pseudo-left in backing Syriza in Greece, with disastrous results, which they eventually blamed on its lacking firm roots in the working class\u2014i.e., trade union backing. This they suggested post-festum would have prevented its leadership from capitulating to the European Union and International Monetary Fund\u2019s demands for the imposition of austerity.<\/p>\n They urged workers, young people and trade unions alike to join or affiliate to Labour to help the \u201cCorbyn revolution\u201d transform the party. In October 2017, the IMT wrote of Corbyn\u2019s \u201cgovernment in waiting\u201d and efforts by \u201cThe Establishment\u201d to control \u201cthe next PM\u201d, insisting that Corbyn would not buckle like Syriza and its leader Alexis Tsipras had done:<\/p>\n There is no doubt that a Left Labour government would face similar pressure from all quarters if in power… However, Britain is not Greece; Labour is not Syriza; and Corbyn is not Tsipras. The Labour Party has a far greater historical weight and much deeper roots within the working class than Syriza ever had. It is not an ephemeral trend, but the traditional mass party of the British working class, with strong links to the trade unions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n By December 2019 the \u201cCorbyn revolution\u201d was over. Having lost a second general election to the Tories he resigned as party leader, paving the way for Sir Keir Starmer. Even then the IMT tried to hold the line, with Woods writing of the Blairites\u2019 \u201clast desperate attempt at regaining control. At a certain point, the right wing will either split, or be vomited out. This will push Labour far to the left, opening up serious possibilities for the Marxist tendency.\u201d<\/p>\n Selling the myth of a socialist Labour Party to the last<\/p>\n When the RCP today tries to portray itself as having taken a critical attitude to Corbyn\u2019s time as Labour leader, this is largely confined to a \u201cfor the record\u201d linking to carefully selected previous articles, rather than making any embarrassing contemporary remarks that would possibly prevent their incorporation into the new party.<\/p>\n But even here a sleight of hand is involved. The first article linked to by Lali was only published on September 11, 2020, and is advanced as an examination of, \u201cThe Corbyn movement\u20145 years on: Lessons for the Left\u201d. These were drawn long after the political project they embraced had ended in defeat.<\/p>\n Its long and purely descriptive account still managed to assert that \u201cAn historic mass movement\u2014an unstoppable force had been created\u201d.<\/p>\n By turns, there are belated criticisms of \u201cCorbyn and his team\u201d for attempting \u201cto compromise with his critics,\u201d combined with demagogic claims that \u201cThe Blairites were crushed\u2026 completely discredited, revealed for the traitors that they were (and are). Their failed assassination attempt had only made Corbyn\u2019s position as leader unassailable\u201d. This was a situation Corbyn is said to have tragically failed to exploit.<\/p>\n The message is that a successful outcome had only been prevented because the \u201cleft leaders\u201d had failed to \u201cstand firm\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cRevolution\u201d had therefore given way to \u201ccounter-revolution\u201d, but \u201cThe biggest danger is demoralisation. Understandably, thousands have ripped up their membership cards in disgust at Starmer\u2019s rightward turn. It is the responsibility of the leaders of the Corbyn movement to turn the situation around. Labour\u2019s civil war is far from over. It is a struggle of living forces\u2014the outcome of which is yet to be decided.\u201d<\/p>\n With their spine stiffened by the \u201cMarxists\u201d, the Corbynites could still \u201cdrive the Blairites and bureaucrats out of the [Parliamentary Labour Party] and Labour HQ and transform Labour back into the mass social movement that it was becoming at the height of the Corbyn era.\u201d<\/p>\n It was only in mid-2022 that the public pronouncements of Socialist Appeal group shifted towards advocating for an independent party, with Woods writing in January 2023, \u201cWhy has there not been a revolution?\u201d \u2013 The need for revolutionary leadership, in which he said of the collapse of Corbynism that \u201ca fatal element was the role played by Corbyn himself\u201d and had led to \u201ca disgraceful rout\u201d.<\/p>\n In a January 2024 report to the international meeting, published February 14, Woods explained the IMT\u2019s intention to relaunch itself as the Revolutionary Communist International. Driven by the collapse of his organisation\u2019s entire perspective, he now swung wildly leftward, asserting that the failure of Corbynism and similar\u201d left reformist\u201d formations meant that young people today were being transformed into communists en masse: \u201cthousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, probably millions of young people are already drawing the correct conclusions. They\u2019ve already accepted the idea of communism. They desire communism.\u201d<\/p>\n Woods\u2019 political scenario, centred on an objectivist assertion of the spontaneous development of revolutionary consciousness, has not survived its first political challenge.<\/p>\n Significant forces within the left representatives of the Labour and trade union bureaucracy, fully aware of the developing rift between the working class and Starmer\u2019s rightward careening Labour Party, have pushed a reluctant Corbyn and a more radical sounding Sultana to spearhead an effort to trap young people in particular behind a new party project by exploiting reformist illusions the RCP claimed were a thing of the past.<\/p>\n Woods forced to issue a corrective<\/p>\n Politically unprepared for this development, and educated for decades in the IMT\u2019s opportunism, large sections of its membership have been so taken up with enthusiasm for new Corbynite party that alarm bells began ringing for Woods. On the one hand, he feared losing a wing of his cadre to Jeremy and Zarah; on the other, he worried how recruits won in the last two years on a perspective of building an independent communist party would react to such open adulation.<\/p>\n On July 28, Woods issued an extended corrective to his party\u2019s uncritical statements, \u201cJeremy Corbyn\u2019s new party: what does it mean, and what attitude should communists take towards it?\u201d<\/p>\n Remarkably, he felt forced to draw himself up to full height and proclaim, \u201cThere is no question whatsoever of liquidating the Revolutionary Communist Party\u2026 On this question, there can be no compromise.\u201d <\/p>\n Having to publicly insist on such a red line shows an awareness on Woods\u2019 part of powerful tendencies towards the liquidation of his tendency into what Corbyn provisionally calls \u201cYour Party\u201d and Lali has already embraced as \u201cOur party.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cstrong wave of support and enthusiasm\u201d for the new party, he wrote, was \u201cnot surprising\u201d as the \u201creactionary policies pursued by the Starmer government had been a slap in the face for millions of people who voted for the Labour Party, hoping for a change.\u201d Moreover, \u201cGiven the weakness of the forces of genuine Marxism at the present time, that vacuum could only be filled by some kind of left reformist alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n He then lists a series of caveats meant to rectify the near political amnesty extended in his party\u2019s other statements, including noting that Corbyn hitherto \u201conly saw reaction on all sides\u201d because he lacked \u201cany knowledge of dialectics\u201d and had held up the formation of a new party \u201cfor a long time by his constant vacillations and hesitation\u201d.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, he stresses, \u201cThis is a colossal step in the direction of a revolutionary transformation\u201d, with millions of people \u201clooking for a way out of the crisis, turning first to one option, then another\u201d. This included \u201cright wing demagogues like Trump\u201d, whose presidency, he is at pains to add, \u201csectarian imbeciles and left reformists who can see no further than the end of their noses interpret\u2026 as the rise of fascist reaction.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe announcement of a new left party in Britain undoubtedly opens new possibilities for the communists,\u201d Woods states, but warns his members that their attitude \u201ccannot be determined by temporary moods of enthusiasm among the masses\u2026 In particular, we must firmly bear in mind the lessons of the past in relation to left reformism. We have the experience of Tsipras in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Sanders in the USA, and last but not least, Jeremy Corbyn in Britain\u2026 They all enjoyed a considerable level of enthusiasm in the beginning. But in the end, it all ended in tears, because they finally capitulated to the establishment.\u201d<\/p>\n There follows a thumbnail sketch of Corbyn\u2019s refusal \u201cto mobilise the mass base that he had in order to crush the Parliamentary Labour Party, deselecting right-wing Labour MPs.\u201d Left reformists, he adds, \u201calways cling to the right reformists, fearing a split\u2026. His defeat was therefore absolutely inevitable, and it was the direct result of his own left reformist policies.\u201d<\/p>\n In this spirit the RCP must now \u201cparticipate, side by side with the masses of the working class, and connect the finished programme of socialist revolution with the unfinished yearning of the most advanced elements for a fundamental revolutionary change.\u201d<\/p>\n Left apologists for the Corbynites<\/p>\n Orthodoxies listed, Woods makes clear that it is only the most naked forms of political accommodation to Corbynism that he is opposing, and not the essential orientation of the RCP acting as his left apologists, especially among those most critical of his record of capitulation and betrayal.<\/p>\n His argument requires desperately tortured formulations, straining to maintain a \u201ccritical\u201d stance while still holding out the prospect of a revolutionary development under Corbyn.<\/p>\n We are told that it is \u201ctoo early to say what the actual physiognomy of the new party will be\u201d because \u201cthe crucial question is whether the leadership of this party really stands for a fundamental transformation of society. By this we mean the abolition of capitalism and the assumption of power by the working class.\u201d <\/p>\n But even after all the experiences he listed previously, including Corbyn\u2019s five years leading the Labour Party and five years of his refusal to stand against it, Woods insists, \u201cWe cannot answer this question in advance.\u201d <\/p>\n This is the case even though \u201cin all probability, the left reformist nature of the leadership will incline them to the position that it is possible to solve the problems of the working class without a radical break with capitalism and private ownership of the means of production.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot answer this question\u201d yet, it is \u201ctoo early\u201d to say, but \u201cin all probability\u201d a \u201creformist leadership\u201d will be \u201cincline[d]\u201d to oppose \u201ca radical break with capitalism\u201d! This is crude sophistry, especially when the \u201creformist\u201d in question is the 76-year-old Corbyn with decades of political life behind him. There are few more well-known quantities in world politics.<\/p>\n In any event, the RCP, while standing \u201con the programme of socialist revolution\u201d, will stand side by side with Corbyn in fighting for reforms without which \u201cthe socialist revolution would be an impossible utopia.\u201d<\/p>\n Woods develops an entirely novel and anti-Marxist critique of reformism, wholly devoid of an historical or class character. \u201cOur criticism of the right reformists is precisely that they do not fight effectively for reforms\u201d, he writes, rather than identifying them as the unalloyed political servants of the bourgeoisie. He then urges his readers to recognise that, in contrast to the right-wing, the left reformists sincerely \u201cbelieve that it is possible to achieve ambitious reforms and improvements in living standards within the limits of the capitalist system.\u201d<\/p>\n Recognising such good intentions, therefore, \u201cWhenever Jeremy Corbyn takes a step in the right direction, we will support him. But whenever he takes a step back, whenever he shows equivocations and vacillations (which he has done on many occasions) we reserve the right to criticise him in a firm but comradely manner.\u201d<\/p>\n Leon Trotsky and the revolutionary attitude to the left reformists<\/p>\n Woods\u2019 proposed \u201ccomradely\u201d criticisms, amid \u201cfruitful and honest collaboration with the left reformists\u201d have nothing in common with Marxism, which demands a relentless exposure of these \u201clefts\u201d.<\/p>\n Above all they repudiate the central insistence of Trotsky that social revolution in Britain depends on breaking the working class from the Labour Party and the trade union bureaucracy and that this depends on the systematic exposure of its left representatives, whose rhetoric is designed to chime with the socialist sentiment of the leftward moving masses to prevent this taking revolutionary forms.<\/p>\n We are only a few months away from the centenary of the 1926 General Strike\u2014a seminal experience for the British and international working class. How did Trotsky seek to prepare and guide the working class through this confrontation?<\/p>\n He directed his fire above all against the Independent Labour Party, which then made up the left-wing of the Labour Party. Trotsky was scathing of this political tendency, which stood far to the left of the Corbynites today.<\/p>\n He indicted the \u201cFabians, the ILPers and the conservative trade union bureaucrats\u201d as \u201cthe most counterrevolutionary force in Great Britain\u201d for their \u201csystematically poisoning the labour movement, clouding the consciousness of the proletariat and paralysing its will.\u201d It was \u201conly thanks to them that Toryism, Liberalism, the Church, the monarchy, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie continue to survive\u201d.<\/p>\n In words that constitute an indictment of the RCP\u2019s political amnesia regarding Corbyn\u2019s new party, Trotsky wrote of \u201cthe \u2018left\u2019 leaders\u201d who \u201creadily changed their line\u201d to accommodate pressure from below: \u201cto evaluate them one must take both sides of the matter into account. Revolutionaries need a good memory.\u201d <\/p>\n He emphasised how \u201cit must be clearly understood that all the traditions, organizational habits and the ideas of all the already existing groupings in the labour movement in different forms and with different slogans predispose them either towards direct treachery or towards compromise\u201d.<\/p>\n Today, the RCP seeks to give a party as yet without formal members, led by a shadowy committee of tried-and-tested Corbynites, a revolutionary programme. Trotsky wrote clearly of the ILP, which had deep connections with masses of workers and declared its sympathy with the Russian revolution, \u201cIt would be the greatest illusion to think that the Independents\u2019 party is capable of evolving into a revolutionary party of the proletariat.\u201d<\/p>\n That was the role of a Bolshevik-type party alone, whose path lay \u201cnot only through an irreconcilable struggle against capital\u2019s special agency in the shape of the [J.H.] Thomas-[Ramsay] MacDonald [right-wing] clique but also through the systematic unmasking of the left muddleheads by means of whom alone MacDonald and Thomas can maintain their positions.\u201d<\/p>\n These arguments were a de facto polemic against the opportunist line then being advocated by the Communist International under Joseph Stalin, which saw the British Communist Party subordinated to the General Council of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party leaders through the \u201clefts\u201d organised in the Anglo-Russian Committee. The result was not only the betrayal of the General Strike, but a betrayal whose causes were left unclarified in the British working class, producing a prolonged period of retreat.<\/p>\n How the revolutionary party breaks workers from the \u201clefts\u201d<\/p>\n At all points, Trotsky differentiated sharply between the ILP leaders and the working-class masses who then followed them, but whose sentiments and political trajectory were far to their left. He explained how the \u201cIndependents\u2019 current role is brought about by the fact that their path has crossed the path of the proletariat. But this in no way means that these paths have merged for good.\u201d<\/p>\nAlan Woods delivering a speech at the founding congress of the RCP, 2024. [Photo by Socialist Appeal \/ Wikimedia Commons \/ CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>]<\/p>\n
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Britain\u2019s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, left, embraces Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Britain\u2019s main opposition Labour Party during his speech on stage during the Labour Party Conference at the Brighton Centre in Brighton, England, Monday, Sept. 23, 2019 [AP Photo\/Kirsty Wigglesworth]<\/p>\n
Screenshot of “Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s new party: what does it mean, and what attitude should communists take towards it?”<\/p>\n
Jeremy Corbyn and other general election independent candidates are paraded on the stage during the rally. From left: Michael Lavalette; Leanne Mohamed; Corbyn; Andrew Feinstein, and Iqbal Mohamed, July 6, 2024<\/p>\n
Leon Trotsky<\/p>\n