In this episode of Maupin and Brar in Conversation, the discussion centres on a crucial topic – that of revisionism (the ‘redefining’, really neutering, of Marxist principles by those who claim to be Marxists) in the working-class movement. Caleb and Harpal talk about the main forms of revisionism in the postwar era and the attempts that have been made over the years to oppose this counter-revolutionary trend.
While revisionism became dominant in the global communist movement after the second world war and the death of Comrade Josef Stalin, the British communists have the ignominious distinction of having adopted a revisionist stance even before Stalin’s passing.
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) published The British Road to Socialism in 1951, two years before Comrade Stalin’s death and a full five years before Nikita Khrushchev’s infamous ‘secret speech’.
In that infamous programme, the CPGB’s leaders argued that there was no longer any need for revolution, claiming that the Labour party’s postwar welfare state reforms had put Britain on a peaceful, steady and harmonious road towards socialism. This was essentially a doctrine of class collaboration and social peace, which permanently tied workers and socialists to the Labour party, disarming them theoretically and then organisationally. The steady decline not only in the Communist movement but in the entire labour and trade union movement can be traced back to the adoption of this erroneous standpoint by the CPGB.
With the Soviet Union later appearing to condemn Comrade Stalin’s leadership and the monumental achievements of socialism under his guidance, not only the British but the entire international movement was thrown into theoretical confusion, demoralisation and disarray. The working-class movement in every country has been grappling with the repercussions of that betrayal ever since.
This is an essential conversation for understanding the problems that still trouble the communist movement – how we got where we are today and what we need to do to put our movement back on a firm footing of class-conscious revolutionary theory and practice.
This conversation was recorded on 30 June 2023.
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Read our party pamphlet on the British Road to Socialism for an in-depth study of the CPGB’s programme of class conciliation: Britain’s Road to Socialism?
See also this overview On the current state and problems of the communist movement.
