While Kneecap and Bob Vylan were speaking up for Palestine at Glastonbury this weekend, the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) met in London.
It’s telling that the vacuum of leadership on the left is so complete that it falls to musicians to express the anger that millions of people are feeling. This Central Committee meeting was part of the RCP’s efforts to build the leadership that’s missing.
Revolutionary action starts with understanding, so we started by discussing what’s going on in the world today. We analysed shifting world relations with a focus on the Middle East and Ukraine. Underpinning this is the ongoing economic crisis of capitalism, exemplified and exacerbated by mounting debt in every country.
The other key process in the world today is the rise of right-wing populists like Trump, Farage, Le Pen, and Meloni. Loads of people applying to join the RCP lately say that this is one of their main worries.
These populist opportunists feed on the anti-establishment anger of millions of people and use it for their own reactionary purposes.
Lessons of the 2010s
One of the reasons they’re able to get away with it is the recent history of defeats and betrayals by the so-called ‘left’ leaders in one country after another during the 2010s.
The next issue of the In Defence of Marxism theoretical magazine has a great article on this topic which analyses the failures of the left in Greece during that period.
But this weekend we focused on the lessons from 2014-19 in Britain, specifically focusing on the Scottish independence referendum, the Corbyn movement, and Brexit.
All of these phenomena were political expressions of anti-establishment anger. And all brought to the fore the mistakes, weaknesses and betrayals inherent in left reformism and its leaders.
This has three interesting lessons for us looking ahead. First is that the anti-establishment anger today will inevitably produce all kinds of twists and turns in the political situation, some on the left and some on the right. We should expect the unexpected.
Second, the job of communists is not to sit on the sidelines and simply commentate as these movements emerge, but to get involved and win people over to our ideas.
And third, is that without a clear revolutionary perspective and leadership these partial expressions of anger will be betrayed and then diverted away from action that can fundamentally change society and solve the problems caused by capitalism.
Lessons of the Fourth International
Of course, it’s not enough for us to simply declare that we’re communist leaders and recite a few quotes from Marx. That’s not what real leadership looks like. We need to be able to size up a political situation, recommend a course of action, and then argue persuasively for it.
At the weekend we studied an example of so-called ‘revolutionary leaders’ who had failed to do any of those things and wrecked their organisation as a result. This is the history of the Fourth International after the death of Leon Trotsky in 1940.
The leaders of the Fourth were completely unable to size-up the situation after the Second World War, because they weren’t really Marxists. So they made lots of practical mistakes and couldn’t convince anyone of their ideas.
The result was that the Fourth split into all sorts of different groups for all sorts of reasons, giving Trotskyists a reputation for squabbling and splitting. Many of today’s sectarian left-wing groups trace their history back to some of the nonsense coming out of the Fourth International.
The RCP’s own history runs adjacent to that of the Fourth International but with limited overlap.
For us, the founding of the Fourth in 1938 was a huge step forward, but we take no responsibility for the mess that the so-called ‘leaders’ made after that.
This was the attitude of Ted Grant, the leader of the original RCP, who founded the organisation that eventually became the Party we have today.
Building the Party
Any leadership is only as strong as its ideas, which is why the majority of the weekend was given over to clarifying our analysis for today and learning the lessons of the past. But of course we have practical work to do to build the Party.
After eight weeks of our recruitment campaign we have over 132 new Party members. We’ve got five weeks to reach our 200 member target, which is a stretch but possible if we work for it.
And halfway through our campaign to tighten up our use of The Communist, circulation is up by 60 percent over the last few months, and we’re discussing with scores of new people we meet at stalls and paper sales.
Fundraising income is steadily rising, though more attention needs to be paid to finances by all Party members.
All the reports of Party building over the weekend were inspiring and energising. The whole leadership is extremely confident in our ability to grow over the next few weeks.
Training a strong Party leadership is an ongoing task, and an essential one. This CC meeting was a good step in that process.
Now we’re looking forward to the World Congress of the Revolutionary Communist International, at which documents debated and amendments passed by our Central Committee will be voted on.
The Congress is held in Italy, but we’ll organise watch parties around the country so everyone can participate. That will be a real landmark in the construction of an international leadership for the world socialist revolution.
