State capitalism – Euros vs Tankies again

[jondwhite]

One of the more nostalgic spotters; a discussion with long replies about the old CPGB and whether a 'revolution' in 1970s Britain was possible and who was responsible for the downfall of the old CPGB – the Euros or the Tankies.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/393207/message/1463825787/PS

Quote:

On another point: "a Leninist policy in 1970's Britain would have been to pursue the revolutionary seizure of state power on the back of the industrial and social militancy of the time"… From 1977 onwards, pure, revolutionary, unadulterated Leninism was (ostensibly) on offer from the NCP. If things were really that revolutionary, we might expect to see a significant working-class influx into that organisation, its militants winning positions of leadership in the labour movement and all that. We saw no such thing. Whyever not?

Quote:

But isn't that precisely the point? Francis's comment about the NCP was in response to the argument that a genuinely Leninist party in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s could have led us to the same sort of victory Lenin led the Russian workers to in 1917. Those "pressures that constrained the CPGB" (including the fact that the vast majority of the British people, including the working class, did not want the seizure of state power by extra-parliamentary means) meant that comparing – say – 1968 or 1973 in Britain to 1917 in Russia is absurd.

And actually I have a very clear memory of Sid French talking about building a mighty party of the working class (when he was not refusing to countenance any criticism of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries).

and so on

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