Day meeting on building a mass communist party Saturday 8 February
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In their reply Talking About Socialism quote Conrad as saying;
“My fear is that what they’ll produce is something at least along the lines of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. This is a maximalist programme that rejects all notions of reform, all notions of transition between capitalism with capitalist state power and communism.”
And
“The comrades in TAS are more inclined to the SPGB approach than what I would describe at least as the sort of classic Marxist approach”
Actually, TAS’s reply to the charge that it “rejects all notions of reform” is the sort of reply we might give (except of course that we don’t think that a socialist party should itself advocate particular reforms):
“‘Only when confronted by the power of the working class will the ruling class and its state be forced to make concessions (reforms), to temporarily appease the majority, fearful of losing complete control, only to take those concessions back when events become more favourable to them. The task of socialists is to strip away the veneer of impartiality from the State, to reveal its class content. While fighting for any reform or concession from the ruling class, the working class must always have its eye on the ultimate goal – fundamentally breaking the power of the capitalist class and the capitalist state and inaugurating the basis of a new society.’
You will find similar formulations throughout our material. Communists must fight for all reforms, to improve the position of the working class in society. But we fight against reformism as a political strategy. Our aim is not to reform capitalism into something that can work in the interests of the working class, that is impossible. We do not aim to manage capitalism but to abolish it.”
Another letter from us in this week’s Weekly Worker, on our attitude towards reforms:
Latest news: TAS break off the “unity” talks with the WW group. Not surprising really in view of the latter’s rigid Bolshevik-Leninism.
Another letter from a Party member in this week’s Weekly Worker:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1545/letters/
Also, mention of us three or four times in Conrad’s attack on TAS:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1545/one-step-back/
For example:
“In fact, as I feared, comrades Wrack and Potts have done little more than produce a soft-focus, banal, incoherent parody of the maximalism of the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s ‘What we stand for’.The TAS duo hate my coming out with any such a description. It is one of those ‘bad words’ they cite to excuse their break with FCU. Pathetic. The comrades plead that they do not reject reforms per se – indeed they don’t. Nor for that matter does the SPGB.”
I haven’t been able to find the alleged “soft-focus, banal, incoherent parody” of our “maximalism”, if anybody can.
‘Another letter from a Party member in this week’s Weekly Worker:
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1545/letters/
Great letter too.
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