Almost immediately after my arrival at the Djelavoi Dvor, a message came: 'Lenin has sent for you to come at once to the Kremlin.'

The Commandant wrote out a little pink probusk. The motor car took me over the cobbles to the walls of the Kremlin. The Red Guards, five or six of them, checked the car to examine my probusk, and three times afterwards I was obliged to display it before I reached my destination. Once, later on, when I walked to the Kremlin to keep an appointment with Lenin, I was stopped for twenty minutes at the gate, because I had only the pass issued by the Conference, which was by that time out of date. Unable to understand the reason why I was being held up, I ran past the guards with their rifles and fixed bayonets, through the open archway to the telephone on the other side. 'You might have been shot,' a comrade told me later. 'What would be the use of shooting me; I could not do any harm?' 'It was a woman who shot Lenin!'

Passing the Czar's big bell, which lay on the ground with a piece chipped out of it, the road led to the private apartments of the Czar and the Throne Room where the Congress was held. Looking at the great entrance, one sees a mighty staircase. Today it was all hung with long red flags blazoned with the sickle and corn-sheaf, and at the end, a painting of 'Labour,' huge and naked, breaking the chains that bind the earth, hideous and ill- proportioned, but having a certain effective vigour. The walls of the corridors and ante-chambers were lined with photographs, posters and literature. The Russian Communists are indeed great propagandists!

Lenin
In the innermost of the private apartments of the Czar's, Lenin, with smiling face, came quickly forward from a group of men waiting to get a word with him.

He seems more vividly vital and energetic, more wholly alive than other people.

At first sight one feels as though one has always known him, and one is amazed and delighted by a sense of pleasant familiarity in watching him. It is not that one has seen so many of his photographs, for the photographs are not like him; they represent an altogether heavier, darker and more ponderous man, instead of this magnetic and mobile being.

Rather short, rather broadly built, he is quick and nimble in every action, just as he is in thought and speech. He does not wear a picturesque Russian blouse, but ordinary European clothes that sit loosely upon him. His brown hair is closely shaved, his beard lightish brown, his lips are red, and his rather bright complexion looks sandy, because it is tanned and freckled by the hot sun. The skin of the face and head seem drawn rather tightly. There seems to be no waste material to spare. Every inch of his face is expressive. He is essentially Russian with a Tartar strain. His bearing is frank and modest. He appears wholly unconscious of himself, and he met us all as a simple comrade. His brown eyes often twinkle with kindly amusement, but change suddenly to a cold, hard stare, as though he would pierce ones innermost thoughts. He disconcerts his interviewers by suddenly shutting one eye and fixing the other sharply, almost fiercely, upon them.

I had been sent for to take part in the Commission on English affairs, which had been set up by the Third International.

We sat at a round table in the Czar's bedroom. Lenin was on my right hand, and on my left, Wynkoop of Holland, who was translating the German speeches into English. Lenin has a complete knowledge of English: he more than once humorously pulled up Wynkoop for misinterpreting the speakers.

Bukharin, Radek, Zinoviev, Trotsky
Bukharin, Editor of the Pravda, and one of the leaders of the Left in the Russian Communist Party, regarded the excited debaters from other countries with laughing blue eyes. Young and vigorous, he had the expression of one to whom life is full of enjoyment. In brown holland blouse and sleeves rolled up to the elbows, he looked like a painter who has just laid down his brushes. During Committee meetings he is continually drawing caricatures of the delegates, but no important point in the discussion escapes him. Today he drew Wynkoop as a solemn, pompous owl.

Radek, who was going to the Polish front in a few days, was also smiling and cheerful, with a detached, dreamy air. One is constantly impressed by the absence of strain or excitement amongst the Russians. These men, standing against a world of enemies, appear to face the situation with perfect calm and much humour.

Zinoviev is of another type: the controversy seemed to bore him. He was a little impatient with the opposition, and criticised, with a tinge of contempt which he doubtless regarded as salutary for the Communist Parties which had not yet learnt how to appeal successfully to the masses. One of the American delegates said of Zinoviev that he always talks to one as though he were taking a bath.

During an interview he seems generally bent on hurrying away to another appointment. An indefatigable pamphleteer, he was probably, even then, composing another Thesis; but he was ready to enter vigorously into the discussion and to speak at considerable length when his turn came.

His voice is not musical, but he is evidently a very popular orator.

At the great meeting in Moscow's biggest theatre, which was the final demonstration of the Congress, Zinoviev and Trotsky were the principal speakers. Trotsky received by far the greater reception. Coming from the Polish front, with the fall of Warsaw to the Red Army daily anticipated, he was naturally the hero of the occasion. He spoke without effort, without any shouting, breathless excitement, but with perfect control and ease. Outwardly well-groomed, he had evidently an excellent mental equipment. He proceeded slowly and leisurely up and down the platform, with an ever varied flow of tone and gesture. The still audience listened eagerly, but he spoke so long that at length he tired them, in spite of their great interest and admiration.

Zinoviev, on the other hand, held the people to the last and finished amid a brisk round of cheers.

At the Commission on private affairs in the Czar's bed- room, Zinoviev sat a little apart from the table. He leaned back comfortably on a soft lounge. Beside him was Levi, of the German KPD. The French; the Austrians and others were also represented on the Commission. The Italians, characteristically, were unrepresented because they could not agree on which of their number should represent them. They were nevertheless present in force and took part in the discussion, Bordiga even presenting a Thesis for discussion against Parliamentary action.

Obviously Lenin enjoys an argument, even though the subject may not seem to him of first class importance, and though the adversaries may be unskilled. At present he was in a bantering mood, and dealt playfully with the British delegates. The majority of them were objectors to certain passages in a Thesis now under discussion, written by Lenin himself, on the tasks of the Communist Party.

Lenin and the British Labour Party
The passages in dispute dealt with the British Communist Parties and declared that they should affiliate to the British Labour Party and make use of Parliamentary action. Lenin evidently does not regard either of these questions as fundamental. Indeed, he considers that they are not questions of principle at all, but of tactics, which may be employed advantageously in some phases of the changing situation and discarded with advantage in others. Neither question, in his opinion, is important enough to cause a split in the Communist ranks. I am even inclined to suspect that he has not been uninfluenced by the belief that the course he has chosen is that which will appeal to the majority of Communists, and will therefore cement the largest number of them in united action. As to the question of affiliation to the Labour Party (a question that may presently arise in similar form for decision by the Communist Parties of Canada and the United States), Lenin says:

'Millions of backward members are enrolled in the Labour Party, therefore Communists should be present to do propaganda amongst them, provided Communist freedom of action and propaganda is not thereby limited.' When, afterwards, in the Kremlin, I argued with Lenin privately that the disadvantages of affiliation outweighed those of disaffiliation, he dismissed the subject as unimportant, saying that the Labour Party would probably refuse to accept the Communist Party's affiliation, and that, in any case, the decision could be altered next year.

Lenin and Parliamentarism
So too with Parliamentarism; he dismissed it as unimportant, saying that if the decision to employ Parliamentary action is a mistake, it can be altered at next year's Congress.

When, however, it is argued that Communists should not go into reformist Labour Parties or bourgeois Parliaments because they may be affected by the environment and lose the purity of their Communist faith and fervour, Lenin replies that after the proletarian conquest of power, the temptation to weaken in principle will be much greater. He argues that those who cannot withstand all tests before the Revolution, will certainly not do so later.

He is for attacking every such difficulty, not for avoiding it: he is for dragging Communist controversy out into the market-place, not closeting it amongst selected circles of enthusiasts.

He does not fear that Communism will be postponed or submerged by the advent to power of reformists. Convinced that reforms cannot cure or substantially palliate the capitalist system, he is impatient for the rise to power of the Reformists in order that their importance may be demonstrated. When I talked with him in the Kremlin, he urged that British Communists should say to the leaders of the Labour Party:

'Please Mr. Henderson, take the power. You, to-day, represent the opinions of the majority of British workers; we know that, as yet we do not; therefore we cannot at present take the power. But you, who represent the opinions of the masses, you should take the power.'

In those days, news had come that Councils of Action had been set up to stop Britain declaring war on Soviet Russia in support of Poland.

Lenin declared that we should inform Henderson that he must no longer scruple to seize power by Revolution, since he and his Party had already committed themselves to that by setting up a Council of Action charged with the work of bringing about a general strike in the event of further war measures by Britain against Russia. Such a strike, as Henderson, Clynes and their colleagues had frequently themselves declared, would be a revolutionary act. The Labour Party was now committed to it.

Lenin said that the creation of the Councils of Action were due to a wave of revolutionary sentiment in the British masses, which had forced their Labour leaders to take some sort of action. That the declarations of the Council of Action failed to satisfy Communists, and that the Council was inactive, merely meant that the wave of mass feeling had not yet gone very far and had largely subsided.

The feeling of the masses rises and falls, he argued, in irregular tides; it does not remain at high-water mark.

'We in Russia,' he said, 'seized the power at the moment the masses had risen. When they receded from us, we were obliged to hold on till the next wave of feeling brought them back to us.'

Lenin argued, that in order to explode the futility of reformism and to bring Communism to pass, the Labour Party must have a trial in office. Therefore British Communists should affiliate their Party to the Labour Party and come to arrangements with it for the formation of a joint Parliamentary block and the mutual sharing out of constituencies. In addition to the Thesis under debate, Lenin had prepared and had translated ready for the Conference, a book called The Infantile Sickness of 'Leftism' in Communism This book was intended to confound and convert those of us who disagree with its author, and who assert that the Labour Party will in any case come to power, and the British Communist Party cannot dissociate itself too early and too clearly from the Labour Party's reformist policy, and must by no means enter into alliances or arrangements with it. We also assert that Communists can best wean the masses from faith in bourgeois Parliamentarism by refusal to participate in it.

Lenin and Trade Unionism
The passages in Lenin's Thesis on Trade and Industrial Unionism, and Zinoviev's Thesis on Unionism were also the subject of hot debate.

Lenin and the other Russians of his school, regard the Unions primarily as agglomerations of workers providing opportunities for Communists to win the masses for Communism. The dissentients, who belong to the highly industrialised Western bourgeois democracies, are unable to detach themselves from the view that an industrial organisation is an organisation for fighting the capitalist employer. Moreover, they are most of them influenced by the view that, if the industrial organisations the workers are developing for themselves under Capitalism do not actually become the organisations which will administer industry under Communism, they are at least a training ground for preparing the workers in the shops to administer Communist industries on Soviet lines. (...)

Whatever the merits of the rival contentions might be, the Theses of Lenin and Zinoviev, and indeed all the Theses and resolutions coming from the Russian Communist leaders, because of their great achievements, were certain to be adopted at this first anniversary of the founding of the Third International.

The Russians, although the sixty delegates of their Party had between them but five votes, like the British, could steam-roller anything they chose through the Congress.

We, who were in opposition on certain matters, nevertheless argued our case in spite of the hopelessness of the task, and Lenin argued against us, as though our defeat had not been a foregone conclusion.

The Congress meeting in the Czar's Throne Room the following evening, allowed me to extend to twenty-five minutes, the allotted five minutes in which I had to accomplish the stupendous task of replying to a Thesis and book of Lenin and innumerable speeches.

The Congress had lasted a month. As the speeches were delivered in various languages and translated, delegates streamed restlessly in and out to an adjoining room, where tables were loaded with slices of bread and butter and sardines, caviar, preserved meats and cheese, and saucers filled with sweets wrapped in coloured papers. Glasses of hot tea were always on hand there. Angelica Balabanova often had to complain that very few auditors were present to hear her translation. Giving but a cursory sketch of rambling speeches, empty of real matter, Balabanova always rendered well and fully the words of those who had anything to say, though she was ill and very tired.

Artists sat amongst the delegates, making drawings of them or roamed about looking for models. Balabanova protested, as she always does against such portraiture.

On the defeat of the English amendments and the unanimous adoption of Lenin's Thesis, with which, in the main, I am in complete agreement, the Congress ended. The delegates sprang up singing 'The International', the Editor of the Italian Socialist paper Avanti! led the singing of the 'Carmanol.' John Reed and others caught Lenin, and though he resisted, hoisted him upon their shoulders. He looked like a happy father amongst his sons.

Published in Workers' Dreadnought, 16 April 1921. Taken from the Antagonism website.

Movements, like human beings, grow and develop from stage to stage and pass through many crazes and illnesses. The Communist Party of Great Britain is at present passing through a sort of political measles called discipline which makes it fear the free expression and circulation of opinion within the Party.

Since its formation the Communist Party of Great Britain has fretted itself at the existence of the Workers' Dreadnought, an independent Communist voice, free to express its mind unhampered by Party discipline.

At the inaugural Party Conference, as I am informed by the Executive, it was even debated whether members of the Party might be permitted to read the Dreadnought since it is not controlled by the Executive of the Party. The position of the Scottish Worker, Solidarity, the Plebs, the Socialist, and the Spur were also discussed. (...) The letter issued by the Executive to branches of the Party recommended the Plebs, Solidarity, and the Worker for circulation by the Party, but stated that the question of circulating the Dreadnought must be left in abeyance. Many branches took this to mean that the Dreadnought must not be circulated, and some of the Party's organisers carried on a campaign against the Dreadnought in this sense, making it a question of loyalty to the Party not to take it. (...)

Soon after my release from half a year's imprisonment I met a subcommittee of the Communist Party Executive, which consisted of Comrades W. Paul, F. Peat, F. Willis and T. Clark. This subcommittee put it to me that 'as a disciplined member of the Party' I should hand the Workers' Dreadnought over to the Executive, to stop it, or continue it, and, should it continue the paper, to put it to any use or policy it chose, and to place it under the editorship of any person whom it might select; I was not to be consulted, or even informed, till the decision should be made. Thus, with a spice of brutality, the disciplinarians set forth their terms to one who had for eight years maintained a pioneer paper with constant struggle and in face of much persecution.

I replied that I could not agree to such a proposition, but would consider carefully, and in a comradely spirit, any proposal that the Party might make to me regarding the paper. I said that I believed in the usefulness of an independent Communist paper which would stimulate discussion in the movement on theory and practice; but just released from prison, the united Party having been formed whilst I was inside, I was anxious to look around me, and hear all points of views. I invited the sub- committee to lay before me any suggestions they had to make. The members of the sub-committee, however, failed to respond in the same spirit; they merely repeated their former demand for an absolute and blindfold renunciation of the paper. (...)

The comrades intended to enforce discipline in its most stultifying aspect. Comrade McManus, as Chairman, informed me that they would not permit any member of the Party to write or publish a book or a pamphlet without the sanction of the Executive. Those who may differ from the Executive on any point of principle, policy or tactics, or even those whose method of dealing with agreed theory is not approved or appreciated by the Executive, are therefore to be gagged.

I told the comrades that if we were before the barricades, if we were in the throes of the revolution, or even somewhere near it, I could approve a rigidity of discipline which is wholly Out of place here and now.

I told them that whereas we are face to face with an opportunist and reformist Labour Party, and since in the midst of capitalism, there is the ever-present tendency and temptation towards compromise with the existing order, it is essential for a Communist Party to be definite in excluding Right tendencies. A Communist Party can only preserve its communist character by using its discipline to prevent Right opportunism and laxity from entering the Party; it must insist that acceptance of Communist principles and avoidance of reformism be made a condition of membership; that is obvious. On the other hand, the Communist Party cannot afford to stifle discussion in the Party; above all, it must not stifle the discussion of Left Wing ideas; otherwise it will cramp and stultify itself, and will destroy its own possibility of advancement.

I stated that in my opinion every member of the Party should be allowed to write and publish his or her views, and that only in cases where these views prove to be not Communist should the question of a member's fitness to belong to the Party be brought into question.

I told the Executive, and it is my strongly held opinion, that in the weak, young, little-evolved Communist movement of this country discussion is a paramount need, and to stifle it is disastrous. Therefore when I was asked whether I would obey the discipline of the Executive I was obliged to say that it was impossible for me to give a general answer to such a question, if discipline could be strained to prevent the expression of opinion, and that I could only decide whether I should obey when a concrete case should arise.

As before, my reply to the demand to surrender the Workers' Dreadnought was, that I was willing to discuss any proposal made by the Executive, but I was still of opinion that the Dreadnought could best serve Communism as an independent organ, giving expression to Left Wing ideas, which include opposition to Parliamentarism and Labour Party affiliation, but which have many other aspects, now clearly showing themselves to be the minority view in the Third International, and which represent the most advanced and thoroughgoing Communism. t said I believed one of the most useful offices I could perform for the movement was to edit the Dreadnought. I was confirmed in this view by recent happenings in the International. The decision to exclude from the Third International the industrialist, anti-Trade Union, anti- Parliamentary and highly revolutionary Communist Labour Party of Germany, which played so important a part in the Ruhr Valley rising, is leading to a division in the Third International, and the publication of a new international organ which it is important to study. The growth of the Workers Opposition in Soviet Russia, which was dealt with in an article by Alexandra Kollontai, published in last week's Dreadnought; the growing cleavage between Right and Left in the Russian Communist Party; the tendency to slip to the Right, which is regrettably manifesting itself in Soviet Russia, (...) all show the importance of independent discussion. The drift to the Right in Soviet Russia, which has permitted the reintroduction of many features of capitalism, such as school fees, rent, and charges for light, fuel, trains, trams, and so on, is due, doubtless, to the pressure of encircling capitalism and the backwardness of the Western democracies. Nevertheless, there are strong differences of opinion amongst Russian Communists and throughout the Communist International as to how far such retrogression can be tolerated. Such questions are not discussed in the Communist; it is a Party organ under the control of the Right Wing of the British Communist Party, and of the Executive in Moscow, which is at present dominated by the Right Wing policy. It presents merely the official view.

The Workers' Dreadnought is the only paper in this country which is alive to the controversies going on in the International Communist movement; it is the only paper through which the rank and file of the movement can even guess that there are such controversies. Such controversies are a sign of healthy development, through them the movement grows onward towards higher aims and broader horizons; by studying them, by taking part in them, the membership will develop in knowledge and political capacity.

I stated my case. The executive replied that it would not tolerate the existence of any Communist organ independent of itself. I informed the Executive, as is the case, that the great financial difficulties under which the Dreadnought is labouring have made us decide reluctantly and with great regret that this issue must be the last. (...)

Comrade McManus rounded off the discussion; the Party had no alternative but to expel me, he contended.

But this farcical parody of discipline is a passing error; it will disappear as the Party is faced with more serious issues, and as its power to take effective action on things that matter develops. If my expulsion assist the Party in passing more speedily through this phase of childishness it will have served a useful purpose. (...)

Let there be no mistake; I am not expelled for any tendency to compromise with capitalism; I am expelled for desiring freedom of propaganda for the Left Wing Communists, who oppose all compromise and seek to hasten faster and more directly onward to Communism.

The great problem of the Communist Revolution is to secure economic equality, the abolition of the wages system, and the ending of class distinctions. Russia has achieved the Revolution, but not the Communist life which should be its sequel. The porter, silent and ill-clad, still awaits the tip; still there are some who go shabby on foot with broken boots, whilst others, smartly dressed, are whizzing by in motor cars. Still there are wages of many grades, still there are graduated food rations. The 'responsible worker must have an adequate supply of food, or his work will suffer', therefore if there is a shortage of food the 'responsible workers' must have a higher ration than the rest of the people; that is the argument. But how is the argument to be strained so as to explain why the wife and family of the 'responsible worker' should have higher food rations than other people, should have higher rations than their neighbours, even in those cases when the 'responsible worker' is not living at home with them? These are the old injustices, the old criminal errors of capitalism persisting under the reign of the Soviets.

How grievous (if it be true, as we greatly hope not) is the news that school fees have been introduced into Soviet Russia! What could be the reason of such a retrograde step? Is it because there are not yet enough school places for all the children, and the fees are a means of ensuring that the children of the higher paid people shall have the preference? Is it the old vicious system of penalising the child whose parents are poor?

We look to Communism as the state of society in which, whilst work shall be a duty incumbent on all, the means of life, study and pleasure shall be freed, without stint, to everyone, to use at will. If a shortage compel rationing in any direction, it should be equal. The principle of paying according to skill, speed, or the length of training required for the work, is wholly bad. If it be true that necessity compels differentiation, then it is the most regrettable of necessities.

The dictatorship of the proletariat, at which some foolish persons desire to play (within their Parties before the Revolution), is a stern necessity of the transition period when capitalism is being overthrown and is striving to re-establish itself again. Such dictatorship is antagonistic to the Communist idea: it will pass away when genuine Communism is reached.

To those who are not familiar with the details of the position, it is necessary, in conclusion, to make clear that the Workers' Dreadnought was founded by me, and from the early days of its existence remained under my personal control, in the first instance in order that any risks of prosecution attaching to it might fall on me alone.

When the WSF, of which the Workers' Dreadnought was the organ, was merged in the Communist Party, it was made clear that I should remain responsible for the Dreadnought, and the Party at its Cardiff Conference passed a resolution affirming that that was the case. When the present united Communist Party of Great Britain was formed I definitely stated that the Workers' Dreadnought would remain outside, and give an independent support to the Communist Party. There is no question either of my having subverted a party organ, or of desiring to maintain a Party organ uncontrolled by the Party.

The position is that the Dreadnought is an independent organ; and that the Executive of the Communist Party of Great Britain has decided that it will not permit me, as one of its members, to publish an independent paper.

I do not regret my expulsion; that it has occurred shows the feeble and unsatisfactory condition of the Party: its placing of small things before great: its muddled thinking.

I desire freedom to work for Communism with the best that is in me. The Party could not chain me: I, who have been amongst the first, as the record of the papers published, both in this country and abroad, will prove, to support the present Communist Revolution and to work for the Third International, shall continue my efforts as before.

Published in Workers' Dreadnaught, 17 September 1921. Taken from the Antagonism website.

What is the difference between ourselves and the Communist Party?

Our differences are partly of principle, partly of practical utility.

As to the second, we believe that we can do useful work for Communism by continuing the Workers' Dreadnought, and we do not admit the right of anyone to stop us.

Moreover, we desire to remain an independent communist voice. An independent organ is a guard against the corruptions, opportunisms and tyrannies which are apt to attend on Parties, and especially Parties formed, as the Communist Party of Great Britain has been, from groups of conflicting tendencies, brought together by outside pressure and largely composed of persons as yet untried in the political struggle. The doctrine: "My Party, right or wrong", which leads inevitably to the practice of putting party before principle, must be shunned consistently by those who desire to take part in the creation of revolutionary change. The past constantly stretches out its tentacles to draw us back to it; constantly strives to clog our minds with sophistries. A high order of mental courage and independence is necessary to maintain always the hard, steep path of the revolutionary. The comfortable, care-free official position; the members so apt to be amenable and trusting, if only they are not asked to leave their groove, or to worry their minds with new and startling thoughts: all these provide an incentive towards opportunism, against which a constant spur is needed.

The danger of opportunism, from which an independent organ can help to protect a party, is moreover inherent in those compromise tactics for which the Third International declared itself at its Second Congress in Moscow last year, and to which it still remains committed.

We contend that the present policy of the Third International is illogical and unworkable, and either the policy must be changed, or a new force must arise to achieve the workers' revolution outside Russia, and to make Russia herself a Communist country.

Briefly, the present policy of the majority in the Third International is to secure numerous adherents, by striving to combine mutually conflicting policies.

Parliamentarism.
Thus the Third International declares that Communism will not come by Act of Parliament, that Parliament is part of the machinery of Capitalism, and must be swept away; that the workers must be estranged from it and induced to set up their Soviets as the rival organism that will overthrow and supersede it; that Capitalism will be overthrown, not by a Parliamentary majority, but by actual force, by the industrial and armed power of the workers.

Having laid all this down in the most unmistakable fashion, the Third International goes on to declare that Communists, though they must not work for reforms through Parliament, must yet seek election to Parliament.

The only official reason given for this weak conclusion is that the election contest and Parliament provide effective platforms for Communist oratory, and that the speeches of Communist candidates and Members of Parliament may be widely reported in the capitalist press.

In reply to these arguments we must point out that the Parliamentary speeches of Colonel Malone went unreported after he joined the B.S.P. and the Communist Party, and that it was only when he was in the dock being tried for his speeches outside Parliament that the Press gave much space to his activities. As for the Communist candidate at Caerphilly his speeches were not even reported in the Daily Herald. But the point is of minor importance; the speeches of Lloyd George, Churchill, Asquith and the rest occupy column upon column in the capitalist newspapers: we Communists can never be given anything approaching the great and constant publicity in capitalist organs that is accorded to the idols of capitalist politics.

We must find other means of reaching the popular ear. Yet even were a candidate or Member of Parliament entitled to a verbatim report in the entire press every day, how flimsy a reason this would be for insisting that Communist Parties must, of necessity, take part in the political scramble for seats in Parliament; how miserably insufficient a reason for casting out the fighting Communist Labour Party of Germany, and many more!

But there are other reasons, reasons not given in Theses, why the Third International demands Parliamentary action from the Parties affiliated to it. Two deeply opposed policies are represented by the Communist acceptance or refusal or Parliamentary action.

Those of the sincere and intelligent Communists decide to use Parliamentary action do so because they believe they can thereby obtain sway over unawakened, unconscious masses: they are not content, patiently, to gather a body of thinking workers, but desire to take a short cut by capturing unthinking masses.

An extreme instance of such opportunism is the decision that the Communist Party should seek affiliation to the Labour Party. Our Russian comrades fail to realise that the present Labour leaders cannot always count on the response of the inert masses in their Unions unless the issue be a very simple bread and butter one of hours and wages. If the Communist Party could conceivably capture executive power in the Labour Party, it would have captured a gigantic machine that would not move.

When we, who are against the use of Parliamentary action, argue that it is contradictory and confusing to declare on the one hand that Parliament is useless and must be destroyed, and on the other hand to urge the workers to put us into Parliament, those who have chosen the way of Parliamentary action, reply that great masses of unconscious workers still have faith in Parliament. Quite so, we answer, then we must undermine that faith; but appalled by the magnitude of the task of creating a body of conscious workers strong enough to effect any changes, the Communist opportunists propose to accomplish the revolution with crowds of unconscious workers.

We, who believe that the revolution can only be accomplished by those whose minds are awakened and who are inspired by conscious purpose, have decided to shun the administrative machinery of Capitalism.

We have decided this because of the clear, unmistakable lead to the masses which this refusal gives, a lead, surer and more effective, because it is a lead given by action, not merely by words.

We have so decided also because the refusal to compete for electoral seats means the cutting off from us of those weak and self-seeking opportunists to whom seats in Parliamentary and on the local government bodies are attractive because of the position they confer upon the holder.

So much for our difference on the Parliamentary question with the Third International, as officially represented in its Theses. Our differences with the Communist Party of Great Britain go still further, for the British Party does not operate the Parliamentary policy in the destructive sense laid down by the Third International.

The British Party has no representatives in Parliament at present; but it has many representatives on local governing bodies: the policy of these representatives is not the policy of the Third International Theses. As we have already pointed out, during the coal strike, when the miners were fighting the concerted attempt of the employing class of this country to reduce the working class standard of living, the representatives of the Communist Party in Poplar were responsible for cutting down wages of bricklayer's labourers, painter's labourers, bakers, sewing machinists and others, as well as reducing the rate of Poor Law Relief to the poor and unemployed. Such examples can be multiplied by anyone who takes the trouble to inquire into the doings of the representatives of the Communist Party of Great Britain, on the local Boards and Councils, up and down the country. Where, indeed, are to be found Communist Party representatives on local bodies using they position on the bodies in a revolutionary way? Where are those Communists? Let us hear of them. Echo, answering " where?" has long given the only response to that urgent question.

We do not blame those "Communists" and Labour representatives who do not see eye to eye with us on this matter; we do not accuse them of bad faith or dishonesty. We simply say that they are not operating the policy of the Third International as set forth in its Theses. We exist to point out such facts: we shall continue to do so, and, in so doing, without malice, we shall educate the movement.

In our opinion, the use of Parliamentary action by Communists is illogical, contradictory and bound to lead to the lapses into rank Reformism that we see wherever members of the Communist Party secure election to public bodies. These Communist Party members who have been elected to public bodies, are simply trying, like the Labour Party, to secure reforms: they are taking no step to unhinge the capitalist system. Some of them may be more, some less, effective Reformists than the Labour Members, but they are doing precisely the same sort of work, whilst the Communist Party fulminates against all Reformers.

Let us look the matter squarely in the face. We are for Revolution: we have done with Reform and, leaving it altogether alone, we concentrate our efforts on bringing people to an understanding of Communism and to a determination to discard Capitalism, and replace it by Communism.

We know that the breath of Parliamentary intrigue, the breath of the Parliamentary Committee Room, the entire atmosphere of the House of Commons and the jugglery of political parties there, is antagonistic to the clean white tire of revolutionary Communist enthusiasm. Comrades who have not, like ourselves, come into close and wearisome contact with the Parlamentary machine, who have not Lobbied and sat in the Gallery, hour on hour, day on day; who have not, year by year, poured over the daily verbatim reports, and drafted and engineered Amendments to Government Bills, cannot know the devitalising pettiness, the hideous imposture of the Parliamentary machine.

We who stood closely by at the birth of the Labour Party, holding the near confidence of its creator, the honest and true man, Keir Hardie, whose spirit, was broken by its failure, its wholly inevitable failure; we say from the depths of our consciousness: never again!

Oh, young body of earnest Communists (if such, genuinely and truly you are) break with the past and its traditions, do and dare for your faith, take not that road.

The Parliamentary contest belongs to the politics of Capitalism; the politics of Communism must forge, new weapons, must find new paths. Do not cling to the skirts of the dead past. Go out without fear to seek the future.

Trade Unionism
The difference of policy between the Communists who place their faith in numbers rather than in consciousness, is evidenced in other matters than that of Parliament.

The decision of the Third International, that the British Communist Party should affiliate to the Labour Party, the decision that the Red Trade Union International shall he a hybrid body, composed of Trade Unions, of whatever sort and political, or non-political complexion, that are willing to join it, as well as of Shop Stewards and Workshop Committee organisations, and militant industrial organisations like the I.W.W.; the decision to expel the German Communist Labour Party for forming new revolutionary Unions: these things display the same hesitant fear of shutting out anyone, the same policy of roping in passive, unawakened masses, that has dictated the use of Parliamentary action.

The Russian leaders who have largely engineered the Third International into its opportunist decisions, refuse to recognise the significance of the persistent tendencies of the working class movement which manifest themselves unmistakably in the highly, industrialised Western countries. We see in these countries a triangular struggle between three forces. Firstly, the employers; secondly, the Trade Union leaders backed by unconscious masses; thirdly, the smaller body of awakened workers. The real struggle is between the employers and the awakened workers; the Trade Union officials, vacillating between the two, occasionally pulled nearer to the side of the conscious workers by the unconscious masses growing restive under economic pressure.

The awakened workers, finding the power of the, Unions concentrated in the hands of the Trade Union officials by the obstructive rules and passive assent of the unawakened masses, who far outnumber the awakened, proceed to form new organisations. The merit of these new organisations is that they are manned by those who have joined them with a definite purpose and a desire for change, and are operated by the rank and file. Therefore, instead of being composed, like the Trade Unions, of inert masses, brought in by the pressure of custom and the attraction of the friendly benefits, they are composed of more or less conscious elements.

These rebel organisms, at war with the old Trade Unionism, cannot be combined with it: to make them an official part of the Unions is to destroy them: they exist as a protest against Conservatism in the Unions. They are an effervescent force, spasmodic and uncertain, sometimes merely revolting against hard conditions with no more than a fugitive purpose, but nevertheless representing the high-water mark of class-consciousness and discontent in the workshop. They are the forerunners of what, some day, will break out spontaneously to form the Soviets. They will function in times of crisis and they will die away, as the English Shop Stewards have now died down, almost to the point of extinction. Their more conscious elements are the active working-class Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists, who form the backbone of those movements, and who rally round them the rank and file of the workshops when feeling runs red enough amongst the masses to dispose the masses for action.

The Red Trade Union International formed by the Russian Communists as an ally of the Third International might have been composed of such elements: all the rebel elements that fight within the workshops. Its mainstay then (beside the Russians who have achieved their revolution) would have been the Germans who are near enough to the Revolution to maintain continuously in existence revolutionary groups within the workshops which, transcending the power ever yet exercised and the consciousness ever yet reached by the British Shop Stewards' movement, are able to assume the title of revolutionary Unions and have proved themselves by actual fighting in the revolutionary struggle.

The Third International was not content to make its industrial ally a relatively small, though intensely revolutionary body: it wanted something big and showy that could rival the Yellow Amsterdam International in actual numbers. Therefore it has built up a shapeless, incoherent body, decorated by the names of non-Communist Trade Union "bigwigs", with the paper backing of unconscious memberships that do not know what Trade Unionism means. These "bigwigs" would all depart from the Red International should it declare a policy of action that would lead to hardship and danger. But such an International is unlikely to declare such a policy.

When the Revolution comes, it is the revolutionary groups within the workshops which will make it – not the N.U.R., the Workers' Union, the Dockers' Union, and the rest, but those spontaneously-gathering workshop groups engineered by the conscious propagandists who maintain the Communist and Anarchist organisations and guided by the Communist and Anarchist organisations themselves, if any of them are strong enough to lead in the crisis. The Unions like the miners', in which the rank and file have obtained most power, and in which advanced thought has a hold on the largest proportion of the membership, may perhaps swing into line after the Revolution has been precipitated by unofficial action; they will not precipitate it.

To state this is not to follow mere imaginings: Russia herself, and Germany, with greater, more prolonged emphasis, have proved this to be the inevitable path of development.

Smillie and Hodges, Thomas, Henderson and Robert Williams may perhaps rush in to capture the Revolution when it is made, and may perhaps succeed for a time; that depends on whether there is a Labour Ministry at the moment of the outbreak, and upon a number of other considerations. In any case, it is certain that neither the Trade Unions nor their officials will actually make the Revolution. The Revolution will be a coup d'état by the conscious Communists and the turbulent rank and file.

It is essential that the Communist Party should not be a large confused mass of incoherent elements honeycombed by Parliamentary and Local Government place-hunters, by people who believe that "Parliamentary action will do it", and by those who have come into the Party merely because they disliked the intervention against Soviet Russia.

The Communist Party can only help to precipitate the Revolution, and, more important, to make the Revolution, when it comes at last a Communist Revolution, if it be a Party of Communists.

The Need to make Communists
From friends and opponents of Communism there is much talk of Revolution but, after all, our paramount need is to make Communists.

What proportion of the British population knows what Communism is?

What proportion of Communists agrees in its version of Communism; in its ideals for Communism?

When we come to discuss closely what is Communism, and how shall we make Communists, we find that the differences of opinion between Right and Left Communists are as deep and far reaching upon these two questions, as upon Parliamentarism and the Trade Unions. This again proves the need for perpetual controversy, study, and exchange of views in the Communist movement.

Why we joined the United Communist Party
We were strongly urged to throw, in our lot with a United Communist Party, and we ourselves desired a United Party: firstly most obviously, because, all told, we Communists, are as yet so few that it seemed desirable to join forces; secondly, because it was obvious that the B.S.P., the S.L.P., the W.S.F., the S.W.S.S. and the rest were divided, not wholly upon principle, but partly on geographical lines and on the accidental fact that certain members had happened to be converted by certain people. There were Parliamentarians and anti-Parliamentarians in every one of these organisations; there were opportunists and extremists in them all. If they were brought together, we hoped that the various like elements would amalgamate and form distinct blocks. Of course, we hoped most for the joining of forces by the scattered anti-Parliamentarians and extremists. We hoped also for their growing influence and final ascendancy in the united Party, failing that they could, should some crisis render it advisable, break out later on.

We never concealed this view, this desire and intention.

In Moscow, when Lenin strongly urged us to join the United Party, he said: "Form a Left block within it: work for the policy in which you believe, within the Party."

But the British Communist Party will not have it so. It declares for the extermination of Left Wing propaganda.

The Right majority in the Communist Parties of other countries has taken a similar line. The Executive of the Third International, after pleading with us to enter, now apparently encourages the excommunication of the Left Wing.

The Russian Party itself is being split; for Lenin, in a recent speech, which has just reached this country, announces that the "Workers' opposition is leaving the Russian Communist Party".

The German Communist Labour Party, the K.A.P.D. held an International Conference in Berlin, on September 11th, of Communists opposed to the Third International.

But the Communist Cause advances; do not doubt it: new tendencies are developing in the movement and must displace the old to make way for themselves.

Published in Workers' Dreadnought, September 24th, 1921. Taken from the Antagonism website.

Saving the Boss

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and other Liberals (for you know, fellow-worker, Mr. MacDonald is the most Liberal of the Liberals: there are few to equal him in orthodoxy) are working hard "to save Europe." They are very much pleased that Asquith, Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, and even most of the bluest of the Tories, have come round to their view, that Germany cannot be made to pay for the war.

Winston Churchill says he rejoices "to see that the simple fact that the payment from one country to another, can only be made in the form of goods or service, has once more become recognised by the most enlightened experts in different countries."

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, and other I.L.P leaders, are greatly pleased to know that Mr. Churchill has said that. Theey feel that the support their policy is now getting from all parties has completely justified them. They are very much pleased also to find that even those of their Labour colleagues, who were loudest in demanding the German money and who were lately much ashamed of the I.L.P-ers, are now in absolute harmony with them.

The capitalists of all countries having accepted the I.L.P, policy, are now pulling together to get International Capitalism out of the difficulties into which it has fallen as a result of the war, the proletarian Revolution, so far as it has spread, and the mistakes which Allied Capitalism made during its war madness and victory drunkenness.

Capitalism feels that, for the present, it cannot afford to have friction in its own household just now. Even the Japanese, who are regarded as upstarts in the capitalist camp, are to be left in peace for ten years, it is said, though that agreement may not be adhered to. Big British Landlordism and Capitalism has climbed down from its throne so as to make concessions to the petty-Capitalism of Sinn Fein, and Germany is to be forgiven for ever daring to rival the British Empire, Capitalism must have peace in which to re-establish itself. Trade is thoroughly bad, and the currency is in a terrible mess.

One of the things which Capitalism thinks important, is to get the £ back to its pre-war value. In doing that, it will incidentally double the value of the money that the capitalists lent to their governments during the war. One of the necessary steps in getting the £ back to the pre-war value is to lower your wages, fellow-worker, but to lower the interest on the war debt, which your Government pays to the bosses, is something that the capitalists do not desire, and the Government, being a capitalist Government, does not propose to do. As the greater part of the National War Debt is lent to British capitalists, there will be a very big war debt for you to pay, fellow-worker, even if all the international war indebtedness of the nation is wiped out.

British capitalists intend to hold fast to the money they lent in War Loan to the British Government, whilst they play at being magnanimous, in advocating the cancelling of the international war debts and proposing a moratorium for Germany.

Do not be under the delusion, however, that the capitalists and their mouthpieces in the capitalist parties are proposing to cancel the international war debts and give Germany an indemnity from generous motives. They only propose these things because they see that they are ruining their own trade by making other nations bankrupt and reducing the value of money in those nations almost to zero.

The policy of the I.L.P and U.D.C was originally put forward from motives of generosity, no doubt, but the capitalist politicians are not adopting it from motives of generosity: they are adopting it because they realise that if they do not there will be a big smash up in the capitalist system. They are adopting the I.L.P policy to save the capitalist system from disaster. They say they are "saving Britain," "saving Europe," "saving civilisation," but they are saving Capitalism and nothing more.

They ask you to be enthusiastic about what they are doing to save Capitalism, fellow-worker, but as a matter of fact, your interest, and the interest of civilisation, is all the other way. To save Capitalism, means to keep you a wage-slave and to hinder the march of progress to Communism. A breakdown in the Capitalist system would provide the workers with their chance of liberation from the slavery of Capitalism.

Watch for that opportunity: organise to be able to take advantage of it. You have got to do that by bringing the facts of the case before your mates in the workshop.

The Searchlight

Object:—

To overthrow Capitalism, the wage system, and the machinery of the Capitalist State, and to establish a world-wide Federation of Communist Republics administered by occupational Soviets.

Method:—

1.—To spread the knowledge of Communist principles amongst the people;

2.—To take no part in elections to Parliament and the local governing bodies, and to carry on propaganda exposing the futility of Communist participation therein;

3.—To refuse affiliation or co-operation with the Labour Party and all Reformist organisations;

4.—To emancipate the workers from the Trade Unions which are merely palliative institutions;

5.—To prepare for the proletarian revolution by setting up Soviets or workers' councils in all branches of production, distribution and administration, in order that the workers may seize and maintain control.

With this object, to organise one Revolutionary Union:

(a) built up on the workshop basis, covering all workers, regardless of sex, craft or grade, who pledge themselves to work for the overthrow of Capitalism and the establishment of the workers' Soviets;

(b) organised into a department for reach industry or service;

(c) the unemployed being organised as a department of the One Revolutionary Union, so that they may have local and national representation in the workers' Soviets;

6.—To affiliate to the Communist Workers' International, Fourth International.

Those who subscribe to the above principles are invited to join the preliminary organisation. Membership card will be sent on receipt of one shilling to the preliminary committee of the Fourth International at 152 Fleet Street, London, E.C.

Taken from the Workers' Dreadnought, Vol. 8 No. 48, 11 February 1922.