First Published: Class Struggle, Vol 2, No. 1, August 1977
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
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After the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist League of Britain (RCLB), the Editor of ’Class Struggle’ interviewed the Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCLB. In this interview the Secretary elaborates on the importance of the founding of the RCLB and the adoption of its ’Manifesto’, as well as explaining some of the important political points contained in the ’Manifesto’.
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COULD YOU FIRST EXPLAIN WHAT THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF BRITAIN IS?
Secretary: The Revolutionary Communist League is an organisation which aims to rebuild the revolutionary Party of the working class.
The ’Communist Party of Great Britain’ is no longer that Party. It has been taken over by revisionists. They still use the name of Communism but they have robbed it of its revolutionary spirit. So the working class has no Party to lead it in its struggles against the bourgeoisie. We must work hard to rebuild that Party so that the working class can fight back successfully and overthrow the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system in a victorious socialist revolution.
WHY IS IT CALLED THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST LEAGUE?
Sec: We absolutely refuse to give up the name of Communists just because the revisionists have dragged it in the mud and because the bourgeoisie attack us. No, we will hold it high. At the same time we want to explain clearly and quickly to fellow workers that we are completely different from the rotten ’Communist Party of Great Britain’. We are Revolutionary Communists.
We uphold the great victories of the working class throughout the world especially the victories in China and Albania. These lessons are summed up in the science of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. This is what guides our thinking in the Revolutionary Communist League and our work in the struggles of the working class.
HOW WAS THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST LEAGUE BUILT?
Sec: The founding of the League is a victory for Mao Tsetung’s teaching on how to win unity in a revolutionary movement – by struggle – by thrashing over differences of principle until you reach Common thinking so you can fight with one heart and mind.
As Mao Tsetung said, “Active ideological struggle is the weapon for ensuring unity”.
The Revolutionary Communist League is the result of a thorough, principled struggle for unity in the interests of the working class by two previous organizations, The Communist Federation of Britain (Marxist Leninist) and The Communist Unity Association (Marxist-Leninist). This struggle lasted one year and firm unity has been reached on all major questions.
The founding of the League is a victory against the division of the revolutionary Communist movement into many small groups.
In the past the CFB was a federation consisting of a number of groups which talked about unity but went their own sweet way. So the CFB didn’t give a strong lead on the way forward for the working class as a whole.
The CUA also had some features of small group mentality. But both organizations have struggled hard against this error, which is totally against the interests of the working class.
The Revolutionary Communist League which has just been founded is a fully democratic centralist organization, able to give a united, centralized lead to its comrades and to the working class and also able to promote lively working class democracy and initiative within its ranks in the struggle to carry the fight forward. It is a national Party-building organization with branches in several cities and towns in Britain.
THE RCL HAS ADOPTED A MANIFESTO. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE MANIFESTO?
Sec: The Manifesto spells out firmly the general line on the way forward for the working class in the struggle within Britain and in the world as a whole. It sums up certain major fundamental Communist principles guiding our work. It shows how we must overcome the influence of bourgeois ideas within the working class in order to win unity and victory. And it shows the way forward in building the revolutionary Communist Party of the working class.
Every worker who uses his head knows we must fight back against the bosses and their state, and knows we mustn’t listen to their lies. But how are we going to fight back? How are we going to counter attack? Where are we going to direct our fire exactly? We need clear lines and policies to guide our fight and to unite all our fire onto the target – the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie.
That’s what the Manifesto is for.
WHY IS IT CALLED A MANIFESTO AND NOT A PROGRAMME?
Sec: The Manifesto is a good step forward but it is not enough. We are out, to rebuild the vanguard Party of the working class, the genuine revolutionary Communist Party. Such a Party, must have a programme, which says clearly the long term aims of the working class and also the short term steps of how we are going to get there. To draw up a really good programme needs a lot of study – study of the scientific lessons of struggle in other countries and study of the actual conditions Our class, the working class, faces here – and we have got to combine that study with practice and use it to guide our practice. All this takes hard struggle, hard work and experience, and the Revolutionary Communist League is not yet strong enough to write such a programme.
But we are strong enough to take an important step in this direction. That is what the Manifesto of the RCL is. It makes our stand clear so that we can struggle to reach unity with other genuine revolutionary Communists in other organizations in Britain. It gives guidance for our class struggle which we can strengthen and test in practice. It takes us an important way towards that programme of the revolutionary Communist Party of the working class.
We will publish the Manifesto within a month and through ’Class Struggle’ urge all workers who want to see the revolutionary Communist Party built, to study it.
WHAT IS THE RCL’S GENERAL VIEW OF THE WORLD SITUATION?
Sec: The world is in upheaval and the threat of a new world war is very real, but basically the situation is excellent!
As the Manifesto says, we must uphold ’Chairman Mao’s theory of the “three worlds”.
This sums up the situation very concisely and guides the struggle of the working class in Britain and internationally. The main enemy of the peoples of the world are the two superpowers. The Soviet Union and the United States. These are the “first world” .They meddle everywhere striving for world domination.
The main force opposing them are the developing countries of the third world, of Asia, Africa and Latin America. These countries have mostly all won formal independence form their colonial masters but they are mostly still economically oppressed and exploited by imperialism, especially the superpowers. Just because they are so oppressed they are fighting back more and more, increasing their unity and strength.
In between the first and third worlds is the second world of second rate imperialists’ countries like Britain. They try to continue to exploit the peoples of the third world but they are running into more and more resistance. But at the same time they are also partly oppressed themselves by the superpowers.
So what should the working class do in Britain? We will firmly add our weight to the great international united front which is developing against imperialism, especially the superpowers. This is very important for us because Europe is the main focus of the struggle between the two superpowers.
We will make sure that all workers in Britain understand their best friends are the oppressed peoples and nations of the world. And although we will never rely on our own bourgeoisie we will struggle to make the British government take a better stand internationally and line up more with the third world in the struggle against the superpowers. In order to do this we must fight British imperialism particularly strongly.
THE MANIFESTO RAISES THE QUESTION OF A WAR BETWEEN THE TWO SUPERPOWERS. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS?
Sec: Both superpowers are out for world domination. The U.S. wants to hang on to it as much as possible. The Soviet Union wants to grab it from them. Since the beginning of the imperialist era the biggest imperialist powers have fought to divide and redivide the world. This battle inevitably leads to war.
Although the Soviet Union was once a great socialist state in which the working class held state power, it has been taken over by a new bourgeois ruling class. It is now a superpower. It is as much socialist as Nazi Germany was ’National Socialist’. But its talk of socialism disarms some people and makes the Soviet Union especially dangerous. Because it is the rising superpower it is the most dangerous source of war.
The working class in Britain and throughout the world must get prepared for this war between the superpowers. We must open our eyes to the threat from the Soviet Union which is building up its army, navy and airforce behind all its talk of peace and detente. But we must also firmly refuse to rely on U.S. imperialism. Only preparations for a true people’s war of national resistance led by the working class can defeat the threat of aggression from the superpowers. We must get ready now to fight and win that war!
AS YOU SAY, THE TWO SUPERPOWERS ARE THE MAIN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.DOES THIS MEAN WE SHOULD UNITE WITH OUR BOSSES AGAINST THEM, INSTEAD OF FIGHTING FOR THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION?
Sec: Definitely not! Our main enemy in Britain is the British monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie and we will overthrow it by socialist revolution. But we must link our fight with the fight of the international working class and oppressed peoples against the superpowers, because the superpowers are the main enemies of the people of the world.
Our strategy for the socialist revolution is to unite all who can be united against the monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie under the leadership of the working class and its vanguard party. One part of that work is to fight against and expose the reactionary, international line of the British ruling class of appeasing Soviet social imperialism, relying on U.S. imperialism and continuing to try to oppress and exploit the oppressed, peoples and nations of the world. Fighting against this, like the fight against all the other reactionary acts of the bourgeoisie helps to educate the working class and working people and carry the socialist revolution forward. But if we also actually manage to force the government to take a better stand internationally this weakens the superpowers and cuts back their sphere of activity. If so, so much the better!
THERE IS A SECTION OF THE MANIFESTO DEALING WITH OPPORTUNISM. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS?
Sec: Opportunism is sacrificing the basic and long term interests of the working class for the supposed interests of the moment. It’s a cancer in the working class movement which undermines our struggle again and again. Opportunists are real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement. People like Jack Jones and Scanlon.
Opportunism is especially strong in imperialist countries like Britain because the bourgeoisie uses the super-profits it gets from imperialist exploitation to bribe and soften up a section of the working class and working people.
The opportunists in the working class movement talk about class struggle up to a point, but they will never go all out and they will never carry the struggle right through to overthrowing the capitalist system. They just seek reforms within the capitalist system and damp down or mislead the unity and strength of the workers’ struggle. And because they don’t develop the workers’ struggle but weaken it instead they stop us eve n winning some reforms and concessions from the bosses, which we could get in the course of fighting for socialist revolution.
The revisionists are the most dangerous opportunists because they use the name of Communism but practice opportunism. They undermine the struggle of revolutionary Communists.
WHAT ARE THE TASKS OF COMMUNISTS AT THE PRESENT TIME?
Sec: There are many tasks but what is the central task? It’s to build the revolutionary Communist Party of the working class again. The last few years have shown yet again that without our own Party the working class cannot carry on the fight well and raise it to a higher level. Look at the excellent fighting spirit shown by workers in the early 70’s in the struggle against the Industrial Relations Act or in the miners’ strike. The reason why we couldn’t keep this up is because we didn’t have a genuine leading working class Party.
The opportunists – the revisionists, the Trotskyists, the ’left’ Labour leaders – made a big show of being militant but backed down and misled the struggle.
They told us we had to behave in order to help the Labour government. But the Labour Party has been doing the work of the bourgeoisie even better that the Conservatives could!
We need a vanguard working class Party with the best members of the working class in it, linked with the mass of the workers and guided by the scientific thinking won by the international Communist movement in its struggles over many years.
That’s our central task. One important way to achieve it is to concentrate on building Communist bases particularly among the industrial working class.
Another way is to struggle for unity with other genuine Marxist-Leninists, other revolutionary Communists in Britain today.
We must get our thinking united on all major questions and then unite in a firm disciplined organization. The founding of the Revolutionary Communist League is a big step towards this. We pledge ourselves to go on fighting for working class unity and working class principles until once again we have a genuine revolutionary Communist Party in this country.