| 'ONE BIG UNION' | |
| The downturn in the level of class struggle and the decline of the shop stewards' movement revived an old debate among socialists in Britain. Before the First World War there had been two basic approaches to the problem of trade union sectionalism, bureaucracy and reformism. 'Amalgamationists' advocated working within the existing trade unions to convert them into industrial unions through amalgamating all the competing unions in each industry. 'Dual unionists' sought the same end (or in some cases a single union for all workers), but advocated building new unions from scratch in the belief that the existing ones were beyond reform. [41] These two camps had been able to work side-by-side in the shop stewards' movement during the war, but when the movement began to die away the division between amalgamationists and dual unionists reappeared. | 41. See B. Holton, British Syndicalism 1900-14 (London: Pluto Press, 1976). |
| Most of the leaders of the engineering shop stewards' and miners' rank and file movements entered the CPGB, where they pursued the strategy of working to reform the unions from within. After Sylvia Pankhurst's expulsion from the CPGB in 1921, the Dreadnought group was therefore cut off from its former influences. This partly explains why from the end of 1921 the Dreadnought group moved in the opposite direction and adopted a 'dual unionist' stance. In August 1921 Sylvia Pankhurst wrote that the working class had to 'fight as one big union of workers to abolish Capitalism'. [42] Thereafter 'One Big Union' became the Dreadnought group's slogan for industrial organisation. The tactics pursued by the group during 1917-20 -- the creation of rank and file movements within the existing unions, the replacement of reformist leaders by revolutionaries, the democratisation of trade union structures and practices, and the conversion of trade and craft unions into industrial unions -- were abandoned. | 42. Workers' Dreadnought, 27 August 1921. |
| This change of attitude can also be explained by the group's view that the decline of rank and file activity had ruled out any immediate prospect of success in reforming the existing unions. In January 1922 Sylvia Pankhurst argued that trade union rules and structures could not be changed 'without long and hard effort . . . it must take many years to change them appreciably'. [43] In April 1923 she argued that those who pursued the tactic of trying to change the unions' leadership were mistakenly 'following in the footsteps of the early Socialists who put Red Flaggers into office, and saw them gradually transformed into the Social Patriots you denounce today'. The central problem was not one of leadership, but of the very nature of trade unionism itself : 'You are dissatisfied with the Union officials -- with all Union officials. Is it not time you ceased to blame particular individuals, and decided to abolish the institution itself?.' [44] Pankhurst also argued that the conversion of craft unions into industrial unions would still not overcome all the divisions within the working class: ‘The working class . . . must break down its craft barriers and its industrial barriers.’ [45] | 43. Workers'
Dreadnought, 28 January 1922.
44. Workers' Dreadnought, 21 April 1923. 45. Workers' Dreadnought, 27 August 1921 (emphasis added). |
| In February 1922 the Dreadnought group's newly-adopted opposition to the existing unions and its rejection of working within them was expressed in the programme of the Communist Workers' Party, which sought 'to emancipate the workers from Trade Unions which are merely palliative institutions'. The party's aim was : | |
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 each 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. [46] |
46. Workers' Dreadnought, 11 February 1922. |
| These aims were taken a step further seven months later, when the draft constitution for an All-Workers' Revolutionary Union of Workshop Committees was published in the Dreadnought. The AWRU's object was 'to emancipate the working class . . . by the overthrow of capitalism and the private property and wage system', with the AWRU itself serving as 'the machinery which will enable the workers to take control of production, transport and distribution, and administer all services for the benefit of the entire community'. It would support 'every form of industrial and active proletarian struggle which furthers its ultimate aim' and engage in 'propaganda. agitation and action . . . to promote the spread of class-consciousness and Communist ideals amongst the workers'. Describing the existing unions as 'bulwarks of the capitalist system' which 'by their sectionalism and craft distinctions . . . prevent the uniting of the workers as a class', the constitution stated : 'The AWRU rejects the policy of "Boring from within" the old Trade Unions; its object is to supersede them; it fights openly against them'. The proposed conditions of membership included prohibitions on taking office in any union except the AWRU, and on participating in any trade union-promoted workshop committee. The structure of the union would take the form of tiers of workshop, factory, district, area and national councils, formed by delegates who would be 'subject to recall at any time by those who appointed them'. [47] | 47. Workers' Dreadnought, 23 September 1922. |
| The proposed formation of the AWRU by the Dreadnought group was influenced by the example of the German left communists. During the German revolution tens of thousands of radical workers deserted the trade unions and formed revolutionary 'factory organisations'. In February 1920 these united to form the General Workers' Union of Germany (AAUD), allied to the KAPD. The Programme And Rules of the AAUD were published in the Dreadnought in November 1921, and the striking similarity between the AAUD and AWRU programmes points strongly to the conclusion that the Dreadnought group intended the AWRU to be a British equivalent of the AAUD. [48] | 48. Workers' Dreadnought, 5 November 1921. |
| In a text on 'The Organisation of the Proletariat's Class Struggle' (1921), Herman Gorter of the KAPD argued that 'the factory organisation is the organisation for the revolution in Western Europe'. [49] However, Gorter did not believe that the working class achieve revolutionary consciousness and succeed in its struggle against capitalism simply by organising on a factory by factory basis. Among the workers in the factory organisations there would inevitably be some who had a broader and clearer view of the class struggle than their fellow-workers. This minority should not remain dispersed among the various factory organisations, but should form itself into a separate party comprising 'the most conscious and prepared proletarian fighters'. [50] This necessity was acknowledged in the AAUD's Programme And Rules: 'The AAU . . . stands for the uniting of the most advanced revolutionary proletarians in a separate political organisation of purely proletarian-Communist character. It thereby recognises the political organisations united in the Communist Workers' International as necessary to the class struggle.' [51] The Political platform of the factory organisations was a simplified version of the party's programme. The factory organisations were open to all revolutionary workers, including, but not only, members of the KAPD. As Gorter explained: | 49. H.
Gorter, 'The Organisation of the Proletariat's Class Struggle' in D. Smart
(ed.), Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism (London: Pluto Press,
1978), p. 157
50. KAPD, 'Theses on the Role of the Party in the Proletarian Revolution' in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 2 (no date), p. 72. 51. Workers' Dreadnought, 5 November 1921. |
The factory organisation endows its members with the most general understanding of the revolution, e.g. the nature and significance of the workers' councils (soviets) and of the dictatorship of the proletariat. |
52. Gorter, The Organisation of the Proletariat's Class Struggle' in D. Smart (ed.), Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 1978), p. 162. |
| The crucial difference between these arrangements and those proposed by the Dreadnought group was the absence from the latter of any stress on the need for the party. When the Dreadnought group formed the Communist Workers' Party in imitation of the KAPD, its platform consisted of six points: to spread communist ideas; electoral abstention and anti-parliamentary propaganda; refusal of affiliation to the Labour Party or any other reformist organisation; to emancipate workers from the existing trade unions; to organise 'One Revolutionary Union' as the forerunner of the workers' councils; and affiliation to the Fourth (Communist Workers') International. Seven months later the AWRU was formed. Far from being a watered-down version of the CWP (as the AAUD was of the KAPD), the AWRU adopted the CWP programme in its entirety. If anything, in fact, the AWRU's programme was more comprehensive than the CWP's platform. Instead of being open to 'all workers who pledge themselves to work for the overthrow of Capitalism and the establishment of the workers' Soviets' (as the CWP programme originally proposed), membership of the AWRU was conditional on acceptance of all the above-mentioned points. In contrast to the German left communists' conception of the relationship between Party and Union, in the Dreadnought group's scheme the AWRU simply superseded the CWP; the Party was now redundant, its role and programme taken over completely by the Union. Whereas Gorter argued that by itself 'the factory organisation is not sufficient' [53] and insisted on the need for separate political organisation, the Dreadnought group believed that the factory organisation (AWRU) would suffice on its own. | 53. Workers' Dreadnought, p. 159. |
| THE AWRU: FORERUNNER OR NON-STARTER ? | |
| The idea that the organisations formed to struggle within and against capitalism would prefigure the administrative institutions of communist society was an important aspect of the Dreadnought group's proposals for the establishment of 'One Big Union'. During 1917-20 the group had criticised the existing trade unions from the standpoint of wanting to see the emergence of organisations which workers would use to struggle against capitalism, overthrow the system, and thereafter administer communist society. The idea behind the formation of the AWRU -- to 'create the councils in the workshops in order that they may dispossess the Capitalist and afterwards carry on under Communism' [54] -- was no different. After 1920 the Dreadnought group had the same long-term aim as before, but sought to realise it by different means. | 54. Workers' Dreadnought, 10 May 1924. |
| The terms used in the Workers' Dreadnought to describe the administrative machinery of communist society -- such as 'a world federation of workers' industrial republics' or 'a worldwide federation of communist republics administered by occupational soviets' -- reveal the group's view of the fundamental features of communist administration. It would be based on workplaces, with the basic unit being the workshop, only socially-productive workers would be able to participate in administration, and representatives would be mandated delegates. In other words, the administration of communist society would share the characteristics of the workers' organisations formed to overthrow capitalism. In February 1922 Pankhurst wrote that 'the Soviets, or workers' occupational councils, will form the administrative machinery for supplying the needs of the people in Communist society; they will also make the revolution by seizing control of all the industries and services of the community'. [55] The 'One Big Union' was an embryonic Soviet; the Soviet was a fully-developed 'One Big Union'. This is what the Dreadnought group meant in 1923 when it stated: 'Communism and the All-Workers' Revolutionary Union are synonymous.' [56] | 55. Workers'
Dreadnought, 4 February 1922.
56. Workers' Dreadnought, 8 September 1923. |
| Yet the historical experiences upon which the group could have drawn -- such as the revolutions in Russia in 1905 and 1917 and in Germany in 1918 -- contained no precedents to support the idea that Soviets or workers' councils would emerge through the development of 'One Big Union'. The soviets of the Russian revolutions and the workers' councils of the German revolution did not develop from previously existing organisations. Instead, they were created more or less spontaneously by the working class in the course of its mass struggles. Before 1921 it had been from mass strike movements that the Dreadnought group had expected soviets to emerge. The necessity for any pre-existing revolutionary workers' union, such as the AWRU, was not mentioned by the group during this period. | |
| After 1921, however, circumstances had changed, and were quite unlike the situations which had prevailed in Russia and Germany. There was little prospect of soviets emerging as a product of mass struggle -- for the simple reason that there was no mass struggle going on. The declining number of strikes that did take place focused mainly on defensive, 'economistic' issues and took place among the working class section by section, rather than generally and simultaneously. A demoralised working class faced high unemployment, rank and file activity had declined drastically, and trade union amalgamations were strengthening union bureaucracies. This was hardly the most favourable climate for the construction of brand-new industrial organisations of any sort, let alone revolutionary ones. The Dreadnought group's idea that the AWRU might develop into a soviet-type organisation, uniting and extending strikes, developing them politically, and challenging the power of the capitalist state, bore little relation to the actual level of class struggle and the preoccupations of most workers. | |
| If workers' councils were unlikely to emerge spontaneously, however, might not an alternative have been to force their emergence artificially, by preparing the way for their development through an organisation such as the AWRU? Even this strategy would appear to have been over-ambitious in the context of the period after 1920. It is difficult to see what activities the AWRU could actually have become involved in during these years. Its draft constitution rejected the role of bargaining and negotiating within capitalism (over wages, hours, working conditions and so on), but there was little prospect of the class struggle having any other content at this time. Apart from converting individual workers to socialism, one by one, through general propaganda, the most the AWRU could have done would have been to wait until the next upsurge in class struggle and class consciousness. Yet such an upsurge would have provided exactly the sort of circumstances in which, as the Russian and German examples had shown, soviets might have arisen, but in which the existence of the AWRU would have made little difference to whether they did or not. | |
| Besides the unpromising circumstances prevailing in Britain after 1920, longer-term historical conditions were also stacked against the AWRU's chances of success. Dual unionism -- the position adopted by the Dreadnought group after 1921 -- had never been found to be a fruitful area in which to work, because the idea of building completely new unions from scratch appeared to be unsuitable for Britain. Dual unionism had made its greatest progress in the United States, through the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The working class in the USA was relatively mobile in geographical and occupational terms. The archetypal IWW members were the 'bums' who travelled around the country on the tramp or by the railroad taking work wherever they could find it. Such workers had no attachment to any particular factory or occupation; they could regard themselves as part of one big class and thus recognise the need for one big union. Moreover, a rejection of 'political' activity in favour of organisation on the job made sense to the many immigrant workers in the IWW who were denied the vote. | |
| However, craft workers aside, the level of unionisation was relatively low in the United States; IWW recruits came predominantly from the large numbers of previously unorganised workers. Where it existed, in fact, the IWW was usually the only union, rather than the dual unionist model of a revolutionary organisation formed in direct opposition to an established reformist craft union. None of these factors which encouraged the growth of the IWW in the first decade of the twentieth century applied in Britain during the same period. Compared to its American comrades the British working class was relatively immobile in geographical and occupational terms, and trade union organisation was sufficiently widespread to be able to recruit previously unorganised workers into existing unions. Attempts to set up new unions necessarily had to be in rivalry to the existing unions, and so could be readily portrayed as divisive of working class unity. | |
| In fact, the actual fate of the AWRU testifies just as eloquently to the shortcomings of its founders' ideas as all the criticisms raised so far. In reality, the AWRU does not seem to have existed at all outside the pages of the Workers' Dreadnought. In July 1923, ten months after the publication of the AWRU's draft constitution, an article in the Dreadnought addressed 'To The Miners Of Great Britain' announced that the AWRU was preparing an intensive campaign to promote the idea of building 'One Big Union' to seize control of industry and administer society. The author admitted, however, that 'There are no funds . . . We are few. The revolutionary truth has few spokesmen'. [57] Two months later the Dreadnought published a second article by the same author, which stated: 'From replies to the recent article . . . it is obvious that revolutionary sentiment, and the will to propagate and accomplish its end, is not dead.' This second article was titled 'Where Is The AWRU?', and in answer to this question the author wrote that 'seemingly its half-developed, swaddled form is nurtured in the minds of hundreds, aye thousands of comrades'. [58] Despite the evident optimism of these remarks, however, the AWRU seems to have disappeared without trace. | 57. Workers'
Dreadnought, 14 July 1923.
58. Workers' Dreadnought, 8 September 1923. |
| THE UNEMPLOYED WORKERS' ORGANISATION | |
| Given the objective conditions of the period after 1920, and in particular the high rate of unemployment in Britain, it is hardly surprising that the AWRU made far less progress than another Dreadnought-sponsored body: the Unemployed Workers' Organisation. | |
| The UWO's Manifesto, Rules and Constitution were published in the Dreadnought in July 1923. The UWO was set up by unemployed workers who opposed the CPGB-dominated National Unemployed Workers' Movement's 'reformist' demand for 'work or full maintenance' and its aim of affiliating to the Labour Party and TUC. [59] The Dreadnought group was not instrumental in establishing the UWO, but an editorial in the paper stated that 'having read its declaration of principles, and believing these were tending towards our own direction, and an improvement on those of the older organisation of the unemployed, we agreed to allow the new organisation to ventilate its views in this paper so far as considerations of space and policy may permit'. [60] The UWO's Manifesto was modelled word-for-word on the 1908 Preamble of the Chicago IWW (the 'anti-political' wing of the IWW, as opposed to the 'political' Detroit wing). In the words of the IWW Preamble, and in similar vein to the constitution of the AWRU, the UWO's Manifesto declared that 'by organising industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old'. [61] | 59. Workers'
Dreadnought, 1 September 1923.
60. Workers' Dreadnought, 4 August 1923. 61. Workers' Dreadnought, 7 July 1923. |
| Compared to the AWRU the UWO's rise was positively meteoric. According to reports published in the Dreadnought it recruited most of its membership among disaffected NUWM members in areas of London such as Edmonton, Poplar, Bow, Bromley, Millwall, South West Ham, Lambeth and Camberwell: 'Branch after branch is dropping away from the old Movement and joining the new. As fast as the members are dropping out of the NUWM they are coming into the UWO.' [62] In January 1924 the Dreadnought reported that a UWO branch was being formed in Leeds, while the total membership in London had reached 'well over 3000'. The UWO was 'still going strong and the membership is increasing by leaps and bounds'. [63] | 62. Workers'
Dreadnought, 4 and 18 August, 1 September and 20 October 1923.
63. Workers' Dreadnought, 19 January 1924. |
| Yet the significance of the UWO's growth should not be overestimated. According to the organisation's Manifesto the working class had to 'take possession of the earth and machinery of production, and abolish the wage system. The army of production must be organised not only for the everyday struggle with Capitalism, but also to carry on production when Capitalism shall have been overthrown.' [64] However, the UWO did not organise the 'army of production'. It organised an army out of production. Precisely because the UWO was an organisation of the unemployed, there was no way that it could have fulfilled the aims stated in its own Manifesto. As unemployed workers the UWO's members were in no position to wield the sort of power which would have enabled them to take over the means of production. The faster the UWO grew, the more this basic flaw in its strategy was exposed. And the faster the unemployed workers' organisation grew, the more it pointed to the lack of viability of any workplace organisations such as the AWRU. | 64. Workers' Dreadnought, 7 July 1923. |
| REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION: TWO VIEWS | |
| A simple lesson can be drawn from the episode of the stillborn AWRU. Mass organisations with revolutionary aspirations are a product of periods of upsurge in the class struggle, when large numbers of people are drawn into conflict with the existing order and established ideas. They cannot survive in the absence of such conditions. | |
| In contrast to the Dreadnought group Guy Aldred seems to have had a greater awareness of this link between the level of class struggle and the possibilities for organisation. By 1920 Aldred had recognised that with the ebb of the post-war revolutionary wave the revolutionary potential of the shop stewards' and workers' committee movement was in decline. Disagreeing with the view that the existing workers' committees were the 'only legitimate British equivalent to the Russian soviets', Aldred argued that 'the actual Industrial Committee arises out of the commodity struggle, and tends to function as the organ of that struggle'. [65] If nothing except commodity struggles (that is, disputes over the price and conditions of sale of labour power) were on the agenda, then the workers' committees faced one or other of two fates. Either they would 'function as the organ' of those struggles, lapsing into a form of radical trade unionism, or, if they tried to preserve their revolutionary aims, they would end up as 'small associations for propaganda . . . unable to enter into the direct proletarian struggle for emancipation'. [66] | 65. Spur,
March 1920.
66. Spur, October 1920. |
| Vernon Richards' remarks about the question of industrial organisation are pertinent here : | |
To be consistent, the anarcho-syndicalist must, we believe, hold the view that the reason why the workers are not revolutionary is that the trade unions are reformist and reactionary : and that their structure prevents control from below and openly encourages the emergence of a bureaucracy which takes over all initiative into its own hands, etc. This seems to us a mistaken view. It assumes that the worker, by definition, must be revolutionary instead of recognising that he is as much the product (and the victim) of the society he lives in . . . In other words, the trade unions are what they are because the workers are what they are, and not vice versa. And for this reason, those anarchists who are less interested in the revolutionary workers' organisation, consider the problem of the organisation as secondary to that of the individual . . . we have no fears that when sufficient workers have become revolutionaries they will, if they think it necessary, build up their own organisations. This is quite different from creating the revolutionary organisations first and then looking for the revolutionaries (in the reformist trade unions in which most workers are to be found) afterwards. [67] |
67. V. Richards, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution, 3rd edn (London: Freedom Press, 1983), p. 198 (emphases in original). |
| These comments accurately define the differences between the Dreadnought group and Aldred and his comrades. A common image in the Dreadnought's accounts of industrial struggles was of a combative, militant rank and file restrained and betrayed by cautious, conservative union bureaucrats: 'the men were prepared to fight but were held back, and consequently let down, by the men they trusted -- their officials'. [68] The attempt to set up the AWRU was premised on the attitude criticised by Richards : that new organisations had to be created in which workers' revolutionary spirit would be allowed untrammelled expression, rather than meeting with suppression as it did in the trade unions. | 68. Workers' Dreadnought, 5 January 1924. |
| Guy Aldred, on the other hand, stood closer to the position supported by Richards. Part of the reason for this was probably that Aldred had already passed through, and later repudiated, a phase when he supported dual unionism. In 1907 Aldred had helped to set up the Industrial Union of Direct Actionists, whose aim was 'to organise the workers on a revolutionary economic basis' with 'Direct Action and the Social General Strike' as its weapons. [69] In Aldred's view 'the workers had to build up their social organisation and evolve their political expression of organisation within the womb of the old society'. [70] The IUDA would fill this need. At that time, therefore, Aldred supported the sort of prefigurative organisation which the Dreadnought group proposed fifteen years later when it formed the AWRU. | 69. G.
Aldred, No Traitors Gait!, (Glasgow: Strickland Press, 1955-63),
vol. II no. 3, p. 359.
70. G. Aldred, No Traitors Gait!, (Glasgow: Strickland Press, 1955-63), vol. II no. 5, p. 113. |
| Aldred soon realised, however, that the IUDA could only fulfil its revolutionary role if its members held revolutionary ideas. The IUDA needed a propagandist organisation working alongside it, spreading communist ideas among the working class. Aldred therefore began to set up Communist Propaganda Groups to infuse potential IUDA members with communist principles. As it turned out, these propaganda groups outlived the IUDA. Thereafter Aldred consistently put the need for propaganda before the need for organisation, and abandoned dual unionism. | |
| Debating the issue of industrial unionism in 1919 Aldred argued: 'The workers functioned under capitalist society as so much commodities . . . and though they had an industrial union, their position remained the same.' Industrial unions could have just as much of a 'palliative purpose' as trade unions. [71] There was no such thing as an inherently revolutionary form of organisation. Organisations merely reflected the consciousness of their members, and could only function in a revolutionary manner if their members were revolutionaries. The most direct route to revolution, therefore, would be through propaganda aimed at developing communist ideas among the working class. Aldred's method was 'to make Socialists first in order to bring about Socialism. But industrial unionism aimed at organising the workers without making them Socialists.' [72] It was only possible to work for dual unionism 'by postponing Socialism and side-tracking Socialist propaganda'. [73] Thus Aldred summed up his attitude as follows: 'Industrial unionism was a question of machinery and method. It was never one of principle or philosophy . . . It ignored the reality of Socialism, the need for Idealism, and so promoted confusion.' [74] | 71. Spur,
August 1919.
72. Spur, August 1919. 73. Commune, September 1923. 74. G. Aldred, Dogmas Discarded: An Autobiography of Thought, Part II (Glasgow: Strickland Press, 1940), pp. 58-9. |
| Aldred's comrades shared this point of view. An article in the Spur in 1917 stated that | |
the great mass of the workers . . . are an easy prey to the wiles of the Capitalist class, and what is worse, to the ineptitude of their self-appointed leaders. We must aim at securing an intelligent class-conscious rank and file. In order to achieve this the paramount need is knowledge. Educate! Educate! Educate! must be our first work. Then we can discuss the question of organisation. [75] |
75. Spur, March 1917. |
| Rose Witcop agreed with these priorities. Replying to a letter complaining about the lack of 'constructive details' in the Spur. Witcop wrote: 'We believe that it is enough at present to point out the many evils from which we suffer today; whilst in discussing freely first principles we are helping along a mental reconstruction which is preparing us for the social change.' [76] | 76. Spur, July 1917. |
| When workers were conscious of the need for communism they would create whatever form of organisation they required in the course of the revolution itself, but these organisations could not be established in embryo before their hour of need. Thus Aldred did not share the Dreadnought group's attachment to the formation of a prefigurative organisation. In June 1923, when Aldred and Pankhurst opposed each other in a public debate on the question 'Is industrial organisation necessary before the social revolution?', Pankhurst affirmed this necessity and Aldred denied it. [77] The APCF also disagreed with the KAPD's view that workers should desert the existing trade unions and form revolutionary factory organisations such as the AAUD. In 1925 the Commune stated: 'The Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation does not believe in, and cannot understand either the need for or the possibility of factory organisation. On this point the APCF differs from the KAPD.' [78] | 77. Workers'
Dreadnought, 23 June and 7 July 1923.
78. Commune, November 1925. |
| In contrast to the Dreadnought group and the KAPD, Aldred advocated 'Spontaneous Social Revolution'. [79] The organisations that had carried out the Russian revolution, for example, had not been set up in advance by any small group of leaders, nor had they developed from any previously-existing organisations; they had been thrown up by the revolutionary struggle itself -- that is, 'spontaneously'. [80] The soviets, Aldred and his comrades argued, would not emerge until the hour of the revolution had arrived. Thus in October 1920 the Glasgow Communist Group stated that while it disagreed 'emphatically' with 'the idea of supporting or working for workers' committees as at present existing', it 'heartily' supported 'the Soviet or Revolutionary Workers' Council System as it will be developed during the transition stage and after the Revolution' . [81] | 79. Commune,
March 1924.
80. Spur, October 1918. 81. Spur, October 1920. |
| After 1920, therefore, there seems to have been little common ground between the Dreadnought group and Aldred and his comrades with regard to the issue of industrial organisation. Both groups held more or less the same critique of the existing trade unions, but disagreed over what, if anything, should take their place. | |
| Things can be said in support of both sides in the argument. Aldred's groups were right to point out that mass revolutionary organisations could not be expected to emerge except during the revolutionary struggle itself, and that attempts to set up or sustain such organisations in a period of declining class struggle would not succeed. During such periods mass organisations could exist only on a reformist basis; revolutionary organisations could maintain their communist principles, but not hope to preserve or attract mass support. | |
| It was one of anti-parliamentarism's basic tenets that certain forms of organisation were inherently reactionary, because they did not allow the mass of the working class to participate actively in their own struggles. This did not necessarily mean, however, that there could be forms of organisation which were inherently revolutionary. Thus Aldred and his comrades were right to stress the importance of propaganda for communism, the goal which the supposedly revolutionary organisational forms were intended to achieve. Yet here the argument becomes more complex. Trade unionism could be said to hinder workers' struggles in two senses. First, it embodies particular notions which condition the way workers set about organising and conducting their struggles, and the aims to which they think they can aspire. In this sense revolutionaries had to oppose trade unionist ideology with another set of ideas: the socialist critique of capitalism, and propaganda for the communist alternative. | |
| However, revolutions do not break out overnight when workers are suddenly converted to a new vision of society. They develop out of the most mundane of struggles. And it is here that workers confront trade unionism in its material form: its rule books, its divisiveness, its bureaucracy and so on. Now the argument shifts in favour of the Dreadnought group. On its own, a rejection of the trade unions, and the development of new forms of organisation designed to facilitate the active participation of all workers, would not have been a sufficient condition for the success of the revolution. But what is equally certain is that capitalism could not be overthrown without the self-organisation and mass activity which the forms of organisation proposed by the Dreadnought group were intended to foster. | |
| In one sense the ideas of the two groups after 1920 can be seen as polar opposites. In another, more fruitful sense, they can be seen as representing two sides of a dilemma that was impossible to resolve in the circumstances of the time. Revolutionaries can be torn between two impulses : on the one hand their commitment to the struggles of the working class and their desire to do something now, and on the other hand their commitment to the final goal of communism. In periods of radical class struggle the conflict between these two impulses disappears, because immediate actions appear to have a direct bearing on whether or not the final goal is achieved. In non-revolutionary periods, however it is far more difficult to effectively reconcile these two impulses, because it appears as if one can only be pursued at the expense of the other. | |
| The Dreadnought group's attempt to set up the AWRU was an effort to intervene in order to precipitate events; by opting to concentrate on propaganda for communism Aldred’s group took a longer-term view. Each group's actions lacked the dimensions of the other. Not until the period of the Spanish Civil War, but more so the period of the Second World War, would the anti-parliamentary communists once again be able to relate their everyday interventions in the class struggle to their basic principles and final goal. In the meantime, they faced the dilemma of being revolutionaries in a non-revolutionary period. Part II, covering the years 1925-35, looks at how the anti-parliamentary communists faced up to the problems this posed. |
