Originally published in The Leninist No.97 December 6 1990. Available on our archive here
Declaration to the Working Class of Great Britain
The Euro Executive Committee, meeting over the first weekend of September, unanimously voted to recommend to their December 8-9 42nd Congress that all reference to “communism” be dropped in the renaming of their organisation.
That the Euros are completing their transformation into an openly bourgeois trend at this moment in time comes as no surprise. Due to the ignominious collapse of bureaucratic socialism and ‘official communism’ in Eastern Europe and the counterrevolutionary process unfolding in the USSR, the world has been plunged into a period of ideological reaction. The leaders and propagandists of capitalism are brimming with confidence. They have triumphantly declared that communism and Marxism-Leninism – capitalism’s mortal enemy – is dead. For the moment at least, they therefore no longer need tame ‘communists’ like the Euros.
Neither Marxism-Leninism nor communism is dead. Marxism-Leninism lives because it is true. Only by using the scientific method first developed by Karl Marx can we really understand the present 1914-type general crisis of bureaucratic socialism and the ‘official’ world communist movement. Only by using Marxism can we understand that, far from the West’s victory in the Cold War ending capitalism’s antagonistic contradictions, they are growing ever more pronounced. And only using Marxism can we end capitalism: a system which, in spite of its claims that it will bring peace and plenty, will only bring mass unemployment, starvation and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Capitalism is a decadent system which long ago outlived its usefulness. Communism still represents the future of humanity.
The Euros have never had the slightest legitimacy in using the proud name of our Party, the Communist Party of Great Britain. Only a disciplined party steeled in Marxist-Leninist ideology deserves to be called the Communist Party.
In the light of the Euros’ decision to change their name, our organisation will no longer call itself the Communist Party of Great Britain (The Leninist). The Leninist will remain our central organ of our Party but we no longer need a suffix in order to distinguish ourselves from the Euro traitors. From now on we will simply call ourselves the Communist Party of Great Britain. That name must not be abandoned, to be buried by the Euros or taken over by one of the other crisis ridden ‘official communist’ rumps.
Our main task remains reforging the CPGB. Although we have the name of the Party, the Party itself has been liquidated. This situation has to be, and will be, reversed. At the moment, however, our organisation remains painfully weak and, in most areas of the country, non-existent. Therefore, in order to indicate what stage we are at, and what tasks we have ahead of ourselves, the leadership of our organisation will use the name Provisional Central Committee.
There is clearly a burning need for a strong Communist Party. Without a strong Communist Party the working class has nothing, with it, everything. That is why our central overriding aim remains reforging the Communist Party of Great Britain. The CPGB will not be reforged through uniting the various opportunist fragments of ‘official communism’. No, a strong Communist Party will only be built on the solid foundations of Marxism-Leninism and through taking the consistent organisational and ideological struggle we have been waging since November 1981 to new heights. A landmark in this will be the coming publication of a draft programme of the CPGB around which genuine communist forces can be won and trained.
The programme will be finalised, and the provisional nature of our leadership ended, at a refounding Congress of the CPGB which we will call as soon as the basis for such a qualitative development has been laid.
Now that the Euro organisation has given up pretending to have anything to do with communism, this conference of Leninists instructs it to hand over all Party property, files and records. The Euros have betrayed all the principles on which our Party was founded in July 1920, everything that was good and fine in our Party’s history and tradition. Their right over Party property, files and records exists only in bourgeois law.
Any remaining communists in the Euro organisation or the other ‘official communist’ rumps should now act under the leadership and discipline of the CPGB. We call upon these comrades, along with all those communists who have left or have been driven out of the CPGB by opportunism, to join us in the great work that lies ahead. Together we can build the strong Communist Party our class needs.