Principles and Tactics

The first text in this section, APCF Aims, was published in 1935, and thus predates the first issue of the journal Solidarity by 3 years (1). Nevertheless it is a good summary of the political outlook of the APCF throughout World War II. The main points in APCF Aims are that the APCF opposes both parliamentarism and trade unionism, and that it does so within the framework of an analysis of the "permanent crisis of capitalism". This in itself is enough to place the APCF firmly within the tradition of council communism

The ideas of council communism were developed by the left wing of the Dutch and German communist movements, before, during and after the First World War (2). Their most well known exponent was Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960). The impetus for council communism came from the need to explain the betrayal of the working class by its parliamentary and trade union leaders, during the First World War and the post-war revolutionary wave, as well as the defeat of the revolutionary wave itself. According to council communism (3), the parliamentary party and the trade unions were forms of organisation which could only be used by the working class during the period of capitalist ascendancy in the second half of the 19^th century. They were the natural forms of working class organisation during this period, when the stability of capitalism made revolution impossible, but workers could win many improvements in their living and working conditions by struggling within capitalism. The outbreak of the First World War showed that this period was over, and capitalism had entered into its decadent phase. Henceforth workers could gain nothing by struggling within capitalism. On the contrary, so long as capitalism survived, workers only prospect was increasing poverty, unemployment, and death in inter-imperialist war. Revolution was on the historical agenda, and with it a return to the earlier working class tradition of insurrectionary struggle. This was proved by the Russian revolution, during which the working class also developed the new form of organisation by which it seizes power and transforms society: the workers councils, or soviets.

According to the council communists, it is futile to expect parliamentary and trade union leaders to ever be won over to the cause of revolution. They have a vested interest in defending their own organisations which are now part of the capitalist state. These organisations, parliamentary parties and trade unions, as well as their reactionary leaders, will have to be destroyed during the revolution along with the rest of the state apparatus. The failure of the revolutionary wave was explained by the failure of the working class to free itself from these outmoded traditions of parliamentarism and trade unionism. The primary task of revolutionaries is to combat influence of these traditions within the working class. Hence council communists reject any form of participation either in parliament or trade unions.

Council communism developed the ideas of pre-war left-wing marxists notably Rosa Luxemburg. Council communists always consider themselves to be marxists. Thus the introduction to the longest article in this section, the Principles And Tactics of The APCF, which presents the ideas of the APCF as "Anarcho-Marxism", is rather misleading.

As noted in our BRIEF HISTORY OF THE APCF, the organisation arose of a fusion of the Glasgow Anarchist and Communist Groups during First World War. At the time of the Russian revolution, many people considered that the Bolsheviks represented a fusion of Anarchism Marxism. After all, hadn't Lenin's State and Revolution adopted anarchist slogan of smashing the state in opposition to marxist orthodoxy at the time? In fact, this slogan has its origins in Marx just as much as in Anarchism. The vacillating attitude of the marxist movement towards the state is briefly discussed in two articles in t section: "The Peoples Convention" and "Workers Vs the State". But any case, anarchists were among the most enthusiastic supporters of Bolsheviks during the first months of the revolution. It was express solidarity with the Bolsheviks that the Glasgow Anarchist Group renamed itself the Glasgow Communist Group in 1920.

Anarchists were soon disillusioned by the development of events in Russia. The left communists in Europe, from whom the council communists were to emerge (4), also confidently expected support from Lenin and the Bolsheviks in their struggle against the treacherous social-democratic leadership, and of course also against social democratic ideas and traditions. They too were quickly disappointed Lenin's "Left Wing" Communism, An Infantile Disorder, Published in 1920, rejected the arguments of the left communists in favour collaboration with the social democrats in order to "keep in touch with the masses"

The largest left communist organisation, the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD), was expelled from the Communist International in 1921. Although the Glasgow Communist Group was not part of the mainstream of European left communism, they went through the same process of disillusionment with Bolshevism. In 1921 they formed the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation as a direct challenge to the Communist Party of Great Britain, which had been set up in 1920 along the lines advocated by Lenin (participation in elections and Parliament and affiliation to the Labour Party).

 However, in their struggle against Bolshevism, the council communists also set themselves apart from anarchism. Anarchists saw the failure of the revolution as being the logical result of the authoritarianism and statism inherent to Marxism. The council communists, on the other hand, blamed the failure of the marxist movement and the working class as a whole to adapt to the new conditions of decadent capitalism - while seeing themselves as the true inheritors of the best, revolutionary traditions of Marxism. All council communists, including the APCF, accepted the need for some kind of transitional workers state immediately after the revolution, although in a very different sense from that understood by the Bolsheviks. Above all, council communists distinguished themselves from anarchists by basing their analysis on marxist historical materialism, which sees economic development as the motive force behind social change, and class struggle as the means by which these changes are brought about.

In the text, Principles And Tactics Of The APCF, written after the withdrawal of most of the anarchists from the organisation (see the Introduction to the section on THE CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN), the line of argument is essentially a marxist one. This text is the APCF's distinctive restatement of the basic ideas of council communism. It was first published in Solidarity number 12/13 in June-July 1939 (5), and reprinted in one of the very last issues of the paper to appear, in 1944. This is a testimony to the theoretical consistency maintained by the core of the APCF during this period, despite the wide range of political views held by the various contributors to the paper.

One of the best features of this text is the very clear and simple way the arguments are presented. This is particularly the case in the final sections, from Towards Workers Soviets to the end. The APCF envisages communism growing out of the defensive struggles of the working class. A defensive workers state' will be necessary during the "transition stage" after the revolution.

The "revolutionary vanguard" will inevitably consist of a number of different parties, who should co-operate with each other, while aiming ultimate1v at their "complete liquidation into workers soviets".

In the earlier sections of the text, the APCF is much less clear than the German and Dutch council communists in tracing the obsolescence of parliament and the trade unions back to its origins in the conditions of class struggle under 'decadent capitalism'. The reason for this can be found in the history of British Socialism. Due to the prosperity of 19^th century British capitalism, there was no strong marxist social democratic movement of the type exemplified by the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) - i.e. based on parliament and the trade unions, while claiming to be revolutionary. The only such organisation in Britain, the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) never grew beyond a few thousand members. In Britain, therefore, the vast majority of working class representatives in the trade unions and parliament were openly opposed to revolution There arose, therefore, at a much earlier stage, a small marxist movement rejecting both parliament and the trade unions whose best known spokesman was William Morris. British anti-parliamentarians did not have to justify their break with the entire pre-war marxist tradition, as did the German and Dutch council communists. On the contrary, they could see themselves as a continuation of the pre-war anti-parliamentary tradition. This explained in the first paragraph of the article To Anti- parliamentarians, which goes on to argue why in "the present period of capitalist decline" the name council communist is more appropriate Despite this, the APCF continued to draw most of its anti-parliament arguments from the pre-war movement. Indeed, the dual influence of European council communism and British anti-parliamentarism largely accounts for the distinctive character of the group.

While the APCF were opposed on principle to "the trickery, insincerity and futility of the bourgeois anti-democratic parliament", the council communists such as Pannekoek argued that parliamentary struggles were necessary part of the working class movement under "ascend capitalism", when the working class "is not yet capable of create organs which would enable it to control and order society... may change when the struggle of the proletariat enters a revolution phase... As soon as the masses start to intervene, act and t decisions on their own behalf, the disadvantages of parliament struggle become overwhelming" (6).

The difference between these two approaches accounts for one of most important weaknesses of the British anti-parliamentary tradition. In Britain anti-parliamentarism has generally associated with a withdrawal from current political life altogether this has taken a number of forms. Syndicalists concluded that problem with parliament is that politics itself is reactionary. ~ simply advocated an escalation of the existing purely economic struggles waged by workers in the trade unions, failing to see that unions themselves should be the object of the same kind of radical critique they had made of parliament. Other tendencies, known collectively as Impossibilists more logically withdrew participation in any day-to-day activity, in favour of educational propaganda work.

Socialist Industrial Unionism, mildly criticised in the Principles And Tactics text, was the movement of followers of the Amen socialist, Daniel DeLeon, organised in the Socialist Labour Parties of Britain and America. The SLP advocated seizure of power by the won class organised in revolutionary industrial unions, which were come into being as a result of the propaganda work of the SLP. Until then they opposed not only the existing trade unions but also all to-day class struggle. In the September 1944 issue of Solidarity, example, there is a debate with a Scottish supporter of DeLeon argues that all strikes are... reactionary.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain belongs to the Impossibilist tradition. Then as now, they advocated the election of socialist MPs, who will however abstain from parliamentary action until the time when socialism is brought about by the election of socialist majority, as a result of SPGB propaganda. The SPGB rejects day-to-day class struggle along with the trade unions as being irrelevant to the struggle for socialism. Paradoxically this allows the SPGB to adopt a quite uncritical attitude towards unions, which it considers make a good job of defending workers immediate interests, until such time as a majority of them convinced of the need for socialism.

What all these tendencies had in common was an inability to understand the links between economic and political struggles, and between workers struggles today and the future struggle for socialism.

The council communists saw socialism coming through the culmination of a process in which the existing day-to-day economic struggles are transformed into a political, revolutionary struggle. They were therefore much more aware of the active counter-revolutionary role played by parliament and the unions - this role being precisely to maintain the artificial separation between political and economic issues, and thereby prevent this process of transformation from taking place.

British Impossibilists dismissed parliament and the trade unions as irrelevant - since in the end everything was irrelevant except their own propaganda. The council communists, with their ideas firmly rooted in working class experience, were able to see that parliament and the trade unions were anything but irrelevant. It was the duty of revolutionaries to attack and expose them.

On this question, the APCF, basing its ideas on council communism, was far in advance of other British organisations which attempted to oppose the Labour Party and Communist Party from a revolutionary standpoint (with the exception of Sylvia Pankhurst's short-lived Workers Socialist Federation).

The APCF advocated independent working class action, organised by the workers themselves, in opposition to the trade unions. However their enthusiastic support for workers struggles sometimes led them to take an uncritical attitude towards radical trade unionism, especially towards the end of the war. In 1943 Solidarity supported the attempted revival of the Clyde Workers Committee, on the basis of a programme which amounted to a call to radicalise the existing trade unions.

Criticism of the CWC was limited to the comment that "We hope, however, that unlike its predecessor in the last war, it will not only fight a rearguard action against capitalism and war but will ultimately pass to the attack and participate in the final victory of the working class" (Solidarity number 61/62, June-July 1943).

In 1944, members of the Workers Revolutionary League, as the APCF was by then called (see the Introduction to the section on THE SECOND WORLD WAR), participated at the first conference of the Scottish Workers Congress Movement, a radical trade union movement which put forward a programme for the revitalisation of Scottish industry under "democratic workers control".

These examples reflect the more diverse political views which began to appear in Solidarity as a result of the WRL's participation in the Workers Open Forum (7).

5. Issues of Solidarity were numbered as if they appeared every month. Double issues covered two months.
6. From: World Revolution and Communist Tactics.
7. The Workers Open Forum was established in Glasgow in October 1942 to organise regular exchange of views between all bona fide revolutionary organisations. The WOF's slogans were: A Workers Council for eliminating error. All parties invited. Let the Truth prevail! Towards the end of the Second World War the activity which the APCF/WRL carried out independently in its own name was steadily reduced in favour of increasing participation in the Open Forum. The WRL and Solidarity thus both seem to have disappeared at the end of the war; the Workers Open Forum continued to be held in Glasgow well into the 1950s.