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Communist Party of Great Britain - Draft Programme
Preamble
The Communist Party of Great Britain was founded on July 31 1920. Our CPGB resulted from a process of communist rapprochement directly inspired by the October 1917 revolution in Russia and the example of Lenin's Bolsheviks.
Despite its early limitations and later failures, as an organisation the CPGB is undoubtedly the highest achievement of the workers' movement in Britain. The history of the CPGB has been the history of the attempt to form the workers in Britain into a consciously revolutionary class.
The CPGB is the advanced part of the working class in Britain. It is not an exclusive ideological sect. Nor is it a pseudo-socialist extension of narrow trade unionism.
This is the draft third programme. The Party's first programme, For Soviet Britain, was adopted in February 1935 at the 13th Congress. Within four years, this centrist mishmash - revolutionary in word, reformist in orientation -was officially deemed outdated. In 1939 a Draft programme was produced. Suffice to say, the outbreak of inter-imperialist war in that year rendered it irrelevant in practice.
The British road to socialism, the second programme, was published in draft form in 1951 and was officially adopted at the 22nd Congress in April 1952. Its underlying theme was that socialism would be achieved through transforming parliament and via a series of Labour governments. In 1958, 1968 and 1977 this programme was 'updated'.
Both previous programmes and their various revisions and editions marked successive shifts to the right by the opportunist factions then dominating the leadership. As a result Marxism was effectively replaced by Fabianism. Inevitably the conclusion of this political liquidationism was reached when between 1988 and 1991 the opportunists organisationally liquidated the Communist Party.
In 1981 Leninists publicly announced their open, disciplined and principled struggle to reforge the Party. A revolutionary rebellion by, its very nature bound up with equipping the working class with a revolutionary programme. Informed by this understanding, the 4th Conference of the Leninists of the CPGB, meeting in December 1989, agreed to prepare a draft programme for the consideration of all workers and all communists, which in due course would be presented to the refoundation congress of the CPGB.
Genuine communists never accepted the right of opportunists to deprive them of their Party membership nor Party duties. The wrecking activity of the opportunists actually greatly increased the responsibilities of the revolutionary wing. Hence the 5th Conference of the Leninists of the CPGB, meeting in 1991, elected the Provisional Central Committee in order to revive Party work and rally new, healthy forces. The publication of this draft programme under its auspices is a milestone in respect to its sole, defining task - that is, the fight to reforge the CPGB.
The draft third programme of the Communist Party is made up of six distinct but logically connected sections.
The first section outlines the main features of the epoch, the epoch of the transition from capitalism to communism. Then comes the nature of capitalism in Britain and the consequences of its development. Following on from here are the immediate economic and political measures which are required if the peoples of Britain are to live a full and decent life in the here and now. Such a minimum programme is, admittedly, technically feasible within the confines of present-day advanced capitalism. In actual fact though it can only be genuinely realised by way of insurrection.
From these radical foundations the character of the British revolution and the position of the various classes and strata can be presented. Next, again logically, comes the workers' government in Britain and the worldwide transition to communism. Here is the maximum programme of the communists. Finally the inescapable need for all partisans of the working class to unite in the Communist Party itself is dealt with. Our essential organisational principles are stated and show in no uncertain terms why the Communist Parry is the most powerful weapon available to the working class.
