Following the experience of the Bolsheviks, the attempt to win the working class to the side of the CPGB required consistent work in the workplaces and the mass organisations, especially the trade unions. Lenin, who took a great interest in Britain, conducted a struggle against the ultra-left and sectarian tendencies within the party, represented among others by Sylvia Pankhurst and Willie Gallacher. These young comrades, fresh to the revolutionary movement, were sickened by the opportunism of the official organisations, and so refused point-blank to participate in the Labour Party, or in elections of any sort. This “infantile” ultra-leftism also manifested itself elsewhere in the International as a refusal on principle to carry out work within right-dominated trade unions. Lenin skilfully took up these arguments in his excellent pamphlet, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, which again is a work that is highly relevant today. Here, Lenin compares ultra-leftism to a childhood malady, corresponding to the infant stage of the international communist movement. He explains the erroneousness of this approach by drawing upon the rich experience of Bolshevism, especially its flexible tactics and methods in relation to the working class and its organisations. He argues that it is the duty of revolutionaries to participate in the trade unions, even reactionary ones, in order to change things from within. Lenin explained that the Bolsheviks went so far as to reach workers in the unions set up by the Tsarist police!
In the chapter “Left-wing” Communism in Britain, Lenin took up in more detail the ultra-left arguments of Pankhurst and Gallacher. Gallacher had written a letter about the Clyde Workers’ Committee’s political views, stating they were against participation in Parliament, or standing in elections, but were in favour of creating soviets; they were against the reactionary Labour leaders, wanted nothing to do with the Labour Party, but desired to build a “clear, well-defined, scientific” Communist Party. Lenin patiently replied:
In my opinion, this letter to the editor expresses excellently the temper and point of view of the young Communists, or of rank-and-file workers who are only just beginning to accept communism. This temper is highly gratifying and valuable; we must learn to appreciate and support it for, in its absence, it would be hopeless to expect the victory of the proletarian revolution in Great Britain, or in any other country for that matter. People who can give expression to this temper of the masses, and are able to evoke such a temper (which is very often dormant, unconscious and latent) among the masses, should be appreciated and given every assistance. At the same time, we must tell them openly and frankly that a state of mind is by itself insufficient for leadership of the masses in a great revolutionary struggle and that the cause of the revolution may well be harmed by certain errors that people who are most devoted to the cause of the revolution are about to commit, or are committing. Comrade Gallacher’s letter undoubtedly reveals the rudiments of all the mistakes that are being made by the German ‘Left’ Communists and were made by the Russian ‘Left’ Bolsheviks in 1908 and 1918.
In a chapter entitled ‘Should Revolutionaries work in Reactionary Trade Unions?’ Lenin argued:
We are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth. Yet it is this very absurdity that the German ‘Left’ Communists perpetrate when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of the trade union top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that… we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and create new and artificial forms of labour organisation! This is so unpardonable a blunder that it is tantamount to the greatest service Communists could render the bourgeoisie… To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders…
This ridiculous ‘theory’ that Communists should not work in reactionary trade unions reveals with the utmost clarity the frivolous attitude of the ‘Left’ Communists towards the question of influencing the ‘masses’, and their misuse of clamour about the ‘masses’. If you want to help the ‘masses’ and win the sympathy and support of the ‘masses’, you should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from the ‘leaders’ (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations – even the most reactionary – in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found.[1]
In other words, in order to change things, you must take the situation as it is, and not as you would like it to be. While a small minority favoured soviets and socialist revolution, the majority did not, and the task was to win over the majority to these ideas. That, in turn, meant working shoulder to shoulder with these layers, in order to show them in practice the correctness of your methods and ideas. Lenin had no time for the sectarian that simply stood on the sidelines. At this time, and as a vital antidote to this approach, Lenin also advised the British Communist Party to affiliate to the Labour Party in order to get closer to the political life of the advanced workers. Again, it was necessary to take the workers as they are, with their misconceptions and prejudices, and work with them, as Marx had urged in the Communist Manifesto, and not impose sectarian principles on the movement.
On 8 July, Lenin wrote to the BSP paper The Call stating:
Personally I am in favour of participation in Parliament and of affiliation to the Labour Party, given wholly free and independent communist activities. I shall defend these tactics at the Second Congress of the Third International on July 15, 1920 in Moscow.[2]
Not surprisingly, this suggestion that the CP should join the Labour Party led to an absolute uproar amongst the British Communists, who had already broken from reformist politics and were determined not to join a party with MacDonald at its head! The controversy over the Labour Party question gave rise to a very heated debate at the Second Congress. Despite strong resistance within the British delegation, the Congress came out overwhelmingly in favour of the British CP affiliating to the Labour Party. Back in Britain, the leaders of the Communist Party very reluctantly agreed to carry out this decision, after taking a vote of 100 to 85 in favour of affiliation.
Their application for affiliation was worded however in such a manner as to deliberately invite rejection. When this came to pass, the British CP leaders simply greeted the news with joyful contempt. Their haughty reply (“So be it. It is their funeral, not ours.”) was published in their newspaper, The Communist of 16 September 1920. As soon as the leaders of the International heard of this, they sent an urgent message urging the British leadership to reconsider their approach. A week later, realising their blunder, the line of the paper changed: “it is the duty of the communists to work where the masses are. That may mean going into reactionary organisations, but that is better and easier than creating brand new organisations in the hope that the masses will leave the old ones and come to the new.”[3] But the short-term damage had been done. This ammunition was used by the right wing to the maximum effect in rejecting all future applications.