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CPGB-ML

A short word about our organisation

The CPGB-ML was set up in July 2004 by a group of committed communists who had either been expelled or had resigned from the Socialist Labour Party. It was set up in recognition of the fact that there was no existing party in Britain that carried a consistently Marxist-Leninist, anti-imperialist, anti-social democratic political line. It was, and is, the unshakable conviction of these comrades that only such a party can develop into a genuine working-class vanguard.

More information on the setting up of the CPGB-ML can be found in the first issue of our journal, Proletarian, in particular the article Why the CPGB-ML?.

As time has gone on, our belief that we are truly different from all the other parties calling themselves socialist and communist in Britain has only deepened. In 2011, there was clear blue water between our position and that of every other party on ALL the important questions: on the crisis, its causes and solutions; on Libya and Col Gaddafi; on Syria and President Bashar al-Assad; on the youth uprisings; on Korea and Comrade Kim Jong Il.

What differentiates us is a consistent revolutionary analysis and a thoroughly scientific approach to all aspects of our work. We are small, but we are growing. We welcome anyone who is serious and committed to working for a socialist future.

Join us!

Britain

Working Class History

The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing of history. It is part of its being, of its condition of existence, to falsify all goods; it falsified the writing of history. And the best-paid historiography is that which is best falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie

Friedrich Engels.

"Show everybody, then, that no power will succeed in depriving the workers of class consciousness! Without knowledge the workers are defenceless, with knowledge they are a force!"

V I Lenin (What are our ministers thinking about?)

Communism

October Revolution

Capitalism

Imperialism

War

"During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government."

V I Lenin

"Private property based on the labour of the small proprietor, free competition, democracy, all the catchwords with which the capitalists and their press deceive the workers and the peasants are things of the distant past. Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of "advanced" countries. And this "booty" is shared between two or three powerful world plunderers armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan), who are drawing the whole world into their war over the division of their booty."

Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism - Lenin.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Belarus, the DPRK, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Grenada ... the list of countries singled out for US/British intervention in order to depose progressive regimes and prop up puppet rulers -- and so preserve the flow of loot into imperialist coffers -- is never-ending.

It is time to stop British governments committing such crimes in our name by withdrawing our labour from every part of the war effort -- serving in the forces, making munitions, shipping supplies, and writing and broadcasting war propaganda. We will advance faster on the road to freedom when we break
the link with all those who would tie us to imperialism -- 'left' or right -- and when we start to give real solidarity to those engaged in resistance against our own imperialist masters.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks pursued such a line during WW1. It was just this revolutionary position that helped them to lead the October Revolutions (1917) and bring about socialism and the USSR, not just talk about it at endless empty conferences, while actually protecting the warmongering imperialist class.

We will let lenin speak against Trotsky, and his modern day heirs who control the Labour Party fawning 'Stop the War' coalition of counterfire trots and CPB revisionists:

During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government

This is axiomatic, and disputed only by conscious partisans or helpless satellites of the social-chauvinists. Among the former, for instance, is Semkovsky of the Organising Committee (No. 2 of its Izvestia), and among the latter, Trotsky and Bukvoyed,[2] and Kautsky in Germany. To desire Russia's defeat, Trotsky writes, is "an uncalled-for and absolutely unjustifiable concession to the political methodology of social-patriotism, which would replace the revolutionary struggle against the war and the conditions causing it, with an orientation—highly arbitrary in the present conditions—towards the lesser evil" (Nashe Slovo No. 105).

This is an instance of high-flown phraseology with which Trotsky always justifies opportunism. A "revolutionary struggle against the war" is merely an empty and meaning less exclamation, something at which the heroes of the Second International excel, unless it means revolutionary action against one's own government even in wartime. One has only to do some thinking in order to understand this. Wartime revolutionary action against one's own government indubitably means, not only desiring its defeat, but really facilitating such a defeat. ("Discerning reader": note that this does not mean "blowing up bridges", organising unsuccessful strikes in the war industries, and in general helping the government defeat the revolutionaries.)

The phrase-bandying Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems to him that to desire Russia's defeat means desiring the victory of Germany....

Take the example of the Paris Commune. France was defeated by Germany but the workers were defeated by Bismarck and Thiers! Had Bukvoyed and Trotsky done a little thinking, they would have realised that they have adopted the viewpoint on the war held by governments and the bourgeoisie, i.e., that they cringe to the "political methodology of social-patriotism", to use Trotsky's pretentious language.

A revolution in wartime means civil war; the conversion of a war between governments into a civil war is, on the one hand, facilitated by military reverses ("defeats") of governments; on the other hand, one cannot actually strive for such a conversion without thereby facilitating defeat.

The reason why the chauvinists... repudiate the defeat "slogan" is that this slogan alone implies a consistent call for revolutionary action against one's own government in wartime. Without such action, millions of ultra-revolutionary phrases such as a war against "the war and the conditions, etc." are not worth a brass farthing...

The defeat of one's own government in the imperialist war. Lenin

Media

Famine in the midst of plenty

Racism & Immigration

"Labor in the white skin cannot be free, while in the black it is branded"

Racism, in its many and varied forms, from the most subtle and 'respectable' to the most sickening and blatant, remains the achilles heel of the modern industrial proletariat of the imperialist nations. It is the secret to neutralising their effective class struggle for their own social emancipation form the oppression of capital.

Evert worker should read this analysis of Capitalism and Immigration (from LALKAR and CPGB-ML):

Part 1: http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/mar2006/immigration.ph­p

Part 2: http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2006/immigration.ph­p

Scapegoating immigrants is a crude, yet very successful, attempt to blame the worst victims of capitalism and divert attention from the latter's responsibility for all the economic and social ills of present-day society.

Workers who fall for this bait effectively become, whether they will it or not, accomplices and tools of the foreign and domestic policy of their imperialist ruling class, which, in an endeavour to maintain imperialist domination of the oppressed nations, violently intrudes into the latter's lives through predatory wars and imperialist-inspired civil strife.

And when the victims of this super-exploitation, war and occupation, which are the driving forces behind periodic waves of immigration, manage to escape their miserable lot by reaching the centres of imperialism, they are vilified as scroungers and blamed at the same time for stealing jobs from local workers.

This horrible and racist treatment of the foreign workers in Britain and other imperialist countries is merely a reflection, and an extension, of the foreign policy of imperialism - imperialism's violent interference in the countries of origin of the immigrants followed by draconian legislation against, and ill-treatment and super-exploitation of, its luckless victims. Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, the lakes region of Africa, Somalia and Sierra Leone, which over the past 15 years have been a major source of emigration into the imperialist countries, furnish excellent proof of this our assertion.

The foreign and domestic policy of imperialism are inextricably linked and the one cannot be arbitrarily separated from the other. They are two side of the self same policy of imperialist plunder and oppression - one abroad and the other at home.

Since modern-day racism is a product of the colonialist and imperialist system, an ideological outgrowth of the colonial plunder and imperialist super-exploitation of the vast majority of the people of Asia, Africa and Latin-America by a handful of exceptionally rich and powerful states, it is only natural that this division between the oppressor and oppressed nations finds it reflection in racist legislation and ill-treatment of foreign workers within the imperialist countries.

Racism in the imperialist countries is merely the reflection within the imperialist countries of the division between oppressing and oppressed nations - a duplication in a somewhat altered form of the imperialist oppression abroad.

In the face of bourgeois attempts at dividing and weakening the working-class movement by pitting workers of one nation against those of another, and recognising the inevitability and the progressive nature of the break-down of all the narrow national barriers by capitalism, the proletariat has but one option - to unite under the banner of proletarian internationalism and the joint fight of the workers of all nationalities for socialism and communism through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

"The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavour to keep them disunited. Class-conscious workers, realising that the break-down of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable and progressive, are trying to help to enlighten and organise their fellow-workers from the backward countries" (V.I. Lenin, Collected works, Volume 19, pp.454-456).

Libya, Syria and the Middle East

The Labour Party

The answer to the problems of austerity and capitalist crisis is NOT the election of yet another ('Blairite', 'Brownite', 'Milibandian', new or old) Labour Party government - with or without alleged 'pressure' to enact 'left' policies and reforms, as so many rrrrevolutionary, trotskyite, revisionist, social democratic and plain bourgeois parties, grouplets and pundits would have us believe.

It is amazing that so many are unable to use their own experience to draw these obvious conclusions, but it is also testament to the power of a social democratic political machine that has misled British workers for over a century.

We need revolutionary change, that will actually give power to working people; the Labour party is just another face of our ruling class enemy's all embracing media, parliamentary political and state machine. It is part of the problem and can never be part of the solution.

One of the assertions - an assertion which has acquired the force of a public prejudice - made not only by the left generally, but also, with some honourable exceptions, by that part of it which calls itself communist, is that the Labour Party is a party of the British working class, which can be an instrument of socialism in Britain.

Communists utterly reject this false assertion. On the contrary, the Labour Party, throughout its existence, ha been an imperialist party -- a "bourgeois labour party", to use Engels' remarkably profound expression -- that it has never championed the interests of the vast masses of the British proletariat.

The Labour Party has always defended the interests of British imperialism and that of the privileged sections of the British working class.

The truth is that imperialism long ago split the working class.

A handful of exceptionally rich and powerful states who plunder the whole world are able to use a portion of their superprofits to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the "working class, who act as the principal social prop of the bourgeoisie, and who are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement, the lieutenants of the capitalist class, real channels of reformism and chauvinism" (Lenin)

On the basis of its monopoly, and the bribing of its labour aristocracy, the bourgeoisie of each imperialist country long ago begot, nurtured and secured for itself a bourgeois labour party. The British bourgeoisie, since monopoly developed much earlier in Britain than elsewhere, was the first to secure such a party. The Labour Party was precisely such a "bourgeois labour party". It is, as it always has been, a party of opportunism and social chauvinism, which is totally alien to the revolutionary proletariat, and unless a determined ruthless struggle is waged against this party, it is pointless and hypocritical cant to talk about eh struggle against imperialism, about Marxism-Leninism, about eh socialist labour movement, or about proletarian revolution.

Read: Social Democracy -- the Enemy Within, by Harpal Brar.

http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=books&subName=displ­ay&bookId=3

Revisionism

Trotsky

Religion v Science

The criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis ["speech for the altars and hearths," i.e., for God and country] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [Unmensch], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

Karl Marx 1843

A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Introduction)

Internationalism

We are opposed to colonial wars
We pay particular attention to aggressive wars for domination fought by 'our own' British government (Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) but we are equally
opposed to those waged by other imperialist countries abroad. They are not fought in our name.

The British capitalist government is the worst enemy of the British people, as it is the enemy of workers and oppressed people of all countries. We note also, and vigorously oppose, the rise of islamophobia and anti-Arab racism promoted by govern-ment, state and media to justify their current wars
for control of the Middle East, and pledge to fight it.

We call on our fellow workers in the British capitalists' armed forces to repent: object, desert or mutiny! Refuse to lend a hand in colonising, enslaving and torturing your fellow workers from other
nations! If you must fight, fight your enemy: the capitalist ruling class and their (Labour, Tory, or whichever) government that sent you, in the name
of 'patriotism' and 'freedom', to commit these foul deeds!

Working-class youth join the army because school and wider society has failed them. They are promised a better life; a final chance to 'be all they can
be', but they instead find themselves used as cannon fodder in conflicts they often don't understand or support.

This is underpinned by a chauvinist and
often outright racist culture that is encouraged by the capitalist class -- but it is a road that leads workers nowhere!
British workers must wake up and discard the thin gruel of narrow nationalism that enslaves us!

Like Joe Glenton, our soldiers must understand that, at the end of the day, they are workers in uniform.

When British workers are paid to fight by our ownruling-class enemies, we are thrown against our fellow workers (from other countries). British workers risk their lives to make their exploiters superprofits
and themselves even more dependent on their own capitalist exploiters.

Working-class soldiers in imperialist armies are turned not into patriots, but mercenaries, fighting against their own interests. This is the meaning of Marx's famous dictum "A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains!"

We call for workers to raise the slogan "No cooperation with war crimes!" Workers have the power to stop these unjust wars in their tracks simply by refusing to help them continue!

Refuse to fight unjust wars!

Refuse to transport munitions to the front!

Refuse to print and distribute propaganda!

Refuse to write, present or broadcast it!

Hands off China!

This excellent series of speeches from Harpal Brar, George Galloway, Keith Bennett, Jack Shapiro and Kojo Amu Gotfried address the great contribution that Chinese Socialism has made to working people and all progressive humanity. We highlight and celebrate China's internationalism in particular.

While China is constantly berated both by capitalist media and the 'left wing' of social democracy in 'western' countries at one and the same time for abandoning communism and simultaneously for not having done so thoroughly enough, it is useful to remind ourselves just why we should support China!

Long live the Chinese Revolution!
Long live the People's Republic of China!
Long live the Communist Party of China!

Understanding North Korea

A series of personal accounts, eye-witness reports and expert testimony on the much maligned and misunderstood communist society of North Korea