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Neil Redfern's thesis — a critical comment
I read with dismay the summary of Neil Redfern's thesis on the British Communist Party 1935-45. I thought it a regrettable example of the simplistic political dogma that has been all too common during the twentieth century. I have not read Redfern's thesis, but I think it reasonable to assume that his own summary is a fair account of his general approach.
'A fundamental part of the conceptual framework deployed', to quote his own words, is that 'the principal content of World War Two was a battle between two rival imperialist blocs for world hegemony'. In other words, as he says elsewhere, World War Two was similar to World War One, whose imperialist character no marxist denies. What his present analysis assumes, therefore, is that in World War Two there was not difference in fundamentals between the bourgeois democracies of Britain and America on the one hand and the fascist powers, Germany most particularly, on the other. It would follow, among many other consequencies, that which of the two blocs won, the working people could expect to be treated in broadly the same way.
There is no dissent from my side concerning the imperialistic character of British and French societies, or that one of the central purposes of Britain, the largest imperialist power, was the preservation of Empire and, if possible, its extension when the war ended. Throughout the years of war, Churchill was always in undeviating opposition to any serious alteration in the relationships between the colonial Empire and Britain. This was especially true for India, where the national movement was strong. Wavell's serious attempts at a minimum of concessions in the post-war ere were constantly blocked in London. In the Mediterranean, where Britain had no direct political control along its northern boundaries, war policies were always directed to maintaining a dominant influence. Hence the military intervention in Greece from December 1944. When Labour won the General Election of 1945 and Ernest Bevin became Foreign Secretary, the foreign policies that were followed were no different from those a Tory government would have accepted.
Let me now turn to the fascist powers and concentrate upon German fascism. Germany was not to be classified as an imperialist power in the way that Britain was, although by1939 Germany had absorbed Austria and dismemebered Czechoslovakia. It is the political and social dynamics of German fascism that must be contrasted with those of the bourgeois democracies, and one must assume that Redfern developed a comparative analysis in the body of his thesis.
This is not the place for a comprehensive discussion of the nature and character of German fascism, but it is possible to summarise quite briefly certain of its central features. It is interesting that before Hitler came to power Leon Trotsky was warning the European movements against the dangers of fascism in the most vigorous fashion: "Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank". By 1939 the consequeneis of fascist rule had become quite clear. The Nazi regime was virulently anti-semetic and racist in general; it had destroyed the democratic structures of the Weimar Republic; in particular the Left parties had been sent underground and many were in prison, and the trade unions were no longer in existence. Political violence against the Left of all shades of opinion was the general rule. Does Redfern believe that a Nazi victory would have provided a different kind of society?
History is a very complicated story, and it is the complexity of historical situations that has so often in the twentieth century made the matter of choice of policy for socialists so difficult. Had Redfern been of age during World War Two I wonder what policy, given his present views, he would have adopted. I assume that he would have recognised that Lenin's slogan for the 1914 war — turn the imperialist war into a civil war — was not a practical proposition in the British society of those days, so presumably he may have followed the example of some socialists of 1914 and refused to be conscripted, to be followed by prison. And suppose he had been a Frenchman, either in the North or in Vichy? Would he have considered the Resistance a politically legitimate activity for a socialist of his persuasion? But I would not wish him to move too much into the side-tracks. The crucial argument relates to the nature and character of fascism in relation to the bourgeois democracies as I have defined tham, and it would be helpful to learn his views.
