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Reply to John Saville
I welcome John Saville's criticism of my thesis on the Communist Party and the Second World War, though it is a pity he chose to make his criticisms without actually having read the thesis. I reject his criticisms, and in particular, the accusation that my work 'is a regrettable example of the simplistic dogma that has been all too common during the twentieth century'. I presume that Saville, as a Marxist, would agree that the test of theory is practice. On such grounds, I would argue that it is Saville who is upholding a dogma — namely, the concept of the Popular Front.
It is more than fifty years since the allied victory and the Second World War led to the imposition of a new imperialist settlement on the world. In several countries – notably Burma, Indo-China, Indonesia, Greece, France and Italy — the international communist movement rendered invaluable assistance to imperialism and demonstrated in practice the essential opportunism of the politics of the Popular Front.Yet Saville continues to insist that this strategy was correct.
It is easy to criticise the communists of the '30s and '40s, and I should say that when I had completed my thesis, I had developed a far greater respect for them than I had had when I started. Even so, I believe that their mistakes (and of course the mistakes of my generation, the class of '68) contributed greatly to the impasse that the left now finds itself in.
The Popular Front rested on the Euro-centric, chauvinist assertion that the over-riding priority of the communist movement must be the defence of the Soviet Union and of liberal democracy in Europe against the threat of fascism. I believe that communists were correct to defend the Soviet Union but I also believe that the strategy of the Popular Front was, as many others have pointed out, essentially a rationalisation of the foreign policy requirements of the Soviet Union. Communists assumed that the movement must do whatever the Soviet Union did. But as Mao was later to point out, compromises made by parties in power need not necessitate other parties making similar compromises. Indeed, in 1945, in his criticism of 'Browderism', Jacques Duclos made this point.
Comintern considered that the advent of fascism in Germany demanded revision of its previous analysis of economics and politics in the era of fascism. Such a view clearly informs Saville's rather patronising remark that 'one assumes that Redfern developed a comparative analysis (of fascism and bourgeois democracy) in the body of his thesis'. No, I did not, for the simple reason that I do not accept the underlying assumptions of the Comintern's analysis.
Saville notes that there is no 'dissent from (his) side concerning the imperialistic character of British and French societies', but argues that 'Germany was not to be classified as an imperialist power in the way that Britain was'. Indeed, it was not, for fascist though it was, Germany was a minor imperialist power compared to Britain, France and the USA. The Comintern's analysis that the fascist states were the 'main instigators' of war rather ignored the fact that they were 'aggressive' because the 'defensive' democratic states were the principal imperialist powers. In other words, it ignored the political economy of imperialism. [1] I must admit that I have harboured doubts about my criticism of Comintern policy with respect to the defence of democracy in Europe: does Saville have no doubts about his defence of this policy when he reflects on the CPGB's robust support for the re-conquest of British colonies and for imperialist dominance of the Mediterranean and middle east?
Even in its own terms, the Comintern's analysis was opportunist. Its claim that the defence of democracy was central to the new strategy only stood up, as Orwell pointed out at the time, if we didn't count that vast majority in the British and French colonial empires who had virtually no democratic rights. I would not go so far as Marika Sherwood [2] but as I argue in my thesis, one reason why British Communists accepted the Comintern's new strategy so readily was that the Communist Party, the commitment of a significant number of its members notwithstanding, had exhibited a general indifference to the colonial question since its foundation. By 1939, this indifference had become but one facet of an outlook that was at least as nationalist as internationalist.
Saville assumes that I '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 1939-45)'. Well, yes and no. Clearly, such a slogan — if applied purely to Britain — could have reflected at best an aspiration, not a concrete task. But to put the question in this way reveals that Saville still shares the Euro-centric assumptions of those who shaped the strategy of the Popular Front. Turning the imperialist war into a civil war would have been a viable aspiration for a movement which still had ambitions to challenge capital on an international scale. But as I show in my thesis, by 1939, the CPGB had thoroughly conflated the categories of class and nation and its members were — at least 'objectively' and to a considerable degree subjectively — more concerned to defend the British nation and Empire than to fight for the interests of the international working class.
Saville invokes the experience of the left under Nazi rule to support his criticism inquiring if I believe 'that a Nazi victory would have provided a different kind of society?' No, of course not, though a Nazi victory would have as likely led to an accommodation between Britain and Germany as to the imposition of fascism in Britain. What would have happened if the communist movement had pursued revolutionary objectives in the Second World War, it is impossible to say. What we can say is that such politics were possible. Those who defied the Comintern and later the CPSU — notably the Chinese and Yugoslav Communists — demonstrated this.
But rather than ask such rhetorical questions, we should surely consider what the allied victory led to. Yes, it led to the welfare state in Britain, but the counterpart of this tawdry welfarism was colonial war in Malaya. The imperialist post-war settlement led to oppression in the colonies and dominated nations which was qualitatively no different from that experienced by workers in Nazi Germany. It is true that a crucial element of the allied victory was the defence of socialism in the Soviet Union and the subsequent creation of the socialist camp. I would argue that the war-time experience also served to undermine the foundations of socialism in the Soviet Union, but that is a matter for another day. As for the socialist camp, few would dispute that history has shown how shallow were the roots of socialism in most of the countries of that camp.
One final point, trivial in itself, but important to me personally. Saville seems to think that I am a Trotskyist. But I am not, nor have I ever been, a Trotskyist. Trotskyism shares with Stalinism the Euro-centric perspectives criticised here.
