Communist Workers' Organisation (UK) | |
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Founded | 1975 |
Preceded by |
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Newspaper | Aurora |
Ideology | Left communism |
International affiliation | Internationalist Communist Tendency |
Website | |
leftcom | |
Part of a series on |
Left communism |
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The Communist Workers' Organisation (CWO) is a British left communist group, founded in 1975, [1] and an affiliate of the Internationalist Communist Tendency, formerly the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party. [2] It publishes a quarterly magazine called Revolutionary Perspectives and distributes the agitational broadsheet Aurora. Works of the CWO and ICT have been cited in various academic and political sources internationally, across several countries and languages. [3] [4] [5] The organisation has its origins in north England and Scotland (Liverpool, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Edinburgh), though it has since grown to encompass other areas with members and sympathisers across the world. [6]
The group was founded in the mid-1970s with the union of Workers' Voice, based in Liverpool, and Revolutionary Perspectives, a group based in the North of England and Scotland – some of whose members had previously been active in Solidarity. [7] Both groups were influenced by German left communism and in particular the KAPD. [8] Both also published articles on the German Revolution. Additionally, Revolutionary Perspectives translated Otto Ruhle's "From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution" into English as well. [9] By 1975 the two groups coalesced broadly around the positions of the KAPD's "Essen Tendency". Both groups had also taken part in international conferences sponsored by the French group Révolution Internationale with the British group World Revolution. [8] These two groups formed the International Communist Current, but the Workers' Voice group denounced this as "counter-revolutionary" over its defence of the October Revolution and its position on the period of transition. [8] Revolutionary Perspectives had tried to mediate between Workers' Voice and World Revolution but was now forced to choose. As World Revolution had already rejected its draft platform and it had disagreements on several other positions, most notably the tendency of the rate of profit to fall , Revolutionary Perspectives chose to unite with Workers' Voice to form the Communist Workers' Organisation. [8]
For a year the organisation grew, publishing ten issues (the journals Workers' Voice and Revolutionary Perspectives) as well as distributing thousands of leaflets at factory gates and establishing groups in several factories. [8] However, by the end of 1976 it was clear that the wave of working class struggle which had led to the rebirth of left communism in Britain was over. The Liverpool section now began to retreat into local activity and, without issuing a document or giving any political explanation, abandoned joint political work and dissolved. [8] This loss was followed in 1977 by the demand of the Aberdeen section that the CWO should now join the International Communist Current, which they now claimed was the communist movement. Although the majority were prepared to discuss this the Aberdeen section left within a month (it would split from the ICC within a few years to form the Communist Bulletin Group). [8]
In 1977 the CWO majority adhered to the international conferences initiated by the Internationalist Communist Party from Italy, also known as the PCInt. In the course of these conferences, the CWO became convinced by the PCInt that the positions the latter had defended since 1943 were the best product of the left communist tradition. [10] The two organisations formed the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party in 1983. [1] Due to their opposition to Stalinism/Marxism–Leninism, Maoism, and Trotskyism – as well as their theoretical basis originating in the Italian left – the CWO has erroneously been referred to as a "Bordigist" [1] or "council–communist" [11] organisation by some authors. A key distinction between the politics of the CWO/ICT and that of Bordigists is that the former do not view the party as the class itself, but an important tool used to fight for a communist perspective in the mass organs of proletarian power that are the workers' councils. [2] For some time in the 1990s it was Sheffield that became a temporary HQ for the organisation. [6]
The International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party was eventually joined by left communist groups in France, Canada, the United States and Germany. In recognition of this expansion it moved towards a closer coordination of its activities in 2009 with the formation of the Internationalist Communist Tendency. [2] The CWO remains an integral part of the ICT. An initiative that the organisation was at the centre of in 2003–2004, known as No War But the Class War (NWBCW), was revived in 2018 by the CWO with the Anarchist Communist Group; the goal behind this move was to highlight the need to oppose all imperialist wars, including efforts of national liberation and other forms of lesser evilism espoused by social democratic and other left-wing groups – and instead focusing on workers' unity and class struggle. [12] The views of NWBCW can be succinctly summed up by a 2017 statement from the CWO: "The only war which is worth fighting is the class war ... if the workers of all countries united and refused to fight, there would be no war!". [13] In its long-time history, the CWO circulated hundreds of thousands of leaflets and publications that it had produced over the years. [6]
The Fourth International (FI) was established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International.
Council communism is a current of communist thought that emerged in the 1920s. Inspired by the November Revolution, council communism was opposed to state socialism and advocated workers' councils and council democracy. It is regarded as being strongest in Germany and the Netherlands during the 1920s.
Paul Mattick Sr. was a German-American Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions.
The Communist Workers' Party of Germany was an anti-parliamentarian and left communist party that was active in Germany during the Weimar Republic. It was founded in 1920 in Heidelberg as a split from the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Originally the party remained a sympathising member of Communist International. In 1922, the KAPD split into two factions, both of whom kept the name, but are referred to as the KAPD Essen Faction and the KAPD Berlin Faction.
The International Communist Party (ICP) is a left communist international political party.
Karl Heinrich Otto Rühle was a German Marxist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars as well as a council communist theorist.
The Internationalist Communist Party is a left communist party in Italy and an affiliate of the Internationalist Communist Tendency, formerly the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party.
Jan Appel was a German revolutionary who participated in the German Revolution of 1918. He became a prominent Left Communist activist and theorist.
The Spartacist League is a Trotskyist political grouping which is the United States section of the International Communist League, formerly the International Spartacist Tendency. This Spartacist League named themselves after the original Spartacus League of Weimar Republic in Germany, but has no formal descent from it. The League self-identifies as a "revolutionary communist" organization.
The General Workers' Union of Germany was a factory organisation formed following the German Revolution of 1918–1919 in opposition to the traditional trade unions.
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder is a work by Vladimir Lenin attacking assorted critics of the Bolsheviks who claimed positions to their left. Most of these critics were proponents of ideologies later described as left communism. The book was written in 1920 and published in Russian, German, English and French later in the year. A copy was then distributed to each delegate at the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern, several of whom were mentioned by Lenin in the work. The book is divided into ten chapters and an appendix.
The International Communist Current (ICC) is a left communist international organisation. It was founded at a conference in January 1975 where it was established as a centralised organisation with sections in France, Britain, Spain, United States, Italy, and Venezuela. It would go on to establish sections in Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, India, Turkey, Philippines, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico. The ICC published the first issue of its theoretical journal International Review in April 1975 and since then has published it quarterly, mainly in English, French and Spanish.
The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, following a ten-year schism, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat (ISFI) and the International Committee (ICFI), reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its Bolshevization by Joseph Stalin and during its second congress.
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as socialist internationalism, is the perception of all proletarian revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that capitalism is a world-system and therefore the working classes of all nations must act in concert if they are to replace it with communism.
Far-left politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1840s, with the formation of various organisations following ideologies such as Marxism, revolutionary socialism, communism, anarchism and syndicalism.
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