PARTISAN!

The Partisan Editorial Board introduce Partisan 3.

Many sects among the Left all claim to have some kind of position of influence within the working class. From the Communist Party (‘71) to Socialist Alternative, there is no shortage of those proclaiming themselves “prole whisperers”. All this hullabaloo confuses the working class and militants alike. A lack of clear industrial/union strategy by communists has continued to separate and distinguish them from the working class broadly. Something needs to change.

We could, like the mainline Communist Party, proclaim ourselves to already be The Party. After all, it’s in the name. But is the Communist Party truly a ‘Workers Party’ in the Marxist sense? No, since it lacks a base of serious cadre dispersed amongst the working class, the unions, other workers organisations, etc. It is more accurate to describe the Communist Party as a ‘Bureaucrats Party’, a party of the calcified trade-union leadership in alliance with Stalinist (pseudo-) intellectuals.

In order for us to claim to be building towards a workers party, we need to put the serious work in to connect ourselves as militants to what’s left of the workers movement. We need to become more confident in presenting our perspectives to workers, and more willing to fight the political fights necessary to win workers to our program and to turn them into militants.

It’s all well and good to have propaganda and slogans – we communists have plenty of those – but what we lack is an ability to present this propaganda effectively and confidently. As Comrade Edith writes in a letter (see: Letters on Page 31), “the task is to show to the working class why they must care [about communism]”.

This issue of Partisan covers not just the struggle of workers for a democratic union, but also features perspectives on ‘direct action’ strategies and on militant activism. We invite militants to send in letters giving their perspectives on party-building, militancy, unions, and the role of communists in the class struggle.