Our union makes us strong

The Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) is a minor left-wing radical group in Britain, led by one David Yaffe. This manifesto was published in 1984 and is still available at the group's website. It is probably of interest only to connoisseurs of ostensibly Marxist literature.

The main defining feature of the RCG's politics is the idea that a substantial portion of the British working class has been "bought off" or bribed by imperialism. Presumably, the same goes for most of the working classes in the other Western nations. I can imagine what the RCG might be saying about privileged workers in Sweden! Well, we still have paid vacations. The "bribe theory" (as it is known in Sweden) is really an attempt to explain why the predictions of Marx and Engels about an inevitable revolution in the advanced capitalist nations never came to pass. Or explain it away.

The RCG points out that even Marx and Engels were somewhat sceptical concerning the revolutionary capacities of British workers, who were bought off by the British Empire already during the 19th century. Likewise, Lenin blamed the betrayal of the Second International during World War I on "the labour aristocracy", a relatively small and privileged layer of the working classes in the Western nations, well fed by the super-profits of colonialist exploitation. In the RCG's opinion, the extensive post-war boom has turned most workers in the West into a kind of labour aristocracy. These workers are at "best" simply reformist, at worst racist. They ultimately identify their interests with those of the imperialist bourgeoisie. In Britain, the Labour Party is the political expression of this privileged working class. For that reason, the RCG opposes all support to Labour, including tactical voting. When the manifesto was written, most British Marxists supported Labour in one way or another, so the RCG's position was bound to be contentious.

Even more controversially, the RCG believes that regular union struggles aren't politically important (although they express their sympathies), being purely defensive in character. Real "class struggle" means a confrontation with the British state, something most workers weren't engaged in at the time. Ironically, the manifesto must have been written just before the British miners' strike! If workers are either bribed by imperialism or otherwise rendered passive, where are the real revolutionary forces? Like other proponents of "bribe theory", the RCG supports underclass riots, prison struggles and national liberation movements in the Third World. Since the RCG are based in Britain, they also support the IRA in Northern Ireland. In fact, support for the Republican movement is their main activity. This is no doubt because the IRA was the most formidable enemy of the British state at the time. Support for the ANC, SWAPO and defence of "the socialist countries" are other important points to emphasize for a Communist group, according to the manifesto. Despite their Trotskyist background, the RCG never criticize the Soviet Union in their text, except for having dissolved the Communist International. In fact, the manifesto sounds "Stalinist".

A remarkable point is that the RCG openly support the struggles of "the new middle class". Is the new middle class better than the working class? "The new middle class" is privileged, to be sure, but it's also afraid of thermo-nuclear war and the destruction of world civilization. For this reason, sectors of the middle class support pacifism and feminism, and have thereby found itself in a conflict with the British state. The manifesto was written during "Cold War II" between Reagan and the Soviet Union, when a massive peace movement in Western Europe protested further deployment of U.S. missiles. Britain also had its own "Euro-missiles". The most well-known peace protest took place in Britain, outside RAF's base at Greenham Common. While writing off the working class, which curiously enough isn't afraid of thermo-nuclear war, the RCG supports middle class peaceniks.

For those who believe that a centralized planned economy is the way to go, the Manifesto of the Revolutionary Communist Group might be of some passing interest. Personally, I'm more into mixed economies (I admit that I don't like thermo-nuclear war or Ian Paisley). What struck me when reading "The revolutionary road to communism in Britain" was something else: the complete denial of Marxism, coupled with a complete denial of the denial! In 1984, the strongest working classes were arguably still those in the metropolitan nations of the global North. If colonialism-cum-imperialism can buy off or otherwise render the strongest working classes passive, what's left of Marxism? IRA, ANC, Black rioters in Brixton or Soviet brass in Moscow aren't "working class". Nor are peace protesters at Greenham Common. In fact, not even the RCG really believes this (except in the case of the rioters). Thus, the RCG has negated Marxism in favour of New Leftism. The idea that a bomb blast or riot is more "revolutionary" or "political" than a union strike for higher salaries is also typical of the New Left. In fact, it seems to be a fairly typical idea on the left at large. I remember the *huge* labour movement and student protests in Sweden against Carl Bildt's government about 20 years ago. I also remember the leftists who complained about the workers and students not being "political" enough. There's nothing like a Vietnam War protest, I suppose...

It's also interesting to compare the Revolutionary Communist Group with their evil twin, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). I mean, the similarities are striking. However, the RCP seems to have been actively contemptuous of the working class, and somehow really did believe that the middle classes were better. After creating havoc on the British left for over a decade, supporting everyone from Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi to the Bosnian Serbs, the RCP (a.k.a. Spiked) ended up as burlesque libertarians. However, they are still weirdly anti-British, firmly holding that Ahmadinejad's Iran and Saddam's Iraq have the right to the bomb. I suppose Frank Füredi isn't afraid of thermo-nuclear warfare, then. Is there *anything* that can scare the RCP?

Meanwhile, the RCG is still busy campaigning against the British state somewhere in Greater London. Today, both the national liberation movements and the socialist bloc have collapsed, so it's not clear to me how the revolutionary road to communism looks like today. A quick glance at the latest issue of RCG's magazine reveals a staggeringly high amount of articles about...union struggles.