Introduction

The Marxist left in Britain, Germany, and perhaps Europe as a whole is in crisis. This is not a unique observation; it could even be considered a cliché. It should not be news to anyone here that Marxist organisations, whatever their flavour, are small and essentially irrelevant, aside from brief revivals on the back of spontaneous movements. To those of us familiar with the Marxist left, what remains is a social milieu, composed largely of students and academics, middle-class ideologues, and the rare tired worker, organised into small activist groupings¹. Each, of course, proclaims itself the true heir of the Marxist movement, explicitly or implicitly considering itself to represent the vanguardist leadership of a resurgent workers movement, whenever that is to arrive. They need only to bring their politics to the masses.

What we are describing is a system of sects. It not only expresses the ill health of European Marxism, it contributes toward it. At the same time, this sect system is the last preserve of organised Marxist politics on our continent. It cannot simply be boycotted and ostracised without the political repression of Marxism within movements per se². To find a way out of this circumstance is no small feat, nor do we propose to have found the answer. Rather, we hope to provide the basis for a mature approach, providing what we hope to be a coherent historical exposition of how this system came to be in Britain and Germany, and what it signifies.

What will be explored here is a brief conceptual framing, followed by two case studies. First we will look at how Marx and later Draper described the sect-form. Afterwards two case studies are drawn up to illustrate these dynamics historically. The first is about the process of how the Communist Party of Great Britain for its Red Decade managed to shed the sect-form. The second case attempts to provide an overview of how the German workers movement - already badly beaten - decayed further after the Second World War, leading to the emergence of a fractured sectarian landscape we inherit today.

1. Theory of the sect: Karl Marx and Hal Draper

Marx

Context & Thesis

The communist movement has produced a variety of explanations in this direction³, though often with a sectarian motive – “our group is a real party; yours is a sect”. The “classical” explanation begins with an often quoted 1871 letter from Karl Marx to Friedrich Bolte⁴ , representative of the International Workingmen's Association (First Internationale) in New York. Here, Marx famously situates the sect as an expression of an ebb in the development of the workers' movement, stating that the “development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers' movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement.” He goes even further, arguing that when the workers' movement has attained the requisite maturity for independent movement “all sects are essentially reactionary”.

Alongside this historical prescription, the letter also provides us with a view of how Marx sees the workers' movement developing toward such a maturity. The process he lays out stresses that the political organisation of the working class movement must arise from its economic struggles: “out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form”. He illustrates this with the example of individual strikes for the shortening of the working day (economic struggle) and the movement to force an eight hour working day in law (political struggle). In this, Marx's commitment to the principle that “'the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”⁵ is clearly at one with his strategic view⁶. The sect stands apart from this process.

This leaves us with a view of the sect as the historical expression of both a low ebb in workers' struggle, and a separation between socialist forces and the real development of the workers' movement. A useful start for further elaboration. However, what essentially all such elaboration misses is the context of these remarks. Marx is writing at the height of the First Internationale's prowess, then with a membership of some 150,000 workers⁷. This is inseparable from his purpose.

Founded in 1864, the organisation developed through considerable economic struggle. Its first major breakthroughs came in 1867, following the intensification of strikes in many European countries. The Parisian bronze workers strike, the ironworkers’ strike of Marchienne in Belgium, and the building workers' strike in Geneva all saw victory through their participation in the Internationale. In each case, the same tactics won out, workers in other countries raising funds and refusing work which would allow the strikers to be broken. Alongside the proliferation of workers' newspapers and the process of theoretical argument produced through the organisation, this strategy saw the Internationale continue to grow and sharpen its politics – political struggle growing from economic struggle and the union of the workers it entailed. This approach lasted until the Paris Commune in 1871, the defeat of which and the subsequent unity of bourgeois forces across Europe against workers' organisation prompted the Internationale's general council – Marx among them – to conclude that the workers now required a political party for struggle in each nation. The Internationale transferred its offices to New York, then dissolved in light of this. As such, Marx's letter to Bolte is not an abstract consideration, but a strategic explanation of the road to such parties, both drawing upon the history of the Internationale and expecting its work would provide a firm basis for party formation. Marx was, of course, largely wrong on this latter point⁸.

Definition

The forces Marx describes as sects in contrast to this process are the primary antagonists he faced through it – namely, the followers of Lassalle, Proudhon and Bakunin. This is instructive in one sense, with each of these forces representing small factions centred around the ideas of their leaders. Ideas, Marx would be quick to point out, which were formed quite apart from the workers' struggle. This is ideologically transparent in the case of the Proudhon faction, whose “mutualism” rejected not only state ownership of the means of production and the land, but even the strike, as it served to separate “ever further two classes that should merge and unite with each other”⁹. It is organisationally transparent in the case of Bakunin's faction, the International Alliance of Social Democracy. Having had their initial application to affiliate rejected as they had fashioned themselves as a rival organisation to the Internationale, Bakunin's faction wound up its international sections and its Geneva branch joined with a minute 108 members¹⁰. In these examples, the sect emerges as a form of organisation formed apart from mass movement, with the ambition to insert their special political theories into it.

This is a clear definition. However, as the examples given so far focus on anarchist sects, the question of how applicable this understanding was to communist forces in Marx's time – thus, the relevance of this framework in approaching them today – must be raised. For the answer, we need look no further than the first “Marxist” “party” in Britain: the Democratic Federation, later the Social Democratic Federation (SDF).

SDF - Example of a Marxist Sect

Founded in 1880-81, the SDF drew a small membership from a medley of sources, including disaffected Liberal and Conservative politicians, delegates invited from workingmen's clubs (private social clubs, essentially small debate groups and meeting points in political terms), and a handful of socialists¹¹. Its moving force and leader, ruling the “party” dictatorially, was Henry Mayers Hyndman, a stockbroker and former Conservative Party candidate for Marylebone. Marx and Engels despised the organisation, with Engels particularly frequently referring to it as a sect¹². Whilst some of this animosity may be accredited to the fact that Hyndman first plagiarised Marx's Capital in his 1881 England for All¹³, then distorted vast swathes of his politics in his 1883 Socialism Made Plain, this does not discredit the view that the SDF was a sect. It quite unambiguously did not arise from the working class, nor was it constituted of them, straightforwardly disdained engaging in struggle for workers' direct needs¹⁴, and much of its activity was limited to “bringing politics to the masses” through speeches, literature and electioneering around a future socialism. The SDF's lack of influence is clearly indicated by its election results in 1885, with two of its three candidates polling just 59 votes between them. The “party” was then ridiculed for running with funds from the Conservative Party¹⁵. Marx and Engels' application of the term sect is clearly consistent in its application across political tendencies.

Draper - Updating the Concept

As we have seen, to Marx and Engels, the sect is an organisation formed apart from the masses, distant from their struggles, around a special set of ideas. Whilst this is a perfectly workable definition, the manner in which the US Trotskyist Hal Draper builds upon it to give a structural critique of the Marxist sect form is useful. The framework he gives provides a clear and recognisable outline for approaching contemporary sect formations. His key writing on the subject come from two short articles, “Toward a New Beginning – On Another Road: Alternatives to the Micro-Sect” published in 1971, and “Anatomy of the Micro-sect”, published in 1973.

In both of his core texts, Draper explicitly defines the sect as a formation organised around its ideological prescriptions¹⁶. This is most clearly put in “Toward a New Beginning”, where he argues that argues any organisation “starting with the Full Program” is to become a sect, contrasting this with Marx's view of workers' organisation arising out of struggle. This is not an abstract criticism as, for Draper, the organisational form and class character of the sect is ultimately determined by this approach. As he argues, “the Full Program” functions for the sect as an “organisational boundary”, with membership of the organisation dependent upon agreement with a set of special ideas. This establishes the sect on a high political level, “on a thin base which is ideologically selective”, leading to a membership largely from outside of the working class – particularly intellectuals and students. The strategy which follows is, inevitably, to send members into the working class, recruiting a member here and member there, with the aim of becoming a revolutionary party through accretion¹⁷. More importantly, this approach leads to a tendency to see the mass movement of the working class as not living up to the standards set by the sect's programmatic vision, thus making the sect hostile to workers' movements¹⁸. Draper's expansion of Marx's analysis here leaves us looking at something rather similar to any number of contemporary socialist organisations.

Let's summarise our understanding of the sect before turning to our case studies.

Summary: What is the Sect-Form

• An organisation formed apart from the masses, around a set of special ideas or a predetermined political program. This is entirely distinct from workers' political struggle, which arises from the activity of the masses (Marx);

• An organisation which treats its programmatic vision as an organisational boundary, its membership determined by agreement with this view and its view of other forces shaped by it. This often puts the sect at odds with workers' movements (Draper);

• An organisation composed of mixed class strata, often from outside the working class and primarily of intellectuals (Draper);

• An historical expression of the working class movement's inability to carry out its own struggle (Marx).

2. Britain: From sects to party

Contextual: History of the Labour Party

If we were to give a thorough history of the Marxist left in Britain and its relation to the sect form, I sincerely doubt that we would ever leave this room. For the sake of brevity, I'll be focusing on a general outline of two general tendencies and processes within this history: the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) which represents the largest Leninist and Marxist tendency in British history, and the Trotskyist tendency, particularly the Socialist Workers' Party and the Militant, now Socialist Party. This gives us a chronology which charts the rise of a serious, if small and sometimes destructive, workers' party (the CPGB) out of sect formations, its decline and the return to a sect system (Trotskyism). Hopefully, from this approach, we will be able to draw some lessons on the historical conditions facing the left in Britain today and, from that, a greater appreciation of the sect form and the problems it really represents in general.

However, to begin to get at any of this history, we first need to take a quick detour to discuss the British Labour party. Whilst in no sense a Marxist or communist organisation, Labour's imprint is felt over the entirety of the Marxist left in Britain. An understanding of its significance and character is utterly indispensable for our approach.

The popular understanding of the Labour party is that it represented a party of the working class prior to the leadership of Tony Blair from 1994 and particularly his withdrawal of the “socialist” clause IV1 from the party's constitution in 1995. The argument which supports this understanding of an “old” Labour party, loyal to the workers,

Foundation of the CPGB

CPGB as a process of unification

The CPGB's founding conference was held in Leeds between 29-30 January, 1921, with 120 delegates in attendance. This formally inaugurated the party, finalising its statues, theses and affiliation to the Communist International, as well as electing a Provisional Executive Committee of 20 members and determining a rudimentary structure for its regional organisation2. Whilst this formal milestone was undoubtedly significant, the formation of the party proper stretches both backwards and forwards from this date considerably. On the one hand, the founding of the CPGB was a merger of a variety of different organisations, the product of protracted negotiations formally begun in 1918, with pre-emptive attempts from as far back as 19133. It had held a newspaper and functioned as a unified organisation since August, 1920. On the other hand, as a merger of a number of different sects and organisations, the CPGB cannot be said to have grown beyond the sect form until a considerable period after its formal establishment4. This latter point underscores a position of Draper's, that the “product of sect unification turns out to be nothing but a somewhat larger sect, as long as the conditions for a genuine socialist movement do not obtain.“5

The organisations which undertook the unity negotiations which led to the CPGB are described in the final report of the Party Commission for reorganisation, presented in October 1922, as “a loose association of propagandists”, their work “mainly confined to the platform and individual work” contributing little beyond “a general programme of a theoretical character” and organising with “little real common policy or concert in [their] work"6. In a word: sects. The largest amongst them, the British Socialist Party (BSP), was a rebrand of Hyndman's SDF. It had reaffiliated to the Labour Party in 1914 and opposed the first world war, both against its founder's wishes. Organisationally, its principle achievement was the leading role it played in the first “Hand Off Russia” campaign against British plans for war on the newly formed Soviet Union, and individual member's involvement in workers struggle7. Otherwise, it remained confined to agitational work around its programme8. Whilst it claimed 6000 members in 1920, the overwhelming majority were paper members9. The second largest force behind unity negotiations, the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) was, amusingly, a split from the SDF, organised almost exclusively in Scotland. Similarly to the BSP, it largely focused on agitational work and education, yet also contained elements which had been played powerful roles as shop stewards10. Adding to this mix was the South Wales Socialist Society (SWSS), which fell apart and reconstituted itself as the South Wales Communist Council (SWCC) during the unity negotiations. It represented even less of a force than the organisations already discussed, consisting of a handful of loosely organised clubs. However, it served as a bridge between the CPGB and revolutionary miners and steelworkers in Wales, whom it could rally around it11. Finally, insofar as the sect organisations involved in the formation of the party are concerned, was the Workers' Socialist Federation (WSF). Owing to the role that this organisation played in the unity negotiations, CPGB literature is at pains to portray it as a small personality cult, beholden to its famous leader, Sylvia Pankhurst12. Whilst it is true that the WSF was a small sect by the time of the unity negotiations, this deliberately obscures its origins. The WSF grew out of the East London Federation of Suffragettes, which represented the revolutionary, working class wing of the suffragette movement. In its various guises it had undertaken serious work in rallying working class women to the suffragette cause, providing childcare and food for them and their families, taking up a serious anti-war position in relation to the first world war, and briefly organising training in arms for workers' self-defence. The WSF had grown directly from a mass political movement13.

Alongside these sects, the unity negotiations were aided by a number of other organisations. Members of the Shop Stewards' and Workers' Committees (SSWC), an anti-war faction of the trade union movement, would provide key leading figures to the early party, though not enter it as an organisation. Members of the Herald League, which published the Daily Herald, the Guild Communists, the Socialist Prohibition Fellowship and individual socialist clubs also joined the party in very small numbers. Finally, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) joined in the unity negotiations, left them after the first negotiation meeting in March 1919 due to its opposition to the Soviet Union14, and, when they were complete, a left wing faction absconded from it15.

Major Contentions in the Negotiation

The political process of unifying these sects was complex and arduous. We won't get into the detail of its history. Most of this difficulty revolved around two questions of a very British nature – participation in Parliament and affiliation to the Labour Party – with affiliation to the Communist International (CI), support for Soviets, workers' councils and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and rejection of reformism largely agreed in the second negotiation meeting on 13 May 191916. The question of participation in Parliament proved the easier of the two questions to resolve with the two largest factions in the unity negotiations – the BSP and SLP – in support of it. The majority of opposition was based on two arguments: (a) that Parliamentary participation is a distraction from struggle in the workplace, and (b) that Parliament corrupts those who enter it. These positions were debated intensely at the 1920 London Communist Unity Conference, held on 31 July-1 August. The first argument was combatted by the view that the working class must use all tools of struggle available to them, and that Parliament offered a clear platform for agitation. The second was resolved with a clause in the motion on participation which mandated communist MPs would be loyal to the party as a whole, not a special electoral body, and could not hold leadership positions. With this, the motion for Parliamentary affiliation passed with an overwhelming majority17. After resolving this, the London Unity Conference moved to discuss affiliation to the Labour party, a debate which would haunt the British left for the rest of its history.

The debate over affiliation to the Labour party, both within the party and at the second congress of the CI held between 19 July and 7 August 1920, was essentially a debate as to whether the CPGB should attempt to operate as a lobby within the Labour party. As an organisation already affiliated, the BSP was in favour of this, where the SLP opposed it. Thus, the question split the two largest factions of the unity negotiations. During preparation for the London Unity Conference, Lenin had already intervened on the side of those for affiliation with a letter to the Provisional Committee, which led unity negotiations. His essential argument was that the workers in Britain were grouped in the Labour party and thus communists ought to operate within it whilst they had the space to. In response to the letter and the possibility of affiliation, the WSF ended its participation in unity negotiations and published an open letter to Lenin from Sylvia Pankhurst18, opposing affiliation and parliamentary participation as corrupting influences19. This is what led the controversy to erupt at an international level and to figure so prominently in Lenin's well-known Left-Wing Communism: an infantile disorder. In both the Unity Conference and the CI, those opposing affiliation lost – though only just in London20. This established two trends within the CPGB which would gestate and grow. The CPGB pursued attempts to affiliate to Labour and adapted its electoral approach to do so, choosing not to stand candidates against Labour and to advocate for a vote for Labour in these areas from this point forward. This considerably undermined the party's electoral strategy, even going so far as to undermine the loyalty of MPs to the CPGB should they stand as Labour candidates21. It was entirely fruitless: Labour never allowed the CPGB to affiliate, not even during the second world war. In addition, perhaps more importantly, Lenin and the CI's intervention can be seen as the start of a process by which the CPGB became overly dependent on the CI for political leadership. This reliance would grow considerably over the years22. Nonetheless, the resolution of this question was the last major step before the party could be officially formed, and allowed it to take united action even prior to this.

Moving out of the Sect-Form

Favourable Conditions

As we have said, on its own the unification of sects can produce only a larger sect. What, then, led the newly formed CPGB to shake off its sect shell? Firstly, the party's early class composition was favourable to this transformation: the CPGB was overwhelming composed of workers. By 1928, seven year's after its founding, the party's membership was around 95% working class, with the remaining 5% formed of intellectuals23. Whilst earlier membership data is unreliable, there is little to suggest this was different at the CPGB's formation; indeed, the small grouping of intellectuals initially associated with the party had largely left by 1924. This somewhat complicates Draper's class analysis of the sect in relation to the CPGB and the organisations which formed it, which largely grew from the back rooms of working men's clubs. As each of these organisation's functioned as a sect in their relationship to political struggle, we must accept that working class sects are, or at least were, a reality. The CPGB's class character is not enough to claim that it represented a working class party. There are many obvious counter-points to such a position. For example, the early CPGB was largely a miner's party, with more than half the party's membership in this profession by 1927. This not only meant the party failed to have much influence in other industries, aside from engineers, who made up the second largest group by profession in the party, and thus straightforwardly couldn't represent the workers as a class, it also led to many small and weak clusters of members, the geographic isolation of mining making this membership hard to expand24. As such, the role that this class composition played in the making of the CPGB as a party is not, in itself, transformative. Rather, it conditioned the relationship of the CPGB to the class. Members were not outsiders, bringing their special ideas in. They were of the class, often struggling with it.

Triple Alliance & Hands-Off-Russia

The work of the early CPGB is both broad and, at times, considerably impressive. Even before its official and final merging in early 1921, the party was already leading the “Hands Off Russia” campaign against British intervention in the Soviet Union. Four of its founding members and leaders were on the National Committee, representing the Parliamentary branch of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the National Shop Stewards' and Workers' Committee Movement, and the Clyde Workers' Committee – titles which themselves display the influence of some the party organised25. The campaign against intervention grew rapidly in the 1920s, given a massive boost by the stopping of “Jolly George” – a cargo ship baring munitions – by dockers on 10 May, after two long years of agitational and organising work among them by the WSF26. By early August, support had grown enormously, requiring the government to meet with representatives of the movement against intervention, including two CPGB members, and establishing 350 local councils of action. On 10 August, the government dropped plans for intervention. The CPGB continued to work within local councils of action and to push for friendly relations with the Soviets27. The British working class had undertaken united political action against imperialism just as the CPGB was formed, with its members taking leading roles. Much to its credit, this lesson in united action would inform the CPGB's strategy for years to come, as well as marking the beginning of a series of anti-imperialist campaigns28.

The short boom following the end of the first world war came to a close by the end of 192029. Over its course, the working class in Britain had won better wages, shorter hours and better conditions, with the membership of trade unions affiliated to the TUC ballooning from 4.5 million at the end of the war to 6.5 million. With the reassertion of crisis, Britain's capitalists required a drastic reduction in wages and conditions. The battle began with the miners. In response to the disintegration of promises from the Sankey Commission, which had recommended nationalisation of mining, the failure of the TUC to respond to this with strikes, and deterioration of real wages, the Miner's Federation of Great Britain declared strike action for 25 September, 1920. Though they called for support from the “Triple Alliance” held with the National Union of Railwaymen and the National Transport Workers' Federation, the reformist leaders of these unions refused, instead opting to broker a compromise. This delayed initial strike action until October, and set a compromise until 31 March, 1921. In this gap, the government let it be known that it intended to decontrol both the mining industry and coal prices, which would see wages plummet. This became law on 24 March, a special conference of miners describing it as a declaration of war. Strikes resumed in April, with the government deploying the army to meet them. Though a further call for support from the “Triple Alliance” secured the miners a vow to joint strike action, union leaders negotiated with the government the following day and agreed to bring the miners under control. No support came, and the government unleashed a terroristic campaign against the resilient miners. This set the pattern of the general industrial retreat to come.

From the start of the miner's strike, the CPGB had not only stood steadfast with the strike, but also warned that the capitalist assault was to target the entirety of the working class, isolating them industry by industry to defeat. The party argued that only the joint action of the working class could stem this tide, and that reformist trade union leaders would see to it that this was impossible. This proved entirely correct. Sector by sector, the same story played out and, by the end of 1921, an average wage cut of 6s had be suffered by six million workers. Alongside its frequent strategic interventions and work within unions, the CPGB responded with the establishment of British bureau of the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU), a rallying centre for radical unionists and a challenge to the reformist union leadership. After defeat upon defeat, a breakthrough came with the docker's strike of 1923, which continued strike action against the wishes of its leadership, showing the possibility of a break. Though this strike still ended with a loss, it established a real foothold in the trade union movement for the CPGB and the RILU, which would ultimately stem the retreat and, after much more struggle, allow the CPGB to play a leading role in the general strike of 1926. Throughout all of this period of struggle the CPGB played the role of unifying the working class, drawing it from isolated, economic struggles to a general, political one.

National Unemployed Workers Committee Movement (NUWCM)

This point is made even clearer by the most significant work undertaken by the early party: the National Unemployed Workers Committee Movement (NUWCM)30. The scale of unemployment at the end of the post-war boom in Britain was staggering, growing to over two million by June 1921 and not falling below one million for many years. By the late autumn of 1920, organisations of the unemployed began to form across Britain, largely with the purpose of gathering alms. CPGB members began to see the need for a new type of organisation, which centred struggle rather than charity. The first major step in this direction came in October 1920, with the party putting all of its resources at the service of the growing unemployed movement and a young, unemployed CPGB member, Wal Hannington, seizing the moment by holding an All-London Conference for the Unemployed. With delegates from many unemployed organisations, this gave birth to the London District Council of the Unemployed (LDCU). This grew to organise 30 unemployed committees within a few weeks. Unlike prior organisations among this strata, the LDCU prioritised militant struggle, organising radical demonstrations against the means testing and mandatory labour required by Poor Law guardians for the receipt of unemployment relief funds. The organisations under its umbrella stormed town halls and held pitched battles with the police where these requirements were enforced. This was immensely effective in restoring individual benefits. By just November, the LDCU had extracted a small general concession, with a rise in unemployed relief rates. More than just militancy, the LDCU represented a significant development of unemployed workers' politics, adopting the slogan “Work or Full Maintenance!” at its formation, as suggested by the CPGB. This not only represented the interests of the unemployed, demanding specifically trade union rates for maintenance, it signalled that the reserve army of labour would not be used to beat down conditions for those still employed by accepting lower rates, a trend which would become all the more marked as the movement grew

By 1921, the unemployed movement was gaining steam across the whole of Britain. A national conference called by the LDCU on 15 April reflected this, forming a national organisation to oversee the whole movement – the NUWCM – with CPGB members in leadership positions. Popular demonstrations proliferated. At the second conference of the NUWCM on 11 November 1921, its politics were more clearly defined, with a great amount of emphasis laid upon solidarity between the unemployed and trade union movements. What this meant practically is clearly illustrated by the NUWCM role in the engineering lock-out of March-June 1922, with the organisation filling out picket lines, raiding factories where scabs were working, and forcing the board of guardians to pay relief to locked-out workers at the same rate as the unemployed. This role continued as the struggle developed. The first hunger march at the end of 1922 and the beginning of 1923 showed the movement's power nationally, with 300 marchers setting out from Glasgow culminating in a demonstration some 70,000 strong in London. By April 1923, the NUWCM's third congress could claim 260 unemployed councils across the country. Though the movement lasted well into the thirties, it is clear that even in this early period it represented both a political movement of the unemployed workers and, through its solidarity with trade union struggle, a part of a political movement of the working class in Britain as a whole. The CPGB's leadership role, from the start of the movement to its eventual death in the 1930s, is indisputible.

Consciously Breaking Free of the Sect

Throughout these struggles, the party also reorganised to shed the remaining influence of the sect system upon it. This became a conscious process by the end of 1921, when it became clear that party membership was falling, that many branches remained agitational outlets in the style of the old sects, and that the structures the party had inherited were not conducive to changing this. After the initial party leadership, who opposed change to this structure, was defeated at the CPGB's fourth congress, a Commission on Party Organisation, drawing from outside of the Executive Committee and with powers beyond it, was established. The Commission's report, delivered for the consideration party's fifth congress on 31 July 1922, recommended a complete overhaul of the party's structure and press. Most notable within its recommendations were the replacement of the party's previous federal structure with one where the Executive Committee could direct work, a requirement for all members to engage in party work, the transformation of the party newspaper from “a small magazine of miscellaneous articles with a communist bias” to “an organ of the workers' daily struggle” focused on agitation, practical news and organisation, organisational cells for communists grouped together in the same workplace, and systematic training of members. Though much of the structural thought here is directly drawn from guidelines drawn up by the CI, it is notable that the Commission's recommendations all focused on bringing the party closer to the working class movement, and required all members – without exception – to involve themselves in this movement. The Commission's recommendations were all accepted31.

From an overview of the party's founding period, the process which transformed it from a sect to a political party proper becomes clearer. It is not to be found in the party's class composition alone, as we have said, though this certainly formed an element of its success and reflected its progress. Nor is it to be found in any particular organisational decision – the party Commision reflected work already in process, providing it a structure to consolidate around. Rather, it is to be found in the role the party played within the working class movement. In each of the examples discussed, the CPGB was able to unite disparate economic or ideological trends within the working class into a general workers' struggle. It did so both through conscious political struggle, with this unity forever in mind, and by chance of fortune, the moment of workers' struggle having arisen. From this consolidatory period, the party continued to play this precise role through the first Labour government, the 1926 general strike, industrial and unemployed struggle through the 1930s and the fight against British fascism. Until the second world war, the CPGB had clearly shed the sect form.

References

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