The Zig-Zag Left: 1928–39

Abstract

At the end of the 1920s, the Communist Party embarked on a destructive shift leftwards. In its policy, the party claimed that the main obstacle to revolution came from other forces within the workers’ movement. The Labour Party and the trade unions constituted ‘social fascism’, an ‘auxiliary apparatus of the bourgeoisie’, which cheated the workers away from revolution. In 1929 it was announced that ‘the Labour Government has already begun to show its Social-Fascist character’, which was illustrated by Labour’s policy of ‘Fascism and violent suppression of the working class’. In its ultra-left practice, the Communist Party isolated itself from ordinary workers within the trade union and labour movement. The party attempted to implement its new politics in industry, through championing break-away red unions, although the unions formed in this way both failed. As Noreen Branson’s official history of the party records, ‘The trade union leaders had tried to destroy the party; ironically “Class against Class” made their job much easier.’1 The fruits of its first ten years of successful political and industrial agitation were thrown away, and the party declined until it had just two and a half thousand members in November 1930. It was by no means obvious that the Communist Party would survive to see the decade’s end.KeywordsCommunist PartyDaily WorkerLabour MovementUnemployed WorkerParty MemberThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.