Communism or Murryism

(In Reply to I. D, C)

Many people to-day have had the experience of engaging in a heated controversy, only to discover in the end that the only matter at stake between them and their adversaries was one of definition. This is largely due to the recent device of widening your definitions of things originally restricted in sense to such an extent as to make them include almost anything you want them to. If you define Christianity as the ideals of Love, Truth and Justice, you are obviously quite free from the danger of an attack. The advantages of this attitude are obvious. You can debate on the broadest definition and continue to act on the narrowest. It is a peculiarly successful trick and a peculiarly dishonest one.

And so there is to-day a tremendous need for narrowing our definitions, even at the cost of multiplying terms. Especially is this true with regard to the two words which are the storm-centres of controversy to-day, "Christian" and "Communist." The majority of "Christians" within our own S.C.M., for instance, are simply illogical humanitarians, who would have been disowned by any reasonably honest Church a generation page 37 ago. Similarly, the word "Communist" is used to mean anything from a political opponent to a social idealist with vaguely defined principles.

Primarily, of course, a Communist means a member of the Communist Party and nothing more. But we can allow ourselves a slightly wider definition than that, since the Communist Party is itself a body based on definite principles and pledged to a definite plan of action. Professor Harold Laski defines Communism as "at once an ideal and a method. As an ideal it aims at a society in which classes have been abolished as the result of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. As a means, it believes that its ideal can be obtained only by the method of a social revolution in which the dictatorship of the proletariat is the effective instrument of change." People like I.D.C. would accept the ideal without the method. But if they do not approve of the method, i.e., social revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat, they are certainly not "Communists" or even "supporters of Communism." They may be "Labourites" or "collectivists" or "socialistically inclined"—but they have nothing to do with Communism, which is both an ideal and a method.

In other words, if the Communist Party is to be an effective instrument in the achievement of socialism, it must be bound by certain broad principles, or what I.D.C. would prefer to call dogmas. They are in no sense akin to religious dogmas, since they are built up on a rational basis which is capable of argument and proof. You may tell their upholders that you are not convinced by them, but it is unfair to suggest that they are not arrived at rationally, but are held by blind faith alone.

The most general principles of Communism are certainly fixed, and must of necessity remain so, because they are the things by which we define Communism. But in the minutiae of its economic theory and the details of its practical policy, the Communist movement is in a constant state of flux, continually adapting itself to the state of the society in which it is working. I.D.C. badly misunderstands the position if he thinks, as he says, that "doubt or dissent is a sin, and criticism an unpardonable error." The matter was clearly put in a letter to Middleton Murry's paper, the "Adelphi." F. le Gros Clark wrote as follows:—

"Referring to the various comments on the Communist Party of Great Britain which have appeared in the 'Adelphi,' it may be laid down that no criticism 'from the outside' is likely to be half as incisive and strongly worded as the criticisms hurled internally at the Communists by one another. If you want to criticise, come inside and criticize. ... By internal self-criticism the Communist Party is making itself, is becoming."

The case of Mr. Middleton Murry appears to worry I.D.C. excessively. Murry's Communism is a recent growth of a rather peculiar kind. He disapproves of the Labour Party, who are trying to achieve Socialism by constitutional means, and he is a constant critic of the Communist Party, which believes that an unconstitutional upheaval is necessary. He distinguishes a mysterious entity called Marxism from a still more mysterious something he calls Leninism, and comments adversely on the latter. Surely he realises the necessity of some political action beyond the publication of books with sales-catching titles, like the "Necessity of Communism." Unless he intends forming a third party, a kind of disembodied intellectualist party, his place is inside the Communist movement, experiencing some of the discomforts and danger of its routine work. Until he does that, his claim to be a Communist is quite literally what the "Daily Worker" called it, "an insult to the heroic workers of the Soviet Union and a mockery of the Communist fighters throughout the world." Though the Communist Party is open to criticism and adaptation from outside as well as in-side, the claims of a man who does not believe in the first principles of Communism to be called a Communist can hardly be recognised. Why not try "Neo-Communist" or even "Murryist"?

—C. G.W.