Learning From the Communist Experience?
by David W. Lovell

The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality
by Stuart Macintyre
Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998,
480pp., $49.95. ISBN 1-86448-580-9

The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) had a turbulent life, largely coinciding with – and bound up with the major international events of – what Eric Hobsbawm has dubbed the 'short twentieth century.' Formed in 1920 from fractious socialists, it only gradually gained organisational coherence; it began to exercise a political influence amongst the unemployed and trade unions during the Depression of the early 1930s. Its other key attraction during the '30s was its hostility to fascism, a stance shaken by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939 and by its consequent lack of support for Australia in the 'inter-imperialist war.' Declared illegal from mid-1940 to the end of 1942, the CPA had nevertheless achieved its largest membership at the end of the Second World War thanks to our, by then, Soviet allies.

Thereafter, it had to weather the Cold War, the attempts of 1950–51 to ban it, and growing disillusionment with the Soviet Union, all combining to reduce massively its membership and influence. The student movements of the 1960s and early '70s brought hopes of a communist revival, but also new perspectives that unsettled the Party's traditional analyses, campaigns and allegiances. By the 1980s, the Party had lost its way. With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, and then in its Soviet heartland in 1991, the CPA considered its position, and dissolved itself. (A group of diehard communists appropriated the name 'CPA' in 1996, but the party is over.)

Stuart Macintyre's new book, The Reds (1998), is a major contribution to the history of the CPA from its origins to mid-1940. It draws a useful sketch of the preceding socialist movement in Australia, and puts the CPA's activities in their chief context: the Communist International's proclamations about particular issues and periods. The treatment is roughly chronological, and it benefits by a sharp focus on a number of key personalities in addition to Party policies. The effect is to provide a clear general outline but also to humanise the early communists, something neglected in other accounts, sympathetic or not. A sequel to this book, covering the post-War part of the CPA's life, is anticipated; it promises to be a competent overview.

Macintyre presents these first twenty years of the CPA as 'an upward trajectory' (p. 412), but that seems overly generous. Likewise, his sense of the CPA's endeavour as somehow impressive, or courageous, also misses the mark. The application of human effort, ingenuity and enthusiasm to a far-reaching endeavour, even if the efforts are misdirected and the endeavour itself misconceived, can appear in different lights as both dignified and farcical. Communism, and communism in Australia, had elements of both.

What is the point of spending more valuable time on the history of a failed party in a failed cause? In my view, The Reds exemplifies a perspective which informs, and impairs, many post-communist assessments of communism. Sentimentality combines with misjudgement, as the sublime human experience of the communist revolutionary obscures communism's essential inhumanity. Being so widely held, such a perspective deserves proper examination.

Writing the history of Australian communism

There have been remarkably few attempts to write a general history of the CPA. Official accounts, such as Lance Sharkey's Outline History (1944), are limited by their official status and political purposes. Alastair Davidson's Short History (1969) had political objectives of its own to pursue at the time, but it was a scholarly work. Robin Gollan's Revolutionaries and Reformists (1975) contains a competent, but brief, introduction to this early period. Such histories have been largely the preserve of communists and their sympathisers. Of course, particular issues surrounding the CPA are the stuff of a legion of articles and Ph.D. theses since the 1960s but, as Macintyre notes, they have tended to avoid the larger political lessons of a failing communism, and have often sought refuge in social and cultural concerns where 'capitalism' is a convenient villain.

Macintyre's own political concerns and perspective are in no way concealed, and they go to the heart of why this is both a good book, and an ultimately insufficient one. He was a member of the CPA in the 1970s who sought to rescue communism from 'Stalinism' (1). In maintaining this distinction and, it seems, this mission, and in presenting the story of the CPA as the triumph of Stalinism over a genuine radicalism, the book is assiduous about the facts but mistaken in their interpretation.

The view from post-communism

The demise of communism makes it difficult, as Macintyre notes, to recreate in young people today a sense of communism as a viable project to which people would devote their lives: communism 'has become almost unintelligible' (2). By the same token, it must also be said, it is much more difficult to recreate the sense of danger that opponents felt at the communist project. Indeed, the passing of communism makes it much easier to become nostalgic, to see communism as an attempt by harmless and well-intentioned people, any government surveillance of which becomes (by virtue of communism's failure) an over-reaction. The Reds, like the communist memoirs which have appeared since 1989, is suffused with a hindsight that contributes to this sentimentality.

Pro-Sovietism

One of the key – and ultimately fatal – features of Western communism was the link between anti-capitalism and pro-Sovietism. It separated communists from various types of socialists: for communists, there was no third way between capitalism and Soviet-style communism. It characterised communists even after some, such as the Trotskyists, had parted ways with the incumbent Soviet leadership. It was a link reinforced by the combination of Marxism, with its 'scientific' approach to socialism, and Leninism, with its stress on a type of organisation that had delivered power. Marxism and Leninism combined to give communists an absolute certainty about the historical victory of socialism, and their method of achieving it.

At first, the link was a boon in the socialist camp, with communist parties directed and subsidised by Moscow. Macintyre (unlike generations of communists) concedes what most of us had long believed: that 'Moscow gold' was channelled to the CPA, and as early as mid-1921 (67). But the linkage between anti-capitalism and pro-Sovietism soon proved a political liability, isolating communists in their support for the twists and turns of Soviet policy and, by at least the 1930s making them the instruments of Soviet foreign policy (even if it included espionage).

The example of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Soviet state, was crucial in the attraction and education – or rather, training – of many CPA members. It gave the Soviet party enormous prestige, and through its control of the Comintern it stood in judgement of all the other communist parties of the world. It made other parties dependent on it: for recognition as 'communist' (always very important in the radically uncertain world of theoretical correctness), for solving frequent leadership disputes, for political direction, and for money.

The pro-Soviet character of communism was not just a long-term liability; it was a cancer from the start. It accepted Lenin's vehemence in 'theoretical' debates that he, and those who took his mantle, were right, and opponents were the conscious or unthinking champions of another class; and his insistence that Bolshevik rule, once attained, had to be maintained by any means necessary. At the heart of communism was the insistence on absolute certitude: from the ultimate goal to the everyday policy (even if it were changed tomorrow). As Macintyre notes, 'the party line was never wrong – rather, objective conditions had changed' (360).

The making of a communist party

The organisational story of the CPA is one of attempts to unify socialists into a communist party, of appeals to the Comintern by various contenders to become the 'official' Australian communists, and of attempts by the Comintern to organise and discipline the Australian party according to its own priorities. The infighting, intrigue, and change of circumstance and fortune that attended this process, especially in its first few years, are followed closely by Macintyre. Factionalism seemed intensified by the small numbers involved: from perhaps a hundred genuine members in 1922 to 250 in 1928. The CPA attempted to influence the labour movement at various times by joining the ALP, attempting to control trade unions, and (in the 1930s) leading unemployed workers' and anti-fascist and peace movements. The attempt to gain political advantage and control – another feature of communism worldwide – took precedence over helping the working class.

In its first years, the CPA was characterised by in-fighting and factionalism. Yet as late as 1927, disagreements at the national conference were not associated with the type of fear and dishonesty that would haunt later debates. Moscow soon remedied its insufficient control, so that by 1930 the CPA was unremittingly loyal and subservient. This had the desired effect of producing cautious and pliant comrades, who doubted their own capacity for independent judgement. In the 1930s, J.B. Miles was made national secretary, and was important in building the CPA into a durable, coherent organisation. It was, most importantly, hierarchical and undemocratic, with candidates to high office being vetted by an examination committee.

By the end of 1932, there were about 2,000 nominal members, though most were unemployed; about three years later, there were nearly 3,000 members. The extent of the CPA's influence is difficult to assess, even though Macintyre suggests that it was high: membership of 'front' organisations did not (or not always) indicate acceptance of communism (291). Macintyre properly notes, for example, that communist jargon ('Communese') put a barrier between communists and others. He justifies the systematisation of the communist position around core texts as powerful, without noting its cynical use, and its self-referential and non-falsifiable nature (349–51).

There is no evidence that communist theory (as distinct from strategy and tactics) was debated, or that communists responded cogently to external theoretical critiques. Macintyre points out that 'education' was quickly replaced by 'training', and that communists took their theoretical cue from works of Marx and Lenin (which they may not have understood thoroughly) and from the systematisations of Stalin (which were theoretical cribs, and eminently quotable). The impression is of a theory that was received and correct, with the task being merely to make the revolution. For communists, of course, any theoretical dallying was inadvisable, since it opened one to the charge of political error. In any case, the belief seemed to be that now was not a time for theorising, but a time for action, another assumption that assisted the leadership's domination over whichever political line was current, and disempowered ordinary communists.

Towards the end of the 1930s, the CPA's slavish subordination was evident in its support – its 'bewildered loyalty,' as Macintyre puts it (386) – for the twists and turns of Soviet policy towards Hitler.

What went wrong: Stalinism?

For Macintyre, 'Stalinism' is a code for blind obedience, and the cause of the CPA's ruination as a revolutionary party. It summarises the notion that brave, independent-minded critics of capitalism very quickly became na•ve followers, liars in a cause. Sometimes, of course, the limits of self-respect were reached, and a comrade would protest a Party decision, or an order for self-criticism. Such communists might even leave the Party, although they tended to remain at the margins. But Stalinism is the essence of communism. Under Stalin himself the methods may have been more extreme, bloody, and deceptive, but the principle of control to which Stalinism put the finishing touch was key to communism. Trotsky himself saw this as soon as Lenin promulgated his plan for the revolutionary party in 1902, arriving at his critique of 'substitutionism' as the logic of Leninism. Ultimately, Trotsky saw, the leader would substitute himself for the party.

Macintyre's discussion of Lenin, who 'transmuted Marxism into communism' (36) – with, it should be noted, a generous admixture of the Russian revolutionary tradition – does not nail the point that Lenin's assumption of absolute authority on everything is the basis for the substance of what follows: both the Revolution (after the 'April Theses') and the repression which followed (beginning with disbanding the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, and onwards through Ekaterinburg, Kronstadt and beyond). Instead, he offers that 'Lenin underestimated the crafty Stalin until it was too late' (364).

The mystery of Stalin, as Macintyre puts it, and of why communism was unable to find alternative methods to compulsion, is no mystery. The genuine mystery is why independent-minded, decent people voluntarily lay down before communism, like lambs to the slaughter. As Macintyre notes, 'Perhaps the most striking feature of this [CPA] disciplinary regime is the acceptance of it' (241). In Australia, at least, expulsion was the highest penalty, and frequently used. But expulsion brought with it isolation, and was very hard for most to accept. Loyalty was elevated into the primary virtue, and the sanctions – losing touch with friends who formed a type of family, and with activities that gave one's life a meaning – were deeply felt. The worst thing a communist could be called was 'traitor' to the cause.

The human experience of communism

What is perplexing about the communist experience is how so many well-intentioned and apparently decent people could have participated in and defended a movement that directly led to the deaths of millions, and suffering, hardship and lack of freedom for many millions more. It is, in a sense, the key issue of our sad century. It hovers in the background of The Reds. At the human level, the issue is complex, but Macintyre at least makes a start in introducing it.

The individual stories within The Reds help to sustain interest, and modify the caricatures of opponents' mythology. But communists, too, had their own caricatures: of capitalists and their political 'stooges'. Indeed, caricature was one of the major weapons of each side in their struggle. Caricature and cliche still emerge on some pages, especially when the 'iron heel of the militarised state' is grinding down the Wobblies, something of a revolutionary exemplar in Macintyre's view of the political world (27, 419). Some of the communists were no doubt endearing characters, but the overriding fact that they subordinated themselves to the cause is both more important, and more apt than seeing the early CPA as a collection of lovable rogues and scallywags. Humanising the early CPA in a sentimental way makes it easier to avoid the hard political lessons. John Sendy (1997: 43), who joined the CPA in 1942, put his finger on it: 'How then do good idealistic people become tyrants who will stop at nothing?'

In Macintyre's book we find people whose sense of injustice under capitalism was developed to a high pitch, and yet who as communists discredited and expelled former leaders in their own pursuit of power (justified as getting the political line right); people who wielded authority in the party with impunity, and who routinely flouted the most basic rules of natural justice when dealing with fellow communists suspected of 'error'. Here were people alive to any capitalist deception – real and imagined – but who gave constant and uncritical support to Stalin's actions, from the human upheavals and bogus statistics of intensive industrialisation and collectivisation to the terror of wholesale purges, imprisonments and slaughter.

Here were people who detested any form of servility, and yet abased and humiliated themselves before their comrades and leaders in campaigns of self-criticism. Any exercise of independent judgement was self-evidently a form of 'petty bourgeois individualism,' and therefore beyond the pale. And despite the stringently managed trips to the USSR during the purges, Macintyre concedes that 'For those prepared to attend to it, there was no lack of evidence' (377). The real issue is this: what would communists not have accepted in the name of communism? Where would they have drawn the line?

It is easy to say – and it may even be true to say – that the purges of Party members which occurred 'with profligate relish' (220) during the early 1930s, and the insistence on absolute obedience, were not designed to further the material interests of CPA leaders. In fact, CPA leadership itself was in some respects an enormous hardship. There is no reason to doubt Daphne Gollan's evidence that 'these men lived isolated lives on unremitting work, much of it routine, for which they were paid a pittance' (cited 360), and that they made extraordinary sacrifices. Just what sustained them is hard to say, and is probably diverse. But it should not be forgotten that the recognition of, and deference to, leaders was itself a reward.

In terms of its feel for the human story – where it marks an advance of previous accounts – The Reds is thus strangely one-sided. There is a general assumption that these were decent people, perhaps misguided, but with the highest of motivations. There is little or no suggestion of cupidity, envy, enmity or resentment as major motives. It is easy, in retrospect, to idealise the losers. But it stretches credulity, even (perhaps, especially) with the greater human depth provided by Macintyre's account, to believe that a communist victory in Australia would have been fundamentally different from communist rule in the Soviet Union. The issue is not primarily personal: the lack of any sort of institutional safeguards and guarantees for the freedom promised by communists is reason enough to be not just wary, but hostile.

Furthermore, the story of communism is one in which the vilified defenders of liberal democracy and opponents of Soviet dissembling deserve both some humanising, and some credit.

In reflecting on their past since 1989, communists such as Eric Aarons (1993) and Bernie Taft (1994) have been keen to stress the 'secondary virtues' – their idealism, their loyalty to their beliefs, their hard-work and discipline – rather than the fact that their loyalty involved them in deceit in defence of barbaric results. If it is proper to remember that communists were human, we should not forget that they were all too human.

Conclusion

Macintyre agrees that 'the communist project itself was deeply flawed' (413), but the question of where the flaw lies remains critical for an evaluation of the experience. Macintyre's work on the history of the CPA is welcome in its detail, but his stress on the bogey of Stalinism does no justice to uncovering the flaws. For those of us who maintain that communism itself was the problem, and that the methods of the Bolsheviks prefigured the worst of Soviet repression, the account in this book will not change our minds. The exercise itself, however, reveals just how difficult it is to confront the assumptions that characterised the communist era: in particular, that communism was both progressive and compassionate, and that it was the culmination of the Western tradition.

The communist experience is a human story of greater complexity and shade than Macintyre allows. Communists relieved themselves of having to deal with critiques, except to dismiss them. Communism, the child of the Enlightenment, subverted reason. This is one of its major crimes. The paradox of communism in the West is that people desiring freedom voluntarily placed themselves in an intellectual servitude. Recognising it, and breaking out of it, is a task that remains for many of them still to be done. Macintyre's account of early Australian communism might be an instructive place to begin that process.

References

Aarons, Eric 1993, What's Left? Memoirs of an Australian communist, Ringwood, Penguin Books.

Davidson, Alastair 1969, The Communist Party of Australia: A Short History, Stanford, Hoover Institution Press.

Gollan, Robin 1975, Revolutionaries and Reformists: Communism and the Australian Labour Movement, 1920–1955, Canberra, ANU Press.

Sendy, John 1997, 'The Octogenarian Revolution,' Eureka Street, November: 41–43.

Sharkey, Lance 1944, An Outline History of the Australian Communist Party, Sydney, Australian Communist Party.

Taft, Bernie 1994, Crossing the Party Line: Memoirs of Bernie Taft, Newham, Scribe.

David W. Lovell. He teaches in the School of Politics at the Australian Defence Force Academy. One of his most recent works is Marxism and Australian Socialism Before the Bolshevik Revolution (Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1997).

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