Guy Aldred’s Mission[1]
Publicado em: International Council Correspondence, [Vol. I] (1934-1935), No 9 (July 1935)
By Aldred’s own assertion, this pamphlet owes its origin mainly to a personal correspondence. It is intended to be the answer to many questions adressed to him regarding the anti-parliamentary movement. The high-flown title of the work is not justified by the contents; what we have here is much rather the self-caricature of a man who is filled with a “mission”. The task which Aldred set for himself – that of revealing in the anti-parliamentary movement the kernel of the new labor movement – remains unfulfilled. Nor, as a matter of fact, is he sufficiently interested in the matter; his principle object is rather merely to make his personal light shine as far as possible. And since his knowledge is very limited, the work turns out to be a tiresome affair which belongs in the realm of political curiosities.
The pamphlet is written mainly with a view to plessing the Little Napoleon of Second Avenue, New York. It accordingly repeats all the nonsense that Trotsky has given out about himself since he lost his uniform, and tries desperately to make a class fighter out of the Leninist Weisbord. The result is a stew of such quality as to be simply indescribable. It is only when Aldred cites a few facts from history of the Third International and produces fragments form the publications of the Communist Labor Party of Germany (K.A.P.D.) that the pamphlet can be read with some interest. In his exposition of the anti-parliamentary movements of Europe, numerous errors creep in with which we need not concern ourselves here. He has neither sufficient factual knowledge for such a work as he has undertaken, nor the theoretical equipment for seriously dealing with the complex of questions involved. Even where he is directly concerned, as in his relation to the Weisbord group and to the J. W. P., he is incapable of seeing the real differences between these groups or of grasping the real character of either of them. The Weisbord group is a hundred-percent Leninist affair with which the U.W.P. has not the least thing in common. The fact that Aldred is ready, because of a “friendly correspondence”, to pardon Weisbord the whole of Leninism is enough to convince us that we also have nothing to do with people of Aldred’s stamp, nor do we want to have.
[1] For Comunism. A Communist Manifesto. Defining the Workers’ Struggle and the Need of a New Communist International. With a History of the Anti-Parliamentary Movement, 1906-1935. By Guy. A. Aldred, 120 pp. Published in Glascow, Scotland.
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