Debate, Controversy and Comradeship

EXTRACT: As anyone who has attended will readily tell you, our CU is distinctive from the various other left schools and conferences in a number of ways - most notably the Socialist Workers Party's Marxism, which always precedes our gathering.
Crucially, the CPGB positively aims to seek out differences of opinion among comrades - to bring them into the open sunlight. But we do so not in order to ridicule them or launch an ideological heresy-hunt, a monstrous trait of the confessional sects that litter the left. Instead, the CPGB has consistently promoted the open clash of contending ideas - the only method by which we can arrive at the truth. From some of our left critics you would get the distinct impression that this is some sort of peculiar idiosyncrasy on the part of the CPGB, rather than the very foundation stone of Marxism - based as it is on the principles of scientific socialism, of free and fearless inquiry. Marx said that the dialectic "does not let itself be impressed by anything, being in its very essence critical and revolutionary". In essence, that is the ethos that we try to inculcate at all levels of the organisation. History has taught us that today's minority or 'eccentric' viewpoint can be tomorrow's common sense or majority opinion.
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