Honor The 92nd Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The 91st Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (The 21 Conditions Congress) Of The CI (July-August 1920)
Markin comment:
Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.
No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.
The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
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Markin comment on this post:
As noted in my commentary on the Manifesto of the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920), reposted below since it also applies to these theses, such documents give the political movement it is addressed to its marching order. In a general sense, at least. These theses codify those general propositions outlined in the manifesto. Note here that this Second Congress took place as the international working class movement was going through a regroupment process right after World War I between the reformist socialists, the emerging communist vanguard, and the bewildered anarchists. Note also the difference in approaches to the more hardened reformist-led socialist parties, and to the ill-formed but more revolutionary-spirited anarchist formations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) here in America in their good days.
A manifesto, particularly a political manifesto, and especially a revolutionary communist manifesto like the one that issued out of the historic Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 should give a cogent analysis of the world political situation. It should also describe the nature of the period (revolutionary, non-revolutionary, heading toward or away from either, an estimation of the enemy’s capacities, and the obstacles in the way both inside and outside the workers movement (out side the treachery of the liberals and inside the perfidy of the labor bureaucracy resting on the labor bureaucracy). In short, give the international proletariat its marching orders. The Manifesto of the Second World Congress does just those things at a time when the fledgling Communist International was trying to consolidate its vanguard position in the world working class movement. The Communist International then, and for some time after, did yeoman’s work in that regard, not always perfectly but from a revolutionary perspective. Even as it degenerated politically toward the middle and late 1920s there were, as the Leon Trotsky-led International Left Opposition held, reasons, good reasons to adhere to its tenets. Only with the debacle around Hitler’s coming to power in Germany did Trotsky throw in the towel. That seemed right then, and now. I would argue that the Seventh (and last) World Congress in 1935 unquestionably put paid to that notion. We did not need a vanguard national party, or a vanguard revolutionary international party for that matter, to give the lead in the political struggle to the liberal bourgeoisie as the popular frontist politics of the CI proclaimed from that time onward (with a few “left” turns). There was an international for that “strategy”, or rather a mail-drop address, it was (is) called the Second International.
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Markin comment on this session:
This session defines what being a communist and in a communist organization is all about. No more party of the whole class (unless it is with Communist hegemony) Sunday socialism and a final recognition that, like it or not, future problems or not, there were two (at least) definite trends, revolutionary and reformist, in the international working class movement (and its Marxist wing as well).
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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International
Sixth Session
July 29
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Serrati opens the session. The discussion is on the conditions for entry into the Communist International. Zinoviev gives the report.
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Zinoviev: We come now to one of the most important questions on the agenda, the question that is to decide what we, the Communist International, actually are and what we want to be.
First of all a short formal report on the work of the Commission. The Commission was, as you know, extended to include the representatives of the USPD and of the Socialist Party of France. Both delegations participated in the meetings and took an active part in the discussions. Much has been changed in the Theses but the main content remains as it was. We will of course present them to you with the changes, and you will have the opportunity to judge them for yourselves. In those cases where we were able to take the advice of the comrades in question into account, we have of course met them half way and accepted it. Paragraph 2 of the French edition is missing in the German edition. It reads:
‘Every organisation that wishes to affiliate to the Communist International must, in a regular and planned manner, remove all reformists and centrists from all posts of any responsibility in the labour movement (party organisations, editorial boards, trades unions, parliamentary factions, co-operatives and local government) and replace them with reliable communists, without baulking at the fact that, especially at first, ordinary workers from the masses will replace “experienced” opportunists.’
Then an important amendment has been made in the 7th Thesis, which previously read:
‘The Communist International will not tolerate notorious reformists like Turati, Modigliani and others having the right to pass as members of the Communist International.’
The Commission did not think it right merely to name Italian opportunists, for we are after all a Communist International, and we must therefore also brand reformists of other countries for what they are. It therefore decided to name at least one of these people from every country. Instead of ‘Turati, Modigliani and others,’ the list therefore reads ‘Turati, Modigliani, Kautsky, Hilferding, Longuet, MacDonald, Hillquit and others.’ [Interjection: ‘Grimm’.] The list is incomplete, I must agree. Perhaps the Congress can complete it.
Then paragraphs 18 and 19 have been added. They read:
‘Paragraph 18. All the leading press organs of the parties of every country have an obligation to reprint all the important official documents of the Executive Committee of the Communist International.
‘Paragraph 19. All parties that belong to the Communist International or have applied to join must call a special congress to check all these conditions as soon as possible and at the latest four months after the Second Congress of the Communist International. In doing this, the Central Committees must make sure that the local organisations are acquainted with the decisions of the Second Congress.’
Comrade Lenin then moved a personal motion.
This motion was discussed in the Commission and adopted by five votes to three with two abstentions. I must state however on behalf of the Russian delegation that we are inclined to withdraw it in its previous form and only to express it as a wish, not as a condition and a directive. We are of the opinion that it is sufficient for the Congress to express such a wish.
Then some amendments of a stylistic nature were undertaken, particularly in the part where we talk of legal and illegal work. These will be laid before you in good time.
I come now to the reasons for these Theses. Page 79 previously read: ‘Under certain circumstances the Communist International can be threatened by the danger of being watered down by inconstant and half-hearted elements which have still not finally cast aside the ideology of the Second International.’
The Commission changed that and decided to be much more categorical here. It decided to say not ‘under certain circumstances’ but ‘communism now runs the danger of being watered down’, and it was right to do so. It really is correct that the Communist International already runs the danger of being watered down by parties that until quite recently belonged to the Second International and come to us under the pressure of the masses – come to us out of necessity. They cannot lay aside the old Adam of their bourgeois and petty-bourgeois background so easily, even if they wanted to. When we held our founding Congress we were also threatened with a number of dangers. The danger however of being watered down and having to take in too many diverse elements did not exist then. Fifteen months ago we were still a small group that people tried to laugh off by saying: ‘Your whole Communist International can be seated on ten chairs; it has no influence. The big old parties are staying in the Second International.’ Now things are different. Now the old parties want to join the Communist International. To the extent that the masses of workers have developed towards communism we must accept them. We must not however forget that they come to us with all the old baggage, that is to say with the old leadership, which waged an obstinate fight against communism during and also after the war.
What was the Communist International when it was founded in March 1919? At that time it was nothing more than a propaganda society. That is what it has remained during the whole year of its existence. That is no small thing, to be a propaganda society on a world scale at a time when the working class is seeking a path after the terrible, destructive war Europe has been through. But I must say openly that at that time it was only a propaganda society organised on a large scale that tried to take the ideas of communism to the working class. Now we want to become something greater and something different. Now we do not want to be a propaganda society, now we want to become a fighting organisation of the international proletariat. We want to organise ourselves as a fighting organisation that not only propagates communism but also wants to turn it into deeds, and to create an international organisation for the purpose.
I have just read an article by Paul Louis in which he states that the First International collapsed because it could not prevent the war of 1870-1871. The same is supposed to have happened with the Second International. The World War broke out, it could not be prevented, and that was why it collapsed. The First International is supposed to have been in the same position in its day as the Second International is today.
That is no less a social-patriotic lie for the fact that it is probably only half-conscious. The First International tried to prevent the war. It fought, and fell in struggle. The Second International tried to avoid this struggle and did avoid it. The First International fell heroically; its best fighters were murdered during the Paris Commune in the fight against the bourgeoisie. The Second International collapsed shamefully. We must say that loud and clear to the working class; that is why we must brand this comparison for what it is, for it tends to support social patriotism and Kautskyism.
The First International was a strictly centralised organisation. It even tried to lead every big economic strike from a central point. And to a certain extent it succeeded in doing that because the movement was still young and weak. Today we cannot have such a centre that can directly lead every big economic strike. We now have economic strikes day by day, hour by hour, and we do not even know that they have taken place. There can be no question of such a centre as far as we are concerned, precisely because the movement has grown so enormous.
The Second International was not a central body. At the most it was a point of concentration. The First and the Second Internationals were a sort of thesis and antithesis. Now that we can set conditions for new relations we come to the synthesis in the social sense. We must recognise that clearly if we want to discuss the conditions for entry.
A large number of leading comrades who until recently still belonged to the Second International are of the opinion that membership of the Communist International will not place any great obligations upon them at all. I have a press-cutting from the Berner Tagwacht (Robert Grimm’s paper) which contains an article by Grimm. He declares that the Second International and its Executive was merely a letter-box. Quite correct. But what does the author of this article propose to the Communist International? The Communist International must, indeed, become something different. It must organise ‘big actions’ for different countries, that is to say it must arrange to form an information service, it must make arrangements so that ‘parliamentary action’ can be ‘synchronised’. Well you can see that it amounts to the same thing. A letter-box that will be a little deeper and more capacious, but still a letter-box.
We need an information service; I have no objection to that. Our information service is very bad, we must organise it better. In relation to parliamentary action too it would be good if we could synchronise it in the various countries and for example all brand the League of Nations as a robber band at the same time, or formulate a motion against the reformists. But that is very far from being a fighting organisation on a world-wide scale. Even financial support is not the most important thing now. The conception of the Communist International held by Grimm and his co-thinkers is basically exactly the same as that of the Second International: a letter box, bigger and better equipped, and painted red. That the Communist International must never become!
I have also read some remarks by various ‘left’ reformists, like for example Claude Trèves, in the French comrades’ Revue. Trèves is in favour of immediate entry into the Communist International, but on condition that nobody is tied down and no political slogans are issued for the individual countries. What they mean is they want to join immediately, but only without tying themselves down and with a degree of ‘autonomy’ that permits these people to carry on in the way they have up until now. Mr. Modigliani, a self-appointed Italian socialist, expressed this most crudely. Formally speaking he is now a member of the Communist International, but he is no comrade of ours. Recently he was in Paris and he tried to persuade Longuet to join the Communist International with the following arguments: ‘Why not join the Communist International? It does not place us under any obligation. All that has to be done is to send the Executive a postcard once a fortnight. That is all. Why do we not do this?’
Those who know him and his opportunist cynicism will recognise the whole Modigliani in these words. These gentlemen from the camp of the reformists think that they can come into the Communist International as if it were a public house. Our whole past, our short but significant fifteen months of past history, has shown every serious politician that there is no room in the Communist International for people who come and continue to do just as they please. We want to build an international of deeds. We are not of the same opinion as Kautsky that the International is merely an ‘instrument of peace’. No, it is to be an instrument of struggle, during peacetime, during the insurrection, before and after the insurrection, a rallying point, a fighting organisation of that part of the international proletariat that is conscious of its goal and wants to fight for its goal.
The question is often posed as if there was some sort of contradiction between the ‘West’ and the ‘East’. The attempt has been made to din into the workers that the Communist International is an organisation of the working class of the East, and that that of the West stands aloof from it. The French leaders and the literati of the USPD have tried to present the matter thus: ‘We (the centrists) do not wish to join the Communist International immediately on our own, but we must first bring the whole working class of the West in with us.’ There is another contradiction, the contradiction between communism and reformism, between social patriotism and communism; but the contradiction between East and West has been plucked out of thin air. We have the same division of the movement into three in every country: 1) an outright opportunist right wing, which is now the main support of the bourgeoisie, 2) a more or less pronounced middle section, the swamp, the centre, which is also a support of the bourgeoisie, 3) a left wing which is more or less clearly communist or at least tends towards communism. It is clear that the western working class, let us say for example in Britain, knows quite well what is happening in Moscow. It knows what the Soviet government means. Every demonstration shows that the British working class is clear on this question. It is high time to abolish from the world the legend about the abyss between ‘East’ and ‘West’ and to stop preaching to the German working class that they should wait for the ‘West’.
Above all, we should not forget the lessons of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The Hungarian comrade has already spoken about the role of the party on this question. It is a question of great historical importance. Remember how it was. The Communist Party of Hungary made it very easy for the Social Democrats to be affiliated. It was done in a hand’s turn. When we were discussing the affiliation in the Commission, some of the Hungarian comrades said that they felt that many parties from the Second International would now accept our conditions as easily as was the case in the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
The Hungarian party called itself ‘Socialist-Communist’. At first it seemed simply to be an argument about the name. The Hungarians were in a struggle and we did not want to stab them in the back. Our Executive was guilty of weakness and agreed to the fusion of the parties. We told each other that it did not matter what they called themselves but it turned out later that it was a question of historical importance and the fact that the communists unfortunately took the greater part of the old social democrats into their own house, and that these gentlemen went over to the bourgeoisie at the decisive hour, perhaps determined fifty per cent of the development of the Soviet Republic in Hungary.
Some of our Italian comrades said that at the next congress they would propose to call their party, which is now called Socialist, Socialist-Communist also. But let us not forget the Hungarian example. This is not a question of verbal hair-splitting but of whether we can have confidence in these old socialist gentlemen who do not want to break with the old ideology and would like to patch it up. This lesson has cost the working class of Hungary and of the whole world enough sacrifice in order to know that if you give reformism a little finger it will take your whole hand and later your head and in the end it will destroy you completely.
The question is that we must have an unambiguously communist International. We must fight for communism; it will not be won in a month but only after many struggles through an organisation that is as centralised as possible and has clear and definite tactics. We will show the door to the gentlemen who think that a post-card is enough before they can come.
There is a real danger that the Communist International will become the fashion once the Second International has shamefully collapsed. Today the Second International is only a stinking swamp, a corpse that is rotting. It goes without saying that the parts are splitting off and trying to turn the Communist International into the same thing but with slightly different words. Many of them only do it half-consciously but objectively it is so.
This danger exists and we must take quite decisive steps against it. Today I received an article from the Freiheit of July 13. It is entitled ‘The Problem of the International’. The Freiheit is of the opinion that if we stand by our open letter to the USPD of February 5, 1920 (which I signed) an agreement is impossible.
[On February 5, 1920, the Executive Committee of the Comintern sent a letter to the USPD, drafted by Lenin and Zinoviev. Perhaps because it had been delayed by Levi for his own reasons, the letter did not reach the USPD leadership until April. While it expressed communist criticism of the USPD in the sharpest way, and condemned the attempts to form a middle of the road ‘International’, the letter ended with a call for negotiations with the Third International, which eventually led to the USPD delegation coming to Moscow.]
Now I can state quite decisively and quite officially, and I hope the Congress will agree with me, that by and large we will set today the same conditions that we set in the letter of February 5, and I can say quite categorically that we reject any collaboration with the leaders of the right wing such as Kautsky, Hilferding and Longuet. The French tell us that Longuet may now be of a different opinion, that he may change his mind. If he agrees with us now so much the better; we will greet him if he is being honest and serious. I say the same thing to the German comrades who will perhaps change.
We declare however quite officially that we do not wish to collaborate with this right wing and its leaders. I should also like to declare, not as the reporter from the Commission, but as the representative of the Russian delegation, that should the case occur that our Italian or other comrades say that they demand a fusion with these right-wing elements, then our party would sooner be prepared to remain completely alone than to fuse with such elements. which we regard as bourgeois elements. I should like to make this statement on behalf of our party.
I should like to consider concretely the situation in the parties that want to affiliate to the Communist International and are courting it as well as the position in those parties that already belong to it. I shall try to do this separately country by country.
First of ail then the parties that did not belong to us previously but now wish to do so. I have gathered extensive material on the French party. I cannot place it all before you; I shall only show the most important. I should like to state in advance that we do not wish to turn anybody’s past remarks into a noose around his neck. It is obvious that anybody can make a mistake and later repent. We only want to quote matters of principle and confine ourselves to the most important points.
There can be no doubt at all as to the personal uprightness of Cachin. Everybody who knows his past knows that he has erred, but that he is an upright fighter. I have his article of January 7, 1920 on the League of Nations. In January he was still calling Wilson the ‘last great bourgeois of our times’. He further stated that ‘American democracy’ had done everything in its power to prevent what had happened. It goes without saying that for a communist that is an explicitly social pacifist remark. And social pacifism is not socialism. That is the spirit of the dead leader, Jaurès, who unfortunately was also only a social pacifist. We must say that, for all the respect we have for his great merits. His tradition lives on in France and other countries. This pacifism and Wilsonism is a very obstinate phenomenon which even many communists are not spared. We had the following example at our previous Congress: Fritz Platten, a left comrade from Switzerland brought a printed shorthand report of a speech he had made in parliament in which he stated that Wilson was, after all, an honourable man who would like to solve the problems of the war peacefully.
Thus even our own people, professed communists, are still often led into temptation by this social pacifism, because great masters have trained us in it for decades. We have not fought against it sufficiently. We must put an end to it and tell our French friends quite clearly: it is very much easier to accept the formal conditions for entry into the Communist International than it is to get a real grip on social pacifism. Social patriotism is a dangerous bourgeois ideology that impedes us in our fight. You can adopt 18 or even 18,000 conditions, but if you stay a social pacifist you are simply not a communist and you do not belong in the Communist International. You must therefore honestly state whether you are finally willing to finish with it or not.
I have a few more things to say about the French comrades. There is an article by Frossard on relations with the Communist International which was written on February 13, 1920. In it Frossard declares: ‘as far as our party’s policies are concerned it is very probable that even after entry into the Communist International they will remain the same. The elections are coming and the Communist International can on no account stop us from forming pacts with other parties.’
So you see, he is of the opinion that the Communist International is a nice public house where the representatives of different countries sing the Internationale and compliment each other. Then they all disperse and carry on with the old practice. We will never tolerate this
damnable practice of the Second International.
I shall make do with these quotations on the French comrades’ practice although I could quote from a whole number of other sources. There is with reference to the lead articles in the Humanité a kind of proportional system, as Cachin and Frossard explained to me. The centrists are allowed 8 lead articles in the week, the Lefts 4 and Renaudel and Co. 2 or 3. You understand that such a system is quite impossible. It is a kind of chemical mixture: 8 drops of distilled water, 3 drops of poison and then, to counteract the poison, 3 drops of milk. [Applause.] This cannot go on. This practice can perhaps be explained from the history of the French movement: but this old tradition must simply be cancelled. Frossard declared before his departure from Paris: ‘I would gladly go to Moscow without Renaudel. We will have a difficult discussion with the Russian comrades. It is better if he stays at home.’ But in the letter in question Mr. Renaudel is called ‘our friend’ by Frossard. We must abolish these French manners. They are not even entirely French. Modigliani also writes ‘my friend’ to
Serrati, and Serrati to Prampolini. This French and Italian method cannot be our method. I hope that you will give the Executive the task of demanding a monthly report from each party so that it has a mirror in which it can see what is happening.
I come now to the German Independents.
I shall do no more than to quote to you some extracts from the last official answer from the USPD Central Committee that was brought to us by the USPD representatives. Their first reproof reads:
‘It is peculiar that the Executive Committee of the Communist International, which, if only in consideration of its position, should be conscious of the duty to treat the workers’ organisations that enter into negotiations with it with all due loyalty, bases its reply to us on the thesis that “the workers who belong to the USPD have a very different temper from ‘the right wing of their leaders’,” a sentence that runs like a red thread through the whole reply.’
It is true that this sentence runs like a red thread through the whole of our declaration of principles. If at the present moment of comparative political calm some 10,000 members of the USPD find themselves in gaol, then I have full respect for these comrades. I say that they are serious fighters and serious workers in addition. We must try to get together with these workers. That does not however contradict my statement that there exists a right wing led by Kautsky, Hilferding and Ströbel. Crispien was at Lucerne with Hilferding and did not want to leave the Second International. There is a right wing.
People say to us: ‘Who bothers about Kautsky now? Nobody.’ To that I reply: That is not true. Kautskyism is an international phenomenon, and many of the leaders of the USPD centre who think that they have freed themselves from Kautsky are in fact repeating the policies that Kautsky carried out. The best we could do was to take into account that there are workers in the ranks of the USPD who seriously fight and stand in contradiction to the right wing leadership who have sabotaged the revolutionary struggle and have until now given the best service to the bourgeoisie. It is said that there are no right-wing leaders in Germany. It is disloyal on the part of the Executive, we are told, to undertake such a partition into left- and right-wing leaders. We should have the greatest loyalty towards our brothers in other countries who are really fighting against the bourgeoisie, bat loyalty towards people like Kautsky, Hilferding and Ströbel would be synonymous with treachery to the working class, and we shall not cultivate such loyalty. There is an abyss between Hilferding, who is able to negotiate in a comradely manner with high-ranking English officers, and us. The red thread that runs through our letter is precisely this difference between the workers who fight alongside us and the right-wing leaders who sabotage the struggle. The USPD Central Committee goes on: ‘What basis the reproof is supposed to have that the “right-wing leaders” of the USPD are “orientated towards the Entente” is a complete mystery to us. Previously it has been mainly the right-wing parties that have reproached us with this. Last year particularly, when we had to wage a fight for the signature of the treaty against all the nationalist agitation and military machinations, we were reproached, especially by the reactionary bourgeois parties, with being “agents of the Entente governments”. The further course of events fully justified our attitude, just as previously it had proved that the attitude on the peace question of the Russian Communists, who as we know were reproached with having allied themselves with German Imperial militarism as a result of that attitude, was dictated by harsh necessity.’
When we in Russia were faced with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the situation was very clear. The working class had the power in its hands in our country. It was starving, but it fought on. German imperialism got a grip on us and the German working class was too weak to come to our assistance. We said to ourselves that, in order to win a breathing space – great emphasis was laid on this at the time – in order to gain time, we would have to reach a temporary pact with these robbers. But what was the situation in Germany in 1918-1919? Power was in the hands of the bourgeoisie, or in the hands of Scheidemann, which amounts to the same thing. What happened in Germany was not the same as what happened in Russia. The sly fox Scheidemann said: ‘I shall wash my hands in innocence; I am against the signing of the Versailles Treaty’. He carried out the most artful deception of the heroic German working class. It was put about that Scheidemann was against the Versailles Treaty. Then along came the USPD and set to work to help Scheidemann. It shouted in every key: ‘Peace must be signed!’ And now you say that the position in Germany was the same as the position in Russia at the time of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk! You Germans overlooked the slight difference that in Russia the working class was in power and the bourgeoisie was on the ground, while in Germany the bourgeoisie was in power and the working class, sold out a thousand times over, was on the ground.
Where does this ‘slight’ confusion come from? It comes from the fact that in March 1919 many right-wing leaders of the USPD pictured the situation like this: ‘Scheidemann or us, it makes no great difference. [Applause.] We are both part of the same working class. It is the same old Social Democracy.’ It was this unconscious state of mind within the USPD that led to the fact that a claim of such crying injustice could be made and that a situation where the working class was in power could be confused with a situation where the bourgeoisie was in power, where the Hindenburgs and the Scheidemanns were grinding the working class under their boots and oppressing them. We are often told: ‘We have no great differences with you. Kautsky has no great significance in our party.’ Does not the whole spirit of Kautsky speak in this letter that was brought to us by the delegates of the USPD?
‘As it is with the question of the dictatorship, so it is with the question of terror and the civil war. Here too the specifically Russian form of the dictatorship has been elevated to the level of a principle for the international proletariat. In this, the form stifles the content and renders the course of the revolution more difficult by failing to give sufficient consideration to the conditions which, where there is a different sociological content, could also make a different form of the revolution necessary. In examining the problem of force we must take into account the fact that we must distinguish between force and terror. Unable as the dictatorship of the proletariat is, like any other dictatorship, even if it cloaks itself in a democratic robe, to renounce the use of force, the extent of its use still depends on the resistance of the counter-revolution. Terrorism as a political method means setting up a reign of terror, means the use of state force even against the innocent, in order to break any intended resistance by intimidation and deterrence. It must be said in opposition that international Social Democracy has rejected such terror on the grounds not only of humanity and justice but also of expedience. If it can be said of force that it is only the midwife of every old society that is pregnant with the new, and that it cannot bring the new society into the light of day until it has ripened in the womb of the old, then we must say of terror and history has proved this one hundred fold – that its application does not express the strength of a movement but much rather its inner weakness. Our party is therefore in harmony with the teachings of Marxism and the experiences of history when it rejects the glorification of terror. The fact that we stand by this principle does not signify, as the reply of the Executive Committee reproaches us, the “demoralization of the revolutionary consciousness of the workers”. It signifies much rather the securing the lasting interests of socialism.’
This is written after the January uprising in Berlin, after the bourgeoisie has robbed the working class of its most valuable possessions.
[January uprising in Berlin – sparked off when on 4 January the government sacked the Berlin police chief, the Independent Social-Democrat Emil Eichhorn. A general strike was called and for a few days the workers were masters of the streets. However, without clear leadership or preparation for an insurrection the movement was soon crushed by the army and in the repression which followed Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were hunted down and murdered.]
This is written after everything that we know about the civil war in Russia, Finland, Georgia, Hungary and so forth! A petty-bourgeois machine has written this, and not the heart of a revolutionary! I think that ‘the lasting interests of the bourgeoisie’ should have been written in place of ‘the lasting interests of socialism’. This statement stands foursquare on the basis of Kautskyism. If Kautsky, as Dittmann and Crispien declared here, is no longer of any importance, then why have they copied in this reply all the platitudes, stupidities and counter-revolutionary rubbish that Kautsky ever scribbled?
When we asked the left-wing USPD representatives here in Moscow whether they had signed this, they were not in a position to say that they had not signed it. They said that they had had no time, that it had been done ‘at a gallop’. These are completely non-political reasons. That such questions should be settled at a gallop at the USPD headquarters is bad in itself. We can see how the dead Kautsky is dragging the living Däumig deep into the water by the hair, instead of the active Däumig shoving old Kautsky to one side with all his counter-revolutionary filth.
So much for the USPD.
Let us proceed! We must set the same standard whether a party already belongs to us or not. The fact that it already belongs to us should not free it from criticism. We must make criticisms and say what is.
I come next to the Italian Party. We have always emphasised, and we emphasise now: It is one of the best of the parties that left the Second International. The Italian working class is a heroic working class which we all love because it is serious about the revolution and communism. However, we cannot, unfortunately, say the same thing about its leaders. ‘You are always talking about Turati’, Comrade Serrati tells us, ‘it becomes boring’. Yes, Comrade Serrati, we will not cease so long as people like Turati are still our members. At the moment, in fact, Turati is a member of the Communist International because he is a member of the Italian Party. Is that not a scandal? If we had a card for every member of the Communist International, Turati and Modigliani too would have membership cards of the Communist International. And these people after all are carrying out counter-revolutionary propaganda in Italy. In the last few days Turati has stood up in the Italian parliament and made the kind of big speech of which he has already made a few in his life. Turati made the following speech: ‘You bourgeois gentlemen see that you are in a difficult position, just like the working class. So we should help each other. In the agrarian question, in the housing question and in the question of food, I propose to you a consistently semi-bourgeois programme.’ The Avanti does not report how the Italian bourgeoisie reacted to that. The Italian party has since then instituted legal action against Turati. When you have such conditions within the party nobody can say that it is a serious party. If it was, it would have better things to do than instituting legal action against people who have been saying the same thing for thirty years because they are consistent reformists.
I have at hand a collection of some 200 to 300 quotations on the Italian Party. I am not in a position to put them all forward. We will publish a red book on the Italians and other countries. Comrade Serrati will receive a copy of this book from me. A bouquet of sweet-smelling quotations, and he will enjoy this book thoroughly. When Turati was asked why he stayed in the Party he replied that this way he could exercise an influence on the working class. Turati has nothing to hide; he openly states that he belongs to the party because he can present himself as a reformist with the halo of a socialist, as a member of the Party in parliament and at meetings. He can tend his affairs bette r inside the party. Why should he go away? We advise our friends to pay attention to what Turati himself has said. These gentlemen should not be allowed to remain in our party and sabotage our fight. We have too many open enemies to allow our concealed enemies into our party.
After a speech made by Bombacci as the representative of the party at a chemical industry trades union conference, in front of a meeting of trades unionists from all over the country, Turati was the next speaker, and babbled his reformist rubbish. The Italian communist Bombacci reacted rather mildly. I ask: Why is Turati allowed to come into a meeting of trades unionists and make a reformist speech to the workers, to which Bombacci replies in a very mild way? As long as Turati is a party, member, Comrade Bombacci of course cannot say that he is our class enemy. We have better things to do than give these gentlemen the opportunity to propagate reformist views in our name in front of ordinary workers.
I come now to the Swedish Party. Comrade Höglund and the others who were with us at the foundation of the Communist International are unfortunately not here. In this matter too, however, we must say what is. Up to now the Swedish left has refused to call itself communist, and it is now clear that that was no accident. The comrades publish a theoretical journal that they call Zimmerwald. It seems they got no further than Zimmerwald. In this journal are printed articles by right-wing German Independents. And that too is no accident, because there are mutual sympathies. The most important thing is that there are out and out reformists in the Swedish left. I do not want to talk about Lindhagen, although he is still a member of the party. On March 12, 1920 he quite openly proposed that Sweden should join the League of Nations, and he carefully proposed 5 amendments to the statutes of the League of Nations.
The Party has, it is true, disavowed one of Mr. Lindhagen’s articles, but Lindhagen remains nonetheless in the Party and is thus formally speaking a member of the Communist International.
One of the Swedish Party’s members of Parliament, Einberg, declared in an article that raised the social-patriotic demand for disarmament that the War Office. could quite easily be wound up, that is to say with the agreement of the government. He then went on to say that he hoped that the right social democrats, that is to say, Branting, would largely support him on this question. There is further the well known member of parliament or leading party comrade, the Swede Ivar Vennerström, who made such approaches that Branting stated: ‘It looks as if the Left Social Democratic Party want to marry us.’ To that Höglund replied that he personally would not like to marry the ageing Branting. But it was declared in the Left’s party press that there were conditions under which such a match could be discussed.
We must recognise the services that the Swedish Left Social Democracy has rendered. It is a movement that arose out of the youth movement. We know that we have there a number of people who are really revolutionary. We must however tell them clearly that we must have a really communist party that will not discuss marriage with Branting and will have had to have thrown disarmament overboard long ago, and that it is not our job to improve the statutes of the League of Nations, but to bury the League of Nations.
The draft programme of the Danish Left states that the Party ascertains that the abolition of militarism raises the prospects of a bloodless revolution. Yes, certainly. Should bourgeois militarism be abolished, then we have a better prospect for a bloodless revolution. But the whole question is how we are to abolish militarism without shedding our own blood and that of the bourgeoisie.
I come now to the Norwegian Party. The party headquarters tolerates a right wing within the party. Scheflo stated in the Commission that part of their membership was anti-socialist. How does this happen? Because they accept entire trades unions in the party. This is no good. We can have good relations with the trades unions. We can form communist factions in the trades unions, but to accept entire trades unions with 10 per cent Christian Socialists and other anti-socialist elements is a mistake. We must draw our Norwegian Party’s attention to that.
The Yugoslav Party now calls itself a Communist Party. We have however read a whole series of reformist articles in our Yugoslav comrades’ central organ. The party opposes it, it is true. But these are conditions that nobody can or should tolerate. We must draw our Yugoslav Party’s attention to the fact that it is impossible to have out-and-out reformists in the party, to place the press at their disposal, and so forth. In everything else the Communist Party of Yugoslavia is splendid.
It is possible that other parties will also have something to tell us Russians. It goes without saying that every party that belongs to the Communist International must tell our Russian Party when it commits a sin. That is its international duty. We should regard ourselves as a single international party with its branches in every country, and every branch should have the right to ‘intervene’ and say what is. We have Communist Parties that are really Communist and form the nucleus of the Communist International. Unfortunately however we also have a number of parties that give the reformists the opportunity to deceive the working class and to steal from us part of the confidence the working class has in us. It is obvious: As a member of the Senate, Trèves daily robs us of part of the confidence of the masses, and Bombacci and Serrati are robbed of the confidence of the masses by Turati and Modigliani.
We have sections of big old parties that want to come to us. Part of the workers in these parties are for us, for the setting up of the dictatorship, and part is still hesitating. We do not propose to accept the French Party and the USPD immediately, but to give the Executive full authority to negotiate further and to examine whether the conditions will be fulfilled, to study the press from day to day and after some time to reach a decision. The French comrades have stated to us in the Commission that they are by and large in agreement with our conditions. The representatives of the USPD have stated more or less the same thing. We will do everything possible to make a rapprochement easier. The most important thing is to study carefully and conscientiously all the articles that are published and for the Congress to give us official authorisation to follow through on its behalf for a specific period the question of whether these conditions will be fulfilled. It is possible to accept 18,000 conditions and still remain a Kautskyite. What matter are deeds. We have put forward these conditions in order to have a standard so that we can have the opportunity of an objective examination of what the Congress wants. I hope in any case that the Congress will clarify things and give us a point of reference, so that every worker can clearly see what the Communist International wants. I can say one thing with complete certainty: whatever the attitude of the USPD headquarters, whatever the attitude of the leadership of the French Socialist Party, the hearts of the workers of every country still belong to us. They will belong to us more each day, because the last hour of the bourgeoisie and of the half bourgeois Second International has struck. The time for a real fight for socialism has come.
Sooner or later all workers will understand that. They will come to us over the heads of their vacillating leaders, and a real fighting organisation of the revolutionary working class will be formed.
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Great and prolonged applause.
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Balabanova: The following motion has been proposed: ‘The parties that belong to the Communist International are ordered to exclude from their ranks all members of the Freemasons as members of a petty-bourgeois organisation, that is to say that comrades belonging to the Communist International, particularly in the West, have no right to belong to the Freemasons.’ This motion was put by Comrade Serrati. The question will be discussed later. We put it forward here so that comrades know that it will be put forward for discussion here.
Radek: After the meeting of the Commission to negotiate on the conditions of entry into the Communist International, after the French and German comrades had expressed their agreement with these conditions, almost all of us who were in the Commission remembered the words that Béla Kun spoke after unification with the Hungarian Social Democracy. He said he had the impression that it had all been too easy. At that moment we too had that feeling, and none of us can get rid of it.
Those who have judged the French Party and USPD on the basis of more than a few articles in their press will understand why I cannot adopt the point of view that what is past is past, and why here, at this Congress, I would like to call to mind how we regard the development of the USPD. It is impossible for a party to change its character from one day to the next by signing a piece of paper, by signing conditions. We have to take two facts into account. The first fact is the lasting radicalisation of the German working class, a fact that urges and forces us and gives us the obligation to put out feelers towards the Independents and to see in them our comrades in struggle. After the first few months of the Ebert-Scheidemann government the Independent workers took up the struggle against this government. When I arrived in Germany, my first impression was that nine tenths of the working class were participating in the struggle against the government. In the struggles of January and March the Independent workers stood shoulder to shoulder with the communist workers and fought with them, where necessary with arms in hands. Wherever our comrades were in prison they were alongside Independent workers. At the same time, however, we can see that the majority of the USPD leaders, those leaders who, seen from the outside, appear to be the decisive factor in the party, were not only not a progressive factor in this development, but they were a factor that held it back, that they only went forwards because they were pushed by the actual working class, and that at every step forwards they tried to confuse the workers.
A few extracts from the USPD’s letter have already been quoted by Zinoviev. I should like to establish a few things as briefly as possible. The letter denies the fact that the USPD broke solidarity with Russia and that it shares responsibility for the breaking of diplomatic relations expressed in the expulsion of the Russian Embassy. It was the Scheidemann government under Prince Max that first brought about the breach. But the USPD was already in the government when the Russian mission was in Borissov under the muzzles of German machine guns, and despite the mission’s numerous telegrams and despite the negotiations with their leaders they did not move a finger. They said that Joffe would first of all have to return to Russia, that first of all it would have to be checked whether or not he had insulted His Majesty’s throne, and then a resumption of relations could be discussed. I need only quote the following. Here are the minutes of the session of the Council of People’s Commissars of November 19, 1918. In these minutes it says: ‘Continuation of the discussions on Germany’s relations with the Soviet Republic. Haase advises dilatory progress... Kautsky joins with Haase; the decision would have to be postponed. The Soviet Government would not last much longer, but would be finished in a few weeks...’
These are the official minutes of the sessions of the government, and these minutes are confirmed in the memoirs of an Independent, Barth, who sat in the government together with Dittmann and Haase. When we reproach the Independents with having collaborated in guiding the German revolution into Entente channels this is confirmed by the following fact: when the Soviet government, as a symbolic act, informed the then Peoples’ Commissars that it was sending two trainloads of corn, not that we were claiming that we could send two train-loads of corn every day, but that it was necessary to link the fate of the two peoples, an answer arrived from Haase in which he said that the American government had pledged itself to supply corn to Germany, that he was very grateful for the shipment, but that it should be used to relieve the hunger of the suffering people of Russia. As we stood by the telegraph and received this answer we could feel how the bonds that had continued to exist despite the criticisms of Zimmerwald and Stockholm were cut through and snapped. We were being given to understand: ‘You are starving; therefore we are setting our hopes on the mighty of the earth, on American capitalism.’
We will come together with the Independent workers of Germany, but at the same time there are things in the history of a workers’ party that cannot be forgotten. We want to have nothing to do with the leaders who, together with Haase, are responsible for the policies of November 1918. There are some things that a revolutionary does not do, however misled he may be, and one of those is a breach of solidarity with a working class that offers its help. If the USPD says that it is against the League of Nations, then we reply that to be against the League of Nations nowadays is nothing very special. After the Versailles Treaty, when Hilferding, Dittmann and Longuet met in Lucerne, they even proposed a revision of the Treaty. What does that mean? It means calling for the world revolution without giving up hope that Wilson, Lloyd George and Clémenceau will condescend to talk to you. At that time the character of the USPD emerged very clearly. We must not forget that, while the cannon were still thundering Noske’s mercy, the USPD adopted the fight for the dictatorship in its programme. And where the workers fought for the dictatorship the USPD placed itself at their head to confuse them. We have a duty to be careful and to say to the workers of the USPD: Always be prepared, always be careful, for in your party there are people in the leadership who can put the train on the wrong track at the decisive moment, who are capable of betraying your trust out of lack of revolutionary insight or lack of revolutionary will.
The question has been put: ‘Why did the comrades not go to the Communist International when they withdrew from the government and became a revolutionary party?’ I have before me the discussions at the national conference of the USPD on September 10, 1919 according to the September 11, 1919 issue of Freiheit. In these discussions Hilferding, of whom one cannot say that he died for the party, like Kautsky, for he is the spiritus rector, the guiding spirit of the party, said that on the question of affiliation to the Moscow International the fact must be taken into account that perhaps they were tying their skiff to a sinking ship; for Russian Bolshevism was the Communist International. At the very moment when the armies of the counter-revolution, especially those of Denikin and Kolchak, were waging their campaign against Soviet Russia, when it was clear to every worker who with his feelings, with his soul, stood on the side of the revolution that at the present hour it was necessary to rush to the assistance of Soviet Russia with every available means, at that very moment the man who leads the USPD stands up and says: ‘This ship is threatened by storms, let us for God’s sake not tie our skiff to it, we could go under.’
The Congress has not pledged itself to draw up a list of those comrades whose expulsion we demand. It has however pledged to demand of the workers that they shall not have as their leader a speculator on the revolution who dares to tell the German workers: ‘Do not join the Russian workers, for they are in danger’. We tell the German workers: ‘If you rely on the written conditions and leave people in the leadership who act like that in the moment of danger, then you are sold out and betrayed. We do not know when the hour of danger will strike but we know very well how these speculators on the revolution will act. However, we still count on the independence of the party. It must keep its own house clean. Clean your house, not with a broom, but with red-hot iron, for it is not simply a matter of expelling Hilferding from the party, but of driving the pettiness of spirit, the weakness of revolutionary spirit out of the party with red-hot iron.’ If the USPD does not do that the expulsion will only be a gesture and we will only have won dead souls for the Communist International.
I have the firm conviction that the workers of the USPD and the left wing will act differently from the way they have acted previously. We must say openly that it is not as if there was on the one hand the right wing of the USPD and on the other hand the masses tested in struggle. If until now the left wing has avoided fighting for its rights publicly, then this is because it counted on forcing the USPD right wing out of the party by some kind of manoeuvre. If you do not fight shoulder to shoulder with the Communists against the party’s past, which consists of calling for revolution and still not believing in it and in saying ‘now it’s here’, just like something that drops on your head – if you do not fight against this past your affiliation to the Communist International will be purely verbal. It is not a matter of Stöcker being theoretically in favour of communism or of Däumig writing articles on the dictatorship of the soviets, but of pursuing your own policies against the leaders when the leaders want to hold the party back. In the Commission the leaders have spoken unconditionally in favour of affiliation to the Communist International. However, Crispien stated in the second edition of his pamphlet ‘that the formation of the Communist International was a premature attempt’. And further on: ‘How easy the solution of the question of the Communist International seems to many people: “To Moscow! Let’s go to Moscow!” But this road does not lead to a solution, unless we want to commit suicide as a revolutionary socialist party.’ (p.36)
There are many living corpses in the International. Crispien is our guest, and we are very glad to see him alive here. The fact that he came here is a result of the pressure of the workers. Crispien further stated at the party conference: ‘The Muscovites themselves have closed the road to Moscow to us through their decisions and their basis against the Independents. On the basis of these decisions we could only get into the Kremlin by blindly subordinating ourselves to the communists and be absorbed into the inter national communist-syndicalist organisation.’ (Crispien in Die Internationale, p. 39). The USPD was forced to go to Moscow under pressure from the workers. It came to us, without any objections to our policies and tactics, after it had learnt that the French delegates had already been sent here. The workers should draw some conclusions from this and change the conditions they work under, for, with the USPD representatives, it is not a question of us, but of the revolutionary workers beating the leaders as bad leaders of the German working class. We see in the USPD a good revolutionary party as far as its worker masses are concerned. The task of the German workers is to carry this work to a conclusion and to turn the USPD into a revolutionary party that does not let its principles remain on paper but carries them out in practice every day.
Cachin: Comrades, I shall confine myself to reading to you the declaration signed by Comrade Frossard and myself. It reads:
Comrades, since Comrade Frossard and I were sent to you here for the specific and exclusive purpose of a mutual exchange of information, we can – as you will understand, comrades – only make a short statement in our own names.
We have read the Theses on the conditions of entry submitted to the competent Commission on behalf of the Executive Committee with the greatest attention and discussed them with many comrades who speak with authority. We have just heard Comrade Zinoviev’s remarks. We are not authorised to discuss them in detail. We shall therefore take from all these sources of information only the most important guiding thoughts. You demand that the parties that wish to affiliate to you should, in word and in deed, in their press and in their propaganda, renounce reformist and opportunist ideas. You wish them to show the nullity of these ideas, oppose their dissemination in every field and advance the necessity of revolutionary deeds in every form. We are in complete and total agreement with this.
These important demands will have practical consequences with which the parties that wish to affiliate to you will have to reckon.
In the first place every party member will have to make a choice and finally decide in favour of reformism or revolution. This is not a matter of individuals, and you are completely correct to insist on a thorough purge of the party. Under the present historical conditions those who still seek to collaborate with bourgeois society at a time when the decisive social fight is bursting out everywhere do not belong in the ranks of the party of the working class.
We are prepared to demand of all our comrades that they proceed in the trades unions and the party as true socialists. We are prepared to collaborate fraternally with all active revolutionaries in the syndicalist organisations who concede the necessity of political action.
Further, propaganda against the imperialist ideology and its adherents and supporters must be carried on with greater energy than ever.
For the last two years now our socialist group in parliament has voted against the approval of credits and against the budget in general. It has condemned in the most decisive terms any participation in the government. It has done that since the conclusion of peace. Should the World War break out again one day, then the present criminal imperialist policy of the French bourgeoisie will bear the main responsibility.
We will refuse to support this policy in the slightest, be it in the form of approving credits or of participating in ministries. We will be able to remember that, under conditions where national interests are confused with the interests of the plutocracy, the highest duty of the proletariat is to its own class.
The programme of our party must be examined and brought into harmony with the programme of the Communist International. Greater centralisation, strict control of parliamentary activity and of the press, strict discipline for all members – these seem to us to be the fundamental conditions for the kind of renewed action that the present time demands.
You call on us to support the Soviet Republic unconditionally in its struggle against the counter-revolution. We shall clarify to the workers with greater energy than before the necessity of refusing to transport munitions and equipment for the counter-revolution. We will agitate with every means at our disposal against intervention among the troops sent to fight the Soviet Republic.
Comrades, these are the statements that we are able to make within the narrow frame of reference of our mission. We are convinced that if our friend Longuet could be here he would, after some consideration, be of the same opinion as ourselves. We shall take your conditions back with us to France and faithfully lay them before our party with the whole literature of the Communist International. At the same time
we will wage a zealous campaign to depict the position of the Russian Revolution.
When all the sections of the party have been put in possession of the facts and have seriously discussed them, a Congress will, within a very few weeks, be held. Frossard and I will speak in favour of affiliation to the Communist International. Until then it would be superfluous to repeat our assurances and promises. We will therefore break finally with the past and proceed with determination to deeds, the judgement of which we will leave to the Communist International.
Lefebvre: Comrades, at the Strasbourg Congress the Socialist Party decided to make contact with several socialist parties in order, as the majority of the French Party expressed it, to reconstruct the International. A visit was also planned to the Communist International, and it seems that during this visit, Comrades Frossard and Cachin, dazzled by the achievements of the Russian revolution, have completely changed their standpoint. Indeed recently our Comrade Cachin said: ‘Reconstruction – what a senseless word.’ That is a simple and brutal condemnation of an entire past. In fact, comrades, since the Strasbourg Congress, the French Socialist Party – I am speaking here of the majority – has mechanically developed continually to the left. Since the left faction, which has declared itself to be the faction of the Communist International, the Loriot faction, as people call it, has grown more and more and continues to grow even now, and since on the other hand the old faction, the faction of Renaudel, has shrunk in the same proportion, so that for practical purposes it no longer counts in our party, at least among militants (in the parliamentary group and in local government it still retains an absolute majority), it was natural that the active majority of the party turned against those whose increasing influence disturbed them. We saw in Strasbourg the marriage of Renaudel and Paul Faure and we were present when the right-wing faction and the centre applauded Paul Faure who, in order to call the bluff of the revolutionaries, turned ironically to the supporters of the Communist International with the words: ‘You talk all the time about the revolution of the masses. You do not know what a revolution is, you do not know what is necessary in order to call forth a revolutionary movement in the French masses that are conservatively minded, as was shown on November 10, and who are afraid of you (for electoral affairs have for the French Socialist Party an almost religious significance). The masses will not follow you in your demagogic evolution. You imagine that you are carrying out propaganda because you have the old traditional assemblies in your hands, where the same people make the same agitational speeches again and again. But call on the working class to perform a mighty and clear action to prevent the expedition against Russia, or even to take power, and you will see what a small following you have.’
Pressemane, who spoke particularly about the French peasants, used analogous arguments. He contrasted those of the masses who in France are still called the ‘extreme left’ with the old militants as some kind of madmen, as some kind of epileptics who do not know what a political organisation is. Pressemane forgot to add that, true to their demagogic traditions, he and his friends only gave the masses the minimum of information about the revolution necessary to win their applause, without meanwhile doing anything that could take them to victory.
I would like to ask the permission of the Congress to make the accusations I am expressing here clearer with a short example out of the internal life of the French Party. The activity of the French Socialist Party is defined in the eyes of the masses by the activity of the parliamentary group. But what takes place inside the party is known only to the members themselves, or can be discovered during their propaganda trips. But the people who do not go to meetings and do not read revolutionary newspapers, the man in the street, as he is called in England, know only the parliamentary group and its debates, which for them embodies socialism. I do not exaggerate when I say that the French Socialist group in parliament is as conservative as all the other bourgeois groups m this assembly. In my opinion their manner of speaking lacks the vengeful passion of men who are constantly fighting a hostile faction. If I had sufficient time I would try to give you a series of short biographies of such people as Paul Boncour, Varenne and Albert Thomas, who is the undisputed leader of the socialist parliamentary group. Does the International really know the full extent of Varenne’s activities, the journalistic activity of this publisher of a series of bourgeois newspapers, that appear and disappear one after the other but for all that never lack a supply of funds? Albert Thomas is an intimate friend of Jouhaux, a member of the staff of Information Ouvriere et Sociale, which is maintained by M. Dulot, the editor of Temps, the official organ of the French bourgeoisie. Each one of these men, finally, has found his way into parliament, and that, thanks to a peculiar electoral system, not through the general will of socialist workers but at the whim of some anti-clerical members of the bourgeoisie.
That is why even people like Léon Blum ascribe such great importance to the question, in itself unimportant, of relations with the Vatican. I would like to quote a series of individual examples to you but I shall not have sufficient time for that. As a typical example I shall tell you of the case of the member of parliament Aubry, a young teacher from the ranks of the extreme left of the French Socialist Party, who was so far affected by the infectious treachery of this group in the course of a few weeks that, shortly after he was elected, he signed an appeal in favour of a national loan together with General de Boissoudy and the Archbishop of Rennes, which is a completely normal phenomenon in the socialist group that is customary there and surprises nobody. A strange case that shows the uprightness of the revolutionary outlook of a socialist member of parliament happened recently. The examining magistrate of Rouen demanded the prosecution of a member of parliament from the Pas-de-Calais region, Barthélemy, who had staged a public meeting with our comrade Meric in Sotteville. Barthélemy was accused of having said that, should there be a revolution, he would place himself in the front rank on the barricades and that he would die at the head of the proletarian troops. The member of parliament Barthélemy immediately went to the rostrum. ‘What’, he cried, ‘a French socialist member of parliament dares to say things like that, dares to talk about placing himself at the head of the revolutionaries and letting himself be killed? Such words have never passed my lips.’ And parliament immediately believed him, so solid is the conservative reputation of the socialist group. I repeat that phenomena of this sort are to be observed daily. Some time ago when our comrade Maurin of the left wing of the ‘reconstruction’ faction was talking in the party’s Administrative Commission about the ways and means that would have to be used to carry out propaganda in France, he declared with an honesty that was nothing short of cynical that propaganda must be allowed so that comrades who were already elected could be re-elected and in order to prepare the election of comrades who had not yet been elected. Before every speech therefore the speaker would have to ask the local powers that be who the party’s petty bureaucrats were in the area. The speaker would have to say something opportunistic, something that assisted the immediate material interests of the electoral situation.
But there are more important things than the parliamentary life of a group that has been discredited in the eyes of the masses. Nowadays members of parliament, with very few exceptions, are thought of as traitors or as people who simply do not count. The French parliament is completely discredited in the eyes of the masses. Perhaps that is the best result of the treachery of the socialist group in parliament. The municipalities are more important. The French Socialist Party had great success in the elections. We dominate the largest part of the local administration of the greatest cities in France. We run between 1,500 and 1,800 local councils, which represents an imposing total. On the day of my departure from France a Congress opened in Boulogne the main purpose of which was to unify the activities of the local councils. At it several questions were raised. It was decided above all, instead of allowing concessionary companies to go bankrupt, to burden the workers living in the local council areas with new and larger taxes. The demand that these concessionary companies should be allowed to collapse was declared to be revolutionary and immediately rejected. When the question came up – I am obliged to quote examples chosen at random which will enable the Communist International to judge what sort of gift people are trying to give it – as I was saying when the attempt was made to forbid these local councils from taking part in the chauvinist celebrations of July 14, the proposal was withdrawn. And Mistral, the representative of the present majority, refused to submit this motion to the National Council (Conseil National). As far as the majority of the assembly of councils was concerned, they were decisively opposed to this proposal, and it was not so long ago – shortly after the May strike, when the government was fighting the active comrades most energetically – that a local councillor was found, the honourable Delory, an old party worker whom you all know, who himself asked for the great honour of being allowed to receive in the town of Lille, of which he is the Mayor, two ministers who were to invest the town with a military decoration. This is how business is conducted in the local councils run by the French Socialist Party.
Finally, comrades, is it not strange that, after the best elements in the party have turned away from if in disgust, we, the supporters of the Communist International, are accused at every Congress of trying to destroy unity? To that we have always replied that you cannot destroy what does not exist, and that unity does not exist. It, does not exist because there are people in the party who ought not to the there and because people who ought to be there are not in the party. Unity will only emerge when there has been a thorough purge of the party (a purge which has long since been promised by the party majority but for which we are still waiting). Is it not strange also that, in a Communist Party that is finally pure, with a strict discipline, the revolutionary syndicalists, who today still stray to the side of anarcho-syndicalism, direct their work according to the Theses of communism worked out here? I would like to tell you what happened during our May strike, what the results of this strike (which were, moreover, immeasurable) were, and what lessons we have had to draw from it. One thing at least you should know, that those people lied who said at Strasbourg that the masses would not move. They moved, fundamentally and in great numbers, and the only cause of their defeat was the lack of revolutionary will among the leaders. That is why one can also say that the only conclusion that one can draw from this bloody experience is the necessity of the creation of a Communist Party.
The conversion of our comrades Cachin and Frossard is only a personal fact. They will return to France and pronounce their declaration to an attentively listening crowd. It is to be feared that, under the influence of a long opportunist past and their peculiar school of thought – in saying this I am casting no doubt on the personal uprightness of our comrades – it is greatly to be feared, I say, that in driving the party towards the Communist International they will lumber it with a minimum programme that will have the disadvantage for you that the treacherous spirit of the Second International will penetrate into your ranks. I claim that the atmosphere in France is unbearable. That must be changed. Changing the minds of two individuals can have no influence. We must remain intransigent, and I assure you that the masses in France will follow you unflinchingly if you yourselves remain firm. The French hypothesis from the Palais Bourbon must not be allowed to be stuck onto the Marxist Theses worked out in Moscow. The application of these Theses would merely be laughable, because we are trusting people who for six years have compromised the word ‘socialism’ and have thus made the proclamation of communism necessary.
Graziadei: I have asked for the right to speak in order to touch on a question that Comrade Serrati has raised. Since however in the form Comrade Serrati has given it a discussion is impossible, I insist on proposing the addition of the following Thesis to the Theses before the Congress:
‘No party that wishes to join the Communist International may under any circumstances permit its members to belong to the sect of Freemasons.’ – The Freemasons do in fact in various countries form political organisations which, through their abstract, formalist and petty-bourgeois conception of social relations and through their whole composition serve the interests of the national and international bourgeois system. Its influence is all the more dangerous for the fact that the Freemason sect is a secret organisation.
A mere glance at the writings of the Freemasons is sufficient to justify my motion. The question is of little interest for the Russians. All the greater however is its importance for the Latin countries, for England and for America. Freemasonry exercises quite a big influence in those countries. It is a political organisation that strives for the conquest and the retention of power. It gathers civil servants, academics and businessmen around itself. The teachings upon which it is based are directly opposed to Marxist socialist conceptions. It endeavours to veil national and class differences under an abstract and formalist conception of theoretical rights. Moreover it is a secret organisation and since, in many countries, we do not yet have secret organisations, we are in their opinion in an inferior position to them.
The comrades who are members of the Freemason sect can check up on us but we for our part have no opportunity to check their organisation. We have had an interesting experience in this matter in Italy. At the Party Congress in Ancona before August 1914, we laid down that membership of the party and of the Freemasons were incompatible. After a few months the war broke out. We were then able to convince ourselves that without the decision I have mentioned our party would never have been able to take up the hostile attitude to the war that it did. In any case it would have split at this most difficult moment. One of the main causes of the present crisis in the French Party is the circumstance that there are in their ranks a great number of Freemasons. I therefore ask the Congress to take Comrade Serrati’s motion and my addendum into account and to add the latter to the Theses proposed by the commission as a supplementary Thesis. The Congress must take up a firm attitude on this question which is in the highest degree important for many countries.
Guilbeaux: The first year of existence of the Communist International was a year of the formation and the setting up of communist parties and groups. I believe that we have now entered into a new phase in the development of the Communist International, the phase of the struggle of the different tendencies within the framework of the Communist International. The debates we have participated in since the start of the Congress are proof of this struggle between left and right. I see in this a sign of the great vitality of communism. But I believe that I note a tendency among the right wing that can grow extensively and which consequently must be fought unhesitatingly by the leaders of the left wing.
In the manifesto of the first, founding Congress of the Communist International, it said that it was necessary to fight centrism, which was correctly held to be the most dangerous tendency in the socialist movement. This manifesto demanded a complete break with centrism and the formation of purely communist groups and parties in every country. It is in my opinion characteristic that the Second Congress of the Communist International adopts a different standpoint on how to approach the centre. The very fact that the possibility is conceded of accepting certain centrist elements into the Communist International marks the beginning of negotiations with the reformists and the centrists.
In the proposed Theses the right wing of the Italian Socialist Party, whose representative is Turati, is condemned on the one hand, but on the other hand a turn is made towards centrist parties such as for example the USPD and the French Socialist Party. In this I see a contradiction. The difference that exists between Cachin and Turati is not big, but it does exist. The attitude the Italian Socialist Party took up during the war was far worthier of a socialist party than that taken up by the French Socialist Party, which was guilty of the basest treachery.
I do not find particular cause for joy in the fact that, under the influence of the revolutionary atmosphere in which they suddenly find themselves in Moscow, the representatives of certain centrist parties profess their communism. I have no doubt as to their honesty, but I ask myself whether, when they return to Paris and the tainted atmosphere of the Socialist Party or the Chamber of Deputies, they will not fall back into their old mistakes. Think about the fact that the preparations for the formation of the Second International, which was set up in 1889, took several years. The comrades who are now negotiating with the socialist parties think that an organisation and a press that can serve the purposes of the revolution can be created from one day to the next. They are sinning against the limitations of possibility. We must first organise the cadre of a strong Communist Party. We must draw the masses into this cadre organisation, but we cannot graft them to it artificially. I insist upon one fact that Comrade Lefebvre has already mentioned. The French Socialist Party is in general a parliamentary party which we should in no case admit, despite its representatives’ statements. The split that should happen has unfortunately not yet happened. Only when it has really come about will there be in France a Communist Party that Comrade Loriot’s supporters and the syndicalists represented by Rosmer and Monatte will join. Then we will have the masses on our side as well. We will however never be able to bring the French masses over to us if we try to transform the French Socialist Party artificially into a Communist Party. If after a trial period of six months or a year we want to accept parties that have for many years betrayed us and gone astray, then I am afraid that in the end they will perhaps be a majority in the Communist International, and that they will replace the red banner of the Communist International with another that is very similar to that of the Second International. We cannot carry on negotiations with parties which, despite their statements, offer no guarantees at all for the future.
Herzog (Switzerland): In this discussion it is also necessary to go briefly into party conditions in Switzerland. As you know the last conference of the Swiss Party decided to leave the Second International and join the Communist International. At the same time however a motion was passed whereby that decision would first of all have to be laid before all the members of the Social Democratic Party in a ballot. In the ballot it was decided to leave the Second International but not, however, to join the Communist International, but on the contrary to give the party leadership the authority and the duty to make contact with all revolutionary parties in order to bring together a big revolutionary international, a Fourth International. The party leadership did everything possible to comply with this decision. Discussions took place with the French Socialists in Berne. The party leadership also sent comrades to Germany to start negotiations with the USPD. When we communists exposed this manoeuvre the Basler Vorwärts in particular tried, to whitewash it. They covered up for the party leadership in this matter. Social Democracy in Switzerland has constantly carried out this policy of hesitation in recent times, this policy of rushing hither and thither that we have seen during the
withdrawal from the Second International. As you know, it decided to associate itself with Kienthal and Zimmerwald, and when we revolutionary workers insisted that these decisions should be put into practice, that association with Kienthal and Zimmerwald did not exhaust the matter, but that the programme also had to be carried out, and that the attempt would have to be made to carry out revolutionary actions, that the army would have to be approached with propaganda, that the soldiers would have to be revolutionised, the party did everything it could to make our activity impossible. We were forced to bring the revolutionary workers together in separate groups within the party. We tried to form communist groups in all the larger localities. We extended these into a central organisation and gave ourselves a programme. We did not stand still at that. We said that we had to start on actions and propaganda in the army, in accordance with the Theses proposed at Zimmerwald, that we would have to say to the workers that they had to carry out great mass actions and, if the party leaders did not want it, against their will. This is the basis of the conflict and of the expulsion of the communists from the Swiss Social Democratic Party. We carried out this propaganda systematically; we distributed tens of thousands of leaflets to the army, which was only our duty as revolutionary communists. That is the reason why we were thrown out.
There was a big general strike in Zurich. I said that the general strike must be carried out, and when we said that in our propaganda we were expelled from the party. The whole organisation of the old revolutionary groups was expelled. We were forced to take the step of founding the Communist Party in order to stay politically alive. We were able by intensive work to set up communist sections in every major locality. We succeeded in winning the sympathies of larger masses of workers. The centre of the party now fears that the great mass of workers will go over to us. That was the reason for the manoeuvre of calling together in Olten a party conference of left socialists and the centre where it was decided to send two representatives to Moscow so that the Communist International would accept Switzerland. Then these people can say: ‘We are in the Communist International, we are revolutionary communists.’ They think that by affiliating to the Communist International they will keep the mass of workers with them. The task of the Congress is to tell these people from the Swiss Social Democracy also: ‘You must prove in practice that you really want to fight in a revolutionary way. Only when you have proved that can you be accepted into the Communist International. This danger must be fought most energetically, and we must apply to the Swiss Social Democratic Party the principle we apply to the Independents and to the French Party. Only by sifting these elements strictly can we prevent the germs of disruption from coming into the Communist International and prevent the revolutionary activity that is present in the masses from being weakened in the next few years.
Goldenberg: For my part I shall not vote for Comrade Zinoviev’s Theses because it seems to me that they contain a great error in method. I shall try to portray this false method briefly.
When we supporters of the Communist International are asked why we do not remain in the Socialist Party, we reply: ‘The war has split the international proletariat into two opposed camps, into the counter-revolutionary camp on the one hand, which is represented by the labour aristocracy, by the layer of the proletariat which, through the development of capitalism, has come closer and closer to the lower layers of the bourgeoisie, and into the revolutionary camp on the other. These two factions also existed before the war within the framework of the individual national parties. The war has shown that there is no possibility of bringing about a reconciliation of these two factions. If in those days, before the war, this contradiction was expressed in strife about the direction to be taken within the framework of the socialist parties of the various nations, it is expressed now, after the war, no longer in factional strife but in a struggle that is waged weapons in hand. In Comrade Lenin’s words, the weapon of criticism has made way for criticism by weapons. One of these two opposed factions has made common cause with the bourgeoisie, the other has shown itself to be the real representative of the revolutionary proletariat. We stand by the latter.’
What standpoint the Communist International, the international organisation of the revolutionary proletariat, will take up towards the socialist parties, or in the split between social reformists and counter-revolutionaries and revolutionary socialists and communists, has not yet been decided. That is a question that we have to answer today.
The Theses proposed by Comrade Zinoviev enumerate a series of conditions the fulfilment of which will enable the socialist parties, the so-called ‘centrists’, to enter the Communist International. I cannot state my agreement with this mode of procedure.
The Communist International, an international organisation of the revolutionary proletariat, which is supposed to consist solely and alone of representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of every country, cannot tolerate in its midst non-communist elements who have proved themselves to be counter-revolutionary elements, the agents of the bourgeoisie.
The conditions that have been laid down for the centrist parties have been posed in a form that permits the French Socialist Party, the USPD, the Norwegian Socialist Party and so forth to join the Communist International if only they declare themselves to be prepared to fulfil the conditions or start to apply communist tactics.
I declare that this way of proceeding will only increase the confusion that already reigns in these parties. I should like to speak here particularly about the French Socialist Party, which I know better than the others. The French Socialist Party more or less as a whole represents that special layer of the labour aristocracy which proved during the war to be completely reactionary. During the war all the leaders of the French Socialist Party without exception placed themselves on the side of the bourgeoisie against the international working class. They voted for war credits right up to the end of the war and even several months after the armistice. We have here a representative of this parliamentary faction who voted for the war credits. We also have here a French member of parliament who declared last year in the French chamber that he refused to vote for the tax rate of three twelfths demanded in the provisional budget by the government, but that he was prepared to vote for a provisional rate of two twelfths. Part of these credits was destined for the counter-revolutionary expeditions of Kolchak and Denikin. While the Russian proletariat was fighting desperately against these international robbers, the representatives of the French Socialist Party were voting in the chamber for war credits for the support of counter-revolutionary armies.
What position has the French Socialist Party adopted since the war? Comrade Lefebvre has just said that a step backwards was to be observed at the Strasbourg Congress. I say, however, that there was no step backwards to be observed, but that this Congress merely showed what the French Socialist Party really is. The leaders of the French Socialist Party had adopted a revolutionary phraseology in order to deceive the masses. They had declared themselves in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. They said that they were supporters of historical materialism; however, when they were posed with the problem of national defence, it became clear that there was nothing incredible about the link between Paul Faure and Renaudel, but that it reflected the true outlook of those who had grouped themselves whether on the right, in the centre or even on the left of the party. The French Socialist Party is a rotten party of petty bourgeois reformists. Its affiliation to the Communist International will have the consequence that this rottenness will also be dragged into the Communist International. Comrade Zinoviev’s Theses contain at the beginning a series of conditions for entry. You can see how readily these Theses have been accepted even by those who only yesterday were their most determined opponents.
The representatives of the French Socialist Party who are participating in this Congress are among those who strove most zealously, with all the means at their disposal, to discredit the Communist International. Even if they are here among us in person, their hearts are not with us, and for this very reason, that they feel that the Communist International is the only revolutionary force in the world and that no other organisation can stand up to it.
They have done everything they could to create a diverging organisation, in opposition to this Communist International, which was to accept all those elements that wished to affiliate to it. The only condition was that they declared themselves to be opposed to the principles of the Communist International. They searched the whole of Europe for parties that could be led into the field against the Communist International.
I still remember their conduct in the party and in the socialist press. They tried not only to sully the ideas of the Communist International but also to blacken the names of the best-known militants of the French Socialist Party. I am thinking of the campaign of slander that was led against those who defended the Communist International in France. Should we now ask these people to join the Communist International because they declare that they wish to accept the principles of the Communist International and to be in agreement with these principles? I have no intention of checking the sincerity of Cachin and Frossard. I want to keep off that issue. I simply wish to state that people who have shown themselves, despite their revolutionary talk, to be determined counter-revolutionaries, cannot have become communists in the course of a few weeks. The tone of the declaration that has just been read out shows the true extent of what Cachin and Frossard conceive to be acceptance of the principles of communism.
When they return to France, how will they behave towards those who have long been defending the principles of the Communist International there? There is in France a committee dedicated to spreading the ideas of the Communist International among the masses and in the party itself. What attitude will Cachin and Frossard adopt towards this committee and the party comrades of whom it is composed, Cachin and Frossard, who were previously their most zealous opponents? I ask you, how are we to behave when Cachin and Frossard come back to France and say: ‘We are in complete agreement with the leaders of the Communist International. We have discussed with them. In reality nothing separates us from them.’ I have just read a few copies of Humanité which report on Cachin and Frossard’s visit to Russia, how marvellously they were received by our Russian friends, how they had attended a session of the Moscow Soviet and how a friendly exchange of views had taken place without any difference of opinions being perceptible. That is the opinion of Humanité, and Cachin and Frossard will also represent this opinion when they return from Russia. They will repeat the claim they made before their departure from France, that if Comrade Lenin was in France he would agree with them and not with us.
I protest against this artificial way of accepting into the Communist International elements that are not even in favour of it. In the name of my comrades languishing in gaol, in the name of the true interests of the French proletariat, I declare that I am not in agreement with this way of proceeding. There is for the revolutionary French proletariat only one means of waging the fight against the Second International, and that is the setting up of a well-organised Communist Party in France that only contains communist elements. What is tragic about the situation in France is the circumstance that up until now it has been impossible to approach this task. We were forced to confine ourselves to the faction struggle within the party. We were unable to take up the task of organisation and training through which alone it is possible to create a well organised party.
The standpoint that I am defending here is that the French Socialist Party cannot be told: ‘Under these conditions you will be allowed to join the Communist International.’ Instead we want to adopt an attitude that forces the revolutionary and reformist elements of the party to break from each other, which could not previously happen. Only thus will it be possible to create a Communist Party that will consist only of left socialists. This will make possible the communist work of organisation and training which alone can create a powerful and successful element, not only for the Communist International, but for the whole proletarian revolution.
Bordiga: I should like to submit to you some observations that I propose to use as an introduction to the Theses proposed by the Commission, and also a further concrete condition which reads as follows: ‘Those parties which have until now maintained their old social-democratic programme have the obligation to subject the latter to immediate revision and to work out a new communist programme that corresponds to conditions in their countries in the spirit of the Communist International. It is a rule that the programmes of the parties that join the Communist International must be ratified by the International Congress or by the Executive Committee. Should the latter withhold its approval from a party, the party shall have the right to appeal to the Congress of the Communist International.’
This Congress has an extraordinary importance. It has to confirm and defend the eternal principles of the Communist International. When Comrade Lenin, I think it was in April 1917, returned to Russia and submitted a short draft of the new programme of the Communist Party, he too spoke of the revitalisation of the International. He said that this work would have to rest on eternal foundations, that on the one hand the social patriots and on the other hand the social democrats would have to be removed, these supporters of the Second International who think it is possible to achieve the liberation of the proletariat without armed class struggle, without the necessity of introducing the dictatorship of the proletariat after the victory, at the time of the insurrection.
The foundation of the Communist International in Russia led us back to Marxism. The revolutionary movement that was saved from the ruins of the Second International made itself known with its programme, and the work that now began led to the formation of a new state organism on the basis of the official constitution. I believe that we find ourselves in a situation that is not created by accident but much rather determined by the course of history. I believe that we are threatened by the danger of right-wing and centrist elements penetrating into our midst.
When the watchword ‘Soviet Order’ was flung to the Russian and the international proletariat at the end of the war the revolutionary waves rose and the proletariat was set in motion all over the world. A natural selection took place in the old socialist parties all over the world. Communist parties arose that took up the fight with the bourgeoisie.
The following period was a time of standstill, since the revolution was suppressed in Germany, Bavaria, and Hungary by the bourgeoisie.
The war is now over. The problem of war and the question of national defence are no longer of immediate interest. It is very easy to say that, in a new war, one would not fall into the same errors, that is to say the mistakes of the ‘union sacrée’ and national defence. ‘The revolution is still far off,’ our opponents say, ‘it is not an immediate problem for us,’ and they will accept all the Theses of the Communist International: the power of the soviets, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the red terror.
We would therefore be in great danger if we made the mistake of accepting these people in our ranks.
The Communist International cannot speed up the course of history. It can neither create the revolution nor bring it about by force. It only stands in our power to prepare the working class. But our movement must remember the lessons of the war and the Russian Revolution. In my opinion we must pay great attention to them.
The right-wing elements accept our Theses, but in an unsatisfactory manner and with certain reservations. We communists must demand that this acceptance is complete and without restrictions for the future.
We have seen the first application of the Marxist method and theory in Russia, that is to say in a country where the development of the classes has not yet reached a very high level. This method must therefore be applied with greater clarity and consistency in Western Europe, where capitalism is better developed.
There is talk here about the difference between the reformists and the revolutionaries. That is an outmoded expression. There cannot be any more reformists, even if, as supporters of socialism, they admit the class struggle, but at the same time hope that the form this struggle takes will be different from what it is in Russia. I am of the opinion, comrades, that the Communist International is standing fast, that it is holding its revolutionary political character upright without flinching.
We must put up insurmountable barricades against the reformists.
These parties must be forced to make an exact declaration of their principles. A common programme ought to be introduced for every party in the world, which is unfortunately not possible at the moment. The Communist International possesses no means of convincing itself that these people follow the communist programme.
Where the 16th Thesis says: ‘Parties that previously have retained their old social-democratic programme have the duty of changing this programme in the shortest possible time and working out a new programme in harmony with the decisions of the Communist International according to the particular circumstances in their countries’, the following words after ‘and working out a new programme’ should be struck out: ‘In harmony with the decisions of the Communist International according to the particular circumstances of their countries’. They should be replaced with the words: ‘In which the principles of the Communist International are established in a manner that is unambiguous and in complete agreement with the resolutions of the International Congresses. The minority of the party that declares itself to be in opposition to this programme must be expelled from the party organisation. The parties that have changed their programme and joined the Communist International and have not fulfilled this condition must immediately call an extraordinary congress to reach agreement on it.’
This condition, about which the representatives of the French Socialist Party have expressed no opinion, and have not said that they are going to expel Renaudel and others from their party, must be posed clearly and distinctly.
All those who vote against the new programme must be expelled from the party. As far as the programme is concerned there is no disciplinary problem: either it is accepted or it is not accepted. Those who do not accept it leave the party. The programme is something that is common to all. It is not something drawn up by the majority of party militants. It is what is laid before those parties that wish to be accepted into the Communist International. It must be the difference between the wish to join the Communist International and the fact of being accepted by it.
I think that, after the Congress, the Executive Committee must be given time to find out whether all the obligations that have been laid upon the parties by the Communist International have been fulfilled. After this time, after the so-called organisation period, the door must he closed.
The aim of my proposal is to bring back Comrade Lenin’s condition that was withdrawn, the condition, that is to say, that in those parties that wished to be accepted a certain number of communists should take over the running of the party organs. I would prefer them all to be communists.
Opportunism must be fought everywhere. But we will find this task very difficult if, at the very moment that we are taking steps to purge the Communist International, the door is opened to let those who are standing outside come in.
I have spoken on behalf of the Italian delegation. We undertake to fight the opportunists in Italy. We do not, however, wish them to go away from us merely to be accepted into the Communist International in some other way. We say to you, after we have worked with you we want to go back to our country and form a united front against all the enemies of the communist revolution.
Serrati: We would like to announce that the International Communist Women’s Conference will open tomorrow, Friday, in the Great Theatre at 6 o'clock. We ask you to attend the opening.
The session will be continued tonight at 8.30 pm.
*******
Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International
Evening Session of
July 29
Milkic: I had not intended to take the floor on this question. I wanted to confine myself to voting.
But I think that it is my duty to declare from the rostrum, as a reply to what Comrade Zinoviev said here, that the Yugoslav party is not an opportunist party.
Zinoviev: That is true.
Milkic: I am glad to hear that Comrade Zinoviev confirms what I say. In 1905 the Yugoslav Socialist Party expelled some of its leaders who were in favour of class collaboration. It did the same in 1912.
Certainly many will say: ‘It was once a courageous party, but it has ceased to be so.’ Comrades, that is a mistake.
Today Comrade Zinoviev gave me some Serbian newspapers and in them I read that the Yugoslav Socialist party has changed its name and from now on calls itself the Communist Party. And the first act of the party centre was to publish a spirited appeal in favour of the Hungarian communists.
After taking note of all the documents on their activity, I can say without exaggeration that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia can serve as an example to all other Communist Parties. I am firmly confident that their tactics in the future will produce good results.
Our comrades have distributed a manifesto among the peasants in which they call upon them to free themselves from the yoke of the landlords. The government has used this occasion to persecute the authors of the manifesto.
I end this short statement by saying that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia is a party of which the Communist International can be proud. It does not deserve what Comrade Zinoviev said about it. He no doubt said it in order to console the German Independents, who are one of the parties which he criticised just as he criticised the South Slavs.
Bombacci: I do not believe that it can be particularly useful to go deeply into a subject that only concerns us as a theoretical question.
Does the adoption of this or that point correspond to the interests of the Communist International? That is the question. It is a difficult one when we are dealing with parties that have a history of thirty years of reformist habits behind them that does not permit them to adopt the spirit of the revolutionary epoch. The Italian Socialist Party joined the Communist International; but since the Bologna Congress, where, in contrast to Comrade Bordiga, I opposed the expulsion of the reformists and the change of the Party’s name, nothing has changed there.
Unfortunately, this fact proves that there are in it elements that are not capable of being really true to the Communist International. It would not be sufficient to expel Turati since Modigliani and fifty or sixty others lead the reformist tendency. The whole party would have to be split, without stopping at the old chiefs of reformism.
I am even more opposed to the acceptance of the French Socialist Party and the German Independents into the Communist International, since these parties cannot adopt a revolutionary communist mode of thought.
With reference to this subject I shall propose an amendment to the Theses we have discussed. It would deal with setting up an inquiry among the mass of members of the parties in question and giving the Executive Committee the right to expel various parties and their individual members who obviously cannot be tolerated in communist organisations. With this big reservation I would be, strictly speaking, in favour of the acceptance of those parties which in principle I condemn. I think that it is impermissible for any communist to be a member of the Freemasons, that purely bourgeois movement. [Applause.]
Polano: I am speaking today on behalf of the Italian Socialist Youth and in order to report to you on its activities. This organisation has existed since 1907. In general its line is in complete agreement with the Italian Socialist Party, which, however, it has constantly pushed to the left. We have never ceased to demand that the Italian Socialist Party should be purged of its reformist elements, and we hope that the Communist International will help us. The International must seek
closer links with the Italian Socialist Party, which will come about through a clear understanding of its historical mission. Its most important task is preparing the revolution. This work is delayed by the struggle inside the ‘party between the two ideologies, between social democracy on the one hand and the communist elements on the other. There does not exist the slightest possibility of uniting these two tendencies. How is it possible that the Marxist elements of the Socialist Party have not yet noticed this contradiction? How could they not grasp the importance, not take measures in order to remove from the party all those elements which obstruct it in action when, after all, it has the duty of leading the masses?
The Italian Socialist Party affiliated to the Communist International en bloc. Nevertheless there are still in its midst men like Modigliani who have never ceased to carry out the most energetic propaganda against the Communist International and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was Modigliani himself who demanded not so long ago that close links should be created between the Socialist Party and petty-bourgeois elements. Turati, who also, as you know, belongs to the Italian Socialist Party, similarly declared recently that communist tactics were childishness and stupidity.
A real communist party cannot be formed from such contradictory elements. The Communist International must come to the aid of the socialist youth in its work of purging. Permit me to draw the attention of the Congress to paragraph 7 of the Theses which says that all the parties that wish to join the Communist International must immediately break with the opportunist and centrist elements. I would also like to remind the Congress of paragraph 18, which says that all parties that affiliate to the Communist International must adopt the name ‘Communist Party’. I cherish the firm hope that the Italian Socialist Party will consider the Theses that we have discussed and that it will soon present itself as a real communist party. But we must be helped to achieve this task. This must not be forgotten. The Communist International will now, however, be able to help the socialist youth and the Italian Socialist Party in its work if it lets in such groups as the French Socialist Party and the USPD. For it is in fact impossible on the one hand to purge the Italian Socialist Party of its opportunist elements and on the other hand to let such elements once more into the Communist International.
Rakosi: The question with which the Communist International is faced resembles in many respects the question we were faced with about sixteen months ago when in our country all the groupings in the social democracy, including those parts that had a dangerous similarity to the USPD, saw their complete bankruptcy and, under the pressure of the masses, were forced to give up their programme and base themselves completely on the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Communist International. It then emerged that these people had given way to this pressure solely in order to remain in power, and not because they had seen that their previous views were wrong. We have had the saddest experiences with these left social democrats, and I would like to warn the comrades against repeating these examples now on a far larger scale. I must warn you energetically because I can see at every step in the speeches of Comrades Crispien and Dittmann the characteristics of our social democrats. They recognised the dictatorship of the proletariat without any further ado, but, like Däumig they spoke out against terror and demanded a ‘mild form’ of the dictatorship at a time when the experiences of the Finnish, Ukrainian and other atrocities of the White Guards were known.
If after three years of revolution, after they have seen the murder of tens of thousands of Independents and communists, Comrades Dittmann or Crispien can come quite calmly to Moscow to speak against terror, this means that these people are not capable of understanding this system. Even in their own soviet dictatorship they will speak against terror and wait until the white terror teaches them a correct understanding of terror. I can see from the examples of Comrades Crispien and Dittmann that their minds run along the same lines as those of our Hungarian comrades, and that they drink from the same spring. Our comrades investigated the Russian experience carefully, not, indeed, to avoid mistakes, but in order to find out from it ways of justifying their own behaviour. The Hungarian social democrats made every effort to justify themselves wherever they were sloppy. Apart from a complete inability to understand the proletarian dictatorship, the right wing Independents have a very dangerous routine, which they showed by being able to force the other left-wing comrades to present a scandalous USPD resolution against the Executive Committee of the Communist International as if it was the general opinion of the USPD.
Dittmann: Where did you get that pearl of wisdom from?
Rakosi: From you and Comrade Däumig. I know quite well how such things are done. I have warned against this because I can see from the example of the Hungarian proletariat that people who do not know what terror and dictatorship are after three years of revolution are not going to become any wiser in the next few years, and that they will make exactly the same mistakes, which the German proletariat will then have to pay for with its blood. When the dictatorship fell our social democrats did not become any wiser at all, although they should have seen that they were wrong. I do not know whether Comrade Dittmann knows that part of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party calls itself ‘Independent, and that one of its leaders is the worst enemy of the dictatorship who has done the greatest damage to the proletariat. He is the Vienna correspondent of Freiheit and writes whole columns in the spirit of Kautsky on conditions in Eastern Europe. These articles pass unnoticed because they fit in with the spirit of Freiheit. I should like to say that I am in favour of the proposal to link acceptance of the USPD to a new condition not yet mentioned in the Theses, and I would like to support all those conditions that limit the indiscriminate acceptance of the USPD and other such centrists into the Communist International, because I know from experience that these people only change in words and give themselves the appearance of fighting for the dictatorship, while in reality they do what they are doing now in Germany and what they did during – the dictatorship in Hungary.
Serrati: I see in the Russian evening paper a statement made by Dugoni, a member of the Italian delegation, on his visit to Russia.
I must admit that I do not know whether these statements by Dugoni are authentic, but I can state in any case that no member of the Italian delegation has empowered Dugoni to make these statements. We have sent the Avanti radio messages and information on our stay in Russia. In them we have expressed our views very clearly. All other statements ascribed to us are completely false. I heard something of this this morning and entrusted Comrade d'Aragona, who departed for Italy today, with the task of finding out from the party leadership whether the statements published in the Italian press which are ascribed to Dugoni actually come from him.
Should the answer be in the affirmative I shall demand his immediate expulsion from the party.
Meyer: Comrades, if we are here concerned with the question of the acceptance of the USPD into the Communist International, then this concern has shown once again how extremely difficult it is to form a clear all-round picture of the character of the USPD. To every objection, to every criticism its representatives reply by pointing to other phrases, other statements by other members, and all in all the picture we see is that the USPD is not something homogeneous or clear, but that in all its parts it cannot show a clearly outlined attitude. Typical of the character of the USPD, which has indeed been manifest since its foundation, is its behaviour towards the Communist International. The Party Conference at Leipzig did, it is true, decide to affiliate to the Communist International. If however this decision is examined carefully it will emerge that it is not a decision to affiliate, but a resolution demanding first of all negotiations with so-called social-revolutionary parties in order to reach an agreement with them, and contact with Moscow only if these negotiations break down. In the declaration that Comrade Crispien made on this in Leipzig he explicitly established that the decision did not mean straightforward affiliation to Moscow but first of all negotiations. This decision is unclear, and when we inquire as to its execution, then we really are groping in the dark. What have the Independents done since the Leipzig conference to carry out the decision? Why have they sent their representatives here? It is not clear from the behaviour of the delegation here what they want. The delegation has not brought a message or an application saying that the USPD now wants to join the Communist International. When we asked them in the Commission whether they want to negotiate on entry with the Communist International – a similar question was put at the Executive – we did not receive a clear answer, but the following statement: ‘These negotiations do not mean that we set special conditions for our entry to the Communist International, but our negotiations have the purpose of clearing away the lumber of misunderstandings that obviously exists in Moscow and in the Communist International about us.’ But these alleged misunderstandings need not prevent anyone from saying whether he agrees with the Communist International or not.
The latest letter from the headquarters of the USPD similarly casts no light on the attitude of the USPD to Moscow. In it the attempt is made to refute certain sentences in the Executive’s letter, but nothing is said about what they think, in what form and under what conditions they are prepared to carry out affiliation to the Communist International, and why this affiliation has not yet been carried out. The answer to that, however, is given by the arguments that have taken place within the USPD between the left wing and the right wing. It is quite clear that elements like Kautsky, Hilferding and Ströbel, who even today within the USPD are looking out of the corner of their eyes at the Second International, would much prefer to go to Basle or Geneva instead of Moscow, and that only because the masses have barred the road to Lucerne do they grope their way slowly towards Moscow, in order to correspond to the wishes of the masses for affiliation to the Communist International. For there can be no doubt that the broad masses of the USPD want direct affiliation with Moscow. When Moscow’s answer to the USPD was published by the KPD and discussed at public meetings, the members of the USPD said almost everywhere: ‘It is wrong that our headquarters has taken the road of mere negotiations and has not published this letter.’
Many of the USPD leaders are still looking out of the corner of their eyes at the Second International, and that is why they do not want to come straight away to the Communist International. This section has been afraid and is still afraid to declare its solidarity with Russia and the Communist International. The headquarters’ reply to the Moscow Executive finds fault in all sorts of ways with Moscow’s behaviour, not only with their letter but also with the politics that are pursued here. The Executive is reproached with trying to impose Moscow methods quite schematically on to other conditions. That means nothing other than rejecting solidarity with Russia, criticising – however timidly – the behaviour of the communists, and refusing to apply so-called purely Russian methods to Germany, and therefore rejecting pure communist tactics in general and trying to tread an opportunist path which basically means the negation of communism. The thing which most of all holds the Independents back from going to Moscow is the demand, clearly expressed and posed by the whole International, for the expulsion of the reformist elements in the USPD. They do not want this split within the USPD which is necessary. Through its headquarters t he USPD replied to Moscow that they would not allow this split to be imposed on them, that they regarded the demand for it as interference in relations within the German party and that they valued the unity of the party higher than purely communist tactics. This is pretty clearly expressed in the reply.
It follows from this that we have in the USPD a left wing and a right-wing; a right wing that is still based on bourgeois democracy and has only made certain verbal concessions to the dictatorship of the proletariat and a left wing that is, indeed, based on the dictatorship of the proletariat, but Which in practice makes continual concessions to the right wing, to bourgeois democracy. At the Leipzig conference even representatives of the left wing spoke out quite clearly against carrying the dictatorship of the proletariat to its logical conclusion. This also emerges from those parts of the letter that deal with the use of terror. Here too that contrast between force and terror is once again emphasised, a contrast which in reality does not exist and which is only posed artificially in order to be able to express in veiled terms the rejection of the Russian Party and the Communist International, in order not to declare solidarity with the revolution and the Communist International. When Comrade Radek says in his speech today that he hopes that the left will finally decide to adopt clear policies and reject the ideology of bourgeois democracy, then I must admit I do not share this hope. The left wing has adapted in practice to the policies of the right. We have an example of this at this Congress itself, for the speakers were not the representatives of the left but of the right Comrades Dittmann and Crispien. We have, it is true, heard that many sharp conflicts have occurred between the left and the right, but none of this is made public; the left wing renounces an open conflict in front of the broad masses. Even here at the Congress the representatives of the left have declared that they do not want a split in the party, and the same thing is expressed in the reply signed by Däumig and Stöcker.
If we put forward here the point of view that we put forward in Germany, that is to say that, in order to be communist, the USPD must split from the opportunist elements, then we do not do this for reason of party interests. The criticisms that are made within our party show that we do not flinch from speaking out ourselves about what we do wrong in order to correct it. If we criticise another party in the same way, then that does not happen in order to destroy the party as such, but in order to advance the revolutionary movement and to set the whole mass of the workers on the right road. The left wing that neglected to publish the Moscow Executive’s letter to the workers itself signed the reply to Moscow and hushed it up from the public. A certain arrogance speaks out of this letter, based on the electoral successes, on the great number of votes, and perhaps also on a certain fear of radical changes within the party if Moscow speaks directly to the masses of the USPD.
This is typical: the USPD does not lead the revolution, it runs after the masses. In 1918 the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils demanded collaboration with the Scheidemanns. The USPD obeyed and followed these immature sections of the masses. When in Moscow circles the coupling of the Councils with parliament was criticised, there too the USPD had an excuse: in that situation there was a danger that the Councils would be completely swept aside, and that was why such a compromise was necessary.
It is not possible, in the framework of a short speech, to go into every question in detail. But it is sufficient to point out a few details in order to see that we will have to be very careful over accepting this party. The condition for accepting the USPD is that it carries out a purely communist practice and does not flinch from expelling the reformists and opportunists. We in the KPD have no confidence that this practice can be achieved by the path of negotiations, but we are of the opinion that the masses of the USPD will find the road to Moscow on their own, and that from here we must enter into direct contact with the masses, more or less in the same way as happened with the Executive’s first letter. Nor do we think that the negotiations here will lead to any particular conclusion, but we want the Executive to turn directly to the masses of the Independents and tell them what we think of the USPD and that we expect not the committees of the USPD but the workers of the USPD to impose their will, that is to say, to tread the same path as communists all over the world, as the Russian communists, as Soviet Russia.
Wijnkoop: Many of the remarks that I wanted to make have already been made. I must say that if the vote had to be taken now the Executive’s proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated. We have heard people here who have put all the good arguments against the Executive’s proposal. At least, their arguments spoke against it; whether or not they themselves drew the necessary conclusions from them I do not of course know. No doubt we will now be told that if I and others vote against the Executive’s proposal it is because we are reckoning on the past and not on the masses. In this matter, however, I agree with what Comrade Radek said. He said that it was a fact that the masses of the USPD are moving towards revolution, that they are becoming more and more revolutionary. I agree with that. Comrade Meyer has explained very well that it is not true that the left-wing leaders of the USPD are leading the revolution or revolutionising the movement, but that they are running after the masses. This raises the question of how the work of revolutionising the masses is to be carried out, and on this I think that the road the Executive is taking is wrong. This way the work of revolutionising the masses that stand behind the USPD in Germany and the masses in other countries is not advanced but pushed back. That is my opinion. You should not tell me that I am not taking into consideration the masses that in fact stand behind this party. I am taking them into consideration, but I tell you that if the Executive of the Communist International gives fresh support to the bourgeois leaders of the German Independents and the French Socialists, these masses will be disillusioned once more in what the great revolution and the Communist International has already taught them. That is what our opposition is based on.
Other comrades have already spoken of the fact that the leaders in all these countries are applying the brake, always applying the brake. Only if we fight these gentlemen ruthlessly in every situation will we be able to defeat them. Then the masses will be freed for the revolutionary struggle. If concessions are made to them, in whatever way it may be, that will strengthen their own false conception and they will go back and carry on their work more boldly than before. Comrade Bombacci has told us of his experiences in Italy. He regrets his earlier weaknesses in this matter. He well knows that at that time he was too mild, but now he feels that he acted wrongly then, for as a result of his softness the party in Italy is not more but less revolutionary, and he feels that he must now tread the path that he did not then want to tread. He has judged correctly, and we in the International should learn from it.
The Swiss comrades have confirmed this experience. What is a piece of paper to an opportunist? He will sign it if he has to, and he will still do what he wants to do. He is always two-faced and speaks with two tongues. This is how they operate, these gentlemen in Switzerland, the Troelstras in Holland, the Cachins, the Crispiens and all the rest of them. To retain their influence on the masses they will sign anything and then carry on as they think fit. Of course I know the Executive will say to itself: ‘As the Executive we have a different power over them than the left leaders at home. Once they have signed we will be able to force them to keep to their pledges.’ That is a mistake. I agree completely with the Executive of the Communist International that much more discipline must be introduced, that the Executive must have more influence, that this must come and will come. But I am of the opinion that the Executive does not possess this influence today, and that simply by its willingness to make concessions it shows these gentlemen that it is not capable of really forcing them to take the path that, as revolutionaries, they must take. I must say that if we look at the results that have been achieved up to now we must realise how mistaken these tactics are.
This morning the French were severely criticised and the Independent gentlemen less severely, although they are worse. There is naturally no great difference between them, but the latter suffered only mild, and the Cachins much sharper, criticism. This is a result of the attitude of the Executive who have created a situation where the criticism of the KAPD against the KPD could not be heard here. We ought to have heard it here, but we have not heard it. The USPD say that we should also make friendly criticism of the Communist Parties. That is the best way to teach the masses what they have to do to their opportunist leaders, that is to say: chase them out. By concentrating all the criticism here on the USPD, on a reformist party, we have avoided hearing the criticism, not, it must be admitted, friendly, but good criticism of the KPD by the KAPD. Has the KPD always been in front of the masses? That is the question that must be posed and answered here. Now, however, in the presence of the USPD, it would be no good. We are not on our own, we are together with the socialist gentlemen who are in a government. But we should be on our own, and tell the truth. The Executive’s moves have prevented that.
This morning Comrade Serrati gave a good answer to the question why Turati remains in the Italian Party: because in this way he can make propaganda on his own behalf. And if we ask why these opportunists have come here now and let us pose questions to them, then Comrade Meyer has already emphasised that we get no clear answers from them. They are more shameless here than they are in Germany. That is precisely the reason why these gentlemen enter into negotiations here with the Communist International, because they want to make propaganda on their own behalf in the big Communist Party that must and will grow in Germany. As has been very well said by Comrade Meyer, we must go over the heads of these leaders to the masses to whom the reformist gentlemen want to go in order to spread among them their propaganda, which is so harmful to the revolution. They cannot say so. openly, but it is the truth. If they said so openly we would reply to them: ‘Thank you kindly, please go.’ That is why they must speak diplomatically.
This morning Comrade Zinoviev said something else that was very correct. He characterised the whole machinery of these Independents as philistine. It is precisely this philistine machine that we are trying to take over here. That will not do. We must stand on the principle that Comrade Radek has laid down. We should go to the masses. But then we cannot sort the matter out with the leaders in this way. I must point out that these gentlemen from the USPD and also Cachin and Frossard have been given a special position here. That is wrong, and something that will take its own revenge. Altogether two questions have been confused here. The question in general has been dealt with here as to what the conditions for entry to the Communist International should be like. That should be in the Theses, and in general I think that there are many good things in the Theses. It may be of course that something will yet be changed by this or that amendment. And there is the further question of what we want those parties to be like that already belong to the Communist International. People expect decisions on that from us communists, and these gentlemen should have no part in them. And nevertheless these gentlemen take part in the Commission to draw up these Theses!
The other main question that is up for discussion here is whether we continue to negotiate in this way with these gentlemen, yes or no. These questions have become confused. I have already said that the Executive has given these gentlemen a special position. I have already protested over this in the Commission, but it did no good. These gentlemen are together with us communists, they are here. I have nothing against individuals, but I have something against bourgeois leaders because history has shown us that these people can never shake off their old weaknesses. They can only be forced into a change of front by the masses; but that is achieved by means that are very different from those that are being tried here.
To wind up: this kind of behaviour by the Communist International will have a bad effect not only on Germany and France but all over the world. It will make a very bad impression on England and America. It will also make a very bad impression because it will be felt that the Communist International has here adopted a rightward orientation with the leaders of the Independents. There is no difference between Hilferding and Crispien, and although Hilferding has been attacked here, Crispien has not. How can the masses be revolutionised in all these countries? Only by refusing to stretch out a hand to treacherous parliamentarians, and that is what is being done here with the Independents and also Cachin. When Cachin returns to France, the masses, who have just learnt that parliamentary matters must be approached differently from the way the social democratic gentlemen previously approached them, will see that this new International is once more reaching compromises with the old leaders. The treacherous old parliamentarism will in this way become strong again, and the masses will feel that and turn away from us. It is wrong just to go by the numbers of the masses who nominally stand behind a party but who, in reality, have already come to us through the experience of the Communist International. I therefore hope that the negotiations with the leaders of these parliamentary parties will be broken off, that the Congress will not ratify the present tactics of the Executive, that all the means that we previously had in mind will be applied and a direct address made to the masses in France and Germany. This way, in any case, one of the next goals, the splitting off of the revolutionary sections of the old parties, will come about much more quickly.
Münzenberg: Comrades, I cannot understand how Comrade Wijnkoop can raise here as a reproach against the Executive the fact that the KAPD is pot represented. If it is not represented then that is solely the fault of its delegation. It was decided to allow them into the Congress with an advisory vote, and they were even given the prospect of presenting a minority report on all the points at issue. They did not take the opportunity, they did not appear at the Congress, they left the battlefield before the battle. I do not know what the members of the KAPD think of this, but by far the largest percentage of the German proletariat will be united in their condemnation of such a procedure, and the two comrades who have acted in this irresponsible manner have, in my mind, put themselves beyond the pale in the revolutionary movement in Germany.
Now on the question of the conditions of entry to the Communist International. The political events of the last year have brilliantly proved that the programme and the tactical guidelines of the First Congress of the Communist International in Moscow were correct, those tactics of which the Manifesto said: ‘If the First International predicted the development of the future and tried to find the paths it would take, and if the Second International rallied and organised the proletariat, then the Communist International is the International of open mass action, the International of revolutionary realisation, of the deed.’
Comrades, this method of revolutionary propaganda, of appealing directly to the revolutionary working masses themselves, ignoring the official party channels and institutions, mercilessly criticising every mistake the labour movement makes, has contributed enormously to the awakening and development of the subjective forces of the proletarian revolution in Western Europe. In my opinion the success of the Communist International in the last year lies not so much in today’s Congress as in the fact that, despite the pitiful organisation of the Communist Parties in the last year, and despite the firm boundary drawn on the right – the line was not drawn, as it is today, at Turati, Kautsky, Longuet and Grimm, but at Däumig and Nobs – hundreds of thousands of workers in Germany, Hungary and other states have, in the past year, fought and bled with weapons in their hands for the aims of the Communist International. That is the great practical success of revolutionary propaganda, and it is far more valuable for the proletarian revolution than the issue of a thousand new party cards. The influence of the Communist International on the German workers was so strong that, even when they were called out onto the streets by the USPD, it did not demonstrate in favour of the ideological content of that party, but in favour of the Communist International. The cry constantly rang out: ‘Long live Soviet Russia, Long live the Communist International, Long live the Proletarian Revolution!’
The same thing is expressed in the attitude of the workers in England, France and America. Even if it has not yet been possible to bring the masses to the point where, going over to the final revolutionary struggle, they have overthrown the bourgeoisie in these countries, they have nevertheless been morally so elevated that they will under any circumstances prevent a military invasion of Soviet Russia by their governments. The decisions recently taken by the most varied organisations who are striving for the rejection of the production and transport of munitions to Poland also testify to this. Admittedly, this is not all that the comrades there must demand, but it is the beginning of practical international solidarity. And it is important for that very reason, because the coming epoch of the proletarian revolution will be characterised by a series of revolutionary wars. The Polish war is only one link in the chain of military attacks that is being developed by the Entente and the nations that assist it on Soviet Russia.
Comrades, if we look over the past year of the development of communism, we have no reason to change our tactics and to put a question mark against the winning of great masses for living revolutionary actions for the sake of possible gains of party groups.
It has been said at a session of the Executive that the foundation of the Communist International was premature. I do not share this view, but I think that its boundaries have been extended prematurely. Comrade Zinoviev has already referred in his report to the various opportunist manifestations in the Italian Party, the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Yugoslav Parties. There has been talk of the enemy within.
There is in addition the fact that in England, America and France there do not yet exist firm, strong and disciplined parties. The Socialist Party of Spain has now declared itself in favour of affiliation to the Communist International. Similarly the Swiss Party is trying to smuggle itself into the Communist International. If we take in addition the French Socialist Party and the USPD in their present composition, then I cannot get rid of the feeling that the Communist International faces a big danger, the danger that our revolutionary propaganda and action will run aground and be weakened. [Lenin: ‘Who wants to accept the USPD?'] The negotiations in the Executive show that. The fact that comrades who only a few weeks or even a few days ago were fighting the Communist International with every means at their disposal can today say that they are prepared to sign any conditions they are set is surely proof that the conditions are not severely and sharply enough formulated. At the present point in the revolutionary struggle it cannot only be a question of making propaganda for communism and founding communist parties, but of directly initiating revolutionary mass actions, thus contributing a rapid politicisation of the masses, their revolutionary education and the development of all the subjective revolutionary forces and, at the same time, piling up difficulties for moribund imperialism, sharpening the conflicts and thus working for a more rapid accomplishment of the proletarian revolution. It is this above all that must be demanded of those parties and organisations that want to become members of the Communist International. How important it is to follow the method of revolutionary mass action also emerges clearly from the report of the Executive Committee. It was the Executive Committee that stated in one of its manifestos that more thousands of Petrograd workers had to bleed because of the collapse of the international mass actions planned on July 21, 1919. The international actions planned for November 7, 1919 and on the anniversary of the death of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg failed in the same way. It is therefore absolutely necessary that strict conditions are laid down for all parties precisely in this respect.
The demands that have been laid down in relation to military preparations are also completely unsatisfactory. It is not enough to carry out propaganda in the bourgeois armies and form agitational cells. On the contrary the present situation of the bourgeoisie imperiously demands that everywhere, in every country, we go over to making the organisational and technical military arrangements for the last conflict with the bourgeoisie. I hand over to the Presidium two proposed amendments that correspond to this.
Lozovsky: The question of the acceptance of the centrist parties is one of the most serious questions facing the Congress. If we take the French Socialist Party as being typical of the parties that are at present developing towards communism, then we can see that this party is a very peculiar combination of different tendencies.
When Comrades Cachin and Frossard introduced themselves to the Executive Committee a series of questions was put to them. In particular they were asked what they would do with Albert Thomas, who is at present director of the Labour Office of the League of Nations, and whether they did not think it impossible to bring socialists of this ‘kind into the Communist International. Comrade Frossard officially answered that the case of Albert Thomas would be dealt with at the next party conference of the French Socialist Party.
The French Socialist Party includes centrist elements like Cachin and Frossard as well as bitter enemies of socialism, members of the League of Nations, in short, people who, in the course of the last few years, have fought every workers’ movement, revolutionary or trade union.
The French Socialist Party suffers from a disease that is not only opportunism, but which one can call ‘unity at any price’ regardless of with whom.
When in the Executive Committee Cachin and Frossard were posed the question of national defence, they avoided tying themselves down in the future. They would only give an ambiguous answer. This question is however essential; it is the pillar, the meaning of every communist movement, the foundation of the Communist International. It is obvious that even after the purge [Goldenburg: ‘They will not carry it out ‘I that will be carried out at the next Congress they will not join the Communist International. But it is on the French workers that the duty falls of coming to the Communist International on their own and leaving those leaders who cannot make up. their minds to do what is necessary outside the door.]
I should like to direct your attention to another essential point. If you read the Humanité you will see how they have fought (as Cachin says) against the Treaty of Versailles. It is a peculiar fight altogether and is all too reminiscent of a children’s game. It is true that the socialist members of parliament voted against the Treaty of Versailles. But you should know how. They confined themselves to protesting against certain articles in the Treaty and not against the Treaty of Versailles in its entirety.
There is another fact that we must establish. Here this morning Cachin read out a new declaration that bears no resemblance at all to the one he made a few days ago. Since he knows that this declaration will be published in France he has chosen words that are much less clear than those in the declaration he made eight days ago, when he was not faced with an immediate return to France.
This declaration, which avoids all the awkward questions, openly proves that the majority of the French Socialist Party, from the standpoint of ideas as much as from the standpoint of action, is incapable of working inside – the Communist International. In his declaration Cachin says not a word on the future tactics of the party. He passed over the question of the class struggle and the overthrow of capitalism in silence – a mere nothing, of course.
Among the Socialist Parties that have affiliated to the Communist International there has been much said from this rostrum about the Italian Socialist Party. I must emphasise that in this party Bolshevism and Menshevism rub shoulders.
If we were, however, to ask our Italian comrades whether Bolshevism and Menshevism can be united, they would surely answer in the negative. They would perhaps add that Italy has not yet entered its revolutionary period. But it was not the revolution that divided us from the Mensheviks in Russia. The abyss between us and them had been dug long before. And we , who have been through these experiences, can tell our Italian comrades: ‘Take good care! You will feel the blows of your opportunism during the revolutionary movement, at a vital moment, when the masses are already on the street.’
I remember on this occasion an unforgettable event that took place in Petrograd during the October Revolution. Negotiations were taking place between the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries with a view to common participation in the action. Do you know what the Mensheviks officially proposed to us? To disarm the workers and march the Cossacks into the workers’ districts! I know all about this because I took part in the negotiations. At that time I myself was an eager compromiser, and I was raging about the implacability of our comrades on the Central Committee. They, the Mensheviks, said to us: ‘If you disarm the workers we will guarantee that the workers will not be murdered.’ That is what our opportunists proposed!
And comrades, on the basis of our revolutionary experience, we are afraid that one day, during the decisive struggle that you will have to withstand, the opportunists in your own country will propose something similar to you.
Crispien: Comrades, we would like to answer briefly the question of why we are in Moscow and what we want here. I must, to be sure, say that this question appears really somewhat strange to me. We did not, of course, come to Moscow to see the town but, as we informed the Executive Committee quite officially, as a result of an invitation in the course of the written correspondence that we had with the Executive Committee in order, in accordance with the decision of our party conference, to negotiate here in Moscow with the Communist International about unification with our party. I shall also explain in my remarks why, in my opinion, we had to choose the path of negotiations.
Allow me first of all to say a few words about our party.
From everything that has been said here I can hear that the comrades from abroad are informed neither about German conditions in general nor about party conditions in particular. It is known that the German Social Democracy too simply abdicated at the outbreak of the war. It may however be less well known that from that hour onwards there were also comrades present within the old Social Democracy who, unswervingly and unhesitatingly, immediately made a front against the old party and against the war, not only through protests, not only through resolutions, but also through very difficult practical work during the four war years. Please just imagine: A mighty party that for decades had drawn into its sphere of influence the most advanced part of the German working class – there were a million members in the old Social Democracy, 2 1/2 million members in the trades unions – and in addition the great mass of indifferent workers caught up in the war fever, in addition the military dictatorship, then you can form a picture of what it meant, and how difficult it was, to hold high the flag of socialism in this situation. It was a small handful which then, by the distribution of illegal literature and Spartakus Letters ... [Cry from Fuchs: ‘Who?']
[The Spartakus Letters were issued from December, 1914 by the left wing of German Social Democracy which opposed the war. At first duplicated, they were later printed and appeared regularly under the title ‘Politische Briefe (Spartakus). Leo Jogiches was in charge of production and the principal contributors were Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Franz Mehring and Julian Karsky. On New Year’s Day, 1916, the group formed its own organisation, the Spartacus League, which was to become the basis for the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1919. Spartacus was the leader of a Roman slave revolt.]
We were there too. The comrades will confirm that I for example was also involved in that. [Cry from Walcher: ‘You were not in favour of the Working Group then!'] I am talking now about the start of the war, and ask whether you can deny that I did my duty as a revolutionary socialist. [Walcher agrees.]
Even during the war we staged mass actions against the war. It was not only the masses that bled and made sacrifices, but also the ‘notorious traitors’, the ‘rascals’, the leaders, who are sitting among you today, who also took part in the mass actions and had to pay for it, like all the other proletarians, against whom all the well-known punishments to which capitalism condemns every revolutionary proletarian were used. An opposition rallied more and more around this little handful of social democrats who fought against the war, and it is understandable that in the process elements came into the opposition that did not fundamentally reject war in general and oppose national defence, but were opposed to the war for some other reason. This was natural and understandable, and in this difficult struggle we had neither the time nor the opportunity to show the workers the correct path in big meetings to clarify the issue. We were not even allowed to meet, we were persecuted, had to work underground and could not approach the masses. Those comrades in parliament who had at first submitted to party discipline came out in writing in favour of the class struggle even during the war. Then came the collapse of the war. That gave us the opportunity to come out into the open. [Fuchs: ‘You came out against Liebknecht.’ Dittmann: ‘I shall refute that.'] Comrade Dittman, who was in parliament, says that he will answer that.
When the war was ended by the uprising of workers and soldiers, the German proletariat was suddenly faced with an enormous task.
That it was not solved in a socialist sense by the proletariat is because, in the first place, it was not possible to shape and drive on the great action of the workers and soldiers to a conscious proletarian and revolutionary action. That is one of the main reasons. You should not make the question so simple and think that some leaders betrayed the cause, and that was why it collapsed. [Interjection: ‘You were against the dictatorship’.] The dictatorship of the proletariat is not some new discovery by the Communist International, it was already in the programme of the old socialist party. It said there that the conquest of political power by the working class is the precondition for the realisation of socialism. That is an old Marxist principle. Whether it was followed in practice by the Social Democracy is another matter. As social democrats, we too were in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The fact that it could not be introduced immediately after the end of the war was because no force existed upon which it could be based. The Soldiers’ Councils offered it no basis, the majority of them were not revolutionary socialists. They were not so far advanced, for it was only at the outbreak of the revolution that we were able to approach the masses. And then the process of clarification, of orientation, began, for our party as well. At the party conference in March we took up an attitude towards the situation, and even then we quite clearly articulated and formulated the dictatorship of the proletariat in our programme. [Interjection: ‘Institutionalisation of the Council system.']
[During the German Revolution of 1918-19 Councils of Workers, Soldiers, Sailors and in some areas Peasants were set up. Taking over certain governmental functions in the post-war breakdown they were embryonic organs of dual power. Owing to the lack of leadership and the betrayals of the Social-Democrats, who fought to restore the bourgeois state in co-operation with the army, the Councils became increasingly ineffective and in the course of 1919 they disappeared or were dissolved. However, in the discussions at Weimar, preceding the drawing up of the new Constitution, there was talk of representation of producers through the institution of Industrial Workers’ and Employees’ Councils and in the final document provision was made for such bodies. In practice these councils proved to be harmless organs of class collaboration concerned mainly with social welfare.]
As early as then we too were emphasising that parliament does not bring us socialism, that it is only a weapon that the proletariat needs in its struggle. In the midst of the great confusion of historical development no single party has ever stepped onto the stage as pure as an angel, and moved without guilt and error. I should like to say to you that he who stands in the middle of the white heat of the political struggle can always be criticised. It is very easy. The criticisms of the communists towards us are repeated towards the communists in Germany by the KAPD in full measure. In your eyes we are traitors, in the eyes of the KAPD you are traitors to the working class. You cannot deny that our party developed between March and Leipzig, and that at Leipzig it undertook a clearer formulation of our programme, and I should like to draw your attention to the fact that this took place under the guidance of precisely those ‘infamous leaders’. These leaders put the programme forward. It was not forced on us by the masses, but submitted to the conference and defended by the then party leadership. We in the party leadership acted honestly and honourably in accordance with the party’s decisions. We have had mass actions in Germany, in many cases in common with the German communists. If we are accused of vacillation in our policies and tactics, I would like to say that we can direct the same accusation against the German communists, who once spoke out against parliamentarism and are now in favour of it. The KPD has vacillated on many questions, and if you were to look into your own eyes you would see beams enough there.
It is said that the masses are different from the leaders, the traitors, that we have here. All we need now is for Wijnkoop to call us police agents. You are making a big mistake if you think that the tactic of blackening the leaders here at the Congress in the hope of turning the masses from us is going to make any impression in Germany. You have to go to the masses with facts in Germany. The German comrades and workers have known us for decades, and they would not elect us to responsible positions again and again if we were traitors. In your opinion the masses of the Independents are communist, and it was these communist USPD masses that elected themselves the leaders whom you are trying to tear down. Something must be wrong with your calculations. If you think you are going to play off the masses against the leaders of the party, your tactics will not lead to success. We discuss this in Germany, and we have no fear of coming off the worst in Germany.
And now your excitement about our letter. Why are you suddenly as sensitive as a virgin? We received a sharp letter from the Executive. We did not weep and say that we would turn the other cheek, but we answered it clearly and set down what we thought without beating around the bush. We did not say, as Comrade Zinoviev thinks, that only the right wing leaders were in conflict with the masses. In its letter to us the Executive says that the whole leadership stands in contradiction to the masses, and the politics of the masses are determined by the right-wing leaders of the USPD. To my surprise I find that here I am counted in with the right-wing leaders. You can say that here in Moscow, but you could not say so in Germany. The policies of our party are determined by the party conference and the decisions are taken by the party comrades. Those who do not want to carry out the decisions cannot join the party leadership; they are not elected. Radek says that in Lucerne I spoke in favour of the League of Nations. That is an error. I spoke against the League of Nations in Lucerne. [Interjection from Radek.] Comrade Radek, I do not know if you have a copy of the text of my speech. I spoke against the League of Nations there. As early as the winter of 1918 I wrote in our paper that the League of Nations was not a league of nations but an instrument of the capitalist government for the oppression of nations. I said it then and I stand by this point of view now. I protested against the League of Nations. We went to Lucerne because we thought it important to unmask the right-wing German socialists in front of the international proletariat. It was surely not a crime for us to assume that German conditions were not sufficiently well known abroad, and that the right-wing socialists could easily have made capital out of it in order to capture other nations for their ideas. We declared that the Second International cannot be resurrected and that historically speaking it is finished.
If I wrote in my pamphlet that the foundation of the Moscow International was premature then I say that I am still convinced of this today. Comrade Radek should have read on to see why I said that the Moscow International had been founded too early. I explained in my pamphlet that the foundation of a new International must be preceded by a clarification of the workers in every country. The workers must be clear on the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat and on the international class struggle, and when they have become clear in their own country they can play an international role. Comrade Zinoviev’s speech proves that that is not such a bad thing at all. Who, anyway, is called and chosen for the Communist International? The Russian Communists are the only ones who were not criticised. Apart from them there was not a single affiliated party that escaped criticism. And the same leaders of those very parties that were criticised here are trying to outlaw the evil Independents in Germany. They completely overlook the fact that we split from the right-wing socialists, that we did not baulk at the split when it was historically inevitable.
But splits are not something to undertake lightly. I can imagine a situation where a split is necessary. The proof of that is the USPD in Germany. But that is a bitter necessity. Before splitting, one should try to win the workers for a fundamentally clear attitude. For that one needs time and patience. It is much easier to split the workers than it is to win them and hold them together for the revolution in Germany. It is one of the greatest tragedies that in Germany the whole left wing of the workers is split into three or four parties, the USPD, the KPD, the KAPD and the Workers’ Union that there has been propaganda for recently. That is very damaging for the German movement, for the world proletarian revolution and particularly for the International. What we need is an International that is capable of acting, and that requires that we must organise the workers in a firmly united way. Otherwise we will not be able to carry out any international action at all. It all depends on holding the masses together and bringing them onto the basis of the proletarian revolution, if they do not stand on it already.
It is true that at Leipzig I opposed immediate affiliation to Moscow. Why? Well, comrades, at the First Congress in Moscow it was decided to annihilate the USPD, to destroy it, to wear it down, to abolish it from the world. You will be able to understand that a representative of a party that is to be annihilated may wish first of all to have a discussion with the comrades that want to do that in the hope of bringing about a negotiated unification. We were not against unification, but we were in favour of first of all abolishing the hostile decisions against us. You cannot beat somebody and then expect him to say: ‘I am your friend because you have beat me.’ These are all things that you must understand and grasp. [Interjections.] As far as signing the peace treaty is concerned, the masses in Germany stood foursquare behind our party on this question. At that time it was the struggle against chauvinism in Germany, and we were glad that for once nationalism was forced back. The German nationalists wanted to turn the question of peace into a nationalist and chauvinist witches’ sabbath. [Interjection from Walcher: ‘You helped them out of their difficulty.'] That is nonsense. Germany had been so weakened by the war that if the blockade had been reimposed the impoverishment of the masses in Germany would have been even more fearful. We thought that the question was to make the masses better able to fight, to bring them up to the highest possible standard of living in a continual fight against the tendency of capitalism towards impoverishment. It is not the completely impoverished layers down to the lumpenproletariat who stand in the front rank, they will not make the revolution, but those layers of workers who can keep their standard of living relatively high. Thus the accusations against us concerning the signing of the peace treaty are also unjustified.
Now the question of force and terror. We are of the opinion that these are two different things. We cannot renounce force if we wish to fight for the dictatorship. Where force is applied it will under some circumstances happen that here and there people are hurt who should have been spared if we had been able to examine carefully their guilt or their innocence. But to say now, before we have the power, that we must apply terror as a political principle, we must set up a reign of terror, is different from saying that we cannot renounce the use of force. Our standard for the use of force is what we are forced to do under the circumstances obtaining at the time.
I can say that we have never slandered the Bolsheviks; even more, I can say that I have always felt myself to be in solidarity with the Russian comrades. When the communists in Nuremberg were accused of taking money from the Russians, I stated that I would be proud to do so as it would have been an act of international solidarity. We have always fought for the Bolsheviks and explained that they must carry out a hard fight, and we have no right to disparage them. [Interjection: ‘Kautsky.'] Kautsky, certainly, he criticised you, but he does not determine the party leadership. That is a big mistake. [Interjection: ‘Ledebour.'] Ledebour never disparaged the Bolsheviks either. You are wrong. Ledebour fought openly for the party without regard for his life. He thinks that you cannot establish terror as a political principle.
I should just like to say here that our friends in Russia are also opportunist sinners, that accuse us of not supporting their demands in the agrarian question. On this question we said the following in our reply:
‘As far as the agrarian question is concerned we find that to our amazement the Executive Committee recommends to the revolutionary proletariat of Germany methods that signify a relapse into petty-bourgeois ways of thinking that have long since been overtaken. Thus we are recommended to make it clear to the small peasants that the proletariat, immediately after the seizure of power, will improve their situation at the expense of the expropriated big landlords, liberate them from the yoke of the big landlords, give the big estates to them as a class, free them from debt, etc. This proposal means nothing other than the rejection of our Marxist conception according to which the big estates should immediately be socialised and worked m common. Instead of that the small peasants are now to be told that they can keep the big estates, that they will be freed from debt, etc. That means the abandonment of the interests of the proletariat in favour of the peasants. It means willy-nilly transferring conditions in Russia, where the land has been given to the peasants, to Germany, whose social and economic development could be most seriously prejudiced by such a measure.’
Do you think that it would be revolutionary for Germany if we gave the land to the small peasants? [Walcher: ‘In order to bring the small peasants to our side.'] You will not bring them to our side by opportunist means. The big landowners must be expropriated and the estates must be farmed on a co-operative basis, and not divided among the rural labourers and small peasants. We must make them ripe for the co-operative farming of the land for society.
Comrade Meyer has asked what we have done in order to bring about unification. I believe that Comrade Meyer has read our official report on this subject. What have we done? We have worked tirelessly to get together with Moscow. Finally, after four months, we received an answer when we were in the middle of preventing a military putsch, we were in an election campaign, and immediately afterwards went to Moscow. That we come together with other parties was the decision that the party conference gave us to take with us, and we have to carry out decisions the party has taken. We avoided holding an international conference with other parties. We wanted to give Moscow the first chance.
It is not true that Koenen in Switzerland said that we are forming a new International. We said that if Moscow rejects us then we must consider what is to happen next. Should we allow ourselves to be excluded from international politics? Do you think it possible for so big a movement as the USPD represents not to be active internationally? To be sure, you communists from Germany have called us dead ever since we were born as a party. Your hopes that we will soon be dead do not worry us any more.
I should like also to say that, in general, I feel the lack of any thinking about historical development in the discussions. Many comrades think that Marxism came into the world all of a sudden with the Communist International, and that now something quite new is present. That is not correct. The First International that was founded in the faith that the proletarian revolution would follow on immediately after the bourgeois revolution, that was attuned to the immediate realisation of socialism, ceased to exist for the reasons that Comrade Zinoviev indicated. What emerged, and what Marx said, was that at that time the proletariat itself lacked the preconditions for the taking and the holding of political power, and that the first thing that came into question was to organise the proletariat and develop in the proletariat the abilities necessary for the fight for the conquest of political power. Those were the historical tasks of that epoch that was dominated by the Second International. Today, the preconditions for the fight for the conquest and maintenance of power are also present in the working class, just as today the conditions for socialism are present in capitalist society. We are now in the epoch when what counts is the seizure of political power. In Russia it has already been seized. I hope that it will very soon be possible to seize it in other countries also. Thus it is necessary to appreciate the development through which the working class has passed in order to see that the Communist International is building on where their predecessors in previous epochs have stopped. If then the parties that are still rightwing socialist today have not recognised their tasks, they will have to pay for that with their collapse and destruction. We have recognised that, we are acting in accordance with it, and in Germany we are carrying out revolutionary policies. I make this claim with complete emphasis, and we can also back it up at any time from the documents.
Formulate your answer as you will, we are striving honestly, we desire honestly, to set up a common front with the Communist International. You cannot deny us our revolutionary convictions, conceptions and activity. We still remain revolutionaries, however much we are suspected of being opportunists. judge as you will; we will not cease to apply all the forces at our disposal in Germany in the future for the proletarian world revolution. But if you give us an answer that the German proletariat that stands in our ranks will receive with joy, then so much the better for the setting up of an international proletarian front.
Dittmann: Comrades, pure coincidence gives me the floor immediately after my friend Crispien. I beg you not to draw from that the conclusion, as has been insinuated by Comrade Wijnkoop, that we intend to act even more impudently here than we do in Germany.
[Amusement.] It really is a pure coincidence that we follow one another on the list of speakers.
We have been accused, particularly Crispien and myself, with not having fought for immediate, direct affiliation to the Communist International. The same people that have accused us of this have also recounted a whole register of sins that they think they have to reproach us with in order to prove that we are not worthy to be accepted into the Communist International. I think that there is a great contradiction here, and it does justify the decision our party took in Leipzig to negotiate with the Communist International in order to find out whether unification or a unified common front is possible or not. It was for this purpose that we have come here now, and we were given the Action Programme on which our Leipzig party conference decided as the basis for our negotiations. This Action Programme – I assume you are familiar with it – has taken as its basis the conquest of political power by the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the soviet system, clearly and frankly, and I do not think that many of the parties whose representatives here have criticised us Independents can show a programme that is so clear and unambiguous on precisely these decisive points as ours is.
Comrades, after what my friend Crispien has explained here I do not want to go any further into these general questions. I asked for the right to speak above all in order to reject some of the accusations that have been made by some of the speakers in the course of the debate.
I must concern myself particularly with Comrade Radek. He raised above all two accusations against the Independents whose representatives belonged to Germany’s first revolutionary government. He has accused the USPD that its representatives at that time rejected the symbolic action of the Russian proletariat in offering two train-loads of corn. And he further criticised the fact that the USPD at that time prevented diplomatic relations between the Germany of the first weeks of the revolution of November 1918 and Soviet Russia from being restored. I know that Comrade Radek is among those foreign comrades who know conditions in Germany better than any other foreign comrades. But nevertheless it very often shows that he does not know conditions in Germany thoroughly enough to be able to give a really authoritative verdict.. I do not say that as a reproach here, but in order to establish the facts. Nor do I know a single person in this room who has mastered conditions in every country with such a universal spirit that he would be able, in any given situation, to establish the necessary political guidelines according to which the proletariat has to march at each point in each country in order to serve the revolution best. That is beyond any human power. That is why I do not say what I say as a reproach. He who wants to judge the conditions that obtained in Germany in November and December 1918 cannot be satisfied with being given a variety of facts by some of the comrades when he comes to Germany. He cannot believe that he can reach an absolutely accurate verdict on the basis of these facts.
What was it like? When Germany suffered a military collapse on the battlefield there was also an economic collapse inside the country. The people had collapsed physically and morally. It was immediately faced with the acute danger of actual starvation. That was what the situation was like in Germany. Despite everything that had happened, the German militarists would not have given up the game for lost in October 1918 had it not been declared from a responsible source that our corn supplies would only last until the beginning of January 1919. That was the end; after that the people would starve.
That was what it was like, and the government which at that time took the reins in its hands had to keep in mind that it had to take care to prevent the people from dying of acute starvation and that, by the time all the supplies at hand had been consumed, corn would have to be obtained from no matter where, even the moon. Nobody could have assumed responsibility for carrying out a policy that would have exposed the whole people to starvation. It was in this situation that the telephone conversation between Radek and Haase on the Hughes Apparatus came. What was Comrade Haase’s reply? I could have wished that Radek had given Haase’s full answer. He declared: ‘We see in this offer an act of solidarity of the Russian with the German proletariat. We see international solidarity symbolised in it. But we know that Russia is also suffering from starvation, and insofar as the supplying of Germany comes into question, America has already agreed to supply enough corn to Germany to make it possible to continue the present level of rations until the new harvest.’ This is what Comrade Haase stated at the time to Comrade Radek on the telegraph. And I would like to ask: where is the abandonment of the international solidarity of the proletariat here?
Comrade Haase acted completely correctly when he stated that we knew that you needed corn yourselves and that, on the other hand, we knew that we would be supplied with corn. So you could keep the corn for yourselves. Did the value of the offer fie in the fact that the trains actually set out? The offer’s value lay in the fact that it was made. That was enough to prove solidarity, and if Haase said that we saw in that an act of solidarity and that we were grateful for it, then that was appropriate in the given situation, and I do not see how Comrade Radek can accuse us for this action of having fallen victim to Wilsonism because we as a government accepted corn from America.
From whom else then should we in Germany have received corn in order to protect our people from starvation, if not from the only country in the world that was then in a position to supply corn to our half-starved people? We can think what we like about America, but America supplied the corn, and not only corn, but other food as well.
And now the expulsion of the Russian Embassy. I think it was on November 4 or 5, 1918 that the government of Prince Max of Baden, the last Imperial Chancellor of the Wilhelmine regime, decided to expel the Russian Embassy from Berlin, allegedly because Joffe was abusing his position as Ambassador by carrying out revolutionary propaganda in Germany. That is why the German Imperial government expelled him. When the German revolution broke out, Comrade Joffe was waiting on the German-Russian frontier. There were still some formalities to be finalised in relation to crossing the frontier; that is why he was waiting there. In this situation, telegrams were sent to Berlin by Comrade Joffe as soon as he knew that the revolution had broken out in Germany and that there were Independents in the government. He sent a telegram to Comrade Haase, and Haase immediately stated in the Council of Peoples Commissaries – that was the name of the government of the day, whose member I was together with Haase and Barth – that we Independents were all three of the opinion that Joffe should be called back immediately. That was the position that we adopted straight away, but the right-wing socialists, supported by the Foreign Minister, Solf, told us there could be no question of it. [Interjection from Walcher: ‘The minutes tell a different story.'] I am coming to the minutes. just let me explain things; I know more about it than anyone else here because I was one of those involved. Then Solf, and with him Landsberg, Scheidemann and Ebert, declared that it was immaterial whether Joffe had tried to support the revolution in Germany or whether he had carried out reactionary propaganda; as an Ambassador, they said, he had to avoid interference in the internal relations of the country under all circumstances. In vain we emphasised that this was a formalistic point of view, which we as revolutionaries, could not support; that Joffe had acted in the interests of the German and the world revolution, and that we felt ourselves to be in solidarity with him, and had to insist that he return as Ambassador. We fought this question out not just once but a number of times. [Interjection from Wolfstein: ‘Vote!'] The Council of Peoples’ Commissars was composed of three right-wing socialists and three Independents. Thus we could have prevented the right wingers from getting a decision through to expel Joffe from Berlin had that not already happened, but we lacked the majority to get through the positive motion to bring Joffe back. It was three against three, and it was impossible for us to have Joffe brought back to Germany. – You clapping there behind me on the platform doesn’t prove a thing. You can’t ask anybody to do more than fight for what he can get through. If you want to interrupt me in this way I shall wait, since it is difficult for me to make myself understood.
What could they ask of us in a situation like that? Only what we could achieve, and we went as far as was possible. We declared however that we would return to the matter, that it had not been settled as far as we were concerned, and we took it up again at every suitable opportunity. But this was rendered very difficult for us precisely by Comrade Radek’s behaviour. One day Comrade Haase said to me in great excitement: ‘You know Comrade Radek; can you imagine that such a clever man could do something so stupid. I have just had a call from Moscow on the Hughes apparatus’ – that is an apparatus that writes out the message simultaneously, so that it is impossible to hold a conversation free from eavesdropping on such an apparatus, a fact that Comrade Radek also doubtless knows, and ought to have made him be careful about what he was saying – ‘and Radek said that a delegation would come to Germany to the first Congress of Soviets, and that at the same time the delegation would bring with it people with foreign language skills who would have the job of going to the Prisoner of War Camps in Germany to carry on propaganda among the English and French prisoners.’ [Cries of ‘Bravo’. Interjection from Radek: ‘Terrible!’] I greet that as a revolutionary socialist, but it is a different matter to inform a government officially, and at the same time officials that are opposed to the revolution, that the intention exists to send agents into the prisoner of war camps to carry on revolutionary propaganda there. That means in other words informing the entire bourgeois world in Germany of the fact, and also taking care to inform the Entente, the same Entente with which the German government was forced to conclude a four week armistice. If the German government had approved of it, the Entente would obviously have interpreted this propaganda as a breach of the armistice. Therefore there was nothing else for Haase to do but to answer Radek on the machine that there could be no question of us agreeing to this offer. Radek thereupon stated that he renounced it. [Interjection from Levi and Radek: ‘And so?’] Your ‘and so’ proves nothing since the offer had been made, it was known in the Foreign
Ministry and it was known to Solf and the bourgeois officials we had to reckon with. [Interjection from Radek: ‘Why did you not throw them out?’] I am the last person to condemn the carrying out of revolutionary propaganda, but we must take some account of the circumstances and understand the situation as it existed. We do not need to fall out over what we want.
As a result of this a situation was created for us Independents in the cabinet that made extraordinarily difficult our efforts to have relations with Soviet Russia resumed, for Landsberg, Scheidemann and Ebert, not forgetting Solf, immediately told us: ‘There you can see what we are to expect if this embassy comes back. They will create the greatest complications with the Entente, they will create a breach of the armistice now, when our troops are being brought back from the left bank of the Rhine. The Entente will march in after them, and Germany will be occupied.’ That was a situation that nobody could conjure up at that time if he did not want to turn the whole mood of the country in Germany against himself, even among working class circles; you should be clear about that. And when Solf and the others repeated that there could be no question of Joffe returning there was nothing left for us to do but to shelve the matter for the time being. We did not want to let it drop. We still hoped we would have an opportunity to get it through despite everything, and it was from this situation that arose the minutes that Vorwärts published once. But the paper avoided publishing the other minutes, from which everything that I have explained here would have emerged very clearly. [Interjection from Walcher and Radek: ‘Barth has confirmed it.'] I was not so discourteous as to quote Barth. He expresses himself in very discourteous terms about you, my dear Comrade Radek. I assume you have seen an extract that was printed in Vorwärts. In his book on the other hand Barth says: ‘The right-wing socialists came with a cable from Radek in which he proclaimed a joint fight on the Rhine against the capitalist Entente. This stupid phrase was a great piece of stupidity and did the worst possible damage to the world revolution.’ That is how Barth expressed himself. You would have done better not to have quoted Barth. I can also read out the piece about Joffe, who is supposed to have given Haase and Barth money for the revolution. The book says about this: ‘I must say that Joffe’s cable was worse than stupid; if I too had named names, those comrades would now surely no longer be alive; the counter-revolution would have murdered them.’ With the greatest efforts on my part, I have been unable to find a single place in Barth’s entire pamphlet that has anything good to say about you, Comrade Radek. I only found the two extracts which I would not have quoted if you had not interrupted me.
Meanwhile we left the government and we are not responsible for what happened afterwards. We always came out publicly in favour of resumption not only of diplomatic but also of economic relations with Soviet Russia. just recently we proposed another motion of that kind in the Reichstag. Comrades Stöcker and Crispien have been entrusted with the task of proposing this motion in parliament. In it we adopt the point of view that of course relations between Soviet Russia and Germany have to be resumed. Quite recently, when the Polish imperialists began their campaign of robbery against Soviet Russia, our party staged a mighty demonstration under the slogan: ‘Hands off Russia! Restore peaceful relations with Russia!’ I do not know whether those comrades who are always receiving reports and information about the Independents, according to which we are hostile towards Soviet Russia, know all these things. I should like to think that they do not know these things. Otherwise they could not have reached the verdict on the Independents that has been expressed here.
A word in conclusion. A whole series of speakers have expressed the opinion that in their view, apart from some other parties, our party too should not be let into the Communist International as it is not revolutionary. My friend Crispien has shown in broad outline how false this accusation is, and if we had the opportunity to unfold the whole history of our party since the German revolution before you, many of you would surely change your verdict on our party. An honourable man would have to change it. Convince yourselves: 5 million people do not vote for a party against which the papers of the Communist Party raise the accusations that have been raised here and a hundred others unless they themselves have been able to form a judgement on whether these accusations are justified. We won our positions in the hardest fight against the majority socialists and the bourgeoisie. We can claim on our behalf that the masses of the revolutionary proletariat in Germany stand behind the Independent Party, and we have come to Moscow because we know that the world revolution is advancing and that it is necessary for the proletariat of every country to march in a unified common front and to try to defeat capitalism, and not, as you say, in response to the pressure of the masses. We ourselves are workers and proletarians, we are workers in our origins and our upbringing, we have been in the labour movement for more than a quarter of a century. Our whole existence is absorbed in the movement and we stood our ground in the darkest days of the war, flinched from no sacrifice, and even stood up against the executioners of the capitalist class state. If here one is put down as somebody who lacks all revolutionary feeling, one has a right to point out the scars one has received in the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.
And if you want the same thing as us, to bring together the proletariat of Russia and of Germany, and beyond them the proletariat of the whole world, united and in closed ranks, then endeavour as seriously as we have endeavoured to find in the negotiations that are to come a way that will enable us to come together soon and carry on the common fight against capitalism to the benefit of the entire world proletariat.
Rosmer: It is 1.00 a.m. The session is closed.
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