Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, founder and leader of the Russian Red Army, on the anniversary of his death.
Showing posts with label Fourth International. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fourth International. Show all posts
Sunday, October 21, 2018
Saturday, October 20, 2018
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *The ABC's Of Socialism- From American Socialist Workers Party Founder James P. Cannon
Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives.
BOOK REVIEW
NOTEBOOK OF AN AGITATOR- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.
The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.
It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.
I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.
Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.
I also suggest a close look at Cannon’s articles in the early 1950’s. Some of them are solely of historical interest around the effects of the red purges on the organized labor movement at the start of the Cold War. Others, however, around health insurance, labor standards, the role of the media and the separation of church and state read as if they were written in 2006. That’s a sorry statement to have to make any way one looks at it.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
*********
Intellectuals and Revolution
James P. Cannon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, Oct.-Nov. 1992. This 1961 letter to George Novack was found among the papers of the late George Weissman. The “M.” referred to is the well-known radical sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916-1962). Mills was the author of numerous works including The Power Elite (1956) and The Marxists (1962). The book discussed here is his controversial best seller, Listen Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba (1960).
Published in Building the Revolutionary Party, © Resistance Books 1997 Published by Resistance Books 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale NSW 2008, Permission for on-line publication provided by Resistance Books for use by the James P. Cannon Internet Archive in 2005.
Transcription\HTML Markup: Andrew Pollack
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear George:
This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter and Evelyn’s lively note of February 9 about your meeting with M. This is certainly interesting and important news. It is also gratifying to hear that a conversation between us about M. a year or so ago led, in a chain of actions and reactions, to your visit at his home.
But you are not quite accurate when you attribute my earlier suggestion that you undertake a serious and critical evaluation of M.’s work to my “customary generosity.” This explanation is a bit too generous on your part. The truth, which I began to love and revere in my earliest youth and which, in my later years, I am beginning to worship, compels me to admit that my motive was a little more complicated and devious than you make it. If I had anything to do with it, two other reasons for my proposal strike me as more plausible and closer to the truth.
In the first place, I recognized that you had studied M.’s writings and related material more attentively and thoroughly than I had and were better qualified as a Marxist scholar to analyze them. In the second place, when there is a big job of work to be done my lifelong reflex has been to look around for someone else to do it. In this instance, as in many others, you happened to be the one I pointed at. Now don’t get the idea that this disclaimer is another example of my well-known modesty. My general procedure in these matters is just a sly, Irish trick of turning the defects of ignorance and laziness into merits. I have been getting away with this sort of thing for years and years. And, strangely enough, the movement has benefited most of the time, while I have acquired a reputation as a nice guy who finds jobs for other people. In addition, as a sort of bonus, I have had the special indulgence to loaf and ruminate without being harried too much by my Irish conscience.
* * *
I think I agree entirely with everything you say in your letter in evaluation of M. He is different. As you know, I have always had a low, not to say contemptuous, opinion of the contemporary American intelligentsia. And that is not simply a carryover of the anti-intellectualism of my young Wobbly days. After I became a communist and recognized that the thinkers and leaders of the Russian revolution, like their own mentors before them, were all intellectuals, I made a serious effort at “thought reform” on the subject. But I must say that the intellectuals of our time in this country, particularly those who have made pretensions to radicalism, have done their best to keep me from going overboard.
Experience and observation over a long time have taught me two things about the American intellectuals in general, and the academicians in particular. They lack modesty, which is the precondition for learning things they don’t already know, especially about the dark interiors of social problems which have been explored by others but remain an undiscovered country for them. Supplementary to that defect, and holding them back from serious exploration, is the plain and simple fact that they have no guts. They want to keep out of trouble.
In the book of Catholicism, which I studied as a boy, there are three types of sins. The first are venial (small) sins, such as my own—work-dodging, procrastination, self-indulgence, shooting pool on Sunday, etc.—which are easily forgiven and which one can even forgive oneself after a few prayers, if a priest isn’t available. Then there are mortal sins, such as murder, blasphemy, adultery, etc. These can be forgiven by a priest if serious penance is done, but the mortal sinner must still serve time in purgatory before entering heaven. The third sin is the sin against the Holy Ghost. For that there is no forgiveness, and there is no place to go but to hell. Well, cowardice is a sin against the Holy Ghost! Or, to turn it around and switch from the catechism to Ben Johnson: “Courage is the first virtue, because it is the condition for the exercise of the other virtues.”
* * *
For quite a while I have regarded M. as a maverick on the academic range; his manifest courage and honesty seemed to separate him from the herd. Then his book about Cuba showed another and most attractive side of his character. I read it attentively, and kept assessing it as I went along, on two levels.
On one level it is an absorbing and moving exposition of the revolutionary process in Cuba, as the leaders of the revolution see it. And, to my mind, reading between the lines of their letters transmitted through M., they see more, and have studied and thought and reflected more about what they are doing, than they explicitly acknowledge in the letters.
They explain that they represent a new generation, starting from scratch, without the weariness and disillusionment that paralyzes the older generations of the radical movement. But they couldn’t have said that if they had not previously thought and reflected about it. They must have noticed that their youth gave them the energy and drive that youth alone can give, and that their simple ignorance, in contrast to the miseducation and disillusionment of their elders, had a certain positive side. They had less to unlearn.
They frankly say they are improvising as they go along. But the remarkable thing is that they have made the right improvisations almost every time, and keep in step with the revolution as it continues to develop. And this course has been continued since the book was written. Castro’s speech at the United Nations on the mainsprings of imperialism was the speech of a man who has picked up Lenin’s theory somewhere; maybe from the book itself. Then, in the press reports the other day Castro was quoted as saying—for the first time explicitly, as far as I know—that the socialist system is superior to the capitalistic system, and that in a resumption of normal diplomatic relations the United States would have to take this Cuban position into account.
From all this I got the impression that the Cuban leaders knew more about revolutionary theory than they claimed to know when they were talking with M., and that they know even more now, and are still learning.
* * *
On the other level, M. revealed himself as a man more clearly in this book than ever before. I kept saying to myself as I turned the pages from his introduction to his summary: “This intellectual really cares about the hungry people of the world. He worries, as he says himself, not about the sweeping revolution, but with it. He is even capable of anger—that holy emotion of rebels and revolutionists—about injustice, oppression, lies, and hypocrisy. What a dangerous wild man to be running loose on the American campus!”
His book moved me deeply. I kept thinking of writing him a note of thanks and appreciation. But with my usual procrastination and bashful reluctance to intrude on strangers, I put it off.
* * *
I would like here to make a brief comment on the important point dealt with inconclusively at the end of your talk with M. For convenience I will first quote a paragraph from your letter:
“If the Soviet economy is more productive, is it not then historically superior?” I asked. “What do you mean by historically superior?” he asked. “That it can produce more goods, more wealth, in less time with less labor per person.” “Yes, I think it can be more efficient but that is not for me the only test of historical superiority. More important is the moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority.” The discussion ended when I added that without a superior capacity for material production there couldn’t be a superior cultural superstructure.
I don’t think the apparent disagreement should be left in that stalemate. The question is more subtle, more complicated. And, for my part, I can see merit in both your criterion and that of M. They should be reconciled, not contrasted.
It is elementary that “a superior capacity for material production is the necessary basis for a superior cultural superstructure.” Even the Cuban leaders, who don’t profess to be practicing Marxists, know that and are working night and day to improve productive capacities to provide the means for all the other things. But in my opinion, there is also merit in M.’s concern for “moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority,” because it cannot be taken for granted that this will follow automatically from the reorganization of the productive system. This aim must be deliberately stated and consciously fought for all the time.
The fullest democracy in the transition period, institutionalized by forms of organization which assure the participation and control of the working people at every stage of development, is an indispensable part of our program. This has to be not merely stated, but emphasized. It distinguishes us from, and puts us in irreconcilable opposition to, the “economic determinists” and the totalitarians. It is the condition for the most efficient and rapid development of the new productive process.
And no less important, perhaps even more important: This full and free democratic participation of the working people, in all stages and all phases of the social tranformation during the transition period between the old society and the new, is the necessary condition for the preparation of the people for citizenship in a genuinely free society. It is not enough to learn to read and write and produce material things in abundance. That’s only the starting point. People have to learn how to live abundantly. That means they have to learn how to be free in body, mind, and spirit. Where else can they learn that but in the school and practice of ever-expanding democracy during the transition period?
In view of the way things have turned in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, this part of our Marxist program—workers’ democracy as the only road to preparation for the socialist society of the free and equal—must be given particular emphasis in all our propaganda and all our arguments with people who are dissatisfied with capitalism, but don’t want to exchange it for totalitarian slavery.
If we fail to emphasize this fundamental feature of our Marxist program; if we omit it or slur over it in our expositions of the superiority of nationalized and planned economy; if we neglect to speak of freedom as the socialist goal—we will never win the American workers and the new generation of intellectuals for the revolutionary fight. And we won’t deserve to.
* * *
My thoughts have turned increasingly to this side of the problem of social transformation in recent years. My speech on “Socialism and Democracy” at our 1957 convention (later repeated at the West Coast Vacation School and subsequently published as a pamphlet) was a first response to the questions troubling many people shaken up by the Khrushchev speech and the Polish and Hungarian events. Our discussion of the Chinese revolution during the past two years has pushed me to think more deeply on the subject, and I will probably have more to say later.
Here I will briefly state my settled conviction, as an orthodox Marxist, in one question and one answer: Will the development of the productive forces by a system of planned economy, under a totalitarian regime of regimentation and thought control, automatically lead to the socialist society of the free and equal? My answer is No, Never! The workers must achieve their own emancipation; nobody will do it for them and nobody can. If anybody is looking for a fight on this basic postulate of Marxism, just tell him to knock the chip off my shoulder. From this point of view, it appears to me that M.’s concern, which I fully share, for the “moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority” of the new society—and by that I have to presume that he means a free society—contradicts his denial of the role of the working class as the decisive agency of social change. This stands out all the more glaringly if we recognize that the transformation of society is not accomplished by the single act of revolution, but requires a transition period during which people change themselves while they are changing society.
If the workers are unable to carry through this historical task, it has to be assigned to some kind of elite. But then we come to the embarrassing questions: Will this uncontrolled elite be benevolent? Will it extend freedom, purely from goodness of heart and nobility of intentions? Or will it curtail freedom until it is stamped out entirely? Experience so far in the history of the human race in general and of this century in particular, speaks powerfully for the latter assumption. I don’t know whether George Orwell’s 1984 was intended as a prophecy or a warning. But if one grants or assumes that the workers are unable to take control of public affairs and keep control, it is most logical to assume that Big Brother will eventually take over. This is not a new thought of mine, or even of Orwell’s. Trotsky bluntly posed this alternative twenty-one years ago in In Defense of Marxism.
He didn’t believe it would happen that way, and neither do I. The working class cannot be written off until it has been definitively defeated on a worldwide scale. That hasn’t happened yet in Europe and America, or in the Soviet bloc, as the events of 1956-57 gave notice.
In this country, where the issue will finally be decided, the working class in basic industry, previously atomized and without experience in organization, showed great power in the thirties. That is too recent to forget. The uprising which culminated in the constitution of the CIO was a semi-revolution. It could have gone much farther if there had been adequate leadership. The workers—who need an “elite” to lead, but not to substitute—have marked time and even lost some ground since then; but they have not been defeated in open conflict.
In my opinion, it would be rash and “unscientific” to assume, in advance of the showdown conflict, that they will be defeated. But if one does assume that, he should not shrink from recognizing the horrifying alternative which first Trotsky, and later Orwell, posed—and quit talking about the future good society of the free and equal. Under such a regime it would be unlawful even to think about such things.
Fraternally,
James P. Cannon
BOOK REVIEW
NOTEBOOK OF AN AGITATOR- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.
The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s long time companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.
It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.
I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.
Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this system.
I also suggest a close look at Cannon’s articles in the early 1950’s. Some of them are solely of historical interest around the effects of the red purges on the organized labor movement at the start of the Cold War. Others, however, around health insurance, labor standards, the role of the media and the separation of church and state read as if they were written in 2006. That’s a sorry statement to have to make any way one looks at it.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
*********
Intellectuals and Revolution
James P. Cannon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, Oct.-Nov. 1992. This 1961 letter to George Novack was found among the papers of the late George Weissman. The “M.” referred to is the well-known radical sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916-1962). Mills was the author of numerous works including The Power Elite (1956) and The Marxists (1962). The book discussed here is his controversial best seller, Listen Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba (1960).
Published in Building the Revolutionary Party, © Resistance Books 1997 Published by Resistance Books 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale NSW 2008, Permission for on-line publication provided by Resistance Books for use by the James P. Cannon Internet Archive in 2005.
Transcription\HTML Markup: Andrew Pollack
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear George:
This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter and Evelyn’s lively note of February 9 about your meeting with M. This is certainly interesting and important news. It is also gratifying to hear that a conversation between us about M. a year or so ago led, in a chain of actions and reactions, to your visit at his home.
But you are not quite accurate when you attribute my earlier suggestion that you undertake a serious and critical evaluation of M.’s work to my “customary generosity.” This explanation is a bit too generous on your part. The truth, which I began to love and revere in my earliest youth and which, in my later years, I am beginning to worship, compels me to admit that my motive was a little more complicated and devious than you make it. If I had anything to do with it, two other reasons for my proposal strike me as more plausible and closer to the truth.
In the first place, I recognized that you had studied M.’s writings and related material more attentively and thoroughly than I had and were better qualified as a Marxist scholar to analyze them. In the second place, when there is a big job of work to be done my lifelong reflex has been to look around for someone else to do it. In this instance, as in many others, you happened to be the one I pointed at. Now don’t get the idea that this disclaimer is another example of my well-known modesty. My general procedure in these matters is just a sly, Irish trick of turning the defects of ignorance and laziness into merits. I have been getting away with this sort of thing for years and years. And, strangely enough, the movement has benefited most of the time, while I have acquired a reputation as a nice guy who finds jobs for other people. In addition, as a sort of bonus, I have had the special indulgence to loaf and ruminate without being harried too much by my Irish conscience.
* * *
I think I agree entirely with everything you say in your letter in evaluation of M. He is different. As you know, I have always had a low, not to say contemptuous, opinion of the contemporary American intelligentsia. And that is not simply a carryover of the anti-intellectualism of my young Wobbly days. After I became a communist and recognized that the thinkers and leaders of the Russian revolution, like their own mentors before them, were all intellectuals, I made a serious effort at “thought reform” on the subject. But I must say that the intellectuals of our time in this country, particularly those who have made pretensions to radicalism, have done their best to keep me from going overboard.
Experience and observation over a long time have taught me two things about the American intellectuals in general, and the academicians in particular. They lack modesty, which is the precondition for learning things they don’t already know, especially about the dark interiors of social problems which have been explored by others but remain an undiscovered country for them. Supplementary to that defect, and holding them back from serious exploration, is the plain and simple fact that they have no guts. They want to keep out of trouble.
In the book of Catholicism, which I studied as a boy, there are three types of sins. The first are venial (small) sins, such as my own—work-dodging, procrastination, self-indulgence, shooting pool on Sunday, etc.—which are easily forgiven and which one can even forgive oneself after a few prayers, if a priest isn’t available. Then there are mortal sins, such as murder, blasphemy, adultery, etc. These can be forgiven by a priest if serious penance is done, but the mortal sinner must still serve time in purgatory before entering heaven. The third sin is the sin against the Holy Ghost. For that there is no forgiveness, and there is no place to go but to hell. Well, cowardice is a sin against the Holy Ghost! Or, to turn it around and switch from the catechism to Ben Johnson: “Courage is the first virtue, because it is the condition for the exercise of the other virtues.”
* * *
For quite a while I have regarded M. as a maverick on the academic range; his manifest courage and honesty seemed to separate him from the herd. Then his book about Cuba showed another and most attractive side of his character. I read it attentively, and kept assessing it as I went along, on two levels.
On one level it is an absorbing and moving exposition of the revolutionary process in Cuba, as the leaders of the revolution see it. And, to my mind, reading between the lines of their letters transmitted through M., they see more, and have studied and thought and reflected more about what they are doing, than they explicitly acknowledge in the letters.
They explain that they represent a new generation, starting from scratch, without the weariness and disillusionment that paralyzes the older generations of the radical movement. But they couldn’t have said that if they had not previously thought and reflected about it. They must have noticed that their youth gave them the energy and drive that youth alone can give, and that their simple ignorance, in contrast to the miseducation and disillusionment of their elders, had a certain positive side. They had less to unlearn.
They frankly say they are improvising as they go along. But the remarkable thing is that they have made the right improvisations almost every time, and keep in step with the revolution as it continues to develop. And this course has been continued since the book was written. Castro’s speech at the United Nations on the mainsprings of imperialism was the speech of a man who has picked up Lenin’s theory somewhere; maybe from the book itself. Then, in the press reports the other day Castro was quoted as saying—for the first time explicitly, as far as I know—that the socialist system is superior to the capitalistic system, and that in a resumption of normal diplomatic relations the United States would have to take this Cuban position into account.
From all this I got the impression that the Cuban leaders knew more about revolutionary theory than they claimed to know when they were talking with M., and that they know even more now, and are still learning.
* * *
On the other level, M. revealed himself as a man more clearly in this book than ever before. I kept saying to myself as I turned the pages from his introduction to his summary: “This intellectual really cares about the hungry people of the world. He worries, as he says himself, not about the sweeping revolution, but with it. He is even capable of anger—that holy emotion of rebels and revolutionists—about injustice, oppression, lies, and hypocrisy. What a dangerous wild man to be running loose on the American campus!”
His book moved me deeply. I kept thinking of writing him a note of thanks and appreciation. But with my usual procrastination and bashful reluctance to intrude on strangers, I put it off.
* * *
I would like here to make a brief comment on the important point dealt with inconclusively at the end of your talk with M. For convenience I will first quote a paragraph from your letter:
“If the Soviet economy is more productive, is it not then historically superior?” I asked. “What do you mean by historically superior?” he asked. “That it can produce more goods, more wealth, in less time with less labor per person.” “Yes, I think it can be more efficient but that is not for me the only test of historical superiority. More important is the moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority.” The discussion ended when I added that without a superior capacity for material production there couldn’t be a superior cultural superstructure.
I don’t think the apparent disagreement should be left in that stalemate. The question is more subtle, more complicated. And, for my part, I can see merit in both your criterion and that of M. They should be reconciled, not contrasted.
It is elementary that “a superior capacity for material production is the necessary basis for a superior cultural superstructure.” Even the Cuban leaders, who don’t profess to be practicing Marxists, know that and are working night and day to improve productive capacities to provide the means for all the other things. But in my opinion, there is also merit in M.’s concern for “moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority,” because it cannot be taken for granted that this will follow automatically from the reorganization of the productive system. This aim must be deliberately stated and consciously fought for all the time.
The fullest democracy in the transition period, institutionalized by forms of organization which assure the participation and control of the working people at every stage of development, is an indispensable part of our program. This has to be not merely stated, but emphasized. It distinguishes us from, and puts us in irreconcilable opposition to, the “economic determinists” and the totalitarians. It is the condition for the most efficient and rapid development of the new productive process.
And no less important, perhaps even more important: This full and free democratic participation of the working people, in all stages and all phases of the social tranformation during the transition period between the old society and the new, is the necessary condition for the preparation of the people for citizenship in a genuinely free society. It is not enough to learn to read and write and produce material things in abundance. That’s only the starting point. People have to learn how to live abundantly. That means they have to learn how to be free in body, mind, and spirit. Where else can they learn that but in the school and practice of ever-expanding democracy during the transition period?
In view of the way things have turned in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, this part of our Marxist program—workers’ democracy as the only road to preparation for the socialist society of the free and equal—must be given particular emphasis in all our propaganda and all our arguments with people who are dissatisfied with capitalism, but don’t want to exchange it for totalitarian slavery.
If we fail to emphasize this fundamental feature of our Marxist program; if we omit it or slur over it in our expositions of the superiority of nationalized and planned economy; if we neglect to speak of freedom as the socialist goal—we will never win the American workers and the new generation of intellectuals for the revolutionary fight. And we won’t deserve to.
* * *
My thoughts have turned increasingly to this side of the problem of social transformation in recent years. My speech on “Socialism and Democracy” at our 1957 convention (later repeated at the West Coast Vacation School and subsequently published as a pamphlet) was a first response to the questions troubling many people shaken up by the Khrushchev speech and the Polish and Hungarian events. Our discussion of the Chinese revolution during the past two years has pushed me to think more deeply on the subject, and I will probably have more to say later.
Here I will briefly state my settled conviction, as an orthodox Marxist, in one question and one answer: Will the development of the productive forces by a system of planned economy, under a totalitarian regime of regimentation and thought control, automatically lead to the socialist society of the free and equal? My answer is No, Never! The workers must achieve their own emancipation; nobody will do it for them and nobody can. If anybody is looking for a fight on this basic postulate of Marxism, just tell him to knock the chip off my shoulder. From this point of view, it appears to me that M.’s concern, which I fully share, for the “moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority” of the new society—and by that I have to presume that he means a free society—contradicts his denial of the role of the working class as the decisive agency of social change. This stands out all the more glaringly if we recognize that the transformation of society is not accomplished by the single act of revolution, but requires a transition period during which people change themselves while they are changing society.
If the workers are unable to carry through this historical task, it has to be assigned to some kind of elite. But then we come to the embarrassing questions: Will this uncontrolled elite be benevolent? Will it extend freedom, purely from goodness of heart and nobility of intentions? Or will it curtail freedom until it is stamped out entirely? Experience so far in the history of the human race in general and of this century in particular, speaks powerfully for the latter assumption. I don’t know whether George Orwell’s 1984 was intended as a prophecy or a warning. But if one grants or assumes that the workers are unable to take control of public affairs and keep control, it is most logical to assume that Big Brother will eventually take over. This is not a new thought of mine, or even of Orwell’s. Trotsky bluntly posed this alternative twenty-one years ago in In Defense of Marxism.
He didn’t believe it would happen that way, and neither do I. The working class cannot be written off until it has been definitively defeated on a worldwide scale. That hasn’t happened yet in Europe and America, or in the Soviet bloc, as the events of 1956-57 gave notice.
In this country, where the issue will finally be decided, the working class in basic industry, previously atomized and without experience in organization, showed great power in the thirties. That is too recent to forget. The uprising which culminated in the constitution of the CIO was a semi-revolution. It could have gone much farther if there had been adequate leadership. The workers—who need an “elite” to lead, but not to substitute—have marked time and even lost some ground since then; but they have not been defeated in open conflict.
In my opinion, it would be rash and “unscientific” to assume, in advance of the showdown conflict, that they will be defeated. But if one does assume that, he should not shrink from recognizing the horrifying alternative which first Trotsky, and later Orwell, posed—and quit talking about the future good society of the free and equal. Under such a regime it would be unlawful even to think about such things.
Fraternally,
James P. Cannon
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *JAMES P. CANNON AND THE EARLY YEARS OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM- Prometheus Research Library
Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for the Internet version of the Prometheus Research Library's "James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism.
BOOK REVIEW
James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism, Spartacist Publishing Company, New York 1991
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.
At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American Socialist Revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.
For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal dispute in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of the period under review.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the 1930’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles here this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
BOOK REVIEW
James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism, Spartacist Publishing Company, New York 1991
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.
At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American Socialist Revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.
For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal dispute in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of the period under review.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the 1930’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles here this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
*On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- LEON TROTSKY'S STRUGGLE TO BUILD BOLSHEVIK PARTIES IN THE 1930'S
Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive copy of his classic 1934pamphlet "A Program Of Action For France". Some of it reads like it was written today, or could have been.
BOOK REVIEW
THE CRISIS IN THE FRENCH SECTION (1935-1936), LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1977
At first blush one would not think that a book about the trials and tribulations of creating a revolutionary workers party along Trotskyist lines in France in the mid-1930’s , other than being of some small historical interest, would be relevant to today’s militants as they fight to build their revolutionary workers parties. And this reviewer will admit, unlike other books he has reviewed, that it may be a strecth here. But, not much. Hear me out.
Aside from the obvious difference in the times, immediate tasks and the milieu worked in there are some lessons to be learned from the experiences of the disheveled French Trotskyist movement of that time. At that time there were two large mass working class parties-the Socialist and Communist Parties. Additionally, the writer of the book under review, exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, whose authority among leftist anti-Stalinist elements was strong and whose moral authority was well recognized actually resided in France for much of this period and therefore could directly intervene in the struggle even if, of necessity, surruptiously. Nevertheless the task that Trotsky’s followers faced in transforming themselves from a ‘circle’ mentality of small propaganda groups to the creation of a small mass party which could challenge the authority of the Stalinists and Social Democrats is analogous to the type of task we face today.
Despite Trotsky’s great authority as a man who had actually led a revolution and defended that revolution through the creation of a Red Army among leftist anti-Stalinists, or maybe because of it, he had many problems trying to coalesce a cadre who could form the nucleus of a new international and new national revolutionary communist parties after the Nazi takeover in Germany in 1933 had forced him to a change of strategy toward the Stalinist organizations. This was particularly true in France where, despite a long and heroic tradition of revolutionary struggle, the leftist elements were in disarray and feuding over personal and petty differences. In short, this is an early example of the infamous “star” system of leadership that has plagued the France left to this day. And not only the French left as the American New Left of the 1960's amply demonstrated.
The notion that Trotsky tried tirelessly to pound home about the virtues and necessity of an authoritative collective leadership in a national section was then, as now, almost inconceivable to those headstrong militants. Nevertheless, Trotsky was forced to try to work with the cadre material at hand. Lenin was the consummate master of this skill. Trotsky, despite his many other talents, never reached Lenin’s level of skill on the party organization question. To our sorrow. Moreover, the 1930’s were a time of tremendous defeats and a downward curve in the revolutionary process. Despite these problems, as the book painfully details, Trotsky patiently tried to construct such an organization. And those eventually futile efforts, which I will leave for the reader to consider, form the bulk of the book.
There is, however, one political issue that stands out during this period which because it is operative for today’s militants I wish to note. That is the question of the entry of the French Trotskyists into the Socialist Party in order to gain influence and enlarge the organization. In the history of the Trotskyist movement this has been called appropriately the “French turn”. There are various ways to create a revolutionary organization- by splits of other organizations through the united front tactic, entries in larger left-moving organizations to break off a militant section and regroupment of separate organizations which are politically similar. I have criticized Trotsky’s tactic, which was taken up by virtually all sections of the International Left Opposition, for the American party-the Socialist Workers Party. I have argued elsewhere that, given the circumstances of the time, the type of recruit that came from the American Socialist Party and the troubles it caused to the organization later when the integrity of the organization was on the line that the proper tactic to intersect the left-ward anti-Stalinist movement of a section of the American working was with that of the “united front”.
This "united front" tactic may have been more appropriate in the small American milieu. Not so for the French" party. Under the circumstances of a rapid leftward movement of the French working class an entry policy made sense. In fact, it would have been unconscionable not to try it. The trouble, as always with new turns, was a debilitating fight in the organizations over opposition to this tactic. And in one of the small ironies of history when the entry maneuver had been tried and then had finally run its course those who had initially opposed entry did not want to leave the ‘comfy’ confines of the Socialist Party. Thus, the reader should pay careful attention to the arguments over this issue and the more substantial issue of how to create a revolutionary organization by a process of regroupment with other left-wing forces that are approaching political agreement. That, dear readers, is the one of the tasks before us today.
BOOK REVIEW
THE CRISIS IN THE FRENCH SECTION (1935-1936), LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1977
At first blush one would not think that a book about the trials and tribulations of creating a revolutionary workers party along Trotskyist lines in France in the mid-1930’s , other than being of some small historical interest, would be relevant to today’s militants as they fight to build their revolutionary workers parties. And this reviewer will admit, unlike other books he has reviewed, that it may be a strecth here. But, not much. Hear me out.
Aside from the obvious difference in the times, immediate tasks and the milieu worked in there are some lessons to be learned from the experiences of the disheveled French Trotskyist movement of that time. At that time there were two large mass working class parties-the Socialist and Communist Parties. Additionally, the writer of the book under review, exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, whose authority among leftist anti-Stalinist elements was strong and whose moral authority was well recognized actually resided in France for much of this period and therefore could directly intervene in the struggle even if, of necessity, surruptiously. Nevertheless the task that Trotsky’s followers faced in transforming themselves from a ‘circle’ mentality of small propaganda groups to the creation of a small mass party which could challenge the authority of the Stalinists and Social Democrats is analogous to the type of task we face today.
Despite Trotsky’s great authority as a man who had actually led a revolution and defended that revolution through the creation of a Red Army among leftist anti-Stalinists, or maybe because of it, he had many problems trying to coalesce a cadre who could form the nucleus of a new international and new national revolutionary communist parties after the Nazi takeover in Germany in 1933 had forced him to a change of strategy toward the Stalinist organizations. This was particularly true in France where, despite a long and heroic tradition of revolutionary struggle, the leftist elements were in disarray and feuding over personal and petty differences. In short, this is an early example of the infamous “star” system of leadership that has plagued the France left to this day. And not only the French left as the American New Left of the 1960's amply demonstrated.
The notion that Trotsky tried tirelessly to pound home about the virtues and necessity of an authoritative collective leadership in a national section was then, as now, almost inconceivable to those headstrong militants. Nevertheless, Trotsky was forced to try to work with the cadre material at hand. Lenin was the consummate master of this skill. Trotsky, despite his many other talents, never reached Lenin’s level of skill on the party organization question. To our sorrow. Moreover, the 1930’s were a time of tremendous defeats and a downward curve in the revolutionary process. Despite these problems, as the book painfully details, Trotsky patiently tried to construct such an organization. And those eventually futile efforts, which I will leave for the reader to consider, form the bulk of the book.
There is, however, one political issue that stands out during this period which because it is operative for today’s militants I wish to note. That is the question of the entry of the French Trotskyists into the Socialist Party in order to gain influence and enlarge the organization. In the history of the Trotskyist movement this has been called appropriately the “French turn”. There are various ways to create a revolutionary organization- by splits of other organizations through the united front tactic, entries in larger left-moving organizations to break off a militant section and regroupment of separate organizations which are politically similar. I have criticized Trotsky’s tactic, which was taken up by virtually all sections of the International Left Opposition, for the American party-the Socialist Workers Party. I have argued elsewhere that, given the circumstances of the time, the type of recruit that came from the American Socialist Party and the troubles it caused to the organization later when the integrity of the organization was on the line that the proper tactic to intersect the left-ward anti-Stalinist movement of a section of the American working was with that of the “united front”.
This "united front" tactic may have been more appropriate in the small American milieu. Not so for the French" party. Under the circumstances of a rapid leftward movement of the French working class an entry policy made sense. In fact, it would have been unconscionable not to try it. The trouble, as always with new turns, was a debilitating fight in the organizations over opposition to this tactic. And in one of the small ironies of history when the entry maneuver had been tried and then had finally run its course those who had initially opposed entry did not want to leave the ‘comfy’ confines of the Socialist Party. Thus, the reader should pay careful attention to the arguments over this issue and the more substantial issue of how to create a revolutionary organization by a process of regroupment with other left-wing forces that are approaching political agreement. That, dear readers, is the one of the tasks before us today.
Friday, October 19, 2018
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *From The Archives- The Slip-Slide From Revolution To The Embrace Of 'Democratic' Imperialism- A Case Study-Albert Glotzer
Click on title to link to the Albert Glotzer Internet Archive for samples of his writing while he was a leader in the Socialist Workers Party in the 1930s and later after he split from that party in the famous Shachtman-led exit in 1940 over the question of defense of the Soviet Union (to form the Workers Party and it subsequent organizational forms that led back, ultimately, to the right-wing of the Social Democratic movement). That was the touchstone issue for his, and later generations, and one can see in the later writing the slip-slide into the defense of "democratic" imperialism. A cautionary tale, for sure.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *Ex-Trotskyist (American Socialist Workers Party) Albert Glotzer's Political Obituary- A Cautionary Tale
Click on title to link to the World Socialist Web Site's political obituary for Albert Glotzer in 1999 mentioned in an entry posted today concerning Glotzer's view of American Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon. This is provided for informational purposes only, as the article hits the highlights of his political rise and fall.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *In Honor Of Leon Trotsky-Bolshevik Leader Of The Red Army On The Anniversary Of His Death
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky,founder and leader of the Russian Red Army, on the anniversary of his death.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- THE FIGHT FOR A REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE IN HARD TIMES
THE FIGHT FOR A REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE IN HARD TIMES
BOOK REVIEW
SPEECHES TO THE PARTY; JAMES P. CANNON, WRITINGS AND SPEECHES, 1952-54, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question that has underscored my previous reviews which detail earlier periods in Cannon’s political career and does so here as well. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show?
The period under discussion- the early 1950’s- is essentially the swan song of his role as the central leader of the organization. Fortunately, Cannon had one last fight in him and went out swinging. However, unlike previous fights in the party he was slow to pick up the gravity of the implications of the opposition’s positions, in the party and internationally in the Fourth International, for the future revolutionary perspective. That said, Cannon did fight, if partially and belatedly, and that accrues to his merit as a revolutionary. Revolutionaries too get old and tired and do not always live in revolutionary times so they can show what they are made of. I will repeat here what I have mentioned in earlier reviews. One thing is sure- in his prime- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
Let’s face it, the post-World War II period, after an initial outburst of class struggle, was not a good time for revolutionaries in America. As a victor America became the dominate economic and military power in the world. That coupled with an out and out ‘red scare’ witch hunt backed by most elements of the ruling class forced revolutionaries to duck their heads and hope for better days. This is the background to the fight which Cannon led against those who wanted to negate the role of the revolutionary party or to liquidate its public tasks.
No political person wants to be isolated from the arena of their work and that applies to revolutionaries as well. Feeling irrelevant has the same effect. Those conditions inevitably lead a revolutionary party inward. Cannon, having experienced about every trial and tribulation a revolutionary could face in a bourgeois democracy, actually felt the fight coming. Cannon stated he had put a question mark over the party’s existence as a revolutionary organization in 1952. He believed that he might have to start over with the youth out in Los Angeles (where he was living at the time). Given that prospect, Cannon, as they say, got his Irish up.
As to the particulars of the fight, known in radical history as the Cochran-Clark fight, there were two trends. The main one represented by Cochran, a leading party trade unionist in the automobile industry, under the pressure of the witch hunt essentially wanted to reduce the organization down to a propaganda circle and liquidate any revolutionary perspective. The other represented by Clark ,which also was reflected internationally in the Fourth International, was to orient to the Stalinist milieu essentially refurbishing the credentials of the American Communist Party in light of Stalin’s death and revolutionary developments in Eastern Europe. This was a different form of liquidation of the revolutionary perspective which the Socialist Workers Party had fought over the, at that time, 25 year history of its fight against Stalinism.
An interesting note about this faction fight is that unlike most such fights in leftist organizations the key elements of the opposition here are the party trade unionists. Usually it is the volatile petty bourgeois elements that develop political differences when times get tough or when the petty bourgeois milieu turns hostile, for example, in 1939 with the Hitler-Stalin Pact which was the immediate prelude to World War II. Party trade unionists, reflecting immediate practical pressures historically tend to be the right wing of revolutionary parties-but they stay in the party. For revolutionaries, this trend is sometimes frustratingly so, as occurred in the American Communist Party in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin Pact mentioned above. Thus, mark it down that a revolutionary party is in trouble when the trade unionists begin to balk. In any case, Cannon was able to pull the majority of the trade unionists back. While the future developments of the party in the 1960’s and 1970’s, after Cannon left the day to day operations, might make one wish that he did take those youth out in California and start over this writer is glad that he fought this fight. Thanks- James P. Cannon.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
Thursday, October 18, 2018
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *A Model Socialist Orator- The Socialist Workers Party's Founder James P. Cannon
Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives.
BOOK REVIEW
SPEECHES FOR SOCIALISM- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
This volume is a compendium of Cannon’s speeches over most of his active political life beginning with his leadership role in the early American Communist Party and his secondary role in the Communist International. Some of the selections are also available in other parts of the series mentioned above. I would also note here that in contrast to his "Notebook of an Agitator" (also reviewed in this space) the pieces here tend to be longer and based on more general socialist principles. The socialist movement has always emphasized two ways of getting its message out- propaganda and agitation. The selections here represent a more propagandistic approach to that message. Many of the presentations hold their own even today in 2006 as thoughtful expositions of the aims of socialism and how to struggle for it. I particularly draw the reader’s attention to "Sixty Years of American Radicalism" a speech given in 1959 in which Cannon draws a general overview of the ebbs and flows of the socialist movement from the turn of the 20th century until then. At that time Cannon also predicted a new radical upsurge which did occur shortly thereafter but unfortunately has long since ended.
Cannon’s speech correctly marks the great divide in the American socialist movement at World War I and the socialist response American participation in that war and subsequently to the Russian Revolution. Prior to that time socialist activity was a loose, federated affair driven by a more evolutionary approach to ultimate socialist success i.e. reformism. That trend was symbolized by the work of the great socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. While that approach had many, ultimately, fatal flaws it did represent a solid attempt to draw a class struggle line for independent (from the capitalist parties) political action by the working class.
Drawing on those lessons the early Communist Party, basing itself on support of the Russian Revolution, became dominant on the American left by expanding on that concept. That is, until the mid-1930’s after it had already long been an agency under orders from Moscow in support, by one means or another, of the Rooseveltian Democratic Party, a capitalist party. That was fatal to long term prospects for independent working class political action and Cannon has harsh words for the party’s policy. He also noted that the next upsurge would have to right that policy by again demanding an independent political expression for the working class. Unfortunately, when that radical upsurge did occur in the 1960’s and early 1970’s the party that he formed, the Socialist Workers Party, essentially replicated in the anti-Vietnam War movement and elsewhere the Communist Party’s class collaborationist policy with the remnants of American liberalism. Obviously, as a man in his sixties Cannon was no longer able or willing to fight against that policy by the party that he had created. Thus, the third wave of radicalism also ebbed and the American Left declined. Nevertheless this speech is Cannon’s legacy to the youth today. A new upsurge, and it will come, must learn this lesson and fight tooth and nail for independent political expression for the working class to avoid another failure.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
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American Radicalism: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
James P. Cannon, International Socialist Review
Winter 1960
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From International Socialist Review, Vol.21 No.1, Winter 1960, from Tamiment Library microfilm archives
Transcribed & marked up by Daniel Gaido and Andrew Pollack for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
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This speech was given at the West Coast Vacation School and Camp, Labor Day, 1959. James P. Cannon is the National Chairman of the Socialist Workers party. He was a founder of the Communist party of the United States and a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International until 1928 when he supported the Trotskyist Left Opposition in the Soviet Union. Before World War I, Cannon was active in the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist party.
The biographical information which the Chairman provided in his introduction doesn’t necessarily qualify anyone to give a coherent account of what happened in the past fifty years or so in the movement of socialist and labor radicalism. The woods are full of people who have been through at least a large part of this experience, but their accounts of it may vary widely. The stormy events of American radicalism during this century may be compared to a long series of explosive and catastrophic experiences after which every survivor tells a different story.
It is not only necessary to have been a participant and an observer to explain the ups and downs of American radicalism in this century. It is equally necessary to have understood what was happening in the world over that period, and to relate it all to a consistent historical theory. You’ll be better able to judge at the end of my speech than at the beginning whether I, in part at least, meet those qualifications.
This is a very big and complicated subject to be compressed within an hour or so. But we need a general view of the preceding events of the present century as a means of giving us some perspective on the years that remain in it.
The Great American Contradiction
Let’s begin with the present reality, with what might be called the great American contradiction. Here we live in the most advanced country in the world from the point of view of its technological and industrial development and its productivity. Because it is the most advanced country in these respects, it is the country where the material conditions and foundations for the socialist transformation of society are prepared to a degree not yet existing anywhere else in the world.
Marx explained that capitalism not only greatly advances the forces of production and is therefore a more progressive stage of society than the feudal past, but, in developing the forces of production and proletarianizing the great mass of the population, capitalist society prepares its own gravediggers in the person of the industrial proletariat. That also has been provided in the United States to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world. The gravediggers of capitalism are more numerous here, and, in some respects, better organized than elsewhere on a trade union level. It is potentially the most powerful working class in the entire world.
The contradiction to all these prerequisites for the socialist transformation of society is the other side of the picture which we all have to recognize. We have here the most conservative political climate of any country in the world, at least among the great powers, and the weakest movement of labor radicalism and socialist consciousness. Despite all the rich experiences of the working people in the rest of the world which should have come to our aid and eventually inevitably will—despite all the favorable developments for socialism on a world scale, the situation of American radicalism today, from the point of view of socialist consciousness, socialist organization and socialist morale is worse than it was thirty years ago. It’s even worse than it was sixty years ago at the turn of the century, when the first modern movement of socialist and labor radicalism in this country began to get a popular hearing.
There are objective causes for this tremendous depression of the radical movement at the present time. They are well known and don’t need to be elaborated here. The unprecedented boom, a prosperity based on war expenditures and preparations for war and so forth, have had a tremendously conservatizing influence. In any case, radicalism would very likely be on the defensive in this country under such conditions. But our concern today is not with these objective causes of the present conjuncture in the development of the historical movement toward socialism. I propose to deal mainly with the subjective causes of the present weaknesses of American radicalism: above all, the failure of leadership which has made conditions ten and a hundred times worse than they needed to be, and which makes our problem of preparing the great socialist revival more difficult.
The present situation which I have briefly sketched can change very rapidly into its opposite. That’s what happened in the thirties, in the decade following the first postwar boom of American capitalism with the concomitant decline of radicalism in the twenties. Very few of you may remember that we went through a period in the 1920’s after the rise of radicalism in the first twenty years of this century, when the unprecedented boom of American capitalism on the one side and the inadequacies of the revolutionary leadership on the other produced a collapse, and almost dispersal, of the previous radical movement. But within the next decade that entire situation turned upside down in a few years’ time.
The subjective reasons for the current depression of United States radicalism cannot be understood without a critical analysis of the inner history of the American socialist and labor radical movement in the sixty years since the turn of the century. We can learn something from this review of the past that will be useful both for the present and for the future. Of course, in a single lecture we can only hit the high spots and must omit many interesting and significant details. But such a condensed review may make the main aspects of the historical development stand out more clearly.
In our century we have seen two widespread and popular movements of socialist and labor radicalism. If we examine what they were, how they came into existence, what they did and failed to do, and what happened to them—we can draw some useful conclusions about the prospects of a new revival of American radicalism and about the nature of our problems and our tasks in preparing the way for it.
The Debsian Movement
At the turn of the century, there was a great upswing of radicalism in this country prompted by the objective conditions of the time—the accelerated development of industrial and monopolistic capitalism, the dispossession of small businessmen and farmers, the unbridled exploitation of the workers who were without organization, and so forth. This rebirth of American radicalism got its big impetus in 1901 with the formation of the Socialist party of America as a fusion of different socialist currents, which up to that time had been isolated groups without any wide popular influence. The distinctive factor which made possible the development of this new socialist movement at that time was the turn of a number of influential individuals and groups away from the policy of class collaboration in politics to the policy of independent socialist action.
Many of you have heard of the great role played by Debs and the Appeal to Reason, the socialist agitational paper which had a half million and more circulation. What is perhaps not so well known by comrades of the younger generation is that Debs, the Appeal to Reason and a very large percentage of the people who were influential in giving the Socialist party its start in the first years of this century had previously been Populists. They had supported the Populist movement and then in 1896, when the Populist party was swallowed by the Democratic party, they went along with it. Debs, the Appeal to Reason, Victor Berger and others who promoted the formation of the Socialist party in 1901, had supported Bryan and the Democratic party in 1896. But by the turn of the century, they broke out of that blind alley and had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to have an independent socialist position. That’s what made the big difference.
The most significant change in the attitude of these influential people, and of tens of thousands of others who supported them, which made possible the emergence and growth of the Socialist party in the first years of this century, was their break with capitalist politics altogether and their espousal of socialism. They emphasized and acted on the fundamental principle that a socialist movement must have its own party and its own candidates and cannot combine with or support any capitalist party, whether Republican, Democratic, Progressive or Populist. This new revelation inspired the emergence for the first time of a popular socialist movement in this country.
The Socialist Labor party and other socialist sects which had existed prior to that time had never gained a popular hearing. But the Socialist party brought into its ranks a great number of people who had had their fill of experimentation in one form of capitalist party politics or another. They gave a great impetus to the new Socialist party. So much so that, by 1912, the Socialist party of the United States had a hundred thousand members and got almost a million votes in the Presidential election. That was before women’s suffrage, and was about six percent of the total vote cast. This would be equal to between three and a half and four million votes at the present time. That gives you an idea of the popular appeal of the Socialist party in that period.
The IWW, which was a very militant organization on the industrial field, was a part of this first popular movement of American radicalism. It is important to recall that the IWW was founded by socialists. At the Founding Convention in 1905 all the leading figures were from a socialist background: they came from the Socialist party, the Socialist Labor party, some Anarchists and other kinds of radicals. This sentiment predominated in the IWW throughout its first twenty years of existence. It called itself not merely an industrial union, but a revolutionary industrial union.
In these early years of our century socialist and labor radicalism attained some proportions of a mass character in this country. The movement had its weak sides. In the course of its electoral activities, as we look back on it now, we can see that it placed too much emphasis on municipal politics and reform. The reformist tendency within the Socialist party was quite strong, although I believe a fair assessment of the history would show the majority were revolutionary.
The composition of the party was also unfavorable in some respects. Comrade White told us last night that the Populist movement in the South was deflected into a reactionary channel. But there was another part of this Populist movement which was drawn into the Socialist party. The Socialist party in many parts of the country consisted of a very large percentage of former Populists. The composition of its membership in the western part of the country was very heavily weighted on the side of the petty bourgeoisie in the cities and in the countryside. At one time the largest single state membership of the Socialist party, and, if I’m not mistaken, the largest socialist vote proportionally, was in the state of Oklahoma. In the other western agrarian states also the hard-pressed tenant and mortgaged farmers and desperate petty bourgeoisie streamed into the Socialist party from the Populist movement and swelled its ranks. So the class composition of the party was not as proletarian as an ideal Socialist movement should be.
Another terrible defect of the socialist and radical movement of that time came from the weakness of the organized labor movement. The great mass production industries in this country were completely without trade union organization. Trade unions were limited almost entirely to the skilled crafts, and were very weak in many places even in that field. Outside of the mines and the railroads, it was very hard to find a single union in the big industries. As I listened the other night to the report about the present steel strike, a general strike shutting down all the mills of the country, with the union so strong it doesn’t need to send more than token pickets—I recalled a very different steel strike in 1913 that I participated in as an IWW organizer. There we ran up against company thugs dressed up in police uniforms who sometimes outnumbered the pickets. And that was a single local strike on the ore docks in Duluth and Superior.
This was a common experience of the IWW and socialist attempts to organize in the steel industry or any place else. The most you could do was conduct a guerrilla attack at a single locality. The idea of a general strike, which was our ideal and our program, was far from realization. Yet that’s taken as a matter of course today.
This weakness of the trade union movement naturally was a weakness also of the socialist movement of the time. Without a strongly organized working class in the basic industries, it is quite futile to expect a socialist and revolutionary transformation of society. The IWW which had played a prominent part in the general radicalization of the period, turned to Syndicalism and that was a big defect of the movement too. The unfavorable class composition of the Socialist party, the weakness of the trade union movement, the mistakes of Syndicalism and reformism—all these defects prepared the way for the decline and eventual collapse of the first big experiment in socialist labor radicalism after twenty years of upswing.
The real trouble began with the First World War and then with the Russian Revolution. The movement as a whole proved unable to assimilate the lessons of these world-shaking experiences. They produced a deep division in the socialist movement, a split in 1919, the formation of the Communist party as a separate organization and the great weakening of what was left of the Socialist party.
This split in the forces of American socialist and labor radicalism, beginning with 1919, was followed by the tremendous post-war boom of the twenties.
The Communist Party in the Twenties
Of course this wasn’t anything like the current boom. But considering the conditions that had previously been known in the country, it was pretty lush. From the end of the war in 1918, up until the stock market crash in 1929, there was a continuous upswing of production, interrupted only by a recession in 1921, which was overcome within a year. And, for the first time in this country, there was year after year of almost full employment, fairly good wages, lots of overtime, and all the rest. Some workers even began to own automobiles. That was a sign of what we called their “bourgeoisification.” Everything is relative—and relative to the previous period, the automobiles of the twenties were a sign of workers’ prosperity.
The big boom of the twenties was interpreted by all kinds of learned people as the final solution of the contradictions of capitalism. Then as now that was a common theme of the economists and intellectuals: Karl Marx was out of date. His theory of the cycle of boom-and-bust had been overcome by the genius of American capitalism. We were going to have ever-rising permanent prosperity from now on. A great many people, including workers, believed that, and radicalism lost its previous attraction.
The result was that by the end of the twenties the original movement had become dispersed. At least ninety percent of the people who had been active socialists and labor radicals in the two decades before had fallen aside. There was nothing left except a weak and rotting right-wing Socialist party and the Communist party, with a greatly reduced membership.
That was, you may say, the end of the Debsian movement. It had lasted twenty years. What remained after that was merely a hangover, a survival of remnants—never the dynamic center of radicalism as it had been before. But despite that eventual failure of the movement, I think the over-all judgment of the Debsian period must be favorable, because out of this movement came the cadres and some of the main ideas for the second big upsurge of American labor radicalism in the thirties.
There never could have been a Communist party in this country in the twenties if there had not been a socialist movement in the twenty preceding years. This first big experiment in socialist and labor radicalism failed in its ultimate mission. But it left behind—and this is what we should remember in our historical appraisal, because it is so pertinent for today—it left behind a residue, in the form of cadres, ideas and attitudes which continued and advanced the socialist tradition. What was left from that older movement eventually became the leaven in the movement of the thirties.
After the split of 1919, the new Communist party took over and rapidly displaced all other contenders for supremacy in the field of radicalism, as the Socialist party had done in the preceding two decades. What was the Communist party like in the twenties? I was there, and I remember, and in the light of later thought and study, I think I understand it and can report it truthfully.
The CP in its early years had certain basic characteristics. Its cadres, formed in the previous radical movement, consisted of younger comrades who were conditioned to irreconcilable struggle against capitalism. It was inspired by the Russian Revolution and was the carrier of its ideas as well as it understood them. Its message was revolutionary, not at all moderate, not in the least conciliatory, or liberalistic, or conciliationism. The idea of class collaboration was simply anathema. Its guiding doctrine was the class struggle.
One of the main slogans of the Communist party in that period was: “Organize the Unorganized!” That was a bold program that only revolutionists could take seriously. If you think it is tough in the steel union or any other union today, look back to those days. Steel, rubber, auto and every other big industry had no unions at all, or company unions, controlled by the companies and led by company stooges. The Communist party conducted a struggle against company unions for bona fide unions of the workers, under the slogan: Class Struggle vs. Class Collaboration! That was a revolutionary slogan for the time, and it did a lot to prepare the great upsurge of union organization in the next decade.
In the main the composition of the Communist party in the twenties was young. The age level of the Communist party today, or what’s left of it or its peripheral circles doesn’t resemble what the Communist party was in the twenties. That was a young movement, as dynamic revolutionary movements always are.
At its inception the “old men” of the party among the leaders were Ruthenberg, Bedacht, Wagenknecht, Katterfeld, later Foster—they were all turning forty years old. A second layer of leaders, represented by Earl Browder, Bill Dunne, Arne Swabeck, myself and others, were turning thirty. And a third layer of the top leaders, represented in the Central Committee and the Political Committee by Lovestone, Weinstone and Wolfe, were in their early twenties—fresh out of college.
That was the composition of the leadership. The ranks, I believe, were even younger. The old men of the Socialist party—of the period before the split—did not come with the Communist party. It took the youth to understand the war and the Russian Revolution and to make the new movement fit for new times.
Maintained Class-Struggle Policy
This Communist party held the line of class struggle and revolutionary doctrine in that long ten-year period of boom, prosperity and conservatism before the crash of 1929. It was in that period—fighting for revolutionary ideas against a conservative environment as we are trying to do today, refusing to compromise the principle of class independence—that the Communist party gathered and prepared its cadres for the great upsurge of the thirties.
Not more than ten percent was left from the old prewar movement. Although the Communist party itself continued to recruit individuals from day to day and month to month, it also continued to lose people and its over-all membership declined. The left wing leaders in the Socialist party had claimed, with some justification, that they had 60,000 votes supporting them in the Referendum of 1919—shortly before the split. But then followed the Palmer Raids, the witch hunt, the deportations, the illegality of the party, and the long boom. It was tough going.
By the time of the stock market crash in 1929, which ended the myth of permanent capitalist prosperity, the Communist party had under 10,000 members. Ninety percent of these were foreign born. But it was a young movement—and primarily proletarian.
That was what the CP had to start with at the end of the twenties. It was up against the fact that the trade union movement was even weaker than it had been at the beginning of the twenties. A peculiar phenomenon was recorded: for the first time in modern history a protracted period of prosperity with its increase of production and increase in the size of the proletariat didn’t increase the size of the unions. On the contrary, it depleted and replaced them in many instances by company unions. The country was so conservative, the bosses were in such firm control, the union leadership was so weak, and its craft form of organization was so inadequate, that the trade unions embraced not more than three million at the time of the 1929 stock market crash. As far as CP influence in the unions was concerned, it was pretty well purged out, except in the garment trades and among the miners.
Although the CP wasn’t in first-class shape in those earlier days, it was young, confident and revolutionary—even ultra-radical at times. The Socialist party and the IWW had withered on the vine. In the Communist party itself, the corruption of Stalinism had already started but as yet had not deeply affected the consciousness of the rank and file. Despite its reduced membership, the Communist party entered the thirties—the period of the great radical revival—as the dominating center of American radicalism. It had no serious contenders. It had to its left only the dissident group of the Trotskyist, who were numerically small and isolated. The right wing group of Lovestoneites was equally weak; the attenuated and decrepit Socialist party offered no real competition; and the IWW had fallen victim to its Syndicalism dogmatism and become a sect. That was the shape of American radicalism when the thirties began.
Then the situation changed, almost overnight. The terrible financial and social crisis really shook up this country—and the workers. The radicalism produced by this shake-up was far stronger than the radicalism of the previous two decades. It had a much firmer social composition. This time the industrial workers in the main centers were the spearhead of the radicalism and gave the new movement a class composition of invincible power. It had the advantage of a more advanced ideology. The inspiration and ideas of the Russian Revolution permeated the Communist movement of that time and gave it a tremendous advantage over all other tendencies.
And then, in the changed situation in the thirties the impossible was accomplished. The impossible task of organizing the automobile industry, the rubber industry, the electrical manufacturing industry, the steel industry, the maritime industry—and actually bringing the monopolistic powers of American capitalism to the point where they had to recognize the unions—all that was accomplished in the great days of the CIO uprising in the thirties.
Along with that there was a growing sentiment for a Labor party which under proper leadership could have brought this whole movement of labor radicalism toward a glorious new epoch of independent class political action in this country. But that didn’t happen. And the main reason it didn’t happen was that the Communist party, which was the main leader of this new movement of labor radicalism, failed in its mission, even more shamefully, even more disgracefully than the Socialist party of the previous two decades. And more catastrophically, because it was not defeated in battle; it was corrupted from within. The Communist party has left less behind it from the great radical movement of the thirties than the Socialist party left in the beginning of the twenties.
You know the CP expanded its organization and influence in all directions in the thirties. Why did it collapse so miserably in the fifties? In fact, it had collapsed before then, but we have only seen in recent years how catastrophic it has been. Although many like John Gates, ex-editor of the Daily Worker, (I use him only as a symbol, because his name is legion) went through the experiences of the thirties, they didn’t understand what happened and they can’t make a true report about what they saw. They attribute the successes of the CP to the party’s cleverness in putting on the mask of “progressivism,” supporting Roosevelt and the New Deal in the late thirties and in the war period. And, conversely, they think the collapse of the CP has been caused by sectarianism, which is the way they describe the policy of class struggle and revolution.
The Big Appeal of the Communist Party
But that’s a complete misunderstanding of what really happened. The main cadres of the Communist party, which played such a big role in the second big wave of American radicalism in this century were forged, as I said before, in the twenties. Then they were renewed and greatly expanded in the early thirties by the policy of the class struggle. (In fact, during the first half of the thirties the Communist party was devoted to what we called ultra-leftism, ultra-radicalism, not at all “progressivism.” It did not maneuver with capitalist politics.)
In 1932, the Communist party nominated a Negro, James Ford, for Vice-President with Foster. And the slogan of their 1932 campaign was: “Class against Class.” There was no mealy-mouthed “progressivism” about that. With this slogan and the spirit emanating from it, the main cadres of the young unemployed workers of that time, the student youth without prospects, and, for the first time in the history of American radicalism, significant numbers of Negroes—thousands of them—and displaced intellectuals in droves—were recruited to the party. In this early period of the depression they were not repelled by the party’s radical and revolutionary aspect, but were attracted precisely because of it. Not in spite of its appearance as the representative of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, but, in large measure, because of it.
That was the big appeal of the Communist party in the first years of the thirties. The discontented turned to the most radical and aggressive movement they could find, and thought they had found it in the Communist party. In that, I think, is a lesson for the future. In times of social crisis, when the workers, the Negro people, the troubled students and the intellectuals of many kinds see no prospect in capitalism, they want to hear the word of a radical social transformation and a new beginning. That’s what the Communist party represented in the eyes of these people; and that’s why it grew.
In the early years of the thirties, the program and tradition of independent class politics completely dominated the Communist party and its tremendous periphery. So strong was this principle and this tradition that it couldn’t be changed abruptly. The rank and file of the movement, educated in the principle of the class struggle—which has its highest and sharpest expression in independent socialist political action—had to be corrupted gradually, a step at a time. The snuggling up to Roosevelt and the Democratic party couldn’t be presented directly to the Communist party membership and its supporters in the middle of the thirties. It had to be presented as a maneuver to fool the class enemy.
“The Mask Becomes the Face”
Of course, it was really a Stalinist maneuver to fool the communist workers; they were the real victims. This new turn was inspired and directed by the Stalinized bureaucracy of the Soviet Union, and designed to use the promising movement of American radicalism as a pawn in its diplomatic game. The leaders in Moscow were concerned with the short-term interests of their foreign policy, and not at all with the American workers and the American revolution. Roosevelt had recognized the Soviet Union, and the Stalinists, in turn, decided to recognize Roosevelt. They looked upon the great movement of American radicalism as something to be expended cheaply. They diverted it, through the leadership of the Communist party, into the Roosevelt camp. They steered it away from the movement for an independent Labor party, which was called for by the conditions of the time and the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of workers. The big switch in policy, from class struggle to class collaboration, was made in the shortsighted temporary interest of Stalinist diplomacy.
That’s the great divide between the rise and the decline, and the eventual complete collapse of the radical movement of the thirties and of the Communist party that led it. The big turn-around began with disguise and double talk. Just think what was done and how it was done in 1936! There was a Presidential election. The Communist party leadership didn’t yet dare to endorse the candidates of a capitalist party. They had a grand convention and nominated their own candidates, Browder and Ford, as independent candidates of the Communist party. This was a concession to the traditional purpose of a socialist or communist party. Then came the double talk. They said: We’re nominating our own candidates, but—“Socialism is not the issue!”
This crooked formula was the great contribution of Browder, as the agent of Stalin, to the betrayal of American radicalism. “Socialism is not the issue?” Well, people might logically ask, if socialism is not the issue, what in the hell are you nominating a socialist candidate for? The Stalinist leaders didn’t answer that question directly. They worked their way around it deviously.
They didn’t call for people to vote for the Communist party candidates. And they didn’t come right out for Roosevelt. They conducted the campaign on the slogan—what do you think? Well, by now you know it happens in every election—“Beat Landon at all costs!” That was the slogan of the Communist party in 1936, in the middle of the social crisis, when the possibility of a ringing campaign to further radicalize the workers was on the agenda. “Beat Landon at all costs!” meant of course, “elect Roosevelt at all costs!” That’s what such a slogan always means in reverse.
It was supposed to be a very slick maneuver to fool everybody. “No, we’re not voting for Roosevelt, we’re putting up our own candidates.” But all the trade unionists who were under the influence of the CP got the word: “Vote for Roosevelt.” It was presented to the communist workers as a maneuver, to fool the class enemy. But those who started out that way, thinking to outwit the class enemy by supporting him, eventually became victims of their own deception. They began to play the capitalist party game in earnest.
The most incredible thing, for one who has been raised in the old socialist tradition, is to run into people by the score, and, if you look around for them, by the hundreds and thousands, who have been educated in the Communist party of recent years, who think they should play the Democratic party game for keeps. They believe in it. The mask has become the face. The dupers have become the duped.
Of course, the Stalinists didn’t capture the Democratic party. I can tell you that, in case you have any doubts about it. But class collaborationist politics did capture the Communist party. The Stalinists went to work, running errands and ringing doorbells in order to beat some capitalist political faker at all costs in order to elect some other capitalist political shyster at all costs. Over a period of time the program of the class struggle and independent class politics was lost sight of altogether by the bulk of these people. The Communist party members and sympathizers forgot the ABC of socialism which Debs understood sixty years ago. They continued to support the Democratic party long after the Democrats had no further need of them and gave them the boot.
Of course, there were other causes for the catastrophic decline and disgraceful collapse of the Communist party and its peripheral movement. But that’s the basic cause, because it goes right to the fundamental class issue of independent politics. That’s the basic cause of the defeat, demoralization and dispersal of the great movement of labor radicalism generated by the crisis of the thirties.
In the thirties and since, the Communist party, as the leading center of the new radicalism, directly reversed the trend of their predecessors of the turn of the century. That unspeakable betrayal stands out strikingly as you see it in historical perspective. Debs and Wayland, who had supported the Populist party and the Democratic party, turned around and led the movement forward from Populism and the Democratic party and all kinds of class collaborationist politics. The Stalinists reversed this whole trend and led communist and socialist workers back from independent class politics, back to class collaboration, back to support of capitalist politicians.
The leading forces of the Debsian period had the benefit of far less experience and far less study. Yet they did far better than their successors of the thirties. That’s a striking historical fact that ought to induce younger people to study the history of the movement. In this study of history they will see how colossal has been the loss of the tremendous potentialities of the radical movement of the thirties under the Stalinist leadership.
The Lost Generation of Radicals
If we’re going to make a new start and prepare for the next wave of radicalism in this country, there’s only one way to begin. We have to return to fundamentals. At least, to the one big fundamental of class politics. If some people, who still call themselves socialists or communists, can’t go directly to Marx and Lenin in one bound, they ought at least, for a start, to try to go back to Debs and the Appeal to Reason when they broke with the Democratic party in 1900.
The great movement of socialist and labor radicalism that was generated by the crisis of the thirties has completely spent itself. That’s what we have to understand if we are going to get a realistic picture of the actual situation. Due to the combination of circum¬stances, the objective difficulties, plus the corruption of leadership, this movement is worn out. All that remains of it, outside the cadres of those who remain faithful to the fundamental ideas of socialism, is a big lost generation of radicals.
They’re numerous in this country. But when I see these people, or hear about them which is more frequent, who have fallen out of the Communist party by the tens of thousands, who still want to consider themselves socialists and even communists, who want to gather every now and then to have a discussion—providing you don’t bring up any fundamental questions or propose any action—they strike me as people suffering from political amnesia. They can’t remember where they came from—from that revolutionary movement of the early thirties. They have a nostalgia for the big masses and big deals, but they’ve forgotten that that mass movement was produced by policies of the class struggle, not by class adaptation.
The radicalism generated by the social crisis in the thirties is not a total loss by any means. Like its predecessor of the Debsian time, the new movement of the thirties left something behind it to build on. First of all, and this is a tremendous thing, out of that great upheaval of the thirties came the CIO movement and the organization of the big industrial unions in the mass production industries. They have softened UP, shackled by government controls and saddled with a conservative, capitalist-minded bureaucracy. But the unions as organizations have survived. We see them in action every once in a while, as in the present steel strike. And they remain a great potential power.
It needs just a little shift in the situation to bring it forth. We got a slight intimation of this a year ago when the bosses went a little bit too far and attempted to pass “right to work” laws. They could have passed them in the twenties without any strongly organized opposition. When they tried it in 1958, they were suddenly made aware of the fact that a seventeen million strong trade union movement, created by the upsurge of the thirties and inspired by radicals, didn’t want to be broken up by “right to work” laws. That was a sort of political uprising, a portent of things to come, that upset all the calculations of the capitalist politicians.
Right now they’re probing again, provoking the steel workers, and provoking the unions generally with the Landrum-Griffin anti-Labor law. Let them go a little bit too far, let a political aggressiveness of the capitalists coincide with some social disturbance and workers’ discontent, and you’ll see what a colossal power this seventeen million strong trade union movement really has. And what a hearing you’ll get from workers then if you speak the true and honest word of class struggle against class collaboration! There’s an immense reservoir for genuine radicalism in this great trade union movement. That’s something left behind from the uprising of the thirties.
Something no less important, perhaps even more important in the long run, are the surviving cadres of class conscious revolutionists who preserve and represent the ideas, who are the continuators of the doctrine and the tradition of socialism. They are important because without the ideas, without the cadres, even though small, you can’t hope to build a consistent revolutionary movement. And the conjunction of a cadre of class conscious revolutionists who have assimilated the experience of the past with a new upsurge of labor militancy, will release a great power.
It is another advantage of great import for the future, that this surviving nucleus of the continuators is organized and active, and is recruiting, even though slowly, but quite consistently and noticeably, a new cadre of young revolutionists. That is the touchstone. That is ground for confidence. The living movement always appeals to the young, and the mark of a living movement is its ability to attract the young. Wherever you see a party anywhere that has no young people, you can say for sure that its prospects are dim. The experienced troops of every army, even the best, always need renewal and replenishment.
“The Party of the Youth”
Here is the central point I have been building up to. The radical movement of the thirties, with all its grandeur, glory and power, has spent itself. Individuals and small groups of the old, fallen-away radicals may be reactivated under new conditions; but the main forces of the new movement of American socialist radicalism have to come from a new generation. There is no room for doubt or misunderstanding on this score. The evidence of the recent years is conclusive. Our task is to hold the line and help the process along, provide some of the ideas, and make room for the new contingents of young militants.
That was Lenin’s idea a long time ago. Only, he was more radical about it than we are today. The New Republic a few weeks ago carried a review of a history of the Russian Komsomol—the Russian Young Communist League. Here’s a quotation from it:
“At the outset of a history of the Soviet Young Communist League or Komsomol, the author, Professor Fisher, cites a remark of Lenin’s made long before the Revolution to someone who complained that the Russian Social Democrats were mostly mere youths. Lenin said. ‘It’s perfectly natural that youth should predominate in a revolutionary party, since this is the party of the future, and the future belongs to the young ... We will always remain the party of the youth, of the most advanced class, i.e., the working class’.”
We have the same general idea and we take the attraction of the upcoming young rebels to our banner as a sign of things to come.
As Marxists, we count on the objective developments to prepare the ground for a great new movement. Trotsky, like all Marxists, based his revolutionary optimism on the contradictions of capitalism generating a revolutionary movement. So do we. In 1931, in the second year of the crisis, Trotsky wrote about America as follows:
“In the past, America has known more than one stormy outburst of revolutionary or semi-revolutionary mass movements. Every time they died out quickly. Because America every time entered a new period of economic upswing and also because the movements themselves were characterized by crass empiricism and theoretical helplessness. Those two conditions belong to the past. A new economic upswing, and one cannot consider it excluded in advance, will have to be based not on the internal equilibrium, but on the present chaos of world economy. American capitalism will enter an epoch of monstrous imperialism, of an uninterrupted growth of armaments, of intervention in the affairs of the entire world, of military conflicts and convulsions.”
Remember, this was written in 1931 when the official policy of the United States was isolationism.
Then Trotsky continued:
“On the other hand, in the form of communism, the American proletariat possesses, rather could possess, provided with a correct policy, no longer the old mélange of empiricism, mysticism and quackery, but a scientifically grounded up-to-date doctrine. These radical changes permit us to predict with certainty that the inevitable and relatively rapid revolutionary transformation of the American proletariat will no more be the former easily extinguishable bonfire, but the beginning of a veritable revolutionary conflagration. In America, communism can face its great future with confidence.”
The first part of Trotsky’s prediction about the militaristic eruption of American capitalism has been confirmed to the letter. The second part was only partly carried out; the revolutionary prospects of the upsurge of the thirties were not realized. But even there, Trotsky had qualified his prediction. He said, the American workers could possess a scientific guide in the form of communism provided its representatives had “a correct policy.” The American Communist party failed to provide that correct policy. Trotsky saw both the transformation of American capitalism into a world-embracing imperialist power on the one hand, and a revolutionary proletariat on the other, as a possible outcome of the thirties. And it really was possible. For the reasons we have cited, that possible outcome was lost the first time. We owe that failure, above all, to Stalinism. But the prospect remains fully valid for the next upsurge. The movement of revolutionary socialism has a great future in this country. And if we face it with confidence, and put our trust in a new generation, the future will become the present all the sooner.
BOOK REVIEW
SPEECHES FOR SOCIALISM- JAMES P. CANNON, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1971
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, especially after his long collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the 1920’s when he was a leader of the American Communist Party to the red-baiting years after World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and then later against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in those fights and in his struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
This volume is a compendium of Cannon’s speeches over most of his active political life beginning with his leadership role in the early American Communist Party and his secondary role in the Communist International. Some of the selections are also available in other parts of the series mentioned above. I would also note here that in contrast to his "Notebook of an Agitator" (also reviewed in this space) the pieces here tend to be longer and based on more general socialist principles. The socialist movement has always emphasized two ways of getting its message out- propaganda and agitation. The selections here represent a more propagandistic approach to that message. Many of the presentations hold their own even today in 2006 as thoughtful expositions of the aims of socialism and how to struggle for it. I particularly draw the reader’s attention to "Sixty Years of American Radicalism" a speech given in 1959 in which Cannon draws a general overview of the ebbs and flows of the socialist movement from the turn of the 20th century until then. At that time Cannon also predicted a new radical upsurge which did occur shortly thereafter but unfortunately has long since ended.
Cannon’s speech correctly marks the great divide in the American socialist movement at World War I and the socialist response American participation in that war and subsequently to the Russian Revolution. Prior to that time socialist activity was a loose, federated affair driven by a more evolutionary approach to ultimate socialist success i.e. reformism. That trend was symbolized by the work of the great socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. While that approach had many, ultimately, fatal flaws it did represent a solid attempt to draw a class struggle line for independent (from the capitalist parties) political action by the working class.
Drawing on those lessons the early Communist Party, basing itself on support of the Russian Revolution, became dominant on the American left by expanding on that concept. That is, until the mid-1930’s after it had already long been an agency under orders from Moscow in support, by one means or another, of the Rooseveltian Democratic Party, a capitalist party. That was fatal to long term prospects for independent working class political action and Cannon has harsh words for the party’s policy. He also noted that the next upsurge would have to right that policy by again demanding an independent political expression for the working class. Unfortunately, when that radical upsurge did occur in the 1960’s and early 1970’s the party that he formed, the Socialist Workers Party, essentially replicated in the anti-Vietnam War movement and elsewhere the Communist Party’s class collaborationist policy with the remnants of American liberalism. Obviously, as a man in his sixties Cannon was no longer able or willing to fight against that policy by the party that he had created. Thus, the third wave of radicalism also ebbed and the American Left declined. Nevertheless this speech is Cannon’s legacy to the youth today. A new upsurge, and it will come, must learn this lesson and fight tooth and nail for independent political expression for the working class to avoid another failure.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
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American Radicalism: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
James P. Cannon, International Socialist Review
Winter 1960
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From International Socialist Review, Vol.21 No.1, Winter 1960, from Tamiment Library microfilm archives
Transcribed & marked up by Daniel Gaido and Andrew Pollack for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
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This speech was given at the West Coast Vacation School and Camp, Labor Day, 1959. James P. Cannon is the National Chairman of the Socialist Workers party. He was a founder of the Communist party of the United States and a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International until 1928 when he supported the Trotskyist Left Opposition in the Soviet Union. Before World War I, Cannon was active in the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist party.
The biographical information which the Chairman provided in his introduction doesn’t necessarily qualify anyone to give a coherent account of what happened in the past fifty years or so in the movement of socialist and labor radicalism. The woods are full of people who have been through at least a large part of this experience, but their accounts of it may vary widely. The stormy events of American radicalism during this century may be compared to a long series of explosive and catastrophic experiences after which every survivor tells a different story.
It is not only necessary to have been a participant and an observer to explain the ups and downs of American radicalism in this century. It is equally necessary to have understood what was happening in the world over that period, and to relate it all to a consistent historical theory. You’ll be better able to judge at the end of my speech than at the beginning whether I, in part at least, meet those qualifications.
This is a very big and complicated subject to be compressed within an hour or so. But we need a general view of the preceding events of the present century as a means of giving us some perspective on the years that remain in it.
The Great American Contradiction
Let’s begin with the present reality, with what might be called the great American contradiction. Here we live in the most advanced country in the world from the point of view of its technological and industrial development and its productivity. Because it is the most advanced country in these respects, it is the country where the material conditions and foundations for the socialist transformation of society are prepared to a degree not yet existing anywhere else in the world.
Marx explained that capitalism not only greatly advances the forces of production and is therefore a more progressive stage of society than the feudal past, but, in developing the forces of production and proletarianizing the great mass of the population, capitalist society prepares its own gravediggers in the person of the industrial proletariat. That also has been provided in the United States to a greater extent than anywhere else in the world. The gravediggers of capitalism are more numerous here, and, in some respects, better organized than elsewhere on a trade union level. It is potentially the most powerful working class in the entire world.
The contradiction to all these prerequisites for the socialist transformation of society is the other side of the picture which we all have to recognize. We have here the most conservative political climate of any country in the world, at least among the great powers, and the weakest movement of labor radicalism and socialist consciousness. Despite all the rich experiences of the working people in the rest of the world which should have come to our aid and eventually inevitably will—despite all the favorable developments for socialism on a world scale, the situation of American radicalism today, from the point of view of socialist consciousness, socialist organization and socialist morale is worse than it was thirty years ago. It’s even worse than it was sixty years ago at the turn of the century, when the first modern movement of socialist and labor radicalism in this country began to get a popular hearing.
There are objective causes for this tremendous depression of the radical movement at the present time. They are well known and don’t need to be elaborated here. The unprecedented boom, a prosperity based on war expenditures and preparations for war and so forth, have had a tremendously conservatizing influence. In any case, radicalism would very likely be on the defensive in this country under such conditions. But our concern today is not with these objective causes of the present conjuncture in the development of the historical movement toward socialism. I propose to deal mainly with the subjective causes of the present weaknesses of American radicalism: above all, the failure of leadership which has made conditions ten and a hundred times worse than they needed to be, and which makes our problem of preparing the great socialist revival more difficult.
The present situation which I have briefly sketched can change very rapidly into its opposite. That’s what happened in the thirties, in the decade following the first postwar boom of American capitalism with the concomitant decline of radicalism in the twenties. Very few of you may remember that we went through a period in the 1920’s after the rise of radicalism in the first twenty years of this century, when the unprecedented boom of American capitalism on the one side and the inadequacies of the revolutionary leadership on the other produced a collapse, and almost dispersal, of the previous radical movement. But within the next decade that entire situation turned upside down in a few years’ time.
The subjective reasons for the current depression of United States radicalism cannot be understood without a critical analysis of the inner history of the American socialist and labor radical movement in the sixty years since the turn of the century. We can learn something from this review of the past that will be useful both for the present and for the future. Of course, in a single lecture we can only hit the high spots and must omit many interesting and significant details. But such a condensed review may make the main aspects of the historical development stand out more clearly.
In our century we have seen two widespread and popular movements of socialist and labor radicalism. If we examine what they were, how they came into existence, what they did and failed to do, and what happened to them—we can draw some useful conclusions about the prospects of a new revival of American radicalism and about the nature of our problems and our tasks in preparing the way for it.
The Debsian Movement
At the turn of the century, there was a great upswing of radicalism in this country prompted by the objective conditions of the time—the accelerated development of industrial and monopolistic capitalism, the dispossession of small businessmen and farmers, the unbridled exploitation of the workers who were without organization, and so forth. This rebirth of American radicalism got its big impetus in 1901 with the formation of the Socialist party of America as a fusion of different socialist currents, which up to that time had been isolated groups without any wide popular influence. The distinctive factor which made possible the development of this new socialist movement at that time was the turn of a number of influential individuals and groups away from the policy of class collaboration in politics to the policy of independent socialist action.
Many of you have heard of the great role played by Debs and the Appeal to Reason, the socialist agitational paper which had a half million and more circulation. What is perhaps not so well known by comrades of the younger generation is that Debs, the Appeal to Reason and a very large percentage of the people who were influential in giving the Socialist party its start in the first years of this century had previously been Populists. They had supported the Populist movement and then in 1896, when the Populist party was swallowed by the Democratic party, they went along with it. Debs, the Appeal to Reason, Victor Berger and others who promoted the formation of the Socialist party in 1901, had supported Bryan and the Democratic party in 1896. But by the turn of the century, they broke out of that blind alley and had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to have an independent socialist position. That’s what made the big difference.
The most significant change in the attitude of these influential people, and of tens of thousands of others who supported them, which made possible the emergence and growth of the Socialist party in the first years of this century, was their break with capitalist politics altogether and their espousal of socialism. They emphasized and acted on the fundamental principle that a socialist movement must have its own party and its own candidates and cannot combine with or support any capitalist party, whether Republican, Democratic, Progressive or Populist. This new revelation inspired the emergence for the first time of a popular socialist movement in this country.
The Socialist Labor party and other socialist sects which had existed prior to that time had never gained a popular hearing. But the Socialist party brought into its ranks a great number of people who had had their fill of experimentation in one form of capitalist party politics or another. They gave a great impetus to the new Socialist party. So much so that, by 1912, the Socialist party of the United States had a hundred thousand members and got almost a million votes in the Presidential election. That was before women’s suffrage, and was about six percent of the total vote cast. This would be equal to between three and a half and four million votes at the present time. That gives you an idea of the popular appeal of the Socialist party in that period.
The IWW, which was a very militant organization on the industrial field, was a part of this first popular movement of American radicalism. It is important to recall that the IWW was founded by socialists. At the Founding Convention in 1905 all the leading figures were from a socialist background: they came from the Socialist party, the Socialist Labor party, some Anarchists and other kinds of radicals. This sentiment predominated in the IWW throughout its first twenty years of existence. It called itself not merely an industrial union, but a revolutionary industrial union.
In these early years of our century socialist and labor radicalism attained some proportions of a mass character in this country. The movement had its weak sides. In the course of its electoral activities, as we look back on it now, we can see that it placed too much emphasis on municipal politics and reform. The reformist tendency within the Socialist party was quite strong, although I believe a fair assessment of the history would show the majority were revolutionary.
The composition of the party was also unfavorable in some respects. Comrade White told us last night that the Populist movement in the South was deflected into a reactionary channel. But there was another part of this Populist movement which was drawn into the Socialist party. The Socialist party in many parts of the country consisted of a very large percentage of former Populists. The composition of its membership in the western part of the country was very heavily weighted on the side of the petty bourgeoisie in the cities and in the countryside. At one time the largest single state membership of the Socialist party, and, if I’m not mistaken, the largest socialist vote proportionally, was in the state of Oklahoma. In the other western agrarian states also the hard-pressed tenant and mortgaged farmers and desperate petty bourgeoisie streamed into the Socialist party from the Populist movement and swelled its ranks. So the class composition of the party was not as proletarian as an ideal Socialist movement should be.
Another terrible defect of the socialist and radical movement of that time came from the weakness of the organized labor movement. The great mass production industries in this country were completely without trade union organization. Trade unions were limited almost entirely to the skilled crafts, and were very weak in many places even in that field. Outside of the mines and the railroads, it was very hard to find a single union in the big industries. As I listened the other night to the report about the present steel strike, a general strike shutting down all the mills of the country, with the union so strong it doesn’t need to send more than token pickets—I recalled a very different steel strike in 1913 that I participated in as an IWW organizer. There we ran up against company thugs dressed up in police uniforms who sometimes outnumbered the pickets. And that was a single local strike on the ore docks in Duluth and Superior.
This was a common experience of the IWW and socialist attempts to organize in the steel industry or any place else. The most you could do was conduct a guerrilla attack at a single locality. The idea of a general strike, which was our ideal and our program, was far from realization. Yet that’s taken as a matter of course today.
This weakness of the trade union movement naturally was a weakness also of the socialist movement of the time. Without a strongly organized working class in the basic industries, it is quite futile to expect a socialist and revolutionary transformation of society. The IWW which had played a prominent part in the general radicalization of the period, turned to Syndicalism and that was a big defect of the movement too. The unfavorable class composition of the Socialist party, the weakness of the trade union movement, the mistakes of Syndicalism and reformism—all these defects prepared the way for the decline and eventual collapse of the first big experiment in socialist labor radicalism after twenty years of upswing.
The real trouble began with the First World War and then with the Russian Revolution. The movement as a whole proved unable to assimilate the lessons of these world-shaking experiences. They produced a deep division in the socialist movement, a split in 1919, the formation of the Communist party as a separate organization and the great weakening of what was left of the Socialist party.
This split in the forces of American socialist and labor radicalism, beginning with 1919, was followed by the tremendous post-war boom of the twenties.
The Communist Party in the Twenties
Of course this wasn’t anything like the current boom. But considering the conditions that had previously been known in the country, it was pretty lush. From the end of the war in 1918, up until the stock market crash in 1929, there was a continuous upswing of production, interrupted only by a recession in 1921, which was overcome within a year. And, for the first time in this country, there was year after year of almost full employment, fairly good wages, lots of overtime, and all the rest. Some workers even began to own automobiles. That was a sign of what we called their “bourgeoisification.” Everything is relative—and relative to the previous period, the automobiles of the twenties were a sign of workers’ prosperity.
The big boom of the twenties was interpreted by all kinds of learned people as the final solution of the contradictions of capitalism. Then as now that was a common theme of the economists and intellectuals: Karl Marx was out of date. His theory of the cycle of boom-and-bust had been overcome by the genius of American capitalism. We were going to have ever-rising permanent prosperity from now on. A great many people, including workers, believed that, and radicalism lost its previous attraction.
The result was that by the end of the twenties the original movement had become dispersed. At least ninety percent of the people who had been active socialists and labor radicals in the two decades before had fallen aside. There was nothing left except a weak and rotting right-wing Socialist party and the Communist party, with a greatly reduced membership.
That was, you may say, the end of the Debsian movement. It had lasted twenty years. What remained after that was merely a hangover, a survival of remnants—never the dynamic center of radicalism as it had been before. But despite that eventual failure of the movement, I think the over-all judgment of the Debsian period must be favorable, because out of this movement came the cadres and some of the main ideas for the second big upsurge of American labor radicalism in the thirties.
There never could have been a Communist party in this country in the twenties if there had not been a socialist movement in the twenty preceding years. This first big experiment in socialist and labor radicalism failed in its ultimate mission. But it left behind—and this is what we should remember in our historical appraisal, because it is so pertinent for today—it left behind a residue, in the form of cadres, ideas and attitudes which continued and advanced the socialist tradition. What was left from that older movement eventually became the leaven in the movement of the thirties.
After the split of 1919, the new Communist party took over and rapidly displaced all other contenders for supremacy in the field of radicalism, as the Socialist party had done in the preceding two decades. What was the Communist party like in the twenties? I was there, and I remember, and in the light of later thought and study, I think I understand it and can report it truthfully.
The CP in its early years had certain basic characteristics. Its cadres, formed in the previous radical movement, consisted of younger comrades who were conditioned to irreconcilable struggle against capitalism. It was inspired by the Russian Revolution and was the carrier of its ideas as well as it understood them. Its message was revolutionary, not at all moderate, not in the least conciliatory, or liberalistic, or conciliationism. The idea of class collaboration was simply anathema. Its guiding doctrine was the class struggle.
One of the main slogans of the Communist party in that period was: “Organize the Unorganized!” That was a bold program that only revolutionists could take seriously. If you think it is tough in the steel union or any other union today, look back to those days. Steel, rubber, auto and every other big industry had no unions at all, or company unions, controlled by the companies and led by company stooges. The Communist party conducted a struggle against company unions for bona fide unions of the workers, under the slogan: Class Struggle vs. Class Collaboration! That was a revolutionary slogan for the time, and it did a lot to prepare the great upsurge of union organization in the next decade.
In the main the composition of the Communist party in the twenties was young. The age level of the Communist party today, or what’s left of it or its peripheral circles doesn’t resemble what the Communist party was in the twenties. That was a young movement, as dynamic revolutionary movements always are.
At its inception the “old men” of the party among the leaders were Ruthenberg, Bedacht, Wagenknecht, Katterfeld, later Foster—they were all turning forty years old. A second layer of leaders, represented by Earl Browder, Bill Dunne, Arne Swabeck, myself and others, were turning thirty. And a third layer of the top leaders, represented in the Central Committee and the Political Committee by Lovestone, Weinstone and Wolfe, were in their early twenties—fresh out of college.
That was the composition of the leadership. The ranks, I believe, were even younger. The old men of the Socialist party—of the period before the split—did not come with the Communist party. It took the youth to understand the war and the Russian Revolution and to make the new movement fit for new times.
Maintained Class-Struggle Policy
This Communist party held the line of class struggle and revolutionary doctrine in that long ten-year period of boom, prosperity and conservatism before the crash of 1929. It was in that period—fighting for revolutionary ideas against a conservative environment as we are trying to do today, refusing to compromise the principle of class independence—that the Communist party gathered and prepared its cadres for the great upsurge of the thirties.
Not more than ten percent was left from the old prewar movement. Although the Communist party itself continued to recruit individuals from day to day and month to month, it also continued to lose people and its over-all membership declined. The left wing leaders in the Socialist party had claimed, with some justification, that they had 60,000 votes supporting them in the Referendum of 1919—shortly before the split. But then followed the Palmer Raids, the witch hunt, the deportations, the illegality of the party, and the long boom. It was tough going.
By the time of the stock market crash in 1929, which ended the myth of permanent capitalist prosperity, the Communist party had under 10,000 members. Ninety percent of these were foreign born. But it was a young movement—and primarily proletarian.
That was what the CP had to start with at the end of the twenties. It was up against the fact that the trade union movement was even weaker than it had been at the beginning of the twenties. A peculiar phenomenon was recorded: for the first time in modern history a protracted period of prosperity with its increase of production and increase in the size of the proletariat didn’t increase the size of the unions. On the contrary, it depleted and replaced them in many instances by company unions. The country was so conservative, the bosses were in such firm control, the union leadership was so weak, and its craft form of organization was so inadequate, that the trade unions embraced not more than three million at the time of the 1929 stock market crash. As far as CP influence in the unions was concerned, it was pretty well purged out, except in the garment trades and among the miners.
Although the CP wasn’t in first-class shape in those earlier days, it was young, confident and revolutionary—even ultra-radical at times. The Socialist party and the IWW had withered on the vine. In the Communist party itself, the corruption of Stalinism had already started but as yet had not deeply affected the consciousness of the rank and file. Despite its reduced membership, the Communist party entered the thirties—the period of the great radical revival—as the dominating center of American radicalism. It had no serious contenders. It had to its left only the dissident group of the Trotskyist, who were numerically small and isolated. The right wing group of Lovestoneites was equally weak; the attenuated and decrepit Socialist party offered no real competition; and the IWW had fallen victim to its Syndicalism dogmatism and become a sect. That was the shape of American radicalism when the thirties began.
Then the situation changed, almost overnight. The terrible financial and social crisis really shook up this country—and the workers. The radicalism produced by this shake-up was far stronger than the radicalism of the previous two decades. It had a much firmer social composition. This time the industrial workers in the main centers were the spearhead of the radicalism and gave the new movement a class composition of invincible power. It had the advantage of a more advanced ideology. The inspiration and ideas of the Russian Revolution permeated the Communist movement of that time and gave it a tremendous advantage over all other tendencies.
And then, in the changed situation in the thirties the impossible was accomplished. The impossible task of organizing the automobile industry, the rubber industry, the electrical manufacturing industry, the steel industry, the maritime industry—and actually bringing the monopolistic powers of American capitalism to the point where they had to recognize the unions—all that was accomplished in the great days of the CIO uprising in the thirties.
Along with that there was a growing sentiment for a Labor party which under proper leadership could have brought this whole movement of labor radicalism toward a glorious new epoch of independent class political action in this country. But that didn’t happen. And the main reason it didn’t happen was that the Communist party, which was the main leader of this new movement of labor radicalism, failed in its mission, even more shamefully, even more disgracefully than the Socialist party of the previous two decades. And more catastrophically, because it was not defeated in battle; it was corrupted from within. The Communist party has left less behind it from the great radical movement of the thirties than the Socialist party left in the beginning of the twenties.
You know the CP expanded its organization and influence in all directions in the thirties. Why did it collapse so miserably in the fifties? In fact, it had collapsed before then, but we have only seen in recent years how catastrophic it has been. Although many like John Gates, ex-editor of the Daily Worker, (I use him only as a symbol, because his name is legion) went through the experiences of the thirties, they didn’t understand what happened and they can’t make a true report about what they saw. They attribute the successes of the CP to the party’s cleverness in putting on the mask of “progressivism,” supporting Roosevelt and the New Deal in the late thirties and in the war period. And, conversely, they think the collapse of the CP has been caused by sectarianism, which is the way they describe the policy of class struggle and revolution.
The Big Appeal of the Communist Party
But that’s a complete misunderstanding of what really happened. The main cadres of the Communist party, which played such a big role in the second big wave of American radicalism in this century were forged, as I said before, in the twenties. Then they were renewed and greatly expanded in the early thirties by the policy of the class struggle. (In fact, during the first half of the thirties the Communist party was devoted to what we called ultra-leftism, ultra-radicalism, not at all “progressivism.” It did not maneuver with capitalist politics.)
In 1932, the Communist party nominated a Negro, James Ford, for Vice-President with Foster. And the slogan of their 1932 campaign was: “Class against Class.” There was no mealy-mouthed “progressivism” about that. With this slogan and the spirit emanating from it, the main cadres of the young unemployed workers of that time, the student youth without prospects, and, for the first time in the history of American radicalism, significant numbers of Negroes—thousands of them—and displaced intellectuals in droves—were recruited to the party. In this early period of the depression they were not repelled by the party’s radical and revolutionary aspect, but were attracted precisely because of it. Not in spite of its appearance as the representative of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union, but, in large measure, because of it.
That was the big appeal of the Communist party in the first years of the thirties. The discontented turned to the most radical and aggressive movement they could find, and thought they had found it in the Communist party. In that, I think, is a lesson for the future. In times of social crisis, when the workers, the Negro people, the troubled students and the intellectuals of many kinds see no prospect in capitalism, they want to hear the word of a radical social transformation and a new beginning. That’s what the Communist party represented in the eyes of these people; and that’s why it grew.
In the early years of the thirties, the program and tradition of independent class politics completely dominated the Communist party and its tremendous periphery. So strong was this principle and this tradition that it couldn’t be changed abruptly. The rank and file of the movement, educated in the principle of the class struggle—which has its highest and sharpest expression in independent socialist political action—had to be corrupted gradually, a step at a time. The snuggling up to Roosevelt and the Democratic party couldn’t be presented directly to the Communist party membership and its supporters in the middle of the thirties. It had to be presented as a maneuver to fool the class enemy.
“The Mask Becomes the Face”
Of course, it was really a Stalinist maneuver to fool the communist workers; they were the real victims. This new turn was inspired and directed by the Stalinized bureaucracy of the Soviet Union, and designed to use the promising movement of American radicalism as a pawn in its diplomatic game. The leaders in Moscow were concerned with the short-term interests of their foreign policy, and not at all with the American workers and the American revolution. Roosevelt had recognized the Soviet Union, and the Stalinists, in turn, decided to recognize Roosevelt. They looked upon the great movement of American radicalism as something to be expended cheaply. They diverted it, through the leadership of the Communist party, into the Roosevelt camp. They steered it away from the movement for an independent Labor party, which was called for by the conditions of the time and the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of workers. The big switch in policy, from class struggle to class collaboration, was made in the shortsighted temporary interest of Stalinist diplomacy.
That’s the great divide between the rise and the decline, and the eventual complete collapse of the radical movement of the thirties and of the Communist party that led it. The big turn-around began with disguise and double talk. Just think what was done and how it was done in 1936! There was a Presidential election. The Communist party leadership didn’t yet dare to endorse the candidates of a capitalist party. They had a grand convention and nominated their own candidates, Browder and Ford, as independent candidates of the Communist party. This was a concession to the traditional purpose of a socialist or communist party. Then came the double talk. They said: We’re nominating our own candidates, but—“Socialism is not the issue!”
This crooked formula was the great contribution of Browder, as the agent of Stalin, to the betrayal of American radicalism. “Socialism is not the issue?” Well, people might logically ask, if socialism is not the issue, what in the hell are you nominating a socialist candidate for? The Stalinist leaders didn’t answer that question directly. They worked their way around it deviously.
They didn’t call for people to vote for the Communist party candidates. And they didn’t come right out for Roosevelt. They conducted the campaign on the slogan—what do you think? Well, by now you know it happens in every election—“Beat Landon at all costs!” That was the slogan of the Communist party in 1936, in the middle of the social crisis, when the possibility of a ringing campaign to further radicalize the workers was on the agenda. “Beat Landon at all costs!” meant of course, “elect Roosevelt at all costs!” That’s what such a slogan always means in reverse.
It was supposed to be a very slick maneuver to fool everybody. “No, we’re not voting for Roosevelt, we’re putting up our own candidates.” But all the trade unionists who were under the influence of the CP got the word: “Vote for Roosevelt.” It was presented to the communist workers as a maneuver, to fool the class enemy. But those who started out that way, thinking to outwit the class enemy by supporting him, eventually became victims of their own deception. They began to play the capitalist party game in earnest.
The most incredible thing, for one who has been raised in the old socialist tradition, is to run into people by the score, and, if you look around for them, by the hundreds and thousands, who have been educated in the Communist party of recent years, who think they should play the Democratic party game for keeps. They believe in it. The mask has become the face. The dupers have become the duped.
Of course, the Stalinists didn’t capture the Democratic party. I can tell you that, in case you have any doubts about it. But class collaborationist politics did capture the Communist party. The Stalinists went to work, running errands and ringing doorbells in order to beat some capitalist political faker at all costs in order to elect some other capitalist political shyster at all costs. Over a period of time the program of the class struggle and independent class politics was lost sight of altogether by the bulk of these people. The Communist party members and sympathizers forgot the ABC of socialism which Debs understood sixty years ago. They continued to support the Democratic party long after the Democrats had no further need of them and gave them the boot.
Of course, there were other causes for the catastrophic decline and disgraceful collapse of the Communist party and its peripheral movement. But that’s the basic cause, because it goes right to the fundamental class issue of independent politics. That’s the basic cause of the defeat, demoralization and dispersal of the great movement of labor radicalism generated by the crisis of the thirties.
In the thirties and since, the Communist party, as the leading center of the new radicalism, directly reversed the trend of their predecessors of the turn of the century. That unspeakable betrayal stands out strikingly as you see it in historical perspective. Debs and Wayland, who had supported the Populist party and the Democratic party, turned around and led the movement forward from Populism and the Democratic party and all kinds of class collaborationist politics. The Stalinists reversed this whole trend and led communist and socialist workers back from independent class politics, back to class collaboration, back to support of capitalist politicians.
The leading forces of the Debsian period had the benefit of far less experience and far less study. Yet they did far better than their successors of the thirties. That’s a striking historical fact that ought to induce younger people to study the history of the movement. In this study of history they will see how colossal has been the loss of the tremendous potentialities of the radical movement of the thirties under the Stalinist leadership.
The Lost Generation of Radicals
If we’re going to make a new start and prepare for the next wave of radicalism in this country, there’s only one way to begin. We have to return to fundamentals. At least, to the one big fundamental of class politics. If some people, who still call themselves socialists or communists, can’t go directly to Marx and Lenin in one bound, they ought at least, for a start, to try to go back to Debs and the Appeal to Reason when they broke with the Democratic party in 1900.
The great movement of socialist and labor radicalism that was generated by the crisis of the thirties has completely spent itself. That’s what we have to understand if we are going to get a realistic picture of the actual situation. Due to the combination of circum¬stances, the objective difficulties, plus the corruption of leadership, this movement is worn out. All that remains of it, outside the cadres of those who remain faithful to the fundamental ideas of socialism, is a big lost generation of radicals.
They’re numerous in this country. But when I see these people, or hear about them which is more frequent, who have fallen out of the Communist party by the tens of thousands, who still want to consider themselves socialists and even communists, who want to gather every now and then to have a discussion—providing you don’t bring up any fundamental questions or propose any action—they strike me as people suffering from political amnesia. They can’t remember where they came from—from that revolutionary movement of the early thirties. They have a nostalgia for the big masses and big deals, but they’ve forgotten that that mass movement was produced by policies of the class struggle, not by class adaptation.
The radicalism generated by the social crisis in the thirties is not a total loss by any means. Like its predecessor of the Debsian time, the new movement of the thirties left something behind it to build on. First of all, and this is a tremendous thing, out of that great upheaval of the thirties came the CIO movement and the organization of the big industrial unions in the mass production industries. They have softened UP, shackled by government controls and saddled with a conservative, capitalist-minded bureaucracy. But the unions as organizations have survived. We see them in action every once in a while, as in the present steel strike. And they remain a great potential power.
It needs just a little shift in the situation to bring it forth. We got a slight intimation of this a year ago when the bosses went a little bit too far and attempted to pass “right to work” laws. They could have passed them in the twenties without any strongly organized opposition. When they tried it in 1958, they were suddenly made aware of the fact that a seventeen million strong trade union movement, created by the upsurge of the thirties and inspired by radicals, didn’t want to be broken up by “right to work” laws. That was a sort of political uprising, a portent of things to come, that upset all the calculations of the capitalist politicians.
Right now they’re probing again, provoking the steel workers, and provoking the unions generally with the Landrum-Griffin anti-Labor law. Let them go a little bit too far, let a political aggressiveness of the capitalists coincide with some social disturbance and workers’ discontent, and you’ll see what a colossal power this seventeen million strong trade union movement really has. And what a hearing you’ll get from workers then if you speak the true and honest word of class struggle against class collaboration! There’s an immense reservoir for genuine radicalism in this great trade union movement. That’s something left behind from the uprising of the thirties.
Something no less important, perhaps even more important in the long run, are the surviving cadres of class conscious revolutionists who preserve and represent the ideas, who are the continuators of the doctrine and the tradition of socialism. They are important because without the ideas, without the cadres, even though small, you can’t hope to build a consistent revolutionary movement. And the conjunction of a cadre of class conscious revolutionists who have assimilated the experience of the past with a new upsurge of labor militancy, will release a great power.
It is another advantage of great import for the future, that this surviving nucleus of the continuators is organized and active, and is recruiting, even though slowly, but quite consistently and noticeably, a new cadre of young revolutionists. That is the touchstone. That is ground for confidence. The living movement always appeals to the young, and the mark of a living movement is its ability to attract the young. Wherever you see a party anywhere that has no young people, you can say for sure that its prospects are dim. The experienced troops of every army, even the best, always need renewal and replenishment.
“The Party of the Youth”
Here is the central point I have been building up to. The radical movement of the thirties, with all its grandeur, glory and power, has spent itself. Individuals and small groups of the old, fallen-away radicals may be reactivated under new conditions; but the main forces of the new movement of American socialist radicalism have to come from a new generation. There is no room for doubt or misunderstanding on this score. The evidence of the recent years is conclusive. Our task is to hold the line and help the process along, provide some of the ideas, and make room for the new contingents of young militants.
That was Lenin’s idea a long time ago. Only, he was more radical about it than we are today. The New Republic a few weeks ago carried a review of a history of the Russian Komsomol—the Russian Young Communist League. Here’s a quotation from it:
“At the outset of a history of the Soviet Young Communist League or Komsomol, the author, Professor Fisher, cites a remark of Lenin’s made long before the Revolution to someone who complained that the Russian Social Democrats were mostly mere youths. Lenin said. ‘It’s perfectly natural that youth should predominate in a revolutionary party, since this is the party of the future, and the future belongs to the young ... We will always remain the party of the youth, of the most advanced class, i.e., the working class’.”
We have the same general idea and we take the attraction of the upcoming young rebels to our banner as a sign of things to come.
As Marxists, we count on the objective developments to prepare the ground for a great new movement. Trotsky, like all Marxists, based his revolutionary optimism on the contradictions of capitalism generating a revolutionary movement. So do we. In 1931, in the second year of the crisis, Trotsky wrote about America as follows:
“In the past, America has known more than one stormy outburst of revolutionary or semi-revolutionary mass movements. Every time they died out quickly. Because America every time entered a new period of economic upswing and also because the movements themselves were characterized by crass empiricism and theoretical helplessness. Those two conditions belong to the past. A new economic upswing, and one cannot consider it excluded in advance, will have to be based not on the internal equilibrium, but on the present chaos of world economy. American capitalism will enter an epoch of monstrous imperialism, of an uninterrupted growth of armaments, of intervention in the affairs of the entire world, of military conflicts and convulsions.”
Remember, this was written in 1931 when the official policy of the United States was isolationism.
Then Trotsky continued:
“On the other hand, in the form of communism, the American proletariat possesses, rather could possess, provided with a correct policy, no longer the old mélange of empiricism, mysticism and quackery, but a scientifically grounded up-to-date doctrine. These radical changes permit us to predict with certainty that the inevitable and relatively rapid revolutionary transformation of the American proletariat will no more be the former easily extinguishable bonfire, but the beginning of a veritable revolutionary conflagration. In America, communism can face its great future with confidence.”
The first part of Trotsky’s prediction about the militaristic eruption of American capitalism has been confirmed to the letter. The second part was only partly carried out; the revolutionary prospects of the upsurge of the thirties were not realized. But even there, Trotsky had qualified his prediction. He said, the American workers could possess a scientific guide in the form of communism provided its representatives had “a correct policy.” The American Communist party failed to provide that correct policy. Trotsky saw both the transformation of American capitalism into a world-embracing imperialist power on the one hand, and a revolutionary proletariat on the other, as a possible outcome of the thirties. And it really was possible. For the reasons we have cited, that possible outcome was lost the first time. We owe that failure, above all, to Stalinism. But the prospect remains fully valid for the next upsurge. The movement of revolutionary socialism has a great future in this country. And if we face it with confidence, and put our trust in a new generation, the future will become the present all the sooner.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- The Popular Front In Spain, 1936
Click on title to link to Leon Trotsky's article on the Popular Front in the heat of the Spanish Civil War. Those who want to defend the concept, the POUM, the POUM leadership of Nin/Andrade/Maurin, etc.-Take cover.
Monday, October 15, 2018
*On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The Labor Party In The United States- A 1932 Article
Click on title to link to a 1932 article by Leon Trotsky about his early thoughts on the Labor Party question in the United States. He also had a more extensive discussion in 1938 down in Mexico with American Socialist Workers Party leaders about the question which can be found on the other blog entry for this date or by Googling the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for 1938.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *A Different View On James P. Cannon- From The Workers Party's Albert Glotzer Archives
Click on title to link to Albert Glotzer's Internet Archives for a 1945 article for the break-away Workers Party on James P. Cannon, a name that should be familiar to readers of this blog. I have touted the abilities of ex-Wobblie, ex- American Communist Party leader and founding Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party leader (along with Glotzer under the party name Albert Gates) Cannon. Glotzer provides a very different view. Compare, but also read Glotzer's obituary also posted on this date to see the curve of his political trajectory. It was not pretty.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *From The Pen Of American Socialist Workers Party Leader James P. Cannon- "Don't Strangle The Party (1967)"
Click on the headline to link to a "James P. Cannon Internet Archive" online copy of his 1967 polemic, "Don't Strangle The Party".
Markin comment:
On a day when I am posting an article from the archives of "Women and Revolution" about the Socialist Workers Party's various policies toward the gay liberation struggle back in the 1970s it seems appropriate to post something from historic SWP leader James P. Cannon. This is from late in his career when he was not in day-to-day charge of the organization, some of the politics are also wobbly, and a lot of the issues concern internal party political in-fighting (as was the rationale for publishing and posting it by others at later times)but the entry is still worth a look at.
Markin comment:
On a day when I am posting an article from the archives of "Women and Revolution" about the Socialist Workers Party's various policies toward the gay liberation struggle back in the 1970s it seems appropriate to post something from historic SWP leader James P. Cannon. This is from late in his career when he was not in day-to-day charge of the organization, some of the politics are also wobbly, and a lot of the issues concern internal party political in-fighting (as was the rationale for publishing and posting it by others at later times)but the entry is still worth a look at.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- Dog Days: James P. Cannon vs. Max Shachtman in the Communist League of America, 1931-1933
Click on title to link to a book review of the publication mentioned in the title about the struggle between two early and important leaders of the American Trotskyist movement, James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman. This is rare and important history that needs to be studied in our continuing struggle to build a revolutionary party to fight for state power.
On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International (1938)- *From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- Don Bateman-Georges Kopp and the POUM Militia
Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History journal entry listed in the title.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*********
Leon Trotsky
The Lessons of Spain:
The Last Warning
(1937)
Written: End of 1937
First Published: Socialist Appeal [New York], January 8th and 15th, 1938
Translated: Socialist Appeal
Transcription/HTML Markup: Matt Siegried
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 1999. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
Menshevism and Bolshevism in Spain
All general staffs are studying closely the military operations in Ethiopia, in Spain and in the Far East in preparation for the great future war. The battles of the Spanish proletariat heat lightening flashes of the coming world revolution, should be no less attentively studied by the revolutionary staffs. Under this condition and this condition alone will the coming events not take us unawares.
Three ideologies fought – with unequal forces – in the so-called republican camp, namely, Menshevism, Bolshevism, and anarchism. As regards the bourgeois republican parties, they were without either independent ideas or independent political significance and were able to maintain themselves only by climbing on the backs of the reformists and Anarchists. Moreover, it is no exaggeration to say that the leaders of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism did everything to repudiate their doctrine and virtually reduce its significance to zero. Actually two doctrines in the so-called republican camp fought – Menshevism and Bolshevism.
According to the Socialists and Stalinists, i.e., the Mensheviks of the first and second instances, the Spanish revolution was called upon to solve only its “democratic” tasks, for which a united front with the “democratic” bourgeoisie was indispensable. From this point of view, any and all attempts of the proletariat to go beyond the limits of bourgeois democracy are not only premature but also fatal. Furthermore, on the agenda stands not the revolution but the struggle against insurgent Franco.
Fascism, however, is not feudal but bourgeois reaction. A successful fight against bourgeois reaction can be waged only with the forces and methods of the proletariat revolution. Menshevism, itself a branch of bourgeois thought, does not have and cannot have any inkling of these facts.
The Bolshevik point of view, clearly expressed only by the young section of the Fourth International, takes the theory of permanent revolution as its starting point, namely, that even purely democratic problems, like the liquidation of semi-feudal land ownership, cannot be solved without the conquest of power by the proletariat; but this in turn places the socialist revolution on the agenda. Moreover, during the very first stages of the revolution, the Spanish workers themselves posed in practice not merely democratic problems but also purely socialist ones. The demand not to transgress the bounds of bourgeois democracy signifies in practice not a defense of the democratic revolution but a repudiation of it. Only through an overturn in agrarian relations could the peasantry, the great mass of the population, have been transformed into a powerful bulwark against fascism. But the landowners are intimately bound up with the commercial, industrial, and banking bourgeoisie, and the bourgeois intelligentsia that depends on them. The party of the proletariat was thus faced with a choice between going with the peasant masses or with the liberal bourgeoisie. There could be only one reason to include the peasantry and the liberal bourgeoisie in the same coalition at the same time: to help the bourgeoisie deceive the peasantry and thus isolate the workers. The agrarian revolution could have been accomplished only against the bourgeoisie, and therefore only through the masses of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There is no third, intermediate regime.
From the standpoint of theory, the most astonishing thing about Stalin’s Spanish policy is the utter disregard for the ABC of Leninism. After a delay of several decades – and what decades! – the Comintern has fully rehabilitated the doctrine of Menshevism. More than that, the Comintern has contrived to render this doctrine more “consistent” and by that token more absurd. In czarist Russia, on the threshold of 1905, the formula of “purely democratic revolution” had behind it, in any case, immeasurably more arguments than in 1937 in Spain. It is hardly astonishing that in modern Spain “the liberal labor policy” of Menshevism has been converted into the reactionary anti-labor policy of Stalinism. At the same time the doctrine of the Mensheviks, this caricature of Marxism, has been converted into a caricature of itself.
“Theory” of the Popular Front
It would be naive, however, to think that the politics of the Comintern in Spain stem from a theoretical “mistake”. Stalinism is not guided by Marxist Theory, or for that matter any theory at all, but by the empirical interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. In their intimate circles, the Soviet cynics mock Dimitrov’s “philosophy” of the Popular Front. But they have at their disposal for deceiving the masses large cadres of propagators of this holy formula, sincere ones and cheats, simpletons and charlatans. Louis Fischer, with his ignorance and smugness, with his provincial rationalism and congenital deafness to revolution, is the most repulsive representative of this unattractive brotherhood. “The union of progressive forces!” “The Triumph of the idea of the Popular Front!” “The assault of the Trotskyists on the unity of the anti-fascist ranks!” ... Who will believe that the Communist Manifesto was written ninety years ago?
The theoreticians of the Popular Front do not essentially go beyond the first rule of arithmetic, that is, addition: “Communists” plus Socialists plus Anarchists plus liberals add up to a total which is greater than their respective isolated numbers. Such is all their wisdom. However, arithmetic alone does not suffice here. One needs as well at least mechanics. The law of the parallelogram of forces applies to politics as well. In such a parallelogram, we know that the resultant is shorter, the more component forces diverge from each other. When political allies tend to pull in opposite directions, the resultant prove equal to zero.
A bloc of divergent political groups of the working class is sometimes completely indispensable for the solution of common practical problems. In certain historical circumstances, such a bloc is capable of attracting the oppressed petty-bourgeois masses whose interests are close to the interests of the proletariat. The joint force of such a bloc can prove far stronger than the sum of the forces of each of its component parts. On the contrary, the political alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, whose interests on basic questions in the present epoch diverge at an angle of 180 degrees, as a general rule is capable only of paralyzing the revolutionary force of the proletariat.
Civil war, in which the force of naked coercion is hardly effective, demands of its participants the spirit of supreme self-abnegation. The workers and peasants can assure victory only if they wage a struggle for their own emancipation. Under these conditions, to subordinate the proletariat to the leadership of the bourgeoisie means beforehand to assure defeat in the civil war.
These simple truths are least of all the products of pure theoretical analysis. On the contrary, they represent the unassailable deduction from the entire experience if history, beginning at least with 1848. The modern history of bourgeois society is filled with all sorts of Popular Fronts, i.e. the most diverse political combinations for the deception of the toilers. The Spanish experience is only a new and tragic link in this chain of crimes and betrayals.
Alliance with the Bourgeoisie’s Shadow
Politically most striking is the fact that the Spanish Popular Front lacked in reality even a parallelogram of forces. The bourgeoisie’s place was occupied by its shadow. Through the medium of the Stalinists, Socialists, and Anarchists, the Spanish bourgeoisie subordinated the proletariat to itself without even bothering to participate in the Popular Front. The overwhelming majority of the exploiters of all political shades openly went over to the camp of Franco. Without any theory of “permanent revolution,” the Spanish bourgeoisie understood from the outset that the revolutionary mass movement, no matter how it starts, is directed against private ownership of land and the means of production, and that it is utterly impossible to cope with this movement by democratic measures.
That is why only insignificant debris from the possessing classes remained in the republican camp: Messrs. Azaña, Companys, and the like – political attorneys of the bourgeoisie but not the bourgeoisie itself. Having staked everything on a military dictatorship, the possessing classes were able, at the same time, to make use of the political representatives of yesterday in order to paralyze, disorganize, and afterward strangle the socialist movement of the masses in “republican” territory.
Without in the slightest degree representing the Spanish bourgeoisie, the left republicans still less represented the workers and peasants. They represented no one but themselves. Thanks, however, to their allies – the Socialists, Stalinists, and Anarchists – these political phantoms played decisive role in the revolution. How? Very simply. By incarnating the principles of the “democratic revolution,” that is, the inviolability of private property.
The Stalinists in the Popular Front
The reasons of the rise of the Spanish Popular Front and its inner mechanics are perfectly clear. The task of the retired leaders of the left bourgeoisie consisted in checking the revolution of the masses and the regaining for themselves the lost confidence of the exploiters: “Why do you need Franco if we, the republicans, can do the same thing?” The interests of Azaña and Companys fully coincided at this central point with the interests of Stalin, who needed gain the confidence of the French and British bourgeoisie by proving to them in action his ability to preserve “order” against “anarchy.” Stalin needed Azaña and Companys as a cover before the workers: Stalin himself, of course, is for socialism, but one must take care not to repel the republican bourgeoisie! Azaña and Companys needed Stalin as an experienced executioner, with the authority of a revols time not at all thanks to high and mighty foreign patrons who supplied “this time not at all thanks to be dared to attack the workers.
The classic reformists of the Second International, long ago derailed by the course of the class struggle, began to feel a new tide of confidence, thanks to the support of Moscow. This support, incidentally, was not given to all reformists but only to those most reactionary. Caballero represented that face of the Socialist Party that was turned toward the workers’ aristocracy. Negrin and Prieto always looked towards the bourgeoisie. Negrin won over Caballero with the help of Moscow. The left Socialists and Anarchists, the captives of the Popular Front, tried, it is true, to save whatever could be saved of democracy. But inasmuch as they did not dare to mobilize the masses against the gendarmes of the Popular Front, their efforts at the end were reduced to plaints and wails. The Stalinists were thus in alliance with the extreme right, avowedly bourgeois wing of the Socialist Party. They directed their repressions against the left – the POUM, the Anarchists, the “left” Socialists – in other words, against the centrist groupings who reflected, even in a most remote degree, the pressure of the revolutionary masses,
This political fact, very significant in itself, provides at the same time the measure of the degeneration of the Comintern in the last few years. I once defined Stalinism as bureaucratic centrism, and events brought a series of corroborations of the correctness of this definition. But it is obviously obsolete today. The interests of the Bonapartist bureaucracy can no longer be reconciled with centrist hesitation and vacillation. In search of reconciliation with the bourgeoisie, the Stalinist clique is capable of entering into alliances only with the most conservative groupings among the international labor aristocracy. This has acted to fix definitively the counterrevolutionary character of Stalinism on the international arena.
Counter-Revolutionary Superiorities of Stalinism
This brings us right up to the solution of the enigma of how and why the Communist Party of Spain, so insignificant numerically and with a leadership so poor in caliber, proved capable of gathering into its hands all reins of power, in the face of the incomparably more powerful organizations of the Socialists and Anarchists. The usual explanation that the Stalinists simply bartered Soviet weapons for power is far too superficial. In return for munitions, Moscow received Spanish gold. According to the laws of the capitalist market, this covers everything. How then did Stalin contrive to get power in the bargain?
The customary answer is that the Soviet government, having raised its authority in the eyes of the masses by furnishing military supplies, demanded as a condition of its “collaboration” drastic measures against revolutionists and thus removed dangerous opponents from its path. All this is quite indisputable but it is only one aspect of the matter, and the least important at that.
Despite the “authority” created by Soviet shipments, the Spanish Communist Party remained a small minority and met with ever-growing hatred on the part of the workers. On the other hand, it was not enough for Moscow to set conditions; Valencia had to accede to them. This is the heart of the matter. Not only Zamora, Companys, and Negrin, but also Caballero, during his incumbency as premier, were all more or less ready to accede to the demands of Moscow. Why? Because these gentlemen themselves wished to keep the revolution within bourgeois limits. They were deathly afraid of every revolutionary onslaught of the workers.
Stalin with his munitions and with his counterrevolutionary ultimatum was a savior for all these groups. He guaranteed them, so they hoped, military victory over Franco, and at the same time, he freed them from all responsibility for the course of the revolution. They hastened to put their Socialist and Anarchist masks into the closet in the hope of making use of them again after Moscow reestablished bourgeois democracy for them. As the finishing touch to their comfort, these gentlemen could henceforth, justify their betrayal to the workers by the necessity of a military agreement with Stalin. Stalin on his part justifies his counterrevolutionary politics by the necessity of maintaining an alliance with the republican bourgeoisie.
Only from this broader point of view can we get a clear picture of the angelic toleration which such champions of justice and freedom as Azaña, Negrin, Companys, Caballero, Garcia Oliver, and others showed towards the crimes of the GPU. If they had no other choice, as they affirm, it was not at all because they had no means of paying for airplanes and tanks other than with the heads of the revolutionists and the rights of the workers, but because their own “purely democratic”, that is, anti-socialist, program could be realized by no other measures save terror. When the workers and peasants enter on the path of their revolution – when they seize factories and estates, drive out old owners, conquer power in the provinces – then the bourgeois counterrevolution – democratic, Stalinist, or fascist alike – has no other means of checking this movement except through bloody coercion, supplemented by lies and deceit. The superiority of the Stalinist clique on this road consisted in its ability to apply instantly measures that were beyond the capacity of Azaña, Companys, Negrin, and their left allies.
Stalin Confirms in His Own Way the Correctness of the Theory of Permanent Revolution
Two irreconcilable programs thus confronted each other on the territory of republican Spain. On the one hand, the program of saving at any cost private property from the proletariat, and saving as far as possible democracy from Franco; on the other hand, the program of abolishing private property through the conquest of power by the proletariat. The first program expressed the interest of capitalism through the medium of the labor aristocracy, the top petty-bourgeois circles, and especially the Soviet bureaucracy. The second program translated into the language of Marxism the tendencies of the revolutionary mass movement, not fully conscious but powerful. Unfortunately for the revolution, between the handful of Bolsheviks and the revolutionary proletariat stood counter-revolutionary wall of the Popular Front.
The policy of the Popular Front was, in its turn, not at all determined by the blackmail of Stalin as supplier of arms. There was, of course, no lack of blackmail. But the reason for the success of this blackmail was inherent in the inner conditions of the revolution itself. For six years, its social setting was the growing onslaught of the masses against the regime of semi-feudal and bourgeois property. The need of defending this property by the most extreme measures threw the bourgeoisie into Franco’s arms. The republican government had promised the bourgeoisie to defend property by “democratic” measures, but revealed, especially in July 1936, its complete bankruptcy. When the situation on the property front became even more threatening than on the military front, the democrats of all colors, including the Anarchists, bowed before Stalin; and he found no other methods, in his own arsenal than the methods of Franco.
The hounding of “Trotskyists”, POUMists, revolutionary Anarchists and left Socialists; the filthy slander; the false documents; the tortures in Stalinist prisons; the murders from ambush – without all this the bourgeois regime under the republican flag could not have lasted even two months. The GPU proved to be the master of the situation only because it defended the interests of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat more consistently than the others, i.e., with the greatest baseness and bloodthirstiness.
In the struggle against the socialist revolution, the “democratic” Kerensky at first sought support in the military dictatorship of Kornilov and later tried to enter Petrograd in the baggage train of the monarchist general Krasnov. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks were compelled, in order to carry the democratic revolution through to the end, to overthrow the government of “democratic” charlatans and babblers. In the process they put an end thereby to every kind of attempt at military (or “fascist”) dictatorship.
The Spanish revolution once again demonstrates that it is impossible to defend democracy against the methods of fascist reaction. And conversely, it is impossible to conduct a genuine struggle against fascism otherwise than through the methods of the proletarian revolution. Stalin waged war against “Trotskyism” (proletarian revolution), destroying democracy by the Bonapartist measures of the GPU. This refutes once again and once and for all the old Menshevik theory, adopted by the Comintern, in accordance with which the democratic and socialist revolutions are transformed into two independent historic chapters, separated from each other in point of time. The work of the Moscow executioners confirms in its own way the correctness of the theory of permanent revolution.
Role of the Anarchists
The Anarchists had no independent position of any kind in the Spanish revolution. All they did was waver between Bolshevism and Menshevism. More precisely, the Anarchist workers instinctively yearned to enter the Bolshevik road (July 19, 1936, and May days of 1937) while their leaders, on the contrary, with all their might drove the masses into the camp of the Popular Front, i.e., of the bourgeois regime.
The Anarchists revealed a fatal lack of understanding of the laws of the revolution and its tasks by seeking to limit themselves to their own trade unions, that is, to organizations permeated with the routine of peaceful times, and by ignoring what went on outside the framework of the trade unions, among the masses, among the political parties, and in the government apparatus. Had the Anarchists been revolutionists, they would first of all have called for the creation of soviets, which unite the representatives of all the toilers of city and country, including the most oppressed strata, who never joined the trade unions. The revolutionary workers would have naturally occupied the dominant position in these soviets. The Stalinists would have remained an insignificant minority. The proletariat would have convinced itself of its own invincible strength. The apparatus of the bourgeois state would have hung suspended in the air. One strong blow would have sufficed to pulverize this apparatus. The socialist revolution would have received a powerful impetus. The French proletariat would not for long permitted Leon Blum to blockade the proletariat revolution beyond the Pyrenees. Neither could the Moscow bureaucracy have permitted itself such a luxury. The most difficult questions would have been solved as they arose.
Instead of this, the anarcho-syndicalists, seeking to hide from “politics” in the trade unions, turned out to be, to the great surprise of the whole world and themselves, a fifth wheel in the cart of bourgeois democracy. But not for long; a fifth wheel is superfluous. After Garcia Oliver and his cohorts helped Stalin and his henchmen to take power away from the workers, the anarchists themselves were driven out of the government of the Popular Front. Even then they found nothing better to do than jump on the victor’s bandwagon and assure him of their devotion. The fear of the petty bourgeois before the big bourgeois, of the petty bureaucrat before the big bureaucrat, they covered up with lachrymose speeches about the sanctity of the united front (between a victim and the executioners) and about the inadmissibility of every kind of dictatorship, including their own. “After all, we could have taken power in July 1936 ...” “After all, we could have taken power in May 1937...” The Anarchists begged Stalin-Negrin to recognize and reward their treachery to the revolution. A revolting picture!
In and of itself, this self-justification that “we did not seize power not because we were unable but because we did not wish to, because we were against every kind of dictatorship,” and the like, contains an irrevocable condemnation of anarchism as an utterly anti-revolutionary doctrine. To renounce the conquest of power is voluntarily to leave the power with those who wield it, the exploiters. The essence of every revolution consisted and consists in putting a new class in power, thus enabling it to realize its own program in life. It is impossible to wage war and to reject victory. It is impossible to lead the masses towards insurrection without preparing for the conquest power.
No one could have prevented the Anarchists after the conquest of power from establishing the sort of regime they deem necessary, assuming, of course, that their program is realizable. But the Anarchist leaders themselves lost faith in it. They hid from power not because they are against “every kind of dictatorship” – in actuality, grumbling and whining, they supported and still support the dictatorship of Stalin-Negrin – but because they completely lost their principles and courage, if they ever had any. They were afraid of everything: “isolation,” “involvement,” “fascism.” They were afraid of France and England. More than anything these phrasemongers feared the revolutionary masses.
The renunciation of the conquest of power inevitably throws every workers’ organization into the swamp of reformism and turns it into a toy of the bourgeoisie; it cannot be otherwise in view of the class structure of society. In opposing the goal, the conquest of power, the Anarchists could not in the end fail to oppose the means, the revolution. The leaders of the CNT and FAI not only helped the bourgeoisie hold on to the shadow of power in July 1936; they also helped it to reestablish bit by bit what it had lost at one stroke. In May 1937, they sabotaged the uprising of the workers and thereby saved the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Thus anarchism, which wished merely to be anti-political, proved in reality to be anti-revolutionary and in the more critical moments – counter-revolutionary.
The Anarchist theoreticians, who after the great test of 1931-37 continue to repeat the old reactionary nonsense about Kronstadt, and who affirm that “Stalinism is the inevitable result of Marxism and Bolshevism,” simply demonstrate by this they are forever dead for the revolution.
You say that Marxism is in itself depraved and Stalinism is its legitimate progeny? But why are we revolutionary Marxists engaged in mortal combat with Stalinism throughout the world? Why does the Stalinist gang see in Trotskyism it chief enemy? Why does every approach to our views or our methods of action (Durruti, Andres, Nin, Landau, and others) compel the Stalinist gangsters to resort to bloody reprisals. Why, on the other hand, did the leaders of Spanish anarchism serve, during the time of the Moscow and Madrid crimes of the GPU, as ministers under Caballero-Negrin, that is as servants of the bourgeoisie and Stalin? Why even now, under the pretext of fighting fascism, do the Anarchists remain voluntary captives of Stalin-Negrin, the executioners of the revolution, who have demonstrated their incapacity to fight fascism?
By hiding behind Kronstadt and Makhno, the attorneys of anarchism will deceive nobody. In the Kronstadt episode and the struggle with Makhno, we defended the proletarian from the peasant counterrevolution. The Spanish Anarchists defended and continue to defend bourgeois counterrevolution from the proletariat revolution. No sophistry will delete from the annals of history the fact that anarchism and Stalinism in the Spanish revolution were on one side of the barricades while the working masses with the revolutionary Marxists were on the other. Such is the truth which will forever remain in the consciousness of the proletariat!
Role of the POUM
The record of the POUM is not much better. In the point of theory, it tried, to be sure, to base itself on the formula of permanent revolution (that is why the Stalinists called the POUMists Trotskyists). But the revolution is not satisfied with theoretical avowals. Instead of mobilizing the masses against the reformist leaders, including the Anarchists, the POUM tried to convince these gentlemen of the superiorities of socialism over capitalism. This tuning fork gave the pitch to all the articles and speeches of the POUM leaders. In order not to quarrel with the Anarchist leaders, they did not form their own nuclei inside the CNT, and in general did not conduct any kind of work there. To avoid sharp conflicts, they did not carry on revolutionary work in the republican army. They built instead “their own” trade unions and “their own” militia, which guarded “their own” institutions or occupied “their own” section of the front.
By isolating the revolutionary vanguard from the class, the POUM rendered the vanguard impotent and left the class without leadership. Politically the POUM remained throughout far closer to the Popular Front, for whose left wing it provided the cover, than to Bolshevism. That the POUM nevertheless fell victim to bloody and base repressions was due to the failure of the Popular Front to fulfill its mission, namely to stifle the socialist revolution – except by cutting off, piece by piece, its own left flank.
Contrary to its own intentions, the POUM proved to be, in the final analysis, the chief obstacle on the road to the creation of a revolutionary party. The platonic or diplomatic partisans of the Fourth International like Sneevliet, the leader of the Dutch Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party, who demonstratively supported the POUM in its halfway measures, its indecisiveness and evasiveness, in short, in its centrism, took upon themselves the greatest responsibility. Revolution abhors centrism. Revolution exposes and annihilates centrism. In passing, the revolution discredits the friends and attorneys of centrism. That is one of the most important lessons of the Spanish revolution.
The Problem of Arming
The Socialists and Anarchists who seek to justify their capitulation to Stalin by the necessity of paying for Moscow’s weapons with principles and conscience simply lie unskillfully. Of course, many of them would have preferred to disentangle themselves without murders and frame-ups. But every goal demands corresponding means. Beginning with April 1931, that is, long before the military intervention of Moscow, the Socialists and Anarchists did everything in their power to check the proletariat revolution. Stalin taught them how to carry this work to its conclusion. They became Stalin’s criminal accomplices only because they were his political cothinkers.
Had the Anarchist leaders in the least resembled revolutionists, they would have answered the first piece of blackmail from Moscow not only by continuing the socialist offensive but also by exposing Stalin’s counterrevolutionary conditions before the world working class. They would have thus forced the Moscow bureaucracy to choose openly between the socialist revolution and the Franco dictatorship. The Thermidorean bureaucracy fears and hates revolution. But it also fears being strangled in a fascist ring. Besides, it depends on the workers. All indications are that Moscow would have been forced to supply arms, and possibly at more reasonable prices.
But the world does not revolve around Stalinist Moscow. During a year and a half of civil war, the Spanish war industry could and should have been strengthened and developed by converting a number of civilian plants to war production. This work was not carried out only because Stalin and his Spanish allies equally feared the initiative of the workers’ organizations. A strong war industry would have become a powerful instrument in the hands of the workers. The leaders of the Popular Front preferred to depend on Moscow.
It is precisely on this question that the perfidious role of the Popular Front was very strikingly revealed. It thrust upon the workers’ organizations the responsibility for the treacherous deals of the bourgeoisie of Stalin. Insofar as the Anarchists remained a minority, they could not, of course, immediately hinder the ruling bloc from assuming whatever obligations they pleased toward Moscow and the masters of Moscow: London and Paris. But without ceasing to be the best fighters on the front, they could have and should have openly dissociated themselves from the betrayals and betrayers; they could and should have explained the real situation to the masses, mobilized them against the bourgeois government, and augmented their own forces from day to day in order in the end to conquer power and with it the Moscow arms.
And what if Moscow, in the absence of a Popular Front, should have refused to give arms altogether? And what, we answer to this, if the Soviet Union did not exist altogether? Revolutions have been victorious up to this time not at all thanks to high and mighty foreign patrons who supplied them with arms. As a rule, counterrevolution enjoyed foreign patronage. Must we recall the experiences of the intervention of French, English, American, Japanese, and other armies against the Soviets? The proletariat of Russia conquered domestic reaction and foreign interventionists without military support form the outside. Revolutions succeed, in the first place, with the help of a bold social program, which gives the masses the possibility of seizing weapons that are on the territory and disorganizing the army of the enemy. The Red Army seized French, English, and American military supplies and drove the foreign expeditionary corps into the sea. Has this really been forgotten?
If at the head of the armed workers and peasants, that is, at the head of so-called republican Spain, were revolutionists and not cowardly agents of the bourgeoisie, the problem of arming would never have been paramount. The army of Franco, including the colonial Riffians and the soldiers of Mussolini, was not at all immune to revolutionary contagion. Surrounded by the conflagration of the socialist uprising, the soldiers of fascism would have proved to be an insignificant quantity. Arms and military “geniuses” were not lacking in Madrid and Barcelona; what was lacking was a revolutionary party!
Conditions for victory
The conditions for victory of the masses in the civil war against the army exploiters are very simple in their essence.
1.The fighters of a revolutionary army must be clearly aware of the fact that they are fighting for their full social liberation and not for the reestablishment of the old (“democratic”) forms of exploitation.
2.The workers and peasants in the rear of the revolutionary army as well as in the rear of the enemy must know and understand the same thing.
3.The propaganda on their own front as well as on the enemy front and in both rears must be completely permeated with the spirit of social revolution. The slogan “First victory, then reforms,” is the slogan of all oppressors and exploiters from the Biblical kings down to Stalin.
4.Politics are determined by those classes and strata that participate in the struggle. The revolutionary masses must have a state apparatus that directly and immediately expresses their will. Only the soviets of workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ deputies can act as such an apparatus.
5.The revolutionary army must not only proclaim but also immediately realize in life the more pressing measures of social revolution in the provinces won by them: the expropriation of provisions, manufactured articles, and other stores on hand and the transfer of these to the needy; the redivision of shelter and housing in the interests of the toilers and especially of the families of the fighters; the expropriation of the land and agricultural inventory in the interests of the peasants; the establishment of workers’ control and soviet power in the place of the former bureaucracy.
6.Enemies of the socialist revolution, that is, exploiting elements and their agents, even if masquerading as “democrats,” “republicans,” “Socialists,” and “Anarchists,” must be mercilessly driven out of the army.
7.At the head of each military unit must be placed commissars possessing irreproachable authority as revolutionists and soldiers.
8.In every military unit there must be a firmly welded nucleus of the most self-sacrificing fighters, recommended by the workers’ organizations. The members of this nucleus have but one privilege: to be first under fire.
9.The commanding corps necessarily includes at first many alien and unreliable elements among the personnel. Their testing, retesting, and sifting must be carried through on the basis of combat experience, recommendations of commissars, and testimonials of rank-and-file fighters. Coincident with this must proceed an intense training of commanders drawn from the ranks of revolutionary workers.
10.The strategy of civil war must combine the rules of military art with the tasks of the social revolution. Not only in propaganda but also in military operations it is necessary to take into account the social composition of the various military units of the enemy (bourgeois volunteers, mobilized peasants, or as in Franco’s case, colonial slaves); and in choosing lines of operation, it is necessary to rigorously take into consideration the social structure of the corresponding territories (industrial regions, peasant regions, revolutionary or reactionary, regions of oppressed nationalities, etc.). In brief, revolutionary policy dominates strategy.
11.Both the revolutionary government and the executive committee of the workers and peasants must know how to win the complete confidence of the army and of the toiling population.
12.Foreign policy must have as its main objective the awakening of the revolutionary consciousness of the workers, the exploited peasants, and oppressed nationalities of the whole world.
Stalin Guaranteed the Conditions of Defeat
The conditions for victory, as we see, are perfectly plain. In their aggregate they bear the name of the socialist revolution. Not a single one of these conditions existed in Spain. The basic reason is – the absence of a revolutionary party. Stalin tried, it is true, to transfer to the soil of Spain, the outward practices of Bolshevism: the Politburo, commissars, cells, the GPU, etc. But he emptied these forms of their social content. He renounced the Bolshevik program and with it the soviets as the necessary form for the revolutionary initiative of the masses. He placed the technique of Bolshevism at the service of bourgeois property. In his bureaucratic narrow-mindedness, he imagined that “commissars” by themselves could guarantee victory. But the commissars of private property proved capable only of guaranteeing defeat.
The Spanish proletariat displayed first-rate military qualities. In its specific gravity in the country’s economic life, in its political and cultural level, the Spanish proletariat stood on the first day of the revolution not below but above the Russian proletariat at the beginning of 1917. On the road to victory, its own organizations stood as the chief obstacles. The commanding clique of Stalinists, in accordance with their counterrevolutionary function, consisted of hirelings, careerists, declassed elements, and in general, all types of social refuse. The representatives of other labor organizations – incurable reformists, Anarchists phrasemongers, helpless centrists of the POUM – grumbled, groaned, wavered, manuevered, but in the end adapted themselves to the Stalinists. As a result of their joint activity, the camp of social revolution – workers and peasants – proved to be subordinated to the bourgeoisie, or more correctly, to its shadow. It was bled white and its character destroyed.
There was no lack of heroism on the part of the masses or courage on the part of individual revolutionists. But the masses were left to their own resources while the revolutionists remained disunited, without a program, without a plan of action. The “republican” military commanders were more concerned with crushing the social revolution than with scoring military victories. The soldiers lost confidence in their commanders, the masses in the government; the peasants stepped aside; the workers became exhausted; defeat followed defeat; demoralization grew apace. All this was not difficult to foresee from the beginning of the civil war. By setting itself the task of rescuing the capitalist regime, the Popular Front doomed itself to military defeat. By turning Bolshevism on its head, Stalin succeeded completely in fulfilling the role of gravedigger of the revolution.
It ought to be added that the Spanish experience once again demonstrates that Stalin failed completely to understand either the October Revolution or the Russian civil war. His slow moving provincial mind lagged hopelessly behind the tempestuous march of events in 1917-21. In those of his speeches and articles in 1917 where he expressed his own ideas, his later Thermidorean “doctrine” is fully implanted. In this sense, Stalin in Spain in 1937 is the continuator of Stalin of the March 1917 conference of the Bolsheviks. But in 1917 he merely feared the revolutionary workers; in 1937 he strangled them. The opportunist had become the executioner.
“Civil War in the Rear”
But, after all, victory over the governments of Caballero and Negrin would have necessitated a civil war in the rear of the republican army! – the democratic philistine exclaims with horror. As if apart from this, in republican Spain no civil war has ever existed, and at that the basest and most perfidious one – the war of the proprietors and exploiters against the workers and peasants. This uninterrupted war finds expression in the arrests and murders of revolutionists, the crushing of the mass movement, the disarming of the workers, the arming of the bourgeois police, the abandoning of workers’ detachments without arms and without help on the front, and finally, the artificial restriction of the development of war industry.
Each of these acts as a cruel blow to the front, direct military treason, dictated by the class interests of the bourgeoisie. But “democratic” philistines – including Stalinists, Socialists, and Anarchists – regard the civil war of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, even in areas most closely adjoining the front, as a natural and inescapable war, having as its tasks the safeguarding of the “unity of the Popular Front.” On the other hand, the civil war of the proletariat against the “republican” counterrevolution is, in the eyes of the same philistines, a criminal, “fascists,” Trotskyist war, disrupting ... “the unity of the anti-fascist forces.” Scores of Norman Thomases, Major Atlees, Otto Bauers, Zyromskys, Malrauxes, and such petty peddlers of lies as Duranty and Louis Fischer spread this slavish wisdom throughout our planet. Meanwhile the government of the Popular Front moves from Madrid to Valencia, from Valencia to Barcelona.
If, as the facts attest, only the socialist revolution is capable of crushing fascism, then on the other hand a successful uprising of the proletariat is conceivable only when the ruling classes are caught in the vise of the greatest difficulties. However, the democratic philistines invoke precisely these difficulties as proof of the impressibility of the proletarian uprising. Were the proletariat to wait for the democratic philistines to tell them the hour of their liberation, they would remain slaves forever. To teach workers to recognize reactionary philistines under all their masks and to despise them regardless of the mask is the first and paramount duty of a revolutionist!
The Outcome
The dictatorship of the Stalinists over the republican camp is not long-lived in its essence. Should the defeats stemming from the politics of the Popular Front once more impel the Spanish proletariat to a revolutionary assault, this time successfully, the Stalinist clique will be swept away with an iron broom. But should Stalin – as is unfortunately the likelihood – succeed in bringing the work of gravedigger of the revolution to its conclusion, he will not even in this case earn thanks. The Spanish bourgeoisie needed him as executioner, but it has no need for him at all as patron or tutor. London and Paris on the one hand, and Berlin and Rome on the other, are in its eyes considerably more solvent firms than Moscow. It is possible that Stalin himself wants to cover his traces in Spain before the final catastrophe; he thus hopes to unload the responsibility for the defeat on his closest allies. After this Litvinov will solicit Franco for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations. All this we have seen more than once.
Even a complete military victory of the so-called republican army over General Franco, however, would not signify the triumph of “democracy.” The workers and peasants have twice placed bourgeois republicans and their left agents in power: in April 1931 and in February 1936. Both times the heroes of the Popular Front surrendered the victory of the people to the most reactionary and the most serious representatives of the bourgeoisie. A third victory, gained by the generals of the Popular Front, would signify their inevitable agreement with the fascist bourgeoisie on the backs of the workers and peasants. Such a regime will be nothing but a different form of military dictatorship, perhaps without a monarchy and without the open domination of the Catholic Church.
Finally, it is possible that the partial victories of the republicans will be utilized by the “disinterested” Anglo-French intermediaries in order to reconcile the fighting camps. It is not difficult to understand that in the event of such a variant the final remnants of the “democracy” will be stifled in the fraternal embrace of the generals Miaja (communist!) and Franco (fascists!). Let me repeat once again: victory will go either to the socialist revolution or to fascism.
It is not excluded, by the way, that the tragedy might at the last moment make way to farce. When the heroes of the Popular Front have to flee their last capital, they might, before embarking on steamers and airplanes, perhaps proclaim a series of “socialist” reforms in order to leave a “good memory” with the people. But nothing will avail. The workers of the world will remember with hatred and contempt the parties that ruined the heroic revolution.
The tragic experience of Spain is a terrible – perhaps final – warning before still greater events, a warning addressed to all the advanced workers of the world. “Revolutions,” Marx said, “are the locomotives of history.” They move faster than the thought of semi-revolutionary or quarter-revolutionary parties. Whoever lags behind falls under the wheels of the locomotive, and consequently – and this is the chief danger – the locomotive itself is also not infrequently wrecked.
It is necessary to think out the problem of the revolution to the end, to its ultimate concrete conclusions. It is necessary to adjust policy to the basic laws of the revolution, i.e., to the movement of the embattled classes and not the prejudices or fears of the superficial petty-bourgeois groups who call themselves “Popular” Fronts and every other kind of front. During revolution the line of least resistance is the line of greatest disaster. To fear “isolation” from the bourgeoisie is to incur isolation from the masses. Adaptation to the conservative prejudices of the labor aristocracy is betrayal of the workers and the revolution. An excess “caution” is the most baneful lack of caution. This is the chief lesson of the destruction of the most honest political organization in Spain, namely, the centrist POUM. The parties and groups of the London Bureau obviously either do not wish to draw the necessary conclusions from the last warning of history or are unable to do so. By this token they doom themselves.
By way of compensation, a new generation of revolutionists is now being educated by the lessons of the defeats. This generation has verified in action the ignominious reputation of the Second International. It has plumbed the depths of the Third International’s downfall. It has learned how to judge the Anarchists not by their words but by their deeds. It is a great inestimable school, paid for with the blood of countless fighters! The revolutionary cadres are now gathering only under the banner of the Fourth International. Born amid the roar of defeats, the Fourth International will lead the toilers to victory.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*********
Leon Trotsky
The Lessons of Spain:
The Last Warning
(1937)
Written: End of 1937
First Published: Socialist Appeal [New York], January 8th and 15th, 1938
Translated: Socialist Appeal
Transcription/HTML Markup: Matt Siegried
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 1999. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
Menshevism and Bolshevism in Spain
All general staffs are studying closely the military operations in Ethiopia, in Spain and in the Far East in preparation for the great future war. The battles of the Spanish proletariat heat lightening flashes of the coming world revolution, should be no less attentively studied by the revolutionary staffs. Under this condition and this condition alone will the coming events not take us unawares.
Three ideologies fought – with unequal forces – in the so-called republican camp, namely, Menshevism, Bolshevism, and anarchism. As regards the bourgeois republican parties, they were without either independent ideas or independent political significance and were able to maintain themselves only by climbing on the backs of the reformists and Anarchists. Moreover, it is no exaggeration to say that the leaders of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism did everything to repudiate their doctrine and virtually reduce its significance to zero. Actually two doctrines in the so-called republican camp fought – Menshevism and Bolshevism.
According to the Socialists and Stalinists, i.e., the Mensheviks of the first and second instances, the Spanish revolution was called upon to solve only its “democratic” tasks, for which a united front with the “democratic” bourgeoisie was indispensable. From this point of view, any and all attempts of the proletariat to go beyond the limits of bourgeois democracy are not only premature but also fatal. Furthermore, on the agenda stands not the revolution but the struggle against insurgent Franco.
Fascism, however, is not feudal but bourgeois reaction. A successful fight against bourgeois reaction can be waged only with the forces and methods of the proletariat revolution. Menshevism, itself a branch of bourgeois thought, does not have and cannot have any inkling of these facts.
The Bolshevik point of view, clearly expressed only by the young section of the Fourth International, takes the theory of permanent revolution as its starting point, namely, that even purely democratic problems, like the liquidation of semi-feudal land ownership, cannot be solved without the conquest of power by the proletariat; but this in turn places the socialist revolution on the agenda. Moreover, during the very first stages of the revolution, the Spanish workers themselves posed in practice not merely democratic problems but also purely socialist ones. The demand not to transgress the bounds of bourgeois democracy signifies in practice not a defense of the democratic revolution but a repudiation of it. Only through an overturn in agrarian relations could the peasantry, the great mass of the population, have been transformed into a powerful bulwark against fascism. But the landowners are intimately bound up with the commercial, industrial, and banking bourgeoisie, and the bourgeois intelligentsia that depends on them. The party of the proletariat was thus faced with a choice between going with the peasant masses or with the liberal bourgeoisie. There could be only one reason to include the peasantry and the liberal bourgeoisie in the same coalition at the same time: to help the bourgeoisie deceive the peasantry and thus isolate the workers. The agrarian revolution could have been accomplished only against the bourgeoisie, and therefore only through the masses of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There is no third, intermediate regime.
From the standpoint of theory, the most astonishing thing about Stalin’s Spanish policy is the utter disregard for the ABC of Leninism. After a delay of several decades – and what decades! – the Comintern has fully rehabilitated the doctrine of Menshevism. More than that, the Comintern has contrived to render this doctrine more “consistent” and by that token more absurd. In czarist Russia, on the threshold of 1905, the formula of “purely democratic revolution” had behind it, in any case, immeasurably more arguments than in 1937 in Spain. It is hardly astonishing that in modern Spain “the liberal labor policy” of Menshevism has been converted into the reactionary anti-labor policy of Stalinism. At the same time the doctrine of the Mensheviks, this caricature of Marxism, has been converted into a caricature of itself.
“Theory” of the Popular Front
It would be naive, however, to think that the politics of the Comintern in Spain stem from a theoretical “mistake”. Stalinism is not guided by Marxist Theory, or for that matter any theory at all, but by the empirical interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. In their intimate circles, the Soviet cynics mock Dimitrov’s “philosophy” of the Popular Front. But they have at their disposal for deceiving the masses large cadres of propagators of this holy formula, sincere ones and cheats, simpletons and charlatans. Louis Fischer, with his ignorance and smugness, with his provincial rationalism and congenital deafness to revolution, is the most repulsive representative of this unattractive brotherhood. “The union of progressive forces!” “The Triumph of the idea of the Popular Front!” “The assault of the Trotskyists on the unity of the anti-fascist ranks!” ... Who will believe that the Communist Manifesto was written ninety years ago?
The theoreticians of the Popular Front do not essentially go beyond the first rule of arithmetic, that is, addition: “Communists” plus Socialists plus Anarchists plus liberals add up to a total which is greater than their respective isolated numbers. Such is all their wisdom. However, arithmetic alone does not suffice here. One needs as well at least mechanics. The law of the parallelogram of forces applies to politics as well. In such a parallelogram, we know that the resultant is shorter, the more component forces diverge from each other. When political allies tend to pull in opposite directions, the resultant prove equal to zero.
A bloc of divergent political groups of the working class is sometimes completely indispensable for the solution of common practical problems. In certain historical circumstances, such a bloc is capable of attracting the oppressed petty-bourgeois masses whose interests are close to the interests of the proletariat. The joint force of such a bloc can prove far stronger than the sum of the forces of each of its component parts. On the contrary, the political alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, whose interests on basic questions in the present epoch diverge at an angle of 180 degrees, as a general rule is capable only of paralyzing the revolutionary force of the proletariat.
Civil war, in which the force of naked coercion is hardly effective, demands of its participants the spirit of supreme self-abnegation. The workers and peasants can assure victory only if they wage a struggle for their own emancipation. Under these conditions, to subordinate the proletariat to the leadership of the bourgeoisie means beforehand to assure defeat in the civil war.
These simple truths are least of all the products of pure theoretical analysis. On the contrary, they represent the unassailable deduction from the entire experience if history, beginning at least with 1848. The modern history of bourgeois society is filled with all sorts of Popular Fronts, i.e. the most diverse political combinations for the deception of the toilers. The Spanish experience is only a new and tragic link in this chain of crimes and betrayals.
Alliance with the Bourgeoisie’s Shadow
Politically most striking is the fact that the Spanish Popular Front lacked in reality even a parallelogram of forces. The bourgeoisie’s place was occupied by its shadow. Through the medium of the Stalinists, Socialists, and Anarchists, the Spanish bourgeoisie subordinated the proletariat to itself without even bothering to participate in the Popular Front. The overwhelming majority of the exploiters of all political shades openly went over to the camp of Franco. Without any theory of “permanent revolution,” the Spanish bourgeoisie understood from the outset that the revolutionary mass movement, no matter how it starts, is directed against private ownership of land and the means of production, and that it is utterly impossible to cope with this movement by democratic measures.
That is why only insignificant debris from the possessing classes remained in the republican camp: Messrs. Azaña, Companys, and the like – political attorneys of the bourgeoisie but not the bourgeoisie itself. Having staked everything on a military dictatorship, the possessing classes were able, at the same time, to make use of the political representatives of yesterday in order to paralyze, disorganize, and afterward strangle the socialist movement of the masses in “republican” territory.
Without in the slightest degree representing the Spanish bourgeoisie, the left republicans still less represented the workers and peasants. They represented no one but themselves. Thanks, however, to their allies – the Socialists, Stalinists, and Anarchists – these political phantoms played decisive role in the revolution. How? Very simply. By incarnating the principles of the “democratic revolution,” that is, the inviolability of private property.
The Stalinists in the Popular Front
The reasons of the rise of the Spanish Popular Front and its inner mechanics are perfectly clear. The task of the retired leaders of the left bourgeoisie consisted in checking the revolution of the masses and the regaining for themselves the lost confidence of the exploiters: “Why do you need Franco if we, the republicans, can do the same thing?” The interests of Azaña and Companys fully coincided at this central point with the interests of Stalin, who needed gain the confidence of the French and British bourgeoisie by proving to them in action his ability to preserve “order” against “anarchy.” Stalin needed Azaña and Companys as a cover before the workers: Stalin himself, of course, is for socialism, but one must take care not to repel the republican bourgeoisie! Azaña and Companys needed Stalin as an experienced executioner, with the authority of a revols time not at all thanks to high and mighty foreign patrons who supplied “this time not at all thanks to be dared to attack the workers.
The classic reformists of the Second International, long ago derailed by the course of the class struggle, began to feel a new tide of confidence, thanks to the support of Moscow. This support, incidentally, was not given to all reformists but only to those most reactionary. Caballero represented that face of the Socialist Party that was turned toward the workers’ aristocracy. Negrin and Prieto always looked towards the bourgeoisie. Negrin won over Caballero with the help of Moscow. The left Socialists and Anarchists, the captives of the Popular Front, tried, it is true, to save whatever could be saved of democracy. But inasmuch as they did not dare to mobilize the masses against the gendarmes of the Popular Front, their efforts at the end were reduced to plaints and wails. The Stalinists were thus in alliance with the extreme right, avowedly bourgeois wing of the Socialist Party. They directed their repressions against the left – the POUM, the Anarchists, the “left” Socialists – in other words, against the centrist groupings who reflected, even in a most remote degree, the pressure of the revolutionary masses,
This political fact, very significant in itself, provides at the same time the measure of the degeneration of the Comintern in the last few years. I once defined Stalinism as bureaucratic centrism, and events brought a series of corroborations of the correctness of this definition. But it is obviously obsolete today. The interests of the Bonapartist bureaucracy can no longer be reconciled with centrist hesitation and vacillation. In search of reconciliation with the bourgeoisie, the Stalinist clique is capable of entering into alliances only with the most conservative groupings among the international labor aristocracy. This has acted to fix definitively the counterrevolutionary character of Stalinism on the international arena.
Counter-Revolutionary Superiorities of Stalinism
This brings us right up to the solution of the enigma of how and why the Communist Party of Spain, so insignificant numerically and with a leadership so poor in caliber, proved capable of gathering into its hands all reins of power, in the face of the incomparably more powerful organizations of the Socialists and Anarchists. The usual explanation that the Stalinists simply bartered Soviet weapons for power is far too superficial. In return for munitions, Moscow received Spanish gold. According to the laws of the capitalist market, this covers everything. How then did Stalin contrive to get power in the bargain?
The customary answer is that the Soviet government, having raised its authority in the eyes of the masses by furnishing military supplies, demanded as a condition of its “collaboration” drastic measures against revolutionists and thus removed dangerous opponents from its path. All this is quite indisputable but it is only one aspect of the matter, and the least important at that.
Despite the “authority” created by Soviet shipments, the Spanish Communist Party remained a small minority and met with ever-growing hatred on the part of the workers. On the other hand, it was not enough for Moscow to set conditions; Valencia had to accede to them. This is the heart of the matter. Not only Zamora, Companys, and Negrin, but also Caballero, during his incumbency as premier, were all more or less ready to accede to the demands of Moscow. Why? Because these gentlemen themselves wished to keep the revolution within bourgeois limits. They were deathly afraid of every revolutionary onslaught of the workers.
Stalin with his munitions and with his counterrevolutionary ultimatum was a savior for all these groups. He guaranteed them, so they hoped, military victory over Franco, and at the same time, he freed them from all responsibility for the course of the revolution. They hastened to put their Socialist and Anarchist masks into the closet in the hope of making use of them again after Moscow reestablished bourgeois democracy for them. As the finishing touch to their comfort, these gentlemen could henceforth, justify their betrayal to the workers by the necessity of a military agreement with Stalin. Stalin on his part justifies his counterrevolutionary politics by the necessity of maintaining an alliance with the republican bourgeoisie.
Only from this broader point of view can we get a clear picture of the angelic toleration which such champions of justice and freedom as Azaña, Negrin, Companys, Caballero, Garcia Oliver, and others showed towards the crimes of the GPU. If they had no other choice, as they affirm, it was not at all because they had no means of paying for airplanes and tanks other than with the heads of the revolutionists and the rights of the workers, but because their own “purely democratic”, that is, anti-socialist, program could be realized by no other measures save terror. When the workers and peasants enter on the path of their revolution – when they seize factories and estates, drive out old owners, conquer power in the provinces – then the bourgeois counterrevolution – democratic, Stalinist, or fascist alike – has no other means of checking this movement except through bloody coercion, supplemented by lies and deceit. The superiority of the Stalinist clique on this road consisted in its ability to apply instantly measures that were beyond the capacity of Azaña, Companys, Negrin, and their left allies.
Stalin Confirms in His Own Way the Correctness of the Theory of Permanent Revolution
Two irreconcilable programs thus confronted each other on the territory of republican Spain. On the one hand, the program of saving at any cost private property from the proletariat, and saving as far as possible democracy from Franco; on the other hand, the program of abolishing private property through the conquest of power by the proletariat. The first program expressed the interest of capitalism through the medium of the labor aristocracy, the top petty-bourgeois circles, and especially the Soviet bureaucracy. The second program translated into the language of Marxism the tendencies of the revolutionary mass movement, not fully conscious but powerful. Unfortunately for the revolution, between the handful of Bolsheviks and the revolutionary proletariat stood counter-revolutionary wall of the Popular Front.
The policy of the Popular Front was, in its turn, not at all determined by the blackmail of Stalin as supplier of arms. There was, of course, no lack of blackmail. But the reason for the success of this blackmail was inherent in the inner conditions of the revolution itself. For six years, its social setting was the growing onslaught of the masses against the regime of semi-feudal and bourgeois property. The need of defending this property by the most extreme measures threw the bourgeoisie into Franco’s arms. The republican government had promised the bourgeoisie to defend property by “democratic” measures, but revealed, especially in July 1936, its complete bankruptcy. When the situation on the property front became even more threatening than on the military front, the democrats of all colors, including the Anarchists, bowed before Stalin; and he found no other methods, in his own arsenal than the methods of Franco.
The hounding of “Trotskyists”, POUMists, revolutionary Anarchists and left Socialists; the filthy slander; the false documents; the tortures in Stalinist prisons; the murders from ambush – without all this the bourgeois regime under the republican flag could not have lasted even two months. The GPU proved to be the master of the situation only because it defended the interests of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat more consistently than the others, i.e., with the greatest baseness and bloodthirstiness.
In the struggle against the socialist revolution, the “democratic” Kerensky at first sought support in the military dictatorship of Kornilov and later tried to enter Petrograd in the baggage train of the monarchist general Krasnov. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks were compelled, in order to carry the democratic revolution through to the end, to overthrow the government of “democratic” charlatans and babblers. In the process they put an end thereby to every kind of attempt at military (or “fascist”) dictatorship.
The Spanish revolution once again demonstrates that it is impossible to defend democracy against the methods of fascist reaction. And conversely, it is impossible to conduct a genuine struggle against fascism otherwise than through the methods of the proletarian revolution. Stalin waged war against “Trotskyism” (proletarian revolution), destroying democracy by the Bonapartist measures of the GPU. This refutes once again and once and for all the old Menshevik theory, adopted by the Comintern, in accordance with which the democratic and socialist revolutions are transformed into two independent historic chapters, separated from each other in point of time. The work of the Moscow executioners confirms in its own way the correctness of the theory of permanent revolution.
Role of the Anarchists
The Anarchists had no independent position of any kind in the Spanish revolution. All they did was waver between Bolshevism and Menshevism. More precisely, the Anarchist workers instinctively yearned to enter the Bolshevik road (July 19, 1936, and May days of 1937) while their leaders, on the contrary, with all their might drove the masses into the camp of the Popular Front, i.e., of the bourgeois regime.
The Anarchists revealed a fatal lack of understanding of the laws of the revolution and its tasks by seeking to limit themselves to their own trade unions, that is, to organizations permeated with the routine of peaceful times, and by ignoring what went on outside the framework of the trade unions, among the masses, among the political parties, and in the government apparatus. Had the Anarchists been revolutionists, they would first of all have called for the creation of soviets, which unite the representatives of all the toilers of city and country, including the most oppressed strata, who never joined the trade unions. The revolutionary workers would have naturally occupied the dominant position in these soviets. The Stalinists would have remained an insignificant minority. The proletariat would have convinced itself of its own invincible strength. The apparatus of the bourgeois state would have hung suspended in the air. One strong blow would have sufficed to pulverize this apparatus. The socialist revolution would have received a powerful impetus. The French proletariat would not for long permitted Leon Blum to blockade the proletariat revolution beyond the Pyrenees. Neither could the Moscow bureaucracy have permitted itself such a luxury. The most difficult questions would have been solved as they arose.
Instead of this, the anarcho-syndicalists, seeking to hide from “politics” in the trade unions, turned out to be, to the great surprise of the whole world and themselves, a fifth wheel in the cart of bourgeois democracy. But not for long; a fifth wheel is superfluous. After Garcia Oliver and his cohorts helped Stalin and his henchmen to take power away from the workers, the anarchists themselves were driven out of the government of the Popular Front. Even then they found nothing better to do than jump on the victor’s bandwagon and assure him of their devotion. The fear of the petty bourgeois before the big bourgeois, of the petty bureaucrat before the big bureaucrat, they covered up with lachrymose speeches about the sanctity of the united front (between a victim and the executioners) and about the inadmissibility of every kind of dictatorship, including their own. “After all, we could have taken power in July 1936 ...” “After all, we could have taken power in May 1937...” The Anarchists begged Stalin-Negrin to recognize and reward their treachery to the revolution. A revolting picture!
In and of itself, this self-justification that “we did not seize power not because we were unable but because we did not wish to, because we were against every kind of dictatorship,” and the like, contains an irrevocable condemnation of anarchism as an utterly anti-revolutionary doctrine. To renounce the conquest of power is voluntarily to leave the power with those who wield it, the exploiters. The essence of every revolution consisted and consists in putting a new class in power, thus enabling it to realize its own program in life. It is impossible to wage war and to reject victory. It is impossible to lead the masses towards insurrection without preparing for the conquest power.
No one could have prevented the Anarchists after the conquest of power from establishing the sort of regime they deem necessary, assuming, of course, that their program is realizable. But the Anarchist leaders themselves lost faith in it. They hid from power not because they are against “every kind of dictatorship” – in actuality, grumbling and whining, they supported and still support the dictatorship of Stalin-Negrin – but because they completely lost their principles and courage, if they ever had any. They were afraid of everything: “isolation,” “involvement,” “fascism.” They were afraid of France and England. More than anything these phrasemongers feared the revolutionary masses.
The renunciation of the conquest of power inevitably throws every workers’ organization into the swamp of reformism and turns it into a toy of the bourgeoisie; it cannot be otherwise in view of the class structure of society. In opposing the goal, the conquest of power, the Anarchists could not in the end fail to oppose the means, the revolution. The leaders of the CNT and FAI not only helped the bourgeoisie hold on to the shadow of power in July 1936; they also helped it to reestablish bit by bit what it had lost at one stroke. In May 1937, they sabotaged the uprising of the workers and thereby saved the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Thus anarchism, which wished merely to be anti-political, proved in reality to be anti-revolutionary and in the more critical moments – counter-revolutionary.
The Anarchist theoreticians, who after the great test of 1931-37 continue to repeat the old reactionary nonsense about Kronstadt, and who affirm that “Stalinism is the inevitable result of Marxism and Bolshevism,” simply demonstrate by this they are forever dead for the revolution.
You say that Marxism is in itself depraved and Stalinism is its legitimate progeny? But why are we revolutionary Marxists engaged in mortal combat with Stalinism throughout the world? Why does the Stalinist gang see in Trotskyism it chief enemy? Why does every approach to our views or our methods of action (Durruti, Andres, Nin, Landau, and others) compel the Stalinist gangsters to resort to bloody reprisals. Why, on the other hand, did the leaders of Spanish anarchism serve, during the time of the Moscow and Madrid crimes of the GPU, as ministers under Caballero-Negrin, that is as servants of the bourgeoisie and Stalin? Why even now, under the pretext of fighting fascism, do the Anarchists remain voluntary captives of Stalin-Negrin, the executioners of the revolution, who have demonstrated their incapacity to fight fascism?
By hiding behind Kronstadt and Makhno, the attorneys of anarchism will deceive nobody. In the Kronstadt episode and the struggle with Makhno, we defended the proletarian from the peasant counterrevolution. The Spanish Anarchists defended and continue to defend bourgeois counterrevolution from the proletariat revolution. No sophistry will delete from the annals of history the fact that anarchism and Stalinism in the Spanish revolution were on one side of the barricades while the working masses with the revolutionary Marxists were on the other. Such is the truth which will forever remain in the consciousness of the proletariat!
Role of the POUM
The record of the POUM is not much better. In the point of theory, it tried, to be sure, to base itself on the formula of permanent revolution (that is why the Stalinists called the POUMists Trotskyists). But the revolution is not satisfied with theoretical avowals. Instead of mobilizing the masses against the reformist leaders, including the Anarchists, the POUM tried to convince these gentlemen of the superiorities of socialism over capitalism. This tuning fork gave the pitch to all the articles and speeches of the POUM leaders. In order not to quarrel with the Anarchist leaders, they did not form their own nuclei inside the CNT, and in general did not conduct any kind of work there. To avoid sharp conflicts, they did not carry on revolutionary work in the republican army. They built instead “their own” trade unions and “their own” militia, which guarded “their own” institutions or occupied “their own” section of the front.
By isolating the revolutionary vanguard from the class, the POUM rendered the vanguard impotent and left the class without leadership. Politically the POUM remained throughout far closer to the Popular Front, for whose left wing it provided the cover, than to Bolshevism. That the POUM nevertheless fell victim to bloody and base repressions was due to the failure of the Popular Front to fulfill its mission, namely to stifle the socialist revolution – except by cutting off, piece by piece, its own left flank.
Contrary to its own intentions, the POUM proved to be, in the final analysis, the chief obstacle on the road to the creation of a revolutionary party. The platonic or diplomatic partisans of the Fourth International like Sneevliet, the leader of the Dutch Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party, who demonstratively supported the POUM in its halfway measures, its indecisiveness and evasiveness, in short, in its centrism, took upon themselves the greatest responsibility. Revolution abhors centrism. Revolution exposes and annihilates centrism. In passing, the revolution discredits the friends and attorneys of centrism. That is one of the most important lessons of the Spanish revolution.
The Problem of Arming
The Socialists and Anarchists who seek to justify their capitulation to Stalin by the necessity of paying for Moscow’s weapons with principles and conscience simply lie unskillfully. Of course, many of them would have preferred to disentangle themselves without murders and frame-ups. But every goal demands corresponding means. Beginning with April 1931, that is, long before the military intervention of Moscow, the Socialists and Anarchists did everything in their power to check the proletariat revolution. Stalin taught them how to carry this work to its conclusion. They became Stalin’s criminal accomplices only because they were his political cothinkers.
Had the Anarchist leaders in the least resembled revolutionists, they would have answered the first piece of blackmail from Moscow not only by continuing the socialist offensive but also by exposing Stalin’s counterrevolutionary conditions before the world working class. They would have thus forced the Moscow bureaucracy to choose openly between the socialist revolution and the Franco dictatorship. The Thermidorean bureaucracy fears and hates revolution. But it also fears being strangled in a fascist ring. Besides, it depends on the workers. All indications are that Moscow would have been forced to supply arms, and possibly at more reasonable prices.
But the world does not revolve around Stalinist Moscow. During a year and a half of civil war, the Spanish war industry could and should have been strengthened and developed by converting a number of civilian plants to war production. This work was not carried out only because Stalin and his Spanish allies equally feared the initiative of the workers’ organizations. A strong war industry would have become a powerful instrument in the hands of the workers. The leaders of the Popular Front preferred to depend on Moscow.
It is precisely on this question that the perfidious role of the Popular Front was very strikingly revealed. It thrust upon the workers’ organizations the responsibility for the treacherous deals of the bourgeoisie of Stalin. Insofar as the Anarchists remained a minority, they could not, of course, immediately hinder the ruling bloc from assuming whatever obligations they pleased toward Moscow and the masters of Moscow: London and Paris. But without ceasing to be the best fighters on the front, they could have and should have openly dissociated themselves from the betrayals and betrayers; they could and should have explained the real situation to the masses, mobilized them against the bourgeois government, and augmented their own forces from day to day in order in the end to conquer power and with it the Moscow arms.
And what if Moscow, in the absence of a Popular Front, should have refused to give arms altogether? And what, we answer to this, if the Soviet Union did not exist altogether? Revolutions have been victorious up to this time not at all thanks to high and mighty foreign patrons who supplied them with arms. As a rule, counterrevolution enjoyed foreign patronage. Must we recall the experiences of the intervention of French, English, American, Japanese, and other armies against the Soviets? The proletariat of Russia conquered domestic reaction and foreign interventionists without military support form the outside. Revolutions succeed, in the first place, with the help of a bold social program, which gives the masses the possibility of seizing weapons that are on the territory and disorganizing the army of the enemy. The Red Army seized French, English, and American military supplies and drove the foreign expeditionary corps into the sea. Has this really been forgotten?
If at the head of the armed workers and peasants, that is, at the head of so-called republican Spain, were revolutionists and not cowardly agents of the bourgeoisie, the problem of arming would never have been paramount. The army of Franco, including the colonial Riffians and the soldiers of Mussolini, was not at all immune to revolutionary contagion. Surrounded by the conflagration of the socialist uprising, the soldiers of fascism would have proved to be an insignificant quantity. Arms and military “geniuses” were not lacking in Madrid and Barcelona; what was lacking was a revolutionary party!
Conditions for victory
The conditions for victory of the masses in the civil war against the army exploiters are very simple in their essence.
1.The fighters of a revolutionary army must be clearly aware of the fact that they are fighting for their full social liberation and not for the reestablishment of the old (“democratic”) forms of exploitation.
2.The workers and peasants in the rear of the revolutionary army as well as in the rear of the enemy must know and understand the same thing.
3.The propaganda on their own front as well as on the enemy front and in both rears must be completely permeated with the spirit of social revolution. The slogan “First victory, then reforms,” is the slogan of all oppressors and exploiters from the Biblical kings down to Stalin.
4.Politics are determined by those classes and strata that participate in the struggle. The revolutionary masses must have a state apparatus that directly and immediately expresses their will. Only the soviets of workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ deputies can act as such an apparatus.
5.The revolutionary army must not only proclaim but also immediately realize in life the more pressing measures of social revolution in the provinces won by them: the expropriation of provisions, manufactured articles, and other stores on hand and the transfer of these to the needy; the redivision of shelter and housing in the interests of the toilers and especially of the families of the fighters; the expropriation of the land and agricultural inventory in the interests of the peasants; the establishment of workers’ control and soviet power in the place of the former bureaucracy.
6.Enemies of the socialist revolution, that is, exploiting elements and their agents, even if masquerading as “democrats,” “republicans,” “Socialists,” and “Anarchists,” must be mercilessly driven out of the army.
7.At the head of each military unit must be placed commissars possessing irreproachable authority as revolutionists and soldiers.
8.In every military unit there must be a firmly welded nucleus of the most self-sacrificing fighters, recommended by the workers’ organizations. The members of this nucleus have but one privilege: to be first under fire.
9.The commanding corps necessarily includes at first many alien and unreliable elements among the personnel. Their testing, retesting, and sifting must be carried through on the basis of combat experience, recommendations of commissars, and testimonials of rank-and-file fighters. Coincident with this must proceed an intense training of commanders drawn from the ranks of revolutionary workers.
10.The strategy of civil war must combine the rules of military art with the tasks of the social revolution. Not only in propaganda but also in military operations it is necessary to take into account the social composition of the various military units of the enemy (bourgeois volunteers, mobilized peasants, or as in Franco’s case, colonial slaves); and in choosing lines of operation, it is necessary to rigorously take into consideration the social structure of the corresponding territories (industrial regions, peasant regions, revolutionary or reactionary, regions of oppressed nationalities, etc.). In brief, revolutionary policy dominates strategy.
11.Both the revolutionary government and the executive committee of the workers and peasants must know how to win the complete confidence of the army and of the toiling population.
12.Foreign policy must have as its main objective the awakening of the revolutionary consciousness of the workers, the exploited peasants, and oppressed nationalities of the whole world.
Stalin Guaranteed the Conditions of Defeat
The conditions for victory, as we see, are perfectly plain. In their aggregate they bear the name of the socialist revolution. Not a single one of these conditions existed in Spain. The basic reason is – the absence of a revolutionary party. Stalin tried, it is true, to transfer to the soil of Spain, the outward practices of Bolshevism: the Politburo, commissars, cells, the GPU, etc. But he emptied these forms of their social content. He renounced the Bolshevik program and with it the soviets as the necessary form for the revolutionary initiative of the masses. He placed the technique of Bolshevism at the service of bourgeois property. In his bureaucratic narrow-mindedness, he imagined that “commissars” by themselves could guarantee victory. But the commissars of private property proved capable only of guaranteeing defeat.
The Spanish proletariat displayed first-rate military qualities. In its specific gravity in the country’s economic life, in its political and cultural level, the Spanish proletariat stood on the first day of the revolution not below but above the Russian proletariat at the beginning of 1917. On the road to victory, its own organizations stood as the chief obstacles. The commanding clique of Stalinists, in accordance with their counterrevolutionary function, consisted of hirelings, careerists, declassed elements, and in general, all types of social refuse. The representatives of other labor organizations – incurable reformists, Anarchists phrasemongers, helpless centrists of the POUM – grumbled, groaned, wavered, manuevered, but in the end adapted themselves to the Stalinists. As a result of their joint activity, the camp of social revolution – workers and peasants – proved to be subordinated to the bourgeoisie, or more correctly, to its shadow. It was bled white and its character destroyed.
There was no lack of heroism on the part of the masses or courage on the part of individual revolutionists. But the masses were left to their own resources while the revolutionists remained disunited, without a program, without a plan of action. The “republican” military commanders were more concerned with crushing the social revolution than with scoring military victories. The soldiers lost confidence in their commanders, the masses in the government; the peasants stepped aside; the workers became exhausted; defeat followed defeat; demoralization grew apace. All this was not difficult to foresee from the beginning of the civil war. By setting itself the task of rescuing the capitalist regime, the Popular Front doomed itself to military defeat. By turning Bolshevism on its head, Stalin succeeded completely in fulfilling the role of gravedigger of the revolution.
It ought to be added that the Spanish experience once again demonstrates that Stalin failed completely to understand either the October Revolution or the Russian civil war. His slow moving provincial mind lagged hopelessly behind the tempestuous march of events in 1917-21. In those of his speeches and articles in 1917 where he expressed his own ideas, his later Thermidorean “doctrine” is fully implanted. In this sense, Stalin in Spain in 1937 is the continuator of Stalin of the March 1917 conference of the Bolsheviks. But in 1917 he merely feared the revolutionary workers; in 1937 he strangled them. The opportunist had become the executioner.
“Civil War in the Rear”
But, after all, victory over the governments of Caballero and Negrin would have necessitated a civil war in the rear of the republican army! – the democratic philistine exclaims with horror. As if apart from this, in republican Spain no civil war has ever existed, and at that the basest and most perfidious one – the war of the proprietors and exploiters against the workers and peasants. This uninterrupted war finds expression in the arrests and murders of revolutionists, the crushing of the mass movement, the disarming of the workers, the arming of the bourgeois police, the abandoning of workers’ detachments without arms and without help on the front, and finally, the artificial restriction of the development of war industry.
Each of these acts as a cruel blow to the front, direct military treason, dictated by the class interests of the bourgeoisie. But “democratic” philistines – including Stalinists, Socialists, and Anarchists – regard the civil war of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, even in areas most closely adjoining the front, as a natural and inescapable war, having as its tasks the safeguarding of the “unity of the Popular Front.” On the other hand, the civil war of the proletariat against the “republican” counterrevolution is, in the eyes of the same philistines, a criminal, “fascists,” Trotskyist war, disrupting ... “the unity of the anti-fascist forces.” Scores of Norman Thomases, Major Atlees, Otto Bauers, Zyromskys, Malrauxes, and such petty peddlers of lies as Duranty and Louis Fischer spread this slavish wisdom throughout our planet. Meanwhile the government of the Popular Front moves from Madrid to Valencia, from Valencia to Barcelona.
If, as the facts attest, only the socialist revolution is capable of crushing fascism, then on the other hand a successful uprising of the proletariat is conceivable only when the ruling classes are caught in the vise of the greatest difficulties. However, the democratic philistines invoke precisely these difficulties as proof of the impressibility of the proletarian uprising. Were the proletariat to wait for the democratic philistines to tell them the hour of their liberation, they would remain slaves forever. To teach workers to recognize reactionary philistines under all their masks and to despise them regardless of the mask is the first and paramount duty of a revolutionist!
The Outcome
The dictatorship of the Stalinists over the republican camp is not long-lived in its essence. Should the defeats stemming from the politics of the Popular Front once more impel the Spanish proletariat to a revolutionary assault, this time successfully, the Stalinist clique will be swept away with an iron broom. But should Stalin – as is unfortunately the likelihood – succeed in bringing the work of gravedigger of the revolution to its conclusion, he will not even in this case earn thanks. The Spanish bourgeoisie needed him as executioner, but it has no need for him at all as patron or tutor. London and Paris on the one hand, and Berlin and Rome on the other, are in its eyes considerably more solvent firms than Moscow. It is possible that Stalin himself wants to cover his traces in Spain before the final catastrophe; he thus hopes to unload the responsibility for the defeat on his closest allies. After this Litvinov will solicit Franco for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations. All this we have seen more than once.
Even a complete military victory of the so-called republican army over General Franco, however, would not signify the triumph of “democracy.” The workers and peasants have twice placed bourgeois republicans and their left agents in power: in April 1931 and in February 1936. Both times the heroes of the Popular Front surrendered the victory of the people to the most reactionary and the most serious representatives of the bourgeoisie. A third victory, gained by the generals of the Popular Front, would signify their inevitable agreement with the fascist bourgeoisie on the backs of the workers and peasants. Such a regime will be nothing but a different form of military dictatorship, perhaps without a monarchy and without the open domination of the Catholic Church.
Finally, it is possible that the partial victories of the republicans will be utilized by the “disinterested” Anglo-French intermediaries in order to reconcile the fighting camps. It is not difficult to understand that in the event of such a variant the final remnants of the “democracy” will be stifled in the fraternal embrace of the generals Miaja (communist!) and Franco (fascists!). Let me repeat once again: victory will go either to the socialist revolution or to fascism.
It is not excluded, by the way, that the tragedy might at the last moment make way to farce. When the heroes of the Popular Front have to flee their last capital, they might, before embarking on steamers and airplanes, perhaps proclaim a series of “socialist” reforms in order to leave a “good memory” with the people. But nothing will avail. The workers of the world will remember with hatred and contempt the parties that ruined the heroic revolution.
The tragic experience of Spain is a terrible – perhaps final – warning before still greater events, a warning addressed to all the advanced workers of the world. “Revolutions,” Marx said, “are the locomotives of history.” They move faster than the thought of semi-revolutionary or quarter-revolutionary parties. Whoever lags behind falls under the wheels of the locomotive, and consequently – and this is the chief danger – the locomotive itself is also not infrequently wrecked.
It is necessary to think out the problem of the revolution to the end, to its ultimate concrete conclusions. It is necessary to adjust policy to the basic laws of the revolution, i.e., to the movement of the embattled classes and not the prejudices or fears of the superficial petty-bourgeois groups who call themselves “Popular” Fronts and every other kind of front. During revolution the line of least resistance is the line of greatest disaster. To fear “isolation” from the bourgeoisie is to incur isolation from the masses. Adaptation to the conservative prejudices of the labor aristocracy is betrayal of the workers and the revolution. An excess “caution” is the most baneful lack of caution. This is the chief lesson of the destruction of the most honest political organization in Spain, namely, the centrist POUM. The parties and groups of the London Bureau obviously either do not wish to draw the necessary conclusions from the last warning of history or are unable to do so. By this token they doom themselves.
By way of compensation, a new generation of revolutionists is now being educated by the lessons of the defeats. This generation has verified in action the ignominious reputation of the Second International. It has plumbed the depths of the Third International’s downfall. It has learned how to judge the Anarchists not by their words but by their deeds. It is a great inestimable school, paid for with the blood of countless fighters! The revolutionary cadres are now gathering only under the banner of the Fourth International. Born amid the roar of defeats, the Fourth International will lead the toilers to victory.
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