*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Yakov Sverdlov

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive’s 1925 appreciation of Bolshevik leader and general organizer Yakov Sverdlov. Sverdlov, before his early and untimely death, was the 'general secretary' (and jack-of-all-trades) of the Bolshevik organization. It is his position that Joseph Stalin later took over on his way to sole power. A good question: what if Sverdlov had lived?

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Yakov Sverdlov

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive’s 1925 appreciation of Bolshevik leader and general organizer Yakov Sverdlov. Sverdlov, before his early and untimely death, was the 'general secretary' (and jack-of-all-trades) of the Bolshevik organization. It is his position that Joseph Stalin later took over on his way to sole power. A good question: what if Sverdlov had lived?

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Yakov Sverdlov

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive’s 1925 appreciation of Bolshevik leader and general organizer Yakov Sverdlov. Sverdlov, before his early and untimely death, was the 'general secretary' (and jack-of-all-trades) of the Bolshevik organization. It is his position that Joseph Stalin later took over on his way to sole power. A good question: what if Sverdlov had lived?

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Yakov Sverdlov

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the great 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader and organizer Yakov Sverdlov. Sverdlov, before his early and untimely death, was the 'general secretary' (and jack-of-all-trades) of the Bolshevik organization. It is his position that Joseph Stalin later took over on his way to sole power. A good question: what if Sverdlov had lived?

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko.

Markin comment:

No revolution can succeed without men and women of Antonov-Ovseyenko's caliber. Although he did Stalin's dirty work Spain in the 1930s his military bravado during the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 is what he is being saluted for here. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Yakov Sverdlov

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive’s 1925 appreciation of Bolshevik leader and general organizer Yakov Sverdlov. Sverdlov, before his early and untimely death, was the 'general secretary' (and jack-of-all-trades) of the Bolshevik organization. It is his position that Joseph Stalin later took over on his way to sole power. A good question: what if Sverdlov had lived?

*PROBLEMS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION, THE EARLY YEARS, 1925-27

Click on title to link to early Leon Trotsky speech on the then unfolding second Chinese Revolution and the tasks of the Russian Left Opposition. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the 1949 revolution it is worthwhile to go back and see where that revolution first went off the skids.

BOOK REVIEW

PROBLEMS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, 1967

Recently I reviewed in this space Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate, a novelistic treatment of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, that emphasized the problems at the base of Chinese society in its late phase after the popular front alliance with General Chiang Kai-Shek’s bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang broke down and Chiang began his extermination drive against the Chinese Communists. In Leon Trotsky’s book, under review here, we get a real time, real life analysis of the political questions that led to that catastrophe and what revolutionaries could learn from it.

I have noted elsewhere that the Communist International (hereafter Comintern) evolved in the mid-1920’s , under the impact of Stalinization, from a revolutionary organization that made political mistakes, sometimes grossly so, in pursuit of revolution to an organization that pursued anti-revolutionary aims as it turned primarily into an adjunct of Soviet foreign policy. Prima facie evidence for such a conclusion is the Soviet Communist Party /Commintern policy and its implementation toward the budding Chinese Revolution.

As much as policy toward the Chinese Revolution became a political football in the internal Russian Communist party fights between Stalin’s bloc and Trotsky’s bloc it is impossible to understand the strategy for the Chinese Revolution without an understanding of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. No Marxist, at least not openly and honestly, put forth any claim that in the West the national bourgeoisie could be a progressive force in any modern upheaval. Russia, in the early 20th century was, however, still a battleground over this question. This is where Trotsky formulated the advanced Marxist notion that in Russia the national bourgeoisie was too weak, too beholding to foreign capitalist interests and too dependent on the Czarist state and its hangers-on to fulfill the tasks associated with the classic bourgeois revolutions in the West. Thus, for Russia alone at that time Trotsky postulated that the working class had become the heirs of the revolutions in the West. The Revolution of 1905 gave a glimmer of understanding to that proposition and the Revolution of October 1917 cannot be understood except under that premise.

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution the question of who would lead the revolutions of the countries even less developed that Russia, mainly colonial and semi-colonial regimes, formed one of the new political battlegrounds. And China was the first dramatic test that Trotsky’s originally Russia-only premise applied to underdeveloped ‘third world’ capitalist regimes, as well. However,unlike in Russia, this time Trotsky lost. The necessary independent organization of the working class and the political separation of the communist vanguard were not carried out and, to our regret, the Chinese Revolution was beheaded. As mentioned above this was a conscious Stalinist policy of kowtowing to Chiang by unequivocably ordering the Communist Party to make itself politically and militarily subservient to the Kuomintang as well as providing Comintern military advisers to Chiang.

Today, even a cursory look at countries of belated and uneven development emphasizes the fact that the various tasks associated with the Russian and Chinese Revolutions still need to be carried out. Thus, the political fights that wracked the international communist movement in the 1920’s which under ordinary circumstances would only be of historical interest today take on a more life and death meaning for many of the peoples of the world. That makes this book well worth the read.

I might add that there is a very interesting appendix at the end of this work detailing reports from the field filed by those Communist agents that carried out Comintern policy in China and who as a result of disillusionment with that policy had become oppositionists. These reports give added ammunition to Trotsky’s more theoretical arguments. They also give flesh and bones to the some of the points that Malraux was trying to bring out in Man’s Fate. Read on.

*From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- The Struggle For The Chinese Revolution

Click on title to link to 1929 Leon Trotsky article on China and the tasks of the Bolshevik-Leninist opposition. For those of us who believe that China is still a workers state, albeit a deformed one (bureaucratically run and misruled) the tasks seem very familiar for revolutionaries today.

*Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-Professor Robert Service's "Trotsky: A Biography "

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Leon Trotsky, leader of the Red Army.



Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By and Films To While Away The Class Struggle By-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin



Book Review



Trotsky: A Biography, Robert Service, Belknap Press Of The Harvard University Press, 2009



I have, on more than one previous occasion, noted that the spirit of the great Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, animates the political material reviewed in this space, and is some ways the materials presented makes no sense without acknowledging that hard truth. I have also noted, as well, that of all the biographies, sketches, memoirs, etc. concerning the life and times of this extraordinary revolutionary that Isaac Deutscher’s three volume Prophet series done in the 1950s and 1960s still, to my mind, is the definitive such study of the man. After reading this Trotsky biography and another more specialized volume that centers on the last period of his life and his subsequent assassination by a Stalinist agent down in Mexico in 1940, both which have the benefit of the latest in archival, particularly Soviet archival, material I still hold to that opinion. However, the present book under review, gives a fairly decent exposition in one volume of Trotsky’s life, warts and all, from a liberal anti-communist academic perspective.

I admit to being somewhat surprised by Professor Service’s book. Not, as mentioned above for its expected liberal disdain for the Soviet experiment, that kind of expectation comes with wading into liberal academic territory. That disdain has been, moreover, telegraphed by Professor previously in his biographies of Stalin and Lenin. What is surprising is that Professor Service felt the need to write a biography of the fallen revolutionary Leon Trotsky in the year 2009 long after his ghost, and that of the Soviet Union, that he was instrumental in creating, especially its military structure, have left the scene and apparently no longer, according to his remarks at the end of the book animate world politics. Furthermore, while I believe this book has a certain merit as a contemporary Trotsky primer it certainly has not revealed much new in the way of biographical material despite the opening up of the archives. That is the sense, or one of the senses, that I mean when I say I continue to stand in awe of Isaac Deutscher’s exhaustive study.

For those not familiar with Trotsky’s life Service details his Ukrainian Jewish childhood, his early pre-revolutionary activities, his immersion into the Russian revolutionary milieu in Russian and in exile, his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905 and after its defeat its defense , the pre-World War I free agent period, the struggle against World War I, the 1917 February and October revolutions where he links his fate with the Bolsheviks , the civil war to defend that October revolution, and Trotsky’s key role in creating the Red Army and the Communist International. He also details the post-Lenin inner-Bolshevik Party struggle where Trotsky’s star started to fate, his internal and then eternal exiles after his defeats at the hand so f Stalin, his fight to create the stillborn Fourth International to replace the Communist International in the fight for world socialist revolution and his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent in 1940. Along the way he also gives scope to Trotsky’s wide ranging literary and intellectual interest that permitted him to continue to make his mark on the political world after his exile, to make a living and to fund his various political projects.

In one sense it is hard for a biographer, any biographer, to say something new about such an open book political man as Leon Trotsky. Both because he wrote much, including his memoirs, My Life, self-serving as Professor Service believes or not, about his political life and positions from early on well before the Russian Revolution of 1905 and because the events that he was associated with left little room for not previously making it onto the pages of history. So what is left for a biographer, Robert Service or Isaac Deutscher included. Well, since no one has scoured the archives and found that Trotsky really did take German gold during World War I. Or that he really, as charged in the Moscow trials, was an agent of the Mikado, British imperialism or Hitlerite Germany then what is left is speculation, now apparently endless speculation, about his personal character flaws.

This is actually the ground that makes Service’s book interesting as he, like others before him detail Trotsky’s prickly personality, his failure to suffer fools gladly (or at all), his aloofness and haughtiness that made him less than the perfect choice for leadership of political factions in the struggle for power. Service’s Trotsky comes out loud and clear as being primarily one of the last of the free agent revolutionaries that while, perhaps, belonging to revolutionary organizations set their own agenda. That, in the end, was a key to Trotsky’s political undoing. Service also details more extensively than I have seen elsewhere some of Trotsky private traits like his late life affair with the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, his health issues and his strained relationships with most of his kin folk.

For those who have not read a previous Trotsky biography and who understand that Professor Service is one of those liberal academics who see Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin as basically all part of the same anti-Western democratic political original sin, Bolshevism, then there is much that can be gleaned from his work. But, I always come back to this hard fact when dealing with the life of the much maligned, besmirched, and denigrated revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, warts and all, comes as close as any historic figure that has come out of bourgeois society to being the proto-type for the new communist man that humankind has products thus far. In that sense Leon Trotsky is in need of no certificate of revolutionary good conduct from Robert Service, Mikhail Gorbachev, this writer or the reader. Enough said.

*Remember The Fall Of Madrid And Barcelona, 1939

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's article by Leon Trotsky, "The Lessons Of Spain: The Last Warning".

Commentary

This is the 70th Anniversary of the fall of Madrid and Barcelona (essentially unopposed militarily by the Republican forces)in the Spanish Civil War. That event effectively ended the war and started the forty year Franco “night of the long knives”. Normally, we of the international workers movement do not ‘celebrate’ such abject failures as defeat in Spain. However, as noted in many entries in this space, the lessons of Spain should be etched into the brain of every serious militant. Why? We could have won there and changed the whole course of history, at least Western history. The reasons for that failure are legion but I would urge every serious militant and every radical to read, for starters, the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s “Lessons of The Spanish Civil War” at his Marxist Internet Archive site. We can argue out our differences on strategy from there.

*Socialism in One Rooming House?-Norman Mailer's "Barbary Shore"

Click on the headline to link to a "The New York Times" obituary for American writer Norman Mailer article, dated November 10, 2007.

Book Review

Barbary Shore, Norman Mailer, Vintage International, New York, 1997

As I recently noted in this space while reviewing Norman Mailer's The Presidential Papers and Miami and the Siege of Chicago at one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that the late author wrote. In his prime Mailer held out promise to match Hemingway as the preeminent male American prose writer of the 20th century. Mailer certainly has the ambition, ego and skill to do so. Although he wrote several good novels, like The Deer Park, in his time I believe that his journalistic work, as he himself might have partially admitted, especially his political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in the literary pantheon. The early novel Barbary Shore under review here only confirms that estimation of his proper place. This is not a Mailer gem.

This novel was written shortly after Mailer’s huge success with the Naked and the Dead and seemingly shared the fate of many second novels- failure to live up to expectations. Not, however, for the reasons one might think. Yes, the plot is a little contrived in building up the tensions between fellow New York rooming house lodgers, including the narrator, a wounded war veteran trying to scratch out an existence as a writer, who seem to have no existent except to act as foils for each other. Yes, the dialogue is a little forced as each character has to be just a little more arch and a little more tragic that the others. Moreover, the action is virtually nonexistent as the rooming house acts as a metaphor turning on itself here.

However none of these reasons are what causes the novel to fail. The politics, or more properly the confused philosophy, underlying the novel are too big to survive in the space allotted. The characters here, including a repentant Stalinist, a dogged governmental Red hunter and a thwarted socialist idealist are symbols for the very real struggle in Mailer’s head, and in those of other Western intellectuals in the post- World War II period as well, to make sense of the contradiction between the promise of old socialist vision and the way it was being played out under Stalinist tutelage. The historic socialist struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that dominated the first half of the 20th century, American version here, as played by the denizens of a New York rooming house cannot be contained in such a milieu.

Moreover, the existentialist philosophy, with a twist of Kafka, that essentially reduces social action to the unmediated acts of individuals that would dominant much of Mailer’s later writing gets its first tentative workout here as the pressure of the ‘Red Scare’ McCarthy era and the flight from seeking socialist solutions began to have its effect on the New York intelligentsia in the early 1950’s. Nevertheless it is still worthwhile to read something that is thoughtfully, if not successfully, written, as is almost always the case with Mailer. And that is really the place where Mailer finds his comradeship with Hemingway.

Films to While Away The Class Struggle By-Dalton Trumbo's Anti-War Classic- "Johnny Got His Gun"

Click on the headline to link to a "Youtube" film clip from the film "Johnny Got His Gun" based on Dalton Trumbo's classic anti-war novel of the same title.

Clip From Trailer for Trumbo (2015)- the story of the black-listed writer who wrote the classic Johnny Got His Gun.

 

 

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin

DVD Review

Johnny Got His Gun, Donald Sutherland, Timothy Bottoms, Jason Robards, directed by Dalton Trumbo, 1971

The first two paragraphs are taken from a review of Dalton Trumbo’s novelistic treatment of the film under review. The points made there apply in general to the film:

“The subject of war has had all sorts of novelistic treatments, the most successful usually treading lightly on the war action itself and delving into the personal choices and consequences of the characters as their central aim. In that odd sense the most compelling novelistic treatments are either pro-war (for some seemingly rational reason like defending one’s country, coming to the aid of a smaller, weaker country, etc.) or neutral to the more physical and psychological dimensions of the situation. A flat out, anti-war (or, to use a more vague term, pacifistic) treatment is usually not successful either because it has a “preaching to the choir” quality or strikes some false chord. That is not the case with Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun”.


Although this novel was written under the sign of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in the late 1930s, reflected in Communist International and American Communist Party political line as one of intense opposition to Western war preparations it brings more home truths than merely another piece of ‘communistic’ propaganda and it would be incorrect even for staunch anti-Stalinists to dismiss it out of hand. Joe, the main character here, maimed beyond belief and repair, is every mother’s son, every American mother’s son. His interior monologue, as he remembers his past, his lost youth, his desires and the useless way he was used in the last days of World War I is almost unique in the way the story unfolds. It certainly is not for the faint-hearted, or the weak-minded. As steps are now being taken to up the ante in Afghanistan, another one of those wars to ‘defend’ democracy, or whatever the reason of the day is, this thing should be required reading for every mother, and every mother’s son and daughter who seeks to put him or herself in war’s way.”

The film pretty faithfully follows Trumbo’s, or at least the spirit of Trumbo’s, main point. Of course it helps that he directed the piece. Off a reading, or rather re-reading of the novel I thought that it would be hard to sustain a film based on the lack of “action” in the story line. That is dealt with two ways-flash backs by Joe to sunnier times and by “dream” sequences featuring the likes of Donald Sunderland giving his droll interpretation of Trumbo’s message. This is not an easy film to get through; certainly not for those who like their entertainments light, but the pathos of the scenes as Joe tries to make sense of his “new” world is cause for reflection. That said, could one find a better actor than Timothy Bottoms to play the role of Joe, the fresh-faced “dough boy” filled with illusions, filled with thoughts of invincibility, but also filled with dreams and sorrows as he goes off to war. Kudos here. And thanks, brother Trumbo.

On The 100th Anniversary Of The Great IWW-led Lawrence (Ma) Textile Strike Of 1912-Labor's Untold Story- "The Rebel Girl"- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Click on to link to Wikipedia's entry for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Joe Hill's "The Rebel Girl", who wound up her career as an abject Stalinist apologist, no question about that. We honor her for her work in the Lawrence strike of 1912 and here work with the International Labor Defense, especially on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. As for the rest, read (and read more than the Wikipedia entry on this one)and decide for yourself. Not everyone who starts out as a young rebel winds up on the side of the "angels"

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Leninism vs. Stalinism On The United Front: What Strategy To Fight Fascism? (1980)

Markin comment:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
********
Markin comment on this article:

This article is a rather succinct description of the differences between the early Communist International Lenin-Trotsky-derived united front tactic and the later Stalin—derived popular front strategy. In practice, the difference between pushing the international proletarian struggle forward and acting primarily as agents for Stalinized Soviet foreign policy- against revolution, in short. I have, periodically addressed the question of the united front tactic and have placed a number of previous articles from historic sources, and commentaries on those historic sources so I will only address the united front question as it applies to the struggle against fascism. Not because the tactic works differently on that question but rather that it takes added urgency to try to create a united front against our mortal enemies on the streets when they raise their heads.

In the best of situations, of course, a mass communist party with authority in the working class and few social-democratic opponents would not need to use the united front, or its use would not be as pressing. Call the demonstration or other action, bring out your membership, and see who else shows up. And a lot of others will, as the experience of the Bolshevik revolution demonstrated when the deal when down for real. For the rest of us, as a sign of our individual organizational weaknesses (or in a case when there is more than one authoritative working class organization with a mass following) the united front is the supreme tactic to get a mass to come out in defense of their organizations. We now know, if previous generations didn’t know or chose not to know, that is what it comes to.

I, and not I alone, have always argued that we need to “nip the fascists in the bud” whenever they ill-advisedly try to show themselves on the streets for some “celebration.” We have no other recourse than to try to create the united front under the traditional practice of marching separately (under your own banners and with your own propaganda) and striking together (united on this particular issue). As this article argues that is easier said that done with the political consciousness at the level it is (or was, since this is a 1980s article but, if anything, it is even lower these days-particularly on the issues of reliance on the state to "ban the fascists" and on “education” (the debate issue) rather than confrontation. On this question, however, there is nothing to debate, there is no will on the part of the state to break these para-military thugs up and we are left to cobble on own resources for a united front. By any means necessary.
*********
From Young Spartacus, October 1980-Leninism vs. Stalinism On The United Front: What Strategy To Fight Fascism?


We publish below a letter Young Spartacus received in June in response to our polemic against the Communist Workers Party (CWP) last May on the strategy to fight fascism and YSp's reply.

June 17, 1980 Los Angeles
Young Spartacus:

I enjoyed your discussion of Dimitrov ["CWP Zigzags Between Third Period' and Popular Front," Young Spartacus No. 82, May 1980] and its particular relevance to the fight against fascist groups in this country. But, if you want to discuss Dimitrov, I think you should complete the discussion.
It is true that his views were presented at the CPSU's 7th Party Congress in 1935. But he only represented one half of a debate! True, it was the winning side, but the alternative position of a "united working class front" of different elements calling for dictatorship of the proletariat (The only real alternative to Dimitrov!) was written by R. Palme Dutt in his Fascism and Socialist Revolution [1934-35]. In this volume he clearly and brilliantly outlines the linkages of the failures of capitalism to inter-imperialist contradictions on one side and the failures of the social democrats on the other. The line which you are taking is diluted Dutt, so why not go read him and draw him into the discussion. Another Marxist discussion from the period which is also very good is Daniel Guerin's Fascism and Big Business. He is stronger than Dutt in explaining how fascist ideology and organization work, but weaker in explaining the causes of fascism within the contradictions of capitalism and imperialism.

Several other points remain, however:
1 By your definitions Dutt was aStalinist. He was the head of the-British CP. How can this be?

2. If you want to clearly present apolitical alternative to the latter day
Dimitrovs, you must work out a few bugs in your line. To begin, you are
correct in criticizing the CWP's [Communist Workers Party] reliance on the
state, but what about your reliance onbourgeois unions and petty-bourgeois
nationalist organizations? The alternative to Dimitrov is not going to liberal organizations, whether labor unions or minority organizations, as an alternative to the large bourgeoisie. This is really an extension of Dimitrov, because you are saying there are some good factions of the bourgeoisie—in the person of union leaders and minority leaders. If you are to make a clean break with Dimitrov, as you suggest, you must make a clean break with the bourgeoisie and their immediate (and politically dependent) representatives.

3. The alternative is to turn directly to people, but not to liberal organizations in which they may have been drawn in.Furthermore, if the basis of this united front from below (qualitatively different
than alliances with petty bourgeois organizations) is simply opposition to
fascism (under some old CP slogan, such as the preservation of democratic
rights) you have also replicated Dimitrov, not repudiated him. The clear
repudiation, again as outlined by Dutt,is to call for a united front from below which is committed to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In other words, if the basis for the united front is the watering down of a communist line to draw in the good (petty) bourgeoisie—as your organization seems to be doing—you have unwittingly committed the errors which you criticize the CWP of, that is exhuming Dimitrov. It is true they do it deliberately, and you appear to do it unwittingly, but the result is the same.

4. A final point needs to be clarified, and this is the debate between Dimitrov and Dutt which you partially analyzed has already been brought up to the attention of the left. In 1971 PL Magazine carefully followed through
the discussion, and pointed out the long list of theoretical and practical errors generated by the International Communist Movement turning to the Dimitrov formulation and abandoning the concept of the united front from below. How is it that one of the groups you decry as Stalinist figured out what your [organization] recently became aware of nine years earlier and with greater theoretical and practical precision? Is this organization really not Stalinist (and Dutt too for that matter), or does
Stalinism not automatically lead to Dimitrovism?

I realize this is a long letter but I would like your reactions to some of the points I have raised, especially about how your line does not represent a clear break with Dimitrov.

Rick Platkin

Young Spartacus replies: Platkin raises once again (ostensibly from the "left")the question of Stalinism versus Trotskyism on the united front. While his slightly crackpot letter contains a number of historical inaccuracies and political absurdities and could be easily dismissed, it provides an opportunity for Young Spartacus to review the elementary Leninist tactic of the united front. Particularly in the aftermath of our successful anti-fascist mobilizations in Detroit and San Francisco, we are pleased to discuss the history of the united front and its particular application to the American labor movement in the fight against the increasingly visible fascist movement.

Without specifically referring to the April 19 Committee Against Nazis (ANCAN) demonstration in San Francisco, called to combat a threatened "celebration" of Hitler's birthday by the Bay Area fascists, Platkin argues that this mobilization—heavily built and organized by the SL/SYL—was inherently opportunist. He accuses us of "exhuming Dimitrov." The reason? Because in addition to the communist SL/SYL, 35 elected trade-union officials as well as nine local unions endorsed and actively built the ANCAN rally along with a number of community, minority, gay and civil rights organizations. For the first time in decades, a genuine united-front action of socialists and organized labor defended the rights of the working class and oppressed, independent of and against the efforts of the bourgeois state and politicians.

No gang of Nazis went goosestepping into San Francisco's Civic Center to celebrate Hitler's birthday and not because the police canceled their permit or the Board of Supervisors passed resolutions against the little storm-troopers. As the endorsement list for the ANCAN rally steadily grew, the cops announced that they could not guarantee the safety of the Nazi scum. The Nazis failed to show because thousands of unionists, minorities and socialists intended to sweep them off the streets. Ever since the April 19 rally, the fake-lefts have been falling all over themselves to explain away the undeniable success of the ANCAN mobilization.

Based on the simple proposition that a massive mobilization of the labor movement and its allies could stop the Nazis, the ANCAN rally was a victory and a vindication of the Leninist tactic of the united front. In contrast the Maoist-dominated Anti-Klan/Nazi Coalition held a little sectarian rally, which attracted 350, a quarter mile away from the site of the proposed Nazi Hitlerfest. Fundamentally pessimistic about the ability of the working class to turn out in force to stop the brownshirts, the Maoist-dominated coalition turned instead to the strikebreaking Democrats in City Hall. Their "strategy" hinged on pressuring Mayor Feinstein and the Board of Supervisors to revoke the Nazis' permit and pass a resolution condemning the Hitler-lovers. But the Maoists found that there were very few bourgeois politicians interested in building a mass demonstration against fascism. Even after they pledged not to lay a finger on the Nazis, the Anti-Klan/ Nazi Coalition could only dig up one black councilman from Oakland. The opportunists, albeit empty-handed, were a quarter mile away from the action.
Platkin accuses the SL/SYL of "watering down... a communist line to draw in the good (petty) bourgeoisie" ind counterposes turning directly to the 'people." In doing so, he echoes Progressive Labor's (PL) rejection of the united front in Road to Revolution III:

"We reject the concept of a united front with the bosses. We reject the concept of a united front with Trotskyists and the herd of various fakes in the left "We believe in a united front from below that takes the form of a left-center coalition."

—PL, November 1971

Platkin speaks approvingly of the "theoretical and practical precision" of the sometime left-sounding Stalinists of Progressive Labor and is in fact a longtime supporter of their sub-reformist front group, the Committee Against Racism (CAR). It is worth noting that PL also came unglued by the success of the ANCAN demo. Before the April 19 rally PL—true to form—denounced both ANCAN and the Maoist-led splinter coalition as "calls for a pacifist counter-demonstration [which] amount to calling for 'peace to the Nazis'." After the fact, in an article entitled "1500 Protest Against Nazis" (Challenge, 30 April) PL waxed eloquent about the Civic Center rally participants who were "just itching for the Nazis to show their faces," proving that when it's opportune PL will even tail the Trotskyist SL/ S YL. (Naturally, they omit any mention of the SL/SYL's central role in building the ANCAN rally.)

The United Front— A Leninist Tactic

The united front is a tactic employed by the vanguard party to unite the working class for practical action and to win the allegiance of non-communist workers from the reformists, centrists, labor bureaucrats and at times the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalists. We wrote in "On the United Front":

"The UF can only be a reality during periods of social struggle, when the need for sharp class battles makes class unity a burning objective necessity that shakes the ranks of the non-communist workers organizations from their le¬thargy and day-to-day humdrum or¬ganizational parochialism, and places strongly before them the need for class unity that transcends their particular organizations..."

— Young Communist Bulletin No. 3, p. 8

There is a reason that the united front became a central question at the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1922. At the time of the First World Congress in 1919 it was expected that the working-class offensive in the wake of the First World War would lead to the direct overthrow of the bourgeoisie under Communist leadership. The need for the united front tactic flowed from the fact that the majority of workers in most countries had gone through the postwar revolutionary upsurge retaining their allegiance to the reformist leaderships of the trade unions and the social-democratic parties. At the same time, in the wake of the receding revolutionary tide, the bourgeoisie went on the offensive. The capitalist offensive was forcing even the reformist-led organizations into partial and defensive struggles for their lives, simply to maintain the organizational gains and standard of living they had won in the past. This situation placed on the agenda the need for a united workers front.

The Third World Congress had two tasks before it: 1) to cleanse the working class, including the ranks of the Communist parties, of all reformist and centrist elements who did not want to struggle; and 2) to learn the art of struggle, and master revolutionary tactics and strategy. Much of the ideological struggle at the Third Congress was directed against the "Lefts"—those whose revolutionary impatience caused them to lose sight of the most important preparatory and preliminary tasks of the party. The Bolsheviks counseled the young communist "Lefts" at the Congress: "Comrades, we desire not only heroic struggle, we desire first of all victory." Trotsky explained:

"Does the united front extend only to the working masses or does it also include the opportunist leaders? "The very posing of this question is a product of misunderstanding. "If we were able to unite the working masses around our own banner or around our practical immediate slogans, and skip over reformist organizations, whether party or trade union, that would of course be the best thing in the world. But then the very question of the united front would not exist in its present form

"It is possible to see in this a rapprochement with the reformists only
from the standpoint of a journalist who believes that he rids himself of refor¬mism by ritualistically criticizing it without ever leaving his editorial office but who is fearful of clashing with the reformists before the eyes of the working masses and giving the latter an opportunity to appraise the Communist and the reformist on the equal plane of the mass struggle.

"Behind this seemingly revolutionary fear of 'rapprochement' there really lurks a political passivity which seeks to perpetuate an order of things wherein the Communists and the reformists each retain their own rigidly demarcated spheres of influence, their own audiences at meetings, their own press, and all this together creates an illusion of serious political struggle."

—"On the United Front," The First Five Years of the Communist International, Vol. 2

Platkin argues, "If you are to make a clean break with Dimitrov, as you suggest, you must make a clean break with the bourgeoisie and their immediate (and politically dependent) representatives." Why should Trotskyists make a "break" with Dimitrov? Unlike the Stalinists, we never supported his class-collaborationist line in the first place. And what does Dimitrov have to do with the Leninist united front tactic? Nothing! Dimitrov supplied the theoretical justification not for the united front but for class-collaborationist political blocs with the bourgeoisie which came to be known as popular fronts. At the Seventh Congress of the Stalinized Comintern in 1935, (not the CPSU's Seventh Party Congress as Platkin says) Dimitrov was quite explicit:

"Now the toiling masses in a number of capitalist countries are faced with the necessity of making a definite choice, and of making it today, not between proletarian dictatorship and bourgeois democracy, but between bourgeois democracy and fascism."

For Platkin, included in the category of "immediate representatives" of the bourgeoisie are the trade unions. Caught in the stranglehold of the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy, the trade unions are nonetheless workers organizations. And in the United States, they are the only mass organizations of the proletariat. To insist that revolutionaries never conclude united front blocs for action with the trade unions is simply a recipe for sealing off commu¬nists from the organized working class. We refer our readers to Trotsky's polemic against the sectarian policies of Stalin's "Third Period" in What Next? Trotsky noted that "just as the trade union is the rudimentary form of the united front in the economic struggle, so the soviet is the highest form of the united front under the conditions in which the proletariat enters the epoch of fighting for power." He goes on to argue that "the refusal by the Communist Party to make arrangements and take joint action with other parties within the working class means nothing else but the refusal to create Soviets" (emphasis in original in both quotes).

Moreover, Platkin's attitude toward the unions is totally at variance with the practice of Progressive Labor which he upholds as the real "left" alternative to Dimitrov. In the history of the commu¬nist movement, there are and have been ultra-left and anarchist organizations which refused on principle to work in the unions, but PL is not one of them. Far from a "leftist" policy, PL's left-center coalitionism in the unions has led to the worst kind of sub-reformist economism and support to "lesser evil" bureaucrats in the United Auto Workers, Communications Workers, AFSCME and other unions.

Cloaked in the phraseology of revolutionary intransigence, blanket opposi¬tion to the united front actually represents political passivity, conservatism and a lack of revolutionary will. "No united front with the reformists" is simply an inverted non-aggression pact with the reformists, an implicit agree¬ment not to fight them on their own turf. Far from such a pact, the united front implies a sharpening of the political struggle with the reformist misleaders. For instance, the unions, black organizations, Chicano, Jewish and gay groups all had a vital interest in stopping the fascist filth. The proposal of a concrete joint action to these organizations gave their respective leaderships the choice of either openly opposing the action or appearing on the same platform with the communists. The vanguard party must retain full freedom to criticize its temporary allies in the united front, something that the Spartacist League took full advantage of on April 19. The dual nature of the united front is captured in the slogan, "March separately, strike together," and the party must be ready to break with the reformists and centrists when they become a brake on the struggle.

Such was the case in Detroit on November 10. The SL and militant auto workers attempted to mobilize the powerful UAW to stop a planned Klan march in Detroit, a march called to "celebrate" the Greensboro massacre. Criminally, the UAW tops refused tc put the weight of the Detroit labor movement behind the anti-Klan rally The "liberal" black mayor, Coleman Young, threatened to arrest any demonstrators—Klan or anti-Klan. We were de facto forced into a united front "from below" under these circumstance and took the call for the demonstration directly to the factory gates an working-class neighborhoods. The result was a rally composed of the "hard core" of largely black, advanced workers willing to defy the criminal inaction of the UAW tops and stand up to a hostile city government and the possibil¬ity of arrest. It was critical that the Klan be stopped in the labor/black town of Detroit. And they were stopped despite the sabotage of the union bureaucrats— a victory for the entire working class and oppressed. However, we did not choose to limit the strength of the anti-Klan mobilization, the only such action to occur in the wake of Greensboro, to a hard core of 500. Much more powerful would have been thousands-strong contingents from the unions putting the Klan and City Hall on notice that "The Klan Won't Ride in the Motor City!"

"The United Front from Below"— History of Betrayal

Platkin fails to address the fact that the revolutionary-sounding "united front from below" has a history: it was the policy of the Stalinized Comintern from 1928 to 1935, the "Third Period." Is Platkin really unaware of the results? The triumph of Hitler and the decimation of the German proletariat were a world historic defeat for the working class.
The policies of the "Third Period" followed the cumulative failures of Stalin's 1924-27 policies of conciliating the colonial bourgeoisie and the trade-union reformists abroad as well as the kulaks at home. During this period, Lenin's united front tactic was degraded to an instrument for class collaboration and counterrevolution. In China, Stalin's "united front" with the bourgeois-nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), resulting in the complete liquidation of the Chinese Communist Party, led to the massacre of tens of thousands of Communist and working-class militants in the Shanghai insurrection of 1927 and killed for two decades the possibility of anti-capitalist revolution in China. In Britain, Stalin allied with the British trade-union bureaucrats in the "Anglo-Russian Trade Union Unity Committee." The Comintern did not see this as a temporary alliance with British trade-union leaders but as a long-lasting co¬partnership. This alliance was preserved through the betrayals of the 1926 General Strike and the miners strike, lending the prestige of the Bolshevik Revolution arid Communism to the strikebreaking Trades Union Congress tops.

From these disasters of Stalin's rightist course were born the ultra-left policies of the 'Third Period." In Germany, Stalin proclaimed....(missing part) .. the reformist Social Democratic Party (SPD) to be "social fascist" and thus eliminated any possibility of an SPD-KPD (German Communist Party) united front against Hitler's increasingly strong forces. Of course, it's quite true that SPD was complicit in the murders of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg. In 1929 the Social Democrat Zoergeibel drowned the KPD May Day march in blood. At every step on Hitler's road to power the reformists capitulated rather than fight.

Trotsky called the Social Democratic bureaucracy the "rottenest portion of putrefying capitalist Europe." But despite the counterrevolutionary be¬trayals of the leadership of the SPD, the Social Democrats still led millions of workers and within certain limits were constrained to reckon with their deluded proletarian constituency as well as with their bourgeois masters. The victory of fascism would mean the annihilation of the organizations of Social Democracy. While the SPD leaders did not want to fight, for the Social Democratic ranks it was a matter of life and death. The KPD's refusal to utilize this contradiction was an act of gross stupidity and treachery. The united front would set class against class, defending the workers' organizations against the stormtroopers and at the same time expose in action the hesitations, vacillations and abhorrence of socialist revolution that lie at the heart of Social Democracy. Trotsky insisted that in the war against fascism the Communists must be ready to conclude practical military alliances with the devil and his grandmother, even with 'Noske and Zoergeibel.

But the Stalinists continued to follow their sectarian-defeatist logic, captured in the slogan "After Hitler—Us." Millions of workers organized in the SPD and KPD were ready and eager to crush the Nazis, but Hitler came to power without a shot being fired because of the policies of the Stalinist "Third Period."

The Popular Front

At the end of 1933, with the triumph of Hitler and the renewed threat of imperialist attack, the panic-stricken Stalinist bureaucracy zigzagged once again. In a desperate search for allies, the Comintern sought to ingratiate itself with the "democratic" imperialist bourgeoisies through calculated contain¬ment of revolutionary proletarian movements in Europe. Where a year before the Stalinists had refused blocs with bourgeois workers parties, they were now prepared to make alliances with the bourgeoisie itself, including participation in capitalist governments. Enter Dimitrov, who provided the justification for these treacherous class-collaborationist political blocs at the expense of proletarian revolution under the catch phrase "the united front against fascism."

Platkin claims that the positions of R. Palme Dutt were the only real alternative to the Dimitrov/Stalin line. From the 1920s through the mid-1960s denounced those who declared the "existing bourgeois dictatorship" to be a "'lesser evil' than the victory of Fascism," but to see this as a polemic against Dimitrov is absurd. The change in the Comintern's line was so abrupt and unevenly implemented that initially even some of the most loyal Stalinist hacks were caught marching out of step. Dutt spoke in favor of Dimitrov's resolution at the Seventh World Congress and was for the first time elected as a candidate member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. How can Dutt be called a Stalinist? In addition to his grandiloquent praise for Stalin himself ("the genius and will of Stalin, the architect of the rising world of free humanity," etc., etc.) suffice it to say that for 40 years he popularized and promoted every twist and turn of Moscow's line in the pages of Labour Monthly.

There is an organic unity between the methodology of the "Third Period" and the popular front. At bottom both represent a lack of confidence in the proletariat's ability to conquer state power. During the "Third Period" the Stalinists abstained from fighting class collaborationism; with the popular front policy they simply embraced it. The net result was the same.

Who opposed the Dimitrov/Stalin line which led to bloody defeat for the working class in Spain and headed off a pre-revolutionary situation in France during the 1930s? Only the Trotskyists. To the popular front, the Trotskyists counterposed a working-class united front to smash the fascists. Instead of depending on the republican generals and the police, the Trotskyists called for workers militias based on the trade unions.

This Trotskyist tradition is today embodied in the program of the Spartacist League/SYL. Against the "ban the Klan" reformism of the Stalinists, the revolting defense of "free speech for fascists" of the social democratic SWP, and the episodically substitutionist antics of PL/CAR and the CWP we have successfully fought for labor/black mobilizations to smash the fascist scum. No other left organization in the U.S. can claim to have responded to the Greensboro massacre by mobilizing black and white trade unionists against the KKK as we did in Detroit; nor has anyone but the SL/SYL put forward and implemented the mass mobilization of the organized labor movement against the fascist threat as occurred in the ANCAN demonstration. The basis for Leninist principles and tactics, as proven by the history of the world working class, is what works.
***********
A cattle dealer once drove some bulls to the slaughterhouse. And the butcher came nigh with his sharp knife.

"Let us close ranks and jack up this executioner on our horns," suggested one of the bulls.

"If you please, in what way is the butcher any worse than the dealer who drove us hither with his cudgel?" replied the bulls, who had received their political education in Manuilsky's institute.

"But we shall be able to attend to the dealer as well afterwards!"

"Nothing doing," replied the bulls, firm in their principles, to the counselor. "You are trying to shield our enemies from the left; you are a social-butcher yourself."

And they refused to close ranks.

—from Aesop's Fables

—Leon Trotsky, "What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat," The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, 1932

*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 92nd Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919) And Th e90th Anniversary Of The Third World Congress (1921)-Lenin's Sppech On Russian Communist Party Tactics

Click on the headline to link to the Communist International Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Honor The 92nd Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The 90th Anniversary Of The Historic Third World Congress Of The CI (1921)

Markin comment:

Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.

No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.

The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
********
Lenin's Report On The Tactics Of The R.C.P.
July 5

Comrades, strictly speaking I was unable to prepare properly for this report. All that I was able to prepare for you in the way of systematic material was a translation of my pamphlet on the tax in kind and the theses on the tactics of the Russian Communist Party. To this I merely want to add a few explanations and remarks.

I think that to explain our Party’s tactics we must first of all examine the international situation. We have already had a detailed discussion of the economic position of capitalism internationally, and the Congress has adopted definite resolutions on this subject.[16] I deal with this subject in my theses very briefly, and only from the political stand point. I leave aside the economic basis, but I think that in discussing the international position of our Republic we must, politically, take into account the fact that a certain equilibrium has now undoubtedly set in between the forces that have been waging an open, armed struggle against each other for the supremacy of this or that leading class. It is an equilibrium between bourgeois society, the international bourgeoisie as a whole, and Soviet Russia. It is, of course, an equilibrium only in a limited sense. It is only in respect to this military struggle, I say, that a certain equilibrium has been brought about in the international situation. It must be emphasised, of course, that this is only a relative equilibrium, and a very unstable one. Much inflammable material has accumulated in capitalist countries, as well as in those countries which up to now have been regarded merely as the objects and not as the subjects of history, i.e., the colonies and semi-colonies. It is quite possible, therefore, that insurrections, great battles and revolutions may break out there sooner or later, and very suddenly too. During the past few years we have witnessed the direct struggle waged by the international bourgeoisie against the first proletarian republic. This struggle has been at the centre of the world political situation, and it is there that a change has taken place. Inasmuch as the attempt of the international bourgeoisie to strangle our Republic has failed, an equilibrium has set in, and a very unstable one it is, of course.

We know perfectly well, of course, that the international bourgeoisie is at present much stronger than our Republic, and that it is only the peculiar combination of circumstances that is preventing it from continuing the war against us. For several weeks now, we have witnessed fresh attempts in the Far East to renew the invasion,[17] and there is not the slightest doubt that similar attempts will continue. Our Party has no doubts whatever on that score. The important thing for us is to establish that an unstable equilibrium does exist, and that we must take advantage of this respite, taking into consideration the characteristic features of the present situation, adapting our tactics to the specific features of this situation, and never forgetting that the necessity for armed struggle may arise again quite suddenly. Our task is still to organise and build up the Red Army. In connection with the food problem, too, we must continue to think first of all of our Red Army. We can adopt no other line in the present international situation, when we must still be prepared for fresh attacks and fresh attempts at invasion on the part of the international bourgeoisie. In regard to our practical policy, however, the fact that a certain equilibrium has been reached in the international situation has some significance, but only in the sense that we must admit that, although the revolutionary movement has made-progress, the development of the international revolution this year has not proceeded along as straight a line as we had expected.

When we started the international revolution, we did so not because we were convinced that we could forestall its development, but because a number of circumstances compelled us to start it. We thought: either the international revolution comes to our assistance, and in that case our victory will be fully assured, or we shall do our modest revolutionary work in the conviction that even in the event of defeat we shall have served the cause of the revolution and that our experience will benefit other revolutions. It was clear to us that without the support of the international world revolution the victory of the proletarian revolution was impossible. Before the revolution, and even after it, we thought: either revolution breaks out in the other countries, in the capitalistically more developed countries, immediately, or at least very quickly, or we must perish. In spite of this conviction, we did all we possibly could to preserve the Soviet system under all circumstances, come what may, because we knew that we were not only working for ourselves, but also for the international revolution. We knew this, we repeatedly expressed this conviction before the October Revolution, immediately after it, and at the time we signed the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty. And, generally speaking, this was correct.

Actually, however, events did not proceed along as straight a line as we had expected. In the other big, capitalistically more developed countries the revolution has not broken out to this day. True, we can say with satisfaction that the revolution is developing all over the world, and it is only thanks to this that the international bourgeoisie is unable to strangle us, inspite of the fact that, militarily and economically, it is a hundred times stronger than we are. (Applause.)

In Paragraph 2 of the theses I examine the manner in which this situation arose, and the conclusions that must be drawn from it. Let me add that my final conclusion is the following: the development of the international revolution, which we predicted, is proceeding, but not along as straight a line as we had expected. It becomes clear at the first glance that after the conclusion of peace, bad as it was, it proved impossible to call forth revolution in other capitalist countries, although we know that the signs of revolution were very considerable and numerous, in fact, much more considerable and numerous than we thought at the time. Pamphlets are now beginning to appear which tell us that during the past few years and months these revolutionary symptoms in Europe have been much more serious than we had suspected. What, in that case, must we do now? We must now thoroughly prepare for revolution and make a deep study of its concrete development in the advanced capitalist countries. This is the first lesson we must draw from the international situation. As for our Russian Republic, we must take advantage of this brief respite in order to adapt our tactics to this zigzag line of history. This equilibrium is very important politically, because we clearly see that in many West-European countries, where the broad mass of the working class, and possibly the overwhelming majority of the population, are organised, the main bulwark of the bourgeoisie consists of the hostile working-class organisations affiliated to the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals. I speak of this in Paragraph 2 of the theses, and I think that in this connection I need deal with only two points, which were discussed during the debate on the question of tactics. First, winning over the majority of the proletariat. The more organised the proletariat is in a capitalistically developed country, the greater thoroughness does history demand of us in preparing for revolution, and the more thoroughly must we win over the majority of the working class. Second, the main bulwark of capitalism in the industrially developed capitalist countries is the part of the working class that is organised in the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals. But for the support of this section of the workers, these counter-revolutionary elements within the working class, the international bourgeoisie would be altogether unable to retain its position. (Applause.)

Here I would also like to emphasise the significance of the movement in the colonies. In this respect we see in all the old parties, in all the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois labour parties affiliated to the Second and the Two-and-a Half Internationals, survivals of the old sentimental views: they insist on their profound sympathy for oppressed colonial and semi-colonial peoples. The movement in the colonial countries is still regarded as an insignificant national and totally peaceful movement. But this is not so. It has undergone great change since the beginning of the twentieth century: millions and hundreds of millions, in fact the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe, are now coming forward as independent, active and revolutionary factors. It is perfectly clear that in the impending decisive battles in the world revolution, the movement of the majority of the population of the globe, initially directed towards national liberation, will turn against capitalism and imperialism and will, perhaps, play a much more revolutionary part than we expect. It is important to emphasise the fact that, for the first time in our International, we have taken up the question of preparing for this struggle. Of course, there are many more difficulties in this enormous sphere than in any other, but at all events the movement is advancing. And in spite of the fact that the masses of toilers—the peasants in the colonial countries—are still backward, they will play a very important revolutionary part in the coming phases of the world revolution. (Animated approval.)

As regards the internal political position of our Republic I must start with a close examination of class relationships. During the past few months changes have taken place in this sphere, and we have witnessed the formation of new organisations of the exploiting class directed against us. The aim of socialism is to abolish classes. In the front ranks of the exploiting class we find the big landowners and the industrial capitalists. In regard to them, the work of destruction is fairly easy; it can be completed within a few months, and sometimes even a few weeks or days. We in Russia have expropriated our exploiters, the big landowners as well as the capitalists. They had no organisations of their own during the war and operated merely as the appendages of the military forces of the international bourgeoisie. Now, after we have repulsed the attacks of the international counter-revolution, organisations of the Russian bourgeoisie and of all the Russian counter-revolutionary parties have been formed abroad. The number of Russian émigrés scattered in all foreign countries may be estimated at one and a half to two millions. In nearly every country they publish daily newspapers, and all the parties, landowner and petty-bourgeois, not excluding the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, have numerous ties with foreign bourgeois elements, that is to say, they obtain enough money to run their own press. We find the collaboration abroad of absolutely all the political parties that formerly existed in Russia, and we see how the “free” Russian press abroad, from the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik press to the most reactionary monarchist press, is championing the great landed interests. This, to a certain extent, facilitates our task, because we can more easily observe the forces of the enemy, his state of organisation, and the political trends in his camp. On the other hand, of course, it hinders our work, because these Russian counter-revolutionary émigrés use every means at their disposal to prepare for a fight against us. This fight again shows that, taken as a whole, the class instinct and class-consciousness of the ruling classes are still superior to those of the oppressed classes, notwithstanding the fact that the Russian revolution has done more than any previous revolution in this respect. In Russia, there is hardly a village in which the people, the oppressed, have not been roused. Nevertheless, if we take a cool look at the state of organisation and political clarity of views of the Russian counter-revolutionary émigrés, we shall find that the class-consciousness of the bourgeoisie is still superior to that of the exploited and the oppressed. These people make every possible attempt and skilfully take advantage of every opportunity to attack Soviet Russia in one way or another, and to dismember it. It would be very instructive—and I think the foreign comrades will do that—systematically to watch the most important aspirations, the most important tactical moves, and the most important trends of this Russian counter-revolution. It operates chiefly abroad, and it will not be very difficult for the foreign comrades to watch it. In some respects, we ought to learn from this enemy. These counter-revolutionary émigrés are very well informed, they are excellently organised and are good strategists. And I think that a systematic comparison and study of the manner in which they are organised and take advantage of every opportunity may have a powerful propaganda effect upon the working class. This is not general theory, it is practical politics; here we can see what the enemy has learned. During the past few years, the Russian bourgeoisie has suffered a terrible defeat. There is an old saying that a beaten army learns a great deal. The beaten reactionary army has learned a great deal, and has learned it thoroughly. It is learning with great avidity, and has really made much headway. When we took power at one swoop, the Russian bourgeoisie was unorganised and politically undeveloped. Now, I think, its development is on a par with modern, West-European development. We must take this into account, we must improve our own organisation and methods, and we shall do our utmost to achieve this. It was relatively easy for us, and I think that it will be equally easy for other revolutions, to cope with these two exploiting classes.

But, in addition to this class of exploiters, there is in nearly all capitalist countries, with the exception, perhaps, of Britain, a class of small producers and small farmers. The main problem of the revolution now is how to fight these two classes. In order to be rid of them, we must adopt methods other than those employed against the big landowners and capitalists. We could simply expropriate and expel both of these classes, and that is what we did. But we cannot do the same thing with the remaining capitalist classes, the small producers and the petty bourgeoisie, which are found in all countries. In most capitalist countries, these classes constitute a very considerable minority, approximately from thirty to forty-five per cent of the population. Add to them the petty-bourgeois elements of the working class, and you get even more than fifty per cent. These cannot be expropriated or expelled; other methods of struggle must be adopted in their case. From the international standpoint, if we regard the international revolution as one process, the significance of the period into which we are now entering in Russia is, in essence, that we must now find a practical solution for the problem of the relations the proletariat should establish with this last capitalist class in Russia. All Marxists have a correct and ready solution for this problem in theory. But theory and practice are two different things, and the practical solution of this problem is by no means the same as the theoretical solution. We know definitely that we have made serious mistakes. From the international standpoint, it is a sign of great progress that we are now trying to determine the attitude the proletariat in power should adopt towards the last capitalist class—the rock-bottom of capitalism—small private property, the small producer. This problem now confronts us in a practical way. I think we shall solve it. At all events, the experiment we are making will be useful for future proletarian revolutions, and they will be able to make better technical preparations for solving it.

In my theses I tried to analyse the problem of the relations between the proletariat and the peasantry. For the first time in history there is a state with only two classes, the proletariat and the peasantry. The latter constitutes the overwhelming majority of the population. It is, of course, very backward. How do the relations between the peasantry and the proletariat, which holds political power, find practical expression in the development of the revolution? The first form is alliance, close alliance. This is a very difficult task, but at any rate it is economically and politically feasible.

How did we approach this problem practically? We concluded an alliance with the peasantry. We interpret this alliance in the following way: the proletariat emancipates the peasantry from the exploitation of the bourgeoisie, from its leadership and influence, and wins it over to its own side in order jointly to defeat the exploiters.

The Menshevik argument runs like this: the peasantry constitutes a majority; we are pure democrats, therefore, the majority should decide. But as the peasantry cannot operate on its own, this, in practice, means nothing more nor less than the restoration of capitalism. The slogan is the same: Alliance with the peasantry. When we say that, we mean strengthening and consolidating the proletariat: We have tried to give effect to this alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, and the first stage was a military alliance. The three years of the Civil War created enormous difficulties, but in certain respects they facilitated our task. This may-sound odd, but it is true. The war was not something new for the peasants; a war against the exploiters, against the big landowners, was something they quite understood. The overwhelming majority of the peasants were on our side. In spite of the enormous distances, and the fact that the overwhelming majority of our peasants are unable to read or write, they assimilated our propaganda very easily. This proves that the broad masses—and this applies also to the most advanced countries—learn faster from their own practical experience than from books. In Russia, moreover, learning from practical experience was facilitated for the peasantry by the fact that the country is so exceptionally large that in the same period different parts of it were passing through different stages of development.

In Siberia and in the Ukraine the counter-revolution was able to gain a temporary victory because there the bourgeoisie had the peasantry on its side, because the peasants were against us. The peasants frequently said, “We are Bolsheviks, but not Communists. We are for the Bolsheviks because they drove out the landowners; but we are not for the Communists because they are opposed to individual farming.” And for a time, the counter-revolution managed to win out in Siberia and in the Ukraine because the bourgeoisie made headway in the struggle for influence over the peasantry. But it took only a very short time to open the peasants’ eyes. They quickly acquired practical experience and soon said, “Yes, the Bolsheviks are rather unpleasant people, we don’t like them, but still they are better than the whiteguards and the Constituent Assembly.” “Constituent Assembly” is a term of abuse not only among the educated Communists, but also among the peasants. They know from practical experience that the Constituent Assembly and the whiteguards stand for the same thing, that the former is inevitably followed by the latter. The Mensheviks also resort to a military alliance with the peasantry, but they fail to understand that a military alliance alone is inadequate. There can be no military alliance without an economic alliance. It takes more than air to keep a man alive; our alliance with the peasantry could not possibly have lasted any length of time without the economic foundation, which was the basis of our victory in the war against our bourgeoisie. After all our bourgeoisie has united with the whole of the international bourgeoisie.

The basis of our economic alliance with the peasantry was, of course, very simple, and even crude. The peasant obtained from us all the land and support against the big landowners. In return for this, we were to obtain food. This alliance was something entirely new and did not rest on the ordinary relations between commodity producers and consumers. Our peasants had a much better understanding of this than the heroes of the Second and the Two-and a-Half Internationals. They said to themselves, “These Bolsheviks are stern leaders, but after all they are our own people.” Be that as it may, we created in this way the foundations of a new economic alliance. The peasants gave their produce to the Red Army and received from the latter assistance in protecting their possessions. This is always forgotten by the heroes of the Second International, who, like Otto Bauer, totally fail to understand the actual situation. We confess that the initial form of this alliance was very primitive and that we made very many mistakes. But we were obliged to act as quickly as possible, we had to organise supplies for the army at all costs. During the Civil War we were cut off from all the grain districts of Russia. We were in a terrible position, and it looks like a miracle that the Russian people and the working class were able to endure such suffering, want, and privation, sustained by nothing more than a deep urge for victory. (Animated approval and applause.)

When the Civil War came to an end, however, we faced a different problem. If the country had not been so laid waste after seven years of incessant war, it would, perhaps, have been possible to find an easier transition to the new form of alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry. But bad as conditions in the country were, they were still further aggravated by the crop failure, the fodder shortage, etc. In consequence, the sufferings of the peasants became unbearable. We had to show the broad masses of the peasants immediately that we were prepared to change our policy, without in any way deviating from our revolutionary path, so that they could say, “The Bolsheviks want to improve our intolerable condition immediately, and at all costs.”

And so, our economic policy was changed; the tax in kind superseded the requisitions. This was not invented at one stroke. You will find a number of proposals in the Bolshevik press over a period of months, but no plan that really promised success. But this is not important. The important thing is that we changed our, economic policy, yielding to exclusively practical considerations, and impelled by necessity. A bad harvest, fodder shortage and lack of fuel—all, of course, have a decisive influence on the economy as a whole, including the peasant economy. If the peasantry goes on strike, we get no firewood; and if we get no firewood, the factories will have to idle. Thus, in the spring of 1921, the economic crisis resulting from the terrible crop failure and the fodder shortage assumed gigantic proportions. All that was the aftermath of the three years of civil war. We had to show the peasantry that we could and would quickly change our policy in order immediately to alleviate their distress. We have always said—and it was also said at the Second Congress—that revolution demands sacrifices. Some comrades in their propaganda argue in the following way: we are prepared to stage a revolution, but it must not be too severe. Unless I am mistaken, this thesis was put forward by Comrade Smeral in his speech at the Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. I read about it in the report published in the Reichenberg Vorwärts[18] There is evidently a Leftist wing there; hence this source cannot be regarded as being quite impartial. At all events, I must say that if Smeral did say that, he was wrong. Some comrades who spoke after Smeral at this Congress said, “Yes, we shall go along with Smeral because in this way we shall avoid civil war.” (Laughter.) If these reports are true, I must say that such agitation is neither communistic nor revolutionary. Naturally, every revolution entails enormous sacrifice on the part of the class making it. Revolution differs from ordinary struggle in that ten and even a hundred times more people take part in it. Hence every revolution entails sacrifices not only for individuals, but for a whole class. The dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has entailed for the ruling class—the proletariat—sacrifices, want and privation unprecedented in history, and the case will, in all probability, be the same in every other country.

The question arises: How are we to distribute this burden of privation? We are the state power. We are able to distribute the burden of privation to a certain extent, and to impose it upon several classes, thereby relatively alleviating the condition of certain strata of the population. But what is to be our principle? Is it to be that of fairness, or of majority? No. We must act in a practical manner. We must distribute the burdens in such a way as to preserve the power of the proletariat. This is our only principle. In the beginning of the revolution the working class was compelled to suffer incredible want. Let me state that from year to year our food policy has been achieving increasing success. And the situation as a whole has undoubtedly improved. But the peasantry in Russia has certainly gained more from the revolution than the working class. There is no doubt about that at all. From the standpoint of theory, this shows, of course, that our revolution was to some degree a bourgeois revolution. When Kautsky used this as an argument against us, we laughed. Naturally, a revolution which does not expropriate the big landed estates, expel the big landowners or divide the land is only a bourgeois revolution and not a socialist one. But we were the only party to carry the bourgeois revolution to its conclusion and to facilitate the struggle for the socialist revolution. The Soviet power and the Soviet system are institutions of the socialist state. We have already established these institutions, but we have not yet solved the problem of economic relations between the peasantry and the proletariat. Much remains to be done, and the outcome of this struggle depends upon whether we solve this problem or not. Thus, the distribution of the burden of privation is one of the most difficult practical problems. On the whole, the condition of the peasants has improved, but dire suffering has fallen to the lot of the working class, precisely because it is exercising its dictatorship.

I have already said that in the spring of 1921 the most appalling want caused by the fodder shortage and the crop failure prevailed among the peasantry, which constitutes the majority of our population. We cannot possibly exist unless we have good relations with the peasant masses. Hence, our task was to render them immediate assistance. The condition of the working class is extremely hard. It is suffering horribly. Those who have more political understanding, however, realise that in the interest of the dictatorship of the working class we must make tremendous efforts to help the peasants at any price. The vanguard of the working class has realised this, but in that vanguard there are still people who cannot understand it, and who are too weary to understand it. They regarded it as a mistake and began to use the word “opportunism”. They said, “The Bolsheviks are helping the peasants. The peasants, who are exploiting us, are getting everything they please, while the workers are starving.” But is that opportunism? We are helping the peasants because without an alliance with them the political power of the proletariat is impossible, its preservation is inconceivable. It was this consideration of expediency and not that of fair distribution that was decisive for us. We are assisting the peasants because it is absolutely necessary to do so in order that we may retain political power. The supreme principle of the dictatorship is the maintenance of the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry in order that the proletariat may retain its leading role and its political power.

The only means we found for this was the adoption of the tax in kind, which was the inevitable consequence of the struggle. This year, we shall introduce this tax for the first time. This principle has not yet been tried in practice. From the military alliance we must pass to an economic alliance, and, theoretically, the only basis for the latter is the introduction of the tax in kind. It provides the only theoretical possibility for laying a really solid economic foundation for socialist society. The socialised factory gives the peasant its manufactures and in return the peasant gives his grain. This is the only possible form of existence of socialist society, the only form of socialist development in a country in which the small peasants constitute the majority, or at all events a very considerable minority. The peasants will give one part of their produce in the form of tax and another either in exchange for the manufactures of socialist factories, or through the exchange of commodities.

This brings us to the most difficult problem. It goes without saying that the tax in kind means freedom to trade. After having paid the tax in kind, the peasant will have the right freely to exchange the remainder of his grain. This freedom of exchange implies freedom for capitalism. We say this openly and emphasise it. We do not conceal it in the least. Things would go very hard with us if we attempted to conceal it. Freedom to trade means freedom for capitalism, but it also means a new form of capitalism. It means that, to a certain extent, we are re-creating capitalism. We are doing this quite openly. It is state capitalism. But state capitalism in a society where power belongs to capital, and state capitalism in a proletarian state, are two different concepts. In a capitalist state, state capitalism means that it is recognised by the state and controlled by it for the benefit of the bourgeoisie, and to the detriment of the proletariat. In the proletarian state, the same thing is done for the benefit of the working class, for the purpose of withstanding the as yet strong bourgeoisie, and of fighting it. It goes without saying that we must grant concessions to the foreign bourgeoisie, to foreign capital. Without the slightest denationalisation, we shall lease mines, forests and oilfields to foreign capitalists, and receive in exchange manufactured goods, machinery, etc., and thus restore our own industry.

Of course, we did not all agree on the question of state capitalism at once. But we are very pleased to note in this connection that our peasantry has been developing, that it has fully realised the historical significance of the struggle we are waging at the present time. Ordinary peasants from the most remote districts have come to us and said: “What! We have expelled our capitalists, the capitalists who speak Russian, and now foreign capitalists are coming!” Does not this show that our peasants have developed? There is no need to explain to a worker who is versed in economics why this is necessary. We have been so ruined by seven years of war that it will take many years to restore our industry. We must pay for our backwardness and weakness, and for the lessons we are now learning and must learn. Those who want to learn must pay for the tuition. We must explain this to one and all, and if we prove it in practice, the vast masses of the peasants and workers will agree with us, because in this way their condition will be immediately improved, and because it will ensure the possibility of restoring our industry. What compels us to do this? We are not alone in the world. We exist in a system of capitalist states. [19]. . . On one side, there are the colonial countries, but they cannot help us yet. On the other side, there are the capitalist countries, but they are our enemies. The result is a certain equilibrium, a very poor one, it is true. Nevertheless, we must reckon with the fact. We must not shut our eyes to it if we want to exist. Either we score an immediate victory over the whole bourgeoisie, or we pay the tribute.

We admit quite openly, and do not conceal the fact, that concessions in the system of state capitalism mean paying tribute to capitalism. But we gain time, and gaining time means gaining everything, particularly in the period of equilibrium, when our foreign comrades are preparing thoroughly for their revolution. The more thorough their preparations, the more certain will the victory be. Meanwhile, however, we shall have to pay the tribute.

A few words about our food policy. Undoubtedly, it was a bad and primitive policy. But we can also point to some achievements. In this connection I must once again emphasise that the only possible economic foundation of socialism is large-scale machine industry. Whoever forgets this is no Communist. We must analyse this problem concretely. We cannot present problems in the way the theoreticians of the old school of socialism do. We must present them in a practical manner. What is modern large-scale industry? It is the electrification of the whole of Russia. Sweden, Germany and America have almost achieved this, although they are still bourgeois. A Swedish comrade told me that in Sweden a large part of industry and thirty per cent of agriculture are electrified. In Germany and America, which are even more developed capitalistically, we see the same thing on a larger scale. Large-scale machine industry is nothing more nor less than the electrification of the whole country. We have already appointed a special commission consisting of the country’s best economists and engineers. It is true that nearly all of them are hostile to the Soviet power. All these specialists will come over to communism, but not our way, not by way of twenty years of underground work, during which we unceasingly studied and repeated over and over again the ABC of communism.

Nearly all the Soviet government bodies were in favour of inviting the specialists. The expert engineers will come to us when we give them practical proof that this will increase the country’s productive forces. It is not enough to prove it to them in theory; we must prove it to them in practice, and we shall win these people over to our side if we present the problem differently, not from the standpoint of the theoretical propaganda of communism. We say: large-scale industry is the only means of saving the peasantry from want and starvation. Everyone agrees with this. But how can it be done? The restoration of industry on the old basis will entail too much labour and time. We must give industry a more modern form, i.e., we must adopt electrification. This will take much less time. We have already drawn up the plans for electrification. More than two hundred specialists—almost to a man opposed to the Soviet power—worked on it with keen interest, although they are not Communists. From the standpoint of technical science, however, they had to admit that this was the only correct way. Of course, we have a long way to go before the plan is achieved. The cautious specialists say that the first series of works will take at least ten years. Professor Ballod has estimated that it would take three to four years to electrify Germany. But for us even ten years is not enough. In my theses I quote actual figures to show you how little we have been able to do in this sphere up to now. The figures I quote are so modest that it immediately becomes clear that they are more of propaganda than scientific value. But we must begin with propaganda. The Russian peasants who fought in the world war and lived in Germany for several years learned how modern farming should be carried on in order to conquer famine. We must carry on extensive propaganda in this direction. Taken by themselves, these plans are not yet of great practical value, but their propaganda value is very great.

The peasants realise that something new must be created. They realise that this cannot be done by everybody working separately, but by the state working as a whole. The peasants who were prisoners of war in Germany found out what real cultural life is based on. Twelve thousand kilowatts is a very modest beginning. This may sound funny to the foreigner who is familiar with electrification in America, Germany or Sweden. But he laughs best who laughs last. It is, indeed, a modest beginning. But the peasants are beginning to understand that new work must be carried out on a grand scale, and that this work has already begun. Enormous difficulties will have to be overcome. We shall try to establish relations with the capitalist countries. We must not regret having to give the capitalists several hundred million kilogrammes of oil on condition that they help us to electrify our country.

And now, in conclusion, a few words about “pure democracy”. I will read you a passage from Engels’s letter to Bebel of December 11, 1884. He wrote:

“Pure democracy . . . when the moment of revolution comes, acquires a temporary importance as the extreme bourgeois party, as which it already played itself off in Frankfort, and as the final sheet-anchor of the whole bourgeois and even feudal economy. . . . Thus between March and September 1848 the whole feudal-bureaucratic mass strengthened the liberals in order to hold down the revolutionary masses. . . . In any case our sole adversary on the day of the crisis and on the day after the crisis will be the whole of the reaction which will group around pure democracy, and this, I think, should not be lost sight of.”

Our approach must differ from that of the theoreticians. The whole reactionary mass, not only bourgeois, but also feudal, groups itself around “pure democracy”. The German comrades know better than anyone else what “pure democracy” means, for Kautsky and the other leaders of the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals are defending this “pure democracy” from the wicked Bolsheviks. If we judge the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, not by what they say, but by what they do, we shall find that they are nothing but representatives of petty bourgeois “pure democracy”. In the course of our revolution they have given us a classic example of what “pure democracy” means, and again during the recent crisis, in the days of the Kronstadt mutiny. There was serious unrest among the peasantry, and discontent was also rife among the workers. They were weary and exhausted. After all, there is a limit to human endurance. They had starved for three years, but you cannot go on starving for four or five years. Naturally, hunger has a tremendous influence on political activity. How did the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks behave? They wavered all the time, thereby strengthening the bourgeoisie. The organisation of all the Russian parties abroad has revealed the present state of affairs. The shrewdest of the leaders of the Russian big bourgeoisie said to themselves: “We cannot achieve victory in Russia immediately. Hence our slogan must be: ‘Soviets without the Bolsheviks.’” Milyukov, the leader of the Constitutional-Democrats, defended the Soviet power from the attacks of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. This sounds very strange; but such are the practical dialectics which we, in our revolution, have been studying in a peculiar way, from the practical experience of our struggle and of the struggle of our enemies. The Constitutional-Democrats defend “Soviets without the Bolsheviks” because they understand the position very well and hope that a section of the people will rise to the bait. That is what the clever Constitutional-Democrats say. Not all the Constitutional-Democrats are clever, of course, but some of them are, and these have learned something from the French Revolution. The present slogan is to fight the Bolsheviks, whatever the price, come what may. The whole of the bourgeoisie is now helping the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who are now the vanguard of all reaction. In the spring we had a taste of the fruits of this counter-revolutionary co-operation. [20]

That is why we must continue our relentless struggle against these elements. Dictatorship is a state of intense war. That is just the state we are in. There is no military invasion at present; but we are isolated. On the other hand, however, we are not entirely isolated, since the whole international bourgeoisie is incapable of waging open war against us just now, because the whole working class, even though the majority is not yet communist, is sufficiently class-conscious to prevent intervention. The bourgeoisie is compelled to reckon with the temper of the masses even though they have not yet entirely sided with communism. That is why the bourgeoisie cannot now start an offensive against us, although one is never ruled out. Until the final issue is decided, this awful state of war will continue. And we say: “A la guerre comme à la guerre ; we do not promise any freedom, or any democracy.” We tell the peasants quite openly that they must choose between the rule of the bourgeoisie, and the rule of the Bolsheviks—in which case we shall make every possible concession within the limits of retaining power, and later we shall lead them to socialism. Everything else is deception and pure demagogy. Ruthless war must be declared against this deception and demagogy. Our point of view is: for the time being—big concessions and the greatest caution, precisely because a certain equilibrium has set in, precisely because we are weaker than our combined enemies, and because our economic basis is too weak and we need a stronger one.

That, comrades, is what I wanted to tell you about our tactics, the tactics of the Russian Communist Party. (Prolonged applause.)


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Endnotes
[1] The Third Congress was held in Moscow from June 22 to July 12, 1921. Its 605 delegates (291 with voice and vote, and 314 with voice only) represented 103 organisations from 52 countries, namely: 48 Communist Parties, 8 Socialist Parties, 28 Youth Leagues, 4 syndicalist organisations, 2 opposition Communist Parties (the Communist Workers’ Party of Gemany and the Workers’ Communist Party of Spain) and 13 other organisations. The 72 delegates from the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks were headed by Lenin.

The Congress discussed the world economic crisis and the new tasks of the Communist International; the report on the activity of the Executive Committee of the Communist International; the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany, the Italian question; the tactics of the Communist International the attitude of the Red International Council of Trade Unions to the Communist International; the struggle against the Amsterdam International; the tactics of the R.C.P.(B.); the Communist International and the Communist youth movement; the women’s movement; the United Communist Party of Germany, etc.

Lenin directed preparations for and the activities of the Congress; he was elected its Honorary Chairman; he took part in drafting all the key resolutions; he gave a report on the tactics of the R.C.P.(B.); he spoke in defence of the Communist International’s tactics, on the Italian question; in the commissions and at the enlarged sittings of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, and at the delegates’ meetings. Before and during the Congress, Lenin met and talked with delegates about the state of affairs in the Communist Parties.

The Third Congress had a great influence on the formation and development of young Communist Parties. It paid great attention to the Comintern’s organisation and tactics in the new conditions of the world communist movement. Lenin had to combat the Centrist deviation and “Leftist” dogmatism, pseudo-revolutionary “Leftist” cant and sectarianism. As a result, revolutionary Marxism prevailed over the “Leftist” danger.

In the history of the world communist movement the Third Congress is known for the following achievements: it worked out the basic tactics of the Communist Parties; it defined the task of winning the masses over to the side of the proletariat, strengthening working-class unity and implementing united front tactics. The most important aspect of its resolutions, Lenin said, was “more careful, more thorough preparation for fresh and more decisive battles, both defensive and offensive”.

[2] On April 13, 1919, in Amritsar, an industrial centre in Punjab, India, British troops fired on a mass meeting of working people who were protesting against the colonialist reign of terror. About 1,000 were killed and 2,000 wounded. The massacre led to popular uprisings in Punjab and other provinces, which were ruthlessly suppressed by the British colonialists.

[3] Posledniye Novosti (The Latest News )—an émigré daily, the organ of the counter-revolutionary party of Constitutional-Democrats, published in Paris from April 1920 to July 1940. Its editor was P. N. Milyukov.

[4] Kommunistichesky Trud (Communist Labour )—a daily published by the Moscow R.C.P.(B.) Committee and the Moscow Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies from March 18, 1920. On February 7, 1922, it took the name of Rabochaya Moskva (Workers’ Moscow ); on March 1, 1939, Moskovsky Bolshevik (Moscow Bolshevik ), and ever since February 19, 1950, has been appearing as Moskovskaya Pravda (Moscow Truth ).

[5] La Stampa (Press )—an Italian bourgeois newspaper published in Turin since 1867.

[6] Corriere della Sera (Evening Courier )—an innuential Italian bourgeois newspaper published in Milan since 1876.

[7]The conference of the reformist wing of the Italian Socialist Party, the so-called “socialist concentration” group, took place in Reggio Emilia on October 10-11, 1920. Lenin gave a detailed characteristic of it in his article, “On the Struggle Within the Italian Socialist Party” (Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 377-96).

The report on the conference mentioned by Lenin was published in Corriere della Sera No. 244 and No. 245, of October 11 and 12, 1920, as well as in Avanti! No. 245 of October 13, 1920.

[8] Avanti! (Forward! )—a daily, the Central Organ of the Italian Socialist Party, founded in Rome in December 1896. During the First World War, it took an inconsistently internationalist stand, and did not break with the reformists. In 1926, the paper was closed down by Mussolini’s fascist government, but continued to appear abroad. It resumed publication in Italy in 1943.

[9] Lenin apparently refers to the conference of the “unitary” group (Serrati, Baratono and others) in Florence on November 20-21, 1920 which came out against the break with the reformists and, with this reservation, for the acceptance of the 21 conditions of affiliation to the Communist International.

[10] In January 1919, the Ebert-Scheidemann government dismissed the Berlin police chief, Eichhorn (a Left-wing Independent) who was very popular with the workers. This sparked off a workers’ protest demonstration on January 4, the day following Eichhorn’s retirement, and later a general strike and an armed uprising to overthrow the Ebert-Scheidemann government. The Revolutionary Committee of Action which headed the uprising included some Independents and Karl Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck of the Communist Party of Germany. The Communist Party considered the uprising premature, but decided to support the revolutionary mass movement in every way. Berlin events fired the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle in the Rheinland, the Ruhr, Bremen and elsewhere.

Alarmed by the scope of the movement, the Central Committee of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany started negotiations with the government, who used them for preparing a counter-revolutionary offensive. On January 11, its forces, led by Noske, attacked the workers and drowned their uprising in blood. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the leaders of the German working class, were arrested and killed at the height of the counter-revolutionary reign of terror. Workers’ action in other parts of the country was fiereely suppressed.

[11] In September 1920, Italian steelworkers occupied their mills on the initiative of their trade union, which was in conflict with the association of industrialists. The movement started in Turin and Milan, then spread through Piedmont and Northern Italy across the eountry, from the metallurgical industry to other industries and to agriculture. In Sicily and in other areas peasants occupied the land. The scope of the movement jeopardised the capitalist regime, but the reformist leaders of the Socialist Party and the trade unions, terrified by the political character of the movement, adopted a decision to confine it to within the trade unions and prevent it from developing into a revolution. They also decided to start negotiations with the industrialists.

This was a hard blow at the Italian workers’ movement and showed the leaders’ inability to lead the mass forces. Fascism used the confusion within the working class to start its armed offensive in Italy.

[12] The amendments were proposed by the German, Austrian and Italian delegations to the draft theses on tactics, motioned by the Russian delegation at the Third Congress of the Comintern. They were published in German in Moskau, the organ of the Third Congress.

[13] The Open Letter (Offenor Brief) of the Central Committee of the United Communist Party of Germany to the Socialist Party of Germany, Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany and all trade unions, was published in Die Rote Fahne (The Red Banner ) on January 8, 1921. The U.C.P.G. called on all workers, trade unions and socialist organisations to unite their forces in combating reaction and the capitalists’ offensive against the working people’s vital rights. Their programme of joint action included demands for higher pensions for disabled war veterans; elimination of unemployment; improvement of the country’s finances at the expense of the monopolies, introduction of factory and plant committee control over all stocks of food, raw materials and fuel restarting of all closed enterprises; control over sowing, harvesting and marketing of farm produce by the Peasants’ Councils together with the agricultural labourers’ organisations; immediate disarming and dissolution of all bourgeois militarised organisations; establishment of workers’ self-defence; amnesty of all political prisoners; immediate re-establishment of trade and diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia. Lenin said these tactics were “quite correct” (see Lenin Miscellany XXXVI, p. 221).

The Right-wing leaders of the organisations to whom the Open Letter was addressed rejected the proposal for joint action with the Communists, despite the fact that the workers came out for a united front of the proletariat.

[14] The theory of an offensive struggle or “theory of the offensive” was proclaimed at the Unity Congress of the Communist Party of Germany and the Left-wing Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany in December 1920. It envisaged that the party should conduct offensive tactics, regardless of whether there were any objective conditions for revolutionary activity or whether the working people supported the Communist Party. The theory found its followers among the “Leftists” in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Austria, and France, and was one of the causes of the defeat of the March 1921 uprising in Germany. But the “Left ists” tried to justify the mistakes of the Central Committee of the U.C.P.G. The theses on the March uprising adopted by the U.C.P.G. Central Committee on April 8, 1921, reiterated that the U.C.P.G. was always to “follow the line of revolutionary offensive” and that offensive tactics, “even when unsuccessful, were a prerequisite of future victory and the only means for a revolutionary party to win over the masses”. At the Third Congress of the Comintern the followers of this theory fought to make it the basis of the Communist International’s resolutions on tactics. Lenin proved this theory to be wrong and adventurous, and the Congress approved his line of patient preparation and winning over of the majority of the working class to the side of the communist movement.

[15] See Note on the British miners’ strike in April-June 1921.

[Note 97: The miners’ strike in Britain

[16] The reference is to the resolution of the Third Congress of the Communist International, “The International Situation and Our Tasks”. See Kommunistichesky Internatsional v dokumentakh. Resheniya, tezisy i vozzvaniya kongressov Kominterna i plenumov IKKI. 1919-1932 (The Communist International in Documents. Resolutions, Theses and Appeals of Congresses of the Comintern and Plenary Meetings of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. 1919-1932, Moscow, 1933, pp. 165-80).

[17] On May 26, 1921, in Vladivostok, the whiteguards, supported by the Japanese interventionists, overthrew the Maritime Regional Administration of the Far Eastern Republic and established a regime of bourgeois dictatorship and terror headed by industrialists, the Merkulov brothers. South Primorye became a spring-board for continued imperialist intervention in the Far East.

The Revolutionary People’s Army of the Far Eastern Republic, under V. K. Blyukher, and later I. P. Uborevich, defeated the whiteguards, liberating Khabarovsk on February 14, 1922, and Vladivostok on October 25, 1922. Japan had to withdraw her forces from the Far East. On November 14, 1922, the People’s Assembly of the Far Eastern Republic set up the Far East Revolutionary Committee with plenipotentiary powers to implement the union of the Far East with Soviet Russia. On November 15, 1922, the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee issued a decree proclaiming the Far Eastern Republic an inseparable part of the R.S.F.S.R.

[18] The Csechoslovak Social-Democratic Party (Left) Congress held in Prague from May 14 to 16, 1921, was the Inaugural Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. It was attended by 569 delegates representing more than 350,000 Party members. The Congress adopted a resolution by acclamation on affiliation to the Third International. B. Smeral was the chief rapporteur at the Congress.

Lenin made a thorough study of the material of the Congress (see Lenin Miscellany XXXVI, pp. 288, 289, 311).

Vorwärts (Forward )—a newspaper published by the Austrian Left-wing Social-Democrats from May 1911 in Reichenberg. In 1921, it became the organ of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (German group).

[19] The verbatim report then goes on to say (Lenin spoke in German) “als Glied der Weltwirtschafw”; the French translation was “comme membre de l’économie mondiale”, and the English, “as a member of the world’s economy”. The text in this volume is taken from Pravda, July 9, 1921, which did not contain these words.

[20] See Note the 10th Party Congress on the counter-revolutionary Kronstadt mutiny in March 1921.