From The Archives Of The Communist International-On The Organization Question At The Third Congress Of The Communist International (1921) -Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of Communist Parties, on the Methods and Content of their Work-ICL Translation

Markin comment on this article:

In the history of the communist movement, since right from the days of Marx and Engels, the question of the organization of the revolution has been intermingled with all the political questions associated with that struggle. For anarchists and others the organization question is sealed with seven seals (or more) but for those of us who stand in the early Bolshevik tradition handed down from the Russian revolution in 1917 it is key. And that question is linked up, sealed up, if you like, with the notion of a vanguard party. These documents and reports from the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1921 are a codification of that experience. For those who think that international imperialism, led by the American monster, will crumble on its own, or worst, can be just patched up brand new with a little tweaking don’t read this material, all other read and re-read this stuff until your eyes are sore.
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Third Congress of the Comintern 1921

Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of Communist Parties, on the Methods and Content of their Work
Adopted at the 24th Session of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 12 July 1921

I. GENERAL
1. The organization of the party must be adapted to the conditions and purpose of its activity. The Communist Party should be the vanguard, the front-line troops of the proletariat, leading in all phases of its revolutionary class struggle and the subsequent transitional period toward the realization of socialism, the first stage of communist society.

2. There can be no absolutely correct, immutable organizational form for communist parties. The conditions of the proletarian class struggle are subject to changes in an unceasing process of transformation; the organization of the vanguard of the proletariat must also constantly seek appropriate forms corresponding to these changes. Similarly, the historically determined characteristics of each individual country condition particular forms of adaptation in the organization of the individual parties.

But this differentiation has definite limits. Despite all peculiarities, the identity of the conditions of the proletarian class struggle in the various countries and in the different phases of the proletarian revolution is of fundamental importance to the international communist movement. This identity constitutes the common basis for the organization of the communist parties of all countries.

On this basis we must further develop the organization of the communist parties, not strive to found any new model parties in place of pre-existing ones or seek some absolutely correct organizational form or ideal statutes.

3. Common to the conditions of struggle of most communist parties and therefore to the Communist International as the overall party of the revolutionary world proletariat is that they must still struggle against the ruling bourgeoisie. For all the parties, victory over the bourgeoisie-wresting power from its hands-remains at present the key goal, giving direction to all their work.

Accordingly, it is absolutely crucial that all organizational work of communist parties in the capitalist countries be considered from the standpoint of constructing an organization which makes possible and ensures the victory of the proletarian revolution over the possessing classes.

4. Every collective action, in order to be effective, requires a leadership. This is necessary above all for the greatest struggle of world history. The organization of the communist party is the organization of the communist leadership in the proletarian revolution.

To lead well, the party itself must have good leadership. Our basic organizational task is accordingly the formation, organization and training of a communist party working under capable leading bodies to become the capable leader of the revolutionary working-class movement.

5. Leadership of the revolutionary class struggle presupposes, on the part of the communist party and its leading bodies, the organic tying together of the greatest possible striking power and the greatest ability to adapt to the changing conditions of struggle.

Moreover, successful leadership absolutely presupposes the closest ties with the proletarian masses. Without these ties the leadership will not lead the masses but will at best tail after them.

In its organization, the communist party seeks to achieve these organic ties through democratic centralism.

II. ON DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM
6. Democratic centralism in the communist party organization should be a real synthesis, a fusion of centralism and proletarian democracy. This fusion can be attained only on the basis of the constant common activity, the constant common struggle of the entire party organization.

Centralization in the communist party organization does not mean a formal and mechanical centralization but rather a centralization of communist activity, i.e., building a leadership which is strong, quick to react and at the same time flexible.

Formal or mechanical centralization would mean centralization of “power” in the hands of a party bureaucracy in order to dominate the rest of the membership or the masses of the revolutionary proletariat outside the party. But only enemies of communism can assert that the Communist Party wants to dominate the revolutionary proletariat through its leadership of proletarian class struggles and through the centralization of this communist leadership. This is a lie. Equally incompatible with the fundamental principles of democratic centralism adopted by the Communist International is a power struggle or a fight for domination within the party.

In the organizations of the old, nonrevolutionary workers movement a thoroughgoing dualism developed of the same kind as had arisen in the organization of the bourgeois state: the dualism between the bureaucracy and the “people.” Under the ossifying influence of the bourgeois environment the functionaries of these parties became estranged: the vital working collective was replaced by mere formal democracy, and the organization was split into active functionaries and passive masses. Inevitably, even the revolutionary workers movement to a certain degree inherits this tendency toward formalism and dualism from the bourgeois environment.

The Communist Party must thoroughly overcome these divisions by systematic and persevering political and organizational work and by repeated improvement and review.

7. In the reshaping of a mass socialist party into a communist party, the party must not limit itself to concentrating authority in the hands of its central leadership, while otherwise leaving its old structure unchanged. If centralization is not to exist on paper alone but is to be carried out in fact, it must be introduced in such a way that the members perceive it as an objectively justified strengthening and development of their collective work and fighting power. Otherwise centralization will appear to the masses as bureaucratization of the party, conjuring up opposition to all centralization, to all leadership, to any strict discipline. Anarchism and bureaucratism are two sides of the same coin.

Mere formal democracy in the organization cannot eliminate tendencies toward either bureaucratism or anarchism, for both have found fertile soil in the workers movement on the basis of formal democracy. Therefore the centralization of the organization, that is, the effort to achieve a strong leadership, cannot be successful if we attempt to achieve it simply on the basis of formal democracy. Necessary above all is the development and maintenance of living ties and reciprocity-both within the party between the leading party bodies and the rest of the membership, and between the party and the working-class masses outside the party.

III. ON COMMUNISTS’ OBLIGATION TO DO WORK
8. The Communist Party should be a working school of revolutionary Marxism. Organic links are forged between the various parts of the organization and among individual members by day-to-day collective work in the party organizations.

In the legal communist parties most members still do not participate regularly in daily party work. This is the chief defect of these parties, which puts a question mark over their development.

9. When a workers party takes the first steps toward transformation into a communist party, there is always the danger that it will be content simply to adopt a communist program, substitute communist doctrine for the former doctrine in its propaganda, and merely replace the hostile functionaries with ones who have communist consciousness. But adopting a communist program is only a statement of the will to become communist. If communist activity is not forthcoming, and if in organizing party work the passivity of the mass of the membership is perpetuated, the party is not fulfilling even the least of what it has promised to the proletariat by adopting the communist program. Because the first condition for seriously carrying out this program is the integration of all members into ongoing daily work.

The art of communist organization consists in making use of everything and everyone in the proletarian class struggle, distributing party work suitably among all party members and using the membership to continually draw ever wider masses of the proletariat into the revolutionary movement, while at the same time keeping the leadership of the entire movement firmly in hand, not by virtue of power but by virtue of authority, i.e., by virtue of energy, greater experience, greater versatility, greater ability.

10. Thus, in its effort to have only really active members, a communist party must demand of every member in its ranks that he devote his time and energy, insofar as they are at his own disposal under the given conditions, to his party and that he always give his best in its service.

Obviously, besides the requisite commitment to communism, membership in the Communist Party involves as a rule: formal admission, possibly first as a candidate, then as a member; regular payment of established dues; subscription to the party press, etc. Most important, however, is the participation of every member in daily party work.

11. In order to carry out daily party work, every party member should as a rule always be part of a smaller working group-a group, a committee, a commission, a board or a collegium, a fraction or cell. Only in this way can party work be properly allocated, directed and carried out.

Participation in the general membership meetings of the local organizations also goes without saying. Under conditions of legality it is not wise to choose to substitute meetings of local delegates for these periodic membership meetings; on the contrary, all members must be required to attend these meetings regularly. But that is by no means enough. Proper preparation of these meetings in itself presupposes work in smaller groups or work by designated comrades, just like preparations for effective interventions in general meetings of workers, demonstrations and mass working-class actions. The many and varied tasks involved in such work can be carefully examined and intensively executed only by smaller groups. Unless such constant detailed work is performed by the entire membership, divided into numerous small working groups, even the most energetic participation in the class struggles of the proletariat will lead us only to impotent, futile attempts to influence these struggles and not to the necessary concentration of all vital, revolutionary forces of the proletariat in a communist party which is unified and capable of action.

12. Communist nuclei are to be formed for day-to-day work in different areas of party activity: for door-to-door agitation, for party studies, for press work, for literature distribution, for intelligence-gathering, communications, etc.

Communist cells are nuclei for daily communist work in plants and workshops, in trade unions, in workers cooperatives, in military units, etc.-wherever there are at least a few members or candidate members of the Communist Party. If there are several party members in the same plant or trade union, etc., then the cell is expanded into a fraction whose work is directed by the nucleus.

Should it first be necessary to form a broader, general oppositional faction or to participate in a pre-existing one, the communists must seek to gain the leadership of it by means of their own separate cell.

Whether a communist cell should come out openly as communist in its milieu, let alone to the public at large, is determined by meticulous examination of the dangers and advantages in each particular situation.

13. Introducing the general obligation to do work in the party and organizing these small working groups is an especially difficult task for communist mass parties. It cannot be carried out overnight but demands unflagging perseverance, careful consideration and much energy.

It is particularly important that, from the outset, this reorganization be carried out with care and extensive deliberation. It would be easy to assign all members in each organization to small cells and groups according to some formal scheme and then without further ado call on them to do general day-to-day party work. But such a beginning would be worse than no beginning at all and would quickly provoke dissatisfaction and antipathy among the membership toward this important innovation.

It is recommended as a first step that the party leadership work out in detail preliminary guidelines for introducing this innovation through extensive consultation with several capable organizers who are both firmly convinced, dedicated communists and precisely informed as to the state of the movement in the various centers of struggle in the country. Then, on the local level, organizers or organizational committees which have been suitably instructed must prepare the work at hand, select the first group leaders and directly initiate the first steps. The organizations, working groups, cells and individual members must then be given very concrete, precisely defined tasks, and in such a way that they see the work as immediately useful, desirable and practicable. Where necessary one should demonstrate by example how to carry out the assignments, at the same time drawing attention to those errors which are to be particularly avoided.

14. This reorganization must be carried out practically, one step at a time. Accordingly, at the outset, there should not be too many new cells or working groups formed in the local organizations. It must first be established in practice that cells formed in important individual plants and trade unions have begun to function properly, and that in other main areas of party work the crucial working groups have been formed and have consolidated themselves to some extent (e.g., in the areas of intelligence-gathering, communications, door-to-door agitation, the women’s movement, literature distribution, press work, in the unemployed movement, etc.). The old framework of the organization cannot be blindly smashed before the new organizational apparatus is functioning to some extent.

Nevertheless, this fundamental task of communist organizational work must be carried out everywhere with the greatest energy. This places great demands not only on a legal party but also on every illegal one. Until a widespread network of communist cells, fractions and working groups is functioning at all focal points of the proletarian class struggle, until every member of a strong, purposeful party is participating in daily revolutionary work and this participation has become second nature, the party must not rest in its efforts to carry out this task.

15. This fundamental organizational task obligates the leading party bodies to exercise continual, tireless and direct leadership of and systematic influence on the party’s work. This demands the most varied efforts from those comrades who are part of the leadership of the party organizations. The leaders of communist work must not only see to it that the comrades in fact have party work to do; they must assist the comrades, directing their work systematically and expertly, with precise information as to the particular conditions they are working in. They must also try to uncover any mistakes made in their own work, attempt to constantly improve their methods of work on the basis of experience, and at the same time strive never to lose sight of the goal of the struggle.

16. All our party work is practical or theoretical struggle, or preparation for this struggle. Until now, specialization in this work has generally been very deficient. There are whole areas of important work where anything the party has done has been only by chance-for example, whatever has been done by the legal parties in the special struggle against the political police. The education of party comrades takes place as a rule only casually and incidentally, but also so superficially that large sections of the party membership remain ignorant of the majority of the most important basic documents of their own party-even the party program and the resolutions of the Communist International. Educational work must be systematically organized and constantly carried out by the entire system of party organizations, in all the party’s working collectives; thereby an increasingly high degree of specialization can also be attained.

17. In a communist organization the obligation to do work necessarily includes the duty to report. This applies to all organizations and bodies of the party as well as to each individual member. General reports covering short periods of time must be made regularly. They must cover the fulfillment of special party assignments in particular. It is important to enforce the duty to report so systematically that it takes root as one of the best traditions in the communist movement.

18. The party makes regular quarterly reports to the leadership of the Communist International. Each subordinate body of the party must report to its immediately superior committee (for example, monthly reports of the local organizations to the appropriate party committee).

Each cell, fraction and working group should report to the party body under whose actual leadership it works. Individual members must report (for example, weekly) to the cell or working group to which they belong (or to the cell or group head), and they must report the completion of special assignments to the party body from which the assignment came.

Reports must always be made at the first opportunity. They are to be made orally unless the party or the person who made the assignment requires a written report. Reports should be kept brief and factual. The recipient of a report is responsible for safeguarding information that would be damaging if made public, and for forwarding important reports to the appropriate leading party body without delay.

19. All these party reports should obviously not be limited simply to what the reporter himself did. They must also include information on those objective conditions observed during the work which have a bearing on our struggle, and especially considerations which can lead to a change or improvement in our future work. Suggestions for improvements found necessary in the course of the work must also be raised in the report.

All communist cells, fractions and working groups should regularly discuss reports, both those which they have received and those which they must present. Discussions must become an established habit.

Cells and working groups must also make sure that individual party members or groups of members are regularly put on special assignment to observe and report on opponent organizations, particularly petty-bourgeois workers organizations and above all on the organizations of the “socialist” parties.

IV. ON PROPAGANDA AND AGITATION
20. In the period prior to the open revolutionary uprising our most general task is revolutionary propaganda and agitation. This activity, and the organization of it, is often in large part still conducted in the old formal manner, through casual intervention from the outside at mass meetings, without particular concern for the concrete revolutionary content of our speeches and written material.

Communist propaganda and agitation must above all root itself deep in the midst of the proletariat. It must grow out of the concrete life of the workers, out of their common interests and aspirations and particularly out of their common struggles.

The most important aspect of communist propaganda is the revolutionizing effect of its content. Our slogans and positions on concrete questions in different situations must always be carefully weighed from this standpoint. Not only the professional propagandists and agitators, but all other party members as well, must receive ongoing and thorough instruction so they can arrive at correct positions.

21. The main forms of communist propaganda and agitation are: individual discussion; participation in the struggles of the trade-union and political workers movement; impact through the party’s press and literature. Every member of a legal or illegal party should in some way participate regularly in all this work.

Propaganda through individual discussion must be systematically organized as door-to-door agitation and conducted by working groups established for this purpose. Not a single house within the local party organization’s area of influence can be left out in this agitation. In larger cities, specially organized street agitation in conjunction with posters and leaflets can also yield good results. Furthermore, at the workplace, the cells or fractions must conduct regular agitation on an individual level, combined with literature distribution.

In countries where national minorities form a part of the population, it is the party’s duty to devote the necessary attention to propaganda and agitation among the proletarian layers of these minorities. This agitation and propaganda must obviously be conducted in the languages of the respective national minorities; appropriate party organs must be created for this purpose.

22. In conducting propaganda in those capitalist countries where the great majority of the proletariat does not yet possess conscious revolutionary inclinations, communists must constantly search for more effective methods of work in order to intersect the nonrevolutionary worker as he begins his revolutionary awakening, making the revolutionary movement comprehensible and accessible to him. Communist propaganda should use its slogans to reinforce the budding, unconscious, partial, wavering and semi-bourgeois tendencies toward revolutionary politics which in various situations are wrestling in his brain against bourgeois traditions and propaganda.

At the same time, communist propaganda must not be restricted to the present limited, vague demands or aspirations of the proletarian masses. The revolutionary kernel in these demands and aspirations is only the necessary point of departure for our intervention because only by making these links can the workers be brought closer to an understanding of communism.

23. Communist agitation among the proletarian masses must be conducted in such a way that workers engaged in struggle recognize our communist organization as the courageous, sensible, energetic and unswervingly devoted leader of their own common movement.

To achieve this the communists must take part in all the elementary struggles and movements of the working class and must fight for the workers’ cause in every conflict with the capitalists over hours, wages, working conditions, etc. In doing this the communists must become intimately involved in the concrete questions of working-class life; they must help the workers untangle these questions, call their attention to the most important abuses and help them formulate the demands directed at the capitalists precisely and practically; attempt to develop among the workers the sense of solidarity, awaken their consciousness to the common interests and the common cause of all workers of the country as a united working class constituting a section of the world army of the proletariat.

Only through such absolutely necessary day-to-day work, through continual self-sacrificing participation in all struggles of the proletariat, can the “Communist Party” develop into a communist party. Only thus will it distinguish itself from the obsolete socialist parties, which are merely propaganda and recruiting parties, whose activity consists only of collecting members, speechifying about reforms and exploiting parliamentary impossibilities. The purposeful and self-sacrificing participation of the entire party membership in the school of the daily struggles and conflicts of the exploited with the exploiters is the indispensable precondition not only for the conquest of power, but, to an even greater extent, for exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat. Only the leadership of the working masses in constant small-scale battles against the encroachments of capital will enable the communist parties to become vanguards of the working class-vanguards which in fact systematically learn to lead the proletariat and acquire the capacity for the consciously prepared ouster of the bourgeoisie.

24. Particularly in strikes, lockouts and other mass dismissals of workers, the communists must be mobilized in force to take part in the movement of the workers.

It is the greatest error for communists to invoke the communist program and the final armed revolutionary struggle as an excuse to passively look down on or even to oppose the present struggles of the workers for small improvements in their working conditions. No matter how small and modest the demands for which the workers are ready to fight the capitalists today, this must never be a reason for communists to abstain from the struggle. To be sure, in our agitational work we communists should not show ourselves to be blind instigators of stupid strikes and other reckless actions; rather, the communists everywhere must earn the reputation among the struggling workers as their ablest comrades in struggle.

25. In the trade-union movement, communist cells and fractions are in practice often quite at a loss when confronted with the simplest questions of the day. It is easy but fruitless to preach just the general principles of communism, only to fall into the negative stance of vulgar syndicalism when faced with concrete questions. This merely plays into the hands of the yellow Amsterdam leadership.

Instead, communists should determine their revolutionary position in accordance with the objective content of each question that arises. For example, instead of being content to oppose every wage agreement in theory and in principle, communists should above all fight directly against the actual content of the wage agreements advocated by the Amsterdam leaders. Since every shackle on the militancy of the proletariat is to be condemned and vigorously combatted, and it is well known that the aim of the capitalists and their Amsterdam accomplices is to use every wage agreement to tie the struggling workers’ hands, it is therefore obviously the duty of communists to expose this aim before the workers. But as a rule communists can best achieve this by advancing wage proposals which do not constitute a shackle on the workers.

The same position applies, for example, to assistance funds and trade-union benefit societies. Collecting strike funds and granting strike benefits from a common pool is in itself a good thing. Opposition in principle to this activity is misplaced. It is only the way in which the Amsterdam leaders want to collect and use these funds that contradicts the revolutionary class interests of the workers. In the case of union health insurance and the like, communists should for example demand the abolition of compulsory special payments and of all binding conditions for voluntary funds. However, if part of the membership still wants to secure sick benefits by making payments, they will not understand if we simply wish to forbid it. It is first necessary to rid these members of their petty-bourgeois aspirations through intensive propaganda on an individual level.

26. In the struggle against the social-democratic and other petty-bourgeois leaders of the trade unions and various workers parties, there can be no hope of obtaining anything by persuading them. The struggle against them must be organized with the utmost energy. However, the only sure and successful way to combat them is to split away their supporters by convincing the workers that their social-traitor leaders are lackeys of capitalism. Therefore, where possible these leaders must first be put into situations in which they are forced to unmask themselves; after such preparation they can then be attacked in the sharpest way.

It is by no means enough to simply curse the Amsterdam leaders as “yellow.” Rather, their “yellowness” must be proved continually by practical examples. Their activity in joint industrial councils, in the International Labor Office of the League of Nations, in bourgeois ministries and administrations; the treacherous words in their speeches at conferences and in parliamentary bodies; the key passages in their many conciliatory hack articles in hundreds of newspapers; and in particular their vacillating and hesitant behavior in preparing and conducting even the most minor wage struggles and strikes-all this provides daily opportunities to expose and brand the unreliable and treacherous doings of the Amsterdam leaders as “yellow” through simply formulated motions, resolutions and straightforward speeches.

The cells and fractions must conduct their practical offensives systematically. The excuses of lower-level union bureaucrats, who barricade themselves behind statutes, union conference decisions and instructions from the top leadership out of weakness (often even despite good will), must not hinder the communists from going ahead with tenacity and repeatedly demanding that the lower-level bureaucrats state clearly what they have done to remove these ostensible obstacles and whether they are ready to fight openly alongside the membership to surmount these obstacles.

27. Communists’ participation in meetings and conferences of trade-union organizations must be carefully prepared in advance by the fractions and working groups, for example, drafting their own resolutions, choosing speakers to present and to support the motions, nominating capable, experienced and energetic comrades for election, etc.

Through their working groups, communist organizations must also prepare carefully for all general meetings of workers, election meetings, demonstrations, political working-class festivals and the like, held by opponent parties. When the communists call general workers’ meetings themselves, as many communist working groups as possible must coordinate their actions according to a unified plan, both beforehand and while the meetings are in progress, to ensure that full organizational use is made of such meetings.

28. Communists must learn how to be ever more effective in drawing unorganized, politically unconscious workers into the sphere of lasting party influence. Through our cells and fractions we should induce these workers to join trade unions and read our party press. Other workers associations (cooperatives, organizations of war victims, educational associations and study circles, sports clubs, theater groups, etc.) can also be used to transmit our influence. Where the communist party must work illegally such workers associations can be founded outside the party as well, on the initiative of party members with the consent and supervision of the leading party bodies (sympathizers’ associations). For many proletarians who have remained politically indifferent, communist youth and women’s organizations can first arouse interest in a common organizational life through courses, reading groups, excursions, festivals, Sunday outings, etc. Such workers can then be drawn permanently close to the organizations and in this way also induced to aid our party with useful work (distributing leaflets, circulating party newspapers, pamphlets, etc.). They will overcome their petty-bourgeois inclinations most easily through such active participation in the common movement.

29. In order to win the semi-proletarian layers of the working population as sympathizers of the revolutionary proletariat, communists must utilize these intermediate layers’ particular conflicts of interest with the big landowners, the capitalists and the capitalist state, and overcome their mistrust of the proletarian revolution through continual persuasion. This may often require prolonged interaction with them. Their confidence in the communist movement can be promoted by sympathetic interest in their daily needs, free information and assistance in overcoming small difficulties which they are at a loss to solve, drawing them to special free public educational meetings, etc. Meanwhile, it is necessary for communists to cautiously and untiringly counteract opponent organizations and individuals who possess authority locally or have influence on laboring small peasants, cottage workers and other semi-proletarian elements. The most immediate enemies of the exploited, whom they know as oppressors from their own experience, must be exposed as the representatives and personification of the whole criminal capitalist system. Communist propaganda and agitation must intensively exploit in comprehensible terms all day-to-day events which bring the state bureaucracy into conflict with the ideals of petty-bourgeois democracy and the “rule of law.”

Every local organization in the countryside must meticulously divide the task of door-to-door agitation among its members and extend this agitation to all the villages, farmsteads and individual houses in the area covered by its work.

30. For propaganda work in the army and navy of the capitalist state, a special study must be made of the most appropriate methods in each individual country. Anti-militarist agitation in the pacifist sense is extremely detrimental; it only furthers the efforts of the bourgeoisie to disarm the proletariat. The proletariat rejects in principle and combats with the utmost energy all military institutions of the bourgeois state and of the bourgeois class in general. On the other hand, it utilizes these institutions (army, rifle clubs, territorial militias, etc.) to give the workers military training for revolutionary battles. Therefore, it is not against the military training of youth and workers but against the militaristic order and the autocratic rule of the officers that intensive agitation should be directed. Every possibility for the proletariat to get weapons into its hands must be exploited to the fullest.

The rank-and-file soldiers must be made aware of the class division evident in the material privileges of the officers and the rough treatment of the ranks. Furthermore, this agitation must make clear to the ranks that their whole future is inextricably bound up with the fate of the exploited class. In the advanced period characterized by incipient revolutionary ferment, agitation for the democratic election of all officers by the soldiers and sailors and for the founding of soldiers councils can be very effective in undermining the pillars of capitalist class rule.

The greatest vigilance and incisiveness are always necessary in agitating against the bourgeoisie’s special class-war troops, especially against their volunteer armed gangs. Where their social composition and corruption make it possible, the social decomposition of their ranks must be systematically promoted at the right time. If they have a homogeneous bourgeois class character, for example in troops drawn purely from the officer corps, they must be exposed before the entire population, made so despicable and hated that the resulting isolation grinds them to pieces from within.

V. ON THE ORGANIZATION OF POLITICAL STRUGGLES
31. For a communist party there is no time when the party organization cannot be politically active. The organizational exploitation of every political and economic situation, and of every change in these situations, must be developed into organizational strategy and tactics.

Even if the party is still weak, it can exploit politically stirring events or major strikes that convulse the whole economy by carrying out a well-planned and systematically organized radical propaganda campaign. Once a party has decided that such a campaign is appropriate, it must energetically concentrate all members and sections of the party on it.

First, the party must make use of all the ties it has forged through the work of its cells and working groups to organize meetings in the main centers of political organization or of the strike movement. In these meetings the party’s speakers must make the communist slogans clear to the participants as the way out of their plight. Special working groups must prepare these meetings well, down to the last detail. If it is not possible to hold our own meetings, suitable comrades should intervene as major speakers during the discussion at general meetings of workers on strike or engaged in other struggles.

If there is a prospect of winning over the majority or a large part of the meeting to our slogans, an attempt must be made to express these slogans in well-formulated and skillfully motivated motions and resolutions. If such resolutions are adopted, then at all meetings in the same town or in other areas involved in this movement we must work toward getting an increasing number of the same or similar motions and resolutions adopted, or at least supported by strong minorities. We will thus consolidate the proletarian layers in motion, whom we had initially influenced only through our ideas, bringing them to recognize the new leadership.

After all such meetings, the working groups which took part in organizationally preparing and utilizing them must meet briefly, not only to prepare a report for the party committee in charge of the work, but also to immediately draw the lessons which are necessary for further work from the experience gained, or from any errors.

Depending on the situation, we must make our operational slogans accessible to interested layers of workers with posters and flyers, or else distribute detailed leaflets to those engaged in struggle, using the slogans of the day to make communism comprehensible in the context of the situation. Skillful postering requires specially organized groups to find suitable locations and choose times for effective paste-up. Leafletting in and outside the plants and in restaurants and pubs used as centers of communication by the layers of workers involved in the movement, at major transit intersections, employment offices and train stations, should be combined wherever possible with the kind of discussion whose catchwords will be taken up by the aroused masses of workers. Detailed leaflets should if possible be distributed only in buildings, plants, halls, apartment buildings or wherever else we can expect they will be read attentively.

This intensified propaganda must be supported by parallel work at all trade-union and plant meetings caught up in the movement. When necessary, our comrades must raise the demand for such meetings or organize them themselves and must provide suitable speakers for main presentations or discussion. Most of the space in our party newspapers, and the papers’ best arguments, must be placed at the disposal of such a particular movement, just as the entire organizational apparatus must be wholly and unflaggingly dedicated to the general aim of the movement for its duration.

32. Demonstration campaigns require a very flexible and dedicated leadership which must keep the aim of the campaign clearly in mind and be able to discern at any moment whether a demonstration has reached the upper limit of effectiveness, or whether, in the given situation, it is possible to further intensify the movement by expanding it into mass action in the form of demonstrative strikes and finally mass strikes. The peace demonstrations during the war taught us that a real proletarian combat party, albeit small and illegal, cannot turn aside or halt even after such demonstrations have been suppressed when a major, immediately relevant goal is involved that is naturally bound to generate wider and wider interest among the masses.

It is best to base street demonstrations on the major factories. First our cells and fractions must have done systematic groundwork in a suitable situation to bring the mood to a certain uniformity through oral propaganda and leaflets. Then the committee in charge must bring together the party cadres with authority in the plants-the cell and fraction leaders-to discuss arrangements for the coming day so that our contingents march up in a disciplined fashion and converge punctually. They must also decide on the character of the slogans of the day, the prospects for broadening the demonstrations, and when to break off and disperse. A thoroughly briefed and organizationally experienced corps of energetic functionaries must form the backbone of the demonstration from the time it leaves the plants up to the time the mass action disperses. In order for these functionaries to remain in active contact with each other and be provided with the continuously necessary political directives, responsible party workers must be systematically distributed throughout the crowd of demonstrators. This kind of flexible, political-organizational leadership of the demonstration best lays the basis for renewed demonstrations and for possibly broadening them into larger mass actions.

33. Communist parties which have already achieved a certain amount of internal cohesion, a tested corps of functionaries and a considerable mass following must do their utmost through major campaigns to completely overcome the influence of the social-traitor leaders over the working class and to bring the majority of the working masses under communist leadership. The way the campaigns are organized will depend on the situation-on whether current struggles enable the party to move to the forefront as the proletarian leadership, or whether temporary stagnation prevails. The composition of the party will also be a decisive factor for the organizational methods of campaigns. For example, the so-called “Open Letter” was used by the VKPD in order to win over the crucial social layers of the proletariat more effectively than was otherwise then possible for a young mass party to do in the individual districts. To unmask the social-traitor leaders, the Communist Party approached the other mass organizations of the proletariat at a time of increasing impoverishment and sharpening class antagonisms, demanding openly before the proletariat an answer as to whether these leaders--with their supposedly powerful organizations-were prepared to take up the struggle together with the Communist Party against the obvious impoverishment of the proletariat, for the most minimal demands, for a measly crust of bread.

Wherever the Communist Party initiates a similar campaign, it must make all organizational preparations to ensure that its intervention wins a response among the broadest working masses. All the party’s industrial fractions and trade-union functionaries must, at their next plant and union meetings and in all public meetings (after thoroughly preparing for such meetings), effectively present the party’s demands as the totality of the life-and-death demands of the proletariat. Wherever our cells or fractions seek to take the offensive to advance mass agreement with our demands, leaflets, flyers and posters must be distributed in a skillful manner to use the mood of the masses advantageously. Our party press must daily feature the issues of the movement during the weeks of the campaign, alternating between shorter and more detailed articles, written from continually varied standpoints. The organizations must supply the press with a steady stream of material for this, and must energetically ensure that the editors do not flag in promoting the party campaign in the press. The party fractions in parliamentary and municipal bodies must also be systematically put to work in such struggles. Following the directives of the party leadership, they must speak for the movement in the parliamentary bodies by introducing appropriate motions. These parliamentary representatives must regard themselves as conscious members of the struggling masses, as their spokesmen in the camp of the class enemy, as responsible functionaries and party workers.

If the united, organizationally concentrated work of all the party’s forces leads in a few weeks to the adoption of a large and steadily increasing number of resolutions in agreement with our demands, the party will be faced with the serious organizational question of providing an organizational framework for the masses who are in agreement with our slogans. If the movement has assumed a predominantly trade-union character, steps must be taken above all to increase our organizational influence in the unions: our fractions must proceed with well-prepared, direct offensives against the local trade-union leadership, either to defeat them or else to force them to wage an organized struggle on the basis of our party’s demands. Where plant councils, factory committees or similar bodies exist, our fraction should intervene to induce plenary meetings of these plant councils or factory committees to decide in favor of this struggle. If several local organizations have been won over to such a movement fighting under communist leadership for the bare life-and-death interests of the proletariat, they must be convened in conferences; plant meetings which have come out in support should also send their special delegates. The new leadership thus consolidating itself under communist influence will gain new impetus by this concentration of the active groups of the organized working class; this impetus must in turn be used to drive the leadership of the socialist parties and trade unions forward-or to expose them, including with respect to their organizational affiliation.

In the economic sectors where our party possesses its best organizations and where it has encountered the most widespread agreement with its demands, the organized pressure which has been brought to bear on the local trade unions and plant councils must be used to consolidate all the isolated economic struggles being waged in this sector, as well as the developing movements of other groups, into a unified, militant movement. This movement must transcend the framework of the particular interests of individual trades and raise several elementary demands in their common interest which can then be won through the joint forces of all organizations in the district. It is in such a movement that the Communist Party will prove itself to be the real leader of that section of the proletariat which wants to fight, while the trade-union bureaucracy and the socialist parties, who would oppose such a jointly organized, militant movement, would be finished-not only politically as regards their ideas, but also in practical organizational terms.

34. If the Communist Party attempts to take the leadership of the masses into its hands at a time of acute political and economic tensions leading to the outbreak of new movements and struggles, it can dispense with raising special demands and appeal in simple and popular language directly to the members of the socialist parties and trade unions not to abstain from the struggles necessitated by their misery and increasing oppression at the hands of the employers. Even if their bureaucratic leaders are opposed, the ranks must fight if they are to avoid being driven to complete ruin. The party’s press organs, especially its daily newspapers, must emphatically prove day after day during such a party campaign that the communists are ready to intervene as leaders in the current and impending struggles of the pauperized proletariat, and that in the immediate acute situation their combativeness will, wherever possible, come to the aid of all the oppressed. It must be proved day in and day out that without these struggles the working class will no longer have any possibilities for existence and that, despite this fact, the old organizations are trying to avoid and obstruct these struggles.

The plant and trade-union fractions, continually pointing to the communists’ combativeness and willingness to sacrifice, must make it clear to their fellow workers in meetings that abstention from the struggle is no longer possible. The main task in such a campaign, however, is to organizationally consolidate and unify all struggles and movements born of the situation. Not only must the cells and fractions in the trades and plants involved in the struggles continually maintain close organic contact among themselves, but the leading bodies must also (both through the district committees and through the central leadership) immediately place functionaries and responsible party workers at the disposal of all movements which break out. Working directly with those in struggle, they must lead, broaden, intensify, generalize and link up the movements. The organization’s primary job is to place what is common to these various struggles in sharp relief and bring it into the foreground, in order to urge a general solution to the struggle, by political means if necessary.

As the struggles become more intense and generalized, it will be necessary to create unified bodies to lead them. If the bureaucratic strike leaderships of some unions cave in prematurely, we must be quick to push for their replacement by communists, who must assure a firm, resolute leadership of the struggle. In cases where we have succeeded in combining several struggles, we must push for setting up a joint leadership for the campaign, in which the communists should obtain the leading positions to the extent possible. With proper organizational preparation, a joint leadership for the campaign can often easily be set up through the trade-union fractions as well as through plant fractions, plant councils, plant council plenary meetings and especially through general meetings of strikers.

If the movement assumes a political character as a result of becoming generalized and as a result of the intervention of employers’ organizations and government authorities, then the election of workers councils may become possible and necessary, and propaganda and organizational preparation must be initiated for this. All party publications must then intensively put forward the idea that only through such organs of its own, arising directly from the workers’ struggles, can the working class achieve its real liberation with the necessary ruthlessness, even without the trade-union bureaucracy and its socialist party satellites.

35. Communist parties which have already grown strong, particularly the large mass parties, should also take organizational measures to be continually armed for political mass actions. In demonstration campaigns and economic mass movements, in all partial actions, one must constantly bear in mind the need to energetically and tenaciously consolidate the organizational experience of these movements in order to achieve ever more solid ties with the broader masses. The experience of all new major movements must repeatedly be discussed and reviewed at broad conferences which bring the leading functionaries and responsible party workers together with the shop stewards from the large and medium-sized plants, so that the network of ties through the shop stewards can be made ever more solid and organized ever more securely. Close bonds of mutual trust between the leading functionaries and responsible party workers on the one hand, and the shop stewards on the other, are organizationally the best guarantee that political mass actions will not be initiated prematurely and that their scope will correspond to the circumstances and the current level of party influence.

Unless the party organization maintains the closest ties with the proletarian masses employed in the large and medium-sized factories, the Communist Party will not be able to achieve major mass actions and genuinely revolutionary movements. If the uprising in Italy last year-which was unquestionably revolutionary in character and found its strongest expression in the factory occupations-collapsed prematurely, then this was no doubt in part due to the betrayal of the trade-union bureaucracy and the inadequacy of the party’s political leaders, but also partly because no intimate, organized ties existed at all between the party and the plants through factory shop stewards who were politically informed and interested in party life. It is also beyond doubt that the attempt to aggressively utilize the political potential of the great English miners movement this year suffered extraordinarily from this same failing.

VI. ON THE PARTY PRESS
36. The communist press must be developed and improved by the party with tireless energy.

No newspaper may be recognized as a communist organ if it does not submit to the directives of the party. Analogously, this principle is to be applied to all literary products such as periodicals, books, pamphlets, etc., with due regard for their theoretical, propagandistic or other character.

The party must be more concerned with having good papers than with having many of them. Above all, every communist party must have a good, if possible daily, central organ.

37. A communist newspaper must never become a capitalist enterprise like the bourgeois press and often even the so-called “socialist” papers. Our paper must keep itself independent from the capitalist credit institutions. Skillful solicitation of advertising-which in the case of legal mass parties can greatly help in keeping our press afloat-must never lead, for example, to our becoming dependent in any way on the major advertisers. Rather, the press of our mass parties will most quickly win unconditional respect through its intransigent attitude on all proletarian social questions. Our paper should not pander to an appetite for sensationalism or serve as entertainment for the public at large. It cannot yield to the criticism of petty-bourgeois literati or journalistic virtuosi in order to make itself “respectable.”

38. The communist newspaper must above all look after the interests of the oppressed struggling workers. It should be our best propagandist and agitator, the leading propagandist of the proletarian revolution.

Our paper has the task of collecting valuable experiences from the entirety of the work of party members and then of presenting these to party comrades as a guide for the continued review and improvement of communist methods of work. These experiences should be exchanged at joint meetings of editors from the entire country; mutual discussion there will also yield the greatest possible uniformity of tone and thrust throughout the entire party press. In this way the party press, including every individual newspaper, will be the best organizer of our revolutionary work.

Without this unifying, purposive organizational work of the communist press, particularly the main newspaper, it will hardly be possible to achieve democratic centralism, to implement an effective division of labor in the Communist Party or, consequently, to fulfill the party’s historic mission.

39. The communist newspaper must strive to become a communist enterprise, i.e., a proletarian combat organization, a working collective of revolutionary workers, of all those who regularly write for the paper, typeset and print it, manage, circulate and sell it, those who collect local material for articles, discuss this material in the cells and write it up, those who are active daily in the paper’s distribution, etc.

A number of practical measures are required to turn the paper into this kind of genuine combat organization and into a strong, vital working collective of communists.

A communist develops the closest ties with his paper if he must work and make sacrifices for it. It is his daily weapon which must constantly be tempered and sharpened anew in order to be usable. The communist newspaper can be maintained only by heavy, ongoing material and financial sacrifices. The means for its expansion and for internal improvements will constantly have to be supplied from the ranks of party members until, in legal mass parties, it ultimately attains such wide circulation and organizational solidity that it itself begins to serve as a material support for the communist movement.

In the meantime it is not enough for a communist to be an active salesman and agitator for the paper; he must be an equally useful contributor to it. Every socially or economically noteworthy incident from the plant fraction or cell-from a shopfloor accident to a plant meeting, from the mistreatment of apprentices to the company financial report-is to be reported at once to the newspaper by the quickest route. The trade-union fractions must communicate all important resolutions and measures from the membership meetings and executive bodies of their unions, and they must report on any characteristic activity of our opponents succinctly and accurately. What one sees of life in public-at meetings and in the streets-often provides an alert party worker the opportunity to observe details with a sense of social criticism which can be used in the paper to make clear even to the indifferent our intimate knowledge of the problems of everyday life.

The editorial staff must treat this information, coming as it does from the life of the working class and workers organizations, with great warmth and affection. The editors should either use such material as short news items to give our paper the character of a vital working collective acquainted with real life; or they should use this material to make the teachings of communism comprehensible by means of these practical examples from the workers’ daily existence, which is the quickest way to make the great ideas of communism immediate and vivid to the broad working masses. If at all possible, the editorial staff should hold office hours at a convenient time of day for any worker who visits our newspaper, to listen to his requests and his complaints about life’s troubles, diligently note them down and use them to enliven the paper.

Obviously, under capitalist conditions, none of our newspapers can become a perfect communist working collective. However, even under very difficult conditions it is possible to successfully organize a revolutionary workers newspaper along these lines. That is proved by the example of our Russian comrades’ Pravda in 1912-13. It did in fact constitute an ongoing and active organization of conscious, revolutionary workers in the most important centers of the Russian empire. These comrades collectively edited, published and distributed the newspaper-most of them, of course, doing this in addition to working for a living-and they scrimped to pay for its expenses from their wages. The newspaper in turn was able to give them the best of what they wanted, what they needed at the time in the movement, and what is still of use today in their work and struggle. For the party ranks as well as many other revolutionary workers, such a newspaper was really able to become “our newspaper.”

40. The militant communist press is in its true element when it directly participates in campaigns led by the party. If the party’s work during a period of time is concentrated on a particular campaign, the party paper must place all of its space, not just the political lead articles, at the service of this campaign. The editorial department must draw on material from all areas to nourish this campaign and must saturate the whole paper with it in a suitable form and style.

41. Sales of subscriptions to our newspaper must be systematized on a formal basis. First, use must be made of every situation in which there is increased motion among the workers and where political or social life is further inflamed by any sort of political and economic events. Thus, immediately after every major strike or lockout where the paper has openly and energetically represented the interests of the struggling workers, a subscription drive should be organized to approach each individual who had been out on strike. The communist plant and trade-union fractions within the trades involved in the strike movement must not only propagandize for the newspaper with lists and subscription blanks in their own arenas but, if they possibly can, they must also obtain lists of addresses of the workers who took part in the struggle, so that special working groups for the press can conduct energetic door-to-door agitation.

Likewise, after every political electoral campaign which arouses the workers’ interest, systematic door-to-door canvassing must be carried out in the proletarian districts by the designated working groups.

At times of latent political or economic crises whose effects are felt by the broader working masses as inflation, unemployment and other hardships, after making skillful propagandistic use of these developments every effort should be made to obtain (as much as possible through the trade-union fractions) extensive lists of the unionized workers in the various trades, so that the working group for the press can productively follow up with sustained, systematic door-to-door agitation. Experience has shown that the last week of each month is best suited for this regular canvassing. Any local organization that allows the last week of even one month to pass without using it for agitation for the press is guilty of a serious omission in extending the communist movement. The working group for the press must also not let any public meeting of workers or any major demonstration go by without being there pushing our paper with subscription blanks at the beginning, during the breaks and at the end. The same duties are incumbent both on the trade-union fractions at every single meeting of their union, and on the cells and plant fractions at plant meetings.

42. Our newspaper must be continually defended by party members against all enemies.

All party members must lead a fierce struggle against the capitalist press; its venality, its lies, its wretched silence and all its intrigues must be clearly exposed and unmistakably branded.

The social-democratic and independent-socialist press must be defeated through a continuous offensive: without getting lost in petty factional polemics, we must expose, through numerous examples from daily life, their treacherous attitude of concealing class antagonisms. The trade-union and other fractions must strive through organizational measures to free the members of trade unions and other workers organizations from the confusion and paralyzing influence of these social-democratic papers. Both in door-to-door agitation and particularly in the plants, subscription work for our paper must be skillfully and deliberately aimed directly against the press of the social-traitors.

VII. ON THE GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE PARTY ORGANISM
43. The extension and consolidation of the party must not proceed according to a formal scheme of geographic divisions but according to the real economic, political and transport/communications structure of the given areas of the country. Stress is to be placed primarily on the main cities and on the major centers of the industrial proletariat.

In beginning to build a new party there is often a tendency to immediately extend the network of party organizations over the entire country. Limited as the available forces are, they are thereby scattered to the four winds. This weakens the ability of the party to recruit and grow. After a few years the party may often in fact have built up an extensive system of offices, but it may not have succeeded in gaining a firm foothold in even the most important industrial cities of the country.

44. To attain the greatest possible centralization of party work it makes no sense to chop up the party leadership into a schematic hierarchy with many levels, each completely subordinate to the next. Optimally, from every major city which constitutes an economic, political or transport/communications center, a network of organizational threads should extend throughout the greater metropolitan area and the economic or political district belonging to it. The party committee which directs the entire organizational work of the district from the major city (the city being the head, as it were, of this party organism), and which constitutes the political leadership of the district, must establish the closest ties with the masses of party members working in the main urban area.

The full-time organizers of such a district, who are to be elected by the district conference or the district party congress and approved by the party central committee, must be required to participate regularly in the party life of the district’s main city. The district party committee should always be reinforced by party workers drawn from the members in the main urban area, so that close and vital contact really exists between the party committee which runs the district politically, and the large membership of the district’s urban center. As organizational forms develop further, the district’s leading party committee should optimally also constitute the political leadership of the main urban center in the district. In this way, the leading party committees of the district organizations, together with the central committee, will serve as the bodies which actually lead in the overall party organization.

The area of a party district is of course not limited only by the geographical extent of the area. The key point is that the party district committee must be able to lead all local organizations in the district as a unit. When this is no longer possible, the district must be divided and a new district party committee founded.

In larger countries, of course, the party needs certain intermediate bodies to serve as connecting links between the central leadership and the various district leaderships (provincial leaderships, regions and the like) as well as between a given district leadership and the various local bodies (subdistrict or county leaderships). Under certain circumstances it may become useful for one or another of these intermediate bodies, for example that of a major city with a strong membership, to be given a leadership role. However, as a general rule this should be avoided as decentralization.

45. The large units of the party organizations (districts) are composed of local party entities: of rural and small-town “locals,” and of “wards” or “rayons” of the various sections of the major cities.

A local party entity which has grown so large that under conditions of legality it can no longer effectively hold general membership meetings must be divided.

In the local party organization the members are to be assigned to the various working groups for the purpose of doing daily party work. In larger organizations it may be useful to combine the working groups into various collective groups. As a rule those members who come into contact with one another at their workplaces or otherwise on a daily basis should be assigned to the same collective group. The collective group has the task of dividing the overall party work among the various working groups, obtaining reports from the heads of the working groups, training candidate members within their ranks, etc.

46. The party as a whole is under the leadership of the Communist International. The directives and resolutions of the international leadership in matters affecting a member party shall be addressed either (1) to the general central leadership of the party, or (2) through it to the central leadership in charge of a special area of work, or (3) to all party organizations.

Directives and decisions of the International are binding on the party and, as a matter of course, on every party member.

47. The central leadership of the party (central committee and Beirat or Ausschuß) is responsible to the party congress and to the leadership of the Communist International. The narrower leading body as well as the broad committee, Beirat or Ausschuß are as a rule elected by the party congress. The congress may, if it deems appropriate, charge the central leadership with electing from its own ranks the narrower leading body, consisting of the political and the organizational bureau. The narrower leading body, through its two bureaus, directs the policies and ongoing work of the party and is accountable for this. The narrower leading body regularly convenes plenary meetings of the party central leadership to make decisions of greater importance and scope. In order to be able to fully grasp the entire political situation and to maintain a living picture of the party, its clarity and its capacity to perform, it is necessary in electing the central party leadership to give consideration to candidates from the different regions of the country, if any suitable ones are available. For the same reason, serious differences of opinion on tactical questions should not be suppressed in the election of the central leadership. On the contrary, representation of these views in the overall leadership by their best spokesmen should be facilitated. The narrower leading body, however, should be homogeneous in its views if at all feasible and must-if it is to be able to lead firmly and with certainty-be able to rely not only on its authority but on a clear and even numerically fixed majority in the central leadership as a whole.

By thus constituting the central party leadership more broadly, the legal mass parties in particular will most quickly create for their central committee the best foundation of firm discipline: the unqualified confidence of the membership masses. Moreover, it will lead to more quickly recognizing, curing and overcoming vacillations and disorders which may show up in the party’s layers of functionaries. In this way, the accumulation of such disorders in the party and the need to surgically remove them at subsequent party congresses-with possibly catastrophic results-can be kept to a bearable level.

48. To be able to lead party work effectively in the different areas each of the leading party committees must implement a practical division of labor among its members. Here special leading bodies may prove necessary for a number of areas of work (e.g., for propaganda, for press work, for the trade-union struggle, for agitation in the countryside, agitation among women, for communication, Red Aid, etc.). Every special leading body is subordinate either to the central party leadership or to a district party committee.

It is the job of the leading party district committee, and ultimately the central party leadership, to monitor the practical work as well as the correct composition of all committees subordinate to it. All members engaged in full-time party work, just like the members of the parliamentary fraction, are directly subordinate to the leading party committee. It may prove useful now and then to change the duties and work locations of the full-time comrades (e.g., editors, propagandists, organizers, etc.) insofar as this does not overly disrupt party work. Editors and propagandists must participate on an ongoing basis in regular party work in one of the working groups.

49. The central leadership of the party, like that of the Communist International, is entitled at all times to demand exhaustive information from all communist organizations, from their component bodies and from individual members. The representatives and plenipotentiaries of the central leadership are to be admitted to all assemblies and meetings with consultative vote and the right of veto. The central party leadership must always have such plenipotentiaries (commissars) available so that it can responsibly provide these district and county leaderships with instruction and information not only through its political and organizational circulars or correspondence, but also by direct verbal communication. In the central leadership as well as in every district committee, there must be an audit commission composed of tested and knowledgeable party comrades to inspect the treasury and books. It should report regularly to the expanded committee (Beirat or Ausschuß).

All organizations and party bodies, as well as all individual members, are entitled at all times to communicate their desires and initiatives, observations or complaints directly to the central leadership of the party or the International.

50. The directives and decisions of the leading party bodies are binding on subordinate organizations and on individual members.

The accountability of the leading bodies, and their obligation to guard against negligence and against misuse of their leading position, can be fixed on a formal basis only in part. The less formal accountability they have, for example in illegal parties, the more they are obligated to seek the opinion of other party members, to obtain reliable information regularly and to make their own decisions only after careful, comprehensive deliberation.

51. Party members are to conduct themselves in their public activity at all times as disciplined members of a combat organization. When differences of opinion arise as to the correct course of action, these should as far as possible be decided beforehand within the party organization and then action must be in accordance with this decision. In order, however, that every party decision be carried out with the greatest energy by all party organizations and members, the broadest mass of the party must whenever possible be involved in examining and deciding every question. Party organizations and party authorities also have the duty of deciding whether questions should be discussed publicly (press, lectures, pamphlets) by individual comrades, and if so, in what form and scope. But even if the decisions of the organization or of the party leadership are regarded as wrong by other members, these comrades must in their public activity never forget that it is the worst breach of discipline and the worst error in combat to disrupt or, worse, to break the unity of the common front.

It is the supreme duty of every party member to defend the Communist Party and above all the Communist International against all enemies of communism. Anyone who forgets this and instead publicly attacks the party or the Communist International is to be treated as an opponent of the party.

52. The statutes of the party are to be formulated so that they are an aid, not an obstacle, to the leading party bodies in the continual development of the overall party organization and in the incessant improvement of the organization’s work.

The decisions of the Communist International are to be implemented without delay by member parties, even in those cases where, according to the statutes, the corresponding changes in the existing statutes and party resolutions can be made only at a later date.

VIII. ON THE COMBINATION OF LEGAL AND ILLEGAL WORK
53. Corresponding to the different phases in the process of the revolution, changes in function can occur in the daily life of every communist party. Basically, however, there is no essential difference in the party structure which a legal party on the one hand, and an illegal party on the other, must strive for.

The party must be organized so that it can at all times adapt itself quickly to changes in the conditions of struggle.

The Communist Party must develop itself into a combat organization capable on the one hand of avoiding open encounters with an enemy possessing overwhelmingly superior forces who has amassed all of his strength at one point; but on the other hand also capable of exploiting this enemy’s unwieldiness, striking him when and where he least expects the attack. It would be the gravest error for the party organization to prepare for and expect only insurrections and street fighting or only conditions of the most severe repression. Communists must carry out their preparatory revolutionary work in every situation and always be on combat footing, because it is often almost impossible to predict the alternation between a period of upheaval and a period of quiescence; and even in cases where such foresight is possible it cannot generally be used to reorganize the party, because the change usually occurs in a very short time, indeed often quite suddenly.

54. The legal communist parties in the capitalist countries generally have not yet sufficiently grasped that it is their task to understand how the party should properly arm itself for revolutionary uprisings, for armed struggle or for illegal struggle in general. The entire party organization is built much too one-sidedly on an enduring legality and is organized according to the requirements of legal day-to-day tasks.

In the illegal parties, in contrast, there is often insufficient understanding of the possibilities for exploiting legal activity and for building a party organization in living contact with the revolutionary masses. In this case, party work shows a tendency to remain a fruitless Sisyphean labor or impotent conspiracy.

Both are wrong. Every legal Communist Party must know how to ensure maximal combat readiness if it should have to go underground, and it must be armed particularly for the outbreak of revolutionary uprisings. In turn, every illegal Communist Party must energetically exploit the opportunities provided by the legal workers movement in order to develop through intensive party work into the organizer and actual leader of the great revolutionary masses.

The leadership of legal and of illegal work must always be in the hands of the same unitary central party leadership.

55. Within both the legal and the illegal parties, illegal communist organizational work is often conceived of as the creation and maintenance of a closed, exclusively military organization isolated from the rest of the party work and party organization. That is completely wrong. On the contrary, in the prerevolutionary period our combat organization must be built primarily through general communist party work. The entire party should be trained as a combat organization for the revolution.

Isolated revolutionary-military organizations established too soon before the revolution are very apt to show tendencies toward dissolution and demoralization because there is a lack of directly useful party work for them to do.

56. For an illegal party, it is obviously of critical importance in all of its work to protect its members and bodies from discovery and not to expose them by, for example, membership registration, careless dues collection or literature distribution. Therefore, it cannot use open forms of organization for conspiratorial purposes to the same degree as a legal party. But it can learn to do so to an increasing extent.

All precautionary measures must be taken to prevent the penetration of dubious or unreliable elements into the party. The methods to be used will depend very largely on whether the party is legal or illegal, persecuted or tolerated, growing rapidly or stagnating. One method which has proved successful here and there under certain circumstances is the system of candidacy. Under this system, an applicant for membership in the party is admitted first as a candidate on the recommendation of one or two party comrades, and whether he can be admitted as a member is dependent upon his proving himself in the party work assigned to him.

Inevitably, the bourgeoisie will try to send spies and provocateurs into illegal organizations. This must be fought with the utmost care and persistence. One method in this fight is the skillful combination of legal and illegal work. Prolonged legal revolutionary work is absolutely the best way to test who is reliable, courageous, conscientious, energetic, adroit and punctual enough to be entrusted with important assignments, suited to his abilities, in illegal work.

A legal party should constantly improve its defensive measures to avoid being taken by surprise (for example, by keeping cover addresses in a safe place, as a rule destroying letters, putting necessary documents in safekeeping, giving its couriers conspiratorial training, etc.).

57. It follows that our overall party work must be distributed in such a way that even before the open revolutionary uprising the roots of a combat organization corresponding to the requirements of this stage develop and take hold. It is especially important that the communist party leadership constantly keep these requirements in mind, and that it try to the extent possible to form a clear conception of them in advance. Naturally, this conception can never be exact or clear enough a priori. But that is no reason to disregard this most important aspect of communist organizational leadership.

For when, in the open revolutionary uprising, the Communist Party is faced with the greatest change in function of its life, this change can pose very difficult and complicated tasks for even the best-organized party. It may be a matter of mobilizing our political party for military combat within a few days. And not only the party, but also its reserves-the organizations of sympathizers-indeed, even the entire home guard, i.e., the unorganized revolutionary masses. At this point the formation of a regular Red Army is still out of the question. We must be victorious-without an army built in advance-by means of the masses, under the leadership of the party. For this reason, even the most heroic struggle may avail us naught if our party has not been prepared organizationally in advance for this situation.

58. In revolutionary situations it has often been observed that the revolutionary central leadership proved incapable of performing its tasks. The proletariat can achieve splendid things in the revolution as regards lesser organizational tasks. In its headquarters, however, for the most part disorder, bewilderment and chaos reign. Even the most elementary division of labor can be lacking. The intelligence department in particular is often so bad that it does more harm than good. There is no depending on communications. When clandestine mailing and transport, safe houses and clandestine printing presses are needed, these are usually totally at the mercy of fortunate or unfortunate coincidence. The organized enemy’s every provocation has the best prospects for success.

Nor can it be otherwise, unless the leading revolutionary party has organized special work for these purposes in advance. For example, observing and exposing the political police requires special practice; an apparatus for clandestine communications can function swiftly and reliably only through extended, regular operation, etc. Every legal Communist Party needs some kind of secret preparations, no matter how minimal, in all these areas of specialized revolutionary work.

For the most part, we can develop the necessary apparatus even in these areas through completely legal work, provided that in the organization of this work attention is paid to the kind of apparatus that should arise from it. For example, the bulk of an apparatus for clandestine communications (for a courier system, clandestine mailing, safe houses, conspiratorial transport, etc.) can be worked out in advance through a precisely systematized distribution of legal leaflets and other publications and letters.

59. The communist organizer regards every single party member and every revolutionary worker from the outset as he will be in his future historic role as soldier in our combat organization at the time of the revolution. Accordingly, he guides him in advance into that nucleus and that work which best corresponds to his future position and type of weapon. His work today must also be useful in itself, necessary for today’s struggle, not merely a drill which the practical worker today does not understand. This same work, however, is also in part training for the important demands of tomorrow’s final struggle.

In Honor Of The 92nd Anniversary Of The Communist International- Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-"The Internationale"- A Working Class Song For All Seasons

Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of a performance of the Internationale.

In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
********************
The Internationale [variant words in square brackets]

Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
L'Internationale

Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passe faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout

C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain (bis)
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain

Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud

L'état comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits

Hideux dans leur apothéose
Les rois de la mine et du rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose
Que dévaliser le travail
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande
Ce qu'il a crée s'est fondu
En décrétant qu'on le lui rende
Le peuple ne veut que son dû.

Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans
Appliquons la grève aux armées
Crosse en l'air, et rompons les rangs
S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales
A faire de nous des héros
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles
Sont pour nos propres généraux

Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes
Le grand parti des travailleurs
La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes
L'oisif ira loger ailleurs
Combien, de nos chairs se repaissent
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours
Un de ces matins disparaissent
Le soleil brillera toujours.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Die Internationale

Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde,
die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt!
Das Recht wie Glut im Kraterherde
nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.
Reinen Tisch macht mit dem Bedranger!
Heer der Sklaven, wache auf!
Ein nichts zu sein, tragt es nicht langer
Alles zu werden, stromt zuhauf!

Volker, hort die Signale!
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
Erkampft das Menschenrecht

Es rettet uns kein hoh'res Wesen
kein Gott, kein Kaiser, noch Tribun
Uns aus dem Elend zu erlosen
konnen wir nur selber tun!
Leeres Wort: des armen Rechte,
Leeres Wort: des Reichen Pflicht!
Unmundigt nennt man uns Knechte,
duldet die Schmach langer nicht!

In Stadt und Land, ihr Arbeitsleute,
wir sind die starkste Partei'n
Die Mussigganger schiebt beiseite!
Diese Welt muss unser sein;
Unser Blut sei nicht mehr der Raben
und der machtigen Geier Frass!
Erst wenn wir sie vertrieben haben
dann scheint die Sonn' ohn' Unterlass!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(The English version most commonly sung in South Africa. )
The Internationale

Arise ye prisoners of starvation
Arise ye toilers of the earth
For reason thunders new creation
`Tis a better world in birth.

Never more traditions' chains shall bind us
Arise ye toilers no more in thrall
The earth shall rise on new foundations
We are naught but we shall be all.

Then comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale
Unites the human race.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Zulu) i-Internationale

n'zigqila zezwe lonke
Vukan'ejokwen'lobugqili
Sizokwakh'umhlaba kabusha
Siqed'indlala nobumpofu.

lamasik'okusibopha
Asilwise yonk'incindezelo
Manj'umhlab'unesakhiw'esisha
Asisodwa Kulomkhankaso

Maqaban'wozan'sihlanganeni
Sibhekene nempi yamanqamu
I-Internationale
Ibumb'uluntu lonke
*****
British Translation Billy Bragg's Revision[16] American version

First stanza

Arise, ye workers from your slumber,
Arise, ye prisoners of want.
For reason in revolt now thunders,
and at last ends the age of cant!
Away with all your superstitions,
Servile masses, arise, arise!
We'll change henceforth the old tradition,
And spurn the dust to win the prize!

So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.

Stand up, all victims of oppression,
For the tyrants fear your might!
Don't cling so hard to your possessions,
For you have nothing if you have no rights!
Let racist ignorance be ended,
For respect makes the empires fall!
Freedom is merely privilege extended,
Unless enjoyed by one and all.

So come brothers and sisters,
For the struggle carries on.
The Internationale,
Unites the world in song.
So comrades, come rally,
For this is the time and place!
The international ideal,
Unites the human race.

*On The 8th Anniversary of The Iraq War (Really 20th) A March 19th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets

Click on the headline to link to the Stop These Wars Website.

Markin comment:

In the lead up to the December 16, 2010 Veterans For Peace led-civil disobedience action in Washington, D. C. where 131 people were arrested (many of whom later had the charges against them dropped) I motivated my support for that action as described below in a blog entry that I am re-posting today. That same general motivation applies (with a caveat noted just below) as another Veterans For Peace-led planned civil disobedience action is scheduled for March 19th 2011, the 8th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War II. (Although as noted in the headline to this entry it really is the 20th year as the theme of the Catholic Worker-led demonstrations in Washington on January 15, 2011 made clear, correctly clear.)

I note here that while I support and will attend the March 19th actions (with as many of the local ad hoc anti-imperialist group that I belong to as can come that day) because they are very important symbolic actions on an important anti-war occasion I am worried, at least a little worried, that if we do not take more arrests (more than 131 that is) this action will be seen as a failure. Not by the media, of course, as they hardly paid attention on December 16th. Not the Bush I-Clinton-Bush II-Obama government, of course, they haven’t paid attention at all, ever. But militants, and potential militants, who will dismiss such actions out of hand and write off street actions as the work of cranky old men and women. In short, we do not want to get civil disobedience-itis any more than we wanted to keep doing those endless dwindling mass marches. So to do this right-All out in support of the Vets- All out to resist these wars- All out to end Obama’s Iraq and Afghan Wars.
********
December 1, 2010

A December 16th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets

On November 11, 2010, Veterans Day, I marched with a contingent of Veterans For Peace in the Boston Veterans Day parade and posted an entry in this space about my take on the event. (See, A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!, dated November 11, 2010). As part of that commentary I noted the following:

“Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.”

Now comes word (click on headline for similar March 19th action) that veterans are leading an action in Washington, D.C. on December 16, 2010 in front of the White House under the rubric of "Peace On Earth." There is no question that I, the anti-imperialist committee that I am a member of in Boston, any self-respecting radical or, hell, any self-respecting little old lady in tennis sneakers for that matter, could endorse this thing. If for no other reason that it begs, literally begs, Warmonger-In-Chief Obama (of the double troop escalations in Afghanistan with nobody holding a gun to his head remember) to “do the right thing.”

That said, the sentiment expressed above in that Veterans Day commentary still holds true. So I, and all I can gather to go with me, will be in Washington on December 16th. I will hold my nose in doing so, although not my tongue, trying to get my fellow vets to change course. In my hand I will hold this slogan-Obama- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! And I won’t be begging him about it, no way.

*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 92nd Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919)And The 90th Anniversary Of The Third World Congress- Lenin's Speech In Defence Of The Tactics Of The Communist International (1921)

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 Speech In Defence Of The Tactics Of The Communist International
July 1

Comrades! I deeply regret that I must confine myself to self-defence. (Laughter.) I say deeply regret, because after acquainting myself with Comrade Terracini’s speech and the amendments introduced by three delegations, I should very much like to take the offensive, for, properly speaking, offensive operations are essential against the views defended by Terracini and these three delegations.[12] If the Congress is not going to wage a vigorous offensive against such errors, against such “Leftist” stupidities, the whole movement is doomed. That is my deep conviction. But we are organised and disciplined Marxists. We cannot be satisfied with speeches against individual comrades. We Russians are already sick and tired of these Leftist phrases. We are men of organisation. In drawing up our plans, we must proceed in an organised way and try to find the correct line. It is, of course, no secret that our theses are a compromise. And why not? Among Communists, who have already convened their Third Congress and have worked out definite fundamental principles, compromises under certain conditions are necessary. Our theses, put forward by the Russian delegation, were studied and prepared in the most careful way and were the result of long arguments and meetings with various delegations. They aim at establishing the basic line of the Communist International and are especially necessary now after we have not only formally condemned the real Centrists but have expelled them from the Party. Such are the facts. I have to stand up for these theses. Now, when Terracini comes forward and says that we must continue the fight against the Centrists, and goes on to tell how it is intended to wage the fight, I say that if these amendments denote a definite trend, a relentless fight against this trend is essential, for otherwise there is no communism and no Communist International. I am surprised that the German Communist Workers’ Party has not put its signature to these amendments. (Laughter.) Indeed, just listen to what Terracini is defending and what his amendments say. They begin in this way: “On page 1, column 1, line 19, the word ‘majority’ should be deleted.” Majority! That is extremely dangerous! (Laughter.) Then further: instead of the words “’basic propositions’, insert ‘aims’”. Basic propositions and aims are two different things; even the anarchists will agree with us about aims, because they too stand for the abolition of exploitation and class distinctions.

I have met and talked with few anarchists in my life, but all the same I have seen enough of them. I sometimes succeeded in reaching agreement with them about aims, but never as regards principles. Principles are not an aim, a programme, a tactic or a theory. Tactics and theory are not principles. How do we differ from the anarchists on principles? The principles of communism consist in the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and in the use of state coercion in the transition period. Such are the principles of communism, but they are not its aim. And the comrades who have tabled this proposal have made a mistake.

Secondly, it is stated there: “the word ‘majority’ should be deleted.” Read the whole passage:

“The Third Congress of the Communist International is setting out to review questions of tactics under conditions when in a whole number of countries the objective situation has become aggravated in a revolutionary sense, and when a whole number of communist mass parties have been organised, which, incidentally, in their actual revolutionary struggle have nowhere taken into their hands the virtual leadership of the majority of the working class.”

And so, they want the word “majority” deleted. If we cannot agree on such simple things, then I do not understand how we can work together and lead the proletariat to victory. Then it is not at all surprising that we cannot reach agreement on the question of principles either. Show me a party which has already won the majority of the working class. Terracini did not even think of adducing any example. Indeed, there is no such example.

And so, the word “aims” is to be put instead of “principles”, and the word “majority” is to be deleted. No, thank you! We shall not do it. Even the German party—one of the best—does not have the majority of the working class behind it. That is a fact. We, who face a most severe struggle, are not afraid to utter this truth, but here you have three delegations who wish to begin with an untruth, for if the Congress deletes the word “majority” it will show that it wants an untruth. That is quite clear.

Then comes the following amendment: “On page 4, column 1, line 10, the words ‘Open Letter’, etc., should be deleted.’’[13] I have already heard one speech today in which I found the same idea. But there it was quite natural. It was the speech of Comrade Hempel, a member of the German Communist Workers’ Party. He said: “The ‘Open Letter’ was an act of opportunism.” To my deep regret and shame, I have already heard such views privately. But when, at the Congress, after such prolonged debate, the “Open Letter” is declared opportunist—that is a shame and a disgrace! And now Comrade Terracini comes forward on behalf of the three delegations and wants to delete the words “Open Letter”. What is the good then of the fight against the German Communist Workers’ Party? The “Open Letter” is a model political step. This is stated in our theses and we must certainly stand by it. It is a model because it is the first act of a practical method of winning over the majority of the working class. In Europe, where almost all the proletarians are organised, we must win the majority of the working class and anyone who fails to understand this is lost to the communist movement; he will never learn anything if he has failed to learn that much during the three years of the great revolution.

Terracini says that we were victorious in Russia although the Party was very small. He is dissatisfied with what is said in the theses about Czechoslovakia. Here there are 27 amendments, and if I had a mind to criticise them I should, like some orators, have to speak for not less than three hours. . . . We have heard here that in Czechoslovakia the Communist Party has 300,000-400,000 members, and that it is essential to win over the majority, to create an invincible force and continue enlisting fresh masses of workers. Terracini is already prepared to attack. He says: if there are already 400,000 workers in the party, why should we want more? Delete! (Laughter.) He is afraid of the word “masses” and wants to eradicate it. Comrade Terracini has understood very little of the Russian revolution. In Russia, we were a small party, but we had with us in addition the majority of the Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country. (Cries : “Quite true!”) Do you have anything of the sort? We had with us almost half the army, which then numbered at least ten million men. Do you really have the majority of the army behind you? Show me such a country! If these views of Comrade Terracini are shared by three other delegations, then something is wrong in the International! Then we must say: “Stop! There must be a decisive fight! Otherwise the Communist International is lost.” (Animation.)

On the basis of my experience I must say, although I am taking up a defensive position (laughter ), that-the aim and the principle of my speech consist in defence of the resolution and theses proposed by our delegation. It would, of course, be pedantic to say that not a letter in them must be altered. I have had to read many resolutions and I am well aware that very good amendments could he introduced in every line of them. But that would be pedantry. If, nevertheless, I declare now that in a political sense not a single letter can be altered, it is because the amendments, as I see them, are of a quite definite political nature and because they lead us along a path that is harmful and dangerous to the Communist International. Therefore, I and all of us and the Russian delegation must insist that not a single letter in the theses is altered. We have not only condemned our Right-wing elements—we have expelled them. But if, like Terracini, people turn the fight against the Rightists into a sport, then we must say: “Stop! Otherwise the danger will become too grave!”

Terracini has defended the theory of an offensive struggle.[14] In this connection the notorious amendments propose a formula two or three pages long. There is no need for us to read them. We know what they say. Terracini has stated the issue quite clearly. He has defended the theory of an offensive, pointing out “dynamic tendencies” and the “transition from passivity to activity”. We in Russia have already had adequate political experience in the struggle against the Centrists. As long as fifteen years ago, we were waging a struggle against our opportunists and Centrists, and also against the Mensheviks, and we were victorious not only over the Mensheviks, but also over the semi-anarchists.

If we had not done this, we would not have been able to retain power in our hands for three and a half years, or even for three and a half weeks, and we would not have been able to convene communist congresses here. “Dynamic tendencies”, “transition from passivity to activity”—these are all phrases the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had used against us. Now they are in prison, defending there the “aims of communism” and thinking of the “transition from passivity to activity”. (Laughter.) The line of reasoning followed in the proposed amendments is an impossible one, because they contain no Marxism, no political experience, and no reasoning. Have we in our theses elaborated a general theory of the revolutionary offensive? Has Radek or anyone of us committed such a stupidity? We have spoken of the theory of an offensive in relation to a quite definite country and at a quite definite period.

From our struggle against the Mensheviks we can quote instances showing that even before the first revolution there were some who doubted whether the revolutionary party aught to conduct an offensive. If such doubts assailed any Social-Democrat—as we all called ourselves at that time—we took up the struggle against him and said that he was an opportunist, that he did not understand anything of Marxism and the dialectics of the revolutionary party. Is it really possible for a party to dispute whether a revolutionary offensive is permissible in general? To find such examples in this country one would have to go back some fifteen years. If there are Centrists or disguised Centrists who dispute the theory of the offensive, they should be immediately expelled. That question cannot give rise to disputes. But the fact that-even now, after three years of the Communist International, we are arguing about “dynamic tendencies”, about the “transition from passivity to activity”—that is a shame and a disgrace.

We do not have any dispute about this with Comrade Radek, who drafted these theses jointly with us. Perhaps it was not quite correct to begin talking in Germany about the theory of the revolutionary offensive when an actual offensive had not been prepared. Nevertheless the March action was a great step forward in spite of the mistakes of its leaders. But this does not matter. Hundreds of thousands of workers fought heroically. However courageously the German Communist Workers’ Party fought against the bourgeoisie, we must repeat what Comrade Radek said in a Russian article about Hölz. If anyone, even an anarchist, fights heroically against the bourgeoisie, that is, of course, a great thing; but it is a real step forward if hundreds of thousands fight against the vile provocation of the social-traitors and against the bourgeoisie.

It is very important to be critical of one’s mistakes. We began with that. If anyone, after a struggle in which hundreds of thousands have taken part, comes out against this struggle and behaves like Levi, then he should be expelled. And that is what was done. But we must draw a lesson from this. Had we really prepared for an offensive? (Radek : “We had not even prepared for defence.”) Indeed only newspaper articles talked of an offensive. This theory as applied to the March action in Germany in 1921 was incorrect—we have to admit that—but, in general, the theory of the revolutionary offensive is not at all false.

We were victorious in Russia, and with such ease, because we prepared for our revolution during the imperialist war. That was the first condition. Ten million workers and peasants in Russia were armed, and our slogan was: an immediate peace at all costs. We were victorious because the vast mass of the peasants were revolutionarily disposed against the big landowners. The Socialist-Revolutionaries, the adherents of the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals, were a big peasant party in November 1917. They demanded revolutionary methods but, like true heroes of the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals, lacked the courage to act in a revolutionary way. In August and September 1917 we said: “Theoretically we are fighting the Socialist-Revolutionaries as we did before, but practically we are ready to accept their programme because only we are able to put it into effect.” We did just what we said. The peasantry, ill-disposed towards us in November 1917, after our victory, who sent a majority of Socialist-Revolutionaries into the Constituent Assembly, were won over by us, if not in the course of a few days—as I mistakenly expected and predicted—at any rate in the course of a few weeks. The difference was not great. Can you point out any country in Europe where you could win over the majority of the peasantry in the course of a few weeks? Italy perhaps? (Laughter.) If it is said that we were victorious in Russia in spite of not having a big party, that only proves that those who say it have not understood the Russian revolution and that they have absolutely no understanding of how to prepare for a revolution.

Our first step was to create a real Communist Party so as to know whom we were talking to and whom we could fully trust. The slogan of the First and Second congresses was “Down with the Centrists!” We cannot hope to master even the ABC of communism, unless all along the line and throughout the world we make short shrift of the Centrists and semi-Centrists, whom in Russia we call Mensheviks. Our first task is to create a genuinely revolutionary party and to break with the Mensheviks. But that is only a preparatory school. We are already convening the Third Congress, and Comrade Terracini keeps saying that thc task of the preparatory school collsists in hunting out, pursuing and exposing Centrists and semi-Centrists. No, thank you! We have already done this long enough. At the Second Congress we said that the Centrists are our enemies. But, we must go forward really. The second stage, after organising into a party, consists in learning to prepare for revolution. In many countries we have not even learned how to assume the leadership. We were victorious in Russia not only because the undisputed majority of the working class was on our side (during the elections in 1917 the overwhelming majority of the workers were with us against the Mensheviks), but also because half the army, immediately after our seizure of power, and nine-tenths of the peasants, in the course of some weeks, came over to our side; we were victorious because we adopted the agrarian programme of the Socialist-Revolutionaries instead of our own, and put it into effect. Our victory lay in the fact that we carried out the Socialist-Revolutionary programme; that is why this victory was so easy. Is it possible that you in the West can have such illusions? It is ridiculous! Just compare the concrete economic conditions, Comrade Terracini and all of you who have signed the proposed amendments! In spite of the fact that the majority so rapidly came to be on our side, the difficulties confronting us after our victory were very great. Nevertheless we won through because we kept in mind not only our aims but also our principles, and did not tolerate in our Party those who kept silent about principles but talked of aims, “dynamic tendencies” and the “transition from passivity to activity”. Perhaps we shall be blamed for preferring to keep such gentlemen in prison. But dictatorship is impossible in any other way. We must prepare for dictatorship, and this consists in combating such phrases and such amendments. (Laughter.) Throughout, our theses speak of the masses. But, comrades, we need to understand what is meant by masses. The German Communist Workers’ Party, the Left-wing comrades, misuse this word. But Comrade Terracini, too, and all those who have signed these amendments, do not know how the word “masses” should be read.

I have been speaking too long as it is; hence I wish to say only a few words about the concept of “masses”. It is one that changes in accordance with the changes in the nature of the struggle. At the beginning of the struggle it took only a few thousand genuinely revolutionary workers to warrant talk of the masses. If the party succeeds in drawing into the struggle not only its own members, if it also succeeds in arousing non-party people, it is well on the way to winning the masses. During our revolutions there were instances when several thousand workers represented the masses. In the history of our movement, and of our struggle against the Mensheviks, you will find many examples where several thousand workers in a town were enough to give a clearly mass character to the movement. You have a mass when several thousand non-party workers, who usually live a philistine life and drag out a miserable existence, and who have never heard anything about politics, begin to act in a revolutionary way. If the movement spreads and intensifies, it gradually develops into a real revolution. We saw this in 1905 and 1917 during three revolutions, and you too will have to go through all this. When the revolution has been sufficiently prepared, the concept “masses” becomes different: several thousand workers no longer constitute the masses. This word begins to denote something else. The concept of “masses” undergoes a change so that it implies the majority, and not simply a majority of the workers alone, but the majority of all the exploited. Any other kind of interpretation is impermissible for a revolutionary, and any other sense of the word becomes incomprehensible. It is possible that even a small party, the British or American party, for example, after it has thoroughly studied the course of political development and become acquainted with the life and customs of the non party masses, will at a favourable moment evoke a revolutionary movement (Comrade Radek has pointed to the miners’ strike as a good example[15]). You will have a mass movement if such a party comes forward with its slogans at such a moment and succeeds in getting millions of workers to follow it. I would not altogether deny that a revolution can be started by a very small party and brought to a victorious conclusion. But one must have a knowledge of the methods by which the masses can be won over. For this thoroughgoing preparation of revolution is essential. But here you have comrades coming forward with the assertion that we should immediately give up the demand for “big” masses. They must be challenged. Without thoroughgoing preparation you will not achieve victory in any country. Quite a small party is sufficient to lead the masses. At certain times there is no necessity for big organisations.

But to win, we must have the sympathy of the masses. An absolute majority is not always essential; but what is essential to win and retain power is not only the majority of the working class—I use the term “working class” in its West-European sense, i.e., in the sense of the industrial proletariat—but also the majority of the working and exploited rural population. Have you thought about this? Do we find in Terracini’s speech even a hint at this thought? He speaks only of “dynamic tendency” and the “transition from passivity to activity”. Does he devote even a single word to the food question? And yet the workers demand their victuals, although they can put up with a great deal and go hungry, as we have seen to a certain extent in Russia. We must, therefore, win over to our side not only the majority of the working class, but also the majority of the working and exploited rural population. Have you prepared for this? Almost nowhere.

And so, I repeat: I must unreservedly defend our theses and I feel I am bound to do it. We not only condemned the Centrists but expelled them from the Party. Now we must deal with another aspect, which we also consider dangerous. We must tell the comrades the truth in the most polite form (and in our theses it is told in a kind and considerate way) so that no one feels insulted: we are confronted now by other, more important questions than that of attacks on the Centrists. We have had enough of this question. It has already become somewhat boring. Instead, the comrades ought to learn to wage a real revolutionary struggle. The German workers have already begun this. Hundreds of thousands of proletarians in that country have been fighting heroically. Anyone who opposes this struggle should be immediately expelled. But after that we must not engage in empty word-spinning but must immediately begin to learn, on the basis of the mistakes made, how to organise the struggle better. We must not conceal our mistakes from the enemy. Anyone who is afraid of this is no revolutionary. On the contrary, if we openly declare to the workers: “Yes, we have made mistakes”, it will mean that they will not be repeated and we shall be able better to choose the moment. And if during the struggle itself the majority of the working people prove to be on our side—not only the majority of the workers, but the majority of all the exploited and oppressed—then we shall really be victorious. (Prolonged, stormy applause.)

*The Question Of The Stillborn German Revolution Of 1923-Part Four-"THE GERMAN REVOLUTION IN THE LENINIST PERIOD"-Jean Van Heijenoort (1944)

Markin comment:

The Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia in October 1917 was consciously predicated by the leadership (Lenin, Trotsky, etc., some others pushing forward, some being dragged along in the fight) on the premise that the Russian revolution would not, could not, stand alone for long either against the backlash onslaught of world imperialism, or on a more positive note, once the tasks of socialist construction reached a certain point. The purpose of the Communist International, founded in 1919 in the heat of the Russian civil war, by the Bolsheviks and their international supporters was the organizational expression of that above-mentioned premise. To work through and learn the lessons of the Bolshevik experience and to go all out to defeat world imperialism and create a new social order. I might add that political, social, and military conditions in war-weary World War I Europe in 1918 and 1919 made those premises something more than far-fetched utopian hopes. And central to those hopes were events in Germany.

If the original premise of Marxism (espoused specifically by both Marx and Engels in their respective political lifetimes) that the revolution would break out in an advanced capitalist European country then Germany, with its high level of capitalist development and socialist traditions and organizations, was the logical place to assume such an event would occur. And that premise, despite the betrayals of the German social democratic leadership in the war period, animated Lenin and Trotsky in their planning for the extension of socialist revolution westward. The rise of a “peace” socialist wing (the Independent Socialists) during the late phases of the war, the events around the smashing of the German monarchy and the creation of a socialist-led bourgeois republic in the wake of military defeat, the ill-starred Spartacist uprising, the working class response to the later Kapp Putsch, the also-ill-starred March Action of 1921, and the possibilities of a revolution in 1923 in reaction to the French exactions in the Ruhr and other events that year all made for a period of realistic revolutionary upheaval that was fertile ground for revolutionaries. And revolutionary hopes.

As we are painfully, no, very painfully, aware no revolution occurred in that period and that hard fact had profound repercussions on the then isolated Russian experiment. That hard fact has also left a somewhat unresolved question among communist militants, thoughtful communist militants anyway, about the prospects then. The question boils down to, as foreshadowed in the headline to this entry, whether there was any basis for the notion that a revolution could have occurred in Germany in 1923. We know what happened because it didn’t, but there are sometimes valuable conditionals pose in absorbing the lessons of history, our communist history. The yes or no of a German revolution is one such question. I have given my opinion previously-if there was no chance of revolution in Germany in 1923, win or lose, then the whole notion of proletarian revolution was just a utopian dream of a bunch of European outcast radicals. The corollary to that proposition is that, in the year 2010, the socialist cooperative notion that we fight for, other than as an abstract intellectual idea, is utopian, and that we are the mad grandchildren (and great-grandchildren) of those mad Europeans. That idea, with world imperialism wreaking havoc and breathing down our backs relentlessly in all quarters makes that corollary ill-founded. So let’s take another look at Germany 1923 from the several perspectives I have gathered in today’s postings.
*********
From Issue no 2, of the Marxist Discussion journal What Next? By kind permission of the editor Bob Pitt, 24 Georgiana St, London, NW1 0EA, email wh@tnext.freeserve.co.uk, who introduces the article.

THE GERMAN REVOLUTION
IN THE LENINIST PERIOD
Jean Van Heijenoort

This article, published under the pseudonym Marc Loris in the March 1943 of Fourth International, is a reply to Walter Held’s analysis of the failure of the German revolution which we reprinted in What Next? No.1. Born in 1912, Jean Van Heijenoort joined the Trotskyist movement in France. He served as Trotsky’s secretary for several years in the 1930s and at the time this article appeared was based in New York where he held the post of secretary of the Fourth International. After the end of the Second World War, Van Heijenoort was to renounce Trotskyism, abandon political activity and pursue an academic career as a mathematician. He died in 1985.

It is not without some embarrassment that I undertake a criticism of our comrade Walter Held’s article Why the German Revolution Failed. The terrible conditions of the reactionary period which we are going through prevent Held himself from participating in the discussion. [1] In spite of Held’s enforced silence, however, I feel forced to criticise his article, because it contains a number of errors on questions of prime importance for the revolutionary education of proletarian militants. For the very reason that his article contains excellent truths, very useful to recall, it is so much the more necessary to criticise it: nothing, indeed, is more dangerous than an error which takes refuge behind a great truth.

Held strongly emphasises, and rightly so, that without a tested party with a firm leadership it is impossible to lead a proletarian revolution to a successful conclusion. This great truth was certainly demonstrated positively in October 1917, in Russia, and negatively in Germany in 1918-19. Held, however, gives to this truth an abstract character.

Apropos of the various events of 1919-23 in Germany or Italy, Held incessantly uses the same expressions: ‘the conception [of the party] was not adequate from the very beginning’, ‘the attempt to [build a party] was too late’, ‘such an attempt [to build a party] was doomed to failure because there was a vacuum’, etc. Held thus turns in a vicious circle: the party cannot be formed because it does not yet exist. But there was a time when the one real party that he recognises, the party of the October Revolution, also did not exist. How did Lenin and his co-workers pass from the non-existence to the existence of a fully-formed and tested party? Held is under the illusion that he has analysed this important question and that he applies what he has thus learned to the events of 1917-23. In reality, however, he simply reiterates, over and over again, that such a party was not created in Germany. As he must get out of this vicious circle one way or another he ends up by breaking through it haphazardly and arbitrarily. As the non-existence of the party is his sole explanation for everything, so he fetishises one incident in the party’s history into the sole explanation for its non-existence. He stumbles, in the history of the German movement, upon the Levi case, and is obliged to exaggerate and distort it in order to construct out of it a cause for the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, and thereby for the degeneration of the Communist International and the Soviet state. Held has thus been led to a veritable revision of the history of the Comintern and the origins of our movement.

To clarify all the points raised by Held would mean to write a history of the Communist International. I will limit myself here to trying to correct his evaluation of a number of important facts. I will try to show how he was led to such inexact evaluations through a false method. It is to be hoped that this discussion will inspire many young members of our party to become much more familiar with the rich history of the first years of the Communist International.

The Second World War once more brings forward to our generation, under broadly analogous conditions, the tasks which were not resolved at the end of the First World War. The history of the Leninist period of the Communist International is of more burning significance today than ever before.

Paul Levi
In order to explain his criticism of the leadership of the German and Russian Communist parties, Held bestows the greatest eulogies on the pamphlet that Paul Levi wrote after the March Action of 1921 in Germany. He writes: ‘Immediately after the close of the event, he [Levi] published a brilliantly written pamphlet, Unser Weg: wider den Putschismus (Our Road: Against Putschism). Outside of Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartacus Programme, this is one of the most noteworthy contributions to be found in the whole history of the German Communist Party.’ Held does not dwell long on the circumstances of the publication of this pamphlet. Only indirectly does it appear in his article that Levi’s criticism of the leadership of which he was a member was made outside the party.

After the defeat of the March Action in Central Germany, the Communist Party underwent the most severe blows. In addition to the military and police repression there was the activity of armed reactionary bands such as the Orgesch. The courts unhesitatingly handed out long sentences to the Communist workers. Leaders were hunted down and arrested. One of them, Sylt, was killed ‘while attempting to escape’. The bourgeois and Social-Democratic press was waging a violent campaign against the Communists, accusing them of sabotage, arson and murder. The entire bourgeois rabble and its Social-Democratic lackeys were crying incessantly about ‘the putsch’. It was under these conditions that Paul Levi, on 3 April 1921, sent his pamphlet to press without the knowledge, much less the consent, of the party. [2] Naturally, Levi understood the term ‘putsch’ differently from the anti-Communist hounds, who so described any revolutionary action. Later we shall discuss whether Levi was justified in calling the March Action a ‘putsch’ in the Marxist sense of the word. But if we admit for the moment that he was entirely right on the political plane, the irresponsible manner in which he presented his critique could not and did not fail to furnish a weapon against the party.

The pamphlet was distinguished above all by its complete lack of solidarity with the party. It threw the grossest insults publicly at the party leaders. It used unsparingly the cheapest demagogy. The following is one example among many others: ’You orphans and widows of the fallen proletarians! Do not hate capitalism; do not hate the Social-Democratic lackeys and hangmen, do not hate the Independent Socialist rascals who have stabbed the fighters in the back. Do hate the leaders of the Communist Party! And you workers who, maltreated in the jails, still raise high your bloody heads, convinced that you have fallen into the hands of the enemy in a gallant right for the interests of the proletariat – you are mistaken. You have no right to be proud of your wounds, you are victims of new Ludendorffs who cynically and, frivolously sent you to your death!’ [3]

The leaders of the party are thus compared publicly, by a member of the leadership, to Ludendorff. Any honest member of the party could do no more than remain impervious to Levi’s arguments. By his irresponsible conduct Levi discredited his political critique of the leadership’s errors, and thus helped the leadership to avoid its political responsibility. As Lenin noted: ‘Levi behaved like an “anarchist intellectual” (if I am not mistaken, the German term is Edelanarchist), instead of behaving like an organised member of the proletarian Communist International. Levi committed a breach of discipline. By this series of incredibly stupid blunders Levi made it difficult to concentrate attention on the essence of the matter.’ [4]

Held passes very lightly over this whole problem of Levi’s conduct. Dealing with the criticisms of Levi that Lenin made in his conversations with Clara Zetkin, Held writes that, according to Lenin, ‘Levi’s critique lacked the feeling of solidarity with the party, and had embittered the comrades by its tone, rather than by its content.’ [5] And Held comments: ‘This argument sounds surprising, coming from a politician who had always used the sharpest tone in his polemics, and had ridiculed every criticism of sharp tone as evidence of political weakness.’ Thus Held reduces the whole question to ‘tone’, without quoting Lenin’s further declaration to Zetkin: ’[Levi] tore the party to pieces. He did not criticise, but was one-sided, exaggerated, even malicious; he gave nothing to which the Party could usefully turn. He lacks the spirit of solidarity with the party.’

Indeed, Lenin knew how to employ 1he sharpest tone in his polemics. But one must note that either this ‘tone’ was directed against the enemies of the party, and not against his own party or, in polemicising against another party member, even where he used a sharp tone, Lenin always made clear that they both stood together within the borders of the same party. Levi did not understand how to discern these borders. He publicly ‘tore’ his own party ‘to pieces’.

Having reduced the affair to a question of tone, Held evidently cannot comprehend the attitude of Lenin and Trotsky. He writes: ‘It remains difficult to understand how Lenin and Trotsky could follow the Third World Congress in placing the form above the content’ [of Levi’s criticism]. But the question was by no means one of ’tone’ or ‘form’; the principles of democratic centralism, the very conception of a party, were at stake. By passing so lightly over this whole aspect of the problem, Held betrays a real blindness to organisational problems.

Under the given conditions the first duty of the German party was to cut immediately all ties with Levi, independently of any further political discussion. To act otherwise would have been to erase all party boundaries; indeed, for the party it would have been suicide. On April 29, 1921, the Executive Committee of the Communist International adopted a resolution approving Levi’s expulsion: ‘Having read Paul Levi’s pamphlet Unser Weg wider den Putschismus, the ECCI ratifies the decision to expel Paul Levi from the United Communist Party of Germany and, consequently, from the Third International. Even if Paul Levi were nine-tenths right in his view of the March offensive, he would still be liable to expulsion from the party because of his unprecedented violation of discipline and because, by his action, in the given circumstances, he dealt the party a blow in the back.’ [6] Today, with the entire experience of the last 22 years that separates us from this declaration, I do not see a single word which could be changed.

Certainly Levi’s conduct hardly tallies with the flattering picture which Held paints of him. Let us try to construct a more balanced portrait. Levi was a lawyer, the son of a rich banker. He came into contact with the Social-Democratic movement before 1914 in the course of defending party members in court. However, he did not become really integrated in the labour movement. During the war he became an internationalist in his views, but did not join in the underground work of the Spartacists. The war over, it was above all his abilities as writer and orator, in view of the lack of cadres, that carried him to the first rank. Those who worked at his side from 1919 to 1921 report that in the difficult periods he sometimes spoke of retiring into private life, that he was not made for the struggle, etc. Zetkin, while defending Levi to Lenin, nevertheless said: ‘After the murder of Rosa [Luxemburg], Karl [Liebknecht] and Leo [Jogiches] he had to take over the leadership; he has regretted it often enough.’ [7]

He never gave up, it is said, collecting antiques. The dilettante and the aesthete were always present in him. Lenin told Zetkin that already during the war he ‘was aware of a certain coldness in his [Levi’s] attitude to the workers’. Something of a ‘please keep your distance’. [8] Extremely interesting for the light it throws on Levi’s personality is the letter which he addressed to Lenin on 29 March 1921. [9] In this letter he was already condemning the March Action, just ended, as a ‘fatal putsch’, and explained what his conduct was going to be: ‘I will also now go no further than to write something like a pamphlet in which I will set down my conceptions; I will neither bring the case before the authorities who are now considering meeting in Germany, nor before the International Executive Committee. The comrades who bear the responsibility should not feel hindered by me.’ [10]

These lines might have been written by anyone but a revolutionist. Intellectual smugness, lack of solidarity with his organisation, condescension and even a certain contempt, and some fatalism – all these can be seen in his words. But even more is involved. This letter was written four days before he sent his pamphlet to press! Either he was guilty of duplicity in reassuring Lenin or, more likely, he reveals here his personal and political instability.

The March Action
We, must now ask ourselves: Was Levi’s estimate of the March Action entirely right politically? In his pamphlet he denounced the party’s adventurism, and qualified the March Action as a ‘putsch’; it was even for him ‘the biggest Bakuninist putsch in all history.’ Held, without saying so specifically, seems to adopt Levi’s version completely. He speaks of ‘putschist riots’ and of ’putschists’. [11] He gives a highly coloured description of the March Action with the help of tragicomic episodes borrowed from Levi’s pamphlet. He neglects, however, to place it exactly in the trajectory of the German revolution.

This tacit adoption of Levi’s appraisal, and this absence of precise political analysis are all the more astonishing since Lenin and Trotsky were far from agreeing with Levi even on the political plane. Held, who could not fail to know the documents, did not undertake to discuss this point. He did not even note it. Lenin wrote: ’Of course, Levi was not right in asserting that this action was a “putsch”; this assertion of Paul Levi is nonsense.’ [12]

The most complete and precise political analysis of the March Action is found in one of Trotsky’s speeches before a membership meeting of the Moscow section of the Russian Communist Party at the end of July 1921, immediately after the Third Congress of the Comintern:

’What was the content of the March events? The proletarians of Central Germany, the workers in the mining regions, represented in recent times, even during the war, one of the most retarded sections of the German working class. In their majority they followed not the Social Democrats but the patriotic, bourgeois and clerical cliques, remained devoted to the Emperor, and so on and so forth. Their living and working conditions were exceptionally harsh. In relation to the workers of Berlin they occupied the same place, as say, did the backward Ural provinces in our country in relation to the Petersburg workers. During a revolutionary epoch it happens not infrequently that a most oppressed and backward section of the working class, awakened for the first time by the thunder of events, swings into the struggle with the greatest energy and evinces a readiness to fight under any and all conditions, far from always taking into consideration the circumstances and the chances of victory, that is, the requirements of revolutionary strategy. For example, at a time when the workers of Berlin or Saxony had become, after the experience of 1919-20, far more cautious – which has its minuses and its pluses too – the workers of Central Germany continued to engage in stormy actions, strikes and demonstrations, carting out their foremen on wheelbarrows, holding meetings during working hours, and so on. Naturally, this is incompatible with the sacred tasks of Ebert’s Republic. It is hardly surprising that this conservative police Republic, in the person of its police agent, the Social Democrat Horsing, should have decided to do a little “purging” there, i.e., drive out the most revolutionary elements, arrest several Communists, etc.

‘Precisely during this period (the middle of March), the Central Committee of the German Communist Party arrived firmly at the idea that there was need of conducting a more actively revolutionary policy. The German Party, you will recall, had been created a short while before by the merger of the old Spartacus League and the majority of the Independent Party and thereby became confronted in practice with the question of mass actions. The idea that it was necessary to pass over to a more active policy was absolutely correct. But how did this express itself in practice? When the Social-Democratic policeman Horsing issued his order, demanding of the workers what Kerensky’s government had more than once vainly demanded in our country, namely: that no meetings be held during working hours, that factory property be treated as a sacred trust, etc. – at this moment the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a call for a general strike in order to aid the workers of Central Germany. A general strike is not something to which the working class responds easily, at the party’s very first call -especially if the workers have recently suffered a number of defeats, and, all the less so in a country where alongside the Communist Party there exist two mass Social-Democratic parties and where the trade-union apparatus is opposed to us. Yet, if we examine the issues of Rote Fahne, central publication of the Communist. Party, throughout this period, day by day, we will see that the call for the general strike came completely unprepared. During the period of revolution there were not a few bloodlettings in Germany and the police offensive against Central Germany could not in and of itself have immediately raised the entire working class to its feet. Every serious mass action must obviously be preceded by large-scale energetic agitation, centring around action slogans, all hitting on one and the same point. Such agitation can lead to more decisive calls for action only if it reveals, after probing, that the masses have already been touched to the quick and are ready to march forward on the path of revolutionary action. This is the ABC of revolutionary strategy, but precisely this ABC was completely violated during the March events. Before the police battalions had even succeeded in reaching the factories and mines of Central Germany, a general strike did actually break out there. I already said that in Central Germany there existed the readiness to engage in immediate struggle, and the call of the Central Committee met with an immediate response. But an entirely different situation prevailed in the rest of the country. There was nothing either in the international or the domestic situation of Germany to justify such a sudden transition to activity. The masses simply failed to understand the summons.

’Nevertheless, certain very influential theoreticians of the German Communist Party instead of acknowledging that this summons was a mistake, proceeded to explain it away by propounding a theory that in a revolutionary epoch we are obliged to conduct exclusively an aggressive policy, that is, the policy of revolutionary offensive. The March action is thus served up to the masses in the guise of an offensive. You can now evaluate the situation as a whole. The offensive was in reality launched by the Social-Democratic policeman Horsing. This should have been utilised in order to unite all the workers for defence, for self-protection, even if, to begin with, a very modest resistance. Had the soil proved favourable, had the agitation met with a favourable response, it would then have been possible to pass over to the general strike. If the events continue to unfold further, if the masses rise, if the ties among the workers grow stronger, if their temper lifts, while indecision and demoralisation seize the camp of the foe – then comes the time for issuing the slogan to pass over to the offensive. But should the soil prove unfavourable, should the conditions and the moods of the masses fail to correspond with the more resolute slogans, then it is necessary to sound a retreat, and to fall back to previously prepared positions in as orderly a manner as possible. Therewith we have gained this, that we proved our ability to probe the working masses, we strengthened their internal ties and, what is most important, we have raised the party’s authority for giving wise leadership under all circumstances.

’But what does the leading body of the German Party do? It gives the appearance of pouncing upon the very first pretext: and even before this pretext has become known to workers or assimilated by them, the Central Committee hurls the slogan of the general strike. And before the party had a chance to rally the workers of Berlin, Dresden and Munich to the aid of the workers of Central Germany – and this could perhaps have been accomplished in the space of a few days, provided there was no leaping over the events, and the masses were led forward systematically and firmly – before the party succeeded in accomplishing this work, it is proclaimed that our action is an offensive. This was already tantamount to ruining everything and paralysing the movement in advance. It is quite self-evident that at this stage the offensive came exclusively from the enemy side. It was necessary to utilise the moral element of defence, it was necessary to summon the proletariat of the whole country to hasten to the aid of the workers of Central Germany. In the initial stages this support might have assumed varied forms, until the party found itself in a position to issue a generalised slogan of action. The task of agitation consisted in raising the masses to their feet, focusing their attention upon the events in Central Germany, smashing politically the resistance of the labour bureaucracy and thus assuring a genuinely general character of the strike action as a possible base for the further development of the revolutionary struggle. But what happened instead? The revolutionary and dynamic minority of the proletariat found itself counter-posed in action to the majority of the proletariat, before this majority had a chance to grasp the meaning of events. When the party ran up against the passivity and dilatoriness of the working class, the impatient Communist elements sought here and there to drive the majority of the workers into the streets, no longer by means of agitation, but by mechanical measures. If the majority of workers favour a strike, they can of course always compel the minority by forcibly shutting down the factories and thus achieving the general strike in action. This has happened more than once, it will happen in the future and only simpletons can raise objections to it. But when the crushing majority of the working class has no clear conception of the movement, or is unsympathetic to it, or does not believe it can succeed, but a minority rushes ahead and seeks to drive workers to strike by mechanical measures, then such an impatient minority can, in the person of the party, come into a hostile clash with the working class and break its own neck.’ [13]

As we see, Trotsky does not speak, and could not speak of a ‘putsch.’ [14] Classic examples of the putsch are: the attempted insurrection of Blanqui in Paris on 14 August 1870, the insurrection of 1 December 1924 organised by the Estonian Communist Party in Reval or, on a reactionary plane, Hitler’s attempt at Munich on 8 November 1923. The March Action is far from this type. It embraced hundreds of thousands of workers. The slogan of political power never went beyond a propagandist character, and played only an episodic role. The question of the arming of the workers was connected with the struggle against the fascist bands and not to a direct struggle for power. [15] Thus, the call for a general strike at Mansfeld declared: ‘The workers should secure arms where they can, and smash the Orgesch [armed reactionaries] wherever possible.’

The character of the movement in Central Germany in its early stages is typified by a resolution adopted by the several thousand workers of the Leunawerke factory on March 21: ‘An action committee was elected which was put in charge of drawing up the following demands and taking the necessary measures to realise them. The following demands were formulated: 1. Immediate withdrawal of the armed police and of the military occupation forces from Central Germany. 2. Disarming of the Orgesch and its accomplices. 3. Arming of the workers for defence against counterrevolutionary coups. 4. If the factories are occupied [by the armed forces] all work is to be stopped immediately.’ [16]

On 24 March, the Central Committee of the party threw itself into the adventure of the general strike, which was a complete failure. The March Action is an example of a partial struggle where a minority is ready to go much further than the class as a whole. Such a situation always raises very difficult tactical problems for the revolutionary party. It is very possible that even with the most prudent policy an experienced party might not have been able to come out of that situation without having received serious blows. The Bolshevik Party was not able to avoid them in July 1917 and, as Trotsky notes, the March Action is related much more to a situation of this type than to a putsch. [17]

The Third World Congress
On the political plane, Levi was of course much closer to the truth than the majority of the German party leadership. Nevertheless, our examination of the question of the ‘putsch’ enables us to evaluate Held’s criticism of the Third Congress of the Communist International. To Held, who adopted Levi’s theory of the ’putsch’, any mention of the fact that the German Communist Party in spite of everything had participated in a great proletarian struggle is a ‘concession to the general rhetoric of the Congress’. As neither Lenin nor Trotsky refrained from often mentioning this important fact, Held saw in this a part of the ‘compromise’ that Lenin refers to with the majority of the German delegation. The remainder of the compromise, according to him, is the attitude of the Congress toward Levi. Held writes that the main theses on tactics adopted by the Congress ‘anathematised the critics of the ultra-leftists’. On this point, however, the theses stated,

’In making a thorough examination of the possibilities of struggle, the VKPI) must carefully note the circumstances and opinions which indicate difficulties, and subject the reasons advanced against an action to searching inquiry, but once action has been decided on by the party authorities all comrades must obey the decisions of the party and carry the action through. Criticism of the action should begin only after the action itself is ended, it should be made only in party organisations and bodies, and must take account of the situation of the party in relation to the class enemy. Since Levi disregarded these obvious requirements of party discipline and the conditions of party criticism, the congress confirms his expulsion from the party and considers it impermissible for any member of the Communist International to collaborate with him.’ [18]

This is the ‘anathema’ of which Held speaks. In reality, the resolution simply recalls the most elementary principles of revolutionary discipline. But we have already seen that Held has a real blindness toward the demands of democratic centralism. For him, the decision of the Third Congress is bureaucratism. Even worse, it is bureaucratism that caused the bankruptcy of the International and the degeneration of the Soviet state. Held writes: ‘The delegates must have gained the impression that it would always be better to make mistakes following orders of the Comintern than to act correctly while violating discipline. In this way the foundation stone was laid for the development which was to change the Communist International in the course of a few years into a society of Mamelukes, in slavish dependency upon the ruling faction in Moscow, and finally into the mere instrument of Stalin’s opportunist nationalistic foreign policy.’ And at the end of the article he mentions, among the causes of the failure of Lenin and Trotsky: ‘the treatment of it [the German March Action] by the Third World Congress, where form was placed above content, and a bureaucratic conception of discipline was sanctioned.’

Held’s somewhat vulgar contrast between ‘to make mistakes following the order of the Comintern’, and ‘to act correctly while violating discipline’ is not correct, for there were not, as we shall see, any ‘orders of the Comintern’ in the March Action. With this criticism, which is certainly the weakest point of his article, Held comes dangerously close to the petty-bourgeois critics of Bolshevism, who also discovered that the ‘foundation stone’ of Stalinism was laid by the Bolsheviks themselves. For them this stone is the discipline of the party, the prohibition of factions in the Bolshevik Party, or the repression of Kronstadt. For Held it is the ‘bureaucratic conception of discipline’ of the International. We will return later to this method of interpretation. Let us now cite still more facts to elucidate the problem of Paul Levi.

Did Lenin and Trotsky give Levi’s head to the leadership of the German party as their part of the ‘compromise’ which Lenin mentioned at the Congress? Not at all. Lenin’s attitude toward Levi is well known through his conversations with Clara Zetkin, as well as through his speeches at the Congress: ‘Levi committed a serious breach of discipline, he attacked the party in an irresponsible and disloyal manner, and the Congress could not retract his expulsion; however, Levi has great abilities, and if he disciplines himself, and wishes to collaborate, Lenin would intervene in a few months for his reinstatement.’ Trotsky’s position was essentially the same:

’The decision concerning Levi adopted by the Congress at Moscow is perfectly clear and requires no extended commentaries. By the decision of the Congress, Levi was placed outside the Communist International. This decision was not at all adopted against the wishes of the Russian delegation, but on the contrary with its rather conspicuous participation, inasmuch as it was none other than the Russian delegation that drafted the resolution on tactics. The Russian delegation acted, as usual, under the direction of our party’s Central Committee. And as a member of the Central Committee and member of the Russian delegation, I voted for the, resolution confirming Levi’s expulsion from the International. Together with our Central Committee I could see no other course. By virtue of his egocentric attitude, Levi had invested his struggle against the crude theoretical and practical mistakes connected with the March events with a character so pernicious that nothing was left for the slanderers among the Independents to do except to support him and chime in with him. Levi opposed himself not only to the March mistakes but also to the German party and the workers who had committed these mistakes ...

‘I do not mean to say by this that I considered Levi irretrievably lost to the Communist International as far back as the Congress. I was too little acquainted with him to draw any categorical conclusions one way or the other. I did, however, entertain the hope that a cruel lesson wouldn’t pass for nought and Levi would sooner or later find his way back to the party ... But when I learned – and this happened two or three weeks after the Congress – that Levi instead of patiently climbing up the embankment began noisily proclaiming that the track of the party and the entire International must be switched over to the precise place where he, Paul Levi, had tumbled, and that therewith Levi began building a whole “party” on the basis of this egocentric philosophy of history, I was obliged to say to myself that the Communist movement had no other recourse – deplorable as it may be – except to definitely place a cross over Levi.’

Zetkin herself, Levi’s close political companion, had to state to the Congress: ‘My personal opinion is that Paul Levi himself will say the last word about this, when he, as I hope, in spite of everything, will work and fight with us again in the future as a Communist on a principled basis and on the line of the Communist Party.’ Indeed Levi said the last word. He soon attacked the October Revolution, and took refuge in the Social Democracy, so that Lenin was able to write a few months later: ‘Levi and Serrati are not characteristic in themselves; they are characteristic of the modern type of the extreme left wing of petty-bourgeois democracy, of the camp of the “other side”, the camp of the international capitalists, the camp that is against us.’ [19]

Then exactly what was the ‘compromise’ of which Lenin spoke at the Congress? The compromise had very precise limits: Lenin and Trotsky so formulated the resolution on tactics [20], written largely by Lenin, that the German delegates could join in a common vote on it. Had they desired, Lenin and Trotsky could have worded it in a way that would have made it impossible for the Germans to vote for it, thus necessitating a separate vote on the tactic of the March Action. One can recognise that there was a question whether to have a common resolution with the Germans, and that it could be answered by yes or no without unleashing by that the degeneration of the International and the USSR. The possibility of a separate vote was mentioned by Trotsky, who added that the Russian delegation would probably be in the minority, for the Germans had the support of the Austrian and Italian delegations, the majority of the Hungarian delegation, etc. Naturally, it was not the fear of being in the minority which held back Lenin and Trotsky from demanding a separate vote, although this fact was not without importance.

The main reason for their attitude was the immaturity of the German leadership. The German party, and moreover the whole International except the Russian party, was still in the process of formation. It must be added that the struggle against centrism in the International was far from being ended. It well seems that for all these reasons Lenin and Trotsky were right, after their sharp political attack on the March Action, in seeking a common vote. However, in a certain sense the question on this particular point remains open. But this by no means signifies that one could, like Held, derive such disproportionate consequences from such a narrowly-limited ’compromise’.

To appraise Held’s criticism of the Third Congress, we must examine one further point: the responsibility of the International in the March events. Held attributes the direct responsibility for the March Action to the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. He writes: ‘Lenin and Trotsky shook their heads at all this folly. They were unaware that the March Action was contrived by the Secretariat of the ECCI.’ And further: ‘Since Lenin and Trotsky based the necessity for the introduction of the New Economic Policy on the failure of the international revolution to materialise, Zinoviev and his associates in the Secretariat thought they could provide a speedy remedy. This was precisely their chief motive for unleashing the infantile March Action.’

For an accusation of such gravity, we must demand serious proof from Held. Held explains lengthily that, in view of their opposition to the New Economic Policy, Zinoviev and Bukharin could not but have desired the March Action. That is possible, but even if it were certain, it would be no proof that they ‘contrived’ and ‘unleashed’ the March Action, i.e., an accusation of direct responsibility. Held was only repeating one of Levi’s accusations, which he too had advanced without proof. In reality, it seems demonstrable, at least indirectly, that such responsibility did not exist. Indeed, the Third Congress was the scene of the most violent discussions; letters and telegrams until then unknown were pulled out of pockets; the leaders of the German party were under fire from Lenin and Trotsky and even from Zinoviev, who was then under pressure from Lenin. If there actually had been some telegram or order, written or verbal, from Moscow about the unleashing of the March Action, it is extremely unlikely that such a bomb would not have burst at the Congress, or even before it. Shortly after the Congress Trotsky had occasion to write on this subject: ‘the German bourgeois and Social-Democratic newspapers, and in their wake the press throughout the world began howling that the March uprising had been provoked by orders from Moscow; that the Soviet power, in difficult straits at that time (peasant mutinies, Kronstadt, etc.), had issued, to save itself, you see, an order to stage uprisings regardless of the situation in every given country. It is impossible to invent anything sillier than this!’ [21]

Further along, Held explains, on the basis of Radek’s later revelations that, in the period immediately preceding the March Action, ‘Zinovlev and Bukharin had continued their machinations against Levi’s policies and, as a result, the March Action had taken place!’ Here Held abandons his main thesis, that of direct responsibility, devoid of proof, as we have seen, for a new thesis of indirect responsibility, difficult to define with precision: Zinoviev and Bukharin had favoured the leadership which had set out on the adventure of March 1921. In this diluted sense responsibility can be extended indefinitely.

Lenin and Trotsky may in this sense he held responsible for not having more closely controlled the work of the Secretariat. And historically there is some truth in this: Lenin and Trotsky were occupied with the building of the Soviet state, they were not always able to prevent Zinoviev and Bukharin from making errors. This general responsibility Trotsky willingly recognised when he wrote: ‘If we were to blame for the March mistakes – insofar as it is possible to speak here of blame – then it was only in the sense that the International as a whole, including our own party, has up to now failed to carry on enough educational work in the sphere of revolutionary tactics, and for this reason failed to eliminate the possibility of such mistaken actions and methods. But to dream of completely eliminating mistakes would be the height of innocence.’ [22]

In this realm it is necessary above all not to lose a sense of proportion. In the concrete case of the German leadership, if one wishes to go to the point of explaining why Levi did not have enough authority to prevent the March Action, one must look – as much as to Zinoviev’s machinations – to the personal traits of Levi himself.

Held’s Method
Summarising his criticism of the Third Congress, Held writes: ‘the Third World Congress already contained the diseased germs which were a few years later to precipitate the degeneration of the Communist International and, along with it, the Soviet state.’ We have already seen how unjustifiable are the historical points of Held’s criticism. We must now dwell upon his method. With his ‘germ’ theory, Held follows a method long practised by the critics of Bolshevism. Trotsky had occasion to reveal the emptiness of this explanation in his pamphlet Stalinism and Bolshevism, in which he showed, specifically, how Souvarine ‘seeks the inner flaws of Bolshevism’ to ‘explain all subsequent historical mishaps.’ [23]

Why was Held carried along this beaten track of the causal continuity of Bolshevism and Stalinism? He recognised, with good reason, the absolute necessity of the party for the success of the revolution. But this in no ways means that the subjective factor – the party – is all-powerful. It operates in a given milieu. If in a historical analysis this factor is artificially separated from the milieu, its development, and its transformations are then assumed to be found within itself, that is to say, it must contain its whole future within itself. This leads to explanation by ’germs’. Held’s way of explaining thus unfolds from an abstract and super-historic interpretation of the role of the party. In a word, Held errs in an excess of subjectivism.

We are forced to the same conclusion when we examine Held’s attitude toward two very important problems, the founding of the Third International, and that of the Fourth International. For Held, one of the reasons for the defeat of the world revolution after the First World War is ‘the all-too-late unmasking of Kautskyism [and] the consequently delayed founding of the Communist International!’ That Lenin held, until 1914, illusions about the character of the German Social Democracy is a well known fact. We should not, however, exaggerate the depth of these illusions. Through them, Held tries to detect a delay in the founding of the Third International, and so he places himself on the ground, unstable enough, of historical hypothesis. Let us try to follow him.

We must first ask ourselves the question: if Lenin had not had these illusions about Kautsky, should he have proceeded with the founding of the Third International in 1903, in 1910 or in 1914? (For this question to make sense, we must suppose that the revolutionary consciousness of the masses would not have been very different from what it was in reality. For if we were to assume that not only Lenin but also large layers of the proletariat had lost confidence in the German Social Democracy, the founding of the Third International would have been possible and necessary well before 1914. But psychologically this is a pious wish, and logically a tautology: if the movement had been in an advanced stage, it would have formed an advanced organisation.) Let us suppose that Lenin alone, or one of the small groups around him, had been fully conscious before 1914 of the role of Kautsky. Should Lenin then have made a split on an international scale? This question raises a large number of hypotheses, but even in this extremely abstract and artificial form, I am ready to answer no.

Held writes: ‘With so much bitterness did Lenin turn against Kautsky, when he realised his mistake in 1914, that his opinion of Kautsky had been mistaken. From this point on, Lenin propagandises unhesitatingly for the foundation of a Third International!’ Thus Held connects the recognition of the necessity of a new International with Lenin’s loss of illusions about Kautsky. But – separating the subjective factor its milieu – Held does not mention the fundamental fact behind this: the war, i.e., the entry into a new historical epoch, which brought changes in the consciousness of the masses

However, these questions on the founding of the Third International become a little more concrete if we consider the creation of the Fourth International. Until 1933, that is, after the Communist International had committed even more dreadful crimes against the international proletariat than had the Social Democracy before 1914, the Left Opposition considered itself a faction of the Comintern. And this after the whole historical experience of the betrayals and splits of the war and its aftermath. The Left Opposition waited to proclaim the necessity of a new International until the Comintern had its own ‘August 4th’ – until the shameful capitulation of the German Communist Party before Hitler in March 1933. Was this because Trotsky had illusions about Stalin as Lenin had about Kautsky? Obviously not. And it is here that we see the emptiness of Held’s appraisal of the founding of the Third International.

But perhaps Held, after all, does not agree with the politics of the Left Opposition? Indeed, this soon becomes apparent. Like many others he opens fire against the policy of the Left Opposition in the USSR. ‘If Trotsky had publicly stepped forward in the spring of 1923’, everything would have been better. This question has been discussed so many times that I do not feel much can be added here. The only new note which Held has introduced is a letter from Engels to Bebel on the end of the First International. Alas, Held does not say a word about the differences between the two epochs. The comparison thus holds a purely literary, and I must say, superficial, character. But it is important to note that this conception of Held’s again reveals in him a certain intellectual subjectivism.

Held poses the following question: ‘Why had not Lenin and Trotsky succeeded in building a serious Marxist International during the period from 1917 to 1923?’ One can only reply that as yet the old society proved too resistant, this resistance having several aspects, such as reformism, the slowness and the difficulty of the formation of revolutionary cadres, etc. Held wants to go further, to find a cause for the defeat of the International in the International itself.

These problems of historical causality can easily turn into casuistry, if one does not state precisely what one is speaking about. In clear terms the question is this: Was there, in the Leninist period of the Communist International, a specific error perpetrated without which there would have been a good probability that the degeneration would not have been produced? Held cites the Levi affair. Until now, it was the method of the petty-bourgeois critics of all shades – the ultra-lefts like Gorter, the anarchists, Souvarine, etc., etc. – to place the cause of the defeat of Bolshevism in Bolshevism itself. We willingly relinquish to them this barren method.

EDITORIAL NOTES
1. Attempting to reach the USA from Sweden overland across the USSR in 1941, Held had disappeared. We now know that he had been arrested en route and executed.

2. Levi initially tried to get his pamphlet issued by the KPD but got no response. He then published the pamphlet himself.

3. Van Heijenoort cites as a source Karl Radek’s article The Levi Case, in Die Kommunistische Internationale, No.17, 1921. In a footnote he adds that the quotation is ‘from the first edition of Levi’s pamphlet. In the second edition of Levi’s pamphlet, which is now the easiest to come by, this sentence has been somewhat altered’. In fact the quoted passage appears in neither edition of Levi’s pamphlet – the words are those put into Levi’s mouth by Radek. A translation of Radek’s article can be found in H. Gruber, ed., International Communism in the Era of Lenin, 1967, pp.341-6.

4. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.32, p.517.

5. C. Zetkin, Erinnerungen an Lenin, 1957, p.38.

6. J. Degras, ed., The Communist International 1919-1943, Documents, vol.1, 1956, pp.219-20.

7. Zetkin, p.39.

8. ibid., p.38.

9. The letter was in fact dated 27 March 1921.

10. This was another ‘quotation’ invented by Radek.

11. P. Levi, Zwischen Spartakus und Sozialdemokratie, 1969, p.43.

12. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.32, p.516. Here the translation is: ‘... essentially much of Levi’s criticism of the March action in Germany in 1921 was correct (not, of course, when he said that the uprising was a “putsch”; that assertion of his was absurd).’

13. Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International, vol.2, 1974, pp. 19-22.

14. However, Trotsky did later refer to the March Action as an example of ‘putschism’. See Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, 1970, pp.89, 98.

15. This isn't really true. For the insurrectionist rhetoric adopted by the KPD during the March Action, see B. Fowkes, Communism in Germany Under the Weimar Republic, 1984, p.66.

16. Degras, p.252.

17. Trotsky, First Five Years ..., pp.84-87.

18. Protokoll des III. Kongresses, p.698.

19. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 32, p.211. Serrati, who along with Levi had opposed the January 1921 split in the Italian Socialist Party, did in fact subsequently join the Communist Party of Italy.

20. Protokoll des III. Kongresses, p.644.

21. Trotsky, First Five Years, p.18.

22. ibid., pp.18-19.

23. Trotsky, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1936-37, p.425.