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Friday, January 18, 2013

Rosa Luxemburg
The Russian Revolution

Chapter 1
Fundamental Significance
of the Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution is the mightiest event of the World War. Its outbreak, its unexampled radicalism, its enduring consequences, constitute the clearest condemnation of the lying phrases which official Social-Democracy so zealously supplied at the beginning of the war as an ideological cover for German imperialism’s campaign of conquest. I refer to the phrases concerning the mission of German bayonets, which were to overthrow Russian Czarism and free its oppressed peoples.

The mighty sweep of the revolution in Russia, the profound results which have transformed all class relationships, raised all social and economic problems, and, with the fatality of their own inner logic developed consistently from the first phase of the bourgeois republic to ever more advanced stages, finally reducing the fall of Czarism to the status of a mere minor episode – all these things show as plain as day that the freeing of Russia was not an achievement of the war and the military defeat of Czarism, not some service of “German bayonets in German fists,” as the Neue Zeit under Kautsky’s editorship once promised in an editorial. They show, on the contrary, that the freeing of Russia had its roots deep in the soil of its own land and was fully matured internally. The military adventure of German imperialism under the ideological blessing of German Social-Democracy did not bring about the revolution in Russia but only served to interrupt it at first, to postpone it for a while after its first stormy rising tide in the years 1911-13, and then, after its outbreak, created for it the most difficult and abnormal conditions.
Moreover, for every thinking observer, these developments are a decisive refutation of the doctrinaire theory which Kautsky shared with the Government Social-Democrats,^[1] according to which Russia, as an economically backward and predominantly agrarian land, was supposed not to be ripe for social revolution and proletarian dictatorship. This theory, which regards only a bourgeois revolution as feasible in Russia, is also the theory of the opportunist wing of the Russian labor movement, of the so-called Mensheviks, under the experienced leadership of Axelrod and Dan. And from this conception follow the tactics of the coalition of socialists in Russia with bourgeois liberalism. On this basic conception of the Russian Revolution, from which follow automatically their detailed positions on questions of tactics, both the Russian and the German opportunists find themselves in agreement with the German Government Socialists. According to the opinion of all three, the Russian Revolution should have called a halt at the stage which German imperialism in its conduct of the war had set as its noble task, according to the mythology of the German Social-Democracy, i.e., it should have stopped with the overthrow of Czarism. According to this view, if the revolution has gone beyond that point and has set as its task the dictatorship of the proletariat, this is simply a mistake of the radical wing of the Russian labor movement, the Bolsheviks. And all difficulties which the revolution has met with in its further course, and all disorders it has suffered are pictured as purely a result of this fateful error.
Theoretically, this doctrine (recommended as the fruit of “Marxist thinking” by the Vorwärts of Stampfer and by Kautsky alike) follows from the original “Marxist” discovery that the socialist revolution is a national and, so to speak, a domestic affair in each modern country taken by itself. Of course, in the blue mists of abstract formulae, a Kautsky knows very well how to trace the world-wide connections of capital which make of all modern countries a single integrated organism. The problems of the Russian Revolution, moreover – since it is a product of international developments plus the agrarian question – cannot possibly be solved within the limits of bourgeois society.
Practically, this same doctrine represents an attempt to get rid of any responsibility for the course of the Russian Revolution, so far as that responsibility concerns the international, and especially the German, proletariat, and to deny the international connections of this revolution. It is not Russia’s unripeness which has been proved by the events of the war and the Russian Revolution, but the unripeness of the German proletariat for the fulfillment of its historic tasks. And to make this fully clear is the first task of a critical examination of the Russian Revolution.
The fate of the revolution in Russia depended fully upon international events. That the Bolsheviks have based their policy entirely upon the world proletarian revolution is the clearest proof of their political far-sightedness and firmness of principle and of the bold scope of their policies. In it is visible the mighty advance which capitalist development has made in the last decade. The revolution of 1905-07 roused only a faint echo in Europe. Therefore, it had to remain a mere opening chapter. Continuation and conclusion were tied up with the further development of Europe.
Clearly, not uncritical apologetics but penetrating and thoughtful criticism is alone capable of bringing out treasures of experiences and teachings. Dealing as we are with the very first experiment in proletarian dictatorship in world history (and one taking place at that under the hardest conceivable conditions, in the midst of the world-wide conflagration and chaos of the imperialist mass slaughter, caught in the coils of the most reactionary military power in Europe, and accompanied by the most complete failure on the part of the international working class), it would be a crazy idea to think that every last thing done or left undone in an experiment with the dictatorship of the proletariat under such abnormal conditions represented the very pinnacle of perfection. On the contrary, elementary conceptions of socialist politics and an insight into their historically necessary prerequisites force us to understand that under such fatal conditions even the most gigantic idealism and the most storm-tested revolutionary energy are incapable of realizing democracy and socialism but only distorted attempts at either.
To make this stand out clearly in all its fundamental aspects and consequences is the elementary duty of the socialists of all countries; for only on the background of this bitter knowledge can we measure the enormous magnitude of the responsibility of the international proletariat itself for the fate of the Russian Revolution. Furthermore, it is only on this basis that the decisive importance of the resolute international action of the proletariat can become effective, without which action as its necessary support, even the greatest energy and the greatest sacrifices of the proletariat in a single country must inevitably become tangled in a maze of contradiction and blunders.
There is no doubt either that the wise heads at the helm of the Russian Revolution, that Lenin and Trotsky on their thorny path beset by traps of all kinds, have taken many a decisive step only with the greatest inner hesitation and with the most violent inner opposition. And surely nothing can be farther from their thoughts than to believe that all the things they have done or left undone under the conditions of bitter compulsion and necessity in the midst of the roaring whirlpool of events, should be regarded by the International as a shining example of socialist polity toward which only uncritical admiration and zealous imitation are in order.
It would be no less wrong to fear that a critical examination of the road so far taken by the Russian Revolution would serve to weaken the respect for and the attractive power of the example of the Russian Revolution, which alone can overcome the fatal inertia of the German masses. Nothing is farther from the truth. An awakening of the revolutionary energy of the working class in Germany can never again be called forth in the spirit of the guardianship methods of the German Social-Democracy of late-lamented memory. It can never again be conjured forth by any spotless authority, be it that of our own “higher committees” or that of “the Russian example.” Not by the creation of a revolutionary hurrah-spirit, but quite the contrary: only by an insight into all the fearful seriousness, all the complexity of the tasks involved, only as a result of political maturity and independence of spirit, only as a result of a capacity for critical judgement on the part of the masses, whose capacity was systematically killed by the Social-Democracy for decades under various pretexts, only thus can the genuine capacity for historical action be born in the German proletariat. To concern one’s self with a critical analysis of the Russian Revolution in all its historical connections is the best training for the German and the international working class for the tasks which confront them as an outgrowth of the present situation.
The first period of the Russian Revolution, from its beginning in March to the October Revolution, corresponds exactly in its general outlines to the course of development of both the Great English Revolution and the Great French Revolution. It is the typical course of every first general reckoning of the revolutionary forces begotten within the womb of bourgeois society.
Its development moves naturally in an ascending line: from moderate beginnings to ever-greater radicalization of aims and, parallel with that, from a coalition of classes and parties to the sole rule of the radical party.
At the outset in March 1917, the “Cadets“, that is the liberal bourgeoisie, stood at the head of the revolution. The first general rising of the revolutionary tide swept every one and everything along with it. The Fourth Duma, ultra-reactionary product of the ultra-reactionary four-class right of suffrage and arising out of the coup d’état, was suddenly converted into an organ of the revolution. All bourgeois parties, even those of the nationalistic right, suddenly formed a phalanx against absolutism. The latter fell at the first attack almost without a struggle, like an organ that had died and needed only to be touched to drop off. The brief effort, too, of the liberal bourgeoisie to save at least the throne and the dynasty collapsed within a few hours. The sweeping march of events leaped in days and hours over distances that formerly, in France, took decades to traverse. In this, it became clear that Russia was realizing the result of a century of European development, and above all, that the revolution of 1917 was a direct continuation of that of 1905-07, and not a gift of the German “liberator.” The movement of March 1917 linked itself directly onto the point where, ten years earlier, its work had broken off. The democratic republic was the complete, internally ripened product of the very onset of the revolution.
Now, however, began the second and more difficult task. From the very first moment, the driving force of the revolution was the mass of the urban proletariat. However, its demands did not limit themselves to the realization of political democracy but were concerned with the burning question of international policy – immediate peace. At the same time, the revolution embraced the mass of the army, which raised the same demand for immediate peace, and the mass of the peasants, who pushed the agrarian question into the foreground, that agrarian question which since 1905 had been the very axis of the revolution. Immediate peace and land – from these two aims the internal split in the revolutionary phalanx followed inevitably. The demand for immediate peace was in most irreconcilable opposition to the imperialist tendencies of the liberal bourgeoisie for whom Milyukov was the spokesman. On the other hand, the land question was a terrifying spectre for the other wing of the bourgeoisie, the rural landowners. And, in addition, it represented an attack on the sacred principle of private property in general, a touchy point for the entire propertied class.
Thus, on the very day after the first victories of the revolution, there began an inner struggle within it over the two burning questions – peace and land. The liberal bourgeoisie entered upon the tactics of dragging out things and evading them. The laboring masses, the army, the peasantry, pressed forward ever more impetuously. There can be no doubt that with the questions of peace and land, the fate of the political democracy of the republic was linked up. The bourgeois classes, carried away by the first stormy wave of the revolution, had permitted themselves to be dragged along to the point of republican government. Now they began to seek a base of support in the rear and silently to organize a counter-revolution. The Kaledin Cossack campaign against Petersburg was a clear expression of this tendency. Had the attack been successful, then not only the fate of the peace and land questions would have been sealed, but the fate of the republic as well. Military dictatorship, a reign of terror against the proletariat, and then return to monarchy, would have been the inevitable results.
From this we can judge the utopian and fundamentally reactionary characters of the tactics by which the Russian “Kautskyans” or Mensheviks permitted themselves to be guided. Hardened in their addiction to the myth of the bourgeois character of the Russian Revolution – for the time being, you see, Russia is not supposed to be ripe for the social revolution! – they clung desperately to a coalition with the bourgeois liberals. But this means a union of elements which had been split by the natural internal development of the revolution and had come into the sharpest conflict with each other. The Axelrods and Dans wanted to collaborate at all costs with those classes and parties from which came the greatest threat of danger to the revolution and to its first conquest, democracy.
It is especially astonishing to observe how this industrious man (Kautsky), by his tireless labor of peaceful and methodical writing during the four years of the World War, has torn one hole after another in the fabric of socialism. It is a labor from which socialism emerges riddled like a sieve, without a whole spot left in it. The uncritical indifference with which his followers regarded this industrious labor of their official theoretician and swallow each of his new discoveries without so much as batting an eyelash, finds its only counterpart in the indifference with which the followers of Scheidemann and Co. look on while the latter punch socialism full of holes in practice. Indeed, the two labors completely supplement each other. Since the outbreak of the war, Kautsky, the official guardian of the temple of Marxism, has really only been doing in theory the same things which the Scheidemanns have been doing in practice, namely: (1) the International an instrument of peace; (2) disarmament, the League of Nations and nationalism; and finally (3) democracy not socialism.^[2]
In this situation, the Bolshevik tendency performs the historic service of having proclaimed from the very beginning, and having followed with iron consistency, those tactics which alone could save democracy and drive the revolution ahead. All power exclusively in the hands of the worker and peasant masses, in the hands of the soviets – this was indeed the only way out of the difficulty into which the revolution had gotten; this was the sword stroke with which they cut the Gordian knot, freed the revolution from a narrow blind-alley and opened up for it an untrammeled path into the free and open fields.
The party of Lenin was thus the only one in Russia which grasped the true interest of the revolution in that first period. It was the element that drove the revolution forward, and, thus it was the only party which really carried on a socialist policy.
It is this which makes clear, too, why it was that the Bolsheviks, though they were at the beginning of the revolution a persecuted, slandered and hunted minority attacked on all sides, arrived within the shortest time to the head of the revolution and were able to bring under their banner all the genuine masses of the people: the urban proletariat, the army, the peasants, as well as the revolutionary elements of democracy, the left wing of the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
The real situation, in which the Russian Revolution found itself, narrowed down in a few months to the alternative: victory of the counter-revolution or dictatorship of the proletariat – Kaledin or Lenin. Such was the objective situation, just as it quickly presents itself in every revolution after the first intoxication is over, and as it presented itself in Russia as a result of the concrete, burning questions of peace and land, for which there was no solution within the framework of bourgeois revolution.
In this, the Russian Revolution has but confirmed the basic lesson of every great revolution, the law of its being, which decrees: either the revolution must advance at a rapid, stormy, resolute tempo, break down all barriers with an iron hand and place its goals ever farther ahead, or it is quite soon thrown backward behind its feeble point of departure and suppressed by counter-revolution. To stand still, to mark time on one spot, to be contented with the first goal it happens to reach, is never possible in revolution. And he who tries to apply the home-made wisdom derived from parliamentary battles between frogs and mice to the field of revolutionary tactics only shows thereby that the very psychology and laws of existence of revolution are alien to him and that all historical experience is to him a book sealed with seven seals.
Take the course of the English Revolution from its onset in 1642. There the logic of things made it necessary that the first feeble vacillations of the Presbyterians, whose leaders deliberately evaded a decisive battle with Charles I and victory over him, should inevitably be replaced by the Independents, who drove them out of Parliament and seized the power for themselves. And in the same way, within the army of the Independents, the lower petty-bourgeois mass of the soldiers, the Lilburnian “Levellers“ constituted the driving force of the entire Independent movement; just as, finally, the proletarian elements within the mass of the soldiers, the elements that went farthest in their aspirations for social revolution and who found their expression in the Digger movement, constituted in their turn the leaven of the democratic party of the “Levellers.”
Without the moral influence of the revolutionary proletarian elements on the general mass of the soldiers, without the pressure of the democratic mass of the soldiers upon the bourgeois upper layers of the party of the Independents, there would have been no “purge” of the Long Parliament of its Presbyterians, nor any victorious ending to the war with the army of the Cavaliers and Scots, or any trial and execution of Charles I, nor any abolition of the House of Lords and proclamation of a republic.
And what happened in the Great French Revolution? Here, after four years of struggle, the seizure of power by the Jacobins proved to be the only means of saving the conquests of the revolution, of achieving a republic, of smashing feudalism, of organizing a revolutionary defense against inner as well as outer foes, of suppressing the conspiracies of counter-revolution and spreading the revolutionary wave from France to all Europe.
Kautsky and his Russian co-religionists who wanted to see the Russian Revolution keep the “bourgeois character” of its first phase, are an exact counterpart of those German and English liberals of the preceding century who distinguished between the two well-known periods of the Great French Revolution: the “good” revolution of the first Girondin phase and the “bad” one after the Jacobin uprising. The Liberal shallowness of this conception of history, to be sure, doesn’t care to understand that, without the uprising of the “immoderate” Jacobins, even the first, timid and half-hearted achievements of the Girondin phase would soon have been buried under the ruins of the revolution, and that the real alternative to Jacobin dictatorship – as the iron course of historical development posed the question in 1793 – was not “moderate” democracy, but ... restoration of the Bourbons! The “golden mean” cannot be maintained in any revolution. The law of its nature demands a quick decision: either the locomotive drives forward full steam ahead to the most extreme point of the historical ascent, or it rolls back of its own weight again to the starting point at the bottom; and those who would keep it with their weak powers half way up the hill, it drags down with it irredeemably into the abyss.
Thus it is clear that in every revolution only that party capable of seizing the leadership and power which has the courage to issue the appropriate watch-words for driving the revolution ahead, and the courage to draw all the necessary conclusions from the situation. This makes clear, too, the miserable role of the Russian Mensheviks, the Dans, Zeretellis, etc., who had enormous influence on the masses at the beginning, but, after their prolonged wavering and after they had fought with both hands and feet against taking over power and responsibility, were driven ignobly off the stage.
The party of Lenin was the only one which grasped the mandate and duty of a truly revolutionary party and which, by the slogan – “All power in the hands of the proletariat and peasantry” – insured the continued development of the revolution.
Thereby the Bolsheviks solved the famous problem of “winning a majority of the people,” which problem has ever weighed on the German Social-Democracy like a nightmare. As bred-in-the-bone disciples of parliamentary cretinism,^[3] these German Social-Democrats have sought to apply to revolutions the home-made wisdom of the parliamentary nursery: in order to carry anything, you must first have a majority. The same, they say, applies to a revolution: first let’s become a “majority.” The true dialectic of revolutions, however, stands this wisdom of parliamentary moles on its head: not through a majority, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority – that’s the way the road runs.
Only a party which knows how to lead, that is, to advance things, wins support in stormy times. The determination with which, at the decisive moment, Lenin and his comrades offered the only solution which could advance things (“all power in the hands of the proletariat and peasantry”), transformed them almost overnight from a persecuted, slandered, outlawed minority whose leader had to hid like Marat in cellars, into the absolute master of the situation.
Moreover, the Bolsheviks immediately set as the aim of this seizure of power a complete, far-reaching revolutionary program; not the safeguarding of bourgeois democracy, but a dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose of realizing socialism. Thereby they won for themselves the imperishable historic distinction of having for the first time proclaimed the final aim of socialism as the direct program of practical politics.
Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary far-sightedness and consistency in an historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and all the other comrades have given in good measure. All the revolutionary honor and capacity which western Social-Democracy lacked was represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution; it was also the salvation of the honor of international socialism.

Footnotes

^[1] During the war the German Social-Democracy divided into three factions: the majority leadership, which openly supported and entered into the Imperial government; the Kautsky section, which declined responsibility for the conduct of the war but supplied many of the theoretical arguments for those who accepted such responsibility; and the section led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, which openly opposed the war and counterposed international solidarity and proletarian revolution to it.

^[2] Here, as at various points in the manuscript, the passage is still in the form of rough notations which Rosa Luxemburg intended to complete later. Her murder by military agents of the Social-Democratic coalition government prevented her from completing and revising the work. The expression, “the International an instrument of peace” refers to the excuses Kautsky gave for its bankruptcy during the war (“an instrument of peace is not suited to times of war”). It probably refers also to the theory that the International, being peaceful, is not an instrument for revolutionary struggle. Kautsky substituted utopian talk of disarmament (without the removal of the causes and roots of war!) for a revolutionary struggle against war. He provided apologetics for the League of Nations which was supposed to have banished war from the world, and he justified socialists who abandoned internationalism, supported their own governments and ruling classes, and became in theory and practice nationalists instead of internationalists. When the struggle for socialism began in earnest, the Scheidemanns defended capitalism against socialism in practice, while Kautsky did so in theory by explaining that capitalist “democracy” was democracy in the abstract, and that they were defending “democracy.” Hence the third point means: the advocacy of democracy as against socialism.

The passage in slightly expanded form might read something as follows:

(1) the International as an instrument for peace-time only and for the maintenance of peace; (2) advocacy of the doctrines of disarmament, apologetics for the League of Nations and nationalism against internationalism; (3) and the advocacy of “democracy” as against socialism.

^[3] A term first applied by Marx to those parliamentarians who think that all history is decided by motions, votes and points of parliamentary debate.

Felix Morrow

Lenin’s Teachings on National Wars

An Answer to the Latest Stalinist Forgeries

(April 1942)

Source: A review from Fourth International, New York, Vol.3 No.4, April 1942, pp.102-107.
Transcription/XHTML Markup: Ted Crawford and David Walters
Copyleft: Felix Morrow Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2004. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

On March 15, 1942, a grotesque ceremony took place in London. At the Holford Square tenement in which Lenin forty years ago lived for a time in exile, a plaque was unveiled in his honor, draped in the Red Flag and... the Union Jack. High officials of the Churchill government surrounded Soviet Ambassador Maisky and his wife as she unveiled the plaque. “Here some of his best works were written,” Ambassador Maisky said, according to the press. “Here he developed many of the ideas that led to the creation of the USSR.” Nobody disrupted the affair by telling what those ideas were.

This obscene ceremony is aptly characterized by Lenin’s own words in State and Revolution:

“ During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes have visited relentless persecution on them and received their teaching with the most savage hostility, the most furious hatred, the most ruthless campaign of lies and slanders. After their death attempts are made to turn the revolutionaries into harmless icons, canonize them, and surround their names with a certain halo for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping them, while at the same time emasculating and vulgarizing the real essence of their revolutionary theories and blunting their revolutionary edge.”

During 1917-1920 Churchill tried to bury Lenin beneath the ruins of the young Soviet republic; today Churchill collaborates with Stalin in trying to turn Lenin into a harmless icon. Maisky is the appropriate ambassador for this work: he was Minister of Labor in the anti-Soviet Samara Government in the years when Churchill led world capitalist intervention against Lenin.

The Stalinist Line on War Until 1935

Lenin died in January, 1924. During the next four years the Stalinist bureaucracy seized control of the USSR and of the Communist International. At the Sixth Congress of the Communist International, in 1928, a permanent Program was adopted; it was a Stalinist document, which Trotsky submitted to exhaustive criticism in The Third International after Lenin. But Stalinist degeneration had not yet reached the point of openly calling upon the workers in imperialist countries to support “their” governments if allied to the Kremlin; on the contrary the Program still had to repeat some Leninist formulations on the question of war; it states:

”The Communist International must devote itself especially to systematic preparation for the struggle against the danger of imperialist wars. Ruthless exposure of social chauvinism, of social imperialism and of pacifist phrase-mongering intended to camouflage the imperialist plans of the bourgeoisie; propaganda in favor of the principal slogans of the Communist International; everyday organizational work in connection with this in the course of which constitutional methods must unfailingly be combined with unconstitutional methods; organized work in the army and navy—such must be the activity of the Communist Parties in this connection. The fundamental slogans of the Communist International in this connection must be the following: ‘Convert imperialist war into civil war’; defeat the ‘home’ imperialist government; defend the USSR and the colonies by every possible means in the event of imperialist war against them. It is the bounden duty of all Sections of the Communist International, and of every one of its members, to carry on propaganda for these slogans, to expose the ‘socialistic’ sophisms and the ‘socialistic’ camouflage of the League of Nations, and constantly to keep to the front the experiences of the war of 1914-1918.” (Handbook of Marxism, International Publishers, 1935, p.1040.)

Incidentally this is still officially the Program of the Communist International.

But perhaps the rise of fascism to power in Germany changed the character of our epoch so it was no longer, as Lenin termed it, “the epoch of imperialist wars, proletarian revolutions and colonial uprisings”? Now it was an epoch of war between fascism and democracy? Stalin dared not say anything of the sort in 1934 in his lengthy Report to the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was clear that a second world war was coming; how did Stalin characterize it:

“In this connection the victory of fascism in Germany must be regarded... as a symptom of the fact that the bourgeoisie is no longer able to find a way out of the present situation on the basis of a peaceful foreign policy, as a consequence of which it is compelled to resort to a policy of war.

“Thus, you see that things are moving towards a new imperialist war as a way out of the present situation.

“Of course there are no grounds for assuming that the war can provide a real way out. On the contrary, it must confuse the situation still more. More than that, it will certainly unleash revolution and put in question the very existence of capitalism in a number of countries, as was the case in the course of the first imperialist war. And if, notwithstanding the experience of the first imperialist war, the bourgeois politicians clutch at war as a drowning man clutches at straw, it shows that they have become utterly confused, have reached an impasse, and are ready to rush headlong over the precipice.” (Handbook of Marxism, pp.920-921.)

But perhaps all this was said on the assumption that the “democracies” would be siding with Germany in the coming war and there was an alternative policy if the “democracies” were fighting Germany? This question was dealt with specifically by the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1934, in a pamphlet by R.F. Andrews, and it said:

#8220;Supposing Fascist Germany attacks the USSR, are you in favor of the workers supporting the British or French Government in an attack on Fascist Germany?

“UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES! ...

“Such action would help the German capitalists to represent the war as one of self-defense. It would strengthen British capitalists and weaken British workers, it would put British imperialism in the event of victory in a favorable position for attacking the USSR, it would mean suppressing the inevitable revolt in India and the Empire.

“On the contrary, by supporting the workers in their struggle against exploitation, profiteering and oppression in wartime—a struggle which is unavoidable in any case—and developing it into a struggle against the war itself, the British workers would undermine Hitler’s own front, which would be the most effective assistance British revolutionaries could give to the USSR in such circumstances.” (The Labour Party and the Menace of War)

A year later this anti-war principle was formulated even more definitively in the leading editorial of The Labour Monthly edited by R. Palme Dutt, the most authoritative Stalinist publication in the English language. Condemning “the attempts to preach the obligation of the working class to subordinate itself to the leadership of the League of Nations,” the editorial proclaimed:

“What is our answer to these ‘left,’ ‘pacifist,’ ‘democratic,’ ‘anti-fascist’ arguments in support of future imperialist war? Our answer remains the Leninist line, the line or international socialism from Marx and Engels, from Stuttgart and Basle up to today. We need more than ever to warn the workers never to become entangled in the lines of imperialist policies, but to judge every question of war and peace solely from the standpoint of the working class revolution. The workers under capitalism have no fatherland; their only fatherland is so much of the territory of the globe as they have conquered and made their own, today the territory of the Soviet Union. The participation of the Soviet Union in the League of Nations no more transforms the character of the League of Nations than the participation of a Communist in Parliament transforms the character of Parliament... The false comparison of the position of a working class which has not yet conquered power, which has not yet overthrown its capitalist class, with the position of a working class which has conquered power and has now to maneuver in a capitalist world (and has to maneuver only because the workers in the other countries have not yet overthrown their capitalists) is the favorite fallacy of reformism to confuse the issues and conceal its own capitalist policies...

“Must we then let the Nazis ‘walk over us,’ demand the trade union leaders with great heat. Must we not ‘defend our country’ against Fascism’? Is not pacifism in such conditions equivalent to surrender to Fascism? The revolutionary answer is clear. We hold nothing in common with the pacifist position. We do not for a moment exclude military defense against Fascism—on one condition and one condition only, namely, that we have a country to defend. We shall defend Workers’ Britain, as an integral part of the World Workers Republic, of the future World Soviet Union, against Fascism with every means in our (power. Let the exploiting class in Prance make way and surrender power to the workers’ united front, and the French workers will defend Workers’ France against every attack, as they defended the Commune, against the combined French-German ruling class. But until then we shall fight our own exploiting class; we shall not let ourselves be dragged into warring for one set of masters against another; we shall raise the slogan of fraternisation with the German workers and soldiers. Is this ‘unpractical’? On the contrary, it is the only practical line. For such fraternisation, such fight of the British workers against British Imperialism, will more rapidly undermine the shaking Nazi regime in Germany, will hasten the German revolution, than any ‘union sacrŽe’ of the trade union leaders with British Imperialism, which will only strengthen the Nazi hold, confirm the Nazi propaganda of the vanity of working-class internationalism, and prolong the war. This is the Leninist line, which remains the only line for the working class in any imperialist war.” (The Labour Monthly, January, 1935)

One could ask for nothing clearer than these quotations: they indicate the extent to which, as late as 1935, the Stalinist parties paid lip-service to Lenin’s line on war in the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution.

In and Out of the New Line

Then, May 15, 1935, came the Stalin-Laval communique and in it this pregnant sentence: “M. Stalin understands and fully approves the policy of national defense undertaken by France by maintaining her armed forces at the level necessary for security.” “Monsieur Stalin” was not then a government official, but General Secretary of the Communist Party. His endorsement of France’s war plans subsequently became the open line of all the Communist parties toward the “democracies.” How appropriate that this began with a joint statement of Stalin and the “democrat” Laval! Lenin’s “epoch of imperialist war, proletarian revolutions and colonial uprisings” was proclaimed to have been transformed into an epoch of “democratic wars against fascism.”

However nearly five years of this new epoch ended not in a democratic war against fascism but in the Stalin-Hitler pact which, freeing Hitler from a second front in the East, enabled him to mobilize all his forces for war against the West, a war which (after a few days of insistence that the pact made no change in their policies) was characterized by the Communist parties of Britain, France, etc., as an imperialist war which they would not support. It was in the name of Leninism that this new policy operated, but it was a policy which has been aptly characterized by our French comrades as “defeatism without revolution.”
The invasion of Greece (begun by the Italians October 28, 1940, completed by the Germans April 27, 1941) and of Yugoslavia (begun at the end of March 1941 and completed in six weeks) produced in the Comintern press condemnation of... Britain for dragging the small countries into the imperialist war.
From September 1939 until June 22, 1941 the Communist parties proclaimed again that this was the “epoch of imperialist war, proletarian revolutions and colonial uprisings.” The colonial peoples of the British and French empires were exhorted to win their independence arms in hand. These tag-ends from Leninism were to hide the nakedness of the period of collaboration under the Stalin-Hitler Pact.

The War “Changes” Once Again

The epoch of imperialist war and proletarian revolutions abruptly ended, by Stalinist computation, on June 22, 1941. As James W. Ford put it in The Communist, October, 1941:

“When the war broke out in 1939 it was clearly imperialistic. It was unmistakably a struggle to determine which group of powers was to dominate the world... The strength of the Soviet Union gave stimulus to the peoples of Western Europe in their struggle for national independence against fascism [i.e., after Hitler subjugated them with the aid of the Stalin-Hitler pact—F.M.]. In desperation the Nazis treacherously violated the non-aggression pact and ruthlessly attacked the Soviet people on June 22. Thus a new phase of the war entered, changing all the relation of forces and the character of the war.”

It is interesting to note that it took the Communist Party of Britain, busily engaged in rabidly condemning the imperialist war aims of the Churchill government, two weeks to make the switch. As late as the July 5, 1941 issue of World News and Views (formerly organ of the Communist International, now published in England without reference to organizational connections), R. Palme Dutt wrote:

“But the British imperialists by no means wish to see a victory for the Soviet Union, with its liberating consequences for Europe. They count, instead, on the basis of the weakening of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, on establishing their own domination in Europe, and eventually to return to their ultimate aim of crushing the Soviet Union. There is no room for illusions on these ulterior aims of the imperialists.”

However, Dutt quickly transferred this correct characterization of British (and American) imperialism into an individual accusation against Moore-Brabazon, Minister of Aircraft Production, who had been indiscreet enough to say just that about the Soviet Union in a speech, and the very concept of British imperialism disappeared from the Stalinist press.

What makes a war imperialist? Stalin and R. Palme Dutt told us not so long ago, repeating Lenin’s thought. Warring for one set of capitalist masters against another is imperialist. The workers under capitalism have no fatherland. Imperialism is the latest—and last—stage in the unfolding of capitalism. Any war conducted by an imperialist power—i.e., the great capitalist powers, ruled by finance capital and holding the colonial peoples in subjection either by direct rule or by dollar diplomacy—is an imperialist war. The participation of the Soviet Union in the war no more transforms the character of the war of the imperialist nations than the participation of the Soviet Union transformed the character of the League of Nations. The British-Soviet pact no more changes the politics of Britain’s war than the Hitler-Stalin pact changed the politics of Germany’s war. War—Lenin never tired of repeating Clausewitz’s formula—is the continuation of politics by other means. And the politics of an imperialist power is always imperialist. Lenin’s sharpest condemnations of Kautsky were directed at his attempts to characterize imperialism as but one of several policies which the capitalist powers might pursue. Imperialism, Lenin answered, is not merely a policy; it is a social, economic and political stage of capitalism, the latest and last; an epoch which determined the character of all pecific policies of capitalist states. Lenin branded Kautsky as a traitor for implying that capitalist powers could pursue an alternative to imperialism. The Stalinist assertion that defense of the Soviet Union requires that the American and British workers support “their” imperialist governments in the war is refuted by the fact that for 18 years after the establishment of the Soviet Union no one dreamed of proposing such a policy.
These truths penetrate into the ranks of the Communist Party in spite of the totalitarian regime. Its Acting National Secretary, Robert Minor, complains of “adulteration of the point of view of the revolutionary working class by admixtures of pacifism and opposition to war ‘in general’ and blames it with utter brass on “ignorance of the history and the theoretical basis of our movement among even honest sympathizers or members of our Party itself.”

The Latest Stalinist Forgeries

To calm these doubters, Minor tells them that Lenin himself predicted just such a “war for national liberation” as the “democracies” are now waging! Such is the thesis solemnly offered by Minor to the “honest sympathizers or members of our Party” who are now “stumbling,” in an article entitled “Lenin on the Junius Pamphlet, in the October, 1941 Communist, the gist of which Minor has since repeated in numerous articles and speeches.

Minor’s thesis is stated as follows:

“By the Hitler war, Europe and the whole world are ‘thrown back for several decades,’ and against this hideous reaction, ‘wars of national liberation’ have become inevitable on the part of all nations of the world and all states capable of defending their national independence.”

If “all nations of the world” are now capable of waging wars of national liberation, this is obviously no longer the epoch of imperialist war and proletarian revolution. Proof? Minor adduces the fact that in August, 1916, Lenin wrote that “to picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong.” Minor then pours vituperation on Trotsky and others who allegedly claim that history always moves forward. [1] This paves the way to falsifying a quotation from Lenin in order that Lenin’s thought that strides backward are possible within the epoch of imperialism is identified with the Stalinist claim that this is no longer the epoch of imperialism!

Here is Minor’s deliberate forgery:

“It should be noted that Lenin states this carefully as a question of scientific principle: that ‘gigantic strides backward’ do occur in history and are in accord with the laws of motion of society. At an earlier time, during the World War, he referred to the matter, saying: ‘We are dealing here with large historic epochs; there are and there will be, in every age, individual, partial, backward and forward movement ...’ (The Imperialist War)... The ‘temporary step backward’ has eventuated.”

Minor does it very neatly—a quotation from Lenin and a reference to the book from which it comes. The reader is not provided by Minor with the page number from the 402 page The Imperialist War and no wonder! For Minor’s “quotation” is deliberately faked to give exactly the opposite idea from that which Lenin wrote!

Minor’s “quotation” comes from page 125 of The Imperialist War and the extent of his deliberate falisification of Lenin’s thought will be clear only to those who read that article; entitled ;Under A Stolen Flag, it is an attack by Lenin on the Menshevik, A. Potresov, for using the “stolen flag” of Marxism to cover support of the imperialist war.
Lenin condemns Potresov for dragging the proletarian movement backward; “he drags it back to the slogans and ideology of the old bourgeois democracy, to the dependence of the masses upon the bourgeoisie,” Then, to show the falsity of thus going backwards in policy, Lenin shows that we live in an entirely different epoch from that in which Marx lived. The second sentence of the following passage is the one which Minor “quoted”—but notice that Lenin is referring to the possibility of developments backward which, however, he insists, would not determine our policy; our policy is determined by the fundamental character of our epoch! Lenin writes:

“ We are undoubtedly living on the borderline of two epochs, and historic events of the greatest importance that are taking place before our eyes can be understood only if, in the first place, we analyze the objective conditions of the transition from one epoch to the other. We are dealing here with large historic epochs; there are, and there will be in every age, individual, partial, backward and forward movements; there are and there will be various deviations from the average type and average tempo of the movement. We cannot know how rapidly and how successfully the various historic movements of a given epoch will develop, but we can and do know which class occupies the centre of one or the other epoch, determining its main contents, the main direction of its development, the main characteristics of the historic circumstances of that epoch, etc. Only on this basis, i.e., by taking into account, in the first!place, the fundamental distinguishing features of the various ‘epochs’ (and not individual episodes in the history of individual countries) can we correctly determine our tactics; and only the knowledge of the fundamental features of a given epoch can serve as a basis for understanding in greater detail the peculiarities of one or the other country...

“The usual division of historical epochs, many times quoted in Marxian literature, is this: (1) 1789-1871; (2) 1871-1914; (3)1914... The First Epoch, from the great French Revolution to the Franco-Prussian War, is the epoch” of the rise of the bourgeoisie, of its full victory... The Second Epoch is the epoch of the full domination and decline of the bourgeoisie, an epoch of transition from the progressive character of the bourgeoisie to reactionary, even rabidly reactionary, finance capital. This is the epoch when there are being prepared and there slowly gather the forces of a new class of modern democracy [the proletariat—F.M.]. The Third Epoch, which is just beginning, places the bourgeoisie in the same position as that in which the feudal lords found themselves during the First Epoch. This is the epoch of imperialism and imperialist convulsions resulting from the nature of imperialism...

“In place of the struggle of rising capital striving towards national liberation from the remnants of feudalism, there has come the struggle of the most reactionary finance capital against the new forces, the struggle of a power that has exhausted and outlived itself, that is headed downward towards decay. The bourgeois-national framework of states, which in the First Epoch was a support to the development of the productive forces of humanity then in the process of liberating itself from feudalism has now, in the Third Epoch, become a hindrance to the free development of the productive forces. From a rising, progressive class the bourgeoisie has become a sinking, decaying, internally dead, reactionary class. The rising class—on a wide international scale—-has become an entirely different one.” (The Imperialist War, pp.125-129.)

After reading this passage, a reader, unfamiliar with the Stalin school of falsification, will rub his eyes as he realizes Minor’s conscious misuse of a sentence out of a passage—and an entire book—which teaches exactly the opposite of Minor’s doctrine.

Why is it treason to the working class to support an imperialist state in war? Lenin answers: because the bourgeois-national state has become a hindrance to the free development of the productive forces. Lenin’s answer applies to 1942 even more than to 1914—after the permanent world crisis of 1918-1939. Imperialism is not a spigot, turned on and off by Stalin’s twists and turns; it is the economic, social and political character of our epoch, and determines the character of any war conducted by the imperialist powers.
Minor’s forged quotation about “backward movements” is merely the atmospheric setting for something much more grandiose—“proof” that Lenin and other Marxists were able “to describe accurately 25 years ago the main conditions under which we are fighting now in a war which they then said would justifiedly be supported by the workers and peoples of the world and by the revolutionary party of the working class.” His “proof” is a section from an article written by Lenin in August, 1916, entitled, On the Junius Pamphlet.
This monstrous falsification of Lenin, really breath-taking in its scope, demonstrates anew the extent to which Stalinism shares Hitler’s precept: “the grosser the lie the more readily people believe it.” But we must try to cleanse these Augean stables.

Lenin’s Teachings on National Wars

During 1916 Lenin found himself in conflict with an important section of the Bolshevik leadership—Bukharin, Pyatakov and others—and with some of his closest international allies in the Zimmerwald Left—the Dutch and Polish revolutionists—on the national question. The main question immediately at issue was the connection of the slogan of national liberation for oppressed nationalities with the coming revolutions in the “prison-houses of peoples,” Russia and Austro-Hungary; in reaction against the national-chauvinism of the Pilsudski socialists, the revolutionary socialists of Poland, led by Rosa Luxemburg, mistakenly rejected the slogan of national liberation, and out of similar circumstances came the similar mistake of the others. Lenin, firmly keeping to the forefront the importance of colonial uprisings against imperialism and of revolts of small nations against imperialist domination, sharply defended the Bolshevik position on the national question—the issue, indeed, nearly led to a split in the Bolsheviks abroad.

Preoccupied with the struggle within the Bolsheviks and the Zimmerwald Left on the national question, Lenin devoted two pages to it in the course of his article, warmly hailing the famous Junius pamphlet, The Crisis of Social-Democracy, the first illegal revolutionary pamphlet to appear in Germany during the war. Junius (Rosa Luxemburg) had written at one point; “In the epoch of imperialism there can be no more national wars.” Her mistake, said Lenin, is “to lose sight of the national movements against imperialism,” and to show the possibility of national wars against imperialism he gave three examples, which are worth describing because they exemplify Lenin’s method on the national question and they will show how deliberately false is Minor’s “quotation.”

I

Very significant for today is Lenin’s insistence that a war waged by a colonial or semi-colonial country against an imperialist power can remain a progressive war—such as China’s war against Japan—in spite of China having imperialist “allies.” Lenin writes:

“Every war is a continuation of politics by other means. The continuation of the national-liberation politics of the colonies must necessarily be national wars on their part against imperialism. Such wars may lead to an imperialist war of the present ‘great’ imperialist powers, but they may also not lead to this-it depends on a number of circumstances.

“To take an example: in the Seven Years War, Britain and France were fighting for colonies; that is, they were waging an imperialist war (which is possible on the basis of slave rule or of primitive capitalism just as much as on the contemporary basis of highly developed capitalism). France was vanquished and lost a part of her colonies. Several years later there began a national-liberation war of the North American States against Britain alone. France and Spain, who still owned a apart of the present United States, were led by their hostility to Britain—that is, by their imperialist interest -to enter into a friendly agreement with the States that were rebelling against Britain. French troops fought along with the Americans against the English. We thus see a national-liberation war, in which the imperialist co-operation [with the colony—F.M.] appears merely as a secondary element without serious significance...” (Lenin, On the Junius Pamphlet, first printed in English in The Labour Monthly, Jan. 1935.)

It is clear here that Lenin gives no credit for progressiveness to the imperialist powers which for “their own imperialist interests” would be supporting such a war as China’s war against Japan. Here is the essence of Lenin’s method on such wars. That method, applied to the present war, characterizes the war of China and the Soviet Union, non-imperialist countries, as progressive, while the war of the imperialist powers on both sides remains reactionary. Contrast this Leninist method with the Stalinist claptrap whereby—presumably by osmosis or contagion—imperialist allies of non-imperialist countries are whitewashed into progressives!

II

In the above example Lenin was considering the great colonial and semi-colonial countries like India, China and Persia, fighting their main imperialist oppressors where it was possible for the imperialist co-operation with the colonial country to be “merely a secondary element.” In Europe, however, as the example of Serbia showed, the small capitalist countries are swallowed up in a general imperialist war so that the national element then “has no serious significance compared to the basic imperialist rivalries.”

But, added Lenin, thinking particularly of the coming break-up of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, opening the way to national independence for the Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Letts, Finns, Poles, etc., there may be occasions when the national struggles for liberation by these small peoples may not be submerged in a general imperialist war:

“The imperialist era has made the present war into an imperialist war; it will necessarily (until the advent of socialism) produce new imperialist wars; it has made the politics of the present great powers essentially imperialist—but this ‘epoch’ in no way excludes a national war, e.g. on the part of the small (even though annexed or nationally subjected) states against the imperialist powers, in the same way as it does not exclude large scale national movements in Eastern Europe... In the event of the ‘great’ powers being thoroughly exhausted in the present war, or in the event of a victory of the revolution in Russia, national wars are quite possible and may even be successful. On the one hand, the interference of the imperialist powers would not necessarily take place in every case. If, on the other hand, it is decided ‘off one’s bat’ that a war of a small state against a giant is hopeless, then we must answer that a hopeless war is also a war. Besides that, the appearance of certain phenomena inside the ‘giants’—for instance the outbreak of a revolution—may change a hopeless war into a very hopeful one.” (idem)

Lenin’s thought here is too unambiguous to permit of Stalinist “interpretation”: the exhaustion of the imperialists or the Russian revolution can provide conditions for an isolated war of national liberation of a small nation against an imperialist power, but if a general imperialist war breaks out “the national element... has no serious significance compared to the basic imperialist rivalries.” By this criterion it is clear how anti-Leninist is the claim of the Stalinists that Britain’s allies, Greece and Yugoslavia (the latter an imperialist state oppressing the Croats), were fighting “national-liberation” wars against Germany.

III

Lenin was writing this article in the dark days of August, 1916, when the European proletariat was dormant; it was conceivable that the war might end without a revolutionary upheaval. In March, 1916, Lenin wrote: “It is possible, however, that five, ten and even more years will pass before the beginning of the socialist revolution.” In January, 1917, he said: “We, the older men, will perhaps not live long enough to see the decisive battles of the impending revolution.” Under certain conditions, if no revolutions come, said Lenin, there might even be a national war in Europe:

“... if the European proletariat proved to be powerless for twenty years; if the present war should end with Napoleonic victories and the subjection of a whole series of national states that are capable of life; if non-European imperialism (mainly Japanese and American) should also hold out for twenty years, without going over to socialism, for instance, as a result of a Japanese-American war,—then a large-scale national war in Europe would be possible. This would mean for Europe a retrograde development of several decades, and is improbable. But it is not impossible, since it is non-dialectical, non-scientific, and theoretically incorrect to imagine world history as progressing smoothly and accurately forward, without occasional enormous retrogressive steps.” (idem)

Fortunately for humanity, the “improbable” did not occur. The European proletariat did not prove to be powerless for twenty years; on the contrary the October revolution destroyed capitalism in one of the key countries of world imperialism, the Soviet Union survived and its weight in Europe and the post-war wave of revolution made impossible any attempt by France to establish a Napoleonic domination of the continent. Otherwise it is conceivable that, over a period of twenty years (note Lenin’s emphasis on how long such a development would take) victorious France, with an absolutely free hand in Europe, permanently occupying the Ruhr and stripping Germany of its industries and economic resources (as well as its colonies) could have reduced Germany to the status of a non-imperialist nation (its finance-capital structure would have been wiped out). And after twenty years, with the old German capitalist class gone from the scene, a new generation in Germany whose bourgeoisie would have been equivalent to the bourgeoisie of a semi-colonial country might have, in alliance with other subjugated nations on the continent, conducted a war of national-liberation in Europe. This is an example of the “improbable” but “not impossible” perspective had no revolutions come during or after the first imperialist war.

But revolution did come, and henceforth Lenin never gave any place in his thoughts to the possibility of such a national war in Europe. Lenin lived for six years after the October revolution, perhaps the most fruitful years of his life. It is no accident that Minor and the Stalinists have to dig back to 1916, before even the February revolution, for something in which Lenin concedes even the possibility of such a national war in Europe! No amount of combing will find anything of the sort in Lenin’s writings between February 1917 and his death in January 1924.
Now, having described what Lenin had to say on national wars against imperialism in his August, 1916 articles, we are in a position to measure the monstrosity of the Stalinist falsification of that article.

Five Stalinist Forgeries

Minor writes:

“In this article Lenin, with startling accuracy, sketched the possibilities and even foretold as probable a great national war in Europe in connection with the rise of a dictator-conqueror of the Napoleon type—provided that certain conditions were to come about. The reader will see what the conditions were, as forecast by Lenin. Among them are: if the war of 1914-1918 were to be concluded in such a way that ‘the proletariat of Europe proved to be powerless for some twenty years’; and if that were to result in ‘victories of the type of Napoleon’s and the enslavement of a number of vital national states’; if ‘extra-European imperialism’ held out for twenty years; and if there should come a victorious revolution in Russia. If these conditions were to come about, said Lenin, a ‘great national war’—i.e., a just war in defense of national independence, would be possible.

“The occurrence of the first three of these conditions ‘would be a development of Europe backward by some decades,’ said Lenin...

“The ‘temporary step backward’ has eventuated. By the Hitler war, Europe and the whole world are ‘thrown back for several decades,’ and against this hideous reaction, ‘wars of national liberation’ have become inevitable on the part of all nations of the world.” (The Communist, Oct. 1941, p.881, my italics—F.M.)

Let us list the main Stalinist forgeries in this fabrication of Minor which follows the Hitler-Stalin precept that “the grosser the lie the more readily people believe it.”

Forgery No.1: Of Lenin’s examples of different types of national wars cited above, Nos.II and III are mutually exclusive: the existence of one excludes the other. III was based on what might happen if there were no Russian revolution and II is based on the perspective of a Russian revolution—II and III could not both happen. But in order to connect together the “great national war” of a revolution-less Europe with the not-to-be-denied Russian revolution, Minor, deliberately committing a forgery,’ puts together as a single set of conditions Lenin’s mutually exclusive conditions for II (revolution) and III (no revolution)!

Forgery No.2: Example III—a great national war in Europe—could happen only if, in addition to the absence of any successful revolutions, there would be a Napoleonic domination of Europe for “some twenty years,” says Lenin, i.e., long enough to wipe out the imperialist structure of a country like France and reduce it to semi-colonial character. This, of course, did not happen after the first imperialist war. This has not happened and could not have happened in the two and a half years since the second imperialist war began—if nothing else, the time that has elapsed is too short for such a process: both Vichy and De Gaullist France are imperialist powers retaining colonial empires, the governments-in-exile are fighting both to recover their own imperialist interests (Holland’s great colonial empire, Yugoslav oppression of the Croats, Czech oppression of the Slovaks and the Sudetens, etc.) and as satellites of Anglo-American imperialism. And the war is still unfolding—to be ended, we are certain, by proletarian and colonial revolutions far greater in scope than the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. The task of the masses in the occupied countries is not “national war”—wars can only be fought by states and armies —but revolution against Nazi domination. To apply to this situation in Europe Lenin’s hypothesis of what could happen after “some twenty years” of Napoleonic domination of Europe can only be done by a Stalinist falsifier.

Forgery No.3: To Lenin the possibility of a great national war in Europe was “improbable” even in the dark days of 1916, and he never referred to it again after the February revolution. Minor falsifies this to mean that “Lenin, with startling accuracy, sketched the possibilities and even foretold as probable a great national war in Europe.” Lenin wrote “improbable”; Minor simply changes it to “probable”

Forgery No.4: Even if this improbable situation became reality, Lenin never said that imperialists if allied to a non-imperialist country thereby become capable of fighting progressive wars. As we saw by his example I, China’s war against Japan does not make Anglo-American imperialism’s war against Japan progressive, any more than Spain and France’s war against England became progressive because they were allied to the American colonies. Lenin makes this absolutely clear. It would be a “national war” only for the semi-colonial countries. Minor deliberately falsifies Lenin to mean that “wars of national liberation have become inevitable on the part of all nations of the world.”

Marx and Lenin on National Wars

Forgery No.5: Minor pretends that the Marxist-Leninist tradition is that, in a national war, it is the duty of the proletariat to collaborate with the bourgeois government, vote for its war budgets, etc. This is precisely the same falsification of Marx’s teachings concocted by the social-chauvinists during the first imperialist war.

Here is what Lenin had to say on the real Marxist tradition toward national wars and its falsification by the social-chauvinists:

“The policy of the social-chauvinists, their justification of the war from the bourgeois standpoint of national liberty, their acceptance of the ‘defense of the fatherland,’ their voting for war appropriations, their participation in the cabinet etc., etc., is a direct betrayal of Socialism...

“The Russian social-chauvinists refer to Marx’s tactics in the war of 1870...

“All these references are an abominable distortion of Marx and Engels’ views... The war of 1870-71 was historical progressive on Germany’s side up to the defeat of Napoleon III.... Even at the beginning of the war of 1870-1871 Marx and Engels approved of Bebel’s and Liebknecht’s refusal to vote for military appropriations; they advised the Social-Democrats not to merge with the bourgeoisie, but to defend the independent class-interests of the proletariat.” (The Imperialist War, p.228.)

Thus the class struggle was to go on even in a national war, for Marx and Engels, and for Lenin. According to the Stalinist falsification of Marxism-Leninism, however, Bebel and Liebknecht—who correctly considered a vote in favour would he a vote of confidence for the bourgeois government—should have been shot as “fifth columnists” for refusing to vote military appropriations in a national war.

There were many who wanted to do just that to Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht; “millions looked upon every Social-Democrat as having played the part of a murderer and a vile criminal in 1870; the Socialist had been in the eyes of the masses a traitor and an enemy,” recalled Liebknecht, “so it was no small thing at that time to swim against the current. But what is to be done, must be done. And so we gritted our teeth in the face of the inevitable. There was no time for fear ... Certainly Bebel and I never for a moment thought of the warning. We did not retreat. We had to hold our posts, come what might.”

“They stuck to their posts,” Rosa Luxemburg adds, in the Junius Pamphlet, “and for forty years the socialist movement lived upon the moral strength with which it had opposed a world of enemies.”

The millions who wanted to lynch Liebknecht had at least the excuse that they were not socialists but under bourgeois influence, and that it was a national war for the unification of German The Stalinists, joining the howling bourgeois pack, want to lynch revolutionary internationalists during an imperialist war - in the forged name of Leninism.

But the revolutionary internationalists fear neither the imperialists nor their Stalinist murder-gangs. Following Lenin, we take our motto from Liebknecht in 1870: against the current.

Footnote

1. Minor’s “quotation” from Trotsky is of course faked:

“Is it not possible that Mr. Trotsky was right in saying that what Hitler is doing is to bring about the ‘national unification’ of Germany, in saying that ‘Bismarck only half fulfilled this task, leaving almost intact the entire feudal and particularist rubbish,’ and failed to centralize Germany! If, as our latest books tell us, history moves only forward, then is it not possible that Trotsky spoke the truth in saying ‘Both these tasks fell to Hitler. The leader of fascism came forward in his own fashion as the continuator of Bismarck’.“

Minor wisely does not cite his source; his “quotation” is from Trotsky’s A Fresh Lesson: On the Character of the Coming War, in the Dec. 1938 New International. What Trotsky actually wrote was:

“The leader of Fascism came forward, in his own fashion, as the continuator of Bismarck, who in his turn had been the executor of the bourgeois bankrupts of 1848. But this is in the long run only the superficial aspect of the process. Its social content has radically changed. From the progressive factor that it was, the national state has long since been transformed in advanced countries into a brake on the development of productive forces. Ten million more Germans within the boundaries of Germany do not alter the reactionary nature of the national state. For Hitler it is not at all a question of ‘unifying Germans’ as an independent task, but of creating a broader European drill-ground for future world expansion.”

In short, Trotsky wrote the opposite of what Minor’s “quotation” attributes to him.

Such is the Stalin school of falsification.

Felix Morrow

The Minneapolis ‘Sedition’ Trial

(January 1942)

Source: Fourth International, New York, Vol.3 No.1, January 1942, pp.4-9.
Transcription/XHTML Markup: Ted Crawford and David Walters
Copyleft: Felix Morrow Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2004. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

I. The Verdict

The Minneapolis “sedition” trial was an unprecedented development in the class struggle in the United States. Never before has the federal government ordered a trial which was so nakedly a political trial, a persecution of the workers’ political movement. The political trials of the last World War were the most significant prior to Minneapolis; but they were limited formally in their scope; they were brought under the wartime Espionage Act and ostensibly were merely aimed at persons allegedly obstructing the war. In Minneapolis, however, the government directly characterized as criminal the doctrines of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, in the indictment and the prosecution arguments. In this assault upon the Socialist Workers Party the government stood out more plainly than ever before as a government of the capitalist class, persecuting proletarian politics.

As the capitalist prosecution marked a new stage in the class struggle, so too did the conduct of the proletarian defense. Never before in a labor trial in this country have defendants so deliberately, so systematically, defended their revolutionary doctrines, using the courtroom as a forum from which to proclaim their ideas; but simultaneously demonstrating that the defense of their doctrines was the most effective way to defend themselves against the charges, not only outside the courtroom but also in the courtroom. By this method the defense won from the jury important concessions, partial victories which enormously facilitate the task of rallying working class and liberal public opinion to support the Civil Rights Defense Committee’s appeal to the higher courts.
An analysis of the jury’s verdict will show how much the Socialist Workers Party has bettered the position of labor’s rights in this battle in contrast to where we stood when the indictment drawn up by the Department of Justice was handed down by a federal grand jury on July 15, 1941, and we went on trial on October 27, 1941.
The jury found all 23 defendants not guilty on Count 1 of the indictment. (Five of the 28 defendants who originally went on trial were acquitted on both counts by directed verdict by the judge for lack of evidence, at the conclusion of the prosecution’s presentation of the case.) Three important consequences resulted from rejecting Count I.

1. The jury thwarted the government’s attempt to use against the labor movement a statute enacted by Congress in 1861, aimed against the southern slaveholders.

Count I charged violation of this statute; the section of the statute adduced against us—used, incidentally, for the first time since its adoption!—makes it a crime to conspire to overthrow the government by force and violence. In argument prior to the trial (for dismissal of the indictment) our chief counsel, Albert Goldman, showed that the statute obviously was designed against attempts to overthrow the government in the immediate present, such as the 1861 rebellion of the southern states. Government counsel, however, stated that it was the position of the government that the statute applied also to any movement whose doctrines could be charged to indicate an attempt to overthrow the government at some time in the remote future. The full meaning of this extension of the application of the statute became clear in final argument, when Assistant Attorney-General Henry A. Schweinhaut called upon the jury to convict us because, although the Socialist Workers Party is a tiny party now, its avowal of the doctrines of the Russian revolution make it possible that, like the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, it could eventually grow to become the leader of a similar revolution here!
In acquitting us on Count 1, the jury, in effect, rejected the government’s attempt to transform the 1861 statute into a ban against revolutionary doctrines. The importance of this as a precedent is that the constitutionality of the 1861 statute as a whole is firmly established by Supreme Court decisions; a conviction under it would be much more likely to remain untouched by the higher courts than one under the hitherto untested Smith Act of 1940. In his final argument, Albert Goldman carefully explained to the jury the important distinction between conspiring to overthrow the government (Count 1) and conspiring to advocate overthrow of the government (Count 2), a distinction which the government, in extending the meaning of the 1861 statute, had refused to recognize. On this important question the jury aligned itself with the defense.

2. Furthermore, by acquitting us on this count, the jury, in effect, characterized the main section of the government’s case as a frame-up. The main purpose of the parade of government witnesses had been to secure a conviction on Count 1. These witnesses were to show the existence of an actual conspiracy to forcibly overthrow the government. This was particularly so in their testimony on the Union Defense Guard of Minneapolis, which the government attempted to depict as an armed force organized with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the government. It was under Count 1 that the indictment brought in the Union Defense Guard. Likewise under this count it was charged that we did “procure certain explosives” for the same purpose.

It is one thing to charge that the doctrines of the Socialist Workers Party constitute “seditious conspiracy”; that is a political persecution. It is something very different, it is a crude police frame-up, to charge that we obtained explosives and armed the Union Defense Guard to assault the government. “If the government persists in its attempt to make of the Union Defense Guard an organization aimed at destroying the government, then this whole case is nothing but a frame-up,” Albert Goldman told the jury in his opening statement; the government did persist; and the jury’s acquittal of the defendants on that count upheld Albert Goldman’s charge of frame-up.

Now Clearly a Civil Liberties Issue

3. The third and most important result of acquittal on Count 1 is that it left the case squarely an issue of civil liberties. The introduction of the charge of violating the 1861 statute, the “evidence” about the Union Defense Guard, the blood-curdling references in Count 1 of the indictment to procuring “explosives,” to soldiers under our influence who would “turn their weapons against their officers,” etcetera—all this had as its aim to picture the defendants as desperados and criminals and not as political prisoners. The liberal Attorney-General wanted at all costs to deny that the case was a civil liberties issue. Biddle, answering a protest from the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in his letter of September 4, 1941:

“You state from your examination of the ‘character of the evidence on which the indictment rests’ that the charges attack utterances or publications and include only one overt act—the organization of the workers in a defense corps. This overt act, however—arming workers to carry out the purpose to which the utterances are addressed—is clearly sufficient to remove the case from one involving expression of opinion... You suggest that the facts show that the intent (of the Union Defense Guard) was merely to protect union property against threats of violence. But the indictment specifically alleges otherwise, and I am confident that it will be supported in the evidence.” So unconvincing was the evidence, however, that the jury aligned itself with the defense on this question and left Biddle in the extremely embarrassing position of having lost his chief prop for his claim that the case was not one “involving expression of opinion.” Let us note in passing that the liberal Attorney-General’s chief prop was an attempted frame-up. Even if we concede he was deceived by subordinates on the Union Defense Guard, Biddle avidly seized upon it—to show his liberalism!

As a clear-cut issue of civil liberties, the appeal to the higher courts will receive far broader support than we could have hoped for had we been convicted on Count 1. Unquestionably it was the jury’s absolving us of the charges of “procuring explosives” and arming guards which has encouraged The Nation and other liberal spokesmen to give their unqualified endorsement to the movement to appeal the case to the higher courts.

The Recommendation of Leniency

On Count 2 the jury found 18 of the 23 defendants guilty, but with a recommendation of leniency. That recommendation undermines the moral validity of the guilty verdict. What does leniency imply here? This was no case of crime committed by a young boy or girl under extenuating circumstances. The defendants were obviously in full possession of their faculties, and not a bit remorseful; indignant against their accusers; clearly determined to go on with their revolutionary work. Under these conditions what could a recommendation of leniency mean, except a formal registration by the jury of its disagreement with the ideas of the defendants rather than a condemnation of the defendants as criminals.

Such a guilty verdict is robbed of all moral validity. No wonder that Mr. Biddle and his associates—it is no secret—are chagrined by such a victory!
An examination of Count 2 renders the verdict still less defensible. Of what were the defendants convicted? Count 2 charged violation of the Smith Act of 1940, popularly known, during the fight against enactment of it, as the Omnibus Gag Bill; the justice of that nickname becomes apparent by describing Count 2. It lists five numbered acts which the defendants allegedly conspired to commit: 1. “Advise, counsel, urge” and “distribute written and printed matter” to cause insubordination in the armed forces. 2. “Advocate, abet, advise and teach the duty, necessity, desirability and propriety of overthrowing the government by force and violence.” 3. “Print, publish, edit, issue, circulate, sell, distribute and publicly display written and printed matter advocating” such overthrow. 4. “Organize societies, groups and assemblies of persons to teach” the same. 5. Become members of such groups.
The last three of these charges played no role. Count 2 was considered, by both prosecution and defense, as if it consisted of the first two charges—causing insubordination and advocating violence.
The jury could vote guilty or not guilty on Count 2 as a whole and could not indicate whether it held the defendants guilty on one, or the other, or both charges in the count. The recommendation of leniency tends to indicate that the jury did not consider the defendants guilty of both.
One of these two charges was so unsubstantiated that it should never have been submitted to the jury at all—that on insubordination in the armed forces. Albert Goldman pointed this out to Judge Joyce in argument for a new trial. For the only “evidence” on this point was some oral testimony by two government witnesses to the effect that one or two defendants had told them that soldiers should be induced to “kick” about food and living conditions. Judge Joyce’s answer was that, since “some” evidence had been offered in this point, he had been bound to submit the question to the jury. Federal judges may dismiss all or any part of any count in an indictment when in the judge’s opinion no substantial evidence has been introduced warranting the submission of the point in question to the jury.
Certainly it is hard to believe that a jury recommended leniency if it held the defendants guilty of such a serious charge as conspiring to cause insubordination in the army.

What Happened in the Jury Room

So far we have discussed the verdict and its logical implications. Perhaps even more devastating to the moral validity of the verdict of guilty on Count 2 is the story of what actually happened in the jury room, which has now been told by some of the jurors. There were three jurors who were ready to vote not guilty on both counts. Had they withstood the pressure, there would have been no verdict, but a hung jury, with a new trial—if the government had decided to go through with a second one.

Instead the jurors compromised. Those who believed us not guilty secured acquittal on the first count, acquittal of five on the second count, and a recommendation of leniency, and in return voted guilty on Count 2.
All in all, the jury’s verdict is scarcely one which the government can point to as a vindication of the government charges on which the trial took place. On the contrary, the defendants are in a strong moral position on the basis of which, even in wartime, great sections of the labor and liberal movement can be united in the appeal against the convictions

II. The Jury

No one connected with the defense, I believe, thought it possible to win from a jury a verdict of not guilty on both counts. With the prestige of the federal government backing the charges, with charges of such a character, with the given procedure in the federal courts, with the trial taking place on the eve of war, it was inconceivable that a jury could be found hardy enough to go against bourgeois public opinion and declare us not guilty. The defendants were not the only ones who held this view. Roger Baldwin, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, just before the case went to the jury, sent out an urgent appeal for funds for the defense in which he assumed that a conviction was coming.

A disagreement in the jury—no verdict—seemed more conceivable than a blanket verdict of not guilty. But those who believed us innocent accepted a compromise, instead of insisting upon a hung jury. Shall we criticize then for that? Perhaps. But let us also examine the real situation of the jury.
Here were jurors chosen by a procedure which made certain that no one sympathetic to labor would be on the venire. They were called upon to pass on a case which, they well understood, had been initiated by the highest circles of the United States Government; an Assistant Attorney-General, sent from Washington, was present in the courtroom to demand of them a guilty verdict. The defendants were revolutionaries committed to the overthrow of the existing order, that is to say, members of a small unpopular movement anathematized by respectable society. Over the courtroom was the shadow of the impending war—the defendants were sentenced the day Congress declared war against Japan. Under those conditions, it would have taken men and women of extraordinary calibre to stand up in the jury room on behalf of the defendants to the point of a hung jury. In truth it is more surprising that those who believed us innocent were not finally beaten down to submit to a blanket verdict of guilty against all defendants, on both counts, and with no recommendation of leniency.
The really significant fact is not that the three jurors compromised, but that the other nine were ready to agree to a compromise favorable to the defendants. A significant fact, for when the trial began these jurors were unquestionably steeped in hostility and prejudice against the revolutionary Marxists they were called upon to judge. That the jurors ended ready to show leniency toward the defendants is a tribute to the character of the defense conducted by Albert Goldman.
Consider who these jurors were and how they were chosen. The venire for a federal jury in this district is constituted as follows: The court clerk and a jury commissioner write to their friends and acquaintances in all the counties of this predominantly rural federal district, asking them to send in the names of persons likely to make good jurors. The court clerk and jury commissioner naturally write to “solid” citizens who, in turn, name the same type. Those named receive routine questionnaires which they fill in and return to the court clerk, who files them. When a court term is about to open and a venire is needed, the clerk gets out of the files the required number distributed almost equally among the counties, which means an overwhelmingly rural venire. In this case the judge called for a venire drawn from 33 counties, predominantly rural.
Nor was Albert Goldman permitted to question prospective jurors, as defense counsel are traditionally allowed to do. The procedure permitted questioning of prospective jurors only by the judge. Defense counsel could submit questions to the judge, who put some of them, rejected the rest. Thus defense counsel could not, by skillful, probing questioning, ferret out prejudiced jurors.
The defense was limited to ten peremptory challenges. After using up the first few, Albert Goldman could not but ask himself: “If I use up the rest, isn’t it almost certain, from such a venire, that I shall get worse than I already have in the jury box?”
And so this jury was chosen: a grain elevator owner; a small town newspaper publisher; a bank executive; a garage owner; a farmer; a farm laborer; a general store owner a general store clerk; a plumbing contractor; a hardware clerk; the wife of a courthouse janitor; a lumber company sales manager. Most of them from rural counties, and not a single person who is or ever has been a member of a trade union.
Visualize that jury and you will begin to understand Albert Goldman’s achievement in conducting the defense!

III. The Method of the Defense

The method of the defense will perhaps be best understood if we contrast it with the method which liberals and civil libertarians advised us to employ.

Retain eminent and respectable attorneys. Leave the strategy of the defense entirely in their hands, without “politically motivated” interference by the defendants. How would such counsel picture the defendants to the jury? As “harmless, theoretical ‘revolutionists’ innocent enough, foolish enough, to talk about overthrowing the government of the United States. To pretend that these people are a danger to this country is simply fantastic.” These words from a New Leader (December 20, 1941) editorial, protesting the prosecution, typify what such counsel would say to the jury: try to laugh it off at the expense of the defendants, plus an appeal to civil liberties.
This approach would include systematic objections by defense counsel to acceptance into evidence of any and all government exhibits from the literature of the Socialist Workers Party—objections designed to limit as far as possible the number of government exhibits, so that there would be as few as possible to explain away. Similar objections would be made to testimony of government witnesses. Each exhibit and item of oral testimony, at least the most damaging, would then be separately “interpreted” to persuade the jury that it isn’t as bad as it is painted. Government witnesses would be cross-examined on the same basis. Defendants would be called as witnesses only primarily to refute specific charges made by government witnesses.
The liberal method of trying the case would eschew any systematic exposition in the case, or in final argument, of the socialist theories of the defendants. Proposals by defendants to defend their doctrines would be frowned upon by the liberal attorneys as having no other purpose than to use the court for propaganda purposes. It might make good propaganda for socialism but would prejudice the jury against the defendants.
This, I think, is a fair presentation of the method that the liberals would use in the Minneapolis and similar cases.

Fallacies of the Liberal Method

There are two fundamental flaws in this strategy.

1. It does not cope with the fact that there are laws on the statute books making it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government by violence. When the New Leader, impliedly conceding the main contention of the government indictment, calls us “foolish enough to talk about overthrowing the government of the United States,” it leaves us with no defense in a jury trial against the Smith Act so long as that is law. When The Nation, while outspokenly calling for support to our appeal, condemns the prosecution as similar to Japan’s prosecutions of “dangerous thoughts,” it is in reality assuming that we, as charged in the indictment, advocate overthrow of the government by violence.

These liberal organs prove to their own satisfaction that the Socialist Workers Party is no danger to the government; and that argument may conceivably be accepted by the United States Supreme Court, for reversing the conviction by adopting the Holmes-Brandeis theory of “clear and present danger.” But that argument is in point only in appellate courts and on a motion to dismiss the indictment, prior to trial. Albert Goldman made that motion on our behalf. Judge Joyce rejected that motion—finding that there was a clear and present danger of the evils which the statutes cited in the indictment sought to prevent and therefore the statutes were applicable! We were then faced with the necessity of convincing a jury that we were not guilty of violating those statutes. The liberal argument that it is unjust to convict “foolish, unpopular, tiny grouplets” for advocating overthrow of the government by violence would get nowhere with a jury which is sworn to take the law as it is handed to them by the judge.

2. The liberals’ appeal to the jury to uphold civil liberties is not likely to sway a jury which has heard such a defense as the liberals would present. The jurors, as we have seen, came into the courtroom with the habits and prejudices of a lifetime standing like a Chinese wall between them and us. Unions were strange and alien to them—a hundredfold more so were proletarian revolutionists. The liberal method of presenting the case would not have broken down those prejudices against the defendants and their socialist doctrines. The perfect civil libertarian may say, with Voltaire: “I abhor to the death what you believe in but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” But the ordinary mortal, sitting as a juror in a doctrinal case, if he abhors to the death what you stand for, is fairly certain to vote guilty.

These reasons would have been sufficient to decide us to reject the liberal strategy. But even had the liberal method been efficacious enough to win us an acquittal, we could not have agreed to that kind of a defense.
To have defense counsel deride the potency of our doctrines, urge the jury to laugh at us as foolish doctrinaires and to let us go because we could never achieve our goal—such a defense would be little better than abandoning our principles for the sake of a possible acquittal.
Instead we employed a principled method which may justly be said to have been used for the first time in this country—certainly for the first time systematically and consciously.
We set out to get those jurors to cease abhorring socialism and to recognize and respect the sincerity, sanity and seriousness of the defendants and their ideas. It might even be said that, in a sense, we set out to make socialist sympathizers or half-sympathizers out of those jurors. The defense had as its main object to make those jurors understand what we are really like and what we really stand for. That could be done only by explaining to them, in the simplest and most persuasive terms, our beliefs and our hopes for the socialist future of humanity.

The Kind of Attorney We Needed

That method of defense necessitated a chief counsel learned in socialist theory; no other could skillfully guide defense witnesses in expounding the doctrines of the Socialist Workers Party, decide what questions to ask government witnesses, which government exhibits were satisfactory to the defense, and make an exhaustive final argument in defense of socialism. Indeed it would be impossible to carry out such a method of defense except under the leadership of an attorney thoroughly trained in Marxism.

There was one man above all in the country who had those qualifications: Albert Goldman. Friendly liberals pointed out to us that he was seriously handicapped by the fact that he was himself one of the defendants in the case; moreover he was a Jew facing a rural jury which might harbor anti-Semitic prejudices. These were facts which we had to take into account. Were Albert Goldman not a Jew and a defendant, perhaps he would have been still more effective with a jury. But for those reasons replace him with another lawyer? Yes—if the other lawyer were Goldman’s equal as a lawyer, as a speaker, as a Marxist. But in those qualities there is no lawyer alive who measures up to Albert Goldman. And by the time he had concluded his final argument all serious observers were agreed that the handicaps had paled away and disappeared as Albert Goldman established his moral authority in that courtroom.
The trial began with opening statements by both sides. After US District Attorney Anderson made his statement, Goldman incisively called the attention of the jury to the heart of the case:

“We shall show to you, by the very evidence introduced by the prosecution, that the Socialist Workers Party’s aim is to win a majority of the people for its ideas. And Mr. Anderson will have to convince you that that is criminal...

“The evidence will show that we were very, very interested in the question of trade unionism. We will not deny it. We instructed our members to be active in all organizations, particularly trade unions. Where people congregate, there should we be, to show the majority of the people that they, in order to solve their problems, must accept those ideas...

“The defense will prove Mr. Anderson’s contention that we are opposed to this war, and the evidence will prove further Mr. Anderson’s contention that the defendants consider this war on the part of England and Germany and Italy, and the United States as an imperialistic war, fought for the economic interests of the small group of financiers and capitalists who control the destinies of these countries...

“Those are ideas of ours with which the jurors may agree or not, but the evidence will show that every statement made by Mr. Anderson to the effect that we believe in sabotage is absolutely false. The evidence will show that so long as we are in a minority, so long as we cannot convince the majority of the people that our ideas are correct, we shall submit and we have nothing else to do but to submit to the government.

“Essentially the question boils itself down to this: Did we advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence? ...

“The evidence will show that we prefer a peaceful transition to socialism; but that we analyze all the conditions in society, we analyze history, and on the basis of this analysis we predict, we predict that the reactionary minority, by violence, will not permit the majority its right to establish socialism. That is the heart of the question!”

The rest of the trial consisted, so far as the defense was concerned, in proving these propositions.

Our Attitude to Prosecution Evidence

Goldman made clear to the jury that he welcomed all exhibits introduced by the government which were programmatic documents of the Socialist Workers Party, articles on policy in our press written by authoritative leaders of the party, resolutions of the party conventions or the National Committee, etc. He explained to the jury that the defense would introduce few exhibits since it would prove its case from the exhibits of the government.

The comparatively few objections he made to exhibits submitted by the government were clearly in protest against irrelevant or unfair items: a floorplan of the Minneapolis party branch offices, red flags and pictures of Lenin and Trotsky seized in an FBI raid on the Twin City branch offices; unsigned articles from our press which had no bearing on the issues, etc. Goldman also objected to the introduction of works by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the ground that, while we accept the fundamental doctrines of these founders of our movement, we are not idol-worshippers who accept every single word they wrote; hence their doctrines should be considered in the form in which they appear in the official literature and resolutions of the Socialist Workers Party.
Goldman followed a similar procedure toward government witnesses. He made no objections to their descriptions of the structure and history of the party, their recital of events at party meetings, their account of party activities in the trade unions, etc. As the reader of Goldman’s final argument will note, he made effective use of this hostile testimony in clinching important points, notably on the question of the party’s aims in the unions. Only where the prosecutors led their witnesses into fabulous tales of private conversations allegedly had between witnesses and defendants in barrooms, automobiles and house-parties, or government testimony was completely irrelevant to the issues, did Goldman object.
Likewise his extremely effective cross-examination carefully avoided any appearance of hammering witnesses merely for the sake of tripping them up. Much of their testimony he did not cross-examine at all, dealing only with crucial points such as their allegations about the Union Defense Guard and about statements by defendants advocating violence against the government. Goldman’s activities during the three weeks that the prosecution was presenting its side of the case clearly indicated his willingness to have everything brought in which would give the jury a complete picture of the doctrines and activities of the Socialist Workers Party.
The defense took only four day’s to presents its case. The party’s National Secretary, James P. Cannon, was on the stand for two days. Under Goldman’s questioning he gave the jury an effectively simple description of our ideas; under cross-examination he defended those ideas against prosecution attempts to pervert their meaning.
This was supplemented by the testimony of Farrell Dobbs and Vincent Dunne on the policy and activities of the party in the trade unions. Short but convincing testimony by six Union Defense Guard members on the nature of the organization, and testimony by Grace Carlson rebutting government testimony about statements allegedly made by her were other important items in the defense presentation.
The effect of the whole was not so much to deny specific government allegations as to describe to the jury the ideas of the Socialist Workers Party.
Whatever may have been the effect of the defense witnesses on the jury, in the end everything depended upon Albert Goldman’s final argument. For after the defense witnesses came the prosecution’s final argument, a day-long speech by US District Attorney Victor Anderson.

IV. The Final Arguments

On the eve of the trial, Attorney-General Biddle had issued a statement, presumably to conciliate protesting liberals, promising that the trial would be conducted in “a low key.” But Anderson’s final argument was an utterly brutal thing, devoid of any hint of concession to the rights of labor; a speech aimed at evoking the most reactionary sentiments; not appealing to the jury’s sense of justice but demanding, in the name of constituted authority, that it bring in a verdict of guilty for the sake of God and country. The jury appeared to us to be visibly affected by Anderson’s demand, either because it shared his sentiments or bowed to his authority.

One felt that all the previous handicaps against us were revived in full force by Anderson’s vicious assault. I have not yet mentioned the handicaps imposed by Judge Matthew M. Joyce; he had scarcely made easier our task of acquainting the jury with our real ideas. I cite but a few examples. The prosecution insisted on introducing as evidence against us Wintringham’s book, New Ways of War, replete with diagrams of how to make bombs, grenades and other weapons; it is a book written to train Britain’s Home Guards to resist Nazi invasion; but we had written a book review of it and the judge admitted the book in evidence. We had visions of the jurors deliberating their verdict and poring over those diagrams! Judge Joyce had also admitted into evidence Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto of 1848; what its words, written about the Europe of 93 years ago, could conjure up in the jurors’ minds, we could only conjecture.
On the other hand Judge Joyce would not permit the defense witnesses to tell the jury the whole story behind the trial—the struggle between AFL Teamsters President Daniel J. Tobin and the Trotskyist leadership of the Motor Transport Workers Union, Local 544-CIO, and the series of governmental actions siding with Tobin, culminating in the indictment of the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party and Local 544-CIO. Whenever defense witnesses approached this question, the prosecutors jumped up to object and were sustained by the judge.
Such were the onerous conditions under which Albert Goldman delivered his final argument, speaking for two days, for a total of ten hours.
His speech, as the reader can see for himself, is austerely simple in its construction. There are no tricks in it, nor flights of rhetoric. The secret of its great power is that it is an unadorned but clear and persuasive explanation of what socialism is. The task Albert Goldman set for himself was to try to make those jurors understand who we defendants are, what we believe, why we believe it, and why we have a moral and legal right to our beliefs. He set out to move those jurors, not inches, but worlds, from their capitalist-dominated world into seeing distance of the socialist world of the future.
The obstacles in the way were well-nigh insuperable. But hour after hour, with an eloquence which lent restrained passion to his words, Goldman labored upon that jury, And, finally, his labors were not in vain. He won from them a partial victory, partial but rich with fruitful consequences for the preservation and building of the revolutionary movement.
Not the least of the fruitful consequences of this trial is the text of Goldman’s speech. It provides something which the American revolutionary movement has long lacked—an elementary exposition of the socialist outlook. Now we have it, not in a dry textbook, but in the dramatic form of a defense of revolutionists against the government’s attempt to imprison them for their ideas. Let us see to it that the new generation of youth, in whose hands is the power to put an end to capitalist slaughter, is given the opportunity to read Albert Goldman’s great speech. [1]

Footnote

1. This article is the introduction to Albert Goldman’s In Defense of Socialism, the text of the first argument in the Minneapolis “sedition” trial, which will shortly appear in pamphlet form. A companion pamphlet is Socialism on Trial, by James P. Cannon, consisting of the official court record of Cannon’s testimony.

AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

Friday, January 18, 2013

Rosa Luxemburg
The Russian Revolution

Chapter 1
Fundamental Significance
of the Russian Revolution

Footnotes

Felix Morrow

Lenin’s Teachings on National Wars

An Answer to the Latest Stalinist Forgeries

(April 1942)

The Stalinist Line on War Until 1935

In and Out of the New Line

The War “Changes” Once Again

The Latest Stalinist Forgeries

Lenin’s Teachings on National Wars

I

II

III

Five Stalinist Forgeries

Marx and Lenin on National Wars

Footnote

Felix Morrow

The Minneapolis ‘Sedition’ Trial

(January 1942)

I. The Verdict

Now Clearly a Civil Liberties Issue

The Recommendation of Leniency

What Happened in the Jury Room

II. The Jury

III. The Method of the Defense

Fallacies of the Liberal Method

The Kind of Attorney We Needed

Our Attitude to Prosecution Evidence

IV. The Final Arguments

Footnote

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About Me

Friday, January 18, 2013

Rosa LuxemburgThe Russian Revolution

Chapter 1Fundamental Significanceof the Russian Revolution

Footnotes

Felix Morrow

Lenin’s Teachings on National Wars

An Answer to the Latest Stalinist Forgeries

(April 1942)

The Stalinist Line on War Until 1935

In and Out of the New Line

The War “Changes” Once Again

The Latest Stalinist Forgeries

Lenin’s Teachings on National Wars

I

II

III

Five Stalinist Forgeries

Marx and Lenin on National Wars

Footnote

Felix Morrow

The Minneapolis ‘Sedition’ Trial

(January 1942)

I. The Verdict

Now Clearly a Civil Liberties Issue

The Recommendation of Leniency

What Happened in the Jury Room

II. The Jury

III. The Method of the Defense

Fallacies of the Liberal Method

The Kind of Attorney We Needed

Our Attitude to Prosecution Evidence

IV. The Final Arguments

Footnote

Rosa Luxemburg
The Russian Revolution

Chapter 1
Fundamental Significance
of the Russian Revolution