Markin comment:
The events in the Middle East, as the current situation in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrate, are moving quickly but our propaganda efforts to fight for workers and peasants everywhere is germane.
******
From Workers Vanguard No. 973, 4 February 2011
For Permanent Revolution Across North Africa!
Egypt: Mass Upheaval Challenges Dictatorship
Down With U.S. Aid to Egypt, Israel!
For Revolutionary Workers Parties!
FEBRUARY 1—As we go to press, the bonapartist capitalist regime of Hosni Mubarak—a strategically important client state of U.S. imperialism—is tottering in the face of an unprecedented wave of mass protests. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square and throughout the country, protesters chant: “The people demand the fall of the regime.” Mubarak’s appointment last week of a new set of ministers, naming longtime cronies and former military commanders as vice president and prime minister, only further inflamed opposition to his dictatorship.
Well over a million rallied in Tahrir Square today, while hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Alexandria, Suez and other cities in a nationwide stay-away strike. Tonight, Mubarak announced his “concession”: he will not seek re-election this fall(!). In response, crowds in Tahrir Square angrily chanted, “We won’t leave!”
One United Nations official estimates that as many as 300 have been killed and over 3,000 injured since protests broke out on January 25. Nevertheless, within days the massive demonstrations overwhelmed police lines in a number of cities. Countless police stations, as well as the Cairo headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), were reduced to burned-out rubble. The widely reviled police withdrew from the scene, although they have since been redeployed. The shaken government then mobilized the military—the core of Egypt’s bonapartist state apparatus—to try to control the streets. The army has officially declared that it will not fire on protesters. But make no mistake: there remains the dire threat that whatever happens to Mubarak, Egypt’s bourgeois rulers will demand fierce military repression to restore and maintain capitalist “order.”
The upheaval has drawn in virtually every layer of the society—unemployed youth, university students, workers, shopkeepers, professionals. Overwhelmingly, their demands are for Mubarak to go and for democratic elections and other reforms. The situation has also created an opening for the reactionary Muslim Brotherhood, which initially abstained from the protests but called for its followers to join them on Friday, January 28. With the ports, banks and other businesses closed, the economy has ground to a halt, while prices for scarce food supplies are soaring. As for the filthy rich at the top, they’re either hunkered down in their gated mansions or flying off to Dubai.
There is no question that the U.S. and other imperialist powers have been shaken by the dramatic events in Egypt, the most populous Arab country with the largest working-class concentration in North Africa and the Near East. The arrogant imperialists, who act as though nothing can stand in the way of their rampages around the world, are now faced with threats to the survival of crucial client regimes. The Obama administration desperately seeks to quell the upheavals in North Africa and prevent their further spread. Jordan and Yemen, an outpost in Washington’s “war on terror,” have already seen mass anti-government demonstrations (dominated by Islamic opposition movements). Today, Jordan’s King Abdullah fired his cabinet. Meanwhile, student demonstrations have begun in Sudan. What is particularly remarkable about the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt is that in a region long dominated by religious and ethnic strife, they have centered on secular-democratic demands, spurred by increasingly intolerable conditions of life.
The immediate spark for the upsurge in Egypt was the mass protest movement that overthrew the Ben Ali dictatorship in Tunisia. But there was ample social tinder ready to be ignited. With nearly half the Egyptian population scraping by on $2 a day or less, the last few years have seen a wave of militant strike activity. Unemployment was massive even before the outbreak of the international financial crisis. Rural areas, especially in southern Egypt and the northern Nile Delta, are marked by excruciating poverty, with landless peasants at the mercy of ruthless landlords. Corruption among the ruling elite is notorious. Expressions of discontent are regularly met with brutal police beatings, torture and imprisonment.
The unraveling of the Mubarak dictatorship has thrown its U.S. imperialist patrons into crisis mode. Every year, Washington pumps $1.3 billion in military aid into the regime, the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel. Egypt has been a linchpin of U.S. imperialist interests in the Near East, especially since 1979 when it became the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel. The Egyptian regime has long served as an accomplice to the Zionist state in oppressing the Palestinian people, currently by policing the southern border of the Gaza Strip. Down with U.S. aid to Egypt, Israel! Defend the Palestinian people!
Having declared the Mubarak regime “stable” at the onset of the protests, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was compelled to shift her approach as the upheaval spread, intoning about “the universal rights of the Egyptian people.” Demonstrators were hardly assuaged, with many holding up tear gas canisters with “Made in the U.S.A.” labels for reporters. Washington is now talking about an “orderly transition.” Meanwhile, it’s finalizing “plans to evacuate thousands of US nationals to ‘safe havens’ in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus” (Financial Times, 31 January). A much-touted “transitional” figure is Mohamed ElBaradei, a bourgeois liberal who helped work out the 1978 Camp David Accords that normalized relations between Egypt and Israel and later headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, where he helped ensure that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was disarmed in the face of U.S. war preparations.
Working Class Must Take the Lead
What is urgently posed in Egypt today is that the powerful proletariat—the only class with the social power to overturn the brutal and decrepit capitalist order—emerge as the leader of all the oppressed masses. The current upsurge comes amid a years-long strike wave that historian Joel Beinin described as “the largest social movement Egypt has witnessed in more than half a century” (The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt, February 2010). His study tallied an average of 194 strikes and sit-ins per year from 2004 through 2008, nearly four times the rate of the previous three years.
The spike in factory occupations, strikes and demonstrations started in 2004 when the government stepped up the pace of privatization of state enterprises. The spearhead of this movement has been the workers at Mahalla al-Kobra textile mills, the country’s largest industrial complex with some 40,000 workers. In April 2008, as people groaned under soaring food prices, a planned strike was headed off by a massive show of police force. This touched off two days of rioting in which three people died by police fire. After the government granted the workers a bonus, a close adviser to Mubarak haughtily and fatuously told the Washington Post (27 September 2009): “Once you give more money to those people, it’s over.”
Mahalla al-Kobra workers walked out on the very first day of the current protests, directly opposing the regime for the first time since the start of the strike wave. Workers in Suez, a port city and oil refining center, have also been out from the beginning. Police there showed no mercy in trying to smash the protests. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times (31 January), Mansoura Ez-Eldin cites a message from a friend describing Suez as a war zone: “Its streets were burned and destroyed, dead bodies were strewn everywhere.” But the city’s working-class residents fought back.
The often exemplary militancy of Egyptian workers has repeatedly run up against the treachery of the regime’s bought-and-paid-for officials of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), who are integrated into the capitalist state apparatus. At the 1957 founding of the federation that would become the ETUF, its entire leadership was appointed by the regime of bourgeois-nationalist strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser. For over two decades, the president of the ETUF usually doubled as Minister of Labor. Today, virtually every member of the ETUF executive committee is a member of the ruling NDP; ETUF president Hussein Megawer was head of the NDP parliamentary bloc and currently chairs the parliamentary Committee on Manpower. Last week, he instructed union officials to head off any labor demonstrations. As police were shooting protesters down on January 25, the ETUF issued a statement congratulating the Interior Ministry in celebration of “Police Day”!
In the course of the recent strike wave, Egyptian workers have acted in defiance of the regime’s “labor lieutenants.” Because strikes must by law be approved by the ETUF leadership, every one that took place was illegal. Often the workers elected strike committees to provide leadership, commonly raising the demand for independent unions. This points to the potential for broad organs of working-class struggle to emerge out of the current political turmoil, such as factory committees and workers defense guards as well as neighborhood committees to oversee the distribution of food and to organize self-defense against the police thugs and their criminal accomplices. All this underscores the need to fight for the independence of the working class from the capitalist state and all bourgeois political forces.
For a Leninist Vanguard Party!
As in Tunisia, what is necessary in Egypt is the forging of a revolutionary party that can lead the fight for a workers and peasants government. Such a party would be, in the words of Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, a “tribune of the people,” fighting against the oppression of peasants, women, youth, homosexuals and ethnic and religious minorities.
A Leninist vanguard party would champion women’s emancipation in Egypt, where “honor killings” and female genital mutilation are common practices, especially in the rural areas where some 60 percent of the population lives. It would also actively defend the rights of the Coptic Christian minority, which suffers discrimination and violent persecution at the hands of the state, abetted by pogromist incitement by Islamic fundamentalists. In December, when Copts protested against the government’s refusal to allow them to set up a church in Cairo, two were shot dead by riot police. This gave a green light to the bombing of an Alexandria church on New Year’s Eve that killed 23 people. Joint protests by Copts and Muslims against the bombing were attacked by riot cops.
A key task for revolutionary Marxists is to combat the widespread nationalist ideology that is evident among the protesters waving Egyptian flags and embracing the army as the supposed friend of the exploited and the oppressed. Many rank-and-file soldiers of the conscript army have fraternized with demonstrators, even allowing them to paint anti-Mubarak graffiti on their tanks. But it is the military brass—subsidized and trained by the U.S. imperialists—that is calling the shots.
Illusions in the army run deep in Egypt, where military officers led by Nasser overthrew the despised British-backed monarchy in 1952. While Nasser, with the support of the Stalinist Communist Party, would lay claim to leadership of a mythical “Arab socialism,” he aimed from the beginning to crush the combative working class. One month after coming to power, Nasser seized on a textile workers strike in Kafr Al-Dawwar near Alexandria to deliver a dramatic blow to the workers movement. Two strike leaders were hanged on the factory grounds, the Communists were banned and strikes were outlawed. Subsequently, Nasser turned on his Communist supporters with a vengeance, rounding up almost every known leftist in the country.
Even as their comrades were beaten to death or left to die for lack of medical aid, the Stalinists maintained their political support to this bonapartist ruler, officially liquidating into his Arab Socialist Union in 1965. Stalinist parties throughout the Near East and North Africa sacrificed their proletarian bases on the altar of bourgeois nationalism, betraying historic opportunities for socialist revolution. This opened the door to reactionary Islamic fundamentalists like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood—a deadly enemy of women, Copts, secularists and leftists—to posture as the only firm opponents of the unbearable status quo. While suffering severe repression, the Muslim Brotherhood has also been tolerated, and at times promoted, by successive Egyptian regimes. Mubarak has often silenced his opponents by claiming that if not for him, the Brotherhood would rule Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood plays little role in the workers movement but is heavily entrenched in the lumpenproletariat of the impoverished slums and among professionals and other petty-bourgeois layers. Many protesters today say that they would oppose the Brotherhood coming to power. Nevertheless, its emergence in the protests points to the threat that it could win a hearing among the desperate masses. The need to politically combat the forces of Islamic reaction was highlighted by the events in Iran in 1978-79, when the Shi’ite clergy under Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in subordinating to its reactionary agenda a powerful wave of opposition to the hated Shah that included the organizations of the working class.
After having been supported by virtually every left group in Iran, Khomeini unleashed a murderous wave of terror against worker militants, leftists, Kurds, unveiled women and homosexuals. Uniquely on the left, the international Spartacist tendency, predecessor to the International Communist League, declared: Down with the Shah! Don’t bow to Khomeini! For workers revolution in Iran! In regard to Egypt today, we say: Down with Mubarak! No to ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood! Workers to power!
It is vitally important for leftists and proletarian militants to study the example of the Bolshevik Party, which provided the necessary leadership for the working class in Russia in 1917. As soviets (workers councils) re-emerged with the fall of the tsar in the February Revolution, Lenin’s Bolsheviks raised the call “All power to the Soviets,” opposing any political support to the bourgeois Provisional Government. Amid rapidly growing opposition to the slaughter of working-class and peasant soldiers in the interimperialist World War I, soviets spread to the peasantry, which was in open rebellion against the landlords, and into the military as well. Under the influence of the organized working class, the soldiers councils served to set the worker and peasant ranks of the military against the bourgeois officer corps. Following the Bolshevik-led October Revolution, the soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers deputies became the organs of the new proletarian state power.
As elaborated in the accompanying article on Tunisia, revolutionary Marxists, based on Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, must put forward transitional demands linking the masses’ democratic aspirations to the struggle for proletarian power and for its international extension. Out of the ferment in Egypt, the International Communist League seeks to cohere the nucleus of a Leninist-Trotskyist party, the indispensible instrument for the victory of proletarian revolution
Sunday, February 06, 2011
From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- The Struggles In Tunisia- Fight For A Workers And Peasants Government
Markin comment:
The events in the Middle East, as the current situation in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrate, are moving quickly but our propaganda efforts to fight for workers and peasants everywhere is germane.
From Workers Vanguard No. 973, 4 February 2011
For Permanent Revolution Across North Africa!
Tunisia: Dictator Flees, Protests Continue
For Revolutionary Workers Parties!
The following article was written by our comrades of the Ligue Trotskyste de France, section of the International Communist League.
After 23 years in power, Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali ignominiously fled the country on January 14. His exit to Saudi Arabia followed several weeks of protests, initially from layers of youth demanding jobs and to be treated with some dignity by the state. Starting in the town of Sidi Bouzid in Central Tunisia, the protests rapidly spread to the whole of the country, encompassing broad layers of Tunisian society, including the working class, and were met with brutal police repression. Even official sources state that over 100 people have been killed in the course of the five weeks of social struggle, the great majority shot down by police fire.
In the hours following Ben Ali’s flight, Mohamed Ghannouchi, Ben Ali’s prime minister for over eleven years, declared himself president. Faced with further protests, which are increasingly being met with police repression, most of Ben Ali’s loyal servants have been fired from their ministerial positions in the latest attempt to put a lid on the protests while keeping in place the core of the governing apparatus. For now, Ghannouchi is once again prime minister. The Tunisian teachers union held a two-day strike over January 24-25, and other strikes including in public transport have been taking place to drive out the detested Ben Ali bosses, who in recent years have imposed ever more draconian working conditions. Pictures of workers chasing out the president of the country’s largest insurance firm, Star, which is partly owned by a French group, have made the rounds of the Web.
Fed up with unemployment, rising food prices, the widespread corruption of Ben Ali and his family and cronies, as well as police-state repression, Tunisians have heroically braved Ben Ali’s cops and thugs to fight for the most elementary democratic rights. Under Ben Ali, who since 1987 has been re-elected in grotesquely fraudulent elections, political opponents were generally co-opted or smashed. Now the bourgeoisie and its imperialist sponsors are regretting that their deposed despot left no ground for an opposition with “clean hands” to jump into the saddle, thus prolonging instability in Tunisia and beyond.
The masses’ democratic aspirations continue to be a powerful spark for struggle. What is vital is for the proletariat, the one class with the social power and historic interest to overthrow the capitalist system, to emerge out of these struggles as the leader of the country’s unemployed youth, urban poor, peasants, women and other oppressed sectors aspiring to emancipation.
The tumultuous events in Tunisia provide an extraordinary opening for popularizing the Marxist program of socialist revolution, which alone can address the masses’ demands. The upheaval has been marked by an outpouring of all social classes other than the upper echelons of the Tunisian bourgeoisie, a good many of them cronies of Ben Ali. Tunisian flags have been everywhere. This reflects a nationalist consciousness that is also expressed in widespread illusions in the army, whose chief reportedly refused to fire on civilian demonstrators and is rumored to have orchestrated the ouster of Ben Ali. Such illusions are a deadly danger to the working people and the oppressed.
Amid the political vacuum created by Ben Ali’s departure and the jostling for political influence by various forces in the country, what is needed is a Marxist working-class vanguard putting forward the program of permanent revolution: the seizure of power by the working class, fighting to extend its revolutionary victory to the centers of world imperialism—the only way to break the fetters of political despotism and economic and social backwardness.
For a Workers and Peasants Government!
In Tunisia, as in other countries of belated capitalist development, historic gains—such as political democracy and national emancipation—associated with the great bourgeois revolutions of the 17th and 18th century in Britain and France cannot be realized so long as bourgeois rule remains. Tunisia is a neocolonial country whose bourgeoisie is tied by a million strings to world imperialism, particularly France, the former colonial ruler, which benefits from the deep oppression of Tunisia’s masses and served as the main prop for the Ben Ali regime.
French foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie even offered to send security forces to help crush the uprising. (A cargo plane full of tear gas canisters was stopped from heading to Tunisia only after news came out that Ben Ali had left the country.) Over a thousand French companies are active in Tunisia, owning the bulk of the financial sector and employing over 100,000 people. U.S. imperialism was also key in propping up the Ben Ali regime. One of the documents recently released by WikiLeaks quotes a July 2009 cable by the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia: “The United States needs help in this region to promote our values and policies. Tunisia is one place where, in time, we might find it.”
The subordination of Tunisia to imperialism serves to ensure the brutal exploitation and oppression of its people. Authentic national and social liberation requires mobilizing the proletariat in a frontal attack against the imperialists and the domestic bourgeoisie, which is the deadly enemy of Tunisia’s workers and oppressed. Indeed, amid continuing protests, there is a real danger of the military carrying out a coup to stabilize the bourgeois order. Addressing protesters on January 24, General Rachid Ammar, the army chief of staff, ominously stressed that “the national army is the guarantor of the revolution” (Le Monde, 26 January). For its part, the right-wing Le Figaro (18 January), a French government mouthpiece, openly and threateningly mooted a military coup as the next stage to save bourgeois order and imperialist domination in Tunisia: “Except for accepting this government of national unity [with Ben Ali cronies] to organize upcoming democratic elections, the Tunisians have no plan B to re-establish civilian peace, except resorting to the military to occupy power.”
In Tunisia today, even a small Marxist propaganda group putting forward a series of transitional demands that link the democratic aspirations of the masses to the struggle for proletarian power could have a great impact on unfolding events. This would lay the basis for the building of a revolutionary party that can lead the proletariat in the fight for a workers and peasants government that expropriates the bourgeoisie. Such a party must be forged not only against Ben Ali’s cronies but also against all manner of bourgeois “reformers” as well as the reactionary Islamic fundamentalists.
A proletarian victory in Tunisia would have an electrifying impact throughout North Africa and the Near East and would serve as a bridge to socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries, especially France, where some 700,000 Tunisians reside. Summarizing his theory of permanent revolution, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky underlined in The Permanent Revolution (1930):
“With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses….
“The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and very quickly confronted with tasks, the fulfillment of which is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution….
“In a country where the proletariat has power in its hands as the result of the democratic revolution, the subsequent fate of the dictatorship and socialism depends in the last analysis not only and not so much upon the national productive forces as upon the development of the international socialist revolution.”
The Bankruptcy of Tunisian Nationalism
Tunisia has long been touted by its rulers, including by the late Habib Bourguiba, the country’s first president after it received independence from France in 1956, as well as by the imperialists and international bourgeois press as an exception in North Africa for its development, high level of education and supposed equal opportunities for women. However, the case of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation sparked the revolt that led to the toppling of Ben Ali, encapsulates the grim reality of life in Tunisia today.
After becoming the main provider for his family at the age of ten, selling fresh produce at the local market, he gave up on his plans to study and left high school at 19 without graduating in order to support his family and give his younger siblings the chance to stay in school. Those who knew Bouazizi spoke of years of abuse and harassment by local police who would confiscate his wares and fine him, ostensibly for not having a permit to sell. On December 17, the police took his scales, tossed aside his cart and beat him. Less than an hour later, after local officials refused to hear his complaint, he set himself alight. Outraged by the events, the city of Sidi Bouzid erupted in protests. Mohamed Bouazizi died on January 4.
Untold numbers of Tunisians and other North Africans, mainly youth, have died in venturing the dangerous boat trip to reach Italy and the rest of Europe to look for work—only to then be subjected to backbreaking exploitation and racist oppression, living under constant danger of deportation. And even that route has become increasingly closed as the European imperialists clamp down on immigration. According to Sami Aouadi, a leader of the Tunisian UGTT trade-union federation, there are today at least 200,000 people with a college degree who are unemployed in Tunisia—that is, 27 percent of all the unemployed in a country numbering about ten million people.
The Tunisian economy is based on agriculture and related processing industries, some oil extraction, phosphate mining in the Gafsa area, tourism and some industry. Textiles, with its heavily female workforce, makes up nearly half of the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing, including French-owned spare parts factories for the auto and aeronautical industries, constitutes about one-fifth of Tunisia’s GDP. There is also an increasingly important service industry with a number of foreign companies, particularly French telecommunications operators, having outsourced call centers to Tunisia. Tunisian workers earn one-eighth of West European wages.
While Tunisia is hardly a heavily industrialized country, it does have a significant trade-union movement, with the UGTT claiming to represent some 600,000 blue-collar workers. The UGTT has a unique history in North Africa of not being completely subservient to the bourgeois-nationalist ruling government. It has engaged in both class struggle and deep class collaboration with the nationalists in power. Ben Ali seemed to have finally brought the UGTT to heel after many years of repression, and in recent years the top leaders of the union federation were also members of the leadership of Ben Ali’s Democratic-Constitutional Rally (RCD) party. The UGTT tops called for a vote to Ben Ali in 1999, 2004 and again in 2009, at a time when the population was sarcastically changing the “Ben Ali 2009” campaign posters to “Ben Ali 2080” and “Ben Ali 2500.”
On December 28, the UGTT demanded the release of those imprisoned following the protests in Sidi Bouzid and elsewhere. However, it insisted that its demands were made “with the aim of contributing to devising constructive solutions in order to appease the situation in that area and contain its fallout.” Under pressure from its ranks, and as protests swelled, it made statements increasingly hostile to the government and finally allowed its regional chapters to call for local general strikes on January 14, the very day that Ben Ali fled.
The UGTT leadership then jumped into the “new” government, the key posts of which, including the police, remained manned by Ben Ali associates. Again, it was only under the pressure of mass protests against the sham “transitional government” that the UGTT ministers resigned from their posts, saying they were still willing to participate in the capitalist government provided that prime minister Ghannouchi was the only Ben Ali crony in it. As Jilani Hammami, a UGTT leader, delicately put it, the trade-union federation “was subjected to heated debates, counterposing the leadership, with its links to the regime, to the federal and regional chapters, which supported the popular uprising.” More recently, the UGTT has endorsed the reshuffled “interim government” in a (so far futile) attempt to quell protests.
The 2008 Gafsa Revolt: a Precursor
The contradictory role played by the trade unions, as well as the divisions between the base and the tops of these unions, was also seen in the 2008 revolt in Gafsa. This revolt was a precursor to the current social upheaval and had previously been the most significant protest Tunisia had seen since the Bread Revolt in 1984, which erupted after Bourguiba instituted an IMF-dictated 100 percent hike in the price of bread.
A phosphate mining area, the Gafsa region has been hit particularly hard by mass unemployment. Over the past three decades, the government-controlled CPG (Company of Gafsa Phosphates), the region’s main employer, has reduced its payroll from 14,000 workers to little more than 5,000. A popular upheaval broke out in January 2008 when the mining company produced a list of people to be hired that favored individuals loyal to the government and to the UGTT regional leaders. Since the company had a policy of not replacing its retirees, this was its first hiring opportunity in six years; hopes were thus particularly high.
For months, workers, women and unemployed youth in the mining region protested. Their banners declared, “Work, Freedom and National Dignity,” “We Want Jobs, No to Promises and Illusions” and “No to Corruption and Opportunism.” In June 2008, the government cracked down. Two people were killed, in addition to one the month before, while dozens were injured and many more were imprisoned. In November 2009, most prisoners were released under a presidential pardon by an increasingly unstable Ben Ali regime, but with the sentences remaining in place and the individuals subject to regular police controls. However, Fahem Boukadous, a journalist who covered the Gafsa revolt, was sentenced last year to four years in prison and released only on January 19. The workers movement in Tunisia and internationally must demand: Freedom now for all the heroic fighters of the Gafsa upheaval and all other victims of bonapartist repression!
Local UGTT activists played a key role in the Gafsa struggle, particularly in the town of Redeyef. However, the central and regional leadership denounced the protests and even suspended one of the trade unionists leading the protests—Adnane Hajji, a teacher who was subsequently sentenced to more than ten years in jail. While on paper the UGTT is opposed to temporary jobs, local UGTT honcho Amara Abbassi, a member of the RCD central committee and of parliament, set up a company of labor brokers to supply the mines with temporary workers. He also set up other labor broker companies to supply maintenance workers, enriching himself and his family on the backs of the superexploited workers. As part of the struggle to forge a Marxist workers party in Tunisia, it is vital to fight to replace the reformist leadership of the UGTT with a class-struggle leadership dedicated to the independence of the trade unions from the bourgeoisie and its state.
For a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly!
In fighting for working-class power, it would be impossible for a Marxist party in Tunisia merely to reject the bourgeois-democratic program. Rather, as Trotsky put it in the 1938 Transitional Program, the founding document of the Fourth International, “it is imperative that in the struggle the masses outgrow it.” The Tunisian working masses are today saddled with a “transitional government” headed by a Ben Ali crony with elections suspended for six months, aiming for the emerging bourgeois regime to consolidate its power.
Thus, against the maneuverings of Tunisia’s bourgeois rulers and their UGTT lackeys, we raise the call for immediate elections to convoke a revolutionary constituent assembly, which could give free expression to the will of the population after decades of silence under the heel of Bourguiba and Ben Ali. This basic democratic demand will not be realized through parliamentary bargaining but only through a victorious popular insurrection.
Our call for a revolutionary constituent assembly is counterposed to calls for a constituent assembly raised by the reformists, who in fact envision parliamentary bargaining with the bourgeois authorities with the (illusory) aim of securing a democratic form of bourgeois rule. The Workers Communist Party of Tunisia (PCOT), a group with a Stalinist background that played a militant role in the Gafsa uprising, stands out for having straightforwardly denounced the governmental combinations formed after Ben Ali fled. Its spokesman Hamma Hammami told l’Humanite (17 January), newspaper of the French Communist Party, that the purpose of the provisional government was “to abort the democratic and popular movement,” insisting: “We don’t demand anything impossible, only the institution of a transitional government to form a constituent assembly in order to elaborate a constitution guaranteeing fundamental civil rights, freedom of expression, of association and of the press.” Speaking plainly, PCOT simply wants, including through its call for a constituent assembly, a capitalist government but without those who have a history of collaboration with Ben Ali.
We raise the call for a revolutionary constituent assembly as a bridge between the current, legitimate democratic aspirations of the masses and the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would be based on soviets (workers councils)—i.e., proletarian democracy, a higher form of democracy than a bourgeois-democratic constituent assembly. As Trotsky underlined in the Transitional Program, “Democratic slogans, transitional demands, and the problems of the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another.” He added:
“At a certain stage in the mobilization of the masses under the slogans of revolutionary democracy, soviets can and should arise. Their historical role in each given period, particularly their relation to the national assembly, will be determined by the political level of the proletariat, the bond between them and the peasantry, and the character of the proletarian party policies. Sooner or later, the soviets should overthrow bourgeois democracy. Only they are capable of bringing the democratic revolution to a conclusion and likewise opening an era of socialist revolution.”
The Working Class Needs Its Own Organs of Power
In periods of acute class struggle, the trade unions, which typically organize the top layers of the proletariat, become too narrow to draw in the broad layers of masses in revolt, including unorganized workers. At the same time, the unions’ bureaucratic misleaders strive to keep on top of the situation in order to derail the struggle. A Marxist party in Tunisia today would put forward a perspective of building organizations that embrace the whole fighting mass: strike committees, factory committees and, finally, soviets.
As Trotsky emphasized, soviets can only arise at the time when the mass movement enters into an openly revolutionary stage. Soviets originally arose amid the 1905 Russian Revolution as workers strike committees. When the soviets arose again during the course of the 1917 Russian Revolution, they embraced not only the workers but also soldiers and the peasantry, becoming organs of dual power. Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the working class took power in Russia, with the soviets emerging as the organs of working-class rule.
Following Ben Ali’s departure, local militias sprang up to defend neighborhoods against the rampages of cops and thugs allied with Ben Ali. What is necessary is for the working class to take the lead. This means organizing factory committees, organs of dual power at the point of production, and from there setting up workers militias, drawing in the urban poor and unemployed, for self-defense against the state’s thugs. The workplace committees must, among their elementary demands, fight for jobs for the unemployed and an end to the intimidation and harassment of women workers, fighting for equal wages and benefits for women. Marxists must also fight for the workers to take charge of food distribution and control food prices in the face of shortages and black market corruption. In the Transitional Program, Trotsky underlined how the tasks and demands of such organs of dual power—i.e., proletarian-centered bodies that vie with the bourgeoisie for control of the country—run up against the very nature of the capitalist order:
“These new organs and centers, however, will soon begin to feel their lack of cohesion and their insufficiency. Not one of the transitional demands can be fully met under the conditions of preserving the bourgeois regime. At the same time, the deepening of the social crisis will increase not only the sufferings of the masses but also their impatience, persistence, and pressure. Ever new layers of the oppressed will raise their heads and come forward with their demands. Millions of toilworn ‘little men,’ to whom the reformist leaders never gave a thought, will begin to pound insistently on the doors of the workers’ organizations. The unemployed will join the movement. The agricultural workers, the ruined and semiruined farmers, the oppressed of the cities, the women workers, housewives, proletarianized layers of the intelligentsia—all of these will seek unity and leadership.
“How are the different demands and forms of struggle to be harmonized, even if only within the limits of one city? History has already answered this question: through soviets.”
Stalinist “Two-Stage Revolution” Means Betrayal
Faced with decades of class-collaborationist betrayal by the Stalinist Communist Party (now called Ettajdid, meaning “Renewal”) and other reformist parties, Tunisia’s working and oppressed masses today do not identify their struggles with the fight for socialism. After decades of brutal dictatorship, there are deepgoing illusions in bourgeois democracy and nationalism.
Tunisian left groups have shown that they have learned nothing from their past betrayals, when many of them supported General Ben Ali’s 1987 ascent to power as he deposed the then “president for life” Habib Bourguiba. We wrote at the time: “The Tunisian so-called left is giving the benefit of the doubt, if not their support, to the new Bonaparte, General Ben Ali, hoping for the liberalization of the regime” (Le Bolchévik No. 79, January 1988). Today, these left groups continue to bow before the ruling apparatus. Ettajdid leader Ahmed Ibrahim greeted Ben Ali’s conciliatory speech on the day before his flight, declaring, “It is a good start to turn the page of authoritarianism” (Le Monde, 15 January). Ettajdid went so far as to participate in the government that was formed after the dictator’s ousting.
Historically, Stalinists in the Third World advocated “two-stage revolution,” with a first, democratic stage to be carried out in alliance with a mythical “progressive” and “democratic” wing of the bourgeoisie, which would then be followed in an indeterminate future by a second stage of socialist revolution. Time and again, these pipe dreams have ended with drowning the workers in blood; the second stage never comes. Once the capitalists have stabilized their power with the help of the Stalinists, they unleash a massacre of the Communists and working-class militants, as they did, for example, with the Iraqi revolution of 1958 (see “Near East, 1950s: Permanent Revolution vs. Bourgeois Nationalism,” WV Nos. 740 and 741, 25 August and 8 September 2000).
Today, however, groups like PCOT do not even go beyond mentioning the first stage of achieving “democracy”—i.e., reformed bourgeois rule. Most recently, PCOT has joined a class-collaborationist bloc called the “January 14 Front”—named after the day Ben Ali left the country—with a number of small bourgeois formations, including Nasserist and Ba’athist nationalists. The Front’s program is thoroughly bourgeois, including the demand for “a new policy of security based on respect for human rights and the superiority of the law.”
Far from instilling the basic Marxist understanding that the military is part of the capitalist state, PCOT contributes to illusions in the army. In a statement dated January 15, PCOT wrote: “The armed forces, which consists in the main of the sons and daughters of the people, are required to provide safety for the people and the motherland and respect people’s aspirations toward freedom, social justice and national dignity.”
If the officer corps did oust Ben Ali, it was because they realized he was a losing proposition for Tunisian capitalism. In fact, the army was involved in the bloody repression of the Gafsa upheaval in 2008 and it will play a similar role in the future, all the more so as illusions still continue to run deep in its supposed role as the “defender of the people.” On January 20, the army fired live rounds into the air, scattering protesters who had converged on the headquarters of the RCD in Tunis. The military, cops, judges and prison guards constitute the core of the capitalist state, an organ of class oppression to maintain bourgeois rule through violence. As the workers fight for their own state power, they will have to smash the bourgeois state apparatus, including by splitting the army along class lines—the conscripts versus the bourgeois officer corps.
Even at their most radical, the left groups in Tunisia at best demand a “democratic republic.” They have abandoned any pretense of fighting for socialist revolution, reflecting the dramatic retrogression in consciousness that followed the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state in 1991-92, a catastrophic defeat for the international working class.
Islamic Fundamentalism and the Fight for Women’s Liberation
The political bankruptcy of Tunisia’s left groups could give an opening to the Islamic fundamentalists. This is a deadly threat to the working class and particularly to women. The Islamic fundamentalists played no visible role in the ousting of Ben Ali, unlike the many women who participated. Most demonstrators have vehemently stressed that they are not for Islamic rule. The mosques were indeed tightly controlled by the regime and supported Ben Ali.
The bourgeoisie internationally, especially in France, had for years supported the bloody Ben Ali regime as a rampart in the “war on terror” and as a vanguard in the fight for “secularism.” In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the U.S. and other imperialists went on to launch or participate in wars of depredation in Afghanistan and Iraq and to increase repression domestically, particularly against minorities with Muslim backgrounds. In France, the former popular-front government of Socialist Party prime minister Lionel Jospin, which included the Communist Party, reinforced the Vigipirate plan of police/army patrols of public transport, which has remained on “red alert” levels since 2005. The Jospin government also passed the “Daily Security Law” that strengthened police powers, which were further increased when Nicolas Sarkozy was interior minister and again now that he is president.
While the imperialists have used the “war on terror” to prop up “secular” leaders like Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, in reality the imperialists long fostered the growth of Islamic fundamentalism as a bulwark against Communism and even left bourgeois nationalism. This is no less true of the Arab rulers, who brutally repress the fundamentalists with one hand while promoting them with the other. In a 1994 interview, Ben Ali himself stated that “to some extent fundamentalism was of our own making, and was at one time encouraged in order to combat the threat of communism. Such groups were fostered in the universities and elsewhere at that time in order to offset the communists and to strike a balance” (quoted in Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report, edited by Joel Beinin and Joe Stork [1997]).
Tunisian society is relatively secular compared with other countries in North Africa and the Near East. Many women do not wear the veil, abortion has been liberalized, contraception is available and polygamy is banned; “repudiation” (where a man can divorce his wife simply by uttering the phrase, “I divorce you”) was replaced by civil divorce. These rights were mostly obtained under President Bourguiba in the early years after independence and in good part because Tunisia had a workers movement that was relatively independent of the state. However, as we wrote more than 20 years ago in Le Bolchévik No. 79, after Ben Ali seized power, Tunisia’s Code of Personal Status is profoundly inspired by Islamic law, forcing women to be subordinate to their fathers and husbands:
“Unmarried women remain under the authority of their father who must ‘provide for them until marriage.’ The husband must pay a dowry ‘of a substantial amount’ for his future wife, before the marriage is ‘consummated.’... After marriage, women must obey their husbands. Sexual inequality in inheritance has been maintained: a woman inherits half the share of a man. The Tunisian Code of Personal Status, its constitution and legislation were designed as an awkward, fragile and reversible compromise between Islamic law and bourgeois ‘modernity’.”
After 23 years of Ben Ali’s rule, very little has changed in this respect, except that obeying your husband is no longer an obligation enshrined in law. However, importantly, the proportion of women in the workforce has increased to nearly 30 percent from just 5.5 percent in the mid 1960s, underlining their increasing role as a vital component of the proletariat.
Fundamentally, women’s oppression is rooted in the institution of the family and in class society. It can be eradicated only after a revolutionary workers state has collectivized the economy and laid the material basis for replacing the family through the socialization of child rearing and education (see “The Russian Revolution and the Emancipation of Women,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 59, Spring 2006). The reforms gained under Bourguiba and Ben Ali—that is about as far as it can go for women under capitalism in such a neocolonial country. The fight for women’s emancipation will play a vital role in the struggle for socialist revolution in Tunisia.
French Imperialism’s Loyal Social Democrats
In response to the Tunisian upheaval, the social-democratic left in France has sowed illusions in French imperialism. Of course, they all criticized the French foreign minister’s offer to send security forces to help prop up Ben Ali. At bottom, these social democrats have been furious that the Sarkozy government’s grotesque support to the Ben Ali regime is going to weaken the position of French imperialism in a post-Ben Ali Tunisia. This is felt in particular with regard to French imperialism’s U.S. rivals, who had been privately critical of the Ben Ali regime and reportedly gave the green light to General Ammar to order Ben Ali to leave the country. With U.S. imperialism hypocritically offering to help organize “free elections” in Tunisia, French Socialist Party honcho Jean-Marc Ayrault lamented that the French government took “positions that disqualify France in the eyes of the world and Tunisians.”
So now the social-democratic left is calling on the same Sarkozy government to be a force for good in Tunisia. The Left Party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who from 2000 to 2002 was a minister in Jospin’s bourgeois government, distributed a statement in Paris on January 13, the day before Ben Ali’s flight, demanding that “the government of M. Sarkozy as well as the European Union use the many forms of pressure available to them to force Ben Ali to listen to the popular demands and engage without delay in the deep democratic reforms that are essential in the country.” Similarly, the Communist Party demanded that Sarkozy and other EU leaders “condemn the repression and take political, economic and financial sanctions against the Ben Ali regime” (l’Humanite, 14 January). This was printed on the very day that the French government was getting a planeload of tear gas ready for Tunisia! This should be no surprise: The social democrats and Stalinists have steadfastly defended French imperialist interests, from the war against Algerian independence waged by the Socialist Guy Mollet government, with the Communist Party’s support, in the 1950s to the defense of present-day French interests in Africa.
The New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) of Olivier Besancenot has been slightly more sophisticated in its attempts to pressure the government. While calling on France to give up its “little neocolonial arrangements” in its former colonies of Tunisia and Algeria, the NPA, in a Paris leaflet distributed on January 13, condemned the “French government’s quasi silence” on the Tunisian uprising as “intolerable.” At home the NPA works to subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie through class collaboration; similarly in regard to Tunisia it uncritically promotes the “January 14 Front” that includes PCOT and a number of small bourgeois parties.
For Permanent Revolution!
The impact of the Tunisian uprising has already reverberated across North Africa and the Near East (see accompanying article on Egypt). Amid the international economic crisis, the masses in countries like Egypt have been reeling from major increases in basic food and fuel prices, fostered by runaway speculation by international capitalist financiers (see “Imperialism Starves World’s Poor,” WV Nos. 919 and 920, 29 August and 12 September 2008, on the previous speculation-fed food crisis). Egypt is exploding. In Algeria, protests have spread throughout the country against the government of the ailing Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a figurehead for the military, which has dominated Algeria since independence.
A workers revolution in Tunisia would have tremendous impact throughout North Africa and the Near East. Workers uprisings could sweep away all these rotting regimes and begin to address the fundamental demands of the masses for jobs, freedom and justice. Imperialist France, the neocolonial overlord of the whole Maghreb region of North Africa, would be profoundly shaken, especially given the strategic position in the French proletariat of millions of workers of North African origin. What is essential is the forging of revolutionary workers parties like the Bolshevik Party that led the working class of Russia to power in the 1917 October Revolution—parties committed to the program of permanent revolution, addressing the burning needs of the masses and unalterably leading them to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat. This is the program of the International Communist League. For a socialist federation of North Africa!
The events in the Middle East, as the current situation in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrate, are moving quickly but our propaganda efforts to fight for workers and peasants everywhere is germane.
From Workers Vanguard No. 973, 4 February 2011
For Permanent Revolution Across North Africa!
Tunisia: Dictator Flees, Protests Continue
For Revolutionary Workers Parties!
The following article was written by our comrades of the Ligue Trotskyste de France, section of the International Communist League.
After 23 years in power, Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali ignominiously fled the country on January 14. His exit to Saudi Arabia followed several weeks of protests, initially from layers of youth demanding jobs and to be treated with some dignity by the state. Starting in the town of Sidi Bouzid in Central Tunisia, the protests rapidly spread to the whole of the country, encompassing broad layers of Tunisian society, including the working class, and were met with brutal police repression. Even official sources state that over 100 people have been killed in the course of the five weeks of social struggle, the great majority shot down by police fire.
In the hours following Ben Ali’s flight, Mohamed Ghannouchi, Ben Ali’s prime minister for over eleven years, declared himself president. Faced with further protests, which are increasingly being met with police repression, most of Ben Ali’s loyal servants have been fired from their ministerial positions in the latest attempt to put a lid on the protests while keeping in place the core of the governing apparatus. For now, Ghannouchi is once again prime minister. The Tunisian teachers union held a two-day strike over January 24-25, and other strikes including in public transport have been taking place to drive out the detested Ben Ali bosses, who in recent years have imposed ever more draconian working conditions. Pictures of workers chasing out the president of the country’s largest insurance firm, Star, which is partly owned by a French group, have made the rounds of the Web.
Fed up with unemployment, rising food prices, the widespread corruption of Ben Ali and his family and cronies, as well as police-state repression, Tunisians have heroically braved Ben Ali’s cops and thugs to fight for the most elementary democratic rights. Under Ben Ali, who since 1987 has been re-elected in grotesquely fraudulent elections, political opponents were generally co-opted or smashed. Now the bourgeoisie and its imperialist sponsors are regretting that their deposed despot left no ground for an opposition with “clean hands” to jump into the saddle, thus prolonging instability in Tunisia and beyond.
The masses’ democratic aspirations continue to be a powerful spark for struggle. What is vital is for the proletariat, the one class with the social power and historic interest to overthrow the capitalist system, to emerge out of these struggles as the leader of the country’s unemployed youth, urban poor, peasants, women and other oppressed sectors aspiring to emancipation.
The tumultuous events in Tunisia provide an extraordinary opening for popularizing the Marxist program of socialist revolution, which alone can address the masses’ demands. The upheaval has been marked by an outpouring of all social classes other than the upper echelons of the Tunisian bourgeoisie, a good many of them cronies of Ben Ali. Tunisian flags have been everywhere. This reflects a nationalist consciousness that is also expressed in widespread illusions in the army, whose chief reportedly refused to fire on civilian demonstrators and is rumored to have orchestrated the ouster of Ben Ali. Such illusions are a deadly danger to the working people and the oppressed.
Amid the political vacuum created by Ben Ali’s departure and the jostling for political influence by various forces in the country, what is needed is a Marxist working-class vanguard putting forward the program of permanent revolution: the seizure of power by the working class, fighting to extend its revolutionary victory to the centers of world imperialism—the only way to break the fetters of political despotism and economic and social backwardness.
For a Workers and Peasants Government!
In Tunisia, as in other countries of belated capitalist development, historic gains—such as political democracy and national emancipation—associated with the great bourgeois revolutions of the 17th and 18th century in Britain and France cannot be realized so long as bourgeois rule remains. Tunisia is a neocolonial country whose bourgeoisie is tied by a million strings to world imperialism, particularly France, the former colonial ruler, which benefits from the deep oppression of Tunisia’s masses and served as the main prop for the Ben Ali regime.
French foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie even offered to send security forces to help crush the uprising. (A cargo plane full of tear gas canisters was stopped from heading to Tunisia only after news came out that Ben Ali had left the country.) Over a thousand French companies are active in Tunisia, owning the bulk of the financial sector and employing over 100,000 people. U.S. imperialism was also key in propping up the Ben Ali regime. One of the documents recently released by WikiLeaks quotes a July 2009 cable by the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia: “The United States needs help in this region to promote our values and policies. Tunisia is one place where, in time, we might find it.”
The subordination of Tunisia to imperialism serves to ensure the brutal exploitation and oppression of its people. Authentic national and social liberation requires mobilizing the proletariat in a frontal attack against the imperialists and the domestic bourgeoisie, which is the deadly enemy of Tunisia’s workers and oppressed. Indeed, amid continuing protests, there is a real danger of the military carrying out a coup to stabilize the bourgeois order. Addressing protesters on January 24, General Rachid Ammar, the army chief of staff, ominously stressed that “the national army is the guarantor of the revolution” (Le Monde, 26 January). For its part, the right-wing Le Figaro (18 January), a French government mouthpiece, openly and threateningly mooted a military coup as the next stage to save bourgeois order and imperialist domination in Tunisia: “Except for accepting this government of national unity [with Ben Ali cronies] to organize upcoming democratic elections, the Tunisians have no plan B to re-establish civilian peace, except resorting to the military to occupy power.”
In Tunisia today, even a small Marxist propaganda group putting forward a series of transitional demands that link the democratic aspirations of the masses to the struggle for proletarian power could have a great impact on unfolding events. This would lay the basis for the building of a revolutionary party that can lead the proletariat in the fight for a workers and peasants government that expropriates the bourgeoisie. Such a party must be forged not only against Ben Ali’s cronies but also against all manner of bourgeois “reformers” as well as the reactionary Islamic fundamentalists.
A proletarian victory in Tunisia would have an electrifying impact throughout North Africa and the Near East and would serve as a bridge to socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries, especially France, where some 700,000 Tunisians reside. Summarizing his theory of permanent revolution, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky underlined in The Permanent Revolution (1930):
“With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses….
“The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and very quickly confronted with tasks, the fulfillment of which is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution….
“In a country where the proletariat has power in its hands as the result of the democratic revolution, the subsequent fate of the dictatorship and socialism depends in the last analysis not only and not so much upon the national productive forces as upon the development of the international socialist revolution.”
The Bankruptcy of Tunisian Nationalism
Tunisia has long been touted by its rulers, including by the late Habib Bourguiba, the country’s first president after it received independence from France in 1956, as well as by the imperialists and international bourgeois press as an exception in North Africa for its development, high level of education and supposed equal opportunities for women. However, the case of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation sparked the revolt that led to the toppling of Ben Ali, encapsulates the grim reality of life in Tunisia today.
After becoming the main provider for his family at the age of ten, selling fresh produce at the local market, he gave up on his plans to study and left high school at 19 without graduating in order to support his family and give his younger siblings the chance to stay in school. Those who knew Bouazizi spoke of years of abuse and harassment by local police who would confiscate his wares and fine him, ostensibly for not having a permit to sell. On December 17, the police took his scales, tossed aside his cart and beat him. Less than an hour later, after local officials refused to hear his complaint, he set himself alight. Outraged by the events, the city of Sidi Bouzid erupted in protests. Mohamed Bouazizi died on January 4.
Untold numbers of Tunisians and other North Africans, mainly youth, have died in venturing the dangerous boat trip to reach Italy and the rest of Europe to look for work—only to then be subjected to backbreaking exploitation and racist oppression, living under constant danger of deportation. And even that route has become increasingly closed as the European imperialists clamp down on immigration. According to Sami Aouadi, a leader of the Tunisian UGTT trade-union federation, there are today at least 200,000 people with a college degree who are unemployed in Tunisia—that is, 27 percent of all the unemployed in a country numbering about ten million people.
The Tunisian economy is based on agriculture and related processing industries, some oil extraction, phosphate mining in the Gafsa area, tourism and some industry. Textiles, with its heavily female workforce, makes up nearly half of the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing, including French-owned spare parts factories for the auto and aeronautical industries, constitutes about one-fifth of Tunisia’s GDP. There is also an increasingly important service industry with a number of foreign companies, particularly French telecommunications operators, having outsourced call centers to Tunisia. Tunisian workers earn one-eighth of West European wages.
While Tunisia is hardly a heavily industrialized country, it does have a significant trade-union movement, with the UGTT claiming to represent some 600,000 blue-collar workers. The UGTT has a unique history in North Africa of not being completely subservient to the bourgeois-nationalist ruling government. It has engaged in both class struggle and deep class collaboration with the nationalists in power. Ben Ali seemed to have finally brought the UGTT to heel after many years of repression, and in recent years the top leaders of the union federation were also members of the leadership of Ben Ali’s Democratic-Constitutional Rally (RCD) party. The UGTT tops called for a vote to Ben Ali in 1999, 2004 and again in 2009, at a time when the population was sarcastically changing the “Ben Ali 2009” campaign posters to “Ben Ali 2080” and “Ben Ali 2500.”
On December 28, the UGTT demanded the release of those imprisoned following the protests in Sidi Bouzid and elsewhere. However, it insisted that its demands were made “with the aim of contributing to devising constructive solutions in order to appease the situation in that area and contain its fallout.” Under pressure from its ranks, and as protests swelled, it made statements increasingly hostile to the government and finally allowed its regional chapters to call for local general strikes on January 14, the very day that Ben Ali fled.
The UGTT leadership then jumped into the “new” government, the key posts of which, including the police, remained manned by Ben Ali associates. Again, it was only under the pressure of mass protests against the sham “transitional government” that the UGTT ministers resigned from their posts, saying they were still willing to participate in the capitalist government provided that prime minister Ghannouchi was the only Ben Ali crony in it. As Jilani Hammami, a UGTT leader, delicately put it, the trade-union federation “was subjected to heated debates, counterposing the leadership, with its links to the regime, to the federal and regional chapters, which supported the popular uprising.” More recently, the UGTT has endorsed the reshuffled “interim government” in a (so far futile) attempt to quell protests.
The 2008 Gafsa Revolt: a Precursor
The contradictory role played by the trade unions, as well as the divisions between the base and the tops of these unions, was also seen in the 2008 revolt in Gafsa. This revolt was a precursor to the current social upheaval and had previously been the most significant protest Tunisia had seen since the Bread Revolt in 1984, which erupted after Bourguiba instituted an IMF-dictated 100 percent hike in the price of bread.
A phosphate mining area, the Gafsa region has been hit particularly hard by mass unemployment. Over the past three decades, the government-controlled CPG (Company of Gafsa Phosphates), the region’s main employer, has reduced its payroll from 14,000 workers to little more than 5,000. A popular upheaval broke out in January 2008 when the mining company produced a list of people to be hired that favored individuals loyal to the government and to the UGTT regional leaders. Since the company had a policy of not replacing its retirees, this was its first hiring opportunity in six years; hopes were thus particularly high.
For months, workers, women and unemployed youth in the mining region protested. Their banners declared, “Work, Freedom and National Dignity,” “We Want Jobs, No to Promises and Illusions” and “No to Corruption and Opportunism.” In June 2008, the government cracked down. Two people were killed, in addition to one the month before, while dozens were injured and many more were imprisoned. In November 2009, most prisoners were released under a presidential pardon by an increasingly unstable Ben Ali regime, but with the sentences remaining in place and the individuals subject to regular police controls. However, Fahem Boukadous, a journalist who covered the Gafsa revolt, was sentenced last year to four years in prison and released only on January 19. The workers movement in Tunisia and internationally must demand: Freedom now for all the heroic fighters of the Gafsa upheaval and all other victims of bonapartist repression!
Local UGTT activists played a key role in the Gafsa struggle, particularly in the town of Redeyef. However, the central and regional leadership denounced the protests and even suspended one of the trade unionists leading the protests—Adnane Hajji, a teacher who was subsequently sentenced to more than ten years in jail. While on paper the UGTT is opposed to temporary jobs, local UGTT honcho Amara Abbassi, a member of the RCD central committee and of parliament, set up a company of labor brokers to supply the mines with temporary workers. He also set up other labor broker companies to supply maintenance workers, enriching himself and his family on the backs of the superexploited workers. As part of the struggle to forge a Marxist workers party in Tunisia, it is vital to fight to replace the reformist leadership of the UGTT with a class-struggle leadership dedicated to the independence of the trade unions from the bourgeoisie and its state.
For a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly!
In fighting for working-class power, it would be impossible for a Marxist party in Tunisia merely to reject the bourgeois-democratic program. Rather, as Trotsky put it in the 1938 Transitional Program, the founding document of the Fourth International, “it is imperative that in the struggle the masses outgrow it.” The Tunisian working masses are today saddled with a “transitional government” headed by a Ben Ali crony with elections suspended for six months, aiming for the emerging bourgeois regime to consolidate its power.
Thus, against the maneuverings of Tunisia’s bourgeois rulers and their UGTT lackeys, we raise the call for immediate elections to convoke a revolutionary constituent assembly, which could give free expression to the will of the population after decades of silence under the heel of Bourguiba and Ben Ali. This basic democratic demand will not be realized through parliamentary bargaining but only through a victorious popular insurrection.
Our call for a revolutionary constituent assembly is counterposed to calls for a constituent assembly raised by the reformists, who in fact envision parliamentary bargaining with the bourgeois authorities with the (illusory) aim of securing a democratic form of bourgeois rule. The Workers Communist Party of Tunisia (PCOT), a group with a Stalinist background that played a militant role in the Gafsa uprising, stands out for having straightforwardly denounced the governmental combinations formed after Ben Ali fled. Its spokesman Hamma Hammami told l’Humanite (17 January), newspaper of the French Communist Party, that the purpose of the provisional government was “to abort the democratic and popular movement,” insisting: “We don’t demand anything impossible, only the institution of a transitional government to form a constituent assembly in order to elaborate a constitution guaranteeing fundamental civil rights, freedom of expression, of association and of the press.” Speaking plainly, PCOT simply wants, including through its call for a constituent assembly, a capitalist government but without those who have a history of collaboration with Ben Ali.
We raise the call for a revolutionary constituent assembly as a bridge between the current, legitimate democratic aspirations of the masses and the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would be based on soviets (workers councils)—i.e., proletarian democracy, a higher form of democracy than a bourgeois-democratic constituent assembly. As Trotsky underlined in the Transitional Program, “Democratic slogans, transitional demands, and the problems of the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another.” He added:
“At a certain stage in the mobilization of the masses under the slogans of revolutionary democracy, soviets can and should arise. Their historical role in each given period, particularly their relation to the national assembly, will be determined by the political level of the proletariat, the bond between them and the peasantry, and the character of the proletarian party policies. Sooner or later, the soviets should overthrow bourgeois democracy. Only they are capable of bringing the democratic revolution to a conclusion and likewise opening an era of socialist revolution.”
The Working Class Needs Its Own Organs of Power
In periods of acute class struggle, the trade unions, which typically organize the top layers of the proletariat, become too narrow to draw in the broad layers of masses in revolt, including unorganized workers. At the same time, the unions’ bureaucratic misleaders strive to keep on top of the situation in order to derail the struggle. A Marxist party in Tunisia today would put forward a perspective of building organizations that embrace the whole fighting mass: strike committees, factory committees and, finally, soviets.
As Trotsky emphasized, soviets can only arise at the time when the mass movement enters into an openly revolutionary stage. Soviets originally arose amid the 1905 Russian Revolution as workers strike committees. When the soviets arose again during the course of the 1917 Russian Revolution, they embraced not only the workers but also soldiers and the peasantry, becoming organs of dual power. Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the working class took power in Russia, with the soviets emerging as the organs of working-class rule.
Following Ben Ali’s departure, local militias sprang up to defend neighborhoods against the rampages of cops and thugs allied with Ben Ali. What is necessary is for the working class to take the lead. This means organizing factory committees, organs of dual power at the point of production, and from there setting up workers militias, drawing in the urban poor and unemployed, for self-defense against the state’s thugs. The workplace committees must, among their elementary demands, fight for jobs for the unemployed and an end to the intimidation and harassment of women workers, fighting for equal wages and benefits for women. Marxists must also fight for the workers to take charge of food distribution and control food prices in the face of shortages and black market corruption. In the Transitional Program, Trotsky underlined how the tasks and demands of such organs of dual power—i.e., proletarian-centered bodies that vie with the bourgeoisie for control of the country—run up against the very nature of the capitalist order:
“These new organs and centers, however, will soon begin to feel their lack of cohesion and their insufficiency. Not one of the transitional demands can be fully met under the conditions of preserving the bourgeois regime. At the same time, the deepening of the social crisis will increase not only the sufferings of the masses but also their impatience, persistence, and pressure. Ever new layers of the oppressed will raise their heads and come forward with their demands. Millions of toilworn ‘little men,’ to whom the reformist leaders never gave a thought, will begin to pound insistently on the doors of the workers’ organizations. The unemployed will join the movement. The agricultural workers, the ruined and semiruined farmers, the oppressed of the cities, the women workers, housewives, proletarianized layers of the intelligentsia—all of these will seek unity and leadership.
“How are the different demands and forms of struggle to be harmonized, even if only within the limits of one city? History has already answered this question: through soviets.”
Stalinist “Two-Stage Revolution” Means Betrayal
Faced with decades of class-collaborationist betrayal by the Stalinist Communist Party (now called Ettajdid, meaning “Renewal”) and other reformist parties, Tunisia’s working and oppressed masses today do not identify their struggles with the fight for socialism. After decades of brutal dictatorship, there are deepgoing illusions in bourgeois democracy and nationalism.
Tunisian left groups have shown that they have learned nothing from their past betrayals, when many of them supported General Ben Ali’s 1987 ascent to power as he deposed the then “president for life” Habib Bourguiba. We wrote at the time: “The Tunisian so-called left is giving the benefit of the doubt, if not their support, to the new Bonaparte, General Ben Ali, hoping for the liberalization of the regime” (Le Bolchévik No. 79, January 1988). Today, these left groups continue to bow before the ruling apparatus. Ettajdid leader Ahmed Ibrahim greeted Ben Ali’s conciliatory speech on the day before his flight, declaring, “It is a good start to turn the page of authoritarianism” (Le Monde, 15 January). Ettajdid went so far as to participate in the government that was formed after the dictator’s ousting.
Historically, Stalinists in the Third World advocated “two-stage revolution,” with a first, democratic stage to be carried out in alliance with a mythical “progressive” and “democratic” wing of the bourgeoisie, which would then be followed in an indeterminate future by a second stage of socialist revolution. Time and again, these pipe dreams have ended with drowning the workers in blood; the second stage never comes. Once the capitalists have stabilized their power with the help of the Stalinists, they unleash a massacre of the Communists and working-class militants, as they did, for example, with the Iraqi revolution of 1958 (see “Near East, 1950s: Permanent Revolution vs. Bourgeois Nationalism,” WV Nos. 740 and 741, 25 August and 8 September 2000).
Today, however, groups like PCOT do not even go beyond mentioning the first stage of achieving “democracy”—i.e., reformed bourgeois rule. Most recently, PCOT has joined a class-collaborationist bloc called the “January 14 Front”—named after the day Ben Ali left the country—with a number of small bourgeois formations, including Nasserist and Ba’athist nationalists. The Front’s program is thoroughly bourgeois, including the demand for “a new policy of security based on respect for human rights and the superiority of the law.”
Far from instilling the basic Marxist understanding that the military is part of the capitalist state, PCOT contributes to illusions in the army. In a statement dated January 15, PCOT wrote: “The armed forces, which consists in the main of the sons and daughters of the people, are required to provide safety for the people and the motherland and respect people’s aspirations toward freedom, social justice and national dignity.”
If the officer corps did oust Ben Ali, it was because they realized he was a losing proposition for Tunisian capitalism. In fact, the army was involved in the bloody repression of the Gafsa upheaval in 2008 and it will play a similar role in the future, all the more so as illusions still continue to run deep in its supposed role as the “defender of the people.” On January 20, the army fired live rounds into the air, scattering protesters who had converged on the headquarters of the RCD in Tunis. The military, cops, judges and prison guards constitute the core of the capitalist state, an organ of class oppression to maintain bourgeois rule through violence. As the workers fight for their own state power, they will have to smash the bourgeois state apparatus, including by splitting the army along class lines—the conscripts versus the bourgeois officer corps.
Even at their most radical, the left groups in Tunisia at best demand a “democratic republic.” They have abandoned any pretense of fighting for socialist revolution, reflecting the dramatic retrogression in consciousness that followed the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state in 1991-92, a catastrophic defeat for the international working class.
Islamic Fundamentalism and the Fight for Women’s Liberation
The political bankruptcy of Tunisia’s left groups could give an opening to the Islamic fundamentalists. This is a deadly threat to the working class and particularly to women. The Islamic fundamentalists played no visible role in the ousting of Ben Ali, unlike the many women who participated. Most demonstrators have vehemently stressed that they are not for Islamic rule. The mosques were indeed tightly controlled by the regime and supported Ben Ali.
The bourgeoisie internationally, especially in France, had for years supported the bloody Ben Ali regime as a rampart in the “war on terror” and as a vanguard in the fight for “secularism.” In the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the U.S. and other imperialists went on to launch or participate in wars of depredation in Afghanistan and Iraq and to increase repression domestically, particularly against minorities with Muslim backgrounds. In France, the former popular-front government of Socialist Party prime minister Lionel Jospin, which included the Communist Party, reinforced the Vigipirate plan of police/army patrols of public transport, which has remained on “red alert” levels since 2005. The Jospin government also passed the “Daily Security Law” that strengthened police powers, which were further increased when Nicolas Sarkozy was interior minister and again now that he is president.
While the imperialists have used the “war on terror” to prop up “secular” leaders like Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, in reality the imperialists long fostered the growth of Islamic fundamentalism as a bulwark against Communism and even left bourgeois nationalism. This is no less true of the Arab rulers, who brutally repress the fundamentalists with one hand while promoting them with the other. In a 1994 interview, Ben Ali himself stated that “to some extent fundamentalism was of our own making, and was at one time encouraged in order to combat the threat of communism. Such groups were fostered in the universities and elsewhere at that time in order to offset the communists and to strike a balance” (quoted in Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report, edited by Joel Beinin and Joe Stork [1997]).
Tunisian society is relatively secular compared with other countries in North Africa and the Near East. Many women do not wear the veil, abortion has been liberalized, contraception is available and polygamy is banned; “repudiation” (where a man can divorce his wife simply by uttering the phrase, “I divorce you”) was replaced by civil divorce. These rights were mostly obtained under President Bourguiba in the early years after independence and in good part because Tunisia had a workers movement that was relatively independent of the state. However, as we wrote more than 20 years ago in Le Bolchévik No. 79, after Ben Ali seized power, Tunisia’s Code of Personal Status is profoundly inspired by Islamic law, forcing women to be subordinate to their fathers and husbands:
“Unmarried women remain under the authority of their father who must ‘provide for them until marriage.’ The husband must pay a dowry ‘of a substantial amount’ for his future wife, before the marriage is ‘consummated.’... After marriage, women must obey their husbands. Sexual inequality in inheritance has been maintained: a woman inherits half the share of a man. The Tunisian Code of Personal Status, its constitution and legislation were designed as an awkward, fragile and reversible compromise between Islamic law and bourgeois ‘modernity’.”
After 23 years of Ben Ali’s rule, very little has changed in this respect, except that obeying your husband is no longer an obligation enshrined in law. However, importantly, the proportion of women in the workforce has increased to nearly 30 percent from just 5.5 percent in the mid 1960s, underlining their increasing role as a vital component of the proletariat.
Fundamentally, women’s oppression is rooted in the institution of the family and in class society. It can be eradicated only after a revolutionary workers state has collectivized the economy and laid the material basis for replacing the family through the socialization of child rearing and education (see “The Russian Revolution and the Emancipation of Women,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 59, Spring 2006). The reforms gained under Bourguiba and Ben Ali—that is about as far as it can go for women under capitalism in such a neocolonial country. The fight for women’s emancipation will play a vital role in the struggle for socialist revolution in Tunisia.
French Imperialism’s Loyal Social Democrats
In response to the Tunisian upheaval, the social-democratic left in France has sowed illusions in French imperialism. Of course, they all criticized the French foreign minister’s offer to send security forces to help prop up Ben Ali. At bottom, these social democrats have been furious that the Sarkozy government’s grotesque support to the Ben Ali regime is going to weaken the position of French imperialism in a post-Ben Ali Tunisia. This is felt in particular with regard to French imperialism’s U.S. rivals, who had been privately critical of the Ben Ali regime and reportedly gave the green light to General Ammar to order Ben Ali to leave the country. With U.S. imperialism hypocritically offering to help organize “free elections” in Tunisia, French Socialist Party honcho Jean-Marc Ayrault lamented that the French government took “positions that disqualify France in the eyes of the world and Tunisians.”
So now the social-democratic left is calling on the same Sarkozy government to be a force for good in Tunisia. The Left Party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who from 2000 to 2002 was a minister in Jospin’s bourgeois government, distributed a statement in Paris on January 13, the day before Ben Ali’s flight, demanding that “the government of M. Sarkozy as well as the European Union use the many forms of pressure available to them to force Ben Ali to listen to the popular demands and engage without delay in the deep democratic reforms that are essential in the country.” Similarly, the Communist Party demanded that Sarkozy and other EU leaders “condemn the repression and take political, economic and financial sanctions against the Ben Ali regime” (l’Humanite, 14 January). This was printed on the very day that the French government was getting a planeload of tear gas ready for Tunisia! This should be no surprise: The social democrats and Stalinists have steadfastly defended French imperialist interests, from the war against Algerian independence waged by the Socialist Guy Mollet government, with the Communist Party’s support, in the 1950s to the defense of present-day French interests in Africa.
The New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) of Olivier Besancenot has been slightly more sophisticated in its attempts to pressure the government. While calling on France to give up its “little neocolonial arrangements” in its former colonies of Tunisia and Algeria, the NPA, in a Paris leaflet distributed on January 13, condemned the “French government’s quasi silence” on the Tunisian uprising as “intolerable.” At home the NPA works to subordinate the working class to the bourgeoisie through class collaboration; similarly in regard to Tunisia it uncritically promotes the “January 14 Front” that includes PCOT and a number of small bourgeois parties.
For Permanent Revolution!
The impact of the Tunisian uprising has already reverberated across North Africa and the Near East (see accompanying article on Egypt). Amid the international economic crisis, the masses in countries like Egypt have been reeling from major increases in basic food and fuel prices, fostered by runaway speculation by international capitalist financiers (see “Imperialism Starves World’s Poor,” WV Nos. 919 and 920, 29 August and 12 September 2008, on the previous speculation-fed food crisis). Egypt is exploding. In Algeria, protests have spread throughout the country against the government of the ailing Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a figurehead for the military, which has dominated Algeria since independence.
A workers revolution in Tunisia would have tremendous impact throughout North Africa and the Near East. Workers uprisings could sweep away all these rotting regimes and begin to address the fundamental demands of the masses for jobs, freedom and justice. Imperialist France, the neocolonial overlord of the whole Maghreb region of North Africa, would be profoundly shaken, especially given the strategic position in the French proletariat of millions of workers of North African origin. What is essential is the forging of revolutionary workers parties like the Bolshevik Party that led the working class of Russia to power in the 1917 October Revolution—parties committed to the program of permanent revolution, addressing the burning needs of the masses and unalterably leading them to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat. This is the program of the International Communist League. For a socialist federation of North Africa!
Saturday, February 05, 2011
From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.)-On The Organization Question At The Third Congress Of The Communist International (1921)-Reports From The Organization Commission
From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.)
Markin comment:
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
***********
Markin comment on this article:
In the history of the communist movement, since right from the days of Marx and Engels, the question of the organization of the revolution has been intermingled with all the political questions associated with that struggle. For anarchists and others the organization question is sealed with seven seals (or more) but for those of us who stand in the early Bolshevik tradition handed down from the Russian revolution in 1917 it is key. And that question is linked up, sealed up, if you like, with the notion of a vanguard party. These documents and reports from the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1921 are a codification of that experience. For those who think that international imperialism, led by the American monster, will crumble on its own, or worst, can be just patched up brand new with a little tweaking don’t read this material, all other read and re-read this stuff until your eyes are sore.
*********
Third Congress of the Comintern 1921
Resolution on the Organization of the Communist International
Adopted at the 24th Session of the Third Congress of the Communist International,
12 July 1921
The Executive of the CI shall be enlarged so as to enable it to take a position on all questions demanding action by the proletariat. Above and beyond the general calls issued on such critical questions up to now, the Executive shall increasingly go over to finding ways and means to initiate in practice a unified organizational and propagandistic intervention in international issues by the various sections. The CI must mature into an International of the deed, into the international leadership of the common daily struggle of the revolutionary proletariat of all countries. The prerequisites for this are:
1. The member parties of the CI must do their utmost to maintain the closest and most active ties with the Executive: they must not only provide the best representatives of their country for the Executive but must judiciously and persistently supply the Executive with constant and reliable information so that the Executive can take positions on political problems that arise based on actual documents and comprehensive materials. In order to use this material productively, the Executive must organize departments for all specialized fields. In addition, an international economics/statistics institute for the workers movement and communism is to be established, attached to the Executive.
2. The member parties must maintain the closest informational and organizational ties among themselves, particularly when they are in neighboring countries and therefore have an equally intense interest in the political conflicts arising from capitalist antagonisms. This relationship of common action can at present be initiated most effectively by sending representatives to each other’s most important conferences and by the exchange of suitable personnel. This exchange of suitable personnel must immediately become a permanent arrangement for all sections which are in any way capable of it.
3. The Executive shall promote the necessary fusion of all national sections into a unified international party of common proletarian propaganda and action by publishing a political correspondence in western Europe in all major languages, through which the application of the communist idea must be made steadily clearer and more uniform, and which, by providing reliable and steady information, will create the basis for active, simultaneous intervention by the various sections.
4. By sending fully empowered representatives of the Executive to the sections, the Executive can give effective organizational support to the effort to achieve a genuine International of the common daily struggle of the proletariat of all countries. The task of these representatives is to acquaint the Executive with the particular conditions under which the Communist Parties of the capitalist and colonial countries must struggle. They must also make sure that these parties maintain the most intimate ties both with the Executive and with one another, increasing the striking power of each. The Executive, along with the parties, shall ensure that communication between it and the individual member parties-both in person through trusted representatives and by means of written correspondence-shall take place more frequently and more quickly than it has to date, so that a common position on all major political questions will be arrived at.
5. To be able to take on this extraordinarily increased activity, the Executive must be considerably expanded. The sections which were granted 40 votes by the Congress shall each have two votes in the Executive, as shall the Executive of the Communist Youth International; the sections which had 30 and 20 votes at the Congress shall each have one vote. The Communist Party of Russia shall have five votes at its disposal, as in the past. The representatives of the remaining sections shall have consultative votes. The president of the Executive shall be elected by the Congress. The Executive is instructed to appoint three secretaries, to be drawn from different sections if possible. In addition to them, the members of the Executive sent by the sections are obligated to take part in carrying out the ongoing work through their particular national departments or by taking over the handling of entire specific fields as rapporteurs. The members of the administrative smaller bureau are elected specially by the Executive, as a rule from among the members of the Executive; exceptions are permissible in special cases.
6. The seat of the Executive is Russia, the first proletarian state. The Executive shall, however, attempt to expand its sphere of activity, including organizing conferences outside of Russia, in order to more firmly centralize the organizational and political leadership of the entire International.
*********
Comintern 1921
Appendix A
Report on the Organization Question
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: by Wilhelm Koenen. Including Discussion on the Report From the stenographic record of the 22nd session of the Third Congress of the Communist International 10 July 1921, 7 pm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KOENEN: Comrades, first of all a little apology. The report on the organization of the parties, the methods and content of their work, was assigned to me only in the course of the last week; consequently there was a certain delay in dealing with it, and it was also not possible to finish revising the Theses in an entirely regular way. You must also pardon me if-since this assignment was given only last week-I could not carry it out comprehensively or thoroughly. The report I have to give is, by virtue of its subject, very extensive. I am to discuss not just the organizational tasks, but also the methods and content of work, and likewise the organizational structure of the Communist International and its relationship to the different parties-
a complex of questions which would demand a very comprehensive exposition. I want to say in advance that because of the breadth of the subject I must completely dispense with any historical introduction on the development of the various parties or of the concept of the Communist Party. Insofar as it is necessary to go into the economic preconditions for the parties, the methods of work of the parties, I will have to do it at particular points in the course of the report.
It is already common knowledge in all the parties that, for a Communist Party, organization is not an end in itself; rather organization, particularly the organizational apparatus, is only a means to the higher aim of furthering the revolutionary cause, of driving the revolution forward, of erecting a communist society-our goal. Karl Marx, in the first General Statutes of the First International Workingmen’s Association, had already formulated the idea that the economic emancipation of the working class is the great end to which every movement must be subordinated as a means. And in line with the spirit of those statutes, an organization will work most effectively for the solution of the social question when it achieves the theoretical and practical collaboration of the most advanced groups. In the modern working-class movement the organizational apparatus must be structured to guarantee that the proletarians in their struggles will at every given moment receive the greatest possible assistance from similarly organized proletarian groups.
In the present turbulent period of latent civil war it is self-evident that the Communist International seeks to bring about a mutual strengthening of the organizational and active forces by means of strict centralization. The goal of organization is clear. The immediate goal of organization is to achieve the conquest of political power for the proletariat. A combat leadership which aims to achieve this end must be able to act within the communist organizations according to a definite plan, with forces that can be relied on. The struggle demands concentrated preparation through education and persuasive agitation, by means of which the total attention of the struggling proletariat is at every moment directed at the great goal shared by the entire class, the goal which actually unites all forces which in any way want to take up the struggle. The organization must therefore be tied together centrally, as a union of forces; it must be held together as a union not only of the consciously revolutionary workers, but of those with genuinely revolutionary impulses as well.
In his remarks on the organizational lessons of the March Action comrade Béla Kun, who originally was supposed to give this report, was quite right to formulate the idea that in the last analysis the question of revolution is not an organizational question. We must keep in mind that, in dealing with this question-in solving this problem-we must perform an important revolutionary task.
If we look at the organizational forms in the various countries, we must admit that the International still constitutes a very colorful jumble of the most diverse organizational forms. And we should not believe that in this respect the Second Congress has already effected a decisive change; we should not hope that even the Third Congress can and will bring about this change. But although we recognize this multiplicity of organizational forms, we must nonetheless work insistently toward standardizing our organizational forms because we are well aware that despite the varying circumstances in the different countries, despite the fact that they condition the various forms of organization in various countries, nonetheless we must achieve a certain identity of methods, of content, since the goal-the conquest of power-is the same. In addition the enemy, namely the bourgeoisie, is the same everywhere and employs the same forms of struggle against us. This compels us to press for a certain homogeneity in the methods of struggle and in the content of the work of Communist Parties.
Some parties still contain all the weaknesses of the old bureaucratic centralization, of the old social-democratic parties. They are still dragging this old tradition around because they have a very brief communist past. In fact one can say that the large mass parties are still dragging along remnants of this old social-democratic bureaucracy. Other parties came into being through a rebellion initiated against this bureaucratic centralism, against this bureaucratic sort of party structure. This was, for example, the case with one wing from which the German Party emerged. The USPD was typically a party which arose from the rebellion of the active elements against the passive center. In the old Social Democracy during the war this passive center necessarily of itself provoked a rebellion by the active elements, and eventually the rebelling individual districts joined together and a certain federalistic basis for the party then arose. These elements were dragging the remnants of federalism around with them and they had to break the independence of the individual districts, and to insist that only this federalism has a right to independence, and the passive center no longer has a say.[1]
These federalist symptoms must be combatted just as energetically as the centralist heritage of the old social-democratic party.
The parties must increasingly become the center of action, of activization. We are faced with the task of structuring the bodies of the party to accord with the goals set for us in the Communist Manifesto. To begin with then, our first task is to secure a firm leadership at the head of a centralist organization. It is unfortunately still necessary to insist on this firm leadership-indeed, any leadership which occupies a pre-eminent position-because certain tendencies opposed even to this can still be observed in the KAP.[2] Unified, strict leadership must be expressly insisted on in opposition to these tendencies. A broader justification is surely unnecessary at this Congress. I need only state that we consider this clear, centralist leadership necessary. But equally necessary for the party bodies to accomplish their work is that this leadership have good ties with the masses. Thus, in concrete terms, the task posed is that along with centralist, strict, unified, clear, firm leadership we must establish good, well-developed ties with the masses which extend even to details.
The ties between the leadership and the masses should be created by constructing the party on the basis of democratic centralism, in accordance with the decisions of the Second Congress. This democratic centralism is not an empty bureaucratic formula but rather may be defined in other words as centralization of activity, concentration for the party of the results of its work and struggle. This is the only way to conceive of centralization. We considered it necessary, in the course of the most recent revision of our Theses, to express this idea even more explicitly. Points two and six contain an easily misunderstood formulation, which we have deleted and replaced with new language intended to express the concept of democratic centralism even more explicitly and clearly. Our proposed new version reads:
Democratic centralism in the communist party organization must be a real synthesis, a fusion of centralism and proletarian democracy. This fusion can be attained only on the basis of the ongoing common activity, the ongoing common struggle of the entire party organization.
Centralization in the communist party organization does not mean a formal and mechanical centralization but rather a centralization of communist activity, i.e., building a leadership which is strong, quick to react and at the same time flexible.
Formal or mechanical centralization would be centralization in order to dominate the rest of the membership or the masses of the revolutionary proletariat outside the party. But only the enemies of communism can assert that the Communist Party wants to dominate through its leadership of the proletarian class struggles and through the centralization of this communist leadership of the revolutionary proletariat. That is a lie; and equally incompatible with the fundamental principles of democratic centralism adopted by the Communist International is a power struggle or a fight for domination within the party.[3]
To underline this briefly once more: what we are saying here is that no leadership clique should form in the party, a leadership clique which for instance believes that because it has been handed the leadership of a central apparatus it is therefore justified in using this central apparatus to work against the express will of the majority of the party-that it, as a narrow leadership clique, can turn the central apparatus into a mechanism to impose its rule. Dangers of this sort have often been pointed out. Here it must be stated that allowing this kind of leadership domination to develop does not correspond to the will of the International. It is solely our work and the direction of this work which are to be centralist. This way we shall be able to begin our work, our struggles, and lead them in a really centralistic fashion. The road to the actual development of this democratic centralization is long. The Guidelines adopted at the Second Congress already stated that the introduction of such democratic centralization was not going to be the work of a short time or of just one year.
It was emphasized that to crystallize out the concentration and centralization of the real leadership of the party is a lengthy and difficult process. And in the Guidelines we stress that, through improvements and diligent testing of their apparatus, the parties must make sure they really have a centralization of their work and not bureaucratic centralism, so that they can achieve a real concentration of the leadership of this work.
The best insurance against bureaucratization of the apparatus is extremely active ties between the party leadership and all party bodies. These active ties also have to bring the masses of members-through constant contact with the central leadership-to realize and understand that such centralization constitutes an objectively justified strengthening and development of their collective work and struggles. The members must feel and experience for themselves that this genuinely means not an alien leadership, but rather a strengthening of their own fighting power. If centralism comes alive in this way, if it does not remain a formality but pulses with life, we will have the best protection against the danger of bureaucratism and the ossification of the apparatus. What comrade Béla Kun says in his article must be granted: namely that, aside from the Russian and this or that small party, there is scarcely any party which has yet attained the necessary living centralism; that instead centralism is still being applied much too mechanically; that we cannot yet speak of its being politically applied.
How do we arrive at a truly political application of this concept? To achieve this we inserted a section on the obligation to do work right after the section on democratic centralism. When all members are drawn into the work, they themselves are brought into very intensive contact with the leadership. And if this obligation to do work, complemented by communists’ obligation to fight, is implemented we can be assured that bureaucratism cannot hold sway. If we want to arrive at living centralism, if we want a concentration of forces which pulses with life, then we must strongly insist on the obligation to do work. Up until now it has not been possible for the great majority of our parties to activate the party’s total forces for one goal, one movement, one struggle. This must be the aim of the leaderships in the Communist Parties. They must strive zealously to integrate the entire party membership not only into the party’s work but also into its campaigns.
In the Guidelines we have given a number of instructions on this. The section is so long in order to make this clear in detail. It would not be sufficient for the Congress to pass a resolution on the obligation to do work-then nothing would change. The point is to give concrete advice on how it should be implemented. We have regarded organizational instructions for the party leaderships as necessary: how the integration, the organizing, the division of labor is to take place, how the groups and cells are to work. And we have said that the party leaderships themselves should personally take on the task of organizing such working groups and getting them going. This is absolutely necessary, for we know that working groups have still hardly gotten a foothold in the International.
In a number of parties there no doubt exist on paper such ostensible cells in the plants and trade unions, and such commissions and boards or committees, which ostensibly have particular work assignments. But I maintain that they exist only on paper. This, however, is of no use to the communist movement; rather, the point is to translate these paper creations into sober reality and to make the whole party into a working body. This comment applies particularly to legal parties. To be sure, you cannot make a fundamental distinction between legal and illegal parties, but in fact they are still very different. In an illegal party only those members who really work belong to the party, since anyone who did not work would attract attention and make himself suspect. In an illegal party do-nothing members cannot be tolerated. To this extent legal and illegal parties do differ, but this difference must be overcome by giving every individual member of a legal party an assignment. Only then will we overcome the difference between these parties and really create a precise form of party organization. We considered it necessary to give these instructions.
But there are still certain differences-which, I believe, still cannot be definitively resolved at this Congress-over whether from now on the organizations can finally be built on cells in the factories, as the basis of the organizations. The tendency established at the Second Congress was that cells in the factories should be the basis of the organizations. From reports which we have received we also know that a number of organizations, a number of illegal organizations, really do regard these cells as the basis of their organizations. But for the broad mass parties this is not at all the case. I shall have more to say about this later in connection with the section on the party organism.
Because this concept of factory cells does not yet form the basis of the party as a whole, we have so far not talked about the working groups. Working groups are instruments for parties which are still built on the basis of residential districts: even if they have such a district organization, from now on they must be required to mobilize the party forces in their residential districts. They should divide up their groups so that every group has its own work. There is a system of tens, where comrades are organized into groups of 10 to 20 in order to give them specific assignments. It is absolutely not necessary to do this so mechanically; rather, the point is to make these assignments concretely, to actually bring all members into the work. There are numerous such opportunities for work. A number of such tasks are mentioned: agitation for the press, door-to-door agitation, trade-union work, work among women, agitation among youth and much more. Working groups for all these various tasks should simply be established in the organization, and they must be put on their feet by the party leadership if they are going to function at all.
It would be wrong for a party to come here, for us to divide everything up on paper and send this schema out into the world, and then for the party to expect its individual districts to divide up their members just as schematically-and just leave it at that. Such a schematic division would be bureaucratic centralism. Instead, only a few groups and cells should be gotten into shape at first; but we must really get these cells working, in order to set into motion additional working groups in turn. A great deal of perseverance, a great deal of energy, a great deal of vitality, a great deal of time will be required to mobilize the working groups, and the parties will have to demonstrate in the course of the year whether they have grasped the essence of centralism by actually setting about the task of organizing working groups. Only in this way will we get capable parties. In addition, it is necessary to assist these working groups in the type of work they are doing, to give them a whole series of specific instructions, so that they draw the necessary conclusions from their work.
The lessons and conclusions which will result from this practical work amount to the lesson of specialization. We will see a number of specialists grow out of the working groups. This specialization is an absolute necessity. We must have trained forces with various skills corresponding to various arenas of struggle. Without this specialization, the coming struggles will not succeed; we will be unable to win the allegiance of the proletariat if we do not undertake the training of specialists. Such specialization must be cultivated, but in speaking of specialization one must warn against overdoing it. If pulsating life is withdrawn from the party, then we will have a party consisting only of specialists, where no one knows anything of the other. And that makes no sense. So it will be necessary for precisely that comrade who develops into a specialist in one group to be transferred into another group, so that he gets to know the life and efforts of other groups as well. This should by no means involve continual turnover and making a mess out of the assignments. The training of certain specialists is necessary, but a change of assignments is also useful to give an inner balance to the personnel. In this way they will embody the actual working life of the party.
While stressing that this specialization should not be overdone, I also consider it necessary to strongly emphasize the need for such a working and fighting organization to institute the practice of making regular reports. Reporting occurs automatically in the case of a number of organizations which are geared toward coming struggles-the courier system, intelligence-gathering, procuring safe houses and clandestine print shops, etc. In the case of this work the practice of making reports is fairly obvious, but unfortunately it is not obvious in a number of other kinds of activity. For example, it can happen that groups in charge of finding rooms for meetings and making preparations for meetings become ingrown, so that only this one group knows where these rooms are. That is a great error, and it runs the risk that if such teams break up then the whole apparatus is crippled. It is therefore absolutely necessary for these groups to make reports.
The Theses put explicit emphasis on making such reports, and we believe it will become an established practice in all groups, so that in this way the party will be informed of everything and will really be able to put the experiences of this or that group to use. These reports will also be very successful for training new groups in other cities. The ability of the party to act will also be increased a great deal by such reporting. For only when the party center receives a flow of reports on their activity from the widest variety of working groups will the party leadership be able to draw real conclusions concerning the extent to which the party’s activity can be increased. If no reports are received from a particular area, changes must be made there. A real activization of the party will be able to proceed through this interaction.
I will now proceed to the section “Propaganda and Action” ["On Propaganda and Agitation,” Section IV]. First I should say, by way of introduction, that because the first sentence was being incorrectly interpreted we have come up with a correction for it. The sentence now reads: Prior to the open revolutionary uprising our most general task is revolutionary propaganda and agitation. Revolutionary propaganda and agitation is described as a general preparatory task. The section dealing with struggle got short shrift in the report. A section on the organization of political struggle, which I intend to report on later, is to be added to this section on organization and propaganda.
The section on agitation and propaganda was made so detailed because there are a number of smaller parties, such as the English and American, which still think they have to apply special principles in these areas; because there are still certain syndicalist remnants in our party which continue to think only of vanguard troops in combat, believing it is not necessary to have propaganda which runs parallel to our other struggles. It must be said that agitation and propaganda cannot cease even after the revolution. The revolution does not put an end to propaganda and agitation. On the contrary, we know that in Russia after the revolution, after the conquest of political power, in the phase of highest revolutionary activity, agitation and propaganda have been intensified to the highest degree. Nowhere has more widespread agitation, more comprehensive propaganda been conducted than in Russia after the conquest of political power. The need for revolutionary propaganda has to be emphasized as strongly as possible precisely because in various places activity in the form of isolated struggles has become too much the focus of attention. Various methods of such agitation are described in the report, and I think I need not waste any more words on them now.
Direct ties with all movements which break out in the International are essential to propaganda. It should be linked to actual circumstances. Where the proletariat is in combat, where the workers are fighting to eliminate social need, we should approach them with our propaganda. And propaganda should be conducted not just with words, but also with deeds. Example is the best propaganda. If we prove ourselves as comrades-in-arms, then people will have the greatest trust in our words, in our ideas. If we prove ourselves as good leaders, good strategists, people will have the deepest trust in all our newspaper articles, our theoretical debates. Thus propaganda must be conducted not merely in words but must be united with the deed as well, to real involvement in all, even the smallest, movements of the workers. We have cited a number of very simple examples for this as well, to show quite clearly that no struggle is too small for the communists to take part in. And every issue for which the workers are really ready to struggle must become the work of the communists. We will best carry out our propaganda and agitation by linking ourselves in this way to all these movements. Propaganda and agitation tied to work, to deeds, to struggle, are things which can really advance the Communist Party. We must emphatically insist on the extreme closeness of these ties.
The point is not merely to carry our propaganda into these small-scale struggles but also to capitalize on this as well by gaining the leadership. We are firmly determined to gain this leadership, and we can do so only by leading the small struggles as well, by marching at the forefront of every struggle, of every movement, by systematically utilizing each and every movement. The Theses cite examples of this, and everyone must read them and take them not as empty words but rather as urgent commandments for every communist. In particular, the kind of struggle that should be waged in the unions is also described in detail there, so that everyone can find practical suggestions for defeating the trade-union bureaucracy and overcoming the present form of the trade unions. These offensives which should be undertaken to defeat the trade-union bureaucracy, to remove the present leading layer-this is the goal of our propaganda and agitation. These offensives must be planned and conducted very systematically, not with an occasional isolated offensive designed, so to speak, to annoy them, to harass them, to drive them to wits’ end.
Only when such appropriate means have been consistently developed will we be able to pass over from propaganda to the real leadership of the proletariat. It must also be stressed that in some countries, especially in areas where the party has to operate illegally, it is appropriate to create organizations, so-called sympathizing organizations, which allow us to extend the scope of the propaganda and agitation of the Communist Party. Such organizations exist in various countries. Where they do not, we should try to form such bodies, under more or less communist leadership, from the ranks of those in other organizations or the unorganized. These bodies will give us the possibility of gaining real access to the broader masses with our organization. This proposal will create a real possibility of ties with the broader masses for organizations which until now have only been able to work underground.
We urgently call the organization’s attention to its specific task: finding ties with the masses at any cost. To draw close to the masses, every organizational means, every variety of propaganda among these masses, is justified. The women’s and youth organizations, since they sometimes make it possible to fulfill a specific task apart from the actual legal organizations, have a very valuable service to render in this connection. We already have a whole series of such examples of how the youth organization has acted as an advance guard for the party-wherever, in a situation of illegality, we want to create broader possibilities and to really utilize these possibilities organizationally and propagandistically.
But our propaganda must also be carried into the circles of semi-proletarian layers, into the circles of peasants, the middle classes, white collar workers, etc. Propaganda among these layers is so important because even though we cannot yet count on winning them as core units for the conquest of political power, we can rid them of their fear of communism. We can destroy the terrible spectre of communism which exists in the minds of these middle layers. Our propaganda must be sharply focused on this aim. When we have freed them from this bogeyman, neutralized them to a certain degree, then in critical situations it will be much easier to wage our great decisive battles without having to pay particular attention to resistance by these circles, or even to worry about them at all.
We find these semi-proletarian layers especially in the countryside. Several speakers have already mentioned the need to neutralize the rural population and to a certain degree win their confidence. I need only remind you that the organizations should carry their propaganda systematically into these circles. The organizations must address the agricultural workers, but also the small peasants, so as to make them at least receptive to the ideas of communism. But we must also do what is necessary organizationally in order to approach them. It is not enough to have a paper that is just left lying around the Organizational Bureau, the paper must also be actually brought into the homes of the rural population. This rural agitation is very tiring and under certain circumstances also dangerous. The Junkers are past masters at inciting the rural population against us. Despite this danger we have to approach these layers, because we must not meet with their conscious opposition in the period of the seizure of power and after the seizure of power. We must have breached their resistance before that.
An organization must therefore exist to bring propaganda into these rural towns and villages. One way of doing this is to assign municipal districts with surplus forces to bring leaflets, etc. put out by the Communist Party into particular villages. Or it can be done by using the organizations which we already have in the countryside to work neighboring villages as well. We can also involve cycling or sport groups and youth associations in this propaganda work, and can see to it that the communist spirit is carried into the rural communities, preventing an ignorant barrier against communism from being erected there. Destroying this barrier is one of the most important tasks prior to the conquest of political power, so that we do not end up with a Vendée outside the gates of all the large cities, from which the troops of the counterrevolution can be recruited.
Propaganda in the armed forces, especially where there are still standing armies, is an equally important area. It is hardly appropriate to go into this in detail. It is absolutely necessary to set up in the particular countries special information centers whose job is to work out with the utmost clarity and care whatever is apt to open the minds of the soldiers. To stereotype this work or point to general methods is not useful; it depends on the particular circumstances of each individual country. But I still must mention one general point. We must point out the difference, the division, between officers and ranks in the armed forces. We must make clear to the ranks how the officers are set above them, not merely through external signs of rank but also through their economic position. How on the one hand the life of the officers is brilliant and secure, how on the other hand the future of the common soldier is absolutely hopeless. That after his discharge from the military he will of necessity do nothing but labor for others, and there is no prospect of overcoming this class division. Stressing over and over the class division in militarism-this is the best way to undermine the military class. This class division must be carried into the ranks of the military where at all possible.
I also believe this is possible in the armed gangs, the irregulars, because it is impossible to check corruption in these gangs of armed volunteers in the capitalist epoch; one must always emphasize the contradiction and introduce the process of disintegration. I just wanted to briefly underline these general principles.
I turn now to the section on the party press. I believe I need to say very little about this. The section is exhaustive and the subject was treated in great detail from very specific standpoints because the leading comrades in Russia are convinced that the press is the best means of organizing broad masses of the population for communism. And this section was worked out in the clearest possible fashion, down to the last detail, in order to push propaganda for the press to the forefront. Next year no party should be able to complain that it has a low subscription base, that it didn’t know how to build up a newspaper. By the next Congress there will be no such excuses, no party will be able to say that it did not know how to get its papers to the masses. How the press becomes an organ of struggle, how the regular collaboration of individuals truly develops the press into a living organism in the framework of the party, is described exhaustively. I emphasize this as strongly as possible, and note that these sections were written to deprive comrades of any and all excuses for the undeveloped state of the press in their countries. The comrades should not allow themselves to be guilty of any sins of omission in this most important area.
I come now to the topic of the general structure of the party organism. No, rather at this point, since I have dealt with agitation and propaganda, I must go on to the section which we want to add-the section on political struggles. We considered it necessary to insert this section because it is possible to establish certain guidelines on organizing movements, on the smallest and largest campaigns. Despite the differences in situations, certain general instructions are still necessary.
In connection with the obligation to do work, we introduce the presentation on the organization of political struggles as follows: For the Communist Party there is no time when great movements are not possible. No matter what the situation, there are various methods of going into action politically. The point is to increase our ability to exploit economic and political situations so that it develops into an art of strategy and tactics. The methods and means will vary according to the objective possibilities. One must be smart in choosing among them. But where there is determination to engage in living activity, and the party proceeds thoughtfully and is both smart and cautious, it will be possible to figure out suitable means for our campaigns. It is important that every section of the International carefully observe what is going on in neighboring countries so it learns from the campaigns of the other sections, in order to effectively utilize collective experience for activating its own campaigns. So far next to nothing has been done in this area.
Weak parties which do not yet have a sufficient corps of functionaries can use economic and political events as a link to develop revolutionary propaganda which makes the communists’ general slogans comprehensible to the workers. To do this they must utilize the ties that they have formed in the plants and the unions through the cells, through working groups. Wherever major centers of the movement emerge and we have such cells, we have to intervene with meetings to inject the party’s slogans into the masses. Where it is not possible to call our own meetings, it is helpful to make use of opponents’ meetings. These interventions must also be organized so that the result is not a disgrace but a credit to our propaganda.
When there is a prospect of winning the masses to our slogans through such radical propaganda, we should skillfully summarize our slogans and aim at getting slogans which conform to ours-at least in their general thrust-put forward and adopted at a large number of meetings, or at least win over large minorities to them. This will really give expression to the influence of the party’s ideas on the masses. We will be able to make use of this rising influence to strengthen our own ranks as well, and will have an impact on the proletarian layers as they sense a commonality. They will see the new leadership in this idea. They understand that here is something that wants to fight for them, and this will reinforce their fighting will and fighting spirit.
In general the groups that prepare these meetings and actively intervene in them must meet afterward to draw the lessons. Reports to the party committee in charge of the work should also be made, so that the general lessons can be drawn. Since such propaganda actions are supported by posters, leaflets, etc., it is important for teams to be organized that know how to carry out this work-leafleting should take place in front of plants, train stations, employment offices.
In some districts it has proved successful to find comrades who know how to combine leafleting with rapid-fire discussion: the discussions are then continued among the masses of workers streaming forward, and in this way our propaganda is automatically carried into the plants. This intensified propaganda must naturally parallel correspondingly intensified work in trade-union and plant meetings. When necessary, the comrades must also organize such meetings in the plants and unions and make sure that speakers are available to support their activity. Our party newspapers must repeatedly propagate the ideas of the particular campaigns day-in, day-out; they must place their best arguments and the greater part of their space at the disposal of such campaigns, just as the entire organizational apparatus must help advance this general idea which the party is striving to get across. The point is that the parties learn how to keep an idea which is being carried into the masses really alive for a longer time-for weeks, if necessary for months-so that the proletariat is truly inspired by this propaganda and grasps the main issue.
Small parties can also have other opportunities for activity if they are able to truly grasp their historic mission. Their immediate goal should of course be for the party to succeed in conquering the leading role in the proletariat. They must therefore consider whether or not the time has come to go over from the phase of propaganda to demonstration campaigns. Such demonstration campaigns can be carried out by both legal and illegal parties. We need only recall the shining example of the Spartakusbund and of the left USPD, which despite the most profound dangers led actions in Germany during the war under the slogan: Down With the War! Down With the Government! We need only recall Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who became casualties of this propaganda. Another example is the work of the small socialist group in England, which showed in the “Hands Off Russia” movement that demonstrating for an idea over and over again can ultimately arouse general interest in it. Similarly, during the last Polish-Russian war the Polish Communist Party sought to keep the Soviet idea and the idea of peace with Russia constantly on the agenda for weeks and months through a comprehensive propaganda campaign, to make sure this idea finally came to the fore.
We can note critically that this opportunity would also have existed for the French party if the whole party had been concentrated on these actions. It would have had such an opportunity in the case of the mobilization directed against Germany. It was just one opportunity where there weren’t sufficient preparations, where the demonstrations began too late and consequently did not attain full effectiveness. As recent reports from Italy indicate, anti-fascist sentiment has now become so broad that our party, in conjunction with other parties, can begin very active work through demonstrations. Gigantic demonstrations have already taken place. The time seems to have come when the fascist mind-set clashes so violently with the active thinking of the workers that the workers are now rebelling and turning against the fascist currents in mass actions. I believe that the Italian party is faced with the kind of movement which, if utilized, will provide it with the opportunity of taking over the leading role and advancing the proletariat very far.
Even the countries where the results of a campaign have gone to the right can also teach us some useful things about demonstration campaigns. First of all, demonstration campaigns require one thing: a very flexible and dedicated leadership. If in such a movement a leadership exists that really knows how to keep the limited aim of this campaign, of this demonstration, clearly in mind, a leadership that is capable of maintaining an overview of the changing situation at every moment, then it is necessary to be completely clear about the forms of this movement, to examine every situation closely to see whether the movement can be intensified through these demonstrations, and then to consider whether the time has come when this demonstration campaign can be expanded into large-scale actions. The peace demonstrations during the war clearly showed that the suppression of such demonstrations is not at all inevitable, that the suppression of such actions by no means necessarily leads to the collapse of the whole demonstration campaign. Even if such demonstrations lead to casualties, there can and will be situations where calling a halt is impermissible. Even where there is the danger of such casualties, such rallies must be repeated again and again; good organizational preparation will not only heighten their effectiveness but will also minimize the number of casualties.
We regard good organization and really disciplined execution of a demonstration, along with the readiness of the workers to sacrifice, as guarantees of the demonstration’s effectiveness. It is vital to learn how to carry out such actions in a truly disciplined and well-organized fashion. Our own experiences have shown that it is best to base street demonstrations on the major factories. To be sure, large demonstrations starting in residential districts can also be staged on holidays as parades, so to speak, with flags. However, such demonstrations usually do not have a revolutionary effect, but rather a certain demonstrative, festive character, a certain propaganda character. But if a truly revolutionary effect is to be achieved, then the workers must be mobilized for the demonstration straight from the factories.
In this connection the cells and fractions have extraordinarily important preparations to make. After the preliminary discussions have taken place according to plan, and a unified mood-absolutely indispensable for carrying out such actions-has been created, then we can venture a step forward. But the organization, through the cells and fractions, must have fairly well assured this unified mood in the plants, so that we do not go into the streets as loosely organized masses inspired by a variety of ideas, but rather as a group of proletarians who know very well what they are demonstrating for. To have a sturdy framework for such demonstrations, a system of cadres with authority in the plants, of the cell heads, must be set up along with the political leadership. If the time is deemed to be ripe for such demonstrations, then the workers leaders in charge, the leading functionaries, must get together with the cadres with authority in the plants to go through all the details of the action; on the next day, after such precise preparatory discussions, the demonstration can be carried out in a really unified, well-organized, disciplined way. But on the day of the demonstration as well, we need a good instrument which forms the backbone of the demonstration from the time it begins up to the time it disperses, and which is always on the spot. This is the only way the demonstration can be carried out with the least casualties but with the greatest effect. The experience gained in this action must then be studied and criticized in the group of functionaries and plant council members in the fractions, so that the basis is really laid for repeating and strengthening such demonstrations, so that broadening such actions into revolutionary mass actions becomes possible.
There are also other possibilities of campaigns to activate the masses. In all movements of the working class we always have the task of showing that we are truly the leaders of the proletariat. Everything must be done to overcome the influence of the social-traitor leaders and to force these people aside. In a period of stagnation one must strive to overcome this stagnation in the political and economic situation by employing other means of agitation, for example as the VKPD did last year with its “Open Letter.” I consider it superfluous to discuss these questions here in detail.
You will be able to read how we must effectively express the idea underlying this campaign through our plant fractions, trade-union functionaries, involvement of our newspapers, of our parliamentary fractions. The organization must prove that it does not consider a matter disposed of once it has written about it; it must prove that, if it is convinced of the rightness of its campaign, it is capable of really carrying it out and of intensifying it for weeks and months. But it is impermissible to make the error-for instance after gathering support for a form, such as was reached with the “Open Letter,” in numerous meetings, by whipping up the mood in the newspapers, through speakers in the parliamentary bodies-of then not carrying this campaign forward but rather allowing it to slack off. This kind of slackening in a campaign is the most serious mistake that organizations can make. If they cannot sustain a campaign, carry it out, then they should not initiate it in the first place but rather be content with less-they should restrict themselves to organizational consolidation.
If in this way we succeed in winning a degree of leadership in a particular economic sector where our party possesses our best organizations and where it has encountered the most widespread agreement with its demands, then organizational pressure must be propagandistically exploited to achieve recognition within the unions, etc., of the party’s leading role. Our comrades must then succeed in calling conferences of those local bodies that come out in favor of our demands; at such conferences, in turn, joint demands must be accepted. Besides adopting these resolutions, it is then necessary to consolidate the real movements as well, to make sure that all those taking part in these campaigns do everything they can to draw together movements which are already in progress or are on the verge of breaking out, so that they become a unified movement.
In this movement the communist leadership will then bring about a new concentration of power which in turn will have an impact on the social-traitor leaders. For, faced with such struggles under unified leadership, these leaders can no longer evade the issue but have to show their colors, say clearly what they want. And if we do not succeed in really harnessing them to the wagon, so to speak, then it is necessary to unmask them, to expose not only politically but also in practical organizational terms the fact that they have no intention at all of leading joint, militant movements of the proletariat. In that case we intervene independently.
But if a communist party has to make the attempt to seize leadership of the masses at a time of serious upheaval, of acute economic and political tensions, then it will have to use other methods than those of mere propaganda. It can even dispense with raising any other special slogans and demands. At such times, when the movements are growing and literally pushing toward explosions, it will have to address open calls to the workers who are on the verge of pauperization and therefore pressing for action, address the organized workers who have the leadership of such struggles wholly in their hands, to demonstrate to them that there can be no more abstention from these struggles, that the leadership of these struggles, however, cannot be allowed to remain in the hands of the social-traitors. Instead, a combative, determined leadership is now needed and the communists are combative enough to lead these small-scale struggles of the proletariat, to consolidate these small-scale struggles into major political ones.
What must be proved in these struggles is that, despite the fact that the proletariat’s last possibilities for existence are being undermined, the old organizations are trying to avoid and obstruct this struggle. The plant and trade-union organizations must make it clear in meetings, continually pointing to the combativeness of the communist workers, that abstention from the struggle is no longer permissible, and if no other party wants to take the leadership the Communist Party is the only one left to show the way out of this pauperization.
But the main task is to unify the struggles born of the situation. The cells and fractions in the trades and plants involved in such movements must not only stay in the closest organizational contact with one another but also maintain ties with the district committees and party centers. And the party centers must be committed to sending specially delegated comrades to all the areas where movements are taking place, who will seek to seize the leadership in these districts and to make sure that the unitary idea underlying these struggles actually comes to the fore, so that all workers recognize this unitary character and finally begin to perceive the political character of these struggles.
As such struggles become generalized it will be necessary to create unified bodies to lead them. If the bureaucratic strike leaderships of the unions cave in prematurely, we must be quick to push for new elections, attempting to fill the strike leadership posts with communists. If several wage struggles have already been successfully combined and several political uprisings successfully tied into these movements-for example, preventing troop transports-then a common leadership must be set up for the campaign, which to the extent possible must consist of communists, who should occupy the leading positions. In this way, trade-union fractions, plant councils, plant council plenary meetings, can provide such joint actions which represent the core-the basis-for the communist leadership, which should make the necessary preparations.
But if the movement takes on the desired political character through the interference of employers’ organizations or the intervention of government authorities, then propaganda for political workers councils must be pushed through with the necessary ruthlessness, even without trade unions. If the communists work carefully and intensively, and weigh their alternatives, they can gain the leadership of the proletariat in extensive areas through partial actions and become capable of larger struggles. But parties which have already grown strong, particularly the mass parties, should also take special organizational measures to be ready for decisive political mass actions. In mass actions, partial actions, etc., it must constantly be kept in mind that the experience of these movements must be energetically used for ever more solid ties with the broader masses.
The ties with the masses are the main thing. In plant conferences the party leaders in charge must repeatedly discuss the experience of the mass actions with the shop stewards, with the plant fractions, trade-union fractions, to make their relationship with these shop stewards more and more solid. Close bonds of mutual trust between the leading functionaries and the shop stewards are organizationally the best guarantee that political mass actions will not be initiated prematurely and that their scope will correspond to the circumstances, considering the current level of party influence. Based on such a network of tested shop stewards in the plants, a large number of organizations have led successful movements. If we look at the Russians’ revolution, we know that in Petersburg the decisive struggles were led by such a network of plant fractions, shop stewards and cells, which were very closely tied to the leadership.
But for Germany as well we can say that the last decisive struggles-in the last general strike before the conclusion of the war in 1917, in central Germany, in Berlin in the spring, in Berlin in the winter of 1918, the November revolution and the subsequent March struggles-could only have been carried out and achieved because there increasingly took shape a solid network of shop stewards which maintained the closest ties with the political leaders. Having allied themselves with the shop stewards, these leaders had the most profound influence on the masses. I remind you again that among many others it was Karl Liebknecht who always sought the closest ties with the stewards in the plants.
So all parties should do their utmost to establish these ties with the plants through the shop stewards. A very high degree of flexibility is guaranteed by this. We saw in Germany that precisely through these highly perfected organizational ties, which had nothing mechanical about them but rather grew out of the movement, it was the shop stewards who were able to lead the masses forward in the necessary armed struggles. Last year in Italy-to make a criticism-the movement, which was unquestionably a revolutionary one and found its strongest expression in the factory occupations, failed because of the union bureaucracy’s betrayal and the inadequate leadership of the party. But on the other hand it must be said that one of the main reasons for the collapse of the movement was that the factories were occupied without a thought of creating, through shop stewards, intimate ties between all the factories and the political leadership. So there too, a real, extensive system of shop stewards would have made it possible to carry the activity forward, to turn it into a real revolutionary mass movement, had close ties existed between these groups. I also believe that it would have been possible to utilize the great English miners movement if the English Party had been able to create the very closest ties with the masses through the shop stewards in every workforce.
We see how necessary it is in utilizing the situation to build up such a really active network of shop stewards, plant fractions, etc., which is the backbone of all the real activity of the parties.
Through such shop stewards and plant fractions we will not only be able to make the party as a whole more active and capable of carrying out campaigns, but will also, by virtue of the fact that the working masses see a leadership, strengthen their trust in this leadership. We will get them to have the greatest confidence in precisely this leadership, which demonstrates that it is in close touch with the factories.
I come now to the section on the structure of the party organism. In general, like the section on the press, this can be treated more briefly, although you might well demand that we go into detail on how the party is built. But we are speaking not of building the party apparatus but of the movement, of the formation of our troops and our groups. Regarding the framework of the party apparatus, we can restrict ourselves to giving some general instructions which have proved useful.
Here too one must bear in mind that the organization can be effective only if it spreads outward from the centers of power, from the main cities and industrial centers. It would be wrong to go home from Moscow now and say, we’re supposed to extend a network of organizations over the whole country; for under certain circumstances this network might be so weak that our forces could not be utilized. It is much more important to build up organizations for the main cities and industrial centers where the masses are present, where the organization can really be significant. Once an organization has been firmly established in the large towns, forces that can be spared should be used to extend an organizational network from the centers over the surrounding areas, but always with the proviso that local branches and new districts are formed only when a corps of members is present in the individual towns. This will guarantee the practical capacities of the organization.
The party with the best organization is not the one with the most branches, but the one with many capable, strong branches, and then only when this capability is demonstrated in the character of their political propaganda and activity. In the course of extending the organization more complicated situations will often be encountered, perhaps a concentration of large cities in one area. Under some circumstances it will also be necessary to build on the basis of rural organizations.
It is also important to establish ties of a flexible nature between the districts and the leading bodies. Here it is not necessary to set up a hierarchical structure of locals, counties, districts, regions and the party center. This could be a grave danger to the party’s political flexibility. The point is to bring all places where party forces are concentrated into immediate contact with the center by dividing the country up into districts, creating independent districts wherever a number of cities are concentrated, districts which will also receive information directly from the party. In general the mutual exchange of information and instruction is an important task the organizational apparatus has to fulfill. What Béla Kun says on this subject in his pamphlet is correct:
In the party there has been a complete lack of political correspondence and of continual, direct and systematic verbal instruction. The natural foundation for this instruction is a systematic information service.
Such a thorough, systematic information service, which is a vital necessity, must protect the Party against routinism and bureaucratization. Béla Kun says at another point:
Only an information service that has become mechanical but is free of the defects of any kind of routinism will make possible the sort of information work which will fully unify the work of the party and create a real and firm centralization.
Providing ongoing, regular, good information, along with the obligation to do work, is the best way of overcoming bureaucratism.
In our guidelines on structure we also give a series of instructions on how to build the party center so that it will be flexible. I would like to remind all parties of this point, number 40.[4] We refer there to the division of labor. We point out that the division of labor in the districts must be implemented centrally. But a continual rotation of personnel must occur there as well.
One more word on this rotation of personnel. Comrades who had been active for a long time as political secretaries sometimes became very bureaucratic in this work. It did them a lot of good when we removed them from these posts and made them into editors. On the other hand the editors were inclined to underrate organizational work, and it was very good to put editors in such organizational posts and the comrades from the organization on the editorial staff. The party definitely benefited from this: the former editors did excellent work in the organization just as the former secretaries did well on the editorial staff. But we also had good experience rotating such functionaries in campaigns. Functionaries who had become rooted in districts where they had all sorts of personal and family ties and could absolutely not be gotten moving were our best forces when we transferred them to another district. Thus this personnel rotation was a means for enlivening the party. There is also a series of modifications to this section, which have been distributed to you.
I will go on now to the last section: legal and illegal work. The title of the section is misleading and will also be changed. What is described there is that the illegal and legal party are not two different things but rather continually overlap. Here we must correct the resolutions of the Second Congress a bit. Comrade Béla Kun in his pamphlet hit the correct formulation in speaking of “the great organizational task of placing the whole party at the service of illegal organizational preparation to make revolutionary struggles a reality.”
The comrade then gives some examples of how a parallel illegal apparatus became autonomous-in Berlin this apparatus broke away and plunged into armed struggles in Mansfeld. “It is necessary,” says Kun, “for the entire party organization to adapt itself to the forms of struggles in such a way that, by the very nature of its organizational setup, it will be unable to break away either organizationally or politically from the legal organization, even for a very short time.” He then protests against the Theses, which say at this point concerning the tasks of the party: “As a result of the state of siege, of exceptional laws, it is not possible for these parties to carry on their entire work legally,” and he considers it necessary to create an illegal apparatus, while emphasizing that the party’s entire organizational apparatus must be geared toward legal or illegal activity. And we attempt to make clear what this legal and illegal activity is, so that everyone sees that the organizations should indeed be trained for legal and illegal work.
Now, someone will say there is too little in this section. Quite true. But someone else will say: too much. We believe we have found a happy medium to give an indication of this, to make it clear how one flows over into the other. Only when the party is really capable of comprehending this organizational principle of democratic centralism: the obligation to do work; when it acts as a genuine collective of struggle in conducting agitation and propaganda, carrying out political struggles and producing its press; when the party implements what we have said in the structure of its party organism-only then can we assume that at the next Congress we will see parties which can truly be given the honorable title of Communist Parties.
Comrades, with that I have come to the end of the main part of my speech. I still have to say a few words about the second section-which can be much shorter-on the organizational structure of the Communist International and its relationship to the member parties. In Moscow[5] you found a proposal made by the German Communist Party at its Party Committee meeting of May 5. Negotiations took place with representatives of the Executive on the basis of this proposal and the result is now a resolution which I place before you for adoption, a resolution which actually fulfills all the essential wishes expressed in the German resolution.
So what are these wishes which we would like to have fulfilled? Some of them were already discussed when we heard the Executive’s trade-union report. These matters were already taken care of in the resolution presented at the conclusion of the discussion on the report of the Executive. This resolution states: “The Congress expects that the Executive, with the increased participation of the member parties in creating a better communications apparatus, and through the increased collaboration of the parties in the Executive, will be able to fulfill its growing tasks to a greater extent than previously.”
In addition, this resolution calls for the parties to furnish their best personnel for the Executive as the leadership of the whole international fighting movement. The resolution I am recommending to you for adoption was drafted from this political point of view. I will first read it to you and then perhaps motivate it with a few short remarks. The resolution reads:
The Third World Congress declares that the time has come in the development of the Communist International to pass over from the stage of influencing the masses in the capitalist and colonial countries through propaganda and agitation, to the ever more tightly organized actual political and organizational leadership of the revolutionary proletarian forces of all countries. The Executive of the Communist International shall be enlarged so as to enable it to take a position on all questions demanding action by the proletariat, such as, for example, the ever more burning problems of mass unemployment, the aggravation-laden with violent conflict-of the political relations of the capitalist governments (such as sanctions and the implementation of sanctions, peace treaties and the new arms race between America, England and Japan). Above and beyond the general calls issued on such critical questions up to now, the Executive shall increasingly go over to finding ways and means to initiate in practice a unified organizational and propagandistic intervention on international issues by the various sections. The Communist International must mature into an International of the deed, into the international leadership of the common daily struggle of the revolutionary proletariat of all countries. The prerequisites for this are:
I. The member parties of the Communist International must do their utmost to maintain the closest and most active ties with the Executive: they must not only provide the best representatives of their country for the Executive, but must judiciously and persistently supply the Executive with constant and reliable information so that the Executive can take positions on political problems that arise based on actual documents and comprehensive materials.
II. The member parties must increasingly feel themselves to be in fact sections of a common international party.
They must therefore maintain the closest informational and organizational ties among themselves, particularly when they are in neighboring countries and therefore have an equally intense interest in the political conflicts arising from capitalist antagonisms. This relationship of common action can at present be initiated most effectively by sending representatives to each other’s most important conferences and by the exchange of suitable leading personnel. This exchange of leading personnel must immediately become an obligatory arrangement for all sections which are in any way capable of it.
III. The Executive shall promote this necessary fusion of all national sections into a single International Party of common proletarian propaganda and action by publishing a press correspondence in western Europe in all major languages, through which the application of the communist idea must be made steadily clearer and more uniform, and which by providing reliable and steady information will establish the basis for active, simultaneous intervention by the various sections.
IV. By sending fully empowered members of the Executive to western Europe and America, the Executive must give effective organizational support to the effort to achieve a genuine International of the common daily struggle of the proletariat of all countries. The task of these representatives would be to acquaint the Executive Committee with the particular conditions under which the Communist Parties of the capitalist and colonial countries must struggle, and they would also have to make sure that these parties maintain the closest, most intimate ties both with the Executive and with one another, increasing their collective striking power. The Executive, along with the parties, shall ensure that communication between it and the individual Communist Parties-both in person through trusted representatives and through written correspondence-shall take place more frequently and more quickly than has been possible to date, so that a common position on all major political questions can be arrived at.
V. To be able to undertake this extraordinarily increased activity, the Executive must be considerably expanded. The Congress shall elect the president and shall instruct the Executive to appoint three directing secretaries, to be drawn from different parties to the extent possible. In addition to them, the members of the Executive sent to Moscow by the various sections are obligated to take part in carrying out the ongoing work of the Executive and Secretariat through their particular national departments or by taking over the handling of entire specific fields as rapporteurs. The countries which are to have voting members on the Executive shall be determined by a special decision of the Congress, and the number of their votes shall also be regulated by Congress decision. The members of the administrative smaller bureau are elected specially by the Executive.
VI. The seat of the Executive Committee is Russia, the first proletarian state. When possible, however, the Executive shall attempt to expand its sphere of activity, including organizing conferences outside Russia, to more and more firmly centralize the organizational and political leadership of the entire International.[6]
I recommend that you adopt this resolution, after a preliminary discussion on it has taken place. It does not need much explanation; I would only like to emphasize in particular that the parties must really decide to place their best people at the disposal of the Executive so that the demands of the resolution are implemented in this regard as well, namely that the individual representatives should serve on the Executive not only as rapporteurs on their countries but also as experts on specific problems. We need such personnel. We cannot keep on demanding that Russia furnish all these people, but rather we must send leading comrades here and see to it that the Executive becomes more active. It is very easy to say that the Executive must inform us concerning this or that case, for instance the Levi case; yet the representatives on the delegations traveled through Germany and spent at least 24 hours in Berlin, where they could have informed themselves in detail. Such objections are inadmissible in an international party that calls itself communist.
Closer ties must be established in the International, and the individual sections must do everything to bring about such closer ties. Joint campaigns, joint assistance can take on very different forms. One should not think that the revolution is developing everywhere in a uniform way. There are a whole number of possibilities for mutual assistance in the most varied kinds of campaigns and propaganda. For example, if large demonstrations are already taking place in one country, another country can take up these demonstrations in its press, in its propaganda.
If demonstrations over some international question have led to heavy losses and battles in one country, the other countries can at least unconditionally solidarize with the neighboring proletariat through speeches in parliament. If large-scale economic struggles break out where it is not yet possible to provide really active assistance, the neighboring countries must be inspired by a fighting spirit that really gives expression to the workers’ fraternal support through appeals, rallies and financial contributions. Thus there will be a whole series of possibilities for forging stronger ties among the national organizations, not only ties between the Executive and the individual parties.
The bourgeoisie is creating such centralization for itself. At the Congress of the Trade Union International, I had the opportunity to point out that just recently in Berlin the chief of political espionage, state prosecutor Weißmann, negotiated with the heads of the French and English secret police on creating an organization to prevent communist troublemakers from escaping if Russia collapses or other such complications arise. They are preparing for every eventuality, even for the most contrived and ingenious possibilities. Seeing that the international bourgeoisie is already making such complicated agreements across all borders, we too must take the first steps toward international parties, not only through resolutions but through practical organizational measures as well. Only then will it be true that the International will really be the human race. (Vigorous applause)
SCHAFFNER (Switzerland): Comrades! I move that these Theses on organizational questions be sent back to the Commission without discussion as being an unsuitable basis for discussion. A Commission was appointed some time ago which was supposed to draft these Theses. Instead we have before us 18 pages, written in a fairly questionable journalistic style, 18 pages of mishmash, which does indeed contain some good ideas, but is kept so vague, so blurred, that it does not deserve the name “Theses” at all. Because if we were to begin to criticize it here, we would have to begin with stylistic corrections, textual corrections; we would have to write the whole thing over again, so that any sort of discussion would be fruitless. So I request, or move, to reject these Theses without discussion, and to instruct the Commission to meet tomorrow, not waiting until one o’clock but as early as possible, so that new theses, which perhaps can take what is good and useful from these Theses, can be worked out and presented to the Congress.
I also move that the extraordinarily important questions of reorganizing the International and the Executive not be swept under the rug by a resolution which is highly debatable and, I believe, known to very few people in the entire hall, but rather that these questions which are of such great importance for the International be properly prepared by a commission with representatives from all the delegations and that a commission be appointed for this particular question as well, which is also to meet early tomorrow morning and present this work tomorrow evening.
ZINOVIEV: Comrades! It seems to me that comrade Schaffner has judged the Theses somewhat too categorically. He has moved to reject this “mishmash” without discussion. I think he is completely wrong. The Theses were drafted by a number of comrades. Perhaps the German wording worked out by our internationally motley crew really is somewhat difficult to understand. But the content of these Theses is in my opinion quite correct and very good. They contain a great number of valuable and very important things for all the parties. I will cite only one section, for example the obligation of all members to do work, propaganda, etc. I believe, comrades, that we absolutely must and shall adopt these Theses by and large. But obviously this should happen after a discussion. If the comrades are so tired that no discussion can take place, or if the French version has not yet been distributed, then we should hold off on the discussion. First of all, the Commission should work tomorrow, but by no means should the Theses simply be rejected. I repeat: anyone who has read the Theses attentively will come to the conclusion that they are by and large very good, quite correct and very important for the movement. (Agreement)
Comrades! No countermotion was made to comrade Schaffner’s second motion. I didn’t hear it. But I am told that comrade Schaffner moved to create a special commission on the question of the composition of the Executive. I believe, comrades, that all parties had the opportunity and today still have the opportunity to send representatives to the Organization Commission. This Commission should discuss the question. I remind you that we are very tired, that it would in fact be hard to put together a special commission. The parties should be requested to send their representatives to the Organization Commission, so that both questions can be dealt with in a single commission. (Agreement)
[VAILLANT-COUTURIER]:[7] Comrades, the French delegation has considered the question of the organization of the International previously raised by comrade Koenen, and yesterday evening our section meeting decided to request that the Congress create a commission to study this question. But since we are faced with the fact that a commission has already been appointed to study organization, we request that two sub-commissions be created immediately: one for the study of organizational questions and the other concerning the organization of the International. We request that these commissions be set up at once, since the question of the organization of the Executive Committee is exceedingly important.
KOLAROV (Chair): The Congress can take note of the proposal of the French delegation and pass it on to the Commission, because it is of a practical nature.
Since no one else has requested the floor, I declare the debate on this question closed on condition that the Commission deal most thoroughly with all these extremely important questions.
Before the session concludes, there are several announcements to be made.
VAILLANT-COUTURIER: It goes without saying that several delegates can be sent from each country.
KOLAROV (Chair): Several delegates can be sent by the Commission, since there are two sub-commissions.
DELAGRANGE: You understand that we cannot debate the proposed Theses, since we do not yet even have them. The same thing will be true in the Commission meeting tomorrow if the Theses do not get printed. Therefore the French delegation requests that it receive the Theses before the beginning of the Commission meeting.
KOLAROV (Chair): Measures have already been taken to see to this.
Session adjourned 10:30 pm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1. This sentence is garbled in the German original, but Koenen seems to be making a point that he made at the 1920 founding conference of the VKPD in his report on “The Organization of the Party”:
Historically, this federalism is understandable. For at the time the Independent Social Democratic Party was founded in Gotha this federalism was justified: at that time the rebellion of the individual districts and locals against the inactive and passive center in Berlin was necessary.
Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Vereinigungsparteitages der U.S.P.D. (Linke) und der KPD (Spartakusbund) (Berlin: Frankes Verlag, G.m.b.H., 1921), 110. Translation by PRL.
2. Koenen is referring to the Communist Workers Party of Germany (Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands), an ultra-left party formed after a split at the Second Congress of the KPD in October 1919. A delegation from the KAPD attended the Comintern’s Third Congress, but it refused to abide by the decision of the Congress and merge with the VKPD. The Comintern soon broke off relations with the KAPD, and it degenerated into a small sect.
3. This wording differs slightly from the final version adopted by the Congress. See point 6 of the Resolution.
4. This corresponds to point 48 in the final text of the Resolution.
5. Moscow was the daily journal of the Third Congress. The German Party’s proposal appeared in the French-language issue dated 10 July 1921.
6. This text is not the final text of the Resolution adopted by the Congress.
7. The German Protokoll shows no change of speaker here, but it is apparent that a representative of the French delegation is now speaking. The Russian stenographic report indicates that this is Vaillant-Couturier.
*********
Comintern 1921
Appendix B
Report of the Commission on Organisation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: by Wilhelm Koenen, Including Discussion on the Report and Voting on the Organizational Resolutions.
Transcribed and Translated: by Prometheus Research Library;
From the stenographic record of the 24th session of the Third Congress of the Communist International 12 July 1921, 9 pm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KOENEN: Comrades! The Organization Commission has had extensive meetings in two sub-commissions and gone over the entire draft. A whole series of minor changes have been made, which were all accepted unanimously by the Commission. In addition a number of cuts have been made, which were also accepted unanimously by the Organization Commission. And then a number of motions for additions have been drawn up, which I will announce.
First, an essential change and addition to the section on democratic centralism has been proposed. This amendment has already been submitted to you in the proofs in all languages, and I do not need to go through it. This proposed change was also accepted unanimously. It makes the concept of democratic centralism somewhat clearer and more comprehensible.
The next important addition concerns agitation and propaganda among national minorities. A specific injunction has been inserted on carrying out this agitation and propaganda quite vigorously, and wherever possible in the language of these minorities. The formulation of the trade-union question, the treatment of wage agreements, has been framed more clearly so that no principled disputes over wage agreements can arise.
The paragraph on “Propaganda in the Army and Navy” was reformulated, and in particular the point was added that, in countries where a standing army still exists, agitation must take into account that in the future the rank and file will be extremely closely bound to the fate of the exploited class. Finally, a specific proposal on the way to deal with troops composed of officers and the student corps was adopted.
The addition on the organization of political struggles that I proposed to you in my report and which during my presentation I read to you almost in its entirety, was accepted in its essentials. Only a few deletions were made, owing to the fact that these ideas essentially were already contained in the Theses on Tactics.
Another point on the participation of the press in carrying out political campaigns was added, and particularly on how editors are to be brought into closer contact with the entire activity of the party and how uniformity is to be introduced into the party press for its revolutionary work, as well as a proposed amendment dealing with the journals, pamphlets and other theoretical and propagandistic publications of the party. All these things are to be included in a centralized manner, consistent with the campaigns of the party.
There was an addition made concerning the social-democratic and independent-socialist press, saying how to conduct subscription work in opposition to it. Here too there was unanimity in the Commission that such an amendment should be made.
Regarding the election of central leaderships in the section on the “Structure of the Party Organism,” there was a dispute as to whether the party leadership should be responsible only to the party congress or to the International Executive Committee as well. The latter proposal was unanimously accepted by the Commission.
The proposals that the leadership, including the narrower leading body, be elected only by the party congress were revised, and it was decided that it should be optional whether the election of the narrower leading body should take place directly at the party congress or should be done by the elected central committees, or else by the Beirat or Central Ausschuß. The changes were accepted unanimously.
In various places insertions were made on the necessity of creating special working groups, and under some circumstances special leadership bodies, for agitation among women and in rural areas. The same thing was also decided for the Red Aid. The assumption is that special departments for aiding the victims of white terror are to be created by the individual parties.
With regard to the subordination of the various party bodies, the Theses were lacking a clear expression of the fact that the parliamentary deputies are also subordinate to the central party leadership. An insertion was made to take care of this. Acting on a suggestion, we added a recommendation that all parties have a special audit commission, charged with inspecting the treasury and books and reporting regularly to the expanded Ausschuß, Beirat, etc. on its work and findings.
Some comrades on the Commission wished at least to define freedom of criticism in the Theses, with some limitations. The Commission acceded to this wish and found a formulation which I would like to read because of the general interest:
In order, however, that every party decision be carried out energetically by all party organizations and members, the broadest mass of the party must whenever possible be involved in examining and deciding every question. Party organizations and party authorities also have the duty of deciding whether questions should be discussed publicly (press, pamphlets) by individual comrades, and if so, in what form and scope.[1]
There was unanimous agreement on this suggestion. We also changed the sentence that said one is just a bad communist when he forgets himself and attacks the Communist Party in public.
The section on “Illegal and Legal Work” is now called “On the Combination of Legal and Illegal Work.” What we are saying here is that there is no contradiction between legal and illegal work, but rather that the two must overlap. A number of points in this section were formulated more cautiously, some deletions were made, so that bourgeois governments would not be able to make too much out of it. It was also considered necessary to insert some formulations warning of the need for caution in accepting new members. Penetration by unreliable members should be prevented by drawing up candidacy lists. However, for the time being it is left up to individual comrades to implement this regulation in their own sections in whatever way is possible. To prevent spies and provocateurs from penetrating our illegal work it is suggested that comrades who want to do illegal work be specially tested in legal activity first. Finally, to note that there were objections to the phrase “before the revolution”; it has been replaced throughout by the expression “before the open revolutionary uprising.”
So those are the essential changes to the present draft on the organization of the party that we are proposing to you. The title will then read: “Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of the Communist Party, on the Methods and Content of Its Work.”
I come now to the section dealing with the Resolution on the Organization of the Communist International. The resolution has been changed in a few places. In the introduction a few deletions were made that did not affect the essentials. This is on the premise that what has been deleted had already been said in earlier resolutions. Similarly, in the first paragraph of point 2, the sentence that the sections of the International should maintain the closest contact with one another was deleted; instead we immediately say how they should do this. Essential changes were actually made only in the last point. It now reads as follows:
V. To be able to take on this extraordinarily increased activity, the Executive must be considerably expanded. Those sections which were granted 40 votes by the Congress shall each have 2 votes in the Executive, as shall the Executive of the Communist Youth International; those sections which have 30 and 20 votes at the Congress, one vote each. The Communist Party of Russia shall have five votes, as in the past. The representatives of the remaining sections shall have consultative votes. The president of the Executive shall be elected by the Congress. The Executive is instructed to appoint three secretaries, to be drawn from different sections if possible. In addition to them, the members of the Executive sent by the sections are obligated to take part in carrying out the ongoing work through their particular national departments or by taking over the handling of entire specialized fields as rapporteurs. The members of the administrative Smaller Bureau are elected specially by the Executive.[2]
There were some differences over this point; votes were taken to determine which sections should receive 2 votes. However, the proposal presented to you here was accepted by a large majority.
There was also a dispute on whether the members of the administrative Smaller Bureau should be elected by the Executive from among its own members or whether the Executive should also be entitled to take into the Smaller Bureau comrades who happen not to belong to the Executive. It was finally decided to formulate the sentence in such a way that the Executive has freedom in this regard. However, opinion still remains divided on this point, and we still need to arrive at an agreement on this.
Finally, the Commission which dealt with international questions also went over a number of other requests. These requests, which do not absolutely need to be discussed in a general session, were for the most part referred to the new Executive for consideration. It was proposed that a control commission be created for the activity of the Executive, specifically for what the Executive is to undertake with the parties in particular countries and what the sections are to do. It was not possible to present a finished plan for this. However, the Commission considered this question so important that it did not want to leave it unresolved until the next Congress but thought that we have to find a solution now. The Commission unanimously proposes to first adopt a provisional arrangement, to set up a provisional control commission, so that the new Executive reaches full agreement with the first voting group, that is, with the leaderships of the largest delegations. If agreement is reached between the first voting group and the Executive, then this provisional control commission is to function for this year. As to these two groups and the Executive, the delimitation of their activities should also be done on a provisional basis. However the Commission proposes unanimously that we stipulate now that in general this commission should not have greater rights than the control commissions of the individual national organizations and that in general it is not to decide political matters. This is the proposal we present to the Congress in this matter. We ask everyone to adopt these proposals without extensive dispute in so far as possible. (Vigorous agreement)
There is a proposal that the Executive be enlarged by one representative, giving a representative with decisive vote to the Indian communist movement; he previously could take part in the proceedings only with consultative vote. The Presidium has no objection to this. We believe this is a supportable proposal.
In addition, an amendment has been put forward to elect the members of the Smaller Bureau solely from among the members of the Executive. Does someone want to speak to this?
SOUVARINE demands a roll-call vote of the delegations be taken here in the plenum.
RADEK: Comrades! In the name of the Russian delegation I oppose this motion, for the following reasons. All political decisions are made by the Executive. The primary task of the Small Bureau is to lead illegal work based on the political decisions of the Executive. In various situations we may need comrades for this work who at the given moment-largely for reasons of chance, because they were not at the Congress-were not elected to the Executive, could not have been elected.
Likewise, when we send a representative abroad, we have not been able to limit ourselves to members of the Executive in selecting representatives, but have also had to send responsible comrades from outside the Executive to do this work. We have always done this. The Executive must also have the possibility of agreeing to have comrades who are not members of the Executive serve on the Small Bureau. It is purely formal schematic thinking that speaks against this; the experience of our movement speaks for it. Taking care of illegal matters demands much greater elasticity. It is characteristic that this motion was made by representatives of organizations which have not had to do any extensive illegal work. (Objection) I ask you to reject the motion. It is no great question of principle. If the Congress decides otherwise, we will have to work accordingly. But such a decision would make our work more difficult.
KOENEN: Does anyone want the floor?
KORITSCHONER: We ask you to vote for comrade Souvarine’s motion. It will not do for comrades who are not sent by the delegation of their country to get onto the Smaller Bureau of the Executive. The Smaller Bureau is a committee of the Executive and as such it must have an analogous composition and develop organically out of it. Everywhere else people are always for organic development. I would like to point out that achieving organizational clarity is an indispensable necessity, and this is the only way to do it. At the same time we must state that the motion has also been signed by delegations that have repeatedly been compelled to carry out illegal work.
WALECKI: Comrades, I must speak against the proposed improvement introduced by a group of delegations, for the following reason: up until now we have had an Executive that was not adequate either in number or in other respects to provide candidates for the Smaller Bureau. At this Congress we have decided to strengthen the Executive and to call upon the parties of the other countries to send their best people as delegates to Moscow. But at this moment we cannot yet predict the extent to which the parties will respond to this call. We cannot yet tell whether it might not still be necessary in the future to look outside the Executive Committee for personnel capable of exercising all the functions of members of the Smaller Bureau. We cannot tie the hands of the Executive Committee in this respect. The responsibility of selection must be left to it. This kind of representation is also permissible from a formal standpoint. Thus comrades who are not directly members of their party leadership are delegated to the Executive by various parties. As a rule the Executive will certainly elect its own members to the Smaller Bureau. But one must not forbid it in advance to draw in one or two persons in exceptional cases who at the given moment are not members of the Executive.
[VAILLANT-COUTURIER:[3] The French delegation defends the amendment proposed to you. Comrade Radek, who spoke very energetically against it, has just stated that this is not a question of principle. Nevertheless, it would be useful to make sure that the Small Bureau, which has special significance and is in permanent session, must consist of accountable members. We consider that the objection made by comrade Radek concerning the special tasks of the Small Bureau and the need to include members tested in illegal work is insufficient for rejecting the amendment. We think that the members of the Executive who constitute the Small Bureau can in case of need create for themselves a technical auxiliary apparatus for specific individual cases. Finally, comrade Walecki explained that it is difficult to find the seven people necessary for the Small Bureau among the thirty members of the expanded Executive. This explanation gives an unflattering assessment of the clandestine abilities of our comrades. On this basis, the French delegation requests a vote on the proposed amendment, believing that it very much simplifies the task of the International. The delegation thinks that with its adoption more convenient and productive work will prove possible. The delegation affirms that this is in no way a manifestation of distrust, since the debate exclusively concerns the method of work necessary for the International to seriously take up its affairs and fulfill to the end its revolutionary duty.]
KOENEN: There are no further requests for the floor. Therefore we must take a vote on the motion.
RADEK: If a motion is signed by a number of delegations-Australia, Austria, etc.-it is necessary to ask whether other delegations support this motion, since the matter is not settled by raising voting cards.
KOENEN (Chair): We now come to the vote by delegations. The delegations which are for having only members of the Executive be members of the Smaller Bureau should vote yes. Those for adopting the original text as I presented it for the Commission vote no, thus rejecting the amendment.
POGANY: The question is incorrectly posed. The yes vote has to be those who accept the Commission’s proposal.
KOENEN (Chair): To make the matter even clearer it should be stated: for the Souvarine amendment or for the proposal of the Commission. Then I think there can be no more confusion.
SOUVARINE: This way of posing the question is unacceptable to us. In fact we are not touching the Commission text at all. The vote should be for or against the amendment.
VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I request that all the countries that have co-signed the amendment be read out.
RADEK: Comrades, comrade Souvarine is playing hide-and-seek. It is a fact that the motion was voted down twice in the Commission. So the motion is counterposed to the Commission’s motion. The Commission’s motion grants the Executive the right to draw in comrades from outside the Executive for the necessary work. The French comrades reject this. Their amendment is therefore a countermotion. For this reason the vote must be: for the Commission or for the Souvarine motion.
KOENEN (Chair): The Presidium will no longer grant the floor to anyone else but will take the vote. The vote will be taken as follows: whoever is for the Commission’s motion must state that he is voting for the motion of the Commission. Whoever is for the amendment must state: for Souvarine’s amendment. I will comply with the request to read off the delegations that signed the amendment: the French, Spanish, Swiss, Yugoslav, Austrian and Australian delegations.
We come now to the voting. I ask the delegations for which motion they are voting. Russia: for the Commission. Germany: Commission. France: against the Commission. Italy: Commission. Czechoslovakia: 30 for Souvarine, 10 for the Commission. Youth group: against the motion of the Commission. Poland: for the Commission. Ukraine: Commission. Bulgaria: amendment. Yugoslavia: amendment. Norway: Commission. England: Commission. America: Commission. Spain: amendment. Finland: Commission. Holland: Commission. Belgium: amendment. Rumania: 5 for the Commission, 15 amendment. Latvia: Commission. Switzerland: amendment. Hungary: 10 for the Commission, 10 for the amendment. Sweden: already left. Austria: amendment. Azerbaijan: Commission. Georgia: Commission. Lithuania: Commission. Luxembourg: amendment. Turkey: not present. Estonia: absent. Denmark: Commission. Greece: amendment. South Africa: Commission. Iceland: Commission. Korea: absent. Mexico: absent. Armenia: Commission. Argentina: Commission. Australia: Commission. New Zealand: absent. Dutch Indies: absent.
The voting is concluded.
Comrades, although the exact count of the results is not yet known, we do know that a large majority is for the motion of the Commission. (Applause) Taking an average, the majority amounts to approximately 150 votes.
Following the vote comrade Zinoviev now has the floor.
ZINOVIEV: Comrades, this is the only roll-call vote during the entire Congress, and it really concerns only a very minor matter. For this reason I believe we should try to find a formula that we can perhaps all agree on. I propose that, despite this glorious victory (Laughter), we make a concession to those who proposed the motion, namely by saying that the members of the Smaller Bureau should as a rule consist only of members of the Executive and that a different procedure can be followed only as an exception. For we are really dealing only with an exceptional case. Obviously, as a rule it should and will only be members of the Executive. The only thing demanded by the exigencies of the work is that the members of the Executive not be tied down. It is obviously not a matter of distrust on the part of those who proposed the amendment but of the method of work. And since we have the experience of the Executive over the past two years, we do ask you to recognize that it will be more useful to allow such an exception, and as a rule it ought to be as the comrades of the French delegation request. I believe that in a vote along these lines-several comrades have promised this-we will receive a compact majority.
KOENEN (Chair): So the formulation is now as follows: the members of the administrative Small Bureau are specially elected by the Executive. As a rule they should be drawn from the members of the Executive. A different procedure can be followed in exceptional cases. That is comrade Zinoviev’s proposal.
There is no opposition to this formulation. Therefore we will take another vote, superseding the previous vote. All those in favor of this amendment, please raise their green cards. (This is done.) Adopted with one vote against.
After this vote I can now assume that the entire draft of the Organization Commission on the methods of work, as well as the resolution on international organization has been accepted. All who wish to express this, please raise their cards. (This is done.) Adopted unanimously.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1. This wording differs slightly from the final version adopted by the Congress. See point 51 of the Resolution.
2. This is not the final text as adopted by the Congress.
3. This speech was not recorded in the German Protokoll. We have translated it from the Russian stenographic report, Tretii vsemirnyi kongress Kommunisticheskogo Internatsionala; stenograficheskii otchet (Petrograd: Gos. izd-vo, 1922), 485.
Markin comment:
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
***********
Markin comment on this article:
In the history of the communist movement, since right from the days of Marx and Engels, the question of the organization of the revolution has been intermingled with all the political questions associated with that struggle. For anarchists and others the organization question is sealed with seven seals (or more) but for those of us who stand in the early Bolshevik tradition handed down from the Russian revolution in 1917 it is key. And that question is linked up, sealed up, if you like, with the notion of a vanguard party. These documents and reports from the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1921 are a codification of that experience. For those who think that international imperialism, led by the American monster, will crumble on its own, or worst, can be just patched up brand new with a little tweaking don’t read this material, all other read and re-read this stuff until your eyes are sore.
*********
Third Congress of the Comintern 1921
Resolution on the Organization of the Communist International
Adopted at the 24th Session of the Third Congress of the Communist International,
12 July 1921
The Executive of the CI shall be enlarged so as to enable it to take a position on all questions demanding action by the proletariat. Above and beyond the general calls issued on such critical questions up to now, the Executive shall increasingly go over to finding ways and means to initiate in practice a unified organizational and propagandistic intervention in international issues by the various sections. The CI must mature into an International of the deed, into the international leadership of the common daily struggle of the revolutionary proletariat of all countries. The prerequisites for this are:
1. The member parties of the CI must do their utmost to maintain the closest and most active ties with the Executive: they must not only provide the best representatives of their country for the Executive but must judiciously and persistently supply the Executive with constant and reliable information so that the Executive can take positions on political problems that arise based on actual documents and comprehensive materials. In order to use this material productively, the Executive must organize departments for all specialized fields. In addition, an international economics/statistics institute for the workers movement and communism is to be established, attached to the Executive.
2. The member parties must maintain the closest informational and organizational ties among themselves, particularly when they are in neighboring countries and therefore have an equally intense interest in the political conflicts arising from capitalist antagonisms. This relationship of common action can at present be initiated most effectively by sending representatives to each other’s most important conferences and by the exchange of suitable personnel. This exchange of suitable personnel must immediately become a permanent arrangement for all sections which are in any way capable of it.
3. The Executive shall promote the necessary fusion of all national sections into a unified international party of common proletarian propaganda and action by publishing a political correspondence in western Europe in all major languages, through which the application of the communist idea must be made steadily clearer and more uniform, and which, by providing reliable and steady information, will create the basis for active, simultaneous intervention by the various sections.
4. By sending fully empowered representatives of the Executive to the sections, the Executive can give effective organizational support to the effort to achieve a genuine International of the common daily struggle of the proletariat of all countries. The task of these representatives is to acquaint the Executive with the particular conditions under which the Communist Parties of the capitalist and colonial countries must struggle. They must also make sure that these parties maintain the most intimate ties both with the Executive and with one another, increasing the striking power of each. The Executive, along with the parties, shall ensure that communication between it and the individual member parties-both in person through trusted representatives and by means of written correspondence-shall take place more frequently and more quickly than it has to date, so that a common position on all major political questions will be arrived at.
5. To be able to take on this extraordinarily increased activity, the Executive must be considerably expanded. The sections which were granted 40 votes by the Congress shall each have two votes in the Executive, as shall the Executive of the Communist Youth International; the sections which had 30 and 20 votes at the Congress shall each have one vote. The Communist Party of Russia shall have five votes at its disposal, as in the past. The representatives of the remaining sections shall have consultative votes. The president of the Executive shall be elected by the Congress. The Executive is instructed to appoint three secretaries, to be drawn from different sections if possible. In addition to them, the members of the Executive sent by the sections are obligated to take part in carrying out the ongoing work through their particular national departments or by taking over the handling of entire specific fields as rapporteurs. The members of the administrative smaller bureau are elected specially by the Executive, as a rule from among the members of the Executive; exceptions are permissible in special cases.
6. The seat of the Executive is Russia, the first proletarian state. The Executive shall, however, attempt to expand its sphere of activity, including organizing conferences outside of Russia, in order to more firmly centralize the organizational and political leadership of the entire International.
*********
Comintern 1921
Appendix A
Report on the Organization Question
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: by Wilhelm Koenen. Including Discussion on the Report From the stenographic record of the 22nd session of the Third Congress of the Communist International 10 July 1921, 7 pm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KOENEN: Comrades, first of all a little apology. The report on the organization of the parties, the methods and content of their work, was assigned to me only in the course of the last week; consequently there was a certain delay in dealing with it, and it was also not possible to finish revising the Theses in an entirely regular way. You must also pardon me if-since this assignment was given only last week-I could not carry it out comprehensively or thoroughly. The report I have to give is, by virtue of its subject, very extensive. I am to discuss not just the organizational tasks, but also the methods and content of work, and likewise the organizational structure of the Communist International and its relationship to the different parties-
a complex of questions which would demand a very comprehensive exposition. I want to say in advance that because of the breadth of the subject I must completely dispense with any historical introduction on the development of the various parties or of the concept of the Communist Party. Insofar as it is necessary to go into the economic preconditions for the parties, the methods of work of the parties, I will have to do it at particular points in the course of the report.
It is already common knowledge in all the parties that, for a Communist Party, organization is not an end in itself; rather organization, particularly the organizational apparatus, is only a means to the higher aim of furthering the revolutionary cause, of driving the revolution forward, of erecting a communist society-our goal. Karl Marx, in the first General Statutes of the First International Workingmen’s Association, had already formulated the idea that the economic emancipation of the working class is the great end to which every movement must be subordinated as a means. And in line with the spirit of those statutes, an organization will work most effectively for the solution of the social question when it achieves the theoretical and practical collaboration of the most advanced groups. In the modern working-class movement the organizational apparatus must be structured to guarantee that the proletarians in their struggles will at every given moment receive the greatest possible assistance from similarly organized proletarian groups.
In the present turbulent period of latent civil war it is self-evident that the Communist International seeks to bring about a mutual strengthening of the organizational and active forces by means of strict centralization. The goal of organization is clear. The immediate goal of organization is to achieve the conquest of political power for the proletariat. A combat leadership which aims to achieve this end must be able to act within the communist organizations according to a definite plan, with forces that can be relied on. The struggle demands concentrated preparation through education and persuasive agitation, by means of which the total attention of the struggling proletariat is at every moment directed at the great goal shared by the entire class, the goal which actually unites all forces which in any way want to take up the struggle. The organization must therefore be tied together centrally, as a union of forces; it must be held together as a union not only of the consciously revolutionary workers, but of those with genuinely revolutionary impulses as well.
In his remarks on the organizational lessons of the March Action comrade Béla Kun, who originally was supposed to give this report, was quite right to formulate the idea that in the last analysis the question of revolution is not an organizational question. We must keep in mind that, in dealing with this question-in solving this problem-we must perform an important revolutionary task.
If we look at the organizational forms in the various countries, we must admit that the International still constitutes a very colorful jumble of the most diverse organizational forms. And we should not believe that in this respect the Second Congress has already effected a decisive change; we should not hope that even the Third Congress can and will bring about this change. But although we recognize this multiplicity of organizational forms, we must nonetheless work insistently toward standardizing our organizational forms because we are well aware that despite the varying circumstances in the different countries, despite the fact that they condition the various forms of organization in various countries, nonetheless we must achieve a certain identity of methods, of content, since the goal-the conquest of power-is the same. In addition the enemy, namely the bourgeoisie, is the same everywhere and employs the same forms of struggle against us. This compels us to press for a certain homogeneity in the methods of struggle and in the content of the work of Communist Parties.
Some parties still contain all the weaknesses of the old bureaucratic centralization, of the old social-democratic parties. They are still dragging this old tradition around because they have a very brief communist past. In fact one can say that the large mass parties are still dragging along remnants of this old social-democratic bureaucracy. Other parties came into being through a rebellion initiated against this bureaucratic centralism, against this bureaucratic sort of party structure. This was, for example, the case with one wing from which the German Party emerged. The USPD was typically a party which arose from the rebellion of the active elements against the passive center. In the old Social Democracy during the war this passive center necessarily of itself provoked a rebellion by the active elements, and eventually the rebelling individual districts joined together and a certain federalistic basis for the party then arose. These elements were dragging the remnants of federalism around with them and they had to break the independence of the individual districts, and to insist that only this federalism has a right to independence, and the passive center no longer has a say.[1]
These federalist symptoms must be combatted just as energetically as the centralist heritage of the old social-democratic party.
The parties must increasingly become the center of action, of activization. We are faced with the task of structuring the bodies of the party to accord with the goals set for us in the Communist Manifesto. To begin with then, our first task is to secure a firm leadership at the head of a centralist organization. It is unfortunately still necessary to insist on this firm leadership-indeed, any leadership which occupies a pre-eminent position-because certain tendencies opposed even to this can still be observed in the KAP.[2] Unified, strict leadership must be expressly insisted on in opposition to these tendencies. A broader justification is surely unnecessary at this Congress. I need only state that we consider this clear, centralist leadership necessary. But equally necessary for the party bodies to accomplish their work is that this leadership have good ties with the masses. Thus, in concrete terms, the task posed is that along with centralist, strict, unified, clear, firm leadership we must establish good, well-developed ties with the masses which extend even to details.
The ties between the leadership and the masses should be created by constructing the party on the basis of democratic centralism, in accordance with the decisions of the Second Congress. This democratic centralism is not an empty bureaucratic formula but rather may be defined in other words as centralization of activity, concentration for the party of the results of its work and struggle. This is the only way to conceive of centralization. We considered it necessary, in the course of the most recent revision of our Theses, to express this idea even more explicitly. Points two and six contain an easily misunderstood formulation, which we have deleted and replaced with new language intended to express the concept of democratic centralism even more explicitly and clearly. Our proposed new version reads:
Democratic centralism in the communist party organization must be a real synthesis, a fusion of centralism and proletarian democracy. This fusion can be attained only on the basis of the ongoing common activity, the ongoing common struggle of the entire party organization.
Centralization in the communist party organization does not mean a formal and mechanical centralization but rather a centralization of communist activity, i.e., building a leadership which is strong, quick to react and at the same time flexible.
Formal or mechanical centralization would be centralization in order to dominate the rest of the membership or the masses of the revolutionary proletariat outside the party. But only the enemies of communism can assert that the Communist Party wants to dominate through its leadership of the proletarian class struggles and through the centralization of this communist leadership of the revolutionary proletariat. That is a lie; and equally incompatible with the fundamental principles of democratic centralism adopted by the Communist International is a power struggle or a fight for domination within the party.[3]
To underline this briefly once more: what we are saying here is that no leadership clique should form in the party, a leadership clique which for instance believes that because it has been handed the leadership of a central apparatus it is therefore justified in using this central apparatus to work against the express will of the majority of the party-that it, as a narrow leadership clique, can turn the central apparatus into a mechanism to impose its rule. Dangers of this sort have often been pointed out. Here it must be stated that allowing this kind of leadership domination to develop does not correspond to the will of the International. It is solely our work and the direction of this work which are to be centralist. This way we shall be able to begin our work, our struggles, and lead them in a really centralistic fashion. The road to the actual development of this democratic centralization is long. The Guidelines adopted at the Second Congress already stated that the introduction of such democratic centralization was not going to be the work of a short time or of just one year.
It was emphasized that to crystallize out the concentration and centralization of the real leadership of the party is a lengthy and difficult process. And in the Guidelines we stress that, through improvements and diligent testing of their apparatus, the parties must make sure they really have a centralization of their work and not bureaucratic centralism, so that they can achieve a real concentration of the leadership of this work.
The best insurance against bureaucratization of the apparatus is extremely active ties between the party leadership and all party bodies. These active ties also have to bring the masses of members-through constant contact with the central leadership-to realize and understand that such centralization constitutes an objectively justified strengthening and development of their collective work and struggles. The members must feel and experience for themselves that this genuinely means not an alien leadership, but rather a strengthening of their own fighting power. If centralism comes alive in this way, if it does not remain a formality but pulses with life, we will have the best protection against the danger of bureaucratism and the ossification of the apparatus. What comrade Béla Kun says in his article must be granted: namely that, aside from the Russian and this or that small party, there is scarcely any party which has yet attained the necessary living centralism; that instead centralism is still being applied much too mechanically; that we cannot yet speak of its being politically applied.
How do we arrive at a truly political application of this concept? To achieve this we inserted a section on the obligation to do work right after the section on democratic centralism. When all members are drawn into the work, they themselves are brought into very intensive contact with the leadership. And if this obligation to do work, complemented by communists’ obligation to fight, is implemented we can be assured that bureaucratism cannot hold sway. If we want to arrive at living centralism, if we want a concentration of forces which pulses with life, then we must strongly insist on the obligation to do work. Up until now it has not been possible for the great majority of our parties to activate the party’s total forces for one goal, one movement, one struggle. This must be the aim of the leaderships in the Communist Parties. They must strive zealously to integrate the entire party membership not only into the party’s work but also into its campaigns.
In the Guidelines we have given a number of instructions on this. The section is so long in order to make this clear in detail. It would not be sufficient for the Congress to pass a resolution on the obligation to do work-then nothing would change. The point is to give concrete advice on how it should be implemented. We have regarded organizational instructions for the party leaderships as necessary: how the integration, the organizing, the division of labor is to take place, how the groups and cells are to work. And we have said that the party leaderships themselves should personally take on the task of organizing such working groups and getting them going. This is absolutely necessary, for we know that working groups have still hardly gotten a foothold in the International.
In a number of parties there no doubt exist on paper such ostensible cells in the plants and trade unions, and such commissions and boards or committees, which ostensibly have particular work assignments. But I maintain that they exist only on paper. This, however, is of no use to the communist movement; rather, the point is to translate these paper creations into sober reality and to make the whole party into a working body. This comment applies particularly to legal parties. To be sure, you cannot make a fundamental distinction between legal and illegal parties, but in fact they are still very different. In an illegal party only those members who really work belong to the party, since anyone who did not work would attract attention and make himself suspect. In an illegal party do-nothing members cannot be tolerated. To this extent legal and illegal parties do differ, but this difference must be overcome by giving every individual member of a legal party an assignment. Only then will we overcome the difference between these parties and really create a precise form of party organization. We considered it necessary to give these instructions.
But there are still certain differences-which, I believe, still cannot be definitively resolved at this Congress-over whether from now on the organizations can finally be built on cells in the factories, as the basis of the organizations. The tendency established at the Second Congress was that cells in the factories should be the basis of the organizations. From reports which we have received we also know that a number of organizations, a number of illegal organizations, really do regard these cells as the basis of their organizations. But for the broad mass parties this is not at all the case. I shall have more to say about this later in connection with the section on the party organism.
Because this concept of factory cells does not yet form the basis of the party as a whole, we have so far not talked about the working groups. Working groups are instruments for parties which are still built on the basis of residential districts: even if they have such a district organization, from now on they must be required to mobilize the party forces in their residential districts. They should divide up their groups so that every group has its own work. There is a system of tens, where comrades are organized into groups of 10 to 20 in order to give them specific assignments. It is absolutely not necessary to do this so mechanically; rather, the point is to make these assignments concretely, to actually bring all members into the work. There are numerous such opportunities for work. A number of such tasks are mentioned: agitation for the press, door-to-door agitation, trade-union work, work among women, agitation among youth and much more. Working groups for all these various tasks should simply be established in the organization, and they must be put on their feet by the party leadership if they are going to function at all.
It would be wrong for a party to come here, for us to divide everything up on paper and send this schema out into the world, and then for the party to expect its individual districts to divide up their members just as schematically-and just leave it at that. Such a schematic division would be bureaucratic centralism. Instead, only a few groups and cells should be gotten into shape at first; but we must really get these cells working, in order to set into motion additional working groups in turn. A great deal of perseverance, a great deal of energy, a great deal of vitality, a great deal of time will be required to mobilize the working groups, and the parties will have to demonstrate in the course of the year whether they have grasped the essence of centralism by actually setting about the task of organizing working groups. Only in this way will we get capable parties. In addition, it is necessary to assist these working groups in the type of work they are doing, to give them a whole series of specific instructions, so that they draw the necessary conclusions from their work.
The lessons and conclusions which will result from this practical work amount to the lesson of specialization. We will see a number of specialists grow out of the working groups. This specialization is an absolute necessity. We must have trained forces with various skills corresponding to various arenas of struggle. Without this specialization, the coming struggles will not succeed; we will be unable to win the allegiance of the proletariat if we do not undertake the training of specialists. Such specialization must be cultivated, but in speaking of specialization one must warn against overdoing it. If pulsating life is withdrawn from the party, then we will have a party consisting only of specialists, where no one knows anything of the other. And that makes no sense. So it will be necessary for precisely that comrade who develops into a specialist in one group to be transferred into another group, so that he gets to know the life and efforts of other groups as well. This should by no means involve continual turnover and making a mess out of the assignments. The training of certain specialists is necessary, but a change of assignments is also useful to give an inner balance to the personnel. In this way they will embody the actual working life of the party.
While stressing that this specialization should not be overdone, I also consider it necessary to strongly emphasize the need for such a working and fighting organization to institute the practice of making regular reports. Reporting occurs automatically in the case of a number of organizations which are geared toward coming struggles-the courier system, intelligence-gathering, procuring safe houses and clandestine print shops, etc. In the case of this work the practice of making reports is fairly obvious, but unfortunately it is not obvious in a number of other kinds of activity. For example, it can happen that groups in charge of finding rooms for meetings and making preparations for meetings become ingrown, so that only this one group knows where these rooms are. That is a great error, and it runs the risk that if such teams break up then the whole apparatus is crippled. It is therefore absolutely necessary for these groups to make reports.
The Theses put explicit emphasis on making such reports, and we believe it will become an established practice in all groups, so that in this way the party will be informed of everything and will really be able to put the experiences of this or that group to use. These reports will also be very successful for training new groups in other cities. The ability of the party to act will also be increased a great deal by such reporting. For only when the party center receives a flow of reports on their activity from the widest variety of working groups will the party leadership be able to draw real conclusions concerning the extent to which the party’s activity can be increased. If no reports are received from a particular area, changes must be made there. A real activization of the party will be able to proceed through this interaction.
I will now proceed to the section “Propaganda and Action” ["On Propaganda and Agitation,” Section IV]. First I should say, by way of introduction, that because the first sentence was being incorrectly interpreted we have come up with a correction for it. The sentence now reads: Prior to the open revolutionary uprising our most general task is revolutionary propaganda and agitation. Revolutionary propaganda and agitation is described as a general preparatory task. The section dealing with struggle got short shrift in the report. A section on the organization of political struggle, which I intend to report on later, is to be added to this section on organization and propaganda.
The section on agitation and propaganda was made so detailed because there are a number of smaller parties, such as the English and American, which still think they have to apply special principles in these areas; because there are still certain syndicalist remnants in our party which continue to think only of vanguard troops in combat, believing it is not necessary to have propaganda which runs parallel to our other struggles. It must be said that agitation and propaganda cannot cease even after the revolution. The revolution does not put an end to propaganda and agitation. On the contrary, we know that in Russia after the revolution, after the conquest of political power, in the phase of highest revolutionary activity, agitation and propaganda have been intensified to the highest degree. Nowhere has more widespread agitation, more comprehensive propaganda been conducted than in Russia after the conquest of political power. The need for revolutionary propaganda has to be emphasized as strongly as possible precisely because in various places activity in the form of isolated struggles has become too much the focus of attention. Various methods of such agitation are described in the report, and I think I need not waste any more words on them now.
Direct ties with all movements which break out in the International are essential to propaganda. It should be linked to actual circumstances. Where the proletariat is in combat, where the workers are fighting to eliminate social need, we should approach them with our propaganda. And propaganda should be conducted not just with words, but also with deeds. Example is the best propaganda. If we prove ourselves as comrades-in-arms, then people will have the greatest trust in our words, in our ideas. If we prove ourselves as good leaders, good strategists, people will have the deepest trust in all our newspaper articles, our theoretical debates. Thus propaganda must be conducted not merely in words but must be united with the deed as well, to real involvement in all, even the smallest, movements of the workers. We have cited a number of very simple examples for this as well, to show quite clearly that no struggle is too small for the communists to take part in. And every issue for which the workers are really ready to struggle must become the work of the communists. We will best carry out our propaganda and agitation by linking ourselves in this way to all these movements. Propaganda and agitation tied to work, to deeds, to struggle, are things which can really advance the Communist Party. We must emphatically insist on the extreme closeness of these ties.
The point is not merely to carry our propaganda into these small-scale struggles but also to capitalize on this as well by gaining the leadership. We are firmly determined to gain this leadership, and we can do so only by leading the small struggles as well, by marching at the forefront of every struggle, of every movement, by systematically utilizing each and every movement. The Theses cite examples of this, and everyone must read them and take them not as empty words but rather as urgent commandments for every communist. In particular, the kind of struggle that should be waged in the unions is also described in detail there, so that everyone can find practical suggestions for defeating the trade-union bureaucracy and overcoming the present form of the trade unions. These offensives which should be undertaken to defeat the trade-union bureaucracy, to remove the present leading layer-this is the goal of our propaganda and agitation. These offensives must be planned and conducted very systematically, not with an occasional isolated offensive designed, so to speak, to annoy them, to harass them, to drive them to wits’ end.
Only when such appropriate means have been consistently developed will we be able to pass over from propaganda to the real leadership of the proletariat. It must also be stressed that in some countries, especially in areas where the party has to operate illegally, it is appropriate to create organizations, so-called sympathizing organizations, which allow us to extend the scope of the propaganda and agitation of the Communist Party. Such organizations exist in various countries. Where they do not, we should try to form such bodies, under more or less communist leadership, from the ranks of those in other organizations or the unorganized. These bodies will give us the possibility of gaining real access to the broader masses with our organization. This proposal will create a real possibility of ties with the broader masses for organizations which until now have only been able to work underground.
We urgently call the organization’s attention to its specific task: finding ties with the masses at any cost. To draw close to the masses, every organizational means, every variety of propaganda among these masses, is justified. The women’s and youth organizations, since they sometimes make it possible to fulfill a specific task apart from the actual legal organizations, have a very valuable service to render in this connection. We already have a whole series of such examples of how the youth organization has acted as an advance guard for the party-wherever, in a situation of illegality, we want to create broader possibilities and to really utilize these possibilities organizationally and propagandistically.
But our propaganda must also be carried into the circles of semi-proletarian layers, into the circles of peasants, the middle classes, white collar workers, etc. Propaganda among these layers is so important because even though we cannot yet count on winning them as core units for the conquest of political power, we can rid them of their fear of communism. We can destroy the terrible spectre of communism which exists in the minds of these middle layers. Our propaganda must be sharply focused on this aim. When we have freed them from this bogeyman, neutralized them to a certain degree, then in critical situations it will be much easier to wage our great decisive battles without having to pay particular attention to resistance by these circles, or even to worry about them at all.
We find these semi-proletarian layers especially in the countryside. Several speakers have already mentioned the need to neutralize the rural population and to a certain degree win their confidence. I need only remind you that the organizations should carry their propaganda systematically into these circles. The organizations must address the agricultural workers, but also the small peasants, so as to make them at least receptive to the ideas of communism. But we must also do what is necessary organizationally in order to approach them. It is not enough to have a paper that is just left lying around the Organizational Bureau, the paper must also be actually brought into the homes of the rural population. This rural agitation is very tiring and under certain circumstances also dangerous. The Junkers are past masters at inciting the rural population against us. Despite this danger we have to approach these layers, because we must not meet with their conscious opposition in the period of the seizure of power and after the seizure of power. We must have breached their resistance before that.
An organization must therefore exist to bring propaganda into these rural towns and villages. One way of doing this is to assign municipal districts with surplus forces to bring leaflets, etc. put out by the Communist Party into particular villages. Or it can be done by using the organizations which we already have in the countryside to work neighboring villages as well. We can also involve cycling or sport groups and youth associations in this propaganda work, and can see to it that the communist spirit is carried into the rural communities, preventing an ignorant barrier against communism from being erected there. Destroying this barrier is one of the most important tasks prior to the conquest of political power, so that we do not end up with a Vendée outside the gates of all the large cities, from which the troops of the counterrevolution can be recruited.
Propaganda in the armed forces, especially where there are still standing armies, is an equally important area. It is hardly appropriate to go into this in detail. It is absolutely necessary to set up in the particular countries special information centers whose job is to work out with the utmost clarity and care whatever is apt to open the minds of the soldiers. To stereotype this work or point to general methods is not useful; it depends on the particular circumstances of each individual country. But I still must mention one general point. We must point out the difference, the division, between officers and ranks in the armed forces. We must make clear to the ranks how the officers are set above them, not merely through external signs of rank but also through their economic position. How on the one hand the life of the officers is brilliant and secure, how on the other hand the future of the common soldier is absolutely hopeless. That after his discharge from the military he will of necessity do nothing but labor for others, and there is no prospect of overcoming this class division. Stressing over and over the class division in militarism-this is the best way to undermine the military class. This class division must be carried into the ranks of the military where at all possible.
I also believe this is possible in the armed gangs, the irregulars, because it is impossible to check corruption in these gangs of armed volunteers in the capitalist epoch; one must always emphasize the contradiction and introduce the process of disintegration. I just wanted to briefly underline these general principles.
I turn now to the section on the party press. I believe I need to say very little about this. The section is exhaustive and the subject was treated in great detail from very specific standpoints because the leading comrades in Russia are convinced that the press is the best means of organizing broad masses of the population for communism. And this section was worked out in the clearest possible fashion, down to the last detail, in order to push propaganda for the press to the forefront. Next year no party should be able to complain that it has a low subscription base, that it didn’t know how to build up a newspaper. By the next Congress there will be no such excuses, no party will be able to say that it did not know how to get its papers to the masses. How the press becomes an organ of struggle, how the regular collaboration of individuals truly develops the press into a living organism in the framework of the party, is described exhaustively. I emphasize this as strongly as possible, and note that these sections were written to deprive comrades of any and all excuses for the undeveloped state of the press in their countries. The comrades should not allow themselves to be guilty of any sins of omission in this most important area.
I come now to the topic of the general structure of the party organism. No, rather at this point, since I have dealt with agitation and propaganda, I must go on to the section which we want to add-the section on political struggles. We considered it necessary to insert this section because it is possible to establish certain guidelines on organizing movements, on the smallest and largest campaigns. Despite the differences in situations, certain general instructions are still necessary.
In connection with the obligation to do work, we introduce the presentation on the organization of political struggles as follows: For the Communist Party there is no time when great movements are not possible. No matter what the situation, there are various methods of going into action politically. The point is to increase our ability to exploit economic and political situations so that it develops into an art of strategy and tactics. The methods and means will vary according to the objective possibilities. One must be smart in choosing among them. But where there is determination to engage in living activity, and the party proceeds thoughtfully and is both smart and cautious, it will be possible to figure out suitable means for our campaigns. It is important that every section of the International carefully observe what is going on in neighboring countries so it learns from the campaigns of the other sections, in order to effectively utilize collective experience for activating its own campaigns. So far next to nothing has been done in this area.
Weak parties which do not yet have a sufficient corps of functionaries can use economic and political events as a link to develop revolutionary propaganda which makes the communists’ general slogans comprehensible to the workers. To do this they must utilize the ties that they have formed in the plants and the unions through the cells, through working groups. Wherever major centers of the movement emerge and we have such cells, we have to intervene with meetings to inject the party’s slogans into the masses. Where it is not possible to call our own meetings, it is helpful to make use of opponents’ meetings. These interventions must also be organized so that the result is not a disgrace but a credit to our propaganda.
When there is a prospect of winning the masses to our slogans through such radical propaganda, we should skillfully summarize our slogans and aim at getting slogans which conform to ours-at least in their general thrust-put forward and adopted at a large number of meetings, or at least win over large minorities to them. This will really give expression to the influence of the party’s ideas on the masses. We will be able to make use of this rising influence to strengthen our own ranks as well, and will have an impact on the proletarian layers as they sense a commonality. They will see the new leadership in this idea. They understand that here is something that wants to fight for them, and this will reinforce their fighting will and fighting spirit.
In general the groups that prepare these meetings and actively intervene in them must meet afterward to draw the lessons. Reports to the party committee in charge of the work should also be made, so that the general lessons can be drawn. Since such propaganda actions are supported by posters, leaflets, etc., it is important for teams to be organized that know how to carry out this work-leafleting should take place in front of plants, train stations, employment offices.
In some districts it has proved successful to find comrades who know how to combine leafleting with rapid-fire discussion: the discussions are then continued among the masses of workers streaming forward, and in this way our propaganda is automatically carried into the plants. This intensified propaganda must naturally parallel correspondingly intensified work in trade-union and plant meetings. When necessary, the comrades must also organize such meetings in the plants and unions and make sure that speakers are available to support their activity. Our party newspapers must repeatedly propagate the ideas of the particular campaigns day-in, day-out; they must place their best arguments and the greater part of their space at the disposal of such campaigns, just as the entire organizational apparatus must help advance this general idea which the party is striving to get across. The point is that the parties learn how to keep an idea which is being carried into the masses really alive for a longer time-for weeks, if necessary for months-so that the proletariat is truly inspired by this propaganda and grasps the main issue.
Small parties can also have other opportunities for activity if they are able to truly grasp their historic mission. Their immediate goal should of course be for the party to succeed in conquering the leading role in the proletariat. They must therefore consider whether or not the time has come to go over from the phase of propaganda to demonstration campaigns. Such demonstration campaigns can be carried out by both legal and illegal parties. We need only recall the shining example of the Spartakusbund and of the left USPD, which despite the most profound dangers led actions in Germany during the war under the slogan: Down With the War! Down With the Government! We need only recall Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who became casualties of this propaganda. Another example is the work of the small socialist group in England, which showed in the “Hands Off Russia” movement that demonstrating for an idea over and over again can ultimately arouse general interest in it. Similarly, during the last Polish-Russian war the Polish Communist Party sought to keep the Soviet idea and the idea of peace with Russia constantly on the agenda for weeks and months through a comprehensive propaganda campaign, to make sure this idea finally came to the fore.
We can note critically that this opportunity would also have existed for the French party if the whole party had been concentrated on these actions. It would have had such an opportunity in the case of the mobilization directed against Germany. It was just one opportunity where there weren’t sufficient preparations, where the demonstrations began too late and consequently did not attain full effectiveness. As recent reports from Italy indicate, anti-fascist sentiment has now become so broad that our party, in conjunction with other parties, can begin very active work through demonstrations. Gigantic demonstrations have already taken place. The time seems to have come when the fascist mind-set clashes so violently with the active thinking of the workers that the workers are now rebelling and turning against the fascist currents in mass actions. I believe that the Italian party is faced with the kind of movement which, if utilized, will provide it with the opportunity of taking over the leading role and advancing the proletariat very far.
Even the countries where the results of a campaign have gone to the right can also teach us some useful things about demonstration campaigns. First of all, demonstration campaigns require one thing: a very flexible and dedicated leadership. If in such a movement a leadership exists that really knows how to keep the limited aim of this campaign, of this demonstration, clearly in mind, a leadership that is capable of maintaining an overview of the changing situation at every moment, then it is necessary to be completely clear about the forms of this movement, to examine every situation closely to see whether the movement can be intensified through these demonstrations, and then to consider whether the time has come when this demonstration campaign can be expanded into large-scale actions. The peace demonstrations during the war clearly showed that the suppression of such demonstrations is not at all inevitable, that the suppression of such actions by no means necessarily leads to the collapse of the whole demonstration campaign. Even if such demonstrations lead to casualties, there can and will be situations where calling a halt is impermissible. Even where there is the danger of such casualties, such rallies must be repeated again and again; good organizational preparation will not only heighten their effectiveness but will also minimize the number of casualties.
We regard good organization and really disciplined execution of a demonstration, along with the readiness of the workers to sacrifice, as guarantees of the demonstration’s effectiveness. It is vital to learn how to carry out such actions in a truly disciplined and well-organized fashion. Our own experiences have shown that it is best to base street demonstrations on the major factories. To be sure, large demonstrations starting in residential districts can also be staged on holidays as parades, so to speak, with flags. However, such demonstrations usually do not have a revolutionary effect, but rather a certain demonstrative, festive character, a certain propaganda character. But if a truly revolutionary effect is to be achieved, then the workers must be mobilized for the demonstration straight from the factories.
In this connection the cells and fractions have extraordinarily important preparations to make. After the preliminary discussions have taken place according to plan, and a unified mood-absolutely indispensable for carrying out such actions-has been created, then we can venture a step forward. But the organization, through the cells and fractions, must have fairly well assured this unified mood in the plants, so that we do not go into the streets as loosely organized masses inspired by a variety of ideas, but rather as a group of proletarians who know very well what they are demonstrating for. To have a sturdy framework for such demonstrations, a system of cadres with authority in the plants, of the cell heads, must be set up along with the political leadership. If the time is deemed to be ripe for such demonstrations, then the workers leaders in charge, the leading functionaries, must get together with the cadres with authority in the plants to go through all the details of the action; on the next day, after such precise preparatory discussions, the demonstration can be carried out in a really unified, well-organized, disciplined way. But on the day of the demonstration as well, we need a good instrument which forms the backbone of the demonstration from the time it begins up to the time it disperses, and which is always on the spot. This is the only way the demonstration can be carried out with the least casualties but with the greatest effect. The experience gained in this action must then be studied and criticized in the group of functionaries and plant council members in the fractions, so that the basis is really laid for repeating and strengthening such demonstrations, so that broadening such actions into revolutionary mass actions becomes possible.
There are also other possibilities of campaigns to activate the masses. In all movements of the working class we always have the task of showing that we are truly the leaders of the proletariat. Everything must be done to overcome the influence of the social-traitor leaders and to force these people aside. In a period of stagnation one must strive to overcome this stagnation in the political and economic situation by employing other means of agitation, for example as the VKPD did last year with its “Open Letter.” I consider it superfluous to discuss these questions here in detail.
You will be able to read how we must effectively express the idea underlying this campaign through our plant fractions, trade-union functionaries, involvement of our newspapers, of our parliamentary fractions. The organization must prove that it does not consider a matter disposed of once it has written about it; it must prove that, if it is convinced of the rightness of its campaign, it is capable of really carrying it out and of intensifying it for weeks and months. But it is impermissible to make the error-for instance after gathering support for a form, such as was reached with the “Open Letter,” in numerous meetings, by whipping up the mood in the newspapers, through speakers in the parliamentary bodies-of then not carrying this campaign forward but rather allowing it to slack off. This kind of slackening in a campaign is the most serious mistake that organizations can make. If they cannot sustain a campaign, carry it out, then they should not initiate it in the first place but rather be content with less-they should restrict themselves to organizational consolidation.
If in this way we succeed in winning a degree of leadership in a particular economic sector where our party possesses our best organizations and where it has encountered the most widespread agreement with its demands, then organizational pressure must be propagandistically exploited to achieve recognition within the unions, etc., of the party’s leading role. Our comrades must then succeed in calling conferences of those local bodies that come out in favor of our demands; at such conferences, in turn, joint demands must be accepted. Besides adopting these resolutions, it is then necessary to consolidate the real movements as well, to make sure that all those taking part in these campaigns do everything they can to draw together movements which are already in progress or are on the verge of breaking out, so that they become a unified movement.
In this movement the communist leadership will then bring about a new concentration of power which in turn will have an impact on the social-traitor leaders. For, faced with such struggles under unified leadership, these leaders can no longer evade the issue but have to show their colors, say clearly what they want. And if we do not succeed in really harnessing them to the wagon, so to speak, then it is necessary to unmask them, to expose not only politically but also in practical organizational terms the fact that they have no intention at all of leading joint, militant movements of the proletariat. In that case we intervene independently.
But if a communist party has to make the attempt to seize leadership of the masses at a time of serious upheaval, of acute economic and political tensions, then it will have to use other methods than those of mere propaganda. It can even dispense with raising any other special slogans and demands. At such times, when the movements are growing and literally pushing toward explosions, it will have to address open calls to the workers who are on the verge of pauperization and therefore pressing for action, address the organized workers who have the leadership of such struggles wholly in their hands, to demonstrate to them that there can be no more abstention from these struggles, that the leadership of these struggles, however, cannot be allowed to remain in the hands of the social-traitors. Instead, a combative, determined leadership is now needed and the communists are combative enough to lead these small-scale struggles of the proletariat, to consolidate these small-scale struggles into major political ones.
What must be proved in these struggles is that, despite the fact that the proletariat’s last possibilities for existence are being undermined, the old organizations are trying to avoid and obstruct this struggle. The plant and trade-union organizations must make it clear in meetings, continually pointing to the combativeness of the communist workers, that abstention from the struggle is no longer permissible, and if no other party wants to take the leadership the Communist Party is the only one left to show the way out of this pauperization.
But the main task is to unify the struggles born of the situation. The cells and fractions in the trades and plants involved in such movements must not only stay in the closest organizational contact with one another but also maintain ties with the district committees and party centers. And the party centers must be committed to sending specially delegated comrades to all the areas where movements are taking place, who will seek to seize the leadership in these districts and to make sure that the unitary idea underlying these struggles actually comes to the fore, so that all workers recognize this unitary character and finally begin to perceive the political character of these struggles.
As such struggles become generalized it will be necessary to create unified bodies to lead them. If the bureaucratic strike leaderships of the unions cave in prematurely, we must be quick to push for new elections, attempting to fill the strike leadership posts with communists. If several wage struggles have already been successfully combined and several political uprisings successfully tied into these movements-for example, preventing troop transports-then a common leadership must be set up for the campaign, which to the extent possible must consist of communists, who should occupy the leading positions. In this way, trade-union fractions, plant councils, plant council plenary meetings, can provide such joint actions which represent the core-the basis-for the communist leadership, which should make the necessary preparations.
But if the movement takes on the desired political character through the interference of employers’ organizations or the intervention of government authorities, then propaganda for political workers councils must be pushed through with the necessary ruthlessness, even without trade unions. If the communists work carefully and intensively, and weigh their alternatives, they can gain the leadership of the proletariat in extensive areas through partial actions and become capable of larger struggles. But parties which have already grown strong, particularly the mass parties, should also take special organizational measures to be ready for decisive political mass actions. In mass actions, partial actions, etc., it must constantly be kept in mind that the experience of these movements must be energetically used for ever more solid ties with the broader masses.
The ties with the masses are the main thing. In plant conferences the party leaders in charge must repeatedly discuss the experience of the mass actions with the shop stewards, with the plant fractions, trade-union fractions, to make their relationship with these shop stewards more and more solid. Close bonds of mutual trust between the leading functionaries and the shop stewards are organizationally the best guarantee that political mass actions will not be initiated prematurely and that their scope will correspond to the circumstances, considering the current level of party influence. Based on such a network of tested shop stewards in the plants, a large number of organizations have led successful movements. If we look at the Russians’ revolution, we know that in Petersburg the decisive struggles were led by such a network of plant fractions, shop stewards and cells, which were very closely tied to the leadership.
But for Germany as well we can say that the last decisive struggles-in the last general strike before the conclusion of the war in 1917, in central Germany, in Berlin in the spring, in Berlin in the winter of 1918, the November revolution and the subsequent March struggles-could only have been carried out and achieved because there increasingly took shape a solid network of shop stewards which maintained the closest ties with the political leaders. Having allied themselves with the shop stewards, these leaders had the most profound influence on the masses. I remind you again that among many others it was Karl Liebknecht who always sought the closest ties with the stewards in the plants.
So all parties should do their utmost to establish these ties with the plants through the shop stewards. A very high degree of flexibility is guaranteed by this. We saw in Germany that precisely through these highly perfected organizational ties, which had nothing mechanical about them but rather grew out of the movement, it was the shop stewards who were able to lead the masses forward in the necessary armed struggles. Last year in Italy-to make a criticism-the movement, which was unquestionably a revolutionary one and found its strongest expression in the factory occupations, failed because of the union bureaucracy’s betrayal and the inadequate leadership of the party. But on the other hand it must be said that one of the main reasons for the collapse of the movement was that the factories were occupied without a thought of creating, through shop stewards, intimate ties between all the factories and the political leadership. So there too, a real, extensive system of shop stewards would have made it possible to carry the activity forward, to turn it into a real revolutionary mass movement, had close ties existed between these groups. I also believe that it would have been possible to utilize the great English miners movement if the English Party had been able to create the very closest ties with the masses through the shop stewards in every workforce.
We see how necessary it is in utilizing the situation to build up such a really active network of shop stewards, plant fractions, etc., which is the backbone of all the real activity of the parties.
Through such shop stewards and plant fractions we will not only be able to make the party as a whole more active and capable of carrying out campaigns, but will also, by virtue of the fact that the working masses see a leadership, strengthen their trust in this leadership. We will get them to have the greatest confidence in precisely this leadership, which demonstrates that it is in close touch with the factories.
I come now to the section on the structure of the party organism. In general, like the section on the press, this can be treated more briefly, although you might well demand that we go into detail on how the party is built. But we are speaking not of building the party apparatus but of the movement, of the formation of our troops and our groups. Regarding the framework of the party apparatus, we can restrict ourselves to giving some general instructions which have proved useful.
Here too one must bear in mind that the organization can be effective only if it spreads outward from the centers of power, from the main cities and industrial centers. It would be wrong to go home from Moscow now and say, we’re supposed to extend a network of organizations over the whole country; for under certain circumstances this network might be so weak that our forces could not be utilized. It is much more important to build up organizations for the main cities and industrial centers where the masses are present, where the organization can really be significant. Once an organization has been firmly established in the large towns, forces that can be spared should be used to extend an organizational network from the centers over the surrounding areas, but always with the proviso that local branches and new districts are formed only when a corps of members is present in the individual towns. This will guarantee the practical capacities of the organization.
The party with the best organization is not the one with the most branches, but the one with many capable, strong branches, and then only when this capability is demonstrated in the character of their political propaganda and activity. In the course of extending the organization more complicated situations will often be encountered, perhaps a concentration of large cities in one area. Under some circumstances it will also be necessary to build on the basis of rural organizations.
It is also important to establish ties of a flexible nature between the districts and the leading bodies. Here it is not necessary to set up a hierarchical structure of locals, counties, districts, regions and the party center. This could be a grave danger to the party’s political flexibility. The point is to bring all places where party forces are concentrated into immediate contact with the center by dividing the country up into districts, creating independent districts wherever a number of cities are concentrated, districts which will also receive information directly from the party. In general the mutual exchange of information and instruction is an important task the organizational apparatus has to fulfill. What Béla Kun says on this subject in his pamphlet is correct:
In the party there has been a complete lack of political correspondence and of continual, direct and systematic verbal instruction. The natural foundation for this instruction is a systematic information service.
Such a thorough, systematic information service, which is a vital necessity, must protect the Party against routinism and bureaucratization. Béla Kun says at another point:
Only an information service that has become mechanical but is free of the defects of any kind of routinism will make possible the sort of information work which will fully unify the work of the party and create a real and firm centralization.
Providing ongoing, regular, good information, along with the obligation to do work, is the best way of overcoming bureaucratism.
In our guidelines on structure we also give a series of instructions on how to build the party center so that it will be flexible. I would like to remind all parties of this point, number 40.[4] We refer there to the division of labor. We point out that the division of labor in the districts must be implemented centrally. But a continual rotation of personnel must occur there as well.
One more word on this rotation of personnel. Comrades who had been active for a long time as political secretaries sometimes became very bureaucratic in this work. It did them a lot of good when we removed them from these posts and made them into editors. On the other hand the editors were inclined to underrate organizational work, and it was very good to put editors in such organizational posts and the comrades from the organization on the editorial staff. The party definitely benefited from this: the former editors did excellent work in the organization just as the former secretaries did well on the editorial staff. But we also had good experience rotating such functionaries in campaigns. Functionaries who had become rooted in districts where they had all sorts of personal and family ties and could absolutely not be gotten moving were our best forces when we transferred them to another district. Thus this personnel rotation was a means for enlivening the party. There is also a series of modifications to this section, which have been distributed to you.
I will go on now to the last section: legal and illegal work. The title of the section is misleading and will also be changed. What is described there is that the illegal and legal party are not two different things but rather continually overlap. Here we must correct the resolutions of the Second Congress a bit. Comrade Béla Kun in his pamphlet hit the correct formulation in speaking of “the great organizational task of placing the whole party at the service of illegal organizational preparation to make revolutionary struggles a reality.”
The comrade then gives some examples of how a parallel illegal apparatus became autonomous-in Berlin this apparatus broke away and plunged into armed struggles in Mansfeld. “It is necessary,” says Kun, “for the entire party organization to adapt itself to the forms of struggles in such a way that, by the very nature of its organizational setup, it will be unable to break away either organizationally or politically from the legal organization, even for a very short time.” He then protests against the Theses, which say at this point concerning the tasks of the party: “As a result of the state of siege, of exceptional laws, it is not possible for these parties to carry on their entire work legally,” and he considers it necessary to create an illegal apparatus, while emphasizing that the party’s entire organizational apparatus must be geared toward legal or illegal activity. And we attempt to make clear what this legal and illegal activity is, so that everyone sees that the organizations should indeed be trained for legal and illegal work.
Now, someone will say there is too little in this section. Quite true. But someone else will say: too much. We believe we have found a happy medium to give an indication of this, to make it clear how one flows over into the other. Only when the party is really capable of comprehending this organizational principle of democratic centralism: the obligation to do work; when it acts as a genuine collective of struggle in conducting agitation and propaganda, carrying out political struggles and producing its press; when the party implements what we have said in the structure of its party organism-only then can we assume that at the next Congress we will see parties which can truly be given the honorable title of Communist Parties.
Comrades, with that I have come to the end of the main part of my speech. I still have to say a few words about the second section-which can be much shorter-on the organizational structure of the Communist International and its relationship to the member parties. In Moscow[5] you found a proposal made by the German Communist Party at its Party Committee meeting of May 5. Negotiations took place with representatives of the Executive on the basis of this proposal and the result is now a resolution which I place before you for adoption, a resolution which actually fulfills all the essential wishes expressed in the German resolution.
So what are these wishes which we would like to have fulfilled? Some of them were already discussed when we heard the Executive’s trade-union report. These matters were already taken care of in the resolution presented at the conclusion of the discussion on the report of the Executive. This resolution states: “The Congress expects that the Executive, with the increased participation of the member parties in creating a better communications apparatus, and through the increased collaboration of the parties in the Executive, will be able to fulfill its growing tasks to a greater extent than previously.”
In addition, this resolution calls for the parties to furnish their best personnel for the Executive as the leadership of the whole international fighting movement. The resolution I am recommending to you for adoption was drafted from this political point of view. I will first read it to you and then perhaps motivate it with a few short remarks. The resolution reads:
The Third World Congress declares that the time has come in the development of the Communist International to pass over from the stage of influencing the masses in the capitalist and colonial countries through propaganda and agitation, to the ever more tightly organized actual political and organizational leadership of the revolutionary proletarian forces of all countries. The Executive of the Communist International shall be enlarged so as to enable it to take a position on all questions demanding action by the proletariat, such as, for example, the ever more burning problems of mass unemployment, the aggravation-laden with violent conflict-of the political relations of the capitalist governments (such as sanctions and the implementation of sanctions, peace treaties and the new arms race between America, England and Japan). Above and beyond the general calls issued on such critical questions up to now, the Executive shall increasingly go over to finding ways and means to initiate in practice a unified organizational and propagandistic intervention on international issues by the various sections. The Communist International must mature into an International of the deed, into the international leadership of the common daily struggle of the revolutionary proletariat of all countries. The prerequisites for this are:
I. The member parties of the Communist International must do their utmost to maintain the closest and most active ties with the Executive: they must not only provide the best representatives of their country for the Executive, but must judiciously and persistently supply the Executive with constant and reliable information so that the Executive can take positions on political problems that arise based on actual documents and comprehensive materials.
II. The member parties must increasingly feel themselves to be in fact sections of a common international party.
They must therefore maintain the closest informational and organizational ties among themselves, particularly when they are in neighboring countries and therefore have an equally intense interest in the political conflicts arising from capitalist antagonisms. This relationship of common action can at present be initiated most effectively by sending representatives to each other’s most important conferences and by the exchange of suitable leading personnel. This exchange of leading personnel must immediately become an obligatory arrangement for all sections which are in any way capable of it.
III. The Executive shall promote this necessary fusion of all national sections into a single International Party of common proletarian propaganda and action by publishing a press correspondence in western Europe in all major languages, through which the application of the communist idea must be made steadily clearer and more uniform, and which by providing reliable and steady information will establish the basis for active, simultaneous intervention by the various sections.
IV. By sending fully empowered members of the Executive to western Europe and America, the Executive must give effective organizational support to the effort to achieve a genuine International of the common daily struggle of the proletariat of all countries. The task of these representatives would be to acquaint the Executive Committee with the particular conditions under which the Communist Parties of the capitalist and colonial countries must struggle, and they would also have to make sure that these parties maintain the closest, most intimate ties both with the Executive and with one another, increasing their collective striking power. The Executive, along with the parties, shall ensure that communication between it and the individual Communist Parties-both in person through trusted representatives and through written correspondence-shall take place more frequently and more quickly than has been possible to date, so that a common position on all major political questions can be arrived at.
V. To be able to undertake this extraordinarily increased activity, the Executive must be considerably expanded. The Congress shall elect the president and shall instruct the Executive to appoint three directing secretaries, to be drawn from different parties to the extent possible. In addition to them, the members of the Executive sent to Moscow by the various sections are obligated to take part in carrying out the ongoing work of the Executive and Secretariat through their particular national departments or by taking over the handling of entire specific fields as rapporteurs. The countries which are to have voting members on the Executive shall be determined by a special decision of the Congress, and the number of their votes shall also be regulated by Congress decision. The members of the administrative smaller bureau are elected specially by the Executive.
VI. The seat of the Executive Committee is Russia, the first proletarian state. When possible, however, the Executive shall attempt to expand its sphere of activity, including organizing conferences outside Russia, to more and more firmly centralize the organizational and political leadership of the entire International.[6]
I recommend that you adopt this resolution, after a preliminary discussion on it has taken place. It does not need much explanation; I would only like to emphasize in particular that the parties must really decide to place their best people at the disposal of the Executive so that the demands of the resolution are implemented in this regard as well, namely that the individual representatives should serve on the Executive not only as rapporteurs on their countries but also as experts on specific problems. We need such personnel. We cannot keep on demanding that Russia furnish all these people, but rather we must send leading comrades here and see to it that the Executive becomes more active. It is very easy to say that the Executive must inform us concerning this or that case, for instance the Levi case; yet the representatives on the delegations traveled through Germany and spent at least 24 hours in Berlin, where they could have informed themselves in detail. Such objections are inadmissible in an international party that calls itself communist.
Closer ties must be established in the International, and the individual sections must do everything to bring about such closer ties. Joint campaigns, joint assistance can take on very different forms. One should not think that the revolution is developing everywhere in a uniform way. There are a whole number of possibilities for mutual assistance in the most varied kinds of campaigns and propaganda. For example, if large demonstrations are already taking place in one country, another country can take up these demonstrations in its press, in its propaganda.
If demonstrations over some international question have led to heavy losses and battles in one country, the other countries can at least unconditionally solidarize with the neighboring proletariat through speeches in parliament. If large-scale economic struggles break out where it is not yet possible to provide really active assistance, the neighboring countries must be inspired by a fighting spirit that really gives expression to the workers’ fraternal support through appeals, rallies and financial contributions. Thus there will be a whole series of possibilities for forging stronger ties among the national organizations, not only ties between the Executive and the individual parties.
The bourgeoisie is creating such centralization for itself. At the Congress of the Trade Union International, I had the opportunity to point out that just recently in Berlin the chief of political espionage, state prosecutor Weißmann, negotiated with the heads of the French and English secret police on creating an organization to prevent communist troublemakers from escaping if Russia collapses or other such complications arise. They are preparing for every eventuality, even for the most contrived and ingenious possibilities. Seeing that the international bourgeoisie is already making such complicated agreements across all borders, we too must take the first steps toward international parties, not only through resolutions but through practical organizational measures as well. Only then will it be true that the International will really be the human race. (Vigorous applause)
SCHAFFNER (Switzerland): Comrades! I move that these Theses on organizational questions be sent back to the Commission without discussion as being an unsuitable basis for discussion. A Commission was appointed some time ago which was supposed to draft these Theses. Instead we have before us 18 pages, written in a fairly questionable journalistic style, 18 pages of mishmash, which does indeed contain some good ideas, but is kept so vague, so blurred, that it does not deserve the name “Theses” at all. Because if we were to begin to criticize it here, we would have to begin with stylistic corrections, textual corrections; we would have to write the whole thing over again, so that any sort of discussion would be fruitless. So I request, or move, to reject these Theses without discussion, and to instruct the Commission to meet tomorrow, not waiting until one o’clock but as early as possible, so that new theses, which perhaps can take what is good and useful from these Theses, can be worked out and presented to the Congress.
I also move that the extraordinarily important questions of reorganizing the International and the Executive not be swept under the rug by a resolution which is highly debatable and, I believe, known to very few people in the entire hall, but rather that these questions which are of such great importance for the International be properly prepared by a commission with representatives from all the delegations and that a commission be appointed for this particular question as well, which is also to meet early tomorrow morning and present this work tomorrow evening.
ZINOVIEV: Comrades! It seems to me that comrade Schaffner has judged the Theses somewhat too categorically. He has moved to reject this “mishmash” without discussion. I think he is completely wrong. The Theses were drafted by a number of comrades. Perhaps the German wording worked out by our internationally motley crew really is somewhat difficult to understand. But the content of these Theses is in my opinion quite correct and very good. They contain a great number of valuable and very important things for all the parties. I will cite only one section, for example the obligation of all members to do work, propaganda, etc. I believe, comrades, that we absolutely must and shall adopt these Theses by and large. But obviously this should happen after a discussion. If the comrades are so tired that no discussion can take place, or if the French version has not yet been distributed, then we should hold off on the discussion. First of all, the Commission should work tomorrow, but by no means should the Theses simply be rejected. I repeat: anyone who has read the Theses attentively will come to the conclusion that they are by and large very good, quite correct and very important for the movement. (Agreement)
Comrades! No countermotion was made to comrade Schaffner’s second motion. I didn’t hear it. But I am told that comrade Schaffner moved to create a special commission on the question of the composition of the Executive. I believe, comrades, that all parties had the opportunity and today still have the opportunity to send representatives to the Organization Commission. This Commission should discuss the question. I remind you that we are very tired, that it would in fact be hard to put together a special commission. The parties should be requested to send their representatives to the Organization Commission, so that both questions can be dealt with in a single commission. (Agreement)
[VAILLANT-COUTURIER]:[7] Comrades, the French delegation has considered the question of the organization of the International previously raised by comrade Koenen, and yesterday evening our section meeting decided to request that the Congress create a commission to study this question. But since we are faced with the fact that a commission has already been appointed to study organization, we request that two sub-commissions be created immediately: one for the study of organizational questions and the other concerning the organization of the International. We request that these commissions be set up at once, since the question of the organization of the Executive Committee is exceedingly important.
KOLAROV (Chair): The Congress can take note of the proposal of the French delegation and pass it on to the Commission, because it is of a practical nature.
Since no one else has requested the floor, I declare the debate on this question closed on condition that the Commission deal most thoroughly with all these extremely important questions.
Before the session concludes, there are several announcements to be made.
VAILLANT-COUTURIER: It goes without saying that several delegates can be sent from each country.
KOLAROV (Chair): Several delegates can be sent by the Commission, since there are two sub-commissions.
DELAGRANGE: You understand that we cannot debate the proposed Theses, since we do not yet even have them. The same thing will be true in the Commission meeting tomorrow if the Theses do not get printed. Therefore the French delegation requests that it receive the Theses before the beginning of the Commission meeting.
KOLAROV (Chair): Measures have already been taken to see to this.
Session adjourned 10:30 pm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1. This sentence is garbled in the German original, but Koenen seems to be making a point that he made at the 1920 founding conference of the VKPD in his report on “The Organization of the Party”:
Historically, this federalism is understandable. For at the time the Independent Social Democratic Party was founded in Gotha this federalism was justified: at that time the rebellion of the individual districts and locals against the inactive and passive center in Berlin was necessary.
Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Vereinigungsparteitages der U.S.P.D. (Linke) und der KPD (Spartakusbund) (Berlin: Frankes Verlag, G.m.b.H., 1921), 110. Translation by PRL.
2. Koenen is referring to the Communist Workers Party of Germany (Kommunistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands), an ultra-left party formed after a split at the Second Congress of the KPD in October 1919. A delegation from the KAPD attended the Comintern’s Third Congress, but it refused to abide by the decision of the Congress and merge with the VKPD. The Comintern soon broke off relations with the KAPD, and it degenerated into a small sect.
3. This wording differs slightly from the final version adopted by the Congress. See point 6 of the Resolution.
4. This corresponds to point 48 in the final text of the Resolution.
5. Moscow was the daily journal of the Third Congress. The German Party’s proposal appeared in the French-language issue dated 10 July 1921.
6. This text is not the final text of the Resolution adopted by the Congress.
7. The German Protokoll shows no change of speaker here, but it is apparent that a representative of the French delegation is now speaking. The Russian stenographic report indicates that this is Vaillant-Couturier.
*********
Comintern 1921
Appendix B
Report of the Commission on Organisation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: by Wilhelm Koenen, Including Discussion on the Report and Voting on the Organizational Resolutions.
Transcribed and Translated: by Prometheus Research Library;
From the stenographic record of the 24th session of the Third Congress of the Communist International 12 July 1921, 9 pm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KOENEN: Comrades! The Organization Commission has had extensive meetings in two sub-commissions and gone over the entire draft. A whole series of minor changes have been made, which were all accepted unanimously by the Commission. In addition a number of cuts have been made, which were also accepted unanimously by the Organization Commission. And then a number of motions for additions have been drawn up, which I will announce.
First, an essential change and addition to the section on democratic centralism has been proposed. This amendment has already been submitted to you in the proofs in all languages, and I do not need to go through it. This proposed change was also accepted unanimously. It makes the concept of democratic centralism somewhat clearer and more comprehensible.
The next important addition concerns agitation and propaganda among national minorities. A specific injunction has been inserted on carrying out this agitation and propaganda quite vigorously, and wherever possible in the language of these minorities. The formulation of the trade-union question, the treatment of wage agreements, has been framed more clearly so that no principled disputes over wage agreements can arise.
The paragraph on “Propaganda in the Army and Navy” was reformulated, and in particular the point was added that, in countries where a standing army still exists, agitation must take into account that in the future the rank and file will be extremely closely bound to the fate of the exploited class. Finally, a specific proposal on the way to deal with troops composed of officers and the student corps was adopted.
The addition on the organization of political struggles that I proposed to you in my report and which during my presentation I read to you almost in its entirety, was accepted in its essentials. Only a few deletions were made, owing to the fact that these ideas essentially were already contained in the Theses on Tactics.
Another point on the participation of the press in carrying out political campaigns was added, and particularly on how editors are to be brought into closer contact with the entire activity of the party and how uniformity is to be introduced into the party press for its revolutionary work, as well as a proposed amendment dealing with the journals, pamphlets and other theoretical and propagandistic publications of the party. All these things are to be included in a centralized manner, consistent with the campaigns of the party.
There was an addition made concerning the social-democratic and independent-socialist press, saying how to conduct subscription work in opposition to it. Here too there was unanimity in the Commission that such an amendment should be made.
Regarding the election of central leaderships in the section on the “Structure of the Party Organism,” there was a dispute as to whether the party leadership should be responsible only to the party congress or to the International Executive Committee as well. The latter proposal was unanimously accepted by the Commission.
The proposals that the leadership, including the narrower leading body, be elected only by the party congress were revised, and it was decided that it should be optional whether the election of the narrower leading body should take place directly at the party congress or should be done by the elected central committees, or else by the Beirat or Central Ausschuß. The changes were accepted unanimously.
In various places insertions were made on the necessity of creating special working groups, and under some circumstances special leadership bodies, for agitation among women and in rural areas. The same thing was also decided for the Red Aid. The assumption is that special departments for aiding the victims of white terror are to be created by the individual parties.
With regard to the subordination of the various party bodies, the Theses were lacking a clear expression of the fact that the parliamentary deputies are also subordinate to the central party leadership. An insertion was made to take care of this. Acting on a suggestion, we added a recommendation that all parties have a special audit commission, charged with inspecting the treasury and books and reporting regularly to the expanded Ausschuß, Beirat, etc. on its work and findings.
Some comrades on the Commission wished at least to define freedom of criticism in the Theses, with some limitations. The Commission acceded to this wish and found a formulation which I would like to read because of the general interest:
In order, however, that every party decision be carried out energetically by all party organizations and members, the broadest mass of the party must whenever possible be involved in examining and deciding every question. Party organizations and party authorities also have the duty of deciding whether questions should be discussed publicly (press, pamphlets) by individual comrades, and if so, in what form and scope.[1]
There was unanimous agreement on this suggestion. We also changed the sentence that said one is just a bad communist when he forgets himself and attacks the Communist Party in public.
The section on “Illegal and Legal Work” is now called “On the Combination of Legal and Illegal Work.” What we are saying here is that there is no contradiction between legal and illegal work, but rather that the two must overlap. A number of points in this section were formulated more cautiously, some deletions were made, so that bourgeois governments would not be able to make too much out of it. It was also considered necessary to insert some formulations warning of the need for caution in accepting new members. Penetration by unreliable members should be prevented by drawing up candidacy lists. However, for the time being it is left up to individual comrades to implement this regulation in their own sections in whatever way is possible. To prevent spies and provocateurs from penetrating our illegal work it is suggested that comrades who want to do illegal work be specially tested in legal activity first. Finally, to note that there were objections to the phrase “before the revolution”; it has been replaced throughout by the expression “before the open revolutionary uprising.”
So those are the essential changes to the present draft on the organization of the party that we are proposing to you. The title will then read: “Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of the Communist Party, on the Methods and Content of Its Work.”
I come now to the section dealing with the Resolution on the Organization of the Communist International. The resolution has been changed in a few places. In the introduction a few deletions were made that did not affect the essentials. This is on the premise that what has been deleted had already been said in earlier resolutions. Similarly, in the first paragraph of point 2, the sentence that the sections of the International should maintain the closest contact with one another was deleted; instead we immediately say how they should do this. Essential changes were actually made only in the last point. It now reads as follows:
V. To be able to take on this extraordinarily increased activity, the Executive must be considerably expanded. Those sections which were granted 40 votes by the Congress shall each have 2 votes in the Executive, as shall the Executive of the Communist Youth International; those sections which have 30 and 20 votes at the Congress, one vote each. The Communist Party of Russia shall have five votes, as in the past. The representatives of the remaining sections shall have consultative votes. The president of the Executive shall be elected by the Congress. The Executive is instructed to appoint three secretaries, to be drawn from different sections if possible. In addition to them, the members of the Executive sent by the sections are obligated to take part in carrying out the ongoing work through their particular national departments or by taking over the handling of entire specialized fields as rapporteurs. The members of the administrative Smaller Bureau are elected specially by the Executive.[2]
There were some differences over this point; votes were taken to determine which sections should receive 2 votes. However, the proposal presented to you here was accepted by a large majority.
There was also a dispute on whether the members of the administrative Smaller Bureau should be elected by the Executive from among its own members or whether the Executive should also be entitled to take into the Smaller Bureau comrades who happen not to belong to the Executive. It was finally decided to formulate the sentence in such a way that the Executive has freedom in this regard. However, opinion still remains divided on this point, and we still need to arrive at an agreement on this.
Finally, the Commission which dealt with international questions also went over a number of other requests. These requests, which do not absolutely need to be discussed in a general session, were for the most part referred to the new Executive for consideration. It was proposed that a control commission be created for the activity of the Executive, specifically for what the Executive is to undertake with the parties in particular countries and what the sections are to do. It was not possible to present a finished plan for this. However, the Commission considered this question so important that it did not want to leave it unresolved until the next Congress but thought that we have to find a solution now. The Commission unanimously proposes to first adopt a provisional arrangement, to set up a provisional control commission, so that the new Executive reaches full agreement with the first voting group, that is, with the leaderships of the largest delegations. If agreement is reached between the first voting group and the Executive, then this provisional control commission is to function for this year. As to these two groups and the Executive, the delimitation of their activities should also be done on a provisional basis. However the Commission proposes unanimously that we stipulate now that in general this commission should not have greater rights than the control commissions of the individual national organizations and that in general it is not to decide political matters. This is the proposal we present to the Congress in this matter. We ask everyone to adopt these proposals without extensive dispute in so far as possible. (Vigorous agreement)
There is a proposal that the Executive be enlarged by one representative, giving a representative with decisive vote to the Indian communist movement; he previously could take part in the proceedings only with consultative vote. The Presidium has no objection to this. We believe this is a supportable proposal.
In addition, an amendment has been put forward to elect the members of the Smaller Bureau solely from among the members of the Executive. Does someone want to speak to this?
SOUVARINE demands a roll-call vote of the delegations be taken here in the plenum.
RADEK: Comrades! In the name of the Russian delegation I oppose this motion, for the following reasons. All political decisions are made by the Executive. The primary task of the Small Bureau is to lead illegal work based on the political decisions of the Executive. In various situations we may need comrades for this work who at the given moment-largely for reasons of chance, because they were not at the Congress-were not elected to the Executive, could not have been elected.
Likewise, when we send a representative abroad, we have not been able to limit ourselves to members of the Executive in selecting representatives, but have also had to send responsible comrades from outside the Executive to do this work. We have always done this. The Executive must also have the possibility of agreeing to have comrades who are not members of the Executive serve on the Small Bureau. It is purely formal schematic thinking that speaks against this; the experience of our movement speaks for it. Taking care of illegal matters demands much greater elasticity. It is characteristic that this motion was made by representatives of organizations which have not had to do any extensive illegal work. (Objection) I ask you to reject the motion. It is no great question of principle. If the Congress decides otherwise, we will have to work accordingly. But such a decision would make our work more difficult.
KOENEN: Does anyone want the floor?
KORITSCHONER: We ask you to vote for comrade Souvarine’s motion. It will not do for comrades who are not sent by the delegation of their country to get onto the Smaller Bureau of the Executive. The Smaller Bureau is a committee of the Executive and as such it must have an analogous composition and develop organically out of it. Everywhere else people are always for organic development. I would like to point out that achieving organizational clarity is an indispensable necessity, and this is the only way to do it. At the same time we must state that the motion has also been signed by delegations that have repeatedly been compelled to carry out illegal work.
WALECKI: Comrades, I must speak against the proposed improvement introduced by a group of delegations, for the following reason: up until now we have had an Executive that was not adequate either in number or in other respects to provide candidates for the Smaller Bureau. At this Congress we have decided to strengthen the Executive and to call upon the parties of the other countries to send their best people as delegates to Moscow. But at this moment we cannot yet predict the extent to which the parties will respond to this call. We cannot yet tell whether it might not still be necessary in the future to look outside the Executive Committee for personnel capable of exercising all the functions of members of the Smaller Bureau. We cannot tie the hands of the Executive Committee in this respect. The responsibility of selection must be left to it. This kind of representation is also permissible from a formal standpoint. Thus comrades who are not directly members of their party leadership are delegated to the Executive by various parties. As a rule the Executive will certainly elect its own members to the Smaller Bureau. But one must not forbid it in advance to draw in one or two persons in exceptional cases who at the given moment are not members of the Executive.
[VAILLANT-COUTURIER:[3] The French delegation defends the amendment proposed to you. Comrade Radek, who spoke very energetically against it, has just stated that this is not a question of principle. Nevertheless, it would be useful to make sure that the Small Bureau, which has special significance and is in permanent session, must consist of accountable members. We consider that the objection made by comrade Radek concerning the special tasks of the Small Bureau and the need to include members tested in illegal work is insufficient for rejecting the amendment. We think that the members of the Executive who constitute the Small Bureau can in case of need create for themselves a technical auxiliary apparatus for specific individual cases. Finally, comrade Walecki explained that it is difficult to find the seven people necessary for the Small Bureau among the thirty members of the expanded Executive. This explanation gives an unflattering assessment of the clandestine abilities of our comrades. On this basis, the French delegation requests a vote on the proposed amendment, believing that it very much simplifies the task of the International. The delegation thinks that with its adoption more convenient and productive work will prove possible. The delegation affirms that this is in no way a manifestation of distrust, since the debate exclusively concerns the method of work necessary for the International to seriously take up its affairs and fulfill to the end its revolutionary duty.]
KOENEN: There are no further requests for the floor. Therefore we must take a vote on the motion.
RADEK: If a motion is signed by a number of delegations-Australia, Austria, etc.-it is necessary to ask whether other delegations support this motion, since the matter is not settled by raising voting cards.
KOENEN (Chair): We now come to the vote by delegations. The delegations which are for having only members of the Executive be members of the Smaller Bureau should vote yes. Those for adopting the original text as I presented it for the Commission vote no, thus rejecting the amendment.
POGANY: The question is incorrectly posed. The yes vote has to be those who accept the Commission’s proposal.
KOENEN (Chair): To make the matter even clearer it should be stated: for the Souvarine amendment or for the proposal of the Commission. Then I think there can be no more confusion.
SOUVARINE: This way of posing the question is unacceptable to us. In fact we are not touching the Commission text at all. The vote should be for or against the amendment.
VAILLANT-COUTURIER: I request that all the countries that have co-signed the amendment be read out.
RADEK: Comrades, comrade Souvarine is playing hide-and-seek. It is a fact that the motion was voted down twice in the Commission. So the motion is counterposed to the Commission’s motion. The Commission’s motion grants the Executive the right to draw in comrades from outside the Executive for the necessary work. The French comrades reject this. Their amendment is therefore a countermotion. For this reason the vote must be: for the Commission or for the Souvarine motion.
KOENEN (Chair): The Presidium will no longer grant the floor to anyone else but will take the vote. The vote will be taken as follows: whoever is for the Commission’s motion must state that he is voting for the motion of the Commission. Whoever is for the amendment must state: for Souvarine’s amendment. I will comply with the request to read off the delegations that signed the amendment: the French, Spanish, Swiss, Yugoslav, Austrian and Australian delegations.
We come now to the voting. I ask the delegations for which motion they are voting. Russia: for the Commission. Germany: Commission. France: against the Commission. Italy: Commission. Czechoslovakia: 30 for Souvarine, 10 for the Commission. Youth group: against the motion of the Commission. Poland: for the Commission. Ukraine: Commission. Bulgaria: amendment. Yugoslavia: amendment. Norway: Commission. England: Commission. America: Commission. Spain: amendment. Finland: Commission. Holland: Commission. Belgium: amendment. Rumania: 5 for the Commission, 15 amendment. Latvia: Commission. Switzerland: amendment. Hungary: 10 for the Commission, 10 for the amendment. Sweden: already left. Austria: amendment. Azerbaijan: Commission. Georgia: Commission. Lithuania: Commission. Luxembourg: amendment. Turkey: not present. Estonia: absent. Denmark: Commission. Greece: amendment. South Africa: Commission. Iceland: Commission. Korea: absent. Mexico: absent. Armenia: Commission. Argentina: Commission. Australia: Commission. New Zealand: absent. Dutch Indies: absent.
The voting is concluded.
Comrades, although the exact count of the results is not yet known, we do know that a large majority is for the motion of the Commission. (Applause) Taking an average, the majority amounts to approximately 150 votes.
Following the vote comrade Zinoviev now has the floor.
ZINOVIEV: Comrades, this is the only roll-call vote during the entire Congress, and it really concerns only a very minor matter. For this reason I believe we should try to find a formula that we can perhaps all agree on. I propose that, despite this glorious victory (Laughter), we make a concession to those who proposed the motion, namely by saying that the members of the Smaller Bureau should as a rule consist only of members of the Executive and that a different procedure can be followed only as an exception. For we are really dealing only with an exceptional case. Obviously, as a rule it should and will only be members of the Executive. The only thing demanded by the exigencies of the work is that the members of the Executive not be tied down. It is obviously not a matter of distrust on the part of those who proposed the amendment but of the method of work. And since we have the experience of the Executive over the past two years, we do ask you to recognize that it will be more useful to allow such an exception, and as a rule it ought to be as the comrades of the French delegation request. I believe that in a vote along these lines-several comrades have promised this-we will receive a compact majority.
KOENEN (Chair): So the formulation is now as follows: the members of the administrative Small Bureau are specially elected by the Executive. As a rule they should be drawn from the members of the Executive. A different procedure can be followed in exceptional cases. That is comrade Zinoviev’s proposal.
There is no opposition to this formulation. Therefore we will take another vote, superseding the previous vote. All those in favor of this amendment, please raise their green cards. (This is done.) Adopted with one vote against.
After this vote I can now assume that the entire draft of the Organization Commission on the methods of work, as well as the resolution on international organization has been accepted. All who wish to express this, please raise their cards. (This is done.) Adopted unanimously.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1. This wording differs slightly from the final version adopted by the Congress. See point 51 of the Resolution.
2. This is not the final text as adopted by the Congress.
3. This speech was not recorded in the German Protokoll. We have translated it from the Russian stenographic report, Tretii vsemirnyi kongress Kommunisticheskogo Internatsionala; stenograficheskii otchet (Petrograd: Gos. izd-vo, 1922), 485.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)