From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-How the Bolshevik-Leninist Group of Romania was Founded
Markin comment:
Every once in a while it is beneficial to go back to the archives to see what our political forebears were up to. And since we are very much in a period where the study of Marxist classics, and socialist concepts in general, is on the order of the day Trotsky, a central leader of world socialism in the first half of the 20th century, has something to tell us about how to organize those inquiries.
********
Alfred Rosmer
THE PARIS MILITANT
Published: Fourth International, Autumn 1959
Trotsky stayed in France at various periods, but it was only during the two years he spent in Paris during the First World War that he could operate as a militant free to move about as well as to speak and write. That freedom was only relative, because it was that of the state of siege and censorship, but in that he was in the same boat as the French themselves, and what may here seem paradoxical is easily explained by reference to what the situation then was. In Vienna, where he had been living at that period, Russia’s entry into war had made him an enemy alien, whereas in France the “alliance” protected him, while at the same time Paris would be for him the best combat post in the hard struggle for the defense of socialism. Experience showed that this reasoning was correct: for nearly two years he was able to battle just as much among the French workers as in the emigré circles. If it all ended badly – by expulsion – there also Trotsky shared the fate of his French comrades at a time when the growth of opposition to war worried the government and led it to take open measures of repression. In his case, Petrograd was giving orders to Paris, for the expulsion, several times requested already, was finally demanded – in which Stalin was later to repeat Czarist policy, and on two occasions.
On his way toward France, Trotsky’s first stop-over was Zurich. He lingered there, staying three months, so warm and encouraging was the welcome he received from the section of the Socialist Party. In those first days of August, the Swiss socialists were, like those of all countries, overwhelmed by the collapse of the International; but, not being involved in mobilization, they were all there, especially the youth, discussing, trying to understand the meaning of the war amid the confusion created and maintained by rival propaganda. Trotsky brought them the stimulant they needed to keep clear heads. Like them he had gone through the German school of socialism: its Social-Democracy was not a party of the International but the party par excellence – one more reason for fighting mercilessly against the betrayal of its chiefs. Their collapse was a tragedy and, at first glance, the outlook was very sombre; that might lead to erroneous conclusions. But what was this war? A clash of imperialisms, of two great formations of antagonists. Of course, but there was a deeper and general meaning: the war marked the revolt of the forces of production against the outdated political form of the nation and the state; and, as the Socialist Parties were in fact national parties, they collapsed with it. Conclusion: all efforts to save the Second International would be useless; it was not socialism, however, that had collapsed, but its temporary external historic form.
An eyewitness, a member of the section and a participant in these discussions, Fritz Brupbacher, wrote later that, with Trotsky’s arrival at Zurich, life was renewed in the workers’ movement, and that his influence had such a power of attraction that they wanted to give him the mandate to represent the section at the next congress of the party. Though Switzerland. would have afforded him a less exposed place of refuge, it was in the heart of a France at war that Trotsky wanted to settle: he wrote in haste a pamphlet in which, under the title Der Krieg und die Internationale, he assembled and developed the ideas that he had just been setting forth to the Zurich socialists, a pamphlet that was so substantial and still so timely that in 1918 an enterprising American publisher made a whole book out of its translation into English.
In Paris there was another paradox: it was through the Vie Ouvière, a revolutionary syndicalist organ, that Trotsky’s liaison, neither ephemeral nor accidental, with the workers’ movement, functioned. Yet there was a Socialist Party there that persisted in calling itself the “French Section of the Workers’ International” but when Trotsky, for a specific purpose, went to the offices of the party’s daily newspaper, he there found its leaders, Cachin among others, going along with the current as usual, therefore ultra-chauvinist; after a few useless attempts at discussion, they made it clear to him that he was an undesirable: they expelled him from l’Humanité before rejoicing to see him later expelled from France by Briand.
As soon as he had found a possible boarding-house – in the Pare Montsouris neighborhood, one of the emigré quarters of Paris – he sent for his family, Natalia and the two sons Leon and Sergei, to join him; from then on he could organize his activity in such a way as to be able to carry out successfully what was going to be his triple task. The articles that he was sending to the Kievskaia Mysl obliged him to follow closely both French politics and military operations: he was a skilled newspaper-reader, and quickly understood what each represented and what must be expected of it. As for parliamentary life, it was then so limited, so non-existent, that the government had to be sought out rather at Chantilly (General Headquarters) than at Paris. But his articles also gave him the opportunity of making research field trips throughout France, of meeting socialist and trade-union militants, of sounding out the state of mind of the average Frenchman: conversations with a Liège anarchist had enabled him to learn about and give an exact description of the resistance movement that had set a notable part of the population – and even the anarchists – against the German troops.
The main work of the day was, naturally, Nashé Slovo, the newspaper, and the group that gravitated round it. The editors met every morning at the printshop in the rue des Feuillantines to discuss that day’s issue and prepare tomorrow’s, on the basis of information that came in, and of discussions about the conceptions defended by the various tendencies of Russian socialism, of polemics with the “defensists” and also with Lenin, who, from Geneva, was defending his own position with vigor and even brutality. Martov, right from the beginning, had been, before Trotsky’s arrival, a sort of editor-in-chief; his anti-war attitude had helped to bring him close to the other sectors of the opposition. It did not correspond however, to that of the majority of the Mensheviks whose representative to the International Socialist Bureau he was; he was embarrassed thereby, to the extent of being unable to accept having certain questions even raised and discussed such as that of a new International. The clashes with Trotsky grew gradually more frequent and sharp, and as it was evident that Trotsky better expressed the conceptions of the paper’s editorship, Martov resigned and left for Switzerland.
It was through him that the first contact had been made between the Russian socialists in Paris and the centre of opposition, then numerically tiny, represented by the Vie Ouvière; a letter he had written to Gustave Hervé, which the latter had published, had been the occasion for their meeting. And it was he also who announced to us the forthcoming arrival of Trotsky and who brought him around as soon as he did arrive. We used to meet in the evening, once a week, and when our little group was reinforced by these new allies, our horizon, until then sombre, lightened up. With Trotsky and Martov there came Dridzo-Losovsky, long settled in Paris, and a Polish socialist, Lapinsky. When, one evening, the Swiss socialist, Grimm, accompanied them, there could be conceived a rebirth of proletarian internationalism, and we already began arrangements which ensured us serious international liaisons, since, through the Swiss, it would he possible for us to remain in contact with the German opposition.
Of these meetings Raymond Lefebvre painted a faithful picture in the preface to L’Eponge de vinaigre. They were kept up all winter, but were abruptly ended when the government profited by a revision of draft exemptions to call up all known oppositionals who had escaped conscription and send them to the armies. At that moment the idea of an international conference had already taken sufficiently specific form so that practical preparations for holding it were being thought out. It was known that inside the French Socialist Party discontent was growing against the nationalist and pro-government policy which the leadership was integrally imposing on the party; a manifestation of this discontent and its importance was the position taken by one of the best provincial federations, that of the Haute-Vienne, and rendered public by a report signed by all the federations’ elected office-holders. The socialists of Nashé Slovo hastened to make contact with some of them who happened to be in Paris. Meetings were held at Dridzo’s place: they were not very encouraging, for the Limousins, though very firm in their criticism of the betrayal of socialism, shied away when we talked about the action that must be taken, obsessed by fear of a split, which they absolutely refused to face. The arrival in Paris of the Italian socialist Morgari, in search of participants in the future international conference, brought about the last meeting. Trotsky has amusingly described in My Life how, when Morgari suddenly spoke of underground activity, the worthy Limousins hastened to disappear. It was impossible to think of adding to the French delegation: Merrheim and Bourderon remained alone to represent the opposition, though, for that period, they represented it very well, even if they refused, despite Trotsky’s friendly insistence, to go further than their resolution at the confederal conference, which had, however, become insufficient, for it no longer corresponded to a situation that events were changing every day.
At Zimmerwald, the already known tendencies became specific. Lenin wanted acts: refusal of war credits by the Socialist parliamentarians; preparation of the new International; appeals to the workers for anti-war demonstrations. As against this clearly defined programme, the Italians set up a waiting policy: they refused to consider that the Second International was dead already; they wished for a rapprochement with the German centre (Kautsky-Bernstein) ; that was also the position of the Mensheviks. Trotsky was in agreement with Lenin (except on the question of defeatism), but he was in a position to understand better than Lenin what it was possible to ask of the conference at that stage: his Paris activity had permitted him to measure the strength of the opposition; in the same way, through his contacts with Grimm and Morgari, he knew exactly the current conceptions of the Swiss and Italian leaderships, of whom it could not be said that they did not represent the feelings of the rank and file. His speeches seemed so convincing that, at the end of the discussions, he was entrusted with the task of drafting the manifesto, which all the delegates approved. Lenin was not entirely satisfied, but that did not prevent him from considering that it was “a step forward,” and that one could be satisfied with that much for the moment.
This fortunate outcome of the conference was going to permit Trotsky to find in France a base for his activity. The manifesto restored confidence, and the opposition, till then skeletonic and dispersed, penetrated into the workers’ movement. A committee had been created for the revival of international relations; its plenary meetings brought together a growing number of militants; one of its most active members was Trotsky, who soon dominated it. Its secretary was Merrheim; with the Metal-Workers’ Federation behind him, he had, right from the beginning, courageously carried on the fight against the confederation’s leadership; now he became too prudent, already disturbed at seeing the committee drive further than he had decided to go. And so he opposed all proposals made by Trotsky to carry the activity of the committee out into public, taking up again at every session his suggestion for creating a Bulletin, indispensable for the committee’s own life, for circulating information verbally communicated during the meetings which it was important to take down and make known to all those who, in the trade unions and in the Socialist sections, were beginning to break away from the lies and illusions by which they had been lulled in order to drag them into the war. Merrheim resisted, grew impatient when he saw the ascendancy that Trotsky was winning over the assembly, but he could do nothing against his clear comments on events, fed by an exceptional experience, against a well-reasoned revolutionary optimism that carried conviction. At the end of the meetings, militants of all tendencies, socialists, anarchists, syndicalists, approached Trotsky, questioning him about points which were not yet clear to them; dates were arranged to permit continuing such fruitful conversations. One of them, F. Loriot, a member of the Socialist Party, definitively won over to the opposition, whose leadership he was to take within the party, wrote a pamphlet whose contents he had studied out with Trotsky, Les socialistes de Zimmerwald et la guerre, which took its place among the clandestine publications of the committee.
The Czarist government could not understand how an ally could allow a newspaper like Nashé Slovo to he published on its territory. On several occasions it had asked that the paper be suppressed and its editors imprisoned. The operation was difficult, being contrary to the policy of the French government at that period, when the Socialist ministers were explaining that persecution of the opposition could only aid it by making it better known – much better to stifle it by censorship. A grave incident that took place among the Russian detachments brought to France at the request of the French government was to he the occasion of an intervention that was this time decisive. The soldiers of this detachment were subjected, in France, to a regime that the surroundings rendered unbearable; the officers treated them like brute beasts. A soldier, slapped in the face by a colonel, retorted with such ardour that death ensued. Nashé Slovo, declared responsible, was immediately prohibited, and an order of expulsion announced to Trotsky. Different interventions enabled him to gain a little time and to try to choose the place to which he was to be deported. All was in vain. The family was then living in the Gobelins quarter, quite close to the hall of the Reine-Blanche, where there had taken place the deeply moving August 1914 meeting at which the various Russian parties tore one another apart, the “defensists” signing enlistment papers in the French army. It was here that two policemen came to take him and conduct him to the Spanish border. But even from Cadiz, where he was stopping temporarily, Trotsky found the means of participating once more in the committee for the revival of international relations, and precisely on the occasion of the pamphlet that he had prepared with Loriot. The growing influence of Zimmerwald had led the minorityites in the Socialist Party to organize themselves on an extremely moderate basis, their position not being essentially differenciable from that of the chauvinists of the leadership, of which they denounced only the “excesses.” This semiopposition represented a danger; there was a risk that it would get some Zimmerwaldists to make a bloc with it against the leadership – which the pamphlet had foreseen. And so complaints arose from the minorityite members, accusing the Zimmerwaldists of “dividing” the opposition. One of these criticisms was communicated to Trotsky, who replied immediately: “Political forces are not ‘divided’ by clarity any more than they are added together by confusion. Three viewpoints, three motions: clarity is political honesty.” And so ended, in an exceptional prolongation, his career as a Paris militant.
Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff.
********
Markin comment:
Every once in a while it is beneficial to go back to the archives to see what our political forebears were up to. And since we are very much in a period where the study of Marxist classics, and socialist concepts in general, is on the order of the day Trotsky, a central leader of world socialism in the first half of the 20th century, has something to tell us about how to organize those inquiries.
********
Alfred Rosmer
THE PARIS MILITANT
Published: Fourth International, Autumn 1959
Trotsky stayed in France at various periods, but it was only during the two years he spent in Paris during the First World War that he could operate as a militant free to move about as well as to speak and write. That freedom was only relative, because it was that of the state of siege and censorship, but in that he was in the same boat as the French themselves, and what may here seem paradoxical is easily explained by reference to what the situation then was. In Vienna, where he had been living at that period, Russia’s entry into war had made him an enemy alien, whereas in France the “alliance” protected him, while at the same time Paris would be for him the best combat post in the hard struggle for the defense of socialism. Experience showed that this reasoning was correct: for nearly two years he was able to battle just as much among the French workers as in the emigré circles. If it all ended badly – by expulsion – there also Trotsky shared the fate of his French comrades at a time when the growth of opposition to war worried the government and led it to take open measures of repression. In his case, Petrograd was giving orders to Paris, for the expulsion, several times requested already, was finally demanded – in which Stalin was later to repeat Czarist policy, and on two occasions.
On his way toward France, Trotsky’s first stop-over was Zurich. He lingered there, staying three months, so warm and encouraging was the welcome he received from the section of the Socialist Party. In those first days of August, the Swiss socialists were, like those of all countries, overwhelmed by the collapse of the International; but, not being involved in mobilization, they were all there, especially the youth, discussing, trying to understand the meaning of the war amid the confusion created and maintained by rival propaganda. Trotsky brought them the stimulant they needed to keep clear heads. Like them he had gone through the German school of socialism: its Social-Democracy was not a party of the International but the party par excellence – one more reason for fighting mercilessly against the betrayal of its chiefs. Their collapse was a tragedy and, at first glance, the outlook was very sombre; that might lead to erroneous conclusions. But what was this war? A clash of imperialisms, of two great formations of antagonists. Of course, but there was a deeper and general meaning: the war marked the revolt of the forces of production against the outdated political form of the nation and the state; and, as the Socialist Parties were in fact national parties, they collapsed with it. Conclusion: all efforts to save the Second International would be useless; it was not socialism, however, that had collapsed, but its temporary external historic form.
An eyewitness, a member of the section and a participant in these discussions, Fritz Brupbacher, wrote later that, with Trotsky’s arrival at Zurich, life was renewed in the workers’ movement, and that his influence had such a power of attraction that they wanted to give him the mandate to represent the section at the next congress of the party. Though Switzerland. would have afforded him a less exposed place of refuge, it was in the heart of a France at war that Trotsky wanted to settle: he wrote in haste a pamphlet in which, under the title Der Krieg und die Internationale, he assembled and developed the ideas that he had just been setting forth to the Zurich socialists, a pamphlet that was so substantial and still so timely that in 1918 an enterprising American publisher made a whole book out of its translation into English.
In Paris there was another paradox: it was through the Vie Ouvière, a revolutionary syndicalist organ, that Trotsky’s liaison, neither ephemeral nor accidental, with the workers’ movement, functioned. Yet there was a Socialist Party there that persisted in calling itself the “French Section of the Workers’ International” but when Trotsky, for a specific purpose, went to the offices of the party’s daily newspaper, he there found its leaders, Cachin among others, going along with the current as usual, therefore ultra-chauvinist; after a few useless attempts at discussion, they made it clear to him that he was an undesirable: they expelled him from l’Humanité before rejoicing to see him later expelled from France by Briand.
As soon as he had found a possible boarding-house – in the Pare Montsouris neighborhood, one of the emigré quarters of Paris – he sent for his family, Natalia and the two sons Leon and Sergei, to join him; from then on he could organize his activity in such a way as to be able to carry out successfully what was going to be his triple task. The articles that he was sending to the Kievskaia Mysl obliged him to follow closely both French politics and military operations: he was a skilled newspaper-reader, and quickly understood what each represented and what must be expected of it. As for parliamentary life, it was then so limited, so non-existent, that the government had to be sought out rather at Chantilly (General Headquarters) than at Paris. But his articles also gave him the opportunity of making research field trips throughout France, of meeting socialist and trade-union militants, of sounding out the state of mind of the average Frenchman: conversations with a Liège anarchist had enabled him to learn about and give an exact description of the resistance movement that had set a notable part of the population – and even the anarchists – against the German troops.
The main work of the day was, naturally, Nashé Slovo, the newspaper, and the group that gravitated round it. The editors met every morning at the printshop in the rue des Feuillantines to discuss that day’s issue and prepare tomorrow’s, on the basis of information that came in, and of discussions about the conceptions defended by the various tendencies of Russian socialism, of polemics with the “defensists” and also with Lenin, who, from Geneva, was defending his own position with vigor and even brutality. Martov, right from the beginning, had been, before Trotsky’s arrival, a sort of editor-in-chief; his anti-war attitude had helped to bring him close to the other sectors of the opposition. It did not correspond however, to that of the majority of the Mensheviks whose representative to the International Socialist Bureau he was; he was embarrassed thereby, to the extent of being unable to accept having certain questions even raised and discussed such as that of a new International. The clashes with Trotsky grew gradually more frequent and sharp, and as it was evident that Trotsky better expressed the conceptions of the paper’s editorship, Martov resigned and left for Switzerland.
It was through him that the first contact had been made between the Russian socialists in Paris and the centre of opposition, then numerically tiny, represented by the Vie Ouvière; a letter he had written to Gustave Hervé, which the latter had published, had been the occasion for their meeting. And it was he also who announced to us the forthcoming arrival of Trotsky and who brought him around as soon as he did arrive. We used to meet in the evening, once a week, and when our little group was reinforced by these new allies, our horizon, until then sombre, lightened up. With Trotsky and Martov there came Dridzo-Losovsky, long settled in Paris, and a Polish socialist, Lapinsky. When, one evening, the Swiss socialist, Grimm, accompanied them, there could be conceived a rebirth of proletarian internationalism, and we already began arrangements which ensured us serious international liaisons, since, through the Swiss, it would he possible for us to remain in contact with the German opposition.
Of these meetings Raymond Lefebvre painted a faithful picture in the preface to L’Eponge de vinaigre. They were kept up all winter, but were abruptly ended when the government profited by a revision of draft exemptions to call up all known oppositionals who had escaped conscription and send them to the armies. At that moment the idea of an international conference had already taken sufficiently specific form so that practical preparations for holding it were being thought out. It was known that inside the French Socialist Party discontent was growing against the nationalist and pro-government policy which the leadership was integrally imposing on the party; a manifestation of this discontent and its importance was the position taken by one of the best provincial federations, that of the Haute-Vienne, and rendered public by a report signed by all the federations’ elected office-holders. The socialists of Nashé Slovo hastened to make contact with some of them who happened to be in Paris. Meetings were held at Dridzo’s place: they were not very encouraging, for the Limousins, though very firm in their criticism of the betrayal of socialism, shied away when we talked about the action that must be taken, obsessed by fear of a split, which they absolutely refused to face. The arrival in Paris of the Italian socialist Morgari, in search of participants in the future international conference, brought about the last meeting. Trotsky has amusingly described in My Life how, when Morgari suddenly spoke of underground activity, the worthy Limousins hastened to disappear. It was impossible to think of adding to the French delegation: Merrheim and Bourderon remained alone to represent the opposition, though, for that period, they represented it very well, even if they refused, despite Trotsky’s friendly insistence, to go further than their resolution at the confederal conference, which had, however, become insufficient, for it no longer corresponded to a situation that events were changing every day.
At Zimmerwald, the already known tendencies became specific. Lenin wanted acts: refusal of war credits by the Socialist parliamentarians; preparation of the new International; appeals to the workers for anti-war demonstrations. As against this clearly defined programme, the Italians set up a waiting policy: they refused to consider that the Second International was dead already; they wished for a rapprochement with the German centre (Kautsky-Bernstein) ; that was also the position of the Mensheviks. Trotsky was in agreement with Lenin (except on the question of defeatism), but he was in a position to understand better than Lenin what it was possible to ask of the conference at that stage: his Paris activity had permitted him to measure the strength of the opposition; in the same way, through his contacts with Grimm and Morgari, he knew exactly the current conceptions of the Swiss and Italian leaderships, of whom it could not be said that they did not represent the feelings of the rank and file. His speeches seemed so convincing that, at the end of the discussions, he was entrusted with the task of drafting the manifesto, which all the delegates approved. Lenin was not entirely satisfied, but that did not prevent him from considering that it was “a step forward,” and that one could be satisfied with that much for the moment.
This fortunate outcome of the conference was going to permit Trotsky to find in France a base for his activity. The manifesto restored confidence, and the opposition, till then skeletonic and dispersed, penetrated into the workers’ movement. A committee had been created for the revival of international relations; its plenary meetings brought together a growing number of militants; one of its most active members was Trotsky, who soon dominated it. Its secretary was Merrheim; with the Metal-Workers’ Federation behind him, he had, right from the beginning, courageously carried on the fight against the confederation’s leadership; now he became too prudent, already disturbed at seeing the committee drive further than he had decided to go. And so he opposed all proposals made by Trotsky to carry the activity of the committee out into public, taking up again at every session his suggestion for creating a Bulletin, indispensable for the committee’s own life, for circulating information verbally communicated during the meetings which it was important to take down and make known to all those who, in the trade unions and in the Socialist sections, were beginning to break away from the lies and illusions by which they had been lulled in order to drag them into the war. Merrheim resisted, grew impatient when he saw the ascendancy that Trotsky was winning over the assembly, but he could do nothing against his clear comments on events, fed by an exceptional experience, against a well-reasoned revolutionary optimism that carried conviction. At the end of the meetings, militants of all tendencies, socialists, anarchists, syndicalists, approached Trotsky, questioning him about points which were not yet clear to them; dates were arranged to permit continuing such fruitful conversations. One of them, F. Loriot, a member of the Socialist Party, definitively won over to the opposition, whose leadership he was to take within the party, wrote a pamphlet whose contents he had studied out with Trotsky, Les socialistes de Zimmerwald et la guerre, which took its place among the clandestine publications of the committee.
The Czarist government could not understand how an ally could allow a newspaper like Nashé Slovo to he published on its territory. On several occasions it had asked that the paper be suppressed and its editors imprisoned. The operation was difficult, being contrary to the policy of the French government at that period, when the Socialist ministers were explaining that persecution of the opposition could only aid it by making it better known – much better to stifle it by censorship. A grave incident that took place among the Russian detachments brought to France at the request of the French government was to he the occasion of an intervention that was this time decisive. The soldiers of this detachment were subjected, in France, to a regime that the surroundings rendered unbearable; the officers treated them like brute beasts. A soldier, slapped in the face by a colonel, retorted with such ardour that death ensued. Nashé Slovo, declared responsible, was immediately prohibited, and an order of expulsion announced to Trotsky. Different interventions enabled him to gain a little time and to try to choose the place to which he was to be deported. All was in vain. The family was then living in the Gobelins quarter, quite close to the hall of the Reine-Blanche, where there had taken place the deeply moving August 1914 meeting at which the various Russian parties tore one another apart, the “defensists” signing enlistment papers in the French army. It was here that two policemen came to take him and conduct him to the Spanish border. But even from Cadiz, where he was stopping temporarily, Trotsky found the means of participating once more in the committee for the revival of international relations, and precisely on the occasion of the pamphlet that he had prepared with Loriot. The growing influence of Zimmerwald had led the minorityites in the Socialist Party to organize themselves on an extremely moderate basis, their position not being essentially differenciable from that of the chauvinists of the leadership, of which they denounced only the “excesses.” This semiopposition represented a danger; there was a risk that it would get some Zimmerwaldists to make a bloc with it against the leadership – which the pamphlet had foreseen. And so complaints arose from the minorityite members, accusing the Zimmerwaldists of “dividing” the opposition. One of these criticisms was communicated to Trotsky, who replied immediately: “Political forces are not ‘divided’ by clarity any more than they are added together by confusion. Three viewpoints, three motions: clarity is political honesty.” And so ended, in an exceptional prolongation, his career as a Paris militant.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff.
********
RomaniaHow the Bolshevik-Leninist Group of Romania was FoundedThe following article appeared over the pseudonym of ‘Barta’ in the French language internal bulletin of the International Communist League, the name of the Trotskyist movement at that time (number 5, which bears the date November 1935, although in fact it was not issued by the International Secretariat until January 1936). It bears the caption “Only for members of the International Communist League”.The author of the article was David Korner (pseudonyms Barta, Albert, A Mathieu). Born in Romania on 19 October 1914, he was a member of the Romanian Communist Party in 1932-33. He joined the French Trotskyist organisation whilst a student in Paris in 1934. He returned to Romania in 1934, where he was one of the founders of the Romanian Bolshevik-Leninist Group in April 1935. He was again in Paris after 1936, where he was a member of the Parts Ouvrier Internationalists. He entered the Pivert-led Parti Socialists Ouvrier et Paysan in February 1939 as a member of the POI minority around jean Rous and Yvan Craipeau. He broke from the French Section of the Fourth International after the outbreak of the Second World War, and launched a duplicated bulletin L'Ouvrier (October 1939 January 1940). In November 1940 he wrote a pamphlet, La lutte contre la deuxieme guerre imperialiste mondiale, in which he criticised the ‘nationalist deviations’ of the French Section, which he considered as ‘petty bourgeois’. After that, under conditions of clandestinity, he set up a small Trotskyist group, which took the names of the Groupe Communiste (Quatrième Internationale) from November 1942 to September 1944, Union Communiste (Quatrième Internationale) from October 1944 to March 1946, and Union Communiste (trotskyste) from May 1946 to March 1950. They published both La Lutte de classes (1942-57) and La Voix des travailleurs (1945-46), which later became La Voix des travailleurs de chez Renault. The Barta-led group played a prominent role in the Renault strike of April-May 1947 (see Revolutionary History, Volume 2, no.1 , Spring 1989), and in May-June 1947, urged by Renault workers, they set up a union, the Syndicat Democratique Renault, thus virtually dissolving their organisation into the latter. The disappearance of the SDR towards the end of 1949 provoked a crisis in the Union Communiste. Barta tried to revive the organisation in 1950 and again in 1956, but with no success. He then retired from active politics, and died on 6 September 1976. This article on the origins of the Romanian Bolshevik-Leninist Group is from the archives of the Centro Studi Pietro Tresso in Foligno, Italy. It is interesting for the evidence it provides for Barta’s early views about the training of Communist militants and of internationalist opposition to social-patriotism, which were to become the distinguishing marks of the organisation he founded in France, from which the modern Lutte Ouvrière group traces its origins. Stalin’s declarations [1] provoked great disquiet, even among the most backward Stalinists. In spite of the statements of more or less highly placed functionaries, according to which Stalin had been talking ‘diplomatically’, and that the Communist Parties of France and Czechoslovakia would continue a policy of defeatism as regards their own bourgeoisie, in no way did they succeed in reassuring those elements that had begun to have doubts about the Third International. Unfortunately the Bolshevik-Leninist group that had been formed in April 1935, whose links to begin with had been confined solely to the Romanian Communist Party, for a number of reasons was for a long time cut off from outside and without any information. That is why we were not able to counterpose any precise fact proving the social-patriotic position of these parties to the lies poured out by the Stalinists, according to which those who had assumed a social patriotic position, like Vaillant Couturier, for example [2] had been expelled from the Communist Parties of France and Czechoslovakia. We also lacked Comrade LT’s [Leon Trotsky’s] An Open Letter to the Workers of France. [3] In these circumstances in June 1935 we published the pamphlet War and the Fourth International with a short preface. [4] And since we were accused by the Stalinists of aiming at a civil war in the Soviet Union we printed The Fourth International and the Soviet Union by LT [Trotsky]. [5] Being a very young small group, with many difficulties to contend with [in illegality] we felt all the weight of the Stalinist apparatus, which created an intolerable and isolating atmosphere around us by all means: lies, threats, and insults (‘Hitler’s agents’, ‘provocateurs’ ... ‘syphilitics’!). [6] Moreover, for a country so backward from the political point of view, with militants who had never thought for themselves, the two pamphlets were too dry, and despite their fairly extensive diffusion, they were only read and understood by a very few militants, but they did help to make our group and its position known. The policy of the Romanian Communist Party at the present time is aiming for the creation of a great ‘Popular Front’ to defend ... democratic liberties! (An unheard-of terror reigns in Romania!) In order to counter the concept of the Popular Front, as well as other theoretical and tactical questions, in October 1935 we wrote and published the pamphlet Popular Front or Workers’ United Front? as well as the Theses on the Workers' United Front (Fourth Congress of the Communist International). [7] The distribution of these pamphlets was much better than that of the two former, thanks to the fact that the ‘Unitary’ Party of Romania [8] (which stands to the left of the SAP) pretends to defend the same ‘principled’ positions as ourselves, but clings to bourgeois legality at all costs and does nothing to spread its ‘principles’ (their journal has been banned by the government). We were able to distribute our pamphlets amongst its militants, to which we owe some recruitment. Then we published Comrade Trotsky’s An Open Letter to the Workers of France, as well as reproducing the article Who Defends Russia? Who Helps Hitler? [9], the distribution of which was very good (in this country, where the working class movement is illegal, every publication passes from one hand to another). In the meantime our group became numerically larger and was clarified. We were organised in cells that carried on the regular work of education and activity. The most urgent task is to form ideologically well trained cadres and a firm nucleus. In particular we must study the history of the Romanian workers’ movement in the light of Marxism, a task that has never been undertaken in Romania, and elaborate an analysis and perspective for Romania, closely linked to the international situation. It is necessary for us to be clearly demarcated from all other tendencies, above all the ‘Unitaries’, who create much confusion, especially by their centrist position (‘total unity’) in relation to the new International. The objective conditions within which our group must struggle are very hard: to the police persecutions should be added those of the Social Democrats and the Stalinists, who employ the same methods as the former. But we will surmount all obstacles, because the positions we are defending are the only way for the emancipation of the working class: the world revolution. Forward for the Fourth International! Barta Notes1. This refers to the statement issued to the press after the signing of the Franco-Soviet Pact of May 1935: “In this respect Monsieur Stalin understands and fully approves the policy of national defence followed by France, in order to maintain her armed forces at the level required by her security”. Both powers also agreed to support Czechoslovakia if attacked. See Max Beloff, The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, Volume 1, London 1947, p.156.2. Paul Vaillant-Couturier (1892-1937) was a founder of the French Communist Party and editor of its newspaper L’Humanité. He was the main protagonist for the Popular Front in France. 3. L.D. Trotsky, An Open Letter to the Workers of France, 10 June 1935, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1934-35, New York 1971, pp.305-14. 4. L.D. Trotsky, War and the Fourth International, 10 June 1934, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1933-34, New York, 1975, pp.299-329. 5. L.D. Trotsky, The Fourth International and the Soviet Union, 8 July 1936, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1935-36, New York, 1977, pp.354-60. 6. A certain ‘BS’ of Bucharest had the following to say in the official organ of the Communist International, International Press Correspondence, Volume 17, no.35, 23 October 1937: ... the Siguranza [special branch of the police] permits the Ghelertar party (which still includes among its membership many honest workers) to publish a paper again which continually repeats all the slanders against the Soviet Union, the Comintern and the Communist Party, which the Trotskyists reiterate day by day in every country. The Siguranza has already succeeded in rallying Trotskyist elements (camouflaged as Communists) around this newspaper Lumea Rumaneasca, a 16 page daily, and through this medium is able to carry on a campaign against the leaders of the General Confederation of Labour, on the ostensible grounds that the leadership is hindering united action and the unity of the trade union movement. Therefore, such unity could only be established in the struggle against this leadership – a policy which in practice would really mean the postponement of trade union unity for several years ... Not content with the publication of Lumea Rumaneasca, that ‘truly Communistic’ newspaper, the Siguranza, at the end of July, commissioned its agent, Barbu Erftimiu, to publish a weekly paper, Saptamana Sociale, around which it attempts to gather all the individuals expelled from the Communist Party and the working clan movement for their treacherous, wrecking, Trotskyist activities. In this paper the police conduct a sort of press campaign against the leaders of the General Conference of Workers, allegedly with the object of facilitating the establishment of trade union unity, but in reality with the object of hindering at all cost the creation of such unity, and to sow confusion in the ranks of the working class ... Further, the Tatarescu government and the reactionary forces standing behind it are very skilfully sending well-camouflaged Trotskyist elements into the ranks of the Social Democratic Party, the trade union: affiliated to the General Conference of Workers, and other working class organisations. These Trotskyist cells are very dangerous, because they are well covered by the membership card of the party or of some other democratic working class organisation. Even more dangerous are the Trotskyist elements which have succeeded in penetrating into the editorial office of Lumea Noua, the newspaper of the Social Democratic Party, and of the General Conference of Workers, and who heap the vilest abuse on the Soviet Union ... It is therefore all the more dangerous and regrettable that the trade union secretary of the Social Democratic Party instead of pointing out the tremendous growth of the danger of war and Fascism and hence the necessity of anti-Fascist unity, has in a leading article published by Lumea Noua, under the heading A Few Words to the Communists, again pronounced himself against the unity of the trade union movement, and attacked not the Trotskyists of Lumea Rumaneasa (who in his opinion are the true Communists), but the CP, thus facilitating the activities of the Trotskyists and of international Fascism, of whom they are the agents.7. L.D. Trotsky, On the United Front, February 1922, The First Five Years of the Communist International, Volume 2, London, 1974, pp.9lff. 8. The Unitary Party to which Barta refers was the Romanian Partidul Socialist Unitar (PSU), the result of a fusion between the left wing of the Romanian Social Democratic Party and the Independent Socialist Party. The latter was a member of the Two-and-a-Half International which had refused to join the Second Internnational in May 1923, and was one of the founders of the International Information Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Parties set up in December 1924, later known as the Paris Bureau (cf. Academia Stefa Gheorghiu, Dictionar politic, Editura Politica Bucharest, 1975). The fusion had taken place a short time before the conference of left parties in Paris in August 1933, which was attended by a PSU delegation. 9. L.D. Trotsky, Who Defends Russia? Who Helps Hitler?, 29 July 1935, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1935-36, op. cit., pp.58-64. |
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