In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Grigorii Zinoviev

Click on title to link to the Gregory Zinoviev Internet Archive's copy of his 1921 statement on the disciplinary measures on Paul Levy and Serrati. This is an important statement about Communist International discipline.

Markin comment:

Before everyone starts yelling and screaming I know that Zinoviev's role in the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power was ugly ("strikebreaker" being the kindest way to express his position). I know that he ran rough shot over the Communist International (although he also did some good work there). I also know that he was less, far less than brave in his opposition to Stalin and was wobbly at the end. But remember this- he was Lenin's right hand man in exile and in the key period before 1917 when World War I was going full blast and when revolutionary internationalists were scarce as hen's teeth he stood his ground. It is for that and his agitation during the months before the revolution that he gets a nod here. Hell, call me an unreconstructed Cannonite but that is the way the deal went down.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Grigorii Zinoviev

Click on title to link to the Gregory Zinoviev Internet Archive's copy of his 1919 article " To The Proletarian Youth".

Markin comment:

Before everyone starts yelling and screaming I know that Zinoviev's role in the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power was ugly ("strikebreaker" being the kindest way to express his position). I know that he ran rough shot over the Communist International (although he also did some good work there). I also know that he was less, far less than brave in his opposition to Stalin and was wobbly at the end. But remember this- he was Lenin's right hand man in exile and in the key period before 1917 when World War I was going full blast and when revolutionary internationalists were scarce as hen's teeth he stood his ground. It is for that and his agitation during the months before the revolution that he gets a nod here. Hell, call me an unreconstructed Cannonite but that is the way the deal went down.

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

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

Markin comment:

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

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Grigorii Zinoviev

Click on title to link to the Gregory Zinoviev Internet Archive's copy of his 1916 article "What Is Imperialism?".

Markin comment:

Before everyone starts yelling and screaming I know that Zinoviev's role in the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power was ugly ("strikebreaker" being the kindest way to express his position). I know that he ran rough shot over the Communist International (although he also did some good work there). I also know that he was less, far less than brave in his opposition to Stalin and was wobbly at the end. But remember this- he was Lenin's right hand man in exile and in the key period before 1917 when World War I was going full blast and when revolutionary internationalists were scarce as hen's teeth he stood his ground. It is for that and his agitation during the months before the revolution that he gets a nod here. Hell, call me an unreconstructed Cannonite but that is the way the deal went down.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Grigorii Zinoviev

Click on title to link to the Gregory Zinoviev Internet Archive's copy of his 1916 article "Wars-Defensive And Aggressive".

Markin comment:

Before everyone starts yelling and screaming I know that Zinoviev's role in the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power was ugly ("strikebreaker" being the kindest way to express his position). I know that he ran rough shot over the Communist International (although he also did some good work there). I also know that he was less, far less than brave in his opposition to Stalin and was wobbly at the end. But remember this- he was Lenin's right hand man in exile and in the key period before 1917 when World War I was going full blast and when revolutionary internationalists were scarce as hen's teeth he stood his ground. It is for that and his agitation during the months before the revolution that he gets a nod here. Hell, call me an unreconstructed Cannonite but that is the way the deal went down.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Grigorii Zinoviev

Click on title to link to the Gregory Zinoviev Internet Archive's copy of his "Opening Address To The Second Congress Of The Communist International". Zinoviev was the first president of the Communist International, for better or worst.

Markin comment:

Before everyone starts yelling and screaming I know that Zinoviev's role in the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power was ugly ("strikebreaker" being the kindest way to express his position). I know that he ran rough shot over the Communist International (although he also did some good work there). I also know that he was less, far less than brave in his opposition to Stalin and was wobbly at the end. But remember this- he was Lenin's right hand man in exile and in the key period before 1917 when World War I was going full blast and when revolutionary internationalists were scarce as hen's teeth he stood his ground. It is for that and his agitation during the months before the revolution that he gets a nod here. Hell, call me an unreconstructed Cannonite but that is the way the deal went down.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Nadezhda Krupskaya

Click on title to link to Nadezhda Krupskaya Internet Archive's copy of a section of her very important work, "Reminiscences Of Lenin". This is inside stuff and required reading for those who want to get an idea of Lenin as a developing revolutionary leader.

Markin comment:


No revolution can succeed without men and women of Krupskaya's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Nadezhda Krupskaya

Click on title to link to Nadezhda Krupskaya Internet Archive's copy of a section of her very important work, "Reminiscences Of Lenin". This is inside stuff and required reading for those who want to get an idea of Lenin as a developing revolutionary leader.

Markin comment:


No revolution can succeed without men and women of Krupskaya's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Nadezhda Krupskaya

Click on title to link to Nadezhda Krupskaya Internet Archive's copy of a section of her very important work, "Reminiscences Of Lenin". This is inside stuff and required reading for those who want to get an idea of Lenin as a developing revolutionary leader.

Markin comment:


No revolution can succeed without men and women of Krupskaya's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Nadezhda Krupskaya

Click on title to link to Nadezhda Krupskaya Internet Archive's copy of a section of her very important work, "Reminiscences Of Lenin". This is inside stuff and required reading for those who want to get an idea of Lenin as a developing revolutionary leader.

Markin comment:


No revolution can succeed without men and women of Krupskaya's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *On The Anniversary Of Vladimir Lenin's Birthday- Those Who Honor Lenin Are Kindred Spirits

Click on title to link the "Vladimir Lenin Internet Archive" for an online copy of his 1917 article, "The Tasks Of The Proletarian In Our Revolution".

Markin comment:

The name Lenin, the party Bolshevik and the revolution Russian need no introduction to readers of this space. We are still trying assimilate the lessons that Lenin drove home in the early struggles for socialism. Happy Birthday, Comrade Lenin wherever you are doing your revolutionary time.

**Poet's Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"- In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Paris Commune

Markin comment:

Old Brecht may not have been from the be-bop generation but he, in his way, knew how to speak truth to power through his poetry and plays.

To Those Born After

I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

II

You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.

*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919)-Declaration of the Participants in the Zimmerwald Conference, made at the Congress of the Communist International in Moscow

Honor The Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The Anniversary Of The Historic First World Congress Of The CI

Markin comment:

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

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

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



First Congress of the Communist International

Declaration of the Participants in the Zimmerwald Conference, made at the Congress of the Communist International in Moscow

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Source: Theses Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congress of the Third International, translated by Alix Holt and Barbara Holland. Ink Links 1980;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.


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4 March 1919
The Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences were of importance at a time when it was essential to unify all those proletarian elements ready to protest in any way against the imperialist slaughter. But the Zimmerwald Association, besides including men and women of a clearly defined Communist orientation, attracted other wavering, pacifist and ‘centrist’ socialists, who are now – as the Berne conference has shown – forging an alliance with the social-patriots to wage a struggle against the revolutionary proletariat. Thus, Zimmerwald is being exploited in the interests of reaction.

At the same time, the Communist current in a number of countries is gaining in strength. The struggle against the ‘centrist’ elements, which are obstructing the social revolution, is now a priority task for the revolutionary proletariat.

The Zimmerwald Association has outlived its usefulness. Everything in it that was truly revolutionary is passing over to the Communist International.

The undersigned members of the Zimmerwald movement declare that they regard its organisation to be dissolved and propose that all the documents of the Bureau of the Zimmerwald Conference be transferred to the Executive Committee of the Third International.

C. Rakovsky, N. Lenin, G. Zinoviev, L. Trotsky, Fritz Platten.

*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919)-Lenin's Speech at the Opening Session of the Congress

Honor The 90th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The Anniversary Of The Historic First World Congress Of The CI

Markin comment:

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

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

The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
********
Speech at the Opening Session of the Congress
March 2

On behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party I declare the First Congress of the Communist International open. First I would ask all present to rise in tribute to the finest representatives of the Third International: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg . ( All rise .)

Comrades, our gathering has great historic significance. It testifies to the collapse of all the illusions cherished by bourgeois democrats. Not only in Russia, but in the most developed capitalist countries of Europe, in Germany for example, civil war is a fact.

The bourgeois are terror-stricken at the growing workers’ revolutionary movement. This is understandable if we take into account that the development of events since the imperialist war inevitably favors the workers’ revolutionary movement, and that the world revolution is beginning and growing in intensity everywhere.

The people are aware of the greatness and significance of the struggle now going on. All that is needed is to find the practical form to enable the proletariat to establish its rule. Such a form is the Soviet system with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictatorship of the proletariat—until now these words were Latin to the masses. Thanks to the spread of the Soviets throughout the world this Latin has been translated into all modern languages; a practical form of dictatorship has been found by the working people. The mass of workers now understand it thanks to Soviet power in Russia, thanks to the Spartacus League in Germany and to similar organizations in other countries, such as, for example, the Shop Stewards Committees in Britain . All this shows that a revolutionary form of the dictatorship of the proletariat has been found, that the proletariat is now able to exercise its rule.

Comrades, I think that after the events in Russia and the January struggle in Germany, it is especially important to note that in other countries, too, the latest form of the workers’ movement is asserting itself and getting the upper hand. Today, for example, I read in an anti-socialist newspaper a report to the effect that the British government had received a dedication from the Birmingham Workers’ Counsel and had expressed its readiness to recognize the Councils as economic bodies. [A] The Soviet system has triumphed not only in backward Russia, but also in the most developed country of Europe—in Germany, and in Britain, the oldest capitalist country.

Even though the bourgeoisie are still raging, even though they may kill thousands more workers, victory will be ours, the victory of the worldwide Communist revolution is assured.

Comrades, I extend hearty greetings to you on behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party. I move that we elect a presidium. Let us have nominations. [B]

*From The Pen Of Early Soviet Culture Commissar Anatol Lunacharsky- Yulii Martov

Click on title to link to early Bolshevik Culture and Education Commissar Anatol Lunacharsky's profile of left-Menshevik leader Yulii Martov from his 1923 "Revolutionary Silhouettes". Lunarcharsky may have been a "soft" Bolshevik but he had insights into the Bolshevik leadership (and here into the 'softness' of the best of the Menshevik leadership) that helped explain the successes (and some of the subsequent political problems) of that leadership.

*Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archive's copy of the 1947 article ,"The Treason Of The Intellectuals", Cannon's stinging indictment of some of the turncoat intellectuals of the 1930s at a time when the American government (and others) ratcheted up the heat in the "red scare" post-World War II Cold War period.

Commentary

No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon the founder of The Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined.

The conclusion that I drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spend a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. That position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.


It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question, religion, special racial and gender oppressions) and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the ‘new’ working class or a ‘new’ vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an ideas that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on , frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray ( in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960’s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?

*From The Pages Of The Communist International-E. Sylvia Pankhurst-The New War(1919)

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


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.
********
E. Sylvia Pankhurst-The New War

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Source: The Communist International, June 1919, No. 2, pp. 171-176 (5,529 words)
Transcribed: Ted Crawford
HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.


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Wake up! wake up! oh, sleepy British people! The new war is in full blast, and you are called to fight in it; you cannot escape; you must take part.

Out of the old inter-capitalist war between the Allies and the Central Empires, the war, the actual crude, cruel fighting between the workers and the capitalists has emerged.

Soldiers who enlisted, or were conscripted, for the old war have been quietly kept on to fight in the new war which began without any formal declaration. They have not been asked: “Do you approve this war; do you understand it?” They have merely been detained and will now fight against their comrades.

Officially the British Government is not at war with Socialism in Europe though in actual fact British and other Allied soldiers have been fighting it for a long time, and British money and munitions are keeping the soldiers of other governments in the field against it.

There has been no official declaration of war, but the House of Commons, on April 9th, expressed its opinion in support of the war on Socialism in general, and on Russian Socialism in particular. This expression of opinion the Home Secretary claims to have been unanimous, and certainly when he challenged Members to express a contrary opinion no voice of dissent was audible enough to reach the columns of Hansard or the press. No Member of Parliament has written to the newspapers to make his protest.

Some Socialists tell us that the floor of the House of Commons is a splendid platform for propaganda; but the trouble is that when they get into the House, their courage seems to evaporate like a child’s soap bubble. We have heard of Labour Members of Parliament being ready to do and say all sorts of heroic things, and to get themselves put out of the House, to arrest the world’s attention on some appropriate occasion. That is not much of course, as compared with running the risk of death in the horrible trenches or with being incarcerated for years in prison; but here was an opportunity, if ever there was one, for Members of Parliament to display all their pluck. Clem Edwards, the notorious anti-socialist, moved the adjournment of the House, “to draw attention to a definite matter of urgent public importance namely, the alleged overtures from the Bolshevik regime in Russia to the Peace Conference in Paris”.

In the debate Brigadier-General Page Croft and Lieut. Col. Guinness suggested that some Members of Parliament supported the Bolsheviki. Did any man cry out: “Yes, we are proud to stand by our fellow-workers in their fight for Socialism?” No, on the contrary, the Labour Members broke out in to cries of protest against the suggestion that they had any such sympathies. Bottomley rewarded them by an assurance of “the profoundest and most affectionate respect”. The Home Secretary hammered in the point, saying the debate had called forth “from every quarter of the House an indignant repudiation that the House contained a single Bolshevik sympathiser”. He described the Soviet Government as “a mere gang of bloodthirsty ruffians”, and said A would strengthen the hands of the Government toknow there is “no quarter” for any Soviet supporters, “at any rate in the British House of Commons”.

Even then there was no protest! Where was the lead to the country, and especially to the lads who may mistakenly enlist in the counter-revolutionary armies, which our “leaders” in Parliament might have given? Of what were the opponents of the resolution afraid? Either they are cravens or their opposition to the new war is of a very lukewarm character. The real work for the Socialist revolution must be done outside Parliament.

On April 10-th, the day after the House of Commons had thus expressed itself, the first contingent of volunteers set sail for Russia.

Remember what happened in the old war: first the voluntary system: then compulsion, growing till millions of men were drawn into the net. Kitchener’s first call in the late war was for 500.000 men, but the Army estimate of the other day was for 2,500,000. Conscription remains, and presently we expect to see class after class of men called up. Will they go to the war against their fellow workers who have set up a worker’s government?

The child, hearing of other peoples misfortunes, says, with a tiny half-regret that his own life will always be tame and jog-trot, and yet with a very comfortable sense of security: “Things like that do not happen in our family.” Death comes and suddenly strikes down his brother; but after the first stunning shock which reveals to him life’s instability, he assures himself that his misfortune is an isolated event, that nothing like it will again trouble him. So he returns to his old belief till his father is killed, the household plunged into ruin, and he himself is thrust out into swiftly-changing and precarious currents. So many people remain always like that: clinging, untaught by life’s experiences, to the belief that there is no change; that evolution having created this our time, will carry humanity no further. They do not believe that great wars will come, never to their country, never to their households. They do not believe in the possibility of revolutions, and if such things happen, they try to dismiss them as mere temporary upheavals, certain to be crushed by the forces of established order, which never will change, at least never in their country. A revolution in their country is unthinkable; they know it is impossible: the majority of the people are too sluggish, too ignorant, would not even vote as they did at the Parliamentary election, would not even put them on the Board of Guardians or the Town Council.

And yet we in this country are actually in the revolution, although the eyes of most of us are still shut to the fact. We are in the revolution, as we were in the war with Germany. The revolutionary war is no a fight between country and country; it cuts across national boundaries and British people are already fighting on both sides.

The British men who are in the army of government are fighting against the Worker’s Socialist Revolution, just as are the men, who are fighting in the armies of the capitalist Governments of Germany, France, Italy, America, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, and any other governments which are joining in the strife. In all these armies the- truth that they are fighting Socialism has dawned on some of the soldiers, and many of these have deserted and joined the Red Armies of working-class Socialism.

Many who are not actually in the fighting ranks have nevertheless ranged themselves against the capitalist governments and on the side of the Soviets. Philips Price, who is editing a Bolshevik newspaper in Russia, and many other British, people, are aiding the Soviets over there. In this country we can also help by working with might and main to establish the British Soviets, by telling the soldiers, sailors, and workers the issues that are at stake in the International Civil War.

That war has now spread far beyond the boundaries of Russia. General Smuts has left Hungary abruptly, finding that Soviet Hungary stood firm for Communism. Shall we presently see the armies of capitalism marching on Hungary? The “Evening News” reported that the Serbs had refused to obey the order of the Big Four to send their troops to attack Hungary, because the Allies had not yet recognised the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. But the Allies will presently secure a capitalist army from somewhere to carry on the fight. Paderewski is reported to have refused to send Polish troops to fight Communism, unless Dantzig and other territory is conceded to Poland. The Allies will bargain with Paderewski till they have bought his support or substituted a Polish ruler who is more amenable.

Churchill has revealed the fact that Germany is ordered as one of the peace conditions, to fight Communism, and that the Germans may buy their way into the League of Nations by doing this efficiently. Indeed, the entire policy of the Paris Conference is dominated by the policy its members are pursuing in the war between the capitalists and the workers. Both false and foolish are the stories, so industriously circulated, that the British and American politicians at the Peace Conference are the pacifying influences and that they are working against a peace of annexation and oppression; whilst the French and Italian politicians are the greedy Jingoes, who, by demanding all, sorts of advantages for themselves, are preventing the peace. The plain fact is that British and American capitalists have got what they set out to gain by the war with the Central Empires and the French and Italians have not.

The Secret Treaties represent the basis upon which the Allies entered the war; the prizes which induced them to support each other are there set forth.

British capitalists have got all, and more than all, the Treaties promised to them. They have secured control of the German Colonies, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia, all that was promised them in the East. They have seized Spitzbergen, with its rich stores of coal and iron, which was not mentioned in the Treaties; they have crushed their trade rival, Germany and their Government is apparently to retain for the present the dominion of the seas.

The secret arrangements which brought America into the war were not disclosed when the Bolsheviki seized the Czar’s archives, because they were not made until after that date. Therefore we can only surmise what they were from the passing of events and the disclosures of politicians. American capitalists have gained by the war substantial advantages in China. They have done some very remunerative trading with the Allies, and have lent them much money on exceedingly profitable terms. More important still, as will presently be seen, American capitalists have induced British capitalists not to make a fuss when they presently annex Mexico and its wonderful oil fields, which the Mexican Government is endeavouring to nationalise. But America is not yet satisfied. President Wilson has ordered his ship. It is said that he is dissatisfied with the slow progress made at the Paris Conference. Perhaps he is: but it is also said that American capitalists desired to sell to France and Italy motor tractors and other goods and that France and Italy refused the offer. Since then it is said the Americans have obstructed the Peace Conference. Time will show how much there is in the rumour. It will also throw light on the rumour that America is bringing pressure to bear on the Allies by threatening to sell the rejected goods to Soviet Russia—a step which would greatly assist her—instead of waiting to trade with Russia till the Soviets are defeated and capitalism re-established. Was not Bottomley referring to this rumour in the House of Commons on April 9th, when he spoke of “some wild, airy, idealistic element, which, under the guise of great ideals and altruism, is keeping a keen eye all the time upon material benefit which will come to those which are furthest away from Europe”.

British capitalists have gained all that the Secret Treaties promised, but French and Italian capitalists have not. French capitalism wants more of Germany’s territory than perhaps the German Government dare give, lest the German people retaliate by setting up the Soviets. French capitalism was promised the Saar basin, with its coal, and the other Allies have been hesitating whether it is safe to force Germany to surrender it. French capitalists were promised Syria by the Secret Treaties, but British capitalists are loth to let them have it.

Moreover, it, seems that if France is to take part of the indemnity which Germany is to pay to her in the form of the Saar basin and its coal, Britain may decide to take the whole of the German mercantile fleet as part of her pound of flesh; and France and Italy would both like to have a share of that.

Italy’s territorial claims come into conflict with the claims of the Southern Slavs and the Big Four cannot offend the Slavs because they need them to fight Bolshevism. Italian capitalism has threatened to send soldiers to fight her late Allies to defend the territories the soldiers have occupied on the Adriatic. Italian capitalists are not concerned that those territories are not inhabited by Italians; they point out that Mesopotamia and Palestine are not inhabited by British populations.

British and American capitalism has got all it can out of the war with the Kaiser; it is preparing for the war against Socialism, in which, beside crushing a menace very dangerous to capitalism itself, they may gain still further extensive profits. Great Britain, as The “Times” puts it, “has made herself responsible for the railway communications in Poland, the Baltic States, the Caucasus, and the Don country. Czecho-Slovakia and Yugo-Slavia have been allotted to the United States”. Who controls the railways controls the nation. As The “Morning Post” has it: “The cant cry of the self-determination of peoples is, we believe, a German invention”. Everything is said to come from Germany now which is embarrassing to Allied capitalism.

France and Italy are again unfortunate. The “Times,” explains: “Greece, Turkey in Europe, the Ukraine and the Don basin have been undertaken by France, though with the evacuation of Odessa, her efforts in the last two regions can hardly be effective for the present”. (The italics are ours).

The French left Odessa, by the way, for lack of food—the peasants of the Ukraine would not serve them; they appealed to have it sent to them from Roumania, but the request was not granted; Canada, by the way, seems to have something to do with the Roumanian railways. French capitalism thinks its Allies have not treated it very well. “Italy is looking after Austria-Hungary”. Poor Italian capitalism: it has a set of very vigorous Bolsheviki too in Hungary; Vienna may set up the Soviets any day; and Italy itself gives cause for very serious anxiety.

It is stated now that Germany is to pay the Allies between ten and twelve thousand million pounds and that the payments will be spread over fifty years, during which the Allies will occupy Germany, we suppose. Evidently it is thought that fifty years will not be too much for the crushing out of Bolshevism. Moreover, after such a period of occupation history teaches us to anticipate that the occupying Powers will consider it inexpedient to withdraw. Ireland, Egypt and India all stand as landmarks calling us to this conclusion.

To this pass has capitalism brought us. Europe, neutral and belligerent alike, is starving: not a household in our country, or any other but mourns some of its members who lost their lives in the last war; and the world, in order to maintain the capitalist system, stands on the threshold of a time of still more extensive war.

British workers, which side are you on in the International Civil War?

B. Sylvia Pankhurst

From The Lenin Internet Archives- To the Workers Who Support the Struggle Against the War and Against the Socialists Who Have Sided With Their Governments (1916)

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 Lenin, a central leader of world socialism in the first quarter of the 20th century, has something to tell us about how to organize those inquiries.
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V. I. Lenin

To the Workers Who Support the Struggle Against the War and Against the Socialists Who Have Sided With Their Governments


Published: First published in the magazine Proletarskaya Revolutsia No. 5 (28), 1924. Written at the close of December (old style) 1916. Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 23, pages 229-235.
Translated: M. S. Levin, The Late Joe Fineberg and and Others
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2002 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text • README

The international situation is becoming increasingly clear and increasingly menacing. Both belligerent coalitions have latterly revealed the imperialist nature of the war in a very striking way. The more assiduously the capitalist governments and the bourgeois and socialist pacifists spread their empty, lying pacifist phrases—the talk of a democratic peace, a peace without annexations, etc.—the sooner are they exposed. Germany is crushing several small nations under her iron heel with the very evident determination not to give up her booty except by exchanging part of it for enormous colonial possessions, and she is using hypocritical pacifist phrases as a cover for her readiness to conclude an immediate imperialist peace.

England and her allies are clinging just as tightly to the colonies seized from Germany, part of Turkey, etc., claiming that in endlessly continuing the slaughter for possession of Constantinople, strangulation of Galicia, partition of Austria, the ruin of Germany, they are fighting for a “just” peace.

The truth, of which only a few were theoretically convinced at the beginning of the war, is now becoming palpably evident to an increasing number of class-conscious workers, namely, that a serious struggle against the war, a struggle to abolish war and establish lasting peace, is out of ,the question unless there is a mass revolutionary struggle led by the proletariat against the government in every country, unless bourgeois rule is overthrown, unless a socialist revolution is brought about. And the war itself, which is imposing an unprecedented strain upon the peoples, is bringing mankind to this, the only way out of the impasse, is compelling it to take giant strides towards state capitalism, and is demonstrating in a practical manner how planned social economy can and should be conducted, not in the interests of the capitalists, but by expropriating them, under the leadership of the revolutionary proletariat, in the interests of the masses who are now perishing from starvation and the other calamities caused by the war.

The more obvious this truth becomes, the wider becomes the gulf separating the two irreconcilable tendencies, policies, trends of socialist activity, which we indicated at Zimmerwald, where we acted as a separate Left wing, and in a manifesto to all socialist parties and to all class—conscious workers issued on behalf of the Left wing immediately after the conference. This is the gulf that lies between the attempts to conceal the obvious bankruptcy of official socialism and its representatives’ desertion to the bourgeoisie and their governments, as well as the attempts to reconcile the masses with this complete betrayal of socialism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the efforts to expose this bankruptcy in all its magnitude, to expose the bourgeois policy of the “social-patriots”, who have deserted the proletariat for the bourgeoisie, to destroy their influence over the masses and to create the possibility and the organisational basis for a genuine struggle against the war.

The Zimmerwald Right wing, which was in the majority at the conference, fought the idea of breaking with the social-patriots and founding the Third International tooth and nail. Since then the split has become a definite fact in England; and in Germany the last conference of the “opposition”, on January 7, 1917, revealed to all who do not wilfully shut their eyes to the facts, that in that country too there are two irreconcilably hostile labour parties,, working in opposite directions. One is a socialist party, working for the most part underground, and with Karl Liebknecht one of its leaders. The other is a thoroughly bourgeois, social-patriot party, which is trying to reconcile the workers to the war and to the government. The same division is to be observed in every country of the world.

At the Kienthal Conference the Zimmerwald Right wing did not have so large a majority as to be able to continue its own policy. It voted for the resolution against the social-patriot International Socialist Bureau, a resolution which condemned the latter in the sharpest terms, and for the resolution against social-pacifism, which warned the workers against lying pacifist phrases, regardless of socialist trimmings. Socialist pacifism, which refrains from explaining to the workers the illusory nature of hopes for peace without overthrowing the bourgeoisie and organising socialism, is merely an echo of bourgeois pacifism, which instils in the workers faith in the bourgeoisie, presents the imperialist governments and the deals they make with each other in a good light and distracts the masses from the maturing socialist revolution, which events have put on the order of the day.

But what transpired? After the Kienthal Conference, the Zimmerwald Right, in a number of important countries, in France, Germany and Italy, slid wholly and entirely into the very social-pacifism Kienthal bad condemned and reject ed! In Italy, the Socialist Party has tacitly accepted the pacifist phrases of its parliamentary group and its principal speaker, Turati, though, precisely now, when absolutely the same phrases are being used by Germany and the Entente and by representatives of the bourgeois governments of a number of neutral countries, where the bourgeoisie has accumulated and continues to accumulate enormous war profits—precisely now their titter falsehood has been exposed. In fact, pacifist phrases have proved to be a cover for the new turn in the fight for division of imperialist spoils!

In Germany, Kautsky, the leader of the Zimmerwald Right, issued a similar meaningless and non-committal pacifist manifesto, which merely instils in the workers hope in the bourgeoisie and faith in illusions. Genuine socialists, the genuine internationalists in Germany, the Internationale group and the International Socialists of Germany, who are applying Karl Liebknecht’s tactics in practice, were obliged formally to dissociate themselves from this manifesto.

In France, Merrheim and Bourderon, who took part in the Zimmerwald Conference, and Raffin-Dugens, who took part in the Kienthal Conference, have voted for meaningless and, objectively, thoroughly false pacifist resolutions, which, in the present state of affairs, are so much to the advantage of the imperialist bourgeoisie that even Jouhaux and Renaudel, denounced as betrayers of socialism in all the Zimmerwald and Kienthal declarations, voted for them!

That Merrheim voted with Jouhaux and Bourderon and Raffin-Dugens with Renaudel is no accident, no isolated episode. It is a striking symbol of the imminent merger everywhere of the social-patriots and social-pacifists against the international socialists.

The pacifist phrases in the notes of a long list of imperialist governments, the same pacifist phrases uttered by Kautsky, Turati, Bourderon and Merrheim—Renaudel extending a friendly hand to the one and the other—all this exposes pacifism in actual politics as a means of placating the people, as a means of helping the governments to condition the masses to continuation of the imperialist slaughter!

This complete bankruptcy of the Zimmerwald flight has been still more strikingly revealed in Switzerland, the only European country where the Zimmerwaldists could meet freely, and which served as their base. The Socialist Party of Switzerland, which has held its congresses during the war without interference from the government and is in a better position than any other party to promote international solidarity between the German, French and Italian workers against the war, has officially affiliated to Zimmerwald.

And yet, on a decisive question affecting a proletarian party, one of this party’s leaders, the chairman of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences, a prominent member and representative of the Berne International Socialist Commit tee, National Councillor R. Grimm, deserted to the social-patriots of his country. At the meeting of the Parteivorstand[1] of the Socialist Party of Switzerland on January 7, 1917, he secured the adoption of a decision to postpone indefinitely the party congress, which was to be convened for the express purpose of deciding the fatherland defence issue and the party’s attitude towards the Kienthal Conference decisions condemning social-pacifism.

In a manifesto signed by the International Socialist Committee and dated December 1916, Grimm describes as hypocritical the pacifist phrases of the governments, but says not a word about the socialist pacifism that unites Merrheim and Jouhaux, Raffin-Dugens and Renaudel. In this manifesto Grimm urges the socialist minorities to fight the governments and their social-patriot hirelings, but at the same time, jointly with the “social-patriot hirelings” in the Swiss party, he endeavours to bury the party congress, thus rousing the just indignation of all the class-conscious and sincerely internationalist Swiss workers.

No excuses can conceal the fact that the Parteivorstand decision of January 7, 1917 signifies the complete victory of the Swiss social-patriots over the Swiss socialist workers, the victory of the Swiss opponents of Zimmerwald over Zimmerwald.

The Grütlianer, that organ of the consistent and avowed servants of the bourgeoisie in the labour movement, said what everyone knows is true when it declared that social-patriots of the Greulich and Pflüger type, to whom should be added Seidel, Huber, Lang, Schneeberger, Dürr, etc., want to prevent the congress from being held, want to prevent the workers from deciding the fatherland defence issue, and threaten to resign if the congress is held and a decision in the spirit of Zimmerwald is adopted.

Grimm resorted to an outrageous and intolerable false hood at the Parteivorstand and in his newspaper, the Berner Tagwacht, of January 8, 1917, when he claimed that the congress bad to he postponed because the workers were not ready, that it was necessary to campaign against the high cost of living, that the “Left” were themselves in favour of postponement, etc.[2]

In reality, it was the Left, i.e., the sincere Zimmerwaldists, who, anxious to choose the lesser of two evils and also to expose the real intentions of the social-patriots and their new friend, Grimm, proposed postponing the congress until March, voted to postpone it until May, and suggested that the meetings of the cantonal committees be held before July; but all these proposals were voted down by the “fatherland defenders”, led by the chairman of the Zimmerwald arid Kienthal conferences, Robert Grimm!!

In reality, the question was: shall the Berne International Socialist Committee and Grimm’s paper he allowed to hurl abuse at foreign social-patriots and, at first by their silence and then by Grimm’s desertion, shield the Swiss Social patriots; or shall an honest internationalist policy be pursued, a policy of fighting primarily the social-patriots at home?

In reality, the question was: shall the domination of the social-patriots and reformists in the Swiss party he concealed by revolutionary phrases; or shall we oppose to them a revolutionary programme and tactics on the question of combating the high cost of living, as well as of combating the war, of putting on the order of the day the fight for the socialist revolution?

In reality, the question was: shall the worst traditions of the ignominiously bankrupt Second International be continued in Zimmerwald; shall the workers be kept ignorant of the things the party leaders do and say at the Parteivorstand; shall revolutionary phrases be allowed to cover up the vileness of social-patriotism and reformism, or shall we be internationalists in deeds?

In reality, the question was: shall we in Switzerland too, where the party is of primary importance for the whole of the Zimmerwald group, insist upon a clear, principled and politically honest division between the social-patriots and the internationalists, between the bourgeois reformists and the revolutionaries; between the counsellors of the proletariat, who are helping it carry out the socialist revolution, and the bourgeois agents or “hirelings”, who want to divert the workers from revolution by means of reforms or promises of reforms: between the Grütlians and the Socialist Party—or shall we confuse and corrupt the minds of the workers by conducting in the Socialist Party the “Grütlian” policy of the Grütlians, i.e., the social-patriots in the ranks of the Socialist Party?

Let the Swiss social-patriots, those “Grütlians” who want to operate their Grütlian policy, i.e., the policy of their national bourgeoisie, abuse the foreigners, let them defend the “inviolability” of the Swiss party from criticism by other parties, let them champion the old bourgeois-reformist policy, i.e., the very policy that brought on the collapse of the German and other parties on August 4, 1914—we, who adhere to Zimmerwald in deeds and not merely in words, interpret internationalism differently.

We are not prepared passively to regard the efforts, now definitely revealed, and sanctified by the chairman of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences, to leave everything unchanged in decaying European socialism and, by means of hypocritical professions of solidarity with Karl Liebknecht, to bypass the real slogan of this leader of the international workers, his appeal to work for the “regeneration” of the old parties from “top to bottom”. We are convinced that on our side are all the class-conscious workers in all countries, who enthusiastically greeted Karl Liebknecht and his tactics.

We openly expose the Zimmerwald Right, which has deserted to bourgeois-reformist pacifism.

We openly expose Grimm’s betrayal of Zimmerwald and demand convocation of a conference to remove him from his post on the International Socialist Committee.

The word Zimmerwald is the slogan of international socialism and revolutionary struggle. This word must not serve to shield social-patriotism and bourgeois reformism.

Stand for true internationalism, which calls for the struggle, first of all, against the social-patriots in your own country! Stand for true revolutionary tactics, which are impossible if there is a compromise with the social-patriots against the revolutionary socialist workers!


Notes
[1] Executive.—Ed.

[2] The allusion, apparently, is to the editorial “Parteibeschlüsse” (“Party Decisions”) in the Berner Tagwacht of January 8, 1917 (No. 6).

*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-The Progressive Labor Party (PL) "Leads" Students For A Democratic Society (SDS)

Markin comment:

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article is a very concise and compact summary of the issues that were confronted, or not confronted, by the radical student movement, the driving edge of the radical movement of the late 1960s, the time when thoughtful radicals were turning to the “old left” working-class orientation where the core of the social power to change society in a progressive direction resided. Now, in hindsight, it is not at all that clear to me that there were objectively revolutionary opportunities to actually take on the government frontally and win. Not with the disarray of the left, and the mostly quiet working class. The defeat, the easy defeat, of the May Day 1971 actions in Washington, D.C. that I have written about previously as one of the key events in my own evolution to a working-class orientation, if nothing else, put paid to notion that it could be done without the social power of the working class behind it.

However, revolution, the word, the idea, the dream, was palpably in the air, or at least the smell of it and it was necessary to get, and keep, communist cadre ready for the long haul class-struggle from among those who flamed red in those days. Thus, even if we lived in a fool’s paradise about revolutionary prospects either on our own volition or through working class struggle we could have avoided squandering that cadre potential. In short, even if objective circumstances were not in our favor it was not necessary, consciously at least as with the case of Progressive Labor, to make every mistake in the revolutionary handbook. (And there were many other candidates as well, PL is just the subject here because in many ways it had the most thoughtful subjective revolutionaries and because it is a classic case study of where wrong theory leads an organization up a blind alley), . And leave a bitter, futile taste for those who come after.

And those who come after now are the youth of the early 21st century who need to read this article, and other critical articles, on the radical politics of the 1960s. As we baby-boomers retire and have more free time there are sure to be myriad memoirs and other productions by those who participated in that student radical minute in the 1960s so get ready for the onslaught. But read the stuff so this generation is better armed for the struggle than the 1960s rebels.
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From The Revolutionary Communist Youth (RCY) Newsletter: The Progressive Labor Party (PL) "Leads" Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) (headline edited by Markin)

The history of the decline of latter-day SDS is the history of Progressive Labor's criminal dissipation of revolutionary impulse and the loss of everything SDS had gained from its break from New Leftist populism in 1969. In April 1966 PL dissolved its youth front group, the May 2nd Movement, in favor of entry into the growing Students for a Democratic Society. In "A Statement on the Dissolution of M2M" PL put forward the following political thrust for SDS: "Our radicalism is based on the belief that the student movement cannot survive or grow without a socialist perspective. " (M2M's Free Student No. 7, April 1966)

Following its SDS entry, PL became the major force in SDS promoting a class analysis and a socialist goal, winning supporters on this basis.But since the SDS split in 1969 PL has systematically squandered this political capital and undercut the chance to build a strong organization of pro-working-class socialist students. While Revolutionary Communist Youth (formerly Revolutionary Marxist Caucus) led the struggle for a socialist class-struggle perspective for SDS, PL led SDS from a subjectively revolutionary working-class line to an economist working-class line, and finally, back to SDS's liberal reformist beginnings.

SDS: Social-Democratic Roots

SDS has its roots in labor reformism and social democracy, originating as the youth group of the League for Industrial Democracy, an organization of liberal union bureaucrats and their kept intellectuals, politically associated with the pro-imperialist Socialist Party. Renamed SDS in 1950, the organization involved itself in the civil rights movement; in June 1962, it came out with the Port Huron statement advocating "participatory democracy" and reaffirming its anti-communism. In June 1965 SDS dropped from its constitution the ban on communist participation and on 1 January 1966 officially severed its connection with the LID, to which SDS had become something of an embarrassment. SDS had passed from establishment left-liberalism to petty-bourgeois radicalism.

Worker-Student Alliance
Following its massive entry into SDS, PL emerged as the pole of attraction in opposition to groupings which wrote off the working class as the vanguard of revolution. But when the hard New Leftists split in 1969 and PL took over leadership of SDS, the rotten and contradictory Stalinist roots of PL's brand of "Marxism" gradually began to erode the left thrust around which PL had built its Worker-Student Alliance caucus. This was apparent as early as the 1969 split convention itself.

Spartacist League members of SDS critically supported the WSA wing, introducing to the WSA's main motion proposing a working-class orientation an amendment calling upon SDS to declare itself a noh-exclusionist socialist youth group. Despite its stated intentions for dissolving M2M, PL opposed this amendment, insisting on defining SDS's program only negatively--!, e. , anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-male-chauvinist, etc. Still riding on the sharp polarization of the factional struggle, however, PL included the following slogan at the end of the WSA statement: "ALL POWER TO THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS!" When a Spartacist spokesman pointed out that the slogan had a certain communist flavor, PL did not reply, but when a final edition of the WSA statement was presented to the body for approval, the slogan had disappeared. This was a foretaste of things to come.

The degeneration of PL's line in SDS from a crude but real working-class orientation to an alliance with academic liberalism stems from an opportunist "two-stage theory" of revolutionary organization and the rejection of the transitional program. PL puts forward a minimum program for "mass organizations" (SDS), reserving for "cadre organizations" (PL) a "maximum program" of socialism. By this logic, PL must fight for reformism in organizations like SDS in order not to deprive itself of its very reason for existence.

At the root of the reformist content PL gives to the slogan of a worker-student alliance is an inability to grasp the Leninist insistence on the leading role of the industrial working class in the socialist revolution. The working class—by virtue of its role in production, the collective and cohesive social organization of its work, its existence as wage slaves rather than proprietors (small or large) of lander capital—is the only inherently revolutionary class in capitalist society. The petty bourgeoisie stands tangential to capitalist production, and its social position is highly unstable. In times of crisis, the petty bourgeoisie in its main motion supports whichever major class—bourgeoisie or proletariat-offers the greater social stability. The critical factor in gaining the support of sections of the petty bourgeoisie for socialist revolution is therefore the strength of the working class and its leadership, the Leninist party. In the absence of a politically conscious and organizationally cohesive working class contending for power, no section of the petty bourgeoisie as a group will transcend the varieties of capitalist ideology: liberalism or, in periods of crisis, fascism. But many individual students can and must be won to the side of the proletariat on the basis of a communist world view, as declassed revolutionary intelligentsia who will constitute an important part of the future Leninist vanguard party.

In a book called SDS—A Profile (New York, Scribner's, 1972), endorsed by PL with only the slightest qualifications (PL Magazine. March, 1972), Alan Adelson writes:

"A revolution is very much a possibility in this country, PL reasons, if the tremendous industrial work-force can be united in struggle with the legions of students. That powerful worker-student alliance would be enough to run out the entrenched 'rulers' here just as the fusion of workers and peasants established 'a dictatorship of the proletariat' in China. " (page 9)

Later, in discussing the failure of the Campus Worker-Student Alliance strategy at Berkeley, Adelson writes: "No one wanted to scrap the idea of trying to ally Berkeley's 'two oppressed groups'—the workers and the students.,.. " (page 91) PL's conception refuses to recognize the class difference between the petty bourgeoisie (to which both peasants and students belong) and the working class, and thus projects an equal
revolutionary role for each group. The "theoretical" codification of this obscuring of class lines is found in PL Magazine, November 1971 (see RCY Newsletter No. 10, January-February 1972, "PL's Right Turn").

The Short but Dull Life of the CWSA

Rejection of the 1969 Spartacist proposal that SDS declare itself socialist was only the beginning of its retreat from the sharp leftist posture taken by PL in preparing for the SDS split. In the fall of 1969, just months after the split, PL pro¬posed the Campus Worker-Student Alliance stra¬tegy for SDS—a reformist working-class orientation economist in thrust and parochially confined to the campus. At the December 1969 SDS conference in New Haven, Spartacist members and supporters in SDS formed the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus. RMC pointed out that campus workers, having little social power, were being used by PL/SDS as a substitute for the decisive struggles in industry and within the union movement, and that the question of program was being shunted aside in favor of "show the workers SDS wants to help them. " PL vehemently opposed RMC demands to broaden working-class struggles beyond pure and narrow economism and to inject revolutionary political issues into SDS's mere atrocity-mongering propaganda. The oft-repeated "Students can't tell workers what to do" conflicted with the line that students and workers are natural allies with shared class interests, but it also represented a patronizing view of workers, a negation of the role of revolutionary theory and a dishonest cover for the desire to keep SDS a low-level front group so that revolutionary-minded-students could be drawn into an organization that could, presumably, "tell workers what to do": PL.

Anti-War Upsurge Bypasses SDS

RMC argued that SDS must address itself to the critically important issue of the Vietnam war, with a revolutionary class program demanding labor strikes against the war. But SDS continued to push the CWSA line, and the national student strike in the wake of the Cambodia invasion and the murders of students at Kent and Jackson State caught SDS totally unprepared. When the student strike wave erupted over its head, SDS chased frantically around campuses trying to seize , buildings and get campus workers to join the de¬monstrations. Only the RMC, pointing out that student strikes are impotent unless they are extended to the working class, which has the power to stop capitalist production, distributed propaganda at union meetings and worked with workers who were agitating in their unions for labor strikes against the war.

PL let the CWSA die quietly, admitting to each other that it had been a failure (as Adelson openly states in his book) and switching SDS's attention to assorted on-campus issues like day care, ROTC, right-wing professors, and resisting any serious orientation to major labor struggles--all this against the background of an increasingly -militant wave of strikes all across the country.

During the summer of 1971, PL held numerous "Fight Unemployment" marches in its own name (around essentially economist demands) but in SDS confined itself to demanding an end to campus unemployment! In August, when Nixon declared the wage freeze, PL responded with the call for a general strike and "30 for 40" (demands lifted directly from the Spartacist program) but opposed RMC's attempt to get SDS to join in agitation for labor strikes against the war and the wage freeze.

We Both Get Thrown Out of NPAC

Belatedly, PL/SDS turned its attention to the anti-war movement and began attending the meetings of the National Peace Action Coalition, the Socialist Workers Party's single-issue popular-front alliance with the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie. At the Cleveland December 1970 NPAC meeting, PL/SDS blocked with Spartacist/RMC to militantly oppose the participation of bourgeois representatives in the anti-war movement.

At the July 1971 NPAC conference in New York, PL/SDS and Spartacist/RMC were violently ejected for shouting down Senator Vance Hartke. Like it or not (and they didn't) PL/SDS found itself in an anti-class-collaboration bloc with Trotskyists. It managed to differentiate itself by organizing a token kamikaze attack on the conference the following day and by its position that trade union bureaucrats are the same as capitalist politicians and should equally be excluded from the anti-war movement.

By the time the November NPAC peace marches came around, PL/SDS declared its support for them. At the December NPAC conference in Cleveland, PL/SDS humbled itself many times over to the leadership of this alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, pledging its support to the next march and generally adopting the posture of NPAC loyalists. The SL/RCY alone at the con¬ference stood in militant and unconditional opposition to class collaboration. What PL learned from the NPAC experience was apparently that capitulation works, and began developing its own reformist single-issue campaign, SDS's "Fight Racist Textbooks" line, complete with endorser lists signed by liberal professors.

PL opposed the welding of a political alliance between radical students and class-conscious workers (the formation of a fighting youth auxiliary to communist opposition in the unions), pre¬ferring to establish such an alliance on an appeal to moral do-goodism and the obscuring of a class line. PL's own inability as a would-be revolutionary party to develop a program to bridge the gap between trade union and socialist conscious¬ness, its adherence to the sterile minimum/ maximum program, fed its tendency to progressively lower the political level of SDS.

Throughout our existence as. the left opposition to PL in SDS, Revolutionary Communist Youth has raised the need for a socialist orientation based on transitional demands--demands which raise the issue of class power, connecting the felt needs of workers to their larger political interests—e. g., strikes against the war and wage freeze, "30 for 40", construction of a labor party, etc. Marked by a rejection of a communist approach, the history of PL's "leadership" of SDS is a sad story of the squandering of precious political capital. Now the sellout-to-liberalism "Fight Racist Textbooks" campaign marks a qualitative shift in the political character of SDS. It is a betrayal and has transformed SDS into an organization whose thrust is dangerous to the working class. The RCY must struggle politically to defeat SDS, counterposing itself as the genuine communist youth organization.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Yevgeni Preobrazhensky

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Yevgeni Preobrazhensky. No revolution can succeed without men and women of Preobrazhensky's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reasons, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.