*The Inside Story of the Paris Commune of 1871- From The Pen Of Prosper Olivier Lissagaray

Click on title to link to an online "History Of The Paris Commune".

Book Review

March 18th is the 137th Anniversary of the Paris Commune. All honor to the men and women who fought to the death to defend this first beacon of working class revolution.

History of the Paris Commune, Prosper Olivier Lissagaray, translated by Eleanor Marx, Black and Red Press, St. Petersburg, Florida, 2007

When one studies the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 one learns something new from it even though from the perspective of revolutionary strategy the Communards made virtually every mistake in the book. This book by a participant and survivor of the Commune has historically been the starting point for any pro-Commune analysis. The original English translation by Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, has given the imprimatur of the Marx family to that view.

Through a close study of the Paris Commune one learn its lessons and measure it against the experience acquired by later revolutionary struggles and above all by later revolutions, not only the successful Russian Revolution of October 1917 but the failed German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Chinese and Spanish revolutions in the immediate aftermath of World War I. More contemporaneously we have the experiences of the partial victories of the later Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions.

Notwithstanding the contradictory nature of these later experiences, as if to show that history is not always totally a history of horrors against the fate of the masses we honor the Paris Commune as a beacon of the coming world proletarian revolution. It is just for that reason that Karl Marx fought tooth and nail in the First International to defend it against the rage of capitalist Europe. It is one of our peaks. The Commune also presented in embryo the first post-1848 Revolution instance of what was later characterized by Lenin at the beginning of World War I as the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement. So this question that after Lenin’s death preoccupied Trotsky for much of the later part of his life really has a much longer lineage that I had previously recognized. Unfortunately, as we are too painfully aware that question is still to be resolved. Therefore, even at this great remove, it is necessary to learn the lessons of that experience in facing today’s crisis of leadership in the international labor movement.

As a final thought, I note that in the preface to this edition that the editors have given their own view about the lessons to be learned from the experience of the Paris Commune. Although virtually every page of Lissagaray’s account drips with examples of the necessity of a vanguard party their view negates that necessity. While we can argue until hell freezes over, and should, about the form that a future socialist state will take one would think that there should be no dispute on that necessity at this late date in history. In any case read this important work (including the above-mentioned provocative preface) as it tells the tale of an important part of our working class history.

From The Archives- We Shall Fight, We Shall Win - Paris, London, Athens, Dublin-Build The Resistance 2017!

Saturday, November 27, 2010

We Shall Fight, We Shall Win - Paris, London, Athens, Dublin


It is not everyday one gets the honour and privilege of being invited to do a Socialist Worker Student Society meeting on 'May 1968 - The Fire Last Time' amidst an actual student occupation (see also here), still less one amidst one of the largest and most significant waves of student revolt to hit University and College campuses in Britain in my living memory - see here and here. Admittedly, it would have been nice to have had more than 10 minutes notice before being asked to do the aforementioned meeting - and it would have been a bonus if the meeting had then happened at the time agreed (10pm) rather than er, just after midnight - but I guess this is the glorious messiness of real life struggle - and if twenty or so students after about 30 hours of maintaining an occupation are still up for a discussion about revolutionary politics from about half twelve until half one in the morning then who am I to refuse them such an opportunity?

Whether the student revolt in Britain has had its 'Grosvenor Square' moment - when 80,000 students protesting against the Vietnam War in March 1968 clashed with riot police outside the US Embassy yet or not is debatable, but certainly the demonstration of 50,000 students which ended with the trashing of the Tory HQ at Millbank - followed up with Day X's display of civil disobedience and mass direct action in which students were charged by the London Met's mounted police division has certainly brought student protest to the attention of the mass media - and their revolutionary spirit has acted as a beacon of inspiration and hope to millions of working people up and down the country in the face of the Tory onslaught of cuts and attacks. Britain is now well and truly part of the wave of resistance to austerity that has already been witnessed across the rest of Europe.

Theoretically, according to bourgeois social science, at least in its postmodern forms - the student revolt just shouldn't be happening. The marketisation and commodification of higher education that tuition fees represents should mean that students have lost any sense of collective identity and are now just individual consumers, buying a 'product' from The University Plc. The revolt shows students aren't prepared to just accept commodification passively, but are active agents of their own destiny - capable of raising the argument that 'another education and another world is possible'.

Just as the student revolt in 1968 detonated a wave of working class struggle, so the student revolt in Britain today is already making a political impact - what with the National Union of Teachers and the UCU lecturers union balloting for strike action in the new year, and public sector trade union leaders are making increasingly militant and fiery speeches against the government at a mushrooming number of anti-cuts meetings. Even Labour leader Ed Miliband is now, wait for it, 'listening' to the students sympathetically and, get this, is ''tempted' to maybe, possibly, even one day actually support them. The students are set to walk about again next Tuesday and again on the day the proposed massacre of higher education is voted on in Parliament. The task for socialists is to make sure that the students are not now left to fight on alone - which would see their struggle rise heroically and spectacularly like a rocket but then come down miserably like a little stick - but that when they next walk out, increasing numbers of workers are encouraged to also walk out, and stand and fight alongside the students - and ever growing numbers of networks of solidarity between students and workers are built. Building such networks would not only begin to encourage the kind of mass strike action British society so desperately needs if the Con-Dem led capitalist juggernaut is to be stopped in its tracks and British society shifted to the left politically - but such direct action by workers at the point of production can also begin to paralyse and undermine capital itself. As the great revolutionary Marxist Rosa Luxemburg put it - 'where the chains of capitalism are forged, there they must be

posted by Snowball @ 2:19 PM

2 Comments:
At 4:34 PM, Grim and Dim said...
The March 1968 demo was 20,000 at most, and not all of us were students. The big demo (up to 100,000) was in October, and didn't go to Grosvenor Square (just a few Maoist nutters and Mick Jagger went there).
This is not pedantry - well it is pedantry but it's also making the point that some recent demos have been considerably bigger than anything in the annus mirabilis of 1968. Grounds for hope.


At 2:43 PM, Snowball said...
Cheers for the clarification - grounds for hope indeed comrade...

From The Archives Of The "In Defense Of Marxism" Website- Spain: The rebellion of the youth

Spain: The rebellion of the youth

Written by Alan Woods
Friday, 20 May 2011


First it was Tunis, then Cairo, then Wisconsin, and now Spain. The crisis of capitalism has set in motion a tsunami that is impossible to control. All the representatives of the old order have combined to halt it: politicians and police, judges and trade union bureaucrats, the hired press and the television, priests and “intellectuals”. But the tsunami of revolt rolls on from one country to another, from one continent to another.

Bankruptcy of Spanish capitalism

The local and regional elections in Spain this weekend come at a time of ever deeper economic, social and political crisis. For ten years the Spanish economy was presented as the motor of job creation in the euro-area. A frenzied speculative boom was followed by a severe slump. Spain now stands on the edge of bankruptcy. Economists are warning of revelations about higher debt levels than previously known. And following the collapse in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the “market” is turning its attention to Spain.

Spanish capitalism went up like a rocket and came down like a stick. The collapse of the construction boom has left Spain with a painful hangover of falling house prices, huge debts, one million empty homes and the highest rate of unemployment in the European Union. The ranks of the jobless in Spain have soared to about 4.9 million. With unemployment in Spain at 21 percent, dissatisfaction has been growing. The discontent is reflected in scepticism towards all the main political parties, which, given their record, should surprise no-one.

In Spain, there are two main parties: the right wing PP and the “socialist” PSOE. The first is made up of the open representatives of Capital, the party of the bankers and capitalists. We know very well what to expect from this party. The PSOE is supposed to represent the interests of the working class. But does it? Millions of workers voted for this party in the hope that it would defend their living standards. But these hopes have been cruelly deceived.

The leader of the Socialist Party, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, was supposed to be a “left”. But under conditions of capitalist crisis, there were only two alternatives: either take action to break the power of the bankers and capitalists, or else accept the dictates of big business and attack the living standards of the workers. There is no third way, as Zapatero soon discovered. The PSOE leaders surrendered to the bankers and capitalists, just as the reformists have done in every other country.

Using the excuse of the economic crisis (that is, the crisis of the capitalist system) the leaders of the PSOE have joined hands with the bourgeoisie to save the system. They are trying to place all the burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of those least able to bear it: the workers, the youth, the old, the sick, the unemployed. They pour billions into the pockets of the bankers, while attacking living standards and pensions. 89% of Spaniards think political parties only care about themselves, according to Metroscopia. But is it any wonder that people are alienated from political parties when they see this kind of thing?

The Social Democrats always prepare the way for right wing reaction. That is their role. Already the opinion polls indicate that the PSOE could lose to the right wing Popular Party (PP) in at least one key region. Even Andalucía, which has always been governed by the Socialists, might fall to the right wing. This would set the stage for a defeat in general elections next year, handing the government over to the right wing Popular Party, the open party of big business.

This is to jump from the frying pan into the fire. If the PP wins a majority, it will introduce even bigger cuts. They will say: “You think there was so much debt, but no, there’s more.” We have already seen this in Catalonia, where regional elections last year swept out the Socialist-led coalition government, but the new government of the CiU has introduced a vicious packet of cuts in health care and education and attacks on living standards that has provoked a wave of wild cat strikes and a 200,000 strong trade union demonstration in Barcelona.

Mood of disappointment

The leaders of the traditional workers parties are completely enmeshed with the capitalists and their state. It is an intolerable state of affairs that leaders who speak in the name of socialism and the working class, or even “democracy”, preside over huge bailouts to private banks, which signifies a big increase in the public debt that will be paid for by years of cuts and austerity. This is done in the name of “the general interest”, but is in reality a measure in the interest of the rich and against the interest of the majority.

Under these conditions, the working class looks to the trade unions for a lead. Under the pressure from below the leaders of the UGT and CCOO called a general strike on 29 September last year. But the union leaders were desperate to do a deal with the government, and saw the general strike only as a means of putting pressure on Zapatero to give some concessions. They think that they can get what they want through negotiation

For the leaders, this is only a means of blowing off steam. For serious trade unionists, on the contrary, strikes and demonstrations are a means of getting the workers to understand their power and prepare the ground for a fundamental change in society. Although they think of themselves as practical and realistic people, the union leaders have not the slightest idea of the seriousness of the crisis of capitalism. They imagine that, by accepting cuts and other impositions in the hope that everything will be all right in the end. This is an illusion. For every step back they make, the bosses will demand three more.

In reality the union leaders are just as out of touch with the real mood of anger of the workers and youth as the leaders of the political parties. Having called a general strike, they then agreed to a pension “reform” that was completely unsatisfactory from the standpoint of the working class. This led to a wave of disappointment that further reinforced the mood of alienation, frustration and discontent.

As the class struggle develops the radicalization of the rank and file of the unions will undoubtedly enter into conflict with the conservatism of the leadership. The workers will demand a complete transformation of the unions from top to bottom, and will strive to turn them into real fighting organizations. But at the present time the unions are lagging behind the needs of the workers and youth. Elena Ortega, who has managed to find only a part-time secretarial job, and helped spread the word on Facebook about the protests on Wednesday, told CNN: "If this is happening, it's because the unions weren't doing what was needed, when it was needed. They haven't delivered".

These moods are most intense among young people, who, as always, are the principal victims of the crisis. The figure of youth unemployment stands at around 45 percent. Many university graduates, having worked hard to obtain qualifications, cannot find work, or else are forced to accept menial jobs on low wages. The levels of “precarious employment”, that is, casual. part-time work, on short term contracts with no rights, is at an all-time high in Spain.

This situation is not so very different to that faced by young people in places like Tunisia and Egypt. Yet Spain is not a Third World country, but a developed and prosperous European economy. This glaring contradiction has produced a mood of anger, frustration and bitterness in the youth, which does not find any reflection in the existing political parties or trade unions.

The discontent and frustration has finally burst to the surface. On Sunday May 15, 150,000 people marched in about 40 cities throughout Spain under the banner of Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now). The largest demonstration was in Madrid with 25,000 or more, followed by Barcelona with 15,000. The main slogan of the demonstration was “We are not commodities in the hands of bankers and politicians”, which shows an instinctive anti-capitalist character of the movement.

Politicians and expert commentators have dismissed this movement as “not having clear aims”, or even “being opened to right wing manipulation”. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of people present at the demonstrations on May 15 would consider themselves as progressive and left wing. The slogans, about the lack of housing, the lack of jobs, the lack of future, the lack of genuine democracy, the dictatorship of the markets, against corrupt politicians and their obscene wages, about the strength of the organised people, show this clearly.

While May15 took many by surprise, it had been preceded by a series of mobilisations which showed the growing pressure building up below the surface. In January and February, mass demonstrations of civil servants rocked Murcia, where the regional right wing government of the PP has carried out particularly vicious cuts. In the same region, activists have organised and effectively resisted evictions of families who have defaulted on their mortgage repayments. On April 7th thousands of youth took to the streets following a call made by the “Youth without future” platform, a coalition of left wing youth and student groups.

It is also clear that the wave of the Arab revolution has been an inspiration to many in Spain. They have seen the power of ordinary people to change things when they are on the move. The idea of setting up tent camps, comes directly from Tahrir Square in Cairo. Many had also looked up to the Greek workers and youth and their courageous mobilisations throughout last year, the massive strike movement in France and even the movement of the youth in Portugal. A sign in Madrid read: “France and Greece fight. Spain wins, in football”, but not anymore. Despite the complete lack of leadership offered by the leadership of the official organisations, the Spanish youth is on the move, and they have the sympathy of wide layers of the workers.

Thousands have been protesting on and off since Sunday in the Puerta del Sol, the city centre in Madrid and in more than 80 cities and towns all over Spain. Protests have also been organised by groups of Spanish youth outside the embassies in a number of European capitals.

Threat to democracy?

These protests took all the politicians by surprise. They have reacted with hysteria and alarm. The defenders of the existing society are scandalized: “this is anarchy”, they protest. “This is chaos!” Some even say it is a “threat to democracy”. Yet what we are seeing on the streets of Madrid and other Spanish cities is no threat to democracy but, on the contrary, an attempt to exercise direct democracy: to give a voice to those who have no voice, to defend the interests of those who nobody defends.

When they speak of a “threat to democracy”, what do they mean? Democracy in its literal sense signifies the rule of the people. But is it true that the people really rule in Spain or anywhere else? No, it is false. In the framework of capitalist society, the participation of the majority of people in democracy is limited to voting every five years or so for one or other of the existing political parties. Once they are elected, they do whatever they like, and the people have no means of changing anything.

Under capitalism all the key decisions are taken by the boards of directors of the big banks and monopolies. They decide whether people will have jobs and houses or not. Nobody elects them and they are responsible to nobody but themselves. The real relationship between the elected governments and the bourgeoisie was exposed in the recent crisis, when the bankers were given a present of billions of public money with no questions asked. In reality, bourgeois “democracy” is only another word for the dictatorship of Capital.

Those who protest do so because they do not recognize themselves in any of the existing parties. And who can blame them? Many people are saying: what is the use in voting when they are all the same? They look at the election campaign with a mixture of indifference and disgust. If this represents a “threat to democracy”, those responsible are not the young people who are protesting in the Puerta del Sol but the ones sitting in the Palacio de la Moncloa.

The right to peaceful protest is a basic democratic right. It was for this right that the Spanish working class fought for decades against the Franco dictatorship. Last Sunday thousands of people, mainly young but also others, went to the Puerta del Sol in the centre of Madrid to register their protest against a system that effectively excludes them. In so doing they were exercising this basic right. How is this democratic conquest being upheld by those who are in control of Madrid and the whole of Spain?

Those people who fill their mouths with the word “democracy” depicted this peaceful protest as a “threat to democracy”. On the early hours of Tuesday May 17 Madrid authorities sent the riot police to disperse a relatively small group of protesters who had set up a camp in Puerta del Sol with the utmost violence. Madrid is ruled by the right wing PP. They must therefore bear the direct responsibility for this brutal and unprovoked attack. But they could never have done this without the approval (tacit or open) of the Zapatero government. This hypocritical chorus was to be expected from the right wing. But it is shameful that people who call themselves “socialists” and “lefts” should echo this poison.

The tough tactics did not work. On Tuesday night, tens of thousands protesters returned to Madrid's central plaza. By Wednesday morning, many remained in their overnight encampment. On Wednesday afternoon, Madrid's elections board banned the planned demonstration at 8 pm at the Puerta del Sol. A regional office spokesman said the election board was trying to prevent demonstrations during the final days of the election campaign because it “could affect the right of citizens to vote freely”. The board said there were not "extraordinary and serious reasons" to allow the demonstration on short notice. And to sooth the nerves of voters, El Pais reported that authorities planned to have sufficient police officers on hand to prevent the demonstration. The Madrid Metro system was warning passengers not to go to Plaza del Sol “as the rally has not been allowed”.

But faced with tens of thousands of people who once again turned up to show their protest, the authorities realised it would be unwise to use the riot police to confront them, as this would have only radicalised the movement further and provoked and even more massive response.

It is not only in Spain where democratic rights are being trampled. Not long ago Cossiga, who was Christian Democrat Minister of the Interior in Italy in the 1970s, later President of the Republic, and now life Senator, was asked what should be done about students’ demonstrations. He answered:

“Let them get on with it for a while. Withdraw the police from the streets and campuses, infiltrate the movement with agents provocateurs who are ready for anything, and leave the demonstrators for about ten days as they devastate shops, burn cars and turn the cities upside down. After that, having gained the support of the population – making sure that the noise of the ambulance sirens is louder than those of the police and carabinieri – the forces of order should ruthlessly attack the students and send them to hospital. Don’t arrest them, as the judges will only release them immediately; just beat them up and also the professors who foment the movement.”

Here is the authentic voice of the “democratic” bourgeoisie. The moment their privileges are threatened, they cast aside the smiling mask of “democracy” and resort to violence and repression. The youth of Spain – like the youth of Britain a few months earlier – is receiving a splendid lesson in the values of bourgeois democracy, delivered in the form of truncheon blows. By dispersing a peaceful demonstration the rulers of Spain showed two things: firstly their complete contempt for the democratic right to demonstrate; secondly their fear of the people.

Manifesto of the May 15 Movement

The youth of Spain is beginning to draw the most advanced conclusions. The following is the Manifesto of the May 15 Movement. While we do not agree with every dot and comma of this document, it is an extraordinary expression of the feelings of millions of people who are now beginning to awaken to political life, for this is fundamentally a political document, even though its authors do not use this word. The reason they do not like the word “political” is because the scandalous conduct of the existing political parties have made the word stink in their nostrils:

“We are ordinary people. We are like you: people, who get up every morning to study, work or find a job, people who have family and friends. People, who work hard every day to provide a better future for those around us.

"The system is the problem". Madrid, May 17. Photo: Jose A. GeladoComment: The most important aspect of this is precisely that it is a spontaneous movement from below, from the real base of society. It is the voice of those who work in the factories and study in the schools and universities: the real voice of Spain, not that of the exploiters and parasites. This represents its inner strength and resilience.

“Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic, and social outlook which we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice.

Comment: This is a mass movement that is giving a voice to the people who have no voice: the people who do not feel represented by the professional politicians and political apparatchiks who sit in the Cortes, that is to say, the great majority of the Spanish people. It is a protest against corruption and exploitation. But here we find a contradiction. How is it possible to hold such radical views and be a conservative? A conservative is somebody who wishes to conserve the status quo, who defends the existing order that the present movement seeks to overturn.

To seek to build a mass movement with the broadest base is very good. But it is not possible to combine fire with water. Either we stand for a complete change in society, in which case we are revolutionaries. Or we stand for its preservation, in which case we are conservatives. One can be one thing or the other, but one cannot be both.

“This situation has become normal, a daily suffering, without hope. But if we join forces, we can change it. It’s time to change things, time to build a better society together. Therefore, we strongly argue that:

“The priorities of any advanced society must be equality, progress, solidarity, freedom of culture, sustainability and development, welfare and people’s happiness.

“These are inalienable truths that we should abide by in our society: the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation, free personal development, and consumer rights for a healthy and happy life. ”

Comment: Yes, we must fight for all these things. But we must understand that there are powerful interests opposed to change. The bankers, landlords and capitalists do not accept that the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation, free personal development, and consumer rights for a healthy and happy life are inalienable rights.

They will tell us that these things are luxuries we cannot afford. Only the right of the bankers to receive vast amounts of public money are considered by them to be inalienable.

“The current status of our government and economic system does not take care of these rights, and in many ways is an obstacle to human progress. ”

Comment: That is right, but it needs to be clarified, so that there does not remain a shadow of doubt concerning the real nature of the problem. Unemployment is not the result of bad policies by this or that government. It is an expression of the sickness of a whole system, that is to say, of capitalism. The problem is not the greed of certain individuals, nor is it the lack of liquidity or the absence of confidence. The problem is that the capitalist system on a world scale is in a complete blind alley.

The root cause of the crisis is that the development of the productive forces has outgrown the narrow limits of private ownership and the nation state. The expansion and contraction of credit is often presented as the cause of the crisis, but in fact it is only the most visible symptom. Crises are an integral part of the capitalist system.

Is it really logical that the lives and destinies of millions of people are determined by the blind play of market forces? Is it fair that the economic life of the planet is decided as if it were a gigantic casino? Can it be justified that the greed for profit is the sole motor force that decides whether men and women will have a job or a roof over their heads? Those who own the means of production and control our destinies will answer in the affirmative because it is in their interest to do so. But the majority of society, who are the innocent victims of this cannibalistic system, disagree.

“Democracy belongs to the people (demos = people, krátos = government) which means that government is made of every one of us. However, in Spain most of the political class does not even listen to us. Politicians should be bringing our voice to the institutions, facilitating the political participation of citizens through direct channels that provide the greatest benefit to the wider society, not to get rich and prosper at our expense, attending only to the dictatorship of major economic powers and holding them in power through a bipartidism headed by the immovable acronym PP & PSOE.”

Comment: Under capitalism democracy must necessarily have a restricted, one-sided and fictitious character. What use is freedom of the press when all the big newspapers, journals and television companies, meeting halls and theatres are in the hands of the rich? As long as the land, the banks and the big monopolies remain in the hands of a few, all the really important decisions affecting our lives will be taken, not by parliaments and elected governments but behind locked doors in the boards of directors of the banks and big companies. The present crisis has exposed this fact for all to see.

We stand for a genuine democracy in which the people would take the running of industry, society and the state into their own hands. That would be a genuine democracy, as opposed to the caricature we now have, in which anyone can say (more or less) what they want, as long as the most important decisions affecting our lives are taken behind locked doors by small, unelected groups on the boards of directors of the banks and big monopolies.

“Lust for power and its accumulation in only a few; create inequality, tension and injustice, which leads to violence, which we reject. The obsolete and unnatural economic model fuels the social machinery in a growing spiral that consumes itself by enriching a few and sends into poverty the rest. Until the collapse.

“The will and purpose of the current system is the accumulation of money, not regarding efficiency and the welfare of society. Wasting resources, destroying the planet, creating unemployment and unhappy consumers.

“Citizens are the gears of a machine designed to enrich a minority which does not regard our needs. We are anonymous, but without us none of this would exist, because we move the world.

“If as a society we learn to not trust our future to an abstract economy, which never returns benefits for the most, we can eliminate the abuse that we are all suffering.!”

Comment: The right to work is a fundamental right. What sort of society condemns millions of able-bodied men and women to a life of enforced inactivity, when their labour and skills are required to satisfy the needs of the population? Do we not need more schools and hospitals? Do we not need good roads and houses? Are the infrastructure and transport systems not in need of repair and improvement?

The answer to all these questions is well known to everybody. But the reply of the ruling class is always the same: we cannot afford these things. Now everybody knows that this answer is false. We now know that governments can produce extraordinary sums of money when it suits the interests of the wealthy minority who own and control the banks and industries. It is only when the majority of working people request that their needs are attended to that the government argues that the money is not available.

What does this prove? It proves that in the system in which we live the profits of the few are more important than the needs of the many. It proves that the whole productive system is based on one thing and one thing only: the profit motive, or, put plainly, greed.

“We need an ethical revolution. Instead of placing money above human beings, we shall put it back to our service. We are people, not products. I am not a product of what I buy, why I buy and who I buy from.”

Comment: The only solution to the problems listed here is the overthrow of the present corrupt and unjust system and its replacement by a genuinely humane, rational and democratic society, which is genuine socialism or communism. In order to achieve this end, however, what is needed is a fundamental change in society – a revolution.

The Manifesto speaks of an “ethical revolution”. But this formulation is too vague. The ethics of a given society reflect the economic base of that society. If we accept an economic system based on profit, we must accept the ethics that flow from this: “each for himself and let the devil take the hindermost.”

A cannibalistic society will inevitably have cannibalistic ethics. Before we can have humane ethics we must have a society based on genuine human relations. The prior condition for an ethical revolution is a social revolution.

“For all of the above, I am outraged.
I think I can change it.
I think I can help,
I know that together we can. I think I can help.
I know that together we can.”

This conclusion contains a most important lesson. It tells us that whereas I, as a single individual, am powerless, there is no power on earth that can withstand the masses, once they are mobilized and organized for the revolutionary transformation of society. That is the lesson of Tunisia and Egypt. The working class has in its hands a colossal power: not a light bulb shines, not a wheel turns, and not a telephone rings without our permission.

Advanced conclusions

The most important thing is that the youth is on the move, and through the experience of concrete struggle the conclusions that the movement as a whole is drawing are becoming more advanced and are coming more openly into conflict with the capitalist system itself. Thus, at the demonstration in Madrid on Tuesday, in protest against the brutal eviction of the camp that same morning, the following slogans could be heard: “it is not the crisis, it is the system”, “the revolution, has begun”, “they call it democracy and it is not”, and also the slogans from the 1970s Chilean movement: “el pueblo unido jamás sera vencido” (the people united would never be defeated), “luchar, crear, poder popular” (to fight, to build, peoples’ power).


The manifesto adopted by the tens of thousands present at Plaza del Sol in Madrid on May 18 was certainly a step forward. Amongst other things it recognised the political character of the movement: “we have lost respect for the main political parties, but we have not lost our ability to criticise. On the contrary we are not afraid of politics. To express an opinion is politics. To look for alternative ways to participate is politics”. It also clarified that it did not call for an abstention in the elections, but rather it demanded that “voting would have a real impact in our lives”. The manifesto also clearly identified those responsible for “the situation we face: the IMF, the European Central Bank, the European Union, the credit rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, the Popular Party and the PSOE, ” amongst others. Some are also questioning the Monarchy as an institution and arguing it should be put to a referendum.

Now the Electoral Junta has declared that no protests on Saturday (the “day of reflection” before elections day in which no political propaganda is allowed) and Sunday (election day itself) will be allowed. This is a direct challenge to the movement. The only effect of the repression in Madrid on Tuesday 17, and the banning of the demonstration on Wednesday 18 has been to radicalise and spread the movement. Demonstrations in provincial capitals have doubled in size in the last few days and tent camps have sprung everywhere. There is now a call for everyone to remain in the squares from midnight today, thus defying the prohibition of demonstrations.

The Spanish ruling class is faced with a difficult choice: if they use repression to enforce the decision to ban the demonstrations then they can provoke a social explosion, if they do not, then the movement will have won a victory and shown the power of the masses as opposed to the power of the official institutions. Vice-president Rubalcaba was today trying to square the circle by arguing that the fact that people gather despite gatherings being banned, “is not a reason enough for the police to intervene unless there is violence”

We Marxists welcome the protests of the youth. We express our wholehearted solidarity with the protest movement and call on the working class to support it actively. It is time to use the power of the working class to change society. It is time to put an end to all prevarications, unprincipled deals and compromises. Stop trying to prop up a diseased and moribund system! It is time to unite and fight! This is the real meaning of the Spanish protests and the May 15 Movement.

Long live the Spanish protests!

Long live the May 15 Movement!

On The 100th Anniversary-From The Archives (U.S.)- "Lenin And The Vanguard Party"-Part Three- "The 1905 Revolution"

On The 100th Anniversary-From The Archives (U.S.)- "Lenin And The Vanguard Party"-Part Three- "The 1905 Revolution"

Lenin And The Vanguard Party -Part Three- The 1905 Revolution


Markin comment on this series of articles:



Oddly enough, when I first became serious about making a revolution in the early 1970s, a socialist working class-led revolution, in the eternal quest for a more just and equitable society, there were plenty (no enough, there are never enough, but plenty) of kindred spirits who were also finding out that it was not enough to “pray” such a revolution into existence but that one had to build a party, a vanguard party in order to do so. The name "Lenin," the designation "Bolshevik," and the term "world socialist revolution" flowed easily from the tongue in the circles that I began to hang around in. As I write this general introduction, right this minute in 2011, to an important series of historical articles about the actual creation, in real time, of a Leninist vanguard working class party (and International, as well) there are few kindred, fewer still in America, maybe, fewest still, and this is not good, among the youth, to carry the message forward. Nevertheless, whatever future form the next stage in the struggle for the socialist revolution takes the question of the party, the vanguard party really, will still press upon the heads of those who wish to make it.

Although today there is no mass Bolshevik-style vanguard party (or International)-anywhere-there are groups, grouplets, leagues, tendencies, and ad hoc committees that have cadre from which the nucleus for such a formation could be formed-if we can keep it. And part of the process of being able to “keep it” is to understand what Lenin was trying to do back in the early 1900s (yes, 1900s) in Russia that is applicable today. Quite a bit, actually, as it turns out. And for all those think that the Leninist process, and as the writer of these articles is at pains to point it was an unfolding process, was simple and the cadre that had to be worked with was as pure as the driven snow I would suggest this thought. No less an august revolutionary figure that Leon Trotsky, once he got “religion” on the Bolshevik organizational question (in many ways the question of the success of the revolution), did not, try might and main, have success in forming such a mass organization. We can fight out the details from that perspective learning from the successes and failures, and fight to get many more kindred.
********
Markin comment on this article:
Below is a quote from my review of Leon Trotsky's 1905 that underscores the central importance of the lessons learned from the 1905 experience in 1917.

"The author of this book, a central Soviet leader of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and one of the 20th century’s larger-than-life revolutionary figures, Leon Trotsky, noted, as have others, that the unsuccessful 1905 revolution acted as a “dress rehearsal” for the Bolshevik-led October 1917 revolution. And thus this book is intended to, and does, give a bird’s eye view from a key participant about the lessons to be drawn from the failure of that first revolution, both the strategic and tactical military and political lessons. And from reading many histories of the October revolution of 1917, Trotsky and Lenin at least learned those lessons very well."
********
To read about the overall purpose of this pamphlet series and other information about the history of the document go the the American Left History Archives From-Lenin and The Vanguard Party-Preface To The Second Edition And Part One, dated March 15, 2011.

The 1905 Revolution

During 1904, Russian defeats in the war with Japan provoked a surge of liberal bourgeois opposition to the tsarist autocracy. This significant change in the Russian political scene deepened the differences between Menshevism and Bolshevism. Assigning the liberals the leading role in the coming anti-tsarist revolution, the Mensheviks sought to encourage the liberal opposition by toning down criticism of them. The Mensheviks' conciliatory attitude to the liberals marked a further regression down the same path as the Economists, restricting the social-democratic party to the defense of the sectional interests of the Russian proletariat.

Lenin sharply attacked this liberal-conciliationist policy in his November 1904 article, "The Zemstvo Campaign and Iskra's Plan," which opened up a new, more profound phase in the Bolshevik-Menshevik conflict. (The Zemstvos were local government bodies through which the liberals sought to reform tsarism.) The heart of Lenin's polemic is this:

"Bourgeois democrats are by their very nature incapable of satisfying these [revolutionary-democratic] demands, and are therefore, doomed to irresolution and half-heartedness. By crit¬icizing this half-heartedness, the Social-Democrats keep prodding the liberals on and winning more and more proletarians and semi-proletarians, and partly petty bourgeois too, from liberal democracy to working-class democracy....

"The bourgeois opposition is merely bourgeois and merely an opposition because it does not itself fight, because it has no program of its own that it unconditionally upholds, because it stands between the two actual combatants (the government and the revolutionary proletariat with its handful of intellectual supporters) and hopes to turn the outcome of the struggle to its own advantage."

This difference over the role of the liberal bourgeoisie in the anti-tsarist revolution was the main issue at the rival Menshevik and Bolshevik gatherings in April 1905. From their premise that the liberal bourgeois party must come to power with the overthrow of absolutism, the Mensheviks derived the position that the social-democratic party, no matter how strong, ought not to militarily overthrow the tsarist govern¬ment. This policy of passive expectancy and liberal tailism was adopted in resolution form at the April Menshevik conference:

"Under these conditions, social democracy must strive to retain for itself, throughout the entire revolution, a position which would best afford it the opportunity of furthering the revolu¬tion, which would not bind its hands in the struggle against the inconsistent and self-seeking policies of the bourgeois parties, and which would prevent it from losing its identity in bourgeois democracy.

"Therefore, social democracy should not set itself the goal of seizing or sharing power in the provisional government but must remain a party of the extreme revolutionary opposition." —Robert H. McNeal, ed., Decisions and Resolutions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1974)


Lenin counterposed to the Menshevik conception the "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry," a concept most extensively set forth in his July 1905 pamphlet, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Dem¬ocratic Revolution. Lenin began from the premise that the Russian bourgeoisie was incapable of carrying through the historic tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. How¬ever, he believed that a peasant-based radical populist move¬ment could and would give rise to a mass revolutionary-democratic party. (Significantly Lenin did not consider the Social Revolutionaries such a party. He regarded them as an "intellectualist" grouping, still addicted to terrorism.) The alliance between the peasant-based revolutionary-democratic and the proletarian social-democratic party, including a coalition "provisional revolutionary government," would over¬throw absolutism and carry through a radical democratic program—the "minimum" program of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDRP). The operational core of Lenin's strategy was adopted at the all-Bolshevik Third RSDRP Congress:

"Depending upon the alignment of forces and other factors which cannot be precisely defined in advance, representatives of our party may be allowed to take part in the provisional revolutionary government so as to conduct a relentless struggle against all counter-revolutionary attempts and to uphold the independent interests of the working class."
—Ibid.

In developing the concept of the "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship," Lenin was primarily concerned with motivating an active military and political role for Russian social democracy in the revolution. As to the future fate of the , "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship," Lenin is deliberately vague; it is clear he did not regard it as a stable form of class rule. In Two Tactics he asserts:

"The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry is unquestionably only a transient, temporary socialist aim, but to ignore this aim in the period of a democratic revolution would be downright reactionary."

The future evolution of Russian society from the "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship" would be determined by the balance of class forces not only in Russia but throughout Europe. Lenin's formulation is therefore an algebraic conception. In its most revolutionary outcome it would shade over toward Trotsky's "permanent revolution": a radical democratic revolution in Russia sparks the European pro¬letarian revolution, which allows the immediate socialist revolution in Russia. In the face of triumphant reaction the "revolutionary-democratic dictatorship" becomes a revolutionary episode, somewhat akin to the Jacobin dictatorship of 1793 or Paris Commune of 1871, which makes possible the stabilization of normal bourgeois-democratic rule.

By early 1905, the issue of the political dynamic of the revolution had superseded the narrow organizational question as the central conflict between Bolshevism and Menshevism. In fact, the criticism of the Mensheviks adopted at the April 1905 Bolshevik congress did not even mention the issue which caused the original split. Rather it condemned the Mensheviks for economism and liberal tailism:

"...a general tendency to belittle the significance of consciousness, which they subordinate to spontaneity, in the proletarian struggle.... In tactical matters [the Mensheviks] manifest a desire to narrow the scope of the party work; speaking out against the party pursuing completely independent tactics in relation to the bourgeois-liberal parties, against the possibility and desirability of our party undertaking an organizational role in the popular uprising, and against the party's participation under any conditions in a provisional democratic-revolutionary
government."

As is well known, not all the leading Mensheviks of 1903 became the liberal-tailists of 1905. During 1904 the young Trotsky developed the theory of the "permanent revolution" as applied to Russia. Due to Russia's uneven development, no revolutionary bourgeois-democratic force, including a peasant-based radical populist party, would emerge to overthrow absolutism. In carrying through the anti-absolutist rev¬olution, the proletarian party would be forced to take state power and also to introduce the beginnings of socialization. Unless the Russian proletarian revolution extended itself to advanced capitalist Europe, the backward workers state would inevitably be overthrown by imperialist reaction. Trotsky's "permanent revolution" position placed him to the left of the Leninists on the question of revolutionary strategy, but, except for a historic moment in 1905, he remained an isolated figure in the pre-war Russian social-democratic movement.

Revolution and Mass Recruitment
The differences with the Mensheviks over the nature of the Russian revolution weakened, but did not eliminate, the Bolshevik conciliators, who favored reunification of the RSDRP. However, the revolutionary upsurge produced a new division within the Bolshevik camp, and this time Lenin found himself taking an unfamiliar position on the organizational question.

The mass radicalization, particularly after Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905, produced tens of thousands of militant young workers who were willing to join a revolutionary socialist party, to join the Bolsheviks. However, habituated to a small underground network, many Bolshevik "committeemen" (the cadres who had built hard-core social-democratic cells in the difficult conditions of clandestinity) resisted a radical change in the nature of their organization and its functioning. They opposed a mass recruitment policy and insisted on continuing a lengthy period of tutelage as a precondition for membership.

Lenin adamantly opposed this apparatus conservatism and sought to transform the Bolsheviks from an agitational organization into a mass proletarian party. As early as February 1905, in an article "New Forces and New Tasks," Lenin expressed concern that the radicalization of the masses was far outstripping the growth of the Bolshevik organization: "We must considerably increase the membership of all Party and Party-connected organizations in order to be able to keep up to some extent with the stream of popular revolutionary energy which has been a hundredfold strengthened. This, it goes without saying, does not mean that consistent training and systematic instruction in the Marxist truths are to be left in the shade. We must, however, remember that at the present time far greater significance in the matter of training and education attaches to the military operations, which teach the untrained precisely and entirely in our sense. We must remember that our 'doctrinaire' faithfulness, to Marxism is now being reinforced by the march of revolutionary events, which is everywhere furnishing object lessons to the masses and that all these lessons confirm precisely our dogma....

"Young fighters should be recruited more boldly, widely and rapidly into the ranks of all and every kind of our organizations. Hundreds of new organizations should be set up for the purpose without a moment's delay. Yes, hundreds; this is no hyperbole, and let no one tell me that it is "too late' now to tackle such a broad organizational task. No, it is never too late to organize. We must use the freedom we are getting by law and the freedom we are taking despite the law to strengthen and multiply the Party organizations of all varieties." [emphasis in original]

The conflict between Lenin's mass recruitment policy and the conservative committeemen was one of the most heated issues of the April 1905 Bolshevik congress. Lenin's motion on the subject was actually voted down by a slim majority. This motion calls upon the Bolsheviks to

"make every effort to strengthen the ties between the Party and the masses of the working class by raising still wider sections of the proletarians to full Social-Democratic consciousness, by developing their revolutionary Social-Democratic activity, by seeing to it that the greatest possible number of workers capa¬ble of leading the movement and the Party organizations be advanced from among the mass of the working class to membership on the local centers and on the all-Party center through the creation of a maximum number of working-class organiza¬tions adhering to our Party...."

—"Draft Resolution on the Relations Between Workers and Intellectuals Within the Social-Democratic Organizations," April 1905

In opposing a mass recruitment policy, the conservative Bolshevik committeemen quoted What Is To Be Done? with its line of "the narrower, the better." Lenin replied that the 1902 polemic sought to guide the formation of an oppositional grouping within a politically heterogeneous movement of underground propaganda circles. The tasks facing the Bolshevik organization in early 1905 were, to say the least, different.

Lenin was absolutely right to oppose a conservative attitude toward recruitment during the revolution of 1905. If the tens of thousands of subjectively revolutionary, but politically raw, young workers who came to the fore were not recruited to the Bolsheviks, they would naturally join the opportunist Mensheviks, the radical-populist Social Revolutionaries or the anarchists. The revolutionary party would be deprived of a large and important proletarian generation. Without mass recruitment the Bolshevik Party would have been sterilized during the Revolution and thereafter.
Another aspect of the Bolshevik committeemen's apparatus conservatism was a sectarian attitude toward the mass organizations thrown up by the revolution—the trade unions and, above all, the Soviets. The key St. Petersburg Soviet [council] of Workers' Deputies originated in October 1905 as a centralized general strike committee. While the Mensheviks embraced the trade unions and Soviets precisely because of their loose, politically heterogeneous nature, a section of the Bolshevik leadership distrusted such organizations as competitors to the party.

Thus in October 1905 the Bolshevik Central Committee in Russia (Lenin was still in exile) addressed a "Letter to All Party Organizations" which stated:
"Every such organization represents a certain stage in the proletariat's political development, but if it stands outside Social Democracy, it is, objectively, in danger of keeping the proletariat on a primitive political level and thus subjugating it to the bourgeois parties."

—quoted in Tony Cliff, Lenin, Vol. I: Building the Parry
(1975)

The Bolsheviks' initial sectarian attitude toward the Soviets permitted the Mensheviks to play a leading role in them by filling a political vacuum. Thus Trotsky, as head of the St. Petersburg Soviet, emerged as the most prominent revolutionary socialist in 1905.

Just as he struggled for a mass recruitment policy, so Lenin intervened to correct a sectarian abstentionist attitude toward the Soviets. In a letter to the Bolshevik press entitled "Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers' Deputies" (Novem¬ber 1905) he wrote:

"The Soviet of Workers' Deputies or the Party? I think it would be wrong to put the question in this way and that the decision must certainly be: both the Soviet of Workers' Deputies and the Party. The only question—and a highly important one—is how to divide, and how to combine, the tasks of the Soviet and those of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party.

"I think it would be inadvisable for the Soviet to adhere wholly to any one party." [emphasis in original]

Like Trotsky, Lenin recognized in the Soviets the organizational basis for a revolutionary government:

"To my mind, the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, as a revolutionary center providing political leadership, is not too broad an organization but, on the contrary, a much too narrow one. The Soviet must proclaim itself the provisional revolutionary government, or form such a government, and by all means enlist to his end the participation of new deputies not only from the workers, but, first of all, from the sailors and soldiers...; secondly, from the revolutionary peasantry, and thirdly, from the revolutionary bourgeois intelligentsia. The Soviet must select a strong nucleus for the provisional revolutionary government and reinforce it with representatives of all revolutionary parties and all revolutionary (but, of course, only revolutionary and not liberal) democrats."
—Ibid.

Lenin's positive orientation toward the trade unions and Soviets in 1905 did not represent a change in his previous position on the vanguard party. On the contrary, the concept of the vanguard party presupposes and indeed requires very broad organizations through which the party can lead the mass of more backward workers. What Is To Be Done? states very clearly the relationship of the party to the trade unions: "The workers' organizations for the economic struggle should be trade-union organizations. Every Social-Democratic worker should as far as possible assist and actively work in these organizations. But, while this is true, it is certainly not in our interest to demand that only Social-Democrats should be eligi¬ble for membership in the 'trade' unions, since that would only narrow the scope of our influence upon the masses. Let every worker who understands the need to unite for the struggle against the employers and the government join the trade unions. The very aim of the trade unions would be impossible of achievement, if they did not unite all who have attained at least this elementary degree of understanding, if they were not very broad organizations. The broader these organizations, the broader will be our degree of influence over them." [emphasis in original]

Did Lenin Renounce What Is To Be Done?
Almost every rightist revisionist has zeroed in on Lenin's fight for a mass recruitment policy and against apparatus conservatism to argue that the founder of contemporary communism abandoned the principles of What'Is To Be Done? then and for all time. The British workerist-reformist Tony Cliff concludes that in 1905:

"On the idea that socialist consciousness could be brought in only from the 'outside,' and that the working class could spon¬taneously achieve only trade-union consciousness, Lenin now formulated his conclusion in terms which were the exact opposite of those of What Is To Be Done? In an article called 'The Reorganization of the Party' written in November 1905, he says bluntly: 'The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic'." —Op. cit.

Jean-Jacques Marie, a leader of the French neo-Kautskyan Organisation Communiste Internationaliste, says practically the same thing:

"Lenin abandoned the rigidity in the definition which he had given of the relationship between 'consciousness' and 'spon¬taneity.' After the Second Congress (August 1903) he indicated that he had 'forced the note' or 'took the stick bent by the Economists and bent it the other way.' The 1905 Revolution could only force him to underline What Is To Be Done?'s historical function for a particular moment." —introduction to Que Faire? (1966)

Because all manner of reformists and centrists exploit Lenin's 1905 fight against apparatus conservatism for anti-Leninist purposes, it is extremely important to define precisely the issues of that dispute. What aspect or aspects of What Is To Be Done? did Lenin consider no longer relevant in 1905? Lenin did not change his position on the relationship between consciousness and spontaneity. In 1905 and until his death, he maintained that the revolutionary vanguard party was uniquely the conscious expression of the historic inter¬ests of the proletariat. As we have pointed out, the April 1905 Bolshevik congress, where Lenin fought for a mass recruitment campaign, condemned the Mensheviks for "a general tendency to belittle the significance of consciousness, which they subordinate to spontaneity, in the proletarian struggle." Lenin did not regard the "young fighters" and would-be recruits of 1905 as more politically advanced than the con¬servative Bolshevik committeemen. On the contrary, he insisted that the knowledgeable, hardened committeemen could and should raise the subjectively revolutionary "young fighters" to their own level.

Lenin did not water down the party's revolutionary program to attract more backward workers; he did not engage in demagogy. This is obvious from the passage quoted in "New Forces and New Tasks." He also did not believe that broad recruitment required a downgrading in the responsibility and discipline of membership. The April Bolshevik congress replaced the loose 1903 Martovite definition of membership with Lenin's position on formal organizational participation. Nor did Lenin hold that the transformation of the Bolsheviks into a mass workers party should lead to a significant relaxation in organizational centralism. Throughout this period he reaffirmed his belief that centralism was a fundamental organizational principle of revolutionary social democracy. For example, in the article "The Jena Congress of the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party" (September 1905), he wrote:
"It is important that the highly characteristic feature of this revision [of the SPD rules] should be stressed, i.e., the tendency toward further, more comprehensive and stricter appli¬cation of the principle of centralism, the establishment of a stronger organization....

"On the whole, this obviously shows that the growth of the Social-Democratic movement and of its revolutionary spirit necessarily and inevitably leads to the consistent establishment of centralism."

Building on the Foundations of What Is To Be Done?

In what way then did Lenin regard What Is To Be Done? as inapplicable to the tasks facing the Bolsheviks in 1905? In 1905 Lenin advocated a lowering of the hitherto normal level of political experience and knowledge required for recruitment and also for leadership responsibilities. And this change was not so much in Lenin's concept of the vanguard party as in the consciousness of the Russian proletariat. In the underground conditions of 1902-03, only a small number of advanced workers would adhere to the revolutionary social-democratic program, risking imprisonment and exile, and accept the discipline of the newly formed and faction-ridden RSDRP. After Bloody Sunday tens of thousands of militant young workers and also radical petty bourgeois wanted to become revolutionary social democrats, insofar as they understood what this meant. Broad recruitment in 1902-03 would have smothered the revolutionary elements of the RSDRP under a mass of backward, Russian Orthodox, liberal-tsarist workers. In 1905, the solid Bolshevik cadre organization was capable of assimilating large numbers of radicalized, though politically raw, workers.

Lenin's mass recruitment policy in 1905 was neither a repudiation nor a correction of the principles expressed in What Is To Be Done? but was based on their successful implementation. A necessary precondition for a broad recruitment campaign during a revolutionary crisis is a politically homo¬geneous cadre organization. And Lenin explicitly states this in a passage that Cliff himself quotes, but refuses to understand or is incapable of understanding:

"Danger may be said to lie in a sudden influx of large numbers of non-Social-Democrats into the Party. If that occurred, the Party would be dissolved among the masses, it would cease to be the conscious vanguard of the class, its role would be reduced to that of a tail. That would mean a very deplorable period indeed. And this danger could undoubtedly become a very serious one if we showed any inclination towards demagogy, if we lacked party principles (program, tactical rules, organizational experience), or if those principles were feeble and shaky. But the fact is that no such 'ifs' exist.... [W]e have demanded class-consciousness from those joining the Party, we have insisted on the tremendous importance of continuity in the Party's development, we have preached discipline and demanded that every Party member be trained in one or another of the Party organizations. We have a firmly established Party program which is officially recognized by all Social-Democrats and the fundamental propositions of which have not given rise to any criticism.... We have resolutions on tactics which were consistently worked out at the Second and Third Congresses and in the course of many years' work of the Social-Democratic press. We also have some organizational experience and an actual organization, which has played an educational role and has undoubtedly borne fruit." [emphasis in original]
—"The Reorganization of the Party" (November 1905)

A weak propaganda group or small, heterogeneous party which opens its gates during a revolutionary upsurge will be swamped by immature, impressionistic, volatile elements who will lead that party to disaster. This is precisely what happened to the German Spartakusbund of Luxemburg and Liebknecht in 1918-19. Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1905 were able to avoid the tragic fate of the Spartakusbund because they had constructed an organization according to the principles of What Is To Be Done? for the previous five years.

Unlike the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks were in a sense swamped by their mass of radicalized recruits. Under the impact of the deepening revolution, the Menshevik leader¬ship in effect split. Martov's chief lieutenant, Theodore Dan, and Martynov (of all people) supported Trotsky's campaign for a "workers government." Martov and Plekhanov adhered to the official Menshevik position of abstaining from the struggle for governmental power. Thus the revolution of 1905 found the two most authoritative figures of Menshevism isolated on the right wing of their own tendency.

It is doubtful that Lenin believed the large majority of those recruited in 1905 would remain Bolsheviks over the long haul, particularly if the revolution failed (as it did) and a period of reaction set in. But among those first drawn to revolutionary struggle in 1905, it was difficult to distinguish the genuinely advanced elements from the politically backward or deviant, the serious-minded revolutionaries from those simply caught up in the excitement of the moment. Only time and internal struggle would sort out the future Bolsheviks recruited during the revolution from the accidental accretions. During the revolution of 1905 the real Bolshevik Party remained the committeemen of the Iskra period: the new recruits were in effect candidate members.

Under normal conditions a revolutionary organization selects, educates and trains its members in good part before they join. This preparatory process often occurs through a transitional organization (e.g., women's section, youth group, trade-union caucus). But during a revolutionary upsurge such a relatively lengthy pre-recruitment period may well deprive the vanguard party of some of the best young fighters who want to play a full political role through party participation. Given a sufficiently large and solid core cadre, the vanguard party should seek to recruit all the seemingly healthy elements who embrace the revolutionary Marxist program as best they understand it. The process of selection and education then takes place internally.

Mass recruitment during a revolution represents in ex¬treme form a general characteristic of party growth and development. The transition from a propaganda circle to a mass workers party is not a uniform, linear process. Periods of rapid growth and expansion into new milieus are typically followed by a period of consolidation, marked by a certain inward turning, leading to the crystallization of a new layer of cadre.

In June 1907, Lenin brought out a collection of his major writings entitled Twelve Years. At this time the Bolsheviks were still a mass, legal organization with an estimated membership of 45,000. The victory of tsarist reaction had not yet reduced the Bolsheviks to a relatively small underground
network. The condition of the Bolsheviks in early 1907 and the situation they faced were thus very different from the Iskraists of 1902-03.

Lenin therefore had to explain and emphasize the historical context and immediate factional purpose of What Is To Be Done? In his preface to Twelve Years, Lenin observes that "The Economists had gone to one extreme. What Is To Be Done?, I said, straightens out what had been twisted by the Economists....

"The meaning of these words is clear enough: What Is To Be Done? is a controversial correction of Economist distortions and it would be wrong to regard the pamphlet in any other light."

Every rightist revisionist (e.g., Tony Cliff, J.-J. Marie) has leapt upon these few sentences, as if they were a dispensation from heaven, in order to claim that Lenin regarded What Is To Be Done? as an exaggerated and historically obsolete political statement. This is a fundamental distortion of Lenin's meaning. What Is To Be Done? appeared one-sided in 1907 because it dealt with the crystallization of an agitational party composed of professional revolutionaries out of a loose movement of propaganda circles. The 1902 polemic did not deal with the transformation of such an agitational organization into a mass workers party, nor with the prob¬lems and tasks of a mass revolutionary party.

In the same preface to Twelve Years, Lenin asserts that building an organization of professional revolutionaries is a necessary stage in constructing a mass revolutionary proletarian party, of which they will be the vital hard core. He pointed out that the committeemen of the Iskra period formed the basis of all subsequent Bolshevik organizations: "The question arises, who accomplished, who brought into being this superior unity, solidarity and stability of our Party ..It was accomplished by the organization of professional revolu¬tionaries, to the building of which Iskra made the greatest contribution. Anyone who knows our Party's history well, anyone who has had a hand in building the Party, has but to glance at the delegate list of any of the groups at, say, the [1907] London Congress, in order to be convinced of this and notice at once that it is a list of the old membership, the central core that had worked hardest of all to build up the Party and make it what it is."

Part Four Will Appear On March 30, 2011

From The "HistoMat" Blog- Tony Cliff And the Russian Revolution

Click on the headline to link to a HistoMat blog entry reviewing a book about Tony Cliff and the Russian Revolution.

Markin comment:

I am preparing under my series headlined  From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.) a group of entries on the pamphlet Lenin and the Vanguard Party, which is a 1970s response to Cliff's work on Lenin and Bolshevik party-building. I will thus save my comments for that series.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Louis- Auguste Blanqui

Click on the title to link to a Marxist Internet Archive biography of 19th revolutionary, Louis Auguste Blanqui.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

Victory To The Greek Workers!-Take The State Power Now And Build A Socialist Future

Markin capsule comment:

Victory To The Greek Workers!-Build Workers Councils In Every City And Town –Arm The Workers Against State And Golden Dawn Attacks-Take The State Power Now And Build Socialism! Later It May Be Too Late- Start Reading Lenin And Trotsky Like Crazy They Knew How To Make A Revolution!

From The “American Left History” Blog Archives-What’s Up With The Vanguard Party Concept? –(Today-2012- More Than Ever)- A Note

Markin comment:

Recently I have mentioned in a number of entries that I have work with, and now work with a loose circle of local anti-war militants who have decided on a three point program to fight Obama’s war policies over the coming years, highlighted by the struggle to create anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees.I have also placed a number of pieces of historical interest around the World War I anti-imperialist anti-war work done by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party that he led at the time. A comparison of the two types of political work as portrayed in these entries have, as was pointed out to me most graphically by a local political opponent who is a supporter of an organization that claimed a Leninist organization heritage, seems to be contradictory. Add in the factor that this blog, in many ways, does not have much meaning or reason for existence except a vehicle to learn the lessons that Lenin and Trotsky drew about revolutionary politics, and organization.

That said, what is the great to-do about. Just this. The core of Leninist politics has historically evolved around intransient opposition to non-revolutionary strategic considerations in the struggle for our communist future AND the notion of a vanguard working-class party as the vehicle to take power on the road to that future. The organizational form that that party form has taken, for those who today may not be familiar with what in the past was a serious difference of political perspective, was that this organization would be staffed by, in short, professional revolutionaries and held together by democratic-centralist discipline. That form of discipline, when in right working order allowed for pretty free-wheeling discussion internally between comrades but once a decision was made, right or wrong, in public the party would operate under that majority line. The other, traditional social-democratic form called for a party of the whole class, warts and all, and a basic cavalier attitude toward carrying out the party line, except when you crossed swords with the party bureaucracy. Trotsky had many early disagreements with Lenin over this dispute but for our purposes here once he was won over to Lenin’s organizational perspective he held to that view until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940.

That is, in a nutshell, the outline of the historic argument. How does that fit in with the work of a man who claims to stand in the Leninist tradition today yet who works in a “circle”, a devise that in Russian revolutionary history was discarded by almost all serious revolutionaries in the late 19th century as inadequate to the tasks at hand for the upcoming revolution that everyone saw as necessary, and coming? Well, a history of the “circle” is in order. The core of this group, including this writer, came together in the fall of 2001 in response to the threat of then President George W. Bush’s to blow Afghanistan to smithereens in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. I have mentioned, I think, in previous entries that one of the few times in my long “street” political career I have faced all sorts of dangerous situations and was very seldom fearful for my person. In those days being out on the streets in opposition to that Afghan war I was afraid that way, more often than not. Not from the right wing crazies that come with the territory of left wing politics, nor from the police who see these things all in day’s work whether they get to beat heads or not, nor, as in past experiences from some bizarre Stalinist or anarchoid left political thugs. No this was from the average placid fellow citizen who made me realize that I might have American citizenship but I was not an American to them. What got me, and us, through those days was the internal discipline and camaraderie or the circle. That, my friends, was a baptism of fire that you do not walk way from easily, not should you, all other things being equal.

And what of the political composition of the circle? Well, it was, and is, all over the place from semi-pacifist to ostensibly Leninist but the core that has held it together, other than that extreme sense of camaraderie mentioned above, is an anti-American imperialist ethos. A need to see the American “monster” held in check, tamped down. The current “three whales” program is a codification of that- opposition to the American military adventures as they pop up, a need to break with the old politics and create a workers party that fights for a workers government, and, as the most overt expression of that need to “tamp down” the “monster”, those anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees. That we agree on. I also wrote in a recent blog that there was internal controversy over the question of putting energies into building the now called-for spring anti-war rallies in Washington, D.C. We are thus emphatically not a democratic centralism organization. I would, since I have to write about it here, characterize it as an on-going rolling “united front”. Others may, given my description, call it a propaganda bloc. Not Leninist, in any case. [However events over the last couple of years have pushed that question to the fore again-Markin-2012]

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-"The Spartacus Youth League and the Student Upsurge of the 1930’s"

Markin comment on this series:

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.
********
The Spartacus Youth League and the Student Upsurge of the 1930’s

Lessons from History

From Young Spartacus No. 22, March-April 1974

The Lessons from History series has in the past included articles on the early years of the Communist Youth International and the development of a "Resolution on the Youth" at the founding Conference of the Fourth International. This article on the Spartacus Youth League, the first Trotskyist youth organization in the U.S., focuses on the SYL’s internal debates over a correct orientation to students and on the main aspect of its student work, namely, its intervention in the anti-war student movement, counterposing the Leninist slogans against imperialist war to the predominating petty-bourgeois pacifism and social patriotism.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today, student groups like the Maoist Revolutionary Union-dominated Attica Brigade and Progressive Labor’s SDS are organized along the same reformist, student-parochialist conceptions as the Stalinist National Student League of the 1930’s. So-called "socialist youth organizations" like the Socialist Workers Party’s Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) made themselves infamous by their consistent petty-bourgeois, single-issue reformism on the Vietnam War. Such anti-Leninist youth work is nothing new; rather, it is the heritage of the Stalinist degeneration of the Third International.

The new recruits to the Attica Brigade, YSA and SDS may not be familiar with the historical traditions of these aspects of youth work and are not aware that old mistakes are being repeated and old betrayals consciously rerun. An examination of these issues in the crisis years of the 1930’s sheds light on current differences between left-wing youth and student organizations.

The development of the Spartacus Youth League (SYL) took place in the context of a growing radical student movement, dominated politically by the National Student League (NSL), which was led by the Stalinist Young Communist League (YCL).

The YCL was changing rapidly in response to events in American society (the Depression, New Deal, renewed militancy in the working class and preparations for imperialist war) and internationally (the further political degeneration of the Soviet Union and the rise of fascism in Germany). The YCL, under the control of the Communist Party, subservient to the dictates of the Soviet bureaucracy, entered a period of crisis in the mid-thirties, losing members and influence, as the line of the sectarian "third period" was abruptly changed to the policy of the People’s Front.

The Stalinist youth liquidated all remnants of independent working-class politics in their program and gave uncritical support to the multi-class American Student Union and American Youth Congress (with the emphasis on the American!), leading them on to the football field to wave pompons and cheer for Roosevelt as he prepared another slaughter for the American workers.

The radical student movement of the early 1930’s, with an even greater percentage of students involved than the protest movements of the 1960’s, was the main battlefield in the political war between the left-wing youth organizations. The sporadic anti-ROTC campaigns and expressions of discontent in 1931 soon developed into a wave of militancy which expressed itself in numerous anti-ROTC and anti-war rallies, conferences on unemployment, fascism and the crisis in education caused by the Depression, and widespread support for striking workers.

In the period since WWI, the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), a bloc of the social-democratic Young People’s Socialist League (who formed its leadership) with liberal Christian "socialists," had been the dominant leftist group on the campuses, while the Young Workers League (previous name of the YCL) had concentrated on work among the young proletariat. The SLID in 1931 was an exhausted and demoralized organization with no enthusiasm to greet the outburst of campus radicalism.

National Student League
The SLID never gained the influence or numbers of the early-thirties National Student League (NSL), the dominant left-wing campus organization throughout this period. The NSL began as a YCL-led split from the SLID in September 1931, a split based on the "third period" line that social democrats were social fascists and on the Stalinists’ organizational appetite for a youth group of their own.

Centered in New York City, the group at first called itself the New York Student League, but the rapid gain in national membership soon justified a name change to National Student League. Publication of a monthly magazine, the Student Review, was begun in December 1931.

At that time the Trotskyist movement held that the Communist Parties were susceptible to reform from within. Consistent with this political orientation, the young Trotskyists considered themselves to be part of the YCL. At first organized into Spartacus Youth Clubs (SYC), sympathizing circles of the Communist League of America (CLA), the young Trotskyists concentrated on education of their membership and periphery in the historical lessons of Marxism and on intervention into YCL activities.

The SYC attempted to introduce resolutions in defense of a revolutionary perspective at YCL meetings and conferences, called on young militants to join the YCL, encouraged Trotskyist sympathizers to remain within the YCL to seek to win over the organization as a whole to Trotskyism, and themselves sought readmission to the organization, from which Trotskyists had been expelled in 1928. The Young Spartacans defended the YCL politically against the YPSL which at that time criticized the Soviet Union from the right and had not even partially broken with the betrayals of the Second International.

Young Spartacus and the Student Movement
The first volume of the paper circulated by the SYC, Young Spartacus, published by the National Youth Committee of the Communist League of America, reflected this strong orientation to the YCL, correct for that period. A real weakness, however, of the early Young Spartacus was a failure to recognize the political importance of certain student protest actions, which it either ignored or gave brief and routine press coverage.

The first two issues contained nothing about the vital and expanding student movement but a one-column editorial which gave a formally correct but abstract analysis of the student’s role in the revolutionary movement. The initial events surrounding the rise of the NSL to popularity such as the student delegation to Harlan County, Kentucky, to demonstrate support for the striking miners and the Columbia University strike in support of expelled liberal student editor Reed Harris, merited only short articles in back pages of Young Spartacus.

With the turning of the YCL more and more to the student arena, however, and the growth of a tremendous anti-war movement within that arena, the Young Spartacus began to devote more space to the student movement, and soon began to publish a monthly column called "Student Notes." The last issue of the paper (December 1935) was devoted exclusively to discussion of the issues surrounding the reunification of the NSL and SLID to form the American Student Union.

The orientation to the student movement necessitated more than just an abstract, formally correct understanding of the student question. Several debates on this question took place in the SYL, reflecting problems experienced in the arena.

Development of Leninist Position on Student Work
While favoring work among students, the SYL held the correct position that separate student self-interest organizations were necessarily reformist dead-ends and that it was not the task of communists to organize front groups for student "economism." Students are a socially heterogeneous group lacking the concentrated social power of the proletariat, which can stop capitalist production by withholding its labor. Therefore students are incapable of playing an independent or consistent political role or of posing a serious threat to the power of the capitalists.

While subordinate to the party’s main work in the class, an orientation by the youth group to students is, however, important in the construction of a vanguard party as—and this was the case in the 1930’s—the student movement, is frequently the arena, for ideological debates within the left. Student work can thus be an important component of the splits, fusions and regroupments that lead to the crystallization of a vanguard nucleus. In the longer view, it will be important in defeating the forces of capitalist reaction to win as large a section of the politically volatile student population as possible, as well as other non-working-class layers, to identify their interests with those of the proletariat.

The SYL sought to build a Leninist youth group which included both students and young workers and to focus its intervention in the student movement on the need to link up with working-class struggles through the class’s political leadership, namely, a Leninist vanguard party. This did not preclude entry or intervention into existing student organizations when principled and tactically advisable. In fact, such work was vital to the growth of the SYL.

Leftism and Rightism on the Student Question
Having overcome its early tendency to abstain from student work, the SYL initially adopted a correct tactical orientation of entry into the NSL with the goal of winning its majority to revolutionary politics. This tactic was arrived at after an internal debate in which sectarian workerist elements advocating a principle of non-entry were defeated.

Nevertheless, a tendency toward sectarianism continued to manifest itself in certain areas of student work, for example, in the SYL’s orientation to the Oxford Pledge movement. This movement originated at Oxford University when the student union voted that "This House will not fight for King and Country in any war." The pledge was picked up by students in other countries, including the U.S., where it was generalized to declarations of refusal to fight for "our government" in any war.

The SYL, correctly noting the pacifist content of the Pledge and narrow, student character of the movement, concluded that a posture of hostility and organizational abstention was therefore appropriate. They thereby cut themselves off from a layer of potential recruits who, while entertaining pacifist illusions, were also motivated by anti-patriotic, implicitly internationalist sentiments (and the movement did take on an international character, at least organizationally). This anti-patriotic sentiment was evident in the declarations’ insistent opposition to participation by "our government" (or "our King and Country") in any war, rather than a general statement of opposition to war.

The retention of the Oxford Pledge became a polarizing issue in the antiwar student movement of the late 1930’s when the social pressures to be patriotic were increasingly felt. The Stalinists opposed the Pledge while the Trotskyist Young People’s Socialist League-Fourth Internationalist (SYL’s successor) argued for its retention, capitalizing on its anti-patriotic, internationalist implications, opposing pacifist interpretations of it, and fighting to link it to anti-imperialist, revolutionary class-struggle demands.

Following the debate in the SYL over a general orientation to students, a rightist minority emerged, advocating abstractly the formation of a national "militant mass student movement" that would be anti-fascist, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist and would "take up the struggles of the students around student issues" (Young Spartacus supplement, October 1934). This centrist formulation failed to put forward a positive socialist program, and instead defined the organization through negatives and as narrowly studentist. It was strikingly similar to Progressive Labor’s 1969 program for SDS (which has since moved from centrism to reformism pure and simple) and the Revolutionary Union’s current program for the Attica Brigade.

The SYL majority counterposed to this the Leninist conception:

"An organization which aims to educate the students in the character of the class struggle, and the duties which result from it can only do so on the basis of a clear program, a communist program. Clarity, which is always essential, is doubly so where different class elements are involved…. organizations, which, like the NSL, move in the direction of organizing the students solely on the problems of the student issues, are…. intolerable. A left-wing group must take sides for and against each of the classes that comprise society. A union, and the NSL contemplates a union, is predicated upon a unity of interests. That unity does not exist among the students; for, they contain representatives of all classes."
—Young Spartacus supplement, October 1934
NSL’s Turn to Popular Frontism
While the rightist minority position was rejected at the SYL Founding Conference, a certain tendency to tail-end the NSL had developed. By 1935, the yearly NSL-led anti-war student strikes had become formations identical to the Socialist Workers Party’s National Peace Action Coalition of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s: subordination of revolutionary politics for the sake of the "movement."

This development coincided with the Stalinists’ turn away from "third period" sectarianism towards the class collaboration of the popular front. The seeds for the capitulation to social patriotism were planted in the "third period," when the Stalinist parties, while following in the main a sectarian policy, zigzagged off into classless "anti-war" actions under the pressure of their role as defenders of the Soviet bureaucracy abroad.

Thus the Stalinists endorsed the infamous 1932 Amsterdam Conference dominated by the wretched politics of the pacifist literary figure Henri Barbusse. Barbusse’s document, which was passed at the Conference, failed to distinguish between reactionary wars of imperialism and revolutionary wars of the proletariat against capitalism. Trotsky denounced the Communist International’s (CI) behavior at the Conference as "monstrous, capitulatory, and criminal crawling of official communism before petty-bourgeois pacifism" ("Declaration to the Antiwar Congress at Amsterdam," Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1932). The Trotskyists’ resolution calling on the Communist International to organize an international anti-war congress of all labor organizations to plan a united front action on a concrete program against war could not even obtain a vote and they were heckled and prevented from getting the floor.

The Stalinists’ pacifism blossomed into open social patriotism in the popular-front period. In the NSL the formerly sectarian and crude but pro-working-class line was totally abandoned in favor of pacifism and social patriotism; the SYL should have recognized this as a qualitative degeneration into a hardened reformism and left the NSL, attempting to take with it any remaining subjectively revolutionary elements.

Instead, the SYL continued to conceive of itself as a left pressure group within the NSL, making formally correct political statements about the NSL’s pacifist anti-war activities, but characterizing such activities as "errors made by the National Student Strike Committee [of the NSL]… [For example,] the failure to include working class youth organizations in the strike committee…. The second error was to allow for unclarity [by omitting] the slogan ‘against imperialist war’…. In certain instances, notably CCNY and New York University, the SYL forced the use of the word ‘imperialist’" (Young Spartacus, May 1935).

The SYL should have denounced the conscious capitulation to the bourgeoisie that these politics represented, rather than creating the illusion of good-willed, but incompetent, opponents of imperialist war. Thus, while the SYL organized support for the anti-war strikes around Leninist slogans, its failure to counterpose itself clearly to the Stalinist NSL undercut its work.

Nevertheless, the SYL continued to recruit from the YCL and its periphery. In Chicago particularly, where several vigorous and active SYL chapters existed, a small but steady trickle sided with the Young Spartacans. The NSL grew so desperate that it attempted to pass a motion barring "Trotskyites" from membership. YCL members attacked SYLers at an NSL meeting against war; Spartacus leader Nathan Gould was attacked by YCLers when attempting to distribute a leaflet, and YCLers issued threats of violence if the Trotskyists did not cease to speak to their members. Such thuggery was the Stalinists’ only "defense" against the SYL’s revolutionary criticism of YCL capitulation. This desperation grew so intense that the Chicago NSL dissolved the organization rather than allow two SYLers to join!

American Youth Congress
This motion from crude pro-working-class radicalism to alliance with the bourgeoisie was repeated in the American Youth Congress (AYC). In August 1934 a Roosevelt supporter by the name of Viola Ilma called upon all youth organizations to "convene and discuss the problems confronting the young people of this country." At the first convention, there was a split between the Ilmaites and the left (predominantly the YCL and YPSL); Ilma withdrew from the Congress, leaving the YCL, YPSL, YMCA-YWCA, the Boy Scouts and a few church organizations.

Despite the protests of the YCL, the SYL was present, although it correctly refused to endorse or join this wretched front for American bourgeois interests in the growing imperialist antagonisms. At the same time, the SYL maintained an active intervention into AYC meetings, sharply counterposing revolutionary class-struggle dethands to the AYC’s class collaborationism.

The AYC adopted a vague program of protest, pointing out the social problems of unemployment, transiency and militarization suffered by American youth. The second Congress, held in January 1935, had no agenda point for discussion. More vague resolutions were adopted—to be brought to Roosevelt and members of the U.S. Congress. Young Spartacus printed a scathing attack on this Congress, which was a pompous facade of fake radical-sounding speeches by Norman Thomas and various liberal Congressmen about the plight of American youth. Since the Congress was a bloc of tendencies representing different classes in society, no concrete program of action that would serve all interests could be adopted; in fact, the program of the bourgeoisie predominated.

The third meeting, in Detroit in July 1935, represented an apt culmination of this motion toward impotent liberalism and moral outrage. The SYL described the meeting in the August 1935 Young Spartacus:

"The congress opened with the singing at an outdoor mass meeting, attended by 2,000, of ‘America.’ In consideration of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, ten o’clock mass was arranged at which Reverend Ward preached a delightful and most interesting sermon.

"Having completed its graduation to pacifism, the congress was no longer dignified by a reluctant opposition to IMPERIALIST war. Resolutions congruous with revolutionary spirit were supplanted entirely by the slogans of the pacifists. Thus, at last, the congress reeked from beginning to end with ‘peace.’

"The Stalinists, chief sponsors of the congress, blocked every formulation, resolution or amendment that stood to the left of the proposed program. Every resolution introduced to the right of the program was carried with passionate enthusiasm and exhilaration…. Every left or semi-left proposal was combatted by a classically opportunist argument: ‘Everybody knows that my organization is heartily in favor of that resolution. However, it must be defeated because its acceptance will narrow the congress to purely labor organizations.’"

The Stalinists thus consciously tried to prevent the drawing of the class line in the Congress.

NSL Rises to FDR’s "Challenge"
The main documents of the Congress, the American Youth Act and the Declaration of Rights of American Youth, were enthusiastically supported by the NSL. The Student Review quoted President Roosevelt’s words—"Therefore to the American youth of all Parties I Submit a Message of Confidence: Unite and Challenge!"—and reprinted the two documents in their entirety. The American Youth Act was the AYC’s version of the New Deal National Youth Administration, and demanded simply a little more money and representatives of "youth" and "education" on the administrative board of the NYA. A campaign was initiated for the passage of this act by the Congress. The Declaration of Rights of American Youth was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and was identical to it in political content. Later in the 1930’s the AYC became the ersatz New Deal youth organization.

The NSL pursued a parallel course. The 7th Congress of the CI adopted the Dimitrov Popular-Front line and extended it to the youth organizations by liquidating the Communist Youth International into the World Federation of Democratic Youth—a fusion of Stalinist and right-wing social-democratic youth groups based on a bourgeois program.

American Student Union Jamborees for ‘Democracy’
In the U.S., after four years of separation, the NSL and SLID were reunited in December 1935 to form the American Student Union (ASU). This unity was initiated by the NSL itself, in accordance with instructions from the CI that "unity at all costs of the young generation against war and fascism" was to be effected immediately. In 1938 the ASU gave up opposition to compulsory ROTC. Roosevelt’s "collective security" was adopted as the ASU line on the war question, with the feeble left cover that support for American imperialism against German fascism was necessary for defense of the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of the YCL, the ASU became a totally social-patriotic organization.

A reporter from the New Republic described a 1939 ASU convention in these words:

"… enthusiasm reached its peak at the jamboree in the huge jumbo jaialai auditorium of the Hippodrome (seating capacity 4,500) which was filled to its loftiest tier. There were a quintet of white flannelled cheerleaders, a swing band and shaggers doing the Campus Stomp (‘everybody’s doing it, ASUing it!’)—confetti. There were ASU feathers and buttons, a brief musical comedy by the Mob Theatre and pretty ushers in academic caps and gowns. All the trappings of a big game rally were present and the difference was that they were cheering, not the Crimson to beat the Blue, but Democracy to beat Reaction."
During the same period, the YCL itself liquidated its 16-year-old paper Young Worker in favor of Champion which featured articles by liberal senators, Farmer-Labor Governor Olson from Minnesota, famous for his savage attempts to crush the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike, and a regular "Miss America" column which gave advice to young female revolutionaries on what kinds of make-up and bathing suits to buy.

The SYL remained intransigent against the growing social chauvinism of the period, directing Leninist antiwar propaganda at students, unemployed youth and young workers:

"How do wars come about? Are they due to ‘bad politicians’?

"We International Communists do not think so. We understand that wars are the logical development of class politics. Capitalist politics have various forms the essence of which is the same: the continuation and development of the system of wage slavery, of exploitation of the many by the few….

"In such a war the working class can gain nothing by the victory of either power. They must fight to defeat their own government so that working class victory can really be the outcome of the war….

"By strikes and demonstrations, fraternization with the ‘enemy’ on the war front, the militant workers’ movement can grow until it is in a position, with the majority of toilers behind it, to turn the imperialist war into a civil war and establish a workers’ dictatorship which will suppress the former master’s class and lead the way for a classless society."
—Young Spartacus, March 1934

While remaining critical of certain tactical mistakes made by the SYL, the Revolutionary Communist Youth, youth section of the Spartacist League, holds up as a model the SYL’s conception of a correct orientation to students and its history of Leninist intervention into the student anti-war movement. An assimilation of this history is important in politically defeating reformist organizations like the Attica Brigade, the Young Socialist Alliance and SDS and winning over their serious militants to Marxism.