Towards a History of the Third International (Part I)

[p023] Towards a history of the Third International (Part I) by Tom Kemp Trotsky’s Marxism under attack 59

[p024] First Congress of the Third International, March 1919: Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kalinin with the Russian delegation. Towards a history of the Third International (Part I) by Tom Kemp Trotsky’s Marxism under attack 59

[p025] THE PURPOSE of this series of articles is not to attempt to write a history of the Third (Commun- ist) International, generally known as the Comin- tern. A full-scale history of the kind which is desirable would require a detailed examination of the development of the class struggle in many countries. It would have to include the immediate pre-history of the Third International in the war years, an analysis of the nature of the socialist movement as it had developed during the pre-war upsurge of capitalism and the conflict of ideological tendencies discernible in the movement during that period. An examination of the war crisis would involve the question of imperialism and also of the crisis in the bourgeois camp which the war greatly intensified. The stage would thus have to be set by a deliberate and well-prepared excursion into general history, into the economic history of capitalism in the imperialist phase and by a de- tailed sociological analysis of the labour and social- ist movement, its relationship to the working class and to the institutional framework of the capitalist countries in which it operated. Such an introduc- tion would itself fill a volume and it has not yet been attempted by either a Marxist or a bourgeois historian. It is true that there exist a number of accounts of the Comintern which deal with the whole or part of its existence, various reminiscences and polem- ical excursions and a few documented studies of the early history of particular national sections. At first sight it is surprising that most of these studies should issue from bourgeois sources; some are exercises in cold war ‘scholarship’ which have to be treated with caution if not with contempt, others are genuine attempts, within the limitations of bourgeois historiography, to come to grips with the real problems posed by the rise and decline of the Third International. But anyone seeking in- formation about what was once a powerful inter- national body which struck fear into the hearts of the bourgeoisie everywhere is soon aware of the great absentee. There is no authoritative history of the Communist International from the Soviet Union or from the Communist Parties outside it. It is true that outlines have been produced by Foster in the USA and by Palme Dutt in Britain, but these votaries of the Stalin school of history suppress so much and lie so freely that anyone who troubles to read the documents of the Com- munist International itself will soon have to deny them any serious claim to credibility. e But who mentions the documents of the Com- munist International immediately reveals another 60 fact which at first sight appears curious. How is it that the Communist Parties do not reprint, circu- late, study and learn from the voluminous proceed- ings, resolutions and theses of the international body to which they were once formally attached? Even the best informed members of the Communist Parties know little or nothing about this enormous and fascinating body ‘f writing, just as they are in virtual ignorance of the history of the inter- national movement to which they are supposed to belong. This ignorance is not an idiosyncracy of the movement in the Western countries, but is just as prevalent in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It is no exaggeration to say that the Communist Party, through its publicists and his- torians, not only in Britain but everywhere else, has given vastly more attention to the First Inter- national of Marx than to the Third International of Lenin and Trotsky. In short, it can be said that for some reason the Third International, although re- ferred to when it cannot be avoided, is surrounded by a peculiar taboo as far as serious historical enquiry is concerned and everything is done to avoid recalling the theories and policies proclaimed in the documents of its Congresses. In fact the only collection of such cocuments available in Karl Radek addresses a meeting. Bela Kun on the right. Fourth International, August 1968

[p026] English has been edited by a bourgeois historian and produced by a university publishing house for a scholarly audience ir. an expensive format. Clearly the Communist Parties have turned their back on an important page in history; nothing, indeed, could proclaim more definitely that there is not a single thread of continuity between the Comintern of the heroic period and the present-day parties, Communist by name. It is important and instructive, therefore, to see what these parties have turned their backs on and why. A finger can be laid straightaway on a most significant fact and a particularly damning connec- tion. Anyone who begins to study the early years of the Comintern is soon struck by the names which appear time and time again as members of its leading bodies and authors of its principal docu- ments. Apart from Lenin, the names which appear most frequently are those of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin and others who were to fall foul of Stalin in the 1930s and were to figure prominently in the great purge trials. If one tries to pursue the bio- graphies of many lesser figures such as Bela Kun or Hugo Eberlein the trail ends at about the same time. Many of the leading figures of the Comintern, not only in its early years, but well after it had become a docile instrument of Stalin’s policies, had their lives snuffed out, many with not even the pretence of a trial. So no honest account of the Comintern can be written which does not resurrect these personalities, raise the question of the frame- ups of which they were victims and thus the whole problem of Stalinism and the social and political origins of the present Soviet leadership. In fact, in the Soviet Union itself, apart from the generals implicated in the Tukachevsky affair and a few minor figures, there has been no rehabilitation of the victims of the Moscow Trials, though many in- dications have been given that it is now recognized that the charges made were false and the pro- cedures used against the accused were illegal in Soviet law. Obviously more is involved than a simple post- humous reinstatement of men who were unjustly accused and murdered. The issues raised go far beyond a miscarriage of justice or Stalin’s patho- logical suspicions and take in the whole question of the social basis of the regime. In the present context it is clear that a full rehabilitation of the victims of the Moscow Trials (and, of course, of the many more victims who had no trial at all) in- volves necessarily a re-evaluation of the history of the Comintern to which many of them gave devoted service before Stalin murdered them. On the one Towards a history of the Third International hand it poses the question: who today are the legitimate heirs of the traditions which the Comin- tern established in its early years, the tired men who try unsuccessfully to hold together the dis- integrating ‘world communist movement’ or those who stand for the principles of the early Congresses as developed and continued by the Fourth Inter- national? If this is one reason for emphasizing the need for the study of the history of the Comintern it is not the only one which is of political importance. Where the Communist Party scholars have passed in shamefaced silence, well-financed and ideologic- ally-prepared bourgeois ‘authorities’ have lately been digging with immense industry. With some honourable exceptions, the accounts which have been financed from American sources have, with varying degrees of sophistication, been intended to expose the Comintern as being mistaken from the start, a docile tool of Russian foreign policy and carrying the seeds of its later degeneration from the time of its foundation. Such accounts have thus been critical, not to say hostile. To some ex- tent one can say it could not be otherwise, given the ideological starting point from which such studies were made. In fact, in the absence of any other sort of study we have to depend to a con- siderable extent on bourgeois authorities for our knowledge of many episodes in Comintern or early Communist Party history: there are just no other accounts to which we can go. Even the bourgeois scholars are handicapped, of course, by lack of source material which, if not destroyed, is kept under lock and key in Moscow and is not available even to Soviet scholars. What little work is done by the latter is, probably mercifully, not translated and the accounts of it show clearly enough that it is superficial and skates over the main problems. Some of the information about the operations of the Comintern has been provided by one-time sup- porters, some of whom, such as Souvarine, have long since broken with Marxism, while others, such as Rosmer, remained faithful to their original principles. Obviously in dealing with such accounts the usual rules of evidence apply. The same applies to the Menshevik and social-democratic enemies of the Comintern, some of whom have been able to make a career as experts on the matter. Notwith- standing their evident bias, this does not vitiate the factual evidence which they provide and which can be checked from other sources. Such people are, or were, exceptionally well informed and, when used critically, their work can be invaluable in the absence of more authoritative material. An- 61

[p027] Alfred Rosmer: remained faithful to principles. its original other trend in Comintern studies, stemming from similar origins, tries to justify the record of the Second International and its parties, placing the main blame for the defeats of the working class between the wars on to the splitting of the working- class movement by Lenin. The recent weighty work by Braunthal is the fullest expression of this trend The pre-history of the Third International begins with the debacle of the Second when, like many a seemingly stable institution of pre-1914 Europe, it was sucked into the maelstrom of the First World War. At congress after congress, national and inter- national, the parties of the Second International had passed resolutions proclaiming working-class internationalism and their determination to struggle against war. As the great powers mobilized their armies and prepared to throw them into battle almost all the leaders of the great socialist parties placed themselves behind the war policies of their 62 and its basic weaknesses will be analyzed in due course. To summarize: although there is no full history of the Communist International, or of any period of its existence, a lengthening list of books which discuss it from one or another of the points of view mentioned is now available. It is thus possible for the student to read most of the principal documents in whole or in part in the Degras collection and to follow the main stages in its development in other works which, however, are to be treated with great caution as far as their interpretation is concerned. Lenin’s speeches and written contributions are fully available in the Collected Works, while Trotsky’s have also been published in English in volume form. Perhaps the least biased of the treatments by a bourgeois histofian is that by E. H. Carr, where it appears as a subordinate part of the history of Soviet Russia. Trotsky’s critique of the programme drawn up by Bukharin and finally adopted at the Sixth Congress in 1928 will be familiar to many readers of this journal. The fate of many Comintern supporters in the 1930s has only been dealt with at all fully from bourgeois sources, but the de- generation of the Comintern under Stalin and the reason for its final winding up in 1943 have been analyzed many times in general if not in detail. In the following pages it is intended to do no more than outline the main stages in the history of the Cominternand someof the political lessons which it teaches. The first article sketches briefly the background to the first three Congresses, the second will carry on the story from the Fourth Congress to the victory of the Stalin faction and its inter- national consequences and the third and final article will deal with the Comintern’s record in the 1930s until its dissolution by Stalin in 1943. 1 ‘own’ governments and called their followers to the blood-bath. It was a shocking and discreditable performance which has often come in for learned explanation since but which remains inexcusable. The behaviour of these leaders and the sophistries which they found to cover their apostasy revealed how far they had travelled, despite their revolution- ary pretensions and commitment to Marxism, on the road to the acceptance of bourgois democracy of which they were but the left wing. All supporters of capitalist institutions and the parliamentary life are unable to avoid sympathy for the “dilemma’ of Fourth International, August 1968

[p028] the German, French and other party leaders in 1914. They had, after all, succeeded in doing what good reformists seek. From within bourgeois society they had worked for the extension of democracy and a peaceful socialist transition. The tolerance with which they were permitted to carry on their activities, the steadily rising membership of their organizations, their increasing parliamentary repre- sentation and importance in local government, their press and party apparatus lulled them into the comfortable acceptance of the conviction that, in the fullness of time, they would secure the requisite parliamentary majority to enable socialist measures to be enacted. In the meantime, apart from the occasional presence at international gatherings and the customary repetition of internationalist slogans the great parties of the Second International be- came more and more closely identified with national life and traditions. The prosperity of the pre-1914 years, the ability to win material gains and social reforms, strengthened this feeling of self-sufficient nationalism and weakened the bonds of inter- national solidarity. In the same way, the ability of diplomacy to ward off crisis after crisis in relations between the great power blocs into which Europe was divided produced the illusion that war was un- thinkable and that the terms of the anti-war reso- lutions would never have to be put to the test. In the avalanche of patriotic hysteria generated by the European governments in 1914 it was not surprising, in view of the steady seepage of bour- gois and nationalist ideology into the working-class movement, that the workers should also have been swept into it. It is a good trick on the part of leaders to blame the rank and file for situations in which leadership itself is being put to the test. In fact, the leaders showed little hesitation in deciding for the national cause rather than staking on the undoubted feelings of international working-class solidarity which did exist. The example set by leaders was obviously of key importance. They can- not find any alibi by claiming to be following the masses. In only a few cases did parties affiliated to the International in the belligerent countries take an anti-war stand. Most of the individuals who did so maintained a pacifist or neutralist. position, not the revolutionary defeatism of Lenin. The fact was, then, that with a few honourable exceptions the socialist and trade union leaders— including most of the syndicalist leadership of the French CGT—placed themselves not against the patriotic current but in its vanguard. Socialist members of parliament voted war credits and, as open or covert government parties the sections of Towards a history of the Third International! the Second International lined up on different sides of the trenches as fervent protagonists of war. It was possible, of course, to find, in each country, arguments drawn from the armoury of bourgeois nationalism and xenophobia to justify these actions. They were even given a socialist gloss: the French were fighting the militarism and imperialism of the Kaiser, the Germans the tyranny and oppression of Tzardom. There was also the hope that by throw- ing themselves behind the national cause a further step would be taken on the road to socialism: bleed for the bourgeois now and later they will stand aside and allow socialism to be built. All in all it was the greatest deception in history. When all has been said on behalf of the leaders of the Second International, and they have found some skilled apologists, the conclusion is inescap- able. The war only revealed in the flash of gunfire that they had already crept into the enemy camp. A deeply-rooted contradiction in the policy and outlook of the parties of the Second International, which even Lenin had not detected at the time, was thus hastened to the point of decision. The Inter- national had irretrievably failed. It could not be put together without repeating the compromises and weaknesses which had brought about that failure and without trying to pass a sponge over the historical record to enable its discredited leaders once again to pose as socialists and Marxists and go on as before. It is true, of course, that as the full horrors of the war were brought home to them, and as the soldiers and workers showed signs of war weariness or open rebellion, more of the old leaders began to shift towards the search for a negotiated peace. The internationalists found grow- ing support and sympathy from the time of the Zimmerwald Conference of September, 1915. How- ever, the international contacts established through the Zimmerwald movement showed both the weak- ness and the diversity of the anti-war trends. In fact it was an arena of struggle in which Lenin sought to win a basis for establishing a new, Third, International on a programme of revolutionary socialism. But no more than a beginning was made in the regroupment of forces. A new left was emerging but it was still only a small minority. The last years of the war saw a rising tide of strikes, demonstrations, mutinies and anti-war feel- ing from one end of Europe to another. Very rapidly and unexpectedly the question of revolution was posed. The overthrow of Tsardom and then the October Revolution created a wholly new situation. Within a year of the latter event the revolutionary opportunities had spread into central Europe with 63

[p029] Second Congress of the Third International in session, December 1919, Hail of Thrones, Kremlin. Zinoviev presiding, Kamenev on his left. the collapse of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Although in the victor countries the de- velopment was understandably slower, after the war’s end they too were swept by waves of strikes and working-class discontent strengthened by the embittered demobilized soldiers looking for jobs. The Russian Revolution did not therefore appear as an exceptional event in an _ otherwise stable European society. Every European country was seething and some were in chaos, while, recognizing the dangers inherent in what they called Bolshev- ism, the governments of the more stable countries were intent upon crushing the Revolution, bringing Russia back into the world market and supporting the most benighted forces of counter- revolution. It would be possible to examine the situation country by country, to discover if and when the conditions for revolution were present in the period from 1917 to 1920. Some were present almost everywhere, all were present perhaps nowhere out- side Russia, despite the establishment, for brief periods, of Soviet republics in Hungary and Bavaria. But revolutionary situations are only in part the result of objective forces and even into them many factors enter which include, or are affected by, the presence or otherwise of a con- scious revolutionary movement. The self-confidence of the ruling class and its ability to g> on ruling in 64 the old way are partly a function of the nature and strength of the challenge which it faces. Looking back the historian is apt to conclude—all the more if he wants to prove that Lenin and the Bolsheviks should not have taken power in a backward coun- try, or should not have split the International—that the post-war revolutionary wave was bound to fail. He records that it must have failed and there is nothing in the way of documentary evidence to ‘prove’ the contrary. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, when they took power in 1917, did, of course, count upon the extension of the revolution into central and western Europe. They hoped, at first, for a rapid movement to the left among the minority trends in the labour move- ment and that a determined revolutionary leader- ship would be given to the spontaneous hostility to bourgeois government and capitalism which was growing among the masses. They did not over- estimate the objective possibilities as a whole but in particular cases their assessment had to be based upon very limited and not too reliable information. Russia was largely cut off from the outside world in the early years of the new regime and communi- cation between the Russian leaders and sympa- thizers and supporters in other countries was very difficult. However, the Russian Revolution became a major factor in the European prospects for revo- lution and constituted a base for its next phase. Fourth International, August 1968

[p030] Lenin had been persuaded, since the disintegra- tion of the Second International under the stress of war, that a new, Third International would have to be formed. Such an International could not be a replica of its predecessors, though it would inherit from them the best traditions of working-class internationalism. It was no longer sufficient to pro- claim theses in words at formal and friendly gather- ings and then go back to the day-to-day work of the national party and forget about them. The new international had to be composed of parties of a different type, pursuing a common programme and strategy according to the conditions which prevailed in each country. It could only be formed in oppo- sition to those leaders who had betrayed the elementary principles of internationalism in 1914. Lenin therefore looked anxiously from beleaguered Russia for signs of the making of such parties in the main European countries. For the time being, however, the majority leaderships of the parties of the Second International were attempting to ride out the storm and efforts were being made to re- invigorate this body. The movement towards the left was visible in many countries everywhere as an important trend, sometimes affecting entire parties. There was the revolutionary left which had opposed the war all along and which was beginning to take on organizational form, especially in the Spartacus League in Germany. There were revolutionary syn- dicalists attracted to the Russian Revolution and disgusted with the betrayals of their own leaders. There were numerous small groups and minority tendencies in the old parties and trade unions all struggling to exist outside them. Most socialist parties had grown from a big influx of newcomers: youth, intellectuals, ex-soldiers, all of whom were ready for action and change. Everywhere the in- dustrial proletariat had swollen in size and in social weight as a result of war-time industrialization and was in a militant mood as prices rose and shortages grew. Behind all these trends was the deep mass revulsion against the war and the system which had produced it. The decision to call the founding congress of the Third International was intended to seize these opportunities. An invitation was thus issued in January 1919, over the names of Lenin and Trotsky and a number of foreign supporters who signed on behalf of parties which did not as yet properly exist. In the circumstances of war and blockade it was difficult to distribute invitations and even Towards a history of the Third International 2 more difficult for foreign delegates and visitors to get to Moscow. In fact, at the First Congress in March 1919, most of the delegates were foreign supporters of the revolution already in Russia and there were, as yet, no Communist Parties which they could formally claim to represent. For Lenin, clearly, the situation demanded revolutionary par- ties and circumstances had placed the Russians in the position where they had the responsibility to assist in their formation and in the speediest man- ner possible. The main task, as he saw it, was to wrest control of the working class from the old reformist leaders and prepare the way for a struggle for power against the discredited and decaying bourgeois order. Lenin took as a supreme example of that decay the murder of Karl Liebnecht and Rosa Luxemburg while prisoners of a bourgeois- democratic republic. Nevertheless, before their deaths the leaders of the Spartacus League had mandated their delegate, Hugo Eberlein, to vote against the setting up of a new International. In fact, he was persuaded to abstain after the delegates from Austria had painted an optimistic picture of the prospects of revolution in central Europe. At the Congress a number of important theses and resolutions drawn up by the Bolshevik leaders were approved, including a ‘Manifesto to the Workers of the World’ written by Trotsky. Not surprisingly, in his book The Internationale, R. Palme Dutt omits to mention that what he calls the ‘New Communist Manifesto’ was the work of Trotsky and says very little about the other documents which the Congress adopted. They included, for example, Lenin’s ‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and Proletarian Dictator- ship’. In a few sentences Lenin makes the case against bourgeois democracy. ‘It would be the greatest nonsense to assume,’ declared Lenin, ‘that the most profound revolution in mankind’s history, the first transference of power from the hands of the exploiting minority to the hands of the ex- ploited majority, could take place within the frame- work of the old bourgeois parliamentary democ- racy, without the greatest changes, without the creation of new forms of democracy, new insti- tutions, new conditions for their use, etc’. He looks forward to a new Soviet form of state power which ‘must inevitably involve not only a change in the forms and institutions of democracy, but change of a kind which results in an extension of democratic usages, on a scale never before known 65

[p031] in the world, to the working classes whom capital- ism enslaved’. Probably E. H. Carr is right in claiming that ‘The fact of the foundation of the Third or Com- munist International, henceforth familiarly known as Comintern, was more important than anything done at its first congress.’ Nevertheless, not only was the framework for a new working-class inter- national established but its theoretical premises and programme were also made absolutely clear. Those who claim that Lenin wished to preserve and extend the split with the old leaderships and poli- cies of the parties of the Second International are, of course, quite correct. There was no deceit or doubt about where the Comintern stood on the major questions and obviously no place in its ranks for leaders or parties of the old type. That there could have been any ambiguity on these matters on the part of those who read the docu- ments of the First Congress is unbelievable. The Congress stood for a complete break with the old International and its practices. It rejected the whole reformist platform of socialism through stages by parliamentary means. It opposed new forms of proletarian rule to the hollow promises of bour- geois democracy. It laid down a strategic line which was clear to every reader. Its condemnation of the ‘centre’ (such as Kautsky in Germany) was as definite as anything can be in politics, and it stated plainly that it sought to split off the most revolu- tionary of the elements in the ‘centrist’ ranks by ruthless criticism and exposure of the leaders of these trends. During the years in which Lenin and Trotsky guided the work of the Communist International its strategic line was quite clear. Where the trouble arose was in its application, in its translation into tactical terms by the leaders of the young Com- munist Parties. In 1919-1920, when the revolutionary current ran deepest, these parties were still in process of formation and beset by enormous difficulties. In fact, therefore, the crucial factor needed to turn the opportunities to account, the revolutionary party, existed only in embryo or as a conglomer- ation of discordant trends. Where mass Communist Parties appeared they depended, first of all, upon a protracted struggle within the Socialist Parties. The principal leaders of these parties, even those who gave sound support to the foundation of a new international, inevitably carried with them the traits characteristic of the leadership of the great pre-war Socialist Parties. They were used to par- liamentary discussion and debate, had absorbed 66 the national tradition of each party and a loyalty to it as well as a camaraderie with other leaders whose ideas they did not share. They broke often with difficulty and reluctance from the party which had for many years been their home and even the best could not acquire in a day the outlook of Communists. In great parties like the French or the Italian or the German Independents, from which the Com- munist Parties split away, the process of birth was a long travail. In fact these splits were far from clear-cut because there went with the Communist Parties many leaders and member whose loyalties were divided. They could not see former colleagues or leaders in the sharp outline of Comintern docu- ments, or they wanted to keep in the Communist Party members who, in their turn, still hoped nostalgically for an all-inclusive party of the pre- 1914 sort. There were also the syndicalist elements, often the most militant in strikes and demonstrations, who joined or gravitated around the Communist Parties. Many retained an aversion to political action and to any form of organization or discip- line. Because there were so few potential cadres for the new parties, and from esteem for their personal merits, Lenin and Trotsky worked very hard to convince and to hold these militants with a syndicalist past. It was hard to amalgamate such elements with established socialist leaders who they regarded, sometimes with good grounds, as opportunists. In any case, between the First and Second Con- gress, which took place in the summer of 1920, there was little that the Comintern could do to assist in the formation or guidance of parties in Europe. Communications between Moscow and the outside world were virtually cut off and the mili- tants in each country who looked to Russia for inspiration were largely left to themselves. At best the Comintern could send out a few publications and agents, the latter recruited from foreigners who had found themselves in Russia and thrown in their lot with the Bolshevik Revolution, includ- ing some ex-prisoners of war. A number, indeed, were Bolsheviks of very recent vintage. Inside the European countries the governments and press turned on a powerful anti-Bolshevik propaganda campaign. The parties of the Second International sought to re-establish their authority. The various strikes and other mass movements broke against the resistance of the bourgeois state supported by the old-line labour leadership. The Soviet regimes in Bavaria and Hungary were short- Fourth International, August 1968

[p032] Hungary: short-lived Soviet followed by bloody repression. lived and followed by bloody repression. The revo- lutionary wave began to lose its initial momentum. As the cadres of the new Communist Parties were formed they confronted a political situation be- coming less favourable for the mass action which the Comintern had sketched out at its First Con- gress. Nowhere outside Russia did the Communist Party become the principal party of the working class in numerical terms nor, in general, did it correspond in nature or policy to the pre-1917 Bolshevik Party. Nevertheless it was something of an achievement that by the Second Congress delegates representing mass parties in the main European countries were present in Moscow. The first task was to convert the sympathy for the Russian Revolution into con- crete measures to form parties affiliated to the Comintern. This could only be done by sharpening up the struggle in parties where a split had not yet occurred in order to lay the foundations of parties of a Bolshevik type. It was complicated by the fact that in a number of cases whole parties, or sub- stantial sections of parties, wholly or partly led by the old opportunist type of labour politician, were ready to declare their allegiance to the Comintern. There was therefore a danger, in Lenin’s esti- mation, of a dilution of the Comintern by the entry of parties, or wings of parties, which still stood, in practice and in theory, on the level of the Second International. If it was merely a question of having as many adherents as possible, or repre- senting actual tendencies in the working class, no doubt the gates of the Comintern should have been left wide open. But the documents of the First Congress make clear that this was not the original Towards a history of the Third International intention. Moreover, it was pretentious of some of those who were now seeking admission to the Comintern to claim that they did subscribe to the strategy which it had mapped out. In order to ensure that parties which affiliated to the Comintern were not swamped by opportun- ists or dragged back to the level of the Second International, very stiff conditions were imposed for entry to its ranks. Bourgeois and social-demo- cratic historians have subjected the famous ‘Twenty-one Conditions’ which were drawn up by the Second Congress to detailed scrutiny and critic- ism and have, of course, seen in them the seeds of the monolithic and bureaucratic Stalinized Com- munist Parties of later date. But as has already been emphasized, there was never any doubt from the beginning of the sort of party which the foun- ders of the Comintern, Lenin and Trotsky, sought to establish from the left wing of the socialist parties. All that the Twenty-one Conditions did was to make explicit and watertight what was already contained in the public documents of the International. That the First and Second Inter- nationals did not impose conditions so rigorous was of course true; but there was no intention of creating a replica of these organizations whose much looser and more heterogeneous structure had, in their time, been justified. What was now being taken into account was the sorry fate of the Second International, the lessons of a quarter of a century of working-class struggle and the needs of a political situation in which the world revolution had already begun. To go back to the methods of the Second International and create parties on similar lines, or to admit people whose intention it was to do so, could only be a retrograde step. It could only have been defended on the grounds that the Third International—and the Russian Revolution itself—was something which should not have happened. If the Second International was right, if it should have been restored and if there were no grounds for a split then it could have been argued, though somewhat perversely, that the Third International should have been wide open to all those wishing to join as a prelude to the restora- tion of unity with its rival. As it was the struggle was joined ta form Communist Parties in open and declared opposi- tion to the old socialist organizations and where necessary by splitting them. In practice, as already pointed out, where splits did occur they did not entirely conform with what the Comintern had intended. The new Communist Parties still re- tained much of the character of the organiza- 67

[p033] tions from which they had been broken off or which they continued with only a change of name. The formation of Communist Parties was _ there- fore only the beginning of a struggle to change the character of the party itself and to root it more firmly in the working class. This meant The years 1920 and 1921 witnessed the petering out of the revolutionary wave in Europe, thus posing the question of how the Soviet regime could surive in a hostile world. New problems occupied the Communist Parties and the Comin- tern once it was clear that the world revolution was no longer on the immediate agenda. The advance of the Red Army into Poland had provided an exciting backcloth for the Second Congress. But it depended upon a serious political miscalculation: that there would be a general uprising in Poland to make possible the setting up of a Soviet regime. Instead the Red Army met stiff resistance, was forced onto the defensive and had to contend with the danger of an invasion of the Soviet Union: it was thus necessary to make peace on unfavourable terms. In March 1921, there was another setback with the failure of the uprising in Germany. Although the civil war in Russia had been brought to a close the economy was in chaos and, following the Kronstadt rebel- lion, the New Economic Policy was adopted. The setbacks of the previous year made neces- sary a basic re-assessment of the position at the Third Congress of the Comintern in the summer of 1921. It had to be admitted that Communist Parties had not been built in time to take advan- tage of the favourable opportunities for revolu- tion which had arisen out of the crisis of capital- ism at the end of the war. In the main countries, despite the formation of Communist Parties, the old organizations of the Second International re- tained their grip on the working class and con- sciously used their influence to preserve the bour- geois social order. The most critical example, of cours@s was the role played by German Social Democracy in the whole turbulent series of events from November 1918 onwards. Even the social- democratic author Julius Braunthal, a strong critic of Bolshevism and the Comintern, has to admit that Germany was ripe for social revolution but when the social democrats had power in their hands he claims that they had no idea how to 68 turning from the labour aristocracy to the most oppressed layers and playing a leading part in all the struggles of the working class: a new, active leadership in every sort of struggle which the old social democracy had abandoned for immersion in parliamentary and trade-union affairs. 3 use it as a means of social change. Instead, thy crushed the Spartacists, armed the Freikorps and co-operated in the establishment of the sham demo- cracy of the Weimar Republic. This ‘democracy’ which they called on the German working class to defend left all the real power in the hands of their enemies. To quote Braunthal: “The state machine was still secretly controlled by the former imperial civil servants, who despised democracy, and the courts were run by reactionary judges who failed to punish acts of political murder by the nationalists. The army was run by the former imperialist officers, and meanwhile nothing was done to stop the Junkers from organizing Fascist Frei- korps, financed by the tycoons of heavy industry. And the universities still remained hotbeds of darkest reaction.’ It is a contradiction in Braunthal’s position that while clearly seeing the shortcomings of the German Social Democrats and their role in re- storing the bourgeois state he condemns the Co- mintern for insisting on a break with such leaders and the pursuit of revolutionary policies. The tragedy of the German proletariat was not dis- unity or revolutionary impatience, though the left made its quota of mistakes, but the failure to develop in time a party and a leadership able to wrest control of the working class from the traditional organizations. By 1921 the result of the betrayals by the social democracy and the set- backs suffered by the Communist Parties left the responsible forces in the Comintern no alter- native but to define the fundamental task as being ‘to lead the present defensive struggles of the pro- letariat, to extend their scope, to deepen them, to unify them, and in harmony with the march of events, to transform them into decisive political struggles for the ultimate goal’. If there was inevitably a retreat it was to be a tactical one to prepare the way for a renewed offensive as soon as favourable conditions pre- sented themselves. It was necessary now to think of a prolonged revolutionary process extend- Fourth International, August 1968

[p034] Third Congress of the Third International, July 1921: Lenin addresses the detegates. ing over years rather than months as had been assumed in the previous optimistic period. In any case the situation inside the major European Communist Parties was difficult. The German Party had lost heavily as a result of the failure of the ‘March action’ and went into the next round of struggle badly prepared and with big divisions in the leadership. The French Communist Party had only been formed as a result of the split in the Socialist Party at the Congress of Tours in 1920, too late to play a role in the big strike wave of the previous year. The tendency of its leaders to behave much as they had done while in the Socialist Party and the decline in the Party’s influence gave the Comintern serious concern. Meanwhile, the majority of the Italian Socialist Party, which had come over to the Comintern under the leadership of Serrati, while proclaiming in words that Italy was ripe for revo- lution, shrank from preparing a _ struggle for Towards a history of the Third International power. In fact the workers had occupied the big factories in Northern Italy, the bourgeoisie was forced on to the defensive and even Braunthal agrees that ‘If the party leadership had been determined then to bring about a revolution, it could undoubtedly have turned the powerful trade- union campaign into all-out revolution’. However, Braunthal does not accept that the essential con- dition for victory was a party of the Bolshevik type purged of its reformist wing. As it was, the divided party which Serrati refused to split until the supporters of the Comintern did so at the Livorno conference was condemned to impotence and within a few years was to be driven underground by the coming of fascism. During this decisive period, when revolutionary situations were still in the making in a number of countries the leaders of the Communist Parties came mostly from the old left wing of the Socialist or Social-Democratic Parties. They found it diffi- 69

[p035] Serrati, leader of the Italian section in conversation with Trotsky. cult to break with the habits acquired in the en- vironment of an all-embracing party oriented towards parliament and containing ‘respected per- sonalities’ from the period of the party’s forma- tion. There was a marked reluctance to break with these habits and to settle accounts with the old-line leaders. The lessons of the Russian Revo- lution, and in particular those of the pre-1917 struggles inside the Social-Democratic Party, had not been understood and related to the experience of other countries. On the other hand, the failure of the revolution to spread strengthened the tremendous prestige and authority enjoyed among the new generation of communists by the Russian leaders—a development which could also become an obstacle to building parties of a Bolshevik type. By some it was be- lieved that this could be done by slavish adherence to Russian models rather than learning the lessons of Bolshevik experience. Some Comintern officials, not excepting Zinoviev and Bukharin, took ad- vantage of this situation to strengthen their per- sonal prestige and influence. In this way the ground was being prepared for Stalin’s domestication of the non-Russian Communist Parties. But there is an obvious difference between the mistakes of the early years and the systematic policy of ousting It is easy to say, as Braunthal and others do, that the working class in its majority in the main European countries had not followed Communist leadership. The explanation generally given for this is that revolutionary politics were alien to the mature working class of the advanced coun- tries able to improve their conditions through 70 dissenting leaders and putting in their place docile yes-men willing to follow the Moscow line through thick and thin which became the rule as the bureau- cracy consolidated itself in Russia. At first the Russians had much to teach. The situation in the key countries was closely followed by Lenin, Trotsky, Radek and others. Advice was given to foreign supporters of the Third International through long and patient discussions; special com- missions were set up, resolutions written and debated in full sessions of the Congresses. It is sheer distortion to confuse this method of con- ducting international business between fraternal parties with those employed during the Stalin era. It is a matter of bad faith, too, to attribute the failures of the working-class movement in the post-war revolutionary years to the methods of Lenin and the Third International. Braunthal has the effrontery to do this although his own account of events makes it clear, especially in Germany and Italy, that the principal architects of the defeats which the workers suffered were the reformist leaders. Everywhere, in fact, the same leaders who had supported their own governments during the war were now co-operating in restoring bour- geois institutions—even when this meant using force against the revolutionary sections of the working class and shoring up a parliamentary system which was so rotten that the bourgeoisie was getting ready to discard it. Meanwhile, of course, as a result of these defeats and the failure to build revolutionary parties in time, the isolation of the Russian workers’ state produced the conditions for the rise of Stalinism. Already, by the time of the Fourth Congress in 1922, European reaction was launching a counter- offensive. The defeats of the next few years, be- sides preparing a period of relative capitalist stabi- lization, were the essential conditions for the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian party and the transformation of the Comintern into an instrument of its international policy. 4 democratic means. Since the world revolution had not happened it must have been a myth, and since this was the aim of the Communist Inter- national ‘the splitting of the labour movement had been a colossal mistake’. This method of writ- ing history serves two purposes. First it provides an alibi for the betrayals of the parties of the Fourth International, August 1968

[p036] Fourth World Congress ot the Third International, November 1922: Trotsky addresses delegates. Second International, for did not they in some way ‘represent’ the majority of the working class? Secondly, it is a comforting application of that historical doctrine which is most adequately des- cribed as worshipping the accomplished fact. Since revolutions were not made they could not have been made and those who tried to make them can be shown, in retrospect, to have been deluded. Now, as has been suggested from Braunthal’s own account of post-war European history, the successful re-establishment of bourgeois stability would have been impossible without the co-operation of the reformist parties. It is otiose to claim that these parties only followed the de- sires of the masses of the working class and that no element of betrayal entered into their conduct. Certainly the workers showed a considerable loyalty to leaders, deferred to their experience and ac- cepted their explanations of their conduct in good faith. In point of social basis, the reformist leader- ship had its roots in the ‘aristocracy of labour’ and in large, conservative and bureaucratized trade unions which tended towards class collabora- tion and integration with bourgeois society if not with the state itself. These trade unions and re- formist parties with which they were closely linked thus put their faith in the preservation of bourgeois democracy. In 1922 in Italy and in 1933 Towards a history of the Third International in Germany they were smashed without a struggle. Thus were they punished for their stand against revolution, their support for the bourgeoisie, when revolution was on the agenda. Even apart from this, before the full conse- quences of their actions could be seen, consistent Marxists were bound to oppose the reformist leadership and to establish new revolutionary parties, the sections of the Third International. Their task was to raise the consciousness of the working class, to break the stranglehold of the old leaders and to take advantage of the conditions for overthrowing bourgeois rule which the post- war crisis of capitalism obviously created or brought near in a number of advanced European countries. To do anything else would have been a betrayal even when it meant advocating a policy which was only able to command the support of a minority of workers. This became still clearer after the Third Congress when there had to be a turn by the Communist Parties towards estab- lishing a solid position in the working class with the aim of winning over a majority rather than aiming at a direct struggle for power at the head of a revolutionary class. The decisions of the Third and Fourth Congresses therefore require careful study. 71

[p037] Marxism and Stalinism in Britain 1920-26 (Part Ill) THE theme of the initial sections of this article has been the failure of L. J. Macfarlane, in tracing the history of the Communist movement in Britain from the 1900s through to the late 1920s, to relate the development of the revolu- tionary tendencies that emerged across this period to the specific stages of development of the working class, its consciousness and the organiza- tional forms through which this was expressed, and the changing character of British capitalism; the relatively rapid change from the booming imperialist economy of the immediate pre-war years to the stagnant, crisis-ridden economy of the 1920s, and the impact this had on wide sections of the working class, is completely ignored by Macfarlane. Without such analysis, however, it is really impossible to explain in any satisfactory manner how the weak revolutionary sects that came together to form the CPGB in 1920-1921 were in a position, at least potentially and in a fair degree actually, to play an extremely influential role in the major developments that took place in the Labour movement around ‘Red Friday’ and the General Strike. Shortcomings of Macfarlane’s method In the earlier sections of this article an attempt has been made to indicate the main phases of development of British capitalism across the period dealt with by Macfarlane’s book and to delineate the main revolutionary tendencies that established themselves in the Labour movement by the end of the First World War. It has been argued, against Macfarlane’s purely descriptive approach to these tendencies, that it is crucial to understand theoretically the political signifi- cance of the tendencies, syndicalist and centrist, which were to be so influential at the time of the formation of the CPGB and which were to determine its character and general political role in its early years. In fact, it was only by a con- scious struggle to overcome the legacy of these tendencies that the CPGB was able to create the 72 by M. Woodhouse conditions for its emergence as a party of the Bolshevik type and in studying the early years of the party’s history it is this process that one is studying. Inevitably, therefore, Macfarlane’s book provides much information on this process; the theoretical significance of the process, however, and the degree to which the CPGB had estab- lished, by 1924-1926, the pre-conditions for effective communist work, he largely ignores. It is because he ignores these factors that the section of Macfarlane’s book with which this part of the review deals, the years from the forma- tion of the party up to the General Strike, is so unsatisfactory and, as a historical evaluation of the significance of the party in the most crucial period of its development, misleading and con- fused. For those who are concerned with under- standing why the CPGB failed dismally in its first serious test as a revolutionary organization during the General Strike of 1926 a clear estimation of the tendencies operating in the party during its early years is essential. The failure of the CPGB to develop the undoubtedly revolutionary poten- tial of the General Strike, its failure to learn from its weaknesses in this period and its inability to resist the pressures working for the Stalinization of the international Communist movement in these years, resulted in the consummation of the pro- cess, operating from 1925 at least, whereby the CPGB became utterly subordinate to and depend- ent on the bureaucratized apparatus of the Comintern. After 1926 the CPGB was never again to be in a position to play any revolutionary role in the British Labour movement. The struggles in the party at the end of the 1920s were not in any real sense connected with an attempt to reverse the rightward tendencies displayed by the majority of the leadership from the time of the General Strike but were, essentially, struggles between two contradictory phases of Stalinism. Significantly enough, it is in this section of his book, where Macfarlane is not concerned with the crucial rela- tionship of the party’s theory and policy to the Fourth International, August 1968