The Political Itinerary of Georg Lukacs

[p041] Political itinerary of Georg Lukacs ‘The class struggle of the proletariat is not just a class struggle . . . but the means for the liberation of humanity . . . Every compromise obscures this aspect of the struggle, and for that reason ... it is fatal for that real final end.’ He comes to this conclusion after posing the question: ‘What moral consideration can provoke the in- dividual’s decision, so that the necessary philoso- phical consciousness of history becomes in him - correct political action, namely the component of a collective will?’ (History and Class Conscious- ness.) It is easy to see that, immediately he joined the Party, Lukacs moved towards ultra-leftism through an individualistic and so-called ethical anarchism. We cannot here deal with all the fundamental problems of the 1918 Soviet Republic, however rich its lessons. We must, however, define Lukacs’ attitude in relation to the central problem, that of the party. The proletariat’s seizure of power was the result of the total inability of the bourgeoisie to satisfy democratic demands. Further, the bourgeois gov- ernment withdrew in the face of the ultimatum from the imperialist powers. Its extreme weakness was revealed in the fact that, faced with this ulti- matum, it handed over the power to the proletariat without a struggle. The social-democrats, then, faced with the need to take power, turned towards the communists. Dumping the extreme right of the party, they asked the .ummunists to take power with them, on the condition that the two parties united. Bela Kun, who led the unification negotia- tions, drew up the conditions for this, summarizing 131 March 21, 1919

[p042] Lenin’s telegram of congratulation to the Revolutionary Governing Council of the Hungarian Council Republic on apparently, the aim is achieved. But only in appear- ance, for a few short minutes. Because truth cannot be driven from the world . .. What human strength can accomplish in history is no more than the attainment of consciousness of the necessity of world history. It is that necessity that we have recognized . . . Against that, everything is futile; truth is on the march, and witch-hunts against those who announce it will only accelerate its arrival.’ [Quoted by Tibor Madju: The Bourgeois Democratic Revolution in Hungary, 1918, Budapest 1968, p. 317. I must stress that the translation of this pamphlet is exact! —B.N.] And so on in this mumbo-jumbo. The revolu- tion is in danger; Lukacs, whose elastic conscience will later lead him to support and justify Stalin’s crimes, has only one thought; to assert his petty- bourgeois, intellectual state of mind in a hopeless search for norms of an abstract morality. From this example, militants can draw up an exact idea of the abyss which was always to separate Lukacs from the labour movement. Thus, it is easily understandable that the growth of the party in the revolution and the assertion of its influence were not due to the work of such a ‘leader’, but to that of the members and other leaders of the party, who led the struggle, at that time, along the line of Bolshevism. As for the ‘leader’ Lukacs, he was obsessed with moral problems. But with this difference; as a member of the party, he poses his ethical problems from the standpoint of ‘pure’ communism, but at the same time as problems of the ‘individual’. During the revolution, his main preoccupation consisted of publishing a pamphlet, Tactics and Ethics in which, among other things, he writes: Political Itinerary of Georg Lukacs ‘The class struggle of the proletariat is not just a class struggle . . . but the means for the liberation of humanity . . . Every compromise obscures this aspect of the struggle, and for that reason... it is fatal for that real final end.’ He comes to this conclusion after posing the question: ‘What moral consideration can provoke the in- dividual’s decision, so that the necessary philoso- Phical consciousness of history becomes in him - correct political action, namely the component of a collective will?’ (History and Class Conscious- ness.) It is easy to see that, immediately he joined the Party, Lukacs moved towards ultra-leftism through an individualistic and so-called ethical anarchism. We cannot here deal with all the fundamental problems of the 1918 Soviet Republic, however rich its lessons. We must, however, define Lukacs’ attitude in relation to the central problem, that of the party. The proletariat’s seizure of power was the result of the total inability of the bourgeoisie to satisfy democratic demands. Further, the bourgeois gov- ernment withdrew in the face of the ultimatum from the imperialist powers. Its extreme weakness was revealed in the fact that, faced with this ulti- matum, it handed over the power to the proletariat without a struggle. The social-democrats, then, faced with the need to take power, turned towards the communists. Dumping the extreme right of the party, they asked the .wummunists to take power with them, on the condition that the two parties united. Bela Kun, who led the unification negotia- tions, drew up the conditions for this, summarizing 131 March 21, 1919

[p043] Hungary 1919: Red soldiers in action against counter-revolutionary troops Pi PSS them in the programme of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but without even consulting the Com- munist Party leadership. Yet there was a fairly strong tendency in the Party, led by Rudas (one of the leaders of the opposition which had fought in the social-democratic party since 1903, and one of the founders of the CP) which was opposed to it, preferring a coalition of the two parties (See L. Rudas Abenteurer und Liquidatorum. Die Politik Bela Kun and Die Krise der KPU, Vienna, 1922, p. 279). So the unification done in a putschist manner by Bela Kun faced the party with a fait accompli and completely dissolved it in the Social Democratic morass. From the first days of the dic- tatorship, relations between the Social Democrats and the communists began to deteriorate with regard to the essential problems of the dictator- ship, posing the need for an independent regroup- ing of the communists. In the discussion, militants more and more had to recognize the need to cut themselves off from the reformists and tentrists. Each clash with them over some problem devel- oped the struggle to set up an authentic com- munist party. From the beginning of May, faced with a new ultimatum from the imperialist powers, and their military attack (enemy troops were 30 km from the capital) when the Social Democrats called for the resignation of the dictatorship, Bela Kun himself began to understand the terrible error committed by an unprincipled unification. Mobilizing the pro- letariat in defence of the dictatorship, he began to 132 take up the clarification of the problem of the party, although in an inconsequential manner. Whilst the communists were looking for ways and means of splitting from the reformists and centrists by building a communist faction, and then organization, the newcomer Lukacs became the mouthpiece of a liquidationist tendency. This ‘idealist philosopher’, as Bela Kun called him in 1932 (See Bela Kun, La Republique hongraise des Conseils. Budapest, 1962, in French, pv. 415) represented that tendency which held that the fusion of the two parties represented the unity of the proletariat and, conseauently that class had no longer need of a party. In the fourth chapter of Tactics and Ethics already quoted above, entitled ‘Party and Class’, Lukacs developed this ‘theory’ of the party. Making an abstraction of the dia- lectic, he claimed that, within capitalism, the dialectical contradiction is between on the one hand, the action of the class, and on the other, that of the party. By thus opposing, mechanistic- ally, the party to the proletariat, he necessarily arrived at the conclusion that the solution to this contradiction is the dictatorship of the proletariat, when the party becomes superfluous. This was also the opinion of some of the German KAPD leftists whom Lenin stigmatized in Left Wing Comomunism. From such a_ mechanistic opposition of the party to the proletariat, which obviously can be covered up by phrases about the dialectic, can also result the inverse error, namely Fourth International Spring 1972

[p044] Recrulting Red Soldiers at the outbreak of the revolution the substitution of the party for the activity of the masses. This inversion of the same error will later be Lukacs’ attitude, especially after 1924 at the time of his definitive adaptation to the nascent and triumphant bureaucracy. In his Memoires, Victor Serge remarked that at that time (1924-1925) Lukacs demanded, for example, that history only be written by Central Committee members of the Party. In the first case, as in the second, is found Lukacs’ organic inability to grasp the dialectical relationship between party and class. There is a break from the dialectical unity of the party and the class in which unity gives place to identifica- tion or, inversely, rigid and mechanical opposi- tion, but in which the interaction of these oppo- sites, their interdependence and_ reciprocal conditioning, are totally absent. The theoretical source of these two positions, liquidationist opportunism and ultimatist leftism, is idealism, which represents the basis of their organic relationship. This idealism consists in detaching the dialectic from its material essence, in this case the labour movement, and making it into a philosophy in itself, ready to discover ‘con- tradictions’ or ‘totality’ here, there and every- where. This is the general position of History and Class Consciousness. Let us return to 1919, and particularly to ‘Party and Class’. For the liquidator Lukacs, the unifica- tion of the two parties was of historical import- ance, for the dictatorship of the-~proletariat was thus possible, making the organization of any party superfluous. Moreover, this is even more im- portant since, according to Lukacs, the party, Political Itinerary of Georg Lukacs under capitalism is corrupted because it must fight on the same plane as bourgeois society. For the Communist Party, Lukacs continues, it is no sacrifice to ‘renounce its party organization, for its entire existence was built on the negation of the old forms of party’. In this position we can easily recognize the mixture of leftism with its natural twin, opportunism. But Lukacs was soon to go further still. He raised to the level of a universal virtue the terrible mistake of the Hungarian communists not to follow through to the end the fight against centrism and reformism. For him, the Bolsheviks’ fight against the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries was a rather’ unfortunate ‘fratricidal struggle’. In fact, contrary to the Russian revolution, ‘the Hungarian revolution showed that revolution is vossible without a fratricidal struggle of the workers’. Here, he goes much further in opvortunism than Bela Kun, identifying the proletariat with its official leadership whether it be centrist, reformist, or— later—Stalinist. This was the first attempt on his part to repudiate, although still very prudently, the univer- sality of the lessons of the Russian revolution with regard to opportunism. This liquidator, who became People’s Vice- Commissar of National Education and Cultural Affairs, took no part in the most important dis- cussions and struggles in which the Communists came to grips with the reformists, centrists and their own mistakes. Whilst bitter struggles were taking place around vital problems of the dictator- 133

[p045] ship. of the proletariat, such as the defence of the dictatorship and military affairs or agrarian policy (the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry), his name is not to be found, even in the last struggle waged, towards the end of the Council Republic, for a new communist party. In short, on all these questions Lukacs was an opportunist observer, busying himself mostly with relations with writers and artists, and culture in general. The only sphere in which he appeared as a political leader was in organizing the vouth, given that it was already connected with the Commis- sariat of National Education. Already, this fact shows the incomprehension of all the leadership with regard to the revolutionary policy to adopt in the ranks of the youth. That suited Lukacs. His conception of the youth came out in his speech at the Young Communists’ conference in 1919. This speech was conceived entirely in the liquidationist spirit. Lukacs explained in it the necessity for the youth to understand the ‘change of function’ of struggle, because, he said ‘the struggle for culture, self-education and study must be the centre of the work of the working-class youth’. He did not put forward this education as did Lenin, who of course gave the Young Communists the aim of studying communism but, precisely, in and through struggle. Instead of that, Lukacs calls for ‘pure’ study. for according to him, the economic and _ political struggle ceased with the seizure of power. Even later, in 1921, when the emigré party pub- lished Lenin’s speech to the YCL III Congress, Lukacs wrote in his preface: ‘In his profound and monumental speech, Com- 134 rade Lenin brings study right to the fore, as the principal task of the working-class youth after the conquest of power ... The study of which Lenin speaks will be the new front of the class struggle. In order to accomplish it we must overcome dificult struggles. Everyone knows that the task of the working class is to occupy the front rank of the vanguard of the revolutions.’ Again, he mechanically separates study—after the seizure of power-—from struggle—before the revolution. In an armed struggle to the death against imperialist intervention and in the middle of all sorts of difficulties, Lukacs said nothing on the vital problems of the revolution. His theoretical preoccupations were entirely detached from it. In March he wrote What is Orthodox Marxism? and in June The Changing Function of Historical Materialism. These two studies. with slight modi- fications, were to become constituent parts of his book, which appeared in 1923, History and Class Consciousness. shall return to an analysis of this book. It should. however, be remembered that these studies, striking in their abstract nature, were written in the middle of a bitter struggle of the revolution, in which. as we have pointed out, all the fundamental problems of the revolutionary party and the dictatorship of the proletariat were posed. Whether Lukacs was a capable organizer of cultural life, or rather a utopian (as he wrote him- self in 1967) is of secondary importance. What is important here is to show that the halo later built around the head of Lukacs, ‘leading Marxist’ of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is simply a mendacious legend. Fourth International Spring 1972

[p046] The struggle of the Comintern for the formation of Communist Parties and Lukacs position AFTER THE FALL of the Council Republic in Hungary, Lukacs went to Vienna with other leaders of the dictatorship. The reorganization of the party began in difficult conditions in a state of illusions, and in the isolation of internment, many militants lost hope. Even among the com- munists, “God-Seekers’ appeared, Tolstoyans, all sorts of mystics. In such confusion, Lukacs naturally became one of the leaders of the reorgan- ized party. The political basis of this reorganiza- tion was supplied by Bela Kun’s pamphlet From Revolution to Revolution which appeared in Vienna in January 1921. (In French, Bela Kun op cit.) In this pamphlet, Kun begins by not recognizing the defeat suffered by the Hungarian working class: ‘Even if the Hungarian workers have lost {the republic] . . they have lost it only from the standpoint of the international class struggle.’ He fixes as the immediate task nothing more or less then preparing to take power: ‘The next historical task of the working class is the conquest of state power.’ Then he draws these conctusions: On the one hand, ‘the white terror and demo- cracy are not, in the last analysis, obstacles, but stimulants to the extension and deepening of the revolutionary workers’ movement.’ On the other hand he refuses to use the frame- work of legality, for it is ‘impossible and futile for a labour movement to work within the frame- work of legality.’ According to him, the immediate conquest of power must be prepared. ‘However, to carry this through is not the busi- ness of the whole working class . .. but of the revolutionary elite of that class (which) will or- ganize the elite troops of the revolutionary class struggle and will galvanize the more or less in- different masses.’ As we see, the ultra-leftists of today have invented nothing. This ultra-leftism was not peculiar to the Hungarian communists. It was rife throughout Europe. The Comintern had created two bureaux: one, at the beginning of 1920 in Amsterdam for the western countries, the other in September 1919 in Vienna for South- East Europe. Both bureaux were in the hands of ultra-lefts: the first led by the Dutch ‘Tribune’ Political Itinerary of Georg Lukacs group Pannekoek, Gorter and Roland-Holst, the other by the Hungarian emigres Bela Kun, Pogany- Pepper, Varga and Lukacs. These two centres contributed enormously to reinforcing the ultra- leftism that was already strong in Germany with the KAPD splinter party, in Italy with Bordiga and his group, in England with Sylvia Pankhurst, etc. It is interesting to note here that Lukacs had already been influenced during the war by the Dutch ultra-left Roland-Holst, a _poetess whose socialism was mainly stamped by moral and ethical considerations. The revue of the South East-Europe bureau in Vienna, Kommunismus, was the hotbed of the ultra-lefts, having special relations with the Amsterdam Bureau. Whilst it was fighting opportunism in the new parties, the Communist International had to attack its corollary, ultra-leftism, not just once but from its creation and throughout the period of the first four congresses. The main attention of the International, particularly its real leaders Lenin and Trotsky, was centred on the education of the young communist movement, explaining to them the necessity of winning the decisive forces of the proletariat, and consequently, of the ways and means of doing so. In April 1920 the ECCI dis- solved the Amsterdam Bureau, whose work was transferred to Berlin. In June of that year, Lenin opened fire with his fundamental work, Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, and on June 12, he addressed a letter to the revue Kom- munismus which openly criticized Bela Kun and Lukacs. His criticism of Lukacs was particularly sharp, as his article went further in ultra- leftism than even Bela Kun. Firstly, Lenin stated that the revue ‘contains an article by Comrade G.L. entitled On the Question of Parliamentarism, which the editors designate as controversial, and from which Comrade B.K. directly dissociates himself (fortunately), i.e., declares that he is in disagreement with it.’ ‘Among other things, we find in this article, “Parliament is the oldest weapon of the bour- geoisie, and can therefore only be a defensive arm of the proletariat”, or again, “Thus, the admission of parliamentary activity signifies for communist parties the consciousness and admission that revo- lution is inconceivable in a more or less foreseeable future”.’ (Lukacs, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 97.) 135

[p047] The struggle of the Comintern for the formation of Communist Parties and Lukacs posrtion AFTER THE FALL of the Council Republic in Hungary, Lukacs went to Vienna with other leaders of the dictatorship. The reorganization of the party began in difficult conditions in a state of illusions, and in the isolation of internment, many militants lost hope. Even among the com- munists, ‘God-Seekers’ appeared, Tolstoyans, all sorts of mystics. In such confusion, Lukacs naturally became one of the leaders of the reorgan- ized party. The political basis of this reorganiza- tion was supplied by Bela Kun’s pamphlet From Revolution to Revolution which appeared in Vienna in January 1921. (In French, Bela Kun op cit.) In this pamphlet, Kun begins by not recognizing the defeat suffered by the Hungarian working class: ‘Even if the Hungarian workers have lost (the republic] . . . they have lost it only from the standpoint of the international class struggle.’ He fixes as the immediate task nothing more or less then preparing to take power: ‘The next historical task of the working class is the conquest of state power.’ Then he draws these conclusions: On the one hand, ‘the white terror and demo- cracy are not, in the last analysis, obstacles, but stimulants to the extension and deepening of the revolutionary workers’ movement.’ On the other hand he refuses to use the frame- work of legality, for it is ‘impossible and futile for a labour movement to work within the frame- work of legality.’ According to him, the immediate conquest of power must be prepared. “However, to carry this through is not the busi- ness of the whole working class . .. but of the revolutionary elite of that class (which) will or- ganize the elite troops of the revolutionary class struggle and will galvanize the more or less in- different masses.’ As we see, the ultra-leftists of today have invented nothing. This ultra-leftism was not peculiar to the Hungarian communists. It was rife throughout Europe. The Comintern had created two bureaux: one, at the beginning of 1920 in Amsterdam for the western countries, the other in September 1919 in Vienna for South- East Europe. Both bureaux were in the hands of ultra-lefts: the first led by the Dutch ‘Tribune’ Political Itinerary of Georg Lukacs group Pannekoek, Gorter and Roland-Holst, the other by the Hungarian emigres Bela Kun, Pogany- Pepper, Varga and Lukacs. These two centres contributed enormously to reinforcing the ultra- leftism that was already strong in Germany with the KAPD splinter party, in Italy with Bordiga and his group, in England with Sylvia Pankhurst, etc. It is interesting to note here that Lukacs had already been influenced during the war by the Dutch ultra-left Roland-Holst, a poetess whose socialism was mainly stamped by moral and ethical considerations. The revue of the South East-Europe bureau in Vienna, Kommunismus, was the hotbed of the ultra-lefts, having special relations with the Amsterdam Bureau. Whilst it was fighting opportunism in the new parties, the Communist International had to attack its corollary, ultra-leftism, not just once but from its creation and throughout the period of the first four congresses. The main attention of the International, particularly its real leaders Lenin and Trotsky, was centred on the education of the young communist movement, explaining to them the necessity of winning the decisive forces of the proletariat, and consequently, of the ways and means of doing so. In April 1920 the ECCI dis- solved the Amsterdam Bureau, whose work was transferred to Berlin. In June of that year, Lenin opened fire with his fundamental work, Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder, and on June 12, he addressed a letter to the revue Kom- munismus which openly criticized Bela Kun and Lukacs. His criticism of Lukacs was particularly sharp, as his article went further in ultra- leftism than even Bela Kun. Firstly, Lenin stated that the revue ‘contains an article by Comrade G.L. entitled On the Question of Parliamentarism, which the editors designate as controversial, and from which Comrade B.K. directly dissociates himself (fortunately), i.e., declares that he is in disagreement with it.’ ‘Among other things, we find in this article, “Parliament is the oldest weapon of the bour- geoisie, and can therefore only be a defensive arm of the proletariat”, or again, “Thus, the admission of parliamentary activity signifies for communist parties the consciousness and admission that revo- lution is inconceivable in a more or less foreseeable future”.’ (Lukacs, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 97.) 135

[p048] Lukacs crowns this ultra-leftism with the state- ment, ‘wherever a workers’ council is possible, parliamentarism is superfluous.’ (Ibid p. 104.) In these lucubrations can be found the ‘argu- ments’ of the ultra-left majority of the foundation Congress of the German Communist Party of December 1918, which against the advice of Rosa Luxemburg, for example, came out against parti- cipation in the parliamentary elections. This is the paragraph from Lenin’s letter on Lukacs article: ‘G.L.’s article is very Left-wing and very poor. Its Marxism is purely verbal; its distinction between “defensive” and “offensive” tactics is artificial; it gives no concrete analysis of precise and definite historical situations; it takes no account of what is most essential (the need to take over and to learn to take over all fields of work and all institutions in which the bourgeoisie exerts its influence over the masses, etc.).’ A pitiless critique. Lenin’s tone is very hard, much different from that used against Bela Kun’s article, although he made no concessions to him either. In Lenin’s short sentences, there is a complete characterization of Lukacs. There is nothing surprising that in this letter Lenin excludes Lukacs from the ranks of Marxists,.as his ‘Marx- ism’ is only nominal, and will remain so through- out his later life. It was in the spirit of struggle against ultra-leftism that the Executive Committee prepared the Second Congress of the International, held from July 17 to August 7, 1920. The fight was mainly devoted to consolidating the new parties and, within this framework, to the struggle against both opportunism and ultra-leftism. The fact that it turned its fire against the hangers-on of reformism (e.g. by the 21 Conditions of Admis- sion) must not let us forget the struggle against ultra-leftism. To this end, the congress stressed that the principal task was to win the majority of the working class from the reformists and centrists, stressing the decisive importance, from this point of view, of work in the trade unions and participation in parliament. During the congress, Hermann Gorter, the spokesman for the Dutch and German ultra-lefts, published his Reply to Lenin (Hermann Gorter, Reply to Lenin on ‘Left Wing Communism’, Librairie Ouvriére, Paris 1930, p. 112, reprint.) Gorter challenged the validity of the Bolsheviks’ experience for the more developed western coun- tries, refused to work in the trade unions and use parliament, basing himself solely on activity and the education of a ‘pure’ organization, as opposed to the proletariat which was infected with bourgeois and reformist ideology. He just stops short of accusing Lenin and the Bolsheviks of being backward peasants who, according to him, are in search of the masses. The Communist International had to intensify its fight against ultra-leftism. All the more so as the imminence of the revolution shown, inter alia, by the advance of the Red Army on Warsaw (the delegates to the 2nd Congress followed it enthusiastically on a map), seemed to justify the ultra-lefts. Among the delegates Bela Kun echoed Gorter’s concep- tion loudest. 136 In November, there was an extended session of the Executive Committee where Gorter per- sonally defended his position. It was Trotsky, not Lenin, who replied to him. Criticizing the whole of Gorter’s conception, he saw its sources in ‘fear of the masses’, which led him to speak ‘in such an arrogant way of the Third International in search of the masses (because) he lacks confidence in the material base of the revolution ——the working class.’ Trotsky asks: ‘What does Comrade Gorter propose? What does he want? Propaganda! This is the gist of his entire method. Revolution, says Comrade Gorter, is contingent neither upon privations nor economic conditions, but upon mass consciousness; while mass consciousness is, in turn, shaped by pro- paganda. Propaganda is here taken in a purely idealistic manner, very much akin to the concept of the eighteenth century school of enlightenment and rationalism. If the revolution is not contingent upon the living conditions of the masses, or much less so upon these conditions than upon propaganda, then why haven’t you made the revolution in Holland?’ He goes on: ‘What you now want to do amounts essentially to replacing the dynamic development of the Inter- national by methods of individual recruitment of workers through propaganda. You want some sort of simon-pure International of the elect and select, but precisely your own Dutch experience should have prompted you to realize that such an approach leads to the eruption of sharpest divergences of opinion within the most select organization.’ Trotsky does not release his grip. ‘According to him [Gorter] we must begin anew and start off with—the head, i.e., with select groups, who, separate and apart from the old forms of organization, will carry unadulterated truth to the proletariat scrub it clean of all bourgeois pre- judices and, finally, spruce it up for the proletarian arrogance of this type is the obverse side of the profoundest scepticism. ‘The bond between the party and the class is fixed—according to Gorter—through a _ purely pedagogic interrelation between a sinall propa- ganda society and the proletariat infected with bourgeoisification. But it is precisely in organiza- tions of this sort, organizations where the fear of the masses reigns, where there is no confidence in the masses, where members are recruited individu- ally through propaganda, where’ activities are con- ducted not on the basis of the class struggle but on the basis of idealistic enlightenment—it is pre- cisely within such organizations that the leaders are bound to play a disproportionate role. (Trotsky, First Five Years of the Communist International, Vol. 1, pp. 137-152).’ We have had to quote Trotsky’s reply to Gorter at length, as it shows up all the mechanism of the ultra-left position. The analysis is fully justified and applicable to the majority of the Hungarian group in Vienna with Bela Kun and Lukacs. Before the meeting of the executive committee, immedi- ately after the second congress of the Inter- national, there was a conference of 3,000 Hun- garian Communists in Moscow. It did not manage to sort out ultra-leftism, but a part of the leader- ship who were already doubtful about the correct- ness of Bela Kun’s and Pogany-Pepper’s position, such as Landler and Rudas, had begun to take up Fourth International Spring 1972

[p049] the struggle to correct these errors. The fight be- tween the two factions broke out at the beginning of 1921. After the unfortunate ‘March Action’ in Germany, ‘Bela Kun’s act of stupidity’ as Lenin called it, it took on a virulent form. We must stop at this episode for a moment in order to get a better grasp of Lenin’s and Trotsky’s conception and of the significance of the faction fight in the Hungarian Party and Lukacs’ position. In March 1921, Bela Kun as Zinoviev’s emis- sary in Germany played a dominant role in unleash- ing the March Action, which led the revolutionary workers into an insurrectionary struggle without the Communists having been able to tear the majority from the reformists and centrists. The lessons of the ‘March Action’ clearly showed the futility of ultra-leftism—its negligence with regard to the masses of the proletariat, its criminal aban- donment of seeking ways and means of winning the majority of the class, a majority which still followed the reformists and centrists. Much later, in The Third International After Lenin, Trotsky wrote of the March Action. ‘In March 1921, the German Communist Party made the attempt to avail itself of the declining wave in order to overthrow the bourgeois state with a single blow. The guiding thought of the German Central Committee in this was to save the Soviet republic (the theory of socialism in one country had not yet been proclaimed at that time). But it turned out that the determination of the leadership and the dissatisfaction of the masses do not suffice for victory. There must obtain a number of other conditions, above all, a close bond between the leadership and the, masses and the confidence of the latter in the leadership. This condition' was lacking at that time.’ (Vol. 1, p. 186 French ed.). Political itinerary of Georg Lukacs Top: Joseph Pogany addressing troops in 1919. Above: Bela Kun in his study; Hungarian emigrés who enforced the ultra leftism that was already strong in the German KAPD and in Italy and England. 137

[p050] It was necessary to march ‘towards the conquest of power by previous conquest of the masses in their daily life and struggle’. Lukacs’ opinion is quite different; however, after Lenin’s sharp letter and the second Congress of the International, he quickly splits from Bela Kun and joins the faction led by Landler and Rudas. In his article ‘Organizational Questions of Revo- lutionary Initiative’, he wrote: ‘It is not correct to say that the action of the German Commupnist Party was wrong, given that it was not grasped by the mass of the proletariat and, therefore the party was again led into isola- tion . . . The great weakness of the March Action (not in its “idea” but rather in its application) rests rather in this that it was not grasped rapidly, sufficiently by the revolutionary vanguard itself.’ (Werke, op cit pp. 148-149.) The contradiction between the ultra-leftists and Lenin and Trotsky is obvious. Whereas Trotsky stresses the necessity of politically winning the majority of the working class, what is essential for -Lukacs is the understanding by a vanguard of the need to launch an assault for power. There we put our finger on the fundamental difference. From a revolutionary situation, the ultra-lefts, falling into a mechanical objectivism, conclude the inevitable victory of the revolutionary party, thanks to its determination and _ propaganda; whereas Lenin and Trotsky insisted that revolu- tionary victory is the work of the majority of the proletariat on condition that the revolutionary party conquers that majority by political means and not by simple propaganda. In these conditions, the third Congress of the International, from June 22 to July 12, 1921, sharpened the struggle against ultra-leftism and the young parties’ incomprehension of the struggle to win politically the working masses. The Con- gress generalized on the experience of the fight against ultra-leftism, making an important step forward with the elaboration of the strategy of the united front of the proletariat, as a method of winning the masses in conditions where the majority still followed the reformist and centrist leadership. Lenin and Trotsky led an implacable struggle for the united front against the ultra-left majority at the congress, one of whose leading spokesman was Bela Kun, with the German Thael- mann. Finally the Congress majority voted for Lenin’s and Trotsky’s line, and in the ‘Theses on Tactics’ declared: ‘From the first day of its foundation, the Com- munist International gave itself the aim, clearly and without equivocation, not of forming tiny com- munist sects seeking to exercise their influence over the working class solely by agitation and pro- paganda, but to take part in the struggle of the working class, to guide this struggle in the com- munist sense and in the process of the struggle to build big revolutionary communist parties.’ It can be said without exaggeration that the battle against ultra-leftism—particularly for the young parties to go out to win the masses instead . of mechanically concluding from an_ objective revolutionary situation the victory of the revo- lution and the party—this was one of the greatest that the International led by Lenin and Trotsky 138 had led. Of course, warning against opportunism, that other weakness of the young parties, Lenin and Trotsky did not speak of winning the masses at any price. As Trotsky later stated in the ‘Third International After Lenin’, the ‘Third International did not simply say ‘Towards the masses’, but “Towards power through the previous conquest 99 ¢ of the masses”’ ’. In the course of the first four congresses of the International, the struggle to assimilate this line took on a more and more elaborate and generalized form. The second Congress stressed the importance of work among the masses in the trade unions and the use of parliament. The third Congress elaborated and adopted the strategy of the united front. And we must add at once that the fourth Congress was to adopt a resolution on the task of elaborating a transitional programme for the International. In this resolution, we read: ‘The theoretical foundations of all transitional partial demands must be formulated within the general programme. The fourth Congress is as resolutely against the attempt to represent the in- troduction of transitional demands into the pro- gramme as opportunism as it is against the attempt to tone down or replace fundamental revolutionary objectives by partial demands.’ This resolution of the fourth Congress was later to be buried, and only realized by Leon Trotsky elaborating the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International in 1938 which is, from this point of view, tco, the continuation cf the first four congresses cf the Communist International. Let us return to the struggle at the time of the Third Congress. Even during the congress, Trotsky wrote an article in Pravda where he characterized ultra-leftism and the review Kommunismus in the following way: ‘A purely mechanical conception of the pro- letarian revolution—which proceeds solely from the fact that capitalist economy continues to decay— has led certain groups of comrades to construe theories which are false to the core: the false theory of an initiating minority which by its heroism shatters ‘“‘the wall of universal passivity” among the proletariat. The false theory of uninter- rupted offensives conducted by the proletarian van- guard, as a “new method” of struggle: the false theory of partial battles which are waged by apply- ing the methods of armed insurrection. And so on and so forth. The clearest exponent of this ten- dency is the Vienna journal Communism. It is absolutely self-evident that tactical theories of this sort have nothing in common with Marxism.’ At the congress of the Youth International, on July 14, 1921, he continued : ‘You are probably aware that there was advanced the so-called theory of the offensive. What is the gist of this theory—Its gist is that we have entered the epoch of the decomposition of capitalist society, in other words, the epoch when the bourgeoisie must be overthrown. How? By the offensive of the working class. In this purely abstract form it is unquestionably correct. But certain individuals have sought to convert this theoretical capital into corresponding currency of smaller denomination and they have declared that this offensive consists Fourth International Spring 1972

[p051] of a successive number of smaller offensives. Thus arose the theory, whose clearest exponent is the Vienna journal Communism—the theory of pure offensive owing to the revolutionary character of the epoch.’ (First Five Years, Vol. 1, pp. 296-303). The faction struggle that was raging in the Hungarian party, particularly after the 3rd Con- gress of the International, was obstructing its work. In August 1921 the International had to intervene. The Executive Committee, after calling together the representatives of both factions, passed a resolution in accordance with the 3rd Congress, and then appointed a provisional central committee of five members, three of whom sup- ported Bela Kun, and two from Landler’s tendency, laying down for the party the struggle to apply the resolution on the basis of democratic cen- tralism. Then, in the autumn, the faction struggle developed to the point where an opposition was formed which repudiated Bela Kun’s leadership and founded its own journal. Its viewpoint was developed in Rudas’ book, already cited, which was published in January 1922. If in the early period, as a reaction to their opportunism in relation to the problem of the party in 1919, the Hungarian Communists had fallen into the inverse error of ultra-leftism, the struggle of the International was to develop a tendency against the incorrigible ultra-left adventurism of Bela Kun and Pogany-Pepper. Rudas’ book, however, and the subsequent evolu- tion of the party show that even this faction did not grasp the essence of the problem. Bela Kun and his faction set out to build in the immediate future a mass communist party, leading whole sections of workers into offensive actions leading to large-scale arrests of party organizers, at the same time imposing a tactic which led to their expulsion from the trade unions. Rudas violently attacked this liquidationist and adventurist tactic. With the Landler faction, he advocated setting up illegal cells of communist workers, working in the trade unions and entering the legal social-democratic party where a strong opposition had, indeed, begun to form. Beyond a doubt, this conception, taken abstractly, was correct. The arguments of this faction, however, re- mained typically ultra-left, in another form. Its proposed tactic was justified by the fact that in Hungary after the defeat, there was not an immediately revolutionary situation, and that for this faction the slogan ‘conquest of the masses’, along with the united front, was only applicable in a so-called defensive situation, at the time of the ebb of the revolution. This was precisely the position of Gorter, who in his pamphlet declared that work in the trade unions, the use of parliament and joining the legal workers’ parties are only justified in conditions of illegality of the revolutionary party. (See his pamphlet op cit p. 85.) In short, this particular ultra-leftism held that Political Itinerary of Georg Lukacs the ‘material base of the revolution’ is not ‘the working class’ as Trotsky said, but the objective situation carrying the revolutionary party, almost of necessity, at the head of the masses. This explains why the Landler-Rudas faction condemned Bela Kun’s ultra-leftism in Hungary while approv- ing of it in Germany for example. In the ‘March Action’ it only criticized Bela Kun’s ill-considered behaviour, on a so to speak ‘psychological’ plane. But there is still another thing: this conception also stated Lukacs’ position, which established a rigid and mechanical opposition between ‘offen- sive’ tactics and ‘defensive’ tactics, denounced by Lenin along with that between legality and illegality. This rigid opposition comes back to opportunism in the measure in which it prevents the party using every possibility of legal work, its appearance as a party with its own programme, leaving this sphere to reformist and centrist cur- rents and organization. There was, then, a mechanical contradiction between the historical programme of the party, which was hidden from the workers, and its programme for immediate demands. So both factions were based, in the last analysis, on mechanically opposed conceptions, thus vacillating between ultra-leftism and opportunism. The basis of this was that neither faction understood that ‘the emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves’, and so the real task of the party consists of leading them from their immediate demands and situation to the achieve- ment of the revolution. This opposition was never to be resolved by the CPs, for it was to find its solution only in the Transitional Programme of the 4th International elaborated by Leon Trotsky, a programme which constitutes the necessary bridge over which workers find the road from their immediate demands and situation to the victory of the revolution. So the united front is only the organizational expression of this path, as the workers are divided by enemy organizations: Consequently, it is also the method of building real communist parties, with confidence in the masses. For this reason, the strategy of revolution which mechanically opposes offensive and defen- sive tactics has no meaning. - We must stress that these problems constitute the basis of Lukacs’ evolution. More exactly, they motivate his reversion to the anti-revolutionary person he had always been. In 1922, he had still not drawn definitive conclusions. But the fact that for him the revolutionary programme was only applied to an immediately revolutionary situation, which for him was something ‘objective’, already shows his personal ‘solution’ which will be the abandonment of every revolutionary programme, when, as he will say, the ‘objective situation’ is no longer revolutionary. Its real nature is expressed in the various studies which he published in 1923 in his book History and Class Consciousness’.

[p052] ‘Amperialism LENIN’S Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, written in 1916, just over a year before the Russian Revolution, and sub-titled ‘A Popular Outline’, remains the fundamental Marxist critique of imperialism. This fact is recognized by the enemies and critics of Marxism who con- stantly seek to belittle and denigrate it, seldom with any real understanding of what Lenin was trying to do. For Marxists the work provides a characterization of the dominant forces of the epoch which conserves all its validity despite the great changes which have taken place in the world since 1916, changes which, in their main lines, represent the working out of the tendencies in capitalism which Lenin discerned. However, no Marxist can be satisfied simply with paying homage to Lenin’s insight. Account has to be taken of the theoretical consequences of the Stalinist degeneration for the theory of imperialism. Fresh analysis has to be made of all the develop- ments which have taken place since Lenin’s day. Imperialism must be taken as a starting point and a methodological guide, not as a sacred text. It 140 SP giao 4a Sn st a TAR ons : aT Tb * loday DT a ta) Pare: eo ti bi st Ly ORS a Sa J Ant it in Sil! Ppa: Sted fy i ; CKMARb W3AHIA: Aa i on th Knwanisit cxnagh 4 maraanne ,Knatb « Swanie’ — 5 Netporpans, FosapeKoii nep., 2, ks. 9 # 10. Ten, 227-42. 1917 r. Pa by Tom Kemp should be remembered, above all, that Lenin's life demonstrates a close and inseparable com- bination of theory and practice; it was no accident that Lenin was able to go from the libraries of Zurich to lead a _ successful revolution. The theoretical work, of which the writing of Imperialism was but a part, enabled Lenin to grasp the significance of events in Russia and actually to change his conception of the nature of the Russian revolution. Lenin did not write as an academic might, concerned simply with providing means to under- stand the complexities of historical change. Much of the search today for a theory of imperialism is apparently directed towards providing the historian with superior analytical tools, often not so much in order to deepen the understanding of a whole epoch, but rather to explain or interpret particular episodes in diplomatic history, colonial expansion or international rivalry. This was not Lenin’s main purpose and only someone who supposes it was can test his theory in this way. His work can only be understood as part of a Fourth International Spring 1972

[p053] enin’s Imperialism lola at 8 LENIN’S Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, written in 1916, just over a year before the Russian Revolution, and sub-titled ‘A Popular Outline’, remains the fundamental Marxist critique of imperialism. This fact is recognized by the enemies and critics of Marxism who con- stantly seek to belittle and denigrate it, seldom with any real understanding of what Lenin was trying to do. For Marxists the work provides a characterization of the dominant forces of the epoch which conserves all its validity despite the great changes which have taken place in the world since 1916, changes which, in their main lines, represent the working out of the tendencies in capitalism which Lenin discerned. However, no Marxist can be satisfied simply with paying homage to Lenin’s insight. Account has to be taken of the theoretical consequences of the Stalinist degeneration for the theory of imperialism. Fresh analysis has to be made of all the develop- ments which have taken place since Lenin’s day. Imperialism must be taken as a starting point and a methodological guide, not as a sacred text. It 140 CKIARb VSKAHIS: = Kram! ooaxs w naraanne Sone © Sammie” _Metporpans, Nlopapcxoa nep., 2, xe. 9 W 10. Tea, 227—42. . 19176. by Tom Kemp should be remembered, above all, that Lenin's life demonstrates a close and inseparable com- bination of theory and practice; it was no accident that Lenin was able to go from the libraries of Zurich to lead a_ successful revolution. The theoretical work, of which the writing of Imperialism was but a part, enabled Lenin to grasp the significance of events in Russia and actually to change his conception of the nature of the Russian revolution. Lenin did not write as an academic might, concerned simply with providing means to under- stand the complexities of historical change. Much of the search today for a theory of imperialism is apparently directed towards providing the historian with superior analytical tools, often not so much in order to deepen the understanding of a whole epoch, but rather to explain or interpret particular episodes in diplomatic history, colonial expansion or international rivalry. This was not Lenin’s main purpose and only someone who supposes it was can test his theory in this way. His work can only be understood as part of a Fourth International Spring 1972

[p054] campaign to re-arm the socialist movement after its disorientation by the actions of its leading representatives in August, 1914. As he put it in Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, written at about the same time: ‘The only Marxist line in the world labour move- ment is to explain to the masses the inevitability and necessity of breaking with opportunism, to utilize the experiences of the war for the purpose of exposing all the vileness of the national-liberal labour politics and not of concealing it.’ ‘Self-censored’ As is well known, Imperialism itself was written in such a way as to get past the Tsarist censor: it is, in other words, a self-censored piece of writing. That makes it all the more necessary to consider it within the context of Lenin’s political position at the time. This explains both the form which the work took—leaving the reader to draw the conclusions which the circum- stances of the time imposed—and the omission from it of political recommendations. It was all the more remarkable that from a wide range of bourgeois sources, and using the works of Hobson and Hilferding, Lenin was able to provide what he called ‘a composite picture [a phrase which Lenin himself emphasised] of the world capitalist system in its international relations at the beginning of the twentieth century... . In the same preface, written in 1920, Lenin insists that a true understanding of the class character of the war and an exposure of the theoretical errors of the revisionists like Kautsky, was in- dispensable to prepare the Communist Parties for the impending social revolution. If nothing else, this preface removes any possibility of be- lieving that Lenin was not intensely concerned with the political conclusions to be drawn from his analysis. . While it is true that Lenin was writing, as always, for a particular situation, to provide a theoretical answer to practical tasks, his work is neither merely a propagandist tract nor of no more than historical interest today as his bour- geois and ‘left’ detractors maintain. What Lukacs wrote about it in 1924 remains correct in essence: ‘The superiority of Lenin consists in this—and that constitutes an unparalleled theoretical accomplishment—that he connected the economic theory of imperialism concretely and completely to all the current political problems and made of the economic content in this new phase the direct- ing thread in all concrete actions in the world thus organized.’ The weakness of most current ‘left’ writing about imperialism is precisely that it fails to establish this connection. It remains empirical, divorced from practice and in that sense abstract, providing no guide to action or simply sticking one on which does not arise at all from the fact as collected and processed. The work of Magdoff, Baran, Jalée, Frank and others falls into this category. Lenin’s Imperialism today The significance of Lenin’s Imperialism can only be grasped, and further theoretical contribu- tions made, if we are engaged as Lenin himself was in the construction of a revolutionary move- ment to overthrow imperialism. To look at his work merely as a fine contribution to theory is to do what Lenin, in another of his works, said was often done to great revolutionaries after their death, when ‘attempts are made to convert them into harmless ikons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolu- tionary edge and vulgarizing it’. This was precisely what the ideologists of the Soviet bureaucracy do with Lenin every day and did on an indecent scale with Imperialism itself during the centenary celebrations last year. Encomiums to the book were obligatory in the ‘theoretical’ publications of thé Communist Parties throughout the world. Yet, through its policy of ‘peaceful co-existence’, and in many practical ways, the bureaucracy was upholding the existing division of the world resulting from the needs of imperialism and had thus become a counter-revolutionary instrument turned against the struggles of the working class in the countries dominated by imperialism. Since then, in Ceylon and Bengal in particular, it has openly lined up with bourgeois governments dependent upon imperialism in order to crush revolutionary movements and oppose the rights of self-determination for oppressed peoples which was, for Lenin, a vital corollary to his theory of imperialism. To deal with the theory of imperialism in con- crete contemporary terms thus requires an examination of all the problems of the epoch. It is not simply dealing with economic trends; however necessary it is to delineate these accur- ately and fully, it is also necessary to see how the economic penetrates the political, to grasp and understand the degeneration of the Soviet Union after Lenin’s death, to recognize and struggle to overcome the crisis of leadership in the working-class movement through the building of the revolutionary movement. Only in such. a way is it possible to continue Lenin’s work as opposed to canonizing him and turning him into a ‘harmless ikon’. The task of Marxist theoreticians is not to write better’ history than bourgeois historians, though that is necessary, but through the analysis they make of history to contribute to changing its course in a revolutionary way. It is from this standpoint that Lenin’s Imperialism must be read and studied. There is no need at this stage to summarise once again the contribution which Lenin made to the theory of imperialism. It is worth pointing out, however, that Lenin conceived his project as. a collective task for the Marxist movement and 141

[p055] that while working on it he was in close contact with others who made their own independent contribution. This applies particularly to Im- perialism and World Economy by N. I. Bukharin, to which Lenin wrote a preface, and to G. Zinoviev’s The War and the Crisis in Socialism which was written in close political collaboration with him. These works drew on much the same material as Lenin and employ the same termin- ology, though’ they approach the question from different angles. Thus, for example, Zinoviev writes as follows: ‘, . . when we speak of modern imperialism, we have in mind that imperialism which was raised on the soil of a highly developed capitalism, the im- perialism of the capitalist bourgeoisie, that im- perialism whose main prop is finance capital. ‘The characteristic feature of modern imperialism is the interconnection between financial and indus- trial capital. To evaluate correctly the historic role of capitalism, it is necessary to differentiate between the various types of capital... .’ The re-creation of Lenin’s tradition Bukharin and Zinoviev were both victims of Stalin and their role in the formulation of the theory of imperialism was not simply forgotten, it was deliberately excised from the historical record. It is necessary to see Lenin’s work as part of a theoretical tradition of Marxism which was all but destroyed during the Stalin era and which today has to be re-created. The quotation from Zinoviev is also pertinent to another issue. Non-Marxists, critics and opponents of Marxism regard their theory of imperialism as applying only to the epoch of highly developed capitalism. As Lenin puts it: ‘if it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism’. Lenin’s pamphlet is, after all, an explanation of this basic point which is amplified in the oft-quoted five ‘basic features’. Critiques of the Leninist theory, based on quite different definitions, have become a feature of the literature, but really pass beside the point. Anyone is entitled to draw up their own definition, but there has to be some consistency in its use thereafter. The Leninist definition is specific and selective, it is not a general theory applicable to all epoch, but relates to the current epoch of advanced capitalism: an epoch which Marxists maintain is one of its crisis and decline. The task of Marxist theory is to explain how the old competitive capitalism passed into a monopoly Stage and to trace out all the social and political consequences—including the international rivalries and wars—which followed from this development. When we turn to the problem of the develop- ment of the theory of imperialism since Lenin we are confronted not with the task of dealing with a great body of theoretical literature or with tracing out its influence but rather with explaining why Marxist theory as a whole was afflicted with a terrible blight which lasted for decades and 142 whose effects are still apparent today. On the one hand it could be claimed that the events of the 1920s and 1930s offered a striking confirmation of Lenin’s characterization of the epoch of imperialism as one of wars and revolutions. The social upheavals which followed the First World War, the unprecedented depth and length of the Great Depression, the emergence, in the shape of fascism, of reaction in its most malignant form, the bitter inter-imperialist rivalries which plunged Europe and Asia into the most destructive con- flicts in history, surpassed what even Lenin might have imagined on the assumption that capitalism would somehow secure for itself a new lease of life. No exoneration for Stalinism The coincidence of this apparent confirmation of everything which Marxism had taught about the nature of the capitalist mode of production, its ripeness for removal from the historical stage, the conflict between the state forms taken by bourgeois rule and the development of the pro- ductive forces with the theoretical palsy of ‘official’ Marxism is at first sight a dramatic and tragic paradox. Observers like E. H. Carr, with some pretensions to objectivity, claim that it was because the working class in the capitalist coun- tries were not ready to make a revolution. The tendency of such explanations is to exoner- ate the Stalinist leadership of the Third Inter- national and the national Communist Parties from blame. But if we take this road how do we explain the theoretical bankruptcy which characterized official Marxism in this period? I have tried to show elsewhere the pitiful state of the theory of imperialism in this period and the general paucity of theoretical work on the subject. On the one hand there was official doctrine, as represented by the textbooks of political economy, a vul- garized version of Leninism doctored and dis- torted to serve the changing interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. Little or no fresh and original work could pierce surface once the Stalinist regime had turned to purging its opponents and turning Marxists like Zinoviev and Bukharin into non-persons. On the other hand, there were those intellectuals, outside the Soviet Union, attracted into the Communist Parties, or following in their wake, who tried to carry on some of the best of the intellectual tradition of Marxism. The price they paid for this, of which they were wholly or largely unaware of at the time, was heavy. It not only weakened their theoretical work but it required of them an abdication of any real share in influencing policy: there was, in fact a complete or near complete divorce between theory and practice. With important works of Marxism no longer reprinted or consigned to the memory hole, how was fresh creative work possible? It is not only that the works of the Left Opposition were suppressed and put under the ban so that, for example, the valuable writings of Preobrazhensky Fourth international Spring 1972 ‘ tele anehples ieee bet

[p056] 4 Preobrazhensky : put under the Stalinist ban and others passed into oblivion. A similar fate was accorded to the work of Luxemburg and her school, directly relevant as it was to the theory of imperialism, to certain of the works of Lukacs, Gramsci and others which have been resurrected only in recent years to fill the enormous theo- retical void in Marxist studies. For a whole epoch, then, Marxists carried on their theoretical work under severe constraints: either under the shadow of the apparatus if they remained inside the Com- munist Parties or accepted their political leader- ship, or as part of tiny opposition groups against which its whole might of propaganda, and if needs be of extermination, was turned. Instead of a straight fight between Marxism and the ideologists of capitalism there was a much more complex situation in which Marxist theory itself was going through a prolonged crisis. The Second World War and its aftermath com- plicated the situation still further and introduced some new elements. For example, the crisis in ‘bourgeois economic thought which had become acute during the depression was relieved by the appearance of Keynesian theory with its immediate policy applications and its apparent relevance to the problems of post-war capitalism. The _per- vasiveness of the Keynesian assumptions in in- tellectual circles brought their influence into much ostensibly Marxist literature about the develop- ment of capitalism. On the practical side, the fact that the expected post-war slump did not take place, that capitalism entered onto a phase of expanded reproduction again, that further struc- tural changes took place within the corporate business order and that the old territorial empires were dismantled provided, a fertile soil for theories which contested the relevance of Marxism from new angles and for revisionism on the part of erstwhile or self-styled Marxists. The repetition by the ‘orthodox’ of theory as dogma and the introduction of opportunist revisions to accord with the needs of the Soviet bureaucracy first Lenin’s imperialism today Rosa Luxemburg: suffered a similar fate Lukacs, their works suppressed, only to be resurrected during the Yalta-Potsdam honeymoon, then during the Cold War and latterly under the umbrella of ‘peaceful co-existence’, further served to confuse the issue. Imperialism survives not as a result of its inherent strength but because of the crisis of leadership in the working-class movement. An analysis of history since 1914 would demonstrate this. Through a series of wars and revolutionary crises bourgeois rule has been saved by the open betrayals first of the leaders of Social Democracy and the trade unions, then of the Communist Parties under Stalinist leadership. These leader- ships have become necessary supports for the maintenance of the capitalist ruling class and its system of exploitation and oppression, productive of still further wars and upheavals. True, within this period structural changes have taken place in capitalism, but the student of Lenin’s Im- perialism sees in them the working out and extension of the tendencies in monopoly capitalism which he discerned. Anti-Marxists and revisionists have used all their ingenuity to find new terms to describe these developments in such a way as to disguise their essence and to mislead their readers into thinking that imperialism has indeed given place to some newer stage of Capitalism or that capitalism has been replaced by something else. For the Stalinists it is ‘state monopoly capitalism’, for Galbraith the ‘techno-structure’, for one set of revisionists the ‘permanent arms economy’, for another ‘neo-capitalism’. All aim to show that Capitalism has acquired a new lease of life for a more or less extended period and that any revo- lutionary perspective, at least in the advanced metropolitan countries, must be indefinitely post- poned. No wonder such latter-day Kautskys avoid a detailed examination of Lenin’s work which they prefer to ignore or dismiss with a few phrases. There is not one of the so-called new tendencies of capitalism which cannot be explained in terms of Lenin’s ‘basic features’ of imperialism. 143 Gramscl :

[p057] Hitferding : Lenin drew from his work Galbraith : Frank : invented new terms for imperialism Of course, it is the task of Marxist political economy to deal as precisely and concretely as possible with the trends in post-war capitalism and the changes which have taken place in imperialism. It is necessary to show what the consequences of the crisis of leadership have been, i.e. the terrible price which has had to be paid for the prolongation of the existence of capitalism owing to the treachery of the reformists, Stalinists and revisionists. This balance-sheet can- not be drawn up on the basis of the gains made by sections of the working class in the advanced countries during the boom, which is the typical procedure of all the revisors and enemies of Marxism. The ability of the capitalist mode of production, once these betrayals had established the conditions for its survival, to undergo a further period of extended reproduction involved a heavy price which the bourgeoisie intends to exact increasingly from the working class even in the hitherto privileged areas. But still more, the measure must be taken of the costs in human misery and death which this has meant in the underdeveloped countries, costs which are so enormous as to be incalculable. Meanwhile, all the contradictions built up during a long period of inflationary full employment and heavy expendi- ture on armaments and war preparations are now coming forward to prepare the way for world monetary breakdown and economic slump of which the first signs have been visible since 1969. In the writing on imperialism which has appeared in ‘left’ circles in recent years a certain amount of progress has been made, in a purely empirical way, in showing how Lenin’s definition of imperialism remains the only one which enables the trends in contemporary capitalism to be understood. However, this writing, such as the books and articles of Magdoff, Jalée, Frank, Baran and others, has done little to advance the theoretical understanding of imperialism and because of this it has been able to make no con- 144 Magdoff, both failed to connect the economic theory of Imperialism to current political problems tribution to the tactics and strategy of the Marxist movement. Such theorists either try to remain ‘independent’ Marxists or they are, in practice, camp-followers of Maoism or Stalinism. They have been mainly trying to convince an intellectual public that imperialism still exists and is a bad thing. At the same time they have for the most part simply written off the role of the working class in the advanced countries and accept the position of Baran and Sweezy that : ‘The revolutionary initiative against capitalism, which in Marx’s day belonged to the proletariat in the advanced countries, has passed into the hands of the impoverished masses in the under-developed countries who are struggling to free themselves from imperialist domination and exploitation.’ Such a false view both of the lack of revolutionary capacity of the working class in the advanced countries and of the ability of the oppressed masses in the colonial and semi-colonial countries to strike decisive blows at the imperialist world system reflects a non-Marxist, petty-bourgeois radical position which goes back from Lenin to Hobson, or adopts a Luxemburgist position on the conditions for capitalist reproduction. Marxist strategy, especially since the early Congresses of the Communist International, has always accorded an important position to the Struggle against imperialism waged by the peasant and worker masses in the colonial and semi- colonial countries. It has always insisted, however, that the decisive blows against imperialism must be struck in the metropolitan countries. The com- bination of the crisis of leadership with the conditions of the boom produced in ‘left’ intel- lectual critics of capitalism, who claimed to be Marxists, a turning away from the basic Marxist concept of the working class as the revolutionary class with an historic role to overthrow capitalism and replace it by a new and higher social for- mation, namely socialism. According again to the very typical representatives of this school, Fourth International Spring 1972

[p058] Baran and Sweezy, ‘the American working class and their organized cores in the basic industries have to a large extent been integrated into the system as consumers and ideologically conditioned members of society’. It is, of course, Baran and Sweezy who place the working class in the ranks of ‘consumers’ instead of beginning, as materialists, with the objective position of the class in the productive relations of capitalism. In fact, their position, at least in this sentence, is to deny the existence of the working class as a class and to abandon Marxism altogether. This, of course, had been done more openly by other ‘New Left’ ideologists such as Marcuse. The role of the working