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Permanent revolution is our permanent philosophy
samedi 13 juin 2026, par
Permanent revolution is our political philosophy of revolutionary development
The theory of permanent revolution, its declared enemies and its false friends, this is the essence of what opposes true revolutionaries to reformists, to opportunistic extreme leftists, to sectarian extreme leftists, to revolutionaries in error and to all the false friends of the proletariat.
https://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?mot317
For example, Tony Cliff rejects what he does not understand about permanent revolution or what he attributes to Trotskyism because false Trotskyists interpret permanent revolution in this way…
https://www.marxists.org/francais/cliff/1963/00/cliff_19630000.htm
Fake Trotskyists and permanent revolution…
https://www.marxists.org/francais/just/ddt2/sj_ddt2_5_04.htm
https://wikirouge.net/D%C3%A9bats_sur_la_R%C3%A9volution_permanente
https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/La-methode-de-Trotsky-pour-analyser-la-situation-mondiale
https://www.wsws.org/fr/articles/2023/10/31/kjko-o31.html
In what way is "permanent revolution" (also called permanent revolution) a philosophy of Marxism which opposes step-like behavior, gradualism, progressivism, reformism and opportunism, from Marx to Trotsky, and not a conjunctural analysis of an exceptional situation and especially not a means of attributing a fundamentally revolutionary character to social forces which do not possess it.
History does not progress gradually, following one step at a time up a staircase to heaven… It undergoes brutal and violent regressions as well as progressions that can even skip stages of historical gradation. Backward societies, reactionary situations, and even regressions can provoke brutal revolutionary advances.
Economic, social, and political development is subject to uneven and combined development (in the sense that advanced segments combine with others that are significantly behind).
The world does not progress together or at the same pace, and inequalities in development can make some links in the chain of domination of the global owning classes more fragile than others ; a break in the chain at one point can fatally weaken the entire system.
The contradictions arising from uneven and combined development must be fully understood and exploited by revolutionaries. These contradictions mean that the national question cannot be resolved within the framework of capitalism and must be addressed by the proletariat. They also mean that the revolutionary struggle must penetrate the struggle for reforms and use it as a transition. Furthermore, they mean that only the proletariat can achieve democratic, peaceful, and liberating goals for oppressed peoples, for all non-capitalist social strata, for all the oppressed. And the revolutionary program of the proletariat must clearly emphasize these goals. The intervention of revolutionaries must be guided by a transitional program that leads from national struggles to international struggles, from struggles for reforms to struggles for socialism, from struggles for peace to revolutionary war, and so on.
Revolutionary communists must not stand apart from, nor call on proletarians to stand apart from, reformist struggles, without themselves falling into reformism ; from national struggles, without falling into nationalism ; from petty-bourgeois struggles, without forgetting the proletarian character of their struggle ; they must unite the different contradictory aspects in a single revolutionary class struggle against the capitalist class.
Many programmatic, social and political points stem from this vision of the march of the social revolution : a transitional program instead of the traditional opposition between a revolutionary program and a reformist program, possible alliances with petty bourgeois strata and oppressed peoples, a united workers’ front, etc.
Marx and Engels already used the term "permanence of the revolution" to describe revolutions like the French Revolution, which maintain the revolutionary dictatorship of a class until the transformation of the entire social structure, or to define their orientation in the revolutions of 1848.[6]
At the time of the debates on the Russian Revolution of 1905, the question of the nature of the coming revolution was hotly debated. The vast majority of socialists believed it would be bourgeois-democratic, but :
• some, essentially the Menshevik right wing, insisted that the revolution would be led by the bourgeoisie, that it might not happen if the socialist wing played into the hands of reaction, and that the socialist revolution would only occur in the distant future ;
• others insisted on the necessity of a decisive role for the popular masses, workers and peasants, and on the fact that the revolutionary dynamic should not be stopped, as it could go further than anticipated, particularly if it coincided with a world revolution. Luxemburg[7] and then Kautsky[8] used the expression "permanent revolution." Lenin said, "We are for uninterrupted revolution."[9]
For his part, Trotsky based his theory primarily on his experience of the Russian Revolution of 1905, then on the confirmation of his theory based on the 1917 revolution and the failure of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-1927. This led him to reaffirm and elaborate on his theory of Permanent Revolution in 1932 in his eponymous book.[3]
https://wikirouge.net/R%C3%A9volution_permanente
In the first Address of the Central Committee of the Communist League to its members in Germany, in March 1850, Marx wrote :
“While the petty-bourgeois democrats want to end the revolution as quickly as possible and after at most fulfilling the above demands, it is in our interest and our duty to make the revolution permanent, until all the more or less propertied classes have been removed from power, until the proletariat has conquered power, and until, not only in one country, but in all the ruling countries of the world, the association of proletarians has made sufficient progress to put an end to the competition between proletarians in those countries and to concentrate at least the decisive productive forces in their hands… But they (the German workers – SNT) will themselves contribute to their final victory far more by becoming aware of their class interests, establishing themselves as an independent party as soon as possible, and not allowing themselves for a moment to be distracted—by the hypocritical phrases of the petty-bourgeois democrats—from the autonomous organization of the party of the proletariat. Their battle cry must be : Permanent revolution !”
Trotsky wrote, summarizing his position of 1905-1906 in "Balance Sheet and Prospects" :
"Once in power, the Russian proletariat that will overthrow Tsarism will not only refuse, but will be unable, to confine itself to the execution of a bourgeois democratic program. It will only be able to carry the revolution through to its conclusion if the Russian revolution transforms itself into a revolution of the European proletariat. The bourgeois democratic program of the revolution will then be superseded, along with its national limitations, and the temporary political domination of the Russian working class will develop into a prolonged socialist dictatorship. But if Europe remains stagnant, the bourgeois counter-revolution will not tolerate the government of the exploited masses in Russia and will push the country far back from a democratic workers’ and peasants’ republic. Therefore, once it has seized power, the proletariat will not be able to remain within the bounds of bourgeois democracy." He will have to develop the tactic of permanent revolution, that is, to overturn the barriers between the minimum and maximum programs of social democracy, to carry out ever deeper social reforms, and to seek direct and immediate support from the revolution in Western Europe.
https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/livres/bilanp/bilan_persp_0.html
Read also :
https://www.marxists.org/francais/trotsky/livres/revperm/rp.html
https://www.marxists.org/francais/tagore/revolution_permanente.htm
DRAFT INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME :
CRITIQUE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL THESES (1)
(June 28, 1928)
In memory of my daughter Nina, who died at her post at the age of 26. (0)
The draft program, that is, the fundamental document that is to define all the activities of the Communist International for many years to come, was published only a few weeks before the convocation of the congress, which was held four years after the Fifth Congress (2). This delay in publication cannot be justified by the fact that the first draft was published even before the previous congress, as several years have passed since then. The second draft differs from the first in its entire structure and attempts to take stock of the developments of recent years. Nothing could be more imprudent or more ill-considered than to rush to adopt this draft at the Sixth Congress, a work that bears the marks of haste and even negligence, without prior serious criticism in the press and without it having been widely discussed in all the parties of the Communist International.
In the few days we had between receiving the document and sending this letter, we were only able to address some of the fundamental issues that need to be addressed in the program.
Due to time constraints, we have had to completely set aside, without examining them, a whole series of very important questions addressed in this project, which may not be of pressing current importance, but which could become exceptionally important in the future. This in no way means that it is any less necessary to critique them than those parts of this project to which this work is devoted.
It should be added that we had to work on this new project under conditions that prevented us from obtaining the most essential information. Suffice it to say that we were unable to even obtain the first draft and therefore had to rely solely on our memory regarding two or three other matters. It goes without saying that all quotations are taken from the original texts and have been carefully verified.
1. PROGRAM OF INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTION
OR PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY ?
The most important question on the agenda of the Sixth Congress is the adoption of the program. Its character can define and fix the physiognomy of the International for a long time. The importance of a program does not lie so much in its formulation of general theoretical concepts (this ultimately amounts to "codification," that is, a concise exposition of truths and generalizations that have been firmly and definitively acquired) ; it is much more about taking stock of the world’s economic and political experience of the last period, in particular the revolutionary struggles of the last five years, so rich in events and errors.
The fate of the Communist International in the coming years depends, in the literal sense of the term, on how the program understands and judges these events, these mistakes and these divergences.
1. General structure of the program
In our era, which is that of imperialism—that is, of a global economy and politics directed by finance capital—there is not a single communist party that can establish its program by taking only or primarily as its starting point the conditions or trends of its own country’s development. This applies equally and fully to the party exercising power within the borders of the USSR.
The hour of the demise of national programs definitively struck on August 4, 1914. (3) The revolutionary party of the proletariat can only base itself on an international program corresponding to the character of the present epoch, that of the crowning and collapse of capitalism. An international communist program is by no means a sum of national programs or an amalgamation of their common features. It must take as its starting point directly the analysis of the conditions and trends of the world’s economy and political state, taken as a whole, with their connections and contradictions, that is to say, with the mutual dependence between its components. In the present epoch, infinitely more than in the previous one, the direction in which the proletariat is moving from a national point of view must and can only be deduced from the direction taken in the international sphere, and not vice versa. This is the fundamental difference that separates the Communist International from the various forms of national socialism from the outset.
It was based on these considerations that we wrote in January of this year :
"We must begin drafting the program of the Communist International (Bukharin’s is merely a poor program for a national section of the Communist International, not for a world communist party)." (4)
We have been insisting on these considerations since 1923-1924, when the question of the United States of America arose in all its magnitude, as a problem of world politics and of European politics, in the most direct sense of the word.
Supporting the new project, Pravda wrote that the communist program "differs radically from the program of international social democracy, not only in substance, in its fundamental theses, but also in the internationalism characteristic of its structure" (5)
This somewhat vague formulation obviously expresses the very idea we have just presented, an idea that was oncestubbornly rejected. One can only approve of the break with the
fir st project presented by Bukharin, which, moreover, did not give rise to any serious exchange of views precisely because of its inconsistency. While it presented a dry, schematic picture
of the evolution of an abstract country toward socialism, the new project, on the other hand, attempts (unfortunately without success and without coherence, as we shall see) to start from the
world economy as a whole in order to determine the fate of its various parts.
By linking together countries and continents at different stages of development in a system of dependencies and oppositions, by bringing together the various levels of their development and then immediately pushing them apart, by ruthlessly setting all countries against each other, the
world economy has become a powerful reality that dominates the economic life of the various countries and continents. This fundamental fact alone lends a very realistic character to the very idea of a world communist party. It is by bringing the world economy as a whole to the highest level of development it can reach under the regime of private property that imperialism, as the project rightly states in its introduction, "exacerbates to the extreme the contradiction between the growth of the
productive forces of the world economy and the barriers that separate nations and states."
It is not possible to advance a single step in the solution of the great problems of world politics and revolutionary struggle if one does not understand this fact which first appeared in all its clarity during the last imperialist war.
We could only approve the radical shift in the very axis of the program, in the new project, if in seeking to reconcile this position, which is the only correct one, with diametrically opposed tendencies, we had not introduced into this project the most unfortunate contradictions, thus removing all principled significance from the new way of approaching the question in
its essence.
2. The United States and Europe
To characterize the first project, thankfully abandoned since, it will suffice to say that, as far as we
can recall, it didn’t even mention the United States of North America. The essential problems of
the imperialist era, by its very nature, cannot be considered solely from the perspective of abstraction
and theory, but also in their material and historical content ; yet, in the first project, they were lost in the inert framework of a capitalist country considered "in general." The new project (and this is, of course, a significant step forward) already speaks of the "shift of the world’s economic center toward
the United States of America," of the "transformation of the Dollar Republic into a global exploiter," of the fact that the United States "has already achieved global hegemony," and finally states that the rivalry (the project uses the unfortunate term "conflict") between the United States and European capitalism, British capitalism in particular, is becoming the axis of global conflicts. It has now become quite evident that a program which did not clearly and precisely define these fundamental facts and factors of the world situation would have nothing in common with the program of the party of the
international revolution.
Unfortunately, the essential facts and trends of world development in the modern era, which have just
been pointed out, are simply designated by name, included in the text of the project, cited by a theoretical sleight of hand, without being intimately linked to the whole structure of the program, without any conclusions being drawn from them regarding the prospects and the strategy.
America’s new role in Europe since the
capitulation of the German Communist Party and the defeat of the
German proletariat in 1923 is not analyzed. It
is not explained that the period of "stabilization,"
"normalization," and "pacification" of Europe, as well as
the "regeneration" of social democracy, unfolded in
close material and intellectual correlation with the first
steps of American intervention in European affairs.
Furthermore, it is not shown that the inevitable
future development of American expansion, the shrinking of
European capital markets, including in Europe itself, will lead to the
greatest military, economic, and revolutionary upheavals
ever seen.
It is also not specified that the United States, continuing
inexorably to exert pressure on capitalist Europe,
will increasingly reduce its share of the world economy, which
obviously means that relations between European states
will not only not improve, but on the contrary will become
extremely strained with violent outbursts leading to
wars : the result is that states, like classes, clash
with even more fury than in times of abundance and
growth when all that remains to be fought over is a meager,
ever-meager ration.
The project fails to explain that the internal chaos of antagonisms
between European states deprives the latter of any
hope of seriously and successfully resisting the
ever-increasing centralization of the North American Republic
. Overcoming European chaos through a Soviet United States
of Europe is one of the primary tasks of the
proletarian revolution, infinitely closer in Europe than in America
(one of the main reasons being precisely
the existence of barriers between states) ; it will therefore very
likely have to defend itself against the North American bourgeoisie
.
On the other hand, he failed to demonstrate (and this is an equally
important aspect of the same global problem) that, precisely, the
power of the United States in the world and the irresistible expansion
that stems from it compel them to introduce into the very foundations of their
edifice the explosives of the entire universe : all the antagonisms of
the West and the East, the class struggles of old Europe,
the insurrections of colonial peoples, all wars and
all revolutions. On the one hand, this makes
North American capitalism, in the new era, the
fundamental force of the counter-revolution, increasingly concerned
with maintaining "order" in every corner of the globe ;
on the other hand, it is through this very process that the immense
revolutionary explosion of this already
dominant and ever-growing global imperialist power is being prepared. The logic of
world relations indicates that this explosion could not be
long in coming after the outbreak of the proletarian revolution
in Europe.
For having explained the dialectic of the mutual relations linking
Europe and America, we have been subjected to
a wide variety of accusations : we have been called pacifists denying the contradictions existing in Europe, accepting Kautsky’s
theory of super-imperialism, and many other sins. There is no reason to dwell here on these "accusations," which, at best, stem from a complete ignorance of the actual processes, as well as our attitude toward them. However, it cannot fail to be noted that it would be difficult to expend more effort to confuse and obscure this world question of the utmost importance than did, among others, the authors of the draft program in their petty struggle against our formulation. Yet it is precisely this formulation that is being entirely confirmed by the course of events. Lately, in the main organs of the communist press, efforts have been made to minimize on paper the importance of American hegemony by relying, for this purpose, on the approach of the commercial and industrial crisis in the United States.
We cannot stop here examining the question of the
duration of the American crisis and the depth it might
eventually reach. This is a matter of current circumstances, not
of policy. We do not doubt, of course, that the crisis
is inevitable ; we do not deny at all that it is possible that
the one that will occur soon will be very severe and very
deep, commensurate with the global reach that
American capitalism has now attained. But attempting to deduce from this that
the hegemony of the United States is declining or weakening is
truly meaningless and can only lead to serious
strategic errors, because precisely the opposite is true.
During the crisis, the hegemony of the United States will be felt more
fully, more openly, with greater intensity and implacable
determination than during the period of growth. The
United States will seek to resolve and overcome its difficulties
and troubles primarily at the expense of Europe, whether
in Asia, Canada, South America, or Europe
itself, and whether by "peaceful" or military means.
It must be clearly understood that, while the initial period of
American intervention brought about stabilization and pacification in Europe
, which still largely persist
and may even be revived and strengthened periodically
(especially in the event of further defeats of the proletariat), the
general course of US policy, particularly if its economy
encounters difficulties and crises, will cause
profound upheavals in Europe and throughout the world.
One conclusion of paramount importance is inescapable :
revolutionary situations will not be lacking in the
coming decade, just as they were in the one that has just
passed. It is all the more crucial to correctly understand
the fundamental mechanisms of the unfolding of events,
so as not to be caught unawares by their impact. If, during the
past decade, the primary source of revolutionary situations
lay in the immediate consequences of the
imperialist war, conversely, in the new
postwar decade, such situations will arise primarily from the
mutual relations between Europe and America. A major crisis in the
United States would once again sound the alarm for wars and
revolutions. We repeat : revolutionary situations will
not be lacking. Their outcome depends on the international party of the
proletariat, the maturity and fighting capacity of the
Communist International, the soundness of its strategic position, and
its tactical methods.
This line of thinking is not expressed at all in the
draft program of the Communist International. A fact
as important, it seems, as "the shift of the
world’s economic center toward the United States" is mentioned
only in passing, by a simple journalistic remark ; nothing
more. It is quite impossible to justify this by lack of
space : indeed, shouldn’t fundamental questions
be addressed in a program ? In
this regard, it must be noted that the draft dwells far too much on
secondary and tertiary issues, even setting
aside its careless style and numerous repetitions ; by
removing these, the program could be reduced by at least a
third.
3. The slogan of the Soviet United States of Europe
Nothing can justify the removal, from the new draft
program, of the slogan "United Soviet States
of Europe," already adopted by the Communist International in 1923
after a rather lengthy internal debate. Or perhaps,
precisely on this issue, the authors want to
"return" to Lenin’s stance in 1915 ? This still needs to be properly
understood.
As is well known, during the early stages of the war,
Lenin hesitated regarding this slogan, initially introduced in
the theses of the Social-Demokrat (the central organ of the party at
the time), then rejected by Lenin. This shows that it was
not a matter of rejecting it a priori on principled grounds : it had to
be judged strictly from a tactical point of view, its positive and negative aspects weighed
in relation to the given stage of the war. It goes without
saying that Lenin rejected the possibility of the realization of
a United States of capitalist Europe. I viewed things in
the same way when I put forward the slogan of a United States
exclusively as a prospect, as a form of state for the
dictatorship of the proletariat in Europe.
I was writing :
“A more or less complete economic union of Europe
from above, following an agreement between
capitalist governments, is a utopia. In this respect,
things cannot go further than
partial compromises and half-measures. Therefore, the economic union
of Europe, promising enormous advantages to the
producer and the consumer, as well as to
the entire development of culture in general, becomes the revolutionary task
of the European proletariat struggling against
imperialist protectionism and its instrument, militarism.” (7)
And further on :
"The United States of Europe constitutes above all a
form, the only conceivable form, of the
dictatorship of the European proletariat." (8)
But at that time Lenin saw certain dangers in
presenting the question in that very way. Since
no experiment in the dictatorship of the proletariat
had been conducted in a single country, and also due to the lack of clarity from a
theoretical standpoint on this problem, even within the left wing
of the social-democratic movement of that time, the slogan of a United States
of Europe could give rise to a conception according to
which the proletarian revolution should begin simultaneously
, at least across the entire European continent. It was precisely
against this danger that Lenin warned. But on
this point, I didn’t disagree with
Lenin in the slightest. I wrote at the time :
“That no country should ‘wait’ for others in
its struggle is an elementary idea, which it is useful and necessary to repeat so that the idea of parallel international action
cannot be replaced by that of international inaction while waiting. Without waiting for others, we begin to fight and we continue to fight on the national stage with the absolute certainty that our initiative will give impetus to the struggle in other countries.” (9)
Then comes a sentence of mine, the very one that Stalin,
at the Seventh Plenum of the Executive Committee of the
Communist International, quoted as the most dangerous expression of
"Trotskyism," that is, the "lack of confidence in" the
internal forces of the revolution and the hope of receiving help
from outside.
"And if this (the extension of the revolution to other
countries) did not happen, there would be no hope
of believing (as evidenced by historical experience
and theoretical considerations) that a
revolutionary Russia could resist a conservative Europe
, or that a socialist Germany could remain
isolated in the capitalist world." (10)
It is on this quotation and two or three others of the same
kind that the plenary session based its condemnation
of "Trotskyism," which, on this "
fundamental question," supposedly had an attitude "having nothing in common with
Leninism." Let us therefore pause for a moment to listen to Lenin
himself.
On March 7, 1918, he said regarding the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk :
"This is a lesson, for it is absolutely true that without
a German revolution we will perish." (11).
One week later :
“Universal imperialism and, alongside it, the
triumphant march of social revolution cannot coexist
.” (12)
A few weeks later, Lenin said :
"The fact that we are late has pushed us
forward ; we will perish if we cannot hold out until
we encounter the powerful support of the
insurgent workers of other countries." (13)
But perhaps he said this particularly under the pressure
of the Brest-Litovsk crisis ? No, in March 1919, Lenin repeated
again :
“We live not only in one state, but in
a system of states ; it is inconceivable
that a Soviet republic could maintain itself for a long time alongside
imperialist states. In the end, one or the other
will prevail.” (14)
A year later, on April 7, 1920, Lenin recalled again :
"Capitalism, if considered on a global scale
, continues to be stronger than the power of the Soviets,
not only militarily but also economically.
It is from this fundamental consideration that we must
begin and never forget it. (15)
On November 27, 1920, regarding the problem of concessions
, Lenin said :
“Now we have passed from war to peace,
but we have not forgotten that war will return.
As long as capitalism and socialism exist
, we cannot live in peace : in the end,
one or the other will prevail ; the Requiem will be sung, either for the
Soviet Republic or for world capitalism. This is
a postponement of war.” (16)
But perhaps the survival of the Soviet Republic prompted
Lenin to "recognize his mistake," to renounce "
distrust of the internal forces" of the October Revolution
?
At the Third Congress of the Communist International, that is,
in July 1921, Lenin stated that :
"An extremely fragile, extremely unstable balance has been created
, but finally a balance that allows the
Socialist Republic to exist, albeit not for very long,
in a capitalist environment." (17)
But there is more ; on July 5, 1921, Lenin declared directly
during a session of the congress :
“For us, it was clear that, without the support of the
world international revolution, the victory of the
proletarian revolution was impossible. Before and after the
revolution, we thought that either the revolution would break out
very quickly in the most advanced capitalist countries, or
, if it did not, we would perish. Despite this
conviction, we did everything
we could in all circumstances to save the Soviet system, because
we knew that we were working not only for ourselves
, but also for the international revolution.” (18)
How far removed these words are, grand in their simplicity, entirely
imbued with the spirit of internationalism, from the
current pronouncements of self-satisfied epigones !
In any case, we have the right to ask : how do all
these declarations of Lenin differ from the conviction
I expressed in 1915, that the coming revolution in Russia or the
future socialist Germany could not survive "isolated in
a capitalist world" ? The timelines have exceeded expectations,
not only mine but also Lenin’s ; but
the underlying idea retains all its force, perhaps now
more than ever. Instead of condemning it, as the
plenary session did on the basis of an incompetent and malicious report, it is
essential to incorporate it into the program of the
Communist International.
In defense of the slogan of a Soviet United States
of Europe, we emphasized in 1915 that the law of
uneven development does not in itself constitute an argument against this slogan
; indeed, the inequality of historical development is itself
unequal with respect to various states and continents : the countries
of Europe are developing unequally in relation to one
another. Nevertheless, it can be said with absolute historical certainty
that it is not possible, at least during the
historical period under consideration, for any of these countries to gain
the advantage that America has gained over Europe. There is one
scale of inequality for America and another for Europe.
Historical and geographical conditions have determined
in advance such a close organic link between the countries of Europe
that they cannot possibly extricate themselves from it. The
current bourgeois European governments are like murderers
chained together. As already mentioned, the
revolution in Europe will ultimately have
decisive importance for America as well. But in the immediate,
short term, the revolution in Germany will be far more
important for France than for the United States of North America . It is from this historical perspective that the political validity of the slogan of a Soviet federation of Europe
is derived .
We speak of relative validity, for it goes without saying that this
federation will expand towards Asia through the gigantic
bridge of the Soviet Union, eventually leading to a union of the
world’s socialist republics. But that will already be the second
epoch, or the next chapter of the imperialist period, and
when we get there, we will find the appropriate formulas.
It can be demonstrated by other quotations that the disagreement
with Lenin in 1915 was strictly a matter of
tactics and was essentially only provisional. But the
best proof of this is the course of events
: in 1923, the Communist International adopted this
controversial slogan. If it had been true that
the slogan of the United States of Europe could not be accepted in 1915 on matters of principle, as the authors of the draft program
now try to claim , the Communist International could not have adopted it eight years later. It must be assumed that the law of uneven development continued to apply during those years.
The entire problem I have just outlined stems from the
dynamics of the revolutionary process taken as a whole.
International revolution is considered a process encompassing a set of mutual relationships whose concrete forms and, so to speak, succession
cannot be predicted , but which is perfectly clear in its general historical outline. Without understanding this, it is impossible to have a correct political orientation. However, things change radically when one starts from the idea of socialist development underway and even nearing completion in a single country. There now exists a "theory" that teaches that it is possible to build complete socialism in a single country, and that relations between it and the capitalist world can be based on a "neutralization" of the world bourgeoisie (Stalin). From this fundamentally reformist, rather than revolutionary and internationalist, perspective, the necessity of the slogan "United States of Europe" disappears, or at least diminishes. But it appears to us precisely because it contains the condemnation of the idea of socialist development isolated in a single country. For the proletariat of every European country, even more so than for the USSR ( though this is only a difference of degree), the extension of the revolution to neighboring countries, the armed support they will give to the insurrections , is of the most urgent necessity ; not for considerations of abstract international solidarity, which, in itself , is incapable of mobilizing the classes, but because of an argument formulated hundreds of times by Lenin : we cannot maintain ourselves if the international revolution does not help us in time. The slogan of the United Soviet Union responds to this dynamic of the proletarian revolution ; it does not arise simultaneously in all countries, but spreads from one to another ; It requires a very close link between them, first and foremost in the European arena, both to defend itself against its very powerful external enemies and to
the necessities of economic construction.
It is true that one might object that after the
Ruhr crisis (19), which was precisely the last push to
adopt this slogan, it no longer played a
significant role in the agitation of the communist parties of Europe and
could not, in a sense, take root. But the same is absolutely
true for the slogans of the workers’ government, the
Soviets, etc., in other words, for all the slogans of the
period immediately preceding the revolution. This is explained by
the fact that, contrary to the politically erroneous judgment
of the Fifth Congress, the revolutionary movement has been steadily
weakening on the European continent since the end of 1923. But
it is precisely for this reason that it would be dangerous to draw up a
program, or parts of it, by referring only
to this period. It is no coincidence that the slogan of a
Soviet United States of Europe was adopted, despite all
reservations, precisely in 1923 when revolution was expected to
break out in Germany (20) and when the problems of
relations between states in Europe had become
particularly acute. Any further aggravation of the internal crisis in
Europe, and even more so of the world crisis, if it is
deep enough to raise fundamental political issues
, will inevitably create conditions favorable to
the adoption of the slogan of a Soviet United States of Europe.
It is therefore a fundamental error to omit it from the
program, without rejecting it outright, in other words, to
keep it in reserve, "just in case." In
matters of principle, the politics of reservations is pointless.
4. The criterion of internationalism
As we already know, the project strives, to our
credit, to take the world economy
and its internal trends as its starting point. Pravda is perfectly
right to say that this is where we
fundamentally differ from national-patriotic social democracy.
Only by starting with the world economy (a whole that dominates
its parts) can the program of the
international proletariat party be developed. But precisely in analyzing the
essential trends in world development, the project not
only reveals gaps that weaken its scope, as
has been shown above, but also manifests in places
grossly flawed conceptions, which leads it to serious errors
.
On several occasions, and not always appropriately, the project
refers to the law of uneven development of capitalism as the
fundamental law determining almost everything. A series of errors
in the project, including a major theoretical error , rests on a truncated and erroneous conception of the law of unequal development
, neither Marxist nor Leninist.
In its first chapter, the project states :
"The inequality of economic and political development
is an absolute law of capitalism. This inequality
increases and intensifies even further in the era of imperialism
."
That’s right. This formulation condemns the way Stalin
recently posed the question, claiming that the law of
uneven development was unknown to Marx and Engels, and that it had
been discovered by Lenin. On September 15, 1925, Stalin
wrote that Trotsky was in no way justified in referring to
Engels, who was writing at a time "when there could not even be
any question (!!) of the law of uneven development of capitalist countries."
Although these assertions seem implausible,
Stalin, one of the drafters, nevertheless
repeated them several times : the text of the draft, as we
see, takes a step forward on this point. Even setting aside this
correction of a basic error, what he says about the
law of uneven development remains fundamentally one-sided and insufficient.
First of all, it would be more accurate to say that the entire history
of humankind unfolds under the sign of unequal development.
Capitalism already finds the various parts of humanity at
different stages of development, each with profound
internal contradictions. The extreme variety of levels
attained and the extraordinary inequality in the pace of development
of different parts of humanity during different periods
constitute capitalism’s starting point. Only
gradually does it master the inequality it has inherited, refract it
, and modify it through its own methods and by following its own
paths. Distinguishing itself from the economic systems that
preceded it, capitalism has the characteristic of always seeking
economic expansion, penetrating new regions,
overcoming economic differences, transforming
closed provincial and national economies into a
system of interconnected vessels, and thus bringing together and equalizing the economic and cultural levels of the most advanced and the most backward
countries .
Without this fundamental process, one cannot
conceive of the relative leveling first of Europe and
England, then of America and Europe, the industrialization
of the colonies, which reduces the gap between India and
Great Britain, as well as the consequences of the processes
listed, on which not only the program of
the Communist International is based, but its very existence.
But by bringing countries closer together and equalizing their levels of
development, capitalism operates according to its
own methods—that is, anarchic methods—which
continually undermine its own work by pitting one country and one
branch of production against another, favoring the development
of some parts of the world economy while hindering and
relegating others. Only the combination of
these two fundamental tendencies—centripetal and centrifugal,
leveling and inequality—both consequences of the
very nature of capitalism, can explain the living fabric of the
historical process.
Because of its universality, mobility, and the accelerated pace
of the diffusion of financial capital, and because of its own
inherent drive, imperialism further accentuates these two tendencies. At a
pace and depth previously unknown, imperialism
binds together the various national and continental blocs into a unified whole , placing them in close and vital
interdependence and aligning their economic methods, social forms, and levels of development. At the same time, imperialism pursues this "goal" through such antagonistic means, making such leaps forward and engaging in such raids on backward countries and regions, that the unification and leveling of the world economy it achieves is accomplished with more violence and convulsions than in previous periods.
Only this dialectical, rather than abstract and mechanical, conception
of the law of unequal development makes it possible to avoid the
radical error from which the draft program
proposed at the VI Congress could not escape.
Immediately after having characterized this law in a
truncated way as we have seen, the project states :
“It follows that the international revolution of the
proletariat cannot be conceived as a single,
simultaneous, universal act. It follows that the victory of
socialism is possible first in a few small countries
and even in a single isolated capitalist country.”
It goes without saying that no one can dispute that it is
impossible for the international revolution of the proletariat to be a
“simultaneous act,” especially after the experience of the
October Revolution carried out by the working class of a backward country under
the pressure of historical necessity, without waiting for the
proletariat of the advanced countries to “rectify the situation.” It is perfectly
correct and appropriate to resort to the law of uneven development within these limits. But the second half of the conclusion, the unfounded assertion that the victory of socialism is possible in “a single capitalist country, taken in isolation,”
is quite different . To demonstrate this, the draft simply states : “it follows” ; in other words, this possibility is deduced from the law of uneven development. But this is not the case. The exact opposite "follows." If the historical process consisted of various countries evolving not only unevenly, but also independently of one another, remaining isolated, then one would undoubtedly have to deduce from the law of uneven development the possibility of building socialism in a single capitalist country taken in isolation : first in the most advanced, then in the most backward, as they reached maturity. This was the usual, somewhat average, conception of the transition to socialism in pre-war social democracy. It was precisely the theoretical consecration of social-patriotism. The project certainly does not adopt this point of view, but it drifts toward it.
His theoretical error lies in attempting to extract from the law of
uneven development what it does not and cannot
contain. Inequality, or the uneven pace of development of
various countries, continually undermines their
growing economic ties and interdependence, but it by no
means eliminates them : in the aftermath of a
four-year-long, infernal slaughter, these countries are forced to trade coal,
wheat, oil, gunpowder, and suspenders. On this
fundamental point, the project presents things as if historical development
were accomplished in leaps ; but the economic terrain
that provokes and on which these leaps occur is either completely
outside the authors’ field of vision or they
arbitrarily disregard it. They act thus with the sole objective of defending
the indefensible theory of socialism in one country.
After what has been said, it is not difficult to understand
that the only correct way to pose the question would be the following :
already in the pre-imperialist era, Marx and Engels had come
to the conclusion that, on the one hand, the irregularity, that is to say the jerks
of historical development, extend the proletarian revolution to
a whole period during which nations will enter
the revolutionary torrent one after another ; but that,
on the other hand, the organic interdependence of the various countries, which has
become an international division of labor, excludes the possibility
of building socialism in a single country ; now
more than ever, when imperialism has extended, deepened and
intensified these two antagonistic tendencies, the Marxist doctrine,
teaching that one can only begin the socialist revolution
on a national basis, but that one cannot build
socialist society within the framework of a nation, is two and three times
truer. In this question, Lenin only broadened and made
more concrete the way in which Marx posed the question and the solution
he gave to it.
Our party’s program is based on the idea that the
October Revolution and the construction of socialism are contingent upon
the international situation. To demonstrate this, it would suffice
simply to copy the entire theoretical section of our program
. Let us recall here only that when, at the Eighth
Party Congress, the late Podbielsky (21) suspected certain formulations in the
program of referring only to the revolution in Russia,
Lenin replied to him as follows in his closing speech on
this matter (March 19, 1919) :
“Podbielsky attacked one of the paragraphs talking about
the social revolution in preparation… Clearly this
argument is unfounded because our program refers to a
social revolution of global scope.” (22)
It is worth mentioning that around this
time Lenin proposed calling our party not the
Russian Communist Party, but simply the Communist Party, to further
emphasize that it was the party of the international revolution.
In the Central Committee, only my vote supported this
proposal. However, he did not bring the matter before the
Congress, given that the Third International was being organized at that time
. This position clearly demonstrates that
the very idea of socialism in one country was not even a possibility then.
This is the sole reason why the party program does not
condemn this theory but simply excludes it.
However, in the program of the Young Communists adopted
two years later, there was already, in order to educate young people in
the spirit of internationalism, a direct warning against
national illusions and narrow-minded nationalism regarding the
question of proletarian revolution. We will discuss this in
more detail later.
The situation is quite different with the new draft program
of the Communist International. In accordance with the
revisionist evolution of its authors after 1924, it embarks, as
we see, in a completely opposite direction. Yet the
answer given to the question of socialism in one country
determines the value of the entire project, that is to say, its character
as a Marxist or revisionist document.
Of course, this project explains carefully,
persistently, and repeatedly highlights and emphasizes the differences
between the communist and reformist ways of framing
the issues. But these assurances do not solve the problem.
It is as if we were on a ship equipped with numerous
Marxist devices and mechanisms, with its sails set wide open to all
revisionist and reformist winds. Anyone who, through the experience
gained over the last three decades, and especially
the exceptional experience of China in recent
years, has learned to understand the powerful dialectical interdependence
between the class struggle and party programs
, will understand us when we say that the
new revisionist sails can destroy the entire functioning
of the safety and rescue mechanisms of Marxism and
Leninism. This is why we are obliged to elaborate
further on this crucial question, which will determine
the development and destiny of the
Communist International for a long time to come.
5. The theoretical tradition of the party
The draft program in the above quotation
clearly and intentionally employs the phrase "victory of
socialism in one country" to achieve a
superficial, purely verbal similarity to Lenin’s 1915 article ;
it was cruelly, not to say criminally
, misused during the discussions surrounding the construction of
socialist society in one country. The draft resorts to the
same method in another instance, when it "alludes" to
Lenin’s words to bolster its position. Such is its
scientific "methodology."
From all the rich Marxist literature and the treasure trove of
Lenin’s works, deliberately ignoring everything Lenin wrote, said,
and did, disregarding the programs of the party and the
Communist Youth, neglecting everything that the leading militants of the
party without exception had expressed at the time of the
October Revolution when the question clearly (and how clearly) arose
, disregarding what the authors of the project, Stalin
and Bukharin themselves, had said up to and including 1924, only two quotes from Lenin are
retained, in all and for all, to defend the theory of
national socialism which was born at the end of 1924 or the beginning of 1925 from the
necessities of the struggle against the so-called "Trotskyism",
one extracted from the article on the United States
of Europe, written in 1915 ; the other from his
unfinished posthumous work on cooperation. Everything that contradicts these two
short quotations—all of Marxism, all of Leninism—
is simply dismissed. As for the two quotations, artificially
isolated from their context and interpreted by their followers with
gross errors, they serve as the basis for a
new, purely revisionist theory whose political implications are not yet foreseeable
. Thus, before our very eyes, an attempt is being made, using
scholastic and sophistical methods, to graft
a branch of a completely different kind onto the Marxist trunk : if this
graft succeeds, it will infect and strangle the entire tree.
During the plenum, Stalin declared (and it wasn’t the
first time) :
"The question of building a socialist economy
in one country was first raised in
the party by Lenin, as early as 1915." (23)
It is therefore acknowledged here that before 1915,
socialism in a single country was not a concept. Stalin and Bukharin cannot,
therefore, claim to be in line with the entire previous tradition of
Marxism and the party on the issue of the international character
of the proletarian revolution. This should be noted.
Yet what exactly did Lenin say "for the first time"
in 1915, contradicting what Marx, Engels, and Lenin himself
had said up to that date ?
In 1915 Lenin wrote :
“The unequal distribution of economic and political development
is an absolute law of capitalism. It follows that the
victory of socialism is possible at first in a few
small countries and even in a single
isolated capitalist country. The victorious proletariat of that country, after
expropriating the capitalists and organizing socialist production within its borders
, would rise up against the rest of the capitalist world
by drawing to itself the oppressed classes of other countries,
inciting them to revolt against the capitalists, and
even intervening, if necessary, by military force
against the exploiting classes and their states.” (24)
What did Lenin mean when he wrote this ? Simply
that the victory of socialism, in the sense of establishing the
dictatorship of the proletariat, is possible first in a single country,
which will thus find itself in opposition to the capitalist world.
The proletarian state, in order to repel attacks and launch its own
revolutionary offensive, must first "organize
socialist production within its borders," that is, direct the work itself
in the factories taken from the capitalists. That’s all. As we
know, a "victory of socialism" of this kind was first
achieved in Russia ; the first workers’ state, in order to
repel global intervention, first had to "organize
socialist production within its borders" or else "trusts of the consistent socialist type
." Lenin therefore meant by victory of
socialism in one country not the fantasy of a
self-sufficient socialist society - especially in a
backward country - but something much more realistic,
namely : what the October revolution achieved in our country from the very
first period of its existence.
Perhaps more evidence is needed to prove it
? There is so much that it is difficult to choose.
In his Theses on War and Peace (January 7, 1918),
Lenin referred to the need "in Russia for a certain period of
time, at least a few months, for the success of socialism
"... (25)
At the beginning of the same year, 1918, in an article directed
against Bukharin and entitled : "On Leftist Childishness and
the Petty Bourgeoisie", Lenin wrote :
“If, in less than six months for example, we had
established state capitalism in our country, it would be a success
and the surest guarantee that within a year socialism would be
definitively consolidated in our country and become invincible
.” (26)
How could Lenin set such a short deadline to
"consolidate socialism definitively" ? What material,
productive, social meaning did he give to these words ?
This question will appear in a completely different light if we
recall that on April 19 of the same year, 1918, Lenin said
in his report to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the
Soviets :
"It is doubtful that the generation immediately following us
, which will be more developed, will entirely embrace
socialism."
On December 3, 1919, at the congress of artels and
collective exploitations, Lenin spoke with even more vigor :
"We know that we cannot introduce
the socialist order right now ; may God grant that it be
established among us in the lifetime of our children, perhaps even
our grandchildren..." (28)
In which of these two cases was Lenin right :
when he set a twelve-month deadline for "definitively consolidating
socialism," or when he charged not our
children, but our grandchildren, with building the socialist order ?
Lenin was right in both cases, because he thus had in mind
different, and incomparable, stages in the construction
of socialism.
In the first instance, Lenin meant by "the definitive consolidation
of socialism" not the construction of
socialist society within a year or even "a few months"—that
is, not the abolition of classes, not the
overcoming of the opposition between town and country, but
the reactivation of factories and plants under the control of the
proletarian state, thus guaranteeing the possibility of the exchange of
goods between towns and villages. The very brevity of the timeframe
provides the key to understanding the
entire perspective without error.
Admittedly, even for this very basic task, the timeframe
set at the beginning of 1918 was too short. It was this
purely practical "blunder" that Lenin mocked at the Fourth Congress of
the Communist International when he said, "We were more stupid
then than we are now." But "we" had been right about the
overall perspective, without believing for a moment that
"socialist order" could be fully established in twelve months, especially in a backward country. Lenin was counting on three generations—on ourselves, on our children, and on our grandchildren—
to achieve this fundamental and ultimate goal.
Is it not clear that, in his 1915 article, Lenin
meant by "organization of socialist production" not the
creation of a socialist society, but an infinitely
simpler task, already accomplished by us in the USSR ? Otherwise, one
would have to arrive at the absurd conclusion that, according to Lenin, the
proletarian party, after having conquered power, "postpones" the
revolutionary war until the third generation.
This is the sad state of affairs at the fundamental bastion of the
new theory : the 1915 quotation. But what is even
sadder is that, for Lenin, this quotation did not apply
to Russia at all. He was speaking of Europe in opposition to
Russia. This is evident not only from the content of the cited article,
devoted to the United States of Europe, but from Lenin’s entire attitude
at the time. A few months later, on November 20,
1915, Lenin wrote specifically about Russia :
“From this factual situation , the task of the proletariat clearly follows . A bold,
unhesitating revolutionary struggle against the monarchy (the slogans of the
January 1912 conference, “the three whales” (29)), a struggle
that would draw in all the democratic masses, that is to
say, above all, the peasantry. And at the same time
, a ruthless struggle against chauvinism, a struggle for the
socialist revolution of Europe in alliance with its proletariat… The
military crisis has strengthened the economic and
political factors that are pushing it (the petty bourgeoisie), as well as
the peasantry, to the left. This is the
objective basis that makes the victory of
the democratic revolution in Russia perfectly possible. We
need not demonstrate here that the objective conditions for the
socialist revolution are completely ripe in
Western Europe ; all influential socialists in all
advanced countries admitted this before the war.” (30)
Thus, in 1915, Lenin spoke clearly of the
democratic revolution in Russia and the socialist revolution in
Western Europe. In passing, he noted, as if it were
self-evident, that in Western Europe, unlike in the
29th century, the three main slogans of Bolshevik agitation under
Tsarism were "democratic republic," "eight-hour day," and "confiscation
of land for the benefit of the peasants." These were called "the three pillars"
or "the three whales"—alluding to the old myth that the
world rested on three whales—of Bolshevism. It was, among other things, on these
three slogans that the Bolsheviks clashed with the liquidators, whose
democratic demands were being studied for potential concessions by
Tsarism.
Russia, in contrast to Russia, the conditions for
socialist revolution “were entirely ripe.” But the authors of the
new theory, who are also the authors of the program, simply ignore
this quotation (one among many), which relates
directly to Russia ; they do the same to
hundreds of others in Lenin’s complete works. On
the other hand, as we have seen, they seize upon another
quotation that relates to Western Europe and attribute to it a
meaning it cannot and does not seek to have ; they attach this
arbitrary meaning to Russia, which the quotation does not refer to ; and on this
“foundation” they erect their new theory.
How did Lenin view this question in the
period immediately preceding October ? Upon leaving
Switzerland after the February Revolution, Lenin addressed
Swiss workers in a letter in which he explained :
“Russia is a peasant country, one of the most
backward countries in Europe. Socialism cannot triumph there
directly right away. But the peasant character of the country,
given the immense agrarian land held by
the landowning nobles, can, based on
the experience of 1905, give the bourgeois and
democratic revolution in Russia an immense scope ; it can
make our revolution the prologue to the
world socialist revolution, constituting a stage that will lead
towards it… The Russian proletariat cannot, by its own
strength alone, victoriously complete the socialist revolution. But
it can give the Russian revolution such scope
that it will create the best conditions for the socialist revolution
, it will, in a way, begin it. It can make
the situation more favorable for the entry, in the
decisive battles, of its principal and most reliable collaborator, the
European and American socialist proletariat.” (31)
These lines contain all the elements of the question. If
Lenin, as we are led to believe, considered in
1915, during a period of war and reaction, that the
Russian proletariat could single-handedly build socialism and
then, having accomplished this task, declare war
on the bourgeois states, how then could Lenin, at the beginning of 1917,
when the February Revolution had already taken place,
so categorically assert the impossibility for
peasant Russia to build socialism by its own efforts ? One
would have to be at least somewhat logical and, frankly,
show some respect for Lenin.
It would be superfluous to multiply the quotations. A continuous exposition
of Lenin’s views on the economic and political character of the
social revolution, conditioned by its international extension,
would require a special study ; it would include many themes,
except that of the construction in a single country of a
self-sufficient socialist society, because Lenin did
not know this subject.
We must, however, pause to consider another article
by Lenin ; indeed, the draft program seems to quote
Lenin’s posthumous article, "On Cooperation," using an
expression taken out of context and unrelated to the
article’s subject. We have in mind Chapter V of the draft program,
which states that the workers of the Soviet republics
"possess, within the country, the necessary
and sufficient material prerequisites... for building comprehensive socialism." (32)
If this article, dictated by Lenin during his illness and published
only after his death, actually stated that the Soviet state
possessed the material prerequisites—that is, first and foremost, the means of
production—necessary and sufficient to build
full socialism on its own, then we would only have to suppose that this was
either a slip of the tongue by Lenin during the dictation or a
stenographer’s error in deciphering it. In any case, both are more
probable than Lenin’s abandonment, in two random lines
, of Marxism and everything he himself had taught
during his lifetime. Fortunately, it is unnecessary to resort to this
explanation. The remarkable, though unfinished, article "On
Cooperation" is linked by a unity of thought to other, no less remarkable, articles published during the last period of Lenin’s
life ;
They form, in a way, the chapters of an
unfinished book, dealing with the place of the October Revolution in the
chain of revolutions in the West and the East ; the article "On
Cooperation" does not at all say what the revisionists of Leninism so lightly attribute to it
.
Lenin explains that "mercantile" cooperation can and
must completely transform its social role in the workers’ state ;
through just policy, it can guide the combination of
the peasant’s particular interest and the state’s general interest
along the socialist path. Lenin then lays out the
foundations of this indisputable idea :
“Indeed, the power of the State over the principal
means of production, the power of the State in the hands of the
proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the millions of
small peasants, the leadership of the peasantry ensured by this
proletariat, etc., is this not all that is needed to be
able, on the basis of cooperation, of cooperation alone
, which we formerly called mercantile, and which
we still have the right to
call so to a certain extent, now that we have the NEP, is this
not all that is necessary to build the
complete socialist society ? It is not yet the construction of
socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and
sufficient for that purpose.” (33)
The text of the quotation alone, containing the unfinished sentence
(“of cooperation alone”), proves beyond doubt that
we are dealing with an uncorrected essay, dictated
rather than handwritten by its author.
It is therefore all the more unforgivable to cling to sentences
cut from the text instead of reflecting on the article’s overall meaning
. Fortunately, however, the very wording of this
quotation, and not just its spirit, demonstrates that one does not have the
right to misuse it as the authors of the
draft do. When he speaks of “necessary and sufficient conditions
,” Lenin rigorously delimits his subject in this
article. He examines only the question of by what
methods, by what processes, we will achieve socialism
without new class conflicts, starting from
dispersed and fragmented peasant farms, thanks to the existence of the foundations
of the Soviet regime. The article is entirely devoted to the
social forms of organization of the transition from small-scale
private to collective economies, and not at all to the
material conditions of production during this period. If
today the European proletariat were to prevail and provide us
with the assistance of its technology, the question of cooperation posed by
Lenin—as a social method of organization combining
private and collective interests—would retain its full
importance. Cooperation shows the way in which
technological progress (particularly electrification) can
reorganize and unite millions of peasant holdings due to
the existence of the Soviet regime ; but cooperation does
not replace this new technology, nor does it create it within itself
. As we have seen, Lenin speaks simply of the
“necessary and sufficient” conditions in general and enumerates them
precisely. These are : 1) “The power of the State
extending to all means of production” (the text reads “
applying” and is obviously not corrected). 2) "State power
in the hands of the proletariat" ; 3) the alliance of the proletariat
and many millions of peasants ; 4) "the guarantee that the
The proletariat will retain hegemony over the peasantry
… And it is only after listing these purely political conditions ( material
conditions are not even mentioned here ) that Lenin draws his conclusion : This (that is, all the listed conditions) is all that is “necessary and sufficient” for building socialist society. “All that is necessary and sufficient” on the political level—nothing more. But Lenin also adds that, for this reason, “this is not yet the building of socialist society.” Why ? Because political conditions alone, even if sufficient, do not solve the entire problem. The question of culture remains . “Nothing but” that—Lenin says ; he emphasizes the words “nothing but” and encloses them in quotation marks to show the enormous importance of what is lacking. Lenin knew as well as we do that culture is linked to technology : “To be cultured,” he said, bringing the revisionists back down to earth, “there must be a certain material basis” (34). One need only refer to the problem of electrification, which Lenin, incidentally, connected to the question of the international socialist revolution. The struggle for culture, [within the framework of ] the “necessary and sufficient” political (but not material) conditions, would absorb all our efforts were it not for the problem of the permanent and relentless struggle—economic, political, military, and cultural—between socialist society, which is being built on a backward foundation, and global capitalism, which is declining but remains powerful through its technology.
“I would say,” Lenin emphasizes, “towards the end of the
same article, “that for us the center of gravity is
shifting towards cultural work, were it not for
international relations, the duty we have to defend our
position in the international arena.” (35)
This is Lenin’s true thought, even if one
considers the article on cooperation in isolation from all his
other works. How else can one describe
the formula of the authors of the draft program but as a falsification ? They
knowingly borrow from Lenin the words concerning the existence
in our country of "necessary and sufficient" conditions, but add
for their part the fundamental condition, that is, the
material condition, whereas Lenin clearly showed that it
was precisely lacking in our country, that it still had to be
achieved in conjunction with the struggle "for our positions in the
international arena," that is, with the
international proletarian revolution. This is what remains of the second and final
point of support for this theory.
We consciously refrain from repeating here the
countless articles and speeches, from 1905 to 1923,
in which Lenin affirms and repeats in the most
categorical way that without the triumphant world revolution we
are threatened with perishing ; that one cannot triumph over the
bourgeoisie from an economic point of view in a single country, and
especially in a backward country ; that the construction of socialist society
is an international task by its very essence ;
Lenin draws conclusions from this which may appear as
"pessimistic" to the creators of the new national and
reactionary utopia ; but they are sufficiently optimistic if one
considers them from the point of view of revolutionary internationalism.
We focus here only on the quotations chosen by the
project’s authors themselves to create the "necessary
and sufficient" premises of their utopia. And we see that
their entire edifice collapses as soon as it is touched.
We nevertheless believe it is logical to cite here at
least one of Lenin’s direct testimonies on the
contentious issue, which does not need to be explained and cannot
be misinterpreted.
“We have emphasized in a whole series of works,
in all our interventions, in all the press, that the situation
in Russia is not like that in capitalist countries : we
have a minority of workers employed in industry and
an enormous majority of small farmers. In such a
country, the social revolution can only triumph definitively
under two conditions : first, that it be supported
in due course by the social revolution of one or
more advanced countries… The other condition is the agreement
between the proletariat exercising its dictatorship or holding
state power in its hands and the majority of the
peasant population… We know that it is only
with the agreement of the peasantry that the socialist revolution in Russia can be saved
as long as the
revolution does not occur in other countries…” (36)
We hope that this passage is sufficiently enlightening :
firstly, Lenin himself emphasizes that the ideas he
sets forth were developed by him "in a whole series
of works, in all our interventions, in all the press" ;
secondly, the perspective indicated was established by Lenin not
in 1915, two years before October, but in 1921, four years
after.
We dare to believe that, as far as Lenin is concerned, the question
is sufficiently clear. It remains to be seen how the
authors of the draft program themselves envisioned it
in the past.
Stalin said about this in November 1926 :
"The party has always accepted as a starting point that
the victory of socialism in one country (is) the possibility
of building socialism there, and that this task can be
accomplished by the forces of one country." (37)
We already know that the party never accepted this as a
starting point. On the contrary, in "a whole series of works,
in all our interventions, in all the press," as
Lenin said, the party based itself on a contrary position which found
its fundamental expression precisely in the program of the
Communist Party of the USSR. But we must hope that Stalin
himself, at least, "always" started from the false idea
that "socialism can be built by the forces of a single
country." Let’s examine this.
We have absolutely no idea how Stalin viewed this
question in 1905 or 1915, as we completely lack
documents on the subject. But, in 1924, Stalin outlined
Lenin’s views on the construction of socialism in these terms :
“Overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie and establishing the
power of the proletariat in one country does not
yet guarantee the complete victory of socialism. The principal
task of socialism—the organization of socialist production—
remains to be accomplished. Can this
problem be solved, can the final victory of socialism be achieved
in one country without the combined efforts of the
proletarians of several advanced countries ? No, it is impossible
. To overthrow the bourgeoisie, the efforts of one
country are sufficient, as the history of our revolution testifies. For
the final victory of socialism, for the organization of
socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially of a
peasant country like Russia, are no longer sufficient ; the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are necessary
… These
are, in general, the characteristic features of the
Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution.” (38)
It must be admitted : "the characteristic features of
Leninist theory" are indeed set forth here with considerable accuracy.
In later editions of Stalin’s book, however, this
passage was revised in a directly opposite direction, and "the
characteristic features of Leninist theory" were
denounced a year later as... Trotskyism. The plenary session of the
Executive Committee of the Communist International adopted its
resolution, conforming not to the 1924 edition but to that
of 1926.
Such is Stalin’s situation. It could not be
worse. It is true that one might still find some consolation if the
plenary session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
were not also in an equally
lamentable situation.
One last hope remains : that at least Bukharin, the
true author of the program, "always accepted
as a starting point" the possibility of achieving socialism
in one country. Let’s check.
Here is what Bukharin wrote about this in 1917 :
“Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
Only the proletariat, even in backward Russia, can be
the irreplaceable engineer of this locomotive. But the
proletariat can no longer remain within the limits of the
property relations of bourgeois society. It is marching
toward power and toward socialism. Yet this task
, which in Russia too is ‘on the agenda,’ cannot
be accomplished ‘within national borders.’
Here the working class encounters an insurmountable wall
(note well : an insurmountable wall. LT) that
can only be breached by the battering ram of the
international workers’ revolution.” (39)
One could not express oneself more clearly. Such was Bukharin’s opinion in 1917, two years after Lenin’s
supposed "reversal" in 1915. Yet, had the October Revolution taught Bukharin nothing new ?
Let’s check that.
In 1919, Bukharin wrote about "The Dictatorship of the
Proletariat in Russia and the World Revolution" in the
theoretical organ of the Communist International :
"Given the existence of the world economy and
the relations between its parts, given the interdependence
of the various bourgeois groups organized into states, it goes
without saying (emphasis added) that the struggle in an isolated country cannot
be completed unless a decisive victory has been won
by one of these parties in several civilized countries."
At that time, it was even "taken for granted". Further on :
"Pre-war Marxist or Marxist-leaning literature
repeatedly raised the question of whether
the victory of socialism was possible in a single country. The
majority of authors answered in the negative (and what about Lenin
in 1915 ? LT), from which it is not possible to
deduce that it is impossible or inadmissible to begin
a revolution and seize power in an
isolated country."
Precisely !
The same article went on to say :
"The period of progress of the productive forces
can only come with the victory of the proletariat in several
important countries... From which we conclude : it is necessary to
develop by all means the world revolution and
to form a solid economic bloc between the
industrial countries and Soviet Russia." (40)
Bukharin’s assertion that the rise of productive forces
— that is, the true rise of socialism—will only take hold
in our country after the victory of the proletariat in the advanced countries
of Europe, is precisely the phrase that forms the basis of all the
indictments leveled against "Trotskyism," including those
presented at the Seventh Plenum of the Executive Committee of the
Communist International. What is curious, however, is that Bukharin
, whose survival is due to his short memory, intervenes as
the accuser. Alongside this comical aspect, there is another,
tragic one : it is Lenin who is in the hot seat, he who expressed
this same basic idea dozens of times.
Finally, in 1921, six years after Lenin’s alleged change of heart
in 1915, four years after October, the Central Committee,
with Lenin at its head, approved the program of the Communist Youth
established by a commission under the direction of Bukharin.
Paragraph 4 of this program states :
“In the USSR, state power is already in
the hands of the working class. During three years of
heroic struggle against world capital, the proletariat has maintained
and strengthened Soviet power. Although Russia
possesses immense natural resources, it is nevertheless,
from an industrial point of view, a backward country
dominated by a petty-bourgeois population. It can only
achieve socialism through the
world proletarian revolution, in the era of development into
which we have entered.”
This single paragraph from the
Communist Youth program (not from a one-off article, but from the program itself
!) makes
the attempts by the drafters to demonstrate that the party has
"always" considered the building of socialism possible
in a single country, and more specifically in Russia, appear ridiculous and truly unworthy. If this had
"always" been the case, why did Bukharin formulate
this paragraph of the Communist Youth program in this way ?
Where was Stalin looking at that moment ? How
could Lenin and the entire Central Committee have approved such heresy ?
How could no one in the party have noticed this "detail"
and questioned it ? Doesn’t all this seem like
a bad joke, increasingly ridiculing
the party, its history, and the Communist International ?
Isn’t it time to put an end to this ? Isn’t it time to tell the
revisionists : stop hiding
behind Lenin and the party’s theoretical tradition !
At the plenary session of the Executive Committee of the
Communist International, Bukharin, who escaped thanks to his short
memory, arguing in favor of the resolution condemning
"Trotskyism," declared :
"Comrade Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution
(and Comrade Trotsky still professes
this theory now) also says that because of our
backward economic situation, we will inevitably perish without
world revolution." (41)
I had spoken in plenary session about the shortcomings in the theory of
permanent revolution as I had formulated it in 1905-1906.
But it goes without saying that I had not even considered giving up what
was fundamental about it, what brought me
closer to Lenin, which now prevents me
from accepting the revision of Leninism.
There were two fundamental ideas in the theory of
permanent revolution.
First : despite Russia’s historical backwardness, the
revolution can return power to the Russian proletariat before
handing it over to the proletariat of the advanced countries. Second : to
overcome the contradictions that the dictatorship
of the proletariat will encounter in a backward country, surrounded by a world
of capitalist enemies, it will be necessary to enter the arena of
world revolution. The first of these ideas is based on a
correct understanding of the law of uneven development. The second
on an accurate understanding of the indissolubility of the
economic and political ties linking capitalist countries.
Bukharin is right when he says that I still profess
these two fundamental theses of the theory of
permanent revolution today. Now more than ever. For I
consider them to be entirely verified and demonstrated,
theoretically, by the complete works of Marx and Lenin,
and practically, by the experience of the
October Revolution.
6. So where is the "social-democratic deviation" ?
These quotations and reminders are more than sufficient to
characterize the theoretical position of Stalin and Bukharin,
both then and now. But to characterize their
political methods, it must be remembered that after gleaning from the writings of
the Opposition42 statements entirely analogous to those
they themselves made up until 1925 (at that time in
perfect agreement with Lenin), Stalin and Bukharin,
relying on these quotations, constructed the theory of our “
social-democratic deviation.” Thus, on the essential problem of the
relationship between October and the international revolution, the Opposition
supposedly thinks like Otto Bauer43, who denies the possibility of
building socialism in Russia. One might truly
believe that the printing press was invented only in 1924 and that everything
preceding it is destined for oblivion. They are counting on short memories.
Yet, already at the Fourth Congress, on the nature of the
October Revolution, the Communist International settled
accounts with Otto Bauer and other philistines of the Second International.
The report I presented on behalf of the Central Committee, on the
NEP and the prospects for world revolution, offered a
judgment on Otto Bauer’s stance that expressed the views of
our Central Committee at the time ; it met with no objections
at the Congress, and I believe it has retained all its
force to this day. As for Bukharin, he refrained from
clarifying the political aspect of the problem since "many
comrades, including Lenin and Trotsky," had already
addressed it ; in other words, Bukharin then aligned himself with
my report. This is what I said about Otto Bauer at the
Fourth Congress :
“Social-democratic theorists who, on the one hand,
admit in their Sunday articles that capitalism
, especially in Europe, survives and has become a
brake on historical development, and on the other hand, express
the certainty that the evolution of Soviet Russia
inevitably leads to the victory of bourgeois democracy
, thus fall into the most
pitifully banal contradiction, quite worthy of these obtuse and boastful confounders
. The NEP is calculated for specific conditions
of time and place : it is a maneuver of
the workers’ state still living in a capitalist environment and
firmly counting on revolutionary development.”
of Europe. In political calculations, one cannot
neglect a factor like time. If we accept
that capitalism will last another century or
half a century in Europe, and that Soviet Russia
will have to adapt its economic policy accordingly, then the question resolves
itself, because, in this scenario, we assume a
priori that the proletarian revolution in Europe will fail
and that a new era of capitalist revival will
begin. On what basis would we accept
this hypothesis ? If Otto Bauer discovered
miraculous symptoms of
capitalist resurrection in present-day Austria, then the fate of Soviet Russia
is sealed. But in the meantime, we see no
miracles, and we do not believe in them. From our point of view, if
the European bourgeoisie were to secure power for several
decades under the current world conditions,
this would lead not to a new flowering of capitalism,
but to the economic decomposition and cultural disintegration
of Europe. Generally speaking, it is undeniable
that such a process could also drag
Soviet Russia into the abyss. Would it pass through the stage of
“democracy,” or would its decomposition take other
forms ? This is already a secondary question
. But we see no reason to subscribe to
Spengler’s philosophy.45 We firmly rely on
the revolutionary development of Europe. The new
economic policy is merely an adaptation to the pace of this
development.46
This way of posing the question brings us back to the point from
which we began to judge the draft program : in
the age of imperialism, one can only consider the destiny of an
isolated country by starting from the trends of world development,
which is a whole in which this country, with its
national particularities, is included, and on which it depends. The theorists of the
Second International isolate the USSR from the rest of the world and
from the imperialist era ; they apply to the USSR, as an
isolated country, the arid criterion of economic “maturity” ; they
establish that the USSR is not capable of building
socialism by its own strength alone, and deduce from this the inevitability of
the capitalist degeneration of the workers’ state.
The authors of the draft program place themselves on the same
theoretical ground ; they fully accept the
metaphysical methodology of the social-democratic theorists : just
like them, they “abstract” from the rest of the world and from
the imperialist era ; They take as their starting point the
fiction of isolated development ; they apply the arid economic criterion to the national stage
of the world revolution ; however,
their "sentence" is the inverse of the latter’s. The "leftism" of
the project’s authors consists in their inverting the
social-democratic judgment. Yet, however
the theorists of the Second International frame the question,
it is worthless. We must follow Lenin, who dismisses
Bauer’s judgment and diagnosis as exercises worthy of a
preparatory-level student.
This is what the "social-democratic deviation" is all about. It
’s not us, but the authors of the project, who should be considered
among Bauer’s relatives.
7. The USSR’s dependence on the world economy
It was Vollmar (47) himself who was the precursor of the preachers
of the national socialist society. In outlining, in his
article entitled "The Isolated Socialist State" (48), the prospect of the
construction of socialism in Germany by the proletariat’s own forces
(which had far surpassed
advanced England), Vollmar, in 1878, referred with
absolute clarity and precision to the law of uneven development, which, according to
Stalin, was unknown to Marx and Engels. Vollmar deduced
(in 1878) from this law the following indisputable conclusion :
"Under the current conditions,
which will remain so for the foreseeable future
, the hypothesis of a simultaneous victory of socialism
in all civilized countries is absolutely excluded..."
Developing this idea further, Vollmar said :
"We thus arrive at the isolated socialist state, about
which I hope to have demonstrated that if it is not the
only possible one, it is at least the most probable..."
Insofar as one can understand here by isolated state
only a state of proletarian dictatorship, Vollmar sets forth
an indisputable thought which was that of Marx and Engels and which
Lenin expressed in the 1915 article cited above.
But then come findings made by Vollmar
himself, formulated, moreover, in a less one-sided
and erroneous manner than that of our theorists of socialism in one
country. To construct his argument, Vollmar begins with the
premise that socialist Germany would maintain
close economic ties with the global capitalist economy,
while also benefiting from the advantages of superior technology
and low production costs. Such a
construct rests on the prospect of the peaceful coexistence
of the socialist and capitalist systems. However, the further socialism
progresses, the more its enormous advantages from the standpoint of
production will become apparent, and the need for world revolution will disappear
of its own accord : socialism will triumph over capitalism through the
market, by means of low prices.
Bukharin, author of the first draft program and co-
author of the second, bases his entire construction of
socialism in one country on the idea of an isolated,
self-contained economy. In Bukharin’s article entitled :
"On the character of our revolution and the possibility of the
victorious construction of socialism in the USSR" (49), which
constitutes the supreme product of scholasticism, multiplied by
sophistry, the whole reasoning taking place within the framework
of an isolated economy, the main and only argument is the
following :
“Since we have everything necessary and
sufficient to build socialism, consequently,
in the very process of this construction, there is
no point at which this construction becomes
impossible. If we have within our country a
combination of forces such that, year after
year, the preponderance of the socialist sector of our
economy is affirmed, if the socialized sectors of our
economy grow faster than those of
private capitalism, we begin each new year with
increased strength.” (49)
It’s an irrefutable argument : "Since we have
everything that is necessary and sufficient," then... we have it.
Taking the results of this demonstration as his starting point,
Bukharin constructs a fully developed system of a closed socialist economy
, with no external inputs or outputs. Bukharin, like
Stalin, only remembers the external environment—that is,
the entire world—in order to view it from the perspective of
military intervention. When Bukharin speaks in this
article of the need to "disregard" the international factor
, he has military intervention in mind, not the global market . He doesn’t need to disregard it because he simply forgets it
throughout his entire framework. According to this scheme, Bukharin defended at the 14th Congress the idea that, if no intervention were to hinder it, we would build socialism "even at a snail’s pace." The ceaseless struggle between two systems, the fact that socialism can only be based on superior productive forces—in short, the Marxist dynamic of replacing one social formation with another, based on the growth of productive forces—all of this was completely discarded . Revolutionary and historical dialectics were replaced by the reactionary utopia of nibbling away at a self-contained socialism, built on an inferior technological base, evolving at a snail’s pace within national borders, and having no relationship with the outside world other than the fear of intervention. Rejecting this pitiful caricature of the doctrines of Marx and Lenin was labeled a " social-democratic deviation." It was in Bukharin’s article, to which we refer, that this characterization of our views was first highlighted , with supporting "arguments." History will record that we were condemned for "social-democratic deviation" because we refused to accept a reversal of Vollmar’s theory of socialism in one country, which made it even worse.
The proletariat of Tsarist Russia would not have seized
power in October if Russia had not been a link—the
weakest, but a link nonetheless—in the chain of the
world economy. The proletariat’s conquest of power in
no way isolated the Soviet Republic from the international division
of labor created by capitalism.
Just as the wise owl only flies away at dusk,
so too did the theory of socialism in one country arise at a
time when our industry, increasingly depleting the old
basic capital that crystallized two-thirds of
our industry’s dependence on that of the world, had an urgent need to
renew and extend its links with the outside world, and at a
time when the problems of foreign trade were
clearly facing the management of the economy.
At the 11th Congress, that is to say the last congress where
Lenin was able to speak, he warned the party in due course that
it would have to undergo a new examination, "an examination organized by
the Russian market and the world market, to which we
are subordinate, with which we are bound, and from which no one
can extricate themselves." (50)
Nothing strikes the theory of
isolated "integral socialism" so cruelly as the simple fact that our foreign trade figures
have become, in recent
years, the cornerstone of our economic plans. "The
weakest part" of our entire economy, including our
industry, is imports, which depend entirely on exports
. Since the strength of a chain depends on its weakest link
, the proportions of our economic plans are tailored to
those of imports.
We read in an article devoted to the system of/establishment
of the plan, published in the State Planning Review :
"In establishing the control figures for the
current year, we had to, methodologically, take
as a starting point our export and
import plans, use them as a guide to
establish a whole series of plans for various branches of
industry, and consequently the entire general industrial plan
, and in particular align the construction
of new factories, etc." (51)
This way of approaching the question according to the method of the
State Plan undoubtedly means that the control figures
determine the direction and pace of our economic development
, but that the control of these figures has already shifted towards
the world economy : this is so, not because we
have become weaker, but because, becoming
stronger, we have broken free from the vicious circle of isolation
.
Through export and import figures, the
capitalist world shows us that it has other means of
reacting besides military intervention. Since the productivity of labor and
of the social system as a whole is measured under
market conditions by the price ratio, the
Soviet economy is more threatened by an influx of
cheap capitalist goods than by military intervention
. For this reason alone, it is by no means a matter of
achieving an isolated economic triumph over one’s "own"
bourgeoisie. "The socialist revolution advancing throughout the world
will not consist merely in the proletariat of
each country triumphing over its bourgeoisie" (52). It is a
match, a life-or-death struggle, between two social systems, one of which
began to be built upon backward productive forces,
while the other still rests today
upon productive forces of infinitely greater power
.
Anyone who labels as "pessimistic" the recognition that
we depend on the world market (Lenin frankly said
that we are subordinate to it), betrays all his
provincial petty-bourgeois pusillanimity in the face of the world market and the
pathetic nature of his local optimism, which hopes to escape
this market by hiding under the bushes, by getting out
of trouble by his own means.
The new theory considers it a matter of honor
the bizarre idea that the USSR could perish as a result of
military intervention, but in no way as a result of its
economic backwardness. But since, in a
socialist society, the working masses must be far more willing
to defend the country than the slaves of capital are to attack it, the
question arises : how could we perish as a result of
military intervention ? Because the enemy is infinitely stronger
from a technical point of view. Bukharin only acknowledges the superiority
of the productive forces in their technical, military aspect. He
refuses to understand that the Ford tractor is just as
dangerous as the Creusot cannon, with the difference that the
latter can only act sporadically, while the former
is constantly under pressure. Moreover, the tractor knows that it has
the cannon behind it as its last resort.
We, the first workers’ state, are part of the
world proletariat and, with it, we depend on
global capitalism. Indifferent, neutral, neutered by bureaucrats, this convenient
little word "ties" is only used to conceal
the extremely painful and dangerous nature of
these "ties" for us. If we produced at world market prices,
our dependence on it, while still a
dependence, would be infinitely less severe than it is now.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. The monopoly on
foreign trade itself testifies to the cruel and dangerous nature
of our dependence. The decisive importance of this monopoly
for our construction of socialism stems precisely
from a balance of power unfavorable to us. But we cannot
forget for a single moment that the monopoly on foreign trade
only formalizes our dependence on the world market,
but does not eliminate it.
"As long as our Soviet republic,"
wrote Lenin, "remains a borderland, isolated from the whole
capitalist world, to believe in our
complete economic independence, in the disappearance of certain dangers, would be
to demonstrate a fanciful and utopian spirit." (53)
The fundamental dangers stem from the
objective situation of the USSR, an "isolated stepping stone" in the
hostile capitalist economy. However, these perils can increase or decrease.
This depends on the interplay of two factors : our
socialist construction on the one hand, and the evolution of the capitalist economy
on the other. Certainly, in the final analysis, it is the second
factor—that is, the fate of the entire world economy—
that is of decisive importance.
Could it happen, and under what specific circumstances, that the productivity of
our social system increasingly lags behind that of
capitalism ? For ultimately, this would inevitably lead
to the collapse of the socialist republic. If we manage
our economy scientifically during this new phase, in which we must create the foundation of industry
ourselves —a process that demands far greater qualities from management—the productivity of our labor will increase. Can we, however, assume that the labor productivity of capitalist countries, or, more precisely, of the predominantly capitalist countries, will grow faster than ours ?
If this question is not answered in a way that takes
perspectives into account, the boastful claims that
our pace is sufficient "in itself" (not to
mention the ridiculous philosophy of "turtle-like movement") are
meaningless. But the mere attempt to answer the problem
of competition between the two systems leads us into
the arena of world economics and politics ; in this
arena, it is the Revolutionary International, including the
Soviet republic, that acts and decides, and by no means a
Soviet republic living for itself and resorting from
time to time to the International’s aid.
The draft program stated, regarding the state-run economy
of the USSR, that it was "developing heavy industry at a pace
exceeding that of development in
capitalist countries." In this attempt to compare the two paces, it
must be acknowledged that a step forward was taken in the realm of
principles, compared to the period when the authors of the program
categorically denied the need for a comparative factor
between our development and that of the world. It is pointless "to
mix the international factor into these problems," Stalin said.
We will build socialism "even at a tortoise’s pace,"
Bukharin declared. It was precisely on the basis of this line of reasoning
that the discussions of principle unfolded over
several years. From a formal point of view, this line
prevailed. But if we do not merely insert into the text a
comparison between the different paths of economic development
, and if we grasp the essential nature of the problem, we
will see that we cannot discuss the project
of "a sufficient minimum of industry" in another chapter, based solely on
internal relations, without any connection to the capitalist world ;
we cannot not only resolve a priori, but even pose the
question of whether it is "possible" or "impossible" for the
proletariat of the country in question to build socialism by its
own strength. The question is resolved by the dynamics of the
struggle between two systems, between two world classes ; despite the
high coefficients of our growth during the
reconstruction period, one essential and indisputable fact remains :
“Capital, if considered on a global scale,
continues to be stronger than the power
of the Soviets, not only militarily but also economically
. This fundamental thesis must
be taken as our starting point and never forgotten.” 54
The problem of the relationship between the different paths
is not resolved. It does not depend solely on our know-how
in addressing the real smychka (55), ensuring grain storage, and
intensifying exports and imports ; in other words, it
does not depend solely on our domestic successes, which are certainly
a factor of exceptional importance in this struggle ; but it
is also linked to the course of the world economy and revolution
. Consequently, the question will be decided not within the confines of a single nation, but on the arena of global economic and political
struggle .
Thus, on almost every point of the draft
program, we see a direct or disguised concession
made to the criticism of the Opposition. This "concession"
manifests itself in a rapprochement with Marx and Lenin in the
theoretical sphere ; but the revisionist conclusions remain
entirely independent of revolutionary theses.
8. The contradiction between productive forces and national borders
, the cause of the utopian and reactionary character of the theory of
socialism in one country.
The argument for the theory of socialism in one
country, as we have seen, boils down, on the one hand, to a
sophistic interpretation of a few lines by Lenin, and on the other hand, to
a scholastic explanation of "the law of uneven development." By
judiciously interpreting both this historical law and the
quotations in question, we arrive at a directly
opposite conclusion, the one reached by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all of us, including
Stalin and Bukharin, until 1925.
From the uneven and jerky development of capitalism stems
the uneven, jerky character of the socialist revolution ; while
from the mutual interdependence of the various countries, pushed to a
very advanced degree, stems the impossibility not only political
, but also economic, of building socialism in a
single country.
Let’s examine the program text once again from this perspective, and more closely . We already read in the introduction :
"Imperialism... intensifies, to the point of
extreme tension, the contradictions existing between the growth
of the national economy’s productive forces and
the barriers separating nations and states."
We have already stated that this thesis was, or rather should
be, the cornerstone of an international program. But it
excludes, refutes, and dismisses a priori the theory of
socialism in one country as a reactionary theory,
because it is in irreconcilable contradiction not only with the
fundamental tendency of the evolution of the productive forces,
but also with the material results that this development has
already achieved. The productive forces are incompatible with
national frameworks. This fact governs not only
foreign trade, the export of people and capital, the
conquest of territories, colonial policy, and the latest
imperialist war, but also the economic impossibility
for a socialist state to exist in isolation. The
productive forces of capitalist countries have long been confined within
the limits of the nation-state. As for socialist society
, it can only be built on the basis of the
most progressive productive forces : electrification, the "chemicalization
" of production processes, including agriculture, the
combination and generalization of the superior elements of the
most advanced contemporary technology. Since Marx, we
have constantly reiterated that capitalism is incapable of
mastering the spirit of the new technology it itself brought
into being ; a spirit that not only explodes the
legal framework of private bourgeois property, but
also, as the war of 1914 demonstrated, shatters the national structure
of the bourgeois state. Socialism, therefore, must not only
reclaim from capitalism the most developed productive forces
, but immediately take them further, elevate them, and
develop them to a degree that was never possible under
capitalism. How then, one might ask, will socialism
push back the productive forces to force them
within the limits of the nation-state from which they were already
furiously trying to escape under capitalism ? Or perhaps
we must renounce the "untamed" productive forces that
are confined within the national framework, and consequently also within
that of the theory of socialism in one country ? Must
we limit ourselves to productive forces that are somehow
domesticated, in other words, to a backward economic technique
? But then we must, from now on, in a whole
series of branches, no longer rise, but fall below
even the pitiful current technical level, which has managed to
indissolubly link bourgeois Russia to the world economy and
lead it to participate in the imperialist war, that is to say, a
war to enlarge its territory to the measure of the productive forces
that have overflowed the framework of the nation-state.
The workers’ state, inheriting these forces and having
reconstituted them, is forced to export and import.
The unfortunate problem is that the draft program merely
mechanically introduces into its text the thesis of the incompatibility
of current capitalist technology with national frameworks ;
then it reasons as if this
incompatibility were entirely irrelevant. Essentially, this entire project is nothing more than a combination
of ready-made revolutionary theses from Marx and Lenin and
opportunist or centrist conclusions that are utterly irreconcilable
with these theses. This is why it is necessary, without being
seduced by a few isolated revolutionary formulas in the
project, to clearly discern the direction in which its
essential tendencies are heading.
We have already quoted the passage from the first chapter, which speaks
of the possibility of the triumph of socialism in "a single
capitalist country, taken in isolation." This idea is expressed more clearly
and more bluntly in the fourth chapter, where it is stated
that :
"The dictatorship (?) of the world proletariat... can only
be achieved after the victory of socialism (?) in
various countries, when the newly formed proletarian republics
federate with those already existing."
If we interpret the words "victory of socialism" simply
as another name for the dictatorship of the proletariat
, then it is merely an indisputable commonplace that
should have been better formulated in the program to
avoid a double meaning. But this is not the
intention of the project’s authors. By victory of
socialism, they mean not simply the conquest of power and the
nationalization of the means of production, but the construction
of a socialist society in a single country. If we accept this
interpretation, we are faced not with a
world socialist economy based on an international division of
labor, but with a federation of socialist communes,
each with its own goal, along the lines of
blessed anarchism, only extending the boundaries of
these communes to those of the nation-state.
The draft program, in its anxious desire to
eclecticistically conceal the new way of approaching the question with
old formulas that are familiar, resorts to the
following thesis : "Only after the complete victory of the proletariat
in the world, after its world power has been consolidated,
will there come a lasting era of intense construction of
the world socialist economy." (Chapter IV).
This thesis, intended to serve as theoretical camouflage,
actually reveals the essential contradiction. If, in the thesis
under consideration, one means that the era of genuine
socialist construction can only begin after the victory of the
proletariat in at least several advanced countries, then one simply abandons
the theory of building socialism in a
single country, and adopts the position of Marx and Lenin.
But if we take as our starting point the new
Stalin-Bukharin theory, which took root in various parts of the
program, we have as our prospect the realization of
integral socialism in several different countries before the
total and worldwide victory of the proletariat ; and it is with these socialist countries
that the world socialist economy will be built, exactly
in the way that children build their house with
ready-made blocks. In reality, the world socialist economy
will by no means be the sum of national socialist economies.
It can only be constituted, in its essential features, on the
very basis of the global division of labor created by all the
previous development of capitalism. Its foundations
will be formed and rebuilt not after the construction of
"integral socialism" in a series of countries, but in the
hurricanes and storms of the world proletarian revolution
that will occupy several decades. The economic successes
achieved by the first countries of the proletarian dictatorship will
not be measured by the degree to which they approach
self-contained "integral socialism," but rather by the
political stability of the dictatorship itself and the successes obtained in
preparing the elements of the future world socialist economy
.
Revisionist thinking is expressed with greater precision, and
consequently, with even greater brutality, if possible, in the
fifth chapter ; hiding behind a line and a half of
Lenin’s posthumous article which they distort, the authors of the
draft program assert that the U.S.S.R. "possesses in the
country the necessary and sufficient material bases, not only
to overthrow the landowners and the bourgeoisie,
but also to build integral socialism."
Under what circumstances have we inherited
such exceptional historical privileges ? We read about this
in the second chapter of the project :
"The imperialist front was broken (by the 1917 revolution
) in its weakest link, Tsarist Russia"
(emphasis added).
This is a magnificent phrase by Lenin. Essentially, it
means that Russia was the most backward and
economically weakest imperialist state. This is precisely why
Russia’s ruling classes were the
first to collapse, having burdened the country’s insufficient productive forces
with an unbearable load. Uneven, stop-start development
forced the proletariat of the most
backward imperialist power to seize power first. We were once
taught that, precisely for this reason, the working class
of the "weakest link" would encounter greater
difficulties in achieving socialism than the proletariat of the
advanced countries ; it would have more difficulty seizing power, but
having achieved it long before we had closed
the gap, it would not only overtake us but would
pull us along in the process of building genuine
socialism based on
superior global technology and the international division of labor. This was the
conception with which we entered the
October Revolution, a conception that the party formulated tens and
hundreds of thousands of times in the press and at
meetings, but which, since 1925, has been subjected to attempts to replace with a
diametrically opposed idea. Now it is clear that the fact
that the former Tsarist Russia was "the weakest link"
places in the hands of the proletariat of the USSR, with Tsarist Russia
and its inherited weaknesses, an invaluable advantage : that
of possessing its own national foundations for "building
comprehensive socialism."
Unfortunate England does not enjoy such a privilege,
due to the excessive development of its productive forces,
which require almost the entire world to obtain raw materials and sell their products. If England’s productive
forces were more "moderate," maintaining a relative balance between industry and agriculture, then perhaps the English proletariat could build full-fledged socialism on its island "considered in isolation," protected by its fleet against foreign intervention.
The draft program, in its fourth chapter,
divides capitalist states into three groups : 1. “Countries of
advanced capitalism (United States, Germany, England, etc.)” ;
2. “Countries where capitalism has reached a
medium level of development (Russia before 1917, Poland, etc.)” ; 3. “
Colonial and semi-colonial countries (China, India, etc.).”
Although “Russia before 1917” is infinitely closer
to present-day China than to the United States today, one
might not raise any special objections to this
schematic division were it not for the fact that, in conjunction with other parts
of the draft, it becomes a source of false conclusions. Since the
draft considers that countries of “medium development” possess
“a sufficient minimum of industry” to build
socialism on their own, this must be even more
true for countries of advanced capitalism. It turns out that only
colonial and semi-colonial countries need outside help
; this is precisely what the program project,
as we will see in another chapter, finds its
distinctive feature.
However, if we approach the problems of building
socialism with this single criterion, disregarding
the country’s natural resources, the internal relationship between industry
and agriculture, and its place in the global
economic system, we will fall into further
, no less egregious, errors and contradictions. We have just spoken of
England. It is undeniably a country of
advanced capitalism, and it is precisely for this reason that it has no
chance of successfully building socialism within
its insular borders. England, subjected to a blockade,
would suffocate within a few months.
Superior productive forces, all other things
being equal, certainly present an enormous advantage for
the construction of socialism. They imbue the economy with
exceptional flexibility, even when it is isolated
by blockade ; this was evident in bourgeois Germany
during the war. But for these advanced countries, the construction
of socialism on national bases would correspond to a
general decline, an overall reduction of productive forces, that is
to say, would run directly counter to the tasks of socialism.
The draft program neglects the fundamental thesis concerning
the incompatibility of current productive forces and national borders
: it follows that superior productive forces
are no less of an obstacle to the construction of socialism
in a single country than underdeveloped forces, although for
the opposite reasons : if the latter are insufficient for their
base, it is conversely their base that is too restricted (within the
country) for the former. We forget the law of
unequal development precisely when we need it most and when it is
most important.
The problem of building socialism cannot be solved
simply by the country’s industrial "maturity" or "immaturity
." This immaturity is itself uneven. Thus,
in the USSR, where certain branches of industry, primarily
machine manufacturing, are woefully inadequate to meet
even the most basic needs, others, on the other hand, cannot
, under the given circumstances, develop without
substantial and ever-increasing exports. Among these
exports, some are of paramount importance, such as
forestry, oil extraction, and manganese mining
, not to mention agriculture. Furthermore, the
"insufficient" sectors will no longer be able to develop effectively
if the sectors that produce in (relative) "surplus"
cannot export. The impossibility of building
an isolated socialist society—not in Utopia or
Atlantis, but within the concrete, geographical,
and historical conditions of our earthly economy—is determined in
various countries to varying degrees, as much by the
insufficient development of certain sectors as by the “excessive” development
of others. Overall, this means
precisely that contemporary productive forces are
incompatible with national frameworks.
“What was the imperialist war ? A revolt of the
productive forces, not only against the bourgeois forms
of property, but also against the frameworks of
capitalist states. The imperialist war meant, in fact,
that the productive forces were found unbearably
confined within the limits of nation-states. We have
always maintained that capitalism is not capable of
controlling the productive forces it has developed, that
only socialism is capable of incorporating them, when,
after their growth, they exceed the framework of
nation-states, into a superior economic whole. There are no
longer any paths that lead back to an
isolated state…” (57)
In attempting to justify the theory of socialism in one
country, the draft program makes a double, triple,
quadruple error : it exaggerates the level of productive forces in the
USSR ; it turns a blind eye to the law of uneven development
of the various branches of industry ; it neglects the
global division of labor ; and finally, it forgets the fundamental contradiction
existing between productive forces and national barriers
in the imperialist era.
In order not to leave out of our examination a single
argument, we still need to recall one more consideration, the
most general one in fact, emanating from Bukharin in his defense
of the new theory.
Throughout the world, Bukharin said, the relationship between
the proletariat and the peasantry is no more favorable than in the
USSR. Therefore, if, due to reasons of delayed development
, socialism could not be built in the USSR, it
is also unrealizable on the scale of the world economy.
This argument should be introduced into all dialectic textbooks
as a classic example of a scholastic reasoning process
.
Firstly, while it is very likely that the relationship between the
proletariat and the peasantry throughout the world does
not differ so much from that which exists in the USSR, the
world revolution, like the revolution in a country, is by no
means achieved according to the method of the arithmetic mean.
Thus, the October Revolution occurred and took hold primarily
in proletarian Petrograd, without selecting a region where the
ratio of workers to peasants corresponded to the average for
all of Russia. After Petrograd, and later Moscow,
established the revolutionary power and army, they
still had to fight for several years to overthrow the
bourgeoisie throughout the country ; only as a result of this
process, which is called revolution, was the current ratio between the proletariat and the peasantry established within the
borders of the USSR
. Revolution is not accomplished according to the method
of arithmetic averages. It may even begin in
a less favorable sector ; but as long as it has
not been consolidated in the most decisive sectors of both the
national and world fronts, one cannot speak of its
definitive victory.
Secondly, the relationship between the proletariat and the peasantry
within the framework of an "average" level of technology is
not the sole determining factor. The class struggle
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie still exists. The USSR is
surrounded not by a working-class and peasant world, but by a
capitalist universe. If the bourgeoisie were overthrown worldwide
, it goes without saying that this fact in itself would not
yet alter either the relationship between the proletariat and the peasantry or the
average level of technology in the USSR or the world
. Nevertheless, the construction of socialism in the USSR
would immediately open up new possibilities and
take on a completely different scope, entirely beyond comparison
with its current state.
Third : if the productive forces of each
advanced country have exceeded national borders to any degree
, then, according to Bukharin, it must be concluded that the
productive forces of all countries have exceeded the limits of the Earth
and, consequently, that socialism must be
built only on the scale of the entire solar system.
We repeat : Bukharin’s argument based on the
average proportion of workers and peasants should be
introduced into political primers, not, as
is probably the case now, to defend the theory
of socialism in one country, but as proof of
the total incompatibility between casuistry and Marxist dialectics
.
9. The question can only be decided in the arena of
world revolution
The new doctrine states : socialism can be built
on the basis of a nation-state, provided that no
intervention occurs. From this can and must follow, despite all the
solemn declarations of the draft program, a policy
of collaboration with the bourgeoisie of other countries. The goal is
to avoid intervention : indeed, this will ensure the construction of
socialism and thus the fundamental historical problem will be
resolved. The task of the parties of the Communist International
then takes on a secondary character : to protect the USSR from
interventions, and not to fight for the conquest of power. These
are obviously not subjective intentions, but the
objective logic of political thought.
"The divergence," said Stalin, "consists in the fact that the
party considers that these (internal) contradictions and
possible conflicts are perfectly surmountable on the basis of the
very forces of our revolution, while Comrade
Trotsky and the Opposition believe that they can only be triumphed
over on an international scale, in the arena of the
world revolution of the proletariat." (58)
Yes, the divergence is expressed precisely in these terms. The contradiction between national-reformism and revolutionary internationalism
could not be formulated more precisely . If our difficulties, obstacles, and internal contradictions, which are merely a reflection of global contradictions, can be resolved simply by "the forces of our revolution itself," without entering "the arena of world revolution," then the International is a semi-auxiliary , semi-decorative institution whose congresses can be convened every four years, every ten years, or not at all. If we also add that the proletariat of other countries must protect our construction against military intervention, the International should, according to this model, play the role of an instrument of pacifism. Its fundamental role, that of an instrument of world revolution, inevitably recedes into the background. And, we repeat, this occurs not according to conscious intentions (on the contrary, a whole series of passages in the program testify to the authors’ best intentions) but as a consequence of the internal logic of the new theory ; which is a thousand times more dangerous than the worst subjective intentions.
Indeed, even in preparation for the plenum of the Executive Committee of
the Communist International, Stalin had dared to develop and
demonstrate the following idea :
"Our party has no right to deceive (!) the
working class ; it should have said frankly that the lack of
certainty (!) about the possibility of building socialism
in our country leads to the abandonment of power, to the
transformation of our party from a governing party into
an opposition party." (59)
This means : “You only have the right to hope in the
meager resources of the national economy ; you cannot
hope for anything from the inexhaustible resources of the
international proletariat. If you cannot do without the international revolution
, relinquish power, this October power that we
conquered in the interest of the international revolution.” This is
the depths of depravity one can reach, in the realm of ideas,
when one starts from a radically flawed way of posing the
question !
The project develops an undeniable idea when it states
that the economic successes of the USSR are inextricably
linked to the world proletarian revolution. But the
political danger of this new theory lies in its
erroneous comparison of the two levers of control for world socialism :
our economic achievements and the world proletarian revolution
. Without the victory of the latter, we will
not build socialism. The workers of Europe and the entire world
must clearly understand this. The lever of economic construction
is of enormous importance. If the leadership is mistaken,
the dictatorship of the proletariat weakens ; the fall of this dictatorship
would deal such a blow to the world revolution that it would
not recover for many years. But the resolution of the
fundamental historical struggle between the world of
socialism and that of capitalism depends on the second lever, that is,
the world proletarian revolution. The enormous importance
of the Soviet Union comes from the fact that it constitutes the basis
on which the world revolution rests and not at all from its
capacity to build socialism independently of the
world revolution.
In a tone of superiority that nothing justifies, Bukharin
asked us several times :
"If there are already premises, these starting points,
a sufficient basis and even some successes in the work of
building socialism, where then is the limit, the edge from
which ’everything is done in the opposite direction’ ? There is
none." (60)
This is flawed geometry, not
historical dialectic. Such a slant can exist. It can exist in
the domestic, international, political, economic, and
military spheres. The most important, the most threatening, would be a
serious and lasting consolidation of global capitalism, a
new surge of the latter. The economic and
political question thus leads to the global arena.
Can the bourgeoisie secure for itself a new era of capitalist growth
? To deny such a possibility, to bet on the "dead
end" of capitalism, would be nothing but revolutionary rhetoric
. "There are no situations that are completely hopeless"
(Lenin). The current state of unstable equilibrium between classes in
Europe cannot last indefinitely, precisely because it is
unstable.
When Stalin and Bukharin demonstrate that the USSR
can, as a state (that is, in its relations with the
world bourgeoisie) do without the help of the foreign proletariat,
they show the same blindness as in the other
consequences of their fundamental errors, because the current
active sympathy of the working masses protects us against
intervention.
It is entirely undeniable that, after the
Social Democrats sabotaged the post-war uprising of the
European proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the active sympathy of the
working masses saved the Soviet Republic. During those
years, the European bourgeoisie was unable to muster the
necessary strength to wage a major war against the workers’ state.
To believe, however, that such a balance of power can be maintained
for years, for example until the construction of
socialism in the USSR, would be to demonstrate the greatest
blindness and to judge an entire curve based on a very
small segment. Such an unstable situation, where the proletariat cannot
seize power while the bourgeoisie does not feel
firmly in control of its own house, must, sooner or later, within a year
, decide brutally in one direction or the other : that
of the dictatorship of the proletariat or that of a
serious and lasting consolidation of the bourgeoisie on the backs of the
popular masses, on the bones of colonial peoples, and who knows...
on our own. "There are no situations that are absolutely hopeless
." The bourgeoisie can permanently escape its
most painful contradictions only by following the path opened
by the defeats of the proletariat and the errors of the revolutionary leadership
. But the reverse is also true. There
will be no further rise of global capitalism (the
prospect of a new era of great upheaval) if
the proletariat can find a revolutionary way out of the
current unstable equilibrium.
"It must now be demonstrated by the practical work
of the revolutionary parties," said Lenin
at the Second Congress on July 19, 1920, "that they have sufficient
awareness, organizational spirit, connection with the
exploited masses, resolve, and knowledge to use
this crisis to the advantage of a triumphant revolution, culminating
in success." (61)
As for our internal contradictions, which depend directly
on the course of the struggle in Europe and the world, they
can be intelligently regulated and mitigated by a
just domestic policy based on Marxist foresight ; but
they can only be overcome by eliminating class contradictions
, which is impossible before
the European revolution has occurred and triumphed. Stalin is right : there is a
divergence precisely on this point, and it is the fundamental divergence
that exists between reformist nationalism and
revolutionary internationalism.
10. The theory of socialism in one country as a source
of inevitable social-patriotic errors
The theory of socialism in one country inevitably leads
to underestimating the difficulties that must be overcome and
exaggerating the achievements made. No assertion could be
more anti-socialist and anti-revolutionary than Stalin’s declaration
that 90% of socialism has been achieved in
our country. This seems specifically designed for the self-satisfied bureaucrat . In this way , the idea of socialist society in the eyes of the working masses
can be irreparably damaged . The successes of the Soviet proletariat are magnificent considering the conditions under which they were achieved and the low level of cultural heritage. But these achievements carry little weight in the balance of the socialist ideal. To avoid condemning to discouragement the worker, the agricultural laborer, the poor peasant , who, in the eleventh year of the revolution, see misery, poverty, unemployment, queues outside bakeries , illiteracy, vagrant children, drunkenness, and prostitution all around them, we must tell the truth, however cruel it may be, and not a pleasant lie. Instead of lying to them by assuring them that 90% of socialism has already been achieved, we must tell them that currently our economic level, our daily living conditions , and our culture place us much closer to capitalism, and moreover to a backward and uncultured capitalism, than to a socialist society. We must tell them that we are only moving towards the path of the true construction of socialism after the conquest of power by the proletariat of the most advanced countries ; that we must work tirelessly towards this construction , using two levers : one short, that of our economic efforts at home, and the other long, that of the international struggle of the proletariat.
In short, instead of Stalin’s phrases about 90% of
socialism already being achieved, we should quote these words from Lenin :
“Russia (impoverished) will only become so (abundant
) if it rejects all discouragement and all
phraseology, if, gritting its teeth, it gathers all
its strength and tenses every nerve and every muscle, if it
understands that salvation is possible only on the path
of the international socialist revolution, which
we have entered.” (62)
We have even heard prominent members of
the Communist International put forward the following argument : obviously, the
theory of socialism in one country lacks substance,
but it offers a perspective, under difficult conditions, to
Russian workers, and thus gives them courage. It is difficult
to measure the depth of the fall, from a theoretical point of view,
of those who do not seek in a program a means of
orientation, a class-based tool with a scientific foundation, but rather
moral consolation. Consoling theories that contradict
the facts belong to religion, not science. And yet, “
religion is the opium of the people” (63).
Our party went through its heroic period with a program
entirely focused on the international revolution, not
on socialism in one country. The Communist Youth,
bearing a banner that proclaimed backward Russia
would not build socialism by its own strength alone, endured the
harshest years of the Civil War, famine, cold, grueling
Communist Saturdays and Sundays, epidemics, studying on an
empty stomach, and the countless casualties that marked every
advance. Party and
Communist Youth members fought on all fronts, hauled beams
through railway stations, not because they hoped to build
the edifice of national socialism with them, but because they were serving the
international revolution, which demands that the Soviet fortress
hold firm ; and, for the Soviet fortress, every new
beam is important. That was how we approached the
matter. The deadlines changed, shifted (though not
so much) ; But the
principled approach to the problem still retains all its force. The
proletarian, the poor peasant partisan, the young communist,
demonstrated beforehand, by all their conduct prior to 1925, the year in
which the new gospel was first preached, that they
had no need of it. But it was necessary for the bureaucrat
who looks down on the masses, for the administrator who struggles
for crumbs and doesn’t want to be bothered, for the man of
the apparatus who seeks to command by hiding behind a
salutary and comforting facade. These are the ones who believe that the obscure masses need "good news," that the people
cannot be controlled without doctrines of consolation.
It is
precisely they who seize upon the false words about the
"90% of socialism", because this formula consecrates their
privileged position, their right to order, to command, their desire to
free themselves from the criticism of "men of little faith" and
"skeptics".
The complaints and accusations that questioning
the possibility of building socialism in one
country would extinguish the spirit and kill energy resemble, despite
different circumstances, the accusations that reformists
have always leveled against revolutionaries. "You tell the
workers that they cannot obtain any significant improvement in their
situation within the limits of capitalist society,"
the reformists objected, "and therefore, you kill their
energy for struggle." In reality, it was only under the leadership of
revolutionaries that workers truly fought for
economic gains and parliamentary reforms.
The worker who understands that one cannot build the
socialist paradise like an oasis in the hell of global capitalism,
and that the destiny of the Soviet republic, and consequently
his own, depends entirely on the international revolution
, will fulfill his duty to the USSR with much
more energy than the worker who has been told that what
already exists is 90% socialism. "Is it then worth
striving for socialism ?" The reformist way of approaching
the question, here as everywhere, strikes not only revolution
, but also reform.
In the 1915 article already cited above, devoted to the slogan
of the United States of Europe, we wrote :
“To examine the prospects of social revolution
within the national framework would mean falling victim to the same
narrow-minded national spirit that constitutes the basis of social-
patriotism. Until the end of his days, Vaillant (64) believed that
France was the promised land of social revolution ;
it was precisely from this point of view that he wanted
to defend it to the very end.” Lensch (65) and his associates (some
hypocritically, others sincerely) believed that
Germany’s defeat would first and foremost mean the destruction of
the foundation of the social revolution... Overall, it
should not be forgotten that alongside the most vulgar reformism, there
still exists within social-patriotism a
revolutionary messianism that extols the exploits of its nation-state
because it considers its industrial situation, its
"democratic" form, or its revolutionary conquests to call upon it
to lead humanity to socialism or "democracy
." If a victorious revolution could truly be
conceived within the confines of a better-prepared nation, this
messianism, linked to the program of national defense,
would have a relative historical justification in its favor.
But in reality, he does not have one. To struggle to preserve the
national basis of the revolution by methods that undermine the
international ties of the proletariat is, in fact, to undermine the
revolution ; the latter cannot begin except on
a national basis, since it cannot be completed on
that basis, due to the economic,
political, and military interdependence of the European states, which has
never manifested itself with such force as during the
current war. Precisely this interdependence, which
will directly and immediately condition the coordination
of the actions of the European proletariat during the
revolution, is expressed by the slogan of the United States
of Europe.” (66)
Starting from his flawed interpretation of the
1915 polemic, Stalin tried more than once to present
things as if the mention of the narrow-minded "national spirit" was aimed at
Lenin. It is difficult to imagine anything more absurd. When I had to
argue with Lenin, I always did so openly,
always guided solely by considerations of ideas. The article
names those it accuses : Vaillant, Lensch, etc.
It must be remembered that 1915 was the year of the social-
patriotic orgy, while our struggle against it was raging.
This was the touchstone of all the questions. The
fundamental question contained in the above quote is
correctly posed : preparing to build socialism in one
country is a social-patriotic process.
The patriotism of German Social Democrats began
as a perfectly legitimate party patriotism—their party being the
most powerful in the Second International. German Social Democracy
wanted to build "its" socialist society on the basis
of German advanced technology and the superior
organizational qualities of the German people. Leaving aside the
hardened bureaucrats, the opportunists, the parliamentary opportunists,
and the political swindlers in general, the social patriotism of
the rank-and-file Social Democrat stemmed precisely from the hope of
building German socialism. It is simply inconceivable
that hundreds of thousands of activists forming
Social Democratic cadres (not to mention the millions of rank-and-file workers
) were seeking to defend the Hohenzollerns or the bourgeoisie.
No, they wanted to protect German industry,
German roads and railways, German technology and culture,
and above all the organizations of the German working class, as
"necessary and sufficient" national premises of
socialism.
In France, too, a similar process was unfolding.
Guesde, Vaillant, and with them thousands of
the party’s best activists and cadres, along with hundreds of thousands of ordinary
workers, rightly saw France, with its traditions
of revolt, its heroic proletariat, and its flexible, gifted,
and highly educated population, as the promised land of socialism. It was
neither the bankers nor the rentiers that the old Guesde,
Vaillant the Communard, and with them thousands upon hundreds
of thousands of honest workers defended. They sincerely believed they were defending
the foundation and the creative force of the future socialist society. They
initially adopted the theory of socialism in
one country entirely ; they believed they were "temporarily" sacrificing
international solidarity to this idea.
This comparison with the social-patriots naturally calls for
the following response : in relation to the Soviet state,
patriotism is a revolutionary duty, while in relation to the
bourgeois state it constitutes treason. This is quite true.
Can adult revolutionaries even discuss such a question
? But the further one goes, the more an indisputable thesis serves
as a scholastic smokescreen for a viewpoint known to be a
deliberate fabrication.
Revolutionary patriotism can only have a
class character. It begins as party and trade union patriotism
and rises to become state patriotism when the
proletariat seizes power. Wherever power is in the hands
of the workers, patriotism is a revolutionary duty. But
this patriotism must be an integral part of revolutionary internationalism
. Marxism has always taught workers
that even the struggle for wages and the limitation of the
working day can only prevail if it is waged as an
international struggle. And now, suddenly, it turns out
that the ideal of socialist society can be achieved by the
forces of a single nation alone. This is a fatal blow to the International
. The unshakeable conviction that the fundamental class goal
cannot be achieved, much less its partial objectives,
by national means or within the framework of a nation, lies at the
heart of revolutionary internationalism. If the ultimate goal can be achieved
within national borders through the efforts
of a nation’s proletariat, then the backbone of internationalism
is broken. The theory of the possibility of realizing
socialism in a single country severs the internal link between the
patriotism of the victorious proletariat and the defeatism of the proletariat
in bourgeois countries. As things stand, the proletariat of the
advanced capitalist countries is still only advancing toward power.
How it will march toward it, what paths it will follow in
its march, will depend entirely on its
answer to the question of whether it considers the
task of building socialist society a
national or an international problem.
If it is possible, from a principled standpoint, to achieve
socialism in a single country, this theory can be admitted not
only after the conquest of power, but also before. If
socialism is achievable within the national framework of the backward USSR,
it is all the more so in advanced Germany. Tomorrow,
the leaders of the German Communist Party will develop this
theory. The draft program gives them the right to do so. The day after
tomorrow, it will be the turn of the French Communist Party. This will be the
beginning of the disintegration of the Communist International along
the lines of social-patriotism. The Communist Party of any
capitalist country, convinced that it possesses within its state all
the "necessary and sufficient" foundations to build, by
its own forces, "a fully socialist society," will,
in essence, be no different from revolutionary social democracy
, which, likewise, did not begin with Noske (69), but
which definitively collapsed on this issue on August 4, 1914.
When it is said that the very existence of the USSR
is a guarantee against social-patriotism, because patriotism
towards the workers’ republic is a revolutionary duty, one is
precisely expressing a narrow-minded national spirit through this
one-sided use of a valid idea : one only has the USSR in mind and
one turns a blind eye to the entire world proletariat.
The latter can only be guided towards defeatism towards the bourgeois state
by addressing the essential problem from an
international perspective in the program, by ruthlessly refuting the
social-patriotic contraband which, for the moment, still disguises itself
by infiltrating the theoretical domain of
the Leninist International’s program.
It is not too late to return to the path of
Marx and Lenin. This necessary return will open the only path
that can lead forward. It is to facilitate this
salutary correction that we present this critique of the draft program to the Sixth Congress of the
Communist International.
II. THE STRATEGY AND TACTICS OF THE IMPERIALIST ERA
1. The complete inconsistency of the main chapter of the project
The draft program includes a chapter devoted to the
problems of revolutionary strategy. One cannot do
less than acknowledge a good intention, consistent with the
aims and spirit of an international program of the proletariat in
the imperialist era.
The idea of a revolutionary strategy only took hold
in the postwar period, initially certainly under the influence of
military terminology. But its emergence was not accidental
. Before the war, we spoke only of the tactics of the
proletarian party : this concept corresponded exactly
to the parliamentary and trade union methods then prevalent
and did not extend beyond the framework of
current demands and tasks. Tactics are merely a system of measures concerning
a particular problem that arises, or
a separate domain of the class struggle. Revolutionary strategy
encompasses a whole system of actions which, in their connection and
sequence, in their development, must lead the
proletariat to the conquest of power.
It goes without saying that the fundamental principles of
revolutionary strategy were formulated when Marxism posed
to the revolutionary parties of the proletariat the problem of
seizing power on the basis of class struggle. But in
essence, the First International (70) only succeeded in theoretically formulating
these principles and partially verifying them through
the experience of various countries. The era of the Second International (71)
gave rise to methods and concepts such as, later,
the one for which, following Bernstein’s famous expression (72),
"the movement is everything and the objective is nothing." In other
words, the strategic task was reduced to nothing, dissolved in the
daily "movement" with its tactical slogans.
It was only the Second International (73) that restored the rights of
revolutionary strategy by completely subordinating
the methods of tactics to it. Thanks to the invaluable experience
of the first two Internationals, upon whose shoulders
the Third stands, thanks to the revolutionary character of the
present era and the immense historical experience of the
October Revolution, the strategy of the Third International immediately
manifested a vibrant combativeness and
enormous historical experience. But the first decade of the
new International unfolds before our eyes a panorama where there
are not only gigantic battles, but also
cruel proletarian defeats since 1918. This is why the
problems of strategy and tactics must obviously
be at the center of the program of the Communist International
. Yet, in fact, the chapter of the project devoted to the strategy and
tactics of the Communist International—which bears the
subtitle "The Road to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"—is the
weakest chapter, almost inconsistent ; As for the part concerning
the East, it consists of a generalization of the errors
already committed and the preparation of new ones.
The introductory section of this chapter focuses on the
critique of anarchism, revolutionary syndicalism,
constructive socialism, guild socialism (74), etc. This is merely a literary imitation of the 1847 Communist
Manifesto , which ushered in an era of proletarian politics based on science through a brilliant and rigorous critique of the various forms of utopian socialism. To engage, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Communist International, in a hasty and cursory critique of the theories of Cornelissen, Arturo Labriola, Bernard Shaw (75), or of little-known "guildists," is not to respond to a political need, but rather to fall victim to a purely literary pedantry. This dead weight can be boldly discarded from the program and relegated to the realm of propaganda literature.
Regarding the strategic issues themselves, the project
then simply proposes models suitable for
primary schools :
"To gain influence over the majority of members
of one’s own class... To gain influence over the broad
working classes in general... The daily work
to win over the trade unions is particularly important
... Winning over large sectors of poor peasants is
also of enormous importance"...
All these elementary truths, indisputable in themselves
, are simply listed one after the other,
that is to say without being linked to the character of the historical period ;
in the academic and abstract form which they currently take,
they could easily take their place in a resolution
of the Second International.
The fundamental problem of the program, the strategy of the
revolutionary coup d’état (conditions and methods for approaching
the insurrection itself, the conquest of power) is
examined in an arid and dry manner in a schematic extract,
shorter than the one devoted to "constructive"
and "guild" socialism : this examination is done in an abstract and
pedantic way without reference to the living experience of our time.
There is no mention of the great battles of the proletariat in
Finland, Germany, and Austria, nor of the
Hungarian Soviet Republic, the September Days (1920) in Italy,
the events of 1923 in Germany, or the general strike (of
1926) in England, except in a
dry chronological enumeration, not in Chapter VI, which deals with the strategy of the
proletariat, but in Chapter II, which sets forth "the crisis of
capitalism and the first phase of the world revolution." In
other words, the great proletarian struggles are considered
only as objective events, expressions of the
"general crisis of capitalism," and not as the
strategic experience of the proletariat. It will suffice to point out that the condemnation
of the revolutionary spirit of adventure (“putschism”), which
is in itself a duty, is formulated in the draft without
even attempting to answer the question of whether, for example,
the uprising in Estonia, the attack on Sofia Cathedral
in 1924, or the last Canton 76 uprising were
heroic manifestations of the revolutionary spirit of adventure
or, on the contrary, methodical actions falling within the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat. A draft that fails to address this urgent question
on the problem of “putschism” is merely a diplomatic evasion by the chancellery, not a document of communist strategy.
It is evident that, in the project under consideration, the abstract way
in which the problems of the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle
are posed, placing oneself above history, is not accidental.
This literary, pedantic, reasoning, Bukharan-
esque approach to posing problems without adopting the perspective of
revolutionary action has yet another cause : for
reasons that are all too understandable, the authors of the
project generally prefer not to delve too deeply
into the strategic lessons of the past five years.
However, a revolutionary action program cannot be conceived
as a mere collection of abstract theses,
independent of what transpired during those historical years
. A program obviously cannot recount everything
that happened, but it must take it as its starting point and
foundation, encompassing all events and referring to them. The program must
allow us to grasp, through its theses, all the
major events of the proletariat’s struggle and all the
important facts of the struggle of ideas within the Communist International
. If this is true for the program as a whole, it is even
more so for the section devoted to questions of strategy and
tactics. Here, in Lenin’s words, we must record what
has been won as well as what has been lost, which
can become a "conquest" if we fully understand and assimilate it
. The proletarian vanguard does not need a
catalogue of commonplaces, but a manual of action. That is
why we will examine the problems of the chapter "strategy
" by linking them closely to the experience of the post-
war struggle, especially of the last five years, during which the
leadership has made tragic mistakes.
2. Essential characteristics of the strategy during the
revolutionary period and the role of the party
The imperialist era is the era of proletarian revolutions
, but the chapter of the program on strategy and
tactics does not, in a somewhat coherent way, make any
comparison from the point of view of strategy between the
present period and that of the pre-war period.
It is true that, in the first chapter, he characterizes the
period of industrial capitalism as a whole as
"a period of relatively continuous evolution of the spread
of capitalism across the globe thanks to the partitioning
of the still unoccupied colonies which took place by force of arms
".
It is also true that this way of appreciating it is quite
contradictory ; nevertheless, it undeniably embellishes the era
of industrial capitalism, which was one of
grandiose upheavals, wars, and revolutions, surpassing in violence
all of humanity’s past. But shouldn’t it have been characterized
as absolutely idyllic, at least to somewhat justify
the recent, ludicrous assertion by the authors of the project that
, "in the time of Marx and Engels,"
the law of unequal development couldn’t even have been discussed ? However, while it
is wrong to characterize the entire history of
industrial capitalism as a "continuous evolution," it is right to
emphasize this fact : while the period experienced by Europe between
1871 and 1914, or at least 1905, saw
contradictions accumulate, relations between classes remained within the
framework of legality, and those between states within that of
armed peace. It was at this time that the Second International emerged and then became petrified,
its historical progressive role ending
at the beginning of the imperialist war.
Politics as a historical mass force
always lags behind economics. If the reign of finance capital and
trust monopolies already began at the end of the 19th century, the new
era that reflects this fact in world political life
begins with the imperialist war, with the October Revolution
and the founding of the Third International.
At the root of the explosive nature of this new era, the
abrupt alternation of political ebbs and flows, and the
continuous spasms of the class struggle between fascism and communism
, lies the fact that, from a historical perspective, the
global capitalist system is exhausted, no longer capable of
progressing as a whole. This does not mean that certain
industrial sectors or countries are not growing and will not continue to grow
. But this development is occurring and will continue to occur at the
expense of the growth of other sectors and other countries. The
production costs of the global capitalist system are
increasingly devouring the global income it generates. But Europe,
accustomed to dominating the world because of the speed acquired by
its rapid pre-war growth and which continued
uninterrupted at the time, has encountered more brutally than any
other part of the world the new balance of power, the
new distribution of the world market, and aggravated contradictions
: thus it is precisely Europe that is undergoing the most brutal
transition from the "organic" era of pre-
war development to that of revolutions.
Theoretically, one cannot say that
a new chapter of general capitalist progress is impossible in
the most advanced capitalist countries, those that dominate and
drive development. But for this to happen, capitalism would first have
to leap over high barriers in the realm of class
and relations between states : it would have to crush
the proletarian revolution for a long time, definitively enslave China
, overthrow the Soviet Republic, and so on. We are
very far from that. A theoretical possibility is far from being a
political probability. It goes without saying that some things depend on us,
that is to say, on the revolutionary strategy of the
Communist International. And, ultimately, this question will be
decided on a global scale. But, in the present era, for
which this program is specifically designed, the
general development of capitalism is encountering insurmountable barriers
made up of contradictions that are shaking it in furious turmoil.
This is precisely what gives this era a
revolutionary character and the revolution a permanent character.
The revolutionary character of the era does not consist in
the fact that it allows for revolution (that is, for seizing
power) at every moment. It consists of abrupt and wide oscillations
: one moves from a directly
revolutionary situation, where the communist party can claim
to seize power, to the victory of a
fascist or semi-fascist counter-revolution, from the latter to a provisional regime
of the middle ground ("left-wing bloc", entry of social
democracy into the ruling coalition in Germany, arrival in power of MacDonald’s party (77) etc.) only for the contradictions to become razor-sharp
again and for the question of power to arise once more.
What did you see in Europe in the last decades
before the war ? Economically, a powerful surge
in productive forces through the "normal" fluctuations of
the economic cycle. Politically : the growth of social
democracy, with some minor setbacks, at the expense of
liberalism and "democracy." In other words : a
methodical process in which
economic and political contradictions intensified ; in this sense, we were witnessing the
emergence of the beginnings of the proletarian revolution.
What are we facing in post-war Europe ?
In economic matters, irregular and convulsive contractions and relaxations
of production have generally gravitated, despite
significant technological progress in certain sectors,
around pre-war levels. In the political sphere, there have been
furious oscillations of the political situation to the left and
right. It is quite clear that the abrupt shifts of
the last two or three years are not determined by
changes in fundamental economic factors, but by
causes and forces that originate strictly from the realm
of the superstructure, symbolizing the extreme instability of the entire
system, whose foundations are being eroded by insurmountable
contradictions.
It is only from this characteristic that the full meaning of revolutionary strategy, as opposed
to tactics, is deduced . It is from this that the
new meaning of the party and its leadership also derives.
The project merely provides a formal definition of the party
(vanguard, Marxist theory, embodiment of experience,
etc.) that would produce no dissonance in the program of
pre-war left-wing social democracy. Currently, this is
entirely insufficient.
Faced with expanding capitalism, even the best
leadership of the party could only accelerate the formation of the
workers’ party. Conversely, its errors could only delay this
formation. The objective premises of the revolution matured
slowly, and the party’s work retained its preparatory character
.
Now, any sudden shift in the
political situation to the left places the decision in the hands of the
revolutionary party. If it misses the critical moment when the
situation changes, it will turn into its opposite. Under
such conditions, the role of the leadership takes on exceptional
importance. Lenin’s assertion that two or three days
can decide the fate of the international revolution would
not have been understood in the era of the Second International. In our
time, on the contrary, it has been all too often confirmed negatively
, with the exception of October. It is the sum of these conditions
that explains the quite exceptional place that the Comintern and its
leadership occupy in the general mechanism of the
current historical era.
It must be understood that the primary and fundamental cause
of the so-called "stabilization" is the contradiction between
the general upheaval that has affected the entire economic and social atmosphere
of capitalist Europe and the colonial Orient on the one hand,
and the weakness, unpreparedness, irresolution of the communist parties
and the cruel errors of their leadership on the other.
It was not some stabilization that came from who knows where that
halted the development of the revolutionary situation of
1918, 1919, or the years that followed, but rather this very situation,
which had not been exploited and which was transforming into its
opposite, giving the bourgeoisie the opportunity to struggle with
relative success for stabilization. The increasingly
acute contradictions of this struggle for "stabilization," or, to
put it better, this struggle for the survival and perpetuation of capitalism
, prepare at each new stage the conditions for
new explosions of classes and international relations—
that is to say, for new revolutionary situations whose
development depends entirely on the proletarian party.
The role of the subjective factor can remain entirely secondary
in an era of slow, organic evolution, where
the proverbs of gradualism emerge : "Slow and
steady wins the race," "No one is obligated to do the impossible," etc., which summarize
the wisdom of the tactics of the organic era, which cannot
"skip steps." When the objective premises
are ripe, then the key to the entire historical process shifts to the
subjective factor, namely the party. Opportunism, which lives,
consciously or unconsciously, under the weight of the past, is always inclined
to underestimate the subjective factor, that is, the importance of the
party and its revolutionary leadership. This phenomenon
manifested itself in all its magnitude during the discussions on
the German October, the Anglo-Russian Committee, and the
Chinese Revolution. In these circumstances, as in others less
significant, the opportunistic tendency emerged along
lines that relied directly on the "masses" and
consequently neglected the problems of the "apex" of the
revolutionary leadership. This approach,
theoretically flawed, appears particularly disastrous in
the imperialist era.
The October Revolution was the result of a special balance
of class forces in Russia and the world, and of
their particular development during the
imperialist war. This is ABC for a Marxist. One does not,
however, contradict Marxism by asking, for example, the question :
“Would we have seized power in October if Lenin hadn’t been able to
arrive in Russia in time ?” Many signs indicate that we
might have failed. The resistance was enormous, even after Lenin’s
arrival, in the upper echelons of the party (which, incidentally
, were largely the same as those that
determine current policy). It would have been infinitely stronger
if Lenin hadn’t been there. The party might not have been able
to get on the necessary course in time. And time was
short. In such periods, a few days are sometimes
decisive. The working masses would have exerted their pressure from
below, with great heroism, but without a leadership
consciously and firmly marching toward the goal. It is unlikely
that we would have prevailed. Meanwhile, having ceded Petrograd
to the Germans and crushed the scattered proletarian uprisings
, the bourgeoisie could have consolidated its power,
probably in a Bonapartist form, by concluding
a separate peace with Germany and taking other measures.
The entire course of events could have taken a completely
different turn for years.
In the German Revolution of 1918, the
Hungarian Revolution of 1919, the Italian proletarian movement of
September 1920, the English General Strike of 1926, the
Vienna Uprising of 1927, and the Chinese Revolution
of 1926-27 (78), to varying degrees and in diverse forms,
the same political contradiction is always expressed
in the face of a revolutionary situation that has reached maturity not
only through its social foundations but often also through the
militancy of the masses. The subjective factor is lacking, namely
a mass revolutionary party, or else this party lacks a
perceptive and courageous leadership.
It goes without saying that the weakness of the communist parties and their
leadership did not appear out of thin air, but is a product of
Europe’s entire past. Given the current maturity of
objective revolutionary contradictions, revolutionary parties
could develop at a rapid pace if the
Comintern leadership acted judiciously, accelerating the
maturation process instead of hindering it. If contradiction
is generally the principal source of progress, then
a clear understanding of the contradiction between the
general revolutionary maturity of the objective situation (despite its
ebbs and flows) and the immaturity of the international party of the proletariat
must be the driving force behind the Comintern’s advance, at least in
its European sections.
If we fail to grasp, dialectically, broadly, and
generally, that the present era is one of abrupt turning points
, it is impossible to truly educate young activists,
to ensure sound strategic direction of the class struggle, to
correctly combine tactics, and above all, to rearm
quickly, courageously, and decisively at every turning point
in the situation. And it is precisely such a turning point of two or
three days that sometimes decides the fate of the international revolution
for years to come.
The chapter of the draft program devoted to strategy
and tactics discusses the party’s struggle for the proletariat in
general, the general strike, and armed insurrection in
general. But it does not analyze the particular character and internal rhythm
of the present era. If these are not understood theoretically , if they are not "sensed" politically, revolutionary leadership
is impossible .
That is why this chapter is so pedantic, so thin,
so inconsistent, from beginning to end.
3. The Third Congress and the question of the permanence of the
revolutionary process according to Lenin and Bukharin
In the political development of Europe after the
war, three periods can be distinguished : the first from 1917 to
1921, the second from March 1921 to October 1923 and the third
from October 1923 to the English general strike, or even up to
the present day.
The postwar revolutionary mass movement
was quite sufficient to overthrow the bourgeoisie. But there
was no one to do it. Social democracy, which was at the
head of the old working-class organizations, mustered
all its forces to save the bourgeois regime. Since we expected the proletariat to seize power
during this period, we anticipated that the revolutionary party would mature rapidly in the heat of the civil war. But the timing didn’t work out. The postwar wave receded before the communist parties fighting against social democracy had grown and become sufficiently strong to lead the insurrection .
In March 1921, the German Communist Party attempted
to use the ebbing tide of the war to bring down
the bourgeois state in one fell swoop. The idea behind the German Central Committee
was to save the Soviet republic (the theory of socialism
in one country had not yet been proclaimed) (79).
However, it turned out that the leadership’s resolve and the
masses’ discontent were not enough to achieve victory :
many other conditions were needed, and above all, a close link between the leadership
and the masses, as well as the latter’s confidence in their
leadership. This last condition was lacking.
The Third Congress of the Communist International marks the turning point between
the first and second periods ; it recognized that the
political and organizational resources of the communist parties
were insufficient to seize power, and it launched the slogan
"To the Masses," meaning to seize
power by first winning over the masses in their struggles and
daily lives. For, even in the conditions of a
revolutionary era, the masses live their everyday lives,
albeit differently.
This approach to the problem met with
fierce resistance at the congress, the theoretical inspiration of which
was Bukharin. He positioned himself from the perspective of his own
permanent revolution, not Marx’s : since
capitalism is finished, the revolutionary offensive for victory must be waged relentlessly
. Bukharin’s position
always boils down to syllogisms of this kind.
It goes without saying that I have never shared Bukharin’s theory
of "permanent revolution," which cannot conceive of any discontinuity, periods of stagnation, setbacks, or transient demands
within the revolutionary process . On the contrary, from the very first days of October, I fought against this caricature of permanent revolution.
When I spoke, like Lenin, of the incompatibility between
Soviet Russia and the imperialist world, I had in mind the
grand arc of strategy, not its tactical intricacies.
Bukharin, on the other hand, before transforming into his opposite,
invariably developed his scholastic caricature of the
Marxist conception of revolution. Throughout
the era of "left communism," Bukharin
believed that revolution allowed neither retreats nor
provisional compromises with the enemy. Long after Brest-Litovsk,
where my attitude had nothing in common with Bukharin’s
(80), the latter, along with the entire ultra-left wing of the
then Communist International, adopted the line of the March
1921 events in Germany, believing that if the European proletariat were not "electrified,"
if new revolutionary explosions did not occur again and again
, the power of the soviets
would inevitably collapse. Although I was aware of the
undeniable dangers threatening this power, this did
not prevent me from fighting, hand in hand with Lenin, at the
Third Congress, against this putschist parody of the Marxist conception
of permanent revolution (81). We repeated dozens
of times during this congress, addressing the
impatient leftists (82) : “Do not rush to save us ;
you would only lose yourselves and consequently us as well.
Follow the path of systematic struggle for the conquest of the
masses with a view to seizing power. It is your victory
that we need, not your willingness to fight
for us under unfavorable conditions. We in
Soviet Russia will maintain our positions on the basis
of the NEP and advance a little. You will still have
time to come to our aid at the opportune moment by preparing
your forces and taking advantage of a favorable situation.”
Although it was after the 10th Congress, which had prohibited the
formation of factions, Lenin took the initiative to create the nucleus
of a faction to combat ultra-leftism. In our
small meetings, he clearly raised the question of the paths to
follow should the Third Congress adopt
Bukharin’s position. Our "faction" at the time did not need
to expand because our adversaries, from the Congress onward,
significantly narrowed their ranks.
Naturally, Bukharin strayed further to the left of Marxism
than the others. At that same Third Congress and afterward, he
opposed an idea I was developing : the inevitability
of an economic recovery in Europe. I,
for my part, expected that after a series of defeats for the
proletariat, this recovery, far from undermining the
revolution, would instead trigger a new surge in the
revolutionary struggle. Bukharin, clinging to his
scholastic notion of the permanence not only of the economic crisis
but of the revolution as a whole, fought me
at length based on this idea, until events
forced him to admit, as always with considerable
delay, that he had been mistaken.
At the 3rd and 4th Congresses, Bukharin fought against the policy
of the united front and transitional demands based on his
mechanical conception of the permanence of the revolutionary process
.
One could trace the struggle between these two tendencies—the
synthetic Marxist conception of the continuous nature of the
proletarian revolution, and the parody of
Marxism, which is by no means a personal peculiarity of
Bukharin—in a whole series of other matters, both minor
and major. But it is pointless : fundamentally,
Bukharin’s current stance is his same ultra-
leftist scholasticism of "permanent revolution," but in reverse. For
example, whereas, until 1923, Bukharin believed that,
without a permanent economic crisis and civil war in Europe, the
Soviet Republic would perish, he has now discovered a
recipe that makes it possible to
build socialism without an international revolution. This inverted Bukharinian continuity
has not improved, especially since, all too often, the
current leaders of the Comintern combine the opportunism of their
present stance with the adventurist spirit that inspired them yesterday, and
vice versa.
The Third Congress was a milestone of great importance.
Its teachings remain alive and fruitful today. The
Fourth Congress merely put them into practice. The slogan of the
Third Congress was not simply "To the masses !" but
"To power through the prior conquest of the masses !"
After the faction led by Lenin—whom he significantly called
"the right wing"—had vigorously urged the Congress to exercise
more restraint, Lenin finally convened a small conference
during which he issued this prophetic warning :
"Remember that what matters is simply gaining the right momentum
to make the revolutionary leap ; the struggle for the masses is
the struggle for power."
The events of 1923 showed that not only the
"led", but many leaders had not accepted this
conception of Lenin.
4. The events of 1923 in Germany and the Lessons of October
The new period in the development of the
Communist International opened with the events of 1923 in Germany.
The occupation of the Ruhr by French troops (at the beginning of
1923) meant a relapse of Europe into the chaos of war.
Although this second attack of the disease was incomparably
milder than the first, because it struck
Germany’s already profoundly weakened state,
serious revolutionary consequences were to be expected from the outset. The leadership
of the Comintern failed to take this into account in time. The
German Communist Party continued to follow the directives of the Third Congress, which
had firmly distanced it from the idea of a putsch, but which it had
adopted unilaterally. We have already stated that in our
era of abrupt changes, the most difficult task for a
revolutionary leadership is to know, at the opportune moment, how to
gauge the political situation, perceive its
sudden shifts, and provide timely and decisive guidance. Such
qualities of revolutionary leadership are not acquired simply
by swearing an oath to the latest Comintern circular ; their
acquisition requires, in addition to indispensable theoretical foundations,
personal experience and the practice of genuine self-criticism.
The abrupt shift from the tactics of the March 1921 uprisings to systematic revolutionary activity
in the press, meetings, trade unions, and Parliament was not without difficulty
. Once the crisis stemming from this shift was overcome,
the danger of a new,
unilateral deviation of the opposite nature became apparent. The daily struggle to
win over the masses absorbs all attention : it establishes its
own tactical routine and obscures the
strategic problems arising from changes in the
objective situation.
In the summer of 1923, the domestic situation in Germany turned catastrophic,
primarily due to the failure of the
passive resistance tactic. It became abundantly clear that the
German bourgeoisie would only be able to extricate itself from this "dead
end" if the Communist Party did not fully grasp
this fact and draw the
necessary revolutionary conclusions. But the Communist Party, holding
the key, used it to open the doors to the
bourgeoisie.
Why did the German revolution fail to
achieve victory ? The causes of this failure lie entirely in the
tactics employed and not in chance. Here we have
a classic example of a failed revolutionary situation. The
German proletariat would have gone into battle if it had been
convinced that, this time, the problem of the revolution was
clearly posed, that the Communist Party was ready to go into
battle, that it was capable of ensuring triumph. But the
Communist Party made its shift without conviction and with
considerable delay. Not only the right wing but also
the left wing (83), despite the fierce struggle in which they were
engaged, continued to view the development of the revolution
with great fatalism until September-October.
But it would be the attitude of a pedant, not a revolutionary
, to analyze now, in retrospect, the question of to
what extent the conquest of power would have been "guaranteed" with
a just policy. Let us simply cite in this regard the
magnificent testimony of Pravda—a testimony,
however, due entirely to chance, since it remained isolated and was
contradicted by all the other assessments made by that
newspaper :
“If, in May 1924, faced with a certain stabilization of the
mark, a certain consolidation of the bourgeoisie, the
shift of the middle and petty bourgeoisie
to the nationalists, after a profound crisis in the party, after
a cruel defeat of the proletariat, if, after all this, the
communists managed to garner 3,700,000 votes, it is clear
that in October 1923, faced with an unprecedented
economic crisis, the complete disintegration of the
middle classes, the greatest confusion reigning in the
ranks of social democracy against a backdrop of
powerful and brutal contradictions within the bourgeoisie itself, and
an unprecedented fighting spirit among the proletarian masses
in the industrial centers, the communist party had
the majority of the population on its side : it could and should have
fought, it had every chance of succeeding.” (84)
Let us also quote the words of a German delegate, whose
name is unknown to us, speaking at the Fifth Congress :
"There is not a single conscious worker in Germany
who does not know that the party should have entered the
battle then instead of avoiding it. The leaders of the
German Communist Party forgot that the role of the party is to have its
own value : this is one of the main causes of the
defeat in October." (85)
During the discussions, many things were said about what
happened during 1923, and especially in the
second half of the year, in the upper echelons of the
German Communist Party and the Comintern. What was said, however, is
often far from what actually happened.
It was primarily Kuusinen who created the confusion on these
issues ; in 1924-1926, his task was to demonstrate that
Zinoviev’s leadership had been beneficial, and then, from a
certain point in 1926, he began to try to demonstrate that it
had been disastrous. The authority necessary for the responsible formulation
of such judgments is conferred on Kuusinen by the fact that he
himself, in 1918, did everything within his modest
means to bring about the downfall of the
Finnish proletariat’s revolution (86).
More than once, attempts were made to retrospectively attribute to me
solidarity with Brandler’s line (87). In the USSR, this was done
in veiled terms, because too many people knew what had happened
. In Germany, they went straight for it, because
nobody knew anything. It was entirely by chance that I came
across a fragmentary account of the
intense intellectual struggle that took place within our Central Committee on the question
of the problems of the German revolution. In the documents
concerning the January 1924 conference, I am explicitly
accused by the Politburo of having displayed an attitude of
mistrust and hostility toward the Central Committee of the
German Communist Party in the period preceding its capitulation. Here is what
it says :
“Before leaving the Central Committee meeting (September 1923 plenum), Comrade Trotsky delivered a speech
that deeply disturbed all the members of the Central Committee,
in which he claimed that the leadership of the KPD
was worthless, that the Central Committee of that party was steeped in
fatalism and weakness. Comrade Trotsky thus declared
that the German revolution was doomed to defeat. This
speech deeply depressed all those present. But
the vast majority of comrades felt that this philippic
was linked to an unrelated incident (?!)
that had occurred during the Central Committee plenum
and that this speech did not correspond to the
objective situation.” (88)
However the members of the Central Committee interpreted
my warning, which was not the first, it was
dictated solely by my concerns about the fate of the
German revolution. Unfortunately, subsequent events proved me
entirely right : among other things, because the majority of the Central Committee
of our leading party had, by their own admission, failed to grasp
in time that my warning perfectly "corresponded" to
the "objective situation." I certainly did not propose a hasty replacement
of the Brandlerian Central Committee with any other (such a
substitution on the eve of decisive events would have been
a truly reckless initiative) ; I had proposed, as early as the summer
of 1923, a more opportune and decisive way of addressing the
question of transitioning to insurrection and, consequently, of
mobilizing our forces to assist the Central Committee of the
German party. The attempt to attribute to me solidarity with the
Brandlerian Central Committee line, whose errors were only a reflection of the
general errors of the Comintern leadership, is due above all to the fact
that, after the capitulation of the German party, I opposed making
Brandler a scapegoat although - or
rather because - I judged the German defeat to be infinitely more
serious than the majority of the Central Committee did. In this case, as in
others, I stood against an unacceptable system which, as
a price for the infallibility of the central leadership,
periodically dethrones the national leaderships, which are then savagely
persecuted and even expelled from the party.
In the October Lessons, written under the influence of the
German Central Committee’s capitulation, I developed the idea that, under
current conditions, a revolutionary situation can
be lost for years in a matter of days. It is hard to
believe, but this opinion has been labeled "Blanquist" and
"individualist." The countless articles written against
the October Lessons have demonstrated how much the experience of
the October uprising had been forgotten and how
little its lessons had penetrated people’s consciousness. To shift
the responsibility for the leadership’s errors onto the "masses," or
to diminish the significance of the leadership in general in order to minimize
its culpability, is a typically
Menshevik attitude stemming from an inability to dialectically understand
the superstructure in general, the superstructure of the
class that is the party, and the superstructure of the party in the form of
its central leadership. There are times when even Marx and Engels
cannot advance
historical development by a single inch ; there are others when men of lesser stature,
holding the helm, can delay the development of the
international revolution for several years.
Recent attempts to explain that I repudiated
the October Lessons are utterly absurd. Of course, I did
"acknowledge" a minor error : when I wrote my
October Lessons, that is, in the summer of 1924, it seemed to me that Stalin
had held a more left-wing—that is,
left-centrist—position than Zinoviev had in the autumn of 1923. I was not very well
informed about the inner workings of the group that served as the
secret center of the apparatus of the majority faction. The documents
published after the split of this factional group, in
particular Stalin’s purely Brandlerian letter to Zinoviev
and Bukharin (89), convinced me of my error in assessing
these groups of people, though this had nothing to do
with the substance of the issues at hand. Besides, this error concerning the
individuals was not so serious. It is true that centrism is quite
capable of zigzagging to the left, but, as
Zinoviev’s "evolution" has once again demonstrated, it is quite
incapable of leading a revolutionary line that is even remotely
systematic.
The ideas I developed in Lessons of October
retain their full force today. Better still, they have been
confirmed time and again since 1924.
Among the many difficulties of the proletarian revolution
, one is quite precise, concrete, and specific :
it arises from the situation and tasks of the
revolutionary leadership of the party during a sudden turning point in events
. Even revolutionary parties run the risk of being
overtaken and of opposing yesterday’s slogans and methods of struggle to the
new tasks and demands. And generally speaking, there is no
more acute turning point in events than that which creates the necessity
of an armed insurrection of the proletariat. And it is here that the
danger arises that the party leadership, the party’s policy as a
whole, will not correspond to the mood of the class and
the demands of the situation. When political life develops
at a relatively slow pace, such discrepancies
eventually resolve themselves : they cause damage, not
catastrophes. But in times of
acute revolutionary crisis, it is precisely time that is lacking to overcome the
imbalance and somehow rectify the situation under fire.
Periods during which the revolutionary crisis reaches its
maximum intensity are, by their very nature, rapid in pace.
The discordance between a revolutionary direction (hesitation,
oscillation, temporizing in the face of the furious assaults of the bourgeoisie
) and the objective tasks, can lead in a few
weeks and even in a few days to a catastrophe and the
loss of what it took years of work to prepare.
It is obvious that the discord between the leadership and the party,
or even between the party and the class, can also be reversed, namely
when the leadership anticipates the development of the revolution by
confusing the fifth month of pregnancy with the ninth.
It was in Germany in March 1921 that the most striking example was seen . There, within the party, we had an
extreme manifestation of the "infantile disorder of leftism" and its consequence
— putschism (revolutionary adventurism) (90). This
danger is a reality, for the future as well. This is why
the teachings of the Third Congress retain all their force.
But the German experience of 1923 cruelly demonstrated
the opposite danger in all its magnitude : the situation is ripe, the
leadership is lagging behind. By the time the leadership manages to
adapt to the situation, the latter has already changed : the masses
are retreating and the balance of power has suddenly become
unfavorable.
In the German defeat of 1923, there were obviously
many national particularities, but also profoundly characteristic features
of a general danger.
This latter danger could be described as the crisis of revolutionary leadership on the
eve of the uprising. The base of the proletarian party, by
its very nature, is hardly inclined to submit to the pressure of
bourgeois public opinion. But, as is well known, certain
elements of the upper and middle strata of the party
inevitably fall, to a greater or lesser degree, under the influence of the material
and intellectual terror exerted by the bourgeoisie at the
decisive moment. It is impossible to ignore this danger. Undoubtedly,
there is no
universally applicable and effective remedy against it. But the first step in the struggle against a danger is
to understand its source and nature. The inevitable emergence
and development of a right-wing faction within every
communist party during the pre-October period
reflects, on the one hand, the immense objective difficulties and
dangers of the "leap" and, on the other hand, the furious pressure of
bourgeois public opinion. This is the foundation and
significance of a right-wing faction. This is precisely why hesitations and reticence
arise within communist parties at the most dangerous moment . In our country, in 1917, hesitation seized a minority in the upper classes, and it was overcome only thanks to Lenin’s severe energy. In Germany, the leadership as a whole hesitated : its hesitation spread to the party and, through it, to the class : a revolutionary opportunity was missed. In China, the workers and poor peasants were fighting for power : the central leadership opposed them. These are obviously not the last leadership crises at decisive historical moments.
Minimizing these inevitable crises is one of
the most important tasks of every communist party and of the
Communist International as a whole. This can only be achieved
by understanding the experience of October 1917 and the
political foundation of the Right Opposition that existed then within our
party,9 by comparing them with the experience of the German party in
1923.
This is precisely the meaning of the October Lessons.
5. The Radical Strategic Error of the Fifth Congress
From the end of 1923 onward, we have a series of
documents from the Comintern and a series of statements from its leaders
concerning the "error of timing" they supposedly made in the
autumn of 1923, inevitably referring to Marx
, who was also said to have erred in setting deadlines. At the same time,
deliberately, it was not specified whether
the Communist International’s "error of timing" consisted of having underestimated or,
conversely, overestimated the proximity of the critical moment for seizing
power. In accordance with the double-entry bookkeeping system
that has become, in recent years, a
tradition of leadership, room was left for either of
these two interpretations.
It is not difficult, however, to conclude from the entire policy
of the Comintern during this period that in 1924 and a good part of 1925,
the Comintern leadership believed that
the peak of the German crisis had not yet been reached. It was therefore inappropriate
to refer to Marx. While Marx may have sometimes perceived the
revolution as closer than it actually was, one
would find no instance where he did not recognize the face of
revolution as it approached, or where he persisted in
claiming that the situation remained revolutionary when it
had clearly changed.
At the 11th conference of the Russian Communist Party,
Zinoviev asserted, while launching the double-edged phrase
"error regarding deadlines" :
"The Central Committee and the Communist International
must tell you that, if similar events were to
be repeated in the same situation, we would have to do
the same thing" (92).
This statement sounded like a threat.
On February 2, 1924, at the International Red Aid conference
, Zinoviev stated that the situation in Europe was
as follows :
"One cannot expect to see tranquility, peace, even apparent peace, established there, even temporarily.
Europe is entering a phase of decisive events...
Germany, it seems, is heading towards an
acute civil war" (93).
At the beginning of February 1924, the Presidium of the Executive Committee of
the Comintern, in a resolution on the lessons learned from the events
in Germany, declared :
"The German Communist Party must not remove
the question of insurrection and the conquest of power from the agenda
. On the contrary(!), this question must
be posed to us concretely and with all its
urgency" (94).
On March 26, 1924, the Executive Committee of the Comintern wrote in
its message to the KP.D. :
"The error in the assessment of the pace of events
(what error ? LT) committed in October 1923,
because of great difficulties in our party. But it is only
an episode. The fundamental assessment remains" (95).
The EC draws the following conclusion from all of this :
"The KPD must, as before, continue with
all its might its work of arming the
working class" (96).
The great historical drama of 1923, the abandonment without a fight
of a grand revolutionary position, was considered, six
months later, as an episode, only an episode. Europe
continues to suffer the extremely painful consequences of this
"episode." The fact that the Communist International was able,
for four years, to avoid convening its congress, as well as
the successive defeats of the left within the Comintern itself,
are also a result of the "episode" of 1923.
The Fifth Congress convened eight months after the defeat of the
German proletariat, when all the consequences of the
catastrophe were already evident. At that time, there was less need
to predict the future than to study the present. The essential tasks
of the Fifth Congress should have consisted, firstly, in
clearly and ruthlessly naming the defeat and
exposing its "subjective" cause, without allowing anyone
to hide behind "objective" conditions ; secondly
, in establishing that a new stage was beginning in
which the masses would retreat, social democracy would grow, and
the Communist Party would lose influence ; and thirdly, in preparing
the Comintern so that it would not be caught unawares, equipping it with the
methods necessary for defensive battles, and consolidating its
organization until the next turning point in the situation.
On all these questions, the congress took the opposite stance.
Zinoviev defined for the congress the meaning of what had happened in
Germany :
"We were waiting for the German revolution, and it
never came."
In reality, the revolution was within its rights to respond to them :
"I came, but you gentlemen were late
for your appointment."
The congress leaders, as well as Brandler, believed
that we had "overestimated" the situation, whereas in
reality we had assigned it a low price, too late. Zinoviev
was easily consoled for his supposed "overestimation" :
he saw the main problem elsewhere.
"The overestimation of the situation was not the worst thing.
The worst thing, as the example of Saxony showed, was the fact that there were many remnants of social democracy
in the ranks of our party " (98)
Zinoviev did not see the catastrophe and he was not the only one.
With him, the entire Fifth Congress missed the greatest defeat
of the world revolution. The events in Germany were
essentially analyzed from the perspective of the communists’ policy
... in the Saxon Landtag. In its resolution, the congress
approved the Comintern Executive Committee’s condemnation of the "opportunistic attitude of the German Central Committee and
especially of the deviation from the united front tactics that occurred
during the governmental experiment in
Saxony" (99).
It’s roughly the same as condemning a
murderer "primarily" for not taking off his hat when
entering the victim’s house. And Zinoviev insisted :
"The Saxon experience created a new situation.
It threatened to open the liquidation of the revolutionary tactics
of the Comintern" (100)
Since the "Saxon experiment" was doomed, and Brandler
dismissed, all that remained was to move on to the next item on the agenda :
"The general political prospects,"
Zinoviev and the congress assured him, "remain essentially
the same as before. The situation contains within it the seeds of revolution.
New class battles are already underway again
; a gigantic struggle is taking place—" etc. (101)
How fragile and insecure such “leftism” is,
trapping mosquitoes in its sieve while letting
camels through ! Those who could see the situation with their own eyes, who
emphasized the importance of the October defeat, who demonstrated
that a long period of revolutionary retreat and a
provisional consolidation (“stabilization”) of capitalism, with
all the political consequences that follow, were
inevitable—these were the very people the leaders of the Fifth Congress tried to
brand as opportunists and liquidators of the revolution. This
was the main objective of Zinoviev and Bukharin. Ruth
Fischer, who, like them, underestimated the defeat of the
previous year, noted in the Russian Opposition
“the loss of the prospect of world revolution,
the lack of faith in the proximity of the German and
European revolutions, a hopeless pessimism, the liquidation of the
European revolution, etc.” (102)
It is unnecessary to explain that those most directly responsible for the
defeats were the most ardent in crying out against the "liquidators,"
that is, against those who refused to call the defeats
victories. Thus, Kolarov (103) thundered against Radek, who had
dared to consider the defeat of the Bulgarian party as decisive :
"Neither in June nor in September was the party’s defeat
decisive. The Bulgarian Communist Party is strong and is preparing for
new battles" (at the Fifth Congress).
Instead of a Marxist analysis of the defeats, there is an
irresponsible bureaucratic bravado that triumphs across
the board. Yet, Bolshevik strategy is incompatible
with complacent and passive "kolarovchina."
There were many just and indispensable things in the
work of the Fifth Congress. The struggle against the right-wing tendencies that
were trying to rear their heads could not be
postponed at all. But it went astray in confusion, lost due to the
radically flawed judgment made about the situation : all the cards were shuffled. Those who simply understood yesterday, today, or tomorrow’s events better or more clearly
were lumped into the right-wing camp . If, at the Third Congress, the leftists of the time had triumphed, Lenin, for the same reasons, would have been classified as right-wing along with (Paul) Levi, Clara Zetkin (104), and others. The confusion of ideas created by the erroneous political orientation of the Fifth Congress subsequently became a source of new and great misfortunes.
The political judgment formulated by the congress was fully
applied in the economic sphere as well. The symptoms
of the economic consolidation of the German bourgeoisie
, which had already had time to manifest themselves, were denied
or considered negligible. Varga (105), who
always presents economic facts by adapting them to the
dominant political trend of the day, noted once again
in his report :
"There is no prospect of reforming
capitalism" (106)
A year later, when the sanitation was, somewhat
belatedly, renamed "stabilization," Varga discovered it with zeal...
after the fact. In the meantime, the Opposition had already been accused of
not recognizing stabilization, since it had dared
to see it begin a year and a half earlier and since, as early as 1925,
it had pointed out the tendencies that were undermining it (107)
The Fifth Congress saw the fundamental political processes
and groupings of ideas in the curved mirror of its
misguided orientation : it was from this that its resolution describing
the Russian Opposition as a "petty-bourgeois deviation" was born. History,
in its own way, corrected this error two years later by
forcing Zinoviev, who had been the public accuser at the Fifth Congress
, to publicly acknowledge that the core
of the 1923 Opposition had been right on the fundamental questions
raised by the struggle (108).
The strategic error of the Fifth Congress led to a misunderstanding
of the processes unfolding within
German and international social democracy. At the Congress, the only topics discussed were
its decline, its disintegration, its collapse. Referring
to the results of the Reichstag elections, which gave
the Communist Party 3,700,000 votes, Zinoviev asserted :
“If we have in the German parliament a ratio
of 62 communists to 100 social democrats, this
should serve to prove to everyone how
close we are to winning over the majority of the German working class
.” (109)
Zinoviev did not understand the dynamics of this
process at all : during that year and those that followed,
the influence of the Communist Party did not grow, but declined : its
3,700,000 votes were only the imposing remnant of the
decisive influence that this party had had at the end of 1923 over the majority of the
German proletariat : in later elections, this number
was inevitably bound to decrease.
While social democracy, in 1923, was unraveling
like a rotten mat, it recovered, on the contrary, after the
defeat of the revolution, and developed largely at the
expense of communism. As we had foreseen—how could
we not have ?—our prescience was attributed to our
“pessimism.” Is it still necessary, after the last elections of
May 1928, in which social democracy garnered more than
9 million votes, to demonstrate that we were right when we
said at the beginning of 1924, and wrote, that the rebirth of
social democracy was inevitable for a certain period, and
that the “optimists” were grossly mistaken in singing
its requiems ? It was above all the Fifth Congress that committed a
gross error.
The second youth of social democracy, with all the
hallmarks of a summer of spring, is obviously not eternal.
The death of social democracy is inevitable. But its
timing is nowhere predetermined. It also depends on us.
To shorten its duration, we must face the facts,
recognize the shifts in the political situation in a timely manner,
call a defeat a defeat, and learn to anticipate the future.
If German social democracy
still constitutes a force of several million today, particularly within the
working class, this is due to two immediate causes : firstly
, the capitulation defeat of the KPD in the autumn of 1923, and secondly
, the misguided strategic direction of the Fifth Congress.
While in January 1924 the ratio between
Communist and Social Democratic voters was almost 2 to 3, four years
later this ratio had worsened to only 1 to 3.
In other words, during this period taken as a whole,
we have not moved closer to, but further from,
winning over the majority of the working class. And this despite the
undeniable strengthening of our party over the
past year, which can and must, with a just policy, become the
starting point for truly winning over the majority.
We will return later to the political consequences
of the attitude of the Fifth Congress. But is it not clear from the outset
that one cannot seriously speak of Bolshevik strategy if one
cannot take in at a glance both the fundamental curve of our
era as a whole and its various twists and turns at all
times, which have for the leadership of the party the same
importance as the curves of a railway track for the
locomotive engineer : going at full speed in the middle of a turn leads
directly onto the embankment.
It was only a few months ago, however, that Pravda
more or less clearly acknowledged the accuracy of the judgment
we had made precisely at the end of 1923. On January 28th
, it wrote :
"The phase of relative (!) apathy and depression which
began after the defeat of 1923 and which allowed German capital
to consolidate its positions, is beginning to pass
" (110).
The "relative" depression that began in the autumn of 1923
did not begin to pass until 1928. This observation, more
than four years late, constitutes a merciless condemnation
of the erroneous orientation of the Fifth Congress as well as of the system of
leadership which, far from disclosing and highlighting the errors
committed, covers them up, thus aggravating the confusion in ideas.
A draft program that makes no judgment on the
events of 1923 or on the fundamental error of the Fifth Congress,
merely turns its back on the real problems of the
revolutionary strategy of the proletariat during the imperialist era.
6. “The Democratic-Pacifist Era” and Fascism
The capitulation of the KPD in the autumn of 1923, the disappearance
of the gigantic proletarian threat, inevitably weakened
the positions of the Communist Party, but also those of
fascism (111). A civil war, even if capitalism prevails,
undermines the conditions under which capitalist exploitation is exercised
. From that time, from the end of 1923, we had
spoken out against the overestimation of the forces of German fascism and
the danger it represented, and we had emphasized that
fascism would be relegated to the background, while the forefront
would be occupied throughout Europe for
some time by democratic and pacifist groups
(the Bloc des Gauches in France, the Labour Party in England),
whose strengthening, in turn, would enhance
German social democracy. Instead of understanding this
inevitable process and organizing the struggle along a
new front line, the official leadership continued to identify fascism and
social democracy and to prophesy their demise in
the course of the impending civil war.
The question of US/Europe relations was closely
linked to the question of social democracy and fascism.
It was the defeat of the German revolution in 1923 that allowed
American capitalism to begin implementing its plans
to reduce Europe to servitude, "peacefully"... for the
time being. Under these circumstances, the American problem had to be addressed
in its full scope. Yet the leadership of
Congress simply missed the point. It considered the
situation within Europe without noting that a
prolonged postponement of the European revolution had suddenly shifted
the axis of world relations toward an American offensive
against Europe. This offensive took the form of an
economic "consolidation" of Europe, its normalization,
its pacification, and the "purification" of
democratic principles. It wasn’t just the ruined petty bourgeois
, but also the ordinary worker who said to themselves : "If the Communist Party
couldn’t triumph, perhaps social democracy will give us
not victory—we don’t expect that from them—but a
piece of bread, by reviving industry with American gold."
It should have been understood that the infamous fiction of
American pacifism, coupled with dollars (after the defeat of the
German revolution), was becoming, and was becoming, the
most important political factor in the life of Europe.
German social democracy swelled thanks to this leaven, but it was
also largely due to it that the French Radicals and
the Labour Party made progress.
To confront this new enemy front, it would have been necessary
to demonstrate that bourgeois Europe could only live and survive
as a financial vassal of the United States, and that
the latter’s pacifism reflected its desire to impose
starvation rations on Europe. But instead of taking precisely
this perspective as the starting point for the struggle against
social democracy with its new cult of Americanism, the
leadership of the Communist International turned
its weapon in the opposite direction : we were given a mediocre
and foolish theory of normalized imperialism, without war or
revolutions, based on American rationing.
During the same February session in which the presidium of the
executive committee of the Communist International, four months before the congress, placed the insurrection "in all its concrete urgency"
on the agenda of the German party , this presidium assessed the situation in France, where parliamentary elections "on the left" were then approaching, in the following way :
"This pre-election activity also affects the most mediocre and insignificant parties , and even
defunct political groups. The Socialist Party, under the
spotlight of the upcoming elections, is reviving and expanding its reach." 112
While in France a wave of
pacifist petty-bourgeois "left" was clearly brewing, drawing in
large sectors of the working class and simultaneously weakening both the
party of the proletariat and the fascist detachments of Capital—
in short, while the victory of the "
Left Bloc" was drawing near—the leadership of the Comintern adopted a
directly opposite perspective and categorically denied the possibility of a
pacifist phase. On the eve of the May 1924 elections, it
referred to the French Socialist Party, that is, the defender of
the left wing of petty-bourgeois pacifism, as a "
political group already dead." We protested at the time in a
special letter addressed to the delegation of the Communist
(Bolshevik) Party of the USSR against this hasty judgment
of the Social-Patriotic Party. In vain ! The Comintern leadership
stubbornly maintained that it was the Left that was turning a blind
eye to the facts. This was the origin of the controversy
over democratic pacifism, a disfigured, perverted and
tainted politics, as always in recent years, which
brought so much trouble to the conscience of the parties of the Comintern. The
representatives of the Opposition were accused of having
reformist prejudices, simply because we did not share
those of the leadership of the Comintern and because we had foreseen in time
that the defeat without a fight of the German proletariat would
inevitably bring onto the scene (after a brief intensification of
fascist tendencies) the petty-bourgeois parties and strengthen
social democracy.
It has already been mentioned above that at the SRI conference,
three or four months before the victory of the Labour Party and the Bloc
des Gauches in France, Zinoviev, clearly arguing
against me, declared :
“In almost all of Europe, the situation is such that one cannot expect to see tranquility, peace, even apparent peace,
established there, even temporarily… Europe is entering a phase of decisive events… Germany, it seems, is heading towards acute civil war .” 113
Zinoviev seems to have completely forgotten that, at the
4th Congress, back in 1922, I had already succeeded in committee, against the
rather stubborn resistance of Zinoviev himself and Bukharin
, in introducing an amendment (admittedly quite watered down)
into the Congress resolution ; it spoke of the future establishment
of a "pacifist and democratic era", a probable step
on the path to the political decline of the bourgeois state as
an antechamber to the domination of communism or...
fascism.
At the Fifth Congress, which was held after the emergence of
"left-wing" governments in England and France, Zinoviev
very aptly recalled my amendment, which he read aloud :
"The current international political situation is
characterized by fascism, martial law, and the
growing wave of white terror against the proletariat. But this
does not preclude the possibility that, in the near future, in
the most important countries, an open bourgeois reaction will give way to
a ’democratic and pacifist era’..."
He added with satisfaction :
"This was said in 1922. Thus, the democratic-pacifist era
was clearly predicted by the Communist International
a year and a half ago." 114
The truth is the truth. The prediction for which I was long
criticized as a "pacifist" deviation (which was supposedly mine,
not that of the course of events) arrived at just the right time at the Fifth Congress
during the honeymoon of the MacDonald and Herriot ministries. 115
Unfortunately, this is generally the case with forecasts.
It must be added that Zinoviev and the majority of the
Fifth Congress took the old perspective of
the "pacifist and democratic era" as a stage in the disintegration
of capitalism too literally. This is precisely what Zinoviev preached at the
Fifth Congress : the "pacifist-democratic era" is a symptom of
the disintegration of capitalism. He reiterated this in his
closing speech :
“I repeat that the democratic-pacifist era
is precisely a symptom of the disintegration of capitalism and
its incurable crisis.” 116
This would have been true had it not been for the Ruhr crisis, had
development proceeded more steadily, without this
historical "leap." And it would have been doubly and triply
true had the German proletariat triumphed in 1923. In that
case, the regimes of MacDonald and Herriot would have been nothing more than
English and French "Kerenskyisms." But the
Ruhr crisis erupted, clearly raising the question of
who would be in charge.
The German proletariat did not win a victory, but rather
suffered a decisive defeat, and in such a way that it was bound to encourage and
strengthen the German bourgeoisie to the highest degree. Faith
in the revolution was undermined throughout Europe for
years to come. Under these conditions, the MacDonald and
Herriot governments had no significance whatsoever of Kerenskyism, nor
in general of the disintegration of the bourgeoisie : they could and
should simply become the ephemeral precursors of
more serious, more solid, and more
self-assured bourgeois governments. The Fifth Congress did not understand this : indeed, having
failed to properly assess the proportions of the
German catastrophe, reducing it to the mere question of the
farce in the Saxon Landtag, it did not realize that the
proletariat of Europe, on the entire front, was already in political
retreat, that the task was not insurrection, but a
new orientation, rearguard battles, and the consolidation
, especially within the trade unions, of the party’s organizational positions
.
It is in connection with this question of "the era" that
a polemic on fascism developed, no less distorted
and misguided. The Opposition explained that the bourgeoisie
only advances its fascist instrument when an
immediate revolutionary peril threatens the very foundations of its regime, when the
normal organs of the bourgeois state prove insufficient. In
this sense, active fascism corresponds to a state of civil war waged
by capitalist society against the insurgent proletariat. Conversely
, the bourgeoisie is obliged to put forward its
left-wing, social-democratic instrument either, before the
civil war, to deceive, demobilize, and disintegrate the proletariat, or
, after having seriously defeated the broad masses of the people,
when, in order to restore the normal regime, it is forced to mobilize them
in parliamentary life and, with them, the workers who
no longer have faith in the revolution. To counter
this absolutely indisputable theoretical analysis,
justified by the entire course of the struggle, the Comintern leadership put
forward an absurdly simplistic assertion about the identity of
social democracy and fascism. Starting from the undeniable fact
that social democracy is just as committed to the
fundamental principles of society as fascism, and that it is always
ready, in times of danger, to advance its Noske (their principles), the
Comintern leadership swept aside, in a single stroke and in a general manner, any
political difference between social democracy and fascism, and, at the
same time, the distinction between the period of
open civil war and that of the "normalization" of the
class struggle. In short, everything was overturned, muddled, and mixed up
to preserve the appearance of an orientation toward the
immediate development of civil war, as if nothing
special had happened in the autumn of 1923 in Germany and Europe : just
an episode.
To show the direction and level of this policy, we
must cite Stalin’s article "On the International Situation
" 118 • Polemically attacking me, he writes :
“Some believe that the bourgeoisie came to
‘pacifism’ and ‘democracy’ not out of necessity,
but of its own volition, through the effect of its free will.”
This fundamental historical and philosophical thesis, on
which it would be humiliating to dwell, was followed by two
essential political conclusions :
“Firstly, it is false that fascism is merely
a fighting organization of the bourgeoisie.
Fascism is not simply a military and
technical category.”
It is difficult to understand why a
combat organization within bourgeois society should be considered a
technical and not a political "category" ! But what exactly is
fascism ? There is an indirect answer to this question :
"Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing
of fascism."
Social democracy can be described as the left wing of
bourgeois society : this definition is quite accurate,
provided it is not interpreted too
simplistically. It must not be forgotten that social democracy continues
to involve millions of workers ; it is forced to reckon,
within certain limits, not only with the will of its
bourgeois bosses, but also with the interests of its proletarian constituents
whom it exploits. But it would be absurd to define it
as "the moderate wing of fascism." Where, then, does
bourgeois democracy fit into all of this ? To find one’s bearings, even in the
most basic way, in politics, one must not lump everything together haphazardly
, but distinguish and see that social democracy and fascism
constitute the poles of the bourgeois front, united in times of
danger, but poles nonetheless. Is it necessary to insist on this today
, after the elections of May 1928, characterized both by the
decline of fascism and the growth of social democracy 119, to
which, incidentally, the Communist Party was once
again proposing to form a united front of the working class ?
The article continues :
“Secondly, it is false that the decisive battles
have already taken place, that the proletariat has been defeated, and that,
consequently, the bourgeoisie has consolidated itself. There have
not yet been any decisive battles, if only
because there have not yet been any mass Bolshevik parties
.”
The bourgeoisie could not have consolidated itself because there
had been no battle. And there were no battles,
if only because there was no Bolshevik party. Thus, what
prevents the bourgeoisie from strengthening itself is... the absence
of a Bolshevik party. In reality, it is precisely because
there was no Bolshevik leadership, not a party
, that the bourgeoisie was able to consolidate its position. If
an army, in a critical situation, capitulates without a fight
to the enemy, this perfectly replaces a "
decisive battle," in politics as in war. As early as 1850,
Engels taught that a party that lets a
revolutionary opportunity slip away disappears from the scene for a long time. But who
is still unaware that Engels, who lived "before imperialism
," is now obsolete ? This is precisely what Stalin writes :
"Under imperialism, it is impossible for
battles to be fought for dictatorship if there are no similar
(Bolshevik) parties."
We are reduced to believing that these battles were possible in
Engels’ time, when the law of unequal evolution had not
yet been discovered.
This entire series of essays is crowned,
as is fitting, by a political prediction :
"Finally, it is also false... that ’pacifism’ can
consolidate the power of the bourgeoisie and postpone the
revolution indefinitely."
Nevertheless, there was indeed a postponement, not
in accordance with Stalin’s ideas, but with Engels’s. A year
later, when it was clear even to the blind that
the bourgeoisie’s position had strengthened and the revolution
had been set back indefinitely, Stalin began
accusing us of... denying stabilization. This accusation became particularly
insistent during the period when "stabilization"
was beginning to crack again, when
a new revolutionary wave was swelling in England and China. And all this
despairing confusion served as a guiding principle ! It must
be pointed out that the definition of fascism and its relationship to
social democracy given in Chapter II of the Project, despite
the ambiguities deliberately tolerated to maintain a link with the
past, is far more reasonable and accurate than the
Stalinist scheme cited above, which was essentially that of the Fifth Congress.
But this slight progress does not settle the matter. A program
of the Communist International cannot, after the experience
of the past decade, avoid characterizing what a
revolutionary situation is, how it forms and how it
disappears, pointing out the classic errors made in
the analysis of this situation, explaining how the mechanic
should drive around corners - instilling in the parties this
truth that there are situations where the success of the
world revolution depends on two or three days of struggle.
7. Far-left politics and the leaven of the right
After the turbulent period of 1923 came the period
of the long ebb, which in the language of strategy meant :
an orderly retreat, rearguard battles, entrenchment in
mass organizations, and a detailed review to hone and sharpen
theoretical and political weapons. This position was called
"liquidationist." In recent years,
this notion, like other terms in the Bolshevik vocabulary, has been grossly abused : it
was not about teaching, not about educating, but about sowing discord and
misleading. The spirit of liquidation is the renunciation
of revolution, the substitution of reformist methods
for its paths and methods. Leninist politics has nothing in
common with this spirit, but it also has nothing to do with
this way of neglecting changes in the objective situation,
of verbally maintaining the course towards insurrection when the
situation is already turning its back on it, when it is necessary to take up again
the path of work in the masses, long, tenacious, systematic,
meticulous, to prepare the party for a new revolution.
A person needs a certain type of movement when
going up stairs, and another when going down. The
most dangerous position is when, after
blowing out their birthday candle, a person prepares to lift their foot in front of a
descending staircase. Falls, bumps, and dislocations are then inevitable.
The leadership of the Communist International did everything in its power in 1924
to stifle criticism of the experiment of the German October
and, more generally, all criticism. For its part, it
stubbornly repeated : "The staircase leads upwards." It is
therefore no surprise that the directives of the Fifth Congress, implemented in the context
of a retreat, provoked cruel falls and political upheavals
.
Issue 5-6 of Mitteilungsblatt (Linke Opposition der
KPD) 120 of March 1st, asserted :
"The biggest mistake of the Left at this
party congress (the one in Frankfurt, in the spring of 1924, during
which the Left took the lead) was that it did not
tirelessly reiterate to the party the gravity of the defeat of
1923, that it did not draw the necessary conclusions from it, that it
did not explain to the party, calmly and without embellishment,
the trends of the relative stabilization of capital, and
consequently, did not formulate the program or the slogans for the
period that was beginning ; it was perfectly possible to
do this while emphasizing, with the indispensable rigor
, the theses of the program : that is what it would have been
right to do" (emphasis added. LT)
These lines had shown that a part of the
German Left which, at the Fifth Congress, had taken part in the struggle against
our supposed "liquidation spirit", had indeed understood the
lessons of 1923-1924. This is what subsequently made possible
a rapprochement between us on a principled basis.
It was 1924 that marked a turning point in the situation. Yet
, it was only a year and a half later that this
abrupt shift ("stabilization") was recognized. It is therefore not surprising
that 1924-1925 were years of
"left-wing" errors and putschist experiments. The
Bulgarian terrorist adventure, as well as the tragic story of the Estonian uprising
of December 1924, were explosions of despair
resulting from a misguided approach. The fact that these attempts
to disrupt the historical process by following the path of putschism
were not subjected to critical scrutiny led to a
relapse of this malaise in Canton at the end of 1927. In politics, even
minor errors do not go unpunished ; this is
even more true for major ones. But the worst thing is to conceal one’s
errors, to thwart criticism, and to prevent
a sound Marxist judgment from being made about them.
This is not the history of the Communist International over
the past five years that we are writing. We
are merely illustrating, through facts,
the two strategic lines at the fundamental stages of this period.
In doing so, we are simultaneously highlighting the futility of a program for
which all these questions do not exist. We cannot, therefore
, describe here, even by simply outlining its
essential features, the full picture of the contradictions in which
the parties of the Communist International struggled, caught between the
directives of the Fifth Congress on the one hand, and political reality on the other.
Certainly, not everywhere these contradictions were resolved by
convulsions as disastrous as those in Bulgaria and Estonia in 1924.
But everywhere the parties felt powerless, failed
to respond to the aspirations of the masses, donned blinders
, and lost their way. In party agitation and propaganda,
in trade union activity, in the parliamentary rostrum, everywhere, the
communists dragged along the ball and chain of the erroneous position
taken by the Fifth Congress. Each party was more or less a victim
of the initial misdirection, chasing phantoms,
neglecting real processes, transforming revolutionary slogans
into empty rhetoric, compromising itself in the
eyes of the masses, and losing its footing. To make matters worse, the
Comintern press, then as now, could not gather and
publish facts and figures concerning the activities of the communist parties
in recent years. After defeats,
mistakes, and failures, the leadership of the epigones preferred to retreat
and punish blindly.
As reality increasingly and
cruelly refuted this, the leadership had to resort more and more to
fabricated factors. Losing its grip a little more each day, the Executive Committee of
the Comintern was forced to discover revolutionary forces and outbursts
where no trace of them existed and had to
cling to rotten ropes to maintain its balance.
Since there were evident
shifts to the right within the proletariat, the Communist International entered
a phase of idealizing the peasantry, exaggerating without
scrutinizing the symptoms of its "break" with
bourgeois society, lending vivid colors to all sorts of ephemeral peasant organizations and adulating "peasant"
demagogues .
The task of the proletarian vanguard, which consists of
a long and tenacious struggle against the bourgeoisie and
pseudo-peasant demagoguery to influence the most disinherited strata
of the village, was increasingly replaced by the hope that the
peasantry would play a direct and independent revolutionary role
on a national and international scale.
During 1924, that is, during the year of
"stabilization", the communist press was full of completely fanciful information
about the power of the Peasant International
which had just been founded 121 •
Its representative, Dombal 122, said in a report that, six months after its founding, it
already had several million members.
It was then that the Radié scandal erupted, involving the leader of the
Croatian "peasant" party who, to increase his chances of becoming
a minister in Belgrade, the white party, had diverted his route from Zagreb,
the green party, to Moscow, the red party. On July 9, 1924, Zinoviev
recounted his new "victory" in a report on the Fifth Congress
to party members in Leningrad :
“Currently, significant movements are taking place among the peasantry . You have all certainly
heard of Radié’s Croatian Peasant Party. Radié
is currently in Moscow. He is a true
people’s leader [...] He is unanimously followed by all the
poor and middle-class peasants of Croatia [...] Radié has decided to join
the International on behalf of his party. We consider
this event very important. The founding of the
Peasant International is a matter of the utmost importance.
Some comrades did not want to believe that
a large organization would emerge from it [...] Today, a large
auxiliary mass is marching towards us : the peasantry.” 124
And so on, in the same vein.
To counter Radié, the "true popular leader," there
was, on the other side of the Ocean, the "leader" La Follette 125 • To
advance more quickly the "auxiliary mass" of
American farmers, Pepper 126, the delegate of the Communist International
127, led the young and weak American Communist Party
into an absurd and shameful adventure by forming the Workers and Farmers’ Party around
La Follette in order to overthrow
American capitalism more quickly 128 •
The good news of an approaching revolution in the
United States, supported by farmers, permeated all the
speeches and articles of the official leaders of the Executive Committee of
the Communist International at the time. In his report to the 5th Congress,
Kolarov asserted :
“In the United States, small farmers have formed a
farmers’ and peasants’ party which is becoming increasingly radicalized
, drawing closer to the communists and embracing the idea
of creating a workers’ and peasants’ government in the United States.
” 129
Nothing more, nothing less !
A member of La Follette’s organization, Green, from
Nebraska, went to the peasant congress in Moscow ; he too
joined something, and then, as usual, at the
St. Paul Conference 130, he helped to thwart the
Communist Party when it tried, without much vigor, to
begin to realize the grandiose intentions of Pepper, the
advisor to Count Karolyi 131, the ultra-leftist of the Fifth Congress, the
reformer of Marxism, one of the butchers of the revolution in
Hungary 132 •
In its August 29, 1924 issue, Pravda lamented :
"The American proletariat as a whole has not
yet risen to the level of understanding the necessity of a
party, even one as collaborationist as the
English Labour Party." 133
However, about a month earlier, in his report to the
activists in Leningrad, Zinoviev asserted :
“Several million farmers, whether they like it or not (!),
are being harshly pushed towards the working class by the
agrarian crisis.” 134
"And directly to the workers’ and peasants’ government !"
added Kolarov.
The press kept repeating that a "Workers and Farmers’ Party" would soon be created in America,
a party that would not be
purely proletarian but nonetheless a class party
"to overthrow capital." What a party that is not
purely proletarian but still has a class character means is
something no astrologer, on either side of the ocean,
can explain to us. In the end, it was simply a
pepper-flavored version of the "two-class workers’ and peasants’ parties"
that we will discuss at greater length in connection with the
Chinese revolution. It will suffice to point out here that the reactionary idea of
non-proletarian parties that would nevertheless be
class parties developed entirely on the supposed
"left-wing" politics of 1924, which, to conceal its
failures, clung to Radié, LaFollette, and the inflated figures
of the Peasant International.
“We are now witnessing,” declares Milioutine, 135,
“the extremely significant and important process
of the splitting of the
peasant masses, who are separating from the bourgeoisie, of the intervention
of the peasantry against capitalism, and of the
ever-greater strengthening of the united front of the peasantry
and the working class struggling in capitalist countries
against the capitalist system.” 136
Throughout 1924, the press of the
Communist International tirelessly spoke of the
general "radicalization" of the "peasant masses." As if one could
expect any meaningful result from this radicalization of the peasants,
mostly imaginary, in a period when, clearly
, the workers were moving to the right, when social democracy was
gaining strength, and when the bourgeoisie was consolidating its power !
We will find the same error in political vision at the end
of 1927 and the beginning of 1928 with regard to China. After any
great and profound revolutionary crisis, when the proletariat has
suffered a decisive defeat, the consequences of which are lasting,
for a long time afterward, bursts of indignation erupt
in the backward, semi-proletarian masses of the cities and the
countryside, like ripples after
a rock falls into water. If the leadership assigns these ripples
their own significance and interprets them, without taking into account the
processes underway in the working class, as signs of
the approach of revolution, know that this is a symptom
that undoubtedly foreshadows that the leadership is heading toward
adventures like those in Estonia and Bulgaria in 1924 or
Canton in 1927.
During this same period of ultra-leftism, the
Chinese Communist Party was harassed until it joined
the Guomindang for a few years, which the Fifth Congress proclaimed a "
sympathizing party," without seriously attempting to define its class character . The further one goes, the more the idealization of the "revolutionary national bourgeoisie"
develops . It is in this same way that, in the East, the so-called left-wing course, which closes its eyes to reality and burns with impatience, lays the foundations for the opportunism that follows it. It was Martynov who was called upon to codify it : Martynov was, for the Chinese proletariat, an especially reliable advisor since he himself, during the three Russian revolutions, had trotted along behind the petty bourgeoisie.
In artificially shortening the time frame, they
clung not only to Radié, LaFollette, and the millions of
peasants of Dombal and Pepper, but they also constructed
a radically false perspective for England. The weakness of the
English Communist Party then created the need to replace it
as quickly as possible with some more impressive force. It was then that
a misjudgment of the tendencies of
English trade unionism became apparent. Zinoviev suggested that he believed the
revolution would come not through the narrow gate of the
English Communist Party, but by passing through the broad barrier of the
trade unions. The struggle, through the
Communist Party, to win over the masses organized by the trade
unions was replaced by the hope of using the ready-made apparatus of these unions as quickly as possible for revolutionary purposes
. It was from
this perspective that the policy of the Anglo-
Russian committee developed, which dealt a blow to both the Soviet Union and the
English working class, which only yielded to it in this respect after the
defeat in China...
The October Lessons, written as early as the summer of 1924, refute this
idea of hastening events by resorting
to the friendship of Purcell and Cook 141, as demonstrated by the
subsequent development of this idea :
“The proletarian revolution cannot triumph without
a party, outside the party, alongside the party, or through a
party substitute. This is the principal lesson of the last
decade. It is true that English trade unions can
become a powerful lever of the proletarian revolution :
under certain conditions and for a certain period, they
can even replace the workers’ soviets. But they cannot
play this role outside the Communist Party, and even
less so against it : they can only play it on the
condition that Communist influence becomes decisive
in the trade unions. We have paid too high a price to
arrive at this conclusion about the role and importance of the party
in the proletarian revolution to so easily renounce it
or simply diminish it.” 142
The same problem is posed more broadly in "Where Is
England Heading ?", which, from beginning to end, is devoted
to demonstrating the idea that the English revolution,
too, can only come about through the communist gate. With a just, courageous, and uncompromising policy
, without illusions about shortcuts, the
English Communist Party can grow and mature in leaps and
rise in a few years to the level of its tasks.
The leftist illusions of 1924 flourished from a
right-wing ferment. To conceal from others and from oneself
the significance of the errors and defeats of 1923, it was necessary to deny
the rightward shift taking place within the proletariat and
to systematically exaggerate, with optimism, the
revolutionary processes underway in other classes. This was the beginning
of the slide that led from the proletarian line to the line of
centrism, that is, the line of the petty bourgeoisie. With the
consolidation of stability, it would later shed
its ultra-leftist mask and reveal itself as blatantly collaborationist
, in the USSR, China, England, Germany
, and everywhere else.
8. Center-right sliding period
The policies of the major communist parties,
established according to the direction decided at the Fifth Congress,
quickly proved utterly ineffective. The errors of pseudo-“leftism
,” which delayed the development of the communist parties
, subsequently led to a new empirical zigzag,
namely an accelerated shift to the right. Once bitten, twice shy
. The “left-wing” central committees of a whole
series of parties were deposed as abusively as they
had been installed before the Fifth Congress. The leftism of the
adventurers gave way to an openly displayed opportunism
of the center-right type. To understand the nature and trajectory of this
rightward shift in the organization, it is necessary to recall that as recently as
September 1924, Stalin, who presided over this shift,
considered the transfer of party leadership to the hands of
Maslow, Ruth Fischer, Treint, Suzanne Girault, etc. was
the expression of the Bolshevization of the parties, responding to the
demands of the Bolshevik workers who are moving towards revolution
and "want to have revolutionary leaders" 143 •
“The last six months,” Stalin wrote, “are remarkable
in that they present a total break in the
communist parties of the West in the direction of the
resolute liquidation of social-democratic remnants, the Bolshevization
of party cadres, and the isolation of opportunist elements
.” 144
About ten months later, the authentic "Bolsheviks," the
"revolutionary leaders," were labeled social democrats
and renegades, removed from leadership and expelled from the party.
Despite the panic-driven nature of this change of
leadership and the frequent use of mechanical, crude and disloyal measures
by the apparatus, it is impossible to draw
a rigorous line of demarcation in ideas between the phase
of ultra-left politics and the opportunistic slippage politics
that followed it.
In the problems of industry and peasantry in the
USSR, of the colonial bourgeoisie, of "peasant" parties
in capitalist countries, of socialism in one country, of the role
of the party in the proletarian revolution, revisionist tendencies
were in full bloom in 1924-1925 : concealed
under the banner of the struggle against "Trotskyism", these tendencies
found a brilliant opportunistic expression in the resolutions
of the conference of the CP(b) of the USSR in April 1925.
The right-wing course, taken as a whole, was a
half-blind, purely empiricist, and
belated attempt to adapt to the setback suffered by the development of the revolution due
to the defeat of 1923. Bukharin initially
approached the question by considering the "permanent" development
of the revolution in the most direct and mechanical sense
of the word. Bukharin admitted no "pause," no interruption
, no retreat : he considered it a revolutionary duty
to continue the "offensive" under any circumstances.
Stalin’s article cited above, "On the International Situation
," which constitutes a kind of program (it was
Stalin’s first intervention on international problems), shows
that the second author of the project also forced himself, in the
first period of the struggle against "Trotskyism," to admit
the same mechanical "left-wing" conception for which there
never existed, and invariably, only "the disintegration" of
social democracy, the "radicalization of the workers," the "growth
" of communist parties, the "approaching" revolution.
As for the one who looks around him and makes distinctions,
he is a "liquidator".
After the turning point in the European situation in 1923, it
took a year and a half for this "tendency" to sense something
new and, in the midst of panic, to radically transform itself
. Lacking any comprehensive understanding of our
era and the trends it contained, the leadership proceeded
tentatively (Stalin), supplementing the fragments of conclusions thus
obtained with scholastic frameworks that it constantly renewed
(Bukharin). This is why, on the whole, its
political line constituted a series of zigzags. Its ideological line
was a kaleidoscope of frameworks that tended to push
each element of Stalin’s zigzags to the point of absurdity.
The Sixth Congress would act wisely if it decided to create
a special commission tasked with compiling
all of Bukharin’s theories into a single body to serve as the basis for
its argumentation, for example, for each stage of the
Anglo-Russian committee : they would need to be arranged chronologically,
organized into a system to attempt to trace the complex diagram
of thought they contain. This would be a
strategic diagram rich in lessons. The same applies to the
Chinese revolution, the economic development of the USSR
, and all other less important issues.
Blind empiricism amplified by scholasticism—this is the
orientation that has not yet been ruthlessly condemned.
This empiricism had fatal consequences in three
crucial areas : the domestic policy of the USSR, the
Chinese revolution, and the Anglo-Russian Committee. It also
manifested itself in the same way, but in a less disastrous manner,
with regard to the immediate consequences in all matters of
Communist International policy.
In the internal problems of the USSR, the policy of
slippage was characterized sufficiently fully
in the Platform of the Bolshevik-Leninists (Opposition) 145 •
We are obliged to limit ourselves here to referring to it. The
Platform is receiving a most
unexpected kind of confirmation today ; all the attempts by the current leadership of the
VKP (b) to evade the consequences of the
1923-1928 policy are based on almost verbatim quotations
from the Platform, whose authors and supporters are scattered
in prisons and places of exile. The fact that the
current leaders resort to the Platform in fragments, without
any consistency in their actions, makes the new
leftward shift extremely unstable. But at the same time, it
enhances the Platform all the more, since it expresses Lenin’s position as a whole.
As for the Chinese question, we are obliged to
subject it to a more careful analysis in a special chapter
(the third), given its decisive importance for the
Communist International and because, in the Platform, it is
presented in an insufficient, incomplete, and sometimes even
truly inaccurate light due to Zinoviev 146 •
As regards the Anglo-Russian committee, the third
most important issue in the strategic experience acquired by
the Comintern in recent years, after all that has been said
by the Opposition in a series of articles, speeches, theses, all that
remains for us is to draw up a short summary here.
The starting point of the Anglo-Russian committee was, as we
have already seen, an impatient desire to bypass the
fledgling Communist Party, which was developing too slowly. This
gave the whole experiment, even before the general strike, a
flawed character.
The Anglo-Russian Committee was not seen as a
temporary coalition at the top, destined to be broken
and spectacularly so at the first serious test, in order
to undermine the General Council ; no, it was viewed—and
not only by Stalin, Bukharin, Tomsky, etc., but also by
Zinoviev—as a long-term “friendly bloc,” an
instrument intended to systematically revolutionize the
English working masses ; this committee was seen, if not as the gateway, at
least as the threshold through which the revolution of the English proletariat would have to pass
. Increasingly, the Anglo-Russian Committee, which had been a
temporary alliance, was becoming an immutable entity, above
the class struggle. This was clearly seen during the
general strike.
The mass movement, openly entering a
revolutionary phase, cast into the camp of bourgeois reaction
the liberal labor politicians who had veered
slightly to the left. They knowingly and openly betrayed the
general strike ; then they sabotaged and betrayed the
miners’ strike. Reformism always contains the potential for
betrayal. But this does not mean that reformism and
betrayal are synonymous at all times. There can be provisional agreements
with reformists when they take a step forward.
But when, frightened by the movement of the masses, they
betray it, maintaining the coalition with them amounts to tolerating
the traitors and concealing their treason, which is a crime.
The general strike aimed to exert, through the force
of five million workers, a united pressure against industry
and the state, the coal industry being the
most important issue in state policy. Through the
betrayal of management, the strike was sabotaged from the outset
. It was a huge illusion, after that, to believe that
the miners’ economic strike, now alone and isolated,
would achieve what the general strike had failed to do. This was where
the power of the General Council lay. Through cold calculation, it
led the miners to defeat so that large segments
of the working class would be convinced that the directives of the Judases on the
General Council were "just" and "reasonable."
Maintaining the friendly coalition with him, and
simultaneously providing aid to the
isolated and prolonged economic strike of the miners, which the general council was fighting against,
seemed to be maneuvers calculated in advance to allow
the leaders of the trade unions to emerge with minimal
losses from these terrible ordeals.
From a revolutionary standpoint, the Russian trade unions played
a thoroughly negative and particularly pitiful role. It goes without saying
that the economic strike, even when isolated, needed support
: among revolutionaries, there can be no disagreement
on this point. But this support should not be merely
financial ; it should also be revolutionary and
political. The Russian trade unions should have openly declared to the
miners’ federation and the
entire English working class that the miners’ strike had no real chance of
success unless, through its obstinacy, tenacity, and
scope, it was prepared to pave the way for a new
explosion of the general strike. This could only be achieved by
directly and openly fighting the General Council,
an agency of the government and the coal industry bosses
. The struggle to transform the economic strike into a
political strike should have meant a furious political and
organizational war against the General Council ; The first step on this
path should have been the breakup of the Anglo-Russian committee, which had become a
reactionary obstacle, a millstone around our necks.
No revolutionary who weighs their words would claim
that victory was assured by marching in that direction. But
it was only possible to reach victory by following that path.
Any defeat would have been suffered on a road that could
later lead to victory. Such a defeat is instructive ; that is to say,
it strengthens revolutionary ideas within the working class.
On the contrary, by only financially supporting a
protracted, ultimately seemingly
pointless, corporate strike—corporatist in its methods, revolutionary and
political in its aims—they were merely playing into the
hands of the General Council, which was calmly waiting for the
strike to end through exhaustion to prove it was "right." It goes without
saying that it wasn’t easy to wait several months while
openly protesting. It was precisely during this
critical period that the General Council needed political camouflage
in the eyes of the masses : this was the Anglo-Russian Committee. Thus,
the questions of a deadly class struggle between capital and the
English proletariat, between the General Council and the miners,
seemed to be transformed into issues for friendly discussion
between allies in the same coalition—the General Council and the
Russian trade union leadership—regarding the best course of action at the
present moment : that of agreement or that of
isolated economic struggle. The strike inevitably ended in an agreement,
that is to say, it tragically ended the friendly "discussion"
in favour of the General Council.
The entire policy of the Anglo-Russian Committee, due to its
misguided orientation, was, from beginning to end, one of support for the
General Council, of backing the General Council, of strengthening
the General Council. Even the fact that the strike was
financially sustained for a very long time thanks to the spirit of sacrifice of the
Russian workers served neither the miners nor the English Communist Party,
but always that same General Council. Following the greatest
revolutionary movement England had seen since
Chartism, the English Communist Party made little progress,
while the General Council was more firmly established than before
the general strike.
These are the results of this
unique “strategic maneuver”.
To explain the stubbornness shown in maintaining
the coalition with the General Council - which even went so far as to
grovel before it at the shameful Berlin conference in
April 1927 - recourse was made again and again to "stabilization".
If the revolution is slow in coming, we must cling even to
Purcell. This argument, which seems extraordinarily profound to
a Soviet official or a trade unionist of
Melnitchansky’s type, is in reality a perfect example
of blind empiricism, further aggravated by scholasticism. What
does "stabilization" mean when applied to the English economy and politics , especially in 1926-1927 ? Development of the productive
forces ? Improvement of the economic situation ?
Increased hopes for the future ? Relative comfort and calm among the
working masses ? Absolutely not. The supposed stabilization
of British capitalism rests entirely on the
conservative strength of the old workers’ organizations, in all
their tendencies and nuances, in the face of the weakness and indecisiveness of the
English Communist Party. Revolution is fully ripe
in terms of economic and social relations in England.
The question arises solely from a political standpoint. The
main foundations of stabilization are constituted by the
leadership of the Labour Party and the trade unions, which, in England,
form a unified whole but practice the division of labor. Given
the mood of the working masses during the
general strike, the principal role in the mechanism of
capitalist stabilization was played, no longer by MacDonald and Thomas,
but by Pugh, Purcell, Cook, and company. They act, and Thomas
completes the process. Without Purcell, Thomas loses all support, and
Baldwin loses it along with Thomas.
Purcell’s "leftism"—false, diplomatic, a masquerade, fraternizing alternately
or simultaneously with churchmen and
Bolsheviks, always ready not only to retreat
but also to betray—this constitutes the main obstacle
to revolution in England. Stabilization is Purcellism
. This reveals the theoretical absurdity of
blind opportunism when it justifies its
political bloc with Purcell through an illusory "stabilization." But to undermine this stabilization, it
was first necessary to dismantle Purcellism. Under these circumstances
, to maintain even
a semblance of solidarity with the General Council in the eyes of the working masses was the greatest
of crimes, the worst of shames.
Even the soundest strategy does not always lead to
victory. To determine if a strategic plan is sound, one must examine
whether it accurately follows the progression of class forces and
realistically assesses the elements of that progression.
The most painful, shameful, and disastrous defeat for
a movement—the typically Menshevik defeat—is
that which results from a flawed class analysis, an underestimation
of revolutionary factors, and an idealization of the
enemy’s forces. Our defeats in China and England were
of this kind.
What was expected of the Anglo-Russian committee, for the USSR ?
In July 1926, Stalin taught us at the plenum of the
combined Central Committee and Central Control Commission :
"The task of this bloc—the Anglo-Russian committee—
is to organize a broad working-class movement
against new imperialist wars and, in
general, against any intervention against our country,
particularly from one of the strongest
imperialist powers in Europe, England."
And while teaching us, the opposition, that we must
have "the concern to defend the first workers’ republic in the
world against intervention" - naturally we did
not know this - Stalin added :
"If the reactionary English trade unions are prepared to form a coalition
with the revolutionary trade unions of our country against the counter-revolutionary imperialists of theirs, why should we not approve of this bloc ?"
If "reactionary unions" were capable of fighting
against their imperialists, they would not be reactionary.
Stalin no longer distinguishes the dividing line between the
notions of reactionary and revolutionary. Out of habit, he
labels the trade unions of England as "reactionary," in
reality he harbors pitiful illusions about their "revolutionary spirit
. "
Following Stalin’s example, the Moscow committee of our party
lectured the workers of our city :
"The Anglo-Russian Committee can and must play, and
undoubtedly will play, an enormous role in the struggle against
all kinds of interventions directed against the USSR. It is
becoming the organizing center of the international
proletarian forces, fighting against all kinds of attempts by
the international bourgeoisie to provoke a new
war." 152
What was the Opposition’s response ?
"The more tense the international situation becomes, the more the
Anglo-Russian committee will transform into an instrument of
British and international imperialism."
At the same plenum, Stalin described this criticism of Stalinist hopes placed in
Purcell, considered the guardian angel of the workers’ state, as a "transition from Leninism to Trotskyism".
"Voroshilov 153 : That’s right.
One voice : Voroshilov has put his seal on it.
Trotsky : "Luckily, we’ll find all of that in
the stenographic record."
Yes, all of this can be found in the stenographic record
of the July plenum where blind, rude and disloyal opportunists
had the audacity to accuse the Opposition of "defeatism
".
This dialogue, which I am obliged to quote from my earlier
article "What was expected and what was obtained ?", offers a
far richer lesson in strategy than the
seminar text on strategy found in the
"Draft Program." The question "What was expected and
what was obtained ?" is generally the principal criterion in matters of
strategy. At the Sixth Congress, it must be applied to all the questions
that have appeared on the agenda in recent years. It will
then become indisputably clear that the strategy of the Executive Committee
of the Communist International, especially from 1926 onward, is one of
imaginary quantities, false calculations, illusions about the enemy,
and the persecution of the purest and most steadfast militants—
in short, the strategy of rotten centrism.
9. On the Maneuvering Nature of Revolutionary Strategy
At first glance, it is impossible to understand why the
draft program completely ignores the problem
of maneuver and "flexibility" in Bolshevik strategy
. Of this entire vast issue, only one point is
examined : agreements with the native bourgeoisie of the colonies.
However, during the last period, opportunism,
which characterized increasingly marked zigzags to the right,
has primarily operated under the banner of
strategic maneuver. The refusal of any unprincipled compromise
was labeled a lack of "flexibility." The majority
proclaimed that its fundamental principle was maneuver.
Zinoviev, as early as 1925, maneuvered with Radié and LaFollette. Stalin
and Bukharin subsequently maneuvered with Chiang Kai-shek,
with Purcell, and with the kulaks. The apparatus has constantly maneuvered
with the party. Zinoviev and Kamenev are now maneuvering with
the apparatus.
In the daily routine of bureaucracy,
an entire corps of maneuver specialists has emerged, composed of men who
were never revolutionary militants and who
now bow before the revolution with all the more enthusiasm
after it has seized power. Borodin maneuvers in Canton,
Rafes in Beijing, D. Petrovsky around the English Channel, Pepper in the
United States, but it can also be done in Polynesia. Martynov
maneuvers remotely but can do so in any part of the
world. Entire teams of young academics
of maneuver have been trained, who, by Bolshevik flexibility, understand
the elasticity of their own spines. The task of this
strategic school is to obtain through maneuver everything that
can only be conquered by the revolutionary force of the class.
Just as every alchemist of the Middle Ages, despite the failures of
all the others, hoped to make gold, so too do
today’s strategists of maneuver, each at their post, hope to deceive
history. It goes without saying that these are not strategists at heart, but
bureaucratic schemers of all sizes, except the large ones.
Some of them, having observed how the master
resolved minor issues, imagined they possessed
all the secrets of strategy. In essence, this is
the whole doctrine of the epigones. Others, having learned
secondhand or thirdhand the secrets of political maneuvering, having
convinced themselves in small matters that such maneuvers can work
great miracles, concluded that they were all the more suitable
for large-scale undertakings. However, all attempts
to apply the bureaucratic method of political maneuvering to the
resolution of major issues, under the pretext that it is incomparably
more "economical" than that of revolutionary struggle
, have inevitably led to shameful failures :
the doctrine of political maneuvering, applied by the party and
state apparatus, has broken the backs of young parties and young revolutions.
Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Jingwei, Purcell, the kulak, all have
so far emerged victorious from all attempts to
reduce it by "maneuvers".
This does not mean that, in general, all maneuvers are
inadmissible, that is, incompatible with the revolutionary strategy
of the working class. But it is essential to understand the
auxiliary, subordinate value of maneuvers, to be used strictly
as means, in relation to the methods of
revolutionary struggle. It must be understood once and for all that a
maneuver can never decide a great cause. If
schemes seem to succeed advantageously in minor
matters, it is always at the expense of those that are important
. A just maneuver only helps the solution, either by
allowing time to be gained or by obtaining more with
less effort. But it is impossible to evade
fundamental difficulties through a maneuver.
The contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a
fundamental one. That is why trying to restrain the
Chinese bourgeoisie through personal
or organizational maneuvers, forcing them to submit to plans laid out
in schemes, is not a maneuver,
but a despicable act of self-deception, even if it
is a large-scale operation. You cannot deceive
classes. This is true for all classes if you consider
things from the broadest historical perspective, but it is
especially true for the ruling, propertied, exploiting, educated classes
. Their experience of the world is so vast,
their class instinct so well-honed, their means of espionage so
diverse, that by attempting to deceive them, by pretending to be something
you are not, you actually manage to lure not your
enemies but your friends into the trap.
The contradiction between the USSR and the capitalist world is
a fundamental one that cannot be evaded through
maneuvering. By making clear and openly stated concessions
to Capital, and by exploiting the contradictions between its
various sectors, one can prolong a pause, buy
time, under very specific conditions and not at any
time. To believe that it is possible to "neutralize" the
world bourgeoisie before building socialism—that is, to
escape, through a few maneuvers, the fundamental contradictions
— is to be gravely deluded, to risk the very head of the
Soviet Republic. Only international revolution can
free us from these fundamental contradictions.
A maneuver on our part may consist of either making a
concession to the enemy, concluding an agreement with a
provisional and always dubious ally, carrying out a timely and
calculated retreat so as not to allow the adversary to
crush us, or alternating
partial demands with slogans designed to provoke a split in the
opposing camp. These are the principal forms of maneuver.
We could cite others, which are secondary. But
every maneuver is by nature only a simple episode in relation
to the fundamental strategic line of the struggle. Now, in the
maneuvers around the Guomindang and the Anglo-Russian committee (we
must always keep them in mind as perfect examples
of Menshevik, not Bolshevik, maneuvers ), precisely
the opposite happened : what should have been only a
tactical episode swelled up to become the strategic line
(struggle against the bourgeoisie and the reformists), and was broken down into
a series of restricted and secondary tactical episodes, of a
mostly decorative nature.
When undertaking a maneuver, one must always start from
the least favorable hypothesis, both with regard to
the enemy to whom concessions are being made and the unreliable ally with
whom an agreement is being concluded. One must never forget that an ally can
become an enemy the very next day. This is true even for an
ally like the peasantry.
“Be wary of the peasantry, organize independently
of it, be ready to fight against it insofar
as it intervenes from a reactionary or
counter-revolutionary position.” 155
This is in no way in contradiction with the great
strategic task of the proletariat which Lenin, first of all, studied in
theory and carried out in depth with such brilliant profundity -
to wrest the lower strata of the exploited peasants from
the influence of the bourgeoisie and draw them up with the proletariat.
But history does not present the alliance of the proletariat and the
peasantry in a fully formed form ; it cannot be created through
sweet maneuvers, trivial coquetry, or pathetic
declarations. The alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry
is a matter of the balance of political power and
therefore requires the independence of the proletariat from all
classes. An ally must first be educated. This can be achieved by
first demonstrating profound attention to all its
historical and progressive needs, and then by systematically distrusting it
, by waging a tireless and implacable struggle against all its
anti-proletarian tendencies.
The meaning and limits of the maneuver must always be
carefully considered and emphasized. A concession must be called
a concession, and a retreat a retreat. It is far less
dangerous to exaggerate the concessions and retreats one
is forced to make than to underestimate them.
Class vigilance and systematic distrust of one’s own side must be maintained, not
lulled into complacency.
The essential instrument of any maneuver, as indeed
of any historical action by the working class, is the party. But it
is not simply a docile instrument in the hands of the
"masters" of the maneuver. It is a conscious tool, acting
on its own. Generally speaking, it is the supreme expression of
the proletariat’s own action. Every maneuver must therefore be
thoroughly understood by the party in the course of its planning and
execution. This is obviously not a matter of diplomatic
, military, or conspiratorial secrets—that is, the techniques of the
struggle of the proletarian state or the proletarian party under
capitalism. It concerns the political substance of the maneuver. The
explanations whispered to claim that the course of 1924–1928
was a grand maneuver with the kulak are therefore absurd
and criminal. You cannot fool the kulak. He judges not by
words, but by deeds, taxes, prices ; he calculates in terms of
money. But the working class, even his own party, can be
deceived. Nothing erodes the revolutionary spirit
of the proletarian party so profoundly as unprincipled schemes
and maneuvers carried out behind its back.
The most important, unshakeable, and invariable rule to
apply in any maneuver is this : never allow yourself
to merge, confuse, or intertwine your
party organization with that of another, however "friendly" it may be at the
moment. Never allow yourself any actions that, directly
or indirectly, openly or secretly, subordinate your
party to other parties or to the organizations of other classes, that
reduce your freedom of action, or that make you, even partially
, responsible for the political line of another party. Never
allow yourself to confuse your flag with theirs, and, all the
more so, it goes without saying, to kneel before the
flag of others.
The worst and most dangerous maneuver is that which
is driven by opportunistic impatience and the desire to preempt the
development of one’s own party, to skip over the
inevitable stages of its development—precisely the case
where skipping stages is not an option—and which is executed
by superficially, hypocritically, diplomatically, schemingly
, and fraudulently linking organizations and elements that are pulling in
different directions. Such experiments, always dangerous, are
fatal to young and weak parties.
In both maneuvering and battle, it is not
strategic wisdom – and even less so the cunning of combinations – that matters.
The outcome is determined by the balance of power. Generally speaking
, a maneuver, even a well-executed one, poses
a greater danger to a revolutionary party the
younger and weaker it is compared to its enemies, allies, or semi-allies.
This is why—and here we come to the most important point
for the Communist International—the Bolshevik party, far from
beginning with maneuvers, which it did not consider
panaceas, only resorted to them when it was large enough to
carry them out because it had by then sunk its roots deep
into the working class, had strengthened itself, and had reached the political maturity
of its ideas.
The real problem lies in the fact that the epigones of Bolshevik strategy
present young communist parties with maneuverability
and flexibility as the very essence of this
strategy, thereby severing them from their historical roots and
fundamental principles, and creating combinations that
too often resemble a squirrel running in its wheel. It was
not flexibility that constituted—and indeed,
it must not constitute now either—the fundamental characteristic of
Bolshevism, but its unwavering resolve. It was precisely this
quality, which it possessed and which its enemies and adversaries
criticized, that Bolshevism was rightly proud of. Not
naive “optimism,” but intransigence, vigilance, revolutionary defiance
, and a struggle for every inch of independence :
these are the essential traits of Bolshevism. This is where
the communist parties of both East and West must begin. They
still have to win the right to large-scale maneuvers, by
first preparing the material and political possibility of their
realization, namely the strength, solidity and severity in the choice
of means used by their own organization.
The Menshevik maneuvers carried out around the Guomindang
and the General Council are ten times criminal because they
fell upon the still fragile shoulders of the communists
in China and England. They not only led to the
defeat of the revolution and the working class, but they
crushed, weakened, and undermined the essential instrument of future struggle : the
young communist parties. At the same time, they introduced
elements of demoralization into the oldest party of
the Communist International : the Communist Party of the USSR
(Bolshevik).
The chapter of the draft program that deals with strategy is completely
silent on the subject of maneuvering, that is, the hobbyhorse
that has been so enthusiastically pursued in recent
years. Some lenient critics might say that this silence is already
a good thing. But it would be a grave mistake to
reason in this way. As we have already shown through a series
of examples, and as we will soon demonstrate, the draft
program itself unfortunately has a
maneuvering character, in the pejorative sense of the term, that is to say, in the
scheming sense. The draft engages in maneuvering around
the party. It camouflages some of its weaknesses "behind
Lenin" and remains silent on the others. In this way, it
sidesteps the question of the strategy of maneuvering. It is
currently impossible to address this subject without mentioning the
recent experiences of China and England. The mere mention
of the spirit of maneuvering evokes the images of Chiang Kai-shek
and Purcell. That’s what the authors don’t want. They
prefer to remain silent on their favorite topic and leave
the IC leadership free to act. But that’s intolerable. The hands
of those involved in the schemes and those who would attempt them must be tied. That’s what the
program is meant to do. Otherwise, it’s pointless.
The chapter on strategy must lay out the
fundamental rules that define and delimit maneuver, that is,
the auxiliary method employed against the class enemy in
the revolutionary struggle, which can only be a fight to the death. The rules outlined above, based on the teachings of Marx and Lenin,
can be formulated more concisely and precisely. But they must absolutely be included in the program of the Communist International.
10. The strategy of civil war
The draft program quickly glosses over the issue of
the insurrection :
"This struggle is subject to the rules of the art of
war : it presupposes a military plan, the
offensive nature of combat operations, the unreserved devotion
and heroism of the proletariat."
Here the project is limited to repeating and summarizing some of
Marx’s observations. Yet we have, on the one hand, the experience
of the October Revolution and, on the other, that of the defeats
of the Hungarian and Bavarian revolutions, the struggle in Italy in
1920, the insurrection in Bulgaria in September 1923, the
1923 movement in Germany, the 1924 movement in Estonia, the
English general strike in 1926, the Vienna workers’ uprising
in 1927, and the second Chinese revolution of 1925-1927.
The Comintern’s program must characterize, in an
equally concrete and precise way, the social and political prerequisites for
the insurrection as well as the strategic and military conditions and methods
necessary to ensure its success. Nothing denounces
the superficial and literary nature of the document better than the fact that the
chapter devoted to revolutionary strategy mentions Comelissen
and certain guildists (Orage, Hobson, GDH Cole) 156 by
designating them all by name, but does not give a
general characterization of the strategy of the proletariat in the imperialist era
and does not define the methods of struggle for the
conquest of power on the basis of
living historical references.
In 1924, after Germany’s tragic experience, we
again raised the issue, requesting that the Comintern
put on its agenda and examine the problems of strategy
and tactics of insurrection and civil war in general.
“It must be acknowledged that the question of the timing of
the insurrection is considered unimportant by
many Western communists who have
still not rid themselves of their fatalistic and passive approach
to the main problems of revolution. Rosa
Luxemburg remains the most representative and
talented example of this. Psychologically, this is easily understood
. She had, so to speak, been forged in the struggle against
the bureaucratic apparatus of German social democracy and trade
unions. Tirelessly, she had demonstrated
that this apparatus stifled the initiative of the proletariat. She
saw salvation and a way out only in an irresistible surge of the
masses sweeping away all the barriers and defenses erected by
the social-democratic bureaucracy. The revolutionary general strike,
overflowing all the banks of bourgeois society,
had become synonymous for Rosa Luxemburg with the
proletarian revolution. However, however
powerful it may be, the general strike does not solve the problem of
power ; it merely poses it.” To seize
power, it was necessary, by leveraging the general strike,
to organize an insurrection. Rosa Luxemburg’s entire evolution
suggests that she would have eventually admitted this. But
when she left the political scene, she hadn’t yet had her
last word, nor her penultimate one. However,
a very strong current toward
revolutionary fatalism still existed within the KPD until recently. The revolution is approaching,
they said ; it will bring the insurrection and give us
power. As for the party, its role at this time is to
stir up revolutionary agitation and await its
effects. Under such conditions, to raise the
question of insurrection outright is to wrench the party from
passivity and fatalism ; it is to confront it with the main
problems of the revolution, in particular the conscious organization
of the insurrection to drive the enemy from
power.
We devote considerable time and effort in
the theoretical field to the Paris Commune of 1871, and
we completely disregard the struggle of the
German proletariat, which had already acquired valuable experience in
civil war ; for example, we pay almost
no attention to the experience of the Bulgarian uprising
last September, and finally, most astonishingly,
we have essentially relegated the
October experience to the archives. [...]
The experience of the October Revolution, the only proletarian revolution to date that has triumphed, must be studied in the most meticulous way . A strategic and tactical calendar of October
must be established . It must be shown how events grew wave by wave, and what repercussions they had within the party, the soviets, the central committee, and the military organization.
What was the significance of the hesitations manifesting themselves
within the party ? What was their
relative importance in the overall scope of events ? What
was the role of the military organization ? This is a task
of inestimable importance. It would be a true
crime to postpone it. [...]
What, then, does this task consist of ? It involves composing
a universal formulary, or a guide, a manual, or even
a set of instructions concerning matters of civil war
and, therefore, first and foremost, armed insurrection, the
pivotal moment of the revolution. We must take stock of
acquired experience, analyze the context, study errors, highlight
the most judicious operations, and draw the
necessary conclusions. Will we thus enrich science—
that is, the knowledge of the laws of
historical development—or art—as the set of rules of action
deduced from experience ? I believe both will
benefit. But our goal is strictly practical ; it
is to enrich the art of revolutionary warfare.
Necessarily, an instruction of this kind will have a
very complex structure. First and foremost, it is necessary to present the
characteristic features of the fundamental prerequisites for
the proletariat’s conquest of power. We are
still in the realm of revolutionary politics :
insurrection is indeed the continuation of politics, but
by other means. The analysis of the prerequisites for insurrection
must take into account the various types of countries. There are
some where the population is predominantly proletarian and
others where the proletariat is an insignificant minority and
the peasantry has absolute dominance. Between these
two poles lie countries of an intermediate type. It
would therefore be necessary to posit at least three "types" of country at the basis of such a study
: industrial, agrarian, and intermediate
. The introduction (which deals with the preconditions
for revolution) must precisely characterize the
particularities of each of these types considered from the perspective
of civil war. We consider the insurrection from a
dual point of view : on the one hand, as a well
– defined stage in the historical process, as a
specific refraction of the objective laws of class struggle ; on
the other hand, from a subjective or active point of view : how
to prepare and carry out the insurrection to ensure victory
with the greatest possible certainty ? 157
In 1924, a large group of people gathered around the
Society of Military Sciences undertook a collective effort
to develop guidelines for civil war, namely a
Marxist guide to the problems of direct class conflict and
armed struggle for dictatorship. This work, however,
very quickly encountered resistance from the Comintern—an integral part of the
general system of the struggle against so-called Trotskyism—and
was subsequently completely halted. It would be difficult to
conceive of a more frivolous and criminal undertaking. In times
of abrupt upheaval, the rules of civil war, understood
in the sense explained above, must be part of the standard
knowledge base of every revolutionary cadre, and, needless to say, of
party leaders. All must constantly study and
supplement these statutes, and each must compare them with recent experience
gained in their own country. It is only through a
study of this kind that one can obtain a certain guarantee,
both against movements of panic and capitulation,
in moments which require courage and great
resolve, and against the capers of adventurers in
periods which require prudence and circumspection.
If such rules were contained in the books that a communist
must study seriously, just as he must know the
fundamental ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, defeats
like those that have occurred in recent years,
which were by no means inevitable—especially the Canton coup
, carried out with childish recklessness—would
not have happened. The "Draft Program" addresses these
issues in a few lines, with almost as much parsimony
as Gandhism in India. It goes without saying that a program cannot
go into detail. But it must state the problem
clearly, present its fundamental elements, and
refer to the most important successes and errors.
In addition to this task, in our opinion, the Fifth Congress
should, in a special resolution, instruct the Executive Committee
to formulate rules of civil war, in the form of guidelines,
based on past experience of victories and defeats.
11. Problems with the party’s internal system
The organizational problems of Bolshevism are inextricably
linked to those of program and tactics. The plan
only touches upon this subject in passing, expressing the necessity of "the
strictest revolutionary order within democratic centralism
." This is the only formula that defines the internal regime
of the party, and moreover, it is entirely new. We knew that
the regime was based on the principles of democratic centralism
. It theoretically guaranteed the party—and indeed, it did
so in practice—the complete possibility of debating,
criticizing, expressing discontent, electing, and dismissing members,
while at the same time ensuring ironclad discipline in
action directed by elected and recallable leadership bodies. If
by democracy we understand the sovereignty of the party over all its
organs, centralism corresponds to a conscious,
judiciously established discipline, guaranteeing the party’s combativeness.
Now, above this formula for the internal regime,
justified by all of history, an addition : “The
strictest revolutionary order.” Thus, the party needs not only
democratic centralism but also a certain revolutionary order
within it. This formulation attributes to the new idea an
intrinsic value and places it above democratic centralism,
that is, above the party.
What then does this revolutionary order – and “the
strictest” – mean, dominating democracy and centralism ? It corresponds to
a party apparatus, independent or tending to be independent
of the party, to a bureaucracy finding its end in its own
existence, which watches over “order” without taking care of the mass of the
party, which abolishes the will of the party and undermines it if
“order” requires it, which tramples on the statutes, postpones
congresses, and makes them into fictions.
For a long time, and by various means, the thinking of
the apparatus has been oriented toward this formula of the “revolutionary order
.” In the last two years, we have seen
the most responsible representatives of the party leadership
offer many new definitions of democracy within the
party, which essentially boil down to saying that democracy and
centralism simply mean submission to the
higher hierarchical bodies. All practice has developed strongly
in this direction. But centralism with a strangled and
empty democracy is bureaucratic centralism. An “order” of this kind
is obviously obliged to conceal itself behind the forms and
rituals of democracy ; it lashes it out with countless circulars
from above, orders it to engage in self-criticism under the threat of Article
58 (158), and demonstrates that the attacks on democracy
emanate not from the central leadership, but from the so-called “executors
.” But it is impossible to demand anything from them for
the simple reason that each "executor" happens to be the
leader of all those who are his subordinates ?
Thus, the new formula, utterly inconsistent from a
theoretical standpoint, demonstrates by its novelty and incoherence
that its function is to satisfy certain aspirations that were already
ripe. It enshrines the bureaucratic apparatus that engendered it.
This question is inextricably linked to that of factions
and groups. When a problem is open to discussion,
when there is a divergence of views, the leadership and the official press,
not only of the VKP (b), but also of the Comintern and all its
sections, immediately divert the debate to the
issue of factions and groups. The life of ideas within
the party cannot be conceived without provisional groupings on the
ideological front.
Naturally, groupings are an "evil," just as much as
divergences. But this evil constitutes a component
of the dialectic of the party’s evolution as necessary as toxins
are to the life of the human organism.
The transformation of groups into organized
and, above all, self-contained factions is an even greater evil.
The art of leading the party consists precisely in preventing this
transformation.
At the Tenth Congress, as the
Kronstadt rebellion and the kulak uprisings raged, Lenin had a
resolution adopted that banned factions and groups.
By groups, he meant not the ephemeral tendencies that inevitably form
during the life of the party, but those
same factions masquerading as groups. The
party mass clearly understood the mortal danger of the moment :
it supported its leader by adopting a resolution that was harsh and implacable
in its form : the banning of factions and groups.
But the party knew full well that it was the Central Committee, headed by
Lenin, that would have to interpret this formula, that there would be no
brutal and disloyal interpretation, and even less so, no abuse
of power (see on this subject Lenin’s Testament). The party
knew that a year later, or even a month later, if a third of the party so
requested, at the next congress, the party would review the experience
gained and make the necessary corrections. The decision
of the Tenth Congress was a decisive measure, due to the
critical situation of the governing party as it made a
dangerous turn from War Communism to the NEP. This
decisive measure was fully justified in due course, as it
merely complemented a just and insightful policy that
removed any solid foundation from the groups formed before the
transition to the NEP. 161
But the resolution of the 10th Congress on factions and groups, which already required judicious
interpretation and application , by no means constitutes an absolute principle that would dominate all other needs of party development, regardless of country, situation and time .
After Lenin’s death, the party leadership,
formally relying on the Tenth Congress resolution on
factions and groups to defend itself against all
criticism, increasingly stifled party democracy and
, at the same time, increasingly lost sight of its immediate goal :
the suppression of factionalism. The task is not, in fact,
to prohibit factions, but rather to ensure their
complete disappearance. Yet, factionalism has never before
ravaged the party so much, fragmented its unity so profoundly, as since
Lenin left the helm. Never before has there been such a pervasive
, false monolithism, beyond this fragmentation,
which merely serves to camouflage the methods used to stifle
party life.
The faction of the apparatus that conceals itself from the party’s view
was formed within the PC (b) even before the 12th Congress.
Subsequently, it adopted a carbonari-like organizational structure
, with its illegal central committee (the "gang of seven"),
its circulars, its agents, its coded language, etc. The
party apparatus selected from within itself a closed and
uncontrollable order, possessing the exceptional resources of the apparatus
, not only of the party but also of the State, transforming
a mass party into an instrument of camouflage and making
it a subordinate tool, used in the maneuvers of schemers
.
But the more this closed-off faction of the apparatus
resolutely escapes the control of the party’s mass—a mass increasingly
diluted by all sorts of "levies" and "promotions
"164—the more the process of fragmentation into factions
becomes, not only at the base but also within the apparatus itself
. Given the
apparatus’s complete and unlimited domination over the party, already established at the time of the 13th
Congress, the divergences that appear within the apparatus itself
find no resolution : calling on the party to provide the
true solution would again be to subordinate the apparatus to it
, to settle the dispute by resorting to the methods of
the apparatus’s democracy, that is, by questioning the
members of the secret faction : only the group that is
certain in advance of having a majority within the apparatus is inclined to
adopt this solution. As a corollary,
new factions sometimes form within the dominant faction of
the apparatus, striving not so much to obtain a majority
within the common faction, but rather to find footholds
within the institutions of the state apparatus. A majority at the
party congress is automatically secured since
the congress can be convened at the most opportune moment and
prepared as desired. This is how
the apparatus usurps power, which constitutes the most
terrible danger for both the party and the dictatorship
of the proletariat.
After the first “anti-Trotskyist” campaign of
1923–1924 had been carried out to its conclusion by means of the factions and
the apparatus, a deep rift appeared in the
secret faction led by the “Gang of Seven.” The fundamental cause
lay in the class discontent of the proletarian vanguard
in Leningrad with the drift that was beginning
to manifest itself both with regard to the problems of the country’s internal life
and to international issues. The
advanced workers of Leningrad continued in 1925 the work
begun by the vanguard proletarians of Moscow in
1923 (165). But these deep class tendencies could not be
openly manifested in the party : they were reflected only
in the muted struggle that took place within the
apparatus faction (166).
In April 1925, the Central Committee circulated a circular throughout the party
refuting rumors allegedly spread
by the "Trotskyists" (!!) claiming that there were, within the core
of the "Leninists"—the "Gang of Seven"—certain differences
of opinion regarding the peasantry. It was only through this circular
that more party cadres learned of the actual existence
of such differences, which in no way prevented them from
continuing to deceive the party by asserting that the Opposition was
undermining the monolithic nature of "Lenin’s Guard." This
propaganda was in full swing when the 14th Congress brought upon the party the existing , formless and confused, but profound, class-based
disputes between the two sections of the ruling faction. The Moscow and Leningrad organizations—that is, the main strongholds of the party—adopted diametrically opposed resolutions at their conferences on the eve of the congress . Both cities obviously did so unanimously. Moscow explained this miracle of " revolutionary order" by the oppression exerted in Leningrad by the party apparatus, while the latter turned the accusation back on Moscow. As if there had been a watertight barrier between the organizations of these two cities ! In both cases, the apparatus decided, demonstrating by its 100% monolithic nature that the party was absent when the fundamental questions of its own existence were being decided. The 14th Congress was therefore forced to provide a solution to the new divergences arising from essential problems and to reorganize the leadership behind the back of the party, which had not been consulted. The congress had no choice but to immediately entrust the task of finding this solution to a carefully selected hierarchy of party secretaries. The 14th Congress marked a new milestone in the dismantling of party democracy through the methods of "order," that is, the whims of the hidden faction within the party apparatus. The next stage has recently unfolded . The art of the ruling faction lies in consistently presenting the party with a resolution that has already been adopted, a
an irreparable situation, a fait accompli.
However, this new, higher phase of “
revolutionary order” by no means signified the liquidation of factions
and groups. On the contrary, they developed
extraordinarily, their relations worsened, both
within the party ranks and within the apparatus itself. As far as
the party was concerned, the bureaucratic punishment inflicted on the groups
became increasingly severe and, as a sign of impotence
, it even stooped to the infamy of the
Wrangel officer affair and Article 58. Simultaneously, the
process of further fragmentation of the ruling faction itself
continued and is still developing today.
Certainly, there is no shortage today either of false displays
of monolithism and circulars testifying to the
complete unanimity of the leading circles. In reality, the silent,
fierce, because inescapable struggle which was taking place in the
closed apparatus of the factions, has taken on, judging by all the symptoms, an
extremely tense character and is leading the party towards some unknown
new explosion.
Such is the theory and practice of the "revolutionary order
" which inevitably transforms into the theory and practice
of usurpation.
For a long time, however, these matters have not been confined to
the Soviet Union. In 1923, the campaign against factionalism
rested primarily on the argument that
factions are embryonic parties. Now, in a country where the
peasantry holds an overwhelming majority and is surrounded by
capitalists, the dictatorship of the proletariat does not allow for the freedom of
parties.168 This thesis is perfectly correct in itself. But it
also requires a just policy and an appropriate regime. It is clear,
however, that by posing the question in this way,
the resolutions of the Tenth Congress of the CPSU(b), the governing party, were being foregone conclusion as to their
application to the CPSUs of bourgeois states. But the bureaucratic regime has its
own self-destructive logic. If it does not allow bureaucratic control
in the Soviet party, it tolerates it no
more in the Comintern, which, formally speaking, dominates the CPSU
(b). That is why the leadership transformed
its brutal and disloyal interpretation and application
of the resolution of the 10th Congress, which corresponded to the
precisely determined conditions of the USSR at the time in question, into a universal principle :
it extended it to all organizations on the globe.
Bolshevism has always been strong because it was
historically concrete in developing its forms of organization
. No arid blueprints. By moving from one stage to the next,
the Bolsheviks radically altered the structure of their
organization. Yet now, the same principle of
"revolutionary order" is being applied simultaneously to the powerful party
of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the KPD, which constitutes a
serious political force, to the Chinese party, which has suddenly been swept up
in the whirlwind of revolutionary struggle, and to the small
propaganda group that is the party in the United States. The mere
occurrence of doubts within the latter regarding the correctness of the
methods imposed by the current Pepper is enough to
unleash punishments upon those skeptics deemed factional. A
young party, which is a completely embryonic political organism
, without any real connection with the masses, without experience in
revolutionary leadership, without theoretical training, is already
entirely adorned with all the attributes of the "revolutionary order
" which fit it like a father’s armor on his six-year-old son.
The Communist Party of the USSR possesses a
wealth of revolutionary experience in the realm of ideas. But, as
recent years have shown, it too cannot live
a single day with impunity by merely consuming the interest
on its capital : it must constantly replenish and increase it
. This is only possible through the collective theoretical work of the
party. What then can be said of foreign Communist Parties, born only a few years ago
, which are still merely going through their
initial phase of accumulating theoretical knowledge and
methods of action ? Without genuine freedom in party life,
without freedom of discussion, without freedom to collectively develop,
including within groups, the path forward, these parties
will never become a decisive revolutionary force.
Before the Tenth Congress, where the ban on factions was decided
, the Communist Party of the USSR had lived for two decades
without such a prohibition. It was precisely these two
decades that shaped it so that, faced with a
most difficult reversal, it was able to accept and endure the
severe resolutions of the Tenth Congress. Western communist parties, however,
begin directly with this.
Lenin, and we with him, feared above all that the
Russian Communist Party, possessing powerful state resources,
would exert an excessive, overwhelming influence on the fledgling
Western parties that had just organized themselves. Lenin tirelessly
warned against a premature increase in centralism
, against exaggerated gestures by the Executive Committee and its
Presidium in this direction, and especially against forms and methods
of assistance that would devolve into a simple
power grab, admitting no appeals.
The break occurred in 1924 under the name of
"Bolshevization." If by Bolshevization we mean the purging
of the party through the elimination of foreign elements and habits
— that of clinging Social Democratic officials
, Freemasons, pacifist democrats,
spiritualist Confusionists, and so on—then this task was carried out
from the very first day of the Communist International’s existence :
at the Fourth Congress, it took on particularly active forms with
regard to the French Communist Party. But this
true Bolshevization was once inextricably linked to the
specific experience of the Comintern’s national sections and spread from
that experience : its touchstone was the question
of national politics, which rose to become
international problems. The "Bolshevization" of 1924 was
merely a caricature. The revolver was put to the temple of the
leading organizations of the communist parties, demanding that,
without information or debate, they take a position immediately and
definitively on the disagreements within the Communist Party of
the USSR. They knew in advance that, depending on the position they
took, they would either remain in the Comintern or be expelled.
In 1924, however, the European PCs were not sufficiently
equipped to resolve as quickly the problems posed in the Russian discussion where, in the new stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat, two principled tendencies
were barely emerging .
Naturally, after 1924, the work of purging continued,
and in many sections,
foreign elements were rightly eliminated. But, considered as a
whole, "Bolshevization" consisted of systematically disorganizing
the emerging leaderships in the Western Communist Parties
by exploiting the disputes between Russians, which
the state apparatus hammered into place. All of this was
disguised under the banner of combating factionalism.
If factions were to crystallize within the proletarian vanguard party, threatening to render it permanently
incapable of fighting, the party would clearly be
faced with a difficult decision : should it allow
time for further verification,
or should it immediately acknowledge that a split is
inevitable ? A fighting party cannot be a collection of
factions pulling in different directions. This is an undeniable truth
in its general form. But using splitting as a
preventative measure against disagreements, cutting off any group or
faction that voices criticism, amounts to
transforming the party’s internal life into a series
of failed attempts. Such methods, far from contributing to the
perpetuation and development of the species, only exhaust
the generating organism, namely the party. The struggle against the spirit
of factionalism becomes more dangerous than that spirit itself.
In the present situation, all the pioneers and founders
of almost all the communist parties in the world are excluded from
the International, not to mention its former president. 169 • In
almost all parties, the groups which have guided its development
for two consecutive periods are excluded or sidelined.
In Germany, the Brandler group now only has one
foot in the party ; the Maslow group is on the other side of the threshold.
In France, the former groups of Rosmer-Monatte, Loriot,
and Souvarine 170 are excluded ; the same is true for the
Girault-Treint group, which was in the leadership during the following period.
In Belgium, the essential group of van Overstraeten 171 has been excluded
. If the Bordiga group 172, which gave rise to the
Italian Communist Party, is only half excluded, this is explained by the conditions
of the Fascist regime. In Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Norway,
the United States—in short, in almost every party in the world—
events of roughly the same order have occurred
since Lenin’s death 173.
It is undeniable that many of those expelled had committed
enormous errors : we were among the first to point this out.
Nor can it be denied that many of those expelled, after being
removed from the Comintern, largely returned to
their original positions, to left-wing social democracy or to
trade unionism. But the task of the Comintern leadership is by no means
to automatically drive the young leaders of national parties into a dead end
and thus condemn some of their
representatives to ideological degeneration. The "revolutionary order
" of the bureaucratic leadership has become a
formidable obstacle to the development of all the parties
of the International.
Organizational questions are inseparable from those of
program and tactics. It is crucial to understand that one of
the most significant sources of opportunism within the Comintern is the
bureaucratic nature of its apparatus and its
ruling party. After the experience of 1923-1928, no one
can deny that in the Soviet Union, the bureaucracy is both
the expression and the instrument of the pressure exerted by non-
proletarian classes on the proletariat. In this regard, the
Communist International’s "Draft Program"
aptly states that bureaucratic depravities
"inevitably arise from a lack of
mass education and class influences foreign to the proletariat."
This is the key to understanding not
only bureaucracy in general, but its extraordinary
growth over the past five years. The level of
education among the masses, while still insufficient, has
undoubtedly increased during this period. Therefore,
the cause of the bureaucracy’s expansion can only be found in
the growing influence of class forces external to the proletariat.
The Communist Parties of Europe, that is to say essentially their
leadership cores, are aligning their organizations with the movements and
regroupings taking place within the Communist Party of the USSR.
Thus, the bureaucracy of foreign Communist Parties is to a large
extent merely a reflection and complement of that of the Communist Party of the
USSR.
The selection of leaders of foreign Communist Parties was, and
still is, based on their ability to accept and approve
the most recent grouping within the apparatus of the Communist Party of the USSR.
Those who had the most independence and sense of responsibility
, those who did not accept to submit to
changes made in a strictly administrative way, were
excluded from the party or forced to join the right - often
so-called right - or else joined the Left Opposition.
Thus, the organic process of selection, which allows for
the cohesion of revolutionary cadres based on the
proletarian struggle, is interrupted, modified, and distorted under the direction
of the Communist International, and sometimes directly replaced
by an administrative and bureaucratic sorting from above. It is no surprise
that the communist leaders most willing to accept
pre-determined decisions and sign any resolution
have frequently prevailed over those more
party-minded and more imbued with a sense of revolutionary responsibility
. Most often, instead of choosing stoic and rigorous revolutionaries, those who, as good bureaucrats, knew how to adapt
were selected .
All problems of domestic and international politics
invariably lead us back to questions of the
Party’s internal regime. It goes without saying that the deviations that have led us
away from the class line in matters of the
Chinese revolution, the British labor movement, the Soviet economy
, wages, taxes, and so on, constitute in themselves
a most serious danger. But this danger is compounded tenfold
by the impossibility for the Party, bound hand and foot by the
bureaucratic regime, to correct,
through normal channels, the line decided at the top. The
same can be said of the Communist International. The resolution of the
14th Congress of the CPSU on the need for a
more democratic and collective leadership of the
Communist International has been transformed in practice into its opposite.
Changing the internal regime of the Communist International
is becoming a matter of life or death for the
international revolutionary movement. This change can be achieved
in two ways : either in parallel with a change in the
internal regime of the CPSU, or by fighting against the
leading role of the CPSU in the Comintern. We must
exert all our strength to make the first path prevail. The
struggle for a change in the regime of the CPSU is
a struggle for the reform of the regime of the Communist International
; it also aims to safeguard our
ideas in the leadership of our party.
The very idea that living, active parties could be subordinated to the
control of the "revolutionary order" of an immovable party and state bureaucracy must therefore be ruthlessly expelled from the program
. The party itself must be restored to its
rightful place. The party must once again become a party. This must
be affirmed in the program in a way that leaves no
room for any theoretical justification of the bureaucracy and its
usurping tendencies.
12. The causes of the Opposition’s defeats and the outlook
From the autumn of 1923 onward, the proletarian left wing of the
party, which had set forth its views in a series of documents,
the principal one being the Platform of the Bolshevik-Leninists
(Opposition), was systematically destroyed as an organization
. The methods of repression were determined by the
nature of the party’s internal regime, which became increasingly bureaucratic
as pressure from the
non-proletarian classes against the proletariat intensified. The general character
of the period allowed these methods to succeed :
it was a time when the proletariat was suffering serious defeats and
social democracy was being revived, while within the
communist parties centrist and opportunist tendencies were strengthening
, whereas, until the very last months, centrism
had been systematically shifting to the right. The first repression
against the Opposition was carried out immediately after the defeat
of the German revolution, of which it was in some ways a
complement. It would have been impossible if the German proletariat
had triumphed, and thus extraordinarily strengthened the
class confidence of the proletariat of the USSR and consequently
its capacity to resist the pressure of the bourgeois classes
both inside and outside the country and the party bureaucracy
which is their transmission belt.
To shed light on the general meaning of the regroupings that took
place within the Communist International since the end of 1923, it
would be of paramount importance to examine how the
leading group, at the various stages of its shift, explained its
victories of "organization" over the Opposition. It is not
possible for us to undertake this task within the framework of a critique of the draft
program. However, to achieve our goal, it will suffice
to examine how the first "victory" won against the Opposition in September 1924 was understood
, according to the article in which
Stalin made his debut in the field of
international politics :
"The decisive victory won by the revolutionary wing in the communist parties must be considered the
surest symptom," wrote Stalin, "of the
very important revolutionary processes taking place deep within
the working class."
And further on in the same article :
"If we add to this the total isolation of the
opportunist tendency within the Russian Communist Party, the picture obtained will be
completely finished. The Fifth Congress of the Comintern only served to
consolidate the victory of the revolutionary wing in the
fundamental sections of the Comintern."
Thus, the defeat of the Russian Communist Party’s opposition was
presented as the result of the proletariat moving
to the left, directly to revolution, and, in all
sections, gaining the upper hand over the right. Now, five years
after the greatest defeat of the international proletariat in
the autumn of 1923, Pravda is forced to acknowledge that
only now is it beginning to "rise from the trough
of the wave, the apathy and depression that began after the
defeat of 1923 and enabled German capitalism to
strengthen its position." 17
But then a question arises, which is new for the
current leaders of the Comintern, if not for us : must
the failure of the Opposition in 1923 and in the
following years be explained by a shift of the working class to the right
and not to the left ? The answer to this question decides
everything.
The one given at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern and later
in speeches and articles was clear and categorical : it was
the strengthening of the revolutionary elements of the
workers’ movement in Europe, the new rising tide, the approach of the
proletarian revolution, that caused the "debacle" of the
Left Opposition.
But today, the lasting, brutal political split that
occurred to the right in 1923, and not to the left, is an
established, universally accepted, and undeniable fact. Consequently, it is clear
that the unleashing of the struggle against the Opposition and its
intensification, with expulsions and deportations, is intimately
linked to the political process of stabilizing the bourgeoisie. It is
true that this process was interrupted during the
last four years by significant revolutionary events.
But further errors by the leadership, even more egregious
than those of 1923 in Germany, each time handed victory to
the enemy under the worst possible conditions for the proletariat and the
Communist Party, thus creating new factors for
bourgeois consolidation. The international revolutionary movement suffered
defeats, and with it the proletarian left wing of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) and the Communist International suffered
setbacks.
The explanation would be incomplete if we did not add the
internal processes of the economy and politics of the USSR
which, starting from the NEP, worsened because the leadership did
not understand the problems of the "smytchka" between towns and
countryside, the imbalance of industrialization and the importance
of its approach on the basis of a planned economy, etc.
The increasing economic and political pressure exerted by
petty-bourgeois and bureaucratic circles within the country, against the backdrop
of defeats for the proletarian revolution in Europe and Asia,
is the historical chain of events that, over these four years,
has tightened like a noose around the
Opposition’s throat. Anyone who doesn’t understand this understands nothing.
In this account, we have had to confront, at almost
every stage, the line that was applied and the one that was dismissed under the
name of "Trotskyism." The meaning of this struggle, its
general aspect, appears quite clearly to a
Marxist. While partial accusations of "Trotskyism,"
supported by an accumulation of real and imagined quotations
spanning a period of 25 years, could be misleading,
a coherent and comprehensive assessment of the struggle in
the realm of ideas waged over the last five years
shows that two lines have emerged. One was conscious
and methodical. It extended and developed Leninist strategic principles
in their application to the
internal problems of the USSR and the world revolution. This is the line
of the Opposition. The other, unconscious, contradictory, hesitant,
zigzagging, deviating from Leninism under the pressure of
enemy class forces during a period of
international political retreat : this is the leadership of the official leadership. When
people change, they more often, more easily, abandon
concepts than words to which they are accustomed. This is the
general law of change in the realm of ideas. In essence, the
leadership revised Lenin on almost all
fundamental questions, but it presented this revision as a
development of Leninism and labeled as "Trotskyism" what
is its revolutionary, international essence, in order to
camouflage itself not only outwardly but even in its
innermost being, so as to better adapt to the process of its own
drift.
Anyone who wants to understand this will not level the
ridiculous accusation that we have linked criticism of the draft program to exposing
the myth of Trotskyism. The present draft matured in
an era steeped in this myth. It was primarily its
authors who fueled it, took it as their starting point, and
judged everything in its light. Thus, this era is reflected
in the draft.
A new and extraordinarily instructive chapter has just been
added to the history of politics. It can be said to prove the
power that the creation of myths, or, to put it more
simply, slander used as a political weapon in the
realm of ideas, can wield. Experience demonstrates that
its value should not be underestimated. We are still far from having made
"the leap that will take us from the realm of necessity to that of
freedom." We live in a class society that is
impossible to conceive of without obscurantism, prejudice, and
superstition. A myth, corresponding to certain
traditional interests or habits, can always
acquire great power in a class-divided society. Nevertheless, relying
solely on a myth, even one that is planned and at the disposal of
all the resources of the State, makes it impossible to build a
broad political framework, especially a revolutionary one, and particularly so
in our era of abrupt upheavals. The
creation of myths inevitably becomes entangled in its own
contradictions. We have only cited a small part of it, although
it is perhaps the most important. Quite independently
of whether external circumstances will allow us
to complete our analysis, we firmly believe
that the objective analysis of events will support
the subjective analysis.
The radicalization of the working masses in Europe is an
indisputable fact, evident in the recent
parliamentary elections. But it is only just passing through its initial phase
. It is being countered by factors such as the
recent defeat of the Chinese revolution, which are paving the way for social
democracy. We do not intend to predict here the speed
at which this will happen. It is clear, in any case, that it will only become
the harbinger of a new revolutionary situation once
the Communist Party’s appeal is
increasingly exerted at the expense of the significant reserves of social
democracy. We are not there yet. But we will get there, for
it is a matter of absolute necessity.
The uncertain direction currently being pursued by the leadership
of the Comintern, which is striving to steer sharply to the left, is
not in line with the policy being conducted within the USSR.
Yet, there is no sign of regime change or of an end to the
struggle against the revolutionary elements that have withstood all
trials. This contradiction stems not only
from the internal difficulties of the USSR—which
fully confirms the Opposition’s opinion—but also corresponds
perfectly to the first phase of the radicalization of the working masses in Europe. The eclecticism of the Comintern
leadership’s policy , the eclecticism of the draft program, constitute, in a way, a snapshot of the current state of the international working class, pushed to the left by events but which has not yet determined its path and which has given more than 9 million votes to German Social Democracy.
The future revolutionary progress will correspond to a
vast regrouping within the
working class and in all its organizations, including the
Communist International. The shape of this process is not yet clearly visible,
but the paths of its concrete development are clear.
The working masses, layer by layer, will pass from social
democracy to communism. The axis of communist politics will
shift from the right to the left. The Bolshevik line,
consistent with the group that, since 1923, since the defeat of the
German proletariat, has managed to swim against the tide amidst a hail
of accusations and persecution, will garner
increasing sympathy.
The organizational methods by which the ideas of true Leninism, which cannot be counterfeited, will triumph
in the Communist International and consequently in
the whole of the international proletariat, depend to a very large extent on the current leadership of the Communist International and consequently directly on the Fifth Congress.
However, whatever the decisions of this congress—
and we are prepared for the worst—the general judgment resulting from
the present era and its internal tendencies, the cause of which has
been informed in particular by the experience of the last five
years, tells us that the ideas of the Opposition do not need to
find their way outside the Communist International.
No one will make us deviate from this. The ideas we defend
will become its ideas and will find their expression in the
program of the Communist International.
III. ASSESSMENT AND PROSPECTS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION :
HIS TEACHINGS FOR THE COUNTRIES OF THE EAST
AND FOR THE ENTIRE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL
It was through analyzing the experience, errors, and tendencies
of the 1905 revolution that
Bolshevism, Menshevism, and the left wing of
German and international social democracy were definitively formed. Analyzing the experience
of the Chinese revolution is of equal importance
to the international proletariat today.
Yet this analysis, far from having begun, is forbidden.
Official literature is busy quickly aligning the facts with the
resolutions of the Comintern Executive Committee, whose inconsistency has become
glaringly obvious. The draft program smooths over
the sharp edges of the China problem as much as possible, but
essentially it endorses the disastrous policy pursued by the Comintern Executive Committee. A literary plea for failed schemes
is substituted for an analysis of one of the greatest processes in history .
1. The nature of the colonial bourgeoisie
The draft program states :
“Are provisional agreements with the native bourgeoisie
of colonial countries admissible only insofar
as they do not obstruct the revolutionary organization
of workers and peasants and wage an
effective struggle against imperialism ?”
This formula, although deliberately inserted into a
subordinate clause, is one of the fundamental tenets of the
project, at least for the countries of the East. The main clause
obviously speaks of "the liberation (of workers and
peasants) from the influence of the native bourgeoisie." However,
we are not judging as grammarians, but as politicians :
drawing on our own experience, we therefore say : "The
main clause here has only secondary value, while
the subordinate clause contains the essential point. As for the
formula as a whole, it is the Menshevik noose
around the necks of the proletarians of the East."
What provisional agreements are we talking about ? In politics, as
in nature, everything is "provisional." Perhaps
we are referring to strictly practical, circumstantial agreements ? It goes
without saying that we cannot, for the future, forgo such
rigorously defined agreements, concerning
precise measures, each serving a well-defined purpose. This is the case, for
example, when it comes to reaching an agreement with Guomindang students
to organize an anti-imperialist demonstration
, or when Chinese merchants provide aid to strikers
in a foreign concession. Such cases are by no means
excluded in the future, even in China. But then, what is the
relevance here of general political conditions : "Provided that
it (the bourgeoisie) does not oppose the revolutionary organization
of the workers and peasants and wages an effective struggle
(!) against imperialism ?"
The sole “condition” of any agreement with the bourgeoisie—
a separate, practical agreement, limited to specific measures, tailored to
each case under consideration—is that organizations
and flags not be mixed, either directly or indirectly, for a
day or an hour ; that red be distinguished from blue ; and
that the bourgeoisie not be believed in any way to be capable—or even
willing—of waging a real struggle against imperialism and not
obstructing workers and peasants. The other condition
is utterly useless to us for practical agreements concerning
specific measures. On the contrary, it could only
be detrimental to us, breaking the general line of our struggle against
the bourgeoisie, a struggle that does not cease, even during the brief
period of the “agreement.” It has long been said that
strictly practical agreements, which bind us in no way and
oblige us to nothing from a political standpoint, can, if
advantageous at a given moment, be concluded with the
devil himself. But it is absurd to demand at the same time
that the devil, on this occasion, convert completely to Christianity
and use his horns not against workers and
peasants, but exclusively for pious works. By
presenting such conditions, we would already be acting, in essence,
like the devil’s advocates, and offering to become his
godfathers.
By imposing these absurd conditions, by pre-emptively flattering
the bourgeoisie, the Draft Program made it very clear
— despite the diplomatically subordinate nature
of the proposal—that it was precisely about long-term political coalitions
and not ad hoc agreements concluded
for practical reasons with a view to immediate measures. But
what does it mean in this case to demand that the bourgeoisie "effectively
" fight and "not obstruct" ? Are we formulating these conditions
to the bourgeoisie itself and demanding that it make
a public promise ? It will do as much as we want !
It will even send its delegates to Moscow, join the
Peasant International, become a sympathizer of
the Communist International 178, cast glances at the
Red International of Trade Unions, in short, promise everything that
will allow it - with our help - to better, more
easily, more completely deceive its workers and peasants,
throwing dust in their eyes... until the first opportunity,
like the one offered to them in Shanghai 179 •
Perhaps these are not political promises from
the bourgeoisie, which, let us repeat, will make them immediately,
thus securing our guarantee before the working masses ?
Perhaps they are an "objective," "scientific" judgment of
the native bourgeoisie, a kind of "sociological
" assessment of this bourgeoisie’s capacity to fight and "not obstruct" ? Alas, as recent experience
shows , such assessments usually make the experts look like fools. This would be nothing if it were only the experts.
No doubt can remain :
the text is precisely about long-term policies. It would be superfluous
to include the question of practical, circumstantial agreements in
the program ; a tactical revolution "in the
present moment," addressing the measures to be adopted, would have sufficed. But the aim is to
justify and enshrine in the program the orientation, followed
yesterday, toward the Guomindang, which led to the crushing of the second
Chinese Revolution and is capable of leading more than one
to its downfall. 180
In accordance with the thinking of Bukharin, the true author
of the project, the focus is precisely on a general assessment of
the colonial bourgeoisie whose ability to fight and not
obstruct must be proven not by its own
oath, but by a strictly "sociological" scheme, that is
to say the 1001st scholastic scheme adapted to this opportunistic work
.
To make the demonstration clearer, let us quote here the
judgment made by Bukharin on the colonial bourgeoisie.
After a reference to the "anti-imperialist core" of colonial revolutions
and to Lenin (completely irrelevant), Bukharin
declares :
"The liberal bourgeoisie played
an objectively revolutionary role in China for many years, not just months, and
then exhausted itself. It was by no
means a ’glorious day’ comparable to the
Russian liberal revolution of 1905."
Everything here is wrong from beginning to end. Lenin did indeed teach
that one must rigorously distinguish between the oppressed bourgeois nation
and the oppressor nation. From this, deductions of exceptional importance follow
, for example, in the case of a war
between an imperialist and a colonial country. For a pacifist, this war
resembles any other ; for a communist, the
war of a colonial nation against an imperialist nation is
a bourgeois-revolutionary war. Lenin placed
national liberation movements, colonial uprisings, and
wars of oppressed nations on the same level as bourgeois democratic revolutions,
particularly that of Russia in 1905. But Lenin
did not, at all, place
wars of national liberation above
bourgeois democratic revolutions, as Bukharin does now after his 180-degree turn. Lenin demanded
the distinction between the bourgeoisie of the oppressed country and that
of the oppressor country. But he never presented this problem anywhere.
and could not have done so—by asserting that the bourgeoisie
of a non-colonial country during the struggle for
national liberation must be more progressive and revolutionary than
the bourgeoisie of a non-colonial country during a period of
democratic revolution. Theoretically, nothing requires it.
History does not bear it out. However pitiful
Russian liberalism may be, even though its left wing—petty-bourgeois democracy
, the Social Democrats, and the Mensheviks—appears stunted, it is
hardly possible to argue that liberalism and bourgeois democracy
in China have shown more elevation and
revolutionary capacity than their Russian counterparts.
To present things as if the colonial yoke
necessarily gave a revolutionary character to the
national bourgeoisie is to reproduce in reverse the fundamental error of
Menshevism, which believed that the revolutionary nature of the Russian bourgeoisie absolutely stemmed from absolutist and feudal
oppression .
The question of the nature and policy of the bourgeoisie
is decided by the whole internal class structure of the nation
which is carrying out the revolutionary struggle, by the historical period in
which this struggle is taking place, by the degree of
economic, political and military dependence which binds the native bourgeoisie
to world imperialism as a whole or to a
definite part of it, and finally - and this is the essential point - by the
degree of class activity of the native proletariat and by the state of
its links with the international revolutionary movement.
A democratic revolution or national liberation
can enable the bourgeoisie to deepen and expand the
possibilities for exploitation. The autonomous intervention of the
proletariat in the revolutionary arena threatens to deprive them of these possibilities completely
.
Let’s look at this more closely. The current leaders of
the Comintern tirelessly repeat that Chiang Kai-shek waged
war against imperialism while Kerensky (181) went hand
in hand with the imperialists. Conclusion : a relentless struggle had to be waged against Kerensky, while Chiang Kai-shek
should have been supported .
The link between Kerenskyism and imperialism is undeniable
. We can go back and point out that the
Russian bourgeoisie "dethroned" Nicholas II (182) with the blessing
of the British and French imperialists. Not only did Milyukov-
Kerensky (183) support Lloyd George-Poincaré’s war (184),
but Lloyd George and Poincaré also supported Milyukov-Kerensky’s revolution,
first against the Tsar, then against the
workers and peasants. This is absolutely beyond doubt.
But how did things turn out on this point in
China ? The "February" revolution took place in China in
1911. It was a great progressive event, although it was
carried out with the most direct participation of the imperialists.
Sun Yat-sen (185) recounts in his Memoirs how his organization
, in all its activities, was supported by the "aid" of the
imperialist countries, sometimes Japan, sometimes France, sometimes
the United States (186). While in 1917 Kerensky continued to participate in
the imperialist war, the Chinese bourgeoisie, also
"national," "revolutionary," etc., supported
Wilson’s intervention (187) in the war, hoping that the Entente would help
liberate China. In 1918, Sun Yat-sen addressed the
Entente governments (188) with his plans for the economic recovery
and political liberation of China. There is no reason
to claim that the Chinese bourgeoisie, in its struggle
against the Manchu dynasty, displayed more
revolutionary qualities than the Russian bourgeoisie fighting against Tsarism,
or that there was a difference in principle between the attitude
adopted towards imperialism by Chiang Kai-shek and by
Kerensky.
But, the Comintern Executive Committee asserts, Chiang Kai-shek
did indeed wage war against imperialism. To present
things this way is to grossly distort reality.
Chiang Kai-shek waged war against the Chinese warlords
, agents of one of the imperialist states. This is not at
all the same as waging war against imperialism. Even
Tan Pingshan understood this (189). In the report he presented
to the Comintern Executive Plenary Assembly at the end of 1926, he characterized
the policy of the Guomindang center, headed by
Chiang Kai-shek, as follows :
"In the field of international politics, he has
a passive attitude, in the fullest sense of the term... He is
inclined to fight only against British imperialism ; as for
the Japanese imperialists, under certain conditions, he is
prepared to accept a compromise with them." (190)
The Guomindang’s attitude towards imperialism was,
from the outset, not revolutionary but entirely collaborative
: it aimed to defeat and repel the agents of certain
imperialist powers in order to begin bargaining with these
powers or others on more advantageous terms. Quite
simply.
This entire approach to the problem is flawed. What
must be considered is not the attitude of each
native bourgeoisie toward imperialism “in general,” but its
position regarding the revolutionary historical tasks at hand
in its country. The Russian bourgeoisie was that of an
oppressive imperialist state. The Chinese bourgeoisie is that of an
oppressed colonial country. The overthrow of feudal Tsarism was
a progressive task in old Russia. Overthrowing the
imperialist yoke is a progressive historical task in China. But
the conduct of the Chinese bourgeoisie toward imperialism
, the proletariat, and the peasantry is not only no
more revolutionary than the attitude of the Russian bourgeoisie
toward Tsarism and the revolutionary classes of Russia,
but is perhaps even more reactionary and cowardly.
That’s the only way to ask the question.
The Chinese bourgeoisie is realistic enough, and
knows the face of world imperialism intimately enough, to
understand that a truly serious struggle against it requires
such a powerful surge from the revolutionary masses that, from the
outset, it is the bourgeoisie itself that will be threatened. If the struggle
against the Manchu dynasty was a task of
lesser historical scope than the overthrow of Tsarism, the
struggle against world imperialism is, on the other hand, a historically
far greater problem. And if, from our very first steps, we taught
the workers of Russia not to believe that liberalism was
willing and petty-bourgeois democracy capable of
overthrowing Tsarism and abolishing feudalism, we should have
instilled this sense of distrust in the Chinese workers with equal force from the beginning
. Ultimately, Stalin
and Bukharin’s entirely false new theory on the "immanence" of the
revolutionary spirit of the colonial bourgeoisie is nothing more than Menshevism
translated into the language of Chinese politics. It
simply serves to turn China’s oppressed situation
into a political advantage for the Chinese bourgeoisie : it throws
a weighty supplement onto the scales, on the side of the bourgeoisie,
to counterbalance the scales of the
triply oppressed Chinese proletariat.
But, Stalin and Bukharin, the authors of the Draft Program, tell us
, Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Campaign
(191) provoked a powerful awakening of the working and
peasant masses. This is undeniable. But the fact that Guchkov and
Shulgin (192) brought Nicholas II’s act of abdication with them to Petrograd
did not play a revolutionary role,
and therefore did not awaken the most crushed,
weary, and timid popular strata. But the fact that yesterday the "Laborist
" (193) Kerensky became Chairman of the Council of Ministers and
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces did not awaken the mass of
soldiers, did not drive them to the rallies, did not incite the
villages against the gentry ?
We can also ask the question more broadly. Does n’t
all the activity of capitalism, in general, awaken
the masses, tear them away, according to the expression of the
Communist Manifesto, from the stupidity of
rural life, and launch the proletarian battalions into the struggle ?
But can we not substitute a historical judgment on the
objective role of capitalism as a whole, or of certain actions
of the bourgeoisie in particular, for our active, class-based,
revolutionary attitude toward capitalism and the activities of the
bourgeoisie ? Opportunist politics has always been based on
this kind of "objectivism"—non-dialectical, conservative, and
conformist. Marxism has always taught that the
revolutionary consequences of certain acts that the bourgeoisie is obliged
to perform because of its situation will be all the more
decisive, undeniable, and lasting the more independent the proletarian vanguard
is from the bourgeoisie, and the less inclined
it is to get caught in the bourgeois machine, to be
dazzled by the bourgeoisie, to overestimate its revolutionary spirit
and its capacity to establish a "united front" and the struggle
against imperialism.
Bukharin’s judgment of the colonial bourgeoisie does
not withstand criticism in the theoretical, historical,
and political spheres. Yet, it is precisely this judgment that the
Draft Program, as we have seen, attempts to enshrine
.
An unacknowledged and unpunished wrong
always leads to another one immediately afterwards or prepares the way for it.
If yesterday the Chinese bourgeoisie was incorporated into the
revolutionary united front, today it is proclaimed that "it has
definitively passed into the camp of the counter-revolution".
But it is not difficult to discover how unfounded these enlistments
and transfers, carried out in a purely administrative manner
without any serious Marxist analysis, are
.
It is quite clear that the bourgeoisie does not join the
revolutionaries by chance or lightly, but because it is under
pressure from its class interests. Out of fear of the masses, it
then abandons the revolution or openly displays
a previously concealed hatred of it. But it can only
definitively switch to the camp of the counter-revolution—that is,
free itself from the need to "support" the revolution again
, or at least to flirt with it—when, through
revolutionary or other methods—those of Bismarck
(194), for example—it succeeds in satisfying its
fundamental class aspirations. Let us recall the history of the years 1848 and
1871. Let us recall that the Russian bourgeoisie could only turn
its back so resolutely on the revolution because it had received
from it the State Duma, namely, the means to act directly on
the bureaucracy and engage in negotiations with it. Nevertheless,
when the war of 1914-1917 revealed that the "renewed" regime
was incapable of ensuring the satisfaction of the main interests of
the bourgeoisie, the latter turned again to the side of the
revolution and its reversal was more brutal than in 1905.
Can it be said that the 1925-27 revolution in China satisfied
at least some of the fundamental interests of
Chinese capitalism ? No, China is currently as far
from genuine national unity and independence
as it was before 1925 (195). Yet, for the Chinese bourgeoisie, the
creation of a single domestic market, its protection against
cheaper foreign goods, constitutes almost
a matter of life or death, second in importance
only to maintaining the foundations of its
class domination over the proletariat and the poor peasantry. But for the
English and French bourgeoisies, maintaining China as a
colony is no less important than
economic autonomy is for the Chinese bourgeoisie. This is why there will
still be many leftward zigzags in the policies of the
Chinese bourgeoisie. In the future, there will be no shortage of temptations
for those who favor a united national front. To tell the Chinese communists today
, “Your coalition with the bourgeoisie was
just from 1924 to the end of 1927, but now it’s worthless
because the bourgeoisie has definitively sided with the
counter-revolution,” is to disarm them once again
in the face of the objective reversals that will occur in the
current situation and the leftward zigzags that the
Chinese bourgeoisie will inevitably make. Chiang Kai-shek’s war
against the North is already completely overturning the
mechanical framework devised by the authors of the draft program.
But the fundamental error in the official way
of posing the question will undoubtedly become most
strikingly, convincingly, and irrefutably apparent if we
recall the recent and highly significant fact that
Tsarist Russia was a combination of oppressor and
oppressed nations—that is, of Great Russians and “foreigners,
” many of whom found themselves entirely in the position
of colonies or semi-colonies. Lenin not only demanded
the utmost attention to the national question of the peoples of
Tsarist Russia, but he also proclaimed, against Bukharin and his ilk,
that the elementary duty of the proletariat of the dominant nation
was to support the struggle of the oppressed nations for their right to
self-determination, even to the point of separation. But did the party
conclude that the bourgeoisie of the nationalities
oppressed by Tsarism (Poles, Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews,
Armenians, etc.) was more progressive, radical, and revolutionary
than the Russian bourgeoisie ? Historical experience shows
that the Polish bourgeoisie, even though the absolutist yoke was
combined with the nationalist yoke, was more reactionary than the
Russian bourgeoisie : in the Dumas, it felt the pull not of the
Cadets but of the Octobrists (196). The same was true of the
Tatar bourgeoisie. The unprecedented deprivation of rights suffered by the Jews
did not prevent the Jewish bourgeoisie from being even more cowardly,
more reactionary, and more spineless than that of Russia. Or
were the Estonian, Latvian, Georgian, or Armenian bourgeoisie
more revolutionary than those of Great Russia ? How
can such lessons of history be forgotten ! But
perhaps we must now recognize in retrospect that
Bolshevism was mistaken when, unlike the Bund, the
Dashnaks, the members of the Polish Socialist Party, the
Georgian Mensheviks and others, it urged, from the dawn of the
bourgeois democratic revolution, the workers of all oppressed nations
, of all the colonial peoples of Tsarist Russia, to
regroup in an autonomous class organization, to break
Any organizational link not only with the liberal
bourgeois parties, but also with the revolutionary parties of the petty
bourgeoisie, to win over the working class in the struggle against the
latter and, through the workers, to fight against them
in order to influence the peasants ? Have we not committed a
"Trotskyist" error here ? Have we not, with regard to
these oppressed nations, including some very backward ones
, skipped over the developmental stage corresponding to the
Guomindang ? How easy it is indeed to construct a theory
according to which the PPS, the Danchak-Tsutiun, the Bund, etc.,
were "particular" forms of a necessary collaboration
between different classes struggling against absolutism and the
national yoke ! Can we forget such lessons of history ?
Even before the events in China over the past three
years, it was clear to a Marxist (and it should
now be clear even to a blind man) that foreign imperialism, as
a direct factor in China’s internal life, makes
Chinese Milyukovs and Kerenskys more cowardly in the final analysis
than their Russian prototypes. It was not for nothing that the first
Manifesto of our party proclaimed that the further
east one goes and the more petty and cowardly the bourgeoisie becomes, the more
important the tasks of the proletariat become. This
historical "law" applies equally fully to China (198).
"Our revolution is bourgeois ; that is why
the workers must support the bourgeoisie, say the
short-sighted politicians from the
liquidator camp. Our revolution is bourgeois,
we Marxists say ; that is why the
workers must open the people’s eyes by showing them
the deceptions of the bourgeois politicians, teach them
not to believe words, to rely only on their own
strength, their organization, their unity, their armaments." (199)
This thesis of Lenin retains its full validity for
the entire East : it must at all costs have its place in the
program of the Communist International.
2. The stages of the Chinese revolution
For the Guomindang, the first stage was a period of
domination by the native bourgeoisie under the apologetic banner
of the "four-class bloc" (200). The second period,
after Chiang Kai-shek’s coup, was that of
the experience of parallel and "autonomous" domination by
Chinese Kerenskyism. While the Russian populists (201) and the Mensheviks
openly gave their ephemeral "dictatorship" the form
of a dual power structure, Chinese "revolutionary democracy,
" on the other hand, had not grown sufficiently to reach
even this level. Since history, generally speaking, does
not work on command, it only remains to understand
that there is no, and will be no, “democratic
” dictatorship other than the one the Kuomintang has exercised since 1925. This
remains true regardless of whether the semi-unity of China
achieved by the Kuomintang is maintained in the immediate future
or whether the country is once again dismembered. But precisely
when the class dialectic of the revolution, having
exhausted all its other resources, placed the dictatorship of the proletariat on the agenda,
bringing millions upon millions
of oppressed and dispossessed people from the cities and the countryside into the fold, the Executive Committee of the Communist International put the slogan of the democratic (that is, bourgeois and democratic) dictatorship of the workers and peasants
at the forefront . The answer to this formula was the Canton uprising, which, although premature and despite its adventurous leadership, unveiled the new stage, or more precisely, the future Chinese revolution , the third (202). It is necessary to emphasize this point. In seeking insurance against the sins of the past, the leadership, toward the end of last year, criminally forced the course of events, resulting in the abortion of Canton. But even an abortion can teach us much about the condition of the mother and the process of childbirth. The enormous importance, truly decisive from a theoretical point of view, that the events in Canton have in relation to the essential problems of the revolution
Chinese, is precisely conditioned by the fact that we are
here in the presence of something that happens so rarely in history and
politics ; a laboratory experiment on a gigantic scale.
We paid dearly for it ; but that obliges us all the more to
assimilate its lessons well (203).
One of the battle slogans of the Canton coup,
according to Pravda (No. 31), was the cry, “Down with the
Guomindang !” Yet, already in the aftermath of
Chiang Kai-shek’s “betrayal” and after that of Wang Jingwei (a betrayal
not of class, but of our illusions), the Executive Committee of the Comintern made
solemn promises : “We will not abandon the
Guomindang banner” (204). The workers of Canton outlawed the
Guomindang by decriminalizing all its factions. This
means that, in order to accomplish the fundamental national tasks
of the bourgeoisie, not only the big bourgeoisie, but
also the petty bourgeoisie, presented no political force, party,
or faction alongside which the party of the proletariat could have
solved the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution
. Specifically, the key to entering the position
lies in the fact that the problem of conquering the
peasant movement already falls entirely on the proletariat, directly on the
communist party ; to address the true solution of the
bourgeois-democratic problems of the revolution, power would have to
be entirely concentrated in the hands of the proletariat
.
Pravda reports on the short-lived
Soviet power in Canton :
"The decrees of the Canton Soviet decided, in
the interest of the workers, [...] control over production by the
workers, implementing this control through factory committees [...]
nationalization of large-scale industry, transportation, and
banks."
Further on, measures of this kind are cited :
“Confiscation of all apartments belonging to the upper
class for the benefit of the workers.” (205)
Thus, it was the workers of Canton who were in
power. Moreover, power actually belonged to the
Communist Party. The program of the new regime included
not only the confiscation of the lands of the gentry, insofar
as such lands existed in Guangdong, and
workers’ control over production, but also the nationalization of
large-scale industry, banks, transportation, and even the
confiscation of the bourgeoisie’s apartments and all their
property for the benefit of the workers. If these are the methods of the
bourgeois revolution, one wonders what
the proletarian revolution in China might look like ?
Although the directives of the Comintern Executive Committee made no mention of the
dictatorship of the proletariat or socialist measures, and although
Canton, with its petty-bourgeois character, was distinct from Shanghai,
Hankou, and other industrial centers of the country, the
revolutionary coup against the Guomindang automatically resulted
in the dictatorship of the proletariat. From its very inception, this dictatorship
was compelled, due to the overall situation, to implement
measures even more radical than those with which the
October Revolution began. And this fact, despite its paradoxical appearance
, naturally stems from both the social relations in China
and the entire development of the revolution.
Land ownership, both large and medium-sized, as found
in China, is most intimately intertwined with
urban capitalism, including foreign capital (206). There is no
caste of minor gentry in China that opposes the bourgeoisie.
The most widespread, common, and hated exploiter in
the countryside is the kulak-usurer, an agent of
urban finance capital. Thus, the agrarian revolution has as much an
anti-feudal character as an anti-bourgeois one. There will be little, if
any, stage in China similar to the first stage of
our October Revolution, during which the kulak marched
with the poor and middle peasants, often at their head, against the
landowner. The agrarian revolution in that country means, and
will henceforth mean, insurrection not only against the
gentry and the true bureaucrats, admittedly few in number, but
also against the kulak and the usurer. While in our country, committees of
poor peasants only intervened in the second stage of the
October Revolution, around the middle of 1918, in
China, in whatever form they may take, they will enter the scene as soon
as the agrarian movement is reborn. "Dekulakization" will be
the first step in China, not the second, of the Chinese October.
The agrarian revolution, however, does not constitute
the sole basis of the historical struggle currently unfolding
in China. Even the most radical agrarian revolution, land redistribution
— which the Communist Party will undoubtedly support to the bitter end—
will not, on its own, allow China to escape the economic impasse.
China equally needs its national unity and its
economic sovereignty, that is, customs autonomy
or, more precisely, a monopoly on foreign trade ; this
requires that it liberate itself from global imperialism. For the latter,
China remains not only the most important source
of enrichment but also guarantees its survival by serving as
a safety valve for the upheavals occurring
today within European capitalism and those
that will occur tomorrow within the American market.
This is what determines in advance the immense scope and
monstrous harshness of the struggle through which the Chinese masses
will have to pass ; all the actors in this fight already have
the opportunity to take the measure of it.
The enormous role of foreign capital in Chinese industry
and its habit of
relying directly on “national” forces to defend its appetites make
the program of workers’ control even less feasible in
China than it was in our own country (207). The direct expropriation of
foreign capitalist enterprises first, and then Chinese ones,
will very likely be imposed by the course of the struggle in the
aftermath of the victorious uprising.
The same objective, social, and historical causes that
determined the outcome of "October" in the Russian Revolution
appear in China in an even more stark form. The
bourgeois and proletarian poles of the Chinese nation are
even more intransigently opposed, if possible, than in Russia, given
that, on the one hand, the Chinese bourgeoisie is directly
linked to foreign imperialism and its military apparatus, and that,
on the other hand, the Chinese proletariat made contact from the outset with
the Communist International and the Soviet Union. Numerically
, the Chinese peasantry is an even more dominant mass
than the Russian peasantry (208) ; but caught in the vise of
global contradictions, on whose resolution
its fate depends, in one way or another, the
Chinese peasantry is even more incapable than the Russian peasantry of
playing a leading role. Now, it is no longer a
theoretical prediction, but a fact verified to the very end and in all its
aspects.
These fundamental and indisputable social and political prerequisites
of the third Chinese revolution show not
only that the formula of democratic dictatorship is
obsolete without any hope of return, but also that the third
Chinese revolution, despite China’s great backwardness, or rather
because of this backwardness compared to Russia, will not see a
"democratic" period, even for six months, as
was the case during the October Revolution from November 1917 to
July 1918 : it will be forced, from the beginning, to carry out the great
upheaval and the suppression of private property in the
cities and the countryside.
It is true that this perspective does not correspond to the
pedantic and schematic conception of the relationship between economics
and politics. But the responsibility for this discordance, which
shakes deeply entrenched prejudices—even though October
had already dealt them a serious blow—lies not with
"Trotskyism" but with the law of uneven development. In this
case, it is indeed applicable.
It would be pedantic to claim that, had
a Bolshevik policy been pursued during the
1925-1927 revolution, the Communist Party would certainly have seized
power. But to claim that this possibility was completely
excluded would be shameful philistinism. The mass movement
of workers and peasants was quite sufficient, as
was the disintegration of the ruling classes. The
native bourgeoisie sent its Chiang Kai-sheks and Wang Jingweis to
Moscow ; through its Hu Hanmins, it knocked
on the doors of the Comintern precisely because, faced with the
revolutionary masses, it felt utterly weak : it
understood its weakness and sought to protect itself in advance. The
workers and peasants would not have followed the
native bourgeoisie if we had not lassoed them along with it
. If the Comintern’s policy had been even slightly correct,
the outcome of the CCP’s struggle to win over the masses was
predetermined : the Chinese proletariat would have supported the communists
and the peasant war would have backed the revolutionary proletariat
.
If, from the very beginning of the Northern Campaign, we had
started establishing soviets in the "liberated" regions—the
masses were spontaneously striving for this with all their might—we
would have gained the necessary base and revolutionary element,
we would have concentrated the agrarian uprisings around us,
we would have created our army, we would have disintegrated that of the
enemy ; despite its youth, the Chinese Communist Party could have matured
thanks to the judicious leadership of the Comintern during these
exceptional years, and come to power, if not in all of China
at once, at least in a considerable part of its
territory. And above all, we would have had a party.
But it was precisely in the realm of leadership that
something absolutely monstrous occurred, a veritable
historical catastrophe : the authority of the Soviet Union, of the
Bolshevik party, of the Communist International, served entirely
and above all to support Chiang Kai-shek against the
Communist Party’s own policies, and then to back Wang
Jingwei as the leader of the agrarian revolution. After
trampling the very foundation of Leninist policy and breaking the bones of the
fledgling Chinese Communist Party, the Executive Committee of the Comintern predetermined the victory
of Chinese Kerenskyism over Bolshevism, of the
Chinese Milyukovs over the Kerenskys, of Anglo-Japanese imperialism
over the Chinese Milyukovs.
This is the meaning - the only meaning - of what
happened in China in 1925-1927.
3. Democratic dictatorship or dictatorship of the proletariat ?
How did the last plenum of the Comintern Executive Committee
assess the experience gained in the Chinese revolution, including
that provided by the Canton uprising ? What
future prospects did it outline ? The resolution of the
February 1928 plenum, key to understanding the sections of the
Draft Program devoted to this subject, states the following regarding the
Chinese revolution :
"It is not accurate to characterize it as a
’permanent revolution’ (the position of the representative of the
EC of the Comintern). The tendency to skip over the
bourgeois and democratic stage of the revolution while
simultaneously considering this revolution to be
’permanent’ is an error analogous to that of Trotsky
in 1905."
Since Lenin left the leadership in
1923, the life of the Communist International has consisted essentially
of fighting against so-called "Trotskyism" and, more specifically,
against "permanent revolution." How, then, could it
have been possible that, on the fundamental problem of the
Chinese revolution, not only the Central Committee of the CCP, but also
the official delegate of the Comintern—that is, a leader who had
received special instructions—committed precisely the "error
" for which hundreds of men are in Siberia and in
prison ? The struggle over the Chinese question had already been going on for
two and a half years. When the Opposition said that the former Central Committee (Chen Duxiu) (211), under the influence of the Comintern’s erroneous
directives , was pursuing an opportunistic policy, this judgment was dismissed as "slander." The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party was considered irreproachable. The renowned Tan Pingshan, with the approval of the entire 7th Plenum of the EC of the IC, swore :
"As soon as Trotskyism arose, the party and the
Chinese Young Communists immediately adopted, unanimously, a
resolution against it" (212).
However, when, despite all these “conquests,” events
unfolded according to their tragic logic, culminating first in
the revolution’s initial debacle, then in a second, even more
appalling one, the leadership of the Chinese party was, within 24 hours
, rebranded as Menshevik and dismissed (213). But as soon as
a new, serious stage arrived, the new Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party was accused of having adopted (as we have already seen, not
in words but in deeds) an attitude of so-called
“permanent revolution.” The Comintern delegate followed the
same path. This striking, truly inconceivable fact can
only be explained by the “gaping” chasm that separates the
directives of the Comintern Executive Committee from the actual dynamics of the
revolution.
We will not dwell here on the myth of the "
permanent revolution" of 1905, which was circulated in 1924 to
sow confusion and mislead. Let us limit ourselves to examining how
this myth has been refracted in the problem of the
Chinese revolution.
The first paragraph of the February resolution, from which
the quote presented above was taken, thus justifies its
negative assessment of the so-called "
permanent revolution" :
"The current period of the Chinese revolution is that
of the bourgeois and democratic revolution, which is not yet
complete from the point of view of the economy (the
agrarian upheaval and the abolition of feudal relations), nor from that
of the struggle against imperialism (the unity of China and
national independence), nor from the point of view of the
class character of power (the dictatorship of the proletariat and the
peasantry)..."
This statement of reasons is an uninterrupted chain
of errors and contradictions.
The Executive Committee of the Comintern taught that the Chinese revolution must
ensure China’s potential for development along the path of
socialism. This goal can only be achieved if the revolution does not
merely stop at the completion of bourgeois
democratic tasks, but if, in growing and progressing from one phase to
the next—that is, in developing continuously
— it leads China toward
socialist development. This is precisely what Marx meant
by permanent revolution. How then can one speak, on the one
hand, of the non-capitalist path followed by China’s development
, and, on the other, deny the permanent nature of revolution
in general ?
But, replies the resolution of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, the revolution
is not yet complete, either from the standpoint of agrarian upheaval or from the
standpoint of the national struggle against imperialism. From this, one
deduces the bourgeois democratic character of the
Chinese revolution in the current period. In reality, the current period
is one of counter-revolution. Undoubtedly, the Executive Committee of the Comintern
means that the new wave of the Chinese revolution, or
more precisely the third Chinese revolution, will have a
bourgeois democratic character, given that the second
Chinese revolution of 1925-1927 resolved neither the agrarian question nor the
national problem. However, even in this amended form,
this reasoning rests on a complete misunderstanding of
the experience and lessons of both the Chinese
and Russian revolutions.
The February Revolution of 1917 had left unresolved in
Russia all the internal and international problems that
had led to it : feudalism in the countryside, the old
bureaucracy, the war, and the economic collapse. It was in
discussing this situation that not only the Socialist
Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, but also many leaders
of our own party, demonstrated to Lenin that "the
current phase of the revolution is that of a
democratic bourgeois revolution." In this essential consideration, the resolution
of the Executive Committee of the Comintern merely reiterates the objections of the
opportunists against Lenin and the struggle for the dictatorship of the
proletariat in 1917.
It goes on to say that the bourgeois democratic revolution
is incomplete not only from an economic and national point of view
, but also "from the point of view of the class nature
of power (dictatorship of the proletariat and poor peasants)."
This can only mean one thing : the Chinese proletariat is forbidden
from struggling to seize power as long
as there is no "genuine" democratic government at the head of China
. Unfortunately, it doesn’t indicate
where to find it.
The confusion is further compounded by the fact that the slogan of
soviets for China has been rejected for the past two years
because, we were told, the creation of soviets is only permissible
when one moves towards proletarian revolution (
Stalin’s theory) (214). Yet, when the uprising took place, when those who
participated in it concluded that this was precisely the
transition to proletarian revolution, they were accused of "
Trotskyism." Can such methods be used to educate the party and
help it accomplish the greatest tasks ?
To salvage a desperate position, the resolution of the
Comintern Executive Committee (breaking with the entire line of thought)
hastily puts forward its final argument : it invokes imperialism
. It so happens that the tendency to skip the
bourgeois-democratic stage "is all the more harmful because, by posing the question in this way,
one eliminates (?) the most important national characteristic
of the Chinese revolution, which is a semi-
colonial revolution."
The only possible meaning of these absurd phrases is
the idea that the imperialist yoke will be overthrown by some kind of
non-proletarian dictatorship. This amounts to invoking "the
most important national characteristic" at the very last
moment to embellish either the native Chinese bourgeoisie or
the petty-bourgeois Chinese "democracy." This argument
can have no other meaning. But we have already examined
this concept in sufficient detail in the chapter
dealing with "the nature of the colonial bourgeoisie." There is no need to
return to it.
China must still endure a gigantic,
fierce, bloody, and protracted struggle for such fundamental gains
as the elimination of the most "Asiatic" forms of
servitude, and the liberation and unity of the country. But, as
the course of events has shown, it is precisely from this struggle that
the future will result in the impossibility of any
bourgeois direction, or even semi-direction, of the revolution.
The unity and emancipation of China constitute an
international problem today, just as the existence of the USSR does. It
can only be resolved by following the path of the fierce struggle of the
oppressed, starved, and persecuted masses, under the
direct leadership of the proletarian vanguard—a struggle not only
against world imperialism, but also against its
economic and political agents in China, against the bourgeoisie,
including the "native" bourgeoisie, and against all its lackeys. But
that is the path to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
From April 1917 onward, Lenin explained to his opponents, who
accused him of "defending permanent revolution
," that the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry
had already been partially realized during the period of dual
power. He later clarified that this dictatorship had found its
continuation during the first period of
Soviet power, when the entire peasantry participated in the
agrarian revolution alongside the workers, while the working class
had not yet confiscated factories and plants
and was experiencing workers’ control. As for the
"class nature of power," the revolutionary socialist
and Menshevik "dictatorship" produced what it could :
the abortion of dual power. Regarding the agrarian revolution,
it gave birth to a perfectly healthy and robust baby, but it was
the dictatorship of the proletariat that had already delivered it. In
other words, everything that the theoretical formula of the dictatorship
of the proletariat and peasantry sought to unite was
decomposed into different factors by the course of the
class struggle. The empty school of half-power was provisionally handed
over to Miliukov-Tsereteli, while the true core of the
agrarian and democratic revolution remained the prerogative of the
victorious working class. Such was the dialectical dissociation of the
democratic dictatorship that the leaders of the Comintern’s Executive Committee failed
to grasp. They plunged themselves into a political dead end,
mechanically condemning the method of "skipping over
bourgeois and democratic stages" and attempting to
steer a historical process with circulars. If
by bourgeois and democratic stage we mean the completion of
the agrarian revolution by following the path of "democratic
" dictatorship, then it was the October Revolution that boldly skipped
"over" the bourgeois and democratic stage. Should we
condemn it for that reason ?
How, under these conditions, can what was historically
inevitable in Russia, what was there the supreme expression of
Bolshevism, be found to be "Trotskyism" in China ?
No doubt by virtue of the same logic which proclaims that the
theory of the Martynovs, branded for twenty years in Russia by
Bolshevism, is suitable for China.
But can we generally accept an
analogy with Russia on this subject ? We reply that the slogan of
the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry was formulated by the
leaders of the Executive Committee of the Comintern exclusively and entirely according to the
method of analogies—but literary, formal analogies , not according to the method of historical materialism. An analogy between China and Russia
can perfectly well be accepted if the comparison is approached correctly. Lenin did this superbly . Moreover, it was not after the fact but in anticipation, foreseeing, as it were, the future errors of his successors. Lenin had to defend the October proletarian revolution hundreds of times , a revolution that had the audacity to seize power even though the bourgeois and democratic problems had not yet been solved. Lenin’s response was : it is precisely for this reason, and it is precisely to provide them with a solution.
On January 16, 1923, Lenin wrote to the pedants
who spoke out against the conquest of power, referring to
an "undeniable" argument 215 ; the fact that Russia was not
ready for socialism :
“It does not even occur to them, for example, that
Russia, which is situated on the border between civilized countries and
countries that war is leading definitively
towards civilization for the first time, countries of the entire Orient, countries
located outside Europe, that, precisely for this reason,
Russia had to manifest certain particularities, which are
obviously arranged in the general line of the evolution
of the world, but which make its revolution distinct from
all those which preceded it in the countries of
Western Europe and which bring certain partial innovations
during the transition that leads to the
Eastern countries.” (216)
For Lenin, the "particularity" which brought
Russia closer to the countries of the East was that, from the dawn of the
movement, the young proletariat had to sweep away feudal barbarism and all other old things
itself in order to forge its path to socialism .
Therefore, if we start from Lenin’s analogy
between China and Russia, we must say that, from the perspective of
the political nature of power, everything that could be achieved as
a democratic dictatorship was attempted in China, first
in Sun Yat-sen’s Canton, then in the march from
Canton to Shanghai, and finally in Wuhan, where the
Left Guomindang appeared in its purest form—that is,
according to the directives of the Comintern Executive Committee, as the organizer of the
agrarian revolution and, in reality, as its executioner. As for the
tasks of the bourgeois and democratic revolution, they will
occupy the first period of the future dictatorship of the
Chinese proletariat and poor peasants. While not only the role
of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but also that of "democracy",
has been revealed, while it has become absolutely undeniable
that, in future battles, "democracy" will exercise its
functions as executioner even more than in the past, launching
now the slogan of democratic dictatorship of the
proletariat and peasantry is simply to allow the concealment
of new varieties of the Guomindang and to set a trap for the
proletariat.
To be thorough, let us recall what Lenin said briefly about
the Bolsheviks who continued to oppose the SR and
Menshevik experience with the slogan of a "true" democratic dictatorship
:
"He who speaks only of ’the revolutionary
democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’
is lagging behind life, he has in fact gone over to the side
of the petty bourgeoisie against the proletarian class struggle
, he must be relegated to the archives of
pre-revolutionary ’Bolshevik’ rarities (one could say :
the archives of the ’old’ Bolsheviks.") (218)
These words sound today as if they were
still relevant.
It goes without saying that there is absolutely no question, at present, of urging the
Chinese Communist Party to rise up immediately and seize
power. The course of action to be taken depends solely on the circumstances.
The consequences of a defeat cannot be eliminated
simply by revising tactics. Currently, the revolution is
receding. The half-hidden rhetoric in the resolution of the
Comintern Executive Committee, claiming that the revolution is facing a
resurgence because countless
earlier French translations in China use Ou-chang or Wuchang instead of
Wuhan, is utter nonsense, since Trotsky uses Wuhan to mean
"Wuhan government."
In this regard, it should be noted that all the executions and a cruel
commercial and industrial crisis testify to criminal
recklessness and nothing else. After three considerable defeats,
an economic crisis does not excite,
on the contrary, it depresses the already exhausted proletariat. The
executions destroy the politically weakened party. 219 • We
have entered in China a period of retreat, therefore
of deepening in the field of theory, of
critical self-education of the party, of the creation and strengthening of
solid footholds in all areas of the
workers’ movement, of the formation of cells in the villages, of the leadership
and unification of the partial struggles, first defensive and then
offensive, of the workers and poor peasants.
Where will the new flow of the masses begin ? What
circumstances will give the proletarian vanguard
, placed at the head of millions of proletarians, the
necessary revolutionary impetus ? This cannot be predicted. The future
will show whether internal processes will suffice or whether an
external shock will be needed.
There are sufficient reasons to believe that the debacle of the
Chinese revolution, closely conditioned by misguided leadership
, will allow the Chinese and foreign bourgeoisies to
triumph to some extent over the appalling economic crisis
currently ravaging the country : it goes without saying that this will be
at the expense of the workers and peasants. This phase of
"stabilization" will regroup the workers, give them
cohesion, restore their class confidence
, only to then pit them, once again, more brutally,
against the enemy, but at a more advanced historical stage. Only
when a new wave of the proletarian movement’s offensive arises
will the prospect
of an agrarian revolution be seriously considered.
It is not out of the question that the first stage of this
future third revolution will reproduce, in a very abbreviated and
modified form, the stages already gone through, by presenting, for example,
some new parody of a "united national front." But
this first stage will hardly suffice to allow the Communist Party to
put forward and proclaim before the masses its
"April theses," that is to say, its program and its tactics for
seizing power.
But what does the Draft Programme say about this ?
"Here (in China), the transition to the dictatorship of the
proletariat is only possible through a whole series of
preparatory stages, following a whole period
of transformation during the growth of the
bourgeois democratic revolution into a socialist revolution."
In other words, all the "degrees" passed do not count ;
the Program Project sees ahead what lies behind.
This is a compliant approach to the issue. It opens
the door wide to new experiments in the style of
the Guomindang’s policies. Thus, by concealing
past mistakes, one inevitably paves the way for new ones
.
If we approach the new rise, which will inevitably develop
at an incomparably faster pace than
the previous ones, while maintaining the outdated scheme of "
democratic dictatorship", we can be certain that the third revolution,
like the second, will be doomed.
4. Adventurism, a consequence of opportunism
The second paragraph of the same resolution from the
February plenary session of the EC of the IC states :
"The first wave of the vast revolutionary movement
of workers and peasants, which marched,
essentially, under the slogans and, to a large extent,
under the leadership of the Communist Party, has passed. It will
end in a whole series of centers of the
revolutionary movement with the most cruel defeats of the workers and
peasants, with the material destruction of the Communists,
and in general of the revolutionary cadres of the
workers’ and peasants’ movement." (Emphasis added. LT)
When "the wave" was rising, the EC said that the whole
movement was marching behind the blue flag and the
leadership of the Guomindang, which was even replacing the soviets.
This is precisely why the Communist Party was subordinate to the
Guomindang. But it is also precisely for this reason that the
revolutionary movement ended in "the most crushing
defeats." Now that these defeats are acknowledged, there is an attempt
to completely erase the Guomindang, to make it seem as if it
had never existed, as if the Executive Committee of the Comintern had not proclaimed
that the blue flag was also its banner (220).
"We used to be told that there hadn’t been a single
defeat, neither in Shanghai nor in Wuhan : there were only stages of
a revolution moving toward a higher stage." That’s what
we were taught. Now, it’s suddenly proclaimed that the
sum of all these stages constitutes "the most crushing
defeats." However, to somewhat camouflage
this unprecedented failure of prediction and assessment, the
concluding paragraph notes :
"The Executive Committee of the Comintern mandates that all
sections of the Comintern must combat the slander of
social democracy and Trotskyists claiming that the
Chinese revolution has been liquidated (?)."
The first paragraph of the resolution told us
that "Trotskyism" consisted of believing the
Chinese revolution to be permanent, that is, transforming itself during
its growth, currently transitioning from a
bourgeois to a socialist phase. According to the last
paragraph, we learn that, according to the
"Trotskyists’" conception, "the Chinese revolution is liquidated." How
can a liquidated revolution be permanent ? This is
pure Bukharin. One must be irresponsibly reckless
to allow such contradictions, which undermine
all revolutionary thought at its very root.
If by "liquidation" of the revolution we mean that
the workers’ and peasants’ offensive has been repelled and drowned
in blood, that the masses are retreating and ebbing away, that before
a new surge, in addition to other circumstances, molecular processes must still occur
within the masses themselves, processes
that require a time impossible to predict. If
this is what we mean by "liquidation," then it is no different
from the "most crushing defeats" that the Executive Committee of the Comintern was
ultimately forced to acknowledge.
Or should we understand the word "
liquidation" literally as the annihilation of the Chinese revolution, that is,
of any possibility, any eventuality of its rebirth in
a new stage ? One could only seriously discuss
such a prospect in two cases, without sowing confusion
: if China were doomed to dismemberment and
total disappearance—but there is not the slightest reason for this
hypothesis—or if the Chinese bourgeoisie proved capable
of resolving the fundamental problems of Chinese life through
its own non-revolutionary means. Is it not this latter scenario that the theorists of the "four-class bloc," who have brought the Communist Party to its knees under the yoke of the bourgeoisie,
are now trying to attribute to us ?
History repeats itself. The blind, who for a year and a
half failed to grasp the magnitude of the 1923 defeat,
accused us, with regard to the German revolution, of being "liquidators
." But even this lesson, which cost
the International dearly, did not benefit them. Now, reviving
their old formulas, they are applying them not to Germany,
but to China. It is true that they feel, with greater urgency
than four years ago, the need to find "liquidators" ; indeed
, now it is all too obvious that, if
anyone truly "liquidated" the second Chinese revolution, it was
the authors of the course directed at the Guomindang.
The strength of Marxism lies in its capacity for prediction.
In this sense, the Opposition can invoke the complete confirmation
of its predictions by experience : first, concerning the Guomindang
as a whole ; second, regarding the "
Left" Guomindang and the Wuhan government ; and finally, concerning
the "down payment" made on the third revolution, that is,
the Canton uprising. Could there be better confirmation
of the correctness of our views in the theoretical realm ?
The same opportunist line which, through a policy of
capitulation to the bourgeoisie, already provoked
the most crushing defeats during the first two stages of the revolution
, "transformed itself and worsened" during the third
stage, becoming a policy of adventurist raids
against the bourgeoisie, thus completing the failure.
If the leadership had not been so quick yesterday to forget the
defeats it had itself caused, it would have
started by explaining to the Chinese Communist Party that
victory is not achieved in the blink of an eye, that on the path to
insurrection there is still a whole period of tense,
tireless, furious struggles for the political conquest of the workers and
peasants.
On September 27, 1927, we said to the presidium of the EC of
the IC :
“Today’s newspapers announce that the
revolutionary army has taken Shantou. For several
weeks now, the armies of He Long and Ye Ting
have been advancing. Pravda calls them revolutionaries. But
I ask you : what prospects are
opening up for the Chinese revolution following
the revolutionary army’s move to Shantou ?
What are the movement’s slogans ? What is its program
? What forms of organization should it take
? Where has the slogan of the
Chinese soviets, suddenly put forward—for one day—by
Pravda in July, gone ?”
Without first opposing the Communist Party to the Guomindang as a
whole, without this party stirring up the masses in favor of the
soviets and the power of the soviets, without its own mobilization of the
masses under the slogans of agrarian revolution and
national liberation, without the creation, expansion, and strengthening
on the ground of soviets of deputies, workers, peasants,
and soldiers, the insurrection of He Long and Ye Ting,
even independently of the opportunism of their policy, could only
be a revolutionary adventure, a
pseudo-communist Makhnovist venture (222). It could only break against its
own isolation, and it did break (223).
The Canton uprising was a larger
– scale and more serious replay of the adventure of He Long and Ye
Ting, with infinitely more tragic consequences.
The February resolution of the Executive Committee to the Comintern combated the
putschist mindset within the Chinese Communist Party, that is, the tendency to
organize armed engagements. However, it failed to acknowledge that
these tendencies constituted a reaction against the entire
opportunistic policy of 1925-1927 and the inevitable consequence of the strictly military order
, issued from above, to "change course"
without any assessment of past actions, without
an open review of the fundamentals of tactics, and without a clear vision of
the future. The He Long campaign and the Canton uprising
were—and under those circumstances, they could not have been otherwise—
outbreaks of putschism.
No true antidote to
putschism and opportunism can be devised without a thorough understanding of this truth : the leadership of the workers’ and poor peasants’
uprising , the conquest of power, and the establishment of the revolutionary dictatorship now rest entirely on the Chinese Communist Party. If the latter fully grasps this perspective, it will be just as unwilling to improvise military raids against cities or stage ambush uprisings as it is to slavishly follow the enemy’s banner.
The resolution of the Comintern Executive Committee condemns itself to
sterility, if only because it discourses in a completely
abstract manner on the inadmissibility of skipping
steps, on the harmfulness of putschism, and because it completely
ignores the class-based nature of the Canton uprising and
the short-lived Soviet regime it spawned.
We in the opposition know that this uprising was an
adventure attempted by the leadership to salvage its "prestige."
But it is clear to us that even an adventure unfolds
according to laws determined by the structures of the social environment.
This is why we seek to discover in the
Canton uprising the features of the future stage of the Chinese revolution. These
features coincide entirely with the historical analysis we
had established before this uprising. But it is equally the
duty of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which considers the
Canton uprising to have been a just and normal stage in the unfolding
struggle, to characterize it clearly from a class perspective.
Yet, the resolution of the EC’s Executive Committee makes no mention of this
, even though the plenum convened immediately after the
events in Canton ? Is this not the most
convincing proof that the current leadership of the EC, by stubbornly
following a false line, is forced to content itself with talking about
alleged errors committed in 1905 or at some other time,
but does not dare to address the Canton uprising of 1927, the
significance of which undermines the scheme of revolution in the East
as established by the Draft Program ?
5. The Soviets and the Revolution
The February resolution of the EC of the Comintern holds "Comrade
N[eumann] 224 and others" responsible for the fact that "there was no
elected soviet in Canton" as the organ of the insurrection
(underlined in the text of the resolution (225). This accusation
actually contains a surprising admission.
The Pravda report (No. 31), based on
direct documentation, announced that the power of the soviets had
been established in Canton. But it contained not a single word
indicating that the Cantonese soviet was not elected, that is,
was not a soviet (for how could a soviet not be elected ?).
We learned this through a resolution. Let us reflect on it for a moment.
The Executive Committee of the Comintern now teaches that a soviet is necessary
to carry out the insurrection, but not beforehand. Yet
, when the insurrection is decided upon, there is no
soviet ! Creating an elected soviet is no simple matter :
the masses must know from experience what it is,
understand it, and their past must have accustomed them to an
elected Soviet organization. It wasn’t even a question in China,
because the slogan of soviets was labeled Trotskyist
precisely during the period when it should have become the driving force
of the entire movement. When, in great haste, the insurrection was decreed
to make people forget their own defeats, it was
simultaneously necessary to designate a soviet by command
. If we do not fully expose the roots of this
error, we can transform even the slogan of the soviets into
a noose to strangle the revolution.
Lenin explained to the Mensheviks that the
fundamental historical task of the soviets is to organize, or help
organize, the conquest of power so that, in the aftermath of
victory, they become the apparatus of that power. His epigones—not his
disciples—conclude that
soviets can only be organized at the last minute. They retroactively transform
Lenin’s general principle into a simplistic formula that, far
from serving the revolution, endangers it.
Before the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917,
there had been Soviet and
Menshevik Soviets for nine months. Twelve years earlier, the first
revolutionary Soviets had existed in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and
dozens of other cities. Before the
1905 Soviet spread to the factories and workshops of the capital,
a Soviet of
Printing Workers’ Deputies had been established in Moscow during the strike. A few months earlier, in May
1905, the Ivanovo-Voznesensk strike had given rise to a
leading body that already displayed the essential features of a Soviet
of Workers’ Deputies. More than twelve years elapsed between the
first attempt to create a Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and the
monumental experience of establishing Soviet power.
Obviously, this term does not necessarily apply
to other countries, including China. But to imagine that
Chinese workers will be able to establish soviets using
a simple formula that merely replaces Lenin’s generalization
is to replace the dialectic of revolutionary action with
a powerless and tedious pedantic prescription. It is
not on the eve of insurrection, with the slogan of the
immediate conquest of power, that soviets should be established ; indeed
, if things have reached the point of seizing power, if the
masses are ready for insurrection, without the existence of soviets,
it is because other forms and methods
of organization have already been at work, enabling the preparatory work
necessary for the success of the insurrection. Then the question of the
soviets becomes of secondary importance, reduced to a
problem of organization or, even less so, to a question of
vocabulary. The task of the soviets is not simply to
exhort the masses to insurrection or to carry it out, but
rather to lead the masses to uprising through the
necessary stages. Initially, the soviet does not win over the masses at all
with the slogan of insurrection, but through other
partial slogans. Only later, step by step, does it lead
the masses to this slogan, without scattering them along the way,
thus preventing the vanguard from becoming detached from the rest of the class.
Most often, and above all, the soviet is formed on the basis of the
strike struggle, which has before it the prospect of
revolutionary development, but which, at the given moment, is limited to
economic demands. In action, the masses must
feel and understand that the soviet is their own organization,
that it unites its forces for struggle, for resistance, for
self-protection, and for the offensive. This cannot be felt and understood in the action
of a single day, nor generally in any action carried out in a single act, but rather through the experience acquired over several weeks, months, or even years, with or without interruption. This is why only a leadership of epigones and bureaucrats can restrain a mass that is awakening and rising up to create soviets, while the country is going through a time of revolutionary upheavals in which the working class and poor peasants in the countryside see the prospect of conquering power opening up before them, even if only in a later stage and even if in the envisaged stage this prospect is accessible only to a minority.
This is the conception we have always had of the soviets.
We appreciated them as a broad
and flexible form of organization open to masses who are only just awakening, from the
first steps of their revolutionary rise, and capable of uniting the
working class as a whole, regardless of the number of
those within it who are sufficiently developed to
understand the problems of the conquest of power.
Do we still need to cite written testimonies on this subject ? Here is
what Lenin wrote about the soviets at the time of the
first revolution :
"The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party has never
ceased to use, during a more or
less strong revolutionary upsurge, certain non-party organizations, such as
soviets of workers’ deputies, in order to increase
the influence of the Social Democrats over the working class and
to consolidate the Social Democratic labour movement." (226)
The literary and historical accounts of this kind that
we could cite are countless. But it seems that the
question is already clear without them.
Taking the opposite view, the epigones
transformed the soviets into a parade uniform, with which the party
merely dresses the proletariat on the eve of seizing
power. But it is precisely then that it becomes clear that
soviets cannot be improvised in 24 hours, on command, directly
with the aim of triggering an insurrection. Experiments of
this kind inevitably take on the character of a fiction,
designed to mask, through the ritualistic appearance of the soviet system
, the absence of the conditions necessary for seizing power
. This is what happened in Canton, where the soviet was
simply appointed on orders to comply with the ritual. This is
where the way the epigones frame the question leads.
During the controversy surrounding the
events in China, the Opposition was accused of a
seemingly blatant contradiction : while from 1926 onward the Opposition
proposed the slogan of soviets in China, its
representatives had spoken out against them in Germany in the
autumn of 1923. Perhaps never has the spirit of political scholasticism
manifested itself so strikingly as in this accusation.
Yes, we demanded that the creation of soviets in China,
as organizations of workers and peasants with their
own distinct value, be addressed in due course, when the tide was rising. The
primary purpose of the soviets should have been to oppose the workers and
peasants to the Guomindang bourgeoisie and its agency, its
left wing. The slogan of the soviets in China meant, first and
foremost, breaking the shameful "four-class bloc" that
was leading to self-destruction and extricating the Communist Party from the Guomindang. The
center of gravity, therefore, lay not in an abstract form
of organization, but in a class line. In contrast, in
Germany in the autumn of 1923, it was merely a matter of a form
of organization. Due to the extreme passivity, delay, and
sluggishness of the leadership of the Communist International and the
KPD (Communist Party of Germany), the opportunity to call on workers to form soviets had been missed
. The factory committees, acting on their own initiative and
under pressure from the rank and file, occupied
the place in the German workers’ movement in the autumn of 1923 that the
soviets would certainly have taken, with far greater success, had the
Communist Party pursued a just and bold policy.
Meanwhile, the situation was extremely serious. To waste any more
time would be to definitively let a revolutionary opportunity slip away
. Insurrection was finally placed on the agenda
, and its launch was planned for the
shortest possible time. To launch the slogan of the
soviets under such circumstances would have been the greatest theoretical folly imaginable. The
soviet is not a talisman containing miraculous power.
In the situation at the time, hastily created soviets would have been
mere stand-ins for the factory committees. The
latter would have had to be stripped of their last revolutionary functions and
transferred to the newly formed soviets, which lacked authorities
and for how long ? In conditions where every day counted.
Revolutionary action would have been replaced by the most
harmful game, that of playing with trifles in the
field of organization.
It is undeniable that the Soviet form of organization
can be of enormous importance, but only when it
translates a sound political line in a timely manner. Conversely,
it can take on a negative significance of
considerable scope when it becomes a fiction, a fetish, an
empty shell. German soviets created at the very last
minute in the autumn of 1923 would have brought nothing new
politically, but they would have introduced a great deal of confusion
in the area of organization. In Canton, it was even worse.
The soviet, hastily created to observe rituals, served only to
camouflage an adventurist coup. That is why we
learned afterward that the Canton Soviet was like an old
Chinese dragon, merely drawn on paper. The politics
of puppets and paper dragons is not ours.
We opposed the improvisation of
telegraph soviets in Germany in September 1923. We supported
the creation of soviets in China in 1926. We would have opposed the
creation of a carnival soviet in Canton in December 1927. There
is no contradiction here. On the contrary, there is a profound
unity in the conception of the dynamics of the
revolutionary movement and its forms of organization.
The problem of the role and significance of the soviets, which has
been disfigured, confused and obscured by the theory and practice
applied in recent years, has not been
clarified at all in the Draft Program.
6. The problem of the nature of the future Chinese revolution
The slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, drawing
the poor peasants behind it, is inextricably linked to the
problem of the socialist character of the future, the third
revolution in China. Now, since it is not only history that
repeats itself, but also the errors that men make in response to its demands
, we already hear the
following objection : China is not yet ready for
socialist revolution. But this is an abstract and dead way of posing the
question. Was Russia, considered in isolation, ready for socialism
? According to Lenin, no. It was ready for the dictatorship of the proletariat, the only method for resolving urgent national
problems .
However, the fate of the dictatorship as a
whole is ultimately determined by the course of
world developments. This does not preclude, but rather
clearly presupposes, a just policy of proletarian dictatorship
, the consolidation and development of the alliance
between workers and peasants, and the use of all measures
that promote adaptation both to national conditions and
to the course of world developments. This is also
entirely true for China.
In the same article, "On Our Revolution" (January 16,
1923), in which Lenin establishes that
Russia’s original features reproduce in their development the particularities
of the evolution of Eastern countries, he describes as "utterly
banal" the argument of European social democracy which
asserts that "we are not big enough to achieve
socialism, that we do not have, according to the expression of all
sorts of ’learned gentlemen’ back home, the
objective economic premises of socialism." But if Lenin
mocks these "learned gentlemen," it is not because he
himself recognizes the existence of the economic foundations of
socialism in Russia, enabling it to be built by
its own efforts, but because it in no way follows from their
absence that the conquest of power must be abandoned, as
the pedants and philistines thought and still believe
. In this article, Lenin responds for the hundred and first or
thousand and first time to the sophisms of the heroes of the First International
: “This undeniable thesis (that Russia was not
ready for socialism) is not decisive for judging our revolution.” (227) This is what the authors of the Draft Program
neither want nor can understand . The thesis of the lack of economic and cultural maturity, both in Russia and in China—and obviously even more so in China than in Russia—cannot be contested in itself. But one cannot in any way deduce from this that the proletariat must renounce power when this conquest is dictated by the entire historical atmosphere and by a revolutionary situation in the country.
The concrete, political, current historical question boils down
to not whether China is economically ready to
establish its own socialism, but rather whether, in the
political sphere, it is ready for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
These two questions are by no means identical. They would be if there were not a law of uneven
development in the world . In this case, this law, which extends entirely to the reciprocal relationship between economics and politics, is perfectly applicable. Is China, then, ready for the dictatorship of the proletariat ? Only the experience of struggle can answer this question indisputably. For this very reason, only the struggle can decide when and under what conditions the unification, liberation, and rebirth of China will take place. To say that China is not even ready for the dictatorship of the proletariat is thereby asserting that the third Chinese revolution is postponed for many years.
There would certainly be little hope left if the vestiges
of feudalism were truly dominant in the Chinese economy,
as the leaders of the Comintern Executive Board claim. But
fortunately, vestiges, in general, cannot
dominate. On this point as well, the Draft Program does not
rectify the errors made, but on the contrary, reaffirms them
in a roundabout and nebulous way. The draft speaks of "the
predominance of medieval feudal relations in both
the country’s economy and its political superstructure." This is
radically false. What does "predominance" mean ? Does it refer to the
number of people involved ? Or to the dominant and
leading role they play in the country’s economy ? The
extremely rapid internal growth of industry, based on
the importance of commercial and banking capital and its conquest
of the country ; the complete dependence of
the most important peasant regions on the market ; the
enormous and growing role of foreign trade ; and the
total subordination of the Chinese countryside to cities—all these facts
affirm the total predominance, the direct domination, of
capitalist relations in China. Social relations of serfdom and
semi-serfdom are certainly very important. They
partly date back to the feudal era, but they are also, to a certain extent,
new formations, resurgences of the past due to the delayed
development of the productive forces, agrarian overpopulation
, the influence of commercial and usurious capital, and so on. But what
dominates is not "feudal" relations (or more
precisely, serfdom and, in general, pre-capitalist relations),
but rather capitalist relations. It is only this predominant role
of capitalist relations that makes it possible
to seriously consider the prospect of proletarian hegemony
in the national revolution. Otherwise, the extremes would
not meet.
"The strength of the proletariat in any
capitalist country is infinitely greater than the proportion of the
proletariat in the total population. This is because the
proletariat economically controls the center and
nerves of the entire capitalist economic system, and also
because, in the economic and political sphere, the
proletariat expresses, under capitalist domination, the
real interests of the vast majority of workers."
Thus the proletariat, even when it constitutes a minority in the population (or when it is the conscious and truly revolutionary
vanguard of the proletariat that constitutes this minority), is capable of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and drawing to its side many allies from the mass of the semi-proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie, a mass that will never declare itself in advance for the domination of the proletariat, that will not understand the conditions and tasks of this domination, but will only become convinced by its subsequent experience of the inevitability, the justice, the legitimacy of the proletarian dictatorship.” (228)
The role of the Chinese proletariat in production is already
considerable. It will only grow in the
coming years. As events have shown, its political role
could have been significant. But the entire policy of the
leadership has been directed against the possibility for the proletariat
to secure the leading role.
The draft program states that the construction of socialism
in China can only succeed "if directly
supported by the countries of proletarian dictatorship." Thus,
regarding China, they acknowledge what the party has always
admitted concerning Russia. But if there are not
sufficient internal forces in China to build
socialist society on their own, then, according to the
Stalin-Bukharin theory, the Chinese proletariat should not seize
power at any stage of the revolution. Or does the very
existence of the USSR resolve the question in the opposite direction ? In that case, it
would appear that our technique would be sufficient to build
socialist society not only in our own USSR but also in China—that is, in two of the most economically backward
countries with a combined population of 600 million. Or can one accept in China the inevitability of the dictatorship of the proletariat because this dictatorship will be introduced into the circuit of the world socialist revolution and will become not only a link in it but also one of its driving forces ? But it is precisely in this way that Lenin posed the problem of the October Revolution, whose “originality” lies precisely in a development analogous to that of the Eastern countries. We thus see how the revisionist theory of socialism in one country, created in 1925 to combat “Trotskyism,” sows discord and confusion every time an important and new revolutionary problem is addressed.
The Draft Program goes even further in this direction.
It contrasts China and India with "pre-1917 Russia,"
Poland ("etc.") as countries "possessing a certain
minimum of industry sufficient to triumphantly build
socialism," or (as stated more precisely and
more erroneously elsewhere) as countries that have "the
necessary and sufficient material bases for building full socialism
." This, as we already know, is a genuine
play on words regarding Lenin’s expression about
"necessary and sufficient bases." This is an unacceptable deception
, since Lenin precisely enumerates the political and
organizational bases, including those of technology, culture, and
international standing. But the essential problem remains
how to determine a priori the minimum level of industry
sufficient to build complete socialism, when it
is a global struggle between two economic systems,
between two social regimes, and when, moreover, our economic base
in this struggle is infinitely weaker ?
If we consider only the economic lever, it is clear that
ours, that of the USSR, and even more so that of
China and India, is infinitely less powerful than that of
global capitalism. But the entire problem will be resolved by
the revolutionary struggle between two systems, a struggle of
global scope. In the political struggle, the most powerful lever is on
our side, or, to be more precise, can and must, if we
pursue a just policy, fall into our hands.
Still in the same article, "On Our Revolution,"
after the words "to create socialism requires a certain level
of culture," Lenin remarks : "Although no one can
say what this level is." Why can’t anyone say ?
Because this question is resolved through struggle, through
global emulation between two social systems and two
cultures. Breaking completely with this thought of Lenin,
which is deduced from the very heart of the problem, the draft program
asserts that pre-1917 Russia possessed precisely
this "minimum of technology," and consequently also of
culture, necessary to build socialism in a single
country. The authors of the draft attempt to say in the program
that, a priori, "no one can say"...
It is impossible, it is absurd, to seek the criterion of a
"sufficient minimum" in national statistics ("Russia
before 1917") when the entire problem is resolved by
revolutionary dynamics. It is on this misleading, arbitrary criterion
, isolated from a national perspective, that
the theoretical basis of the narrow-minded national spirit in politics rests, a spirit that is the
source of inevitable national-reformist and social-
patriotic errors in the future.
7. On the reactionary idea of the "biclassist workers’ and peasants’ parties
" for the Orient.
The lessons of the second Chinese revolution are
teachings for the entire Communist International, but
above all for the countries of the East.
All the arguments presented in defense of the
Menshevik line in the Chinese revolution should, if taken
seriously, have three times more force when applied to India. The
yoke of imperialism there, in that classic colony, takes
infinitely more direct and concrete forms than in China. The
vestiges of feudal relations, that is to say, of serfdom, are
in India incomparably deeper and more considerable.
Nevertheless (and to speak more precisely, precisely for
this reason), the methods applied in China, which ruined
the revolution, will have even more
disastrous consequences in India. Only an immense and indomitable movement of the
popular masses, which, by virtue of its very scope and
indomitable character, its goals and its international ties
, cannot tolerate in its leadership any half-measures,
any compromises, any opportunism, will be able to overthrow
the Indian gentry, the Anglo-Saxon bureaucracy, and
British imperialism.
The leadership of the Communist International has already made
a number of mistakes in India. Circumstances have not yet
allowed these errors to manifest themselves on such a vast scale
as in China. It is therefore hoped that the lessons learned from the events in China will enable the leadership to correct its political course in India and other Eastern countries
in a more timely manner .
For us, the cardinal question here, as everywhere and
always, is that of the Communist Party, its complete independence, its
uncompromising class character. In this regard, the greatest
danger is the creation of so-called "workers’ and
peasants’ parties" in Eastern countries.
From 1924 onward, a year that would be remembered as the year of the
open revision of a whole series of Marx and
Lenin’s fundamental theses, Stalin promoted the formula of "
two-class workers’ and peasants’ parties for the countries of the East." This was
still based on the same national yoke that served in the East as a
camouflage for opportunism, just as "stabilization
" did in the West. Telegrams from India, as well as from Japan,
where there is no national oppression, have frequently announced
interventions by
provincial "workers’ and peasants’ parties" during this period. They all refer to these parties as organizations
close to, and friendly with, the Comintern, almost as if they were
"its own," without, however, concretely outlining their
political profile—in short, in the way that people spoke and wrote
about the Guomindang until very recently.
Pravda was already asserting this in 1924 :
“Some indications show that the
national liberation movement in Korea is gradually taking shape
from an organizational point of view, adopting the model of creating
a workers’ and peasants’ party.” 229
Meanwhile, Stalin was teaching the communists of
the East :
"The Communists must move from the policy of the
national united front [...] to that of the revolutionary bloc
of workers and the petty bourgeoisie. In such countries,
this bloc can take the form of a single party, a
workers’ and peasants’ party, along the lines of the Guomindang." (230)
The minor "reservations" that followed concerning the autonomy
of communist parties (no doubt in line with the "autonomy"
of the prophet Jonah in the belly of the whale) served only
as camouflage. We are deeply convinced that the
Sixth Congress should declare that, in this area, the slightest
ambiguity is disastrous and will be rejected. This is a
completely new, utterly false, and entirely anti-
Marxist way of posing the fundamental question of the party and its
relationship to the class and the classes.
The need for the party to join the Guomindang was argued
by asserting that the latter, by its
social composition, was a party of workers and peasants, that 9/10 of the
Guomindang - this figure was repeated dozens of times -
belonged to the revolutionary tendency and were ready to
march hand in hand with the Communist Party.
Yet, at the time of the Shanghai and Wuhan coups and
afterward, these Guomindang revolutionaries, these nine-tenths, vanished
as if they had fallen into the water. No one found any
trace of them. And the theorists of class collaboration in
China—Stalin, Bukharin, and others—didn’t even bother
to explain where these nine-tenths of the Guomindang members
, these nine-tenths of workers and peasants, revolutionaries,
sympathizers, entirely "his own," had gone to live ? Yet the answer to
this question is of decisive importance for understanding
the fate of all these "two-class" parties preached by Stalin and
for grasping their very idea more clearly, an idea that
takes us far back not only from the program of the
VKP (b) of 1919, but even from the Communist Manifesto
of 1847.
The question of where the famous 9/10 disappeared to will
only become clear to us if we understand the impossibility,
1° of the existence of a bi-class party, that is to say a party of
two classes simultaneously expressing two mutually exclusive historical lines
, that of the proletariat and that of the petty
bourgeoisie, 2° that one cannot found in capitalist society a
peasant party playing an independent role, that is to say expressing
the interests of the peasantry at the same time as being independent of the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
Marxism has always taught, and Bolshevism has reiterated,
that the proletariat and the peasantry are distinct classes,
that it is wrong to conflate their interests in capitalist society in any way
, and that a peasant can only join
the Communist Party insofar as he shifts from the perspective
of the landowner to that of the proletariat. Under the dictatorship of the
proletariat, the alliance of workers and peasants does not invalidate
this thesis, but, in a different context, it confirms it
in other ways. If there were no distinct classes with
differing interests, there would be no question of an alliance.
This is compatible with the socialist revolution only insofar
as it is introduced within the iron framework of the
proletarian dictatorship. The existence of this dictatorship cannot be reconciled in our country
with that of a so-called peasant league, precisely
because any peasant organization "having its own value
," claiming to solve the political problems facing
the entire nation, will inevitably end up becoming an instrument
in the hands of the bourgeoisie.
The organizations that call themselves peasant parties in capitalist countries
are in reality a variety of
bourgeois parties. Any peasant who does not adopt the attitude of the proletarian
by abandoning the landowner’s perspective will inevitably be
drawn into the fundamental questions
of politics by the bourgeoisie. It goes without saying that any bourgeois party that
relies, or wants to rely, on the peasants and, if possible,
on the workers, is obliged to disguise itself, that is, to wear
a combination of colors. The famous idea of
"workers’ and peasants’ parties" seems to have been designed specifically
to camouflage bourgeois parties that are obliged to seek support
from the peasants but are also willing to include
workers in their ranks. The Kuomintang has now entered
history as the classic example of such a party.
As is well known, bourgeois society is structured so
that the dissatisfied, deceived, and
propertyless masses are at the bottom, while the complacent swindlers are
at the top. It is according to this principle that every
bourgeois party is also established, if it is truly a party—that is, if
it encompasses the masses in sufficiently large proportions.
In a class-divided society, there is only a minority of exploiters
, swindlers, and profiteers. Therefore, every capitalist party is
obliged to reproduce and reflect, in one way or another, in
its internal relations, the relations that exist in bourgeois society
in general. In every mass bourgeois party, the
base is more democratic, more "left-wing," than the top.
This is true for the German Centre Party, for the French Radicals
, and even more so for social democracy. This explains the
tireless lamentations of Stalin, Bukharin, and others, complaining
that the "left" base of the Guomindang, its leadership, is
so naive and inexcusable. What is presented in these
bizarre lamentations as a fleeting, troublesome misunderstanding
that needed to be eliminated through organizational measures, instructions
, and circulars, is in reality the
essential characteristic of a bourgeois party, especially during a
revolutionary period.
It is from this perspective that we must judge the fundamental argument
of the authors of the Draft Program, who defended all
opportunist blocs in general, both in England and in China.
According to them, fraternization with the leadership is done exclusively
in the interest of the rank and file. As is known, the Opposition
demanded that the party break away from the Guomindang. “One wonders
why,” said Bukharin. “Because the leaders of the Guomindang
are hesitating (?). And the mass of the Guomindang, are they merely
cattle ? Since when is one decides on the attitude toward a
mass organization based on what happens in its ‘
highest sphere’ (231) ?”
It seems implausible that such an argument could be
put forward in a revolutionary party. "And the mass of the Guomindang
, is it nothing but cattle ?" Bukharin asks. Certainly
, it is cattle. In every bourgeois party, the mass is
always cattle, though to varying degrees. But
surely, for us, it is not cattle ? Indeed, but
precisely for this reason, we are forbidden to push it
into the arms of the bourgeoisie by disguising the latter under the name
of the workers’ and peasants’ party. It is precisely for this reason that we are
forbidden to subordinate the party of the proletariat to that of the
bourgeoisie, but that, on the contrary, we must at every turn
set them against each other. The summit of the Guomindang, which
Bukharin speaks ironically of as something
secondary, is in reality the soul of the Guomindang, its social essence
.
The bourgeoisie is certainly only a "summit" within the party,
just as it is in society. But this summit is
powerful because of its capital, its knowledge, its connections, the
possibility it always has of relying on the imperialists, and
above all because of its de facto power in the state and in the army, which is
intimately linked to the leadership of the Guomindang itself.
It was he who drafted the laws against strikes, stifled
the interventions of the peasants, pushed the communists into
the shadows, allowing them, in the best case, to
constitute only a third of their party, made them swear to place
petty-bourgeois Sun Yat-senism above Marxism 232 • The
base was approaching this summit and served, like Moscow,
as a support point "on the left" while the generals, the
compradors, the imperialists supported it on its right. To
consider the Guomindang not as a bourgeois party, but
as a neutral arena in which one struggles to have the
masses on one’s side, to throw the 9/10 of the "
left base" as an asset to mask the question of who is master in
the house, meant consolidating the power and strength of the "top" : it meant helping it to transform the ever-increasing
masses into "livestock" and to prepare, under the most favorable conditions in this top, the Shanghai coup.
Based on the reactionary idea of the "two-class party," Stalin
and Bukharin imagined that the communists,
along with the "leftists," would obtain a majority in the Guomindang and thereby
power in the country, since in China power was in the hands
of the Guomindang. In other words, they imagined that, through
simple re-elections at Guomindang congresses,
power would pass from the hands of the bourgeoisie to those of the
proletariat. Can one conceive of a more tender, more idealistic devotion
to "party democracy"... when it is a
bourgeois party in question ? For the army, the bureaucracy, the
press, and capital are in the hands of the bourgeoisie. It is
precisely for this reason that it also holds the reins of the
ruling party. The bourgeois "summit" tolerates, or has tolerated,
"9/10" of "leftists" (and leftists of this kind) only insofar
as they do not threaten the army, the bureaucracy,
the press, or capital. Through these powerful means, the
bourgeois summit maintains in submission not only 9/10
of the "leftist" members of the party, but the popular masses
as a whole. Now, the theory of the class bloc, the theory
of the Guomindang as a workers’ and peasants’ party, serves
the bourgeoisie to the best of its ability. On the other hand, when the bourgeoisie
then clashes with the masses as an enemy and attacks them with machine guns, in this
collision between two real forces, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat,
the famous 9/10 are not even heard to bleat. The pitiful
democratic fiction vanishes without a trace before the bloody
reality of the class struggle.
This is the true political mechanism, the only possible one
for "two-class workers’ and peasants’ parties in the East." There
are no others, and there will be none.
Although the idea of two-class parties cites in its explanatory memorandum
national oppression, which supposedly abrogates
Marx’s doctrine of classes, we already know of such aborted
"workers and peasants" in Japan, where no
national yoke exists. But this is not enough : the matter is not limited to the
East alone. The "two-class" idea is trying to universalize itself. In this
area, the most caricatured attempt was the one
mentioned above by the CPA in supporting the
presidential candidacy of the bourgeois "antitrust" senator
LaFollette, in order to bring American farmers to the forefront of
social revolution. Pepper, the theorist of this maneuver, one of
those who assassinated the Hungarian revolution because he had
failed to notice the Hungarian peasantry, made a great effort in America, no
doubt out of a desire to compensate, to destroy the
PCA by dissolving it among the farmers. Pepper’s theory
held that the super-surplus value of American capital
transforms the American proletariat into a
global labor aristocracy ; conversely, the agrarian crisis would ruin the farmers and
drive them toward socialist revolution. The party,
numbering a few thousand members, mostly immigrants,
should, according to Pepper’s conception, have aligned itself with the
farmers through a bourgeois party and, after
forming a "two-class" party, ensure the socialist revolution
in the face of the passivity or neutrality of a proletariat corrupted by
super-surplus value. This delusional idea had supporters and
semi-supporters in the upper spheres of the Comintern. For
several weeks, the balance swung sometimes to one side, sometimes to
the other until finally a concession was made to the ABC of
Marxism - it was said behind the scenes "to the prejudices of Trotskyism
" - It was necessary to lasso the CP.A. from the hands of
LaFollette’s party (234), which died before its founder.
Everything that the new revisionism first invents for
the East is then transported to the West. If Pepper attempted, on
the other side of the Ocean, to violate history with his
biclass party, the latest information received shows that
the undertaking carried out with the Guomindang has found imitators
in Italy, where, it seems, they are trying to impose on our party the
monstrous slogan of a “republican assembly (?) supported
(?!) by workers’ and peasants’ committees.” 235 In this slogan
, the spirit of Chiang Kai-shek embraces that of
Hilferding (236). Will we really come to this ?
In conclusion, we must reiterate that the idea of a
"worker and peasant" party erases from the history of Bolshevism
the entire struggle against populists, without which there would be no
Bolshevik party. What was the significance of this
historical struggle ? Lenin wrote in 1900 about the Socialist Revolutionaries
:
"The fundamental idea of their program was
by no means that there should be an ’alliance of forces’ between the
proletariat and the peasantry ; but that there was no
class chasm between the two, that
a class dividing line should not be drawn between them ; that the
social-democratic conception of the petty-bourgeois character
of the peasantry, distinguishing it from the proletariat, was
radically false" (237).
In other words, the two-class party, worker and peasant, is
the cardinal idea of Russian populism. It was only by fighting against
it that the proletarian vanguard party in
peasant Russia was able to develop.
Lenin repeated, tenaciously, tirelessly, at the time of
the 1905 revolution :
“Beware of the peasantry, organize independently
of it, be ready to fight against it, insofar as
it intervenes in a reactionary or anti-
proletarian way” (238)
Lenin wrote in 1906 :
“One last piece of advice : proletarians and semi-proletarians
of the towns and countryside, organize yourselves separately.
Do not trust any small landowner, however small,
however ‘worker’ [...] We fully support the
peasant movement, but we must remember that
it is the movement of another class, not the one that can
and will accomplish the socialist upheaval
” (9)
Could
the very idea of a workers’ and peasants’ party be condemned in a more scathing, more merciless, more murderous way ?
As for Stalin, he teaches :
“The revolutionary, anti-imperialist bloc [...] can
take, but does not always (!) necessarily (!)
take, the form of a single workers’ and peasants’ party, bound in
its form by a single platform.” 240 •
Lenin taught that the alliance of workers and peasants
should in no case and at no time lead to the unification
of parties. Stalin, for his part, makes only one concession to Lenin :
according to him, the class bloc must take “the form of a
single party, a workers’ and peasants’ party, in the style of the Guomindang
,” but this is not always obligatory. At least we should be grateful
for this caveat.
It was with the same intransigence that Lenin posed the
question at the time of the October Revolution. Generalizing
the experience of the three Russian revolutions, Lenin, from 1918 onward,
missed no opportunity to reiterate that, in a
society where capitalist relations predominate, there are two forces
that decide : the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
“If the peasant does not follow the workers, he is dragging himself along in the wake of the bourgeoisie ; there is no middle ground
and there cannot be ” (241).
Yet a "workers’ and peasants’ party" represents precisely
an attempt to provide a middle ground.
If the vanguard of the Russian proletariat had not opposed
the peasantry, if it had not waged a relentless struggle
against the petty-bourgeois confusion of this peasantry, it
would inevitably have dissolved itself into the
petty-bourgeois elements, through the intermediary of the sr party or some
other "two-class party," which, in turn, would inevitably have
subjected it to the leadership of the bourgeoisie. To achieve
a revolutionary alliance with the peasantry—and this is not
achieved without difficulty—the proletarian vanguard
, and through it the working class as a whole, must first
free itself from the petty-bourgeois masses ; this
can only be accomplished by educating the proletarian party in a spirit
of hardened class intransigence.
The younger the proletariat, the more recent and intimate its kinship
with the peasantry, the greater its proportion of
the population, and the more
important the struggle against any "two-class" political alchemy becomes. In the
West, the idea of a workers’ and peasants’ party is simply
ridiculous. In the East, it is disastrous. In China, India, and
Japan, it is the mortal enemy not only of the
proletariat’s hegemony in the revolution but also of the
most basic autonomy of the proletarian vanguard. The workers’
and peasants’ party can only be a base, a screen, a springboard for the
bourgeoisie.
Inevitably, on this crucial issue for
the entire East, current revisionism merely repeats the
errors of the old pre-
revolutionary social-democratic opportunism. The majority of European social-democratic leaders
considered our struggle against the Social Democrats a mistake and
insisted on merging the two parties, believing
that a worker-peasant party would be the perfect fit for the Russian "East
." Had we heeded this advice, we would never have
achieved either the alliance of workers and peasants or the dictatorship of the
proletariat. The "two-class" worker-peasant party of the Social Democrats
became, in our country—and it could not have been otherwise—an
agency of the imperialist bourgeoisie ; in other words, it tried
in vain to play the historical role that the Guomindang successfully played in a different,
"original" way, in the Chinese manner and thanks to the revisionists of
Bolshevism. Without
a merciless condemnation of the very idea of workers’ and peasants’ parties in the
East, there is no and there cannot be a program of
the Communist International.
8. We need to check what the Peasant International has produced
One of the main, if not the most important, accusations
leveled against the Opposition was that it had "underestimated" the
peasantry. On this point, too, life has taught us a lesson, both
domestically and internationally.
Official leaders were guilty across the board of underestimating the role
and importance of the proletariat in relation to the peasantry. One
can foresee the most serious errors in the
economic, political, and international spheres on this point.
Herein lies the basis of all the mistakes made domestically in
1923 : an underestimation of the importance, in relation to
the entire national economy and the alliance with the
peasantry, of state industry under the authority of the proletariat
that manages it. In China, the revolution was lost due to
a misunderstanding of the decisive leading role of the proletariat in the
agrarian revolution. It is from this same perspective that we must examine
and assess the activities of the Peasant International, which
from the outset was merely an experiment requiring, moreover, the
utmost circumspection and great rigor in the choice
of means and their conformity to principles : it is not difficult
to understand why.
The peasantry, by virtue of its history and
living conditions, is the least international of all classes. What
is called national distinctiveness has its principal source in the peasantry. It—and even then, only its semi-proletarian masses—
can only be drawn onto the international path under the leadership of the proletariat. Only to the extent that the native peasantry, thanks to the proletariat, wrests itself from the influence of the native bourgeoisie, and thus learns to see in the proletariat not only its ally but its guide, is it possible to lead it onto the path of international politics . As for attempts to group the peasantry of different countries into an international organization over the head of the proletariat and outside of national communist parties , they are doomed to failure from the outset and can, in the final analysis, only harm the struggle of the native proletariat to gain influence among agricultural workers and poor peasants.
Throughout both bourgeois revolutions and
counter-revolutions, from the Peasant Wars of the 15th century onward
, and even before 1942, the peasantry, represented by its
various strata, played a considerable and sometimes decisive role. However, it
never played an independent role. Directly or indirectly, the
peasantry always supported one political force against
another. But it was never itself a force
capable of resolving national political problems. In
the age of finance capital, the polarization of capitalist society
has worsened considerably compared to
previous phases of capitalist development. This means that
instead of increasing, the specific weight of the peasantry has decreased.
In any case, during the era of imperialism, the peasantry is
even less capable of pursuing an independent political line,
even on a national scale, let alone an international one
, than during the era of industrial capitalism. In the United States
today, farmers are infinitely less capable of playing
an independent political role than they were forty or fifty
years ago, as evidenced by the experience of the populist movement
,243 where they were unable to create a national party.
The brief but serious shock that affected agriculture,
following the economic decline caused by the war,
briefly fostered illusions about the role that
"peasant" parties—that is,
"pseudo-peasant" bourgeois parties demagogically opposing bourgeois parties— could play
. While it was possible, during the tumultuous
peasant unrest of the postwar years, to risk
attempting the risky experiment of the Peasant International to
explore new relationships between the proletariat and the peasantry
, between the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, it is now high time
to take stock of the five-year
Peasant International experiment, to reveal its cruelly negative aspects
, and to try to identify its positive ones.
One conclusion, at least, is indisputable. The experience
of the "peasant" parties of Bulgaria, Poland, Romania,
Yugoslavia (that is to say, of all the backward countries), the
old experience of our Socialist-Revolutionaries and the
recent experience (the blood is still hot) of the Guomindang, the
episodic experiences in the advanced capitalist countries, particularly
the LaFollette-Pepper experience in the United States - all
have demonstrated without discussion that in the era of the decline of capitalism
there is even less reason than in that of its rise to hope to see the emergence of independent, revolutionary, anti-bourgeois
peasant parties .
"The city cannot be the equal of the countryside. The
countryside cannot be the equal of the city, under the
historical conditions of this period. Inevitably, the city
draws the countryside along with it. Inevitably, the
countryside follows the city. The question is which
class of ’those of the city’ will be able to draw the
countryside along with it." (244)
The peasantry will still play a decisive role in the
revolutions of the East. But this role will not be leading and will have
no intrinsic value. The poor peasants of Hubei,
Guangdong, or Bengal can play a significant role,
not only nationally but internationally. They will
only succeed if they support the workers of Shanghai, Hankou,
Canton, and Calcutta. This is the only way for the
revolutionary peasantry to break into the international arena
. The attempt to directly unite the peasant of Hubei with that
of Galicia or Dobruja, the Egyptian fellah with the farmer of the
American Far West, is futile.
But it is in the nature of politics that anything which does not
directly serve the interests of a class inevitably becomes
an instrument used for other, often completely
opposed, ends. Are there not examples of bourgeois parties,
supported by the peasantry or aspiring to do so, judging it in their interest
to take out insurance with the Peasant International,
if they could not do so with the Comintern, against the blows dealt
by the Communist Party of their country (245), just as Purcell, in the
trade union sphere, protected himself through the Anglo-Russian Committee
? If LaFollette did not seek to join
the Peasant International, this was due to the extreme weakness of the
CPA, especially since its leader at the time, Pepper, with
complete selflessness and without being asked,
nevertheless welcomed LaFollette with open arms. Already dismissed, the leader-
banker of the Croatian kulaks had felt the need, on
his path to a ministerial post, to leave
his business card with the Peasant International. The Guomindang
went much further : after securing its place in the
Peasant International and the Anti-Imperialist League, it also knocked on
the door of the Communist International and received the blessing
of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the
USSR, with one exception.
It is particularly characteristic of the
leadership’s policy in recent years that, while the tendencies towards the
liquidation of the Red International of Labor Unions were very strong
his very name was struck from the statutes of the Soviet trade unions
– , if we remember correctly,
the question of what
exactly the conquests of the Peasant International consisted of was never raised in the official press.
The Sixth Congress must seriously examine the activities of
the Peasant International from the perspective of
proletarian internationalism. It is high time to take stock of this ongoing experience from a Marxist perspective . It must be incorporated,
in one form or another, into the program of the Communist International ; the current proposal makes no mention of the Peasant International’s millions of members, nor even of its existence.