The Evolution of the Comintern
Contents
Preface
The Evolution of the Comintern was written in 1936. The Communist International (the “Comintern”) was founded in March 1919, following the Russian revolution of October 1917. Lenin and Trotsky consistently explained the need for international revolution:
We have always proclaimed and repeated this elementary truth of Marxism, that the victory of socialism requires the joint efforts of workers in a number of advanced countries (Lenin, February 1922)
In backward, Czarist Russia, capitalism was weak, while Lenin and Trotsky, and with them the Bolshevik party, were capitalism’s most skilled and determined adversaries. Russia, a backward, Feudal regime, was not by any means one of the “advanced countries” where conditions had ripened for socialism, but the workers and peasant masses could no longer tolerate the brutal Czarist regime, and overthrew it in February 1917.
Lenin and Trotsky explained that the victory of socialism could only be assured by completing the revolution in Russia, and spreading it particularly to Western Europe, where capitalism was no longer developing society, but instead had plunged the entire world into war.
Revolutions and epic struggles wracked the entire European continent, from Germany in 1919 to Spain in 1937. Capitalism survived, but the struggles of the parties of the Comintern, and the lessons drawn from them, have left an invaluable treasure of living experience for future Marxists.
‘The Evolution of the Comintern’, written by Walter Held (real name Heinz Epe, executed by the Stalinist GPU in 1941), who was a member of Trotsky’s International Secretariat, was adopted at the First International Conference for the Fourth International, founded by Trotsky and his followers in July 1936. It outlines the tragic degeneration of the Comintern, from an inspiring revolutionary international to a counter-revolutionary force carrying out the dictates of the Soviet bureaucracy. Lenin fought the bureaucracy’s rise to power from his death bed, and Trotsky continued the battle until he was assassinated by one of Stalin’s GPU agents on the 20 August 1940.
Written in 1936, the article predates but clearly anticipates the Second World War, condemning the rampant nationalism of the Communist Parties — including that of the German Communist Party. In September 1939 Stalin made a pact with Hitler, anticipated by Trotsky as early as March 1933:
What would [Stalin] do in the event of an agreement with Hitler? … It is very likely Stalin would agree to cut off all subsidies for illegal [Communist Party] work in Germany … One should also assume that the noisy, hysterical and hollow campaign against fascism which the Comintern has been conducting for the last few years will by slyly squelshed.
And this is precisely what happened. Indeed, until the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941 — reports of which Stalin refused to believe, leaving Russia unprepared — the Communist Parties of the Comintern became Hitler’s apologists. The British Communist Party’s Daily Worker pronounced, in a typical editorial in February 1940:
[In a recent speech] Hitler repeated once again his claim that the war was thrust upon him by Britain. Against this historical fact there is no reply. Britain declared war, not Germany. Attempts were made to end the war, but the Soviet-German peace overtures were rejected by Britain.
Yet German capitalists funded Hitler, brought him to power, and encouraged his anti-communism. When Hitler finally invaded Russia the Allied forces largely stood by, hoping for the mutual destruction of both countries.
But it was in Spain, in the year after The Evolution of the Comintern was written, that the Stalinist Comintern committed its greatest treachery. The Bureaucracy in the Soviet Union feared “any event anywhere that may upset the European status quo.” Felix Morrow, in Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain, writes that in 1936 the Comintern’s new course was to:
maintain the status quo as long as possible, this time not merely by preventing revolutions, but by active class collaboration with the bourgeoisie in the “democratic countries.” This collaboration was designed, in the event of war breaking out, to provide Russia with England and France as its allies.
Stalin dissolved the Communist International in 1943 at the request of the Allied forces. The Communist Parties remained, each proclaiming a reformist, national “road to socialism”, utterly without Marxist content.
Four decades later, on the 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and over the next few years capitalism was restored in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, causing economic collapse.
This capitalist restoration was seen as inevitable by Trotsky if the working class did not succeed in overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy first. As he predicted, many of the bureaucrats in these countries soon enough became capitalist owners of industry and commerce.
For more on the fall of the Soviet Union, go to the Marxist Classics section of the Socialist Party Books and Pamphlets page
There is a Glossary of the organisations, individuals and terms in use at the end of this article.
The evolution of the Comintern
The First World War and the second “Socialist” International
The imperialist world war of 1914-1918 was the clearest indication that the capitalist mode of production had become a fetter on the productive forces, and that conditions had become ripe for the victory of the proletarian revolution.
However, the Second International, whose bureaucracy had adapted itself to bourgeois society during the long period of capitalist expansion, betrayed the interests of the proletariat at the decisive moment of the outbreak of war, and occupied the position of defence of the fatherland, i.e., defence of the frontiers of the bourgeois national state, which — together with the system of private property — had become a brake on the further development of productive forces.
Only a very small number of revolutionary Marxists drew from the shameful treachery and miserable collapse of the Second International the conclusion that a Third International was necessary. It is true, in most countries an opposition formed against the chauvinist standpoint of the Social Democratic parties, but such opposition had in the beginning mainly a pacifist-centrist character. At the international conferences of the opponents of imperialist slaughter at Zimmerwald (1915) and Kienthal (1916) the supporters of the building of the Third International remained in the minority and were termed by all centrists and social-imperialists as fanatics, utopians, and sectarians.
The Russian Revolution
The victory of the Russian Revolution in October 1917 was the victory of the revolutionary principle of struggling against the enemy at home and of turning imperialist war into civil war, which since 1914 had been counterposed by the handful of revolutionary Marxists, and especially the leadership of the Russian Bolsheviks, to the principle of defending fatherland. The Bolsheviks – after overcoming analogous tendencies in their own ranks – broke with the ambiguous centrist majority of Zimmerwald and raised the banner of the Third International.
The First Congress of the Third International
At the founding congress of the Third International, [the Communist International], in March 1919, only the representatives of a few comparatively weak parties and groups met side by side with the victorious Bolshevik Party. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who would have deserved a place of honour at this gathering, had been murdered by the soldiery of the German Social Democrat Noske.
The First Congress [of the Communist International] took a very definite stand against the reactionary effort to rebuild the Second International in its pre-war form (Berne Conference of the Social Democratic and independent parties in February 1919) and stood for gathering the vanguard in a homogeneous revolutionary international. The manifestos of the congress pitilessly exposed the treacherous pacifism of President Wilson and the illusion of a capitalist League of Nations, which was supported by the Second International.
One of the most important results achieved by the congress was the restoration of the Marxist teachings on the state as an instrument of class rule and the exposure of parliamentary democracy as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. Lenin’s theses on ‘Democracy and Dictatorship,’ which were adopted by the congress, explain the counterrevolutionary, bourgeois character of the abstract slogans and principles of ‘pure,’ formal democracy (‘liberty,’ ‘equality,’ etc.)
They showed, by the example of the Russian experiences, the necessity of abolishing the bourgeois state apparatus and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship on the foundation of the soviet (workers’ councils).
The Hungarian revolution
In 1919, the experience of the Hungarian revolution was also gained. There, owing to the complete deterioration and confusion of the bourgeoisie, power had fallen into the lap of the Communists and left Social Democrats. But from the start the Hungarian revolution had no real leadership. The Communist Party was assimilated in the Social Democratic Party and thereby showed that it was not a Communist party. The Hungarian revolution failed not only because of the unfavourable international situation, but also owing to the complete incapability of Bela Kun and Co.’s leadership (in regard to the agrarian question, apart from the question of party organization). The Communist International, only just recently formed, was not yet firm enough in an organizational sense to give a different direction to the Hungarian revolution.
The disastrous results of the war led to a powerful awakening of proletarian class consciousness among the masses. They began, to an ever-increasing extent, to clearly see through the treacherous role played by the Social Democratic parties. Under pressure of their rank-and-file, some of the old reformist and social-pacifist leaders (the German Independent Socialist Party, the Italian Socialist Party, the French Socialist Party, the British ILP, etc.) sought affiliation to the Comintern, without however revising their centrist positions.
Second Congress
This danger of injecting opportunist tendencies into the ranks of the Comintern was counteracted by the Second Congress (1920), which adopted the 21 points, setting the conditions for membership in the Communist International. These conditions declared implacable war against the ambiguousness, the wavering attitude, and the sterile social-pacifism of the centrists and demanded a complete break with all pacifist ideas and illusions (such as disarmament League of Nations, international arbitration, etc.)
To the governing principle of the Second International of maintaining loose contacts between parties nationally independent (and acting directly in opposition to each other) was counterposed the principle of the world party built on the foundation of common theory and practice, and the aim of realising a common international leadership on the principles of democratic centralism.
Those centrist and conciliatory (toward the Second International) politicians, who had been hindered by the Second Congress from joining the Comintern, tried to form a “Two and-a-Half International” (beginning of 1921), a go-between affair, midway between open social treachery and revolution (the Austro-Marxists, the German ‘Independents,’ the French Longuetists, the ILP, etc.). The Two-and-a-Half International proclaimed afresh – as Karl Liebknecht put it – “the unity of fire and water,” the unity of revolutionises and social traitors in one international. But history had left no place for such a half-hearted solution. The Two-and-a-Half International was crushed in the struggle between the Second and Third Internationals. Its revolutionary elements turned to the Third International. Its bureaucratic tops reunited in 1923 (the Hamburg Congress) with the Second International.
Virus of ultra-leftism
Opportunist centrism, which did not lead the masses but wanted to be led by them, found its complement in ultra-radicalism, which instead of winning the masses from within by cooperation in their organizations, their struggles, and experiences, put an ultimatum to them from outside. These ultra-lefts declared themselves against participation in parliamentary elections, for leaving the mass trade unions and forming “pure” revolutionary unions, and for isolated action of the vanguard. These tendencies led in Germany to the formation of the KAP (Communist Workers Party) in 1920.
But even the official Communist Party of Germany had not been able to rid itself of adventuristic tendencies. This was shown, above all, in the course of the March events (1921) when the party, instead of confining itself to defensive tactics against the provocative challenge of the Social Democrats in the government, led the isolated vanguard to an armed offensive and suffered shipwreck.
The Third Congress
But the greatest danger was that now a whole school of theorists had established itself in the party who transformed the tactics of March into a principle (Thalheimer, Froelich, Maslow, Koenen, etc.) The Third Congress condemned ultra-left adventures and issued the slogan, “To the masses,” recognizing that the first great post-war wave (1917-1920) was now ebbing, and that a breathing space had occurred which it was necessary to utilize by preparing better and more thoroughly for the coming struggles.
The strategy and tactics of the Communist parties were drafted in resolutions which remain models even today. The Congress adopted “Guiding Principles for the Organizational Development of the Communist Parties, the Methods and the Content of Their Work,” which, in spite of being too mechanical, “too Russian” (Lenin, at the Fourth Congress), give many valuable suggestions, particularly regarding the connection between legal and illegal work, the necessity of a quick switchover from one to the other method of work, the organization of the press, the creation of factory cells, etc.
The Fourth Congress
The Fourth Congress (1922) reaffirmed the lessons of the Third Congress and dealt with them more thoroughly and concretely. The NEP (New Economic Policy) of the Soviet Union, following on “War Communism,” which had to be introduced under the pitiless pressure of circumstances, supplied the immensely important experience of necessary tactical retreats even after the winning of power, an experience which most probably will have its validity not only for backward Russia, but also for more advanced countries.
The Fourth World Congress was able to look back on tremendous organizational results. In the course of three years, in all continents and in practically all countries, sections had been created, and apart from this, the Red International of Trade
Unions and the Young Communist International had been built up. The Communist parties in a number of countries were at that time leading mighty revolutionary mass actions.
The defeat of the Italian proletariat
The defeat of the Italian proletariat in 1922 was not a defeat of the strategical and tactical methods of the Leninist Comintern, but of those of Italian Maximalism (Serrati), against which the Comintern since the Second World Congress had been continuously carrying on a hard struggle, without however, being able to avert the catastrophe.
One of the greatest achievements of the Comintern of those years was the publicity given by it to the historical importance of national movements of liberation in the colonies and semi-colonial territories, and the support given by it to the struggle of enslaved nations against Imperialist oppression, a task which the Second International had always neglected, and which, by its attitude in the World War, the Second International had absolutely betrayed.
Lenin’s “Guiding Principles on the National and Colonial Question,” at the Second Congress, were definitely directed against any attempt to fasten a communist label on revolutionary movements of liberation which were not in reality communistic. A temporary alliance with the national revolutionary movement was considered by these theses as necessary, but it was pointed out that the task of the Communists was not to amalgamate with these nationalist parties, but under all circumstances unconditionally to uphold the independent character of the proletarian movement.
The 1923 turn – a decisive turning point
The year 1923 represents a decisive turning point in the history of the Comintern. Owing to the development of new layers of exploiting elements in the Soviet Union as a consequence of the NEP, and owing to the general exhaustion of the working class after the tremendous efforts and the fervour of the years of revolution and Civil War, the bureaucracy of the party and state apparatus, which had meantime become very strong, was enabled to raise itself at an ever-increasing rate as an independent social force, as an arbiter over the classes.
However, the bureaucracy could gain political power only by a struggle against the proletarian vanguard, against proletarian democracy inside the party and the soviets. This is the content of the struggle which began in 1923 between Stalinism and Trotskyism. The ascent of the bureaucracy coincided with the grave illness and forced political inactivity of Lenin who however in his last writings (especially in the article “Better Fewer, But Better” and in the so-called Testament) had clearly recognized and called for a struggle against the danger of bureaucratisation and against Stalin as its main representative.
German Revolution
In Germany in 1923 a revolutionary crisis broke out afresh. The consequences of the [first imperialist] war, which had not been by any means overcome, the economic crisis interrupted only by slight boomlets, the occupation of the Ruhr territory by the French army, the organization and the collapse of ‘passive resistance’ of the German bourgeoisie against this occupation, the runaway inflation of German currency – all these causes led to an extraordinary sharpening of the class contradictions.
Huge mass strikes took place. The shop stewards movement became a gathering point for the revolutionary masses. The workers organized themselves in Hundertschaften (bodies of 100) and commenced to arm themselves. In a number of large unions the Communists even obtained a majority. Social Democracy was in confusion; the bourgeoisie was split. The mass movement reached the critical point when decisiveness and practical initiative of the highest degree are required of the revolutionary, leadership to push this movement further ahead to victory.
But the leadership of the Communist Party (Brandler, Thalheimer, Walcher, Froelich, etc.) showed itself incapable of fulfilling its historical tasks, and thereby proved that it was only a Social Democratic leadership, with a coating of Communist varnish. It stuck to the united front with the Social Democracy, without being able to grasp that the idea of the united front is to “step back in order thus to leap forward all the better”; without being able to grasp that at a certain moment the fight for winning the masses can be carried out only by a direct struggle for power.
The leadership of the Comintern, which already showed signs of bureaucratic degeneration, also proved incapable of leading the CPG on to the correct road. When the German bourgeoisie at last gathered its forces, proclaimed a state of siege, and proceeded to take the offensive, the CPG capitulated without a struggle. The consequence was a severe defeat of the German, and with it the European, proletariat, giving thereby European capitalism the possibility of stabilizing itself anew.
Consequences of the 1923 defeat
The defeat of 1923 led to a serious internal crisis in the CPG. A new “left” leadership (R. Fischer-Maslow) was chosen. This leadership, however, did not recognize that the October defeat was decisive in character. Instead of ordering a retreat it proceeded along the path of adventurism and thereby increased the scope of the defeat.
In Bulgaria, the Comintern section of that country (under the leadership of Kolarov-Dimitrov) also let slip in 1923 a highly favourable revolutionary situation and then endeavoured to make up for it by putschist adventures in September 1923, thereby causing a fatal defeat of the Bulgarian proletariat.
After the German defeat, the Comintern adopted a policy of adventurism and extended this course to the entire International, the consequence being a further defeat in Esthonia (uprising in Reval, December 1924).
“Socialism in one country” and the Fifth World Congress
To the extent that the German defeat had weakened the positions of the international proletariat and of its vanguard, to the same extent it acted to strengthen the tendencies of the Soviet bureaucracy to become an independent force. This accounts for the fact that the Fifth World Congress of the Comintern (1924) signifies above all the subjection of the Comintern to the yoke of the Russian bureaucracy. The Comintern itself became bureaucratised and was brought into complete dependence on the bureaucratic centre in Moscow.
The theory of “socialism in one country,” advanced by Stalin, the head of the bureaucracy, in the autumn of 1924 in glaring contradiction to the entire theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism, became for the newly formed social layers (bureaucracy, kulaks [well-to-do peasants], “spetses’ [specialists], etc.) the ideological expression of their nationally-limited interests. Not the international proletariat but the bureaucracy was proclaimed as the bearer of socialism. The Comintern, created to be an instrument of world revolution, now became the tool for the national interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. This fundamental contradiction placed its imprint on the future policy of the Comintern, which from that point on became centrist zigzagging, unprincipled adaptation to the reformist bureaucracy and bourgeois democracy on the one hand, and putschist adventurism on the other. All these traits became combined in its policy. The social basis of this type of centrism – the stable point in a world movement – is the Soviet bureaucracy.
Bureaucratic centrism
The two methods adopted by the Comintern for handling the masses – on the one hand, unprincipled adaptation to existing circumstances and the bourgeois democratic and petty-bourgeois reformist parties; and on the other, the sudden, unprepared appeals to the revolutionary instincts of the masses – have their roots in the social position of the Soviet bureaucracy (the Comintern bureaucracy being its obedient appendage).
Owing to its entire social character, the Soviet bureaucracy inclines toward adapting itself to the privileged and exploiting sections of Soviet society (kulaks, intellectual strata, labour aristocracy). However, as soon as the development has reached a critical point, when these strata become so powerful socially that they threaten the bureaucracy’s position of political privilege, the latter saves itself by an appeal to the masses.
In reality, it only stirs the proletarian masses (or more correctly merely small sections of these masses) by applying rigidly the whole force of state power (in particular, the GPU). On the international field, the Soviet and Comintern bureaucracy feel themselves attracted by petty-bourgeois democracy. But whenever for national reasons or by the logic of events the Soviet bureaucracy finds itself in opposition to petty-bourgeois democracy, it endeavours all of a sudden to drive the masses to revolutionary action. But as the Comintern lacks the state forces required to enforce its ultimatums, the masses remain passive.
This explains, on the one hand, the pseudo-successes of Stalinist policy in the Soviet Union (which so impress the philistines of all shades, from the reactionary English Fabians, Webbs and Co., over to the Romain Rollands, and down to the ‘London Bureau’ of the SAP-ILP); and on the other hand, the catastrophic failures of the Comintern.
Adventuristic
The adventuristic course of 1924-25 found its opportunistic supplement in bureaucratic combinations, directed entirely against the interests of the proletarian vanguard. The formation of a Peasants’ International (Krestintern), the flirtation with the Croatian Peasants’ Party of Radich, and with LaFollette in the United States (Federated Farmer-Labor Party), were examples of the endeavours by the Stalinist bureaucracy to use on an international scale the kulak tendencies as a counterbalance against the proletarian vanguard.
The union with the Chinese Kuomintang, in which the class differences were ignored, the hopes pinned on the English trade union bureaucrats, all these props of the adventuristic course of 1924-25 became the most essential elements of the openly opportunist course of 1925-27.
1925 – 1927 Chinese revolution
In the period from 1925 to 1927 the Chinese revolution had its gigantic outbreak. The initial events enabled the Chinese bourgeoisie and its party, the Kuomintang, to take the leadership. The Comintern declared its complete solidarity with the Kuomintang and its military leadership (Chiang Kai-shek). The Chinese Communist Party was forced to renounce an independent policy, and to join and to submit completely to the Kuomintang. Thus, all lessons of the Second World Congress were disregarded. This entirely Menshevist policy was justified by quoting a formula from the days of the 1905 revolution: “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasants.”
For Lenin this formula was an elementary expression of the idea of a fighting alliance between the proletariat and the poor peasants against the aristocrats and liberal bourgeoisie. It was left to each concrete revolutionary situation to determine the concrete form which this dictatorship of the oppressed against the oppressors should assume. When, however, in the spring of 1917, opportunist tendencies within the Bolshevik party tried to hide behind this old Bolshevik formula, Lenin in his Letters on Tactics (April 1917) discarded it as having been rendered obsolete by living developments. However, in the hands of Stalinism, Lenin’s slogan, which had been directed against the liberal bourgeoisie, served for the complete subjection of the proletariat to the liberal bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless, in spite of the opportunist policy of the Stalin bureaucracy, crawling on its belly before the military bureaucracy and lacking confidence in the revolutionary power of the proletariat, the Chinese proletarian masses and poor peasants turned to Communism, imbued with the desire to carry out in their country the ‘October Revolution,’ the partition of the land, the expropriation of the expropriators, the destruction of the bourgeois-militarist state machine and its substitution by Soviets.
The Kuomintang bourgeoisie, tied by finance capital to the landlords and the rich peasants, opposed with all its might the agrarian revolution. The Chinese Communists, thus tied by Stalinism to the Kuomintang, were hindered from placing themselves at the head of the agrarian revolution. The peasants remained without revolutionary leadership and the Chinese revolution was deprived of its strongest lever.
In spite of the submissive policy of Stalinism, the Chinese bourgeoisie did not refrain from settling accounts with the potential danger created by the rising wave of Communism. The militarist leadership of the Kuomintang made a counterrevolutionary coup d’etat; and, at a time when Chiang Kai-shek was still hailed in Moscow as the hero of the revolution, he ordered thousands of Chinese proletarians, who had already been deprived of power and arms by the Stalinist policy, to be shot.
After Chiang Kal-shek’s “treason” (not against the class interests of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but against Stalinist illusions), the Stalinist bureaucracy supported the alliance with the “left” Kuomintang (Wang Ching-wei) and underwent with him the same bitter experiences as with Chiang Kai-shek. Only when the defeat was completed, did the bureaucracy appeal to the proletarian masses whose vast majority had just been crushed to the ground. The result was the Canton insurrection which – although bearing a putschist character and condemned to complete isolation and thus to defeat – again showed unmistakably in retrospect the class character of the Chinese revolution and the possibility and necessity of forming Soviets and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat and thereby underlined the criminal folly of the whole Stalinist policy.
Opportunist policies
In the other colonial and East Asiatic countries (British India, Dutch East Indies, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, etc.), Stalinism supported during this period the building of “Peasants’ and Workers’ parties” (of the Kuomintang type) in direct contrast to Communist parties. This policy completely disorganized and demoralized the proletarian vanguard in those countries and-in conjunction with the catastrophic defeat of the Chinese revolution-is the main cause for the fact that in these countries no independent proletarian party has been formed to this day.
Parallel with the political alliance with the Kuomintang, a political alliance was made with the English trade union bureaucracy, the so-called “Anglo-Russian Committee” for the purpose of “preventing the war of intervention.” Whereas the Leninist united front tactic has the aim of winning the masses to Communism, the Stalinist bureaucrats here did not come into contact with the English masses at all. The Anglo-Russian Committee confined itself to purely bureaucratic activities (conferences, banquets, and so on). The result was a strengthening of the authority of the reactionary trade union bureaucracy and the direct desertion by the Third International of the Minority Movement which at that time was developing favourably within the trade unions. This reactionary character of the Anglo-Russian Committee was exposed clearly during the English General Strike of 1926, which was miserably betrayed by the trade union leaders (covered by the authority of Moscow). The relations were broken off not by the Russian but by the English bureaucracy at a moment most favorable for the latter.
In 1927, the fight of the bureaucracy against the proletarian vanguard in the Soviet Union came to its sharpest clash. Due to the catastrophic results of Stalinist policy, which confirmed in all points the criticism of the Left Opposition (Trotskyists), the bureaucracy – in direct alliance with the kulaks and the other petty-bourgeois sections – took the sharpest measures against the Opposition, measures which were a denial of every principle of proletarian democracy.
Expulsions
Expulsions from the party, ejections from office, imprisonment, exile, deportation, smuggling agent provocateurs into the ranks of the Opposition, counterfeit evidence, executions, cleared the road for the Bonapartist dictatorship of Stalin.
After having used the kulaks and the urban petty-bourgeois strata as a support in its fight against the Opposition, the bureaucracy itself was faced by the danger of becoming crushed by these strata. For reasons of self-preservation it was therefore now compelled to turn against the kulaks.
On the international field, a continuation of the openly opportunistic course had likewise become impossible owing to the attitude of the partners (termination of the relations by the British trade union bureaucracy, counterrevolutionary coup d’etat of Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei). So far as the German and French Social Democracy was concerned, contradictions existed which were mainly due to national and foreign policy considerations. These were the causes which led to the turn from bureaucratic adaptation to Social Democratic, trade union, and National-democratic (Kuomintang) bureaucracies, on the one hand, to bureaucratic ultimatism and adventurism, on the other hand. (See Bureaucratic Centrism above).
Sixth world congress
The Sixth World Congress (1928), called after a lapse of four years, had an ambiguous, contradictory character. This congress was held during the period of transition front the ultra-right to the ultra-left course and served the purpose of preparing for the expulsion of the right wing, which had no desire to depart from the opportunist line adopted and applied from 1925 to 1927 (Bukharin, Rykov, Brandler, Thalheimer, Walcher, Froelich, Kilbom, Lovestone, etc.). The programme adopted by the Sixth World Congress was based, from beginning to end, on eclecticism. It canonized the theory of socialism in one country, thus castrating the Comintern.
The programme does not take as a premise the present day world situation of capitalism as an interlocked whole, from which must be deduced the necessity for the world revolution, but it examines in a pedantically reactionary manner the possibility of each country ‘realizing socialism, thus opening wide the door for future social-patriotic degeneration of the Comintern. For the colonies and semi-colonial countries – with certain limitations, even for such countries as Spain, Portugal, Poland, etc. – the programme issues the slogan of “democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants,” filling it with the same anti-Leninist content (fraternization of the classes) which had caused the collapse of the Chinese revolution.
On the question of strategy and tactics, the programme does not go beyond commonplaces. The real experiences gained by the October victory and the tremendous defeats of the proletariat in Germany, Hungary, China, etc., and the role and the importance of the revolutionary party and of its leadership are not analysed.
“Third Period”
Throughout the subsequent period, the Stalinist bureaucracy operated mainly, but by no means exclusively, through the other method at its disposal, i.e., that of issuing commands to the masses, issuing ultimatums, without any preparation. In the midst of the comparative social peace of the then still existing boom period of 1924-1929, a “revolutionary upheaval” was suddenly ordered uniformly on the international field (the so-called “Third Period”).
The fatal policy of splitting the trade unions (propagation of the Red Trade Unions as independent organizations) was put in practice. Any pact with the social democracy, even one of merely temporary or practical-technical nature, was rejected. The theory of social fascism was promulgated (“Social democracy and fascism are not antipodes, they are twins” said Stalin) and every difference between parliamentary democracy and fascist dictatorship was denied.
Whereas the “ultra-left escapades” – as Lenin put it – which occurred in the first post-war years, were at any rate caused by honest revolutionary desire, the Stalinist bureaucrats betrayed in scoundrel’s fashion the interests of the proletarian masses.
1929 Economic crisis
The severe economic crisis originating in America in 1929-1930 shook to the core the existing regime, first and foremost in Germany, which fit the characterization given by Lenin to the Russian capitalism of 1917 as being the “weakest link of the capitalist chain.” The policy of the German Social Democratic Party, adapting itself to declining capitalism, (under the slogan of the “lesser evil”), and the bureaucratic degeneration of the German Communist Party hindered the strengthening of the working class movement in the crisis.
The petty bourgeoisie turned to demagogic fascism, which preached civil war not against the oppressing bourgeoisie but against the proletariat; and the aim of which is to continue and intensify capitalist exploitation through the suppression of all democratic liberties. But even the rise of this dangerous enemy of the proletariat could have been employed as a lever for the revolution, if only the Communist Party of Germany had understood how to set all proletarian forces in motion against it.
But the Stalinist bureaucracy did not even recognize the danger, to say nothing of being able to fight it. The absolutely insane estimation of the Social Democracy as “social fascism” led to rapprochement with real fascism (programme of national and social liberation, support of the fascist referendum against the Social Democratic government of Prussia in 1931, etc.).
This programme of adapting oneself to nationalist agitation, and the bureaucratic-cowardly evasion of a military struggle against the fascist opponent found its support in Soviet foreign policy, which was solely governed by day-to-day considerations. This foreign policy saw its task in keeping alive German-French antagonism, in order thus to exclude an intervention from the west. Basically, Soviet foreign policy is, of course, absolutely justified in exploiting for its own ends the differences between imperialist powers. But it is an unheard-of-crime to sacrifice the interests of the proletarian revolution to day-to-day considerations of foreign policy.
The criminal, blind policy of the German Communist Party (for which the whole Comintern bears complete responsibility) led to the shameful defeat without a battle of the German proletariat. The miserable collapse of the German Communist Party (which was confirmed anew by the melancholy result of the Saar Plebiscite of January 1935) brought the final proof that the Comintern had become transformed from a subjective factor of the world revolution into an objective obstacle to the World revolution.
The policy of bureaucratic ultimatism found its complement in unprincipled combinations with bankrupt bourgeois Politicians, pacifists, and novelists (Lord Marley,, Barbatsse, Romain Rolland, Heinrich Mann, etc.), as well as in the “Peace Congresses” organized by the Stalinists, the League Against Imperialism, the Friends of the Soviet Union, etc. It is a policy which is the exact opposite of the Leninist united front tactic for winning the proletarian masses, a policy which reflects the bureaucratic admiration of “people in high positions,” and the bureaucratic scorn of the revolutionary forces of the masses.
“People’s Front”
In 1934, a new turn of the Comintern policy was imposed by the domestic political situation of the Soviet Union as well as the foreign political situation, altered by the victory of fascism in Germany. Whereas the Leninist united front tactic in relation to social democracy had been previously regarded as “counterrevolutionary,” now every opportunity presenting itself anywhere was used to make an alliance not only with social democracy, but also with its masters, the liberal bourgeoisie, and this treacherous capitulation to bourgeois democracy received the pompous name of “People’s Front.”
Stalin’s declaration to the French Premier Laval (May 1935), that “he understood and approved completely the policy of national defence of France,” signals the Comintern’s desertion to the camp of imperialism. Soviet diplomacy, which in the meantime had joined the League of Nations, advocates “collective security” (i.e., the security of the imperialist robbers to continue to rob without hindrance), international arbitration, and the like. Thereby, the Comintern makes itself the prop for the oldest and most worn-out illusions with which imperialism deceives the masses and prepares them for the mass slaughter, and this at a moment when Italy’s brutal assault on Abyssinia demonstrates clearly the whole emptiness and shallowness of the lying phrases of collective security.
“National Defence,”
The Seventh World Congress, assembling at last in the autumn of 1935, signifies the break with the last remnants of Comintern traditions. “People’s Front” and “National Defence,” social betrayal, and social chauvinism are all that this Congress – a hollow theatrical performance of bureaucratic marionettes – had to offer to the world working class.
The Stalinists demand in all countries, in exchange for their willingness to defend the “Fatherland,” only one price, i.e., that the foreign policy of the respective country should not be directed against the Soviet Union. The Franco-Soviet military agreement alone sufficed in order to transform the French Stalinists into the worst type of chauvinists, preaching national fraternization of all classes and of all political and religious denominations.
The British Stalinists have no other aim but to get the British bourgeoisie to become a signatory to the Franco-Soviet agreement. Today, the American Comintern section already endorses a war of the United States against Japan “for the defence of the Soviet Union.” Although a war of the USA against Japan – given a correct policy on the part of the proletarian party – would offer tremendous possibilities for the proletarian world revolution, the American Stalinists are already preaching the renunciation of the revolutionary class struggle and the support of the American bourgeoisie, the mightiest and most dangerous imperialist bourgeoisie of the world. In China, the Stalinists are prepared to deliver the Chinese proletariat and poor peasants again into the hands of the counterrevolutionary Chiang Kai-shek if the latter only declares himself willing to turn his bayonets against Japan.
In the small European countries, the Stalinists already declare themselves defenders of “national independence.” They forget completely that these countries are links in the imperialist chain and that they too carry on war with imperialist aims. So far as Czechoslovakia is concerned, a nation which is particularly dear to the hearts of the Stalinists, this is not a national state at all, but only a conglomeration of nationalities, held together by French imperialism. Poland, Rumania, Belgium, etc., are themselves oppressors of national minorities. Holland, Belgium, Portugal, and others have colonies of their own which they exploit with a brutality second to none of the great imperialist powers.
The Austrian Stalinists declare that they are prepared to defend the “independence of Austria” – of this artificial creation, incapable of independent existence – if only the Austrian bourgeoisie (and Franco-English capital) will allow the Stalinists a certain amount of legality for their patriotic loyal propaganda.
The German Stalinists in emigration have become inverted social-patriots, transforming themselves from nationalist champions against the Versailles Peace Treaty to defenders of the status quo created by this very same treaty. It follows from the present position of the German Stalinists that they will transform themselves into real social-patriots as soon as the fascist dictatorship in Germany is replaced by another type of bourgeois regime.
As against this enormous betrayal of the interests of the proletariat, the organizations of the Fourth International adhere to the internationalist slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war; not the defence of the reactionary national frontiers, which decades ago became a brake on any kind of progressive development, but their abandonment; the creation of the United Soviet Republics of Europe and of the whole world is our aim.
GLOSSARY
Organisations
Second International (or Labour and Socialist International): organised in 1889 as a successor to the First International established by Marx and Engels. In 1914 almost all its national sections supported their own imperialist governments and it fell apart during the war. It was revived as a completely reformist organisation in 1923.
Third (Communist) International: organised under Lenin’s leadership as the revolutionary successor to the Second International. Founded in 1919, its first four congresses developed the genuine ideas of Bolshevism, but from the fifth congress in 1924, until its dissolution in 1943, Stalin’s machine was in control.
The Fourth International: organised by Trotsky and his followers once it became clear that the ranks of the Third (Communist) International – the Comintern – were incapable of learning from the disastrous Comintern policies which allowed Hitler to come to power. However the Fourth International was unable to understand the period following the Second World War. It fragmented and pursued a number of sectarian and opportunist policies. Subsequently, the Socialist Party, then known as the Militant, founded the Committee for a Workers International in 1974, now with sections and followers in 35 countries on all continents.
London Bureau (or IAG): A collection of centrist groupings in the early 1930s.
Peasant International (or Krestintern): Formed by the Coniintern in 1923, but met with little success and quietly disap peared in the late 1920s or early 1930s.
Red International of Labour Unions (or Profintern): Organised in Moscow in 1921, as a rival to the reformist International Federation of Trade Unions.
Left Opposition: Formed by Trotsky in 1923 to fight the growing bureaucracy in Russia. Expelled from the Communist Party in 1928. The International Left Opposition (ILO) was formed in 1930, bringing together co-thinkers of Trotsky in a number of countries.
SPD: German Social Democratic Party.
KPD: German Communist Party.
KAPD: An ultra-left group who were expelled from the KPD in 1919.
USPD: Left wing split from the SPD in 1916. In the early 1920s split,
one wing returning to the SPD, the other joining the KPD.
KPO: Communist Right Opposition. Formed by expelled KPD members in 1929.
SAP: Socialist Workers Party. A left split from the SPD in 1931. It briefly collaborated with the International Left Opposition, but after 1933 moved to the right.
ILP (Independent Labour Party): Founded in 1893, it split from the Labour Party in 1931. It was for a time attracted towards Stalinism.
Social Democrat, Social Democracy: The names of various socialist parties. Until 1914, when most social democratic parties supported the war, it was synonymous with revolutionary socialism-Marxism. Thereafter it became the general term for reformist parties.
Individuals
Lenin: Leader of the Russian resolution and founder of the Communist International, died in 1924.
Trotsky: Together with Lenin, leader of the Russian revolution, organised the Red Army to victory in the civil war. Expelled from the CP in 1927 and forced into exile by the Stalinists in 1928, he was murdered by a Stalinist agent in 1940,
Zinoviev: Old Bolshevik, first president of the Communist International. Collaborated with, then opposed, Stalin in the late 1920s, before capitulating. Executed at the first Moscow show trial in 1936.
Kamenev: Old Bolshevik. One-time deputy to Lenin. Like Zinoviev collaborated with, then opposed Stalin before capitulating. Was also executed in 1936.
Beria: Old Bolshevik, became an ardent Stalinist.
Molotov: Old Bolshevik, became an ardent Stalinist.
Stalin: Elected General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party in 1922, rapidly became a pliant mouthpiece for the bureaucracy which developed as a result of the revolution’s isolation.
Rykov: Old Bolshevik, led with Bukharin the Right Opposition. Capitulated to Stalin in 1929. “Confessed” at the 1938 Moscow show trial and was executed.
Bukharin: Old Bolshevik, second president of the Comintern, 1926-29. Formed the Right Opposition in 1928, and was expelled in 1929. He capitulated to Stalin, but was executed in 1938.
Pollitt, Campbell Palme-Dutt: Leaders of the British CP in 1920s, were mouthpieces for the Stalinist leadership of the Communist International.
Daladier: Leader of the French Radical Socialist Party (which was neither radical nor socialist). Was Premier of France in 1933 and 1934, and in 1938-40.
Noske, Scheidermann: German Social Democratic leaders responsible for suppressing the Spartacus uprising in 1919, and the murder of the revolutionary leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
F.D. Roosevelt: American president from 1932. Introduced the ‘New Deal’ programme of state intervention intended to deal with economic problems while heading-off the radicalisation of the working class.
Wilson: American president during World War 1. Main architect of the Versailles Treaty.
Liebknecht, Luxemburg: Leaders of the Spartacus uprising in Berlin, 1919. They were assassinated in January 1919 on the orders of the Social Democratic rulers of Berlin.
Bela Kun: Leader of the defeated Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, he moved to Moscow and became a Comintern functionary. He later became a spokesman for the class collaborationist theory of the People’s Front.
Jean Longuet: Grandson of Karl Marx, was a leader of the ‘pacifist’ minority of the French Socialist Party during World War 1. He opposed the formation of a Communist Party in France.
Thalheimer: A founder and leader of the KPD. Together with Brandler was expelled in 1929, and formed the KPO.
Froelich: A founder of the KPD, later the KPO, then the SAP.
Maslow: Led the KPD along with Fischer and Urbahns after the eclipse of the right-wing Brandler group in 1924. In 1926 he supported the Left Opposition. He was expelled from the KPD in 1927, capitulated to Stalinism in 1928. Refused re-admission to the KPD, he formed the Leninbund together with Fischer and Urbahns.
Koenen: Was a member of the left-wing of the KPD during the early 1920s.
Ruth Fischer: Was a founding member of the Austrian Communist Party, became a leader of the German party. Expelled from the KPD along with Maslow and Urbahns in 1927. Together they subsequently formed the Leninbund.
Serrati: Leader of the Italian Socialist Party, attended the Second Congress (1920) of the Comintern where he opposed an unconditional break with the reformists. This attitude- was to be a major cause of the paralysis of the Italian revolutionaries during the revolutionary crisis of September 1922.
Sidney and Beatdce Webb: Were founders of the Fabian Society, and the major British theoreticians of gradualist socialism. In the 1930s the Webbs became apologists for Stalin.
Romain Rolland: French novelist, opposed World War I and the Russian revolution from a pacifist standpoint. He later lent the prestige of his name to Stalinist literary congresses and manifestos.
Mann: German writer, lived in exile in France, 1933-40.
Kilbom: Leader of the Swedish CP. Together with a majority of the CP leadership refused to accept the Stalinist policy which characterised Social Democrats as “Social Fascists”. Left the CP and formed a National Communist Party which adhered to the centrist London Bureau for a while before joining the Social Democrats.
Lovestone: Leader of the right-wing of the American CP. Deposed as leader in 1929 and expelled.
Other Terms
Reichstag: German parliament building, burnt down by Nazi provocateurs in 1933.
Treaty of Versailles: Imposed harsh terms on Germany at the end of the first world war.
Anglo-Russian Committee: Committee of the “left” bureaucracy of the British trade unions and Soviet representatives. Formed in May 1925. It was used by the British trade union leaders to demonstrate their “progressiveness”. It folded in 1927 when the British members, no longer needing a left cover after the defeat of the 1926 General Strike, walked out.
Minority Movement: A left wing caucus in the British Trade Unions, initiated by the Communist Party in the 1920’s.
Muzhik: General term for peasants in Russia.
Kuomintang: People’s Party-a bourgeois-nationalist party in China.
Centrist: A term used by Trotsky to describe groupings which vacillate between reformism and Marxism.
League of Nations: Set up in 1919 by the victors of World War 1. It ended ingloriously with WWII after which it was superseded by the United Nations.
New Economic Policy: Followed the highly centralised regime of War Communism, was adopted as a temporary measure allowing a limited revival of free trade in the Soviet Union, to revive the economy after the civil war.
Estonian Uprising, 1924: Was a putsch-a conspiratorial adventure behind the backs of the masses. About 200 armed communists assaulted various government buildings. They were crushed in four hours.
GPU: Stalinist secret police.
Menshevism: Reformist wing of the Russian workers’ movement.
1905 Revolution: Ten months of revolutionary struggle in Russia which culminated in the bloody crushing of a worker’s uprising in Moscow in December 1905.
Saar Plebiscite: Under the Treaty of Versailles, the coal rich Saar region was taken away from Germany and placed under League of Nations Administration, while France had control of the coal mines. The plebiscite of 1935 was a referendum which overwhelmingly voted to return to Germany, despite the opposition of the SPD and (after a number of changes in position) the CP who advocated autonomy because of Hitler coming to power in Germany.
This material was originally included in “The Rise and Fall of the Communist International” published by Militant Publications, and has been shortened.
