Nationalism or Internationalism ?
>From the outset therefore the Third International was dominated by the
policies and finances of the Russian party. This party, isolated from the
international working class movement by the counter-revolutionary 'allied'
intervention, concluded that the revolutionary crisis was over by mid 1919.
The leadership of Zinoviev and Radek [who had some influence within the
German movement] and with the support of the entire Russian party
leadership, turned the Third International into a vehicle to 'stabilise'
and 'normalise' political relations between new Russian state and the
leading capitalist states of Europe and North America.
The means to this end was to exercise political influence within the
'socialist' movements of the world, frequently by using Comintern agents
recruited specifically for the purpose. The aim was to create 'communist'
parties allied to the International who, while they rejected pre war Social
Democratic and syndicalist positions, would nevertheless adhere to
Bolshevik policies and specifically i] participate in parliamentary and ii]
trade union activity. This meant 'mass' parties for electoral purposes to
serve as powerful political pressure groups on their respective ruling
classes especially in relation to 'soviet Russia'. In effect these new
parties were to work within Social Democracy once more, but to justify this
practice to the doubting revolutionaries among their own membership as
merely a 'tactic' required to defend the Russian Revolution.
In other words, they were to return to the politics of the Second
International in the name of the Third. At the same time and secretly, the
Bolsheviks were attempting to negotiate with leading capitalist
industrialists in Western Europe [and especially Germany] to renew foreign
capital investment in Russia, a practice justified under the slogan of
'peaceful co-existence' and whose practical result was the Treaty of
Rapallo in 1922. Just to make clear our meaning - the Boslheviks were
engaged from the outset in 'normalising' relations with international
capital so as to pursue capitalist policies at home. A conclusion which the
German Left soon arrived at.
The Russian Policy
The two major obstacles to Bolshevik policy within the socialist movement
at an international level, whose strength and influence varied greatly from
country to country were the anti-Bolshevik Left Social Democrats of the
Socialist parties such as the Serrati faction of the PSI in Italy and the
Kautskyite section of the USPD in Germany on the one hand, and on the other
the non Bolshevik communists for whom the revolutionary period was not over
just because Moscow said so.
Foremost of these latter tendencies in political coherence and
organisational strength were the Left Communists in Germany. Other smaller
'Left' groupings included that of Sylvia Pankhurst in Britain and the
Bordigists in Italy as well as the Dutch Left Communists.
Where the Bolsheviks could identify the Social Democrats as the main enemy,
the Comintern tactic was to split their party and then regroup a
pro-Bolshevik side of the split into a new communist party.
Where the Left Communists, the 'Infantilely Disordered' had strength, the
tactic was either to force them to unite with a parliamentary oriented
party or to discredit their leaders and win over their members, for as
Lenin noted of the KAPD in Germany - their members were,
'. . . . better able than the latter [KPD] to carry on agitation among the
masses.'
['Left Wing Communism - An Infantile Disorder' - V I Lenin p.114 Peking
Edition October 1965, where this comment appears in an Appendix called 'The
Split amongst the German Communists']
It is vital to emphasise here a clear understanding of the role of the
Third International at this time, because of what it has suppressed. This
role has had a crippling influence on what 'proletarian internationalism'
means and what we should understand by what was Left Communism in its own
time and what it means today, since this role of the International [the
famous 'first four congresses'] is the foundation upon which most of the
'Left' is built today.
The very term 'infantile' used by Lenin to describe the Left Communists at
this time is a misconception between a young and necessarily immature
working class politics and what he saw as childish impracticality. Lenin
used all his personal authority and prestige to attack the Left and bolster
the counter-revolutionary policy of the Third International. Rather we
should call this tendency 'Left Wing Communism: The Future of the
International Working Class in its Infancy' and given the history of the
intervening period there is obviously now no longer any need at add the
prefix 'Left Wing'.
The essential political content of the time is clear from Pannekoek,
'It is easy to see that the needs of the Republic of Soviets are at the
basis of these politics . . . . Moscow wants to be able to rely not upon a
radical Communist Party, leading to a fundamental revolution in the future,
but rather on a large organised proletarian force which will intervene in
its favour precisely to the extent that it puts pressure upon the
Government of its country . . . . .The task of Communism is to unmask the
forces and tendencies which seek to halt the revolution halfway, to point
out the way forward to the masses, the way which leads, by way of the
fiercest struggles, to the distant goal, to undivided power and to
stimulate the energies of the proletariat and to deepen the revolutionary
current . . . .If one adopts the perspective of the immediate safeguarding
of Soviet Russia, one will inevitably arrive through this at a conception
of the World Revolution [the taking of power by workers leaders sympathetic
to the Soviet Union]'
'. . . . From there, Russia, surrounded by 'friendly' workers' republics,
will in all tranquillity be able to pursue its economic construction in the
direction of communism, that is why the same things we consider to be
intermediary, transitory, inadequate forms, to be fought against with all
our might, for Moscow constitute the realisation, the end point, the
supreme goal of communist politics.'
[Postscript to 'World Revolution and Communist Tactics' 1920 in
'Pannekoek et les Conseils Ouvriers' Editions Briacanier EDI Paris pp
200 - 201]
>From its formation in 1920, the KAPD criticised the policies of the Third
International, but it took it another two years to break altogether with
the International. Whereas the more outright opposition of the Ruhle
tendency within the party to the policies of the Third International from
early on, contributed to its break with the KAPD.
The first and most important critique by the KAPD of the Third
International policies - produced by Gorter in his famous 'Reply to Lenin'
[in response to 'Left wing Communism . . . . ] stressed the difference in
economic development and thus in class structure, between social relations
inside Russia and those within the countries of Western Europe.
The West European working class had to stand as a class alone to make the
revolution, against the weight of bourgeois ideology and custom, against
all other classes in capitalist society, the peasantry included. So all
political practice and principles had to bring to the fore the means by
which the working class could increase its revolutionary capacities and its
self reliance. Rejecting Parliament and Trade Unions, what the KAPD called
'leader politics', the Social Democratic management of 'national consensus'
and so on was based on these principles.
KAPD Criticism of the Third International
Whilst arguing this perspective for the German working class, the KAPD also
showed it to be a correct estimation of the problems facing the communists
as a minority within the working class, in as much as they failed to carry
through the implications of their analysis with regard to their membership
of the Third International. As we have shown this body was showing itself
to be increasingly dominated by the needs of the new Russian state. This
weakness of the KAPD can be seen in Gorter's deference to Lenin [*] in
sections of his 'Reply', in the reluctance of the KAPD to criticise
Bolshevik policy inside Russia, and by their taking part in the 'March
Action' in Germany, an insurrection led by the KPD under the Comintern
supervision of Bela Kun.
[* For example accepting the 'united front' between workers and peasants in
Russia which Gorter contrasted with its incorrectness in Western Europe. In
effect admitting that Russia was somehow a 'special case' to which the
principles of proletarian internationalism need not be strictly applied.
Luxemburg had consistently criticised Bolshevik policy towards the
peasantry. Bordiga also in Italy devoted much effort to working out this
question]
This involvement in the 'March Action' was the cause of an especial
antagonism between the AAUD and the KAPD, for it was widely suspected that
this insurrection was deliberately timed by Comintern politicians, 'the
palace mayors of Moscow', to take attention away from the anti-Bolshevik
strikes by the working class of Petrograd in the spring of 1921 which led
to the Kronstadt insurrection. This was bloodily suppressed by the
Bolsheviks.
Effectively the KAPD was guilty by association in crushing this uprising,
and when challenged by the Russian party at the Third World Congress of the
International in Moscow shortly after, they failed to disassociate
themselves from this suppression. The KAPD spokesman stating in explanation
that in a newspaper article Gorter had referred to the Kronstadt
insurrection as a proletarian uprising, that while he recognised the 'inner
logic' of the actions of both the workers involved and of the Russian
party's response,
'Comrade Gorter does not side with the Kronstadt rebels, and the same goes
for the KAPD.'
['La Gauche Allemande' op. cit. p. 52]
The KAPD subsequently criticised the suppression of the Kronstadt
insurrection after their expulsion from the Third International. Gorter
saying of this event,
'then - as by a breath - communism collapsed.' [World Communism]
Some of the basis for the KAPD's involvement in this and other putschist
actions must be recognised in their own desire for revolution in Germany.
The pressure towards 'voluntarist' actions was actually the pressure
exerted by the counter revolution and the KAPD's reaction was a misplaced
desire to ignite the German working class into action by their action. The
KAPD's idea of its role within the Third International at the Second and
Third Congresses after which it was expelled, was to try and constitute
itself as a revolutionary opposition within the International. It drew in
support from other national sections and acted as a counter weight to the
dominance of the Russian party and its reactionary policies within the
International. This role was a combination of a highly developed
internationalism and political @naivete as to the real intentions and
strength of the Russian party. By 1923 and its short lived attempt to set
up an alternative Fourth International [several years before Trotsky],
Gorter and the KAPD had quite clearly drawn the overall lessons of this
bitter experience.
'We would advise our Russian comrades to say to the [Russian] Communist
party and the Soviet Government: You have done giant work as a proletarian
movement and government party. . . . Very probably certain mistakes were
made at the beginning of the Revolution, only our Russian comrades can know
this, we cannot decide this point clearly. This will remain so for all
time. That you could not do everything in a proletarian and communist way,
and that you had to retreat when the European revolution did not
materialise, is not your fault. As proletarians we shall more strenuously
fight you as our class enemies the more you return to capitalism. But your
real fault, which neither we nor History can forgive, is to have foisted a
counter-revolutionary programme and tactics on the worlds' working class
and to have rejected the really revolutionary one which could have saved
us.'
[from 'World Communism']
The 'Einheitlern' Disagree
Ruhle and his comrades drew their own conclusions as to the return to
capitalist class relations within Russia and their influence on the
policies of the International at an earlier stage than their former
comrades in the KAPD.
Ruhle was one of the KAPD delegates to the Second Congress of the
International in July 1920 and he travelled slowly through Russia for
several weeks on his way to Moscow in order to find out for himself the
social conditions and relations in the new post-revolutionary society. His
conclusion which he wrote up for an article in a socialist paper on his
return to Germany was that the system was Soviet in name only. All power
lay with the party bureaucracy and that in the industrial areas,
'The Russian workers are even more exploited than the German workers.'
The main object of Ruhle's criticism was the substitutionist role of the
Bolshevik party. He described this in 1921 in an article called 'The Basic
Issues of Organisation',
'Russia has the bureaucracy of the Commissariat; this rules. It has no
council system. The Soviets are chosen according to lists of candidates
drawn up by the party; they exist under the terror of the regime and thus
are not councils in a revolutionary sense. They are 'show' councils, a
political deception. All power in Russia lies with the bureaucracy, the
deadly enemy of the council system.
But proletarian autonomy and the socialist economy require the council
system; here everything is produced for need, and all take part in
administration. The Party prevents Russia from achieving a council system
and without councils there is no socialist construction, no communism. The
dictatorship of the party is commissar-despotism, is state capitalism. . .
. .'
' . . . . The Tsarist dictatorship was that of one class over all other
classes, that of the Bolsheviks is that of 5% of a class over a other
classes, and over 95% of its own class.'
[Originally published in 'Die Aktion' No. 37 1921. Journal of the AAUD-E]
On arriving in Moscow, Ruhle was confronted with the 'Twenty-One
Conditions' for membership of the International and told that unless he and
his party accepted these terms, he could not take part in the Congress. No
debate, no discussion, simply a 'fait accompli'. Ruhle immediately left
Moscow for Germany. He was censured for this by the KAPD Central Committee.
Following this he was excluded from a meeting of the Central Committee of
which he was an elected member, in October 1920. He left the KAPD, taking
with him the East Saxony and Hamburg sections. These then dissolved
themselves, took about half the 200,000 members of the AAUD out of that
organisation, and formed the AAUD-E at the end of 1921.
Thus the main points of difference between the KAPD and the AAUD-E as far
as the latter was concerned were:-
i] the AAUD-E's insistence on the political primacy and uniqueness of the
factory organisation
ii] its outright rejection of the Third International from the Second
Congress including the '21 Conditions'
iii] its opposition to the KAPD's tendency to putschism
As far as the AAUD-E was concerned, the KAPD leadership had failed to
differentiate itself sufficiently from the 'professional politics' of the
KPD leadership except for the KAPD's rejection of parliamentarism. From the
founding congress of the KAPD, Ruhle had adopted a position that the party
was to exist as a separate organisation only for as long as was necessary
to prepare its effective dissolution into the AAUD. It had been at his
group's insistence that the words,
'the KAPD is not a party in the normal sense, it is not a party of leaders.
Its main work will be in supporting the German working class in so far as
it will be able to do away with all leadership.'
had been included in the 'First Appeal of the KAPD', at its founding
conference on 4th and 5th of April 1920 in Berlin.
Now this outlook was based on a refusal to take any action other than on
the basis of the revolutionary self-development of the German workers as a
'class for themselves'.
The reality of the counter-revolution which the AAUD-E recognised somewhat
earlier than the KAPD, transformed these intended principles in practice
into their opposite. The AAUD-E became a moment in the fragmentation and
dissolution of the communist project. Despite claims to the contrary, the
rejection of KAPD putschism became in practice the virtual rejection of any
armed struggle. Rejection of the party and the need for independent
political organisation in a pre-revolutionary period [that is most of the
time] becomes a refusal to work through the problem of the relationship of
the most conscious members of the working class to the rest of the class -
what we refer to as the problem of minority organisation.
In reaction to the substitutionist and voluntarist weaknesses of the KAPD,
are also abandoned its strengths. This consisted of an attempt by a
revolutionary organisation to identify and develop within the working class
a revolutionary understanding of itself, however difficult this may have
been at the time.
The 'Einheitlern'' - and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Ruhle's idea of proletarian dictatorship will not do - it starts from the
wrong headed notion of 'seizure of one's own means of production' as
against the collective seizure by the international working class of the
global means of production. [This also echoes the 'take and hold' idea of
the IWW influenced SLP in Britain. Nevertheless it should be noted that the
SLP was the nursery for the majority of the 'best' - and worst - militants
in the workers movement in Britain]
Further, organisation 'at the point of production' is a necessary but
hardly a sufficient basis on which to organise for a class which is not
simply to take over industrial production, but transform production of all
needs for the whole of society. The working class cannot make itself into a
political class for all human society on the basis simply of its factory or
industrial organisation. These are merely SOME of the roots which reflect
its origin as a producer class for capital. Instead the working class must
create political institutions to express its rule as a class, such as the
soviets [briefly] were in Russia. In addition it must discover or work out
the relationship of the these soviets to other organisms it creates at the
'point of production'.
Now we are not implying here that in its programme and propaganda the
AAUD-E rejected the need for armed struggle or the proletarian
dictatorship. What it did do was to lay too much emphasis on factory
organisation, 'the terrain of the proletariat' as Ruhle called it, as the
basis upon which and from which class rule could be won and exercised. By
contrast other areas of social struggle and the necessity for armed
struggle become in this outlook secondary or subsidiary questions. Again it
is important to stress the international features of this post-war
movement. A similar criticism could be made for instance, of the Turin
workers of 1920.
Part 7
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