International Organisation. (1930)

From the November 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our readers will be familiar with the Socialist Party’s attitude towards the “Labour and Socialist International,” which is a loose association of parties like the Labour Party and the I.L.P., and towards the ”Third (Communist) International.” We are hostile to the national parties on account of their failure to accept and apply the principles of Socialism, and equally hostile to the international federations which cannot be more advanced than the affiliated organisations themselves.

The “Labour and Socialist International” is composed of parties which are prepared to support the capitalist class in their wars, and are prepared either alone or in coalition with Liberals and Tories, to carry on the administration of the capitalist system.

The “Third International” differs from its rival in several important respects, but its aims and methods are no less dangerous to the working class. It is rigidly centralised, but the control of the organisation is not in the hands of the affiliated parties. These latter are in the position of having their policies, dictated to them by the Russian party. The policies are in line with the wishes of the Russian government, but not necessarily in line with working-class interests. So we see the Communists advocating the dangerous tactic of violence and giving support to capitalist parties (e.g., the Labour Party). The Socialist movement is not helped, but hindered, by such methods.

It is an encouraging sign that there are now quite a number of parties abroad whose experiences during and since the war have taught them that neither of the international federations is deserving of the support of Socialists. While such an attitude is not of itself proof of sound Socialist principles, it is full of promise for the future. An attempt has been made by some of these parties to lay the foundation for

THE INTERNATIONAL BUREAU OF REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST PARTIES.

The International Bureau has affiliated to it parties in France, Germany, Italy, Rumania, Russia, and Jugo-Slavia. In addition, a Norwegian party endorses its attitude towards the existing internationals. Reports of the Bureau’s Congresses show that, for most of the delegates, association with either of these bodies is unthinkable, and it is claimed by the Secretary of the Bureau, Angelica Balabanoff, that the constituent parties, that “at least the majority,” are Marxist. It is important to notice, however, that the Bureau has no formal constitution. That being so, it is difficult to see how the International Bureau can take the very necessary steps to see that its affiliated bodies are parties which conform to the essentials of Socialist principles and policy. We read, for example, that Maxton and Brockway, of the I.L.P., have indicated their “interest and sympathy.” If the Bureau had a formal constitution based on Marxian principles, these two advocates of alliance with the parties of capitalism would have known that they could not give support to it.

In the absence of such a constitution, the soundness of the organisation can only be tested by an examination of its affiliated parties. The principles of one of them, the French party, are examined below.

The Socialist-Communist Party of France.

The Socialist-Communist Party was formed in 1922 by members of the Communist Party who found intolerable the way in which the Moscow organisation habitually ignored and countermanded the decisions arrived at by the Congresses of the French party, especially in view of the fact that Moscow’s orders were not of a kind to further the interests of the working class. The new organisation at its Congress in 1923 adopted the following declaration as a basis of “reconstituting the unity of the working class” :—

“The formation of a class political party for the revolutionary conquest of power by the workers, with a view to securing, by means of a temporary and impersonal dictatorship of the whole working class, the disappearance of the State and the substitution of socialism or communism for capitalism. The utilisation of all means for ameliorating the workers’ conditions of life ; the refusal to vote for capitalist budgets and refusal to participate in the government of capitalism ; opposition to war making, accepting the principle of ‘insurrection rather than war’.”

The party’s attitude to political action is rather obscure. It repudiates the Communist policy of a violent seizure of power by a minority, and it takes part in national and local elections, but “without attaching to elections exceptional importance . . . attributing to them chiefly a propaganda value.”

The Socialist-Communist Party’s views on many questions are set out in a pamphlet, “L’Unité Ouvrière Nationale et Internationale” (Working Class Unity, National and International), written by the General Secretary, Paul Louis, and published by the party at 12, Rue Rochambeau, Paris 9.

The main argument of the pamphlet is that, were the working class re-united, Socialism would be obtainable. Unity is to be achieved largely through the instrumentality of an international organisation. The writer, Paul Louis, entirely overlooks the point, which is of the utmost importance, that the working class have never yet been united in any country on a Socialist programme. If they had, the existing divisions could never have arisen.

He makes the serious mistake of supposing that the British Labour Party and the I.L.P. are parties of Marxians. Let us therefore repeat that the Labour Party in this country has never at any time had Socialism as its objective. Its aim has been, and is, some form or other of nationalisation or State capitalism. The Labour Party and the I.L.P. have never even claimed to be Marxian bodies, in which respect they are superficially unlike the Labour Parties in the Continental countries which have made that claim. The difference is, however, one of appearances only. Neither in France nor Germany has the nominal acceptance of Marxian principles meant the application of those principles to policy. The behaviour of the German and French parties in 1914 sufficiently demonstrated that.

When, therefore, Paul Louis writes of “re-uniting” the working class, he is overlooking the fact that the working class have not been won over to Socialism in any country. The majority of them do not want Socialism and do not understand it. That being so, it is mere illusion to imagine that working-class unity on a Socialist basis is attainable at present. A Socialist Party cannot yet be more than a minority party.

Paul Louis is similarly mistaken when he writes of the International having broken down only in 1914.

The International had not been built up on a Socialist basis, as was shown before 1914 by its admission to membership of such parties as the Labour Party, the I.L.P., and the French and German Parties, none of which were based on Socialist principles and policy. The anti-Socialist character of the International was perceived by the Socialist Party of Great Britain long before 1914. We foretold that it would be as useless in war as in peace, and we withdrew long before the outbreak of war proved the correctness of our condemnation.

Paul Louis may say that it is not that kind of unity which his party seeks to reconstitute. But if that is the case, then it is essential that each national party and the International itself should be firmly based upon a clear declaration of essential Socialist principles. The objective of common or social ownership, must be clearly understood (this alone would rule out the parties now in the Labour and Socialist International, all of which are supporters of nationalisation or State capitalism).

There must be no room for policies of minority action and armed revolt.

There must be no collaboration with capitalist parties. (This would rule out not only the Labour Party and the I.L.P., both of which are prepared to co-operate with Liberals and Tories in the administration of capitalism, but would also rule out the Communist Parties, which for years have urged the workers to vote for the Labour Parties.)

There must be no room in a Socialist International for any but Socialist parties. And this being so, there could be no purpose in forming an international organisation except upon a definitely constituted Socialist basis. If the affiliated parties are Socialist parties then they can and will undertake to conform to Socialist principles.

The work of making Socialists has to precede the growth of the separate Socialist parties, and their construction on a sound basis must precede the formation of an effective international.

If Paul Louis envisages the reverse process, he has failed to read aright the lessons of past attempts at building national and international Socialist organisations.

We would welcome some further information on the aims and methods of the French Socialist-Communist Party.

First we would like to know exactly what is its objective. It ought, of course, to be unnecessary to ask such a question of a party which declares its aim to be Socialism and declares its acceptance of Marxian theories. Unfortunately, the Labour Parties in all countries have misused the word Socialism, and applied it to their aim of state capitalism, which leaves intact the division of society into a propertied class and a class of property-less wage-earners.

Secondly, we would like to know exactly where the Socialist-Communist Party stands with regard to the use of the vote. If, as appears to be the case, they regard elections as having chiefly a propaganda value, how do they propose to gain control of the political machinery, without which Socialism cannot be achieved ?

Thirdly, does the Socialist-Communist Party rule out entirely the policy of collaboration with the non-Socialist parties, including the parties in the Labour and Socialist International and the parties in the Third International?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not prepared to join with parties whose aims and methods are contrary to the interests of the working class and a hindrance to the achievement of Socialism. The Labour and Communist Parties are parties to which that condemnation applies. It is our experience that any other policy is fatal for a Socialist organisation.

Edgar Hardcastle

Contemptible Communist Propaganda Methods (1943)

From the May 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not an accident that Communist propaganda methods in Great Britain have for many years fallen to a particularly low level of irresponsibility and dishonesty. They were tainted at their source in the Communist International. Angelica Balabanoff, who after many years in the Italian Labour movement, held influential position in Bolshevik Russia, gives interesting examples of Communist methods even in the early days. She relates, for example, that as early as 1918 Lenin and others were prepared to use any means and instruments to gain whatever object they had immediately in view. On one occasion Radek was busy forming Communist groups out of foreigners then in Russia as prisoners of war, with the object of carrying on propaganda in their own countries on their return. Balabanoff found, however, that these alleged Communists were attracted to join the group by the favour and privilege membership carried with it, and "practicality none of them had any contact with the revolutionary or labour movement in their own countries and knew nothing of Socialist principles" ("My Life as a Rebel," p. 233). Balabanoff (who later broke with the Bolshevists over their use of such methods) says that two of the Italian prisoners "were about to return to Italy with special credentials from Lenin and a large sum of money. I had only to talk with them for a few moments in Italian to understand that they knew nothing of the Italian movement, or even of the elementary terminology of Socialism. I decided to go direct to Lenin with my protest."

When she told Lenin of this and advised him that the Italians were "merely profiteers of the Revolution" and would seriously damage Communism in Italy, Lenin's cynical reply was: "For the destruction of Turati's party, they are quite good enough."

It is but a step from Lenin in 1918 to the Communist Party of Great Britain now. For the achievement of whatever object they have in view at any moment, any men and any methods are deemed good enough. Recently the Daily Worker carried on for weeks on end a campaign of denunciation of a small group called the British National Party. Hardly anyone would have heard of this obscure B.N.P. but for the Daily Worker's campaign for their suppression as being Fascist sympathisers; but as a tactic what could be more useful to the Communists? If only the Communists could persuade the credulous that this B.N.P. is a great and growing menace how easy to recruit members to the Communist Party to fight it! Sc with characteristic irresponsibility the Daily Worker pursued its campaign. But irresponsibility has its pitfalls and sure enough the Daily Worker fell. It announced in its issue of February 25 that the B.N.P. had booked Lysbeth Hall "in the name of the Socialist Party" for an Easter Conference. With what was a thinly disguised incitement to disorder the article opened as follows:—

  A Fascist conference, meeting openly in the heart of London whilst lads give their lives fighting Fascism abroad. That is the prospect if present plant of the British National Party are allowed to be carried into effect (italics ours).

At this point it is important to notice a statement made in the House of Commons on March 18 by Mr. Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary. He said that the B.N.P. "is a small body with only about a hundred members, and in no way merits the importance recently attributed to it" (Manchester Guardian, March 19, 1943).

Yet the Daily Worker, which claims to know all about the B.N.P., not only published details of an imaginary conference being held by the B.N.P. but added the statement that "preparations are being made to accommodate some 500—600 delegates, for whom catering has already been arranged." (Daily Worker, February 25.)

So the 100 members were going to send 500—600 delegates! Perhaps this throws light on how the Communists arrange their own conferences!

As was pointed out in The Socialist Standard for March (back page), the Daily Worker when called to account for the utterly false statement that we had had a hand in arranging the imaginary B.N.P. conference (the only Conference was our own, held in this hall for the third year running) published a brief and inadequate extraction, without apology. They, declined to publish a longer statement sent to them.

Another illustration of Communist malice and irresponsibility is afforded by a letter received by our West Ham Branch from the West Ham Branch of the Communist Party. It arose out of a challenge to debate.

Here is the letter, a. typical piece of Communist scurrility :—

Read the Daily Worker, World News and Views, and
 Labour Monthly.

COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN


West Ham Branch.

115, The Grove,

Stratford, E.15.

February 23, 1943. 

The Communist Party has NO dealings with murderers, liars, renegades, or assassins. 

The S.P.G.B., which associates itself with followers of Trotsky, the friend of Hess, has always followed a policy which would mean disaster for the British working class. They have consistently poured vile slanders on Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, told filthy lies about the Red Army, the Soviet people and its leaders, gloated over the assassination of Kirov and other Soviet leaders, applauded the wrecking activities of Trotskyist saboteurs in the Soviet Union. They have worked to split the British working class, and are in short agents of Fascism in Great Britain. 

The C.P.G.B. refuses with disgust to deal with such renegades. We treat them as vipers, to be destroyed. 

C.P.G.B., West Ham Branch,

J. Barker, Secretary. 

Needless to say, none of the charges in the letter are true or have even a semblance of basis in fact. Doubtless even the West Ham Communists realise this well enough—hence their failure, when challenged, even to attempt to substantiate their letter.

Executive Committee.

This Month's Quotation: Angelica Balabanoff (1939)

The Front Page quote from the August 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

   “I am proud to have lived and worked with artisans of a new social order. Many of them are now dead or defeated—in exile or in their own countries. But a new generation will take their place — to build more wisely and more successfully on the foundations we have laid.”

Angelica Balabanoff

This Month’s Quotation

The passage quoted on the front cover is from "My Life as a Rebel" (page 349). Angelica Balabanoff was associated with Mussolini in his pre-Fascist days, on the journal Avanti. After the Bolshevist seizure of power she was given important posts in Russia but resigned owing to disagreement with the Bolshevist attitude on democracy and other questions. Her whole life has been spent in working-class movements.

Angelica Balabanoff: To Bolshevism and back (2018)

Angelica Balabanoff

From the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

 Anželika Isaakovna Balabanova was born in Černigov, now Černihiv in Ukraine in August, probably around 1868. Her family was wealthy and she had a privileged upbringing. Yet, she soon realised that she did not fit in that type of high-class society and broke with her family, moving to Brussels to attend the Université Nouvelle. There she met leading figures in and around the Second International, such as Élisée Reclus, Émile Vandervelde, and Georgi Plekhanov. 

 In Leipzig, where she moved for a short while, she met Rosa Luxemburg who became her role model for the years to come. Then she moved to Berlin where she attended economics lectures and met various high-level SPD members such as Clara Zetkin and August Bebel. She heard about an Italian professor of philosophy, Antonio Labriola, who was quite well known amongst SPD students; so she decided to move to Rome where she attended Labriola’s lectures and met PSI founders Filippo Turati, Claudio Treves, and Turati’s partner, fellow Jewish Ukrainian, Anna Kuliscioff.

Mussolini

She became a member of the PSI in 1900. The Party asked her to move to Lausanne to educate the Italian immigrants to socialism. Here she met Benito Mussolini. She describes her first encounter with him in her book Traitor: Benito Mussolini and his ‘Conquest' of power. He was destitute. He could not work because he was ‘ill’. ‘I’m good at nothing, not even to earn a piece of bread’, the future Duce told her. He was implicitly asking her help to translate a Kautsky pamphlet from German, in which he was a beginner, to earn some money. Out of pity he was invited here and there to give speeches at socialist conferences for a few francs. As we all know, he turned out to be an effective as well as a bombastic speaker. 

 In Switzerland she also founded Su Compagne (Come on Women Comrades) and she met the Menshevik leaders Martov and Axelrod. She joined in the League of Academic Marxists led by Chicherin, and she met Trotsky in Vienna in 1906. Balabanoff probably met Lenin for the first time in Berne. In 1907, she represented the Russian Academic Students at the 5th Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Party in London. The same year she also participated in her first meeting of the Second International in Stuttgart. Here she mainly contributed as a translator, and met Karl Liebknecht.

 Together with Giacinto Serrati, future leader of the PSI, she helped Mussolini to leave Switzerland and find a good job in Trieste, a job that he was not able to keep for very long. She gave an interesting account of the day when Mussolini was elected as director of the local magazine Lotta di Classe (Class Struggle). The editor wanted to give up this position and offered it to Mussolini who he thought must be a good socialist considering his father’s politics (he had named his son after a Mexican revolutionary), and because he had no work commitments. The start of Mussolini‘s political fortune is often identified with the role he played at the 1912 Party Congress, when he proposed the motion to expel certain high-level reformists from the Party. Balabanoff tends to minimise his role. According to her, he was of course for their expulsion, but he was nominated to propose the motion to expel them only because he was pushed by the comrades of his region and because of the lack of other volunteers. 

 The victory of the intransigents in the leadership of the PSI pushed reformist Claudio Treves to resign from editing the party organ Avanti! Also in this case Mussolini was offered the job because of the lack of others without work and family commitments. When he was offered this post he was hesitant, and accepted only on condition that Balabanoff joined him. Balabanoff gives an account of Mussolini as being prone to corruption. She broke with him before his betrayal, because of his opportunistic and selfish behavior. Some believed that Balabanoff and Mussolini had a romantic relationship. This does not concern us, but what is sure is that Mussolini’s himself at the peak of his power admitted that without Balabanoff’s help he would have remained nobody. 

Zimmerwald

At the outbreak of WWI in July 1914 she was called urgently to Brussels for a special meeting of the International. She proposed mass strikes against the war, while Viktor Adler and Jules Guesde were against the idea; she was backed only by the Labourists Keir Hardie and John Bruce Glasier. In August she met Plekhanov in Geneva who hoped to see the Italian party push for Italy’s intervention on the British-French-Russian side. In Italy, by now on the verge of intervention, it was hard to be a foreigner. When the German SPD member Albert Südekum visited Italy to push the PSI to convince the masses to intervene on the German-Austrian side, she was attacked as pro-German, although she reminded the crowd that she had been expelled by Austria in 1909 and by Germany earlier in 1914.

 Balabanoff moved to Switzerland. In December 1914 she moved to Berne where she was instrumental in organising the conference of anti-war Social Democrats in Zimmerwald which took place in September 1915. She became a member of the executive bureau composed of the Swiss Social Democrat Grimm, the Italian Maximalist Lazzari and Rakovsky as secretary. The Zimmerwald manifesto, drafted by Trotsky, was the result of the clash of the moderates against Lenin’s Left fraction. The topics discussed at Zimmerwald were the peace action by the proletariat, the position with regards to the Second International, and the transformation of the war into a revolutionary civil war. The moderate view prevailed, thus Zimmerwald stood mainly for peace. It did not officially break with the Second International and did not propose to transform the war into a civil war

Bolshevik

Balabanoff lived in Zurich until the outbreak of the Russian revolution in February 1917. As did other revolutionaries, she left Switzerland to reach Russia on a special train, travelling with Martov, Axelrod and Lunacharsky. She became disillusioned with the February revolution and began to lean toward the Bolsheviks. In this period she saw Trotsky very often. She signed a resolution together with Trotsky, Kamenev and Riazanov for an outright boycott of the Russian Provisional Government. 

She travelled to Stockholm to organise the 3rd conference of the Zimmerwald movement, which took place in September 1917. By now the moderate block was poorly represented and Lenin’s left prevailed. After the 1917 October revolution Lenin asked her to stay in Stockholm to propagate from there news about Russia, providing her with plenty of money to do this. On two occasions the Anti-Bolshevik League tried to assassinate her. In the end she tried to return to Moscow in September 1918, because Lenin had been severely injured by Fanny Kaplan’s attempted assassination. But because of the fighting between White and Red armies at the Finnish border she had to go back to Stockholm. She eventually managed to enter Russia in October. She met Lenin who was still recovering in his country house. 

 She was soon on the go again. In Zurich she was accused of carrying 100 million francs to finance the revolution in Italy. She was expelled from Switzerland, while Italy asked for her extradition to put her in jail there. She, together with other Bolsheviks, was transported to Germany where the November 1918 Revolution was taking place. However, with the victory of the SPD, they were sent to Russia. While in Berlin she was the guest of Adolph Joffe, the Bolshevik ambassador in Germany. She met some members of the Independent Social Democratic Party to convince them to follow the Bolsheviks, with no success.

When the new International, the Comintern, was established Lenin nominated Zinoviev as President and Balabanoff as secretary. Lenin needed her for her international networking. But she found herself doing mere administrative work for the Comintern. She was sent to Ukraine as commissioner of foreign affairs, but in 1920 the Bolsheviks had to flee Ukraine and she returned to Moscow. She had quite some friction with Zinoviev who tried to get rid of her in many ways. 

 In June of that year a delegation from the PSI arrived in Moscow led by Serrati, now its leader. The 2nd Congress of the Comintern was taking place at the same time, at which Lenin laid down the conditions for parties to join; for the Italians this would mean expelling open reformists like Turati. Serrati was against this and Balabanoff leant towards his position. When Lenin asked her to write something against Serrati she refused, telling him ‘I agree more with him than with you’.

 Balabanoff reported another episode of Lenin’s despotism, at the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in 1921. Alexandra Kollontai, a People's Commissar, had criticised the Party for allowing very little autonomy to workers’ organisations; this was enough for Lenin to destroy her publicly. At the beginning of 1921 the peasants rose up against requisitions; many were executed. Kronstadt rose up against Bolshevik rule, leading to the bloody suppression of the local Soviet. These were the last straws that made her decide to leave Russia. Yet she needed Lenin’s permit to do so. 

 While Balabanoff was waiting to leave Russia Clara Zetkin arrived there. Zetkin stayed with her. According to Balabanoff’s account Zetkin seemed quite sensitive to and quite liked the Bolsheviks’ adulations. Zetkin tried to convince Balabanoff to remain in Russia. Balabanoff refused to be a translator at the 3rd Congress of the Comintern in June 1921. In December 1921 she was eventually allowed to leave Russia. From this point on she was an open anti-Bolshevik, though she was officially expelled from the RCP only in 1924. 

Anti-Bolshevik

Lenin had asked her not to leave. She responded that she did not agree with the Bolsheviks’ despotic and demagogic methods. Years later when Trotsky was a refugee in Mexico she wrote to express her sympathy and she reminded him that the same methods of denigration used against him had been used by him against others. He answered: let’s not mention the past; those were different times; let’s not ruin our friendship.

 Balabanoff had seen the Bolsheviks from close quarters and was convinced that without Lenin there would have been no Stalin. She explained that Lenin’s regime and the apparatus he had created allowed creatures like Stalin to develop, with no inhibitions, no brakes; in fact, the climate created by the regime fertilised this and encouraged the immoral tendency of the future dictator.

 After leaving Russia, she stayed in Sweden and then she moved to Austria where Social Democrats like Otto Bauer were in power. Here she wrote for Arbeiter-Zeitung. In 1927 she moved to Paris, called there by the PSI in exile. She moved there, against her inclination, because the PSI lacked an old guard, Serrati having passed to the Communists shortly before his death; Lazzari had also died. At the Congress in January 1928 she was elected secretary of the Party and editor of Avanti! The party also decided to enter an anti-fascist coalition. She was against the United Front because of her anti-bolshevism and did not want to work with reformists or communists. Later, Trotsky wanted her to join his 4th International but she was not interested. 

 In November 1935 she obtained a visa to move to the US, where she got close to the rightwing Social Democrat, Gaetano Salvemini. In 1938 her autobiography My Life as a Rebel was published. In 1941 the Maximalist faction of the PSI ceased to exist and with it the legendary Avanti!

 In 1947 she returned to Italy. Balabanoff was used by Saragat to promote his Workers' Socialist Party of Italy (PSLI), a reformist party which was claiming at that time to continue the legacy of Turati’s 1892 PSI. She was in it because of her anti-bolshevism, but also because she believed that the PSLI was ideologically closer to the Italian reformists of the early 1900s. In 1955 she was invited to the Congress of the ‘Socialist International’ in Vienna where she was acclaimed as a living legend. She spent most of 1957 in Austria and Switzerland. She got close to Golda Meir and was pro-Israel. Finally, in 1960 she settled permanently in Rome. She died on 25 November 1965.

 Balabanoff was the archetype of the revolutionary maximalist Social Democrat. Her Marxism was rather idealistic and lived as a faith. She saw herself as a missionary. Her mission was to convert workers to Marxism. With this in mind, one can understand why she took to heart Mussolini’s case, helping this idle anarcho-syndicalist to become a respected socialist, how she gave in to Lenin’s Bolshevism to pursue the maximal revolutionary goal, and how, at the same time, she defended the integrity of the Second International by means of Zimmerwald. Later in life, she stood for early 20th century Marxist reformism. 

Balabanoff had the merit of exposing from first-hand experience Mussolini (Traitor), and above all Lenin and Bolshevism (Impressions of Lenin) in a period when it was not popular or even allowed. These two works are worth reading and why she is worth remembering.

Cesco