Editorial: The Bankruptcy of “Communist” Theory. (1924)

Editorial from the December 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power there was some excuse for the misconceptions of the significance and causes of that event, which were prevalent here in working-class circles. Reliable information on Russian affairs had been lacking throughout the war years, and to those who were not familiar through historical study with the slow growth of social forces, no rumoured happening behind the wall of censorship was too fantastic to be believed. Those people outside Russia who erred in crediting the Bolsheviks with achievements which were hardly dreamed of by Lenin and other responsible Communists, were quite unable to examine critically the proposals which were put out by the Third International for the conduct of the workers’ struggle elsewhere. They erred again and more seriously in assuming that methods which may have been useful and probably inevitable in Czarist Russia could be applied here where almost every condition is different. Underlying Communist doctrines lay the assumption that constitutional action is futile for the Socialist’s main aim, that the democratic idea is a myth and a danger, and that capitalism can be overthrown not by the deliberate act of an organised working class, but only by a minority, the Communist Party. To the superficial observer the condition of Europe at the end of the war and at the beginning of the peace made these assumptions less absurd than they appear now. There were sections of the ruling class which had lost their grip on the situation in face of a war which they began and could not control, and in face of peace problems which threatened to be insoluble and fatal. The moment passed and even during capitalism’s difficulty, the workers, in spite of equally superficial views to the contrary, were never less ready to act as a class against their exploiters. All that can be said for the Communists is that many of them did believe their desperate creed. They were prepared to pit their puny strength against the might of the capitalist state, to have their own and other people’s heads broken in trying conclusions with the armed forces, to go to jail for defiance of capitalist laws and in general to face the consequences of their own foolhardy actions. Not so our present-day Communists. The violent doctrines of 1920 will no longer stir even the most emotional and youthful would-be rebel. They are too obviously impracticable to stand the test of discussion in the light of the present situation. But while they dare not go on preaching civil war they are not prepared to admit their error. Instead, they now ask us to believe that they are the innocent victims of wicked misrepresentation, and that they never believed these doctrines at all. Accordingly we give below a selection from the host of declarations they now want be forgotten, prefaced by their recent repudiation of their original policies.

  “The Communist Party has repeatedly pointed out that unless it is able to win over to its standard a decisive majority of the working class it cannot realise the social transformation. The Communist Party believes that without the activity of a majority of the workers both in the struggle to set up a real Workers’ Government, and in the subsequent Socialist reconstruction, emancipation is impossible.” (Editor, Workers’ Weekly, November 7th, 1924.)

Lenin writing on Bourgeois Parliamentarism versus Proletarian Revolution (Workers’ Dreadnought, August 28th, 1920) used the following words :—

  “The accusations of siding with the Bourgeoisie can indeed be levelled at all … who, while proclaiming adhesion to the dictatorship of the proletariat in words, in deeds propagate the belief in the necessity of gaining under the capitalist régime the formal consent of the majority of the population (that is a majority of the votes in a bourgeois parliament) before political power can be transferred to the proletariat . . . Let the revolutionary proletariat first overthrow the bourgeoisie, throw off the yoke of capitalism . . . and then it will be in a position to gain the support of the non-proletarian working masses.”

Lenin here uses “proletarian” to mean only the class-conscious minority, not the whole of the working class, as is shown by his following remark that “economically and politically it (the proletariat) represents the true interest of the vast majority of the workers.”

Eden and Cedar Paul, two members of the C.P.G.B., in their pamphlet “Communism” (Labour Publishing Co., 1920, p 12), wrote— “the Bolsheviks believed in the concentration of revolutionary energy in the hands of a comparatively small group prepared to seize power and declare the dictarorship of the proletariat. . . The dictatorship will not be exercised here, any more than it has been exercised in Russia, by the masses. It will be exercised by an oligarchy by a revolutionary élite.”

Lenin, speaking at a Peasants’ Congress (“Ten Days that Shook the World,” p. 303), is reported by John Reed as saying : “If Socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least 500 years.”

Karl Radek (“The Development of Socialism from Science to Practice”) describes “the notion that the proletariat should undertake no revolution until it is satisfied it has the majority of the people at its back,” as “nonsense.”

Bela Kun (“Liberator,” March, 1920), declared in an interview that “only a small part of the Hungarian workers were Bolshevik . . . But the most effective means of revolutionising the masses is revolution.”

Clara Zetkin, speaking for the Third Interrnational at the Berlin meeting of the three Internationals in April, 1922, declared that “The new political organism cannot at first be broad-based upon the people’s will . . . The revolutionary élite wrests the powers of the State from the grip of the capitalist class, and establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (Official Report, p. 15, Labour Publishing Co. Ltd)

The Thesis of the Third International on “Parliamentarism, etc.,” adopted at the Moscow Congress, 1920 (C.P.G.B., p. 4), “repudiates the possibility of winning over parliament.” “The Statutes and Conditions of Affiliation” (C.P.G.B., page 4) declares that “the aim of the Communist International is to organise an armed struggle for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie …”

The “Workers’ Republic” (Communist Party of Ireland, April 7th, 1923) states that “the advanced workers, organised in a Communist Party . . . will put the capitalist class out of existence by handing back to the workers that which has been filched from them.”

So much for the Communists’ repudiation of minority action and the armed revolt against the capitalist class. They have changed their watchwords because the old ones were growing ever more unpopular and absurd, but they have failed to see where they have drifted.

In 1920 they were sharply differentiated from other so-called working class parties, but this distinguishing feature removed, they fall back where they truly belong, into the ranks of the reformists. With their long and continually changing list of “Immediate demands,” ranging from capitalist measures like nationalisation to the dissolution of the British Empire, both of them a recognised part of the stock-in-trade of the Labour quack in the ‘eighties, they will have difficulty in showing any reason for their separation from the I.L.P. and the Labour Party. They have demonstrated that Communist theory is barren of hope for the working class.

Where Russia Stands. (1921)

From the July 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2

On the question of whether a Socialist Revolution is possible without, as a prerequisite, a majority of the population understanding Socialism, and being in favour of it, we have contradictory views expressed by the Bolsheviks. We will quote some opposite statement as examples of their confusion.

Lenin states on one occasion :

  The first problem of any rising political party consists in convincing the majority of the population that its program and politics are correct. … The second problem of our party was the conquest of political power and the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters. (The Soviets at Work, p. 10.)

He puts this point of view even more strongly in "Left Wing Communism", as witness the following:

  Without an alteration in the views of the majority of the working class, revolution is impossible . . .  It follows that for the revolution it is essential first that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the conscious, thinking, politically active workers) should fully understand the necessity for a revolution, and be ready to sacrifice their lives for it. (Page 65.)

If the above quotations have any meaning at all they surely signify that, before the workers can conquer political power, there must be a majority understanding Socialism and in favour of it. In other words, there must be a majority of class conscious workers.

Were we of a guileless and trusting disposition we would accept the above evidence that Lenin was against minority action—Blanquism. But alas! we are critical, and so we find that Lenin in other writings took up exactly the opposite point of view.

Under the heading “Elections to the Constituent Assembly” the following appeared in the Workers’ Dreadnought, 21.8.20:

  This is a process which the representatives of the Second International have never been able to understand, namely that the proletariat can be victorious without conquering a majority of the population. To limit or condition this victory to the acquisition of a majority of votes at an electoral contest under bourgeois domination is evidence of chronic intellectual indolence, or else, quite simply, of a device to deceive the workers. In order to bring the majority over to its side, the proletariat must first overthrow the bourgeoisie and take possession of the power of government, and then, after having destroyed the old state apparatus, introduce the Soviet system, whereby the domination and authority of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois democrats over the non-proletarian labouring masses is at once nullified. It must finally complete the destruction of the influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois democrats over the majority of the non-proletarian labouring masses by satisfying their economic needs in a revolutionary manner, at the expense of the exploiters.

Lenin, in the above quotation, states in effect that first of all a minority of the workers must conquer political power and then induce the majority of the workers to come over to their side. In the previous extract, however, he states that first of all we must have a majority in favour of Socialism and then conquer political power. He tries to have both ways, and is on this account self convicted of being wrong in one attitude or the other.

On this particular point it was left to a gasbag to put the finishing touch to the absurdity. In The Development of Socialism from Science to Practice Karl Radek stated :

  The notion that the proletariat should undertake no revolution until it is satisfied that it has the majority of the people at its back is nonsense, for in no capitalist State would the democracy be left free to convince itself that it had the majority of the people at its back. Young working men and working women, exploited as they are to the uttermost by the capitalist, are nowhere to be found in the enjoyment of their full (political) rights. Were they possessed of them the bourgeoisie would straightway send Parliament to the devil rather than allow the workers to carry into effect the will of the majority of the people. (Page 20. Socialist Labour Press.)

The latter part of this passage shows that Radek, at any rate, is opposed (or should be if he is logical) to parliamentary action, as, on the surface, it does not appear to be much use accompanying parliament to the devil! Of course Radek gives no evidence for his statement—but that would be too much to expect from one who contends that Socialism has left the domain of Science and entered that of Practice.

The Bolsheviks, as a matter of fact, had a majority in favour of the “Peace, Bread, and Land” part of their programme, but by no means a majority of CLASS-CONSCIOUS workers — hence the compromises and concessions to mass ignorance and their attempts to justify compromising policy. This also explains the contradictory statements they were driven to make on various occasions. For instance, we have Lenin saying—

  What can be achieved at once by a revolutionary act has been achieved at once ; for instance, between the 26th October, 1917 and the 8th November, 1917 all private land ownership was abolished. (The Workers’ Dreadnought, 3.7.20.)

If all private land ownership has been abolished then we, who are thousands of miles away, would only be logical if we assumed, on the strength of Lenin’s statement, that there was no longer any private ownership of land in Russia. What are we to think, then, when we read the following, under the heading “A Rough Draft of the Thesis on the Agrarian Question—For the Second Congress of the Communist International” ?—

  However, the direct problem of the victorious proletariat should not be the expropriation of the rich peasantry, for the necessary material, especially technical necessaries needed for the socialisation of such farms, fail. Besides that, the social conditions do not allow for this. In exceptional cases, allotments are confiscated which are let out on hire or which are necessary for the petty-peasant population round about these parts. Part of the agricultural machines, which belonged to the rich peasantry, should be lent to these peasants gratis, and so on. According to the general rule—the proletarian State power—the rich peasants should be assured of their land, which should be confiscated only in case of rebellion against the existing labour power. . . Concerning the question of how the land, confiscated from the rich landowners, is worked, in Russia, which is economically backward, this land was divided amongst the peasantry ; only in exclusive cases the so-called Soviet farms were organised.

From the above it will be seen that private property in land has only been abolished on paper. Practically private property still persists. In actual fact, so far as land is concerned, Russia has retreated a step from social production, as land is parcelled out in smaller lots than formerly, the result being a more primitive form of production.

The Bolshevik programme of compromising (“revolutionary compromises”) is not merely put forward as being action necessary in Russia, on account of its backwardness, but is laid down as an axiom to be followed out by Socialists in all countries. This is where we come right up against Lenin and the Bolsheviks in general. Here is Lenin’s advice to class-conscious British workers (Left Wing Communism, published by the Communist Party of Great Britain):

  . . . since the workers in Britain still support the British  Scheidemanns and Kerenskys ; since they have not yet experienced a government composed of such men . . it follows without any doubt that the British Communists must participate in Parliament. They must from within Parliament help the workers to see in practice the results of the Henderson Government; they must help the Hendersons and Snowdens to vanquish Lloyd George and Churchill united (p. 65).
  The Communist Party must offer to the Hendersons and the Snowdens a compromise, an electoral understanding:—”Let us go together against the union of Lloyd George and Churchill; let us divide seats in Parliament according to the number of votes cast by the workers for the Labour Party or the Communists (not in the elections but by a special poll), we to retain the fullest freedom of agitation, propaganda, and political activity (p. 66).

Let us submit the above excerpts to a close examination.

In the first paragraph Lenin states that the majority of the workers “still support the British  Scheidemanns and Kerenskys.” In his succeeding remarks he makes it clear that he designates by this phrase the Henderson and Snowden group. A superficial examination of the situation here would show that the above statement is very wide of the mark, yet Lenin’s advice is based on such imaginary material. The result of the last General Election, and also of the more recent Bye-elections, clearly demonstrates that the workers in this country overwhelmingly support the avowed capitalist candidates against the alleged Labour candidates. The fact is that recently the. Labour vote has relatively shrunk against the vote cast for Independent Liberals, Coalition Liberals, Tories, and Coalition Tories—none of whom come within the scope of Lenin’s phrase “British Scheidemanns and Kerenskys.” As a matter of fact Lenin slaughters himself in the same paragraph when he recommends us to help the Snowden group to beat Lloyd George & Co. If the majority of the workers support the Henderson and Snowden groups, then the latter should be the majority in Parliament and should want no help to overthrow Lloyd George and take over the governing power. If they do not desire to take over the governing power our help would be wasted. And finally, by the time we would be strong enough to force them to take over power we should be strong enough to take over power ourselves. However, Lenin is badly informed as to the position. The Labour group is in the minority though they support the Lloyd George Government.

The naiveté of the suggestion that the Communists should offer “to the Hendersons and Snowdens a compromise, an electoral understanding,” but “we to retain the fullest freedom of agitation, propaganda, and political activity” is too good to pass over. To imagine that the wily Labour leaders are so simple as to walk blindly into the net spread with so much ostentation and “hot-air” needs a child-like, trusting, and simple conception of things such as we cannot lay claim to. This point of view is urged on the ground that the change in view of the workers can “be brought about by the political experience of the masses only.” On the same line of argument are we then to support every new party that arises so that the workers shall learn the rottenness of such parties by experiencing their shortcomings as governing parties ? Why not give Bottomley’s Business Government a chance to shine ? No wonder Lenin thought it would take five hundred years to establish Socialism !

Gilmac.

To be Continued.

The Super-Opportunists: A Criticism of Bolshevist Policy (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Fatuous Policy
The Bolshevik leaders are opportunists. They start out with a definite programme and policy but change it completely when they find the world’s workers do not support them. Lenin, Trotsky, Radek, and the other officials denounced Kautsky, Henderson, Longuet, and others for their reformist policy, but we now have Lenin and Zinoviev advising the Socialist workers of England to take parliamentary action and join the Labour Party.

The report of the Executive of the Communist Party of Russia to the 1920 congress of the Third International lays down the position that we should get inside the Parliamentary Labour parties. This advice is anti-Socialist, as anybody with a knowledge of the history and composition of the Labour parties know.

The Bolshevik leaders told us that the workers of the world were ripe for revolution and their support of Bolshevism was expected and depended upon. Now that it is plain that workers do not understand socialism and fight for it, Lenin is pandering to the ignorance of the world’s workers. In defence he says that by supporting the pro-capitalist Labour Party and helping to establish a Labour Party government, the workers will learn the uselessness of the Labour parties.

The Logical Conclusion
If that policy is to be adopted, then it is necessary for the workers to follow every false road, to support every reactionary measure, and to join every movement and learn from their mistakes—in other words, exhaust every possible evil before they try the right road. If this policy is right why did not Lenin support Kerensky’s policy of capitalism for Russia and let the workers painfully learn its uselessness? Such nonsense as supporting parties and Governments to gain power to learn their misdeeds is not the road to Socialism, it is the path to apathy and despair, and lengthens capitalism’s life.

The Coat Turned
After spending much ink and eloquence in denouncing parliamentary action Lenin tells us in his interview in the Manchester Guardian that it is necessary in modern capitalist countries.

In his telegram to the British Socialist Party Lenin calls upon them to support parliamentary action by means of a Labour party. After all the attempts of Lenin to show that Marx and Engels believed in smashing the State power, Trotsky tells us in A Paradise for the Workers that we have to get control of the State power and use it instead of abolishing it. Radek, in his Communism—From Science to Action, denounced parliamentary action and majority rule, but in a recent letter to a German Communist he completely changes round and advises parliamentary action.

The Opportunist Weathercocks
Lenin, in his letter to the German party, supports Parliamentary Action and the winning of the masses in defiance of all his previous advice and previous praise of the Spartacan minority action. The Amsterdam Bureau of the Third International was abolished because it told the English Socialists not to engage in Parliamentary Action or to support the Labour Party. All this demonstrates the absence of any principle and simply to veer with the changing winds.

We have been denounced for our attitude of insisting upon the need of Socialists making a revolutionary use of parliaments. Our position, however, was based upon Socialist principles and a recognition of the facts of history, not a desire to pander to popular prejudices such as support of a dangerous and fraudulent Labour party.

We have opposed Kautsky’s reformism and opportunism because it is not Socialism and is against the principle of the Class Struggle. We are equally opposed to dangerous teachings if they come from Lenin, Radek, or any other man who sets himself up as a teacher of socialism. Our position is that taken up by Marx and Engels and made plain by them in their writings. Engels says in his last (1890) preface to the Communist Manifesto that we must gain the minds of the masses. Bolshevism, however, has depended for its triumph upon the minority, who ignored the majority of workers. So true is this that Radek in his pamphlet ridicules anything else in minority action for Socialism.

Bertrand Russell, who accompanied the Labour delegation to Russia in June, records his interview with Lenin in the Nation (July 10th and 17th), and Lenin there admits the opposition of the peasantry. Lenin in reply to Kautsky (The Dictatorship and the Betrayer Kautsky) does not attempt to deny Kautsky’s charge that the Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary delegates to the Soviets were suppressed in order to maintain Bolshevik majorities. Russell states the Soviets are moribund and that any other delegates than Bolshevik ones are denied railway passes and so cannot attend the Soviet meetings. He also says that the All Russian Soviet meets seldom, that the recall is exercised for minor offences, such as drunkenness, and that the delegates continually ignore their constituents. We do not accept Russell as an authority, but much of his report agrees with Bolshevik writings.

We have always contended that the Bolsheviks could only maintain power by resorting to capitalist devices. History has shown us to be correct. The January 1920 Congress of the Executive Communists in Russia abolished the power of workers control in factories and installed officials instructed by Moscow and given controlling influence. Their resolutions printed in most of the Labour papers and the Manchester Guardian here show how economic backwardness has produced industrial conscription with heavy penalties for unpunctuality, etc. The abolition of democracy in the army was decreed long ago, but now that the army is being converted into a labour army it means rule from the top with an iron hand.

Russia has agreed to repay foreign property-owners their losses and allied Governments their “debts.” This means continued exploitation of Russian workers to pay foreign exploiters.

With all the enthusiasm of the Communists they find themselves faced with the actual conditions in Russia and the ignorance of the greater part of its population.

There is no easier road to Socialism than the education of the workers in Socialism and their organisation to establish it by democratic methods. Russia has to learn that.

Adolph Kohn

Unarmed and Unforgiven (2017)

Book Review from the October 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Prophets Unarmed: Chinese Trotskyists in Revolution, War, Jail and the Return from Limbo'. Edited by Gregor Benton (Haymarket $55)

A 1,200-page volume on a political movement that existed for just twenty-five years and had at most a few thousand supporters (and generally far fewer than that), this is an exhaustive study of Trotskyism in China, from 1927 to 1952. It is based primarily on memoirs written years after the events or interviews with elderly former participants, as there are very few original documents surviving.

In the 1920s, many young Chinese left-wingers spent time in Moscow, being indoctrinated and learning how to organise political activity. Some of them came under ‘Left Opposition’ influences, especially from Karl Radek, who was one of their teachers. Many of those who sympathised with Trotsky, or were thought to do so, were sent back to China, where they tried to build some kind of movement in opposition to the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party (CCP). Later, Trotsky-supporters were kept in Moscow, where they could be more easily controlled.

The best-known of Chinese Trotskyists is Chen Duxiu, one of the founders of the CCP and its first leader. He was held by Stalinists to be responsible for the failure of the Chinese ‘Revolution’ in 1927, when Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Guomindang violently clamped down on the CCP and its supporters (though he and others were basically just following the Comintern’s line). He was expelled from the CCP in 1929, and died in 1942.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Trotskyists in China were brutally suppressed by, at various times, the CCP, the Guomindang and the Japanese occupiers: imprisoned, tortured, executed. Many CCP members regarded them as Japanese spies. After the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, there was a civil war between the CCP and the Guomindang, during which the Trotskyists were too weak to be anything other than bystanders. In 1948–9 there were two Trotskyist organisations, with just a couple of hundred members in total. A number left the country when the CCP took power in 1949; those who stayed behind were for the most part not politically active.

In December 1952 the remaining Trotskyists in China were arrested and imprisoned, apparently in order to gain more support for the Mao regime from the USSR. These arrests were not publicised or made part of a wider political campaign. Some prisoners were not released until 1979, and they have never been formally ‘rehabilitated’, even posthumously. Opposition to Trotskyism remains part of the CCP’s political line, perhaps because, Benton suggests, such opposition ‘is a badge of commitment to political monolithism.’

There are some references to disputes among Trotskyists as to whether post-1949 China was state capitalist or bureaucratic-collectivist, but unfortunately there are no details of what these disagreements involved. Presumably this is because, as the editor states, ‘the focus of the volume is on Chinese Trotskyism as an active political force rather than as detached commentary.’ But it would have been good to see more on these theoretical issues, rather than so much on long-forgotten doctrinal disputes and splits.

If you are interested in the topic but cannot face a book of this length, reading the editor’s forty-page introduction would probably suffice.   

Paul Bennett