Lenin and Bukharin on imperialism

It is almost one hundred years since the publication of V. I. Lenins Imperialism: The
Highest Stage of Capitalism and Nikolai Bukharins Imperialism and World
Economy,2 written in the midst of the carnage of World War I. Imperialism was
written in the first half of 1916 and published in mid-1917; Imperialism and World
Economy was not published until several months later, but it was substantially written
in 1915 and very likely influenced Lenins own thinking, since he read the book in
manuscript and wrote an introduction for it in December 1915 supporting its main
analysis. Both books, and especially Lenins, have had a major influence on the
revolutionary left. A century after their first appearance, it is worth evaluating their
legacy.
Both Lenin and Bukharin were leading figures in the militant Bolshevik wing of the
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. The Bolsheviks were one of a very small
number of socialist groups in Europe to denounce the war as an imperialist conflict
and to refuse to support their own government. On one side of the war were Britain,
France, and Russia, on the other Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Turkish Ottoman
Empire. In the decade leading up to the war, the Second International (an association
of the worlds leading socialist parties), had passed numerous resolutions pledging to
oppose war between the big powers if and when it broke out. But when war was
finally declared in August 1914, socialists in the German parliament overwhelmingly
voted for war credits, arguing that they had to defend civilization against the
despotism of the Russian tsar. French socialists responded by saying they had to
defend revolutionary France against Prussian militarism. The British Labour Party
supported Britains entry into the war, and so on down the line. Lenin was so
surprised by this betrayal, particularly of the German Social Democratic Party, that he
initially refused to believe that it was true. His comrade Gregory Zinoviev recounted
his reaction a few years later:
When the war broke out we were living in a god-forsaken little mountain village in
Galicia. I remember having had a bet with him. I said You will see, the German
Social Democrats will not dare vote against the war, but will abstain in the vote on the
war credits. Comrade Lenin replied: No, they are not such scoundrels as all that.
They will not, of course, fight the war, but they will, to ease their conscience, vote
against the credits lest the working class rise up against them. In this case Lenin was
wrong, and so was I. Neither of us had taken the full measure of the flunkeyism of the
social patriots. The European Social Democrats proved complete bankrupts. They all
voted for the war credits. When the first number of the Vrwarts, the organ of the
German Social Democrats, arrived with the news that they had voted the war credits,
Lenin at first refused to believe. It cannot be, he said, it must be a forged number.
Those scoundrels, the German bourgeoisie, have specially published such a number of
the Vrwarts in order to compel us also to go against the International. Alas, it was
not so. It turned out that the social patriots really had voted the war credits. When
Lenin saw it, his first word was: The Second International is dead.3

Both works by Lenin and Bukharin attempted to explain how the war was rooted in
profound economic changes, but they were also intervening in the sharp political
debate that had torn apart the international socialist movement when the war began.
Both of them argued that the war was an imperialist conflict in which all sides were
trying to grab more territory and extend their power and influence, or at the very least
hang on to territories to which they had no right in the first place. People who called
themselves socialists but who nevertheless found excuses to support their own
governments had betrayed the working class and the socialist movement. Those who
privately opposed the war but refused to make their opposition public were just as
bad. Lenin himself advocated the sharpest opposition to the war, arguing that
socialists should not just refuse to support their own ruling classes, but should openly
call for their defeat.
Similarly, Lenin supported the right of oppressed nations to self-determination.
National independence could not bring about genuine liberation without the abolition
of class divisions and the overthrow of capitalism, but the fight for independence
would weaken imperialism, and support for that fight by workers in the oppressing
nation would cut against national chauvinism and make possible the emergence of a
genuinely internationalist socialist movement.4
Lenins main goal in Imperialism was to show how the colonial expansion of the
major world powers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centurieswhich led to
interimperial rivalry and eventually warwas rooted in profound changes in the
nature of capitalism during the same period. That is why he called imperialism at the
beginning of the twentieth century a stage of capitalism. Lenins claim has confused
some of his readers, so it is worth pointing out that he was not saying that there was
no imperialism before the late nineteenth century. Rather, he was pointing out that the
nature of imperialism had changed.
Colonial policy and imperialism existed before the latest stage of capitalism, and even
before capitalism. Rome, founded on slavery, pursued a colonial policy and practiced
imperialism. But general arguments about imperialism, which ignore, or put into the
background the fundamental difference of social-economic systems, inevitably
degenerate into absolutely empty banalities, or into grandiloquent comparisons like
Greater Rome and Greater Britain. Even the capitalist colonial policy of capitalism
in its previous stages is essentially different from the colonial policy of finance
capital. (Ch. VI)
Another source of confusion has been the description of imperialism as the highest
stage of capitalism. Countless commentators have attributed to Lenin the idea that
early twentieth century capitalism was the final form that capitalism would take, and
no further development was possible. But Lenin says no such thing. In fact a more
accurate translation of his title is Imperialism: The Latest Stage of Capitalism, and the
text itself repeatedly speaks of the latest stage of capitalism, 5 not its final stage. The
title was probably a deliberate echo of an important book by the Austrian Marxist
Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital, the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development,
which was an important influence on Lenins views.6
What Lenin was attempting to explain was the extremely virulent form of imperialism
that began to emerge in the late nineteenth century, resulting in the scramble for

Africa from the 1880s, and the increasing tensions between the major powers. In
calling it a stage of capitalism, Lenin was saying that the new imperialism could not
be satisfactorily explained in ideological or political terms, and that it was
fundamentally an economic phenomenon.
According to Lenin, an adequate definition of modern imperialism needs to embrace
five essential features (Ch. VII):
1. The concentration of production and capital developed to such a high stage
that it created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
2. The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the
basis of this finance capital, of a financial oligarchy.
3. The export of capital, which has become extremely important, as distinguished
from the export of commodities.
4. The formation of international capitalist monopolies which share the world
among themselves.
5. The territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist
powers is completed.
Lenins list has to be examined critically because, in retrospect, some of the features
he listed are more fundamental than others. For example, the integration of industrial
and banking capital was certainly an important aspect of German capitalism in the
early twentieth century, but far less developed in countries such as Britain. Nor had all
the major capitalist powers become net exporters of capitalmore investment was
still flowing into the United States and Japan when Lenin was writing, for example,
than was going out.7 Nevertheless, Lenin was correct to point out the importance of
the banking industry and the financial sector, which has continued to grow in
influence over the past century. And he makes clear that the most important feature of
imperialism is the first one that he listed. If it were necessary to give the briefest
possible definition of imperialism, he wrote, we should have to say that imperialism
is the monopoly stage of capitalism. So Lenins underlying argument was that the
rivalries and wars between capitalist powers were inherent in one of capitalisms basic
features: the tendency, analyzed by Marx, for capital to become more centralized and
concentratedlarger and larger units of production controlled, because of mergers
and acquisitions, by fewer and fewer capitalists. 8 By the end of the nineteenth century
this process was already well underway, allowing dominant capitalist firms to acquire
monopoly or near monopoly status in particular sectors of their national economies.
Lenin described his pamphlet as a popular outline, and it is really a sketch rather
than a finished theoretical study. Bukharin attempted to explain the underlying
dynamic of imperialism more systematically. In Imperialism and World Economy,
Bukharin analyzes imperialism as the result of two contradictory tendencies in
modern capitalism. The first is the concentration and centralization of capital
discussed by Lenin. As this process develops, however, the state comes to play an
increasingly active role in managing the economy, and Bukharin argued that there is a
tendency for capital and the state to become more and more closely integrated. The
end point of this process is for state and capital to merge together and form what he
called state capitalist trusts (Ch. X).

Second, as the first process unfolds, there is a simultaneous tendency for production,
trade, and investment to break out of national boundaries and to become organized on
a global scale. As a consequence of this second process, according to Bukharin, there
is a tendency for economic competition between capitals to take on the form of
geopolitical competitionin other words, for economic competition to be expressed
in terms of political and military rivalries between states for territory, influence, and
power. This is the basis of modern imperialism.
Bukharin summarizes his view as follows:
There is here a growing discord between the basis of social economy which has
become world-wide and the peculiar class structure of society, a structure where the
ruling class (the bourgeoisie) itself is split into national groups with contradictory
economic interests, groups which, being opposed to the world proletariat, are
competing among themselves for the division of the surplus value created on a world
scale. Production is of a social nature; international division of labor turns the private
national economies into parts of a gigantic all-embracing labor process, which
extends over almost the whole of humanity. Acquisition, however, assumes the
character of national (state) acquisition where the beneficiaries are huge state
companies of the bourgeoisie of finance capital. The development of productive
forces moves within the narrow limits of state boundaries while it has already
outgrown those limits. Under such conditions there inevitably arises a conflict, which,
given the existence of capitalism, is settled through extending the state frontiers in
bloody struggles, a settlement which holds the prospect of new and more grandiose
conflicts. (Ch. VIII)
Bukharin sometimes described the tendency towards the creation of state-capitalist
trusts as more complete than it really was, and he wrongly believed that such trusts
would only be affected by outside crises, ignoring the internal contradictions that
continued to exist in all capitalist economies. On this score, Bukharin needs to be
modified by Lenin, who noted: The monopoly created in certain branches of
industry increases and intensifies the anarchy inherent in capitalist production as a
whole. (Ch. I) Later Lenin writes: At the same time the monopolies, which have
grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter but exist above it and
alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute antagonisms, frictions
and conflicts. (Ch. VII)
There is one other important element in this theory. Capitalism tends to create a single
world economy, but development does not take place uniformly either within
individual states or in the system as a whole. Instead, it is characterizedin Trotskys
famous phraseby combined and uneven development. Economic, military, and
political power tends to be concentrated in a handful of states, which therefore
dominate the rest of the world. But, as Lenin noted, Finance capital and the trusts do
not diminish but increase the differences in the rate of growth of the various parts of
the world economy. (Ch. VII) In certain circumstances it is possible for relatively
backward states to develop rapidly by importing advanced technologies and to catch
up with, or even overtake, their rivals.
This is crucial, because it shows that the division of power between the advanced
states and the rest of the world isnt static. Even if stability in international relations

were established for a period of time, it would eventually be undermined as the result
of economic changes. So, for instance, the attempt at the end of World War I to
prevent the outbreak of further wars by creating the League of Nations was a
complete failure.
The main target of many of Lenins and Bukharins arguments was Karl Kautsky, for
many years the leading theoretician of the German SPD. At the start of the war,
Kautsky privately advocated abstaining on the war credits vote in the German
Reichstag, but refused to publicly criticize the SPDs vote for the war and argued that
democratic Germany was fighting a defensive war against autocratic Tsarist Russia.
Almost a year into the war, when Germanys expansionist aims became undeniable,
Kautsky did finally publicly oppose it, but he maintained that the war was not rooted
in capitalism and that from the point of view of the capitalist system, war had become
irrational precisely because the world economy was becoming integrated on an
international level. As a consequence, Kautsky argued, the result of the World War
between the great imperialist powers may be a federation of the strongest, who
renounce their arms race.9 Kautsky called this anticipated phase of capitalist
development ultra-imperialism, and he saw the formation of the League of Nations
at the end of the war as part of the shift to ultra-imperialism and a more peaceful
world order.
But of course the League of Nationswhich Lenin described as an alliance of
robbers, each trying to snatch something from the others 10was never able to paper
over the sharp differences between the major imperialist powers, and within a
generation the world was engulfed in an even more barbaric war. Kautskys vision of
a relatively peaceful capitalism was revealed as an illusion. By contrast, Lenin and
Bukharins theory seems to do a remarkably good job of explaining the development
of capitalism in the first half of the twentieth century, and why the major capitalist
powers plunged the globe into two catastrophic and barbaric world wars.
Imperialism
since
Lenin
and
Bukharin
But does Lenin and Bukharins approach help us to understand the modern world?
After World War II, the structure of global politics changed dramatically. Before the
war, the world was economically and politically multipolar. After the war it remained
economically multipolar but became politically bipolar, with the formation of two
rival global military alliances, one dominated by the United States, the other by the
Soviet Union. While nominally socialist, the USSR was by this time ruled by a
bureaucratic elite that exploited the majority of the population in order to compete
with the West for power and influence. The stage was set for the Cold War. At the end
of World War II, the Soviet Union took over most of Eastern Europe (initially with the
agreement of their wartime Western allies) and installed regimes modeled on its own,
with one-party states that controlled in each case most of the economy. While state
and capital never fully merged in most of the capitalist world, they did so in the
Soviet bloc for several decades.11
It would be hard to deny that this was a period of intense interimperialist rivalry. Wars
continued on the periphery resulting in millions of deaths, and the two superpowers
engaged in a massive arms race, but there was no war between the USA and the
USSR, although they came extremely close at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in
1962 and on several other occasions.12 But with the Eastern European revolutions of

1989 and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union itself, the structure of the
global system changed again.
The end of the Cold War took place at the same time as the decisive US victory in the
1991 Gulf War against Iraq, and was supposed to usher in a new world order of
international stability, in which military conflict would decline, and we would all
receive the benefits of a massive peace dividend. But despite a mood of
triumphalism among US imperial strategists and propagandists in the early 1990s, the
peace dividend never materialized because the US ruling class found itself almost
immediately faced with new challenges.
For the United States, one positive consequence of the Cold War was that it gave
Washington political dominance over the major capitalist countries in Europe and
Asia, since they depended on the US military for their security. With the fall of the
Soviet Union, Western Europes military dependency on the US decreased at the same
time as its economic and political integration accelerated. US planners viewed this as
a potential medium-term threat to continued American global dominance. In the mid1990s, some European countries began floating the idea of a European Defense Force
that could act independently of the US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), which had been formed to oppose the USSR and now seemed to have little
reason for its existence. US policy makers were also concerned about the possibility
of a German-Russian strategic alliance, as well as the emergence of China as a major
economic and military power that might begin to replace the US as the dominant
power in Asia.
The Clinton administration responded to these challenges both economically and
militarily. It pushed through policies of economic globalization designed to bind the
other major powers into relations of dependency on the US in the World Trade
Organization. Simultaneously it followed a policy of strengthening and expanding
NATO in order to maintain the US presence in Europe and weaken Russia. This
culminated with military interventions in the former Yugoslavia, intended to maintain
European dependence on US armed power.
In the 1990s, US strategists from both sides of the political aisle began to look for
ways in which Washington could use its enormous military power to keep its main
rivals in check. On the right, the most influential group was a neoconservative thinktank named the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), several of whose
members became prominent figures in the George W. Bush administration. In a report
issued in September 2000, PNAC outlines the key strategic goal of maintaining
global US pre-eminence . . . and shaping the international security order in line with
American principles and interests. Key to achieving this goal, according to the
report, was seizing control of the Persian Gulf region. While the unresolved conflict
with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American
force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. 13
Regime change in Iraq would, it was assumed, not only give the United States control
over the second largest oil reserves in the world but also significant leverage over its
main rivals, particularly Europe and China, both highly dependent on Middle Eastern
oil.

This was not just the fantasy of neoconservative extremists. By the end of the 1990s,
there was bipartisan consensus that Saddams government needed to be removed, and
it had become official US policy. Shortly after the PNAC report of September 2000,
the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies issued a report on the
geopolitics of energy that pointed to a fundamental contradiction between the need
to modernize Iraqs oil infrastructure in order to increase production to meet growing
world energy demand and continued sanctions.14 But if the sanctions were lifted while
the Iraqi regime remained in power, then the chief beneficiaries would be France and
Russia, which had negotiated major oil concessions with Saddam.
Underlying this immediate concern were continuing imperial rivalries with other
major powers, driven by the same intersecting logics of economic and military
competition analyzed by Lenin and Bukharin in different geopolitical circumstances
ninety years earlier. None of the other powers could threaten Washingtons hegemony
on a global level, but they could erode US dominance in specific areas. The long-term
goal of US imperialism was to maintain its control of Middle East oilfirst
established after World War IIby shoring up friendly governments in the area no
matter what their records might be on human rights, and by containing and when
possible replacing unfriendly ones. It was in fact the Democrat Jimmy Carter who
articulated this most clearly in his January 1980 State of the Union address: An
attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be
regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such
an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. 15 The
so-called Carter Doctrine is a reminder that control over what a 1945 State
Department memorandum to President Harry Truman had described as a stupendous
source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history, 16
was always a bipartisan project.
When the Bush administration came to office in 2001, however, the goal of regime
change in Iraq was not immediately achievable, since there was insufficient domestic
support for an outright invasion. The PNAC report had bluntly noted in the previous
year that what was needed to implement such a policy was some catastrophic and
catalyzing eventlike a new Pearl Harbor. 17 The attacks of 9/11 thus provided the
Bush administration with exactly the opportunity it needed to pursue an agenda that it
had already decided on. As Gilbert Achcar puts it: September 11, 2001 came as a
terrific windfall for the Bush administration. . . . The spectacular blow struck by
Islamic fundamentalists, former US allies who had become its sworn enemies, created
such a huge political trauma in the United States that the Bush administration thought
it was possible at last, for the first time, to break once and for all with the Vietnam
syndrome and return to the unbridled military interventionism of the first Cold War
decades.18
The important point to note is that while there were tactical differences between the
administration and some other sections of the political establishment about how best
to pursue the agenda, there was near unanimity on the goal itself. The shift to a much
more aggressive and unilateralist foreign policy was not the result of a
neoconservative coup but a consequence of radically new circumstances providing US
imperialism with the opportunity to solve its problems in a new way.

Some in the Bush administration wanted to attack Iraq immediately, but for political
reasons it was decided that an invasion of Afghanistan was politically more feasible
and could be a stepping stone towards the goal of removing Saddam Hussein. It had
the additional benefit of allowing Washington to set up a string of military bases in
Central Asia, thus increasing its control over Caspian oil and gas, and giving it greater
leverage against both Russia and China.
Once the operation in Afghanistan seemed to have been completed, the Bush
administration turned its attention to Iraq, with support from nearly all the leading
figures in the Democratic Party. The conflicts with France, Germany, Russia, and
China in the buildup to the invasion revealed the key rivalries between the major
powers that were at the root of US policy. The war on Iraq was supposed to assert US
dominance not just over the Middle East but over these economic and military rivals
too. The goal was to remove a regime hostile to US interests, to gain control over
Iraqi oil, thereby increasing US leverage over Europe and China, and to use Iraq as a
base to reshape the entire Middle East along lines congenial to Washington.
In an interview on BBC television, General Jay Garner, former head of the Iraq
occupation authority, described Washingtons long-term vision of Iraq as a political
and military base, modeled on Americas control of the Pacific in the early twentieth
century.
We used the Philippines. And the Philippines, for the lack of a better term, it was in
essence a coaling station for the navy. And it allowed the US navy to maintain
presence in the Pacific. They maintained great presence in the Pacific.
I think . . . we should look right now at Iraq as our coaling station in the Middle East,
where we have some presence there and it gives a settling effect there, and it also
gives us a strategic advantage there, and I think we ought to just accept that and take
that for a period of time, as long as the Iraqi people are willing to allow us to be
guests in their country.19
This interview reveals some of the continuities of current policy with the long history
of US imperialism. But the world that US policy has brought about over the past few
decades has created new problems for US imperialism. The occupation of Iraq first
bogged down the US militarily while at the same time removing Irans biggest rival in
the region, leading in turn to an intensification of Washingtons confrontation with
Tehran.
Even more importantly, while Washington has been largely successful in reintegrating
the countries of Western Europe into a US-dominated international framework since
the end of the Cold War, the same is not true for Russia (which is still a major military
power, with thousands of nuclear missiles) or China (which is a rising economic and
military power). Indeed US policy makers are obsessed by the rise of China and how
they can prevent it from becoming a major challenger to US power on a regional or
even a global level. The US used 9/11 to set up military bases in central Asia. In
response, Russia and China formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in an
effort to maneuver the United States out of the region. They were successful in
pushing it out of Uzbekistan, with Russia and China supporting the Uzbek regime.
That is an illustration of a process unfolding on a much larger scale in which the

major centers of economic and military power in the world continue to maneuver
against each other for advantage. None of them are prepared to stand out against the
United States directly because the costs are too high, but the process illustrates the
fragmentation and instability of the global system.
The shift to a much more aggressive and unilateralist foreign policy by the Bush
administration following 9/11 was not the result of neoconservatives hijacking the
government,20 but a consequence of radically new circumstances providing US
imperialism with the opportunity to solve its problems in a new way. For that reason,
little changed when Barack Obama replaced Bush as president, as the conservative
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat pointed out in 2011:
For those with eyes to see, the daylight between the foreign policies of George W.
Bush and Barack Obama has been shrinking ever since the current president took the
oath of office. But last week made it official: When the story of Americas post-9/11
wars is written, historians will be obliged to assess the two administrations together,
and pass judgment on the Bush-Obama era.21
This is not exactly what most of Obamas supporters had in mind when they voted for
him in 2008, but two-and-a-half years later, the record speaks for itself. Troops were
eventually withdrawn from Iraq in accordance with a plan begun under Bush, but the
war in Afghanistan was expanded, with regular attacks across the border into
neighboring Pakistan and high numbers of civilian deaths, a secret bombing campaign
in Yemen exposed by Wikileaks, an open bombing campaign against Libya, and saber
rattling against Iran. Obama also announced a pivot to Asia to challenge Chinas
growing power and greatly increased the US military presence in Africa. US
imperialism did not end when George Bush left office.
These developments confirmed Lenins observation that imperialism is not simply a
policy, but something built into the fabric of developed capitalism, as economic
competition gives rise to geopolitical competition and military intervention. The form
of that competition can change over time, but so long as capitalism exists, so will
imperialism. That is whyapart from minor differencesboth major political parties
in the United States pursue the same foreign policy agenda.
Critics
on
the
left
I have argued that despite changes in the structure of capitalism in the last one
hundred years, Lenins and Bukharins theories retain their relevance and remain an
essential starting point for analyzing contemporary imperialism, but many on the left
reject this view. The Canadian Marxist David McNally acknowledges the strengths of
the analyses put forward by Lenin and Bukharin, but he goes on to argue there were
real limits to these theorieslimits which become especially disenabling today. 22
What are these limits? McNally mentions three.
First, according to McNally Lenin believed that colonialism pivoted on the export to
the colonies of excess capitalcapital which could find no profitable outlet at home.
Yet the very tables he produced in his booklet indicated instead that the bulk of
exported capital went from one rich capitalist nation to anotheras it continues to do
today.23 McNally is certainly right to point out that most foreign investment by
advanced capitalist economies goes to other developed economies, but Lenin does not

deny this, and his theory does not depend on rejecting this claim. What is essential to
his view is that control of the territory, resources, and markets of the less developed
world plays a vital role in competition with other developed capitalisms, not that
investments in such countries makes up the bulk of exported capital.
Second, McNally criticizes Bukharin for taking an historically specific period of
integration of capital with the nation-state in the early twentieth century and
inflat[ing] it into an inherent tendency of capitalist development, arguing that capital
and the state fuse over time. Yet as recent waves of privatization and deregulation
indicate, the relationship between state and capital is much more fluid and
changeable. Again, McNallys descriptive point is correctBukharins account of
the relation between state and capital is obviously too simple, even though it does
describe a trend that remained dominant for the middle as well as the early part of the
century. In fact, as we have noted, Bukharin himself in Imperialism and World
Economy, pointed to the contradictory tendencies that modern capitalism exhibits:
The development of world capitalism leads, on the one hand, to an internationalisation
of the economic life and, on the other, to the leveling of economic differences, and to
an infinitely greater degree, the same process of economic development intensifies the
tendency to nationalise capitalist interests, to form narrow national groups armed
to the teeth and ready to hurl themselves at one another any moment. (Ch. VIII)
The Marxist writer Chris Harman developed this point in the 1970s:
The trend is towards state capitalism, towards the complete merger of individual
capitals in each country with the national state. But the trend is also to the
internationalisation of production: the most modern techniques are developed on an
international scale; the resources for participation in key industries like chemicals,
aerospace, computers, and, increasingly, motors can be obtained by pooling the
resources of more than one country.
These two trendstowards state capitalism and towards internationalisation of
productionare both complementary and contradictory
This means that even in the advanced capitalist countries, crosscutting the state
capitalist trend is another trend towards dependence on firms, which see their
interests as differing from the interests of the national capital. Of course, they have a
home base. Of course, they depend upon a national state to bail them out when it
comes to the crunch. But that is not the same as saying that they will willingly
subordinate themselves to the national state.24
Since Harman wrote this almost forty years ago, direct state ownership and state
planning have greatly declined in most major capitalist countries. 25 Nevertheless, it is
not true (as is sometimes argued) that most giant corporations have become delinked
from specific nation states,26 even if the relationship between state and capital is often
characterized by sharp tensions.27 It is this connection between capitalist enterprises
and specific national states that is the crucial premise of Bukharins (and Lenins)
arguments. We need to update Bukharin to take account of the new and highly
complex ways in which state and capital are intertwined, but it is the fact that they are
intertwined that ultimately matters most.

Finally, according to McNally, perhaps the biggest flaw in these theories of

imperialism is that they saw territorial occupation by the major powers as a necessary
feature of global capitalism. Certainly direct occupation and the acquisition of
colonies was the way in which imperialism expressed itself in the late nineteenth
century and the first half of the twentieth century, and Lenin and Bukharin attempt to
explain why. But the hallmark of imperialism is not occupation but control, and what
the main capitalist powers learned after World War II was that such control could
generally be exercised more effectively using economic coercion, with military power
and physical occupations generally held in reserve to deal with temporary
emergencies.28 The move from direct colonial occupations to indirect or
neocolonialism is certainly of major historical importance, but the underlying
dynamic described by Lenin and Bukharin, in which economic competition gives rise
to diplomatic, geopolitical, and military maneuvering and confrontation between
capitalist states, can explain both imperialism with colonies and imperialism without
them.29
The changes that have taken place in the world economy over the past century require
anyone who wants to defend the theories of Lenin and Bukharin to develop and
elaborate their insights in new ways. But the most influential recent theories of
imperialism have tended to reject their central idea of interimperialist conflicts. For
example, in their briefly influential book Empire,30 Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt
downplayed the importance of nation states and described a world in which imperial
domination was maintained by a much more diffuse network of multinational
corporations and international institutions.
According to Negri and Hardt, rivalries between the major capitalist states on the one
hand, and the huge and systematic differences in economic development and living
standards between different parts of the world on the other, are no longer the main
features of the world economy. Instead, over the past few decades, old-style
imperialism has been replaced by Empirea transnational, network capitalism in
which the dominant economic and political relationships are no longer clustered
around centers of national capitalist power, but have broken down the national
organization of capitalism into relations that operate transnationally. This leads them
to conclude, no nation-state can today form the center of an imperialist project. 31
Later they write, The history of imperialist, inter-imperialist, and anti-imperialist
wars is over. The end of that history has ushered in the reign of peace. Or really, we
have entered the era of minor and internal conflicts.32
The problem for this view is that it didnt fit the world in the 1990s, let alone the
world after September 11, 2001. Even under Clinton, the United States had openly
begun to use its military power to maintain its economic primacythats what the
war in Kosovo was largely about. Then, little more than a year after Empire was
published in 2000, Washington launched a new and more aggressive phase of
imperialist intervention in Afghanistan and then Iraq following the 9/11 attacks. Put
simply, George W. Bush didnt use US military power in the interests of some
anonymous, impersonal transnational network, he used it in the interests of US
capitalism. Both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq were assertions of US
national power.

Negri and Hardt have various ways of trying to explain what happened after 9/11. One
is to claim that Bush is a throwback who represented the past. A more sophisticated
variant of this explanation is the claim that Bush represented the interests of
backward-looking national capital, not the interests of transnational corporations. But
this really doesnt wash. The Bush administration pursued neoliberal economic and
trade policies every bit as aggressively as Clinton did and worked hand in glove with
the biggest transnational companies. Moreover, as we have seen, Obama essentially
continued Bushs policies.
A second view of modern imperialism, defended in greatest detail by Canadian
Marxists Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch in their book The Making of Global
Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire,33 is now more influential on
the left. According to this alternative, the world is dominated by US superimperialism. There are no longer rival centers of capitalist power competing for global
or regional hegemony. The resources of the United States are so much greater than
any potential competitors that other states are effectively subordinated to
Washingtons dictates.
On this theory, classical imperialism has been replaced not by the transnational
network power of Negri and Hardts Empire, but by the overwhelming dominance of
one national center of capitalist power. Gindin and Pantich argue that since World War
II the American empire has integrated and subordinated the entire advanced capitalist
world. They emphasize the role of international institutions like the IMF, G-8, NATO,
and so on, as means through which the United States asserts its power over the other
major capitalist countries.
Now it is obviously true that the United States has considerably more power than
other capitalist states in terms of its military strength, the size of its economy, and its
financial clout; and it certainly uses a variety of international institutions to maintain
its dominance. But the key part of Gindin and Panitchs thesis is that this means that
the era of interimperialist rivalry is over. Yet while Washington has been largely
successful in integrating the countries of Western Europe into a US-dominated
international framework, we have already noted that the same is not true for Russia or
China, and that US policy makers are determined to prevent China from becoming a
major challenger to its power on a regional, or even a global, level. Gindin and
Panitchs response to this is that the Chinese challenge is overstated: China may
perhaps emerge eventually as a pole of interimperial power, but it will obviously
remain very far from reaching such a status for a good many decades.34
This analysis, however, may significantly underestimate the rapidity of the changes
that are taking place in the global balance of power. This is what lay behind the pivot
to Asia initiated by Obama during his second term. 35 In May 2014, The New York
Times reported on Chinas increasingly aggressive response to Washingtons attempt
to contain it:
All around Asia, China is pushing and probing at Americas alliances, trying to loosen
the bonds that have kept the countries close to Washington and allowed the United
States to be the pre-eminent power in the region since World War II.

In just the past week, China traded punches with Vietnam and Japan. A Chinese
fishing vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat on Monday near a Chinese
deep-water oilrig that was placed in disputed waters off the coast of Vietnam. That
confrontation followed a close encounter last Saturday in which two pairs of Chinese
fighter jets flew close to Japanese surveillance and electronic intelligence planes, in
disputed airspace claimed by both countries.36
Gindin and Panitch seem to downplay the significance of such conflicts because they
rely on a narrow conception of what constitutes interimperial rivalries. In effect, their
view is that unless there is a fairly imminent trajectory towards war, such rivalries do
not exist. But there can be rivalry between, say, China and the United States, or the
United States and France, without there being any immediate threat of war. When
Lenin and Bukharin were writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, imperialist
rivalries did lead to war between major powers for one simple reasonthere were a
number of competing states that were relatively evenly matched in military terms.
Today, of course, that is no longer the case. The United States spends almost as much
on its military budget as the rest of the world combined, so the other major powers
have a strong incentive to avoid any direct military confrontation.
But interimperialist rivalries can take other forms. The contemporary world is
characterized by sharp economic competition that shapes the pattern of trade
negotiations between the leading centers of capital accumulation and there are also
very important kinds of geopolitical rivalry. As we have noted, for example, Russia
and China have formed a bloc to counter the US presence in central Asia. Neither
country is willing to confront Washington directly, because the costs would be much
too high, but the biggest economies nevertheless maneuver to gain economic and
trade advantages, they look for ways to strengthen their political clout and weaken
that of their competitors, and they look for ways to widen their areas of influence.
Lenin and Bukharin would no doubt recognize this as interimperialist rivalry, even if
war between the major powers were not a likely immediate prospect. Indeed, even in
their own day it took many years for such a war to break out, proceeded by a series of
smaller wars, including the Second Boer War (18991902), the Russo-Japanese War
(190405), and the Balkan Wars (1912 and 1913). What has not changed is that the
most powerful states will use their military strength in whatever ways they can to
pursue their own interests, typically by intervening militarily in weaker countries, or
at least threatening to intervene. Russias sudden invasion and annexation of Crimea
in early 2014, detaching it from Ukraine, is a dramatic case in point.37
The US ruling class is currently playing for very high stakes, trying to maintain its
dominant global position in a world in which the distribution of economic power is
changing to its disadvantage. That produces a highly unstable and potentially very
dangerous situation. Other leading powers may not be prepared to challenge the
United States directly at the moment, but that doesnt mean that they wont be
prepared to do so in the future. Unless we get rid of capitalism, the prospect of future
military confrontations on a much larger scale remains. Even without major military
confrontations between powers, it is impossible to deny the devastating effect of
regional warssuch as those raging currently in the Middle East, for examplein
which great powers, and in particular the United States and its allies, have played an
outsize role.

Moreover, even if a war between the United States and any of its major rivals is
unlikely in the immediate future, competition between the big powers is the principal
reason why it has been impossible to negotiate a solution to the ongoing climate
crisis, which threatens to turn into a catastrophe before the end of the century.38 When
Rosa Luxemburg warned that the choice for humanity is between socialism and
barbarism, she had in mind the horrors of World War I.39 A century later, we know that
barbarism can take more than one form.
It is obviously true that one cannot understand the complexities of contemporary
geopolitics and imperialism simply by reading Lenin and Bukharin. But it is equally
true that if one ignores their key insights, it is not possible to make much sense of the
otherwise bewildering set of events that is currently being played out on the
international chessboard and, just as importantly, to come up with a coherent political
strategy to oppose militarism, war, environmental destruction, and all the other
horrors that capitalism creates. The framework Lenin and Bukharin developed a
hundred years ago, taken as a methodology and not as a set of dogmas, retains its
relevance for activists today.
1. This article is based on the introduction to a new edition of Lenins
Imperialism and Bukharins Imperialism and World Economy, forthcoming
from Haymarket Books.
2. The full text of both works can also be found at the Marxist Internet Archive:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/index.htm
3. Lenin: Speech to the Petrograd Soviet by Gregory Zinoviev Celebrating
Lenins Recovery from Wounds Received in the Attempt Made on his Life on
August
30,
1918,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/zinoviev/works/1918/lenin/index.htm.
The
quotation is from the section titled The Metal Workers Meeting. Trotsky
repeats this story in Chapter 18 of his autobiography, My Life, but incorrectly
locates
Lenin
in
Switzerland:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch18.htm.
4. Lenin,
The
Right
of
Nations
to
Self-Determination,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/index.htm.
Lenins views are summarized in Tom Lewis, Marxism and nationalism, ISR
13,
AugustSeptember
2000
(http://isreview.org/issues/13/marxism_nationalism_part1.shtml) and ISR 14,
OctoberNovember
2000
(http://isreview.org/issues/14/marxism_nationalism_part2.shtml).
5. See Chapters IV, VI, and VII.
6. Notes from the Editors, Monthly Review, Vol. 55, No. 8, January 2004,
http://monthlyreview.org/2004/01/01/january-2004-volume-55-number-8.
Lenin was also influenced by the British liberal economist J.A. Hobsons book
Imperialism: A Study, first published in 1902. However, Hobson viewed
imperialism as beneficial only to certain sectors of business (such as the arms
industry), not rooted in the nature of capitalism itself.

7. Michael Kidron, ImperialismHighest Stage but One, International

Socialism
(1st
series),
No.
9,
Summer
1962,
http://marxists.org/archive/kidron/works/1962/xx/imperial.htm.
8. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 25, The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm.
9. Ultra-imperialism,
Die
Neue
Zeit,
September
http://marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1914/09/ultra-imp.htm.

1914,

10. Speech Delivered At A Conference Of Chairmen Of Uyezd, Volost And

Village Executive Committees Of Moscow Gubernia, October 15, 1920.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/oct/15b.htm.
11. For a brief account of this period and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet
bloc see Phil Gasper, The legacy of Stalinism, International Socialist
Review 69, January 2010. http://isreview.org/issue/69/legacy-stalinism.
12. Patricia Lewis, Heather Williams, Benot Pelopidas and Sasan Aghlani, Too
Close for Comfort: Cases of Near Nuclear Use and Options for Policy,
Chatham
House
Report,
April
2014.
http://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/papers/view/199200
13. Rebuilding Americas Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New
Century (September 2000). PNAC disbanded in 2006 and its website no
longer exists, but a copy of the report is available at
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...
14. CSIS Panel Report, The Geopolitics of Energy into the 21st Century
(Washington: CSIS, 2000), Executive Summary, xiv.
15. The State of the Union Address Delivered Before a Joint Session of the
Congress, January 23, 1980. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?
pid=33079.
16. Report by the Coordinating Committee of the Department of State, Draft
Memorandum to President Truman, Foreign Relations of the United States,
Diplomatic Papers, The Near East and Africa, Vol. 8, 1945, 45.
17. Rebuilding Americas Defenses.
18. U.S. Imperial Strategy in the Middle East, Monthly Review Vol. 55, No. 9,
February 2004, https://monthlyreview.org/2004/02/01/u-s-imperial-strategyin-the-middle-east.
19. Interview on BBC Newsnight, broadcast March 19,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/3552737.stm.

2004,

20. The hijacking claim was common among American liberals at the time of
the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example in Robert Kuttners Boston
Globe op-ed Neo-cons have hijacked US foreign policy, Boston Globe,
September
10,
2003,
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/10
/neo_cons_have_hijacked_us_foreign_policy/. It is also worth noting that

many neoconservatives were originally Cold War Democrats. As two leading

neocons pointed out at the time, Most, like former U.N. Ambassador Jeane
Kirkpatrick, simply had been hawkish Democrats who became disenchanted
with their party as it drifted further left in the 1970s. Many neocons, such as
Richard Perle, originally rallied around Henry Scoop Jackson, a Democratic
senator who led the opposition to the Nixon-Ford policy of dtente with the
Soviet Union. Max Boot and Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Think again: Neocons,
Foreign Policy, January/February 2004, http://www.cfr.org/united-states/thinkagain-neocons/p7592.
21. Whose Foreign Policy Is It? New York Times, May 8, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/opinion/09douthat.html.
22. David McNally, Understanding imperialism: Old and new dominion,
Against the Current 117, JulyAugust 2005, http://www.solidarityus.org/site/node/255. McNally also briefly discusses the rather different views
about imperialism developed by Rosa Luxemburg during the same time. I
agree with McNallys criticisms of Luxemburg.
23. See the table showing Distribution (Approximate) of Foreign Capital in
Different Parts of the Globe (circa 1910) in Chapter IV, which indicates that
over two-thirds of the combined foreign investment of Britain, France, and
Germany was in Europe and America.
24. Chris Harman, Better a Valid Insight Than a Wrong Theory, International
Socialism
(1st
series),
No.100,
July
1977,
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/harman/1977/07/insight.htm.
25. China, which has developed its own variation of state capitalism during this
time, in which state capitalists and private capitalists are both part of the ruling
class, is the most significant exception. For a brief sketch see Tom Bramble,
China
after
the
boom,
Red
Flag,
July
29,
2015,
https://redflag.org.au/article/china-after-boom.
26. The view that globalization has produced a transnational ruling class without
any national ties is defended by the sociologist William I. Robinson in A
Theory of Global Capitalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2004). Robinson debates his critics in the May 2012 issue of Critical
Sociology.
27. See Chris Harman, The State and Capitalism Today, International Socialism
2:51,
Summer
1991,
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1991/xx/statcap.htm), for an attempt
to analyze the complex ways in which state and capital remain entwined.
28. In the 1960s and 1970s some dependency theorists believed that this indirect
control was so strong that countries in the so-called Third World would remain
in a permanently backward state. The subsequent development of countries
such as China, South Korea, India and Brazil has undermined this view.
29. For more on this topic, see Harry Magdoff, Imperialism Without Colonies
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003).

30. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Also see the review by Tom
Lewis, Empire Strikes Out, International Socialist Review 24, JulyAugust
2002, http://www.isreview.org/issues/24/empire_strikes_out.shtml.
31. Hardt and Negri, Empire, xiv.
32. Ibid, 189.
33. New York: Verso Books, 2012. For further commentary see Ashley Smith,
Global Empire or Imperialism? International Socialist Review 92, Spring
2014, http://isreview.org/issue/92/global-empire-or-imperialism.
34. Global Capitalism and American Empire, in Leo Panitch and Colin Leys
(eds.), Socialist Register 2004: The New Imperial Challenge (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 2003), 25.
35. See Ashley Smith, US imperialisms pivot to Asia, International Socialist
Review 88, MarchApril 2013, http://isreview.org/issue/88/us-imperialismspivot-asia.
36. Helene Cooper and Jane Perlez, U.S. Sway in Asia Is Imperiled as China
Challenges
Alliances,
New
York
Times,
May
30,
2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/31/world/asia/us-sway-in-asia-is-imperiledas-china-challenges-alliances.html .
37. Alan Maass, The battle over Ukraine intensifies, Socialist Worker, March
19,
2014,
http://socialistworker.org/2014/03/19/battle-over-ukraineintensifies
38. See, for instance, Chris Williams, Understanding Warsaw: Capitalism,
Climate Change and Neocolonialism, Truthout, 25 November 2013,
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20194-understanding-warsawcapitalism-climate-change-neocolonialism
39. What
Does
the
Spartacus
League
https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/14.htm

Want?

Inequality and social crisis in Europe

By Roland Pfefferkorn
Issue #99: Features
Share
The following was a presentation by Roland Pfefferkorn, a professor at the University
of Strasbourg whose primary research focus is social and gender inequality in
contemporary France. It was delivered at an international forum called Late
Capitalism: Its Socio-political Aspects in the Twenty-First Century, held in memory
of Ernest Mandel (19231995) at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. The
presentation was delivered on May 21, 2015, in a workshop titled, Companies in
Europe under the Impact of a Prolonged Crisis. Translated by Tom Gagn.

The conclusion no one denies: Three decades of rising inequality

Since the 2008 crisis, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD),1 the European Commission,2 the National Institute of Statistics and
Economic Studies,3 along with other statistics institutions within the European Trade
Union Confederation,4 have all agreed on this fact 5: In recent decades, social
inequalities have increased significantly across Europe. And not only in Greece or
Spain; the situation is the same in Sweden and Germany. In the past twenty-five years
Swedish society has experienced a considerable growth in inequality 6; according to
the OECD, between 1985 and 2008 the country recorded the highest growth of
income poverty among industrialized countries.7 In Germany one in six is now at risk
of poverty.8 NGO Caritas Europe denounces the increase in poverty and inequality
across Europe, especially in the seven most affected countriesGreece, Spain,
Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Cyprus, and Romania.9 In six years, from 2009 to 2014,
800,000 people have left Spain. Last year, there were still 125,000 set to leave. In
Greece, one third of the people has no health insurance and no access to health care.
In France, the central intelligence of the interior minister, that is, the police and
gendarmerie, is now worried about the situation within hospitals and the tensions
surrounding hospital emergencies.10 In their latest report, Benchmarking Working
Europe 2014, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and its center of
expertise, the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), came out against the
increasing social inequality, the weakening of national solidarity mechanisms, and
dismantling of national social models.
In recent years, the OECDthe European economic institution most favorable to
neoliberal policieshas also turned up the alarm on inequality. Michael Frster,
social policy analyst for the institution and coordinator of the 2012 report on the
evolution of income inequality in rich countries, 11 has already noted the unambiguous
progression in income inequality in the majority of wealthy countries since the mid1980s. The theme of inequality emerged even in January 2014 at the World Economic
Forum held in Davos, an event bringing together political and business leaders. In
May 2015, the secretary general of the OECD, Angel Gurra, expressed alarm over the
unprecedented increase in inequality in the preamble to the latest report:
We have reached a critical point. Inequality in the OECD countries has never been
higher than we now measure it. Figures show that growing inequalities impede

growth. The topic for political action is as much social as it is economic. By not
addressing the problem of inequality, governments destroy their social model and
affect long-term growth.12
This is a radical change in doctrine within the OECD, which has long argued that the
increased inequality was the ransom for greater efficiency of the economy under a
supposed trickle-down theory claiming that the wealth of someeven a very small
numberwould eventually trickle down to all. The report states, Income inequalities
have reached record levels in most OECD countries and remain at higher levels even
in many emerging economies. Today in the OECD area, the top 10 percent of the
population earning 9.6 times the income of the poorest 10 percent, compared to 7.1
percent in the 1980s and 9.1 percent in the 2000s. This increase concerns countries
known for their high level of inequality, such as the United Kingdom, but also the
Scandinavian countries of Europe traditionally considered to be more egalitarian. 13
When inequality rises there are losers, quite a lot of losers, but there are also winners.
Specialized business publications like Forbes, Manager Magazine, and Challenges
have made lists identifying billionaire upon billionaire, and the billionaires have never
been so rich.14 For example, according to Challenges, in France the 500 largest
fortunes have increased fivefold since 1996 and the top ten sevenfold. 15 The study on
large fortunes published in autumn 2014 by Credit Suisse16 confirms an earlier report
released by NGO Oxfam17: the concentration of wealth has reached unprecedented
levels since the 1920s. The richest 1 percent owns 48 percent of global wealth. In
short, the social distance between the oligarchies and the rest of the population has not
stopped growing.
Rising
inequality
is
the
result
of
neoliberal
policies
The growing social inequality in Europe is the result of the implementation of a
systematic policy of disruption of previous compromise balances developed in
Western Europe and the United States in the aftermath of World War II. Before the
turn to neoliberal policies in the late 1970s, as explained by Alain Bihr, 18 the
reproduction of class relations under late capitalism was characterized by the
establishment and maintenance of a compromise between capital and labor. The
famous Fordist compromise was based on a sharing of productivity gains between
growth in real wages (direct and indirect) and a growth in profit made possible by the
generalization of scientific management (or Taylorism) and the mechanization of the
labor process. This compromise was supervised and guaranteed by the states.
What were the various institutions and procedures that contributed to it? The
institutionalization and the animation of a permanent dialogue between the different
social classes (more precisely between their representative organizations: professional
organizations, trade unions, political parties, and so on) and the development of
structures for the purpose of negotiation between the so-called social partners (the
term refers to the pacification of class struggle in the Fordist compromise). The period
between 19451970 was also marked by the establishment, or expansion, of a set of
public utilities (electricity, water, postal system, health, schools) throughout national
territories.
The neoliberal turn took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Europe. The
regressive evolution was noticeable early on, along with measurable public statistics
appearing as early as the 1990s.19 The first empirical studies that highlighted growing

social inequalities were for a long time ignored by the mainstream media or outright
denied. This is not the case anymore. Someamong supporters of the capitalist order
even fear now that the scale of inequalities feeds a movement that calls into
question this order.
These same neoliberal policies have produced more contradictory effects in Southern
Europe. The collapse of the command economies of the states of Central and Eastern
Europe resulted in the forced adoption of the market economyunder the influence
of shock therapy advocated by the infamous Chicago Boys. Even in these states there
are economic and social inequalities, but also uneveness in terms of the development
between integrated regions or countries in a subordinate position, the dynamics of
capitalist sectors dominating the European Union, and those irreversibly
marginalized. But with the fall of the command economies, the European continent
was reunited under the law of a more liberalized capitalism.
The liberalization of the movement of capital and commodities has played an essential
role in the development of inequality. First, the increased labor competition exerted a
downward pressure on the share of wages in total wealth, a process exacerbated by
relocations, deregulation of labor markets, the downward revision in the standards of
social protection, and the gradual reduction in the scope of intervention by
governments and public authorities. This took place against the backdrop of a strong
and persistent structural unemployment, a growing precariousness of employment,
and a weakening of the fighting capacity of salaried workers.20
The
role
of
European
institutions
This picture would be incomplete without a word concerning the policies pursued by
the European Union (EU). In the article devoted to this question appearing in the
Dictionary of Inequalities, Pierre Concialdi presents three principal means of action:
the EU budget, the standards set by the EU, through directives or regulations, and
finally, all recommendations or processes that fall under the so-called soft law, which
are, in fact, not binding for member states of the EU.21
Regarding the European budget, we should first underline its weakness: in 2015 it
amounted to just over 140 billion, forty-five times less than the member states
overall national budgets.22 This budget represents less than 1 percent of the EUs GDP.
Consequently, the policies of the EU are much more limited in scope than those that
can be taken at the state level. They mainly concern two areas: the so-called social
cohesion policy designed to help the regions and the poorer countries to catch up and
integrate into the single market, and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Since
2004 the European Union has added thirteen new member states. 23 The budget for
these funds was reduced so that these incoming countries, which were among those
whose economic backwardness was larger compared to other EU member countries, 24
found that the share allocated to them was much smaller than received by other earlier
latecomer countries such as Ireland, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. The impact of
these funds on reducing regional inequalities will thus be considerably weaker. When
we see the economic and social situation of these four countries, we can wonder what
will be the long-term effects of the allocation of these funds.
Guidelines and regulations form the second-lever actions of European policies; these
are laws that are binding on states. The legislative and regulatory activity of the EU

operate in two areas of competence that have an impact on inequality: the free
movement of workers, and equal pay for women and men. The main benefit of these
measures is that they can combat certain forms of discrimination, and therefore
certain situational inequalities, while seeking to make the labor market as competitive
as possible. Their main limitation is that they do not directly reduce many forms of
inequality (income, access to health care, and overall health, for example) that are not
the
product
of
discrimination.
The third lever is part of what is called the soft law; it is realized mainly through the
open method of coordination, which applies to areas that remain essentially the
responsibility of states. This is notably the case for social protection, which
constitutes a major tool for the redistribution and reduction of inequality. Through this
open method of coordination, states set nonbinding targets and provide tools to assess
their achievement (good conduct guidelines, sharing of best practices, peer review,
benchmarking). In social protection, it is significant to observe that the reduction
of inequalities is never mentioned as a possible purpose of a social protection
system, and barely as one of its effects.25
However, the EU is implementing many other policies that, in effect, have a
countervailing impact on inequality. In this regard, we must mention the role of the
Broad Economic Policy Guidelines, which have a very structuring character and limit
the action of member states in the policies they can carry out at the state level to act
on inequalityincluding social inequalities. These guidelines are the main
instruments for coordinating economic policies. They also define strict deficit targets
and in public indebtedness, according to first criteria set by the Maastricht Treaty
(1992), specified by the Stability and Growth Pact (1997), and now confirmed and
hardened by the Treaty on Stability, Coordination, and Governance, which came into
force on January 1, 2013. Throughout this process, the pressure on member states to
respect the deficit and debt criteria have become stronger and stronger.
To the extent that the European Commission usually considers higher tariffs, however
desireable, to be a hindrance on the development of market mechanisms, the
commissions recommendations cover the reduction in public spendingmost of
which consists of social expenses. This can only weaken the impact of social policies
designed for the redistribution of income and reduction of inequality. In general, the
policies conducted and driven at the EU level are the central axis in the promotion of
free and undistorted competition and give a key role to market mechanisms. In this
trend there is a growing commodification and privatization of social protection, a
development of the flexibility and precariousness of the labor market, and the
privatization of public servicessome of the many phenomena that are the sources of
growing inequality.
Austerity
in
wages
and
deteriorating
living
standards
The essential result of the implementation of neoliberal policies has ultimately been
wage austeritystronger or weaker according to the regions or countries concerned,
and depending on the effective implementation of policies and workers resistance.
Thus, these policies have helped to reverse the dynamics that reduced social
inequalities in these states since the mid-1970s; and what numerous statistical data
and socioeconomic studies have confirmed since then26even despite how the social
sciences were relatively disinterested in the study of social inequality and its
aggravation during the same period.27

The decline in the wage share in total wealth, observed since the early 1980s, was
accompanied by an increase in the share of profits and a recovery in the rate of profit.
The share of profits devoted to taxes has remained roughly constant, the one devoted
to interests declined due to a global reduction in corporate debt. The investment rate
remained almost stable. The most significant development was the increasing share of
profits going to shareholders as dividends. This lead to an increase in social
inequality, favored the production of luxury consumer goods, the swelling of the
financial and real estate bubble, and ultimately caused the 2008 crisis.
Moreover, for wage earners, especially for the working class, working conditions
have deteriorated in recent decades.28 According to the results of the fifth survey
(conducted in 2010) by the European Foundation on Living and Working Conditions
in Dublin, the proportion of workers exposed to physical and chemical hazards at
work has increased since 1991. Similarly, repetitive labor under difficult pressure and
deadlines is increasing. That also goes for psychological risks linked to pathogenic
forms of workplace organization that can lead to suicide. Low-skilled employees in
the service industry (call centers, supermarkets, and so on) are hardly spared, and
broadly share in the overall global deterioration in working conditions, as do also
larger sections of the civil service sector since the introduction of new forms of public
management.
The use of outsourcing and temporary work, fixed-term contracts, partime jobs, and
so on, has spurred the increase in precariousness. These processes accentuate the gap
between permanent workers, whose jobs are still relatively protected, and those of
precarious workers involved in outsourcing or in particularly dangerous work
(handling, maintenance, cleaning, waste management).
Figures about exposure to carcinogens exist mainly for the more dangerous of these
types of jobs. A worker in France is ten times more likely to die of cancer before age
sixty-five than a senior manager. Occupational cancers remain largely unknown,
however, because of what Annie Thbaud-Mony has called triple invisibility: toxic
ignorance, or the lack of knowledge concerning the toxicity of thousands of
chemicals that are introduced into production; physical invisibility, or the
imperceptible nature of carcinogens, coupled with the lack of information for workers
exposed to these risks; and social invisibility, the very low recognition of these
cancers in occupational disease analyses. Finally, we should highlight the massive
relocation of pathogenic work environments to impoverished areas in Asia, Africa,
and Latin America.29
The neoliberal period has also seen the gradual dismantling of public services, leading
to the closure of facilities in certain regions.30 Therefore, for suburban inhabitants or
residents in rural areas, the constraints of geographical mobility (deficiency of public
transport networks, cost of transporation, and so on) reinforce their economic
precarity. These two types of spaces are the site for the expression of a specific type of
inequality. Unemployment and precarious employment are suburban facts, and the
inactivity of women is an important marker in many rural areas. A low level of
qualification and training are markers of the popular classes in rural areas, while the
new migrant populations arrive in cities.

Youth and migrant workers bear the brunt of difficult working conditions and low
wages. Women are more concentrated than men in sectors where work is arduous
(shift work, heavy lifting, repetitive work under severe time constraints, sexual
harassment, and toxic dangers). They are also disproportionately present in the
growing sector of personal services (domestic workers, child care, elder care)
between self-employment and wage labor. These jobs are often painful and
humiliating. Finally, it is women who, overwhelmingly, ensure that family and
domestic work is metthe double burden of domestic labor. Moreover, despite
thirty years of feminist demands, differential labor conditions between men and
women are still some of the strongest manifestations of gender inequality.
Slow
progress
toward
gender
equality
hindered
Since the 1960s and 1970s, the increase in enrollment in education for girls, the
development of professional activity of women, and control over their own
reproduction have contributed to a structural transformation in the relationship
between men and women. The second wave of the feminist movement, between 1970
and 1976, was a product of this transformation and it in turn was strengthened by
enabling advances concerning the right of women to control their own bodies.
However, despite undeniable progress, inequalities persist in as many areas of the
domestic sphere as in public spaces, or in professional life, largely because women
bear the brunt of the neoliberal turn, especially in the undermining of public services
and the welfare state, in three main ways. As workers in these sectors, they face a
deterioration in their working conditions, or even the complete disappearance of their
jobs as a result of privatization, downsizing, or outsourcing. Furthermore, women are
disproportionately affected as beneficiaries of social programs whose disappearance
or deterioration will be accentuated with the replacement of welfare with workfare in
several countries, the disappearance of certain services for mothers of young children
in the countries of Eastern Europe, and so on. As substitutes for failing public
services, women must take on an increasing share of the care of dependents (children,
elderly, handicapped, or sick people). Women who are assigned to this work, when it
is socialized, are also migrants who often come from poorer countries. We must
therefore take into account, in the analysis of these changes, the international chains
of care, resulting in the influx of women working in this immense sector coming
from across the Maghreb, of sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Latin
America, or Southeast Asia, including the Philippines.
Since the 1970s, the analysis of class inequality has been progressively enriched and
made more complex, but also partly obscured, by the inclusion of other inequalities:
between men and women, between age groups and generations, between native-born
and immigrants, between groups based on race, and so on. These changes are due not
only to the development of specific struggles (women, youth, immigrant populations
in Western metropolises, antiracist struggles, struggles against social and residential
segregation, and so on), but also to ideological debates and theoretical developments
that have accompanied them. This has allowed us to raise to the level of scientific
objects hitherto neglected or even ignored aspects of social reality (for example,
domestic work, the color line, the effects of neighborhoods, and so on), and have led
to the development of new concepts: gender and gender relations, sexual division of
labor, social relations by generation, spatialization of social inequality, and so on.
They thus tasked the social sciences with the difficult problem concerning the

relationship between these different types of inequalities, taking account of the

phenomena of power (domination or oppression) and social relations that engender
them, for example, that for which the concept of intersectionally attemps to account.
The complexity of these analyses must not lead us to lose sight of the renewal of
inegalitarian discourse. Equality was subjected to an important right-wing attack
during the 1980s under the guise of a criticism of egalitarianism. The defense of
inequality over the last thirty years has been established by various ideological
currents: Not surprisingly by mainstream sectors, also by left-wing governments. A
whole series of adjectives (modern, new, efficient, clear, and even liberal)
characterize these so-called left governments. For example, the French prime minister
Manuel Valls wanted to end the nostalgic left, the one which limits itself to a bygone
era and nostalgic past, haunted by the Marxist superego and the memory of the
postwar boom. The only valid question is how to steer modernity to accelerate the
empowerment of individuals.31 A few months later he would specify that the Left
also has a duty to clarity and truth, to justify the continuation of neoliberal policies. 32
The anti-equality platitudes are now defended by the most conservative members of
this left government, who no longer hesitate to openly extol the virtues of inequality
each of them bringing something to the table. In January 2015 economic minister
Emmanuel Macron did not hesitate to take the side of Guizot: We need young French
people who want to become billionaires. He added that he preferred that people
who have talent and who take risks are highly paid, rather than having an economy of
fading recipients of annuities.33
These antiegalitarian platitudes are articulated around three well-known themes:
Equality is above all synonymous with uniformity; inequality is then defended in the
name of the right to difference. The argument is based on a double conflation of
equality and identity, on the one hand, and of inequality and difference on the other.
Moreover, the argument goes, equality creates inefficiency. Guaranteeing everyone an
equal social status demotivates people and ruins the foundations of rivalry and
competition, and is therefore counterproductive both for the individual and for the
community. Inequalities ultimately benefit everyone, both the losers and winners.
The inegalitarian discourse rests mainly on this third argument: equality would mean
constraint, alienation of liberty, up to and including the limitations on a free
functioning of the market. It would inevitably open the way to the worst of
totalitarian hells.
However, while equality does imply identity (or uniformity), inequality does not
guarantee difference. Equality of social conditions can open multiple opportunities for
action and existence, which are more favorable to the affirmation of singularities.
Market-generated inequalities lead to mass unemployment and ecological disaster.
Finally, inequality oppresses. What is freedom for the unemployed, the stressed parttime worker, the illiterate, or those whose lives are shortened by overwork? The only
freedom that guarantees inequality is the right of a minority to accrue material
benefits and privileges, both institutional and symbolic, at the expense of the
majority.34
1.

See Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising (Paris: OECD,

December 2011), http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/dividedwesta... In It Together:

Why Less Inequality Benefits All (Paris: OECD, May 21, 2015),
http://www.oecd.org/social/in-it-togethe....
2. See European Commission (2012), Employment and social developments in
Europe 2011, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union,
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catI....
3.

Magali Beffy, Marie-milie Clerc, and Cline Thvenot, Ingalits, pauvret

et protection sociale en Europe: tat des lieux et impact de la crise, Report
Ingalits, pauvret et protection sociale en Europe, Paris: INSEE (National
Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies [France]), 2014).

4.

See the report, Benchmarking Working Europe 2014 (Brussels: European

Trade Union Institute, 2014), http://www.etui.org/Publications2/Books/....

5.

This is shown by the overall statistics on living conditions and income

inequality, Sandrine Levasseur tells us in Pauvret et exclusion sociale en
Europe: o en est-on?, February 23, 2015, OFCE blog,
http://www.ofce.sciences-po.fr/blog/tag/sandrine-levasseur/.

6.

Wojtek Kalinowski, Le modle sudois se fissure. Alternatives

conomiques, hors-srie, n 103, dcembre 2014 ; Cyril Coulet, Le modle
sudois lpreuve, Questions internationales, n 71, JanuaryFebruary
2015. In Sweden, the Gini coefficient rose from 0.21 to 0.26 between 1985
and 2008. To the different ways of measuring inequality see the Dictionnaire
des ingalits, under the direction of Alain Bihr and Roland Pfefferkorn (Paris:
Armand Colin, 2014). See the entries: Indicateurs dingalit; Indicateurs de
genre; Indice de Gini; Indice de dveloppement humain; Indice de sant
sociale; Revenu (mesure des ingalits de); Courbe de Lorenz, and so on.

7.

Divided We Stand; Employment and Social Developments in Europe 2011

(Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2012).

8.

Federal Office of German Statistics, 2013.

9.

Caritas Europas Crisis Monitoring Report, Poverty and Inequalities on the

Rise: Just Social Systems Needed as the Solution, 2015,
http://www.caritas.eu/news/crisis-report....

10. Le Parisien, March 10, 2015.

11. Toujours plus dingalit : Pourquoi les carts de revenus se creusent,
http://www.oecd.org/els/social/negalite....
12. In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All.
13. Cdric Rio, Compte rendu de colloque : Les ingalits et la crise en Europe.
Colloque international organis le 6 avril 2012 luniversit Paris 8 Vincennes
Saint-Denis, Politiques sociales et familiales, n 111 mars 2013, 7781.
14. See for example, the Forbes regularly updated list, The Worlds
Billionaires, http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/.
15. Challenges, July 11, 2014.

16. Crdit
Suisse,
Global
Wealth
https://publications.credit-suisse.com/t....

Report,

October

2014,

17. Oxfam, En finir avec les ingalits extrmes. Confiscation politique et

ingalits conomiques, January 20, 2014.
18. Alain Bihr, Actualiser et complexifier lapproche marxiste de lEtat,
Conference at the International Symposium Le troisime ge du capitalisme,
sa physionomie socio-politique lore du XXIe sicle, May 2022, 2015
Lausanne.
19. See Anthony B. Atkinson, The Economic Consequences of Rolling Back the
Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); or for France see our own
work, Alain Bihr and Roland Pfefferkorn, Dchiffrer les ingalits, 2nd ed.
(Paris: Syros, 1999).
20. For more than twenty years we have been making the same observation:
This reversal in trends . . . was the work of increasingly neoliberal polices in
the management of the economic crisis . . . recessive policies, based on the
idea that the crisis is due largely to a shortage of supply, higher wages; they
have the following objectives: the development of unemployment,
precariousness and the flexibility of employment, declining real wages, a
dismantling of social protection for public systems in reduction of financial
cost; but they have also led to a change in the distribution of added value more
favorable to capital, a surge in real interest rates, incredible speculative profits,
gradual or sudden deregulation of markets conducive to this greater
flourishing of liberty, which is offset by the increased subjugation of the
lowest ones. Alain Bihr and Roland Pfefferkorn, Dchiffrer les ingalits,
1415.
21. Pierre Concialdi, entry Union europenne, in Dictionnaire des ingalits,
under the direction of Alain Bihr and Roland Pfefferkorn (Paris: Armand
Colin, 2014), 40911. We summarize here the essence of our case.
22. The 2015 budget foresees 145.32 billion euros in commitments and 141.21
billion euros in payments.
23. Recall the first expansion: the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark
(1973); the second expansion: Greece (1981); the third: Spain and Portugal
(1986); the fourth: Austria, Sweden, and Finland (1995); the fifth and sixth:
Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland,
Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Romania (2004 and 2007); and the seventh:
Croatia (2013).
24. Math Antoine, Viprey Mouna, Quelle intgration conomique et sociale pour
les pays entrants? Chronique Internationale de lIRES, n 88, May 2004.
25. Math Antoine, Protection sociale et ingalits: les dbats europens, in
Rduire les ingalits. Quel rle pour la protection sociale ? (Paris: DreesMire, 2000), 5970.
26. Cf. on France, our own works: Alain Bihr et Roland Pfefferkorn, Dchiffrer
les ingalits.

27. Cf. Roland Pfefferkorn, Ingalits et rapports sociaux. Rapports de classe,

rapports de sexe (Paris: La Dispute, 2007).
28. Cf. two entries Conditions de travail dAnnie Thbaud-Mony, in
Dictionnaire des ingalits.
29. But environmental inequalities also reinforce class inequality in the wealthier
countries. Cf. Razmig Keucheyan, La nature est un champ de bataille (Paris:
Editions Zones-La dcouverte, 2014).
30. Cf. the entry Ville/campagne de Julian Mischi and Nicolas Renahy, in
Dictionnaire des ingalits.
31. Manuel Valls, interview given in LObs, October 23, 2014.
32. Libration, December 11, 2014.
33. Emmanuel Macron, interview given to the newspaper Les Echos, January 7,
2015.
34. This line of argument was developed in particular by Tony Andrani and
Marc Feray, Discours sur lgalit parmi les homes (Paris: LHarmattan,
1993), chapters 1 and 3; you will find a synthesis of this argument in
Dchiffrer les ingalits, 1417.

European Union in Reality

Imperialist unions cannot be permanent
There have been several imperialist unions on different levels since the beginning of
the twentieth century and formation of such unions today is quite possible. But,
because of deep crises of capitalist system which are unavoidable, such unions are
always bound to contain the risk of disintegration. Lenin noted that the imperialist
tendency to form big empires was, in practice, being frequently materialised in the
form of imperialist alliances of sovereign and politically independent states. He says:
Such an alliance is possible and is encountered not only in the form of an economic
merger of the finance capital of two countries, but also in the form of military cooperation in an imperialist war. [1]
It must be kept in mind that multi-national companies have a complicated structure
and that the tendency of capital towards union makes its way through counteracting
factors. Kautsky denied this important fact and asserted that it was possible capitalism
might enter a new phase beyond imperialism from an economic point of view.
Moving from Hilferdings organised capitalism Kautsky said competition and
struggle among finance capital groups with different national identities could be
overcome. For him, the finance capital united on an international level could usher in
a new era, an era of ultra-imperialism, based on a joint exploitation of the world. In
criticism of Kautsky, Lenin says that it is possible only in an abstract sense that the

monopolist tendency leads to a world monopoly. All dead abstractions about ultraimperialism would serve to divert attention away from the profoundness of existing
contradictions. Best answer to these kinds of dead abstractions is to lay bare concrete
economic realities of the world economy.
It is in contrast to concrete structural features of capitalism to claim that the tendency
towards union operating among big capital groups would completely abolish
competition among nation-states. It is completely wrong to jump over to an extreme
as if a real tendency is realised hundred percent in reality. This is against Marxist
method which seeks to grasp things in their contradictions in life. Monopolisation and
internationalisation of capital do not lessen contradictions on a national and world
scale, rather aggravate them.
On the other hand, rise of competition to the level of a competition among
monopolies encourages economic unions both on a national and international level.
The existence of monopolist capitalist countries such as the US having enormous
resources drives other countries having no such power towards union. Regardless of
the level of such drives, they essentially rest not on an abstract wish for union but on
quest for maximizing capitalist interests. Unions formed by major capitalist powers to
divide the world into spheres of influence, though they might include some weak
countries, would be imperialist unions first and foremost pursuing the interests of the
former countries, not abolishing the conflicts among them. It is thus in contrast to real
workings of capitalism to perceive imperialist unions and alliances as unbreakable,
static and stable unions.
Capitalist blocs cannot be lasting. They change as the power balance changes. The
assumption that EU or similar unions can abolish the contradictions between member
nation-states and start an era of super-union free of inner conflicts has not stood, and
cannot stand, the test of realities. In capitalism division of interests and spheres of
interest is solely based on the general economic, financial, military might of the
parties involved. The balance of power between those involved does not remain same,
but it changes. For capitalism means unequal development and it is impossible for
countries, industries, monopolies to develop equally. As Lenin said, it is unthinkable
that the balance between imperialist powers would remain same in 10 or 20 years
time.
The history of imperialism is full of examples proving the possibility of formation of
military, economic alliances, coalitions, blocs, institutions when there are joint
interests between various capitalist powers for them to stand against their rivals.
European Union is exactly such a union. Formed out of certain concrete conditions
and calculations, such unions break up when conditions change, and there will be new
ones. The fate of the European Union should certainly be assessed in this framework.

Americas rivalry has given rise to the European

Union
Contrary to what some bourgeois writers tried to portray, the European Union in its
whole actual course has in no way advanced towards lifting the borders between
European countries. What essentially motivated the union was not the tale of

integrating the common historical and cultural identity of Europe but economic
interests as always the case with such formations. The main motive that lay beneath
the progress from the EEC to the EU was to gain more competitiveness by getting
united against the USA and Japan. The mounting competition among imperialist
powers in 1960s, between the USA and Europe in particular, motivated the aim of
advancing the economic unity of Europe. The competition between the trading blocs
of America and Europe was feverishly addressed by some bourgeois European writers
to accelerate the efforts towards EU. Servan-Scheibers book entitled The American
Challenge was an important example of this genre in 1960s. [2]
In imperialist era which is based on worldwide movement of finance capital, it is
impossible to bring a common market under control and protection based solely on
the interests of the member states. Other grand rivals would seek and find ways into
this market as long as they find it profitable and advantageous. Thus European
common market has been an attractive place for investment and sale for American and
Japanese companies during the period of economic upswing. Imperialist capital
groups that belong to different trading blocs try to be active both within their own
trade bloc and in the rivals and divide the lot according to their size and might
regardless of national or continental identities. Thus, just as it is not possible in a
capitalist partnership for all partners to get equal shares, it is not a rule that the ones to
get the most out of the European common market must necessarily be its members.
Hence the effort of those countries such as Germany and France not content with the
common market to seek a tighter monetary and economic union in the face of rivals.
Also deterrent measures to prevent member states to resort to devaluation to
increase their exports were brought in.

From EEC to EU
In the aftermath of the Second World War Europe was in ruins and exhausted. The US
imperialism however kept its ascendency and became a world hegemonic power. The
Bretton-Woods agreement, for instance, was one of the embodiments of the
domination of American economy. As Trotsky said, the centre of gravity of the world
economy had shifted from Mediterranean to Pacific. In a decline accelerated by the
Second World War, Europe came to be in need of Americas aid. It was surely
unthinkable that the USA would not rush to the rescue of European capitalism against
the danger of a revolution in Europe at a time when the Soviet Union set out to form
its socialist bloc. More importantly, as in the aftermath of all big imperialist wars,
the USA considered Europe a profitable area of reconstruction and a fruitful area of
investment after the destruction of Europe. With the aid of the USA through Marshall
Plan the old continent began to experience a new capitalist boom. The main
conditions of the plan disclosed by the US General Marshall were that the tension
between France and Germany would be ended, economies of European countries be
internationalised and financial discipline be established.
On the other hand, there was the need to protect the European market in the face of
big rivals such as the USA and Japan, which led the way to European common market
and customs union. As it is impossible for European nation-states individually to cope
with the world competition in imperialist era, they set out for an economic union
among themselves. In the first place the European Coal and Steel Community was
established in 1952 to protect steel and coal industries which were very important at

that time. The six founding member states were France, West Germany, Italy,
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg, which were called The Six. This is
followed by preparations for a more extensive common market including other
commodities and a wider union. In 1957 Treaty of Rome was signed by the Six and
European Economic Community was founded. The main aim of the EEC was to
establish a common market and a customs union wherein free movement of
commodities, services, capital and workforce would be possible. And in January 1959
the member states made the first reduction in tariffs which was 10%. In July 1968
tariffs among member states were removed and a common tariff was agreed to be
applied to non-member countries.
The main problem of European big capital was to survive and strengthen the
European trade bloc vis--vis US (and Japanese) imperialism. In striving to solve this
problem various European countries signed an agreement for a single market in 1987
that can pursue a common policy of prices. EEC would begin to be called European
Community with 1980s and later in 1993 it turned into European Union. In 1997 the
Union made a decision to expand, obviously considering the new balance of forces in
the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. [3]
The Delors Report of the EU, dated 1989, set the convergence criteria for member
countries to follow in order to proceed towards financial and economic union. And the
Maastricht Treaty signed in 1992 set various economic and financial criteria for the
member states. One aspect of the treaty was to achieve European Monetary Union
(EMU) and start a common European currency. Many member countries entered new
millennium with euro as their currency and in 2002 the euro became the only currency
of the EU by and large. Another criterion in the Maastricht Treaty was that the budget
deficit in member countries must be at most 3% of the GDP. Even the relatively
strong Germany has failed to meet this criterion. With the pretext of reducing deficit
public expenditures have been cut across Europe. The attack on the social rights won
by hard struggles of the working class has gone rampant through practices such as
privatisation, de-unionisation, outsourcing, and flexible work regime. These measures
imposed as criteria for union by European capitalists clearly demonstrate whose union
is the European Union.
Many economic and financial criteria that can be implemented in a feverish economic
conjuncture have not worked due to the conditions of stagnation. For instance,
although the EU criteria require that the tendency to union not be hindered by
protective measures, with the insufficient level of economic growth member states
became worried to maintain their national income and budget balances. In fact this
project for union was already maimed due to the spasm experienced by the world
economy when the leading imperialist powers of the EU, i.e. German and French
imperialisms, imposed single currency and boosted the propaganda for union. The
future of the EMU which is presented to be a lasting monetary union is uncertain in
the event of the EU going into a process of disintegration. One of the main reasons for
the hegemony war launched by the US imperialism in Iraq is the contention between
euro and dollar which is a direct consequence of the rivalry between EU and USA. If
we consider historical examples, we can see that a stable system of currency can only
be possible in a period of ascendency with a relative balance secured under a
hegemonic power like in the example of Bretton Woods in the aftermath of the
Second World War.

EU is a contradictory union
In the period of feverish economic growth after the Second World War until 1974 the
big capitalist powers of Europe indeed moved on towards economic union as it suited
their interests. Headed by Germany and France, this process of getting united was not
without contradictions and problems. For instance, as France under De Gaulle was
sceptical of Britain for its intimacy with the USA vetoed her first application to join
the EEC and Britain could join only later in 1973. Over time there would be many
conflicts among member states. The EU experience demonstrated that a union of
nation-states without contradictions is not possible under capitalism. At turning points
where political balances change or economic situation deteriorates these
contradictions deepen and bring serious tensions, conflicts. And the time when the
Soviet Union collapsed was such a time.
German unification in the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinism made Germany
potentially a big economic power. In the struggle for hegemony going on within the
EU German imperialism made a leap forward and embarked on taking a strong role in
Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia an so on. It also advanced its role in the
Russian market in its effort to surpass the rivals. While the Bosnian war revealed the
imperialist ambitions of the EU, it also demonstrated the impossibility of an EU free
of conflicts of interest among member countries. It exposed the impossibility of the
big powers of Europe, i.e. France, Germany and Britain, to follow a common foreign
policy. Because whenever it suited their interests each of them could draw near to
another power, i.e. the USA, without bothering about its European brothers.
France seeks to limit the hegemony of German imperialism within the EU and place
an alliance of France-Germany at the heart of the union. And Germany is conscious of
the fact that it can pursue its imperialist ambitions only under a cover of Europeanism.
German imperialism needs to develop its power in political, diplomatic and military
terms as well. Quests for coming close to Russia, plans to form a European Army
outside NATO, the propaganda that a European federation can be set up, are all
consequences of it.
As to Britain, although certain bourgeois sections opt for the EU, she is kind of an
extension of the USA within the EU. [4] Because the USA is the guarantor and
protector of investments of London across the world. Britain, in search of maintaining
her superiority and cunning skills in world politics and diplomacy obtained during the
era of big colonial empires, is playing the role of a scornful imperialist power
coupling its assets with the economic and military power of the USA. Hence, as if to
prove its exceptional imperialist position, it has neither become part of Schengen nor
euro, let alone its insistence on not changing certain standards including things like
traffic direction. Its essential role in the EU is to weaken the role of the FranceGermany axis. It is in search of undermining the EU by making it something different
from what France and Germany intend it to be, and this effort includes its policy to
include countries like Eastern European countries and Turkey that are supposed to
play the role of Trojan horses of the USA.

Turkeys uncertain EU journey

Turkey-EU relations have had their ups and downs for the last 40 years with an
uncertain future. Turkey made its application for full membership of EEC in 1959. In
its reply EEC recommended a partnership agreement that would be in force until the
point where full membership criteria are reached. This agreement was signed in 12
September 1963. According to this agreement called Ankara Agreement after a certain
transition period Turkey would completely join the European Customs Union. At the
end of this period of preparation Additional Protocol was signed in 13 November
1970 and it was put in force in 1973. With the protocol first tariff reductions were
made and preparations for membership were accelerated.
But Turkey was not going to be able to fulfil its obligations due to economic and
political crisis conditions and the angle between the EEC and Turkey would grow.
After the military coup in 12 September 1980 the Community suspended its relations
with Turkey and financial cooperation was ceased. Negotiations restarted in 1986
thanks to factors such as the first parliamentary elections after the coup held in 1983
in Turkey and the beginning of integration with the world economy in 1984. In 14
April 1987 Turkey applied for full membership and tariff reductions began in 1988
with a rapid pace. It was agreed that the process of customs union would be complete
in 1995 and following the negotiations and preparations in the years that followed
Customs Union between the EU and Turkey started on January 1, 1996. However,
despite the process of expansion agreed in the 1997 summit of the EU, the Turkey
problem remained unsolved and only in the Helsinki summit in December 1999
Turkey was given the status of candidate member in the framework of certain
conditions.
In 2000 the EU drew up the Accession Partnership Document for Turkey. And a plan
for partnership relation between EU and Turkey (a road map) was drawn. Afterwards
Turkey made some legal regulations to comply with the EU criteria and the so called
harmonization package was passed hastily from parliament. There was a general
mood that in the 2002 December summit Turkey who seemed to have convinced the
EU that it was implementing certain criteria would be given a date for full
membership. But in reality among the conditions put forward by the EU was the
solution of Cyprus question. TUSAD, the union of big capital, and pro-EU bourgeois
milieus pressed for a speeding up of reforms in political and legal sphere in Turkey
and a solution for gangrenous questions like Cyprus according to the demands of the
EU. The Ecevit government which was said to be an obstacle for the process of
change had to step down and early elections were held. The elections on 3 December
2002 put an end to the period of old political parties and coalition governments of
them. These old parties have in recent years been discredited in the eyes of the
masses. Even in the first days of its rule the AKP was anxious to speed up the process
of joining the EU with the pressure of the pro-EU big capital milieus. But the strife
between the USA and EU which for a long time has its reflection in the ruling circles
in Turkey was soon to put its grip over the AKP government and the fate of the
process of joining the EU was again to fall into uncertainty. And the expectation of
Turkey for membership was to fall to the barbed wire of Cyprus question in the
Copenhagen summit. While the summit which was held on 12-13 December 2002
gave the date 16 April 2003 for membership of Southern Cyprus, it was declared that
the situation with Turkey was to be overviewed at the end of December 2003.

It is nearly impossible for the traditional ruling forces in Turkey, the high level state
bureaucracy, the army staff being in the first place, to come to terms with any
proposals for a political solution to Cyprus question or Kurdish question and act in
accordance with the EU. Although in recent years organisations of big capital have
increasingly taken an attitude in favour of the EU, the decisive role of the army staff
in the ruling heights of Turkey can by no means be ignored. And the primary role
belongs to this element of ruling elite in uniform as a strategic partner of the USA
within the NATO alliance in drawing Turkey into the war front. In fact, as a
peculiarity of the capitalist development in Turkey, the army is in the position of the
representative of one of the biggest financial capital groups. Although the chief of
staff appeared to be taking a softer position about EU criteria since the last days of
Ecevit government, the new order of warfare being involved in the Middle East has
made the cooperation with the USA more important.
The conflicting process over the EU flows in fact from the Turkish bourgeoisies need
for a deeper incorporation into the imperialist system. Keep in mind that all sections
of the big bourgeoisie know very well that national isolation would mean sort of an
economic and political suicide. What matters to them is to choose their allies
according to their own interests in this scramble for greater share. The fact that a
bourgeois section or organisation which appears to stand against the EU with a jargon
of national independence is in fact an expression of their effort to blur the
consciousness of the masses and to conceal their choice, lets say, in favour of the
USA instead of the EU.
The fact that there was no certain date determined for Turkeys full membership in the
December 2002 Copenhagen summit is considered a retrograde step taken by the EU
in its endeavour to dismiss a perspective of Turkeys membership. One element that
strengthened the hand of the alliance of Germany and France who are unwilling about
Turkeys membership was that the ruling circles in Turkey and Northern Cyprus were
unwilling to accept the Annan Plan which proposes a joint state on the Cyprus
question and that they were also in search of a US backing for their cause. Moreover,
preparations for an Iraq war by the USA without EU consent have already increased
the tensions between the USA and EU. Thus the EU membership of both Turkey and
Northern Cyprus has now entered in a process of utter uncertainty. Although there
may be some new developments in the EU course of Turkey depending on the course
of the hegemony war between imperialist powers this question is not simply a
question of joining the EU. This long-time painful question has become part of the
new world order which is now being forged through the flames of imperialist wars.

The fate of the European Union is uncertain

The European Union spearheaded by Germany and France has for some time been
under serious tension. Europe had been in a disadvantageous position against its main
rival, namely the USA, due to factors such as low growth rates, high labour costs and
insufficient industrial integration level around the continent. Additionally, the big
crisis and war atmosphere increased the tension within the EU bringing it to the brink
of disintegration. In fact the plan of the EU to expand towards Middle and East
Europe, Balkans even Turkey means in a sense a watering down of the union by the
USA. The USA intends to undermine the EU and take it under its hegemony by
encouraging the entry of those countries that are considered to be easier to keep under

control of the US. At a time when American imperialism raises the tension in a drive
to reshape the world the EU is cracking while it tries to expand.
With its current attitude Britain, as one of the biggest components of the EU, takes its
side with the USA and not with the EU. Many EU members support the US war
coalition either directly or indirectly. The plight of the EU displays that it is not at all
the kind of union that progresses towards a joint state contrary to the promoters of the
myth of a capitalist European Federation. European Union is essentially an economic
union. It is an economic association formed by the big capital in various European
countries to maintain and expand their spheres of hegemony. While the fact that it is
based on the European continent gives it a unique character, in the final analysis, it
has similar foundations with other economic unions encountered in the monopolist
stage of capitalism. Of course it cannot be ignored that the geographical and cultural
affinity of European countries gives a special importance to the commercial and
economic relations among them. However, overrating the question of union of
European countries and arguing that the nation-states of Europe will unite under a
new nation-state would be completely wrong.
The dream of a United States of Europe came into the stage by the pressing need of
overcoming the narrow framework of nation-states which is an obstacle to European
capitalism which had elevated to the monopolist stage. However it was but a delusion
that these fetters could be overcome and productive forces would continue their
development without contradiction under capitalism. While some are waiting for the
train that is supposed to carry the EU to the United States of Europe in a manner of
political mindlessness, the real world has begun to shake by the US hegemony war.
With this new period we have just entered, let alone the delusion to achieve a United
States of Europe, all capitalist alliances which marked the long period after the
Second World War are cracking. The fate of all capitalist unions and blocks from
NATO through the United Nations to the EU is uncertain. Since every union based
on conflicts of interest is destined to fall apart with reshuffling of cards. In a word, the
fate of the European Union which is said to progress towards the goal of United States
of Europe is not certain even in its present form. Therefore let alone the dream of a
capitalist United States of Europe even a project of a lasting European Union is
destined to fail in the test of realities.
[1] Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, LCW, v.23
[2] In this book, published in September 1967, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber
advocated that, in the face of the challenge posed by America, Europe needed a
change in organisation and mentality and a technological breakthrough in order not to
become a satellite of it. He said the only way to counter the competition of America
was economic, financial, political and judicial cooperation, reviving the bourgeois
dream of United States of Europe. He advanced the idea that a big state to cope with
big affairs in Europe must be a federal state like the USA necessitated by international
division of labour. And he was trying to implant this idea to the working class as a
hope. Contending that the European left needed a renewal, he advised the way for a
social conciliation among workers unions, boss unions and governments.
According to this, those countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic,
Slovenia, Estonia that are more advanced in terms of complying the EU criteria would

be accepted as members in the first round, and be followed by a second round of

countries such as Slovak Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania. And later
Malta, Turkey and South Cyprus were added to the list. This was the plan for
enlargement of the EU, which means addition of 13 candidate members to the existing
15 members, i.e. Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Luxemburg, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Ireland, Spain, Greece and Portugal.
[4] For instance, Thatcher, who was one of the most prominent figures of neoliberal
wave, claimed that all problems that are dealt with by the world were generated by
Europe and that founding of EU was perhaps the biggest stupidity of modern age.
As former leader of Tories Thatcher says Britain must withdraw from key agreements
of the EU such as agriculture, fisheries and defence.

The United States of Europe?

A dream of capitalists: United States of Europe
In order to make a true interpretation on the European Union debate which has taken
place during the recent years both in the bourgeois milieus and also in the left circles,
it will be useful, first of all, to express an important point. It is necessary to make a
distinction between two different subjects, the European Union (EU) in its concrete
existence with an uncertain fate, and the United States of Europe that has not been
realised in any ways though it was talked so much. In fact the capitalists dream of
United States of Europe has an old history and was turned out to be nothing in
every time before the ruling laws of capitalist system. The European Union, with its
realised and realisable aspects, is a temporary economic union established between
various capitalist countries. And the formation of this kind of unities is always
possible. Yet, it is not possible, on the base of capitalism, to overcome the divisions in
the form of nation-states and to reach a peaceful fusion of those European states. This
kind of a fusion can only be achieved under the government of the working class, on
the base of United Workers Soviets of Europe.
It is known that, the debate over the United States of Europe has enlivened in the
conjecture of World War I. However the history of this idea goes further in the past.
For example in the period of French Revolution, dream of an Europe, integrated from
the point of view of economic relations and of cultural-historical base, was considered
by bourgeois ideologues. In the following years, founders of Marxism too had come
face to face with that debate of Europe, united over the capitalist base. This
bourgeois dream was also defended by some organisations extending into the working
class. One of the ideas that were proposed by Peace and Freedom Union constituted
in 1867 in Switzerland by petty-bourgeois republicans and liberals was to establish
the United States of Europe. The Union adopted the thesis that wars in Europe
could only be prevented by that way. Marx and Engels criticised this pacifist attitude
that was creating illusions in the working class about the nature of both
internationalism and of capitalism. For example Engels referred this subject in 1875
while he was criticising German social-democrats Gotha programme.[1] Lasallites

were setting up a hope of union belonging to liberal bourgeoisie, a hope of capitalist

United States of Europe against the working class internationalism; whereas
German workers leading the European workers movement had taken an
internationalist attitude against the war. With supporting each other under hard
conditions as in big strikes, they gave samples of the route that must be followed.

Kautsky and the United States of Europe

The Second International too adopted the slogan for a United States of Europe on a
bourgeois base. For instance, Otto Bauer was uttering that the United States of Europe
was not a dream and the European nations would reach that goal as an inevitable
result of capitalist development.
In Lenins phrase, hand in hand with their imperialist bourgeoisie, socialist-masked
social-chauvinists in European countries were trying to build an imperialist Europe
over the shoulders of Asia and Africa.
In the period of First World War, the idea of United States of Europe was brought
into agenda at a level enough to have an important repercussion. Lets remember
briefly the conditions at that time. In a world dragging towards an imperialist war,
militarism was rising and a feverish preparation for re-sharing the world was being
made in the big capitalist countries. The most concrete indicator of this was the
increased expenditures on armament. The situation was forcing Marxists to be
prepared ideologically, politically and organisationally in a revolutionary manner
against the approaching war. Just at such conditions, Kautsky, admitted as the
foremost Marxist authority of that period, began to develop analysis that would cause
pacifist attitudes against imperialist wars.[2] He proposed the idea that armament and
wars could not be assumed as an unavoidable product of imperialism. In order that the
conflicts of interest between imperialist countries not to cause a war, he was advising
European bourgeoisie to behave reasonably. He was uttering that agreeing with each
other and exploiting the rest of the world altogether would be more suitable both for
their interests and for restricting the manoeuvre area of reactionary Tsarist Russia.
Kautsky, claiming that the United States of Europe established on a base of
bourgeois parliamentarism would open a period of permanent peace, was writing the
followings in his article dated 1911:
the realisation of such understandings betokens no guarantee for the permanent
duration of the peace, which shall for ever ban the spectre of war. Therefore there is
today only one way: The union of the States of European civilisation in a
confederation with a universal trade policy, a federal Parliament, a federal
Government and a federal arm the establishment of the United States of Europe.
This attained, something enormous would have been achieved. These United States
would possess such overwhelming power that, without any war, they could compel all
other nations, so far as these did not willingly do so, to join them, to disband their
armies and give up their fleets. But with this would also disappear every necessity for
the new United States themselves to be armed. They could then not merely give up all
further armaments the standing army, the warships for attack the abandonment of
which we to-day demand, but also every means of defence; even the citizen army
itself would no longer be necessary. Thereby would the era of eternal peace be
securely founded [3]

In this way the debate, whether an economic union achieved between European
countries would be able to abolish the competition struggle between imperialist
powers of the Continent, has fallen on the agenda since that times. According to those
who consider and defend the economic unity of Europe as a lasting and progressing
formation, steps taken towards the unity would have given the division of Europe into
nation-states to an end and integrated them under in the frame of United States of
Europe. Debates going on this axis had inevitably found its reflections among the
revolutionary Marxists of the time and Rosa, Lenin and Trotsky assumed their own
attitudes on this question.

Rosa and the United States of Europe

Rosa, as early as 1911, uncovered the real economic character of the capitalist United
States of Europe project, which was supported among the German social-democrats
by Ledebour and Kautsky. From one aspect this project was utopian because the
modern nation-state was a historical product of economical development and it was
impossible to overcome it by voluntary decisions. Although the concept of Europe
was reflecting a geographical and, to a certain extent, a historical-cultural union base,
the United States of Europe that was considered as a lasting economic union which
would integrate nation-states under a single roof, could not get along well with the
inherent realities of capitalism because of two reasons. Firstly, as long as the capitalist
states continue to exist in Europe, a complete abolishment of the contradiction and the
competition between them was not possible. Secondly, a European capitalism in
which the economical relations would intensify solely on a continental scale could
only be supposed as a speculation of mind. Because, in reality, capitalism was a world
system and Europe was not an isolated and self-sufficient economic unity within this
world economy.
Another more important point on which Rosa was attracting attention about this
utopian project was the sly imperialist intentions that were tried to cover with the lies
of peace epoch by the European imperialist powers. In spite of all radical masks,
capitalists United States of Europe project could not offer any progressive solution
to the working class. Whenever the bourgeois politicians defend the Europenity
idea -unity of European states-, this was accompanied in each case by the bare or
hidden denigration against yellow danger, black continent or inferior races.
Shortly, the United States of Europe defended by bourgeoisie could not go beyond
the point of being an imperialist abortion.
And now if we, as Social Democrats, were to try to fill this old skin with fresh and
apparently revolutionary wine, then it must be said that the advantages would not be
on our side but on that of the bourgeoisie[4] says Rosa. Because, whichever
revolutionary cover was used, a United States of Europe project that remains
under the frame work of capitalist social order would mean, from the economical
point of view, a tariff war with the USA. Therefore political results of this project
would not be the peace but, on the contrary, imperialist conflicts and wars. Thus,
Rosa was raising the voice of revolutionary Marxism against people such as Kautsky
who was telling liberal peace tales to the working class while the world was
actually being dragged into a hellish war. She kept this attitude till end. She referred
to the same subject in Thesis On the Tasks of International Social-Democracy in the
well-known Junius pamphlet in 1915. Eighth article of the thesis explains clearly that

the world peace could be assured neither through unbiased courts of capitalist
diplomats, diplomatic disarmament treaties nor utopian or, in fact, reactionary
projects like the United States of Europe. Because, as Rosa expresses, imperialism,
militarism and war can never be abolished nor attenuated so long as the capitalist
class exercises, uncontested, its class hegemony. The sole means of successful
resistance, and the only guarantee of the peace of the world, is the capacity for action
and the revolutionary will of the international proletariat to hurl its full weight into the
balance.[5]

Lenin and the United States of Europe

In October 1914, Lenin too referred to the United States of Europe question that
caused various debates at that time, in The Manifesto of the Central Committee of the
Bolshevik Party. Manifesto defended the slogan of republican United States of
Europe against Europe under the reactionary oppression of monarchies. It says that
The formation of a republican United States of Europe should be the immediate
political slogan of Europes Social-Democrats.[6] However, social-democrats had to
be very careful when they were defending this slogan. Because the bourgeoisie who
was ready to promise everything in order to drag proletariat into the general stream of
chauvinism was also using the United States of Europe slogan for its own interests.
Therefore proletariat had to be absolutely clarified about the fact that this watchword
would be a lie and a meaningless slogan unless the German, Australian and Russian
monarchies were liquidated.
In Bern Conference of the RSDLP Sections Abroad, the United States of Europe
question was again considered and this time Lenin expressed some doubts. Debate
about the slogan for a United State of Europe was going on along one-dimension
and getting a solely political character. But the question had also got a more important
dimension, an economical meaning. So the Conference decided to postpone debates
for studying the economic side of the question in party press. Then Lenin published
his article named On the Slogan for a United States of Europe in August 1915 for
this reason.
According to this article, the slogan for a United States of Europe was formulised
directly as an immediate political slogan in the Central Committees Manifesto.
However, to avoid any misunderstanding it was not satisfied with only mentioning
about republican United States of Europe and emphasised especially that this aim
would be a false and meaningless one without the revolutionary overthrow of the
German, Austrian and Russian monarchies. Thats why there was no problem in the
political content. But this slogan had a problem from the standpoint of economical
content. Lenin concluded that the United States of Europe under capitalist relations
was economically either impossible or a reactionary target. It was impossible because
in the capitalist system the nation-state, just as the private property, was not a
temporary fact but a fundamental expression of capitalist contradiction. It was
reactionary because rival European imperialist forces like France and Germany were
trying to carry out this unity by means of imperialist wars and military aggressiveness.
In his article, Lenin refers to economic basis of the matter and lists the main lines of
the subject that will be treated subsequently in detail in his book called Imperialism.
First of all, capital has assumed an international and monopolist character and the

world has been carved up by a handful of great powers. A repartition could only be
took place according to the power balance between big capitalist countries, and this
balance changes with the course of economic development. Under capitalism, there
are no other means of restoring the periodically disturbed equilibrium than crises in
industry and wars in politics.[7]
Lenin, thus explained that an absolute interest unity that would put an end to division
of European countries into nation-states was not possible. Hence a permanent
unification was also impossible. Therefore, the thought of preventing wars by means
of a United States of Europe under capitalism was completely unfounded.
Temporary agreements between capitalists and between states were possible and the
suppositions about a European union could be considered only in this content.
However, such an agreement could express a positive meaning only for European
bourgeoisies interests. What about the interests of the working class?
Lenin was uttering that an agreement between capitalists would mean a jointly
suppressing socialism in Europe and a jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan
and America. Compared with the United States of America, Europe as a whole was in
an economic stagnation. On these economic conditions a United States of Europe
would result an organisation of reaction also in point of retarding Americas more
rapid development. Therefore, the times when the cause of socialism was associated
only with Europe had gone for ever. Thus, after investigating the question of United
States of Europe from various aspects, Lenin ended his article as follows: after
repeated discussions the Central Organs editors have come to the conclusion that
the slogan for a United States of Europe is an erroneous one.[8]
Other than its impossibility, the idea of a United States of Europe emerged from the
extension needs of European monopolist capital is imperialist and reactionary for
working class. For this reason, points emphasised in Lenins article titled as On the
Slogan for a United States of Europe are completely true and corresponding to the
concrete reality. However, the critical attitude of Lenin, in the same article, towards
Trotsky for his defence of the slogan for a United States of Europe is strange.
Because, Trotsky does not defend a United States of Europe on a capitalist base. On
the contrary, the United States of Europe which Trotsky defends is a Europe unified
under a workers power. True person that was addressed by Lenins criticism could
only be Kautsky. And thus Lenin too was criticising Trotsky as he was thinking that
Trotsky had been inspired by Kautskist thoughts. However, as can easily be
understood from Trotskys thought on the United State of Europe, his approach has
nothing in common with Kautskist political attitude.
Another point that must be clarified in Lenins article causing various debates is in
regard to the strategy of proletarian revolution. It is known that Stalinists, in order to
strike Trotskyism, have been trying to use this article as evidence regarding the
socialism in one country. Yet the truth of the matter is that those lines being
distorted by Stalinists are not about the construction of socialism but the conquest of
the power. In regard to the impossibility of constructing socialism in one country, the
light of revolutionary Marxism is so shining that it will be completely useless to try to
find essential and important differences between Lenin and Trotsky.

Lenin deals with the slogan for a United States of Europe adopted by Trotsky from the
point of its meaning under a workers power too. As he thinks that this approach
would mean to defend simultaneous revolutions on the whole European continent,
Lenin declares that such an approach is false. Because, according to Lenin, the
European working class, in this case, would be obliged to wait for a simultaneous
revolution and realisation of the goal of United States of Europe. However, it is
possible to overthrown the capitalist state at first in a several or even in one country.
And when it comes on the agenda, this probability points to a mission that must be
fulfilled.
But it is not true to say that defending the goal of United States of Europe Trotsky, in
regard to the conquest of political power, has been taken a waiting attitude which
was completely different from that of Lenin. Because the fact which Trotsky tried to
express insistently was not that the power could not be conquered by proletariat in one
country, but that workers power could not be protected and socialism could not be
built in one country. Likewise, Trotsky explains that there were no essential
differences on this subject between himself and Lenin and quotes the following lines
from 1915 Peace Program as proof: Not a single country must wait for the other
countries in its struggle. It will be useful and necessary to repeat this elementary idea
so that temporizing international inaction may not be substituted for parallel
international action. Without waiting for the others, we must begin and continue the
struggle on national grounds with the full conviction that our initiative will provide an
impulse to the struggle in other countries.[9]

Trotsky and the United States of Europe

In some articles written by Trotsky during the First World War, there is the slogan for
a United States of Europe having neither monarchies nor permanent armies.[10] He
thinks that a Europe which has not been divided by tariffs and national borders would
be a positive step with respect to transition to socialist organisation of the world
economy. He tries to associate this slogan directly with the revolutionary struggle of
working class aiming the conquest of power. However, because of some reasons such
as usage of this same slogan by bourgeoisie and especially distortions made by
Kautsky, this subject has followed a very controversial course. In addition, at the
beginning Trotsky, too, could not clarify sufficiently that by this slogan he had
defended essentially a working class power in Europe. This situation caused Trotsky
to be misunderstood and considered as if he defends a bourgeois democratic United
States of Europe. Yet Trotsky puts forward the idea that the proletariat must stand
against the imperialist war with a social revolution programme. He raises the working
class peace programme against smashing of Europe by bloody conflicts between
imperialist powers. He defends that a peace programme which would give an end to
the destruction of productive forces, to imperialist wars and to savage militarism,
could be implemented only on the base of a Europe unified and integrated under a
workers power.
Thus, just as Lenin, Trotsky too was rejecting the possibility that a capitalist United
States of Europe could be realized. Against the distorting efforts of his primary
articles related to the slogan of the United States of Europe, he reminds that he did not
defend a United States in a capitalist frame even in 1914: That was also my approach
to the question when I advanced the slogan of the United States of Europe exclusively

as a prospective state form of the proletarian dictatorship in Europe.[11] Since that

time, he had been defending the following idea: A more or less complete economic
unification of Europe accomplished from above through an agreement between
capitalist governments is a utopia. Along this road matters cannot proceed beyond
partial compromises and half measures.[12] He was calling attention to an extremely
important reality by saying that an economic unification of Europe would in fact
entail colossal advantages both to the producer and consumer and to the development
of culture in general. However, such a unification could be succeeded only by the
revolutionary struggle of European workers. Therefore, the realisation of the goal of
workers United States of Europe was becoming a revolutionary task of the European
proletariat in its struggle against the imperialist protectionism, the nationalist
isolationism and the militarism as an instrument of these all.
Since the formulation of a United States of Europe without monarchies, permanent
armies and secret diplomacy he propagandised in Peace Programme had caused
various speculations, he had to return this subject in the following years. In the
extended version of his article dated 1923, he treated the claims of his opponents who
were distorting his views by setting forth that this slogan could acquire a reactionary
and an imperialist content under certain conditions. In fact, he was trying to clarify an
important point which is related to the essential character difference between two
lines starting from the era of Marx and Engels and reaching till now, with respect to
organise, secure and develop the working class power.
The petty-bourgeois socialism is, in essence, a national-developmentalism covered
with a bit of revolutionary phrases. Whereas the proletarian socialism stands over a
scientific and a wide scoped base, completely free from the obsession of national
borders reflecting the interest of bourgeoisie. In general, proletariat does not have any
interest in the division of world into nation-states. Moreover, in capitalist Europe, the
bourgeoisies relatively revolutionary nationalism epoch has finally ended.
Revolutionary Marxism does not stand for the national market and tariffs against the
process advancing in the direction of economic integration. If the continents
imperialist powers support some kinds of unifications for their interest, revolutionary
working class will make a stand against this with the goal of creating a united soviet
government of workers, not with the flag of national defence. This is the main line
of what Trotsky tried to argue in his Peace Programme.
A United States of Europe on a capitalist base is really impossible. However let us
imagine for a while an integrated Europe not divided into nation-states and tariffs.
This assumption would mean a broader material basis for socialism objectively.
Therefore Trotsky was saying that: If the capitalist states of Europe succeeded in
merging into an imperialist trust, this would be a step forward as compared with the
existing situation, for it would first of all create a unified, all-European material base
for the working class movement.[13]
It is no doubt that economic and political development of the world tends to gravitate
toward a unified world economy. For this reason, Trotsky reminds that the question of
Why a European Federation and not a World Federation? might be asked against
arguing the slogan for a United States of Europe. However, if we take into
consideration the concrete situation of that period, it could easily be seen that such a
question would be an abstract and a dogmatic one. Because, the concrete problem that

must be solved was concerned not with the future socialist economy of the world but
with finding a revolutionary way out of the present Europe impasse. Europe is not
only a geographic term; it also reflects an economic and cultural-historic community.
In the First World War, even after the intervention of the USA, it was Europe that was
the arena of war. Saying that the revolutionary problems confront first of all the
European proletariat, Trotsky explains that setting forth the slogan of the United
States of Europe was not depend on his choice but on the Marxist analysis of the
concrete situation.
The slogan for a United States of Europe defended by Trotsky with a proletarian
content since 1915s was rejected by Lenin and Bolshevik Party for a period. But
following the October Revolution this attitude had changed in a certain degree.
Because it became clear for the Marxists that the meaning of this slogan was to create
the workers' united Europe in connection with advancing the world revolution. Thus,
the article named Is the Slogan of the United States of Europe a Timely One?[14]
written by Trotsky in 1923 on the Ruhr Crisis[15], was adopted officially by the
Executive Committee of the Comintern in spite of a considerable opposition. Trotsky
made the following consideration about the matter in 1928: It was no mere accident
that, despite all prejudices, the slogan of a Soviet United States of Europe was
adopted precisely in 1923, at a time when a revolutionary explosion was expected in
Germany, and when the question of the state interrelationships in Europe assumed an
extremely burning character. Every new aggravation, of the European and indeed of
the world crisis is sufficiently sharp to bring to the fore the main political problems
and to invest the slogan of the United States of Europe with attractive power.[16]
As Trotsky explained in his article on Ruhr Crisis, Europe was smashed, cut up,
divided, exhausted, upset, disorganised and Balkanised and transformed into a
madhouse. The need of the productive forces for a broader arena of development that
was not hampered by tariff walls was laying at the bottom of the war. The aggressive
methods adopted by the ruling bourgeoisie to overcome obstacles created by the
national frontiers were causing disintegration to be more severe and millions of
people to die. Another bourgeois attempt for organising the unity of Europe over this
base, for example the rising militarism in Germany, would cause either collapsing of
European civilisation or the counter-revolutionary domination of American
imperialism over the globe.
In these circumstances, only the proletariat could rescue Europe from disintegration.
But, while the revolutionary wave was withdrawing, in order to join workers and
toilers under the revolutionary flag of the proletariat, it was necessary to set forth
transitional slogans which could gain masses for the goals of struggle. At that period,
the Comintern had proposed a workers and peasants government as the slogan of
united front. Trotsky insisted on the idea that this slogan had to be incorporated with
the call for a United States of Europe that would be realised by the workers own
efforts. Only such an orientation could save Europe from an economic decay and from
enslavement to American capitalism. The slogan of the United States of Europe must
be regarded as a step toward the dictatorship of the proletariat. The United States of
Europe a purely revolutionary perspective is the next stage in our general
revolutionary perspective, said Trotsky.[17] Commenting the slogan not as founding
directly the dictatorship of the proletariat but as a step on the way towards it could be
seen as if it might create some confusion; yet this was not an important

problem.Because this approach was not erecting various governmental stages before
the revolutionary power of workers, and was only aiming to advance mass struggle to
the goal of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Advancing of revolutionary struggle
would already raise this slogan to its real content.
On the other hand, although it was not possible to impose apriori a sequence on the
process of world revolution, it was absolutely possible that course of events might
cause Europe to get ahead of America. For Trotsky, the events in Europe were
important from this point of view and it was extremely probable that these events
could affect America. Trotsky was thinking that a probable revolution in Europe
would absolutely break the self-confidence of American capitalist class and accelerate
the process of conquering the power by American working class. He was not stopping
at the point of arguing the idea of European Federation realised under a workers
power, and by defending probable workers Soviet federations in the Middle East,
Balkans etc. he was trying to embody the goal of World Soviet Federation. He was
considering that, for a united Europe, Soviet Union might form a reliable bridge
reaching over to Asia. Thus, together with Soviet Union, the united Europe could
constitute a centre of attraction for the oppressed peoples of Asia. The revolutionary
block of European and Asian peoples could confront the threat from the USA. A nonunified Europe could not achieve this.
The slogan for a United States of Europe that was adopted by the Comintern in 1923
was able to last its validity only till 1926. In a pamphlet titled as the Socialist United
States of Europe, written by John Pepper and printed in 1926 by the official
publishing house of the Comintern, the followings were said: It is very important that
we not only have a critical position towards this bourgeois-social democratic demand
(Pan-Europe), by demolishing its fraudulent pacifist contents, but that at the same
time we set up against it a positive slogan which can actually be the comprehensive
political slogan for our transitional demands. For the next period the slogan of the
United States of Socialist Europe must serve as the comprehensive political slogan for
the European communist parties.[18] However these were the last ones for this kind.
The goal of founding workers United States of Europe got its share amply from
Stalinist attacks associated with the establishment of absolute domination of Stalinism
in the Soviet Union and in the Comintern. Because it is impossible to comport a goal
directly related to the world revolution with the Stalinist theory of socialism in one
country. Trotsky explained that the ideology of socialism in one country would
inevitably cause blurring the reactionary role of nation-state, which has already
become tight for productive forces, reconciling with it, idealising it, and thus reducing
the importance of revolutionary internationalism. In very deed, this Stalinist ideology
is a defence of nation-state covered with a socialist jargon. Thats why everything
related to the perspective of world revolution, including the goal of a United States of
Europe based on workers soviets was eliminated from the Cominterns draft program
published in 1928 with the signs of Stalin and Buharin. In an environment where
criticisms were forbidden and opposing voices were silenced, draft program was
adopted in the sixth congress of the Comintern without an important change. Trotsky
was criticising Stalinist attitude which finds its expression in the draft, and adding that
there was no acceptable reason for the elimination of United States of Europe
approach, which had a content of soviets power, from the program of the world
communist movement.

Trotsky has continued to defend resolutely the perspective of the world revolution
against hostile attitude of the leadership of Stalinist Comintern towards this
perspective. In an article titled as Disarmament and the United States of Europe and
published in 1929, Trotsky once again set forth clearly that Europe had to be united
under a revolutionary workers power. As Trotsky indicated, the productive forces
have definitely outgrown the framework of the national state and now they have to be
conceived only on a world scale. In fact, the imperialist war had grown out of the
contradiction between the productive forces and national boundaries. There is no
doubt that socialism can not attain its full development even in the limits of a single
continent. Therefore, the Socialist United States of Europe represents the historical
slogan which is a stage on the road to the world socialist federation.[19]
Just as Lenin, Trotsky had also carried out a lasting struggle to save working class
from the evil of social-chauvinism raised during imperialist war especially in
European countries. In a document of the Fourth International dated 1940, he reminds
its main mission to the European working class being dragged once again into an
imperialist war: Against the reactionary slogan of national defense it is necessary to
advance the slogan of revolutionary destruction of the national state. To the madhouse of capitalist Europe it is necessary to counterpose the program of the Socialist
United States of Europe as a stage on the road to the Socialist United States of the
World.[20]
Enormous rising of American imperialism, on the one hand, sharpened the
contradictions among capitalist European countries worrying about a bigger share
from the world market; on the other hand, it also incited bourgeois dreams of
confronting the USA by uniting. Trotsky, in one of his article, was expressing
brilliantly the exact material source of this bourgeois dream about a United States of
Europe: If the capitalist world were able to endure several more decades without
revolutionary paroxysms, then these decades would unquestionably witness the
uninterrupted growth of American world dictatorship.[21] However, this process
would inevitably sharpen contradictions between USA and Europe. Because, the USA
would force Europe to strive for an ever increasing rationalisation and at the same
time would leave Europe an ever decreasing share of the world market. Thus, the
competition among European countries for a bigger share of the world market would
inevitably become aggravated. At the same time, under the pressure of USA, capitalist
powers of Europe would also try to unite their forces.
As we are finishing the subject of the United States of Europe, it seems that there is
not a lot of things that must be added to Trotskys words. In the imperialist world wars
that transform the world into a hell, the working class had suffered two times from
following the liberal bourgeois lies. And today American imperialism is declaring war
all around in order to become unrivalled sovereign of the world. Neither United
Nations nor European Union is able to prevent this madness. On the contrary, all
present unions of the imperialist system are dragging into deep crisis in the period of a
new sharing war. American imperialism claims to introduce a new order to the
world on lines of the interest of its own oil and arm barons. We will see whether the
European Union, supposedly proceeding in a road to become a capitalist United
States of Europe, can exist as a unity even at the present level. The allegation that
capitalist Europe can represent an anti-war and a democratic choice against the
aggressive USA will inevitably collapse once again with a big uproar. In the

imperialist epoch, the argument that democracy and peace can be achieved by the
capitalist Europe is a poisonous lie for the working class. A democratic and peaceful
world can be achieved only and only by the revolutionary power of the working class.
Therefore the sole salvation for our world being under the invasion of imperialist
aggressors is the proletarian world revolution that will sweep away capitalism from
our planet. The slogan of the United Workers Soviets of Europe as a part of Workers
Soviets of the World, which will be a gift of this revolution to humanity, is still valid.

[1] Engels to August Bebel In Zwickau, March 18-28

(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_03_18.htm)

1875,

[2] One of the important reason of our calling attention to these matter that was
discussed several years ago is that, in fact, the present attacks on Marxism under the
mask of new ideas are not a new phenomenon and are nourished from the ideas of
old renegades like Kautsky. For instance, the thesis that was suggested by Toni Negri
in his book, the Empire, which has became a famous book thanks to European left
intellectual circles, is nothing but another version of the Kautskist theory of
continuous peace epoch beyond imperialism.
[3]
Kautsky,
War
and
Peace
(29
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1911/04/war1911.htm)
[4] Rosa Luxemburg, Rosa Luxemburg
1911),Pathfinder Press, 1999, p.352

Speaks,

Peace

April
Utopias

1911),
(May

[5] Rosa Luxemburg, ibid, p.450

[6] Lenin, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/sep/28.htm
[7] http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/aug/23.htm
[8] http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/aug/23.htm
[9] Trotsky, The Peace Program, Works, Vol.III, part 1, p.89-90, Russian ed.
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti01.htm#n5)
[10] For example, the War and the International (1914), and the Peace Program
(1915)
[11]
Trotsky,
The
Third
International
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti01.htm)

After

Lenin,

[12] ibid.
[13]
Trotsky,
The
Programme
of
(http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/trotsky/works/britain/ch11.htm)

Peace,

[14] Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International, vol.2, Monad
Press, 1977, p.341-346
[15] The crisis broke out as a result of occupation of Ruhr region by France. The Ruhr
region of Germany is rich in mineral and coal deposits.
[16]
Trotsky,
The
Third
International
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti01.htm)

After

Lenin,

[17] Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International, vol.2, p.346
[18] quoted in, Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin
[19]
Trotsky,
Disarmament
and
the
United
(http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1929/10/disarm.htm)

States

of

Europe,

[20] Trotsky, Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the
Proletarian World Revolution, in Writings of Leon Trotsky, Merit Publishers (June
1969), p.34
[21]
Trotsky,
Disarmament
and
the
United
(http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1929/10/disarm.htm)

States

of

Europe,

EU and capitalist development

Liberals and their leftwing variations seasoned with Marxism are very keen to present
EU imperialism as an alternative of democracy
The social chauvinists of the Second International who took side with their own
bourgeois governments during the first imperialist war and voted for war expenditures
had created democratic and peaceful illusions in the masses before the war. That is
why the working masses were pushed into a position of passive waiting while
imperialist powers were in feverish preparations for war. And the illusions were still
alive when the war broke out. All social-pacifists tried to prevent workers from using
the class struggle weapon against imperialist war of re-divide. Millions of people who
experienced the horrors of the First World War were made believe that that war was
the last one. But with the second imperialist war of re-divide, the world was once
again covered with the blood of millions of workers. But the bad memories of the past
seemed to have been forgotten in the long years that followed the world war. In those
years when the world workers movement was in decline there was a big political
void. And in many regional wars, in Yugoslavia, Somali, Rwanda, and Palestine,
where imperialist powers settled their accounts, it was those peoples living there who
were deeply affected as the saying goes: An ember burns where it falls.
As present day developments strikingly vindicate once more, no period in the history
of imperialism justified reformists disseminating peace illusions. In only those periods
of long-term economic upswing there were relative peaceful alliances among great
capitalist powers. However, a worldwide economic stagnation has inevitably
aggravated contradictions and sparked new wars. Therefore, relatively peaceful

periods are in the last analysis nothing but breathing spaces between wars. As Lenin
put it, imperialist unions that were taken by those like Kautsky as embryos of a postimperialism period of peace are in fact means of transition from peaceful division of
the world to non-peaceful division, and vice-versa.
In capitalism, once relations of power changed, there is no other means but force to
resolve contradictions. The most characteristic feature of imperialism is the
competition for hegemony among a few great powers. If the strife for hegemony and
re-devision of spheres of influence among imperialist powers somehow set some
imperialist countries against one another, the parties would have to settle their
accounts and set a new balance of power according to their real strengths. This is in
the nature of capitalism. Capitalism cannot exist without competition and conflicts
among nation-states, including imperialist era. This does not only concern the world
in general but also the European continent in particular. If tension rises as a
consequence of heated competition and bring two European countries -say Britain and
Germany- against each other, then the ruling bourgeois of these countries will never
heed those social priests preaching European Union.
What form the tensions among countries can take is of secondary importance
compared to the main factor, i.e. economic competition. Keep in mind that at some
point speeches and diplomacy in the struggle among striving capitalist powers come
to an end and guns start to talk both in the era of capitalist colonialism and in the era
of imperialist expansion. The idea that the process of internationalisation of capital
can lessen the conflicts among nation-states, or even usher in a new era that
transcends nation-states is utterly unfounded. As Trotsky put, So long, however, as
the main productive forces of society are held by trusts, i.e., isolated capitalist cliques,
and so long as the national state remains a pliant tool in the hands of these cliques, the
struggle for markets, for sources of raw materials, for domination of the world, must
inevitably assume a more and more destructive character. [1]
With the new millennium imperialist system has plunged into such a deep and acute
crisis different from the previous periodic crises that even bourgeois strategists cannot
predict the time when it will end. This is the reason lying beneath the determination of
the US to drive the whole world into hysteria of war in the new period started in the
aftermath of the 11th of September.

EU and the dream of a stable democracy

We know that with the beginning of the 20 th century our world became the stage for
the highest stage of capitalism, the rise of the international rule of finance capital.
With capitalist production reaching greater dimensions the era of free competition was
replaced by the era of monopoly capitalism. The economic essence of imperialism
means giant monopolies on a national and international level. These monopolies find
expression in the formation of various unions on a national and international level, in
the rise of power of giant banks transcending national boundaries, centralisation in the
hands of a few of capital concentrated enormously.
With the development of monopolism, political superstructure of capitalism changes
from democracy to political reaction. Lenin said, imperialism is the epoch of finance

capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination,
not for freedom. Whatever the political system, the result of these tendencies is
everywhere reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field.[2]
This assessment is essentially correct and is a reply to those arguments that imperialist
era has created an expansion in democracy compared to the previous era of
capitalism. But as Lenin pointed out, this fact does not mean that differences in
political regimes in bourgeois order are removed.
As can be seen throughout all history of capitalism, also within the imperialist stage
there can be differences in political structuring of the bourgeois order depending on
the country and time. For example, in European countries there have been, for a long
time, relatively bourgeois democratic regimes compared to countries like Turkey. No
doubt that in the last analysis certain economic realities underlie this difference. In
those countries like Turkey that frequently fall into the grip of crises the bourgeois
order has proved that it has been short of breath for a western European type
bourgeois democracy. In any case, to avoid any misunderstandings, we must clearly
state that the democracy in Europe is a class democracy; the democracy of the ruling
bourgeois class, i.e. parliamentary form of its class dictatorship.
Although this fact is so clear for the Marxists, the democratic framework of the
European Union might look appealing for the working masses of those countries that
have failed to achieve even this level of democratic life. This is understandable. But,
to tell the truth, the bourgeois democratic framework that is presently possessed by
the European Union is in fact not a lasting and stable one at all. This framework is a
consequence of a long period of economic upswing that stretches from the aftermath
of the Second World War to recent times. One should not forget that before this
period, big imperialist power Germany which leads the European Union at present
was suffering under Hitler fascism. Some people argued that the relatively peaceful
and democratic period in the aftermath of the Second World War is a new phase which
has been built on the lessons of world war and fascism and which will never be lost
again. For them, political and legal unity in Europe would usher in an era of
democracy and set an example for other parts of the world.
These kinds of mindless ideas that have been propagated among the masses are
nothing new. At a time when European continent was convulsed by the rule of fascism
and a second world war, petty-bourgeois pacifism took comfort in a dream of
democracy that was to be brought by the Allied imperialist powers. Against these
kinds of delusions Trotsky said that the pledge that a democratic European federation
would be created was the most vulgar one of all pacifist lies. State was not an
abstraction but an instrument of monopoly capitalism. As long as capitalist property
was maintained a democratic federation in Europe would be a very bad repetition of
League of Nations at most.
The dream of an ideal and enduring European democracy stems from a mindset
which cannot or does not want to grasp the essential features of imperialism. And
although it has been popular for a long time, it seems that it cannot stand the burning
realities of the day. The European continent is not immune to consequences of the
great crisis that has shaken the USA, the hegemonic power of imperialist system, to
its foundations and brought down the Twin Towers that have been the symbol of the
capitalist American dream. Accordingly, with the stumbling in economy in recent

years the first targets to come under attack in Europe have been the democratic and
social rights of the working class. The USs declaration of war against the world and
the rising workers movement in European countries toll the bells for the European
bourgeoisie. In the new period we have entered, the ruling bourgeois will attempt to
restrict the bourgeois democratic framework at the cost of damaging the veneer of
historical-cultural superiority of Europe.
It is not the job of Marxists to sow illusions about bourgeois democracy among the
working class by exaggerating the relatively broader aspects of the bourgeois
democratic regime in Europe in comparison to Turkey. This is what the liberal lefts
are doing. Our task is to erect the alternative of workers democracy vis--vis
bourgeois democracy which has a limited significance in its essential character, even
in its broadest form, for the working class and which, in fact, veils exploitation.
However revolutionary struggle is a long-running one. One cannot attain the goal at
once. It is a childhood disorder to assume that the realities that can be grasped
easily by revolutionary cadres can be grasped by the masses immediately and easily.
We know what bourgeois democracy in European countries mean in the last analysis.
At a time when workers democracy is a burning need, bourgeois democracy, even in
its European form, cannot be regarded as a remedy as it is indeed the rule of the
bourgeois class. It is this bourgeois democracy that fuels xenophobia, and uses the
conditions it brings immigrant workers in as a threat to cut down the rights of the
European working class. Consequently, the pledge that EU membership will bring all
members an ever-widening wealth and democracy is a hollow pledge.
For us it is not a justifiable thing to tie the hope for a better future to an imperialist
union instead of relying on the organised power and struggle of the working class. But
we must employ a very careful language in our propaganda towards the masses. One
cannot do away with the illusions of the masses at one blow. Most of the working
masses in Turkey and Northern Cyprus look at their own plight and nurture
aspirations for a democratic regime at least on the level of European democracy. In
European countries, however, we see developments in the opposite direction. The
most powerful factor to end these illusions of the masses in Turkey and Northern
Cyprus that have a sympathetic attitude towards EU membership in relation to
expanding democratic rights will in the last analysis be their own experience in real
life. Moreover the present realities of capitalist system surface in a more striking and
quicker way than in the past.
To make up liberal tales that Turkey will be a heaven of democracy should it join the
EU is something genuine Marxists cannot do. But the alternative is not to argue for a
despotic-repressive statism in the name of nationalist leftism which is neither fish nor
fowl. In other words, not to tail-end EU-loving liberals does not justify at all the kind
of opposition to EU that is reduced to the level of nationalist bourgeois. In fact, the
latter are much more an obstacle than the former to the progress of the working class.
And they force the working class into the old repressive framework. For example, it is
not a bad thing at all, with respect to a state of general inaction, that for the working
class of Turkey to demand a broader democratic regime in the example of European
countries and embark on a struggle for more advanced demands. But one thing should
never be forgotten! Advanced demands can be won and preserved by having
confidence in and relying on ones own organised strength, not by relying on the
organisations of the bourgeois such as the EU.

Petty-bourgeois opposition is a dead end

Capitalist unions are no charity institutions. It is contrary to the logic of capitalism
that all partners gain equally. For example, relatively less developed countries and
regions are put in a disadvantageous position due to the common agriculture and price
policy within the European Union. Likewise, common customs policy works in the
same way. These consequences result in an opposition in the European Union
countries, members and candidates alike, of farmers and the bourgeois and pettybourgeois sections whose interests are damaged. However, while opposing to joining
capitalist unions, these opposition currents that do not aim at the foundations of
capitalism, wallow in a defence of national capitalism which is incompatible with
the economic realities of the day.
The main feature of petty-bourgeois opposition, with all its tendencies, left, right,
reformist or revolutionary, against imperialism is that they detach existing problems
from the dominant tendency of capitalist development. For example, when Turkey
applied for membership to the European Common Market in 1963, Turkish left
objected with the slogan: they are common/partners we are the market. While this
slogan is an expression of unequal relations within imperialist-capitalist unions, the
extent of reaction was in general on the level of a so-called anti-imperialism detached
from a genuine struggle against capitalism. And this slogan, given the conditions of
that period, even meant defence of national capitalism against Europe.
Petty-bourgeois leftism opposes defence of national independence against the
historical tendency of capitalism towards unity. This attitude is not revolutionary but
nationalist in essence. Since national independence in reality means achievement of
political independence, that is establishment of nation-state. In all countries where
political independence has been achieved and a bourgeois rule has been established,
the urge to carry on the struggle against imperialism with the aim of national
independence but not of socialism is essentially to subscribe to national capitalism.
And this, in the last analysis, means to advocate an impossible and retrogressive goal,
that is, national isolation. When it comes to opposing EU we have to remember this
reality. We should fight the kind of opposition to EU which is based on pettybourgeois nationalist hysteria as it leads to serving bourgeois nationalism. What is
needed is a kind of opposition to EU which is based on anti-capitalism in order the
working class struggle to be placed in an internationalist revolutionary path and to be
strengthened. This and only this attitude can clear the minds of the workers and toilers
who require satisfactory answers.
In imperialist stage of capitalism a national capitalism isolated from outside is never
possible. Since capitalist system rests on mutual dependence relations with unequal
workings. Therefore, the fact that weaker capitalist countries with respect to powerful
imperialist countries have a tendency towards economic convergence and
partnership/collaboration on an international level with this or that advanced capitalist
country or countries cannot be regarded as a mere question of political choice. This
tendency flows from a need imposed by inner workings of capitalist system. Although
in certain periods some bourgeois governments appear to take a reverse path under the
pretext of national interests the end result remains more or less the same. No
bourgeois government has ever managed to turn back the wheels of the economy with
simultaneously talking about economic independence and remaining in capitalist

system. While all those bourgeois governments that have undergone economic
regression and collapse under talk of economic independence could turn their
backs on an imperialist power, they have not, or cannot, come up with an outcome
other than going into the orbit of another imperialist power.
When we dig in the petty-bourgeois left circles discourse covered with revolutionary
guise we will see not a future that represent a transcending of capitalist system
towards socialism but an aspiration for a country that gives the highest priority to
fully independent and national interests. The petty-bourgeois left groups in Turkey or
north Cypru s that have swung to nationalist line reveal in a striking way what this
aspiration really means. These circles cover their propaganda with revolutionary
words that they borrow from Marxism as long as they speak in the abstract. However,
when it comes to a serious and concrete problem they do not shrink away from
offering their direct or indirect support to their bourgeois under the pretext of
national interests. Who are they? No need to count their names here, but you can
arrive at right addresses if you follow, for example in Turkey, the nationalist attitudes
(oppressor nation nationalism) on the Kurdish question. Or, it is quite instructive, for
example, that the communist party of Greek Cyprus, i.e. AKEL, tail-ended their
nationalist bourgeois and supported nationalist Papadopulous in the last elections. In
fact it is quite common to come across such attitudes on the question of EU among socalled communist parties and petty-bourgeois left circles in Turkey.
A genuine revolutionary, a genuine Marxist stands against EU or a likewise
imperialist union not from the standpoint of defending the national interests of his
own ruling bourgeoisie, but of the aims of the revolutionary working class struggle.
To content oneself with saying no to imperialist unions and institutions and not to
make the necessity of ending capitalism the major axis is petty-bourgeois leftism. All
those petty-bourgeois left currents that take struggle against imperialism as only a
defence of national economy-national state, seek to direct the attention of the
working class not towards a future transcending capitalist system but towards the past,
i.e. founding period of nation-states.
Capitalist mode of production is a global system that creates a world market and
connects the destinies of different nations. In the course of capitalist development
different nations achievement of independence has not been simultaneous with the
capitalist development of domestic market. But all countries advancing on capitalist
foundations have faced at a certain stage the need to become incorporated into the
imperialist system and went on advancing in this direction. In imperialist age,
salvation of the proletariat, and toilers at large, in those countries which have
established their nation-states and achieved national independence (to the extent it is
possible under capitalism) requires not turning backwards but moving forward. The
only way for salvation is to overthrow the unfair globalisation created by capitalism
and build an egalitarian and exploitation-less globalisation in its place, that is,
universal socialism. Therefore, a genuine and revolutionary struggle against the
globalisation of the imperialist stage of capitalism bringing so much suffering to
workers, can only be waged under the internationalist flag of socialism, and not under
the flag of national independence.

The debate on accession to the EU is an internal

question of the bourgeoisie
The way that Marx handled the debate between free trade and protectionism in his
time is worth remembering as an historical example. Since replacing the title of the
subject with Joining the EU or Staying out of It? will not change the essence. Marx
pointed out how the pro-free trade faction of the bourgeoisie, advocating the change
for its self interest, tried to present this change as though it was also for the good of
the working class. He unmasked the true intentions of bourgeois layers that acted as
liberals or progressives, in order that the working class was not deluded by them. In
terms of economic workings of the bourgeois rule, there is no policy that can work to
the mutual benefit of the bourgeoisie and the working class, neither free trade nor
protectionism. In reality, whether under protectionism or free trade, workers will still
remain to be the exploited class that produces the surplus value.
Nothing, then, can be a more self-derogatory attitude for a wage-slave than to take
sides in the dispute as to which one of the bourgeois alternatives is more favourable to
remain a slave. Marxists do not preach to the working class on taking this or that side
of a debate within the bourgeoisie. However, such questions have historical and social
backgrounds and this is precisely the point where it is essential to enlighten the
working class.
As is known, as long as capitalism is not overthrown, it has to proceed in such a way
as to strengthen economic ties and commercial relations on a world scale. Some
bourgeois groups benefit from this trend whereas others interests are harmed. Thus,
economic and political preferences are shaped in this context. For instance, the
bourgeois elements that are highly dependent on the domestic market would insist on
protectionism for their self-interests and base its propaganda on slogans such as
defend national interests! As for pro-free traders, they would stand up for opening
up to foreign markets and becoming well-known trade-marks etc. in the world arena
as they cover their propaganda with a discourse in which they say that the best way to
protect and develop the national interests is to take their way.
So, this was the essence of the debate over free trade that occurred within the
bourgeoisie in Marxs day. The fundamental tendency of capitalist development was
in many points in accord with the arguments of pro-free traders. Pro-protectionists
were representing nationalism and conservatism which were by no means compatible
with the long-term interests of the working class. The leftists who confined
themselves to shouting No! to the change offered by pro-free trade layers of the
bourgeoisie were not actually opposing the bourgeois rule. Such a stance did not
amount to anything more than offering support to one of the bourgeois alternatives,
and whats more, to an alternative that would strengthen the nationalist, conservative
and oppressive bourgeois layers. On the other side, even though those who wore
themselves out for Yes! to free trade took a relatively progressive stance, their
progressivism was not going beyond approving a bourgeois alternative and offering
support to capitalist trend. The only aspect of the question that is of particular concern
to the working class was the foundations laid by capitalist development for the future.
For such foundations were indicating the developments that were accelerating the
social revolution of the proletariat.

In his speech delivered before the Democratic Association of Brussels on 9 January

1848, Marx was saying Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criticizing freedom of
commerce we have the least intention of defending Protection.[3] Marx pointed out
that the system of free trade was generally destructive to the old equilibrium whereas
the system of protectionism in operation was conservative. The system of free trade
was going to break up old nations and push the antagonism between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie to the extreme. To sum up in one sentence, the system of free
trade was going to be the catalyst of the social revolution. And this was the only
aspect of this debate that could be associated with the revolutionary interests of the
proletariat. It was for this reason that Marx ended his speech with the following
words: It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free
trade.[4]
Marxs approach should set an example for us. For revolutionary Marxists, wearing
oneself out for No! like nationalist bourgeois or petty-bourgeois leftists who try to
roll back the wheel of history can by no means be seen as the correct attitude towards
debates on EU that take place in Turkey, Cyprus, and elsewhere. But neither is it a
right attitude to hail the Yes! camp of bourgeois elements that side with
imperialism. The mindset that can be outlined as, Imperialism is the modern
capitalism. The development of capitalism is inevitable and progressive. This means
imperialism is progressive too. Therefore, one must kneel down before it and praise
it, befits to modern Cunows, which Lenin illustrated when he exposed Cunow who
supported German Imperialism. The progress of capitalism, as Marx pointed out,
concerns us only to the extent that it paves the way for the workers revolution that
will overthrow this system, thus for the socialist future.
The debates and confrontations over EU accession that take place in Turkey and
elsewhere are basically internal questions of the bourgeoisie. We are not obliged to
take sides, to say yes or no, in this debate. We must keep in mind that, regardless
of the question, a correct attitude that is based on a Marxist point of view, reflecting
the interests of the working class, can never be constrained within the framework of
capitalism. The solution does not lie in capitalism either with or without EU. The road
to liberation of the working class and toiling masses from the conditions of oppression
and exploitation lies in the social revolution that will overthrow capitalist order.
Let us also note that if the bourgeois are to form alliances such as the EU due to the
necessities imposed by capitalist system and in order to overcome the obstacles posed
by national borders in accordance with its self-interests, so be it! We are sure that all
the steps to be taken in this direction (apart from the fact that it is uncertain whether
they will take these steps or not or whether the EU will disintegrate or not) will serve,
in the final analysis, as catalysts for the social revolution of the working class. In
other words, no matter what all the bourgeois of the world do, they will not be able to
free themselves from the laws of history!

Bourgeois alternatives cannot be the solution!

The interests of the working class do not require favouring one of the bourgeois
alternatives against the other. But unfortunately, as seen in the cases of Turkey and
Cyprus, whilst they are not yet convinced of the necessity of the revolutionary
solution, the masses are confined within a double-sided bourgeois framework where

one side is occupied by liberals and the other by nationalists. Unless this bourgeois
framework is abandoned, the liberal attitude stands out as a more reasonable
alternative than the nationalistic one which represents isolation from the world for the
sake of so-called national interests and intensification of domestic oppression and
exploitation.
Those bourgeois alternatives that promise some reforms always sound appealing to
the masses who suffer from oppressive and reactionary bourgeois alternatives. As
long as they do not adopt revolutionary solutions, the working masses are doomed to
be gripped by illusions in every major question. One must sense the mood of the
masses under such illusions. However, sensing their mood does not mean to abandon
the effort to show them these illusions. Marxist attitude has never had, and must never
have, anything in common with tendencies that support the illusions of the masses for
the sake of standing by them and that regard tail-ending them as virtue.
There is an old saying, All roads lead to Baghdad. In todays world, the solutions of
all major social problems lie in the social revolution. If the masses do not find this
convincing enough due to the incapacity of the forces and preparations of the
revolution, then twisting the facts for the sake of impressing them will not help.
The question regarding debates on the EU is very clear for revolutionary Marxists:
capitalism with or without EU cannot bring any solution to problems of the working
class. It is the shortest way to self-deception to expect a solution from the lesser of
two evils, whilst remaining within the capitalist system in its period of decay. As
seen in the cases of Turkish, Kurdish, Cypriot, Palestinian or Iraqi peoples, the
solution plans of imperialist alliances such as the EU or the UN, to which the
working masses cling as a hope of getting rid of existing conditions, are nothing but
trickeries. Such plans are nothing but roadblocks put in the way of revolutionary
solution which is, for today, considered impossible by workers and toilers. Therefore,
unless the working class and toiling masses organise and mobilise themselves in order
to implement a revolutionary plan that will represent their own interests, they will not
be able to liberate themselves from being stuck in bourgeois alternatives and losing
time. As long as they deceive themselves supporting bourgeois plans that are expected
to change the poor conditions they live in, they will waste both today and the future in
conflicts of interest between imperialist powers. The truth is that simple. But, it would
be naive to expect masses to discover this in a trice. The task that lies ahead of
revolutionary internationalist forces of the proletariat is to keep up the struggle
tirelessly until the real solution is realised by the masses.

The solution lies in the revolutionary struggle of the

working class
The imperialist stage of capitalism boosts concentration and centralisation of capital
as well as monopolist mergers. This deepens the contradiction between two
tendencies, economic centralisation and a fragmented political system composed of
nation-states. Globalised capitalism imposes a globalisation in politics, that is, a
central structure under control of hegemonic powers in the world arena. As distinct
from the nationalist petty-bourgeois leftism, Marxism does not oppose a globalising,
economically integrating world. Fragmentation of the world into small nation-states is

also at variance with broader interests of the working class. However, what
accompanies this political centralisation under capitalism is not the expansion of
democracy, but rather the rise of militarism and oppressive policies.
Having created a world system, capitalist mode of production makes it inevitable that
there will be multifaceted relations and alliances at different levels rather than
national isolation. Yet, what this inevitability really indicates is not to consent to the
presence of the capitalist system as if it is an unchangeable reality, to comply with or
even advocate its rules, but to transcend this rotten and degenerated capitalist order. In
order to be able to offer solutions to todays burning problems in favour of the
working masses, it is indispensable to build a revolutionary alternative that goes
beyond the existing order. And the alternative that must be advocated in todays world
can be nothing else than a workers power matching a globalised world.
When it comes to the unity of Europe, the solution is clear. At the current level of
productive forces, the interests of all humanity entail integration on the basis of a
classless and non-exploitative order. Only a union under workers power can prevent
the fragmentation of Europe due to confrontations between imperialist powers and
national conflicts they provoke. Therefore, against the European Union of
capitalists, internationalist communists support the programme of unity of the
working class and raise the slogan United Workers Soviets of Europe. It is clear
that, as the age of revolutionary upheavals gradually engulfs the world, revolutionary
solutions proposed by the working class will find increasing echo in the hearts of the
masses.
Whenever it was shaken by imperialist wars and dragged into chaos, the world always
was on the verge of revolutions. Today, this objective reality is as valid as, or even
more valid than, it was yesterday. However, the objective reality will not change the
world by itself, as long as the question of subjective factor, which is indispensible in
mobilising the millions of working women and men of the world in a conscious and
organised way, that is, the question of revolutionary leadership, remains unsolved.
But, we can never deny the influence of objective realities on the revolutionary
struggle. During the decades of growth of the capitalist economy, the revolutionary
potential of the working class remained latent like the potential energy of a sleeping
giant. Now the giant is waking up as the ground begins to be shaken by footsteps of
workers in many countries of the world. Revolutionary forces of the proletariat have
now left behind the dark period of swimming against the current. Consequently, the
need for revolutionary internationalist organisation of the proletariat in every corner
of the world has gained a much more decisive importance now.
Let us remember that even in a very difficult period of history, during the days when
the first imperialist war broke out and the Second International collapsed, Lenin did
not abandon the historical optimism of Marxism. As Krupskaya recalled in her
memoirs, he was saying, It does not matter that we now number only a few
individuals, millions will be with us! The Great October Revolution proved Lenin
right. As new generations of workers and toilers begin to mobilise all over the world
today, we no longer number only a few individuals!

[1] Trotsky, Imperialist War And The Proletarian World Revolution,

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi...
[2] Lenin, Imperialism, LCW, vol.22, p.297
[3] Karl Marx, Selected Writings, Oxford University Press, 2000, p.295.
[4] Karl Marx, ibid, p.296.

Stalin and Zionism

Written by A. Kramer in Israel Thursday, 15 May 2003

Some on the left still maintain the myth that Stalin was "a great fighter against world
Zionism". In reality his policy on this question was a zig-zagging one that went from
support for Zionism to outright anti-Semitism. A Kramer, in Israel, unravels the truth.
On February 11, 1945 in Yalta president Roosevelt asked Stalin, what he thought of
Zionism. The answer he got shocked the translator Charles Bolen who had read
Stalin's work on "Marxism and national question": "In principle I support Zionism,
but there are difficulties with solving the Jewish question. Our experiment in
Birobidzan (1) failed, because the Jews prefer to live in cities".
It is a well-known fact that Stalin personally did not like Jews. He also detested the
British, the Chechens and several other nationalities. He had a narrow Russian
nationalist chauvinist outlook. He was very far removed from the internationalism that
was characteristic of Lenin and the Bolshevik party before the party succumbed to the
Stalinist degeneration. While he definitely had these traits he also liked to cosy up to
different petit-bourgeois nationalist movements in different countries.
Towards the end of the 1920s he had developed a strong relationship with Chang Kai
Shek's Kuomintang. In spite of this "friendship" that cosy relationship ended with the
massacre of the Chinese communists in Nanking.
Later he was to push the Spanish Communists into an alliance with the so-called
"progressive wing" of the Spanish bourgeoisie in the 1930s. This was to lead to the
defeat of the Spanish revolution. NKVD agents (the then KGB, or Russian
intelligence services) were actively involved in such manoeuvres

During the Second World War Stalin formed an alliance with the Anglo-American
bourgeoisie. Part of this was an agreement that was to lead to the liquidation of the
Comintern (the Communist International). In Greece it led to the open betrayal of the
Greek Communists who were left to be massacred by the British forces after the war.
All these "alliances" ended in big disappoints for "comrade" Stalin and what was even
worse, they led to a large number of victims among the workers in the countries
where this false policy was applied. However, there are people who never learn, and
Stalin was one of these. The Zionist movement thus became the next adventure that
Stalin steeped himself in. In the period immediately after the Second World War the
Zionists were in conflict with the British masters of Palestine and were looking
around for new friends.
We must point out that Joseph Vissarionovich (Stalin) had had some contacts with the
Zionists in the past. The Russian Zionist activist Dan Pines wrote in his memoirs that
he had visited Stalin when the latter was Commissar for Nationalities in the mid
1920s and got his support for his Zionist activities in Russia.
This position was in total contradiction to official communist policy. It flew in the
face of all those Comintern decisions and also of the policy of the Jewish section of
the Comintern that had declared Zionism as a dangerously reactionary movement.
In 1920 the Second Congress of the Comintern had issued a statement on the colonial
and national question, in which we can read the following: "A glaring example of the
deception of the working people of oppressed nations by the united forces of
imperialism of the Entente and the bourgeoisie of these nations is the Palestinian
adventure that is being put forward by the Zionists (and Zionism in general, which, in
claiming to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, in practice is advocating the
expulsion of the Arab working people from Palestine, where the Jewish workers
constitute only an insignificant minority, a role that is exploited by Britain.)" (2) But
Stalin completely ignored the genuine traditions of the Bolshevik Party and the
Communist International (when it was led by Lenin and Trotsky). A sympathy for
Zionism was typical of the "right Bolsheviks". Another supporter of Zionism was
Felix Dzerzinsky, the head of the GPU, who was also a "right Bolshevik".
However, in line with the ultra-left turn of the Stalinists in the late 1920s, when most
of Bolshevik oppositionist leaders were in prison, this sympathy towards Zionism was
suddenly suppressed and it was outlawed in Soviet Russia. In spite of this, criticism of
Zionism was never strong and systematic in the 1930s. In fact not all relations were
bad between Zionism and Stalinism.
However, after having had their hopes raised about the "positive" aspects of Zionism,
by the late 1920s many left wing Zionists had been disappointed by their experiences
in Palestine and they returned to the USSR. The majority of these people were later
executed in 1937.
Others understood that there was no way back from the "Zionist paradise". In the late
1930s the official position on Zionism in the USSR also began to change to a more
favourable one. In the huge official Soviet Encyclopedia published in those times we
find a positive attitude towards Zionism. It said that Jewish migration to Palestine had

become a "progressive factor" because many of the immigrants stood on the left and
were also workers and these could be used against the pro-British Arab sheikhs!
At the beginning of 1947 a very strange coalition had come into being over the
Palestinian question the USA, the USSR and the Zionists. They all supported the
partition of Palestine. Of course each one of these had their own specific interests.
The USA wanted to push out the old British colonial lion and replace him in the oil
rich and strategically important Middle East. As for Stalin, he wanted to use the Jews
in Palestine against British imperialism, and to establish a point of support for the
Soviet bureaucracy in the Middle East. We also know what Ben-Gurion and his gang
wanted a "Great Israel" on both sides of the Jordan or at least encompassing the
Sinai peninsula.
We could ask ourselves the question as to whether Stalin had any inkling of a Marxist
understanding when he supported Zionism? The answer is, of course, that he did not.
His approach was all reduced to playing the old game between Russian and British
imperialism for control of this region. Stalin didn't support any drastic social changes
in Palestine and thus a bloody conflict to divide Palestine was absolutely predictable.
The only solution would have been a united Socialist Palestine for both Jews and
Arabs as part of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, but this was a closed book
for Stalin. Even worse than this was the fact that the Soviet authorities gave a "green
light" for supplying Israel with weapons. Through their puppet regime in
Czechoslovakia arms were indeed sent to Israel, and at the same time "communists"
were encouraged to serve in the Israeli armed forces, those same forces that
committed terrible crimes against the Arabs workers and peasants. The "Great
Leader" of course had hoped to became a patron of the future Jewish state, and to
achieve a so-called "Finlandisation" and thus to make Israel a capitalist ally of the
Soviet Union.
The most ardent exponent of this line was Vacheslav Molotov, the man that was in
charge of the Soviet foreign office between 1939 and 1949. He was the one who put
his signature to the infamous Stalin-Hitler pact together with Ribbentrop in 1939. He
was absolutely convinced that the USSR should abandon its policy of supporting the
Arab communists because he regarded them as being powerless and that it should
shift its support to the Zionists as he believed these were in a position to cut out a
large chunk from the British Empire. Experts from the Middle East subdivision of the
international department of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist
Party had criticised this perspective, but nobody at the top of the Soviet regime would
listen to them, and the head of this subdivision, Doctor of History, Peter
Vladimirovich Milogradov, who had criticised Molotov's position, was consequently
replaced.
But Stalin and Molotov had made a serious miscalculation. The Israeli bourgeoisie
and the bureaucracy of the emerging Israeli state had always maintained deep
economic and political links with the West and in particular with the USA. Golda
Meir said at that time: "We cannot buy Soviet weapons with money that we have
received from American Jews". Thus the Israeli ruling class cynically exploited Soviet
help to their own advantage when they were setting up their state, but after the so-

called "War of Independence" was over they began to develop closer relations with
the West.
This end to the "friendship" between the USSR and the Zionists was easily
predictable. The academic Ivan Michailovich Maisky, the soviet ambassador in
London between 1934 and 1943 visited Palestine in 1943 on his way home. He met
the Zionist leaders, and from the results of this meeting he drafted a report for the
Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov, in which he wrote the following:
"They are a very nice people, they have all completed their education in Russian
colleges or gymnasiums. We spoke about classical literature and the Russian
language, but they think in English with an American accent". This is an eloquent
description of the real position of the Zionist leadership.
The failure of Soviet policy in the Middle East had become abundantly clear. Israel
was lost to the Soviet sphere of influence. But as a consequence of this disastrous
policy of Stalin many of the Communist parties in the Arabs countries disintegrated
and lost their influence.
In Damascus mobs looted the offices of the local Communist Party after Gromyko
had made his speech in the United Nations in favour of the partition of Palestine. The
Communist Party of Palestine had both Arab and Jewish members and had always
supported the position of one state for two peoples. But because it was linked to the
Soviet Union it also suffered a large fall in support. Traditionally it had had close
contacts with the Communist parties and movements in the neighbouring Arab
countries, such as Palestine, Egypt and the Lebanon, but these were now broken.
Now Stalin did a complete 180-degree turn as he had done many times in the past. In
1933 Stalin had shifted his position from an extremely ultra-left course, in which even
the Socialist parties were regarded as enemies, (or "social- fascists"), to an alliance
with the so-called "liberal bourgeoisie" (the "Popular Front") .Thus towards the end of
the 1940s Stalin moved from supporting Jewish nationalism to an outright antiSemitic position. This manoeuvre also fitted well with his policy of the "creeping
Thermidor" which included the restoration of some reactionary customs that harked
back to Tsarist Russia.
Thus anti-Semitic hysteria was whipped up right until the death of Stalin in 1953. It
was to be his last present to the Zionists. As result of this Stalinist policy of
discrimination and oppression thousands of Russian Jews were pushed into the hands
of the Jewish nationalists, the Zionists. Thus rather than weakening Zionism, Stalin's
policy enormously strengthened it and provided it with more recruits.
It is curious to note today in Russia how some old hard-line Stalinists regard Stalin as
"a great fighter against world Zionism". This had its mirror image even in Israel itself,
among some on the left. In some kibbutzim until the beginning of the 1980s it was
still possible to find pictures of Stalin hanging on the walls! For some he was
regarded as the man that helped realize the Zionist dream. In spite of all these myths,
however, the genuine Marxists in Israel today know the real truth.
(May 2003)

(1) After the 1917 revolution Lenin and the Bolsheviks granted those Jews who
wished to live in their own autonomous region, the area known as Birobidzan. This
was a gesture on the part of the Bolsheviks to demonstrate that the new workers' state
was putting an end to all forms of discrimination. The vast majority of Jews did not
take up the offer because they felt that their rights were now guaranteed in post
revolutionary Russia. Unfortunately this was not to be the case under the later
Stalinist regime.
(2) Translated from the Russian edition of The Communist International, 1919-1943.
Vol. 1 Leningrad., 1960. P. 144.

talin: 50 years after the death of a

tyrant - Part one
Written by Alan Woods Wednesday, 05 March 2003

Fifty years ago today the world heard the news of the death of Stalin. For decades the
Stalinist propaganda machine had assiduously encouraged the myth of Stalin as "the
Lenin of today", who was supposed to have led the Bolshevik Party together with
Lenin. But all this was merely a construction to justify the usurpation of power by a
tyrant who destroyed Lenin's party, liquidated the political conquests of October and
wrecked the Communist International.
"The revolution explodes the social lie. The revolution is true. It begins by calling
things and the relations between things by their proper names [] But the revolution
itself is not an integral and harmonious process. It is full of contradictions [] The
revolution itself produces a new ruling stratum which seeks to consolidate its
privileged position and is prone to see itself not as a transitory historical instrument,
but as the completion and crowning of history." (Trotsky, The Stalin School of
Falsification.)
Fifty years ago today the world heard the news of the death of Stalin. For decades the
Stalinist propaganda machine had assiduously encouraged the myth of Stalin as "the
Lenin of today", who was supposed to have led the Bolshevik Party together with
Lenin. But all this was merely a construction to justify the usurpation of power by a
tyrant who destroyed Lenin's party, liquidated the political conquests of October and
wrecked the Communist International.
In actual fact, Stalin played a very secondary role in the history of the Bolshevik
Party. He was made a member of the Central Committee at a time when there was a
shortage of experienced people in Russia. Stalin attended the Fifth Party Congress in
London in 1907, but uttered not a single word in any of the sessions. Stalin was what
one might call a "practico" - a committeeman who was involved in the practical and

administrative aspects of the work of the revolutionary party. He was never a

theoretician, a writer or an orator. He was interested in building the Party machine.
People like this can play an important role in the Party, as long as they are kept under
the firm control of a theoretically developed and ideologically firm leadership. But if
they try to take control of the Party and substitute organisational narrowness for
theory, it is always a recipe for disaster. Lacking the political and moral authority, they
will always resort to the apparatus to resolve internal problems. This is a finished
recipe for crises and splits. Moreover, they tend to approach every problem from an
organisational and administrative point of view. This has happened more than once in
the history of the revolutionary movement - and always with the most negative
results.
Lenin never saw the Party in such a way, although he was perfectly capable of
building an apparatus, and did so more than once. For Lenin, the Party was in the
first place, programme, ideas, methods and traditions, and only in the second place
an apparatus to put these ideas into practice. He understood the dangers that could
arise if the Party machine escaped from political control.
Stalin and the October revolution
On several occasions Lenin clashed bitterly with the Bolshevik committeemen on this
question. At critical moments, those "practicos" showed their complete inability to
understand the revolutionary ideas and theory of Marxism and lost their bearings. So
it was with Stalin, the archetypal committeeman or Party apparatchik. With such
people, organizational intransigence (or plain bullying) is the reflection not of strength
but of political weakness. Stalin was inclined to the Bolsheviks, not because of their
political and theoretical clarity, but because they were a disciplined and centralised
organisation. Not for nothing was Lenin's faction in 1903 described as "the hards" as
opposed to "the softs" who supported Martov.
However the "hardness" of the Bolsheviks, their revolutionary intransigence, was only
an expression of their political line, which in turn was rooted in Marxist theory. The
centralised organisation has no meaning in and of itself. It is only a means to an end.
However, the committeemen tended to see it as an end in itself. In a peculiar way they
repeated the view of the revisionist Bernstein, who said: "the movement is everything,
the final goal nothing". Such a statement (actually quite meaningless) reflects the
mentality of the Party "practico", the narrow-minded apparatchik or bureaucrat who
sees the revolution not as the self-movement of the working class, but purely through
the spectacles of Party organization.
Like many other committeemen, Stalin was able to show intransigence in a narrow
sphere, but in the broader stage of the class struggle and above all revolution, he was
out of his depth. At every key moment in the history of the Bolshevik Party in the
period before the revolution, Stalin vacillated and adapted himself to opportunism and
conciliationism. He even described the differences between Lenin and the Mensheviks
as a "storm in a tea cup" and an migr squabble. That led to sharp conflicts with
Lenin, for example in 1912 and again in February 1917, when together with Kamenev
he was in favour of unification of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

Stalin in 1917
In April 1917 when Lenin demanded that the Bolsheviks come out firmly against the
bourgeois Provisional Government, Stalin and Kamenev immediately disowned him
in the pages of Pravda, stating that his position was "unacceptable in that it starts
from the assumption that the bourgeois democratic revolution has ended [...]."
(Pravda, April 21 (8) 1917.) Only after a sharp internal struggle did Lenin succeed in
winning over the Party for his position.
Contrary to the old mythology, Stalin's role in the October revolution was
insignificant. The attempts made by the falsified histories of the 1930s to claim a
special role for the so-called Military Revolutionary Centre of which Stalin was a
member are absurd. In fact, this committee was only a sub-committee of the Military
Revolutionary Council, which was headed by - Leon Trotsky. In fact, the famous
MRC never even functioned, and was only remembered years later when it became
necessary to find some kind of a role for Stalin in October.
A poor speaker, Stalin's real sphere of action was not the barricades, factories or
barracks but in the Party offices, where he was working to cultivate a layer of cronies.
Maria Joffe, the widow of the Bolshevik leader Adolph Joffe, who committed suicide
in protest at the Stalinists in the 1920s, and who herself spent 28 years in Stalin's
camps, comments:
"But one of the Smolny men, puny and insignificant [] never went round visiting
factories and regiments; he sat permanently at the end of the wire, connected with all
the provinces and all the towns. Although it was the charming, gentle Elena Stasova
who was the secretary of the Central Committee, all daily instructions, all answers to
urgent queries and the ordinary routine telegraphic traffic - all bore his [Stalin's]
signature. Thus it happened that the various county and regional organizations mostly
saw and remembered one particular name. And, conforming to an instruction, the
replies were also addressed to him. No one at the time took any notice of the fact that
this one man was gradually and persistently wooing the provinces, getting them used
to him and winning them to his side. On occasions he would call some leading worker
to come and see him and at Party conferences he appeared to have more friends than
anyone else. Inviting them to a friendly' drink, he would get to know in detail how a
particular organization functioned. That's how it was in 1917." (Maria Joffe, One
Long Night, pp. 69-70.)
The fact that Stalin was virtually unknown outside a narrow circle of Party activists in
1917 is immediately clear from reading John Reed's famous account of the October
revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World. Lenin described this book in his
introduction as "a most truthful version of events". He "strongly recommended this
book to all the workers of the world" and adds that this is "a book I would like to see
published in millions of copies [] and translated into all languages". But in this
book, which emphasises Trotsky's role, Stalin is hardly mentioned, although he does
speak of a vast number of people of greater or lesser importance in 1917. The book
index shows that whereas Trotsky is mentioned 54 times, Stalin is mentioned only
twice. This accurately expresses the real state of affairs. It also explains why Reed's
book, despite Lenin's enthusiastic recommendations, was withdrawn from all Soviet
libraries in the 1930s and not republished again in the USSR in Stalin's lifetime.

Soviet democracy
One of the most disgusting slanders that is constantly repeated today is that Leninism
and Stalinism are the same. In fact there is nothing in common between the regime of
workers democracy established by Lenin and Trotsky and the totalitarian monstrosity
that Stalin erected over the dead bones of the Bolshevik Party.
Already in State and Revolution, written in the revolutionary days of 1917, Lenin laid
down the four conditions for Soviet power - not for Socialism or Communism, but for
the first days of workers' power:
Free and democratic elections with right of recall for all Soviet officials.
No official to receive a higher wage than a skilled worker.
No standing army or police force but the armed people.
Gradually, all the tasks of running the state must be done by everybody in turn.
"When everybody is a bureaucrat' in turn, nobody is a bureaucrat."
These elementary principles of Leninism were contained in the 1919 Party
Programme. It is true that, under difficult conditions where the revolution was isolated
amidst terrible backwardness, hunger and illiteracy, there were inevitable distortions.
As early as 1920 Lenin said that "ours is a workers state with bureaucratic
deformations". But these were relatively small deformations, and nothing like the
monstrous regime later established by Stalin.
The real cause of the problems faced by the Bolsheviks was the isolation of the
revolution. Lenin and Trotsky formed the Communist International in 1919 as a
means of breaking out of this isolation. This was the only way forward. The 1919
Party Programme was written in terms of uncompromising proletarian
internationalism. It started from the premise that "the era of the world-wide
proletarian revolution had begun".
It explained that "deprivation of political rights and any kind of limitation of freedom
are necessary as temporary measures" due to war and that "the Party will aim to
replace and completely abolish them". But this aim was postponed by the invasion of
the Soviet state by 21 armies of foreign intervention that plunged the country into a
bloodbath.
Despite everything the working class enjoyed democratic rights. The 1919 Party
programme specified that "all the working masses without exception must be induced
to take part in the work of state administration". Direction of the planned economy
was to be mainly in the hands of the trade unions. Collectivisation was not mentioned,
but rather support for various types of co-operatives.
This document was immediately translated into all the main languages of the world
and widely distributed. However, by the time of the Purges in 1936 it was already
regarded as a dangerous document and all copies of it were quietly removed from all
libraries and bookshops in the USSR.

A commission was set up, with Stalin as chairperson, to produce a new Party
programme. Besides Stalin there were 25 other Party officials, including Voznesensky,
Beria and Bagirov - each of whom were later shot as "enemies of the people". When
Lenin and Trotsky stood at the head of the Party, its congresses were held every year
without fail, even in the difficult years of the Civil War. Under Stalin, thirteen years
passed before the 19th Party congress was held in October 1952. We had the grotesque
situation where for many years the USSR was ruled by a Party whose (theoretically
still valid) programme was actually banned by the censorship.
The general secretary
The general secretary was never the most important post in the leadership of the
Bolshevik Party, having a mainly administrative character. Before Stalin the general
secretary was Sverdlov, an outstanding organizer and a man of high moral character.
But Sverdlov died in March 1919. Lenin was anxious to find a replacement and
thought that Stalin was the best candidate. But Stalin was no Sverdlov. From 1919,
with the growth of the new party apparatus, the post of general secretary became
much more important. In December 1919 a new rule was passed making district
secretaries a full-time post.
From 1920 on there was a steady stream of complaints about "bureaucratism" in the
Party. But these complaints were at first concerned with the abuses of individuals, red
tape, etc. At this stage this was a relatively healthy workers' state, with only minor
bureaucratic deviations. But this was about to change.
To the degree that the working class was exhausted and weakened by the long years
of war, revolution and civil war, they fell into passivity. This led to a colossal increase
in bureaucracy. The end of the civil war greatly increased the problem. The
demobilization of the Red Army meant that a large number of former military
personnel were absorbed into the state apparatus. These people were mainly honest
Communists, but had got used to the method of command.
Lenin wanted a strong person at the centre of the Party apparatus to root out
corruption and bureaucratism. He thought that Stalin was such a person, but he was
mistaken. Once installed in such an important post, Stalin began to staff the Party's
central offices with cronies such as Kaganovich, who was put in charge of the Party's
Organizational Department (Orgotdel). This committee controlled appointments. It
therefore had powers of patronage. It would never have occurred to Sverdlov to use
this position for personal gain. And the Party itself was very clear on the question of
appointments and non-elective positions in general. The Tenth Party Congress, held
under very difficult circumstances, passed the following resolution on the trade
unions:
"It is above all necessary to put into practice [] on a wide scale the principle of
elections to all organs [] and to do away with the method of appointments from the
top."
On the Party, another resolution stated that all members must be ensured "an active
part in the life of the party, in the discussions of all questions arising in the party".
Moreover, "the nature of workers' democracy excludes every form of appointment in

place of election as a system". (See KPRSS v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 1, pp. 516-27 and
534-49.)
In general, the system of appointments would only be permissible in underground
conditions. However, Stalin systematically used the system of appointments to build a
base of support among Party officials grateful to him for promotion.
Lenin versus Stalin
Every bureaucracy tends to become a closed caste of privileged elements, anxious
only to defend their vested interests. To imagine that a workers' state is somehow
immune to such tendencies is foolish. But in a workers' state in conditions of extreme
backwardness, with a weak and exhausted working class and a largely illiterate
peasant population, the dangers of bureaucratic degeneration were extreme. That is
why Lenin was alarmed. He saw that the bureaucracy could undermine and destroy
the Soviet state - and history has proved him correct.
In an attempt to fight against bureaucracy, Lenin set up Rabkrin - the Workers and
Peasants Inspectorate and put Stalin in charge of it. But instead of fighting
bureaucracy, Rabkrin became a hotbed of bureaucracy. In one of his last letters Lenin
says that Rabkrin does not have a shred of authority and demands its reorganisation.
Lenin warned many times, especially in his last writings and speeches, of the danger
of bureaucratism in a workers' state. His advice to remove Stalin from the post of
general secretary was no accident. He gradually realised that Stalin represented the
very bureaucratic tendencies he was warning against.
During Lenin's last illness, he launched a sharp struggle against Stalin over his
handling of the national question - a matter of life and death for the October
revolution. In 1920, without consulting the leadership, Stalin staged what amounted to
a coup when he engineered the invasion of Georgia, a soviet republic where the
Mensheviks were in control. Faced with a fait d'accompli, Lenin reluctantly
acquiesced but issued stern warnings that the Georgians were to be treated with
sensitivity and respect.
Stalin's henchman Ordzhonikidze was made virtual dictator of Georgia. Lenin
bombarded him with directives urging moderation and advising that concessions
should be made to the Georgian Mensheviks. This advice was ignored. The situation
got so bad that Stalin's agents were acting like an occupying force. The Georgian
Bolshevik leaders protested, but they were answered with the tactics of bullying and
intimidation. On one occasion, a Georgian Bolshevik was physically assaulted by
Ordzhonikidze. Such an act was completely unprecedented, although it was nothing
compared to the wholesale violence later used by Stalin and his gangsters.
In 1922 Stalin, Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze were using violence and bullying
tactics to force the Georgian government to accept the dictates of Moscow. With
Lenin, now seriously ill, Stalin used his control of the Party apparatus to isolate Lenin
completely. But Lenin found out about the Georgian affair, and he was scandalised by
the conduct of Stalin and his henchmen Dzerzhinsky and Ordzhonikidze. It had
serious implications not just for the national question but also for the future of Soviet

democracy in general. He clearly understood that Stalin and his bureaucratic clique
was behind all this - hence his decision to remove Stalin as general secretary.
Stalin attempted to isolate Lenin, using his control over the Party apparatus and the
Kremlin doctors. Despite his failing health, Lenin dictated a series of notes to his
secretaries, which he managed to smuggle out with the assistance of his wife,
Krupskaya. One of these messages was a secret memorandum to Trotsky, asking him
to take charge of the defence of Lenin's positions at the forthcoming Party congress.
The existence of this correspondence between Lenin and Trotsky was revealed to
Kamenev by Trotsky, who did not know that Kamenev and Zinoviev had formed a
secret bloc with Stalin.
On the 22nd of December 1922, Kamenev wrote to Stalin:
"Joseph,
"Tonight T[rotsky] phoned me, saying he had received a note from St[arik] (i.e.
Lenin, AW), who, though he is happy with the congressional report on Vneshtorg (the
Ministry of Foreign Trade, AW), wants T[rotsky] to deliver a report on this question
to a faction of the Congress and to prepare the ground to put this question to the Party
Congress. Apparently, he means to strengthen his position. Trotsky did not offer his
opinion, but he asked that the matter be handed over to the section of the CC
responsible for the conduct of the Congress. I promised him to tell you about it, and I
am doing this.
"I could not reach you by phone.
"In my report I am going to present the resolution of the CC Plenum with fervour, I
shake your hand.
"L. Kam[enev]"
Stalin answered immediately:
"Comrade
Kamenev!
"I have received your note. I think we should confine ourselves to the statement in
your report without bringing this up at the faction. How did Starik manage to organize
this correspondence with Trotsky? Foerster utterly forbade him to do it.
J.
(Izvestiya Ts. Kom. KPSS, 1989, p. 191.)

Stalin."

These two letters were not published in the Soviet Union until 1989. When Stalin
found out about the memorandum he flew into a fury and phoned Krupskaya to warn
her not to meddle. Krupskaya tried to defend herself and in the course of the
conversation Stalin swore at her and abused her in the most shameless fashion, calling
her a "whore" and a "syphilitic bitch". These expressions sufficiently illustrate Stalin's
character and the degree of his loyalty and affection to the dying Lenin.
The next day, Krupskaya wrote to Kamenev, protesting bitterly about Stalin's conduct:

"Lev
Borisych,
"With regard to the short dictation I took from Vlad. Ilyich with his doctor's
permission, Stalin spoke to me yesterday in the rudest terms. This is not my first day
as a Party member - and during these 30 years I have not heard a single rude word
from any of my comrades. The Party interests and those of Ilyich are no less dear to
me than to Stalin. Now I need to exercise great self-control. I know better than any
doctor what I may or may not tell Ilyich, as I know what agitates him and what does
not. At any rate I know it better than Stalin. I am appealing to you and to Grigorii
(Zinoviev, AW), as the closest friends of V.I. and I beg you to defend me from the
rude interference into my personal life, from unseemly swearing and threats. I don't
doubt the unanimous decision of the Control Commission, with which Stalin took
liberties to threaten me, but I have neither the strength nor the time to spend on this
stupid squabble. I am a human being and my nerves are extremely strained.
N.
(Lenin, Collected Works in Russian, vol. 54, 1965, pp. 674-5.)

Krupskaya"

On March 5th 1923, Lenin dictated a letter to Stalin in which he broke off all personal
and comradely relations with him - an unprecedented action. On the same day Lenin
offered Trotsky a bloc against Stalin. He asked Trotsky "urgently to undertake the
defence of Georgia in the Central Committee". The following day Lenin sent Trotsky
three notes on the national question that he had dictated some ten weeks before.
If Lenin had not fallen ill, Stalin would undoubtedly have been removed from his post
of general secretary. One of his secretaries remarked that Vladimir Ilyich was
"preparing a bomb" for Stalin at the Party Congress. He sent a note to the Georgian
Bolshevik leaders Mdivani and Makharadze, giving them his support "with all my
heart" against Stalin.
Although Lenin had broken all relations with Stalin and demanded his removal as
general secretary, Stalin managed to hold onto his position by a series of manoeuvres.
As a result Lenin's Testament was not made public, despite Krupskaya's protests. At
the meeting of the Politburo and Presidium where the matter was discussed, Stalin
said:
"I suggest there is no reason to publish, especially as Ilyich gave no instructions to do
so." (D. Volkogonov, Trotsky, p. 243.)
Lenin's step in breaking off relations with Stalin is unprecedented. His Testament was
a devastating blow. But the message was never made public. Lenin's Testament
remained hidden from the people of the USSR until Khrushchov quoted it in the
secret session at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956. Before that it had been
published by the Trotskyists in the West, but denounced as a forgery by the Stalinists.
They were rude and disloyal to Lenin's last wish.
After Lenin's death
As long as Lenin was alive, the Stalin clique had to proceed cautiously. The memories
of the October revolution were too recent, and Lenin's personal authority too great.
But once Lenin was removed, they began manoeuvring to seize control of the Party.

Stalin's ambition was fuelled by the death of Lenin, whom he mortally feared. After
Lenin's death, a caste of privileged officials usurped power in the Soviet Union. They
were represented inside the Party by the bureaucratic faction that formed around
Stalin.
A secret triumvirate was formed of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin, aimed at isolating
Trotsky. In his Testament, Lenin not only referred to Trotsky as the most capable
member of the Central Committee but also stated that his non-Bolshevik past "should
not be held against him personally". Yet the triumvirate ignored Lenin's advice and
launched a vitriolic campaign against Trotsky, inventing the myth of "Trotskyism". As
part of this they created the cult of Lenin. Against Krupskaya's wishes, his body was
embalmed and placed on public display in the mausoleum in Red Square. Later
Krupskaya stated: "All his life Vladimir Ilyich was against icons, and now they have
turned him into an icon."
A fatal role in all this was played by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who were motivated by
petty considerations of ambition and jealously to open up a campaign of calumny
against Trotsky. When Lenin described Trotsky in his Testament as the most capable
member of the Central Committee it offended Zinoviev in particular, who regarded
himself as the natural successor to Lenin. Of course, such things as personal
animosities, jealousy and rivalry can never determine the outcome of broad historical
processes. They rather fall under the heading of historical accident. But as Hegel
explained with such profundity, necessity expresses itself through accident. By acting
as they did Kamenev and Zinoviev undoubtedly facilitated Stalin's task and greatly
accelerated the process of bureaucratic degeneration.
Lenin did not trust Kamenev and Zinoviev, and warned in his Testament that their
conduct during the October revolution was not an accident. Again, his judgement was
shown to be correct. Stalin used them for the purpose of discrediting Trotsky, and then
turned against them. More correctly, they turned against Stalin when they realised
where he was leading the USSR. For a time they participated with Trotsky in the Left
Opposition. Then, typically, they capitulated to Stalin when things got difficult.
Stalin's speech at Lenin's funeral was a typical example of his hypocrisy. He was
relieved that Lenin had died, since he knew that Lenin was determined to have him
removed. Yet he delivered a funeral oration in terms of Byzantine worship. It was
quite safe to flatter Lenin once he was dead - sometimes dead men are more useful
than living ones. Couched in the language of the Orthodox Church liturgy that Stalin
had learned in the seminary, it was more like a religious incantation than a Marxist
speech. This was no accident, for while building up a religious cult of Lenin, Stalin
was trampling underfoot the most elementary principles and policies of Leninism.
Under the banner of "Leninism" he was establishing a new creed of Stalinism, the
polar opposite of the ideas of the Bolshevik Party.
There is, of course, nothing new in all this. Every usurpatory caste in history has
always been obliged to conceal its revisionism under the guise of "orthodoxy". The
revolutionary communist ideas of the early Christians were turned into a defence of
privilege and worldly wealth when it was taken over by the state under Constantine.
The church had changed into its opposite, and became the church of the rich and
privileged, but was nevertheless compelled to pay lip service to the name of the son of

a poor Jewish carpenter and rebel from Galilee. In the same way Napoleon Bonaparte,
while trampling underfoot the traditions of the French revolution, and placing the
imperial crown on his head, continued to speak in the language of the Republic of
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
The United Opposition
More than an idea, Stalinism began as a definite mood of reaction among the officials.
The campaign against "Trotskyism" was in essence the reflection of a petty bourgeois
reaction against October. The numerous caste of Soviet officials were tired of the
storm and stress of revolution, which they associated with the idea of "permanent
revolution", although the real meaning of this idea was a closed book for them.
In a manoeuvre to dilute the Party with raw elements and swamp the Leninist
vanguard, Stalin organised the so-called Lenin Levy. The doors were thrown open and
a mass of new recruits were allowed to join and vote in the congress, in disregard of
the Party rules, according to which they only had the status of candidate members.
Maria Joffe recalls: "The Party gates, guarded so vigilantly so as not to admit anyone
unworthy, were flung wide open: workmen, office workers, civil service bureaucrats
entered in their masses, lured by the promise of much scope. All they needed was to
prove themselves to be disciplined' and aware'. The deeply convinced political
meaning of the Lenin enrolment' was mainly to water down the revolutionary front
ranks - by human raw material, neither hardened in battle, nor experienced, and not of
independent mind, but certainly possessing the ancient and now greatly cultivated
Russian habit of fearing the authorities and blindly obeying them." (Maria Joffe, One
Long Night, pp. 71-2.)
By the end of 1927, over 60 percent of the secretaries of the primary Party cells had
joined the Party after 1921 -that is, after the end of the Civil War. In the period of the
revolution and Civil War, Party membership conferred no advantages and involved
only risks and sacrifices. But after 1921 this changed. The Party was in power and
attracted all sorts of careerist elements. They owed their advancement to Stalin and
could be relied upon to support him against the Party's left wing.
In August 1922 the number of full-time Party officials was 15,325. At the time of the
Fourteenth congress in 1925 it was about 20,000. These functionaries were paid up to
50 percent more than the scales laid down for comparable government employees
and, more importantly, enjoyed privileges not available to workers. They therefore
had material interests to defend.
However, the anti-working class and anti-socialist policies of the bureaucracy had to
be disguised in "socialist" phraseology. This was provided by the anti-Marxist
"theory" of socialism in one country. But when Stalin advanced this reactionary
slogan, violating every principle of Leninism, it was too much for Kamenev and
Zinoviev. They broke with him. They then attempted to defend the basis ideas of
Leninism and the October revolution, albeit in a half-hearted and vacillating manner.
Eventually, Kamenev and Zinoviev joined forces with Trotsky to form the United Left
Opposition, which included, among many prominent Old Bolsheviks, Lenin's widow

Krupskaya. She said at a meeting of the Left Opposition in 1926 that "if Vladimir
Ilyich were alive today, he would be in one of Stalin's jails". This was an indication of
how far things had gone. Later, when Kamenev and Zinoviev capitulated and were
murdered by Stalin, Krupskaya was silenced by Stalin's threats and blackmail. He
warned her that if she crossed him again he could always find another "Lenin's
widow".
Stalin now veered to the right and joined forces with Bukharin, who stood at the head
of that section of the Party that advocated concessions to the rich peasants (kulaks).
He advanced the slogan directed at the peasants: "Enrich yourselves, develop your
farms and do not fear that you will be subjected to restrictions."
Expulsion of the Opposition
The Opposition defended the principles of Leninism and October. It warned against
the disastrous policy of compromising with the rich peasants, and advocated taxing
the kulaks and industrialization, including five year plans, linked with measures to
restore workers' democracy, against bureaucratism and for proletarian
internationalism.
But the struggle was uneven. Stalin mobilized the full weight of the apparatus to crush
the Opposition. Oppositionists were sacked from their jobs, expelled from the Party,
persecuted and arrested. Stalin used hooligans to break up Opposition meetings. All
this was completely alien to the clean traditions of the Bolshevik Party.
The rightward zig-zag in Russia was followed by a rightward zig-zag internationally.
The policies of Stalin and Bukharin were ruinous to the Communist International.
They ensured one defeat after another - in Estonia, Bulgaria, Britain, and worst of all
in China.
Stalin, the narrow-minded "practico" tried to base himself on the right wing
internationally, just as he tried to base himself on the kulaks in Russia. Having no
confidence in the working class or the Communist International, he sought deals and
alliances with the right wing trade leaders in Britain and with Chiang Kai Shek in
China. Chiang was even put on the International Executive Committee of the
Comintern, with only one vote against - that of Leon Trotsky.
Every new defeat for the international revolution deepened the disillusionment and
despair of the Soviet workers and increased the confidence of the bureaucrats.
Finally, in 1927 the Fifteenth Party congress voted to expel the Opposition. It was
packed with Stalin's supporters, so the result was a foregone conclusion. Trotsky and
other Opposition speakers were heckled and barracked by the Stalinists - a blatant
departure from the scrupulous democratic traditions of Lenin's party.
The bureaucracy triumphed not because of the mistakes of the Opposition, or because
of the far-sightedness of Stalin, but because the working class was exhausted by the
long years of war, revolution and civil war. They were disappointed and dispirited.

The Soviet functionaries yearned for peace and order, so that they could quietly get on
with their administrative tasks. They did not understand Bolshevik internationalism
and distrusted it. They were equally hostile to Soviet democracy that allowed the
workers to "interfere" with their plans and the functioning of their departments.
"A political struggle is in its essence a struggle of interests and forces," Trotsky wrote,
"not of arguments. The quality of leadership is, of course, far from a matter of
indifference for the outcome of the conflict, but it is not the only factor, and in the last
analysis is not decisive. Each of the struggling camps, moreover, demands leaders in
its own image." (The Revolution Betrayed, pp. 86-7.)
The argument that Stalin won because he was more skilful and perspicacious than
Trotsky is entirely false. The struggle was determined by the class balance of forces,
which by this time was unfavourable to the proletarian vanguard. The personalities of
the contending forces were an entirely secondary feature. What happened here was a
triumph of the bureaucracy over the Soviet working class and its vanguard. In the
person of Stalin the bureaucracy found a leader in its own image.

Fifty years after the death of a tyrant Part two

Written by Alan Woods Wednesday, 05 March 2003

The second part of Alan Woods' article covers the whole period of the thirties, from
the adventurist policy of forced collectivisation to the Moscow Trials, until the
assassination of Trotsky

Stalin - the executioner of Lenin's Party

The policies of Stalin-Bukharin caused a very dangerous situation in the countryside,
where the kulaks were becoming a powerful force hostile to the Soviet power. Here
we see Stalin's crude empiricism and lack of Marxist understanding. In February 1928
he wrote: "The NEP is the foundation of our economic policy and will so remain for a
long time to come." In April of the same year, Stalin and the Plenum of the Central
Committee had passed a resolution to the effect that "only liars and
counterrevolutionaries could spread rumours about the abolition of the NEP."
The Left Opposition continually warned of the kulak danger and demanded a change
of course. But all their appeals fell on deaf ears. Then within a few months the whole
policy was thrown into reverse. The kulaks had organised a grain strike as the first
step in the capitalist counterrevolution against Soviet power. By the end of 1927 the
drop of grain supplies to the towns had assumed alarming proportions. In a 180
degrees somersault Stalin announced the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class."

In 1930 Trotsky warned that the collectivisation of the peasantry should proceed
gradually and on a voluntary basis, so as not to open up a conflict between the
proletariat and the peasantry. He advocated that no more than 20-25 percent of
peasant farms should be collectivised "lest the framework of reality should be
overstepped."
This was in line with Lenin's attitude to collectivisation. But instead Stalin insisted on
collectivising everything - down to the felt boots that were dragged off the feet of the
kulak's children. In the process, no distinction was made between the rich and middle
peasants. The result was a bloody civil war in which the Red Army had to be sent into
the countryside. As a result of Stalin's lunacy, a terrible famine swept across the land
in 1932-3. Millions of people starved to death. There were cases of cannibalism in the
Ukraine and Central Asia.
From an economic point of view there was no point in whole-scale collectivising
when Soviet industry was not in a position to supply the collective farms with tractors
and combine harvesters. As Trotsky observed ironically: "By putting together the
primitive hoes and the poor nags of the mujhiks one no more creates large-scale
agriculture than one creates a large steamer by putting together a lot of fishing boats."
Later Stalin had to retreat, but the damage was done. Soviet agriculture never
recovered from this blow. Stalin's adventurist policy of forced collectivisation of
agriculture provoked a terrible disaster. Stalin later admitted to Churchill that ten
million people had starved to death. (See Churchill, The Second World War, vol. IV,
pp. 447-8.)
In the field of industry, Stalin carried out a similar zig-zag. When Trotsky, following
in Lenin's footsteps, advocated a policy of industrialization based on Five Year Plans
and electrification he was accused of being a "super industrializer". Stalin ridiculed
Trotsky's proposal for the building of a hydroelectrical project on the Dnieper
(Dnieperstroy) as the equivalent of offering a peasant a gramophone instead of a cow.
But now, where he had previously denounced Trotsky's idea of a Five Year Plan,
Stalin suddenly proclaimed a "five year plan in four years."
This led to serious dislocation in industry, which was only rectified with difficulty,
after great losses. Nevertheless, the launching of the Five Year Plans was a giant step
forward for the USSR that enabled it to pull itself out of terrible backwardness and
industrialize in a very short space of time. In effect, Stalin stole some of the policies
of the Left Opposition, which he had previously opposed. But he copied them in a
distorted, one-sided and bureaucratic manner. There was no question of his accepting
the most basic demands of the Opposition, relating to workers democracy and
internationalism. The result was not a genuine socialist policy but only a bureaucratic
caricature.
Nevertheless, the leftward lurch of the Stalin faction was interpreted by many
Oppositionists as a proof that their policies had been vindicated. A number of
prominent leaders capitulated, beginning with Kamenev and Zinoviev. But
capitulation is a very slippery slope. It can become a habit. They capitulated a second
and then a third time in the most abject manner, but that did not save them. Stalin used
them and then had them executed. No amount of capitulation could have saved them.

The consolidation of Stalinism demanded the complete liquidation of the Old

Bolsheviks.
The rise of the bureaucracy
A decisive turning point was the abolition of the Party Maximum. This Leninist
measure was intended to prevent the formation of a privileged layer of "Communist"
bureaucrats. Lenin explained that the existence of wage differentials was a survival of
capitalism that would tend to disappear as society moved towards socialism. The
development of the productive forces would be accompanied by a general
improvement of living standards and the inequalities would tend to decrease.
However, in Stalinist Russia the opposite was the case. Far from a reduction of
inequality, there was an enormous increase in the difference between the living
standards of the working class and the upper layers of the bureaucracy in particular.
In a speech in 1931 Stalin spoke of the "happy life" of the people of the Soviet Union.
At this time the workers' living standards were extremely low, and the wages of the
workers remained depressed throughout the 1930s, despite the colossal gains of the
Five Year Plans. Yet the "happy life" was a reality for millions of officials in the state
and "Communist" Party; they lived very well. In addition to other privileges of
provisions and lodgings, a new network of closed "distributors" was established and
restaurants reserved for the use of high Communist or non-Party officials. Then
special "state shops" were set up for their exclusive use. In these shops one could buy
anything and everything but at prices no worker could afford.
Lenin's principles were trodden underfoot. Lenin had pointed out that wage
differentials were a survival of capitalism that would be reduced as the USSR moved
towards socialism. In fact, precisely the opposite happened. Ciliga comments on the
lifestyle and mentality of the bureaucrat and their families:
"A man's worth was measured by the elegance of the holidays he could afford, by his
apartment, his furniture, his clothes and the position he occupied in the administrative
hierarchy. []
"The differentiation of the bureaucratic elite was made on yet another plane; the
husbands, the wives and the children constituted three groups, each with its own
standards. The husbands had developed a sense of diplomacy, they were not assertive
and did not fail to remember to 'keep in contact with the masses', nor to keep up
proletarian and revolutionary appearances. They expressed themselves in cautious
terms. The women had no such considerations. Their only thought was to dazzle
people with their clothes, their box at the theatre, the elegance of their homes, and
their descriptions of their holidays at such-and-such a watering place or their journey
abroad. They were conscious of belonging to 'Society', and lived only for their petty
ambitions. []
"As to the children, they were shocked by their parents' hypocrisy. They wanted to
call a spade a spade. 'We are boss here, why hide it?' 'Why not always dress in smart
clothes? Why may one do it on certain occasions, whereas on others one must dress
with mock modesty? Why not go out in the car, since we have one? Why does Soand-So take the children to school in a car, whereas father refuses to take us?'

Revolutionary phraseology grated on them, they hated hearing the word proletariat
used over and over again." (Ante Ciliga, The Russian Enigma, pp. 118-9.)
In these few lines one has all the information necessary to understand exactly what
has occurred in Russia, Eastern Europe and China over the last ten or twenty years.
Stalin's Purges
After the death of Lenin the CPSU experienced a process of bureaucratic degeneration
that ended in the dictatorship of Stalin. But in order to consolidate his power Stalin
had first to destroy Lenin's Party. He did this by physically exterminating the
Bolshevik Party in the notorious Purges.
The "Communist" Party under Stalin became transformed into a bureaucratic club. In
fact, it was not a party at all but part of the state apparatus - a vehicle for controlling
the working class and for the advancement of careerists. Although some genuine
Communists remained, the overwhelming majority of its members were yes-men,
bootlickers, spies and toadies.
In 1935 the Society of Old Bolsheviks was dissolved, followed one month later by the
Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiles. The Party's history was being
rewritten to glorify Stalin and he did not want any awkward witnesses around to
contradict him. The youth represented an even greater threat. A drastic reorganization
of the Komsomol was carried out on Stalin's personal initiative with the aim of
eliminating "enemies of the people".
The first political trials were those of the so-called industrial opposition in 1930.
Perfectly innocent engineers were made the scapegoats for the economic mess caused
by the crazy policy of "five year plans in four years." The accused were accused of
having organized a vast network of sabotage on behalf of the French Military High
Command. They were compelled to confess to non-existent crimes and given long
prison sentences. This was Stalin's dress rehearsal for the Moscow Purges.
This was followed by the trial of the "Bureau of Menshevik Socialists". These were
previously unknown people who at one time had belonged to the Mensheviks, but
were now inactive. They also confessed to organising a programme of sabotage to
prepare for foreign military intervention against the USSR. There was not a word of
truth in this, but it prepared the ground for greater things.
The Seventeenth Congress in October 1934 was hailed as "the congress of victors".
The delegates competed with each other to sing the Leader's praises, but almost all the
2,000 delegates later fell victim to Stalin's Terror. The congress showed that Kirov, the
Leningrad Party boss, was popular with the delegates - too popular. He got a standing
ovation at the start and finish, and was elected to the Secretariat of the Central
Committee. This meant that he would be transferred from Leningrad to Moscow,
where he would be a rival to Stalin. In fact, the disasters of forced collectivisation and
the economic disruption caused by the mismanagement of the first Five Year Plan had
caused many doubts about Stalin, and a section of the Party was in favour of replacing
him with Kirov. That sealed his fate.

On the December 1, 1934, Kirov was assassinated by a young Communist, called

Leonid Nikolayev, who had been, conveniently, a minor member of the Zinovievite
Opposition in Leningrad. In fact, Nikolayev worked for the GPU and was a mere tool
in Stalin's machinations. That Nikolayev was a provocateur is shown by the following
fact. He kept a diary at the beginning of 1934 in which he revealed not only a critical
attitude to the Party leadership but also terrorist tendencies. This was discovered and
he was expelled from the Party but then reinstated. Yet he was allowed to continue
working at the Smolny Institute, the headquarters of the Leningrad Party.
Given these circumstances it is incomprehensible that Nikolayev was allowed to come
into direct contact with Kirov, who, like all the other Party leaders was surrounded by
bodyguards. However, at the time of the assassination there was not a single
bodyguard in sight. Immediately after the assassination, steps were taken to liquidate
all witnesses in order to cover the tracks. Not only was Nikolayev himself shot, but
Kirov's bodyguards and driver were also killed, in addition to Nikolayev's wife and
other family members.
There is not the slightest doubt that this assassination was planned by Stalin. He
feared Kirov as a rival. At a time when Stalin was losing support, Kirov's name was
circulating in Party circles as a possible replacement. He had to be eliminated and he
was eliminated.
The Kamenev and Zinoviev trial
Initially the assassination of Kirov was blamed on White Guard elements, but then the
story was concocted that the real authors were Kamenev and Zinoviev, those
"unfinished enemies" who were said to be guided by "the fascist hireling Trotsky".
They were put on trial in secret in 1935, accused of political responsibility for Kirov's
murder. Having capitulated once to Stalin they now capitulated yet again. Stalin had
promised to spare their lives if they confessed and they were sent to a camp. But this
was insufficient for Stalin. He wanted them dead. So after 18 months, they were taken
back to Moscow for another trial.
On August 19, when the discussion of the Stalin Constitution ("the most democratic
constitution in the world") was in full swing, 16 leading ex-Oppositionists, headed by
Zinoviev and Kamenev, together with Yevdokimov and I.M. Smirnov, were put on
trial for capital charges. This time they were accused, not of "political responsibility"
for the assassination of Kirov, but of organising terrorist actions against Stalin,
Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Zhdanov, under the direst instructions and guidance of
Trotsky.
This trial was an attempt to give an excuse for mass arrests of all who questioned
Stalin's leadership. During the proceedings, the accused were forced to pour dirt over
their own heads. Kamenev testified that "He himself served fascism and with
Zinoviev and Trotsky had prepared a counterrevolution in the USSR." Zinoviev stated
that "Trotskyism is a variant of fascism." The abject nature of these confessions did
not save them: they were shot. Within twelve months of this trial, 100,000 people
were either arrested or shot in Leningrad alone.

The methods of the GPU were those of the Inquisition. The accused were dragged
from their beds in the middle of the night, kept in isolation, beaten, tortured, their
families threatened, to extort a false confession. Interrogations were carried on
uninterruptedly day and night, for 16 to 24 hours, with the prisoner denied sleep (the
"conveyer" system). Those that did not confess were shot or just disappeared. They
used agents' provocateurs to engineer denunciations. Children were urged to
denounce their own parents.
The main motive of the Purge Trials was to liquidate the Bolshevik Party, to wipe out
the entire generation of Old Bolsheviks and thus to consolidate the rule of the
bureaucracy. Anyone who could remember the old democratic and internationalist
traditions of Leninism was seen as a danger. Like any common criminal Stalin
understood the need to eliminate all witnesses. But there was also a personal motive.
Stalin was a mediocrity who could not stand comparison with the Old Bolshevik
leaders. Compared with Bukharin, Kamenev and even Zinoviev, let alone a genius
like Trotsky, he was a nonentity. And he knew it. Therefore he entertained feelings of
revenge towards the entire generation of Old Bolsheviks.
Stalin was a sadist who took a personal interest in tormenting his victims. He brought
to Moscow the primitive methods of the Georgian blood feud, in which not only
enemies had to be killed but their families also. He once stated: "There is nothing
sweeter in the world than to plan revenge on an enemy, see it carried out, and then
retire peacefully to bed." He personally checked the list of the victims and decided
who would live or die. Out of a total of about 700,000 cases, he personally signed 400
lists, with a total of 40,000 people. On these lists were the names of all of Lenin's
principal lieutenants and comrades-in-arms.
Stalin had a very simple recipe for the interrogation of prisoners: "Beat, beat and beat
again." At the time of the first trials the chief of the OGPU-NKVD was Genrykh
Yagoda. He carried out Stalin's directives, but not enthusiastically enough for the
Vozhd'. Stalin was furious because Yagoda had not obtained confessions to the murder
of Kirov from Kamenev and Zinoviev in the 1936 trial. He called him in and said:
"You work poorly, Genrykh Grigorievich. I already know for a fact that Kirov was
murdered on instructions from Zinoviev and Kamenev, but so far you have not been
able to prove it! You have to torture them until they finally tell the truth and reveal all
their connections." (Anna Larina, This I cannot Forget, p. 94.)
Yagoda was a corrupt official and a contemptible careerist whose hands were stained
with blood, but having been a Party member since 1907 he was inhibited by the old
traditions and sometimes dragged his heels at the monstrous orders he was expected
to carry out. This sealed his fate. He was removed, put on trial, accused among other
things of poisoning the writer Maxim Gorky, and executed. The accusation about
Gorky is significant. Gorky, who had a soft heart, often used to intercede with Lenin
on behalf of people who had been arrested, and tried the same thing with Stalin. But
Stalin was not like Lenin. He found the old man's pleadings irritating. But Gorky was
too famous to put on trial as a "Trotskyist", so in all probability Stalin had him quietly
put down, and placed the blame on the unfortunate Yagoda. This was quite in Stalin's
style.
The year 1937

The year 1937 will go down in history as synonymous with Stalin's unbridled terror.
The man who replaced Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, was a monster in the image of Stalin.
No action was too base or bloody for him, no order too atrocious to carry out. This
creature was the perfect embodiment of Stalin's political counterrevolution.
In the camps, millions were starved and worked to death. Between 1929 and 1934 the
average life expectancy was less than two years. Yet the Boss complained that
conditions in the camps were too comfortable: they were "like health resorts". Up till
1937 it was not the deliberate policy of the camp administration to exterminate the
prisoners, although many died as a result of poor food and overwork. But Yezhov
changed all that. After he took over the situation was much worse. To begin with, the
maximum sentence before death was increased from ten years to twenty-five. In most
cases this amounted to a death sentence.
According to data supplied by Yezhov at the end of 1936 and the beginning of 1937,
in the central institutions of Moscow alone, thousands of "Trotskyist wreckers" were
arrested. Between October 1936 and February 1937, the following numbers of
employees in the People's Commissariats were arrested and sentenced: Transport 141, Food Industry - 100, Local Industry - 60, Internal Trade - 82, Agriculture - 102,
Finance - 35, Education - 228; and so on. Later the situation got even worse. On one
day alone, 12th December 1938, Stalin and Molotov sanctioned the shooting of 3,167
people, and then went to the cinema.
It is now known that the NKVD had quotas for arrests and was expected to fulfill
them, just like the quotas for steel, coal and electricity under the Five Year Plan.
Yevgeniya Ginsberg relates the following conversation she had in prison in 1937. "As
a Tartar, it was simpler to make me a bourgeois nationalist. Actually, they did put me
down as a Trotskyist at first, but Rud sent the file back, saying they'd exceeded the
quota for Trotskyists but were short on nationalists, though they'd taken all the Tartar
writers they could think of." (Yevgeniya Ginsberg, Into the Whirlwind, pp. 109-10.)
Stalin's propaganda machine was working overtime. Meetings were organised under
such slogans as "Death to the Fascist Hirelings!" "Crush the Trotskyist Vermin" and
"Trotskyism is another Form of Fascism!" On March 6, 1937 Pravda asserted that
"the Trotskyists are a find for international Fascism [] The insignificant number of
this gang should not reassure us, we have to increase our vigilance tenfold." On 15th
March 1938, Vechernaya Moskva snarled: "History knows no evil deeds equal to the
crimes of the gang from the anti-Soviet Right-Trotskyist Bloc. The espionage,
sabotage and wrecking done by the over-bandit Trotsky and his accomplices
Bukharin, Rykov and the others, arouse feelings of anger, hatred and contempt not
only in the Soviet people, but in all progressive mankind." (Quoted in D. Volkogonov,
Trotsky pp. 381-2.)
History knows no evil deeds equal to the crimes of the gang from the anti-Soviet
Stalinist bureaucracy. A wave of terror was unleashed by Stalin against the people of
the USSR. Tens of millions of innocent people were arrested, condemned and sent
into the Gulag. Even the security services were purged. In 1937-8 23,000 NKVD
officers were arrested. Most informed on others in order to survive.

Not all of Stalin's victims were put on trial. The trade union leader Tomsky, a follower
of Bukharin's Right Opposition, cheated Stalin by committing suicide. Stalin's wife,
Nadezhda Alleluyeva was also driven to suicide by Stalin. A decent and honest
woman, she sympathised with Bukharin. She shot herself as a protest against Stalin's
moral and political perfidy. Later the same fate befell Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Stalin's
old friend and comrade. On 18th February 1937, he died suddenly, allegedly of a heart
attack. In reality he was also driven to suicide by Stalin, who had Sergo's brother
arrested, tortured and shot for no reason.
The details of this case were revealed by Khrushchov at the 20th Congress of the
CPSU in 1956. In the same speech he revealed that, of the total of 139 members and
candidate members of the Central Committee elected at the 17th Congress in 1934, 98
- that is, 70 percent - were shot. Khrushchov stated that those arrested were subjected
to brutal tortures, and only confessed to "all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes" when
"no longer able to bear barbaric tortures."
The destruction of the Red Army
Stalin was suspicious of the Red Army, which had been founded by Trotsky. Many of
its leaders, heroes of the Civil War, had fought with Trotsky and had been under his
influence. Many of them were extremely talented and one at least, M.N.
Tukhachevsky, was a military genius. A former officer in the tsarist army,
Tukhachevsky came over to the side of the revolution and served it faithfully. He led
the Red Army in the struggle against Wrangel and against the Poles.
In 1920 his forces got as far as Warsaw, where they were defeated in part because
Stalin's stooges Voroshilov and Budyonny refused to join forces with Tukhachevsky,
preferring to wage war on their own account, pursuing the entirely secondary
objective of Lvov. As a result, the Red Army was defeated at the gates of Warsaw - a
major setback in Lenin's strategy for world revolution, which led to the isolation of
the Russian revolution, cutting it off from the German revolution.
The Polish dictator Pilsudsky latter revealed that: "Our situation seemed to me utterly
hopeless. I saw the only bright spot on the dark horizon in Budyonny's failure to
launch an attack on my rear [] the weakness which was exhibited by the Twelfth
Army." [i.e. the army that upon the orders of Commissar Stalin had refused to help
Tukhachevsky force and had broken away from it.]
In 1935 Tukhachevsky was made a Marshall of the Red Army. This was well
deserved. This great military genius had worked it out that World War Two would be a
mobile war fought with tanks and planes. But Stalin was jealous of Tukhachevsky and
suspicious of the general staff of the Red Army. So when Tukhachevsky insisted on
increasing the number of planes and tanks in the Red Army, Stalin refused, calling
him a harebrained schemer. (See Dimitri Shostakovich, Testimony, p. 103.)
Stalin the mediocrity always hated people with talent. And he hated and feared
Tukhachevsky whose brilliance always reminded him of his own incompetence in
military matters, where he would have liked to se himself as a genius. But far more
seriously, Stalin lived in fear of a military coup. He therefore organized a gigantic

new frame-up involving the whole of the Soviet general staff. He accused
Tukhachevsky and other key leaders of the Red Army of being in league with Hitler.
The famous Soviet composer, Dimitri Shostakovich was a personal friend of
Tukhachevsky. In his memoirs he writes: "Now it is well known that Tukhachevsky
was destroyed through the joint efforts of Stalin and Hitler. But one mustn't
exaggerate the role of German espionage in this matter. If there hadn't been those
faked documents that 'exposed' Tukhachevsky, Stalin would have got rid of him
anyway." (Dimitri Shostakovich, Testimony, p. 99.)
Stalin replaced this great original military thinker with his cronies Budyonny and
Voroshilov, two incompetents who thought that World War Two would be fought with
cavalry! Just before World War Two, they were showing propaganda films in Russia
of Voroshilov and his cavalry, sweeping the enemy before them! Only after the first
crushing defeats of the Red Army in 1941 did Stalin realise his mistake, but this was a
very costly lesson for the USSR. The same thing happened with rockets. Stalin had all
the Leningrad rocketry experts shot, and then had to start from scratch.
The Purge destroyed the entire leading cadre of the Red Army and badly damaged the
defence capabilities of the USSR. Tukhachevsky, Yakir and others were shot in secret,
which indicates that they refused to confess. The military Purge that continued
throughout 1938 led to the elimination of 90 percent of all generals, 80 percent of all
colonels, and 30,000 of lower ranking officers. This left the Red Army seriously
weakened on the eve of the Second World War. We know that it was one of the main
factors that convinced Hitler that he should attack the USSR. He silenced the
objections of his generals with the remark: "They have no good generals."
The trial of the 21
In March 1938 the trial of the 21 opened in Moscow. Bukharin, Rykov, Krestinsky,
Rakovsky, and other members of the so-called Right-Trotskyist Bloc. These Old
Bolsheviks were described by the ex-Menshevik Vyshinsky as "stinking carrion",
"pitiful scum", "damned vermin", "chained curs of imperialism" and so on. Pravda
described this disgusting travesty of a show trial as "the most democratic people's
court in the world." This verdict was accepted by a most unexpected "Friend of the
Soviet Union" - Winston Churchill, who described Vyshinsky's performance at the
trial as "brilliant".
On the first day of the third trial, March 2, 1938, the former Menshevik Andrei
Vyshinsky slandered the man whom Lenin had described in his Testament as "the
Party's favourite: "Bukharin sits there with his head bowed low, a treacherous, twofaced, whimpering, evil nonentity who has been exposed [] as the leader of a gang
of spies, terrorists, and thieves, as instigator of assassination [] This filthy little
Bukharin". (The Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists, Record of
Court Proceedings, Moscow, 1938, pp. 656-57.)
Though Vyshinsky read the lines, their author was Stalin, taunting his victim and
smearing him with filth before destroying him physically. This was the favourite
method of the "beloved Leader and Teacher". "The hypocrisy and perfidy of this man
exceed the most perfidious and monstrous crimes known to the history of mankind."

These words cannot be applied to Bukharin, a revolutionary of spotless honesty and

dedication, but perfectly describe Stalin himself.
Bukharin later stated: "The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of
jurisprudence. [] I did not plead guilty [] I do not know of this [] I deny it []
I categorically deny any complicity."
Not only Trotskyists were killed but also many Stalinists who fell into the disfavour of
the "Beloved Leader and Teacher". Abel Yenukidze, for example, was shot for trying
to save the lives of Old Bolsheviks. Not content with killing his enemies, Stalin took
his revenge on their families and friends. Hundreds of thousands were sent to the
camps not just as "enemies of the people", but also as chesirs or "family members of a
traitor to the motherland". Among these victims were the wife and sisters of
Tukhachevsky, the wife of Bukharin, Trotsky's first wife, his eldest son, Sergei, who
was not involved in active politics, was arrested but courageously refused to denounce
his father and was shot.
The methods of the GPU were exposed in a surprising way during the Moscow Trials
themselves. When Yagoda was himself put on trial, Vyshinsky declared (on March
11, 1938): "Yagoda stood at the peak of the technology of killing people in the most
devious ways. He represented the last word in the 'science' of bestiality." (Sudebny
otchet po delu antisovetskogo trotskiiskogo tsentra, the official report of the trial in
Russian, Moscow 1937, p. 332.). Amidst all the miserable morass of lies and
distortions that make up these documents, this is probably the only truthful statement.
Yezhov had attained the highest power. There was even a cult of Yezhov to match the
cult of Stalin. Yezhov was called officially "the Beloved of the nation. The horrors he
inflicted on his victims were known as "Yezhov's prickles" (Yezh in Russian means
hedgehog). Bards in Central Asia sang of Father Yezhov. All this was not a wise thing
to do under Stalin, who had a morbid fear of rivals.
Yezhov even sent a draft decree to the CC, allegedly on the initiative of "countless
requests from workers" that Moscow be renamed Stalinodar. (See Volkoganov, p.
463.) However, Stalin was not foolish enough to accept. Instead he had Yezhov
arrested in 1938. Typically, Stalin blamed all the horrors and dislocations of the
Purges on his puppet Yezhov, whom he replaced with a Georgian stooge, Lavrenty
Beria. The "Beloved of the nation" then disappeared into the Gulag and was
apparently shot in 1939.
The assassination of Trotsky
The only serious opposition to Stalin was Trotsky's Left Opposition. Stalin read
everything that Trotsky wrote and was determined to eliminate him. The Russian
Trotskyists (Bolshevik Leninists) maintained their faith in the principles of
Bolshevism and the perspective of the world revolution. They kept their organization
alive even in Stalin's concentration camps. They organised hunger strikes against their
tormentors, and were only silenced by the firing squad. And as they marched to their
death in the frozen tundra they sang the Internationale.

By such means Stalin eradicated the last remnants of the traditions of Leninism from
the Soviet Union. But one voice remained to challenge him - that of Lenin's main
lieutenant, the architect of the October revolution and founder of the Red Army, Lev
Davidovich Trotsky. As long as Trotsky remained alive Stalin could not rest.
Despite everything, Stalin did not feel safe. His persecution of Trotsky was not just a
matter of personal hatred - though that was a fact. It was above all fear that the ideas
and programme of Trotsky and the Bolshevik Leninists would get an echo in the
Soviet working class. This was no idle fear. There was growing discontent in Soviet
working class at the bad conditions and above all at the growing inequality and the
privileges of the bureaucracy.
Even at the height of the Purges there are indications of a subterranean ferment of
discontent. Through the reports of the Party and the NKVD, Stalin was well aware of
the real situation. In the 1937 Party protocols of the Medgorodsk construction
enterprise (Smolensk), we have an unusually frank description of the living conditions
of the workers:
"The workers' barracks were described as overcrowded and in a state of extreme
disrepair with water streaming straight from the ceiling onto workers' beds. Heat was
rarely provided in the barracks. Bedding went unchanged and sanitary work was
almost nonexistent. There were no kitchens and eating halls on the construction sites.
Hot food could not be obtained until the evening, when workers had to walk a long
distance to reach the dining-hall. 'Many of the women,' one female Party worker
reported, 'live practically on the street. None pays any attention to them; some of
these defenceless creatures threaten to commit suicide .'In addition, cases where
wages were not paid were on the increase. All this 'neglect of the elementary needs of
the workers', as well as 'lack of care for them as human beings'resulted in 'fully
justified dissatisfaction' and bitterness on the part of the workers.
"The mood of some of the workers was described as 'often threatening' and 'directly
counterrevolutionary'. For example, in a discussion of the 1936 Constitution a certain
Stepan Danin, a carpenter, and workers of his brigade were quoted as saying:
"'We must permit the existence of several political parties in our midst - as it is in
bourgeois countries; they will be able better to note the mistakes of the Communist
Party.
"'Exploitation in our midst has not been eliminated, communists and engineers
employ and exploit servants.
"'The Trotskyists Kamenev and Zinoviev won't be shot anyway - and they shouldn't
be, for they are Old Bolsheviks.
"To the question of an agitator as to who should be viewed as an Old Bolshevik, one
worker replied, 'Trotsky'." (Quoted in M. Fainsod, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule, p.
322.)
Stalin therefore followed very closely the activities of the Trotskyists. He planted his
agents in their ranks and Trotsky's articles were on his desk in the Kremlin each

morning - often before they had been published. Stalin's agents in Paris murdered
Trotsky's son, Leon Sedov, who was playing a key role in the movement. This was a
serious blow against the Fourth International, which was still in an embryonic phase.
One by one, Trostky collaborators, friends and family were murdered by Stalin.
An NKVD officer Sudoplatov was put in charge of the assassination of Trotsky. The
first armed attack on his house in Coyoacan failed. But it was immediately followed
by another. On August 20, 1940, Lev Davidovich was struck down by one of Stalin's
agents in Mexico City.

he Stalin-Hitler Pact
Written by Ben Peck Monday, 24 August 2009
In the early hours of August 24 seventy years ago Germany and Soviet Russia signed
a "non-aggression pact", which divided the states of Northern and Eastern Europe into
German and Soviet "spheres of influence", effectively slicing Poland into two halves.
Ben Peck looks back at what happened and explains why such an incredible event
could take place and the price that was paid.
The Stalin-Hitler pact has gone down in history as a mark of the absolute cynicism of
the bureaucracy. It was a treacherous agreement that involved the occupation and
division of Poland, half to Stalinist Russia and half to Hitlers Germany. Such a move
was described by the Stalinists as defensive. The Pact did not prevent war between
Germany and Russia, but certainly helped Hitler in his war aims. It caused confusion
and demoralisation amongst honest communists around the world, who for years had
been denouncing Hitler as the foremost enemy of the labour movement and a threat to
world peace.
Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov signs the pact. German foreign minister Joachim
von Ribbentrop and Josef Stalin stand behind him. Unlike Stalin, who sought all kinds
of diplomatic deals with the imperialist powers in accordance with the theory of
socialism in one country, and cynically sacrificed the revolution in the west, for
Lenin and the Bolsheviks the guiding principle was the promotion of the world
socialist revolution. This was a principle based on very concrete considerations. For a
backward country like Russia, encircled by the imperialist powers, the spreading of
the revolution internationally was the key to its survival and development toward
world socialism.
When out of necessity Lenin and Trotsky signed the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty in
1918 it meant a strengthening of German imperialism, allowing them to take the
Ukraine. The idea of a workers state dealing with capitalist nations is not precluded by
socialists each case must be weighed and considered as to how it advances the cause
of the workers on an international scale. The Brest-Litovsk treaty of 1918 was forced
upon the Soviet republic by Germany as its very survival was at stake. However
Lenin and Trotsky saw such diplomatic manoeuvres as secondary to the only real
saviour the spreading of the revolution itself, starting with Germany.

The signing of the Stalin-Hitler pact must be seen in a different light. It marked a
further break with the traditions of Bolshevism and the foreign policy of Lenin and
Trotsky. As Trotsky said at the time, it was an extra gauge with which to measure the
degree of degeneration of the bureaucracy, and its contempt for the international
working class, including the Comintern.
Clearly, the rise of Fascism in Germany had had a devastating impact on the working
class internationally. The mightiest and best organised labour movement in the world
had allowed Fascism to triumph, as Hitler boasted, without breaking a window. The
reason for this catastrophe was the insane actions of the Stalinist Communist Parties.
By 1927 Trotsky and the Left opposition were being expelled from the Communist
parties and its supporters were being hounded by the Stalinists. In face of the menace
of Fascism, they raised the need for a United Front in Germany of socialist and
communists. The Stalinists in Russia, having leant on the Right to defeat the Left
Opposition, now proceeded to crush Bukharin and the enriched peasantry he
represented. This was reflected by the ultra-left turn in the Communist International in
1928. This meant denouncing every group that was not the Communist Party as a
variant of Fascism: social-fascists, liberal-fascists, and worst of all, the Trotskyfascists. Such nonsense simply demoralised the workers and played into the hands of
Hitler's gangs.
The utter bankruptcy of the leaders of the German CP was revealed when Hitler was
made Chancellor. They dismissed it with the declaration: first Hitler, then our turn!
The Nazis divided and paralysed the German working class, which finally led not
only to the arrest and persecution of the Jews, but also the liquidation of communist
and socialist parties and all independent workers organisations. After this disaster,
which did not even cause a ripple in the Communist Parties, Trotsky realised that the
Communist International was finished and could no longer be a tool that could be
used to further the cause of the international working class. A new international was
needed.
German foreign minister Ribbentrop and Stalin at the signing of the Pact. Photo by
Deutsches Bundesarchiv. At this point it is questionable whether the Stalinist
bureaucracy was actively seeking to sabotage the workers' movement as they later did
in Spain in 1936, where it was clearly acting as a conscious and self-interested caste
out to preserve its own position. The Spanish Stalinists acted on a line dictated from
Moscow that demanded the sabotage of the revolution and the concentration of all
effort on the civil war. The Stalinists were clear: At present nothing matters except
winning the war; without victory in the war all else is meaningless. Therefore this is
not the moment to talk of pressing forward with the revolution At this stage we are
not fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat, we are fighting for parliamentary
democracy. Whoever tries to turn the civil war into a socialist revolution is playing
into the hands of the fascists and is in effect, if not in intention, a traitor.
This policy stemmed from their new policy of Popular Frontism, adopted in 1935
which represented a 180 degree turn. Rather than the United Front of worker
organisations, the new Popular Front policy sought the unity of communists with
socialists, liberals and progressive, anti-fascist capitalists. From mad ultra-leftism
they swung to desperate opportunism. They abandoned all principles in order to

ingratiate themselves with every progressive anti-fascist possible. It therefore meant

the abandonment of any independent action of the working class - the only way to
defeat Fascism.
At the level of international diplomacy Stalin sought to prove to the capitalist
democracies that he was a reliable ally by selling out the Spanish revolution. In 1936
Stalin publicly announced that the USSR never had any such intentions of promoting
world revolution, and that any such misconception was the result of a 'tragicomic'
misunderstanding.
At this point the persecution of all opposition and political dissent inside the USSR
reached fever pitch. The Purge Trials of 1936-38 drew a river of blood between the
regimes of Lenin and Stalin. From August 1936 the world-wide Stalinist press was
publishing on a daily basis resolutions from workers meetings speaking of the
defendants as Trotskyist terrorists conducting their activities in league with the
Gestapo!
Of the members of the Central Committee who met at the 17th Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1934, the overwhelming majority had been
shot or disappeared by 1938. The Purges extended far and wide. Those shot included
Bukharin, Kamenev and Zinoviev, members of the Politburo under Lenin. The Red
Army was purged with leading military figures murdered such as Tukhachevsky, a
military genius and hero of the Civil War. In total 90% of generals, 80% of colonels,
and 35,000 officers were liquidated by Stalin. The Red Army was decapitated. This
fact was well noted by Hitler, particularly after the Sovietsdisastrous campaign in
Finland in 1939, which played a part in his calculation to attack Russia in 1941.
Last page of the Additional Secret Protocol Lenin was fond of quoting the Prussian
military theorist Clausewitz when he said that war is the continuation of politics by
other means. The one-sided Civil War conducted against those genuine communists
who remained in the Soviet Union marked the full emergence of a conscious and selfaware bureaucracy. The possible success of the Spanish revolution would have
rejuvenated the aspirations of the Russian workers and undermined the stranglehold
of the bureaucracy. It was no coincidence that the Moscow Trials took place at this
time. If Stalin had not moved to suppress the Russian workers in blood, he would
have been removed.
War was coming. The western democracies were not keen on a deal with Stalin.
Stalin, the pragmatist, therefore sought a deal with Hitler. This was the solution, or so
he thought. After the British handed Hitler Czechoslovakia on a plate, Stalin urgently
needed an agreement with Hitler whatever the cost. Within a week, the Stalin-Hitler
Pact was signed. Even the pliable leaderships of the Comintern were taken by
surprise. In Britain, the general secretary of the CP, Harry Pollitt, did not jump fast
enough and within a few days had fallen into disgrace and was removed on Moscows
orders.
The pact provided the Nazis with raw materials which funded the Nazi war machine
in Europe, later to be turned against the USSR itself. By 1940 Russia supplied
Germany with 900,000 tons of mineral oil, 100 tons of scrap iron, 500,000 tons of
iron ore along with large amounts of other minerals. Soviet diplomats grovelled

before the Fhrer in order to ingratiate themselves. In his cynical fashion, Stalin
expelled each ambassador from the territories of the USSR as their countries were
occupied by the Nazis armies.
In June 1941, to Stalin's complete surprise, Hitler invaded Russia, meeting little
resistance on the way. Despite the obvious signs and clear warnings, the USSR was
totally unprepared and suffered heavy losses. Stalin, on hearing the news, disappeared
for more than a week, declaring All that Lenin built is lost.
Eventually regaining his nerve, resistance was organised. The Nazi attack on the
USSR delighted the imperialists who hoped that the fight on the Eastern front would
mutually exhaust both sides, after which they could move in and mop up. But they
had miscalculated. They had not counted on the planned economy, which, despite the
waste and mismanagement of the bureaucracy, managed to increase production and
shoulder the burden of the war during its darkest days. The superiority of the plan,
combined with the Russian masses hatred of Hitlerism, provided the Soviet Union
with the invincible fire-power needed to defeat the Nazi armies, eventually throwing
them back to Berlin.
The Second World War reduced itself in essence to a struggle between the USSR and
Germany, with the Allies as bystanders. In 1943, Stalin wound up the Communist
International as a sop to the imperialists, but they turned deaf ears to Russia's pleas for
a Second Front. By 1945, the Red Army had shattered the Nazi war machine and
defeated Hitler. This strengthened Stalinism for a whole period.
However, as Trotsky had warned, inherent within the ruling bureaucracy was a desire
to restore capitalism in order to pass on their privileges to their offspring. It took 50
years for this prognosis to play out. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and the
leading bureaucrats, such as Yeltsin, embraced capitalism. The Stalinists, despite all
the sacrifices of the Russian masses, had become the grave-diggers of the Russian
Revolution.

Prologue to Rosa Luxemburg's Reform

or Revolution
Written by Alan Woods and Niklas Albin Svensson Friday, 03 October 2014

Rosa Luxemburg was one of the most important figures in the history of the
international workers movement. Together with Lenin and Trotsky she was the
outstanding representative of Marxism in the 20th century. Reform or Revolution was
one of the most important of her early writings. Written in 1899, it provides a
devastating demolition of the theoretical and practical basis of reformism. It was

completely valid at the time when it was written and it remains completely valid
today.

Luxemburg in her youthIt seems astonishing that she

was only 28 year old when she wrote it. And it placed herself amongst the foremost
leaders of the left of Social Democracy internationally, a role she was to occupy until
her assassination in 1918. It remains today one of the classic texts of Marxism.
The German Social Democracy
In order to understand the significance of this work it is necessary to explain the
evolution of the German Social Democracy (as the socialist movement was known
internationally before 1914). The German Social Democratic Party was by far the
largest and most influential party of the Second (Socialist) International. It was
regarded as the model party of the International. It had emerged successfully from the
repressive period of the 1880s (the period of the Anti-Socialist Laws) and by 1898
become the most popular party in Germany.
Furthermore, thanks to its historic links to Marx and Engels, the SPD, was considered
to be the most authentic representative of orthodox Marxism in the International. Its
leaders enjoyed enormous authority in the eyes of Socialists everywhere. The course
of development of the German Social Democratic Party therefore exercised an
enormous influence on the development of the whole of the Second International and
Social Democrats from around the world paid close attention to the development of
the Party and the discussions inside it. This included the Russian Social Democrats
who looked up to the German Party.
On paper, everything seemed to be in order. In the Party press and in speeches on the
First of May, the German leaders spoke in solemn terms about socialism, the class
struggle and internationalism. And if they strayed from the line of revolutionary
socialism and internationalism, Karl Kautsky, the leader of the official Left of the
German SPD, was sure to correct them. Until 1914 Lenin considered himself an

orthodox Kautskyite. Only in 1914 did Lenin understand the real role of Kautsky as
a left cover for the right wing reformist bureaucracy of the SPD.
However, behind this impressive facade not all was what it seemed. From the very
beginning Marx and Engels made a series of sharp criticisms of the opportunist
tendencies of the leaders of the German Social Democracy, their ideological
weakness, their tendency to sacrifice principles for short-term practical gains and
their tendency to compromise. The Critique of the Gotha Programme is the most
well-known example of the critical attitude of the founders of scientific socialism but
in the correspondence of Marx and Engels we find far sharper criticisms.
In Germany the rapid industrialisation in the second half of the 19 th century had
created a militant, fresh working class, unburdened by traditions of anarchism or
English trade unionism. The economic crisis of the 1870s gave a huge boost to the
Social Democratic Party. Bismarck tried to block its advance through the AntiSocialist Laws in 1878, which banned the Party. But the Party thrived in semi-legal
existence. After the anti-socialist laws expired in January 1890 (and Bismarck was
forced to resign), it won 20% of the popular vote in the February elections.
However, the period of illegality and semi-illegality did not pass without leaving
some negative traces. A section of the leadership, especially the intellectuals and
academics whom Engels contemptuously branded as the Katheder Sozialisten
(armchair socialists) used the restrictions caused by the laws to water down the
Partys socialist programme and hide its goals on the grounds of expediency. From
London, the elderly Engels castigated these opportunists ceaselessly and put pressure
on Bebel and Kautsky to keep the Party on the right road.
These differences remained unknown, or else poorly understood, by the membership
of the SPD, and that was even truer for the overwhelming majority of Socialists
internationally. That is why the betrayal of the German Social Democratic leaders in
1914 dealt such a crushing blow to the morale of the international Socialist
movement. Lenin himself was taken by surprise, as Trotsky explained in an article
about the role of Rosa Luxemburg:
The capitulation of German Social Democracy on August 4, 1914, was entirely
unexpected by Lenin. It is well known that the issue of the Vorwrts with the patriotic
declaration of the Social Democratic faction was taken by Lenin to be a forgery by the
German general staff. Only after he was absolutely convinced of the awful truth did
he subject to revision his evaluation of the basic tendencies of the German Social
Democracy, and while so doing he performed that task in the Leninist manner, i.e., he
finished it off once for all. (Trotsky, Hands off Rosa Luxemburg!)
Rosa Luxemburg understood the role of Kautsky long before Lenin, a fact that he
acknowledged in October 1914, when he wrote to Shlyapnikov:
I hate and despise Kautsky now more than anyone, with his vile, dirty, self-satisfied
hypocrisy ... Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote, long ago, that Kautsky has
the subservience of a theoretician servility, in plainer language, servility to the
majority of the Party, to opportunism

Lenins previous illusions in Kautsky can be explained by the fact that for most of the
time he was following the German Party from a distance. The reason why Rosa was
able to see through Kautsky and the other SPD leaders (including the Lefts) was
that she had had direct experience of their activities for a long time and could see
more clearly than Lenin what their Marxism amounted to in practice.
Reformist Degeneration
The tragedy of the Socialist International was that it was formed at a period when
capitalism in Europe was in the course of a colossal upswing. The economic
expansion of this period which preceded the First World War is ultimately the
explanation of the national-reformist degeneration of the SPD and the entire Second
International. It brought with it an amelioration of the lot of a section of the masses in
Germany, Britain France and Belgium, including concessions and reforms, and the
consequent softening of relations between the classes. It conditioned the psychology
of the leading layer of the parties of the Social Democracy and gave rise to the
illusion that capitalism was well on the way to solving its fundamental contradictions.
It was the social and economic premise for the rise of Bernsteinite revisionism.

Karl Kautsky The rapid growth in power and influence

of the workers parties and trade unions also spawned a new caste of union officials,
parliamentarians, town councillors and party bureaucrats who, in their living
conditions and outlook, became progressively removed from the people they were
supposed to represent. This stratum, reasonably well-off and lulled by the apparent
success of capitalism, provided the social base for revisionism, a petty bourgeois
reaction against the storm and stress of the class struggle, a yearning for the creature
comforts and the desire for a peaceful and harmonious transition to socialismin the
dim and distant future.
The German Social Democratic Party emerged out of illegality with some 100150,000 members and it grew steadily throughout the 1890s both in membership and
votes. The rapid growth of the Party also brought new problems in the form of
increasing pressures from bourgeois society. Although on a national level, they were
effectively excluded from all government involvement, on a state level, particularly in
the South, the Party was invited to support the liberals in government. This was a
deliberate attempt to get the SPD to take responsibility for the running of capitalist
society, to incorporate the party into the regime after repression had failed.

By 1905 the SPD had 385,000 members and 27% of the vote. The Party press had a
massive readership, with 90 papers and magazines with a circulation of 1.4 million in
1913. The Party and its press had around 3,500 full-timers, to which must be added
more than 3,000 trade union officials. All organizations have a conservative side. That
is particularly true of the apparatus. The soul of the apparatus is routine: organizing
meetings, collecting funds, selling papers, administrating finances, bookkeeping and a
thousand and one small tasks that are absolutely necessary, but which can lead to
habits of routine. The same is true of trade union work. This consists to a great extent
of a series of mundane tasks. The growth of the labour movement in Germany,
France, Britain and Belgium inevitably gave rise to powerful bureaucratic apparatuses
that through their top layer reflected the pressures of capitalism.
The opportunist tendencies of the labour leaders increased continuously in the years
before 1914. The reformist bureaucracy in the SPD and trade unions was not
interested in theory but only in practical politics. The Party leaders fell under the
influence of the idea of gradualism, the idea that slowly, gradually, peacefully,
capitalism could be reformed without the painful need for socialist revolution: today
would be better than yesterday, tomorrow would be better than today, until finally one
day we would wake up in the morning to find ourselves living in the socialist
paradise. This comforting illusion, so soothing to the nervous system, was finally
blown sky-high by the First World War.
Bernsteins revisionism
Revisionism first emerged as a trend to criticise the ideas of Marx and Engels, or
rather to bring them up to date. Eduard Bernstein was to become the theoretician of
the revisionist tendency, which bears a striking similarity to the so-called Socialism
of the 21st Century peddled by Heinz Dietrich and others nowadays. These people
always claim to have something completely new and original to say, but never do. The
advocates of 21st Century Socialism say nothing that we do not find expressed far
better by Bernstein and the Utopian Socialists.

Eduard BernsteinMarx explained that social being

determines consciousness. It is not an accident that the revisionist tendency in
Germany grew stronger in the midst of the 1890s boom. During the crisis of 18731882 the economy had grown by a mere 3% over the course of a decade. The period
1887 to 1896, in comparison had a growth of 36%. The boom was sowing illusions in

Capitalism. A series of minor reforms and concessions on the industrial front also
gave the impression that through a gradual strengthening of the working class
organisations, a gradual improvement of the conditions of the working class could be
achieved.
Bernstein launched his assault against orthodoxy in a series of articles published in
the theoretical journal of the Party, Die Neue Zeit between 1896 and 1897. Although
these articles caused indignation among the Partys Left wing, there was no serious
reply and Kautsky the Left, who edited Neue Zeit, even thanked Bernstein for his
contribution to the debate. As a result, the right wing was emboldened and a
revisionist tendency was organised around the journal Sozialistische Monatshefte
(first issued in January 1897).
Like all revisionists in history, Bernstein started his attempt to bring Marxism up to
date, to liberate Marxism from Hegel (that is, from dialectics). But it is impossible
to attack one aspect of Marxism without attacking or distorting all the others. In the
end, Bernstein rejected all the main pillars of Marxism, not just dialectics but the
labour theory of value, the theory of crisis, socialist revolution, etc. His aim was to
prove that the contradictions between the classes were decreasing as the middle class
was growing and that the growth of capitalism had no limits: the crises of capitalism
might reoccur but wouldn't necessarily get worse.
Among other things, Bernstein argued that the concentration of industrial production
was taking place at a much slower pace than had been foreseen by Marx; the great
number of small businesses showed the vitality of private enterprise (small is
beautiful, as they say nowadays!); instead of polarisation between workers and
capitalists, the presence of numerous intermediate strata means that society is much
more complex (the new middle classes); in place of the anarchy of production,
capitalism was capable of being controlled to the extent that crises were less frequent
and less severe (Keynesianism and managed capitalism); and the working class,
apart from being a minority of society was only interested in the immediate
improvement of its material conditions of existence.
The supposedly modern theories of the present-day Labour leaders are only clumsy
plagiarisms of notions far more ably expressed by Bernstein a hundred years ago.
According to him the sole aim of the Party was to be the struggle for reforms, a
position that was summed up in his notorious (and essentially meaningless) phrase:
The goal, whatever it might be, is nothing to me, the movement is everything.
Answering Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg explained that his theories, if accepted by the
Party, would inevitably lead to a complete break with Marxism:
If the opportunist currents in the practical activity of our Party are an entirely natural
phenomenon which can be explained in the light of the special conditions of our
activity and its development, Bernsteins theory is no less natural an attempt to group
these currents into a general theoretic expression, an attempt to elaborate its own
theoretic conditions and the break with scientific socialism.
Kautskys opportunism

The response of the Party leadership to the attack was timid, cowardly and evasive.
Although they may not have necessarily agreed with Bernstein, they were reluctant to
get involved in a battle over theory, which, if the truth is to be told, they regarded as a
useless irrelevance, like the fairy on the Christmas tree. They would have preferred
the whole issue to go away. Karl Kautsky said nothing for a long time. In fact he was
the one that published the articles in the first place. August Bebel, the leader of the
Party, was similarly discreet.
Kautsky was generally regarded as the guardian of Marxist orthodoxy par excellence
and the main theoretician of the Party, the Pope of Marxism. But Kautskys
Marxism had an abstract, scholastic character. Whereas Plekhanov regarded Bernstein
as an enemy to be attacked, unmasked and, if necessary, driven out, Kautsky still saw
him as an erring companion, whose theoretical eccentricities ought not to spoil an
agreeably friendly relationship. Kautskys attitude is clearly revealed in a letter he
wrote to Axelrod on the 9 March 1898, congratulating him on his articles against
Bernstein in the following terms:
I am most interested in your opinion of Eddie. Indeed, Im afraid were losing him
However, I have still not given him up as a bad job and I hope that when he enters
into personalif only writtencontact with us, then something of the old fighter will
return to our Hamlet (sic), and he will once again direct his criticism against the
enemy and not against us.
A pile of replies appeared on Kautskys desk but he refused to publish them, claiming
it was all a misunderstanding. This was also the line taken by Vorwrts, the main
Party paper. But both Franz Mehring and Parvus wrote strongly critical articles
against Bernstein in the papers they controlled. Internationally, Plekhanov wrote an
article entitled Why should we thank him?, which not only subjected Bernstein to a
very sharp criticism but also attacked Kautsky for not refuting him.
At the Party congress, things came to a head, in spite of the attempt by Party officials
to keep it off the agenda. There was an open clash between revisionists and leftwingers in which Rosa Luxemburg played a prominent role. In the session that was
dedicated to the Party press, Klara Zetkin attacked Kautsky and Vorwrts for their
silence on Bernstein.
The intensification of the conflict forced the Centre, occupied by Bebel and Kautsky,
to intervene. Bebel proclaimed that it is utterly false tactics to rob the Party of its
enthusiasm and of its willingness to make sacrifices by pushing its goals into the
indefinite future. But even in answering Bernstein, Bebel revealed his philistinism
and theoretical weakness. In reality, he was objecting to Bernstein, not so much for
being wrong in what he said, but for saying things that he felt could undermine the
morale of the Party.
Ignaz Auer, in private, rebuked Bernstein by advising him that one does not say such
things; one simply does them. This remark admirably sums up the narrow
philistinism and lack of principle of the SPD leaders. They objected to Bernstein, not
because of what he said or wrote, but because the debate posed a threat to Party unity.
Why cause all this bother? There is no need to provide a theoretical justification for

our opportunism. There is no need even to talk about it. Just do it! And that was
exactly what the leaders of the SPD were doing.
The Party leadership were hoping to bury the problem. They attempted to suppress
discussion, and, in particular, ignored calls to take action against the revisionists. In
complete contrast, Rosa Luxemburg attacked the opportunist wing of the Party for its
hostility to theory:
What appears to characterise this practice above all? A certain hostility to theory.
This is quite natural, for our theory, that is, the principles of scientific socialism,
impose clearly marked limitations to practical activity.
Lenin made the very same point when he attacked the Russian followers of Bernstein,
the so-called Economist trend in What is to be done?:
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This idea
cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of
opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of
practical activity.
Reform or revolution
In the summer of 1898, Rosa Luxemburg prepared her reply, which appeared in the
Leipziger Volkszeitung in the autumn (before the Stuttgart Party congress). For Rosa
Luxemburg this was not just a question of defeating Bernstein in a vote (which
happened time and time again at Party congresses), but of educating the rank-and-file
of the Party:
It is, therefore, in the interest of the proletarian mass of the Party to become
acquainted, actively and in detail, with the present theoretic knowledge remains the
privilege of a handful of academicians in the Party, the latter will face the danger of
going astray. Only when the great mass of workers take the keen and dependable
weapons of scientific socialism in their own hands, will all the petty-bourgeois
inclinations, all the opportunistic currents, come to naught.
In Reform or revolution Rosa Luxemburg provided a comprehensive political
response to Bernstein. Unlike other critics of Bernstein's, Luxemburg was not merely
aiming to defend the status quo. In attacking Bernsteins reformism she was implicitly
challenging the existing reformist practice of the SPD leaders. She was to work
tirelessly right up to her murder, to defend revolutionary Marxism and to educate the
rank-and-file in revolutionary theory.
Today, almost a century after her murder, the name of Rosa Luxemburg is a source of
inspiration to socialists everywhere. Together with Lenin, Trotsky, Karl Liebknecht
and Connolly, she defended the cause of socialist revolution and proletarian
internationalism and died fighting for it. It is true that she sometimes made mistakes,
but even her mistakes were always motivated by revolutionary considerations. After
her death, Lenin, who greatly admired Rosa Luxemburg, defended her against her
Marxist critics by quoting an old Russian saying:

Although the eagles do swoop down and beneath the chickens

chickens with outspread wings never will soar amid clouds in the sky.

fly,

Those who wish to exaggerate the differences between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin
often quote her criticisms of the Bolsheviks in 1918, when she was writing from a
prison cell in Germany. Deprived of accurate information about the situation in
Russia, her appraisal was one-sided and basically incorrect. Yet even then, this is how
she speaks of the October insurrection:
Everything that a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness, and
consistency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky, and the other comrades have given in
good measure. All the revolutionary honour and capacity which the Social Democracy
of the West lacked were represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was
not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution; it was also the salvation of the
honour of international socialism.
Today the ideas of Reform or Revolution are as correct and relevant as the day they
were written, and the young generation of class fighters in Mexico and internationally
look for inspiration to that great revolutionary, fighter and martyr of the working
class, Rosa Luxemburg. In the words of that great revolutionary Leon Trotsky:
The crisis of the proletarian leadership cannot, of course, be overcome by means of
an abstract formula. It is a question of an extremely humdrum process. But not of a
purely historical process, that is, of the objective premises of conscious activity, but
of an uninterrupted chain of ideological, political and organizational measures for the
purpose of fusing together the best, most conscious elements of the world proletariat
beneath a spotless banner, elements whose number and self-confidence must be
constantly strengthened, whose connections with wider sections of the proletariat
must be developed and deepened in a word: to restore to the proletariat, under new
and highly difficult and onerous conditions, his historical leadership. The latest
spontaneity confusionists have just as little right to refer Rosa as for miserable
Comintern bureaucrats have to refer to Lenin. Put aside the incidentals which
developments have overcome, and we can, with full justification, place our work for
the Fourth International under the sign of the three Ls, that is, not only under the
sign of Lenin, but also of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. (Luxemburg and the Fourth
International)

osa Luxemburg and the womens

question

Marxism
in
her
Bloodstream
Written by Lis Mandl Thursday, 15 January 2009

Lis Mandl looks at how Rosa Luxemburg considered the womens question as
inseparable from the struggle of the working class as a whole. She also looks at how
the struggle for womens rights was also a struggle against the reformists within the
movement who constantly tried to limit demands for full womens emancipation.
Introduction

Rosa Luxemburg was deeply convinced that the full emancipation of women is only
possible under socialism.
She had mastered the Marxist method like the organs of her body. One could say that
Marxism ran in her bloodstream These words written by Leon Trotsky are probably
the best characterisation of Rosa Luxemburg to date. Rosa Luxemburg was one of the
outstanding fighters of the working class movement in Germany as well as
internationally. She was solid as a rock in theory and practice. When it came to
revolution, and the trust in the working class, she was deeply devoted to her one and
only goal: socialism. She was also known for her fine sense of criticism and her bitter
struggle against war and imperialism.
In her lifetime she was a representative of minorities: She was Jewish (although not
religious), she came from Poland (she had German citizenship, but still was always
regarded as the Pole), she was never married (but lived her relationships openly)
and she was a political female leader of the Proletarian International Movement!
This article mainly deals with the womens question and some readers may ask why
we should refer to Rosa Luxemburg in dealing with this question, since she never was
connected to the womens question in the same way, as for example Alexandra
Kollontai or Clara Zetkin. She wrote only a few articles about the womens question,
especially on womens right to vote. But that doesnt necessarily mean she wasnt
interested or she was thinking about the womens question only as a secondary

contradiction. The opposite is true. In November 1918 she wrote a letter to Zetkin
saying: Maybe I should write on the womens question. Its so important right now,
and we dont have any comrades here who understand something about it.
Rosas political life coincided with the theoretical struggle within the social
democratic parties on which way the movement should go? It was the period of the
rise of the bureaucratic apparatus and privileges within the movement and its
functionaries. It was the period of the rise of imperialism and the need to tie the
revolutionary working class, especially of the so called first world countries, to the
capitalist system. One of her most famous books on Reform or Revolution deals
with the latest development with the German Social Democrats, who were trying to
abandon the socialist revolution and, as a matter of fact, socialism itself.
The leaders of the Party Bernstein and later Kautsky argued that because of the
development of capitalism a slow linear process towards socialism was possible. By
taking gradual control over political and economical life, the working class would
find itself in control of the state and would thus, almost by accident achieve
socialism. These strange ideas are still repeated today by some so-called leaders of the
international working class movement (although most of them now speak of a social
market economy).
This discussion exactly and simultaneously mirrored and still mirrors the basic
question facing the womens movement: is the liberation of women within capitalism
possible or not? The split between the bourgeois and the proletarian womens
movement was caused basically by this question. Rosa Luxemburg was deeply
convinced that the full emancipation of women is only possible under socialism and
therefore her struggle against the degeneration of the party and for a correct politically
line within the party must also be seen as her fight for womens liberation!
Bourgeois Womens Movement

The first women's movements were bourgeois and limited their liberation struggle to
their own class.
We have dealt in other articles about the origin of womens oppression. The most
famous book about this subject is Engels The origin of the family, private property
and the state, where he argues that class societies and womens oppression are a

product of the rise of private propriety. Marxism explains that the root of women's
oppression lies not in biology, but in social conditions. The first division of labour
was between men and women, but this doesnt mean that it coincided with the
oppression of women. As long as the reproduction was organised in a collective way
men and women had equal rights and the same status.
This changed with the ability of society to produce a surplus and the development of
the haves and have-nots. The need to know the legitimate inheritor to pass the
property on to forced women into a state of monogamy and bound them to the
household. In contrast to all feminist currents which declare patriarchy as the origin of
womens oppression, Marxist theory explains that capitalism uses patriarchal
structures for its own interests to maintain the cheap and/or free labour of women by
dividing the working class according to sex or race etc
Although there has always been some kind of resistance against womens oppression
the mass movement was a child of capitalist society. For the first time in human
history the material basis for complete social and economic equality of opportunity
for men and women was brought into being. In previous class societies, like slavery
and feudalism, women were a part of mens household, but the development of
capitalism shook this divine order. In the bourgeois revolution women played a very
active role. The slogans of freedom, human rights and equality expressed exactly the
thoughts and wishes of millions of women.
The so-called first womens movement was basically a movement of bourgeois
women. At the beginning they fought for complete social and economic emancipation
through direct access to education. A famous representative in the French Revolution
was Olympe de Gouges. In her famous Declaration of Rights of Women and Female
Citizens De Gouges never questioned the bourgeois order but nevertheless her
demands were still too radical and she was executed in 1793. Another activist was
Rose Lacombe, who in contrast to De Gouges, tried to link up the struggles of female
worker with a revolutionary perspective. She founded the Association of
revolutionary citizens with the aim to organize working-class women.
In Germany and Austria in 1848 the bourgeoisie never played such a progressive as in
France. Terrified by the awakening of the young working-class they moved back to
the old ruling order and forgot very quickly everything about human rights, fraternity
and equality. The same was true with the bourgeois womens movement. With the
exception of Louise Otto Peters the Grande Dame of the German womens
movement they capitulated and their revolutionary spirit was gone. Their criticisms
of the common traditional gender roles, violence within the family and the horrible
situation of women in the workplace became silent. The bourgeois womens
movement objected to the class struggle in principle. They fought for social and
economic reforms within the capitalist system. With World War I and the Russian
Revolution they were forced to show their true colours and most of them jumped
(with their bourgeois men) into the bed of reaction.
There were exceptions, such as Sylvia Pankhurst of the Suffragettes (the British
bourgeois womens movement which also attracted working class women), a founder
of the British Communist Party, who, while her sister Christabel Pankhurst

(Suffragette and MP for the conservatives) was waging a fight against working class
rights, was imprisoned for anti-war actions.
The Proletarian Womens Movement

Clara Zetkin (on the picture) and Rosa Luxemburg argued for a general strike to
achieve the right to vote for women and men but they were blocked by the reformists.
At the beginning the demands for the right to work and to vote, as well as decent
working conditions, were shared by the whole of the womens movement and thus
many female workers were attracted to the different womens associations. But with
the rise of reaction after 1848 all these demands were put aside by the bourgeois
womens movement causing a necessary split and the birth of the proletarian womens
movement.
Clara Zektin paid tribute to the brave fighters of the first womens movement but
criticised their inability to break their links with the bourgeois system. This was
clearly shown during the great uprising of the servants in 1899 when the bourgeois
women, who felt threatened in their own privileges, cooperated with the police to
pacify the movement. The bourgeois women often referred to their poor sisters in
the factories and organised some charity keeping them dependent on arbitrary moral
acts, as Zektin rightly stated: to condemn the masses to the forces of reaction.
The working class in the 19th century included not just men but also women. To
reduce their wage costs many capitalist used the labour of women and children. The
working day of women was one of long hours, dirty and loud workplaces, dangerous
working conditions, sexual harassment and rape. After a day of work they also had to
take care of the children and the whole household. Abortion was forbidden and many
women died of the consequences of illegal abortion or birth complications. They had
no rights, no access to education and the crushing burden of the clerical ideology

made any attempt to flee this hell almost impossible. The young working class
movement was the first that made the fate of these women public and fought for better
conditions.
Among the first demands of the Social Democrats was the reduction of working hours
for women. However, the social democratic movement was not free of bourgeois
influence and sexist ideas. In 1866 the First International voted (under the influence of
Proudhon) in favour of a resolution to abolish all kinds of female wage labour,
however, Marx and Engels argued firmly against the resolution. The followers of
Lassalle tried to push women out of the production process arguing about the natural
role of women, in effect expressing their fear of extra competition from women in
the labour market. In 1871 Marx succeeded in inserting into the statutes of the First
International a clause allowing for the establishment of special womens branches,
which soon attracted thousands of female workers.
As we can see, the attempt to organize female workers was not welcomed by
everybody. Just as the movement came under the pressure of alien bourgeois ideas in
the form of a reformist wing, this same layer expressed backward sexist ideas, arguing
for example that most of the women tended towards reactionary ideas and thus their
right to vote would strengthen the conservatives. For example, when the idea was
raised of organising married women, the Austrian party secretary Schuhmeier cried
out: My better half doesnt need to be organized, I have organized her already at
home.
Engels once said: Within the family the man is the bourgeois and the woman
represents the proletariat. The Marxists within the Party like Bebel, Zetkin,
Luxemburg and Liebknecht advocated the theory of the emancipating force of wage
labour, which brings out women from their isolation of domestic work and gives them
some kind of independence. Debates on sexism, traditional gender roles and domestic
violence etc., were subordinated to the economic discussion and class struggle.
The Marxists fought for social and political rights for women, but at the same time
they were absolutely convinced that full emancipation could only be achieved in a
socialist system, where the whole of reproduction (such as childcare, care for the
elderly, housework etc) would not be done free of charge.
The debate on how to organise women and for what was characteristic for the actual
situation of the social democracy at the time. At the German party congress finally in
1891 most delegates voted in favour of the following demand: womens right to vote,
the creation of free schools for all sexes, public free medical health care, especially
for childbirth. The ensuing debate on how to win the right to vote for women marked
the split within the party between the reformists and the revolutionaries. Under the
influence of the 1905 Russian revolution Zetkin and Luxemburg argued for a general
strike to achieve the political aims of the movement, but the leaders of the reformist
wing warned against Russian conditions (that meant they were warning against a
revolutionary development) and argued that the masses would go out of control(!). By
giving up the general strike as a mean of class struggle, the leaders were abandoning
revolution, which was the only way of achieve socialism, and thus they were saying
goodbye to the real emancipation of women.

The Austrian Social Democrats were considered as a model within the Second
International. But here we see how far the reformist degeneration had already gone. In
1905 they decided to struggle only for the right to vote for men. The leader of the
party, expressing an extreme gradualist approach, said at the womens congress: You
have to ask yourself, whether the political situation is mature enough to fight for
womens right to vote We must take the last step after the first. And the first step is
the right to vote for men. Thus, with the help of the women activists these
reformist leaders achieved their first goal for men and then stood still, until
revolution forced them to move on.
The First International Womens Congress was organised in 1907 in Stuttgart. Zetkin
put forward the socialist position to fight for the full and equal right to vote for men
and women. Against the resistance of the British and Austrian sections the resolution
was passed and put forward to the Congress of the Second International. Under the
influence of Luxemburg the Second Womens Congress in 1910 called for a day of
action against war. It condemned imperialist war and appealed to the international
working class to show solidarity. An appeal that was ignored by most of the leaders of
the Social Democratic parties These examples show that often women played a
more progressive and advanced role within the movement.
In 1915 Clara Zetkin once again organized against the orders of the party leaders
another International Womens Congress, to show a sign of international solidarity.
The Austrians didnt show up strongly influenced by the official party line.
Nevertheless the congress was a big success. The result of this congress was a huge
campaign against the war. Zetkin was then arrested and the right wing within the
Social Democracy had her removed from the editorial board of the largest proletarian
newspaper for women Die Gleichheit. a paper founded by Zetkin herself! The
Russian Revolution, the founding of the Communist International and the complete
political bankruptcy of the German Social Democracy led to the formation of the
USPD, the Spartakusbund and later the German Communist Party. Apart from Zetkin
and Luxemburg many other women played a leading role in this process.
World War I was a heavy defeat, especially for the international working class
movement, whose leaders capitulated to national chauvinism and imperialist war. The
Russian Revolution gave a new impetus and hope to the cause of the working class
and women. Masses of women workers surged towards the party to use it as their
instrument to fight for peace and socialism. In Austria and Germany (and elsewhere)
the women workers in the factories were in the vanguard of the revolutionary
movement which forced the bourgeois to introduce some reforms in order to prevent a
socialist revolution. The right to vote, the shortening of the working day, a healthcare
system, holidays and unemployment benefits were a big step forward for the (women)
workers. But because these reforms were part of a move by the bourgeoisie, aided and
abetted by the reformist leaders of the working class to derail the revolution, they
marked a big step away from the struggle for a classless society without any kind of
oppression and the full emancipation of women.
Rosa Luxemburg (and Karl Liebknecht) were murdered with the connivance of the
right-wing Social Democratic leaders and thus the fascists began to raise their heads.
Within a few years the working class had lost everything they had fought for and

women were once again bound to the household and brutally oppressed by fascist
ideology.

150 years since the foundation of the First

International
On 28th September 1864, delegates from different countries gathered in St.
Martins Hall in London. This was the most serious attempt yet to unite the
advanced layers of the working class on an international scale. The meeting was
convened a consequence of the international solidarity in response to the Polish
uprising of 1863.
The meeting unanimously decided to set up the International Workingmens
Association, which became known as the First International. The centre was to be in
London, directed by a committee of 21, which was instructed to draft a programme
and constitution. This task was entrusted to Karl Marx who, from that time onwards
played a decisive leading role in the International.
In retrospect, we can say that the historical task of the First International was to
establish the main principles, programme, strategy and tactics of revolutionary
Marxism on a world scale. However, the new International did not spring completely
formed and armed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. At its inception, it was not a
Marxist International, but an extremely heterogeneous organization composed of
different tendencies.
However, the founders of scientific socialism were very far removed from that brand
of sectarianism that tries to find a chemically pure working class organization,
something that has never existed and will never exist. Marx and Engels understood
the importance of working in a broad arena with mass roots in the working class. In
this sense, the participation of the British trade unions was particularly important.

From the beginning Marx and Engels

waged a stubborn struggle for ideological clarification within the International. But
they understood very well that in order to conquer the masses for the ideas of
scientific socialism, it was necessary to conduct patient work within the historically
determined organizations of the proletariat with deep roots in the class. For the first
time the IWA provided them with a common framework within which to test and
debate their ideas beyond the scope of the small revolutionary circles that had existed
hitherto.

In the beginning Marx and Engels faced formidable difficulties. In most countries the
workers movement was in its early beginnings. It was still in its formative stages and
was often influenced by bourgeois liberal and democratic ideas. In most countries the
working-class movement had not yet broken away from the bourgeois parties.
In Marx and Engels' day, the overwhelming majority in Europe were peasants or else
small artisans, not wage workers. Only in Britain did the working class make up the
majority of society, but the British trade union leaders were under the influence of the
Liberals. In France the Proudhonists were opposed to strikes, counterposing their
utopian ideas of mutualism. They were also opposed to the workers participating in
the political struggle.
In the end, by combining firmness on principles with great tactical flexibility, Marx
and Engels gradually won over the majority. Under the guidance of the General
Council led by Marx and Engels, the International laid the framework for the
development of the labour movement in Europe, Britain and America. It established
deep roots in the main European countries.
Socialism and internationalism
Socialism is internationalist, or it is nothing. Already at the dawn of our movement, in
the pages of The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote the famous words:
The workers have no country. The internationalism of Marx and Engels was not a
caprice, or the result of sentimental considerations. It flowed from the fact that
capitalism develops as a world systemout of the different national economies and
markets there arises one single, indivisible and interdependent wholethe world
market.
Today this prediction of the founders of Marxism has been brilliantly demonstrated, in
almost laboratory fashion. The crushing domination of the world market is the most
decisive fact of our epoch. Not a single country, no matter how big and powerfulnot
the USA, not China, not Russiacan stand apart from the mighty pull of the world
market.
There is no more modern book than Marx and Engels' Manifesto. It explains the
division of society into classes; it explains the phenomenon of globalization, global
crises of overproduction, the nature of the state and the fundamental motor forces of
historical development.
However, even the most correct ideas can achieve nothing unless they find an
organizational and practical expression. That is why the founders of scientific
socialism always fought for the creation of an international organization of the
working class. Marx and Engels had already been active in the Communist League,
which was, from the beginning, an international organisation, but the formation of the
IWA represented a qualitative step forward.
The International developed and grew in the period preceding the Paris Commune. It
did not stand apart from the everyday problems of the working class. On the contrary,
it was constantly engaged in practical work in the workers movement. The
International inscribed on its banner the struggle for equality and fought for the

improvement of the conditions of women and young people that suffered the greatest
oppression under capitalism. At first the IWA had mostly male membership, but in
April 1865 membership was opened to women and the International developed a
series of demands for women workers.
The headquarters of the General Council were in London and several unions affiliated
to it. It was present in many strikes and other labour disputes. The International aimed
to prevent the import of foreign strikebreakers and collected money to give direct aid
to strikers and their families. This made the new organisation immensely popular with
the workers, who began to realise that the International was the champion of the
proletariat, and was fighting to defend its interests.
Despite these successes, or rather because of them, the reformist trade unionists were
increasingly alarmed at the growing influence of the International in Britain. They
accepted its help but had no sympathy with its socialist and revolutionary ideas.
Nevertheless, the International was popular with the British working class movement.
The Trade Union Conference at Sheffield adopted a resolution thanking the
international Workingmens Association for its attempts to unite the workers of all
lands in a fraternal league, and recommending the unions represented at the
Conference join the International.
The struggle against sectarianism
Marx and Engels were obliged to fight on two fronts: on the one hand, they had to
combat the reformist ideas of the opportunist trade union leaders who were always
inclined towards class collaboration and conciliation with the bourgeois Liberals. On
the other hand, they were obliged to wage a constant battle against ultraleft and
sectarian tendencies. This situation has not changed very much today. The Marxist
tendency is faced with exactly the same problems and has to fight against the same
enemies. The names may have changed but the content is just the same.
The history of the First International is characterised above all by the struggle
between two incompatible trends: on the one hand that of the sectarian and utopian
systems which were initially dominant in the working-class movement and, on the
other, that of scientific socialism, the foremost representative of which was Karl
Marx.
In the First International, apart from British Owenites and reformist trade unionists,
there were French Proudhonists and Blanquists, Italian followers of the moderate
nationalist Mazzini, Russian anarchists, and other trends. In a letter to Engels, Marx
wrote: It was very difficult to frame the thing so that our view should appear in a
form acceptable from the present standpoint of the workers' movement. [...] It will
take time before the re-awakened movement allows the old boldness of speech. It will
be necessary to be fortiter in re, suaviter in modo [mild in manner and bold in
content].
The anarchists, both of the Proudhonist and of the Bakuninist trends, were opposed to
the participation of the working class in the political struggle, though from different
points of view. The Proudhonists advised the workers to achieve their emancipation

through petty economic measures, especially by the organisation of free credit and of
equitable exchange among the producers.
On the other extreme the Bakuninists advocated the propaganda of the deed, which
boiled down to individual terrorism and petty insurrections, which were supposed to
prepare the ground for the general uprising which was to achieve the social revolution
at one blow. While Proudhon represented in an idealised form the petty bourgeois
outlook of small-holders and independent artisans, Bakunin gave expression to the
outlook of the lumpenproletarian and insurrectionary peasant.
These false ideas were a serious problem at a time when the working masses were
awakening to a new life. Recovering from the terrible defeat they had sustained after
the revolution of 1848, the French workers instinctively expressed their revolt against
economic slavery in strikes, while politically they were preparing the struggle for the
overthrow of the Bonapartist regime. But the Proudhonists were opposing strikes and
offering petty palliatives of a utopian character.
Instead of basing themselves on the real movement of the working class and raising
the masses to a higher level, the sectarians were endeavouring to impose upon it their
particular doctrines. A sharp and stubborn ideological struggle was necessary to purge
the International of sectarianism and provide it with a firm ideological basis. Marx
had to devote an enormous amount of time and effort to the struggle against
sectarianism in all its different forms.
The Paris Commune
In its day, the bourgeoisie trembled before the menace of communism in the form of
the International. But great events were being prepared that would cut across its
development. While the ideological struggle was thus being fought out within the
International, a dramatic situation was unfolding on the European Continent.
In July 1870 war broke out between Bonapartist France and Bismarcks Germany. The
IWA adopted an internationalist position on the War. The General Council issued a
manifesto protesting against the war, and laying the blame for it jointly on Napoleon
and the Prussian Government. While pointing out that for Germany the war had a
defensive character, the manifesto warned the German workers that if they allowed it
to become a war of conquest, this would prove disastrous to the proletariat whether it
ended in victory or in defeat.
The catastrophic defeat of the French army on September 4, 1870 unleashed a chain
of events that led to an insurrection by the proletariat and the establishment of the first
workers state in history: the Paris Commune. In the words of Marx, the workers of
Paris "stormed Heaven." The Commune was not a parliament of the old type, but was
a working body with executive as well as legislative functions. The officialdom,
which had hitherto been a mere tool of the Government and a pliable instrument in the
hands of the ruling class, was replaced by a representative body composed of persons
elected by universal suffrage, and subject to recall at any moment.
This is not the place for a detailed history of the Paris Commune. Suffice it to say that
the weakness of the Commune was a weakness of leadership. The Commune had

neither a definite programme nor a clearly worked out tactic for defence or for attack.
In the Commune itself, the Internationalists were in a minority. There were only
seventeen of them in a total membership of ninety-two. In the absence of a conscious
leadership, the Commune was unable to present wide perspectives to the workers and
peasants that could have ended the isolation of the Paris workers.
Despite its great achievements, the Commune made mistakes. In particular, Marx
pointed to the failure to nationalise the Bank of France and march against the centre
of the counterrevolution in Versailles. The working class paid a terrible price for these
mistakes. The government in Versailles was given time to organize a
counterrevolutionary army that marched on Paris and crushed the Commune with the
utmost savagery.
Having drowned the Commune in blood, the bourgeois press organised a foul
campaign of slanders against it. Marx defended the Commune vehemently. In the
name of the General Council he wrote a manifesto that later became known as The
Civil War in France, in which he explained the real historical significance of this great
proletarian revolution. The Commune was a form of political rule by the working
class, a dictatorship established by the oppressed class over the oppressing class. It
was a transitional regime that stood for the complete economic transformation of
society. This was what Marx meant when he spoke of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
The collapse of the International
The defeat of the Paris Commune dealt a mortal blow to the IWA. The orgy of
reaction that ensued made it impossible to function in France, and everywhere the
International was persecuted. But the real reason for its difficulties is to be found in
the upswing of capitalism on a world scale that followed the defeat of the Commune.
This in turn had a negative effect on the International.
Under these conditions, the pressures of capitalism on the labour movement resulted
in internal quarrels and factionalism. Feeding off the general atmosphere of
disillusionment and despair, the intrigues of Bakunin and his followers intensified.
For these reasons, Marx and Engels first proposed moving the headquarters of the
International to New York, and finally decided that it would be better to dissolve the
International, at least for the time being. The IWA was formally wound up in 1876.
The IWA succeeded in laying the theoretical foundations for a genuine revolutionary
International. But it never was a real mass workers International. It was really an
anticipation of the future. The Socialist International (Second International), launched
in 1889, began where the First International had left off. Unlike the latter, the Second
International began as a mass International which organised millions of workers. It
had mass parties and trade unions in Germany, France, Britain, Belgium, etc.
Moreover, it stood, at least in words, on the basis of revolutionary Marxism. The
future of world socialism appeared to be guaranteed.
However, the misfortune of the Second International was to be formed during a long
period of capitalist upswing. This set its stamp on the mentality of the leading layer of
the Social Democratic parties and trade unions. The period of 1871-1914 was the

classical period of Social Democracy. On the basis of a long period of economic

growth, it was possible for capitalism to give concessions to the working class, or,
more correctly, to its upper layer. This was the material basis for the nationalreformist degeneration of the Second (Socialist) International, which was cruelly
exposed in 1914, when the leaders of the International voted for the war credits and
supported their bourgeoisie in the imperialist slaughter of the First World War.
The 3rd International

The terrible catastrophes of the First World

War provided an impetus to the Russian Revolution, which in 1917 brought the
workers to power under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin and
Trotsky. But the Bolsheviks never saw the Russian Revolution as a purely national act
but rather the first act of the world socialist revolution. That is why in 1919 they
established a new revolutionary International.
The Third (Communist) International, generally known as the Comintern, stood on a
qualitatively higher level than either of its two predecessors. Like the IWA the Third
International, at the high-point of its development, stood for a clear revolutionary,
internationalist programme. Like the Second International, it had a mass base of
millions. Once again, it appeared that the fate of the world revolution was in good
hands.
Under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, the Communist International maintained a
correct revolutionary line. However, the isolation of the Russian Revolution under
conditions of frightful material and cultural backwardness caused the bureaucratic
degeneration of the Revolution. The bureaucratic faction led by Stalin gained the
upper hand, especially after Lenins death in 1924.
Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition attempted to defend the spotless traditions of
October against Stalinist reactionthe Leninist traditions of workers democracy and
proletarian internationalism. But they were fighting against the tide. The Russian
workers were exhausted by years of war, revolution and Civil War. On the other hand,
the bureaucracy felt increasingly confident, pushed the workers to one side and took
over the Party.
The rise of Stalinism in Russia stifled the tremendous potential of the Third
International. The Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union played havoc with the
still immature leaderships of the Communist Parties abroad. Whereas Lenin and
Trotsky looked to the international workers revolution as the only safeguard for the
future of the Russian revolution and the Soviet state, Stalin and his supporters were

indifferent to the world revolution. The theory of socialism in one country

expressed the national limitedness of the outlook of the bureaucracy, which looked on
the Communist International merely as an instrument of the foreign policy of
Moscow. Having used the Comintern for his own cynical purposes, Stalin dissolved it
in 1943 without even the pretence of a congress.
The 4th International

Expelled and exiled, Trotsky attempted to

re-group the small forces that remained loyal to the traditions of Bolshevism and the
October revolution. Under the most difficult conditions, slandered by the Stalinists
and persecuted by the GPU, he held aloft the banner of October, of Leninism,
workers democracy and proletarian internationalism.
Unfortunately, in addition to the smallness of their forces, many of the adherents of
the Opposition were confused and disoriented, and many mistakes were made,
particularly of a sectarian character. This reflected in part the isolation of the
Trotskyists from the mass movement. This sectarianism is present today in most of the
groups that claim to represent Trotskyism, but have failed to grasp the most
elementary ideas that Trotsky defended.
Trotsky launched the Fourth International in 1938 on the basis of a definite
perspective. However, this perspective was falsified by history. The murder of Trotsky
by one of Stalins assassins in 1940 struck a mortal blow against the movement. The
other leaders of the Fourth International proved to be completely unequal to the tasks
posed by history. They repeated the words of Trotsky without understanding Trotskys
method. As a result, they made serious errors which led to the shipwreck of the
Fourth. The leadership of the Fourth International was totally incapable of
understanding the new situation that arose after 1945. The break-up and splintering of
the Trotskyist movement is rooted in that period.
It is not possible here to go into more detail about the mistakes of the then leadership
of the Fourth International, but it is sufficient to say that Mandel, Cannon and co., lost
their bearings after the Second World War and this led to a complete abandonment of
genuine Marxism. The so-called Fourth International degenerated after the death of
Trotsky into an organically petit-bourgeois sect. It has nothing in common with the
ideas of its founder or with the genuine tendency of Bolshevism-Leninism.
The movement has been thrown back

The Second and Third Internationals degenerated into reformist organisations, but at
least they had the masses. Trotsky, in exile, did not have a mass organization, but he
had a correct programme and policy and a clean banner. He was respected by workers
all over the world and his ideas were listened to. Today the so-called Fourth
International does not exist as an organisation. Those who speak in its name (and
there are a few of them) have neither the masses, nor the correct ideas, nor even a
clean banner. They have degenerated into the kind of sterile sectarianism that Marx
combated in the First International. All talk of resurrecting the IV International on this
basis is absolutely excluded.
We must face facts. Today, 150 years after the founding of the First International, for a
combination of circumstances, objective and subjective, the revolutionary movement
has been thrown back, and the forces of genuine Marxism reduced to a small
minority. That is the truth, and whoever denies it is merely deceiving himself and
deceiving others. The reasons for this are to be found partly in the mistakes
committed in the past. But the decisive factor for the isolation and weakness of the
forces of revolutionary Marxism are to be found in the objective situation.
Decades of economic growth in the advanced capitalist countries have given rise to an
unprecedented degeneration of the mass organizations of the working class. It has
isolated the revolutionary current, which everywhere has been reduced to a small
minority. The collapse of the Soviet Union has served to sow confusion and
disorientation in the movement, and set the final seal on the degeneration of the
former Stalinist leaders, many of whom have passed over to the camp of capitalist
reaction.
Many have drawn pessimistic conclusions from this. To those people we say: it is not
the first time we have faced difficulties, and we are not in the least frightened by such
difficulties. We retain unshakable confidence in the correctness of Marxism, in the
revolutionary potential of the working class and in the final victory of socialism. The
present crisis exposes the reactionary role of capitalism, and places on the order of the
day the revival of international socialism. There are the beginnings of a regroupment
of forces internationally. What is required is to give that regroupment an organized
expression and a clear programme, perspective and policy.
The only way out
The task we are confronted with is roughly analogous to that which confronted Marx
and Engels at the time of the founding of the First International. As we explained
above, that organization was not homogeneous but composed of many different
tendencies. However, Marx and Engels were not deterred by this. They joined the
general movement for a working class International and worked patiently to provide it
with a scientific ideology and programme. They faced many difficulties. At the end of
his life Engels wrote: Marx and I were in a minority all our lives, and we were proud
to be in a minority.
Like Marx and Engels, for decades we were obliged to swim against the current. But
now the tide of history has begun to turn. The global economic crisis of 2008-9
marked a turning point in the world situation and the strategists of capital see no way
out. They are predicting 10 to 20 years of cuts and austerity. This has been the slowest

recovery in the history of capitalism and any recovery that exists is definitely not
benefitting the majority of the population.
Elementary mechanics tells us that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
The crisis of capitalism is provoking a reaction by the workers and
youth. Everywhere, beneath the superficial veneer of calm and tranquillity, there is a
seething undercurrent of rage, indignation, discontent and above all frustration at the
existing state of affairs in society and politics. In one country after another the masses
have erupted onto the scene with elemental force: Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil,
Greece, Spain and Portugal. Even in the United States there is a widespread
discontent and a questioning of the existing state of affairs, which was not present
before.
Today the ideas of Marx are more valid and necessary than ever. After six years of
deep economic crisis, there is mass unemployment, falling living standards, constant
attacks on the welfare state and democratic rights. We have the scandal of bankers,
who have destroyed the worlds financial system through greed, speculation and
swindling, walking away with huge bonuses. Oxfam released a statistic that showed
the worlds richest 66 people are worth more than the poorest 3.5billion, half of all
humanity. Marx predicted all of this in the pages of Capitaland The Communist
Manifesto.
The economists and politicians have no solution to the crisis, the causes of which they
cannot comprehend. They refer to a crisis of global overcapacity, but in reality they
use such terms because they are afraid to call things by their real names. What they
mean is overproduction, which Marx had already explained in 1848. This is the
fundamental contradiction in capitalism, one that was unheard of in previous
societies. And the only way to eliminate this contradiction is to free the productive
forces from the straitjacket of private ownership and the nation state.
Working-class and young people do not need to be told there is an economic crisis; all
they need to do is turn on the television. While insecurity is increasing at one pole,
wealth is amassing at the other. Productivity, the amount of wealth produced per hour
of work, has risen more than 50 per cent since the 1970s in most Western countries,
and yet real wages have stagnated over the same period. The colossal surplus value
produced by the working class is appropriated by the richest in society, what the
Occupy movement called the 1%.
The only way to put an end to capitalist anarchy is for the working class to take power
into its own hands, expropriate the banks and big corporations and begin to plan the
economy on democratic socialist lines. When the majority of society those who
really create its wealth are able to decide the priorities, they will ensure that the
resources of society are used for the satisfaction of real human needs not private gain.
It will be possible to provide decent housing and healthcare, free education at all
levels, and at the same time enormously enhance the productivity of labour.
This new socialist society would lay the basis for the disappearance of classes. In the
words of Marx: In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class
antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is
the condition for the free development of all.

0
Days
That
Shook
the
World
Reed
Year
One
of
the
Russian
Revolution
Serge
History
of
the
Russian
Revolution
Trotsky
*The
Unknown
Revolution
:
1917-1921
Voline
*The
Russian
Revolution

Luxemburg
*Kronstadt 1917-1921 : The Fate of a Soviet Democracy - Israel Getzler
Forced
Labour
and
Economic
Development
S.
Swianiewicz's
*Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present Mikhail
Heller/Aleksandr
Nekrich
Lessons
of
October
Trotsky
The
Russian
Revolution,
1917-1921
R.
Kowalski
The Bolshevik Party in Conflict: The Left Communist Opposition of 1918 - R.
Kowalski
The
Russian
Revolution
Marcel
Liebman
Leninism
Under
Lenin

M.
Liebman
The
ABC's
of
Communism
Bukharin/Preobrazhensky
All
Volumes
for
1917
in
Lenin's
Collected
Works
*The Petrograd Workers and The Fall of The Old Regime - D. Mandel
*The Petrograd Workers and The Soviet Seizure of Power - D. Mandel
*The
Bolshevik
Revolution,
Vol.
1-3
E.H.
Carr
*The
Workers
Revolution
in
Russia
S.
Smith
Red Petrograd: Revolution in The Factories, 1917-18 - S. Smith
The
February
Revolution:
Petrograd,
1917

T.
Hasegawa
The
Workers Revolution
in
Russia
in
1917

Kaiser,
Ed.
Moscow
Workers
and
the
1917
Revolution

D.
Koenker
The
Bolsheviks
Come
To
Power
Rabinowich
Kronstadt
and
Petrograd
Raskolnikov
Lenin,
3
Vols.
T.
Cliff
The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Minutes of the Central Committee of the
RSDLP (Bolsheviks), August 1917-February 1918 A. Bonn, Ed.
Red Guards and Workers Militias in the Russian Revolution R. Wade
Class
Struggles
in
the
USSR,
1917-1923
Bettelheim
Red
Victory
Lincoln
The
Red
Army
Wollenberg
The
Bolsheviks
in
Power
Ilyin-Zhenevsky
Lenin's
Moscow
Rosmer
Leninism
Under
Lenin
Marcel
Liebman
The
Russian
Anarchists
Avrich
The
Anarchism
of
Nestor
Makhno
M.
Palij
Nestor
Makhno
in
the
Russian
Civil
War
M.
Malet
Civil
War
in
Russia

D.
Footman
Liberty
Under
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R.
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The
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Bread and Justice; State and Society in Petrograd 1917-22 - M. McAuley

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Pipes
Resolutions
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Birth
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Kenez
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Guards
and
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Wade
The
Mensheviks
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and
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Reappraisal
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J.
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B.
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E.
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M.
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The Origin of Forced Labour in the Soviet State - J. Bunyan
The
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S.
Fitzpatrick
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The
Making
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Georgian
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G.Suny
Culture
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C.
Read
Workers,
Soviets
W.
Chase
Collected
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Lenin
The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky - Lenin
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Trotsky
Social Democracy and the Wars of Intervention, 1918-1921 - Trotsky
Military
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(5
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Trotsky
Military
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Trotsky
Kronstadt
Lenin/Trotsky
Before Stalinism - Farber
Counter-revolution
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Within
*The
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M.
Brinton
*The Experience of the Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution - Jones
From
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Betrayed
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*State
Capitalism
and
World
Revolution

James
*The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State Capitalism - Dunayevskaya
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Marxism
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The
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E.H.
Carr
Socialism in One Country, Vol. 1, 2, 3a, & 3b - E.H. Carr
Lenin:
All
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Lenin's
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Lewin

Twenty
Years
After
Serge
The
Third
International
After
Lenin
Trotsky
Memoirs
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A
Revolutionary
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Selected Writings on The Opposition in The USSR - Christian Rakovsky
Challenge
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the
Left
Opposition,
Vol.
1-3
Trotsky
Documents
of
The
1923
Opposition
Platform
of
the
Joint
Opposition,
1927
Stalin
School
of
Falsification
Trotsky
The
Case
of
Leon
Trotsky
Soviet
Russia
Masters
The
Comintern
Gruber
Foundations
of
a
Planned
Economy,
Vol.
1-2
E.H.
Carr
Twilight
of
The
Comintern
E.H.
Carr
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in
The
USSR,
Vol.
1
&
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Bettelheim
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Peasants
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Vol.
4
T.
Cliff
Stalin
Trotsky
Stalin
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The Fate of The Russian Revolution: Lost Texts of Critical Marxism, Vol. 1
Matgamna,
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State
Capitalism
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Tony
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The Bureaucratic Revolution - Max Shactman

March: Sisters, Let Us Set the World

Alight!
Declaration for 8 March 2016 International Day of Women Workers
by Almedina Guni, International Women's Secretary of Revolutionary Communist
International Tendency (RCIT), www.thecommunists.net

1.
Day by day, we women shape the world in which we live, through our work
and through our struggles. We do so as working women in China, by the millions, in
factories of companies, performing our daily tasks, constituting a huge portion of the
global working class. At the same time we strike with iron resolve as factory workers
in the struggle against exploitation in Cambodia, organizing by the hundreds of
thousands for higher wages, for the establishment of trade unions, and for our equality
as women against the oppression of the factory and against the brutal police. We are
the heroines of the struggle against inhuman dictatorships like that of al-Sisi in Egypt
and Assad in Syria. We are the spearhead of the struggle against imperialism and its
consequences. For all what we are we are persecuted and punished every day. For a

decade now, we are attacked in Mexico, often raped, murdered and buried in the
desert. We are persecuted as fighters against the government in Burundi, robbed of
our lives in the dark of night. We are fearsome warriors in the eyes of the apartheid
state of Israel, imprisoned only because we raise a hand against the inhuman
oppression of our Palestinian people. We are the nightmare of the ruling classes
around the world, the Furies who cannot be bound as much as they try. We cannot be
defeated and will not break whatever the class enemy might do. We are the morning,
bringing the light to our oppressed brothers who are fighting, as workers and as the
poor, in towns and in the country, against exploitation and oppression. For them, we
are not and never will be Furies, but rather examples. All that we are throughout the
entire year, Sisters, we recall as members of the RCIT on March 8.

2.
The core of the global working class is shifting more and more to the east and
south. The emerging factory towns throughout the Asian continent resemble similar
developments in the 19th century Europe and America. In China, our sisters live in
miniscule, confined spaces, dozens of bunk beds crammed into a room with a small
stove being the pinnacle of luxury. Many of these women are migrant workers,
separated almost all the year round from their families. From early morning until late
at night, they are the wage slaves of corporations. Most spend their entire day working
at a piece rate. In addition to immediate improvements, such as replacing the piece
rate with a decent hourly wage, and the ability to organize in a union, we are
struggling with our sisters for the expropriation of the factories, their placement under
public ownership and their control by the workers; in particular in the case of factories
which have been closed or are facing closure. Our sisters in China have played a
central role in numerous strikes in the past, especially in the province of Guangdon,
where 30% of Chinas exports are produced in countless factories almost exclusively
staffed by a female workforce. But, in addition to the appalling conditions in which
they work, our sisters are also forced to fight daily against sexual assault, so prevalent
in the workplace. Surveys conducted in the third largest city in China, Guangzhou,
reveal that at least 70% of women workers regularly suffer sexual assault. Therefore,
the fight of our sisters in their workplaces is not only against their demeaning
exploitation as workers, but also as victims of sexual violence and intimidation. The
present and the future of the global class struggle are directly and significantly
influenced by the working class women of China. Thus, the building of a worldwide
revolutionary womens movement will depend to a great extent on our Chinese
sisters.

3.
The struggles of our sisters in Cambodia are inferior in nothing to those of our
sisters in China. The heroic commitment of women workers of Cambodia to the
establishment of independent trade unions and their struggle for increases in wages
have already been a model for a number of years. In the province of Phnom Penh, our
class sisters have led an enormous labor strike overwhelming composed of women,
who account for nearly 90% of the textile workers there. Throughout the country,
supporting strikes have included hundreds of thousands of workers. While the
bourgeois Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) has been supportive of the
strikes, the former Stalinist, bourgeois party Cambodian People's Party (CPP), which

has been in power for more than three decades, has been instrumental in attempting to
crush them with brutal force by the police, and has at times even called in the military.
Even with the CNRPs official favoring of the strike, they have cynically tried to use
it for their own ends, and thus a central task of our sisters in Cambodia is to fight for
the independence of the trade unions from these bourgeois parties. This can only be
done by our heroic sisters building a revolutionary workers' party. In this way, the
labor disputes can be extended and augmented with creation of self-defense units
against the violence of the regime, towards the calling of a general strike, and the
beginning of a revolutionary uprising against the capitalist government under the
leadership of the new revolutionary party. Our sisters have already achieved much in
the course of their recent struggles. With much spilt blood and many deaths, our
sisters, who fought alongside their class brothers, have forced the government to
increase the minimum wage. However this, in turn, brought many corporations to
leave the country and relocate their production facilities, demonstrating that the sole
aim of the imperialist parasites it to bleed the country and to leave it at the earliest
possible opportunity. Only a victorious armed struggle and the forming of a socialist
workers and peasant government can stop this by expropriating the factories and
placing them under control of the workers. It is the task of the international labor
movement to call for solidarity strikes with our sisters and brothers in Cambodia, in
order to help bring about the expropriation of the corporations and put their factories
under control of all the workers.

4.
The migration of companies from Cambodia and other parts of the Asia is
closely linked with the construction of new factories on the African continent. With
the emergence of Russia and China as new imperialist powers, intense competition
has emerged among all the imperialist powers, both East and West. China, in
particular, began years ago investing in impoverished, sub-Saharan Africa and is now
the largest investor there. Based on Chinas own experience, it was clear to these new
imperialists that the younger proletariat in Asia can also organize rapidly and thereby
cut into Chinese profits. Accordingly, China established a foothold in many other
countries, like Ethiopia, with the aim of developing the economic powerhouse of
Africa for their own profit. In Ethiopia, wage costs are minimal even compared with
those of China, at times constituting only 10% of what the Chinese capitalists would
have to pay to workers in their own homeland. Naturally, very little Chinese capital is
invested in safety for the Ethiopian workers. As a result, almost 30% of Ethiopian
textile factory workers are injured by machinery in the course of their working lives,
while an additional 20% are hurt in other ways in the workplace. At the same time, the
very young Ethiopian proletariat is historically unused to the new relations of
imperialist exploitation, and the physical capacity of workers there averages 8 hours
per day, while the Chinese capitalists are accustomed by to getting 11 hours of work
per day out of their workers at home. Consequently, Ethiopian workers are drilled and
harassed by their foreign bosses. Still, given the mass unemployment and poverty in
Ethiopia, factory jobs are highly sought after. To make matters worse, the country of
our Ethiopian sisters and brothers is currently suffering from the worst drought in 50
years, one which, by midyear, is expected to affect 15 million persons. When there
was a severe drought in the country 30 years ago, a million people died. But that
drought was nothing compared to the present one. Added to all this, Ethiopia pays
exorbitant interest on its foreign debts to the imperialist states. Therefore, in full

solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia, as well as those across the African
continent, and in all semi-colonies around the world, we call for an immediate and full
cancellation of all debt! In addition, we call upon the international labor movement to
organize immediate humanitarian aid for drought-stricken Ethiopia. It is yet just
another perversion of imperialism that our class brothers and sisters must die from
thirst while, in some countries, drinking water is used to flush toilets!

5.
In addition to the torment of exploitation fomented by the imperialists in the
factories, the human suffering due to the problems caused by increasing climate
change and environmental disasters (which are ultimately the responsibility of the
Number 1 polluters, namely the multinationals), our sisters in Africa are also
suppressed because of their sex. In Burundi, every day opponents of the current
government are abducted, killed and their corpses are left lying somewhere. Women
are often brutally raped beforehand. Rape, in addition to other forms of sexual
violence, is a special burden that is imposed on us women against our wills. And its
not only our sisters in Burundi who are suffering.

6.
Gang rape of women in India regularly takes place and these crimes are so
dramatic in their brutality that they often lead to death of the victim. There is hardly a
woman of lower classes in India who has not suffered rape during her lifetime.
However, the mainstream media have only begun to show indignation in recent years,
making the phenomena known to the public following rapes directed against wealthy
women. But long before their widespread report, our Indian sisters began to organize.
They have shown us what self-defense units can actually look like, and they have
become ubiquitous; like the Gulabi Gang (Pink Saris) which was created ten years
ago and was founded by the then 45-year old Sambat Pal Devi, a member of the
lowest caste. Since then more than 150,000 women have joined this self-defense unit!
Our militant sisters, have adopted pink for the color of their garments, because none
of the previously existing parties had claimed that color for itself. The independence
of the self-defense units from all the bourgeois parties is an important and correct
approach taken by our Indian sisters. Since Sambat Pal Devi has become a supporter
of the Congress Party, it is said that this has led to a split in the movement. The Pink
Saris arm themselves with iron-tipped sticks, called Lathi, not only against rapists, but
also against corrupt policemen and members of higher castes that exhibit violence
towards members of lower castes. They are also fighting for their own movements
independence from bourgeois influence, and are supported by poor women in cities
and rural areas. These are the women who have become the heart and soul of a new
revolutionary party in India. Without such a party, in the long run the movement
cannot possibly implement its self-proclaimed political goal: Stopping any injustice
against the poor and weak.

7.
The movement of the Gulabi Gang demonstrates the potential for building a
revolutionary women's movement in India. But it could also serve as a shining
example for our sisters in todays Mexico. For a decade now, they have experienced a

growing wave of violence and murder. Women are kidnapped, raped and often
dumped dead in the middle of the desert. Many of the surviving victims recover only
after a very long time. This murderous violence against women, in this particularly
heinous form, must be stopped immediately. Self-defense groups for our sisters in
Mexico, like that of the Pink Saris in India, could be a lifesaver. In addition, every
case of rape or other form of physical and sexual violence against any woman must be
thoroughly investigated and solved. A jury, consisting of representatives of the
workers' movement and the persons concerned must address each such incident, with
the goal of bring the perpetrators to justice. Our victimized sisters and their families
should be given the option of restorative justice for the atrocities they have suffered.

8.
"Ni una Menos!" ("Not one less!") is the slogan called out by hundreds of
thousands of our sisters in mass demonstrations against femicide in Argentina. In May
2015, a 14-year old woman was brutally murdered, as happens to hundreds of other
women each year in Argentina. As in Mexico, our sisters in Argentina have bitter
experience with brute force, often resulting in femicide. Death at the hands of the
partner or by family members and friends is a particularly common form of femicide
in Latin America. Every one of our sisters must be protected against such cruelty. In
every neighborhood, in every village, in the workplace and educational institutions,
women must have the ability to conduct meetings. The cohesion and mutual
protection thus created, the awareness and the timely warnings of violence in the
immediate environment can literally save hundreds of lives!

9.
However, the worst killers of us women are by far the major imperialist
powers and their stooges, the dictatorships. Our heroic sisters in Egypt are fighting
relentlessly against the brutal dictatorship of General al-Sisi, which sends even small
children to trial. This dictatorship was inaugurated in a coup on July 3, 2013, and was
hailed by the US and the imperialist countries of the EU. A month later, an
incomprehensible massacre was perpetrated by the military dictatorship, in which in a
single day, more than 3,000 of our brothers and sisters were slaughtered. Tens of
thousands of people are suffering torture and humiliation in the prisons of the military
regime and are usually judged in summary proceedings. In show trials conducted in
the course of a single day, hundreds of people were sentenced to death, sometimes
without even having had the opportunity to consult with a lawyer. Yet, for this dictator
and mass murderer, al-Sisi, the imperialist powers have rolled out the red carpet.
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel met with al-Sisi and his delegation last year in
Berlin. While our sisters were rotting in the prisons of the Egyptian regime, those who
had not already lost their lives in the struggle against the dictatorship, Angela Merkel
courted the mass murderer al-Sisi! At the same time, someone like Alice Schwarzer, a
leading representative of bourgeois feminism, makes statements against immigrants
and Muslims and plays right into the hands of the racist PEGIDA movement. What
striking examples of middle class, iconic women, epitomes of feminism, who have
absolutely nothing at all to do with the real interests of women! What excellent
examples of how little feminism has to do with women's liberation! The Angela
Merkels and Alice Schwarzers of the world are one with the mass murderers in the

world! They are, therefore, not our sisters, but the greatest enemies of us working
women!

10.
Just as our sisters in Egypt heroically fight against the dictatorship of al-Sisi,
so our sisters in Syria are fighting against the dictator Assad. Yet they are forced to
simultaneously fight the imperialist intervention by Russia and its Iranian henchmen
on the one hand, and the US and the EU and their stooges on the other, if in the end
they do not want to lose their home to the imperialist predators.

11.
No list of heroic anti-imperialist struggles would be complete without
mentioning our sisters in Palestine. More and more of our sisters are actively
organizing in the resistance against the apartheid state of Israel. The vital Third
Intifada cannot be set in motion without their courageous efforts! They are the
brightest models in a relentless struggle for justice and freedom, in the struggle for a
free, red Palestine!

12.
On this March 8 we recall each of the heroic struggles of all our sisters
worldwide. We remember the history of March 8 as a day of battle, which began in
the self-sacrificing struggle of working women more than 100 years ago. We
remember the fighters and all those sisters who are today oppressed and exploited.
Like the millions of fleeing persons looking for a new home in Europe. We want to
open the gates to them, shout out support for them, and welcome them. We intend to
do so not only today, but fight even more resolutely for this tomorrow. Against
exploitation in the factories, suffered by our sisters in China, Cambodia and around
the world; Against the brutal apartheid, suffered by our Palestinian sisters at the hands
of the imperialist state of Israel; Against the beast of imperialism that exploits not
only us working women, in city and country, but also our class brothers every day;
Against murderous racism, not only against refugees and migrants but also against our
black brothers and sisters in the US and elsewhere; Against the war machine of the
imperialists whose economies and greed pave the path to our subjugation by crushing
our bodies. Our history is one of struggle, and so is our present. We will yet retrieve
every tear, every drop of sweat and blood. We will fight for a future in which the
exploitation and oppression is nothing but a shadow of the past; a future in which
capitalism and its final stage, imperialism, is nothing but a chapter in the book of
history; a future in which our children's children will proudly speak of the
revolutionaries, women and men, who together moved forward to build a world
revolutionary party and courageously stood up to the imperialist beast; who organized
the greatest event in the history of mankind the world socialist revolution; those
who gave humankind a future of socialism in which we women are free at last.

Uprising of the 20,000 and International

Womens Day

Feb 29, 2016

For eleven weeks, from November 1909 through February 1910, some 20,000 mostly
young, Jewish, women workers went on strike against low wages in the New York
City garment industry. Their abysmal wages, even lower than mens in the trade,
meant poverty for their families. They were led by women like socialist Clara
Zemlich, who thought workers would eventually need to overturn the whole capitalist
system in order to get a decent life. This momentous strike would later be called the
Uprising of the 20,000.
No one acquainted with labor history will be surprised to hear that the bosses hired
thugs. The police arrested hundreds of strikers, after which the courts gave them big
fines or time in jail. A judge expressed the usual sentiments against women: You are
striking against God and nature. Even union leaders disdained them. Samuel
Gompers, head of the AFL, said it wasnt worth organizing women because they
would just get married and leave the union.
Nevertheless, by the end of the strike, the women had won a somewhat reduced work
week and a bit higher wages. Some 85% of the strikers joined the International Ladies
Garment Workers Union.
This wasnt the only fight organized by women workers in that era. For instance, in
May of 1908, women textile workers in Chicago had gone on strike for similar
reasons.
It was fights like these that socialists Clara Zetkin and Luise Zeitz commemorated
starting in 1911 with International Womens Day. The first of these drew out an
estimated million marchers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Denmark. To this
day, people around the world continue to celebrate womens fight for a decent life
every year on March 8.

Womens Struggles and the Working

Class
Feb 29, 2016
Hillary Clinton presents herself as a symbol of womens progress in the 21 st century
U.S. finally, a woman candidate for the presidency. Madeleine Albright, former
Secretary of State, and Gloria Steinem, former editor of Ms. magazine, have said
women who dont support Hillary Clinton are going against their own interests.
Certainly, it is disgusting that some criticisms of Clinton have been pure sexism.
But the difficulties faced by working class women and well-to-do women are not the
same. Some women have become top corporate executives. Clinton herself was on the
board of Walmart. But the majority of women working at Walmart earn poverty-level
wages. The interests of the executives and the interests of the workers are in direct

conflict with each other, whether they are men or women. This class difference has
been present throughout the long history of womens struggle for a decent life.
In the fight for the right to an abortion, wealthier women have always been able to
find a sympathetic doctor. But it took a fight in the 1970s, following on the struggle of
the black population, for all women to gain the right to a legal abortion in the U.S.
And almost from the moment Roe v. Wade passed in 1973, politicians tried to take
away the right to an abortion from poor women. Today, the majority of counties in the
United States do not have a single abortion provider. So were going back to the days
before Roe v. Wade: women with money can get an abortion easily, while access for
poor women is increasingly blocked.
Women had to fight for the right to vote for more than a century before the 19 th
Amendment was ratified after WWI. This fight was mostly led by the better off, better
educated women in the 1800s, though these women often tried to link themselves to
working class women. It went along with a struggle for decades against laws that
treated women as chattel, that is, as the property, first of their fathers, and then of their
husbands. The legal right to vote in an election made women a little more able to
stand up as adults, rather than remaining property without a voice, like children. But
once the right to vote was won, many privileged women abandoned the fight, feeling
that they had achieved their goal.
But working class women had to continue the struggle. One of the longest-running
and least successful battles has been the fight for decent pay and decent working
conditions for women. After a 1911 factory fire in which 146 women died, union
activist Rose Schneiderman addressed a New York City funeral march of 100,000: I
would be a traitor to the poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship.
We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting.... This is
not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city.... The life of men and women
is so cheap and property is so sacred.... It is up to working people to save
themselves....
Conditions in the early days of U.S. factories were horrendous. Six days and 65 hour
work weeks were common. While men workers wages were abysmal in factories and
mines, womens wages were worse because the bosses could get away with paying
them less, using the excuse that they were not heads of households. In the early 20 th
century, half the people in New York City were immigrants, crowded into slums. In
the factories where they worked, the majority were under the age of 20.
These problems were not addressed by upper class women. Rather, women organizers
in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union led strikes against such appalling
conditions, as did organizers in other industries. Often these organizers were socialists
or later communists. Through these fights, women workers won some improvements
from the most appalling conditions they faced.
Yet today, women workers face similar problems. Working class women still make
less money and have many more family responsibilities than men and working class
men also make less and less every year, adding on to the problems facing working
class families. As in the past, these problems will not be solved by looking to upper

class women like Hillary Clinton to help us. They will only be solved by working
class women organizing and fighting for themselves, in their own interests.

Womens Struggles and the Working

Class
Feb 29, 2016
Hillary Clinton presents herself as a symbol of womens progress in the 21 st century
U.S. finally, a woman candidate for the presidency. Madeleine Albright, former
Secretary of State, and Gloria Steinem, former editor of Ms. magazine, have said
women who dont support Hillary Clinton are going against their own interests.
Certainly, it is disgusting that some criticisms of Clinton have been pure sexism.
But the difficulties faced by working class women and well-to-do women are not the
same. Some women have become top corporate executives. Clinton herself was on the
board of Walmart. But the majority of women working at Walmart earn poverty-level
wages. The interests of the executives and the interests of the workers are in direct
conflict with each other, whether they are men or women. This class difference has
been present throughout the long history of womens struggle for a decent life.
In the fight for the right to an abortion, wealthier women have always been able to
find a sympathetic doctor. But it took a fight in the 1970s, following on the struggle of
the black population, for all women to gain the right to a legal abortion in the U.S.
And almost from the moment Roe v. Wade passed in 1973, politicians tried to take
away the right to an abortion from poor women. Today, the majority of counties in the
United States do not have a single abortion provider. So were going back to the days
before Roe v. Wade: women with money can get an abortion easily, while access for
poor women is increasingly blocked.
Women had to fight for the right to vote for more than a century before the 19 th
Amendment was ratified after WWI. This fight was mostly led by the better off, better
educated women in the 1800s, though these women often tried to link themselves to
working class women. It went along with a struggle for decades against laws that
treated women as chattel, that is, as the property, first of their fathers, and then of their
husbands. The legal right to vote in an election made women a little more able to
stand up as adults, rather than remaining property without a voice, like children. But
once the right to vote was won, many privileged women abandoned the fight, feeling
that they had achieved their goal.
But working class women had to continue the struggle. One of the longest-running
and least successful battles has been the fight for decent pay and decent working
conditions for women. After a 1911 factory fire in which 146 women died, union
activist Rose Schneiderman addressed a New York City funeral march of 100,000: I
would be a traitor to the poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship.
We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting.... This is
not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city.... The life of men and women

is so cheap and property is so sacred.... It is up to working people to save

themselves....
Conditions in the early days of U.S. factories were horrendous. Six days and 65 hour
work weeks were common. While men workers wages were abysmal in factories and
mines, womens wages were worse because the bosses could get away with paying
them less, using the excuse that they were not heads of households. In the early 20 th
century, half the people in New York City were immigrants, crowded into slums. In
the factories where they worked, the majority were under the age of 20.
These problems were not addressed by upper class women. Rather, women organizers
in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union led strikes against such appalling
conditions, as did organizers in other industries. Often these organizers were socialists
or later communists. Through these fights, women workers won some improvements
from the most appalling conditions they faced.
Yet today, women workers face similar problems. Working class women still make
less money and have many more family responsibilities than men and working class
men also make less and less every year, adding on to the problems facing working
class families. As in the past, these problems will not be solved by looking to upper
class women like Hillary Clinton to help us. They will only be solved by working
class women organizing and fighting for themselves, in their own interests.

Behind the Scenes of the Revolt

In 1968 there was an upsurge in class struggle in many parts of the
world including in Germany. The Trotskyist movement in West
Germany actively participated in the revolt, but did not benefit much
from it. What were the German Trotskyists doing in '68? Why couldn't
they rally important sectors of the revolutionary youth around their
banner? The following is a study on Trotskyist policies before and after
'68 with some lessons for today.

Photo: Rudi Dutschke, referent of the German student movement in the 1960s. From
timothynunan.com
February 1968, West Berlin: Six thousand mostly young people from West
Germany and other countries gather at the Technical University of Berlin for the
International Vietnam Congress. The most prominent speaker is Rudi Dutschke from
the Socialist German Student Union (SDS). But sitting next to him on the podium are
Trotskyists like Ernest Mandel and Tariq Ali. Behind the scenes literally and
metaphorically the small Trotskyist organization in West Germany is at work. This
group does not even have a name its members refer to themselves as "the German
section" (sometimes adding "... of the Fourth International"). Although the writings of
Leon Trotsky and Ernest Mandel are published by the SDS publishing house, Neue
Kritik, and discussed in the student movement, in contrast to Maoism, Trotskyism as a
political tendency is barely visible and benefits minimally from the 68 revolts in
West Germany.
The Trotskyist movement of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) has still not
overcome this weakness today. For example, well-known French Trotskyist, 28-yearold postman Oliver Besancenot from the Ligue Communiste Rvolutionnaire (LCR),
received 1.5 million votes in the 2002 presidential elections. In contrast, Germanys
best-known Trotskyist, Lucy Redler, won only 40,000 votes as the top candidate of
the WASG in the 2006 Berlin elections; the WASG was not even a Trotskyist
organization, but rather, a split from the SPD that fused with the PDS soon after to
form the Die Linke party. The results of other Trotskyist electoral projects generally
look even worse. [1]
Perry Anderson, historian and longtime editor of the magazine New Left Review,
asked at the end of his study, "Considerations on Western Marxism," why Trotskyism,
as a Marxist alternative to Stalinism, had so little attraction for the "New Left" after

1968, in comparison to the "Western Marxism" represented by the Frankfurt School

and others: "Throughout this period, another tradition of an entirely different character
subsisted and developed off-stage for the first time to gain wider political attention
during and after the French explosion. This was, of course, the theory and legacy of
Trotsky." [2] The Trotskyist movement in France became, after 1968, a small but
significant political force in Germany in contrast, Trotskyism never emerged from
marginality. This is particularly surprising, considering the fact that in the 1970s, up
to 100,000 people "in some way passed through" the German Maoist groups (KGruppen). [3]
Longstanding Trotskyist Oskar Hippe (1900-1990), who supported the building of a
new Trotskyist youth organization in 1969, noted in his autobiography that "no larger
groups of students" approached Trotskyism: "Most of them at this time saw their
salvation in Mao Zedong and in peoples war, and saw their forefather in Stalin." [4]
But why?
First we need to look at the international situation in a political and economic sense.
Leon Trotsky had predicted that the Second World War would culminate in a new
revolutionary wave that would sweep away the Stalinist bureaucracy of the Soviet
Union. However, due to the role of the Soviet Army in the war against the Nazis,
Stalinism emerged from the war with renewed legitimacy. New, bureaucratically
deformed workers states such as the GDR were established, exerting a strong
influence on the left in West Germany. Due to the force of attraction of Stalinism (and
its variants such as Maoism), the revolutionary uprisings that developed in semicolonial and colonial countries after the Second World War remained under petty
bourgeois, nationalist leaderships and gave little impetus for revolutionary movements
in central imperialist countries.
Added to this was the post-war boom, which allowed the more privileged layers of the
working class and especially the trade union bureaucracy to be coopted by the
capitalists. Class collaboration became important in all imperialist countries, but in
the FRG especially. While the 1968 radicalization in France led to a confluence of the
students movement with workers strikes, especially in the general strike of May
1968, the youth radicalization in Germany remained isolated from the workers.
Tendencies towards radicalization amongst workers in Germany came to the fore only
with the September Strikes of 1969 and again with the strike way of 1972-73 but
even here, a significant part of the working class remained under the firm control of
class collaborationist bureaucracies.
In addition to the difficult objective conditions, the subjective policies of the
Trotskyist groups of the BRD during the 68 revolt prevented them from attracting
larger sectors of the radicalizing youth movement to their program.

Post-war Trotskyism
The Fourth International was founded in 1938 as a consistent opposition to the
counter-revolutionary policies of the Second (Social Democratic) and Third (Stalinist)
Internationals. Trotsky and his comrades-in-arms also fought against tendencies that
wavered between revolutionary and reformist positions (centrism) in order to give the
new international a clear revolutionary program. Beginning with the formation of the

International Left Opposition in 1929, they had set out to build an international
organization with an international program. This is why the development of German
Trotskyism after the Second World War can only be understood in an international
context. After the Second World War, the Fourth International would itself become a
centrist tendency.
The degeneration of the Fourth International was a result of the massacre of Trotskyist
cadre by both fascist and Stalinist executioners during the Second World War. The
young revolutionaries who assumed the leadership of the international after 1945
were not able to analyze the new situation. Instead of the expected revolutionary
upsurge, the post-war "Yalta order" strengthened the counter-revolutionary leadership
of the workers movements. The Trotskyists, expecting the immediate outbreak of a
"Third World War," adapted to this leadership. Since the imminent war would leave
no time to construct independent revolutionary parties, they decided to dissolve their
organizations into social democratic or Stalinist mass parties and carry out
conspiratorial, non-Trotskyist work. This policy of "entryism sui generis" meant
abandoning an openly revolutionary program. [5]
Thus "after 51-53, the Fourth International became a centrist movement, where the
common denominator of its main tendencies was the loss of a strategic orientation
toward building independent parties and instead, eclectically adapting to each
leadership that became strengthened in the mass movement as was the case with the
adaptation to Tito, Mao, Castro, etc. thus breaking the continuity of revolutionary
Marxism." But this doesnt mean we can simply push "Trotskyist centrism" aside. On
the contrary, "we maintain, on the basis of partially correct resistance against the most
open betrayals, that despite the rupture of revolutionary continuity, there have been
threads of continuity which form a point of departure for the reconstruction of the
Trotskyist strategy." [6] A critical analysis of the history of German Trotskyism,
particularly in the crucial period around 1968, can provide lessons for the construction
of a revolutionary party today.
The organizational conditions for the German Trotskyists in the post-war period were
catastrophic. While the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI) was able to
maintain clandestine work in occupied France for the duration of the war and even
published a little-known internationalist newspaper for members of the Wehrmacht in
France, Arbeiter und Soldat the Internationale Kommunisten Deutschlands (IKD)
were completely smashed by the Nazis in 1935-36: [7] in 1940, the groups exiled
leadership reported that of the roughly 1,000 members in 1933, 50 had gone into
exile, half had withdrawn from politics and about 150 were in prison. [8] Only a
small, illegal group in Berlin-Charlottenburg around Oskar Hippe remained active
until 1945 [9] and in the meantime, the Foreign Committee of the IKD turned away
from Marxism and finally broke with the Fourth International in 1948. [10] Thus, the
destruction of German Trotskyism was complete.

German Trotskyists in the Post-war Period

Unlike France, where several hundred Trotskyists continued their activity after the
war, one single cadre with years of experience in the workers movement was
available in 1945 to reconstruct the German section of the Fourth International:
Hamburg worker Georg Jungclas (1902-1975) became the "mentor of German

Trotskyism". [11] Besides "Schorsch", as Jungclas was called, there was also Willy
Boeppele, a former KPD functionary who only joined the Trotskyists in 1951 but
from then on played a leading role in the group, [12] as well as Jakob Moneta and
Rudolf Segall (two Trotskyists of Jewish origin who had survived fascism in
Palestinian exile), who were prominent functionaries of trade unions of the main
federation (DGB) and therefore had to be very reserved about their revolutionary
convictions. [13] Although its impossible to say exactly how big the group was in the
first years of the post-war period, it was undoubtedly extremely weak. [14]
The subjective weakness of the group was no match for the objectively difficult
situation for revolutionaries in post-war Germany. Perry Anderson describes the
pressure on Marxist intellectuals in this climate: "Post-war West Germany was now
politically and culturally the most reactionary major capitalist country in Europe its
Marxist traditions excised by Nazi chauvinism and Anglo-American repression, its
proletariat temporarily passive and quiescent. In this milieu, in which the KPD was to
be banned and the SPD formally abandoned any connection with Marxism, the
depoliticization of the [Frankfurt] Institute [for Social Research] was completed". [15]
Anderson criticized the Frankfurt School for adapting to the academic world of
capitalist Germany. The small Trotskyist group was exposed to similar pressures, not
only due to isolation, but above all because of the intensely anticommunist
atmosphere in the FRG and the fear of prohibitions. " Although the repressive
measures are mostly directed against the KPD [...]", Jungclas wrote, "the German
section of the Fourth International is also [...] threatened. We do not work publicly."
[16]
The post-war IKD produced a very small paper and agitated for the "merger of the
independent left groups in one organization". In this framework, they joined the shortlived Independent Workers Party (Unabhngige Arbeiterpartei, UAP), which was
oriented to the Tito regime in Yugoslavia. The UAP was founded in March of 1951;
by August of that year it had expelled its Trotskyist members, and shortly thereafter
collapsed entirely. [17] After this, the section decided in accordance with the
decisions of the third world congress of the Fourth International in 1953 on a policy
of "entryism sui generis", that is, long-term entry in the SPD and the abandonment of
any public Trotskyist work. To this end, from 1954-68 they published the magazine
Sozialistische Politik (SOPO), which was de facto produced by Trotskyists, but
included social democratic and trade unionist collaborators. [19] As part of a
solidarity campaign with the national liberation struggle in Algeria, they published the
magazine Freies Algerien from 1961 onwards. [20] Above all, they worked in the
social democratic youth organization Die Falken [the falcons], which "in some areas
stood under strong Trotskyist influence (specifically in Cologne and Berlin)". [21]
The only openly Trotskyist publication at this time was the organ Die Internationale,
which appeared irregularly in Vienna from 1956-68. [22]
Their hypothesis that the nucleus of a revolutionary party would emerge from a left
wing of the SPD proved to be false as Georg Jungclas later wrote in a balance sheet,
it was a "crucial miscalculation". [23] When the Socialist German Student Union
(SDS) was expelled from the SPD in July 1960, the Trotskyist group felt unable to
express solidarity with the SDS there were no articles published about the expulsion
in the "SOPO" due to the fear that otherwise the newspaper would no longer be
tolerated in the SPD. [24] Jochen Ebmeier, a member of the group from 1963,

reported that there had been discussions between the West Berlin Trotskyists and Rudi
Dutschkes small group the latter sympathized with the ideas of Trotskyism, but
rejected the Trotskyists work in the SPD. [25] In this way, the Trotskyists isolated
themselves from the only small yet still significant left-wing development in the
Social Democracy during their 15 years of entryist work. In 1968, the group again
tried unsuccessfully to win leading figures of the SDS to Trotskyism.
The group was involved with many initiatives, but was barely visible as a Trotskyist
tendency. Peter Brandt, who was recruited to the group as a high school student in
1966, confirms that the group was unnamed and referred to only as "the German
section of the Fourth International". [26] In contrast, the Pekinger Rundschau [Peking
Review] had appeared in German since 1964 and clearly communicated the positions
of Maoism in the emerging youth movement of the FRG. [27] It wasnt until 1969
that the Trotskyists finally left the SPD and founded an organization with a public
profile. At the time, they had about 50 members. [28] They had survived the
reactionary post-war period; however, they not only stagnated in a quantitative sense,
but also abandoned their Trotskyist program and were poorly positioned for the new
upswing.

The "Gradual Abandonment of Entryism

The expectations of a radicalization within the SPD, in which the German Trotskyists
would participate thanks to their entryist project, were not fulfilled in the course of the
60s. On the contrary, due to the decades-long cooptation of Social Democracy by
post-war "social partnership", the radicalization took place mostly in the form of a
broad "extra-parliamentary opposition", i.e. almost completely outside the SPD,
which made a reorientation of the Trotskyist group increasingly necessary. Peter
Brandt writes in retrospect: "In actuality, the years 1967-68 were already a phase of
gradual abandonment of entryism under the influence of the youth radicalization."
[29]
In 1967, a new student newspaper appeared at the Schadow high school in the
Zehlendorf neighborhood of Berlin: Neuer Roter Turm [New Red Tower]. The second
issue of the old paper, Roter Turm, had been banned by the principal because of an
article on torture in Spain. The scandalous quality of this newspaper discussed in the
Berlin newspapers as well as in the Senate was no doubt heightened by the fact that
one of the editors, 18-year-old Peter Brandt, was the son of Germanys Foreign
Minister Willi Brandt. [30] The newspaper agitated in the style of the emerging youth
movement against the authoritarian education system, for sexual education and
against imperialist wars. The editors, including several young members of the
"German section", were active in Die Falken, but resigned the following year. It is
noteworthy that in the many reports about this students paper, a Trotskyist
organization is never mentioned the papers content also offers no evidence of
specifically Trotskyist convictions of individual editors.
A turning point for the youth movement of the FRG was the International Vietnam
Congress, which took place on February 17-18, 1968 at the Technical University of
Berlin. Six thousand people gathered in the overflowing main lecture hall (Audimax)
under a banner with the slogan, "For the victory of the Vietnamese Revolution!" Rudi
Dutschkes role at this congress is well known; in contrast, the Trotskyists play no

role in the historical recollection. But Georg Jungclas wrote that the "success" of the
congress "was due to the activity of the section", [31] and the historian Peter Brandt
claims, "The congress was under strong Trotskyist influence, organizationally and
politically." [32] At least three panel speakers were active in the United Secretariat of
the Fourth International, namely Ernest Mandel, Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn. [33]
However, these Trotskyist speakers from Belgium and Great Britain were not joined
by comrades from Germany.
The Trotskyists did not present themselves as such. Tariq Ali mildly criticized the
Soviet Union for not supporting the Vietnamese FLN, but referred to Vietnam as a
"fraternal socialist country" (although Trotskyism had always denied the socialist
character of Stalinism); [34] Robin Blackburn referred to himself as "part of the same
revolutionary movement" as "the Vietnamese, the Guatemalan guerrillas and the
guerrillas of the Falcon Front [in Venezuela]"; [35] Ernest Mandel argued for a
guerrilla strategy in Argentina to supplement the workers class struggle (even though
the armed struggle of small groups does not play a central role in Trotskyist strategy).
[36] All three speakers referred positively to the FLN; none of them presented a
criticism of Stalinism, neither in an abstract form nor with any concrete criticism of
Ho Chi Minh. Their positions were oriented more to Che Guevaras guerrilla strategy
than to the strategy of proletarian insurrection represented by Leon Trotsky.
Two and a half years later, the Spartacus group published a criticism of their former
tendency, writing that the United Secretariat of the Fourth International "did not
intervene with anything other than a leaflet the uninitiated participants of the
Vietnam Congress could not have known anything about Ernest Mandel or the
Jeunesses Communistes Rvolutionnaires (JCR [...]) other than that they were
somehow Trotskyists." [37]

The Reorientation of 1968-69

After the Vietnam Congress, the Trotskyist group began a complete reorientation.
Beginning in May 1968, the German section published the magazine was tun [what is
to be done] for the "organization of the strategic-theoretical discussion" in the extraparliamentary opposition. [38] The 15-member editorial board included not only
Trotskyists such as Lothar Boepple, Peter Brandt, Jochen Ebmeier, Hans-Jrgen
Schulz, Wolfgang Zeller and Bernd Achterberg, but also prominent SDS activists such
as Gaston Salvatore and even Rudi Dutschke. This (exclusively male) list includes the
names of SDS activists who would soon become famous as spokesmen of West
German Maoism, including Christian Semmler, who later founded the Communist
Party of Germany (Construction Organization) (KPD(AO)) or Thomas SchmitzBender, who led the Workers League for the Reconstruction of the KPD (AB) [39].
It appears that this editorial board never functioned there is not a single article from
the SDS activists or the later Maoists. Nevertheless, the magazine did not have a
particularly Trotskyist profile: Although there was sharp criticism of the "real
socialism" in the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il-Sung were all
praised; Stalin was criticized for having "degraded the Communist International to an
instrument of Soviet foreign policy", but even at this convenient opportunity there
was no reference to the Fourth International that had been founded by Trotsky in
opposition to Stalinism. [40] The fifth issue was the first to include a quote from

Trotsky; the eleventh issue printed excerpts from a statement by the United Secretariat
of the Fourth International; finally, the twelfth issue included a picture of Trotsky (on
the title page as an advertisement for his essay: "Trade Unions in the Epoch of
Imperialist Decay"). Beginning with the twelfth issue, i.e. after a full year, was tun
was officially published by a Trotskyist group. [41]
In October 1968, members of the German section in West Berlin, who worked as a
group around the students paper Neuer Roter Turm and had already resigned from
Die Falken, organized a broader split in the Berlin organization of Die Falken. The
"revolutionary tendency in Die Falken, i.e. the district organizations in the Wedding
and Neuklln neighborhoods, left the social democratic youth group and together with
the Neuer Roter Turm (which by its own account consisted of "about twenty men"
[42]), founded the "Initiative Committee for a Revolutionary Youth Organization"
with the perspective of building up an "independent, autonomous organization". [43]
This group published the first issue of the magazine Spartacus in January 1969. At its
formal foundation, in order to distance itself from its history in the SPD, it called for
the "creation of a revolutionary party of the working class" the construction of a
revolutionary youth organization was intended as a step in this direction. Their role
model was the French JCR, which had gotten a lot of attention at the Vietnam
Congress in West Berlin. [44]
Finally, in March 1969, these West Berlin Trotskyists together with younger members
of the section from West Germany formed a "Bolshevik Faction" (Bolfra), an internal
platform that demanded the complete exit from the SPD and the construction of a
revolutionary youth organization at a national level (i.e. the extension of the
"Initiative Committee" policy to the entire section). The West Berliners wanted to
create a fait accompli: As Brandt put it 45 years later, "the foundation [of the Initiative
Committee] was an act of highhandedness, with which the Berlin group wanted to
force the hand of the whole German section". [46] This was not to be. At a conference
of the section during the Pentecost weekend in May 1969, the group split. The
immediate issue was the not explicitly political question of whether Lothar Boepple
should become the full-time secretary of the group, which neither the Bolfra nor his
step-father Willy Boepple agreed to. Willy Boepple, who for nearly two decades had
played a leading role in the section, retired from active politics, even though he
remained in sympathy with the Trotskyist movement. [47] This split was particularly
unfortunate because the political differences between the two wings of German
Trotskyism were only to be worked out after the formation of two separate
organizations.

The Impact of the Split

After the split, there were two Trotskyist groups in Germany. Both claimed to
represent the majority of the old section, and at least according to Brandt, they were
"equally strong". After several months, the Gruppe Internationale Marxisten (GIM)
around Jungclas, Moneta and Schulz was recognized as the German section of the
United Secretariat. [48] The GIM, which "at the beginning didnt have more than 30
members" [49] did not stick to the entryist work in the SPD, and instead implemented
the central demand of the Bolfra by founding an independent group at that very
conference; soon thereafter they began with the construction of an independent youth
organization called the Revolutionr-Kommunistische Jugend (RKJ), which was

founded as a national organization in May 1971. [50] The Internationale

Kommunisten Deutschlands (IKD) around Ebmeier, Brandt and Zeller took up the
traditional name of the Trotskyist group in Germany and continued their work for the
construction of a Trotskyist youth organization oriented to working class youth. Their
Kommunistische Jugendorganisation (KJO) Spartacus was founded as a national
organization in March 1971. [51]
Both groups experienced rapid growth, reaching 300 members each. In this time,
especially the Spartacus group began to critically reexamine its own tradition, but
only very slowly. [52] It is significant that neither of the two groups mentioned the
split in the press or tried to draw lessons from it it was two years before the first
critical debates and polemics between the groups appeared. Although the development
of the GIM after 1971 goes beyond the scope of this work, it can be briefly stated that
the GIM failed to establish a clear Trotskyist profile for itself. (There are countless
examples of political adaptations to trending movements, as have been shown in was
tun and the intervention at the Vietnam Congress.) In 1986, the GIM fused with a
Maoist group on the basis of a confused program, which led to the rapid demise of the
new organization. [53]
The Spartacus group made various efforts to update the Trotskyist program for the
1970s, but suffered from an excessive focus on youth work ("youth avant-gardism"),
which was only overcome in 1974 after a split and a later reunification. [54] In the
end, this group was never able to form an international tendency as an alternative to
the United Secretariat of the Fourth International from which they had broken. This
contributed to the sudden dissolution of the Spartacusbund by its Central Committee
in 1977. [55] Without an international framework, the group was condemned to "an
existence of uninterrupted internal crises", as the GIM polemically declared in 1971.
[56] After the split, two groups emerged, which despite recruitment in the youth
movement were not only numerically weak, but also could not overcome their
centrist legacy.
At the same time, new Trotskyist groups were formed in Germany via exchanges with
different international tendencies. These included the Internationale ArbeiterKorrespondenz (IAK) as part of the "International Committee" of Lambert and Healy,
the Voran Group as part of the "Committee for a Workers International" (CWI) of Ted
Grant, and the Sozialistische Arbeitergruppe (SAG) as sister group of the
"International Socialists" of Tony Cliff. These belonged to traditions that also emerged
from the centrist degeneration of the Fourth International. Even though their histories
cannot be dealt with in this work, it can be said that all were based on the centrism of
the Fourth International in the post-war period and not on the legacy of Leon Trotsky

Conclusions for Today

The policies of the German Trotskyists until 1968 prevented them from forming a
pole of attraction for radicalizing youth. While the "Mao bible", the little red books
with quotes from Mao Zedong, were distributed en masse, Trotskyist groups only
began to disseminate the writings of Trotsky in 1970. [57] A Trotskyist who took part
in the student movement in Frankfurt am Main in 1968 reports that he knew certain
books by Trotsky from non-Trotskyist publishing houses, "but I was not aware at that

time that there were political groups who based themselves on Trotskys legacy." [58]
Entryism made the Trotskyist group practically invisible in the decisive moment.
Willy Boepple defended entryism in the SPD in a talk he gave in 1988, arguing there
was "no other possibility until well into the 1960s to develop practical work on a dayto-day basis". [59] But even if entryism represented a chance to "hibernate" for the
reactionary period after the Second World War, it must be said that the group woke up
from this "hibernation" very slowly. They were not able to respond to the altered
situation in 1968, to the worldwide upsurge in the class struggle, which in Germany
was principally expressed by the youth radicalization. The split showed that the group
lacked the political preparation for a turn of this kind therefore the previous "day-today work" was of little long-term value. Even the structures that had been built up
inside the SPD were of no use for the new orientation. The result was that the
Trotskyist movement in Germany after 1968 had to be rebuilt from scratch, with
practically no continuity, as a youth movement with a few older advisors. [60]
But the problem was not solely that the Trotskyists were too late and remained behind
the scenes of the revolt. They in fact reacted with a program that reflected their
previous adaptation to social democracy and Stalinism in the Third World. Thus they
did not stand out in the generally radical milieu. The worldwide upsurge in the class
struggle pushed the Trotskyist movement to the left, but there was a high "cost of the
years of adaptation", because the years of adaptation to Social Democratic or Stalinist
parties had left programmatic marks. The Trotskyists had an important political
legacy. "However, the years before the upsurge had not been used by the different
currents of Trotskyism to re-appropriate this legacy in order to define the strategic
framework and to build up revolutionary currents within the workers movement."
The result of this programmatic weakness was that the Trotskyist organizations grew
quantitatively, but could not break free from their centrist legacy and restore
revolutionary continuity. "Although at the beginning of the upsurge the forces of the
different currents of Trotskyism were mostly dissolved within Stalinism and Social
Democracy, tendencies towards class independence were strengthened in
confrontations with the official leaderships of the workers movement. This
strengthened the currents of Trotskyist centrism, which in several cases became
currents of several thousand militants (ie., the Ligue Communiste in France, the
American SWP or the PST in Argentina in the 70s)." [61] This development also
existed in the FRG, although the organizations of Trotskyist centrism only included
several hundred and not several thousand members.
Precisely the policy of "Entryism sui generis" before 1968 and the centrist program
that underlay it provide a critical explanation for why Trotskyism is so weak today in
Germany. Some historians have come to the conclusion that it was a mistake for the
section to leave the SPD at all. They claim that especially after 1968, many young
people surged into Social Democracy, so the Trotskyists should have worked there.
Thus, the former Trotskyist and current SPD member Peter Brandt writes, "It is
striking that entryism was abandoned precisely in a situation when the conditions for
a more open form of work in the SPD were beginning to improve." [62] (Brandt was
expelled from the Spartacusbund in 1973 and joined the Sozialistisches Bro; in the
90s he became a member of the SPD. Ebmeier broke with the Spartacusbund in 1974
and joined the SPD directly.) In the same vein, Wolfram Klein argues that "most
Trotskyist groups in the 1960s abandoned work in the Social Democratic parties

precisely as the conditions were getting better, and instead threw themselves into the
68 movement." [63] Klein is a member of the SAV, which worked in the SPD from
1973 to 1994 and now carries out the same policies in the left party Die Linke. Based
on on the historical account that has been retold here, this assessment must be
rejected. The political adaptation to the SPD actually made the Trotskyists
unattractive for the radical sectors that they were most likely to have won.
A historical balance sheet of the deep entryism of German Trotskyists in the SPD 45
years after the Vietnam Congress, which marked the beginning of the end of the
entryist project is essential to develop a revolutionary policy for today. The largest
organizations in the FRG today that base themselves on the legacy of Leon Trotsky,
namely the SAV (formerly Voran) and Marx21 (formerly SAG and Linksruck) have
had a similar orientation to the Left Party since 2007. They are not completely hidden
as tendencies, but they argue in favor of left-reformist and not revolutionary Marxist
positions, i.e. they hide their programmatic identity. They believe that they can win
more influence in the Left Party or sine the Left Party currently has lots of reformist
bureaucrats and few active members that a future intensification of the class
struggle will lead countless new members to join this party.
A similar policy, justified with similar prognoses, was practiced by the German
Trotskyists from 1953 to 1968 within the SPD. The results of this policy were
catastrophic. The entryists were not able to build up a revolutionary current in the
SPD and their political program was not visible as wide sectors of the youth were
searching for revolutionary ideas during the upsurge of 1968. Had a small Trotskyist
group campaigned openly in 1968 for the ideas of Trotskyism, the radical left of the
FRG might look different today.
First appeared in Klasse Gegen Klasse #6, April 2013. Translation by the author in
February 2016.

Footnotes
[1] To cite a few examples: In the federal elections of 2005, the Socialist Equality
Party (PSG) got 15,605 votes (considerably less in other years). The International
Marxist Group (GIM) got 4,767 votes in the general elections of 1976. The
Spartacusbund participated in state elections in Bremen in 1975 and BadenWrttemberg in 1976 and received just 117 and 94 votes respectively. In the city of
Rostock, Socialist Alternative (SAV) won a seat on the town council in 2004.
[2] Perry Anderson: Considerations on Western Marxism. London 1976. p. 96.
[3] Andreas Khn: Stalins Enkel, Maos Shne. Die Lebenswelt der K-Gruppen in der
Bundesrepublik der 70er Jahre. Frankfurt am Main 2005. p. 287.
[4] Oskar Hippe: und unsere Fahn ist rot. Erinnerungen an sechzig Jahre in der
Arbeiterbewegung. Hamburg 1979. p. 261. (This is also available in English: Red is
the Colour of our Flag. London 1990.)
[5] RIO: Theses on Rise, Crisis and Fall of the
http://www.onesolutionrevolution.org/?p=517&language=en.

IV

International.

[6] Emilio Albamonte / Matas Maiello: En los lmites de la restauracin burguesa.

http://www.ft-ci.org/En-los-limites-de-la-restauracion-burguesa?lang=es.
[7] Wolfgang Alles: Zur Politik und Geschichte der deutschen Trotzkisten ab 1930.
Frankfurt am Main 1987. p. 238-243.
[8] Internationale Kommunisten Deutschlands: Organizational Report Of The
International Communists Of Germany (IKD). In: Will Reisner [Ed.]: Documents of
the Fourth International. The Formative Years (19331940). New York 1973. p. 369.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fiemerg12.htm.
[9] Hippe: Fahne. p. 164-193.
[10] Second World Congress of the Fourth International: Reorganization of the
German Section of the Fourth International. In: Fourth International. Volume IX, No.
6.
New
York,
August
1948.
p.
187-88.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/fi-2ndcongress/1948congress09.htm.
[11] Peter Berens: Trotzkisten gegen Hitler. Kln 2007. p. 158-159.
[12] Wolfgang Alles [Ed.]: Gegen den Strom. Texte von Willy Boepple (1911-1992).
Kln 1999. p. 59.
[13] See the obituaries from the RSB: Wolfgang Alles: Rudolf Segall (19112006):
Vom
Zionismus
zum
revolutionren
Marxismus.
http://www.rsb4.de/content/view/1669/88/.
Ebd.:
Wer
war
Jakob
Moneta?

Ein
Nachruf.
http://www.rsb4.de/content/view/4595/81/.
According to Jochen Ebmeier, there was a group in Frankfurt "around the two senior
trade union officials Segall and Moneta, who of course had membership cards [of the
SPD], but were far to exposed to intervene politically in the SPD." Jochen Ebmeier:
Letter to the author from September 2, 2012.
[14] Hippe writes about 52 members in the Berlin group in 1948 (who had
presumably
disappeared
by
1956).
Hippe:
Fahne.
p.
240.
Kulemann mentions IKD groups in 14 cities in 1948, but without membership figures.
Peter Kulemann: Die Linke in Westdeutschland nach 1945. Hannover 1978. p. 66.
In any case, by 1968 the group had about 50 members.
[15] Anderson: Marxism. p. 34.
[16] Georg Jungclas: Von der proletarischen Freidenkerjugend im Ersten Weltkrieg
zur Linken der siebziger Jahre. 1902-1975. Eine politische Dokumentation. Hamburg
1980. p. 212.
[17] Gregor Kritidis: Linkssozialistische Opposition in der ra Adenauer. Ein Beitrag
zur Frhgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Hannover 2008. p. 153-56, 16068.

[18] Peter Brandt/Rudolf Steinke: Die Gruppe Internationale Marxisten. In: Richard
Stss [Hrsg.]: Parteien-Handbuch. Die Parteien der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
1945-1980. Band II: FDP bis WAV. 1984 Opladen. p. 1601-1606.
[19] Gnther Gellrich: Die GIM. Zur Politik und Geschichte der Gruppe
Internationale Marxisten 1969-1986. Kln 1999. p. 19.
[20] Jungclas: Dokumentation. p. 239-250.
[21] Brandt/Steineke: GIM. p. 1604.
[22] Jungclas: Dokumentation. p. 212.
[23] Georg Jungclas: Aus der Geschichte der deutschen Sektion der Vierten
Internationale. Hamburg 1972. p. 25-26.
[24] Jungclas: Dokumentation. p. 253.
[25] Ebmeier: Letter.
[26] Peter Brandt: Letter to the author from September 7, 2012.
[27] Khn: Enkel. p. 18.
[28] Robert Alexander: International Trotskyism. 1929-1985. A Documented Analysis
of the Movement. Durham 1991. . 430. He refers to an interview with R. Segall.
Brandt confirmed this number in: Brandt: Letter. September 7, 2012.
[29] Peter Brandt: Letter to the author from August 24, 2012.
[30] Seda Mouradian: Inter Esse und Neuer Roter Turm. Ein Beitrag zur Struktur
der Berliner Schlerzeitungen. Unpublished magister thesis. Freie Universitt Berlin
1968.
p.
57-58.
See also: Neuer Roter Turm. Schlerzeitschrift. #3. 1967. p. 38-39.
[31] Jungclas: Geschichte. p. 24. He is also referring to the solidarity campaigns for
the revolutions in the colonial world as a political foundation of the congress,
including the solidarity work for the national liberation struggle in Algeria which the
German section carried out throughout the 60s.
[32] Brandt/Steineke: GIM. p. 1603.
[33] The program of the congress was printed in: Michael Ludwig Mller: Berlin
1968: Die andere Perspektive. Berlin 2008. p. 200. The United Secretariat supposedly
distributed a flyer, but this could not be found.
[34] SDS Westberlin und Internationales Nachrichten und Forschungsinstitut: Der
Kampf des vietnamesischen Volkes und die Globalstrategie des Imperialismus.
Internationaler Vietnam-Kongre 17./18. Februar 1968 Westberlin. 1968 Berlin. p. 3138.

[35] Ebd.. p. 39-43.

[36] Ebd.. p. 76-80, 124-134.
[37] Spartacus. #19. p. 18-19.
[38] was tun. #1. p. 3.
[39] was tun. #1. p. 2.
[40] For an uncritical attitude toward the Communist Party of Vietnam, see: was tun.
#2.
p.
9.
For a long and uncommented speech by Fidel Castro, see: was tun. #2. p. 11.
For praise of the industrialization of the Korean Peoples Democratic Republic, see:
was
tun.
#5.
p.
17-19.
For an article on the 50th anniversary of the Communist International, see: was tun.
#6. p. 14-15.
[41] was tun. #5. p. 6, #11. p. 8, #12. p. 1-5.
[42] Brandt: Letter to the author from October 24, 2012. Brandt corrected later that up
to a third of the members of the Neuer Roter Turm were women.
[43] was nun. #5. p. 6-8. Previously they had "abandoned the illusion that via the SPD
it would be possible to set sizable proletarian masses in motion and thus initiate a
process of differentiation within the party, one day leading a broad left wing to split
off."
Regarding the size of the Wedding and Neuklln groups that left Die Falken, there are
no concrete numbers. It was likely around 50 people.
[44] Spartacus. #3. p. 6.
[45] Brandt/Steineke. p. 1605-1606.
[46] Brandt: Letter of September 7, 2012.
[47] Alles: Strom. p. 237-238.
[48] Brandt/Steineke: GIM. p. 1606.
[49] Jungclas: Dokumentation. p. 276.
[50] was tun. #16. p. 3.
[51] Spartacus. #21. p. 6.
[52] It takes two years before Cuba is mentioned for the first time in the press of the
Spartacus group, and even then there is no critical analysis about whether Castros
system is socialist as the United Secretariat had analyzed or not. See: Spartacus.
#22, p. 22-23.

[53] Frank Nitzsche: Aus dem Schatten in die Reichweite der Kameras. Die
Entwicklung trotzkistischer Organisationen in Deutschland, sterreich und der
Schweiz unter besonderer Bercksichtigung des Einflusses der neuen Sozialen
Bewegungen von 1968 bis heute. Unpublished Dissertation. Universitt Siegen 2009.
http://dokumentix.ub.unisiegen.de/opus/volltexte/2009/390/pdf/Historie_Trotzkismus.pdf. p. 50-53.
[54] Brandt/Steineke: GIM. p. 1631-32.
[55] Nitschke: Entwicklung. p. 58-59.
[56] GIM: Wider den National-Trotzkismus. Hamburg 1971. p. 112.
[57] The first reference to a pamphlet by Trotsky, "What Next?", can be found in the
tenth issue of Spartacus in 1970. Spartacus. #10/11. p. 38.
[58] N.N.: Letter to the author from August 24, 2012.
[59] Alles: Strom. p. 270.
[60] This includes not only Georg Jungclas, who was active in the GIM, but also
Oskar Hippe, who supported the Kommunistische Jugendorganisation Spartacus.
Hippe:
Fahne.
p.
260-261.
In 1970 the GIM described the "work style of the older comrades" rather negatively as
one of "theoretical sterility, waiting for real fights, social democratic organizational
practices and an uncritical relationship with the International Secretariat", imprinted
"during 15 years of entryist work". GIM: Zentraler Rundbrief. #27.
[61] Albamonte/Maiello: Limites.
[62] Brandt/Steineke. p. 1604.
[63]
Wolfram
Klein:
Zur
Geschichte
http://www.sozialismus.info/2010/09/13824/.

des

Trotzkismus.

Connolly and the 1916 Easter Uprising

On 17th April 1916 the Irish Citizen Army, together with the Irish Volunteers, rose up
in arms against the might of the British Empire to strike a blow for Irish freedom and
for the setting up of an Irish Republic. Their blow for freedom was to reverberate
round the world, and preceded the first Russian Revolution by almost a year.
The background to the rebellion was the centuries of national oppression suffered by
the Irish people in the interests of British landlordism and capitalism. In this they had
the support of the Irish landlords and capitalists, of the Catholic hierarchy, who were
linked by ties of interest to the Imperialists, and joined with them in fear of the Irish
workers and peasants.

It is impossible to understand the Easter Rising without understanding the ideas of its
leader, James Connolly, who considered himself a Marxist and based himself on the
ideas of Internationalism and the class struggle. Like MacLean in Britain, Lenin and
Trotsky, Liebknecht and Luxemburg and other Internationalists, Connolly regarded
with horror the betrayal by the leaders of the Labour movement in all countries in
supporting the Imperialist War. Dealing with the betrayal of the Second International,
Connolly declared in his paper The Workers Republic: "If these men must die, would
it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for
the abolition of war, than to go forth to strange countries and die slaughtering and
slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers might live?" [source] Protesting
against the support by the British TUC of the war, Connolly wrote: "Time was when
the unanimous voice of that Congress declared that the working class had no enemy
except the capitalist class - that of its own country at the head of the list!" [source]
Connolly stood for national freedom as a step towards the Irish Socialist Republic.
But while the Stalinists and reformists today - 50 years after 1916 still mumble in
politically incoherent terms about the need for the "national revolution against
imperialism", Connolly was particularly clear about the class question that was at the
basis of the Irish question. Without being in direct contact with Lenin and Trotsky he
had a similar position. "The cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland, and the cause of
Ireland is the cause of Labour", he wrote. "They cannot be dissevered. Ireland seeks
freedom. Labour seeks that an Ireland free should be the sole mistress of her own
destiny, supreme owner of all material things within and upon her soil." [source]
Connolly had no illusions in the capitalists of any country, least of all Ireland. On
International capitalism he wrote: "If, then, we see a small section of the possessing
class prepared to launch into war, to shed oceans of blood and spend millions of
treasure, in order to maintain intact a small portion of their privileges, how can we
expect the entire propertied class to abstain from using the same weapons, and to
submit peacefully when called upon to yield up forever all their privileges?" [source]
And on the Irish capitalists, "Therefore the stronger I am in my affection for national
tradition, literature, language, and sympathies, the more firmly rooted I am in my
opposition to that capitalist class which in its soulless lust for power and gold would
bray the nations as in a mortar." [source] And again, "We are out for Ireland for the Irish.
But who are the Irish? Not the rack-renting, slum-owning landlord; not the sweating,
profit grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute pressmen the hired liars of the enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom the future depends.
Not these, but the Irish working class, the only secure foundation upon which a free
nation can be reared."[source]
Writing on the need for an Irish insurrection to expel British imperialism he wrote in
relation to the World War: "Starting thus, Ireland may yet set the torch to a European
conflagration that will not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond
and debenture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last War lord."[source]
As an answer to the demand for conscription which had been imposed in Britain and
which was supported by the Irish capitalists for Ireland too, where the employers were
exerting pressure to force Irish workers to volunteer, Connolly wrote: "We want and
must have economic conscription in Ireland for Ireland. Not the conscription of men

by hunger to compel them to fight for the power that denies them the right to govern
their own country, but the conscription by an Irish nation of all the resources of the
nation - its land, its railways, its canals, its workshops, its docks, its mines, its
mountains, its rivers and streams, its factories and machinery, its horses, its cattle, and
its men and women, all co-operating together under one common direction that gather
under one common direction that Ireland may live and bear upon her fruitful bosom
the greatest number of the freest people she has ever known." [source]
He looked at the employers who were opposing conscription too from a critical class
point of view: "if here and there we find an occasional employer who fought us in
1913 (the Great Dublin lock-out in which the employers tried to break union
organisation, but were defeated in this object by the solidarity of the Irish workers and
their British comrades too) agreeing with our national policy in 1915 it is not because
he has become converted, or is ashamed of the unjust use of his powers, but simply
that he does not see in economic conscription the profit he fancied he saw in denying
to his followers the right to organise in their own way in 1913." [source]
Answering objections to the firm working class point of view which he expounded he
declared: "Do we find fault with the employer for following his own interests? We do
not. But neither are we under any illusion as to his motives. In the same manner we
take our stand with our own class, nakedly upon our class interests, but believing that
these interests are the highest interests of the race." [source]
It is in this light that the uprising of 1916 must be viewed. As a consequence of the
struggles of the past Connolly who was the General Secretary of the Irish Transport
and General Workers Union had organised the Citizens Army for the purpose of
defence against capitalist and police attack and for preparing for struggle against
British imperialism. The Citizens Army was almost purely working class in
composition: dockers, transport workers, building workers, printers and other sections
of the Dublin workers being its rank and file.
It was with this force and in alliance with the more middle class Irish volunteers that
Connolly prepared for the uprising. He had no illusions about its immediate success.
According to William O'Brien, on the day of the insurrection Connolly said to him:
"We are going out to be slaughtered." He said "Is there no chance of success?" and
Connolly replied "None whatsoever."
Connolly understood that the tradition and the example created would be immortal
and would lay the basis for future freedom and a future Irish Socialist Republic. In
that lay his greatness. What a difference from the craven traitors of the German
Socialist and Communist and Trade Union leaders who despite having three million
armed workers supporting them, and with the sympathy and support of the
overwhelming majority of the German working class (ready to fight and die,
capitulated to Hitler without firing a shot.
Having said this, it is necessary to see not only the greatness of Connolly, sprung from
the Irish workers, one of the greatest sons of the English speaking working class, and
the effect of the uprising in preparing for the expulsion, at least in the Southern part of
Ireland of the direct domination of British imperialism, but also the faults of both.

There was no attempt to call a general strike and thus paralyse the British Army.
There was no real organisation or preparation of the armed struggle. No propaganda
was conducted among the British troops to gain their sympathy and support. The
leaders of the middle class Irish Volunteers were split. One of the leaders Eoin
MacNeill countermanding orders for "mobilisation" and for "manoeuvres" and in the
confusion only part of the Volunteers, joined with the Irish Citizens Army in the
insurrection. Thus at the last minute the insurrection was betrayed by the vacillation
of the middle class leaders, as they have betrayed many times in Irish history and in
the history of other countries.
The British occupying troops suppressed the insurrection and then savagely executed
its leaders, including the leader of the insurrection James Connolly, who was already
badly wounded.
Connolly was murdered, but in the last analysis, British imperialism really suffered
defeat.
Nowadays all sections of Irish society in the 26 counties hypocritically give support to
the "brave and undying heroism of Connolly." The Irish capitalists pretend to honour
him. Connolly would have split contemptuously in their faces. He fought them, ever
since he attained manhood, in the interests of the Irish workers and of International
Socialism. But his most withered contempt would have been reserved for those in the
Labour movement, including the leaders of the Labour Party and of the so-called
Communist Parties, and of the various sects claiming to speak in the name of Irish
Labour, who fifty years after Easter 1916, have not understood that unity of the Irish
workers North and South can only be obtained by conducting the struggle on a class
basis for an Irish Socialist Republic, in indissoluble unity with the British workers in
their struggle for a British democratic Socialist Republic.
April 1966

Thoughts on Easter Week

Source:
W.S.F.
Publication
pamphlet,
6
pages,
;
First published: in their paper then called Womens Dreadnought on Saturday 13 May
1916.
This appears to be only the first article and the first page of the second. The British
Library catalogue refers in a bound collection of WSF pamphlets to 1919, Thoughts
on Easter Week, 1916, by E. Sylvia Pankhurst Scenes from the rebellion by
Patricia Lynch The first Sinn Fein member of Parliament by Mary OCallaghan,
but the third is missing. Note all three authors are women and only few months later
was the paper called The Workers Dreadnought.
Patricia Lynch (1898 1972) was an Irish author of childrens literature and a
journalist. In 1916 she was sent to Dublin to report on the Easter Rising for The

Woman Dreadnought. Although a committed Irish nationalist, she retained a London

accent to the end of her life.
The first and second of these articles appeared in the Workers Dreadnought
immediately after the Rebellion or Easter Week; the third at the time of the Irish
Convention in 1916. We re-publish them now because we believe that a knowledge of
the events and policies with which they deal will help towards a realisation of the
present developments in Ireland.

Justice can make but one reply to the Irish rebellion, and that is to demand that Ireland
shall be allowed to, govern herself.
Differences of opinion in England, Scotland, or Wales as to what measure of selfgovernment Ireland is to have ought not to affect the matter by the freedom of
small nations which the British Government has so bombastically sworn to defend,
this is essentially a question for Ireland herself to decide. Let a popular vote be taken
in Ireland as to whether, she shall be an independent, self-governing republic, or an
autonomous part of the British Empire, like Australia and New Zealand. That is the
only method by which the Irish difficulty can be solved and Ireland learn content.
The firm and vigorous administration which The Times demands for Ireland, which
we suspect is but another term for coercion, and such suggestions as that of the
professing Liberal, Professor Longford, that conscription shall be applied to Ireland,
and that the Irish Rebels shall be set free on condition that they join the Army, will
only lead to graver trouble in the near future. Ireland has been held in subjection by
force too long, not to retaliate with what force she can, when provoked beyond a
certain point.
Official reports in the very nature of things are, of course one-sided, and these are all
that may readily be obtained from Ireland as yet. Therefore it is not possible to say at
the moment of writing whether the time of the Irish rebellion was chosen by its
leaders, or whether the outbreak was finally provoked by outside agencies, but there
are various indications that the latter view may be correct.
The reasons for the discontent which has caused the rebellion are clearly apparent. In
the first place the Home Rule Act fails to satisfy considerable sections of Irish men
and women, who regard it as a mere extension of local government.
In the second place, the Home Rule Act itself is not secure. Should a Unionist
Government succeed the present administration at Westminster (and what at the
moment seems more probable?) the Home Rule Act could easily be repealed before it
had ever been put into force. On the eve of the European War, Sir Edward Carson and
the Ulster Unionists were threatening and openly preparing revolution, to prevent the
application of the Home Rule Bill. The Times, which supported Carson and his Ulster
rebels, now declares that:

The country will not be satisfied with the Irish Situation until the men who sat and
looked on while armed potential rebels were openly trained in Dublin are removed
from office.
But The Times is not referring to Sir Edward Carson, and Sir Edward Carson himself,
though he talks very glibly of preserving Law and Order, just now, makes it quite
clear that he intends to revive his pre-War threats of armed rebellion when there again
appears a prospect of enforcing Home Rule, which, in a letter to the Press of April
29th, 1916, he described as a gross wrong. As a matter of fact, so far from being
prepared to forego armed resistance to Home Rule, the Carsonites are keeping their
ammunition ready, and when asked by the British Government to hand over their arms
for use in the present War, they refused to do so on the ground that they would need
them later on. Everyone knows that it was the Carsonites who first armed to resist
Home Rule. It was afterwards that the Redmonite Home Rulers set up an army; and
that the Sinn Fein organisation armed to fight for the Irish Republic; whilst the
working-class industrial movement, under Larkin and Connolly, also set up its Citizen
Army later than the Carsonites, and did so in the first place to protect peaceful
meetings of the workers from ill-treatment by the police.
The Sinn Feiners and the Larkinites have gradually drawn together, though during the
great strike in Dublin the Sinn Feiners accused the Larkinites of appealing to the Irish
people to forswear the name of Irishmen for Citizens of the World, and Larkin and
his comrades declared that it mattered little to the Workers whether they were
enslaved by British or Irish capitalists.
To many of us, who believe that neither race nor creed should separate the workers of
the world, it is a matter of regret that the old position of Larkin and Connolly should
now seem to be somewhat obscured. We believe that the co-operative millenium
cannot be reached till Capitalism is overthrown by the workers. Yet we know the
impatience which many an earnest reformer feels with the slow growth of the
proletarian movement. We understand the revolt of the impetuous Celtic temperament
against being tied to slow-moving England, more conservative than either Wales or
Scotland, England, who, with her strong vested interests and larger population, is
always the predominant partner in the British Isles. We sympathise with the dream of
so many ardent lovers of Ireland to make of her an independent paradise of free
people, a little republic, famous, not for its brute strength, but for its happiness and
culture, something unique in all the world, holding a position amongst the nations like
that of Finland, who, until Russia trampled on the constitution which she won, not by
bloodshed, but by a universal strike, was thought here to be, and probably was
politically, the most free of all lands.
The Irish Rebels find to-day almost every mans hand against them, yet reckless
though they may have been, their desperate venture was undoubtedly animated by
high ideals. And we also know that their action will further those ideals. In
proclaiming the Irish Republican Brotherhood, they declared for equal rights and
equal opportunities, for all its citizens, and resolved to pursue the happiness and
prosperity of the whole nation, cherishing all the children of the nation equally. They
promised that as soon as a permanent Government could be established, it should be
elected by all the men and women of Ireland.

Mad folly, perhaps, but hardly, as The Times calls it, a brutal, bloody and savage
rebellion. The Republic of a week was evidently set up without violence and
bloodshed; the Rebels War News says that it was proclaimed with cheers. When the
soldiers came, there began, indeed, heartrending slaughter slaughter perpetrated by
both sides, but the Rebels, untrained men, women and boys, had for arms only a job
lot of rifles, whilst the authorities opposed them with machine guns, bombs,
bayonets, and cannon.
The Rebels condemn them who can find heart to do well knew, in their reckless
bravery, they would be defeated, that their rebellion could be no more than a stage in
the long struggle for Irish independence. A writer in the Manchester Guardian, much
opposed to the Rebels, says:The Post Office was on fire. It had been shelled and was now ablaze. I have learnt
something of the spirit of the garrison from two or three different sources. On
Monday night, I am told by a priest who was admitted to the building, it contained
500 or 600 men and a score or so of young women, who proposed to cook and nurse.
The priest heard the confessions of many of the men, and they told him they were
going to die for Ireland. He counselled the young women to leave, but they replied
that they would stop and die with the men; a spirit too good for so bad a cause.
When the end came and the fire drove the garrison out, they sought to escape by
rushing in a body from the rear of the building. The street at the back bends a little,
and beyond the bend was a machine-gun, which, as soon as the rout began, discharged
its volleys into the fleeing rebels.
Can the story of scenes like that bring pride to British hearts?
Parnell, without allying himself with armed rebellion in Ireland, never publicly
repudiated or criticised his countrymen, and always pointed to the fact that they
fought because the justice they longed for was withheld. Mr. Redmond, on the
contrary, at once placed himself in line with the British Government, and in his
eagerness to do so, he declared that Irelands grievances had been redressed, and that
she had been led from slavery and poverty to freedom and prosperity. But no openeyed, unbiassed person could visit Ireland in recent days without being impressed by
her desolation. Dublin was obviously a city of decay; the fine old mansions, let off in
tenement dwellings, were crowded with poor, ill-clad people. Five shillings a week
was a wage commonly paid to adult women there: It was natural that the premises
occupied by Murphy, the hotel-keeper, and Jacobs, the biscuit-manufacturer, who
fought the workers in their long starvation strike for a bare subsistence wage, were
amongst the first to be captured by the Rebels.
In the West of Ireland the people live in hovels built by themselves, with roofs of turf,
mud floors, and walls of rough stones which the tenants hew with their own poor
implements out of the hillside. For the little strips of undrained, stoney ground on
which their homes are built they pay rents that are far too high. The Congested
Districts Board, which is a supposed charity under the auspices of our British
Government, finds work for the people to enable them to pay their way, allowing
them to get 3s. 6d. to 7s. a week for making crochet or lace, and 101/2d. a dozen for
socks. The children are kept at home to help with this wretchedly paid work, and, as a

result, Government Blue Books admit that in country districts the proportion of
illiteracy varies from 35 to 70 per cent.; 50 to 65 per cent of illiteracy being most
common. The earnings of the people in these industries have fallen instead of rising in
recent years: Government reports show that whereas in 1912-13 the total earnings in
the lace-making trade were 29,754, they had fallen in 1914-15 to 11,680. We learn
that the kelp-making industry on which the people in the West of Ireland largely exist,
is improving as a result of the War. Yet the Government inspector in this years report
states that an entire family in the best districts can earn but 20 in a season, though
years ago they could make 40.
Knowing these things, we understand why rebellion breaks out in Ireland, and we
share the sorrow of those who are weeping there to-day for the Rebels whom the
Government has shot.

***
Saturday
Scenes
Patricia Lynch.

13th
from

May
the

1916
Rebellion.

Euston Station was crowded with soldiers, and one might have imagined it to be in the
hands of the military. Very few civilians were to be seen. Only single tickets were
being issued to Holyhead, and boat tickets were not being sold at all.
In the train to Holyhead a dark young soldier with an Irish accent said he had enlisted
to help the Belgians, and he did not want to fire on people who were fighting for their
country. The stewardess on the boat was pale-faced and serious. Her eyes were red
with crying for the rebellion. She feared it was really all over and a failure. It will be
like the Germans in Belgium, she said; and theyre beginning already.
While I waited at the Town Hall, Kingstown, for my pass to Dublin, a woman, who
had been detained there for more than a week, told me she had seen nothing of the
fighting. All the time that she and her family had heard firing they had been so much
occupied in trying to get food and a place to sleep in, and had succeeded so badly, that
she connected a revolution with hunger and personal discomfort and nothing more. A
man who owned a motor car, offered to try to drive her into Dublin for 10, or if she
could get others to share, for 2 10s. each, but she could not afford it. She was
English, and thought the Irish people were inconsiderate, as usual, to start their
revolution when other folk were beginning their holiday. A red-cross nurse had come
over to seek for friends, from whom nothing had been heard for a fortnight. These and
the others I met there were solely occupied with their own grievances. I was glad to
be rid of them.
The Dublin train was crowded with soldiers, all talking of the trouble, with a complete
absence of bitterness. Many hoped they would not be ordered to fire on the rebels.
Westland Row Station, in Dublin; was guarded by police, and on coming out one saw
at once the shops all smashed and broken.

The barricades were still across the streets and soldiers guarding them. Men required a
pass to go anywhere at all. Women needed them to go out of the city. In OConnell
Street and along Eden Quay the dust was still thick upon the ground, the air was
heavy with burning, and dense clouds of smoke obscured the ruins. Even when the
rain came, and after three days of it, they were still smouldering. Strangers talked
quite openly to each other in the streets at first, as they viewed the damage. Could
the Germans do worse to us? one said, and another: They tell us to pity the
Belgians; its ourselves need pity, Im thinking. The affair at the Post Office aroused
great horror: To turn machine guns on them and they running away! The English
papers talk of Louvain; whatll they say of Dublin? But after the first few days
people became more cautious; everyone suspected his neighbour of being a spy or
informer. Soldiers and police stood all along the pavements preventing people from
going into the ruins or down the side streets. The soldiers looked like dwarfs
compared with the police. Bodies were being brought out. It was more like a
nightmare than reality. Women walked along, tears streaming down their cheeks. One
woman spoke to me. She was elderly, dressed in black, her eyes swollen from
weeping, and she stumbled against me. Her only son was a Sinn Feiner: he had been
killed in the fighting. She was not grieving for the houses which had been destroyed,
but for the brave young lives which seemed to have been thrown away. She did not
grudge her boy to Ireland, if only she could feel that the sacrifice had not been wasted.
As much ammunition was being used for one sniper as would wipe out a German
regiment, she said, adding bitterly: But then the English dont hate the Germans the
way they hate us.
In the midst of the desolation the statues of Parnell and OConnell, and the hideous
Nelson pillar, remain uninjured.
Along Eden Quay the damage is not evenly distributed. The paper shop next to
Liberty Hall is untouched. The windows of Liberty Hall are smashed, and on the side
facing the Liffey a small portion of the wall is broken. Soldiers could be seen inside.
It is said that its position near the railway and the Custom House saved it from being
entirely destroyed.
I went one morning to get my pass at Trinity College, where a pale, nervous-looking
young man talked to me and urged me to do my best to get a pass at once, for I might
be prevented from leaving at all. Two soldiers took me into a room on the left-hand
side of the quadrangle. I was told to go upstairs, and stood for a moment on the
landing with two prisoners, one a boy of 17, very thin, poorly dressed, but holding his
head erect and looking far away. The other was a mild-mannered man with clumsy
clothes and restless hands. We smiled at each other, then the door was opened and I
was motioned forward. I stood in the doorway, a soldier on each side of me. An
elderly officer, short-necked, red-faced, with bulging blue eyes and carrotty hair, sat at
a table. A younger officer, tall and slim, stood by the fire at the other end. He looked
angry.
Pass or prisoner? shouted the officer at the table. The soldier on my left stammered
with nervousness. P-p-pass, sir, he said.

Then my cross-examination began. When did I come over? Why did I come? Why did
I travel alone? Who were my people? How long had I been in England? Who were my
relations in Ireland?
I answered them all.
Was I connected with the Sinn Fein or any other political organisation?
Before I answered the officer by the fire took a step forward. I object to this
bullying, he said; the question is unnecessary.
He spoke in a low tone, the officer at the table heard, turned and glared at him; but the
question was not repeated.
The bull-like gentleman at the table looked for a form, found it, and a pen which he
appeared to have some difficulty in using. He filled in my name, Dublin address,
London address, and signed and stamped it.
Countersigned at the Castle, he bellowed at me. Ill send someone with you, said
the other.
As we went out I heard him say that he would see the prisoners after lunch his lunch
I suppose.
I was marched around different departments of Dublin Castle with my pass. The
soldiers were very civil, the police haughty. One official told me they were having a
terrible time at the Castle, and God only knew when it would be better. After four
hours I came out again into Dame Street with my pass completed.
In the restaurant where I had my lunch a waitress, pale-faced, haggard-eyed, told me
that her sweetheart was a prisoner: she feared he would be shot. They dont shoot
German prisoners, although they call them Huns and baby-killers: they only shoot
our brave Irish boys
The charwoman in the house in which I stayed told me that without warning the
soldiers had commenced firing at her tenement. She lived with her four children in the
cellar tenement, and all the other inmates of the house came flocking down and
huddled together during the night on the stone flags under the staircase. Afterwards
they were told that it was thought there were snipers on the roof, but no-one in the
house knew anything about it. None of them were Sinn Fein or knew how to shoot,
and if the snipers were on the roof, wasnt it queer to riddle the front the house with
bullets? But everything seemed hard on poor people. They werent allowed out of
their houses except for a few moments in the morning to fetch bread and milk. Some
who had no money because they were prevented from earning it had to go without
unless they could share the little that their neighbours had. The step between semistarvation and absolute starvation is so slight to these dwellers in one room tenements
that they regard it with a measure of indifference.
Another woman who worked in the same house had been in slightly better
circumstances., she, with her family, had a two roomed flat in a turning off OConnell

Street. The Sinn Feiners turned the out of it and the military blew it up. She could not
make up her mind which party had served her worse, She hoped the Government
would give her compensation but doubted it theyd be more likely to give it to the
landlord, and him a rich man though she had lost her home, her clothes everything.
A girl living near the North Wall has one brother fighting at the front, another in the
Irish Volunteers. The latter, when the revolution started, went off without being at all
aware of what was on hand. Before he reached his destination he met a friend, who
told him that ammunition was being served out, and that fighting was going to
commence. He returned home and in order to protect his family from any unpleasant
consequences, gave himself up to the police at once. His sister has heard nothing of
him since. She is afraid he may be taken to England and forced to join the army.
Another young man was an ordinary member of Sinn Fein: he did not even drill, but
was arrested while out walking, together with a boy of 15 who was with him, and
neither have been released.
I saw that in Ireland the attitude towards the rebels taken by many, even of those who
condemn the rising, is one of esteem, admiration and love. One young woman who
had knowledge of first aid told me of her experiences. She lives near Merrion Square.
When the firing began she went out to see if she could help but was ordered back by
the military. All night she remained alone with her dog, listening to the shots passing
over the house and praying for those who were killed. But she longed to care for the
wounded. Towards morning she went out, meeting another woman bent on the same
charitable errand. They went towards Mount Street Bridge intending to search the
houses and gardens where the fighting had taken place. A young officer assured them
that there were no wounded but they persisted. They found a young soldier lying on
his back, his hands flung above his head as though asleep. They returned twice to him
before they could realise he was dead. Further on they came to a soldier entangled in
some wire. They had to cut away nearly all his clothes until they could get him out.
Then they found a little Sinn Feiner, barely 12 years old. He was wounded in the head
and his brains were showing. He was still conscious and his pitiful white face, with its
big dark eyes wide open with fear of the soldiers, wrung their hearts. At the womens
request a soldier ran for a priest. When he came the childs face lighted up with joy,
and his terror vanished, although he was dying.
The same young woman helped to carry a terribly injured women into a nursing
home. They had scarcely put her down when a young girl was carried into the same
room. She saw the woman and screamed out Mother; but her mother could not
speak she was dying. They told the girl she would see her mother after she had slept.
The young woman who told me of these things chanced also to be present at the
Battle of Bolands Mill. It has been stated that Devalera was forced to surrender by his
men, She says that is not true. She loved him so much they would willingly have died
with him, but he did not wish to sacrifice them uselessly. The mill was so well
defended that the soldiers thought there must be some hundreds within; yet when the
defenders came out there were but 50 of them, and 30 dead. She said that Devalera
looked like a king when he came out, defeated but unsubdued. Although she was his
opponent, she told me that she was filled with grief when she heard the incorrect
report that he had been shot.

Side by side with generous-minded people who can admire their opponents, are those
well-fed, well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who condemn the revolution because of
the gas supply being cut off; they were compelled to go without toast for breakfast, or
coffee for dinner. I heard one lady, who looked as if a little hard work and fasting
would do her a world of good, speak most angrily of those poor women who
exchanged their rags for silken dresses from ruined shops. She held up her plump
be0riged hands in horror at the little boys who took sweets from the shops, and the
others who put on ladies boots upon their bare feet and new suits for their poor little
bodies. I thought of her starved and naked soul, bare of all pity or humanity, and
considered her more to be pitied than the poor looters.
I have seen the military search suspected houses, I have seen gangs of prisoners
mere boys and grey-bearded men marched into Dublin Castle, wet, weary, haggard,
but their eyes shining and their head erect. I have seen the natural outbursts of feeling
give way to caution as the fear of spies and informers grows, and I have listened to
many reasons as to why the rebellion should have taken place at all. I will give the
statements of the two most influential people who gave me their views.
The first to me is the strangest and saddest. It is by one who has had years of dealing
with officials and politicians:The rebellion was engineered by those who wish to rob Ireland of Home Rule. By
those who feel that the way to destroy liberty is to goad those who worship it into
open revolt. The leaders of the revolution, idealistic, pure-minded, high-souled
unpractical, are their unconscious tools.
Can this be true?
The other is the statement of a poet and philosopher it is that Labour, neglected
oppressed, wronged, has allied its discontent to that of political enthusiasts. Poets and
dreamers alone cannot make a revolution. There must be popular unrest behind even
the smallest revolt. In Dublin it is impossible for men and women of the working class
to live like human beings. The conditions under which they live are more deadly than
the trenches; out of every six children born, one dies. The one-roomed tenements of
Dublin are a scandal to civilisation. The wages of the women are an outrage and all
over the country it is as bad. In five years there have been two labour revolts. For
weeks men, women and children have voluntarily starved rather than be forced to
half-starve all their lives. Yet the grievances, though acknowledged, remain
unredressed. Can we wonder that high-spirited men and women, seeing their wrongs
so ignored, have allied their discontent to that of political reformers? Give Labour a
chance and there will be an end of armed rebellion.
In England people forget the politicians last lie almost before he invents another. In
Ireland we have long memories. We never forget a wrong, we always remember a
kindness; but our history is one long story of wrong and oppression. English children
know nothing of the Chartists; to Irish children the broken treaty of Limerick, the
horrors of the penal days, the misery of those preventable famines and the barbarities
following upon the different risings are as fresh as the placing of Home Rule upon the
Statute Book. Will the English government never learn? It can only suppress revolt by
appealing to the imagination of the Irish. If not one leader had been shot, if clemency,

toleration had been the order, the rebellion would indeed have been at an end. We
cannot resist kindness, we can never endure oppression.
A heroic girl marrying her lover on the morning of his execution; a beautiful countess
giving up the advantages of her position to live with the working people and if
necessary to die with them; these strike the imagination of a race of poets and
idealists. If, against that, we have set wholesale imprisonments and shooting, the
paying of spies and informers, the verdict of even those who support the English
Government in the European War and in other ways will be that remark which I have
frequently heard in ruined OConnell Street The Germans could do no worse!
Is that what the Government desires?

eter Hadden

Connolly and the 1916 uprising

(March 1972)

From
Militant
(UK),
No. 94,
March
1972.
Transcribed
by
Ciaran
Crossey.
Marked up by Einde O Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line
(ETOL).

This years Easter celebrations will once again bring to life in Ireland the memories of
the Easter Rebellion of 56 years ago. For those people who in Ireland, north and
south, today continue the struggle begun by the Easter insurgents, the real lessons of
1916, not those drawn from the potted official histories of the southern state, are of
fundamental importance.
In numerical terms, the rebellion was small. The initial march into OConnell St was
only just over 1,000 strong. In general, the country outside Dublin remained quiet
during the week of fighting. The capture of Ashbourne by Tom Ashes men, the
Wexford rising, and the taking of Enniscorthy, the mobilisation of 1,000 volunteers
led by Liam Mellows in Galway, these were the only significant exceptions to the
overall calm.
With such small forces, the rising faced inevitable defeat. Every one of the signatories
of the Declaration of Independence under stood this. Connollys words to William
OBrien, spoken on the morning of the insurrection, show how aware he was of his
fate: We are going out to be slaughtered. Asked by OBrien, Is there no chance of
success??,
Connolly
replied,
None
whatsoever.

New chapter of history

Yet 1916 is something far more than a brief and bitter confrontation between a
handful of patriots and the armed might of England. Pearse and Connolly for their
part in the rising, stand directly in line with the traditions of revolt laid by the United
Irishmen and subsequently built upon by every generation. The volunteers of Easter
week und the tiny Citizen Army in 1916 wrote a new chapter in Irish history, turning
the page from where the vanquished of previous generations, Robert Emmet, the
Young Irelanders, the Fenians and others had left off.
Only a few may have marched on Easter Monday. Yet the actions of these few was
enough to kindle the flame of revolt among the mass of the Irish people. In this
respect, the heroism and gallantry of those who fought, gallantry which was even
praised by the British Officers sent to put the rising down, singles them out as the
outstanding figures of their generation.
In particular, the young insurgents of 1916 stood head and shoulders above the rotten
leaderships of the Social Democratic parties throughout the world; the people who in
the interest of their particular national capitalists, applauded the sending of their
supporters to become cannon fodder in the trenches of Europe.
These people, the so-called socialist leaders of the world, who at the Basle Congress
of 1912 had promised opposition to any imperialist war, but who, in the event, sprung
to the Defence of the fatherland, pale in comparison with Connolly, and his
comrades, who were prepared to take up arms against the war of nation against
nation in the interest of royal freebooters and cosmopolitan thieves.
It was in order to off-set the rising tide of support for the war, in particular the threat
of conscription in Ireland that motivated Connolly to make this stand. Before the
rising, impatient with the leaders of the volunteers, he was even prepared to go it
alone with the small force of the Citizen Army, not because there was any possibility
of success, but only because such bold action, he believed, could set the torch to a
European conflagration that will not burn out until the last capitalist bond and
debenture is shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last war lord.
The battles now being waged on the streets of Northern Ireland, the reawakening of
the nationalist consciousness of the people of the south, all this is a continuation of the
struggle of 1916. After the Easter Rising, General Maxwell ordered that graves big
enough for 100 bodies should be dug for those he intended to execute. General
Maxwell has his modern counterpart in General Ford, the man who sent the
paratroopers into the Bogside on Bloody Sunday.
The million people who came out on strike in revulsion against the latter atrocity,
stand directly in line with those who demonstrated for the release of the prisoners
after 1916. The fight for, in Connollys words, The reconquest of Ireland, for an end
to military tyranny; for all end to the tyranny of the exploitation of the Irish working
class at the hands of foreign capitalists and financiers and their Irish counterparts, has
not
ended.

Marxist
For this reason, the real lessons of 1916 must be taken to heart. In particular, the
lessons of Connolly, in whose tradition every leader of the Catholic population in the
North claims to stand. The motives which drive the residents of the Catholic areas
towards the IRA, given the methods of the army, are understandable. But even a
cursory comparison of the leaders of both sections of the IRA, as well as the green
Tories who claim to head the national movement, is enough to show the depths of the
chasm which separates them from both the ideas and the methods of Connolly.
Connolly was not an individual terrorist. He did not organise the planting of bombs,
the assassination of soldiers, politicians, or whatever. Had he wanted to do so, he had
every opportunity in the period between the 1913 lockout and rising when he had to
back him an armed and trained force, the Citizen Army.
As a Marxist, Connolly put his faith in the ability of his class to change society, not a
handful of individuals to do it for them. Those people who justify individual terrorism
by looking to the traditions set by 1916, have not understood the first thing about that
rising.
Protestant workers
Although it is true that only a few thousand participated in the rising, it is also true
that none of its leaders saw any possibility of victory. The rising had a different
purpose. It was an appeal to the people of Ireland and the working class of the world
to rise against the bloody slaughter being perpetrated in Europe. Every bullet fired in
1916 was intended as an inspiration to others. Not so with the bullet s and bombs of
today. The individual terrorist dose not turn outwards to the masses. Instead he
reduces the struggle to a duel in the dark between his own secretive organisation and
the British Army.
A guerrilla campaign in Northern Ireland is particularly self-destructive in that it
worsens sectarianism and thereby weakens the position of the Catholics themselves.
The Provisional IRA together with the other Catholic leaders, have not the beginnings
or an idea of how to appeal to the Protestant workers.
All that they can think of to overcome sectarianism in their Dail Uladh, is that the
Protestants could be adequately satisfied if they formed a large part, possibly a
majority, in a truly Ulster regional parliament. For the Catholics in such a set-up,
they would take comfort in their newly-found strength. (Republican News,
September 11th)
What an abyss lies between this and the position of Connolly! In his Socialism and
the Orange Worker, Connolly attacks the northern socialist for not having seriously
taken up the question of organising among the Protestants. This would not have been
carried out by stressing the comparative strength of their religion in any new set-up,
but by pointing to their position as workers and their day- to-day struggle against
exploitation,
misery
and
want.

Ancient Order of Hibernians

Connollys appeal to Protestants was never merely an exposure of the Orange leaders,
but was this coupled with a withering attack on all shades of bigotry in the ranks of
the Catholics.
This Easter, the AOH, in the name of Connolly amongst others, will celebrate the
rising. Quietly forgotten is Connollys own description of this organisation. Once
described as more Catholic than the Pope, the AOH was referred to by Connolly as
the foulest brood that ever came into Ireland. He went on, were it not for the Board
of Erin (AOH), the Orange society would long have ceased to exist. To brother Devlin
(Grand Master AOH) and not brother Carson, is mainly due the progress of the
covenanting movement.
What would Connolly have said about the miserable squeakings of An Phoblachton
the question of the trade unions, when they call for the breaking of all links with
foreign unions and for the conducting of branch business in Gaelic, is unimaginable.
Suffice to say that in his Yellow unions in Ireland, he describes how such unions,
when established, have been the first to betray the cause of Labour.
Erins Hope
The Citizen Army was built and prepared for 1916, not on the basis of a hand-in-glove
relationship with the Green Tories with whom they would share the barricades, but on
the basis of a struggle against such people. Connolly would literally turn in his grave
to think that people who claim to be his followers today, engage in parleys and
behind-the-scene deals with the Tories of Fianna Fail. Never would he have accepted
money from a capitalist government on the provision that he would disengage from
struggle against that government. Nor would he have rubbed shoulders on Civil
Rights platforms with Green Tories and bigots, without at the same time openly and
mercilessly criticising them.
The words written by Connolly in Erins Hope, are like a beacon lighting up the
mistakes of both sections of the IRA in this respect. No revolution can safely invite
the co-operation of men or classes whose ideals are not theirs and whom, therefore,
they may be compelled to fight at some future critical stage of the journey to
freedom. These are exactly the same sentiments as he echoed on the very eve of the
rising, when he instructed his men, in the event of victory, to hold onto their guns
because
the
volunteers
may
have
a
different
goal.
International Example
1916 holds many important lessons for today. But the most fundamental of all arises
from the fact that in the main, the participants in the rising were drawn from the ranks
of the working class. This is the proof of the correctness of Connolly s famous
phrase, Only the Irish working; class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the
fight for freedom in Ireland. Every other class is bound hand and foot to the pursestrings of English capital. For this reason only the working class can solve the

national problem in Ireland. There can only be a free united Ireland if that freedom,
that unity, is founded on the basis of a fight against the stranglehold of Rent, Interest
and Profit; the tyranny of landlordism and capitalism and for a socialist united Ireland.
The failing of the Easter rising was that it was premature. The Irish rose too early
before the same seeds of revolt were sown among the workers of Europe. At the same
time, no preparations were made to organise a general strike and to appeal to the
soldiers in the British Army, many of whom were Irish in any case.
Nevertheless, those who fought in 1916 set an example for the working-class
movement internationally to follow. Even in the present situation in NI, were the
Labour leaders to breathe in even one breath of the spirit of 1916 and couple this with
a correct application of the ideas of Connolly and of Marxism, a way forward could
be provided.

Peter Hadden

The real ideas of James Connolly

(April 2006

From
Socialism
Today,
No. 100,
April/May
2006.
Copied
with
thanks
from
the
Socialism
Today
Website.
Marked up by Einde O Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line
(ETOL).

James Connolly was a Marxist, a revolutionary socialist and an

internationalist. On the ninetieth anniversary of his execution,
PETER HADDEN reviews his life of unremitting struggle to
advance the interests of the working class and overthrow the
existing social order.

IN 1910 JAMES CONNOLLY concluded his pamphlet, Labour, Nationality and

Religion, in the simplest and most straightforward terms: The day has passed for
patching up the capitalist system, it must go. Ninety years after his death it is
necessary to begin any true account of James Connollys life with reminders of what
he really believed in, what he really fought for.
It is necessary because, with this years anniversary celebrations of the 1916 Easter
Rising, we are likely to witness the nauseating spectacle of Irish government

representatives, leaders of the establishment parties in the south along with the main
nationalist parties in the north, trying to commemorate and venerate Connolly as
though, somehow, they follow in his tradition.
Connolly, were he alive today, would be fighting as relentlessly against these people
and the system they represent as he fought against their equivalents in Ireland and
internationally in his own time. But he would not be surprised that people who are the
enemies of all that he stood for would try to claim his political heritage. After all, in
the centenary year of the 1798 Rebellion, Connolly noted the way the establishment
of the time did much the same to the memory of United Irish leader, Wolfe Tone.
Apostles of freedom, he wrote in the first edition of his newspaper, Workers
Republic, are ever idolised when dead, but crucified when living.
Connolly was born in the Cowgate district of Edinburgh in 1868, the youngest of
three sons. His father was a carter and the family lived in extreme poverty. James had
to work from the age of ten or eleven. He worked in a printers, a bakery and a mosaic
tiling factory. His education was rudimentary and his formidable skills in writing
not just his political and historical journalism but also his attempts to get a message
across through poetry and drama were largely self taught. Desmond Greaves, in his
biography of Connolly, surmises that the young James had to read by the light of
embers, whose charred sticks served him as pencils. Hence his slight squint.
Connolly was also slightly bow legged as a result of rickets, a common by-product of
poverty and malnourishment.
He was only 14 when poverty forced him to adopt a pseudonym and enlist with the
Kings Liverpool Regiment of the British Army. His service took him to Ireland and
lasted almost seven years before he deserted and returned to Scotland at the end of
1888 or early in 1889. It was then that, scraping by through casual work in Edinburgh,
Connolly began his lifelong involvement in socialist politics. He joined the Socialist
League, a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), one of the earliest
socialist groups in Britain. Members of the Socialist League included Eleanor Marx,
daughter of Karl Marx, and one of its main influences was Frederick Engels.
All the groups that existed at the time were very loose and federal in structure and
there was a constant overlap in membership. By the time he left Scotland in 1896 to
take up an invitation to become the secretary of the Dublin Socialist Club, Connolly,
although in financial destitution, was the secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation
and of the Scottish Labour Party, the local name for Kier Hardies Independent
Labour Party (ILP).
Within months of his arrival in Dublin he converted the Dublin Socialist Club into the
much more organised Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP), formed at a meeting of
eight people in a bar in Dublins Thomas Street in May 1896. He became its paid
organiser at a salary of 1 a week. From that time until his execution twenty years
later, Connolly was a full-time revolutionary, working, when the money was there, for
small socialist groups like the ISRP or later the Socialist Party of Ireland, or else as an
outstanding trade union organiser. For much of this time Connolly and his family
continued to live in poverty. Much of the time he was forced to go on prolonged
speaking tours to raise funds, to Scotland, England and the USA.

Connolly understood the need for publications to get his ideas across. He produced a
number of important pamphlets and published a number of newspapers, notably
Workers Republic, first launched as an ISRP publication, and The Harp, a
newspaper he first issued in the US, where he lived from 1903-1910.
Maintaining these papers on a shoe string and with a limited circulation would not
have been possible but for the gargantuan energies Connolly poured into the task. He
was the main contributor, the person who ensured that publication dates were met,
printers bills paid, and was most often the driving force on sales. Bearing out that the
job of revolutionaries is to do what needs to be done, no matter how mundane the
task, Connolly took it on himself to see that his papers reached the widest workingclass audience. In the US he stood at street corners and outside meetings selling The
Harp. One of the early pioneers of the US labour movement, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
in her autobiography, remembers Connolly pushing the sales of this journal: It was a
pathetic sight to see him standing, poorly clad, at the door of Cooper Union or some
other East Side Hall, selling his little paper.
It was through his articles in these journals and in the papers of other organisations
that Connolly developed the ideas that he held most consistently through his life. He
took the ideas of Marx and Engels, especially their view that the motor force of
history is the struggle between contending classes, and applied them to Ireland.
His earliest pamphlet, a series of essays published in 1897 under the title, Erins
Hope, drew the conclusion that Connolly defended and expanded upon throughout his
life, that the Irish working class was the only secure foundation on which a free
nation can be built. This conclusion was amplified and presented in a more rounded
form in his major work, the 1910 pamphlet Labour in Irish History. This booklet
remains Connollys most important contribution in the realm of ideas.
The main conclusion of Labour in Irish History is that the Irish middle and
propertied class have a thousand economic strings in the shape of investments
binding them to English capitalism. It follows that only the Irish working class
remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland. These
conclusions parallel the ideas being developed by Leon Trotsky at the time, now
known as the theory of the permanent revolution.
Trotsky explained that the native bourgeois (capitalist class) in the less developed
countries and in the colonial world had emerged late onto the scene of history. They
were too enfeebled as a class to dare to put themselves at the head of movements to
remove the last vestiges of feudalism or establish independent nation states as the
bourgeois in the established capitalist powers had, nervously and often incompletely,
managed to do. These tasks fell then to the working class who, in taking power, would
carry through the unfinished tasks that in a previous historical period had fallen to the
rising capitalist class. But at same time the working class would proceed,
uninterrupted, to carry through the tasks of the socialist revolution.
Connolly never drew these conclusions with the precision of Trotsky. Nor had he the
opportunity to read Trotskys material. As with many of his other writings, there is
occasional ambiguity in his writings on the national question, an ambiguity that was
amplified by his actions at the end of his life. He did make statements, especially at

that time, which could be read as supporting the idea that independence would give a
boost to the struggle for socialism. For example, in 1916 he commented that
independence is the first requisite for the free development of the national powers
needed for our class. Loose formulations like this have been used by some on the left
to back the mistaken notion that national independence is somehow a necessary first
stage on the road to socialism and to justify alliances with nationalists to achieve
this.
This was never really Connollys view. His most consistent material states the
opposite. In Labour in Irish History and in his other main writings on the national
question, he is more or less at one with Trotsky; that it is the working class who must
achieve independence and, in so doing, will also establish socialism. This made him a
giant of his time.
In many other respects Connolly stood politically head and shoulders above those
around him in the British and Irish labour movement. He recognised that every
political party is the party of a class which it uses to create and maintain the
conditions most favourable to its own class rule. The working class needed its own
political instrument and this instrument should stand independent of other parties.
It goes without saying what his position would have been on the present day calls of
trade union leaders for social partnership; on those like the Irish Labour Party and
Sinn Fein who spend their time knocking on the doors of the right-wing establishment
parties seeking coalition government; or indeed on those on the left who quietly drop
their socialist ideas so they can participate in broad fronts with individuals and
groups that are fervently hostile to socialism.
The socialist organisations of Connollys time were still mainly propaganda
organisations without a mass political base or influence. To Connolly this was
something to be changed and the question of the hour was how to build them into
mass organisations without diluting their socialist content. Intense debates on
questions like this raged within all the socialist groupings that Connolly was involved
with. There were often very bitter exchanges that reflected different political trends
that were emerging. One of his political experiences was with the Scottish wing of the
SDF, ultimately a propagandist sect, led by Henry Hyndman, a man whose role, as
Connolly saw it, was to preach revolution and practice compromise and to do neither
thoroughly.
When he left Ireland for the US in 1903, Connolly joined the Socialist Labour Party
(SLP) which was led by Daniel De Leon. Connolly soon clashed with De Leon over a
number of theoretical questions and more particularly over the dictatorial way in
which he ran the SLP. De Leons response was not always political among other
things he accused Connolly of being a Jesuit agent and a police spy. All in all it
was a bitter experience and Connolly would have agreed with Engels who, early in
the 1890s, wrote that the SDF and SLP treated Marxism in a doctrinaire and
dogmatic way as something to be learnt off by heart ... To them it is a credo and not a
guide to action.
Connolly left the SLP in 1908 declaring it had no future in De Leons hands, except as
a church. He joined the Socialist Party, a larger organisation but with a more

compromising/reformist outlook, in order to be one of the revolutionary minority

within it. This demonstrates his total absence of political sectarianism. He knew the
importance of clear ideas but he also understood that it was necessary to take those
ideas into the living movement of the working class, not refrigerate them in a pure
political sect.
At the 1912 Irish Trades Union Congress, held in Clonmel, it was Connolly who
successfully moved the motion for independent labour representation that marked the
birth of the Irish Labour Party. He saw no contradiction between this and his work to
build his own Socialist Party of Ireland. Connolly, in other words, instinctively
understood the dual task of socialists to encourage, assist and participate in every
development that draws the broad mass of workers into political activity, while at the
same time building a more conscious socialist organisation.
This does not mean that he had a clear conception of the need for a revolutionary
party that could act as the instrument of the working class in carrying through the
socialist revolution. At the time, only Lenin in Russia understood that a successful
revolution would require a conscious leadership organised in such a way that it would
not
bend
politically
under
the
pressures
of
events.
Trade union struggles
CONNOLLY, LIKE MOST of the Marxists of his day, was not fully clear what
instrument the working class would use to overthrow capitalism or how. For a time,
he put forward the syndicalist view that the main role would be played by industrial
unions. His flirtation with syndicalism does not mean that he saw no role for politics
or parties. Throughout his life he was consistent on the need for the working class to
organise itself politically as well as industrially.
Connolly understood the critical importance of ideas. But he would never have been
content to play the role of a dusty, De Leon style, professor. He understood that theory
is only a preparation for action and that the only real testing ground for ideas is in the
living movement. During the last decade of his life in particular, most of which he
spent working as a revolutionary trade union organiser, his ideas and his methods
were put into practice in a series of momentous struggles and upheavals.
His ability as a mass workers leader was put to the test in Ireland in 1911 when he
became the Belfast organiser of James Larkins Irish Transport and General Workers
Union (ITGWU). He had returned from the US with several years experience
working as an organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World. During this time, he
had participated in some of the bloody battles that were being fought by US workers
against vicious bosses backed by armed police and scabs.
Connolly took up his position in the ITGWU just as an explosive wave of strikes was
taking place in Britain and Ireland. Three million strike days were lost in 1909. Three
years later the figure was 41 million. Ireland saw the most bitter battles as employers
tried to forcibly resist the militant growth of New Unionism, the organisation of the
semi-skilled and unskilled, in the form of the ITGWU. In 1911 Connolly led a
struggle of the Belfast dockers. That was quickly followed by an approach from

female mill workers, the linen slaves of Belfast, and an inspiring strike by more
than 1,000 of these workers against the grim conditions and tyrannical managerial
regime they suffered in the mills.
At the end of 1911 Connolly had to go to Wexford where ITGWU members had been
locked out since August in an attempt by employers to break the union. During this
dispute, the workers formed a defence organisation, a Workers Police, to protect
themselves from the police. This was a forerunner of the Irish Citizens Army which
was formed for the same reason during the 1913 Dublin lock out.
Dublin 1913 was the culmination of this period in which the forces of labour and
capital went head to head in Ireland. In August 1913, the Dublin Employers
Association, led by William Martin Murphy, locked out ITGWU members,
demanding they leave the union. This was a bid to finally break the back of the Irish
labour movement before a Home Rule parliament was established.
The struggle dragged on until the end of January 1914 when the workers were finally
starved back to work. At its highpoint, it involved virtually the whole of the Dublin
working class. The undisputed leaders of the workers were Larkin and Connolly.
Arraigned against them were not just the employers and the forces of the capitalist
state, but the churches and the forces of right-wing nationalism. Lenten pastorals from
the pulpits denounced socialism and trade unionism. The Ancient Order of Hibernians
Ancient Order of Hooligans to Connolly who from the early days of the ISRP had
been involved in repeated attempts to physically break up Connollys meetings and
rallies, broke into the Irish Worker printing office and smashed the type.
In the end it was the false friends rather than the open enemies of the ITGWU who
left the workers of Dublin isolated and with little choice but to return to work.
Connolly and Larkin had called for a solidarity general strike in Britain and for the
blacking of the scab boats that were delivering goods in and out of the port of Dublin.
The issue of blacking was debated at a special meeting of the British TUC in
December but, with the leaders of the main unions opposed to solidarity action, the
motion was decisively defeated by 2,280,000 votes to 203,000.
The eventual return-to-work was on the employers terms but the immediate victory
they had won was at the cost of laying down a tradition of militancy and solidarity
which meant that the union had been badly wounded but not broken.
The national question
THIS WAS ONE of three defeats suffered by the working-class movement in the
space of a few short years, which without a doubt left Connolly somewhat
disorientated and shaped the direction he took in the last three years of his life.
Connollys return to Belfast after the strike was against the backcloth of the Home
Rule crisis of 1912-14. The proposal by Westminster to grant limited Home Rule to
Ireland had invoked a furious opposition among Unionists and from a significant
section of the British ruling class. The Ulster Volunteer Force was formed in 1913 and
the Unionist hierarchy voted to establish a provisional government in Ulster in the

event of the Home Rule Bill becoming law. With the drums of civil war beating
loudly a compromise was arrived at that allowed for the temporary exclusion of any
of the Ulster counties that chose to stay out of the arrangement. Nationalist leader,
John Redmond, accepted this deal.
Connolly dismissed the idea that this exclusion would be temporary and correctly
viewed these events as a defeat for the working class. He predicted that partition
would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the Irish
labour movement, and paralyse all advanced movements while it endured.
During his time in Belfast, Connolly had attempted to unite workers both industrially
and politically. But he did not manage to give the unity achieved in strikes and other
struggles a lasting organisational form. The ITGWU organised Catholic workers in
the main, as did the socialist political groups with which he was involved.
Connolly stood for class unity and fought to achieve it, but this fine ambition in itself
was not enough to break the sectarian mould. He never properly examined the reasons
why big sections of the Protestant working class were prepared to fall in behind the
Lords and Ladies of Unionism. If he had looked more closely he would have seen that
Protestant workers had real fears about what might happen under a Home Rule
parliament and would have understood that it was necessary for socialists to put
forward ideas to counter those fears.
The greater Belfast area was the industrial hub of Ireland at the time. The heavy
industries that had developed were part of an industrial triangle whose other two
points were Liverpool and Glasgow. Protestant workers had developed strong ties of
struggle with workers in these cities especially. Their fear was that in a Home Rule
parliament, run in the interests of the smaller businesses in the south who favoured
protectionist measures, their ties with the labour movement in Britain would be
broken and their jobs would be threatened as their industries were cut off from their
export markets.
Connollys analysis of the national question as it had evolved in Ireland was
fundamentally correct, but his application of that analysis in the form of a programme
was somewhat one-sided and, as such, would not re-assure the mass of Protestants.
Along with Larkin, he stood for separate Irish trade unions as well as separate
political organisations. This was necessary in order to draw Catholic workers away
from the Nationalists. But in the north it created the danger, as actually happened, that
Protestants would, by and large, stay with the British organisations and workers
would be divided along religious lines. At the very least, it would have been necessary
to advocate that special formal links be maintained between the working class
organisations in Ireland and in Britain, and especially to defend and maintain the ties
that had been built up between shop stewards organisations.
Likewise on the question of independence. Connolly was correct in advocating an
Irish Socialist Republic, but this too was posed in a one-sided manner. When Marx
spoke about the struggle for Irish independence, meaning independence on a capitalist
basis, he added the rider that after independence may come federation. Connollys
material leaves this idea to the side.

While fighting to place the labour movement, with its goal of a socialist republic, at
the head of the struggle for independence, it would have been better if Connolly had
also argued to maintain the links with the British working class and had put forward
as the ultimate objective the idea of a voluntary socialist federation of Ireland and
Britain.
World war & the Easter rising
THE THIRD DEFEAT suffered by the working class came in the form of the outbreak
of war in August 1914. Before the war, the mighty parties of the Second International,
particularly the Social Democratic Party of Germany, had issued belligerent anti-war
statements and had promised a general strike to paralyse the war effort should
hostilities be announced.
When the fighting started, all this resistance, with the exception of some courageous
individual leaders and of a few parties like the Russian Bolsheviks, crumbled away to
nothing. To Connolly this was another blow and he responded in his typical
vituperative style: What then becomes of all our resolutions, all our protests of
fraternisation, all our threats of general strikes, all our carefully built machinery of
internationalism, all our hopes for the future? Were they all as sound and fury,
signifying nothing?
The outbreak of war was accompanied by a wave of jingoism. Class ideas along with
strikes and other expressions of class struggle were, for the moment, pushed to the
background. In Ireland, Nationalist leader John Redmond, became a voluntary
recruiting sergeant for the British army and tens of thousands who had previously
drilled in the uniforms of the Irish volunteers joined up.
It is clear from Connollys writings after 1914 that all these disappointments and
betrayals affected him deeply. His writings on the war, as a whole, were not so clear
and precise as earlier works. At bottom he maintained his socialist and internationalist
outlook but, increasingly, his ideas became tempered by his frustration at the passivity
of the working class in face of the slaughter in Europe: Even an unsuccessful attempt
at social revolution by force of arms, following the paralysis of the economic life of
militarism, would be less disastrous to the Socialist cause than the act of Socialists
allowing themselves to be used in the slaughter of their brothers in the cause. A great
continental uprising of the working class would stop the war.
With England so heavily preoccupied, he began to consider that the first blow could
be struck in Ireland. As the war bogged down to the seemingly interminable horror of
the trenches, the need to act quickly to ensure that this blow was struck became his
overriding concern.
In his impatience he was prepared to set some of the ideas and methods he had so
carefully developed during a lifetime of revolutionary struggle temporarily to the side.
In Labour and Irish History he points out correctly that revolutions are not the
product of our brains, but of ripe material conditions. In an earlier Shan Van Vocht
article he criticised the Young Irelanders and Fenians for taking to the field when the
conditions for revolution had not matured: The Young Irelanders made no reasonable

effort to prepare the popular mind for revolution so failure was inevitable. Now he
stressed the opposite argument, criticising those in the Young Ireland movement who
talked about revolution but when the time came began to make excuses, to murmur
about the danger of premature insurrection.
With the working class largely quiescent, Connolly looked to the radical nationalist
forces then organised in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and the 13,000 Irish
Volunteers who had broken from Redmond over his support for the war. He hoped
that an uprising in Ireland, even if it was organised for nationalist rather than socialist
objectives would, as he put it, set the torch to a European conflagration that will not
burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond and debenture will be
shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last war lord.
In order to pressurise the IRB, and through them the Volunteers, into action, Connolly
was prepared to make political concessions he would not have made at any other time
in his life. He was fully correct to work alongside the nationalists in opposition to the
war as he did in the Irish Neutrality League. But in joining hands on specific issues it
was also necessary, as Connolly had done throughout his life, to maintain an
organisational and political independence. Connolly never abandoned his socialist
ideas but there were times when, by not putting them forward, he allowed his views to
be blurred with those of the nationalists. It was the green flag of independence, not the
red flag of socialism, not even his own Starry Plough, that he flew over Liberty Hall,
the ITGWU headquarters.
The conditions for a successful rising did not exist in 1916. From this point of view
the rising was premature and doomed to failure from the start. Connolly was aware of
this. When, on the morning of the rising his long-term colleague William OBrien
passed him on the stairs of Liberty Hall and asked if there was any chance of success,
Connollys reply was none whatsoever.
For Connolly its purpose was as an act of military defiance whose repercussions
would hopefully reverberate around the other European nations and encourage the
working class of other countries to rise. His lack of any real attempt to use his
position at the head of the ITGWU to prepare the working class to back the rising
shows that he was only too well aware that there was no broad mood of support for
what he was about to do. He made no call for a general strike to paralyse the
movement of troops and munitions. During the rising itself he made no attempt to
appeal to the British troops on a class basis not to fight.
Leaving aside the issue of whether it was correct to go ahead at this time, the manner
in which Connolly participated was also wrong. In his desperation to make sure that
the rising went ahead he agreed to participate largely on the political terms of the
Volunteers, rather than his own.
He put his name to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which was read by Pdraic
Pearse from the steps of the GPO. The proclamation is a straightforward statement of
nationalist, not socialist ideas. It is true that there are phrases in it that were most
probably insisted on by Connolly, such as the declaration of the right of the people of
Ireland to the ownership of Ireland. Connolly had previously always sternly opposed
the idea of an appeal to the whole people, which includes the rack renting

landlords and the profit-grinding capitalists and based himself on the interests of
the working class.
In the run up to and during the rising he issued no separate platform setting out the
socialist objectives of the Citizen Army. To have done so would have been no empty
gesture, even in defeat. Had he issued his own platform making the call for a socialist
Ireland he would at least have laid a foundation stone for future socialist movements.
He would also have prevented political forces and individuals who represent the very
antithesis of everything he stood for, from claiming his mantle.
Those who took part fought heroically and held out for a week against impossible
odds. Connollys courage under fire earned him the respect, not just of the men and
women of the Citizen Army, but of the Volunteer ranks and even of some of the
British officers.
After the rising came the reprisals. The main leaders were court-martialled and
executed. Connolly was severely wounded and in no condition to face a court martial
but General Maxwell, the British General in charge, insisted that it go ahead in the
military hospital. Connolly was sentenced to death and taken in an ambulance to
Kilmainham jail where he was shot on arrival. It was the revenge of the British ruling
class backed by their Irish counterparts not just for the rising but for Connollys
lifetime of struggle against them.
The real tragedy of 1916 was clear to see just over one year later. In October 1917 the
Bolsheviks led the Russian working class to power. The shock waves of revolution
spread across Europe and beyond. Ireland too was convulsed by these events and a
more favourable opportunity opened for the working class to take power than had
existed at any time during Connollys life.
But Connolly was dead and in his death the Irish working class were deprived of their
foremost and outstanding leader. Connolly had not recognised the need to build a
disciplined revolutionary party and so there was no force present to carry on his work.
The movement ended not in revolution but in partition and defeat.
Our tribute to Connolly is not to join with the false eulogies that will drip
hypocritically from the lips of the establishment, but to learn both from his
accomplishments and his mistakes so that the experience of his life will assist the
current generation to succeed in finally ridding the world of capitalism.
Peter Hadden

Divide and Rule

1914-1921: Socialism or Division

With the outbreak of war the various sections of the bourgeoisie agreed to put
aside their differences and concentrate on the task at hand the pouring of as
much human raw material as possible into the trenches. In parliament the
Liberals, the loyalists and even the nationalists vied with each other to show that
they put the nation first. Carson volunteered the postponement of the Home
Rule debate until after the war. So did Redmond. So too did Asquith.
The Irish problem had simplified itself as far as the bosses were concerned. It was
now a problem of how to pressgang as many Irishmen as possible into uniform to go
and serve their King and Country in Flanders. Conscription was favoured by many
sections of the ruling class. However, a number of factors had prevented its
implementation. First there was the question of opinion in America. The prime
concern of the British bosses was to bring America into the war on their side. The
American government, with all its superficial phrasemongering about defending the
rights of small nations, would have to be sensitive to the tide of pro-Irish feeling at
home. It would have had difficulty justifying an ally which practised its defence of the
rights of small nations by coercing unwilling Irishmen into its army. Secondly the
very problem of implementing the policy of conscription without tying down huge
numbers of troops in Ireland to maintain order was a deterrent. Finally, and
particularly towards the end of the war, of major importance was opposition to
conscription from the ranks of an aroused Irish labour movement.
If the Irish could not be press-ganged into uniform, more gentle measures would have
to be employed! And what better than to employ the trusted leaders of the nationalist
movement to plead the case of imperialism to the Irish people?
By 1914 Redmond proved most patriotic! Not only did he support the war; he even
offered to use the Volunteers to look after security in Ireland so that the British
garrison would be free for use in Europe. Of course the British preferred that the Irish
Volunteers serve in the trenches so that their troops could be spared to keep order in
Ireland.
And Redmond willingly obliged! He expended not a little energy touring the country
to address recruiting meetings. With him were the other leaders of right-wing
nationalism. As Connolly pointed out, the selfsame people who denounced the
workers of Dublin in 1913 for sending children to Protestant homes to avoid
starvation were now, with gusto, encouraging the youth of Ireland to clamber into
khaki uniforms and shed their blood in the interests of their masters. In Dublin one of
the slogans of the recruiting meetings was that the trenches are safer than the slums.
Because of the risk of disease in the miserable hovels of Dublins ghettos this may
well have been the case. Never more clearly had capitalism been indicted by the
people who spent their time trying to preserve it than it had through this slogan.
Redmond was highly successful during the early war years in his recruiting efforts.
The initial wave of jingoism which had accompanied the war had even stretched itself
into Ireland. It had combined with the miseries of life in the slums and on the land, to
drive some 200,000 Irish people into the army.
Those who volunteered, thanks to the efforts of the nationalists, found themselves
scattered throughout the regiments of the British army. A concentration of Irish

soldiers in any regiment would have spelt danger to the control which could be
exercised by the army chiefs. These reactionaries who made up the bulk of Carsons
UVF received different treatment. The special 36th (Ulster) Division was formed
almost entirely from the ranks of the UVF.
The overwhelming majority of the National Volunteers backed Redmonds stance in
1914. When a few more militant sections of the Volunteers such as the secret Irish
Republican Brotherhood talked in terms of Englands difficulty being Irelands
opportunity,
they
were
largely
scorned
or
ignored.
Connolly and 1916
Among the few people who stood out against the war was James Connolly. In 1914 he
was one of a handful of socialists internationally who denounced the carnage as an
imperialist war. He stood with Lenin, Trotsky, Liebknecht, Luxembourg, and a few
others, in his denunciations.
In pitiful contrast were the leaders of the major social-democratic parties and major
unions in Europe. These gentlemen had met in 1914 at the Basle Congress and
resolved that the outbreak of war would be answered by an international general strike
which would paralyse the war effort of every country. When the armies of Europe
eventually descended upon each other, tossing worker against worker, the initial
outburst of national chauvinism which accompanied the first shots was sufficient to
dissolve the opposition of almost all the leaders of European social democracy.
Inevitably those at the top of the strongest movements, with the greatest power at their
disposal, became the most rotten, the most cowardly and the most open in their
support of the war effort.
Faced with, and outraged by, these betrayals, Connolly, more than any other leader in
Ireland, was determined that action on the part of the Irish people was necessary. He
pressed the leaders of the IRB and the Volunteers to organize an insurrection.
Suspicious of the role of the leaders of these organizations, he even threatened that if
they were not prepared to rise he would do so, using only the tiny forces of the Citizen
Army. On one occasion, he told his son that he thought the Volunteer leaders were
prepared to fight only if they had steam-heated trenches.
When plans for a rising during Easter week 1916 were agreed, Connollys
reservations about the role of the nationalist leaders were shown to be well founded.
Connolly had once described the nationalist leaders as the open enemies or the
treacherous friends of the working class. McNeill, the commander of the Volunteers,
on the day before the 1916 rising, actually sent out an order stating that it had been
called off. Arthur Griffith expressed vehement opposition to this lunacy and split
away from all the groups that were involved. During the actual fighting he had a
change of heart and offered support but was told by the insurgents to stand aside
and instead concentrate on political back-up work. His subsequent arrest proved
fortunate for his political career, since, in the minds of the people, if not in actual fact,
it placed him side by side with the heroes of 1916.

On the morning of Easter Monday 1916 little more than a thousand men marched to
the GPO in the centre of Dublin. There the flag of independence was raised and a
proclamation read. Other buildings throughout the city were seized, including the
Four Courts, the South Dublin Union and Bolands Mill. The reaction of the military
establishment was swift. Despite Connollys prediction, probably given to reassure his
somewhat unwilling troops, that the capitalists would not shell their own property,
within one day, artillery was being used against the insurgents.
Outside Dublin only a few areas were affected. In Galway over a thousand men were
mobilized by Liam Mellows, only to be dispersed after several skirmishes. The town
of Enniscorthy in Wexford was held for a time. Elsewhere there was little activity,
except in North County Dublin, where a railway line was seized.
After one week of fighting, the Dublin rising was bloodily suppressed. Lacking any
real basis of support, the insurgents did not have the slightest chance of victory. In
fact, as the captured men were marched through the streets of Dublin in many cases
they were met with the derision and abuse of the people. In Dame Street, a crowd
actually waved Union Jacks in their faces. Elsewhere, in Thomas Street, for example,
tomatoes and other fruit were hurled at them.
There followed a program of executions. General Maxwell, the head of the British
forces, demanded that a grim example be made of the insurgents. Ninety people were
sentenced to be executed by firing squad. As the program of executions got under
way, demands for clemency grew in both Britain and Ireland. But the executions
continued continued, that is, until Connolly was dead. Then, with the greatest leader
of the workers in Ireland dead, the killings were ended. Not surprisingly the Irish
Independent, owned by William Martin Murphy, that money-grabbing capitalist of
1913, raised the call for clemency only after one of his arch-enemies, Connolly, had
been shot.
Murphys stance was indicative of that of the entire establishment and business
community in Ireland. When such representatives of Irish capitalism as millionaire
Charles Haughey and others pay lip service to the national heroes of 1916 they
deserve to be reminded that their class took a somewhat different position at the time
of the rising. To a man, the capitalists of Ireland made themselves hoarse in 1916 by
shouting their denunciations of Connolly, Pearse and Co.
The Irish Times in an editorial at the time celebrated the fact that Liberty Hall is no
more than a sinister and hateful memory. On May 8 it insisted that the execution of
leaders should continue. Calling for military rule to be extended, it stated:
We have learned that the sword of the soldier is a far better guarantee of justice and
liberty than the presence of the politician.
Alongside Murphy the Dublin Chamber of Commerce opposed the rising. So did the
church. So did the ragbag of right-wing sectarian organizations such as the Ancient
Order of Hibernians and the Irish National Foresters. Respectable Dublin, the kith
and kin of the present rulers of Southern Ireland were not in the GPO during Easter
week 1916. From their drawing rooms and parlors they were praising and
encouraging the British forces. In their speeches and publications they were

wholeheartedly demanding retribution in full against those who dared physically to

oppose the national oppression of Ireland.
Few incidents in Irish history have been subject to such confusion and distortion as
the 1916 rising. In particular, the participation of Connolly, fighting with the people
he did, under the Irish flag, and as signatory to a declaration which demanded that the
Irish people, not the Irish working class, should be the owners of Ireland, has sown
endless confusion. Connollys role in 1916 has been and still is used by countless
petty-bourgeois nationalists, republicans, Green so-called socialists and a hundred
and one other self-ordained followers to give license to the crimes which they
commit against the working class movement in his name.
Connolly stands as a giant when compared to all the other leaders, apart from Larkin,
who have dominated the Irish labour movement before 1916 or since. His
contribution in terms of ideas has not been surpassed. His readiness to struggle at all
times and to make endless sacrifice has not been matched. In 1916 his motive was the
advancement of the interests of the class he had faithfully served throughout his life as
a conscious socialist.
Neither before nor during the 1916 rising did Connolly have any illusions in his
nationalist allies. On the eve of the fighting he addressed the Citizen Army with the
following words:
the odds against are 1000-1. But if we should win, hold onto your rifles, because the
Volunteers may have a different goal. Remember we are out not only for political
liberty but for economic liberty as well. So hold onto your rifles.
Albeit with the very best motives, Connolly was nevertheless mistaken in 1916 in
concocting the type of alliance he did between himself and the nationalists, and in
doing this on the terms that he did. There were occasions in the pre-rising period
when he even spoke on platforms with such right-wing petty-bourgeois enemies of the
working class as Arthur Griffith. His decision in 1916 to fly the green flag over
Dublins GPO, rather than have the Citizen Army march and fight separately under
the red flag, was a decision which was not supported by many of his followers within
the Citizen Army even at that time. But this mistake was not made because Connolly
had a change of heart about the very people whom he had viciously polemicised
against before the war.
Nor was Connolly at any time motivated by mere narrow, nationalist sentiments. His
mistake in 1916 was made for the best of reasons. The battle of Dublin workers in
1913 had temporarily exhausted the movement of the Irish working class. During the
war there were strikes, some successful, but never did the movement even begin to
rise to the crescendo of the struggles of the pre-war period. The betrayal of the great
lockout by the leaders of the British trade unions, and the mood of exhaustion which
swept the Irish labour movement thereafter, undoubtedly had an effect on Connolly
himself. His partial disorientation caused by these events was confounded by the
outbreak of the war.
After 1914 his prime concern was with the war and the mood of jingoism which
swept sections of the population. Aghast at the gross betrayal perpetrated by the tops

of the workers movement internationally in 1914, and shocked that the carnage could
rage for two years without any opposition, he looked in desperation for some way of
provoking a movement against the war. He was prepared to sacrifice himself, his
organization, and even to compromise on some of his ideas, in order to set the
workers movement once again on a forward path. This attitude of struggle stands in
marked contrast to the cringing chauvinism of the social-democratic leaders
internationally who discarded their socialism in favour of patriotic phrases throughout
this period. Connolly was isolated in his denunciation of the war. He could not see
even a ripple of a class movement in Europe and therefore he decided to use every
possible means and every possible ally, to create such opposition in Ireland: Should
the working class of Europe rather than slaughter each other for the benefit of the
King and financiers proceed tomorrow to erect barricades all over Europe, to break up
bridges and destroy transport services that war might be abolished, we should be
perfectly happy in following such a glorious example and contributing our aid to the
final dethronement of the vulture class that rule and rob the world. But pending either
of these consummations it is out manifest duty to take all possible action to save the
poor from the horrors this war has in store.
A revolutionary duty, not just to fight against national domination in Ireland, but to
the international struggle against class domination this was Connollys view of the
need for a rising. As he graphically put it, the hope was that a rising would set the
torch to a European conflagration that will not burn out until that last capitalist bond
and debenture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last warlord.
The mistake of the Easter rising was not so much that it took place, but that it took
place prematurely. Connolly was wrong when he argued that it would ignite the class
movement in Europe. The theory that any group of workers can be detonated into
action by heroic example is false. Only when the conditions for mass struggle actually
exist, only when the masses are prepared to do battle and make enormous sacrifices,
can a mass revolutionary movement be created. Many of those who advocate the false
tactics of individual guerilla warfare today draw, in part, their inspiration from the
Easter rising. If they removed their blindfolds they would discover that the actual
experience of the rising proved the futility of isolated action.
In any case the 1916 rising was an attempted insurrection, not a part of a guerilla
campaign. Had Connolly had the slightest illusion in the methods of individual terror,
he had ample scope to use such methods between 1914 and 1916. Not only did he
have the opportunity provided by the war, he had an armed organization in the
Citizen Army. But Connolly during these years neither conducted, nor advocated a
campaign of bombings and shootings.
The conditions for mass revolutionary action expressly did not exist in 1916. They did
not exist in Ireland and they did not exist in Europe. In Ireland the IRB and the
Citizen Army were only a handful in number.
True, the advanced workers had stood out against the war. All the groups who fought
in 1916 were working-class in composition. The Citizen Army was the army of the
workers led by workers leaders. The other organizations, such as the IRB, while their
leadership was petty bourgeois, were chiefly made up of workers, albeit largely of
white-collar workers. In fact many of the Volunteers were people who had wished to

join the Citizen army but who had been refused because of lack of equipment. Yet
these advanced sections of the class had not gathered behind them the active support
of the mass the workers and the small farmers and farm labourers.
In the period after the industrial battles of 1913, and because of the jingoism which
had accompanied the war, Connolly had actually on some occasions advised against
strikes because of the depleted resources of the ITGWU. Activity within the workers
organizations remained low-key right up until 1916.
A reflection of this, and also of Connollys desperation to stage an insurrection, no
matter how hopeless, was the lack of any real preparation for a rising. The power of
several thousand armed men is one thing. Such power, linked to the overwhelming
might of organized labour, is something entirely different. A general strike to paralyze
supplies and to bring the masses into activity was an ABC demand. Yet even Connolly
did not raise it.
Even within the Citizen Army and among the labour activists, opposition to the war
had not yet crystallized to the extent of broad support for an uprising. Connolly used
his tremendous authority as a revolutionary leader, and a trade union organizer, to
drag his men behind him. He ignored criticism from the other leaders of the Irish
Transport and General Workers Union because his sights were set on action, no
matter how futile.
It is an incredible fact that at the Congress of the Irish Trade Unions and Labour Party
which met in August 1916 no separate protest was made about the execution of
Connolly. Instead the Congress leaders tried to be all things to all people by proposing
a minute silence to both the dead of the Easter rising and those killed in the trenches
of Europe. This, despite the fact that Connolly had, prior to 1916, been, in Larkins
absence, acting general secretary of the ITGWU. Many of his opponents within the
trade union movement would not have been disheartened to see him removed from
activity within the unions. But the fact that no protest occurred reflected not only the
opportunism of the Congress leadership but also the lack of any mass basis of active
support among the trade union rank and file for Connollys participation in the rising.
The difference between Connolly and other Marxists such as Lenin and Trotsky was
that they maintained a perspective for future struggles and were thus capable of
preserving their ideas despite the most difficult objective circumstances. Lenin
understood that events would turn themselves inside out. He saw that the same war
which had reduced the revolutionary wing of social democracy to a handful in 1914
would itself be a generating factor in producing a new wave of class storms which
would shake Europe.
In 1916 the tiny forces of those internationalists who stood out against the war
attended a conference at Zimmerwald in Switzerland. It was joked that the entire
forces of international revolution at that time could be put into the few coaches which
carried them to the conference. And of those attending only a minority were prepared
to give support to the ideas of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Yet this tiny, tiny nucleus,
because it applied the tested methods of Marxism, was able, on the basis of a
movement of the masses themselves, to become the centre of the new and mass
revolutionary organization of the international working class.

In Dublin in1916 it was the advanced workers in the main who fought. Thus the
flower of the Irish proletariat rose up, but was slaughtered, before the movement
really began in Europe. The tragedy of the rising lies in this fact. Above all the most
farsighted leader of the Irish workers, the most outstanding Marxist to have emerged
from the British or Irish labour movement, was dead. No Marxist party had been
created by Connolly to carry on his struggle and keep alive his real ideas and his real
traditions. A large section of the head and of the brain of the workers movement was
destroyed and was destroyed before the really decisive movement of the class as a
whole had begun. Into the vacuum stepped a whole breed of shabby opportunists
ready to lavish praise on men like Connolly, in order to trample on the traditions of
revolutionary struggle which, throughout his whole life, Connolly had maintained.
Alongside the fact that the action was premature, Connolly was also incorrect in the
manner in which he participated in the rising. He should have fought on his own
program, not on the vague ideas contained in the proclamation read from the steps of
Dublins GPO on the first day. Much of the present day confusion surrounding
Connollys role would never have arisen had he clearly presented his own alternative
program. Had he issued a call to the workers of Ireland and of the world on the
question of hours of work, of wages, of factory conditions, and of the ownership of
the land, the banks and the major industries by the working class, his clear socialist
ideas would not have been open to the slightest misinterpretation.
Connolly had given up none of these objectives in 1916. He ensured, for example,
during the rising, that the flag of Irish labour, the Starry Plough, was raised above the
Imperial Hotel, owned by Martin Murphy. But in his efforts to ensure that a rising
went ahead he had been prepared to compromise on ideas with members of the IRB.
That mistake has opened up a chink in the armour of Connollys socialist thought and
has allowed people who are opposed to everything for which Connolly sacrificed his
entire existence to pretend to stand in his shoes.
Of course, all the mistakes which Connolly was prepared to make in order to prepare
for the rising, his alliance with the nationalists, his willingness to temporarily forgo
aspects of the socialist program, have been exalted to positions of genius and
examples to be followed. His real contempt for the petty-bourgeois nature of the
nationalist movement, his uncompromising revolutionary ideas, the real reasons why
he pushed for an insurrection, have too often been forgotten. Coalitions, dirty deals of
all sorts with all types of people who, were he alive today, would have fought tooth
and nail against Connolly are prepared to toast his memory. As Connolly himself once
commented, apostles of freedom are ever idolized when dead but crucified when
living.
Those who justify coalitions between the workers organizations and other political
parties on the basis of Connollys participation in the 1916 rising would do well to
study Connollys whole lifetime experience of struggle against such unholy alliances.
On January 22, 1916 he made a statement which many leaders of the labour
movement would do well to digest today: The labour movement is like no other
movement. Its strength lies in being like no other movement. It is never so strong as
when it stands alone. At the turn of the century the French socialist leader, Millerand,
accepted a position in the French cabinet. Connolly denounced this betrayal, on the
basis that a workers party should accept no government position which it cannot

conquer through its own strength at the ballot box. He denounced Millerands stand
by saying that what good Millerand may have done is claimed for the credit of the
bourgeois republican government: what evil the cabinet has done reflects back on the
reputation of the socialist parties. Heads they win, tails we lose. It takes no genius to
work out what stand Connolly would have taken on the Southern coalition between
the organization that he helped to create, the Irish Labour Party, and the group of
former blueshirts who call themselves Fine Gael.
In 1917 the perspectives of Lenin and Trotsky were borne out by the events in Russia.
In February of that year the workers of Russia rose up and swept aside tsarism. Only
because the political consciousness of this movement, and of its leadership, was still
at a low level, this did not immediately result in the passing of power into the hands of
the workers, but in the emergence of a Constituent Assembly including
representatives of the capitalist parties. However, side by side with this body, the
workers established their own organizations the soviets or workers councils.
It was soon apparent that the program of piecemeal reform could not ease the burden
of the Russian workers and peasants and could not put an end to the war. The soldiers
and workers were demanding peace and bread. The peasants were demanding the
land. The liberal capitalists could provide none of these. And so the task of
implementing these demands fell to the working class, who also carried out their
program, the abolition of capitalist rule. In October 1917 the Bolshevik Party,
supported by the mass of the population, wrested power from the bosses and
established the most democratic form of government which has ever existed rule by
the soviets.
Thus were vividly demonstrated the importance of clear ideas, correct tactics and
above all a perspective of future events. Before October 1917 the Bolsheviks had
warned against premature attempts to seize power. In July the workers in the cities, en
masse, had been champing at the bit. But the Bolsheviks urged caution, advising that
the mood in the countryside and army was not yet at a revolutionary pitch. The
workers, provoked by the government, refused to sit back, and the July
demonstrations were suppressed by the government. Because the Bolsheviks, despite
their advice to the workers not to go onto the streets with arms at that stage, did not
turn their backs on those workers who did demonstrate, but put themselves at the head
of the demonstrations, the movement was able to retreat in good order. By October
1917 the revolutionary fever had infected the countryside. The soldiers were ready to
turn their backs on the trenches and to face their officers. Genuine mass support for
the seizure of power existed. The Bolsheviks were able to carry through a successful
insurrection. As a result of this overwhelming support Petrograd was in the hands of
the workers with the loss of only ten lives. Moscow, the second city, fell within a
week. What a sharp contrast with the bitter experience of the Dublin workers! After a
week of fighting in which over 1300 people were killed or wounded, defeat was the
result. A tradition of struggle had been maintained but at a terrible cost to the
working-class
movement.
Working Class Offensive

Easter week 1916 did not set the spark for the European conflagration hoped for by
Connolly. The Russian revolution did. Here again is underlined the importance of
correct perspectives, and of the ability to evaluate precisely the mood of the masses.
With the Russian workers in power the international situation was transformed.
Despite the crude distortions later laid upon these events by the Stalinist bureaucracy
which was later to emerge and usurp the democratic institutions and traditions of the
Soviet state including the soviets themselves, Lenin and Trotsky never conceived of
socialism being built in Russia alone. Internationalists to the core, the Bolsheviks saw
the Russian revolution as part and parcel of the international socialist revolution.
1917 produced an enormous revolutionary wave which swept across Europe.
Revolutionary situations developed in Hungary, Italy and France. In Germany in 1918
workers returned from the front lines to find they had sacrificed themselves for a
future of destitution at home. Towards the end of that year a series of upheavals
actually left the working class in virtual control of the country. Whole towns and cities
were for a time in the hands of the German workers organizations. A piece of thread
would have been strong enough to tie the hands of German capitalism at that stage.
All that was needed was the final half-step to the consolidation of workers rule. Then
the bells would really have begun to toll not only for German but for world
capitalism. That half-step forward was not taken. No Lenin, no Bolshevik party
sufficiently strong, existed in that country. Instead, the utterly rotten leadership of the
German social democracy, by leaving the machinery of the state and the wealth of the
country in the grip of the capitalists, took several paces backwards.
These revolutionary developments, mirroring discontent nurtured by the war itself,
rekindled the class struggles which had been cut across in 1914.
In many countries the pace of class warfare had been accelerating before 1914. War
had cut across and actually reversed this process. But the war also laid down the
conditions for a resumption of the struggle, at even faster pace and with even more
dire consequences for the bosses.
In Ireland, as elsewhere, this was the case. Between 1918 and 1921 the class
movement which had developed was the major preoccupation of all sections of
society. It transformed the national movement. It convulsed the labour movement,
North and South. It determined the attitude of the bosses in Britain. It struck dread
into the hearts of the reactionary Unionists and right-wing nationalists alike.
It is impossible in a brief space to give an impression of the extent of the movement.
All that can be given is a catalogue of only a few of the major developments so that
readers may draw their own conclusions.
Moves to impose conscription in 1918 were answered by a general strike. Over 1,500
delegates from the shop floor and from union branches came to Dublin in 1918 to
discuss the organization of this strike. They returned to their areas and on April 23
were successful in closing shops and factories throughout the country, except in
Belfast. This movement was enough to persuade the government to hold its hand on
this issue.

After 1918 the struggle in the South took a different turn as the opening shots of the
War of Independence were fired. However, although many labour leaders and
nationalist leaders willed otherwise, the class struggle would not wait. In 1920-21 the
southwest of the country became the centre of a series of major battles which showed
how far the workers were prepared to go in their demands.
County Clare was convulsed with land seizures. Soviets were actually established in
rural areas in this relatively backward and isolated part of the country. In 1920
workers in the Knocklong Creamery took over the enterprise and ran it as a
cooperative. Their slogan was We make butter, not profits. The following year the
workers in the Arigna coalmines in County Leitrim seized the mines and raised the
red flag above their pits. Above all, the workers of Limerick demonstrated the mood
of the working class as a whole when in 1919 they took over and ran the entire city as
a soviet. They even printed their own money and controlled the prices of all goods
within Limerick during this period.
At the top of the movement the leaders mouthed revolutionary phrases but made no
attempt to swing the might of the industrial workforce of the east of the country
behind these takeovers in the west. The full potential was not tapped. Yet what would
have been possible was unmistakably shown.
In 1920 political prisoners in Mountjoy jail arrested under the Defence of the Realm
regulations went on hunger strike. The working class, which, other than on this
occasion, had been held apart from the national struggle, intervened and intervened
decisively/ A general strike was called in support of the prisoners. Industry was closed
throughout the country outside Belfast. As in 1918 during the strike against
conscription, shopkeepers and other middle layers of society backed the workers. On
the second day of the strike against conscription, shopkeepers and other middle layers
of society decisively backed the workers. On the second day of the strike the
government recognized the injustice of imprisoning these men! In other words, they
recognized the power of the working class and the dangerous consequences if that
power were to weld itself behind the struggle for full independence. Such a dire
consideration forced a change of heart. All prisoners concerned were released.
There were other, not less dangerous incidents when the workers organizations,
despite the timidity of their leaders, involved themselves in the fight against
oppression. For example, in 1920 the Dublin dockers refused to unload munitions
from Britain. In may of that year railway workers refused to transport soldiers.
A further indication of the rising pulse of class activity was the situation within the
unions themselves. From the position of 1916 when the ITGWU had been reduced to
a paltry 5,000 members, and possessed recorded assets of as little as 96, by 1921 that
union could boast over 130,000 members.
All this represents a movement of revolutionary proportions. Such a movement knows
no boundaries and scorns artificial barriers. It is profoundly and truly inspirational in
scope. In Ireland the struggle did not develop in the North separately from the South
or vice versa. Precisely the same infectious tide of militancy as gripped the South
after 1918 also gripped the industrial area of the North by the throat.

1919 opened a general struggle for shorter hours in Britain and Ireland. In February
1919 a special Union and Labour Congress in Ireland issued a call for a 150 percent
wage rise and a 44-hour week. This congress undoubtedly took its cue from the
magnificent struggle of the Belfast engineering workers which had begun in January.
These workers had come out behind the demand for a reduction in their basic hours
from 54 to 44.
A TUC deal offered a reduction to 47 hours. The workers reacted against this
betrayal. First of all in Belfast the demand for 44 hours became the focus for mass
action. Then in Glasgow and other parts of Britain similar movements erupted, in
some places with the demand for 40 hours being raised.
The Belfast strike began with a magnificent display of mass solidarity. On January 14,
1919, 20,000 shipyard and engineering workers downed tools and marched to the City
Hall to a mass meeting, from which they went to their union halls to vote on the TUC
deal of 47 hours. A little over a thousand workers voted in favor of the deal, while
over 20,000 both rejected it and voted for strike action to achieve their own ends. At
noon on January 25 the strike itself was begun.
After one week of strike action 40,000 workers were out and a further 20,000 were
laid off. Almost every day there were mass meetings in various parts of the city. There
was mass picketing of several factories. For almost four weeks the working class were
in virtual control of the city. Transport, electricity, gas, most public services, the major
engineering firms and the shipyards were all involved. Clerical as well as manual
employees of Belfast Corporation had been brought out.
These four weeks provide a never-to-be-forgotten demonstration of the power of the
working class. In Belfast the workers became the government. They controlled what
moved and determined what did not move. At the center of this power were the
recognized organizations of the working class, the strike committee itself and also the
Belfast Trades Council. During the dispute the strike committee published its own
newspaper which kept the workers informed of the strike activities.
As with trades councils in many British cities during the 1926 general strike, the
Belfast Trades Council in 1919 according to its official history became a virtual organ
of workers government in the city. As this history records the event:
To an increasing extent the Belfast Trades Council was looked towards as the
leadership of the people. The Council formed itself into a Council of Action and to a
great extent had control over the movement of goods in the city.
Reaction was held at bay by the power of the workers. Initial attempts to invoke
sectarianism only added to the workers strength. At the beginning of February the
Orange Order had hung out its true colours by publishing a manifesto calling for a
return to work. This document also chose to comment on the strike leaders pointing
out that leaders of the Labour Party were involved. The capitalist press foamed at the
mouth at the activities of the strikers. Each issue of the Belfast Newsletter lamented
the manner in which the Bolsheviks and Sinn Feiners could mislead the good
workmen of Belfast. Such shrieks of horror failed absolutely to dent the solidarity of
the strike.

Religious division was demolished by this strike movement. Symbolic of this was the
composition of the strike committee itself. The majority of its members were
Protestant, but the chairman was a Catholic. As in 1907, and to an even greater extent,
it was demonstrated as an absolute law of history that, when the workers movement
goes forward, sectarianism, together with all the other backward tendencies in society,
is forced to retreat. Only vacillation, backsliding or defeat, on the part of organized
labour, gives these reactionary tendencies the opportunity to regain a foothold.
A concrete example of the way in which the labour movement can deal with the
menace of sectarianism was given. At the beginning of the dispute a few sectarian and
hooligan incidents did occur. There was some looting in the city centre. The workers
reacted quickly. A body of about 2,000 men was set up to patrol the city, and keep it
free of intimidation, looting, etc. For a brief moment in history the working class
managed to suspend in mid-air the state machine of the exploiters and impose
workers law and workers order.
Sir Richard Dawson Bates, who had been secretary to the UUC, and who was to be
rewarded for his services by an appointment as Northern Irelands first Minister for
Home Affairs in 1921, wrote to Sir James Craig about the strike. In his letter he
revealed, for all who care to see, the total impotence of the forces of the state and the
Unionist leaders when confronted with the might of the organized working class. The
question of the use of troops, he reveals, was discussed and dismissed as
inadvisable.
I had several talks with Hacket-Pain who, notwithstanding a certain amount of
pressure from scaremongers, declined to bring out troops, or do anything to make the
workers think that they were being intimidated. What one wants to try to get the
workers to see is that no one is really against them, except themselves: that the
question is not a local one but a national one. In other words the use of troops might
have had the dangerous consequence of driving together the workers North and South
and utterly destroying the credibility of the Unionists.
Bates also reveals that, desperately wanting to put an end to the strike, the Unionists
thought of intervening. He advises against by outlining the consequences of such an
action: I am firmly convinced that at the present time is would be most injudicious to
drag Carson or any of the other leaders into it. In the first place they were not
consulted as to going out on strike, and in the second place, if the men went back
unsatisfied they would subsequently say that they were let down by their unionist
political leaders. However, his advice continues: If the workers indicate a desire
to go back, pending a national arrangement being carried out, the question of getting
the political leaders over to mediate is a question that could subsequently be raised.
Thus, panic-stricken at the thought that intervention on their part would propel the
workers into political opposition to Unionism, but on the other hand driven on by
their class interests, the Unionists hovered like vultures waiting for a first sign of the
weakness of their enemy before intervening.
Initially direct intervention by bigots and by the state was restrained. The bosses
trembled at the possibility of provoking an even fiercer movement of workers. Instead
they waited fir the first signs that the momentum was waning. The first setback for the
strike came from its own leaders. By the end of the second week it was clear from its

own leaders. By the end of the second week it was clear that extra force would need to
be applied to pressure the bosses to concede their demands. The support had been
promised by transport workers, dockers and railwaymen. But the strike committee
hesitated and drew back from involving these sections. Thus the total power of the
working class was not fully realized.
February 12 brought a major setback. Faced with police batons and ultimately with
troops, machine-gun emplacements and even tanks, the workers of Glasgow admitted
defeat. From this moment the Belfast workers were isolated. Discussions of
settlement terms threatened to split them. A ballot taken two days after the Glasgow
defeat produced a majority of over 3,000 against settlement. But it revealed a sizeable
minority of almost 9,000 prepared to return to work. It was a signal for the bosses to
act.
That weekend, troops in battle gear occupied the gasworks and power stations. The
Defence of the Realm Act was invoked to arrest two shop stewards who refused to
work. Police were used with savagery against pickets who tried to stop the trams in
the city centre. By physical means the strike was broken.
Despite its defeat the strike left precisely the deep legacy of class discontent which the
Unionists had feared. 100,000 people marched in the 1919 May Day demonstration in
Belfast. One year later the industrial unity of 1919 spilled over into political unity.
Strike leaders and other trade unionists were nominated to stand for Labour in the
1920 local elections. No less than 13 Labour candidates were elected. Significantly, in
many Protestant areas, such as the Shankhill Road and Sandy Road, Labour received
amongst its highest percentage of the vote. Also significantly five of the thirteen
newly elected Labour councillors had been members of the strike committee. Baulked
on the industrial battleground, the tide of class militancy had turned to the political
arena.
Labour Must Wait
Not only was it in the North that the awakening of the masses had an effect in
radicalising the political wing of the movement. Initially the pressure of the rank-andfile activists was placed on the leadership and the movement was driven to the left in
response. It was entirely a reflection of this pressure that, in August 1918, the Irish
Trade Union Congress and Labour Party, by a conference decision, changed its name
to the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress. The political goals of the
movement were being pulled to the forefront.
This movement of the masses into action throughout Ireland had the effect of
transforming the character of the national movement. The grip of Redmond was
broken. His role, like that of other nationalists, in supporting the war effort, left him
stranded when the tide of support for the war turned into outright opposition.
In February 1917 there came the first open sign of this transformation. A candidate
from the until then tiny Sinn Fein organization stood against the candidate from
Redmonds party in a by-election in North Roscommon. Sinn Fein won the seat by
3,002 votes to 1,708 votes.

North Rosscommon was the first clear symptom of a condition which was becoming
general throughout Ireland. A general election in 1918 reduced the parliamentary
party to rubble and placed radical republicans in Sinn Fein at the political head of the
national struggle. Prior to 1918 the parliamentary party held 80 seats. After the
election they could boast only seven, and, of these, one was in Liverpool. Sinn Fein
won 73 seats, while the Unionists returned 26 of their candidates. This electoral
process, reflecting the sweeping radicalisation of the country, continued throughout
the immediate post-war period. By 1920, 172 councils out of 206 were under Sinn
Fein control.
Redmond had fought for independence, for a separate parliament with certain powers
but with recognized limitations. The switch to Sinn Fein was a switch from right-wing
nationalism to petty-bourgeois radicalism and populism. No longer could limited
independence be the aim. Instead the demand was for a republic. The proclamation of
1916 became enshrined as the program of Sinn Feinn.
Those elected in 1918 established their own illegal parliament in Ireland. The
democratic program of this First Dail was infused with populist phrases upholding
in words the rights of labour. It declared that all right to private property must be
subordinate to the public right and welfare. The Irish government, it promised,
would cooperate with other governments in determining a standard of social and
industrial legislation with a view to a general and lasting improvement in the
conditions under which the working classes live and labour. Likewise the foremost
leader of the Dail, De Valera, went out of his way to pay extensive tribute to labour
and even to Connolly. Thus he could state:
I never regarded freedom as an end in itself, but if I were asked what statement of
Irish policy was most in accord with my views as to what human beings should be
struggling for, I would stand side by side with James Connolly.
In words De Valera stood with Connolly at this point in time but only to draw the
support of the aroused masses. The purpose of his words was to ensure that the real
ideas of Connolly were into carried into practice.
So it was with the Sinn Fein leaders as a whole. The members elected to the First Dail
reflected the class content of the top of this organization. 65 percent of its members
belonged to the professional and commercial classes, mainly teachers, journalists,
shopkeepers and small businessmen. It included figures such as Arthur Griffith, who
had already proved himself no ally of the workers. Behind the scenes these
individuals were strenuously attempting to maintain good relations with the native
capitalists, with the church hierarchy and with the other pillars of the Irish nation
they were in the process of creating. To use Connollys phrase, while the old
nationalist had been the open enemies of labour, these radical republicans were its
most dangerous allies.
On the one hand the radical phrases issuing from the mouths of these people reflected
the leftward movement of the bottom layers of society. The ranks of Sinn Fein, and
the grip it maintained, reflected the cowardly role played by the leaders of the labour
movement.

While the ranks of the trade union and labour movement swung to the left and
embarked on a program of direct action, the most prominent of its leaders temporized
and vacillated. Connolly was dead. Larkin was languishing in an American jail. Into
the gap stepped the William OBriens, the Thomas Johnstons and the Cathal
OShannons. With flowery speeches they echoed the sentiments of the workers. In
deeds they shrank from the struggle. North and South one united class movement was
developing during this period. What was required was a leadership which could tie
together, in the minds of all the workers, the land and factory seizures in the South,
the takeovers of towns such as Limerick, with the industrial muscle revealed by the
Belfast working class in 1919. A common struggle against capitalist domination could
have been begun. Al the demands of the republican leadership of Sinn Fein, for a
republic, for the withdrawal of the English garrison, etc., would and should have been
encompassed by such a movement. But it would have gone much further. Not just for
a republic, but for a workers republic! Not just the right to have a parliament but for a
revolutionary constituent assembly which could take the factories and the land out of
the hands of the speculators and profiteers and place them in the hands of the working
class! Not just for rule by the Irish people but for rule by the Irish workers, the only
class capable of solving the problems of the small farmers and all the middle strata of
society. Not just for independence, but for independence of British capitalism! Not
just for freedom, but for freedom from exploitation! Not just against national
oppression, but for socialist internationalism including the forging of the strongest
possible links with the organizations of the British working class!
Such a program, linked to decisive action on the part of the workers organizations,
could have placed labour at the head of the national struggle. By removing the fight
for independence from the camp of petty-bourgeois nationalism it could have broken
sectarian division and won the Protestant workers. Labour had the opportunity to
intervene in this way. To do so was merely to provide the natural political extension to
the industrial battles waging North and South.
At the time of the Easter rising, Sinn Fein was a tiny organization of not more than
100 members. Within a year and a half they could boast over a quarter of a million
members. Only in a revolutionary situation could such a revolutionary growth have
occurred. But Sinn Fein only attracted this support because of the role of the
leadership of the labour movement.
In 1916 the labour movement also was weak. However, its potential for growth was
infinitely greater than that of Sinn Fein. At bottom its ranks were surging to the left,
demanding action. In complete contrast the top leaders of the movement were busy
only abdicating their responsibility to show a clear lead. Even those struggles which
did take place did so without direction or assistance from the topmost leaders of the
movement. The land seizures were carried out despite the fact that the ITGWU
leaders stubbornly refused to involve their 50,000-strong agricultural labourer
membership.
In political terms the labour leaders played the role of silent allies of Sinn Fein. Non
only did they fail to provide a challenge to De Valera and his friends, but they have
this group every possible assistance. William OBrien, the head of the ITGWU,
actually supported and worked for the Sinn Fein candidate in one of the 1917 byelections. Against the wishes of the rank and file of the movement, the labour leaders

agreed to participate in a National Front involving the petty bourgeois nationalists.

Later, Thomas Johnston, Labour Party leader, obligingly wrote a section of the
program of the First Dail for Sinn Fein. Thus he assisted in constructing the disguise
by which the Sinn Fein leaders made themselves presentable to the people.
For those activists who were appalled at such decisions at the manoeuvrings of
OBrien and the other leaders, there was little opportunity to express dissent.
Incredibly, despite the crescendo of class struggle, the ITGWU, the biggest union in
the country, held no conference between May 1915 and August 1918. No less
incredibly the executive of this union held no meeting between January 1916 and
February 1918. In 1918 this policy of backsliding and outright betrayal was
consummated.
In November 1918 parliament was dissolved. Labour had the opportunity to fight for
the political leadership of the awakening mood of revolt. The decision of the August
1918 conference to change its name to the Labour Party and TUC showed that the
ranks were squaring up for the contest. At times the workers movement is defeated
through battle. Such honourable defeats at least lay down traditions for future struggle
which fresh generations will take up. But when the movement suffers defeat only
because its leaders refuse to fight, all that remains is a sour taste in the mouth.
Labour must wait. Thus De Valera instructed the Johnstons and OBriens that they
must wait their turn. The nation must come before any specific interest within the
nation! Sinn Fein must be allowed a clear field to show the maximum unity!
At first Labour decided to fight the 1918 elections. Then they decided to accept the
advice of De Valera and stand down. A special congress of the Irish Labour Party and
Trade Union Congress was held and the decision not to stand was forced through
against opposition from many delegates. In a statement the leaders of the movement
boasted of their generosity:
We shall show by this action that while each of the other political parties is prepared
to divide the people in their efforts to obtain power, the Irish Labour Party is the only
party which is prepared to sacrifice party interests in the interests of the nation in this
important crisis in the history of the nation.
For the interests of the nation read the interests of the capitalists. Only they stood to
benefit from Labours gesture of humility. The national unity put forward by Sinn
Fein was really the unity of the Catholic toilers and small farmers marching behind
the banners of the pro-capitalist parties. For this Catholic, all-class unity, Labour was
asked to sacrifice the more essential unity of Catholic and Protestant workers drawing
behind them the middle strata of society. It was a poor swap!
Thus it was the humble silence of Labour which allowed Sinn Fein to gain 73 of the
seats in this election. Instead of a contest dominated by class interests, extending the
ever-increasing industrial militancy into the political sphere, petty-bourgeois
nationalism was given a free rein. As on every occasion when the national issue has
been presented in any other than social terms it became a sectional and ultimately a
potentially sectarian issue.

The radical nationalism of Sinn Fein could hold no attraction for the Protestant
workers of the North. If rule by the De Valeras and Griffiths was the alternative to
British rule and to Unionism, the traditional allegiances of the Protestants would not
be broken. The task of Labour, the only body capable of drawing working-class
support from the unionists, was made more difficult. As we shall se later, Carson was
partially able to contain the political movement of workers within his own brand of
Labour Unionism. The four genuine Labour candidates who stood in Belfast in 1918
were isolated from the labour movement throughout the country and were decisively
beaten.
Military Repression
The post-war revolutionary upsurge affected the outlook of the British ruling class no
less than it affected the labour and national movement in Ireland. During the first
years of the war, with the overwhelming need to conciliate Redmond in order to draw
recruits to the imperialist slaughter, Lloyd George and Asquith went to great lengths
to appear to seek a solution to the problem. In addition the need to conciliate
American opinion increased the governments anxiety to keep up this pretence.
After 1916 in particular, these moves represented no more than attempts to keep the
Irish talking until the war ended, when the real solution would be imposed, on the tips
of bayonets if necessary. Open coercion, including conscription, was not possible
during the war years. Such a policy would have tied down enormous resources in
Ireland, resources much needed in Europe.
Therefore Lloyd George came up with an answer an Irish Convention in which the
Irish parties and interests could meet and hammer out their own solution. Confident
that no agreement could be reached between Unionists and nationalists and even
among the various shades of Unionism and nationalism themselves, Lloyd George
was happy to let the Convention discussions continue for as long as these parties
wanted. This talking shop met on July 25, 1917 and continued to meet until April
1918. By that time the British bosses were almost in a position to let the Irish have a
taste of the real solution they had in mind.
The major preoccupation of the ruling class after the war was with the threat of the
socialist revolution. Should the movement on the land and in the cities, the power of
the workers shown in the general strikes in the South, be harnessed with the industrial
muscle shown in Belfast in 1919, and should this power in turn be linked to the might
of the British workers, the capitalist system would be faced with extinction.
When the bosses looked at the republican movement they saw its radicalism, they saw
the demand for a republic and nothing else, above all they saw the shadow of labour
and socialism in the background.
In this climate, concessions to the Redmondites or to Sinn Fein would have been
futile. One unionist explained this clearly in a letter written shortly after the 1917
North Roscommon by-election victory for Sinn Fein: Fear was expressed that if John
Redmond was put in control and had to face an election for a legislative object in that
country, he would be replaced at once by Sinn Feiners, and what then? In local

government elections the whole tendency is to fall to the lower stratum on each
occasion. And the lowest stratum is none other than the working class. Sinn Fein
might take over, and what then! These words precisely summed up the anxiety of the
bosses.
A republic, to the British ruling class, was ruled out. While their prime concern was
with the impetus any concession would give to the social struggle, Britain also had
military strategic reasons for stamping on any other than the most limited forms of
independence.
Thus when outlining terms for a settlement the British made it clear that
the common defence of Great Britain and Ireland in defence of their interests by land
and sea shall be mutually recognized. Great Britain lives by sea-borne food, her
communications depend upon the freedom of the freedom of the great sea routes.
Facilities were also required for the air force the Royal Air Force will need
facilities for all purposes that it serves and Ireland will form an essential link in the
development of air routes between the British Isles and North American continent
(July 1921). Particularly in relation to the strategic importance of Irelands naval
bases the war had reinforced the resolve of imperialism that there should be no
concessions in this direction.
Lloyd George (1919) stated this conclusion in black and white terms. If in the war, he
postulated,
we had there a land over whose harbours and inlets we had no control you might
have had a situation full of peril that might well have jeopardized the life of this
country. The area of sub-marine activity might have been extended beyond the limits
of control and Britain and her allies might have been cut off from the dominions and
from the USA. We cannot possibly run the risk of that, and it would be equally fatal
for the interests of Ireland ... I think it is right to say in the face of the demands which
have been put forward from Ireland with apparent authority, that any attempt at
secession will be fought with the same resolve as the Northern States of America put
into the fight against the Southern States.
The demand for a republic would not be tolerated, not only because of the class
danger inherent in it, but also for these military reasons. Britannia at this time might
have found that she no longer ruled the waves, if her oldest and geographically
closest country were permitted to wriggle free of her clutches.
In addition British imperialism was concerned with the effect of the granting of
concessions to Ireland would have on other parts of the empire. To be seen to retreat
in disarray from her oldest and closest colony could have a dangerous effect on India,
parts of the African continent and other already restless dominions.
In 1919 the first shots of the War of Independence were fired by the newly constituted
Irish Republican Army (IRA). Imperialism reacted quickly by returning to their longestablished method of subjugation coercion. First with their forces already in
Ireland, especially the Royal Irish Constabulary, they moved to stamp out the

republican menace. In 1919 the First Dail was suppressed. In March of that year Sir
Nevil McCready was placed in command of the British forces. He had already won
his spurs in the fight to uphold capitalism in 1911, when he had let the miners at
Tonypandy have a taste of his methods.
A gentleman named Colonel Smith, a First World War veteran, took charge of the
Royal Irish Constabulary in Munster. He revelled in his newfound opportunity to
demonstrate how a people can be subdues by force. His instructions to his men were
to lie in ambush and when civilians are seen approaching shout hands up. Should
the order be not immediately obeyed, shoot them down. Would such a policy not
result in innocent deaths? Colonel Smith had thought of this and had an answer:
You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent people may be shot, but that
cannot be helped, and you are bound to hit the right party some time. The more you
shoot the better I will like you, and I assure you no policeman will get into trouble for
shooting any man.
In 1920 the existing forces were supplemented by the arrival of the Black and Tans, so
called because of the mixture of uniforms they wore when they arrived. The Black
and Tans and the Auxiliaries have become infamous. In the true spirit of Cromwell
they set about their task, and the toll of their atrocities, the sack of Cork,
indiscriminate murder in the Croke Park, etc., is well documented.
In 1920 a curfew was imposed in the towns. Internment was used as a means to help
break the back of the armed resistance. By 1921, 5000 republicans were interned. The
generals and other army tops were consistent in their calls for a military solution. Sir
Henry Wilson, chief of the general staff, perhaps summed up the attitude of these
people with his call for the shooting of Sinn Feiners by roster.
Lloyd George, among others, was a little more sensitive to the real needs of the
situation. He recognized the shortcomings of a purely military solution. Such a policy
might hold the situation in check. On its own it would not resolve the problem. At best
it would open out a long and protracted struggle. While the IRA, with their tactics,
could never inflict a military defeat on the British forces, the task of crushing them
would prove both protracted and expensive. By 1920 the war in Ireland was bleeding
the British Exchequer of approximately 10 million per annum.
Above all, while the war against the republicans was being waged, the class
movement was developing. Clearly military coercion on its own could not prevent the
movement towards land seizures, factory seizures and towards the establishment of
soviets. Nor could this contagion of socialism, if unchecked, be prevented from
infecting the population of the English cities.
A further pressure on British capital to come up with something other than mere
repression came from the aroused British labour movement. Today the activities of the
Provisionals, particularly the bombings of English workers in pubs, has utterly
alienated the British labour movement. During the War of Independence things were
very different. Then, there was real and active sympathy among British workers for
the demands of the Irish.

When, in 1920, 130 Irish prisoners staged a hunger strike in Wormwood Scrubs,
thousands of Irish people, together with British socialists, campaigned in support. The
Liverpool dockers threatened to strike in sympathy. In 1921 a Labour Commission
visited Ireland, and, upon their return, met with Lloyd George and urged that a
settlement be reached. Labour meetings up and down Britain echoed the demand for a
withdrawal of troops from Ireland and for an end to the use of coercive tactics against
the Irish people.
This sympathy raised the fear that any advance made by the class movement in
Ireland would similarly accelerate the revolutionary movement of the British workers.
It was not long after the action by British workers in defence of the Wormwood
Scrubs prisoners that the British working class was flexing its muscles on its own
issues. 1920 saw a major strike by the miners. It saw, for example, a movement of the
unemployed which brought 20,000 workers into physical battle with police in the
streets of Whitehall and thereby brought the smell of revolution directly under the
noses
of
the
rulers
of
society.
Capitalism Means Division
To speed the derailment of the movement in Ireland the military coercion was spiced
with the most blatant and open use of sectarianism in order to provide and weaken the
workers. As in the pre-1914 crisis, and for precisely the same reasons, the antics of the
Unionists were developed. Because the class threat was even more imminent, the use
of sectarianism, and its encouragement by all sections of capital, was even more
blatant. It was the failure of the labour movement, and the consequent dominance by
petty-bourgeois nationalists in Sinn Fein, which permitted such a policy.
Partition was seized upon as an answer. Partition did not flow out of the situation
within Ireland itself. As we shall see it was not imposed in order to satisfy the
demands of the republican movement in the South. Rather it was forced upon the
leaders of the republican movement, who were compelled by British imperialism to
come to the conference table and negotiate a cease-fire on the basis of the demands of
imperialism. Nor did it develop out of the struggles of the Unionist movement within
the North. It is a complete myth that the borders of the Northern Ireland state were
agreed because of the determined resistance of an armed camp of Unionist reaction in
the Northern counties.
Carsons armed detachments had flourished in the pre-war period. The UVF
developed only on the basis of the support received from the British ruling class. Had
this organization been faced with the resistance of the tops of British society and the
military machine of British imperialism, it would have disintegrated. Its aristocratic
chiefs would have had no stomach for a fight against their class allied in Britain. They
would have deserted at the sound of the first shot. Behind them their organization,
because of its class composition, mainly of the petty bourgeoisie and of sections of
the rural population, would have disintegrated.
In a letter to Carson, written in 1915, one of the UVF leaders, Lord Dunleath, gave
expression to his private forebodings at the thought of battle. To him the fiery threats

contained in the Covenant which he and his men had signed were not to be taken too
literally.
Moreover I do not believe that our men are prepared to go into action against any
part of his Majestys forces, and we their leaders should not consider ourselves
justified in calling upon them to do so. As I said just now, many of us are prepared to
risk a great deal for our cause, but even our covenant does not compel us to run our
heads against a wall ...
The UVF would not have withstood any serious military resistance. But in addition
those who argue that it was the military might of Protestant reaction which brought
about partition of the country have one further small problem to explain. This is the
fact that the UVF was virtually wiped out at the Battle of the Somme. Ulster did not
emerge of the armed resistance of the Protestant population. In the post-war period,
and in the years leading up to partition, a mass army of Protestant resistance did not
exist. Certainly there were groups of armed thugs, used primarily against the unity of
the working class and the organizations of the labour movement. But they were hardly
a serious threat to the might of the British Empire!
Partition developed not out of the forces at war within Ireland. It was imposed from
without by British imperialism in order to satisfy its needs at the time. It was imposed
for a clear reason, not only to draw a visible line across the map of Ireland, but, more
significantly, to draw an invisible line of bigotry between Catholic and Protestant
workers in North, between workers North and South, and between the movement in
Ireland and that in Britain.
During the pre-war crisis when the idea of partition had been raised the Unionists had
been no more in favour of it than had their nationalist opponents. At that time partition
when posed was merely used as a ruse to defeat Home Rule as a whole.
Carson and his Tory bands followed a similar strategy when they concentrated their
efforts on the northeast of the country. There and there alone it was possible for their
ideas to gain a base beyond the layers of privilege at the top of society. Thus, in 1913,
Carson was prepared to threaten to establish a provisional government in Ulster if
Home Rule became a reality. Behind such fiery declarations, behind the saber-rattling
of military-style parades and behind the frantic efforts to gather signatures for the
Covenant lay the belief that Ulster was the rock on which this and every Home Rule
attempt would founder.
Time after time Carson made his position clear: if Ulster succeeds Home Rule is
dead. Home Rule is impossible without Belfast and the surrounding parts as a portion
of the scheme. Or the following statement contained in a letter he wrote to the Irish
Times in October 1912:
not even Mr. Redmond could undertake the government of Ireland without being
able to draw upon the resources of Ulster and the prosperity won by the energy and
capacity of Ulstermen.

Not until 1916, and then only after extreme pressure from Lloyd George, did Carson
reluctantly accept the concept of partition. Even then, his acceptance resulted in
further dissension and division among his supporters.
The tactic of leaning on the support of Ulster employed by Carsonites prior to 1914
was handed back by the British government as a policy in the post-war period. The
Government of Ireland Act of 1920 proposed two separate parliaments, one for the
North and one for the South. It was accompanied with the threat that, if it would not
work, the alternative was colonial government for Ireland.
The real purpose of this policy of division was soon clear. Partition was to be
accompanied with a major campaign aimed at re-injecting the poison of sectarian
division into the minds of the workers. As in 1906, when one reactionary had been
able to comment that Unionism was dead among the masses, so after 1918 the ideas
of socialism were developing apace among Protestant and Catholic workers.
Sectarianism was used to reverse this process.
Once again the utterances of the Unionists give the clearest indication of the extent to
which class ideas were destroying their grip on the situation. Dawson Bates, in 1919,
in a letter to Captain C.C. Craig, Unionist MP for South Armagh, gave a glimpse of
the desperation of the Unionists at the rise of labour. In different words but in the
same dire tone, he repeated the message of Crawford of thirteen years earlier: that
Unionism is dead among the masses. There is a general desire to kick against all
authority and all discipline all over the three kingdoms. Bates was astute enough to
realize the electoral consequences of this general revolt: the Labour question is
becoming acute in Belfast and the North of Ireland and egged on by nationalists,
many of the electors are finding fault with their respective associations in the various
districts.
If the labour leaders in Ireland were not aware of their own strength, the Unionists
were not so blind. They recognized the power of the class movement to dissolve their
working-class base of support. To counteract this danger the Ulster Unionists Labour
Association was formed in June 1918. President of this supposed working-class
association was the champion of the workers cause Carson himself!
In December 1918 the general election was fought. Carson, it is said, went to the
lengths of refusing to cooperate with his colleagues unless three of the nine Unionist
candidates in Belfast were trade unionists.
Why? Because Carson was anxious to ensure representation for the workers? On the
contrary! Carson sought to present an impression of all-class representation in order to
disguise the reality of the vicious anti-working-class nature of unionism. Three token
trade-unionists were chosen, principally to halt the drift to real workers
representation. Significantly these three workers who were offered the privilege
of standing with their aristocratic rulers and betters were all skilled workers,
probably filled with craft prejudices. One was a shipwright, one a tenter and one a
lithographic printer. When elected, these three, even though drawn from the labour
aristocracy, mixing with the lords and ladies of the British establishment at
Westminster, became among the most degenerate of all the Unionist representatives,

mere tokens, cardboard replicas of workers, toadies pulled forward and told to speak
and behave like workers in order to please their masters.
The elevating of such stooges could not stop the irresistible drive of the working class
towards independent action. Only weeks after the election of these people and of the
better-heeled versions of Unionism, Belfast was virtually under the control of the
working class. And the Unionists found themselves powerless to intervene. The
conclusion, again clearly expressed by Dawson Bates, was that the influence of the
Ulster Unionist Labour Association would have to be extended. Writing to Carson in
June 1919 he complained that the
all class organizations, the parliamentary associations and the Orange Institutions do
not find time to discuss matters which might better attract working people. The
absence of such discussions frequently leads to the younger members of the working
classes joining socialist and extreme organizations run by the Independent Labour
Party where they educated in views very different to those held by our body. The
defect has to a very large extent been made good by the Ulster Unionist Labour
Association, but at the same time it is felt that having ordinary meetings, such as they
have about once a month, is not sufficient. In other words, the Association will have
to extent its sphere of operations.
Smother the workers with sectarianism! Cultivate a labour identity in order to drag the
workers away from those socialist organizations which were fighting to remedy such
conditions! This was the role of the Unionists, particularly through the Ulster Unionist
Labour Association. Bates is quite explicit about this
it is felt that it is desirable that this Association should extend its operations so as to
afford a greater opportunity to the working classes to belong to it and so prevent them
from joining political Labour organizations whose primary object may be the
advancement of Home Rule.
Thus is unequivocally stated the real basis and use of sectarianism to prevent the
development of the socialist movement.
Yet despite all these efforts the labour movement continued to develop. The January
1920 corporation elections resulted in the return of 13 Labour candidates from the
Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party. Labour Unionists also stood in an
attempt to maintain the bridle of sectarianism on the workers. Only six Labour
Unionists were returned. No less than ten trade-union officials were elected.
Nor was this a movement exclusive to the northeast of Ireland at this time. Despite the
fact that Labour had not intervened in the previous election in 1918, and despite the
fact that the leaders of the labour movement had failed to place themselves at the head
of the revolt developing within Ireland, the elections held in 1920 throughout the
country revealed the basis of potential support which existed for Labour. In total in
Ireland in these elections, of the 1806 seats, 550 Sinn Fein councillors were elected.
355 Unionists were returned. 238 nationalists, 108 ratepayers candidates and 161
independents were also elected. Labour despite the failings of its leaders, managed to
win 394 seats. In this result is clearly seen the potential of Labour to develop as the
major political force within society.

Clearly more desperate measures from the bigots would be required if the menace of
workers unity was to be put to an end. The extension of the operations of groups
like the UULA and the Unionist leaders was soon apparent. Every conceivable
method was used to infect the shop floor with sectarianism. Inflammatory speeches
encouraging pogroms were made. The employers showed their hand. An extreme
sectarian group, the Belfast Protestant Association, was given permission by many
employers to hold meetings in the workplaces. In July 1920 this incitement came to a
head with the outbreak of bitter violence against Catholics and socialists mainly in
Belfast.
By the third week of July serious rioting had broken out and it did nor take long
before it was driven into the Lagan and pounded with steel rivets (Belfast confetti!).
These attacks on the shipyard workforce were launched from the outside. Gangs of
Protestant thugs, many from the rural and semi-rural areas outside Belfast, attacked
the gates of the yards.
Protestant Unionists soon intervened to fan these flames of sectarianism. One called
for a show of revolvers in the shipyard. James Craig, soon to become the foremost
figure of Ulster Unionism, in a comment directed at the shipyard men declared if you
ask me my opinion of your action I say well done. Likewise Carson, a few days after
the riots, considered the time was ripe to announce that he was prouder of my friends
in the shipyard than of any other friends I have in the world.
The pogroms spread to other factories and beyond into working-class estates. Outside
Belfast, in Lisburn and Banbridge, riots resulted in the expulsion of almost all of the
Catholic families living there. Significantly not only Catholics but also socialists and
active trade-unionists were driven from their jobs and homes. At the end of this
upheaval there was not one Catholic working in the shipyard. This is common
knowledge. Not so well known is the fact that an estimated 25 percent of those
expelled were Protestants, in other words at least a quarter of the victims of their
pogrom suffered as socialists and trade union activists.
Such atrocities were given the backing not only of the political heads of Unionism but
of the representatives of capital. No protection was given to the Catholic workers by
state forces. In fact it was at this time that the British government came up with its
proposal that a special constabulary should be established in other words that
Protestant gangs should be given the stamp of official approval and should receive
uniforms and arms.
The capitalist state is not the protector of the interests of the working class. This was
again shown in these activities. The workers have only themselves and their
organizations to fall back upon. In this period there were many honourable incidents
where Protestant socialists and trade unionists attempted to intervene to halt the
pogroms. The advanced layers of the workers were repulsed and made an open stand
in defence of the expelled workers.
The National Union of Railwaymen in a resolution at a conference in Belfast stated:
without complete unity amongst the working classes, (we should not allow either
religious or political differences to prevent their emancipation) which can be achieved

through a great international brotherhood the world over, no satisfactory progress

could be made.
A delegation from the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners spoke to the
shipyard workers attempting to defuse the situation. They went so far as to produce a
blacklist of firms from which expulsions had taken place. This included the Workman
and Clarke shipyard, the Sirrocco plant and union executive, while a further 2,000, by
staying at were, were expelled from the union.
It was the lack of an overall lead from the trade unions and from the labour movement
generally throughout Britain and Ireland which determined that such courageous but
isolated calls could not be successful. Without the support and active backing of
workers organizations throughout the British Isles such calls were in fact foolhardy.
At that time there were approximately 100,000 people in the area that was to become
Northern Ireland who had no jobs. The labour organizations were not conducting a
decisive struggle in Ireland around socialist policies and for jobs. It was therefore not
surprising that 2000 members of the Amalgamates Society should have been reluctant
to risk their livelihood and support their union.
The role of the republican movement was no help to the attempt of the labour
organizations to call a halt to the bloodshed. The pogroms in the North were answered
by the IRA with the boycott of Ulster goods. Later this boycott was ratified by the
Dail.
Opposition from the labour movement was one thing. If strong enough it could have
isolated the bigots. Opposition from the petty-bourgeois nationalists was something
totally different. The stronger it was, the more it reinforced the influence of bigots
over the minds of Protestant workers.
Until July 1920 the labour movement in the North had been going forward.
Industrially and then politically it was moving from strength to strength. The 19 July
pogroms and the passing of the Government of Ireland Act threw this process into
reverse gear. The potential which had existed, for the movement to develop as never
before, was temporarily lost.
In the period before 1914 the labour movement North and South had recognized the
dangers inherent in partition. Leaders like Connolly concluded that only action by the
workers organizations could avert disaster. At that time the weakness of the
movement lay in its youth, in the fact that it had engaged in a series of exhausting
industrial battles. Connolly and other leaders strove to overcome these objective
handicaps. Under the then existing conditions he and the other leaders of the
movement faced an uphill battle.
From the war the movement emerged fresh, the scars of battle healed, and on the crest
of a revolutionary wave. Its body was invigorated. But its brain was sadly weakened.
Had Labour intervened in the 1918 election the forces of the working class would
have been drawn together North and South. Workers would have lined up against
sectarianism and against reaction in all its forms. Had the leaders of the movement
launched a campaign for socialism from that time, taking it to every workshop, to
every estate, they would have won the leadership of the national struggle. In the years

after 1918 they failed to face up to this task. Had they done so the radicalisation of the
country would not have mustered around the banner of mere nationalism. It would
have been a struggle for socialism North, South and in Britain also.
From the criminal decision not to participate in 1918, and the subsequent lack of a
campaign around any independent class program, stemmed the defeats suffered North
and South in the early 1920s. That decision, that inaction, left the advanced workers
in the North isolated in 1920 when the bigots drew their swords. Had the movement
not sat back and allowed petty-bourgeois nationalists to tap the revolutionary energy
of the masses, partition itself could have been averted.
The Government of Ireland Act was foisted on Ireland by British imperialism
primarily in order to divide and disorientate the workers movement in Ireland and in
Britain. It gave legitimacy to the activities of the Carsonite thugs in the North. It
assisted the attempts of such reactionaries to break up the solidarity shown in 1919.
And with the temporary paralysis of the workers organizations in the North, the
ruling class were more able to concentrate their efforts on the southern parts of the
country. Coercion was intensified and, at all times, the pressure maintained on the
leadership of the republican movement to force them to come to terms.
It was the petty-bourgeois nature of this leadership which opened a way to a
settlement on the terms of imperialism, of course. The British government through
Lloyd George pressed for negotiations to take place. On July 11, 1921 a truce was
called. De Valera led a delegation to London to discuss terms. What they were offered
amounted to a mere sham of token independence, approximately the proposals
contained in previous Home Rule Bills, though spiced with a few additional
concessions. Air and naval facilities were to be granted to Britain, and recruiting
would still take place in Ireland for the British army. There was to be a limitation on
the size of the Irish army. And on top of this the recognition of the Northern Ireland
parliament, and with it the division of the country, was demanded.
De Valera rejected these proposals. However, in his correspondence it was made quite
clear that some form of compromise might yet be reached. The struggle of the Irish
masses was to be reduced to a game of swapping concessions with the representatives
of British capital.
In October a fresh delegation, this time led by Arthur Griffith and excluding De
Valera, went to negotiate with Lloyd George. The central objections to the British
proposals raised by this delegation were the question of Ulster, and also the issue of
the wording of an oath of allegiance to the British monarch. The military conditions
were fairly readily accepted.
During the negotiations it became clear that the latter-day Daniel OConnell, Arthur
Griffith, was the most susceptible to the persuasive methods of Lloyd George. When
the proposal to establish a Boundary Commission to determine where exactly the
border would run was made, and when a modified version of the oath of allegiance
was produced, it was apparent that Griffith was prepared to capitulate.
Lloyd George seized upon the cracks appearing among the Irish delegation and
bluntly informed them that if they did not sign the treaty the British would embark on

a course of all-out war within three days. Griffith had already given a personal
assurance that he would sign no matter what his colleagues would do. But they were
not long in following suit.
There is no doubt that Lloyd Georges threat of all-out war was no bluff. Had the
treaty not been accepted, a savage offensive against the republican forces would have
been begun. This was being seriously considered by the capitalists as the first part of a
direct offensive against the working class. The leaders of the British military machine
had been demanding an extension of their powers and of their operations in Ireland.
For example, the commander of the forces, Sir Henry Wilson, had demanded powers
to intern anyone without charge or trial for an indefinite period, and the power to try
any prisoner by court-martial and without legal advice, except in cases requiring the
death penalty. Had the republican leaders not been prepared to accept the terms being
offered at this stage, imperialism would have no choice but to continue to escalate the
military efforts in order to enforce these leaders to the conference table and to
compromise at some future stage.
For their part the republican leaders agreed to the British terms firstly because
ingrained within them and their class outlook was the spirit of compromise, but
secondly, and more importantly, because they could see no prospect of victory. Of all
the republican leaders few were more closely in touch with the actual military
situation as was Michael Collins. Collins himself, in 1921, estimated that the IRA had
only 2000-3000 men whom they could rely upon at any one time. In addition, their
operations were being handicapped by a severe shortage of ammunition.
Only one force could have led a successful struggle against imperialism the working
class. The De Valeras, Griffiths etc., had no perspective for the mobilization of the
workers. Their prominence was one of the factors repelling the Protestant workers in
the North. History books tell us that the treaty arose from the betrayal of a few
individuals. On the contrary! The need to come to terms arose from the methods that
had been adopted by the leaders of the struggle in Ireland. Above all, it arose from the
backsliding of the labour leadership in 1918 and soon afterwards.
The republican struggle was divorced from the social agitations welling up at the
time. Labour must wait meant that the demands of the working class were
dismissed. By pressing their interests the workers were said to be endangering the
unity of the republican forces! On the land also the tenants were seizing the estates
only to find themselves remonstrated by Sinn Fein and the IRA, who even went to the
lengths of carrying out evictions in order to break the back of the land-seizure
movement.
Pushing the social struggle to the background, Sinn Fein inevitably leaned towards the
capitalists and away from the working class. In so doing it drained the struggle of the
resources and reserves required to ensure success.
In addition, the methods of struggle which were adopted, those of a campaign of
individual terror as conducted by the forces of the IRA, were incapable of defeating
imperialism. History, drawn from the international experience of the working class,
teaches that it is only mass action by the organizations of the working class which can
change society. The truth of this was shown in Ireland during these years. Had a treaty

not been negotiated in 1921, the IRA campaign could have been continued, but it
would not have achieved the military and economic expulsion of imperialism. On the
basis of the methods which had been adopted up to 1921, of guerilla activity, there
could have been only one result of such a campaign ultimate defeat and a settlement
of some sort chiefly on the bosses terms.
It was the objective factors bearing down upon the republican movement, stemming
from their false strategy, from their false policies, and also from the failures of the
labour movement, which forced the compromise terms of the treaty to be accepted.
The subjective factors, the willingness to compromise and betray inherent in the
psychology and cringing class outlook of these petty-bourgeois leaders, merely
accelerated this process.
The treaty was not a sudden and unexpected betrayal of a few individuals. It was
the only possible consequence of the methods of struggle adopted and the social
composition of the forces involved. No matter what individuals were conducted,
nothing could get away from the fact that the cause itself was being squeezed by
events towards shabby compromise.
Labour and working-class unity were the real victims of partition. Labour alone could
have averted this menace. The all-Irish unity of the working class continues to be a
victim of the political division of the country. But just as only labour could have
averted partition in 1920 so only united class action struggling for socialism can end
partition today.

The March Action Introduction

Richard Price
This short article first appeared in English in Fourth International, Volume 1, Number
2, Summer 1964. Its author, Pierre Brou (b.1926), was for many years a member of
the Lambertist tendency in France (variously OCI, PCI, and latterly Parti Ouvrier). An
internationally recognised historian, Pierre Brou has published a steady stream of
books and articles on the history of the revolutionary movement for over four
decades. His only book-length work to be published in English is The Revolution and
the Civil War in Spain (with mile Tmime), which was originally issued in France in
1961. Other works yet to be translated include The Bolshevik Party (1971),
Revolution in Germany 1917-1923 (1971), an epic 1,000-page biography, Trotsky
(1988), and his History of the Communist International (1997). He is also the editor of
many collections of Trotskys writings, including an authoritative version of his post1928 writings, The Chinese Question in the Communist International, and Leon
Trotsky, Alfred and Marguerite Rosmer: Correspondence (1929-39). He is the founder
and editor of Cahiers Leon Trotsky, a journal dedicated to historical research on
Trotsky and the revolutionary movement. He was expelled from the PCI in 1989, on
the pretext that he had addressed a right-wing gathering (on Trotsky!) without the
partys permission. He currently publishes Le Marxisme Aujourdhui, and is a member
of the Socialist Party. Translations of five articles by Brou can be found at:
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/etol/writers/broue/

The debacle represented by the March Action in Germany in 1921 was a crucial
turning point in the development of the Communist International. The defeat led to a
crisis in the German Communist Party (KPD), which had repercussions for the entire
International. Under the immediate impact of the defeat, the Third Congress of the
Comintern steered a course away from the adventurism and putschism which
Bukharin and Zinovievs theory of the offensive had encouraged, and adopted the
policy of the united front. Yet even after such a graphic lesson, the united front
continued to be resisted in practice by a number of important Comintern sections.
The March Action does contain enduring lessons for the left above and beyond the
specific adventurist actions advocated by the majority of the KPD leadership. At their
broadest, they are that to attempt to lead workers across a broad front into offensive
actions, without having first convinced a majority of workers to take part, still less
having won their organisations to supporting the action, will almost always lead to
defeat and confusion.
In Left Wing Communism, Lenin had insisted that . . . you must soberly follow the
actual state of class consciousness and preparedness of the whole class (not just of its
communist vanguard), of all the toiling masses (not only their advanced elements).
Many on the left today disagree in practice with Lenins approach. Instead, their
method is to itemise the betrayals of the Labour and trade union leaders, and
counterpose to this what is necessary, whether this involves making a fetish out of
the call for a general strike, or elevating the standing of candidates in elections into a
principle. The groups affiliated to the Socialist Alliance may not have that much in
common. But they do share a common belief that the central task at present is to
organise the left of the left independent of a significant level of radicalisation across
broad sections of the working class.
What unites the ultra-leftism of the 1920s with its less spectacular, though no less
mistaken, forms today is that together they are the Marxist first cousins of the
anarchist propaganda of the deed. The decision for action is taken largely
independent of the organisations of the working class, and is relayed to workers at
best as an example to follow, and at worst as an ultimatum.
Further reading: Pierre Brous Revolution in Germany 1917-1923 is perhaps the most
important Marxist study of Germany in this period, but it remains untranslated (see
above). There is, however, an extensive literature on the March Action and its
aftermath. For a general overview of the German workers movement and the
prospects for revolution, see Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution: Germany 19181923, Bookmarks, 1982; Mike Jones, The Decline, Disorientation and
Decomposition of a Leadership in Revolutionary History, Vol.2, No.3, Autumn 1989;
and Germany 1918-23: From the November Revolution to the failed October,
Revolutionary History, Vol.5, No.2, Spring 1994. Extracts from Paul Levis pamphlet,
Our Course Against Putschism, together with documents and correspondence from
Radek are in Helmut Gruber (ed.), International Communism in the Era of Lenin,
Anchor, 1972. The Executive Committee of the Cominterns statements on the March
Action and on the expulsion of Levi, together with its manifesto on the conclusion of
the Third Congress, are reprinted in Jane Degras (ed.), The Communist International
1919-1943: Documents, Vol.1, Oxford, 1956. Lenins comments (referred to in the
text of the article that follows) can be found in Klara Zetkin, My Recollections of

Lenin, Moscow, 1956, together with her own views. Brief comments by another
participant, Heinrich Brandler, can be found in Isaac Deutscher, Marxism, Wars and
Revolutions, Verso, 1984, pp.135-137. Other memoirs include Alfred Rosmer, Lenins
Moscow, Bookmarks, 1987, pp.144-151, and Rosa Levin-Meyer, Inside German
Communism, Pluto, 1977, pp.17-20. The assessment made by the Third Congress of
the Comintern, in section VII of the Theses on Tactics and in the brief resolution
The March Events and the United Communist Party of Germany, can be found in
Alan Adler (ed.), Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of
the Third International, Pluto, 1983. Trotskys speech to the Third Congress dealing
with the March events is in The First Five Years of the Communist International,
Vol.1, New Park, 1973, while a later assessment and a sharp public attack on Paul
Levi is in Vol.2, New Park, 1974. Lenins speeches to the Third Congress are in
Speeches at Congresses of the Communist International, Progress, 1972, while his
later Letter to the German Communists is in his Collected Works, Vol.32, Progress,
1965, pp.512-523. back to archive contents

*****************
March 1921. An atmosphere of civil war. Armed nationalist bands provoke workers
suffering from crisis and unemployment. In central Germany hard-fought strikes
break out; the miners have bloody tussles with the police. On March 16, Horsing, the
Social Democratic security chief, announces that the police will occupy the mining
district of Mansfeld. Objective: to restore calm, disarm the workers.
The police were welcomed with firing. Rote Fahne, organ of the German Communist
Party, on the 18th appealed for resistance: Every worker should defy the law and take
arms where he can find them. On the 19th a thousand police occupied the district: the
strike spread to all trades in the affected region. The workers barricaded themselves in
their factories; on the 23rd there was fighting throughout the district. On the 24th the
Central Committee of the German CP called for a general strike. It was not followed.
Fights between workers broke out everywhere: the strikers, few in number, took on
the blacklegs who remained in the majority, the Social Democrats and the trade
unions indignantly denouncing the attempted rising of the communists. . . .
Here and there Communist officials organised false attacks on themselves in order to
provoke the indignation of the masses and bring them into the struggle. In the centre
of the country the factories were surrounded and bombarded and gave up one after
another: the Leuna factory, the last to do so, surrendered on the 29th.
On the 31st the CP rescinded the strike order. Illegal once again, it was to experience
an unprecedented crisis: a number of its leaders, including Paul Levi, denounced its
adventurist policies and were expelled. Shortly afterwards the Third World Congress
of the Communist International gave its verdict on the March Action, in which it
saw a forward step at the same time as it condemned the theory of the offensive at
all costs which its supporters had put forward. The German party lost a hundred
thousand members, including many trade union cadres, who had refused to follow it,
condemned its actions or been overwhelmed by the publication in the bourgeois and
socialist press of documents which incriminated its leaders.

It was some time before it was understood that the March Action brought to a close
the post-war revolutionary period, that it was the last of the armed actions of the
proletariat which had begun with the struggles in Berlin in January 1919. The
contribution which this affair made to the failure of the German Communists to build
a revolutionary mass party, a Communist Party of the Bolshevik type, has yet to be
measured.
The building of the party
The Bolsheviks thought that their revolution could only be the forerunner: the
problems posed in Russia could only be resolved on a world scale and, in the
meantime, the decisive battlefield was Germany, where the bourgeoisie, after
November 1918, owed its survival to the alliance between the officer corps and the
Social Democratic and trade union apparatus against the Workers Councils. The
murderers employed by the socialist Noske won the first round: by assassinating the
revolutionary leaders Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the outstanding founders of
German communism, they decapitated the young party which was coming into being.
The vanguard, moreover, was deeply divided. Years of opportunism had fed a violent
anti-centralising reaction in the German working class; the years of war pushed the
young generations towards impatience and adventures. Against the leadership around
Paul Levi a strong leftist minority called for the boycotting of elections, condemned
work in the trade unions and wished to retain from the Russian experience only the
lesson of the insurrection, which was possible at any time since the workers were
armed and the bourgeoisie was provoking them. Lenin, who polemicised against them
in Left Wing Communism, nevertheless wished to keep them in the party, but Levi
took steps to expel the leftists.
Despite the difficulties, the new perspectives seemed to confirm his viewpoint. The
Independent Social Democrats [USPD], born of the split from the Social-Democratic
Party during the war, had recruited hundreds of thousands of instinctively
revolutionary workers whom Levi hoped to win for communism en bloc. Their
leaders had collaborated in the crushing of the Councils in 1918, but the difficulties of
the working class in post-war Germany, the prestige of the Russian Revolution, the
tenacious action of the International, radicalised them and won them gradually
towards communism. In September 1920, at their Congress at Halle, the majority of
the Independents decided to ask for affiliation to the Communist International and to
accept its 21 conditions. In December the Unified Communist Party was born: it had
over half a million members, a solidly organised vanguard with strong fractions in the
big unions, control over local unions in several industrial towns, 40 daily papers and
several specialised reviews and periodicals, an underground military organisation and
considerable financial resources. It was the instrument which had so far been lacking
to bring the proletarian revolution in Germany to a successful conclusion, all the
communists thought.
The conquest of a majority of the proletariat
The Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920 had set itself the task of
the construction of such parties, with the perspective of an early conquest of power in
several countries. Summing up its work, Zinoviev, president of the International,

declared: I am profoundly convinced that the Second Congress of the Comintern is

the prelude to another congress, the world congress of Soviet republics. And Trotsky
explained why the Communists wished to see a split in the working-class movement:
There is no doubt that the proletariat would be in power in all countries if there had
not been between the Communist Parties and the masses, between the revolutionary
masses and the revolutionary vanguard, a powerful and complex machine, the parties
of the Second International and the trade unions, which, in the epoch of the
disintegration and death of the bourgeoisie, placed their machine at its service. From
the time of this Congress, the split in the world working class must be accelerated
tenfold.
Zinoviev indicated the meaning of the split at Halle: We work for the split, not
because we want only 18 instead of 21 Conditions, but because we do not agree on
the question of the world revolution, on democracy and the dictatorship of the
proletariat. For the Communists the split was not simply a state of affairs destined to
last for some time, but an immediate necessity in order to eliminate definitively from
the workers movement the reformist leaders who acted as agents of the bourgeoisie.
It was the preface to the reconstitution of unity on the basis of a revolutionary
programme, a condition for victory in the struggle for power.
Once the split had been realised there was still the question of wresting from the
reformist chiefs the millions of proletarians who made up their following. Lenin, more
than anyone, sought to win support in the Communist Parties for the understanding of
the necessity for a United Front policy; later, Zinoviev said of this policy that it was
the expression of the consciousness that (i) we have not yet won a majority in the
working class; (ii) the social democracy is still very strong; (iii) we occupy defensive
positions and the enemy is on the offensive; (iv) the decisive battles are not yet on the
agenda.
It was from analysis such as this that at the beginning of 1921 the leaders of the
German CP addressed an open letter to the trade unions and workers parties
proposing common action on an immediate programme of defence of living standards.
The letter, which Lenin described as a model political initiative, began with the
recognition that more than ten million workers still followed the Social Democratic
leaders and the trade union officials and obeyed their orders. Communist strategy,
wrote Radek, must be to convince these large masses of workers that the trade union
bureaucracy and the Social Democratic Party not only do not want to fight for the
dictatorship of the proletariat, but also do not want to fight for the most fundamental
day-to-day interests of the working class.
However, the Second Congress fixed as a first objective the construction of parties
capable of leading the struggle of the masses for power: for Zinoviev and a part of his
group, in the headquarters of the International, the idea of the conquest of the
masses apart from the march to power was an opportunist conception. They saw the
open letter as an instrument of demobilisation.
Destructive activism
Rallying to the Zinoviev line after having been one of the authors of the open letter,
Karl Radek then wrote to the German CP that it was necessary to break with the wait-

and-see attitude which it had followed while it was still a sect and become conscious
that, now that it was a mass party, it had become a real factor in the class struggle. It
was necessary, he wrote, to activise our policy in order to draw in new mass support.
For his part, Rakosi, emissary of the International at the Italian Socialist Party
Congress at Livorno, adopted the same activist position and took pleasure in the
perhaps inevitable but catastrophic split, which left the overwhelming majority of the
revolutionary workers behind the centrist leaders of the Socialist Party and reduced
the scarcely founded Italian CP to the status of a sect. Against Levi, who maintained
that they had no right to split when the movement was in retreat, he boasted before the
Central Committee of the German CP of the necessity and virtue of splits, developing
the theme of a too large party which would strengthen itself by purging itself.
Another collaborator of Zinoviev, a compatriot of Rakosi, Bela Kun, bore the
responsibility, as emissary of the International, for having thrown the German CP into
the March Action. Did he, as has been supposed, follow the suggestions of Zinoviev,
who was frightened by Russian internal difficulties at the time of the Kronstadt
revolt? Did he try to force a revolutionary crisis in Germany to prevent the Russian
communists from having to make the retreat of the New Economic Policy? In the
present state of documentation no certain answer is possible. What is certain is that
Kun placed his prestige as Comintern delegate behind a theory of the offensive which
was to be used to justify the position of the CP in March and was to end in disaster.
It is equally unquestionable that the centralised structure of the International, the
doubtful practice, introduced by Zinoviev, of Comintern agents not responsible to the
parties which they supervised, raised a problem of organisation which would be
pointed out by Lenin at the Fourth Congress, but never really tackled.
Lenin on the party and the March Action
It is known today, on the other hand, that Lenin and Trotsky had to wage an energetic
political struggle in the leadership of the Russian CP and the CI against the partisans
of the offensive, at the head of whom stood Zinoviev, before imposing their point of
view at the Third World Congress. It was upon Trotsky that the task devolved of
showing that the international situation had been modified since 1919, that the taking
of power was no longer on the agenda, but that the Communist Parties had to turn to
the conquest of the masses: a condition for the struggle for power in the next phase of
revolutionary advance.
To Lenin fell the task of denouncing, wringing the neck of, the theory of the
offensive, holding up to ridicule the puerile arguments of its defenders the
kuneries, as he called them, of Kun, as well as the boasting of the Italian Terracini,
who took advantage of the Bolshevik example in order to excuse the small size of his
own party.
Lenin joined Levi in denouncing the March Action. He was careful, in approving
someone who had broken party discipline, not to anger those who, through discipline,
and in good faith, had followed absurd slogans. He conveyed his inner thoughts to
Clara Zetkin, who, very fortunately, later recounted them. Lenin thought that Levis
criticism was justified. Unfortunately, he made it in a unilateral, exaggerated and
even malicious fashion, in a way which lacked a sense of solidarity with the party.

In short, he lost his head and thus concealed the real problems from the party, which
turned against him. For this he had to be condemned by the Congress and was. But
Lenin added: We must not lose Levi, both for ourselves and for the cause. We cannot
afford to lose talented men, we must do what is possible to keep those that we have.
Lenin declared himself ready, if Levi behaved himself (for example, by working for
the party under an assumed name), personally to ask for his re-admission after three
or four months. The important thing, he said, is to leave the road open back to us.
Speaking to Clara Zetkin of two workers, Melzahn and Neumann, supporters of Levi
and delegates at the World Congress, who had even been reproached by hecklers for
the posts which they held in the trade unions, while they replied by attacking hairsplitting intellectuals, Lenin said: They are wonderful . . . I do not know whether
they will make shock troops, but there is one thing of which I am sure: it is people
like these who make up the long columns with solid ranks of the revolutionary
proletariat. It is on their unbreakable force that everything depends in the factories and
the trade unions: these are the elements who must be assembled and led into action, it
is through them that we are in contact with the masses. He added, speaking of the
Independent leaders who had come to communism in 1920: With them also patience
is necessary, and one mustnt think that the purity of communism is in danger if it
sometimes happens that they do not succeed yet in finding a clear, precise expression
of communist thought.
Through these informal words of Lenin to the German militant can be seen the
constant concern of the revolutionary leader for his party. Lenin saw that a leadership
cannot be built in a few days by bureaucratic decisions, but develops and raises itself
up in years of patient effort. It was vital not to 'close the doors by purely negative
attitudes to erring comrades but to aid them, develop a deep sense of the solidarity of
the party and enable them to take their bearings. The party of the workers vanguard
had to bring together different generations, comrades with varied experience: the
young, the impatient, the 'leftists together with the older, more solid and prudent,
often 'opportunist members. The intellectuals had to be brought into harness with the
practical men of the trade unions. The contacts of the party had to be enriched and its
understanding, consciousness and means of action developed by the qualities brought
into it by people from very different, yet close, backgrounds: syndicalists, socialists,
anarchists who sought a common goal by different roads, like the proletariat itself.
All these men had to be brought into a common struggle by a constant effort to
construct the party, raise the level of its consciousness and by fighting to raise the
level of the consciousness of the masses. 'Learn, learn, learn! Agitate, agitate, agitate!
Be prepared, prepared to the utmost in order to use the next revolutionary wave with
all our conscious energy.
These are the real lessons of the March Action. Thus, as Lenin stressed in a letter of
August 14, 1921, to German militants, revolutionaries must learn 'to determine
correctly the times when the masses of the proletariat cannot rise with them. Ten
years later, in the face of the Nazi hordes, there would not be a revolutionary party in
Germany, but a Stalinist party and a Social Democratic Party which equally shared the
responsibility for the disaster of 1933. The responsibility of those who were unable to
build the party which was necessary in Germany is no less crushing. After them,
however, it is no longer possible to underestimate the difficulties of the enterprise, and

to believe that it is enough to 'proclaim ideas in order to win, without undertaking the
hard labour of construction of the historic instrument for their victory.

German Revolution, xi: The March

Action of 1921: the danger of pettybourgeois impatience
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In the previous article in this series, dealing with the Kapp Putsch in 1920, we
underlined that having been through the defeats of 1919, the German working
class returned to the offensive. But at the international level, the revolutionary
wave was about to go into decline.

The ending of the war had already, in a number of countries, cooled revolutionary
ardour, and above all had allowed the bourgeoisie to exploit the division between the
workers of the "victorious" countries and those of the "defeated" countries.
Furthermore, the forces of capital were succeeding in isolating more and more the
revolutionary movement in Russia. The victories of the Red Army over the Whites who had been strongly supported by the western democracies - did not prevent the
ruling class from pursuing its offensive on an international scale.

In Russia itself the isolation of the revolution and the growing integration of the
Bolshevik party into the state were making their effects felt. In March 1921 came the
revolt of the workers and sailors of Kronstadt.
Against this background, the German proletariat was exhibiting a much stronger
combativity than in other countries. Everywhere revolutionaries were facing the
question: how to react to the offensive of the bourgeoisie when the world
revolutionary wave is entering into reflux?

Within the Communist International (Cl), a political turnaround was taking place. The
21 Conditions for admission adopted by the Second Congress of the CI in the summer
of 1920 expressed this clearly. In particular they imposed work within the trade
unions and participation in parliamentary elections. The CI was thus returning to the
old methods used during the ascendant period of capitalism, with the hope of reaching
wider layers of the working class.

This opportunist turn was manifested in Germany particularly through the "Open
Letter" addressed to the KPD in January 1921 to the trade unions and the SPD as well
as to the anarcho-syndicalist FAUD, the KAPD and the USPD proposing "that all the
socialist parties and trade union organisations should wage common actions to
impose the most urgent economic demands of the working class". This appeal, which
was addressed most particularly to the unions and the SPD, was to give rise to the
"united front in the factories": "The VKPD wants to set aside the memory of the
bloody responsibility of the majority of Social Democratic leaders. It wants to set
aside the memory of the services rendered by the union bureaucracy to the capitalists
during the war and in the course of the revolution." (Die Rote Fahne, 8 January
1921). Through this kind of opportunist flattery, e Communist Party was trying to
draw the parties of Social Democracy to its side.
Simultaneously it theorised, for the first time, the necessity for a proletarian offensive:
"If the parties and the unions to whom we are addressing ourselves refuse to initiate
the struggle, the Unified Communist Party of Germany will then be forced to wage it
alone, and it is convinced that the masses will follow" (ibid).

The unification between the KPD and the USPD, in December 1920, gave rise to the
VKPD and had brought back the conception of the mass party. This was reinforced by
the fact that the party now had 500,000 members. The VKPD also allowed itself to be
blinded by the percentage of votes it won in the elections to the Prussian Landtag in
February 1921 (almost 30%)[1].

Thus the party increasingly thought that it could "heat up" the situation in Germany.
Many of its members dreamed that another right-wing putsch, like the one that had

happened the year before, would provoke a workers' uprising with the perspective of
taking power. Such ideas were to a large extent due to the increased influence of the
petty bourgeoisie in the party since the Unification between the KPD and the USPD.
The USPD, like any centrist current within the workers' movement, was strongly
influenced by the conceptions and behaviour of the petty bourgeoisie. Moreover, the
numerical growth of the party tended to accentuate the weight of opportunism as well
as petty bourgeois impatience and immediatism.
It was in this context of a retreat in the international revolutionary wave, and of deep
confusions in the revolutionary movement in Germany, that the bourgeoisie launched
a new offensive against the proletariat in March 1921. The main target of this attack
was the workers of central Germany. During the war a huge proletarian concentration
had been formed in this area around the Leuna factories in Bitterfeld and in the
Mansfeld basin. The majority of the workers there were relatively young and militant
but had no great experience of organisation. The VKPD alone had 66,000 members
there, the KAPD 3,200. In the Leuna factories 2,000 out of the 20,000 workers were
members of the Workers' Unions.

Seeing that, following the confrontations of 1919 and the Kapp Putsch, many workers
were still armed, the bourgeoisie badly wanted to pacify the region.
The bourgeoisie tries to provoke the workers
On 19 March 1919 a powerful military police force arrived in Mansfeld with the aim
of disarming the workers.

This order did not come from the extreme right wing of the ruling class (the right
parties and their forces within the army) but from the democratically elected
government. Once again it was democracy which played the role of executioner to the
working class, using any means necessary.

For the bourgeoisie, the aim was to disarm and defeat a relatively young and militant
fraction of the German proletariat in order to weaken and demoralise the working
class as a whole. More particularly, the ruling class wanted to strike a crucial blow at
the proletariat's vanguard, its revolutionary organisations. By forcing the workers into
a decisive but premature struggle in central Germany, the state would have the
opportunity to isolate the communists from the rest of the working class. It wanted to
discredit them first in order to then subject them to repression. In particular, it aimed
to prevent the newly formed VKPD from consolidating itself and to prevent the
growing rapprochement between the VKPD and the KAPD. In doing so, German
capital was acting in the name of the world bourgeoisie in order to increase the
isolation of the Russian revolution and weaken the CI.

At the same moment the International was impatiently waiting for the movements of
struggle that would support the Russian revolution from outside. In a way it was
waiting for the bourgeoisie to launch an offensive so that the working class, placed in
a difficult situation, would react in strength. A number of violent minority actions
-like the KAPD's blowing up of the Victory Column in Berlin on 13 March - had the
explicit aim of provoking workers' combativity.

Paul Levi made this report of the intervention of the Moscow envoy, Rakosi, at a
meeting of the VKPD Centrale: "The comrade explained that Russia was in an
extraordinarily difficult situation. It was absolutely necessary for Russia to be
relieved by movements in the west, and on this basis, the German party had to push
for immediate action. The VKPD now had 500,000 members and it could count on of
allowing of 1,500,000 workers, which was enough to overthrow the government. It
was thus necessary to immediately engage in the battle with the slogan of
overthrowing the government" (Levi, Letter to Lenin, 27 March 1921 ).
"On 17 March the KPD Central Committee held a meeting in which the directives of
the comrade sent by Moscow were adopted as orientation theses. On 18 March Die
Rote Fahne took up a new resolution and called for armed struggle without first
saying what its objectives were, and it maintained the same tone for several days"
(ibid)

The long awaited government offensive took place the next day with the entry of
police troops into central Germany.
Can you force the revolution?
The police forces sent to central Germany on March 19 by the Social Democratic
minister Horsing had been ordered to search houses in order to ensure that the
workers were disarmed. The experience of the Kapp Putsch had dissuaded the
government from using Reichswehr troops.

The same night a general strike for the region was decided, to begin on 21 March. On
23 March the first clashes took place between the Reich security police (SiPo) and the
workers. The same day the workers of the Leuna factory in Merseburg proclaimed a
general strike. On 24 March the KAPD and the VKPD launched a joint appeal for a
general strike throughout Germany. In response to this there were sporadic
demonstrations and exchanges of fire between strikers and police in several towns. In
the whole country, about 300,000 workers came out on strike.
The main focus of confrontation however remained the industrial region of central
Germany where nearly 40,000 workers were facing up to 17,000 police and soldiers.
In the Leuna factories 17 armed proletarian centuries were set up. The police troops

readied for the attack. It was only after a number of days that they managed to take
the factory. To help them the government even had to call in aircraft to bomb the
factory. Against the working class, all means are good.
On the initiative of the KAPD and the VKPD there were dynamitings in Dresden,
Freiberg, Leipzig, Plauen and elsewhere. The newspapers Hallische Zeitung and
Saale Zeitung, which were being particularly provocative against the workers, were
reduced to silence by explosives.

Although the repression in central Germany had pushed workers into spontaneous
armed resistance, they were not able to fight the government forces in a coordinated
way. The combat organisations set up by the VKPD and led by H Eberlein were
militarily and organisationally ill-prepared. Max Holz, who led a workers' combat
troop of 2,500 men, managed to get to within a few kilometers of the Leuna factory
besieged by the government troops and tried to reorganise the workers' forces. But his
troops were wiped out on 1 April, two days after the taking of the Leuna factories.
Although there was little fighting spirit in other cities, the VKPD and the KAPD
called for an immediate armed response against the police forces:
"The working class is called upon to enter into active struggle for the following
objectives:

1. the overthrow of the government;

2. the disarming of the counter-revolution and the arming of the workers"

(Appeal dated 17 March 1921).

In another appeal on 24 March the VKPD wrote: "Remember that last year you
defeated in five days the white guards and the scum of Baltikum's Freikorps thanks to
the general strike and the armed uprising. Fight with us, like last year, to beat the
counter-revolution! Begin the general strike everywhere! Break the violence of the
counter-revolution with your own violence! Disarming of the counter-revolution,
formation and arming of local militia on the basis of cells of workers, employees and
functionaries!
Immediate formation of local proletarian militia! Take power in the factories!
Organise production through factory councils and trade unions! Create work for the
unemployed!"

However, locally the combat organisations of the VKPD as well as the workers who
had armed themselves spontaneously were not only poorly prepared, but the local
organs of the party were not in contact with the Centrale. The different combat
groups, the best known of which were those under Max Holz and Karl Plattner, fought
in different places in the zone of the uprising, isolated from each other. Nowhere were
there any workers' councils to coordinate their actions. On the other hand, the
government's troops were in close contact with the headquarters which directed them.
After the fall of the Leuna factories, the VKPD withdrew on 31 March its call for a
general strike. On 1 April, the last armed workers' groups in central Germany
dissolved themselves.

Bourgeois order reigned once more! Once again repression was unleashed. Once
again workers were subjected to police brutality. Hundreds were shot, more than
6,000 arrested.

The hopes of the great majority of the VKPD and the KAPD - that provocative action
by the apparatus of state repression would produce a dynamic response from the
workers - crashed to the ground. The workers of central Germany had remained
isolated.
The VKPD and the KAPD had quite clearly pushed for the battle without taking the
whole of the situation into account. They thus found themselves completely isolated
from the hesitant workers who were not ready to go into action, and they created
divisions within the working class by adopting the slogan "Whoever is not with me is
against me" (Die Rote Fahne, editorial of 20 March).

Instead of recognising that the situation was not favourable, Die Rote Fahne wrote:

"It's not only on the head of your leaders but on the head of each of you that bloody
responsibility lies, when you tolerate in silence or protest without acting against the
terror and the white justice unleashed on the workers by Ebert, Severing, Horsing
and Co ... Shame and ignominy to the worker who is still not at his post".
In order to artificially provoke combativity, there were attempts to use the
unemployed as a spearhead: "The unemployed were sent forward like assault troops.
They occupied the gates of factories. They forced their way into the factories, lit fires
here and there and tried to force the workers outside with cudgels ... it was a terrible
spectacle to see the unemployed themselves getting chased out of the factories,

weeping under the blows they received, and then fleeing from those who had sent
them there" (Levi, ibid).

The fact that the VKPD, from before the beginning of the struggle, had had a false
appreciation of the balance of forces, that afterwards it was incapable of revising its
analyses, all this was tragic enough, but it did even worse by launching the slogan
"Life or Death" according to the false principle that communists never retreat:

"In no case can a communist, even if he is in a minority, return to work! The

communists have left the factories. In groups of 200, 300 men, sometimes more,
sometimes less, they left the factories: the factory continued to operate. They are now
unemployed, since the bosses seized the opportunity to purge the factories of
communists at a time when a large part of the workers were on their side" (Levi,
ibid).
What was the balance sheet of the March Action?
Although this struggle was forced on the working class by the bourgeoisie, and it was
impossible to avoid it, the VKPD "committed a series of errors, the main one being
that instead of clearly bringing out the defensive character of this struggle, through
its call for an offensive it provided the most unscrupulous enemies of the proletariat,
the bourgeoisie, the Social Democratic Party, the Independents, a pretext for
denouncing the Unified Party as a maker of putsches. This error was further
exacerbated by a certain number of party comrades who represented the offensive as
the essential method of struggle for the Unified Party in the current situation" (Theses
on Tactics, Third Congress of the CI, June 1921).
For communists to intervene to reinforce the workers' combativity is an elementary
duty. But they don't do this at any price.

"The communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and
resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which
pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great
mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the
conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement" (MarxEngels, The Communist Manifesto of 1848). This is why communists have to be
characterised vis-a-vis the working class by their capacity to analyse correctly the
balance of forces between the classes. To push a weak or insufficiently prepared class
into decisive struggles, to lead it into the traps laid by the bourgeoisie, is the height of
irresponsibility, for revolutionaries. Their first responsibility is to develop their
capacity for analysing the level of consciousness and combativity within the class as
well as the strategy being used by the ruling class. This is the only way that
revolutionary organisations can really take up their leading role in the class.

Immediately after the March Action, violent debates developed within the VKPD and
the KAPD.
False organisational conceptions: an obstacle to the party's ability to make a selfcritique
In an orientation article on 4-6 April 1921, Die Rote Fahne affirmed that "the VKPD
has inaugurated a revolutionary offensive" and that the March Action constituted "the
beginning, the first episode of decisive struggles for power".

On 7 and 8 April its Central Committee met and instead of making a critical analysis
of the intervention, Heinrich Brandler sought above all to justify the party's policy.
For him the main weakness resided in a lack of discipline among the local militants of
the VKPD and in the failures of military organisation. He declared that "we have not
suffered any defeat. It was an offensive".
In response to this analysis, Paul Levi made the most virulent criticism of the party's
attitude during the March Action.

Having resigned from the Central Committee in February 1921 along with Clara
Zetkin, for, among others, divergences over the foundation of the Communist Party of
Italy, Levi once again showed himself unable to take the organisation forward through
criticism. The most tragic thing about this was that "Levi is basically right on many
points in criticising the March Action in Germany" (Lenin, Letter to German
Communists, 14 August 1921, Collected Works, Vol. 32). But instead of making his
critique in the framework of the organisation, on 3 and 4 April he wrote a pamphlet
which he published on the outside on 12 April without first submitting it for
discussion within the party[2].
In this pamphlet, Levi not only spat at organisational discipline, he exposed all kinds
of details about the internal life of the party. He thus broke a proletarian principle and
put the organisation in danger by publicly revealing its mode of functioning. He was
excluded from the party on 12 April for behaviour threatening the security of the
organisation.[3]

As we showed in our previous article on the Heidelberg Congress of October 1919,

Levi tended to see any criticism as an attack on the organisation, but also as an attack
on his own person. He thus sabotaged any possibility of collective functioning. His
point of view clearly expressed this: "Either the March Action was valid, which
means that I should be excluded from the party. Or the March Action was an error
and my pamphlet was justified" (Levi, letter to the VKPD Centrale). This attitude was
harmful to the organisation and was repeatedly criticised by Lenin. After Levi's
resignation from the VKPD Centrale in February, he wrote "And the resignation from
the Central Committee? That is quite simply the greatest of errors. If we tolerate a

state of affairs where members of the Central Committee resign as soon as they find
themselves in a minority, the development and purification of the Communist Parties
will never follow a normal course. Instead of resigning, it would have been better to
have had a number of discussions about the litigious questions with the Executive
Committee ... It is indispensable to do everything possible, and even the impossible but, at all costs, to avoid resignations and not to exaggerate divergences" (Lenin,
Letter to Clara Zetkin and Paul Levi, 16 April 1921, CW, Vol. 45).
The partly exaggerated charges which Levi made against the VKPD (which was
virtually seen as the only one at fault, thus ignoring the responsibility of the
bourgeoisie in provoking the March struggles) were based on a rather distorted view
of reality.

After being expelled from the party, Levi edited for a short period the review The
Soviet which became the mouthpiece of those who opposed the direction taken by the
VKPD.

Levi tried to expound his criticisms of the VKPD's tactics in front of the Central
Committee but it refused to let him into its meetings. Clara Zetkin did it in his place.
He argued that "communists are not able to undertake actions in place of the
proletariat, without the proletariat, and, in the final analysis, even against the
proletariat" (Levi, ibid).
Clara Zetkin then proposed a counter-resolution to the position taken up by the party.
The session of the Central Committee, in its majority, rejected the criticisms and
underlined that "to avoid this action ... was impossible for a revolutionary party and
would have meant a pure and simple renunciation of its calling to lead the
revolution". The VKPD "must, if it is to fulfil its historic mission, hold firmly to the
line of the revolutionary offensive which was at the basis of the March Action and
march with determination and confidence in this direction" ('Leitsatze uber die
Marzaktion', Die Internationale 4, April 1921).

The Centrale persisted with the tactic of the offensive and rejected all the criticisms,
In a proclamation of6 April 1921, the Executive Committee of the Communist
International (ECCI) approved the party's attitude and declared: "The Communist
International says to you: 'you acted well ' ... Prepare yourselves for new combats"
(published in Die Rote Fahne, 14 April 1921).
It was at the Third Congress of the CI that the disagreements about the events in
Germany began to be expressed. The group around Zetkin in the VKPD was strongly
attacked in the first part of the discussion. But the interventions and the authority of
Lenin and Trotsky led to a turnaround in the debates and cooled the hotheads.

Lenin, absorbed by the Kronstadt events and the affairs of state, had not had the time
to follow the events in Germany or the debates about the balance sheet to be drawn.
He had only just begun studying the situation more closely. On the one hand he very
firmly rejected Levi's breach of discipline; on the other, he announced that the March
Action, because of "its international importance and significance, must be submitted
to the Third Congress of the Communist International". Lenin's concern was that
discussion in the party should be as broad and unhindered as possible.
W Koenen, the VKPD's representative in the ECCI, was sent to Germany to ensure
that the Central Committee of the German party would not take a definitive decision
against the opposition. In the party press, it became possible for criticisms of the
March Action to appear. Discussions on tactics opened up.

However, the majority of the Central Committee continued to defend the position
adopted in March. Arkady Maslow called for a new approval of the March Action.
Guralski, an envoy the ECCI, even declared that "we are not concerned with the past.
The coming political struggles of the party are the best response to the attacks of the
Levi tendency". At the Central Committee meeting of 3-5 May, Thalheimer intervened
to call for unity in action by the workers. F Heckert pleaded for strengthening work in
the trade unions.
On 13 May Die Rote Fahne published theses which developed the objective of
artificially accelerating the revolutionary process. The March Action was cited as an
example. The communists "must, in particularly grave situations where the essential
interests of the proletariat are threatened, take a step ahead of the masses and seek by
their initiative to draw them into the struggle, even at the risk of not being followed
by a part of the working class". W Pieck, who in January 1919 had, against the
decisions of the party, thrown himself along with Karl Liebknecht into the Berlin
uprising, thought that confrontations within the working class "would take place more
and more frequently. Communists must turn against the workers when they don't
follow our appeals".
The reaction of the KAPD
While the VKPD and the KAPD had taken a step forward by carrying out joint
actions, unfortunately these took place in unfavourable circumstances. The common
denominator of the approach of the VKPD and the KAPD in the March Action was
the desire to come to the aid of the working class in Russia. At this time the KAPD
was still defending the revolution in Russia. The councilists who were to emerge from
it took up an opposing position.

However the KAPD's intervention was beset by internal wrangling. On the one hand
the leadership launched a joint appeal for a general strike with the VKPD and sent
two representatives of the Centrale to central Germany, F Jung and F Rasch, to
support the coordination of combat actions; on the other hand the local leaders of the
KAPD, Utzelmann and Prenzlow, on the basis of their knowledge of the situation in

the industrial region of central Germany, considered that any attempt at an uprising
was insane and did not want to go any further than a general strike. They also
intervened towards the Leuna workers, calling them to stay in the factory and prepare
for a defensive struggle. The KAPD leadership acted without consulting the local
party organs.
As soon as the movement was over, the KAPD timidly began a critical analysis of its
own intervention. This analysis was also contradictory. In a reply to Levi's pamphlet,
it highlighted the fundamentally erroneous approach of the VKPD Centrale. Hermann
Gorter wrote:

"The VKPD has, through parliamentary activity - which in the conditions of bankrupt
capitalism has no other meaning than the mystification of the masses - diverted the
proletariat from revolutionary action. It has gathered up hundreds of thousands of
non-communists and become a 'mass party '. The VKPD has supported the trade
unions by the tactic of creating cells within them ... When the German revolution,
having become more and more powerless, began to retreat, when the best elements of
the VKPD became more and more dissatisfied and began calling for action, suddenly
the VKPD decided on an grand enterprise for the conquest of political power. This is
what it consisted of before the provocation by Horsing and the SiPo, the VKPD
decided on an artificial action from above, without the spontaneous impulse of the
broad masses; in other words it adopted the tactics of the putsch.
The Executive Committee and its representatives in Germany had for a long time been
insisting that the party should strike out and show that it was a true revolutionary
party. As if the essential aspect of a revolutionary tactic consisted simply of striking
with all one's forces! On the contrary, when instead of affirming the revolutionary
strength of the proletariat, a party undermines this same strength and weakens the
proletariat by supporting parliament and the trade unions, and then after such
preparations suddenly resolves to hit out by launching a great offensive action in
favour of the same proletariat it has just been weakening, this can be nothing other
than a putsch. That is to say, action decreed from above, having no source in the
masses themselves, and thus doomed to failure from the start. And this attempt at a
putsch has nothing revolutionary about it: it is opportunist in exactly the same way as
parliamentarism or the tactic of union cells. Yes, this tactic is the inevitable other side
of the coin of parliamentarism and the tactic of union cells, of collecting up noncommunist elements, of the policy of leaders substituting for the policy of the masses,
or, more precisely, the policy of the class. This weak and intrinsically corrupt tactic
must inevitably lead to putsches" (Gorter, 'Lessons of the March Action', Afterword to
the Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, Der Proletarier, May 1921).
This text by the KAPD puts its finger on the contradiction between the tactic of the
United Front, which reinforced workers' illusions in the unions and social democracy,
and the simultaneous and sudden call for an assault on the state. But at the same time,
we find contradictions in the KAPD's own analysis: while on the one hand it talks
about a defensive action by the workers, on the other it characterises the March
Action as "the first conscious offensive by the revolutionary German proletarians
against bourgeois state power" (F Kool, Die Linke gegen die Parteiherrschaft). In

this respect, the KAPD even noted that "large masses of workers remained neutral, if
not hostile, towards the combative vanguard". At the extraordinary congress of the
KAPD in September 1921, the lessons of the March Action were not examined any
further.

It was against this background of virulent debates within the VKPD and contradictory
analyses by the KAPD, that the Communist International held its Third Congress, at
the end of June 1921.
The International's attitude towards the March Action
Within the International, different tendencies had begun to form. The ECCI did not
have a unified position on the events in Germany and did not speak with one voice.
For a long time the ECCI had been divided on the analysis of the situation in
Germany. Radek had developed many criticisms of the positions and behaviour of
Levi and other members of the Centrale had seized upon them. However, these
criticisms were not publicly and openly expressed within the VKPD at congresses or
elsewhere.

Instead of publicly debating the analysis of the situation, Radek did a lot of damage to
the functioning of the party. Often criticisms were not expressed openly and
fraternally, but in a covert manner. Often debates were not centred round political
errors but around the individuals responsible for them. The tendency towards the
personalisation of political positions developed. Instead of building unity around a
position and a method, instead of struggling as a body that functions collectively, the
organisational tissue was destroyed in a completely irresponsible manner.
More generally the communists in Germany were themselves profoundly divided. On
the one hand, at this moment, the two parties, the VKPD and the KAPD, which was
also part of the CI, began to clash violently on the orientation to be followed.

Vis-a-vis the CI, before the March Action, parts of the VKPD had kept quiet about
certain information about the situation; at the same time, divergences of analysis were
not brought to the knowledge of the CI in all their breadth.

Within the CI itself, there was no real common reaction or unified approach to this
situation. The Kronstadt uprising completely monopolised the attention of the
Bolshevik party leadership, preventing it from following the situation in Germany in
more detail. The way in which decisions were made in the ECCI was often not very
clear and it was the same with the mandates given to the delegations. Certainly the
mandates given to Radek and other ECCI delegates to Germany do not seem to have
been decided with much clarity[4].

Thus, in this situation of growing divisions, notably within the VKPD, the ECCI
members - in particular Radek - officiously entered into contact with tendencies
within the two parties, unbeknownst to the central organs of the two organisations,
with the aim of preparing for putschist actions. Instead of pushing the organisations
towards unity, mobilisation and clarification, divisions were exacerbated and the
tendency to take decisions outside the responsible organs was accelerated. This
attitude, taken in the name of the ECCI, fuelled within the VKPD and the KAPD
behaviour that could only damage the organisation.

Levi criticised this approach: "More and more frequently the envoys of the ECCI are
overstepping their powers, and it is being shown later that these envoys have not been
given such far-reaching powers" (Levi, Unser Weg, wider den Putschismus, 3 April
1921).

The structures of functioning and decision-making, as defined in the statutes both of

the VKPD and the KAPD, were being bypassed. At the time of the March Action, in
both parties, the appeal for the general strike was made without the whole
organisation being involved in the reflection and decision. In reality it was the
comrades of the ECCI who made contact with elements or certain tendencies within
each organisation and who pushed for taking action. In this way the party as such was
being bypassed.
Thus it was impossible to arrive at a unified approach by each party, still less at real
joint action between the two parties.

To a large extent activism and putschism gained the upper hand in both organisations,
accompanied by individual behaviour that was very destructive for the party and for
the class as a whole. Each tendency began to carry out its own policies and to create
its own informal, parallel channels. The concern for party unity, for a functioning in
conformity with the statutes, was to a considerable extent lost.

Although the CI was weakened by the growing identification between the Bolshevik:
party and the interests of the Russian state, and by the opportunist turn towards the
tactic of the United Front, the Third Congress of the International still contained a
collective and proletarian critique of the March Action.
For the Congress, the ECCI, with a correct political concern under Lenin's impulsion,
ensured that there was a delegation representing the opposition within the VKPD.
While the delegation from the VKPD Centrale was still trying to muzzle any criticism
of the March Action, the Political Bureau of the Russian Communist Party, on Lenin's
proposition, decided that "as a basis to this resolution it is necessary to examine in

precise detail, to bring to light the concrete errors committed by the VKPD during the
March Action and to even more energetically be on guard against repeating them".
What attitude to adopt?
In the introductory report to the discussion on 'The world economic crisis and the new
tasks of the Communist International', Trotsky underlined that "Today, for the first
time, we don't see and feel ourselves so immediately close to our goal, the conquest of
power. In 1919, we said: 'It's a question of months'. Today we are saying: 'It's perhaps
a question of years '". The combat may last a long time, it will not progress so
feverishly as we would have liked, it will be excessively difficult and will demand
numerous sacrifices".

Lenin: "This is why the Congress must make a clean sweep of leftist illusions that the
development of the world revolution will continue at the same mad pace as it did in
the beginning, that without any interruption it will be carried along by a second
revolutionary wave and that victory depends solely on the will of the party and its
action" (Zetkin, Memories of Lenin).

The VKPD Centrale, under the responsibility of Thalheimer and Bela Kun, sent to the
Congress draft theses on tactics which called on the CI to embark upon a new phase
of action. In a letter to Zinoviev of 10 June 1921, Lenin considered that "the theses of
Thalheimer and Bela Kun are radically false on the political level" (Lenin, Letters,
Vol. 7).
The Communist Parties had nowhere conquered the majority of the working class, not
only at the level of organisation, but also at the level of communist principles. This is
why the tactic of the CI was the following:

"We must ceaselessly and systematically struggle to win over the majority of the
working class, first of all inside the old unions" (ibid).

In discussion with the delegate Heckert, Lenin thought that "the provocation was as
clear as day. And instead of mobilising the working masses behind defensive aims in
order to push back the attacks of the bourgeoisie and prove that you had the right to
do this, you invented your 'theory of the offensive', an absurd theory which provides
all the reactionaries and police authorities with the opportunity of presenting you as
aggressors against whom the people had to be defended!" (Heckert, 'My encounter
with Lenin', Lenin as he was, Vol. 2).

Although previously Radek had supported the March Action, in his report presented
in the name of the ECCI he talked about the contradictory nature of the March Action:
he praised the heroism of the workers but also criticised the erroneous policy of the
VKPD Centrale. Trotsky characterised the March Action as an extremely unfortunate
attempt which "if it is repeated, could really lead this good party to its doom". He
stressed that "it is our duty to say clearly to the German workers that we consider this
philosophy of the offensive as the supreme danger and that, in its practical
application, it constitutes the worst kind of political crime" (Proceedings of the Third
Congress).
The VKPD delegation and the specially invited delegation from the opposition within
the VKPD clashed at the Congress.

The Congress was aware of the danger to the unity of the party. This is why it pushed
for a compromise between the leadership and the opposition. The following
arrangement was obtained: "The Congress considers that any splintering of the forces
within the Unified Communist Party of Germany, any formation of fractions, without
even talking about splits, would constitute the greatest danger for the whole
movement". At the same time the resolution adopted warned against any vengeful
attitudes: "the Congress expects the leadership of the Unified Communist Party of
Germany to have a tolerant attitude towards the old opposition, provided that it
loyally applies the decisions taken by the Third Congress" (Resolution on the March
Action and the Unified Communist Party of Germany, Third Congress of the CI).
During the debates at the Third Congress, the KAPD delegation hardly expressed any
self-criticism about the March Action. It seemed to be concentrating its efforts on the
questions of work in the trade unions and parliament.

Although the Third Congress managed to be very self-critical about the putschist
dangers that appeared at the time of the March Action, to warn against them and to
eradicate this "blind activism", it unfortunately embarked upon the tragic and
pernicious path of the United Front. While it rejected putschism, the opportunist turn
inaugurated by the adoption of the 21 Conditions was confirmed and accelerated. The
grave errors identified by Gorter for the KAPD, i.e. the CI's return to work in the
unions and parliament, were not corrected.

Encouraged by the results of the Third Congress, from the autumn of 1921 the VKPD
involved itself in the policy of the United Front. At the same time, this Congress
posed an ultimatum to the KAPD: either fuse with the VKPD or be excluded from the
CI. In September 1921, the KAPD left the CI. Part of the KAPD rushed into the
adventure of immediately founding the Communist Workers' International. A few
months later it was rent by a split.

For the KPD (which again changed its name in August 1921), the door towards
opportunism was wide open. As for the bourgeoisie, it had obtained its objectives:
thanks to the March Action it had managed to continue its offensive and weaken the
working class still further.

While the consequences of the putschist attitude were devastating for the working
class as a whole, they were even more so for the communists. Once again they were
the main victims of the repression. The hunt for communists was stepped up. A wave
of resignations hit the KPD. Many militants were deeply demoralised after the failure
of the uprising. At the beginning of 1921, the VKPD had between 350-400,000
members. By the end of August it had only 160,000. In November it had no more than
135-150,000.
Once again the working class had fought in Germany without a strong, consistent
communist party.

DV

[1] At the elections to the Prussian parliament in February 1921, the VKPO won 1.1
million votes; the USPD 1.1 million; the SPD, 4.2 million. In Berlin, the VKPD and
the USPD put together obtained more votes than the SPD.
[2] Clara Zetkin, who agreed with Levi's criticisms, exhorted him in several letters to
avoid behaviour that would damage the organisation. Thus on 11 April she wrote to
him: "You must withdraw the personal note from the preface. It seems to me
politically beneficial for you not to make any personal judgement on the Centrale and
its members, whom you declare to be fit for a lunatic asylum and whose revocation
you demand, etc. It would be more reasonable to keep solely to the politics of the
Centrale and leave aside the people who are only its mouthpieces". Only the personal
excesses should be suppressed". Levi would not be convinced. His pride and his
penchant for always wanting to be right, as well as his monolithic conception of
organisation, were to have grim consequences.
[3] "Paul Levi did not inform the party leadership of his intention to publish a
pamphlet nor did he bring to its knowledge the main elements of its content. He had
his pamphlet printed on 3 April, at a time when the struggle was still going on in
several parts of the Reich and when thousands of workers were being hauled before
special tribunals. so that his writings could only excite them to pronounce the most
bloody sentences. The Centrale fully recognises the right to criticise the party before
and after the actions that it leads. Criticism on the terrain of the struggle and
complete solidarity in the combat is a vital necessity for the party and a revolutionary

duty. Paul Levi's attitude does not go towards the strengthening of the party but
towards its dislocation and destruction" (VKPD Centrale, 16 April 1921).
[4] The ECCI delegation was composed of Bela Kun, Pogany and Guralski. Since the
foundation of the KPD Radek had played the role of "liaison" between the KPO and
the CI. Without always having a clear mandate, he above all practiced the politics of
informal and parallel channels.

Pierre Brou

Germany 1921: The March Action

(Summer 1964)

From
Workers
ACTION.
Originally published in English in Fourth International, Vol. 1, No. 2, Summer
1964.
Transcribed
by
Ted
Crawford.
Marked
upby
Chris
Clayton.
Proofread by Einde OCallaghan (September 2011).

The March Action Introduction

Richard Price
This short article first appeared in English in Fourth International,
Volume 1, Number 2, Summer 1964. Its author, Pierre Brou
(b.1926), was for many years a member of the Lambertist tendency
in France (variously OCI, PCI, and latterly Parti Ouvrier). An
internationally recognised historian, Pierre Brou has published a
steady stream of books and articles on the history of the
revolutionary movement for over four decades. His only book-length
work to be published in English is The Revolution and the Civil
War in Spain (with mile Tmime), which was originally issued in
France in 1961. Other works yet to be translated include The
Bolshevik Party (1971), Revolution in Germany 19171923 (1971),
an epic 1,000-page biography, Trotsky (1988), and his History of
the Communist International (1997). He is also the editor of many
collections of Trotskys writings, including an authoritative version
of his post-1928 writings, The Chinese Question in the Communist
International, and Leon Trotsky, Alfred and Marguerite Rosmer:
Correspondence (192939). He is the founder and editor of Cahiers
Lon Trotsky, a journal dedicated to historical research on Trotsky
and the revolutionary movement. He was expelled from the PCI in
1989, on the pretext that he had addressed a right-wing gathering (on

Trotsky!) without the partys permission. He currently publishes Le

Marxisme Aujourdhui, and is a member of the Socialist Party.
Translations of five articles by Brou can be found at:
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/etol/writers/broue/.
The debacle represented by the March Action in Germany in 1921
was a crucial turning point in the development of the Communist
International. The defeat led to a crisis in the German Communist
Party (KPD), which had repercussions for the entire International.
Under the immediate impact of the defeat, the Third Congress of the
Comintern steered a course away from the adventurism and
putschism which Bukharin and Zinovievs theory of the offensive
had encouraged, and adopted the policy of the united front. Yet even
after such a graphic lesson, the united front continued to be resisted
in practice by a number of important Comintern sections.
The March Action does contain enduring lessons for the left above
and beyond the specific adventurist actions advocated by the majority
of the KPD leadership. At their broadest, they are that to attempt to
lead workers across a broad front into offensive actions, without
having first convinced a majority of workers to take part, still less
having won their organisations to supporting the action, will almost
always lead to defeat and confusion.
In Left Wing Communism, Lenin had insisted that ... you must
soberly follow the actual state of class consciousness and
preparedness of the whole class (not just of its communist vanguard),
of all the toiling masses (not only their advanced elements). Many
on the left today disagree in practice with Lenins approach. Instead,
their method is to itemise the betrayals of the Labour and trade union
leaders, and counterpose to this what is necessary, whether this
involves making a fetish out of the call for a general strike, or
elevating the standing of candidates in elections into a principle. The
groups affiliated to the Socialist Alliance may not have that much in
common. But they do share a common belief that the central task at
present is to organise the left of the left independent of a significant
level of radicalisation across broad sections of the working class.
What unites the ultra-leftism of the 1920s with its less spectacular,
though no less mistaken, forms today is that together they are the
Marxist first cousins of the anarchist propaganda of the deed. The
decision for action is taken largely independent of the organisations
of the working class, and is relayed to workers at best as an example
to follow, and at worst as an ultimatum.
Further reading: Pierre Brous Revolution in Germany 19171923
is perhaps the most important Marxist study of Germany in this
period, but it remains untranslated (see above). There is, however, an
extensive literature on the March Action and its aftermath. For a

general overview of the German workers movement and the

prospects for revolution, see Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution:
Germany 19181923, Bookmarks, 1982; Mike Jones, The Decline,
Disorientation and Decomposition of a Leadership in Revolutionary
History, Vol.2, No.3, Autumn 1989; and Germany 191823: From
the November Revolution to the failed October, Revolutionary
History, Vol.5, No.2, Spring 1994. Extracts from Paul Levis
pamphlet, Our Course Against Putschism, together with documents
and correspondence from Radek are in Helmut Gruber (ed.),
International Communism in the Era of Lenin, Anchor, 1972. The
Executive Committee of the Cominterns statements on the March
Action and on the expulsion of Levi, together with its manifesto on
the conclusion of the Third Congress, are reprinted in Jane Degras
(ed.), The Communist International 19191943: Documents,
Vol.1, Oxford, 1956. Lenins comments (referred to in the text of the
article that follows) can be found in Klara Zetkin, My Recollections
of Lenin, Moscow, 1956, together with her own views. Brief
comments by another participant, Heinrich Brandler, can be found in
Isaac Deutscher, Marxism, Wars and Revolutions, Verso, 1984,
pp.135137. Other memoirs include Alfred Rosmer, Lenins
Moscow, Bookmarks, 1987, pp.144151, and Rosa Levin-Meyer,
Inside German Communism, Pluto, 1977, pp.1720. The
assessment made by the Third Congress of the Comintern, in section
VII of the Theses on Tactics and in the brief resolution The March
Events and the United Communist Party of Germany, can be found in
Alan Adler (ed.), Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First
Four Congresses of the Third International, Pluto, 1983. Trotskys
speech to the Third Congress dealing with the March events is in The
First Five Years of the Communist International, Vol.1, New Park,
1973, while a later assessment and a sharp public attack on Paul Levi
is in Vol.2, New Park, 1974. Lenins speeches to the Third Congress
are in Speeches at Congresses of the Communist International,
Progress, 1972, while his later Letter to the German Communists is
in his Collected Works, Vol.32, Progress, 1965, pp.512523.

March 1921. An atmosphere of civil war. Armed nationalist bands provoke workers
suffering from crisis and unemployment. In central Germany hard-fought strikes
break out; the miners have bloody tussles with the police. On March 16, Horsing, the
Social Democratic security chief, announces that the police will occupy the mining
district of Mansfeld. Objective: to restore calm, disarm the workers.
The police were welcomed with firing. Rote Fahne, organ of the German Communist
Party, on the 18th appealed for resistance: Every worker should defy the law and take
arms where he can find them. On the 19th a thousand police occupied the district: the
strike spread to all trades in the affected region. The workers barricaded themselves in
their factories; on the 23rd there was fighting throughout the district. On the 24th the
Central Committee of the German CP called for a general strike. It was not followed.
Fights between workers broke out everywhere: the strikers, few in number, took on

the blacklegs who remained in the majority, the Social Democrats and the trade
unions indignantly denouncing the attempted rising of the communists ...
Here and there Communist officials organised false attacks on themselves in order to
provoke the indignation of the masses and bring them into the struggle. In the centre
of the country the factories were surrounded and bombarded and gave up one after
another: the Leuna factory, the last to do so, surrendered on the 29th.
On the 31st the CP rescinded the strike order. Illegal once again, it was to experience
an unprecedented crisis: a number of its leaders, including Paul Levi, denounced its
adventurist policies and were expelled. Shortly afterwards the Third World Congress
of the Communist International gave its verdict on the March Action, in which it
saw a forward step at the same time as it condemned the theory of the offensive at
all costs which its supporters had put forward. The German party lost a hundred
thousand members, including many trade union cadres, who had refused to follow it,
condemned its actions or been overwhelmed by the publication in the bourgeois and
socialist press of documents which incriminated its leaders.
It was some time before it was understood that the March Action brought to a close
the post-war revolutionary period, that it was the last of the armed actions of the
proletariat which had begun with the struggles in Berlin in January 1919. The
contribution which this affair made to the failure of the German Communists to build
a revolutionary mass party, a Communist Party of the Bolshevik type, has yet to be
measured.
The building of the party
The Bolsheviks thought that their revolution could only be the forerunner: the
problems posed in Russia could only be resolved on a world scale and, in the
meantime, the decisive battlefield was Germany, where the bourgeoisie, after
November 1918, owed its survival to the alliance between the officer corps and the
Social Democratic and trade union apparatus against the Workers Councils. The
murderers employed by the socialist Noske won the first round: by assassinating the
revolutionary leaders Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the outstanding founders of
German communism, they decapitated the young party which was coming into being.
The vanguard, moreover, was deeply divided. Years of opportunism had fed a violent
anti-centralising reaction in the German working class; the years of war pushed the
young generations towards impatience and adventures. Against the leadership around
Paul Levi a strong leftist minority called for the boycotting of elections, condemned
work in the trade unions and wished to retain from the Russian experience only the
lesson of the insurrection, which was possible at any time since the workers were
armed and the bourgeoisie was provoking them. Lenin, who polemicised against them
in Left Wing Communism, nevertheless wished to keep them in the party, but Levi
took steps to expel the leftists.
Despite the difficulties, the new perspectives seemed to confirm his viewpoint. The
Independent Social Democrats [USPD], born of the split from the Social-Democratic
Party during the war, had recruited hundreds of thousands of instinctively

revolutionary workers whom Levi hoped to win for communism en bloc. Their
leaders had collaborated in the crushing of the Councils in 1918, but the difficulties of
the working class in post-war Germany, the prestige of the Russian Revolution, the
tenacious action of the International, radicalised them and won them gradually
towards communism. In September 1920, at their Congress at Halle, the majority of
the Independents decided to ask for affiliation to the Communist International and to
accept its 21 conditions. In December the Unified Communist Party was born: it had
over half a million members, a solidly organised vanguard with strong fractions in the
big unions, control over local unions in several industrial towns, 40 daily papers and
several specialised reviews and periodicals, an underground military organisation and
considerable financial resources. It was the instrument which had so far been lacking
to bring the proletarian revolution in Germany to a successful conclusion, all the
communists
thought.
The conquest of a majority of the proletariat
The Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920 had set itself the task of
the construction of such parties, with the perspective of an early conquest of power in
several countries. Summing up its work, Zinoviev, president of the International,
declared: I am profoundly convinced that the Second Congress of the Comintern is
the prelude to another congress, the world congress of Soviet republics. And Trotsky
explained why the Communists wished to see a split in the working-class movement:
There is no doubt that the proletariat would be in power in all countries if there had
not been between the Communist Parties and the masses, between the revolutionary
masses and the revolutionary vanguard, a powerful and complex machine, the parties
of the Second International and the trade unions, which, in the epoch of the
disintegration and death of the bourgeoisie, placed their machine at its service. From
the time of this Congress, the split in the world working class must be accelerated
tenfold.
Zinoviev indicated the meaning of the split at Halle: We work for the split, not
because we want only 18 instead of 21 Conditions, but because we do not agree on
the question of the world revolution, on democracy and the dictatorship of the
proletariat. For the Communists the split was not simply a state of affairs destined to
last for some time, but an immediate necessity in order to eliminate definitively from
the workers movement the reformist leaders who acted as agents of the bourgeoisie.
It was the preface to the reconstitution of unity on the basis of a revolutionary
programme, a condition for victory in the struggle for power.
Once the split had been realised there was still the question of wresting from the
reformist chiefs the millions of proletarians who made up their following. Lenin, more
than anyone, sought to win support in the Communist Parties for the understanding of
the necessity for a United Front policy; later, Zinoviev said of this policy that it was
the expression of the consciousness that (i) we have not yet won a majority in the
working class; (ii) the social democracy is still very strong; (iii) we occupy defensive
positions and the enemy is on the offensive; (iv) the decisive battles are not yet on the
agenda.

It was from analysis such as this that at the beginning of 1921 the leaders of the
German CP addressed an open letter to the trade unions and workers parties
proposing common action on an immediate programme of defence of living standards.
The letter, which Lenin described as a model political initiative, began with the
recognition that more than ten million workers still followed the Social Democratic
leaders and the trade union officials and obeyed their orders. Communist strategy,
wrote Radek, must be to convince these large masses of workers that the trade union
bureaucracy and the Social Democratic Party not only do not want to fight for the
dictatorship of the proletariat, but also do not want to fight for the most fundamental
day-to-day interests of the working class.
However, the Second Congress fixed as a first objective the construction of parties
capable of leading the struggle of the masses for power: for Zinoviev and a part of his
group, in the headquarters of the International, the idea of the conquest of the
masses apart from the march to power was an opportunist conception. They saw the
open
letter
as
an
instrument
of
demobilisation.
Destructive activism
Rallying to the Zinoviev line after having been one of the authors of the open letter,
Karl Radek then wrote to the German CP that it was necessary to break with the waitand-see attitude which it had followed while it was still a sect and become conscious
that, now that it was a mass party, it had become a real factor in the class struggle. It
was necessary, he wrote, to activise our policy in order to draw in new mass support.
For his part, Rakosi, emissary of the International at the Italian Socialist Party
Congress at Livorno, adopted the same activist position and took pleasure in the
perhaps inevitable but catastrophic split, which left the overwhelming majority of the
revolutionary workers behind the centrist leaders of the Socialist Party and reduced
the scarcely founded Italian CP to the status of a sect. Against Levi, who maintained
that they had no right to split when the movement was in retreat, he boasted before the
Central Committee of the German CP of the necessity and virtue of splits, developing
the theme of a too large party which would strengthen itself by purging itself.
Another collaborator of Zinoviev, a compatriot of Rakosi, Bela Kun, bore the
responsibility, as emissary of the International, for having thrown the German CP into
the March Action. Did he, as has been supposed, follow the suggestions of Zinoviev,
who was frightened by Russian internal difficulties at the time of the Kronstadt
revolt? Did he try to force a revolutionary crisis in Germany to prevent the Russian
communists from having to make the retreat of the New Economic Policy? In the
present state of documentation no certain answer is possible. What is certain is that
Kun placed his prestige as Comintern delegate behind a theory of the offensive which
was to be used to justify the position of the CP in March and was to end in disaster.
It is equally unquestionable that the centralised structure of the International, the
doubtful practice, introduced by Zinoviev, of Comintern agents not responsible to the
parties which they supervised, raised a problem of organisation which would be
pointed out by Lenin at the Fourth Congress, but never really tackled.

Lenin on the party and the March Action

It is known today, on the other hand, that Lenin and Trotsky had to wage an energetic
political struggle in the leadership of the Russian CP and the CI against the partisans
of the offensive, at the head of whom stood Zinoviev, before imposing their point of
view at the Third World Congress. It was upon Trotsky that the task devolved of
showing that the international situation had been modified since 1919, that the taking
of power was no longer on the agenda, but that the Communist Parties had to turn to
the conquest of the masses: a condition for the struggle for power in the next phase of
revolutionary advance.
To Lenin fell the task of denouncing, wringing the neck of, the theory of the
offensive, holding up to ridicule the puerile arguments of its defenders the
kuneries, as he called them, of Kun, as well as the boasting of the Italian Terracini,
who took advantage of the Bolshevik example in order to excuse the small size of his
own party.
Lenin joined Levi in denouncing the March Action. He was careful, in approving
someone who had broken party discipline, not to anger those who, through discipline,
and in good faith, had followed absurd slogans. He conveyed his inner thoughts to
Clara Zetkin, who, very fortunately, later recounted them. Lenin thought that Levis
criticism was justified. Unfortunately, he made it in a unilateral, exaggerated and
even malicious fashion, in a way which lacked a sense of solidarity with the party.
In short, he lost his head and thus concealed the real problems from the party, which
turned against him. For this he had to be condemned by the Congress and was. But
Lenin added: We must not lose Levi, both for ourselves and for the cause. We cannot
afford to lose talented men, we must do what is possible to keep those that we have.
Lenin declared himself ready, if Levi behaved himself (for example, by working for
the party under an assumed name), personally to ask for his re-admission after three
or four months. The important thing, he said, is to leave the road open back to us.
Speaking to Clara Zetkin of two workers, Melzahn and Neumann, supporters of Levi
and delegates at the World Congress, who had even been reproached by hecklers for
the posts which they held in the trade unions, while they replied by attacking hairsplitting intellectuals, Lenin said: They are wonderful ... I do not know whether they
will make shock troops, but there is one thing of which I am sure: it is people like
these who make up the long columns with solid ranks of the revolutionary proletariat.
It is on their unbreakable force that everything depends in the factories and the trade
unions: these are the elements who must be assembled and led into action, it is
through them that we are in contact with the masses. He added, speaking of the
Independent leaders who had come to communism in 1920: With them also patience
is necessary, and one mustnt think that the purity of communism is in danger if it
sometimes happens that they do not succeed yet in finding a clear, precise expression
of communist thought.
Through these informal words of Lenin to the German militant can be seen the
constant concern of the revolutionary leader for his party. Lenin saw that a leadership
cannot be built in a few days by bureaucratic decisions, but develops and raises itself
up in years of patient effort. It was vital not to close the doors by purely negative
attitudes to erring comrades but to aid them, develop a deep sense of the solidarity of

the party and enable them to take their bearings. The party of the workers vanguard
had to bring together different generations, comrades with varied experience: the
young, the impatient, the leftists together with the older, more solid and prudent,
often opportunist members. The intellectuals had to be brought into harness with the
practical men of the trade unions. The contacts of the party had to be enriched and its
understanding, consciousness and means of action developed by the qualities brought
into it by people from very different, yet close, backgrounds: syndicalists, socialists,
anarchists who sought a common goal by different roads, like the proletariat itself.
All these men had to be brought into a common struggle by a constant effort to
construct the party, raise the level of its consciousness and by fighting to raise the
level of the consciousness of the masses. Learn, learn, learn! Agitate, agitate, agitate!
Be prepared, prepared to the utmost in order to use the next revolutionary wave with
all our conscious energy.
These are the real lessons of the March Action. Thus, as Lenin stressed in a letter of
August 14, 1921, to German militants, revolutionaries must learn to determine
correctly the times when the masses of the proletariat cannot rise with them. Ten
years later, in the face of the Nazi hordes, there would not be a revolutionary party in
Germany, but a Stalinist party and a Social Democratic Party which equally shared the
responsibility for the disaster of 1933. The responsibility of those who were unable to
build the party which was necessary in Germany is no less crushing. After them,
however, it is no longer possible to underestimate the difficulties of the enterprise, and
to believe that it is enough to proclaim ideas in order to win, without undertaking the
hard labour of construction of the historic instrument for their victory.