The Comintern and the German Communist Party PART ONE: How did we end up with the organizational model called Marxism-Leninism, oralternately, democratic centralism? The tendency has been to assume that there is anunbroken line between the small, sectarian groups of today and the Bolshevik Party of theturn of the century. When organizational changes have been made, the assumption is thatthese are refinements to Lenin's party. For example, if Bukharin published ruthlesscriticisms of Lenin's position on the national question in the newspaper "TheStar", an �migr� Bolshevik paper, we have tended to assume that this was ananomaly. The essence of Leninism is to defend a unitary political line in the officialparty newspaper and Bukharin's "indiscipline" was a sign of immature Bolshevismrather than a confirmation of its true spirit. Tracing the evolution of Lenin's organizational approach to the rigid, monolithicmodels of today requires an examination of official Comintern documents of the early 1920ssince these became the guidelines for organizing Communist Parties. Most"Marxist-Leninist" parties of today regard this period as a link in the chainbetween the historic Bolshevik Party and what passes for Leninism today. Rather thanseeing these Comintern documents as a distortion of historic Bolshevism, we have tended toregard them as hagiography. Part of the problem is that Lenin gave his official blessingto these documents and this somehow gives them a hallowed status. It is time to examinethem on their own merits. The first clear statement on organizational guidelines were contained in the July 12,1921 Theses on the Structure of Communist Parties, submitted to the Third Congress of theComintern. W. Koenen, a German delegate, confessed that they were hastily drafted and werereferred without further discussion to a commission. Two days later, they were passedunanimously without discussion. The purpose of the theses was to impose a uniform model onCommunist Parties worldwide. For example, they state that "to carry out daily party work every member should asa rule belong to a small working group, a committee, a commission, a fraction, or a cell.Only in this way can party work be distributed, conducted, and carried out in an orderlyfashion." Of course, what this led to everywhere is the immediate creation offractions or cells. Anybody who has been a member of a "Marxist-Leninist" groupwill be familiar with this approach to political work. Nobody has ever thought criticallyabout what it means to have a "cell" or a "fraction" in a union ormass movement that speaks with the same voice on behalf of a single tactical orientation,but nevertheless the rule--hardly discussed at the Congress--became law. Poor Lenin was trying to sort out all sorts of problems that year and probably didn'thave the minutiae of organizational resolutions upper-most in his mind, but there is someevidence that these sorts of rigid guidelines did not sit well with him. A year later, atthe fourth congress, Lenin offered some critical comments on them: "At the third congress in 1921 we adopted a resolution on the structure ofcommunist parties and the methods and content of their activities. It is an excellentresolution, but it is almost entirely Russian, that is to say, everything in it is takenfrom Russian conditions. That is its good side, but it is also its bad side, bad becausescarcely a single foreigner--I am convinced of this, and I have just re-read it-can readit. Firstly, it is too long, fifty paragraphs or more. Foreigners cannot usually readitems of that length. Secondly, if they do read it, they cannot understand it, preciselybecause it is too Russian...it is permeated and imbued with a Russian spirit. Thirdly, ifthere is by chance a foreigner who can understand it, he cannot apply it...My impressionis that we have committed a gross error in passing that resolution, blocking our own roadto further progress. As I said, the resolution is excellent, and I subscribe to every oneof the fifty paragraphs. But I must say that we have not yet discovered the form in whichto present our Russian experience to foreigners, and for that reason the resolution hasremained a dead letter. If we do not discover it, we shall not go forward." This resolution, which was composed in haste and which Lenin described as "tooRussian", was never subjected to the sort of critical evaluation that he proposed.The opposite process occurred. The rigid, schematic organizational forms were not onlyaccepted, but turned even more rigid and schematic. Part of the explanation for this isthat Lenin himself died and nobody in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had the sortof subtle understanding that he did about such questions. The party hack Zinoviev becamethe supreme arbiter of organizational questions and took the communist movement in exactlythe opposite direction. The Comintern ended up proposing organizational guidelines thatwere even "more Russian" than the ones that were adopted in 1921. The explanation for this is twofold. The party leadership--including all factions leftand right--understood only the outward forms of the Bolshevik Party rather than its innerspirit. Also, the reversals in the class struggle in the early 1920s--especially inGermany--tended to create a crisis atmosphere in the Russian party and the Comintern.Under such conditions, the tendency is to circle the wagons and enforce ideologicaluniformity on the basis of the orientation of the current leadership. Criticism isconsidered "anti-party" and ultimately an expression of alien class forces. Therelationship of the Russian party to the class struggle in Germany during this period willbe the subject of my next post. PART TWO: There are no shortcuts in building revolutionary parties, but theoverwhelming tendency in "Marxism-Leninism" is to do things in the name ofexpediency. For example, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party always transferred partymembers into politically dissident branches to achieve an artificial majority. Ipersonally moved from New York to Boston in 1970, and then from Boston to Houston 3 yearslater, in order to help subdue such branches. The national office always views thesemachinations as being in the interest of the working class since they believe thatdissident branches inevitably reflect alien class influences. Unfortunately, this type of behavior is deeply ingrained in the Communist movement andgot its start in the very early days of the Comintern, even when Lenin was in charge. Manyof these problems are Lenin's fault since he was critical in the establishment of theComintern itself, an institution that embodied all the problems of resolving politicalproblems administratively. It may come as a surprise to some comrades, but Lenin wascapable of making mistakes. The Comintern was a big one. If we examine the relationship of the Comintern to the revolutionary forces in Germanyimmediately after the end of WWI, we can see how these mistakes helped to shape aCommunist Party in Germany that simply was not up to the task of confronting Germancapitalism effectively. Communist Parties can only become vanguard parties when theyestablish their authority in the mass movement through victories. The German CommunistParty's authority, on the other hand, came primarily from the benediction it received fromthe Comintern. It was built on weak foundations. Let us review the left-wing movement in Germany in the post-war period. The GermanCommunist Party was formed by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in solidarity with theSoviet victory, but this party was not a clone of Lenin's party. Rosa Luxemburg had her own peculiar ideas about party-building and they clashedviolently with Lenin's. She made a fetish of spontaneity and thought that the democraticcentralism of the Russian party was a guarantee of bureaucracy and dictatorship. What isnot appreciated is the degree to which her hostility to any form of centralism had as muchto do with the top-heavy German Social Democracy which exercised rigid discipline througha tightly-organized hierarchical structure. Her own Spartacus League, which predates the Communist Party, was deeply flawed bythese anti-centralization prejudices. The League was a major actor in the 1918 uprising inGermany, but it had no conception of coordinating the mass movement nationally. Mostly,the Spartacus League threw itself into isolated street battles that lacked the power totopple the regime. On December 18, 1918 Luxemburg and the other Spartacists founded the Communist Party incombination with the Left Radicals, another revolutionary grouping. The new CommunistParty retained some of the old prejudices against centralism. A central body wasestablished called the Zentrale to provide ideological guidance to the national party, butCommunist Party units throughout the country had local autonomy. Also, the Zentrale had nocontrol over party publications. Thus, it can be said that the Communist Party represented old wine being poured intonew bottles. It was Communist in name, but the organizational principles were those thathad evolved as a reaction to the centralism of German Social Democracy and to thedemocratic centralism of the Russian party which they failed to grasp adequately. A month later, in January 1920, the German revolutionary movement organized anotherunsuccessful uprising against the government which failed for many of the reasons of theprevious year. The objective conditions had not ripened and the revolutionary forces wereincapable of coordinating the mass movement effectively. Street rioting and strikessubsided and civil order was restored. In the aftermath of the uprising, Luxemburg andLiebknecht were arrested and murdered by government troops with the complicity of SocialDemocratic leaders. The German left in 1920 now confronted a declining mass movement. The three majorparties of the left were also bitterly divided. The Social Democracy had 102 delegates inthe Reichstag, while a left-wing split called the Independent Socialist Party had 82. TheCommunist Party could only send 2 delegates, Paul Levi--the party's leader--and ClaraZetkin, a legendary socialist leader. The only way the Communist Party could have grown was by patiently persuading theGerman working class of its message. Many of the potential recruits would come from theIndependent Socialist Party, which split from the Social Democracy in opposition to thepro-war policy of the leaders. The Spartacus League was actually a faction of this party. The Communist Party and the Independent Socialist Party both attended the Second WorldCongress of the Comintern, the latter as a guest. Another smaller party, the ultraleftGerman Communist Workers Party, attended. At this gathering, Lenin discussed the prospects for German Communism with Paul Levi,the party's leader. Lenin was anxious for German Communism to grow rapidly. He keenly feltthe isolation of the young Soviet republic and hoped for a breakthrough in the West torelieve the pressure. He thought that the left-wing of the Independent Socialist Partycould be split from the party and be convinced to join the much smaller Communist Party.Levi suggested a more cautious approach, one which involved patient collaborative workwith the Independents as a preparation for fusion. Lenin's desire for a rapid victory in Germany clouded his ability to judge objectiveconditions there in an impartial manner. The only judgment we can render on Lenin'sexpectations was that they were unrealistic and based on an inadequate understanding ofthe German class struggle. A anecdote reported by the German revolutionary Balabanoff dramatizes the problem. At ameeting in Lenin's offices during the Second World Congress, Zinoviev stood before astrategic map of Germany, with Lenin and 3 German delegates, including Levi, inattendance. Zinoviev was speculating on possibilities for working class support for RedArmy initiatives. The Red Army was fighting successfully in Poland against thecounter-revolution and driving westward. Zinoviev stated that according to Trotsky'sestimates, the Red Army would reach the German border within a few days. Turning to the seated parties, Zinoviev asked, "In your opinion, Comrades, whatforms will the uprising in East Prussia take?" (East Prussia bordered Poland.) Thethree Germans stared at him in amazement. The predominantly peasant East Prussia was oneof the most conservative German regions, and an uprising in support of the Red Armysounded like a bad joke to the German delegates. One of them, Ernest Mayer, said that anuprising was unlikely. An irritated Lenin turned to Levi and asked his opinion. When Leviremained silent, Lenin terminated the discussion by remarking, "In any case, youought to know that our Central Committee holds quite a different opinion." The favorable news of Red Army advances emboldened triumphalist moods in the Kremlin.Even though the French Socialist Party and the German Independent Socialist Party attendedthe congress as friendly consultative delegates, the Russian Communists seemed in no moodto placate these "half-hearted" or centrist formations. To the contrary, thiscongress passed the famous 21 conditions for entry into the Comintern, which theyenvisioned as a single Communist Party with branches in different countries. These 21conditions were drafted by Zinoviev with Lenin's agreement. One provision urged by theItalian ultraleftist Bordiga was particularly stringent. It demanded that all partymembers be expelled if they rejected the 21 conditions. These 21 conditions could only beconsidered a slap in the face by the French and German socialists, who in every other waywere sympathetic to the revolution. When the congress was over, Levi returned to Germany in a mood of despair. TheIndependents also faced a difficult situation. Even though they felt constrained by the 21conditions, they still sought to ally themselves with the Soviet revolution and theorganized revolutionary movement that identified with it. They convened a special congressto consider the 21 conditions. A debate was held between Zinoviev in favor of the 21conditions and Rudolf Hilferding opposed. The hall was decked out with Soviet regalia,which helped to deepen the polarization of an already polarized situation. Hilferdingargued, quite correctly, that the 21 conditions were a schematic projection of Russianorganizational norms on other countries with different traditions. 236 delegates at the meeting accepted the 21 conditions and 156 rejected them. TheComintern had successfully split the Independent Socialist Party in half. Theorganizational consequences of the vote was that 300,000 out of 890,000 Independentsjoined the new Communist Party in December 1920. Two events slowed the leakage of the Independent Socialist Party into the CommunistParty. First, the Red Army offensive slowed and German workers grew skeptical about thenotion of a Red Army-assisted proletarian revolution in Western Europe. The other eventwas the creation of the Profintern, the Communist Trade Union International. This was anattempt to create unions independent of the Socialist-run unions. German workerstraditionally had a very strong identification with their unions, even more so than withtheir party, and this move alienated many of them. At a ceremony to celebrate the admissions of the Independents into the Communist Party,the Russian-inspired triumphalist mood infected the leadership, including Paul Levi. Alldoubts about the wisdom of a wholesale ingestion of hundreds of thousands of new partymembers were thrown to the wind. Levi gave a speech to the gathering which hardly touchedon German conditions at all. He spoke mostly about Asia and the Anglo-American world andconcluded his remarks with the bombastic salutation, "Enter, ye workers of Germany,enter our new party, for here are thy gods." The German Communist Party owned its enormous growth not to the skill of theleadership, but merely to the authority of the Russians. Lenin, Trotsky and Zinovievlooked unblinkingly at this artificial and inflated monstrosity with high expectations.These expectations would be dashed over and over again in the next couple of years forreasons inevitably linked to the ill-considered manner in which the party was created. Itentered the center stage of German politics not through strenuous exercises in the massmovement, but through the steroids of Comintern intervention. The reversals that followed and their consequence on the Russian party itself will bethe topic of my next post. (Source: "Stillborn Revolution, the Communist Bid for Power in Germany,1921-1923", Werner T. Angress, Princeton, 1963) PART THREE: In March of 1921 the German Communist Party attempted a putsch that was theresult of its own immaturity and some ultraleft prompting from Bela Kun, a Cominternemissary. The March Action, as it became known, was a disaster. Paul Levi, who had resigned as party chairman earlier in the year, would emerge as thesharpest critic of the March Action and a key critic of Comintern interference in theGerman party. He had become embroiled in a dispute between the Italian Socialist Party andthe Comintern over the infamous 21 conditions. The Italian party was divided into 3factions--right, center and left--, but only the right was consciously reformist. TheComintern representatives to the Italian party convention in January 1921, as would beexpected, ordered the Italians to throw out the right wing. The leader of the centerfaction, Giacinto Serrati, did not want to alienate the Comintern but he was equallyunwilling to break with the right faction on the spot since these party leaders had astrong union base. To Levi's consternation, a Comintern-engineered split took place andthe remaining left faction formed the Communist Party of Italy. When Levi returned to Germany to sit down with the Zentrale (Central Committee) todiscuss the Italian events, one of the two Soviet emissaries who engineered the split, aHungarian by the name of Matyas Rakosi, invited himself to the meeting. He defended thesplit and threatened that other parties, including their own, could get the same treatmentif they didn't toe the line. The cowed Zentrale took a vote on the Italian events andLevi's position lost 28 to 23, whereupon he resigned as party chairman. This left the Germany Communist Party in the hands of one Heinrich Brandler, a totalmediocrity whose only claim to fame was some trade-union experience and commanding anarmed detachment of workers in Saxony during the fitful 1919 uprising. Brandler had fewstrong convictions of his own and soon found himself accommodating to a rather aggressiveultraleft faction led by Ruth Fischer. Fischer and her followers thought that theCommunist Party should be a party of action, an approach that stripped of its Marxistverbiage was pure Blanquism. The German Communists received a surprise visit from a three emissaries from theComintern, who at this point were covering as much territory per month as modern-dayjet-setters. They were led by Bela Kun, who had led an unsuccessful revolt in Hungary 2years earlier and was now on official duty in Germany to give the Communists there thebenefit of his wisdom. The party, Kun advised, must take the offensive even it had to resort to provocativemeasures. Once the Communists launched an offensive, 2 to 3 million German workers werebound to follow their bold lead. When he revealed his ideas to veteran Communist ClaraZetkin, she was shocked. She went immediately to Paul Levi and stated that a witness mustbe present at all future conversations with Kun, who she regarded as an adventurer despitehis Comintern credentials. Kun and the Fischerites were successful in winning Brandler to their ultraleft schemaand he announced in early March 1921 that "...We have in the Reich today two to threemillion non-Communist workers who can be influenced by our Communist organization, whowill fight under our flag...even in an offensive action. If my view is correct, then thesituation obligates us to deal with the existing tensions at home and abroad no longerpassively; we must no longer exploit...them merely for agitation, but we areobligated...to interfere through Action in order to change matters in our sense." This ultraleft putschism bore rotten fruit in the next few weeks when tens of thousandsof workers in Central Germany were thrown into a ill-prepared battle with the police andarmy. The Prussian province of Saxony and the neighboring states of Thurngia and Saxonyformed a powerful industrial base that had recently been the scene of pitched battlesbetween strikers, especially coal-miners, and the state. Otto Horsing, the head ofPrussian Saxony, decided to provoke the workers into a major battle so as to vanquish themonce and for all. He called for their disarmament while turning a blind eye to right-wingmilitias in neighboring Bavaria. On March 17, word of Horsing's provocation reached Brandler's Central Committee whodecided to turn the local fight into a revolutionary struggle for power. To say that theyhad no idea how one thing would lead to another is the understatement of the century. Whatfollowed was a series of miscued confrontations that left the workers defeated anddemoralized. The Communists summoned the workers to battle with words drafted by Bela Kun himself: "The bourgeoisie stands in arms and refuses to surrender them... and the Germanworkers have no weapons!.. Now the law means nothing any more; nor does Versailles.Weapons will decide, and the counterrevolutionaries refuse to surrender theirs...Everyworker will simply ignore the law and must seize a weapon wherever he may find one." This is an utterly cavalier attitude to take to the armed struggle, to say the least.What happened is that the call to arms was largely ignored by the Social Democrats and theIndependent Socialist rank and file, while being actively opposed by their leaders. Nosignificant armed actions were mounted by the Communists themselves. The most successfulinsurrectionary activity was organized by one Max Hoelz who had been thrown out of theparty in 1919 after getting on Brandler's wrong side. Hoelz was a fire-breathing adventurer who had a real talent for Action. He formed shocktroops almost immediately and began robbing banks, burning down buildings, dynamitingtrains in a bold but strategically insignificant campaign. For example, the repeatingdynamiting of passenger trains filled with workers going off to their morning factory jobstended to alienate them and the people who worked on the railroads. The German Communists could not control this insurrection which did take on a certainlife of its own. Many deeply frustrated unemployed and lumpen elements joined in therioting and looting. Neither were they capable of spreading the struggle to other parts ofthe country. In Berlin, despite their most inflammatory slogans, the masses remaineduninvolved. This was a purely Communist Action and regarded with polite curiosity at thebest. In most cases, it earned bitter resentment. Heavy fighting continued for several days until the government won the upper hand..Despite the defeat, the Communists viewed the events as a qualified success. They put allthe blame on the "treacherous" non-Communist workers parties. The March Actionleft hundreds of workers dead, while thousands of others lost their jobs and prospects forfuture employment Only two leaders, Brandler and the adventurer Hoelz, were jailed. Mostof the retribution was directed against their followers. It is not surprising that in theaftermath, the Communist Party of Germany shrank from 350,000 to 180,000 by the summer of1921. Paul Levi wrote a scathing criticism of the March Action which Clara Zetkin supportedcompletely. At this point the German party was divided sharply between critics like Leviand ultraleftists like Ruth Fischer who stood by the "strategy." A German delegation arrived in Moscow for the Third Congress of the Comintern in 1922.On the agenda of this gathering was to be an assessment of the German events. Lenin hadbecome pessimistic about the prospects of revolutionary upheavals in Europe and wasthinking of ways to weather the storm. The NEP was a strategy fit for an ebb in the globalclass struggle. If the mood in the Kremlin had become conservative, this meant that theGerman ultraleftists were bound to be repudiated. While storming the barricades might havebeen an appropriate form of revolutionary activity during War Communism and Trotsky'smarch into Poland, new realities would call for moderation. Lenin and Trotsky turned the Congress into a campaign against ultraleftism, the Germanparty's in particular. Trotsky's final speech evoked the new approach perfectly: "...In a word, the situation now at the time of the Third Congress of theCommunist International is nto the same as it was during the First and SecondCongresses...Now for the first time we see and feel that we are not so immediately near tothe goal, to the conquest of power, to the world revolution. At the time, in 1919, we saidto ourselves: 'It is a question of months.' Now we can say: 'It is perhaps a question ofyears.'" There was one problem, however, in getting to the bottom of the German fiasco. TheComintern, including Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev, the three main leaders, refused toacknowledge their own responsibility in the events. It was Bela Kun, after all, who hadproposed the ultraleft course. It was Karl Radek who had endorsed these actions as well. When it came time to hand down an official verdict on the German events, the Cominternproduced a mealy-mouthed document that let everybody off the hook, especially itself. Itstated that the German party was forced into an offensive by the Prussian state and that,despite mistakes, did the best it could to advance the struggle. An honest appraisal wouldhave said nothing like this. It would have been a ruthlessly honest critique of theComintern and the German Communists. This would have been the only way for the party tolearn from its mistakes. Instead, Paul Levi, the only Communist who warned about the foolishness of the strategyin advance, was expelled for his efforts. He was charged with "indiscipline"since he went public in his attack on the March Actions. The Communists who were responsible for the March Actions, like so many Communists whofollowed them in history, were convinced at the gathering of the "error of theirways" and soon became the most vehement defenders of cautiousness. They decided toout-Lenin Lenin. The March Events and their aftermath, including Levi's expulsion, wouldsignal the beginning of the end of German Communism as an independent revolutionary force.The next two years brought further intrigues and reversals, as the spiral descended. Thiswould all culminate in the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, the "Bolshevization"Congress. In my next post, I will cover the events that led up to the fateful congresswhich sealed the fate of all attempts at building revolutionary parties for decades tocome. PART FOUR: The German Communist Party was chastised at the 1922 Comintern WorldCongress for its adventurist role in the 1922 March uprising. This did not prevent theComintern from bringing charges against the German party leader Paul Levi who had raisedthese criticisms before they became accepted by the Russians. Levi was expelled for airinghis views in public while the Comintern architect of the uprising, Bela Kuhn, remainedunscathed. The German delegates came back from the 3rd World Congress ready to accommodate to thehigher wisdom of the Kremlin which now preached a more moderate policy, including a unitedfront with Socialists. There remained a core of recalcitrant ultraleftists in the Germanleadership grouped around Ruth Fischer who distrusted any form of conciliation with thereformists, but the majority of the party was committed to united action with the otherworker's parties in Germany. The general secretary of the German party was Ernst Reuter-Friesland, an enthusiasticsupporter of the united front. He was a one-time supporter of Ruth Fischer's ultraleftopposition but changed his mind at the 3rd World Congress. Reuter-Friesland was no hack,however. He supported the new united front policy because it made sense, not just becauseLenin was for it. Reuter-Friesland was a little bit too independent-minded for his own good. TheComintern had been issuing "open letters" to the German party andReuter-Friesland prevailed on the German representatives to the Comintern to ask it not togo over his head. These "open letters" tended to incorporate sectarian attackson non-Communist unions that Reuter-Friesland thought imprudent. The Comintern ignored hisrequests and all kinds of pamphlets, leaflets and brochures--written in Moscow--floodedthe German left and trade unions. Reuter-Friesland grew angry. Meanwhile, Paul Levi spoke for a bloc of ex-Communists in the Reichstag known as theCommunist Working Cooperative. Radek insisted that Levi's group be "unmasked" asenemies of Communism. If anybody refused to denounce Levi, they would be considered hisally. Does this sound sickeningly familiar? The problem was that politically Paul Levi had positions very close to those of theGerman Communist Party, not surprisingly since he had been advocating a united front ayear before it became the majority viewpoint. Therefore, the opposition to Levi was basedsolely on sectarian motives: anybody who is not with us is against us. Tensions grewbetween Reuter-Friesland and the Comintern until they reached the breaking point. He madean appeal to the rank-and-file of the party: "The Communist International, and the idea of international centralized leadershipof the revolutionary proletariat will be hopelessly compromised if such methods assmelling out deviations, snooping, uncontrollable side influences and ... interferencesinto the affairs of the German party are not ruthlessly exposed and eliminated." He issued a pamphlet "On the Crisis in Our Party" and blamed Karl Radek forhaving created the crisis. This act resulted in his being brought up on charges and he wasexpelled. Reuter-Friesland was replaced by Heinrich Brandler, the third new party leaderin the span of two years. The German party was then thrown into a new crisis over the Treaty of Rapallo, a peaceagreement between Germany and the Soviet Union concluded at the end of April in 1922. Thistreaty raised the same sort of contradictions as the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of 1939. Howcould Communists call for the overthrow of a regime that the Russian party had justpledged to maintain peaceful relations with? Stalin resolved this contradiction in astraightforward manner. He declared that anti-fascist agitation should immediate stop. TheCommunist Parties of 1922 had not become degenerated and still tried to maintain arevolutionary outlook, no matter the difficulties. Karl Radek did not help matters unfortunately. He interpreted the Treaty of Rapallo asa go-ahead to support the German bourgeoisie against the dominant European capitalisms,especially France. Germany was forced to sign a punitive reparations agreement after WWIand was not able to satisfy the Entente powers. France then marched into the Ruhr in orderto seize control of the mines and steel mills. The German capitalist class screamed bloodymurder and proto-fascist armed detachments marched into the Ruhr to confront the Frenchtroops. Radek interpreted these German right-wing counter-measures as a sign of progressivenationalism and argued that a bloc of all classes was necessary to confront Anglo-Frenchimperialism. At the height of the anti-French armed struggle in the Ruhr, the GermanCommunist Party took Radek's cue and began to issue feelers to the right-wingnationalists. On June 20, 1922 Radek went completely overboard and made a speech proposing a de factoalliance between the Communists and the Fascists. This, needless to say, was in hiscapacity as official Comintern representative to the German party. It was at a time whenTrotsky was still in good graces in the Soviet Union. Nobody seemed to raise an eyebrowwhen Radek urged that the Communists commemorate the death of Albert Schlageter, afreecorps figher who died in the Ruhr and was regarded as a martyr of the right-wing, aGerman Timothy McVeigh so to speak. Radek's stated that "...we believe that the greatmajority of nationalist minded masses belong not to the camp of the capitalists but to thecamp of the Workers." Radek's lunacy struck a chord with the German Communist ultraleftists who went evenfurther in their enthusiasm for the right-wing fighters. Ruth Fischer gave a speech at agathering of right-wing students where she echoed fascist themes: "Whoever cries out against Jewish capital...is already a fighter for his class,even though he may not know it. You are against the stock market jobbers. Fine. Tramplethe Jewish capitalists down, hang them from the lampposts...But...how do you feel aboutthe big capitalists, the Stinnes, Klockner?...Only in alliance with Russia, Gentlemen ofthe "folkish" side, can the German people expel French capitalism from the Ruhrregion." As the French occupation of the Ruhr continued, economic suffering mounted in Germanyas hyperinflation set in. Strikes took on more and more of a political character asworkers throughout the country expressed open hatred for the government, despite thepresence of Socialist Party ministers. The German Communist Party would once again beafforded the opportunity to unite the workers and lead a struggle for state power. Thetumultuous events of the next year would once again test the German Communist Party andexpose the strains that reliance on the Comintern put upon it. This will be the subject ofmy next post. PART FIVE: The other day I was talking with Scott McLemee over the phone about thefairly unimpressive performance of the Comintern with respect to the German revolution. Hespeculated that if Lenin had not made it back to Russia in 1917, there probably would nothave been a Bolshevik revolution. Which got me to thinking. The best way to understand theOctober 1923 fiasco in Germany is an attempt at a Bolshevik revolution without theconsummate leadership of Lenin. It is a sad story. The decision to launch a revolution in Germany in the Fall of 1923 was made in Moscow,not in Germany. Germany had definitely entered a pre-Revolutionary situation. Frenchoccupation of the Ruhr, unemployment, declining wages, hyperinflation and fascistprovocations all added up to an explosive situation. The crisis was deepest in the heavily industrialized state of Saxony where a left-wingSocialist named Erich Zeigner headed the government. He was friendly with the Communistsand made common cause with them. He called for expropriation of the capitalist class,arming of the workers and a proletarian dictatorship. This man, like thousands of othersin the German workers movement, had a revolutionary socialist outlook but was condemned asa "Menshevik" in the Communist press. The united front overtures to Zeignermostly consisted of escalating pressure to force him to accommodate to the maximumCommunist program. The Bolshevik leaders were monitoring the situation carefully. Lenin at this point wasbed-ridden with a stroke and virtually incommunicado. Any decisions that were to be madeabout an "intervention" in Germany would rest on Zinoviev, Stalin, Kamenev,Bukharin, Radek and Trotsky who were the key leaders in Lenin's absence. At a Politburo meeting on August 23, 1923 Germany's prospects were discussed. Trotskywas optimistic about victory and predicted that a showdown would occur in a matter ofweeks. Zinvoiev was also optimistic, but was reluctant to commit to a timetable. OnlyStalin voiced skepticism about an immanent uprising. A subcommittee was established tosupervise the German revolution. Radek, who had only a year earlier made a batty proposalfor an alliance with the ultraright, became the head of this group. The German revolution became the dominant theme of Russian politics from that momenton. Workers agreed to a wage freeze in order to help subsidize the German uprising. Womenwere asked at public meetings to donate their wedding rings and other valuables for theGerman cause. Revolutionary slogans were coined, like "German Steam Hammer and SovietBread will Conquer the World!" There was only slight problem. The head of the German Communist Party was simply not upto the task of leading a revolution and was the first to admit it. This cautious,phlegmatic functionary was a former trade union official and bore all the characteristicsof this breed. He had been implicated in the failed ultraleft uprising of 1921 and was noteager to go out on a limb again. When Brandler got to Moscow, the Bolshevik leaders cornered him and pressured him intoaccepting their call for a revolutionary showdown. What was key in their calculations wasthe likelihood that a bold action by the Communist Party would inevitably galvanize therest of the working class into action. Once again, an element of Blanquism had colored thethinking of the Bolshevik leaders. They assumed that the scenario that had occurred inRussia in 1917 would also occur in Germany. This was an unwarranted assumption that wasfed by a combination of romanticism and despair. Romanticism about the prospects of aquick victory and despair over the USSR's deepening isolation. It was Zinoviev, the head of the Comintern, who was most self-deluded by the strengthof the German Communist Party. He wrote in October 1923, "in the cities the workersare definitely numerically superior and" and "the forthcoming German revolutionwill be a proletarian class revolution. The 22 million German workers who make up its armyrepresent the cornerstone of the international proletariat." What Zinoviev didn'ttake into account was that while the working class may be united socially andeconomically, it was not necessarily united politically. This turned out to be a fatalmiscalculation. Brandler was so swept up by the enthusiasm of the Bolshevik leaders thathe joined with them in pumping up the numbers. In the end he went so far as to claim thatthe Communists could count on the active support of 50,000 to 60,000 proletarians inSaxony. The Bolshevik leaders finally wore Brandler down and he agreed to their plans, whichinvolved the following: 1) The Communists would join Zeigner's government in Saxony as coalition partners andarm the workers. The state of Saxony would then provide a base for a military andpolitical offensive in the rest of Germany. 2) A date would be set for the seizure of power. Trotsky was the main advocate ofsetting a date. Over the objections of Brandler, Trotsky insisted that the date beNovember 9th. This was meant to coincide closely with the Bolshevik revolution of November7th, 1917. Trotsky said, "Let us take our own October Revolution as an example...Fromthe moment that the Bolsheviks were in the majority in the Petrograd Soviet...our partywas faced with the question--not of the struggle for power in general, but of preparingfor the seizure of power according to a definite plan, and at a fixed date. The chosenday, as it is well known, was the day upon which the All-Russian Congress of the Sovietswas to convene..." Trotsky simply could not perceive that Russian revolutionariessetting a date for themselves is much different than setting a date for revolutionaries inanother country. This distinction would have been lost on Trotsky who had gotten in thehabit of laying down tactics for other Communist Parties in his capacity as Cominternofficial. He had the audacity to tell the French Communist Party, for example, what shouldgo on the front page of their newspaper L'Humanite. The next few weeks witnessed escalating confrontations between the left-wing governmentin Saxony and the German capitalist class. The Communist newspaper "Red Flag"printed daily calls for arming the workers and preparing for an offensive against thebourgeoisie. A telegram from Zinoviev arrived on September 31 who confirmed that the datefor seizure of power would come in the first half of November. The problem, however, isthat an enormous gap existed between the feverish proclamations of their newspaper,Zinoviev's green light and the actual preparations for an armed offensive. In fact, theproblem was that very little attention was paid to technical and organizational details upto this point. While the Comintern had stressed the need for an underground apparatus,there was little evidence that the German party had paid any attention to such matters.The dichotomy between ultraleft braggadocio and painstaking preparation proved to be theparty's undoing. Specifically, their military plan required a 3 to 1 numerical superiority over the armyand police. However, the Communists could not rely on such numbers. There were 250, 000well-trained cops and soldiers while the Communist Party membership was only about300,000, including many people either too young or too old to be effective fighters. The bigger problem turned out to be political, however. The German Communist Party hadsimply overestimated its ability to command the allegiance of the rest of the workingclass and its parties. While this mass party had some claim to be the "vanguard"of the German working class as compared to the Maoist and Trotskyist sects of today, itstill had not won over the masses completely as the Bolsheviks of 1917 had. The German central government had reacted to the insurrectionary developments in Saxonyas one would expect. They assembled a fighting force under the command of General Mullerin order to restore order. As soon as the Communists heard about this white guard'spending attack, they assembled a conference of left-wing and labor leaders in Chemnitz,Saxony on October 21 to put together a united defense against the counter-revolution. Aside from 66 Communist delegates, there were 140 delegates from factory councils, 122representatives of labor unions, 79 delegates from control commissions, 15 delegates fromaction committees, 16 from unemployed committees and 7 from the Socialist Party. Brandlertook the floor and called for a general strike. His call was met by stony silence. What hehad not counted on was the hostility of the rest of the workers movement. As much as theyfeared the consequences of General Muller's offensive, they were not ready to follow thelead of a sectarian Communist Party that had unilaterally made decisions for the massmovement. On the day of the conference, the German army marched into Saxony and the CommunistParty was forced to call of its revolution. Or, to be more accurate, the Communist Partywas forced to call off the revolution of Zinoviev, Radek, Stalin and Trotsky. The consequences of this defeat were enormous. They had an effect on internal Russianpolitics which in turn had an effect on the Comintern. The net result was to increase toan even greater degree the control over the Communist Parties of the world and to foistupon them an ultra-centralized model that was called "Bolshevism" but had littleto do with Lenin's party. This was accomplished at the Fifth Congress of the Cominternwhich is the topic of my next post. PART SIX: The German Communist Party went through 3 wrenching experiences from 1921 to1923. 1) Bela Kuhn, the Comintern agent "assigned" to Germany, inspired the partyto take part in the ultraleft 1921 putsch. Paul Levi, the German Communist Party leader,objected to this course and spoke up publicly. He was expelled for his trouble. 2) Levi was replaced by Ernst Reuter-Friesland, who objected to Comintern"intervention" in German trade union politics. He was also accused of being toofriendly to the recently expelled Levi who had argued for a united front of working classparties, now official Communist policy. Reuter-Friesland was expelled in 1922. 3) After Reuter-Friesland's expulsion, the mediocre Heinrich Brandler took over.Summoned to Moscow, Brandler, against his own instincts, was persuaded to embark on afight for state power in early November, 1923. Trotsky's role was to convince Brandler'sand to set a fixed date. When the isolated German Communist Party failed to lead themasses to power, the Comintern once again found a convenient scapegoat in Brandler. He wasexpelled and replaced by the ultraleftist Ruth Fischer, who had been lining up support inthe USSR. While these wrenching changes were being foisted on the German Communist Party, theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union was going through its own tumult. Factional linesbetween the triumvirate of Zinoviev, Stalin and Kamenev on one hand, and Trotsky on theother were being drawn. The triumvirate decided to use the German events as a bludgeonagainst Trotsky, since Karl Radek, his close ally, was the chief architect of the failedGerman revolution. The scapegoating of Radek was in line with the degenerating state ofaffairs in Russian politics. The Russian party had become more and more bureaucratized. Lenin proposed to Trotskythat they wage a fight against Stalin, who they saw as a emerging bureaucratic dictator.Stalin's heavy-handed treatment of the Georgian nationality particularly incensed Lenin.When Lenin's wife Krupskaya was dispatched by Lenin to gather information on Stalin'shandling of the Georgians, he treated her rudely. Lenin interpreted this as a declarationof war. Meanwhile Trotsky had developed criticisms of the NEP. He thought that too manyconcessions were being made to the peasantry and to the NEP-men. Trotsky won the supportof many veteran Bolsheviks who were disturbed by the trends in the party and nation. Theyput forward a New Course that articulated their ideas on the direction the Soviet Unionshould take. It was the first formal critique of the embryonic Stalinist system. In aletter to branches of the Communist Party, Trotsky defended the New Course: "Away with passive obedience, with mechanical leveling by the authorities, withsuppression of personality, with servility, and with careerism! A Bolshevik is not merelya disciplined man [sic]: he is a man who in each case and on each question forges a firmopinion of his own and defends it courageously and independently not only against hisenemies but inside his own party." While Trotsky surely believed these words, it is regrettable that he did not take themseriously himself when he was wearing down the hapless Brandler. It was a servile Brandlerwho decided to plunge ahead with the foolish bid for state power in Germany and it was thedecidedly courageous Paul Levi who would have argued Trotsky down. In any event, Trotsky's letter captured the imagination of many Communists. Anorganized grouping already existed that concurred with many of Trotsky's New Coursecriticisms, even though the group could hardly be considered Trotskyist. While it includedhis close allies like Preobrazhensky and Antonov-Ovseenko, it also included members of theultraleft Workers Opposition. Shortly after the opposition emerged, it began to winfollowers everywhere. At least one-third of the Red Army party units sided with theopposition as did a majority of the student organizations. The triumvirate launched a bitter and unprincipled counter-attack which culminated inthe thirteenth party conference in May, 1924. They did everything they could to turn thefight into one of the Old Bolsheviks versus the upstart. Trotsky was depicted as"anti-party", a rather inflammatory but meaningless term that is often usedmyself against factional opponents in any internal struggle in a"Marxist-Leninist" group. While Trotsky spoke in the name of the workers, thetriumvirate claimed that he was really articulating the interests of the students andintelligentsia. In other words, he was a spokesman for the petty-bourgeoisie. Finally,they said his hatred for the party machine indicated that he continued to harboranti-Leninist sentiments. He was an unreformed semi-Menshevik. In brief, all of the methods of dehumanizing and smashing a political opponent weremobilized against Trotsky. He was a petty-bourgeois and a Menshevik. He did not believe inthe primacy of the working class. The triumvirate's underhanded attack on Trotsky is ofcourse the first line of defense of so-called "Marxist-Leninists". What betterway to demonize one's political opponents than by treating them as a wolf in sheep'sclothing. Bolshevik in name only, the opposition was in league with thecounter-revolution. The problem that the triumvirate faced was that Trotsky had an unblemished reputationinternationally. He was considered to be the preeminent leader of the Russian Revolution,next to Lenin. When word was received of the anti-Trotsky crusade, the French and PolishCommunist Parties protested and demanded that the differences between the two factions beresolved in a comradely manner. Unfortunately, most of the other Communist leaders hadlong given up any pretense of independence. In the process of eviscerating the GermanCommunist Party leadership, the Comintern eliminated the possibility of independent voicesbeing heard against bureaucratic maneuvers. Unfortunately, Trotsky himself hadparticipated in the weakening of the German party. At the May, 1924 Russian CP conference,only the French delegate Boris Souvarine stood up for Trotsky. The rest of the delegatesjoined in a procession of anti-Trotsky denunciations. A month later the "Bolshevization" Fifth Congress of the Comintern tookplace. This congress was designed by Zinoviev and Stalin to export the monolithic modelthat the Russian party had adopted. Whatever independence remained in the world-wideCommunist movement would soon disappear after this congress. Zinoviev and Stalin had oneand one interest only: to line up the world's revolutionary forces behind their faction.Ironically, the model that this monstrous Comintern congress adopted was identical to theone that the world Trotskyist movement itself adopted. This "Marxist-Leninist"monstrosity has been the organizational lynch-pin of all party-building attempts from 1924on. Trotskyists have always disavowed the political decisions made at this congress, buthave never addressed the organizational methodology that was ratified at the same time.The bureaucratic politics and the monolithic party-building model go hand in hand. The Fifth Congress gave the new leader of the German Communist Party, Ruth Fischer, theopportunity to rail against Radek, Trotsky and Brandler. They were all Mensheviks,opportunists and "liquidators of revolutionary principle." In the words of IsaacDeutscher, "she called for a monolithic International, modelled on the Russian party,from which dissent and contest of opinion would be banished. 'This world congress shouldnot allow the International to be transformed into an agglomeration of all sorts oftrends; it should forge ahead and embark on the road which leads to a single Bolshevikworld party.'" The Statutes of the Communist International adopted at the fifth congress were a rigid,mechanical set of rules for building Communist Parties. All of the Communist Parties weresubordinate to the Comintern and members of the parties had to obey all decisions of theComintern. The world congress of the Comintern would decide the most importantprogrammatic, tactical and organizational questions of the Comintern as a whole and itsindividual sections. It would be appropriate, for example, for the Comintern to overrule amember party that had decided to support Trotsky's New Course. The Statutes also includedthe sort of ridiculous measures that mark most of the sect-cults of today. For example,statute 35 declares that: "Members of the CI may move from one country to another only with the consent ofthe central committee of the section concerned. Communists who have changed their domicileare obliged to join the section of the country in which they reside. Communists who moveto another country without the consent of the CC of their section may not be accepted asmembers of another section of the CI." It was a ruling like this that was used as the pretext to expel Peter Camejo, long-timeleader of the American Socialist Workers Party. Camejo had moved to Venezuela for a yearto take a leave of absence to study Lenin and develop a critique of SWP sectarianism. Whenhe returned to the United States, he was prevented from rejoining because his move was"unauthorized." He was victimized for his political beliefs rather than any formof "indiscipline." Compare these unbending strictures with the norms of theBolshevik Party. In the Bolshevik Party, there was no such thing as formal membership. ABolshevik was simply somebody who agreed with the general orientation of Iskra. Nobody hadto get permission to transfer from one Bolshevik branch to another because such a conceptwas alien to the way the free-wheeling Bolsheviks functioned. Even more insidious than the Statutes were the Theses of the Fifth Congress on thePropaganda Activities of the CI and its sections. This document sets in concrete themethodology of dividing every serious political disagreement into a battle between the twomajor classes in society. It states: "Struggles within the CI are at the same time ideological crises within theindividual parties. Right and left political deviations, deviations from Marxism-Leninism,are connected with the class ideology of the proletariat. Manifestations of crisis at the second world congress and after were precipitated by'left infantile sicknesses', which were ideologically a deviation from Marxism-Leninismtowards syndicalism....The present internal struggles in some communist parties, thebeginning of which coincided with the October defeat in Germany, are ideologicalrepercussions of the survivals of traditional social-democratic ideas in the communistparty. The way to overcome them is by the BOLSHEVIZATION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTIES.Bolshevization in this context means the final ideological victory of Marxism-Leninism (orin other words Marxism in the period of imperialism and the epoch of the proletarianrevolution) over the 'Marxism' of the Second International and the syndicalistremnants." So the legacy of the Fifth World Congress of the Comintern was organizational rigidityand ideological conformity. This has been the unexamined heritage of the Marxist-Leninistmovement since the 1920s. Any attempt to veer from this method has been dubbed"Menshevik." Zinoviev was the architect of these measures. He himself was soondeposed by Stalin who found the guidelines perfect for his own bureaucratic consolidation."Trotskyism" soon entered the vocabulary of curse-words that now included"Menshevik", "opportunist" or "syndicalist". The Comintern was transformed by these measures, even though the seeds of thetransformation were present at the time of the 21 Conditions. There were signs that Leninwas troubled by the drift of the Comintern. He considered moving the headquarters toWestern Europe where the Russian influence would be much less preponderant. He also wasdeveloping a critique of the organizational model of "democratic centralism"that had been encoded in the Second World Congress in a document he found "all tooRussian". But Lenin did not survive his stroke. We have no way of knowing what the outcome wouldhave been had he lived. After all, Stalin's power did not rest on his charisma but on hisroots in a powerful social layer: the state bureaucracy. The only way that history can bechanged is not by rewriting it but by creating it anew. We have the opportunity today touproot this rotten "Bolshevization" methodology which belongs to the torturedearly years of the Soviet Union. In my final post in this series, I will examine the impact of the Fifth World Congressof the Comintern on the American Communist Party which tried to apply these precepts totheir own organization with fateful results. PART SEVEN: Like the German party, the American Communists were molded by the Cominternduring the 1920s. And like the German party, the transformation took some time. In 1917,the people who would go on to form the Communist Party in this country had no inkling ofwhat a "Marxist-Leninist" party was. For example, Charles E. Ruthenbergexplained Bolshevism in 1919 not as something "strange and new", but somethingsimilar to the revolutionary traditions of the United States. His ownSocialist-syndicalist background led him to believe that the Soviet state was a"Socialist industrial republic." The process of transforming the American movement into a caricature of Lenin's partytook a number of years and it was the authority of the Comintern that made thistransformation possible. After all, if the Russians tell us to have "democraticcentralism", they must know what they're talking about. They do have state power. The first organizational expression of the American Communist movement showed its rootsin the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs. The party was organized on the basis of branchesrather than cells, as the Comintern dictated. Another feature of the American Communistmovement that was distinct from what is commonly known as "democraticcentralism" was the open debates that various factions took part in. While it isbeyond the scope of this article to trace all the divisions within the American movement,suffice it to say that they tended to reflect very real differences about the character ofthe movement--whether it should orient to the more radicalized foreign language speakingworkers, or develop roots in the English speaking sector of the class. The Comintern,needless to say, used all of its power to shape the direction of American revolutionarypolitics despite Zinoviev's open admission in 1924 that "We know England so little,almost as little as America." The Fourth National Convention of the Communist Party was held in Chicago, Illinois inAugust, 1925. This convention was inspired by the Bolshevization World Congress of theComintern that was held in 1924. The American delegates came to the United States with theunderstanding that their party would adopt more stringent organizational norms in linewith Zinoviev's directives. To give you a sense of the importance of the languagequestion, the proceedings of the convention report that there were 6,410 Finnish membersas opposed to 2,282 English speaking members. The American party had its own dissident minority that the new"Bolshevization" policy could be used as a cudgel against. This minority was ledby one Ludwig Lore, who was the main demon of the American movement as Leon Trotsky was inthe Soviet movement. The Majority Resolution laid down the law against Lore: "We also endorse fully and pledge our most active support to the Comintern andParity Commission decisions providing for the liquidation of Loreism in our Party. Wedemand that the Party be united in a uncompromising struggle against this dangerous rightwing tendency. We pledge our fullest support to the whole Comintern program forBolshevizing our Party, including a militant fight against the right wing, theorganization of the Party on the basis of shop nuclei, and the raising of the theoreticallevel of our membership." This is quite a mouthful. They are going to liquidate a dangerous right wing tendencyand reconstitute the party on the basis of factory cells all in one fell swoop. And"the raising of the theoretical level of our membership" can mean only onething. They are going to get politically indoctrinated by the Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalinfaction in order to destroy all of its opponents wherever they appear. Poor Ludwig Lore was in a political fight with other leading Communists about how torelate to the Lafollette Farmer-Labor Party. This third party was an expression ofAmerican populism and it was not clear which direction it was going. The disagreementsover how to approach it are similar to the sorts of disagreements that crop up today abouthow to regard, for example, the Nader presidential campaign. So Lore found himself in a bitter dispute about a purely American political question.What he didn't figure out, however, was that he had no business being open-minded aboutTrotsky while this dispute was going on. Lore had befriended Trotsky during a visit to theUSSR in 1917 and retained warm feelings toward him, just as the French Communist BorisSouvarine did. Not surprisingly, Lore had very little use for Zinoviev. On one occasion,according to Theodore Draper, Lore told Zinoviev to his face that his information aboutthe American labor movement was questionable. Considering Zinoviev's track record inGermany, this hardly comes as a surprise. What really got his name in the Comintern's little black book, however, was his causticobservations about the infamous "Bolshevization" World Congress of March, 1924: "The Third International changes its tactics, nay, even its methods, every day,and if need be, even oftener. It utterly disregards its own guiding principles, crushestoday the these it adopted only yesterday, and adapts itself in every country to newsituations which may offer themselves. The Communist International is, therefore,opportunistic in its methods to the most extreme degree, but since it keeps in its mindthe one and only revolutionary aim, the reformist method works for the revolution and thusloses its opportunistic character." This was just what the Comintern would not tolerate at this point, an independentthinker. Lore was doomed. The "Resolution on Bolshevization of the Party" spells out how the AmericanCommunists would turn over a new leaf and get tough with all the right-wing elements inthe party. "...the task of Bolshevization presents itself concretely to our Party asthe task of completely overwhelming the organizational and ideological remnants of oursocial-democratic inheritance, of eradicating Loreism, of making out of the Party afunctioning organism of revolutionary proletarian leadership." And so Lore wasexpelled at this convention. The party was re-organized on the basis of factory cells and a rigid set oforganizational principles were adopted. For example, it stipulated that "Whereverthree or more members, regardless of their nationality or present federation membership,are found to be working in the same shop, they shall be organized into a shop nucleus. Thenucleus collects the Party dues and takes over all the functions of a Party unit."What strikes one immediately is that there is absolutely no consideration in theresolution about whether or not a factory-based party unit makes political sense. It issimply a mechanical transposition of Comintern rules, which in themselves are based on anundialectical understanding of Lenin's party. The expulsion of Lore and the new organizational guidelines was adopted unanimously bythe delegates, including two men who would go on to found American Trotskyism: James P.Cannon and Vincent Ray Dunne. Cannon and Dunne are regarded as saints by all of theTrotskyist sects, but nobody has ever tried to explain why Cannon and Dunne could havecast their votes for such abysmal resolutions. There really is only one explanation: theirunderstanding of Bolshevism came from Zinoviev rather than Lenin. Cannon's myopia on these sorts of questions stayed with him through his entire life. Inhis "First Ten Years of American Communism", he describes Lore as someone whonever "felt really at home in the Comintern" and who never became an"all-out communist in the sense that the rest of us did." That says more aboutCannon than it does about Lore. Who could really feel at home in the Comintern? Thisbureaucratic monstrosity had replaced the heads of the German Communist Party 3 times in 3years. It had intruded in the affairs of the German Communist Party as well, coming upwith the wrong strategy on a consistent basis. Those who "felt at home" in theComintern after 1924, as James P. Cannon did, would never really be able to get to thebottom of the problem. Furthermore, Cannon himself took the organizational principles ofthe 1925 Communist Party convention and used them as the basis for American Trotskyism aswell. Zinoviev was responsible for not only ostracizing Trotsky in the Russian party, butLore in the American party as well. Zinoviev was a master of casting people into Menshevikhell. Cannon himself was plenty good at this as well. Over and over again in AmericanTrotskyist history, there were others who were to face ostracism just like Lore.Schachtman in the 1930s, Cochran in the 1950s and Camejo in the 1980s. In every case, thecurrent party leadership was defending the long-term historical interests of theproletariat while the dissident were reflecting petty-bourgeois Menshevik influences. Whatgarbage. Cannon's views on Zinoviev were those of a student toward a influential professor. In"The First Ten Years of American Communism", Cannon pays tribute to the dreadfulZinoviev: "As far as I know, Zinoviev did not have any special favorites in theAmerican party. The lasting personal memory I have of him is of his patient and friendlyefforts in 1925 to convince both factions of the necessity of party peace and cooperation,summed up in his words to Foster which I have mentioned before: 'Frieden ist besser.'('Peace is Better')." What a stunning misunderstanding of the events of 1924-1925. Zinoviev had broken theback of the German Communist Party and the Soviet party and now was doing everything hecould to destroy any independent voices in the American party. Zinoviev himself would soonbe a victim of the same process. Yesterday's Bolshevik would become the Menshevik of 1926and 1927. The sectarian and rigidity of the Comintern party-building model are still upheld bythe Trotskyists and other "Marxist-Leninists" of today. If these groups were ascritical of their own history and ideas as they were of the ruling class, much improvementcould obtain. This is not something to be hoped for. Those of us who prefer to think forourselves must create our own organizational and political solutions, just as Lenin did inturn-of-the-century Russian. Any effort which falls short of this will not produce theoutcome we so desperately need: the abolition of the capitalist system and the developmentof socialism. Louis Proyect |