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ABC of Marxism
The World War brought sharply to the fore the old differences existing between the basic tendencies in the world labor movement: reformism; centrism and revolutionary Marxism.
Reformism is the expression of the interests of the capitalist class in the ranks of labor. It is a doctrine and system of tactics designed to subordinate the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. It is essentially counter-revolutionary. Its classical representatives today are the parties of the Second and Third Internationals.
Revolutionary Marxism represents the interests of the international proletariat as a whole. It organizes its independent class activity, unifies its struggles on a national and international scale and puts the proletariat at the head of the struggle for emancipation of all the oppressed classes in society. It aims at the forceful overthrow of the capitalist system and the building of a socialist society. It participates in the struggles of the proletariat for immediate demands as a means to this end. Its classical representatives in this generation have been the Bolshevik party and the Communist International under Lenin's leadership.
Centrism is the expression within the labor movement of the pressure both of the bourgeoisie and of the proletariat. It attempts to reconcile revolutionary aims with opportunist means, to combine revolutionary phraseology with reformist practice. It is unstable, vacillating between reformism and revolutionary Marxism. In periods of sharpening class struggle it tends to disintegrate, its elements flying to the camps of the revolution or reformism. In periods of lull, it may consolidate and even attract and trap forces moving toward revolutionary Marxism. It constitutes an obstacle on the road to revolution. The designation “centrists” does not sufficiently characterize a tendency or movement. The irreconcilables it is trying to reconcile must be specified concretely; also its general direction and how far it has travelled. Centrism is the subjective expression in the labor movement of the objective situation of the petty-bourgeoisie, crushed between the major classes.
Each of the three internationals played a decisive role in history. They correspond to the three main stages of capitalist development. Shortly after the birth of capitalism when the proletariat first began to assume an independent role in the class struggle the First International arose. The Second International was founded and grew with developing capitalism. The Third International was the outcome of the World War and the victorious October Revolution in the stage of capitalist decline.
Before the revolution of 1848 there existed a secret international organization known as the Communist League. Marx and Engels were its founders and leaders. They were commissioned to write its program, the Communist Manifesto (1847) which laid down the basic concepts of the revolutionary working class movement. Following the revolutions of 1848, capitalism entered a period of lusty growth. National labour unions sprang into being in England and France. The cotton famine produced by the American Civil War (1861–5) and the Polish Insurrection of 1863 gave a profound impetus to the European labor movement. Out of the growing demand of European unions for international solidarity against scabbery organized by mass importation of foreign workers in labor disputes, the International Workingmen’s Association was organized in 1864 at a congress in London. It has since been known as the First International.
Throughout its life the First International was torn by internal struggle over policy. The communists under Marx and Engels had first to fight and defeat the Proudhonists, a movement inspired by ruined French small producers who advocated a gradual substitution of capitalism by mutual credit and cooperative associations. In the second half of its existence a fierce struggle was fought against the anarchists led by Bakunin, who believed that smashing the state alone could solve all social problems. He regarded all participation in day-to-day struggles as rank opportunism. He maintained that not the industrial proletariat but the pauperized peasantry, the lumpenproletariat and the young intellectuals would make the revolution. In the main the IWMA was an international organization of revolutionary propaganda groups rather than a mass organization of workers.
In 1871 the International took part in the Paris Commune, the first great struggle of the workers for power. After its defeat the reactionary forces persecuted the International in every land. A wave of reaction swept all capitalist countries. In 1870 the Bakuninists set up a rival organization in Switzerland. This was the beginning of the end. The International office was transferred from London to New York and then to Philadelphia, where it died in 1876, just a few years after the Commune. With all its shortcomings the First International laid the foundation for proletarian internationalism. Its service to the proletariat must not be underestimated.
After 1871 capitalism developed industry on a gigantic scale. Huge combines dominated economy. The earth was divided among the leading powers. A struggle arose among them for a new division. Again the working class movements surged forward. Socialist parties began to grow in various countries. In 1889 an international conference of these parties was held and organized the Second International.
The Second International was more homogeneous ideologically than the First. It was all “socialist”. The German and Austrian Social Democracy, Socialist Party of France, labor parties in Belgium and England, and the American Socialist Party were all affiliated. Within the International, however, were united the two otherwise irreconcilable tendencies of revolutionary Marxism and reformism: Debs, Berger, DeLeon; Hardie, Hyndman, Henderson and MacDonald; Bebel, Bernstein, Kautsky and Luxemberg; Bulgarian orthodox Marxist (“Narrows”) and the revisionists (“Broads”); Pannekoek, Gorter and Troelstra; Lenin; Plechanov, Martov and Martinov; Jaurès and Guesde – were all part of the Second International. The Right and Left Wings represented basically different class forces. The “center” (Kautsky) was the link between the two. It was the buffer protecting the Right wing against Marxist criticism and acting as a screen behind which the Right Wing everywhere took control of the key positions in the various parties.
In the absence of convulsive revolutionary struggles the socialist parties placed all emphasis on day-to-day reforms and in practice forgot, except for verbiage, the revolutionary goal. Thus they became reformist parties. They revised Marxist theories to conform to their day-to-day practices.
The Socialist International rejects the Marxian theory of the state. Its Right Wing regards the state not as an instrument of class oppression but rather as a permanent and necessary organ which serves society as a whole. It stands above and removed from class relations. Other theoreticians of the Second International admit the class nature of the state, but believe society under capitalism can, through the pressure of the working class, develop more and more democracy until socialism can gradually be introduced. The Second International is opposed to all dictatorships, including the dictatorship of the proletariat. Pure democracy is an absolute principle with them, regardless of particular social or class setting. They reject the Marxist method of analysing society.
The tactics and strategy flowing from these theoretical conceptions of the Second International have brought the workers nothing but setbacks. In 1914, at the crucial moment, the leading sections of the International threw overboard all Marxist pretensions and came out in support of “their” countries. To cap this treachery, they openly aided their capitalists in suppressing revolutionary uprisings, as in Germany.
Since the war, the October Revolution and the rise of the Third International, the Second International has taken on new life. The “stinking corpse” again has a being. The period of its new lease on life closely corresponds to and is explained by the degeneration of the Comintern. A new revolutionary wave will deal a death blow to both these treacherous bodies.
The decisions adopted at the Basle (Switzerland, 1912) congress of the Second International to oppose war and to organize socialist revolts in case of an imperialist war were ignored when the war broke out. All the big parties became social-patriotic – socialist in words, patriotic in deeds – except the Swiss, Italian, Russian, Serbian and a few other minor parties. From then on it was clear to the revolutionists that no matter how large the parties, or how big the mass following, the fact remained that the INTERNATIONAL COULD NOT BE REFORMED, could not be used as an instrument for the revolution.
The Second International serves only to hinder the development of workers to a revolutionary position. The Second International may contain militants and leftward moving elements. These elements must be made to see the implications of their position, to realize they must break with the Socialist International, that only a new, Marxist International – the Fourth – can lead the workers of the world to victory.
When the war broke out the International Socialist Bureau refused to convene the Congress which was to have dealt with the war. Clara Zetkin, secretary of the Women’s Buro, called an International Women’s Congress at Berne, Switzerland in March 1915, where anti-war resolutions were adopted. The resolution of the Bolsheviks was rejected. In September 1915 the Italian SP together with the Swiss party convened the first real anti-war International Conference at Zimmerwald, Switzerland. Lenin’s resolution: “Convert the imperialist war into a civil war” and break with the Second International was overwhelmingly rejected. The conference condemned the pro-war socialists, urged workers to unite for socialism and peace, but barely mentioned the International Socialist Bureau. The Second Zimmerwald Conference (held at Kienthal, Switzerland in March 1916) again rejected Lenin’s resolution but for the first time denounced the “social-nationalists” and “bourgeois pacifism”. It called peace under capitalism an illusion. It condemned the ISB in detail. The centrists were still dominant but losing ground. These two conferences prepared the ground for the Third International.
The victory of the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky and the establishment of the Soviet government placed Russia in the forefront of the international working class movement. Here was the material basis for the establishment of the Third International – the task set by Lenin in 1914. Without such a basis the founding of the International would have been a travesty.
The Third International was established in 1919. It immediately became the center for revolutionary forces both within and without the Soviet Union for the maintenance and extension of the October Revolution to other countries. It attracted myriads of new forces, many of which never fully assimilated the basic principles of revolutionary Marxism.
The first four congresses of the Comintern (up to the 1923 defeat in Germany when Lenin died) made classical contributions to Marxist theory and practice. No revolutionist today can afford to be without their guidance. All important actions of the proletariat in all countries were subjected to minute scrutiny. The basic laws of revolutionary strategy and tactics were formulated and applied in all countries. From 1923 on, however, the isolation of the revolution in Russia as a result of the numerous defeats in Europe laid the foundation for the adaptation of the Comintern to the coexistence of the Soviet state with capitalist environment (Socialism In One Country) The Communist International degenerated steadily into a mere frontier guard or foreign office, serving the narrow national interests of Russia. It no longer represented the interests of the world proletariat and ceased to be the revolutionary Marxist Party. (See page 30)
Theoretically the Comintern has revised Marxism on a series of fundamental questions. Here are the most important:
Ideologically and politically the Comintern has been brought to the position of the Social Democracy. The Fifth and Sixth Congresses widened the gap between Stalinism and Marxism and marked the final repudiation of the revolutionary tasks of the proletariat. The CI has long become a counter-revolutionary force and an objective ally of the world bourgeoisie. Like the Second International it may undergo a period of growth in one country or another, but IT CAN NEVER BE REFORMED. It can lead the proletariat only to defeat. It is the duty of all revolutionary elements to break with it politically and organizationally, and join in the building of the Communist Fourth International.
The fate of the proletariat and of mankind as whole depends today upon the creation of a new communist world party, the Fourth International. Its foundations must be laid today, in spite and because of the disintegration which has swept through the world labor movement since the rise of Fascism. A firm clear vanguard working for a new communist international is the only means to counteract this tide of disintegration. The Third International was established on the wave of victorious revolution. But the Russian victory was possible only because the directing forces had been prepared by years of struggle against opportunism during the period of disintegration after 1905 and 1914. The Marxists face the preliminary task today of creating a propaganda and organizing center for the new International, to gather and steel the forces to work for the victorious outcome of the next revolutionary upswing of the movement.
Spurious Internationals: The movement may expect various abortive attempts by immature or treacherous elements who have broken with the Second or Third Internationals or both, to mechanically set up paper propaganda centers or actual “internationals”. The Trotskyists, for example, have founded two such scarcely more than two years apart, behind the backs and without the participation of any section of the world proletariat. Such travesties tend to discredit the Marxists conception of a revolutionary proletarian international, should it become widely known. In trying to escape from their self-imposed isolation, the Trotskyists have veered from the policy of building the 4th International through the Second back to a policy of proclaiming another paper Fourth International opposing the Stalinist Third. A living international must be in a position to TAKE THE PLACE OF, not merely oppose the reformist bodies. It must organize and lead millions of workers through decisive victories against the capitalist system. It must DISPLACE THE CORRUPT INTERNATIONALS IN ACTION. This the paper “internationals” cannot do. The revolutionary masses are the stuff out of which a revolutionary Marxist International is made.
“The Communist International is the concentrated will of the world proletariat. Its mission is to organize the working class of the whole world for the overthrow of the capitalist order and the establishment of Communism ... The working masses will overcome all obstacles and create this new International. The present triumph of opportunism is short-lived. The greater the war losses, the clearer it will become to the working masses that the opportunists betrayed the cause of the workers and that it is necessary to turn the weapons against the governments and the bourgeoisie of their respective countries.” – Lenin
War and the Second International – Lenin
Theses of the II Congress (Comintern)
Workers Answer to Boss War (RWL)
History of the First International – Steklov
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Last updated: 7 August 2019