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Nationalization
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 44, 23 September 1933, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
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This article deals with a subject which has not formerly been discussed in the Militant, it is therefore accepted explicitly as a discussion article. The views expressed are those of the writer. Other contributions in discussion of this subject are invited, but they should not exceed 700 words – Ed. |
In answer to the industrial codes adopted by the capitalists in their desperately organized attempt to bring about “recovery” from the crisis, the Communists have now the task, with the aid of the workers in the several industries, of laying out specific workers’ codes of action. But before proceeding with a model of such a code of action as applied to coal mining and involving the slogans of nationalization and workers’ control, it may help to forestall first of all objections raised against these slogans “in principle”.
No field offers greater danger of blundering and of falling into opportunism than that of partial demands and intermediate slogans. Nevertheless the Communist does not reject such demands and slogans in toto just because there is this danger. A criterion for the choice of our tactics and slogans was given by Lenin in his brochure on Left Communism: “The whole point lies in being able to apply these tactics to raise and not to lover the general level of proletarian class-consciousness and revolutionary ability to fight and conquer.” Thus the decision as to the correctness or incorrectness of a slogan rests to a large extent on our judgment of the ripeness or unripeness, not of the advanced workers but of the mass of workers to rally around and fight for a given slogan. Our purpose is not to sink to the level of the backward masses, not to hide the truth from them by sinking into opportunism, not to win them over to false slogans and to a false ideology, but to take into account as an objective factor for us, the Communists, the present mood, state of consciousness and preparedness of the class as a whole.
Life alone is the final arbiter in the matter of choice of tactics. Literature is never decisive, but it can be extremely helpful if properly understood and applied. In this sense it would be a worthwhile task to collate all the writings, particularly since the formation of the Comintern, on the questions of nationalization and workers’ control. For particularly at the present moment in America, with events moving at tremendous speed, with the working class commencing anew its lessons in organization first of all in trade unions, with the posing of economic and political problems to the workers on a vaster scale than ever before in American history, it is of vital importance that we understand their true dialectic nature, their usefulness in elevating the plane of struggle at the proper moment from that of immediate and intermediate demands to that of power, and consequently their proper place in the strategy of revolution.
Theses on Partial Demands and Intermediate Slogans were adopted by the Leninist Third and Fourth Congresses of the Comintern. Just before the Third Congress Lenin gave cognizance to the sharp ultra-Leftist trend in the international movement with Bucharin as its foremost theoretician in the Soviet Union. Lenin wrote his pamphlet on “Left Communism” to combat this infantilism and had it distributed among the delegates to the Third Congress in order to alter the “intransigent” attitude of some towards partial demands and slogans. So much did the false position of Bucharin and others cause concern to Lenin that be took the unprecedented step of announcing at the Congress that he spoke in favor of the theses proposed on partial demands only under the discipline of his fraction. Between the Third and Fourth Congresses, Lenin, Trotsky, Radek and Zinoviev carried on a struggle against the ultra-Leftist position to such good purpose that at the Fourth Congress Bucharin himself was forced to read a Declaration in which the Russian fraction announced that they considered as false and incorrect the view expressed on partial demands, the idea that these were opportunist, in the Third Congress theses.
In his desire to correct the views which had caused Bucharin and others to attack Lenin and Trotsky as Rightists and opportunists at the Third Congress, Lenin posed the questions at issue in the simplest yet sharpest terms. For example:
“Communists, adherents of the Third International, exist in all countries precisely for the purpose of adapting, along the whole line in every domain of life, the old socialist, trade unionist, syndicalist and parliamentarian activities to the new Communist idea.”
Again:
“We do not know and we cannot know which of the inflammable sparks which now fly in all countries, fanned by the economic and political world crisis, will be the one to start the conflagration (in the sense of a particular awakening of the masses); we are therefore bound to utilize our new Communist principles in the cultivation of all and every field of endeavor no matter how old, rotten, and seemingly hopeless.”
What were the specific issues in the controversy over partial demands? Radek, working closely together with Lenin and Trotsky at that time, proposed for capitalist countries (particularly but not solely for Germany), the ideas of partial confiscation of capitalist property (statification of trusts), workers’ government, workers’ control of production. These slogans were not given for the future when a revolutionary situation would once more arise, but for the period preceding it and which is preparing it. And in view of the existence of the separate organizations of the working masses at that time (2nd, 2nd and one-half, 3rd internationals, and social democratic trade unions), Radek proposed the adoption of the United Front tactic to carry out these slogans. Bucharin was so much opposed to the United Front tactic as to the slogans to which this tactic was to be applied. In the settling of this controversy, it was carried before an enlarged Plenum of the C.I. in Dec. 1921 when for the first time the C.I. gave its formal adherence to the tactic of the United Front despite the argument of Bucharin that this essentially class slogan might become, in a pre-revolutionary situation, a cover for class collaboration.
The argument against intermediate slogans as being essentially class collaboration (including that against the United Front), would be correct if these slogans are divorced from the slogans involving the struggle for power and for the seizure of industries and these latter from a real mass struggle. To hide our real views and ultimate goal would be to practice opportunism. At all times we warn the workers that their final salvation under capitalism is an utter illusion, that even the partial nationalization of any industry cannot help the working class in any final sense, that only the workers can achieve their own emancipation, and only by the overthrow of the capitalist system and the seizure of all industries by the workers.
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