File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-10-18.130, message 45


Date: 16 Oct 96 03:15:45 EDT
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: The comintern


dear friends,

L  .Proyect thinks "the act of creating the CPs separate and apart from the SPs
was a huge mistake"
(circa 1919-21-NC). This is not just bad monday morning (or friday morning)
quarterbacking.
It is taking leave of  comprehending key historical facts.

The SPs  theory and practice was already in decay and degeneration . Especially
on the 
issues of supporting  parliamentarianism, agaisnt  international solidarity of
workers, for legalism ,  for nationalism, for reformist trade/craft unionism,
for colonialism, etc.

The world wide hegemony of big  monopoly  capital and the need of  other
imperialists  to 
take the swing to re-division by direct  armed force led to the imperialist war.
All the major SPs backed their OWN ruling classes in the war externally in 
their militarism and INTERNALLY too as recruiting sergeants for the  national
armies,
voting war credits, working with the right to smash up anti-war
internationalists, protests
in all belligerent countries. 
Many  SPers-Labourites went on War Production boards to make sure armaments
production,
the weapons of death , incl. mustard gas were produced in mass quantities-
and used with devastating effect is this criminal slaughter of workers against
workers.

EVENTs themselves paved the way for the CP-SP split from 1917-21 in many
countries.
In Germany and the central powers who "lost" the iperialist war, the struggles
became ones
not of debates and parlor action  or grand jury summons' but revolutionary
battle in the streets.

The German SPD  majority actually aligned with the reaction, the reichswehr, the
frei-korps-
(precrursors/frorunners  to the Nazi Party itself) to smash up the German
workers councils and German 
red soviet movement  which had insurrectedand taken power briefly  in many
cities, Berlin, Bremen,
Munich, Frankfurt, etc.
The SP (right and "left" still claimed to be marxists!!) and still sang the
internationale! All this 
as they , Ebert/Scheidemann's SPD  helped  capitalist reaction drown the best
and most valourous of the
German proletariat in rivers of blood.
In, Hungray, Italy, it was much the same at this key period of revolutionary
wave in this century. The
fever pitch of mass revolutionary strife led to the class line political splits.

In Britain, France and USA victor imperialisms , the SPs played a treacherous
role too, supporting the war,
recruitment  wise promoting "US democracy vs. the Hun" , using positions in the
state and in their Parties to drum up blind patroitism and ugly racism and
chauvinism.
In the USA, this fight was very sharp and led to the massive CP/CLP vs. SP split
in the US socialist and workers movements by 1919..

THe nature of capitalist imperialism and its crimes of labor skinning and
horrific wars led to the massive splits
 CPs vs, SPs and this is not something  even the Russian bolsheviks could have
prevented even had they wanted . Of course at this time, the Russian  bolsheviks
followed a pretty consistent revolutionary politics but this would change in the
1920s, when in isolation and suffering economic damage and famine, they too
would make many compromises and  did much backtracking.
Of course this was later felt in the policies of the comintern and all the new
CPs affiliated to it.

A cursory study of the actual political/economic condition and the antagonism
>from the imperialist slaughter 
led to the SP-CP splits. This was not just something conjured up by the
Bolsheviks or the comintern,
it was the militant advanced masses themselves acting on political savvy gained
and experience.

We can all learn much from a more thorough study of key left trend of this
period of mass struggle
in the USA, and Britain as well.

Lenins works on this period  are a good start  . Also the ones of CE Ruthenberg
(CP of America) and  S. Pankhurst and G Aldred and John Mc Clean,
anti-parliamentary communist  internationalists in UK in WW1.
there is more too.

Neil





   

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