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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