File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9708, message 88


Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 15:29:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: The Invention of Marxism-Leninism, part 6


THE "BOLSHEVIZATION" OF THE COMINTERN

The German Communist Party went through 3 wrenching experiences from 1921
to 1923.

1) Bela Kuhn, the Comintern agent "assigned" to Germany, inspired the
party to 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 by objecting to
Comintern "intervention" in German trade union politics earned its
disapproval. He was also accused of being too friendly to the recently
expelled Levi who had argued for a united front of working class parties,
by 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 a fight for state power in early November, 1923.
Trotsky's role was to apply pressure on Brandler to go along with Moscow's
plans, and to set a fixed date for the seizure of power. When the isolated
German Communist Party failed to lead the masses to power, the Comintern
once again found a convenient scapegoat in Brandler. He was expelled and
replaced by the ultraleftist Ruth Fischer, who had been busy lining up
support in the USSR.

While these wrenching changes were being foisted on the German Communist
Party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was going through its own
tumult. Factional lines between the triumvirate of Zinoviev, Stalin and
Kamenev on one hand, and Trotsky on the other were being drawn. The
triumvirate decided to use the German events as a bludgeon against
Trotsky, since Karl Radek, his close ally, was the chief architect of the
failed German revolution. The scapegoating of Radek was in line with the
degenerating state of affairs in Russian politics.

The Russian party had become more and more bureaucratized. Lenin proposed
to Trotsky that 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's
handling of the Georgians, Stalin treated her rudely in his characteristic
manner. Lenin interpreted this as a declaration of war. 

Meanwhile Trotsky had developed criticisms of the NEP. He thought that too
many concessions were being made to the peasantry and to the NEP-men.
Trotsky won the support of many veteran Bolsheviks who were disturbed by
the trends in the party and nation. They put forward a New Course that
articulated their ideas on the direction the Soviet Union should take. It
was the first formal critique of the embryonic Stalinist system. In a
letter to branches of the Communist Party, Trotsky defended the New
Course:

"Away with passive obedience, with mechanical leveling by the authorities,
with suppression of personality, with servility, and with careerism! A
Bolshevik is not merely a disciplined man [sic]: he is a man who in each
case and on each question forges a firm opinion of his own and defends it
courageously and independently not only against his enemies but inside his
own party."

While Trotsky surely believed these words, it is regrettable that he did
not take them seriously himself when he was wearing down the hapless
Brandler. It was a servile Brandler who decided to plunge ahead with the
foolish bid for state power in Germany and it was the decidedly courageous
Paul Levi who would have argued Trotsky down.

In any event, Trotsky's letter captured the imagination of many
Communists. An organized grouping already existed that concurred with many
of Trotsky's New Course criticisms, even though the group could hardly be
considered Trotskyist. While it included his close allies like
Preobrazhensky and Antonov-Ovseenko, it also included members of the
ultraleft Workers Opposition. Shortly after the opposition emerged, it
began to win followers everywhere. At least one-third of the Red Army
party units sided with the opposition as did a majority of the student
organizations.

The triumvirate launched a bitter and unprincipled counter-attack which
culminated in the thirteenth party conference in May, 1924. They did
everything they could to turn the fight into one of the Old Bolsheviks
versus the upstart. Trotsky was depicted as "anti-party", a rather
inflammatory but meaningless term that is often used against factional
opponents in any internal struggle in a "Marxist-Leninist"  group. While
Trotsky spoke in the name of the workers, the triumvirate claimed that he
was really articulating the interests of the students and intelligentsia.
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
harbor anti-Leninist sentiments. He was an unreformed semi-Menshevik. 

In brief, all of the methods of dehumanizing and smashing a political
opponent were mobilized against Trotsky. He was depicted as a
petty-bourgeois and a Menshevik. He was charged with not believing in the
primacy of the working class. The triumvirate's underhanded attack on
Trotsky is of course the first line of defense of so-called
"Marxist-Leninists". What better way to demonize one's political opponents
than by treating them as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Bolshevik in name
only, the opposition was in league with the counter-revolution. Every
single Marxist-Leninist sect-cult has learned this defamation technique 
from the early Comintern which used it first against Trotsky.

The potential problem that the triumvirate faced was that Trotsky had an
unblemished reputation internationally. 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 Polish Communist
Parties protested and demanded that the differences between the two
factions be resolved in a comradely manner. Unfortunately, most of the
other Communist leaders had long given up any pretense of independence. In
the process of eviscerating the German Communist Party leadership, the
Comintern eliminated the possibility of independent voices being heard
against bureaucratic maneuvers. Unfortunately, Trotsky himself had
participated in the weakening of the German party. In the showdown with
Trotsky, only the French leader Boris Souvarine had the courage to standd
up for Trotsky. The rest of the Comintern leadership would prove only too
willing to join in a ritual procession of anti-Trotsky denunciations. 

A month later the "Bolshevization" Fifth Congress of the Comintern took
place. This congress was designed by Zinoviev and Stalin to export the
monolithic model that the Russian party had adopted. Whatever independence
remained in the world-wide Communist movement would soon disappear after
this congress. Zinoviev and Stalin had one and 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 the
one that the world Trotskyist movement itself subsequently adopted. This
"Marxist-Leninist" monstrosity has been the organizational lynch-pin of
all party-building attempts from 1924 on. Trotskyists have always
disavowed the political decisions made at this congress, but have 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, the opportunity to rail against Radek, Trotsky and Brandler. They
were all Mensheviks, opportunists and "liquidators of revolutionary
principle." In the words of Isaac Deutscher, "she called for a monolithic
International, modelled on the Russian party, from which dissent and
contest of opinion would be banished. [She said], 'This world congress
should not allow the International to be transformed into an agglomeration
of all sorts of trends; it should forge ahead and embark on the road which
leads to a single Bolshevik world 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 were subordinate to the Comintern and members of
the parties had to obey all decisions of the Comintern. The world congress
of the Comintern would decide the most important programmatic, tactical
and organizational questions of the Comintern as a whole and its
individual sections. It would be appropriate, for example, for the
Comintern to overrule a member party that had decided to support Trotsky's
New Course. The Statutes also included the 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 of the central committee of the section concerned. Communists who
have changed their domicile are obliged to join the section of the country
in which they reside. Communists who move to another country without the
consent of the CC of their section may not be accepted as members of
another section of the CI."

It was a ruling like this that was used as the pretext to expel Peter
Camejo, long-time leader of the American Socialist Workers Party. Camejo
had moved to Venezuela for a year to take a leave of absence to study
Lenin and develop a critique of SWP sectarianism. When he returned to the
United States, he was prevented from rejoining because his move was
"unauthorized." He was victimized for his political beliefs under the
rubric of anti-Bolshevik "indiscipline." C

Compare these unbending strictures with the norms of the Bolshevik Party. 
In the Bolshevik Party, there was no such thing as formal membership. A
Bolshevik was simply somebody who agreed with the general orientation of
Iskra and who accepted the discipline of the party in actions such as
strikes and demonstrations. Nobody had to get permission to transfer from
one Bolshevik branch to another because such a concept was alien to the
way the free-wheeling Bolsheviks functioned. 

Even more insidious than the Statutes were the Theses of the Fifth
Congress on the Propaganda Activities of the CI and its sections. This
document sets in concrete the methodology of turning every serious
political disagreement into a battle between the two major classes in
society. It states: 

"Struggles within the CI are at the same time ideological crises within
the individual 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-Leninism towards syndicalism....The present
internal struggles in some communist parties, the beginning of which
coincided with the October defeat in Germany, are ideological
repercussions of the survivals of traditional social-democratic ideas in
the communist party. 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 (or in other words Marxism in the
period of imperialism and the epoch of the proletarian revolution) over
the 'Marxism' of the Second International and the syndicalist remnants."

So the legacy of the Fifth World Congress of the Comintern was
organizational rigidity and ideological conformity. This has been the
unexamined heritage of the Marxist-Leninist movement since the 1920s. Any
attempt to veer from this method has been dubbed "Menshevik." Zinoviev was
the architect of these measures. He himself was soon deposed 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 now transformed by these measures, even though the seeds
of the transformation were present at the time of the 21 Conditions. There
were signs that Lenin had been troubled by the drift of the Comintern. He
considered moving the headquarters to Western Europe where the Russian
influence would be much less preponderant. He also was developing a
critique of the organizational model of "democratic centralism" that had
been encoded in the Second World Congress in a document he found "all too
Russian". 

But Lenin did not survive his stroke. We have no way of knowing what the
outcome would have been had he lived. After all, Stalin's power did not
rest on his charisma but on his roots in a powerful social layer: the
state bureaucracy. The only way that history can be changed is not by
rewriting it but by creating it anew. We have the opportunity today to
uproot this rotten "Bolshevization" methodology which belongs to the
tortured early years of the Soviet Union.

In my final post in this series, I will examine the impact of the Fifth
World Congress of the Comintern on the American Communist Party which
tried to apply these precepts to their own organization with fateful
results.

Louis Proyect




     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005