From: "David Bedggood" <dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 12:56:59 1200+
Subject: M-TH: The Comintern and Germany 1921


Louis,

Your interpretation of the German revolution is a classic menshevik 
rationalisation, of "the workers were not ready". I will prove that. 
You blame the intervention of the Comintern for the failures of 1921 
and 1923, and you implicate Trotsky in these failures. 
Lets look first at the post-mortem of the 1921 adventure in the 3rd 
Congress. Remember Congresses were at this stage still places where 
different views could he aired by the national sections 
democratically.
You say that the March action  was the fault of the Comintern. 
Yet it seems that the Congresss discussion revealed that the German 
leaders took responsibility for the March action on their assessment 
of events; this was clear from the debate and the fact that they did 
not want to be blamed for the failure of the action; second that 
there was a considerable difference of opinion among the German 
delegates as to situation in Germany that led up those events; third 
dispite these differences,  all were agreed that the German party 
should not be held to blame and wanted the Congress to pass a 
resolution in which the March action could be judged a success:
"This action signifies that the strongest mass party of Central 
Europe has made the transition to real struggle; it constitutes the 
first attempt to realize in life the CP'as lelalding role in the 
struggle of the German proletariat - the role which the party had 
assumed in its founding program. The March action signifies the 
exposure of a victory over the open counter-revolutionary character 
of the USP and the masked centrist elements in the ranks of the VKPD 
itself. The March action, by disclosing in the very course of the 
struggle num erous mistakes and organisational lshortcomings of the 
party, has made it possib le to clearly understand these mistakes and 
shortcojmings and to begin liquidating them.  etc etc"

Trotsky opposed this whitewash for a number of reasons. The timing 
was wrong - the bourgeoisie had gained the ascendancy by 1921, after 
the revolutionary upheavals in 1919 and 1920, and he based this point 
on his own analysis of the ebbs and flows of the economy and balance 
of class forces ;  he disagreed with the rationalisation that an 
action should be undertaken to learn from its mistakes; "In a private 
conversation with Cd Thalheimer I told him that he reminded me of a 
Russian translator in teh '70's who translated an English book 
andpointed oiut ini his introduction that he had translated it solely 
to show the world how worthless this book is"; and  that this action 
was a mistake and should not be covered up because of the lessons 
that needed to be learned for the next period and in other European 
states.
Trotsky concludes "The Congress must say to the German workers that a 
mistake was committed, and that the party's attempt to assume the 
lealding role in a great mass movement was not a fortunate one. That 
is not enough. We must say that this attempt was completely 
unsuccessful in this sense - that were it repeated, itmight actually 
ruin this splendid party." [Trotsky's speech on Radek's report on 
"Tactics of the Comintern"  in the First Five Years of the Communist 
International Vol, 1]
 What this episode demonstrates is that left to 
its own devices the German leadership got it wrong. The 3rd Congress 
corrected this mistake by recognising it and winning a victory 
against the ultra-left tendency at the Congress. Of course, this was 
not sufficient to prevent the Comintern from  acting incorrectly in 
1923 which is the subject of the posting I made last week.

Dave.


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