The same was seen with the entry of the Stalinists and centrists into the Popular Front governments in Spain and France, in the 1930's.
Trotsky, then, makes the comparison with the events in Germany, in 1923, and their evaluation by the Third Congress of the Communist International. In March 1921, the German Communist Party, basing itself on an active minority of the workers, sought to engage in an insurrection. The large mass of the working-class, however, was apathetic. It came after a period of serious defeats, such as that following the 1918 revolution, when the revolutionary leaders, such as Luxemburg and Liebknecht, had been murdered. The active minority of workers, who did take part in these events, in March 1921, indeed, again, showed considerable heroism, and the leaders who were responsible for leading them into a battle that was inevitably doomed, used that to cover their errors, just as the Stalinists did following the Canton adventure.
Trotsky points out, however, that, in 1921, the ECCI did not congratulate those German leaders for having engaged in such an adventure, and wasted revolutionary resources, but condemned the adventurism of that leadership.
““Their essence,” we wrote, “is summed up in the fact that the young Communist Party, alarmed by a manifest decline in the workers’ movement, made a desperate attempt to profit by the intervention of one of the most active detachments of the proletariat in order to ‘electrify’ the working class and, if possible, to bring matters to a decisive battle.” (L. Trotsky, Five Years of the Communist International, p.333.)” (p 165)
By 1923, conditions had changed, in Germany. The workers had had time to recover and rebuild their confidence and organisation, from the earlier defeats. Support for the German Social Democrats was moving towards the Communists, and the economy was in crisis, as a result of the conditions imposed on it by the imperialists via the Versailles Treaty. It was suffering hyperinflation, as the state printed money tokens to pay those debts. It was a case in which the ruling class could no longer rule in the old way. On a rising wave of workers' struggle, therefore, the leaders of the Comintern argued for a date to be fixed for the insurrection.
“From July 1923 on, we demanded, to the great astonishment of Clara Zetkin, Warski and other old, very venerable but incorrigible Social Democrats, that the date of the insurrection in Germany be fixed. Then, at the beginning of 1924, when Zetkin declared that at that moment she envisaged the eventuality of an uprising with much “more optimism” than during the preceding year, we could only shrug our shoulders.” (p 165)
In other words, a failure by Zetkin et al to know what time it is, and to fail to understand the role of the revolutionary party in catching the upward wave, and leading it forward, as against the opportunist policy of tailism, of only raising transitional/revolutionary demands at that point where the workers have already spontaneously arrived at them themselves. The reality is that, at that point, the revolutionary wave has probably already peaked, and, as it takes time to then organise soviets etc., these demands are put forward in conditions of ebb.
““An elementary truth of Marxism says that the tactics of the socialist proletariat cannot be the same in face of a revolutionary situation as when this situation does not exist.” (Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Works, Vol.XV, p.499.)” (p 165)
In 1871, the Parisian workers rose in revolt, spontaneously, and established the Paris Commune, despite Marx's earlier warnings against doing so. A similar thing occurs with the July Days, in Russia, in 1917. In those conditions, the Marxists have to be with the workers, attempting to organise them, in conditions they had not anticipated. But, in Germany, in March 1921, and in Canton in 1927, that was not the case. These were not cases of the proletariat spontaneously revolting and the Marxists having to respond to it. It was a case of a Communist Party itself fermenting the revolt, in conditions that were not favourable.
“What did the leadership do and what should it have done during the weeks and months that immediately preceded the Canton insurrection? The leadership was duty bound to explain to the revolutionary workers that as a consequence of defeats, due to an erroneous policy, the relationship of forces had veered entirely in favour of the bourgeoisie. The great masses of workers who had fought tremendous battles, dispersed by the encounters, abandoned the field of battle. It is absurd to believe that one can march towards a peasant insurrection when the proletarian masses are departing.” (p 166)
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