Virginia Worker Editorial Board member Sal Rojo weighs in on the debate over marxist organization that has been happening on the German Communaut Journal for the past year between two main tendencies which situate themselves as either “revolutionary social democracy” or council communism. This same dynamic finds itself in the US between DSA groups like the Communist Caucus and the Marxist Unity Group.
Our program is deliberately opposed to the standpoint of the Erfurt Program; it is deliberately opposed to the separation of the immediate, so-called minimal demands formulated for the political and economic struggle from the socialist goal regarded as a maximal program. In this deliberate opposition [to the Erfurt Program] we liquidate the results of seventy years’ evolution and above all, the immediate results of the World War, in that we say: For us there is no minimal and no maximal program; socialism is one and the same thing: this is the minimum we have to realize today.
Our Program and the Political Situation, Rosa Luxemburg
After reviewing the exchanges in Communaut on the organization question we see a trend which reflects the limitations of nominally Marxist thinking today in both Germany and the US. As exemplified in the Angry Workers translation “Forwards and (not) Forgotten?” and “Dilemma With No Way Out?” there’s a symmetry of right and left opportunism embodied in circles like the Marxist Unity Group and the Communist Caucus both operating within the left-liberal DSA formation. It seems that the left everywhere cannot escape the dominant ideological tendencies of either social democracy (we include stalinism in this camp) or left communism/anarchism.
While WEH are the more correct circle in their exchanges with spontenaist critics in Communaut, as they juxtapose the need for a party and program to the idealist hopes of mass riots and strikes towards communism, they still fall into the trap of centrism promoting “revolutionary social democracy” that has become popularized by the likes of Eric Blanc. The historical record indeed shows the crucial role played by the independent working class parties from the 1st International to the 2nd International in the organization of the proletariat for its interests on both the economic and political levels towards revolution. But rather than reckon with the failures of the class parties of the 2nd International and their structural incapacity to uphold their own resolutions in the lead up to World War I, WEH remains largely silent.
They advocate not just for 2nd International type parties, but also their programmatic formulations of the minimum-maximum type. In the context of 19th century Europe still laden with feudal social relations the fight for political rights and expanding the franchise to the working class was understandable within a framework of fighting for minimum demands by a class party, but in the context of imperialist capitalism this Efurtianism became simply a roadmap for reformism. This is even more true in the context of 21st century capitalism. The nostalgia for the outdated minimum-maximum formulation is emblematic of the centrist tendency in WEH, as well as the US neo-kautskyists, who refuse to recognize the qualitative break from the decayed social democracy of the 2nd International represented by the rise of the revolutionary 3rd International rooted in the first workers’ state.
Some Communat spontenaists rebuked WEH’s “revolutionary social democracy,” instead upholding the Paris Commune in 1871, which they claim was Marx’s true model, not Russia in 1917. What the spontenaists ignore is that Marx, while supportive of the Paris Commune, critiqued it for the very same reasons the spontenaists fetishize it. The commune, due to its spontaneous development and lack of a party, was defeated by its enemies in a mere two months. Rather than fetishizing communal democracy, Marx and Engels considered the communards’ lack of centralization and militarization as a fatal flaw. On the other hand the October Revolution shaped the entirety of the 20th century and beyond. And the workers’ state – although degenerated – lasted for close to a century. There is no comparable historical example with that degree of significance. There are definitive lessons from the first successful workers’ revolution which evade WEH just as much as the spontenaists. Those lessons were properly summarized in the first two Communist International congresses.
WEH rejects the 3rd International without much consideration, the most substantial being footnote 47 in the first article. Their critique? That the COMINTERN saw the necessity to create a new international with standards that national parties would have to conform to via the 21 Conditions as well as purging parties of the rightists and centrists still imbued with the politics of the 2nd International which led the global working class into their death march by the millions during World War I. WEH’s arguments are a reassertion of the social democrats against Soviet Russia, the Bolsheviks and the COMINTERN under the guise of democracy. That they would favor a politics and international where resolutions had no weight, where parties could superficially sign onto statements to resist world war by any means necessary only to negate them and support their national bourgeoisie is a sure sign of political bankruptcy and naivety. The standards of the 3rd International were a source of its strength and a sign of its real commitment to uphold revolutionary marxism against the stinking corpse of social democracy.
While the 3rd International degenerated alongside Soviet Russia with the rise of stalinism, it remains a higher synthesis to the 2nd International. The first four congresses of the COMINTERN show lively debate, an openness to different tendencies – including the USPD, KAPD, and the IWW – as well as their international labor front the RILU, composed of communists and syndicalists alike. All revolutionary marxists would be much better off in situating themselves in the current context by starting from the theses of the first four congresses of the COMINTERN, which build off both the positive and negative aspects of the 1st and 2nd Internationals, versus trying to rehash 2nd International or even 2 ½ International type politics.
The COMINTERN up to 1923 did not dictate to national parties on how they would achieve revolution in their specific contexts. COMINTERN leaders were very clear that revolution would develop along specific lines particular to each country. Nevertheless the COMINTERN also helped to positively facilitate the construction of communist parties across the world as shown by Jacob Zumoff. They laid the foundation for communist and worker movements across the third world. They struggled against rightist and centrist tendencies within these parties as they fought to win over the majority of the working classes to their line while exposing the opportunism of social democrat parties and their leaders in the labor movement as agents of the bourgeoisie when they failed to unify workers in struggle and advance their material interests through strike actions or winning political demands via their united front policy. It was always understood by the 3rd that reforms were only a result of revolutionary class struggle. And that the best way to gain influence and win over others to their line was by leading workers in struggle and proving themselves in combat. That was how they enacted their propaganda and agitation, not from the outside, but from the inside of worker organizations, regardless of the reactionary leadership who ran the unions and bourgeois worker parties.
The third and fourth COMINTERN congresses especially remain useful resources for communists today. As the revolutionary tide subsided in 1918 and the optimism for worldwide socialist revolution to emerge in short order after the October Revolution passed, these communists and their parties had to ask and debate “what do we do in non revolutionary situations?” “how do we prepare for when revolutionary situations arise in our countries?” “how do we win over the majority of the working classes to our parties?” The united front policy was their answer and it had multiple successes across several countries. This comment from Radek at the 4th COMINTERN congress should resonate with communists of today:
The idea of a struggle for power is for the moment not present among the broadest worker masses. Rather the entire situation has forced them backwards, and the great majority of the working class feels powerless. Given these facts, the conquest of power is not on the agenda as an immediate task. That is a historical fact. And if Communists answer every question, even that of state administration of dentistry, by saying that only under the dictatorship of the proletariat will teeth be extracted without pain, well, repeating that may possibly have propagandistic value, but it does not alter the fact that our own comrades, Communist workers, are convinced that the struggle for power is not possible at this time – even though we know that, sooner than some suppose, many states will tremble before a struggle for proletarian dictatorship.From this it flows that – even leaving aside the question of the united front tactic – if we are going to pose only the political tasks that tie us to the broadest worker masses, we must above all conduct a struggle around questions that have the greatest immediate relevance to the broad working masses: questions of wages, hours of work, housing, defense against White danger, against the war danger, and all the issues of working people’s daily life. Communism does not consist of sticking one’s head in the sand and saying that it is not appropriate for such a good Communist as me to bother with things like this. Simply in order to hold to the banner of communism the workers we have already won, we must concentrate our struggle around these questions. Only in the broadening, deepening, and heightening of these struggles will a struggle for [proletarian] dictatorship arise.
The worker sees in the factory and in every strike that he cannot struggle for the most immediate and vital goals unless he does this together with the other workers.
And not just that. He sees that workers in their masses are united on these questions, without regard to their party affiliation. And because that is so, the Communist Party’s politics must explain how to deal with the fact that the workers put forward the same demands but are politically divided. Comrades, if we do not succeed in speaking to the masses as supporters of the conception of a proletarian united front, we will shrink down to a little handful. What gives our workers the strength to stay with the Communist Party in this period, indeed to draw new masses around them, is not merely our goal, not only the growing understanding of their most advanced layers that a proletarian dictatorship is necessary, but also the feeling that we are the unifying force in the working class. Never did I feel that more strongly than at the end of 1920, when I attended the unity convention in Berlin and spoke to comrades there. We split off all the forces from the Social Democracy that were prepared on the basis of their previous experience of revolution to embrace the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat. The workers who could not take that step perceived only the split. Meanwhile, the entire situation had temporarily driven our final goals into the background of the masses’ consciousness. Given this, our comrades believed that propaganda regarding the final goals and the split, no matter how indispensable and vital, cannot win over new and broad masses of workers.
They believed that they had to talk to workers about what the workers are thinking and feeling, how they are oppressed by unemployment and lack of food, indeed how they go hungry even when they are working. For the working masses, the idea of a united front means gathering the working class for a struggle against the suffering inflicted on them by capitalism in its disintegration.
The second question was, given the need for a united front, how was it to be implemented? Should it be by addressing the broadest masses of the proletariat with the call: Struggle with us under the banner of communism? Should we tell the workers that we reject all negotiations with the trade unions and leadership bodies?
It takes little thought to see that the idea of trying to achieve a united front in this manner is total nonsense. The Social Democratic workers know that their party is against the dictatorship [of the proletariat]. But they believe that the Social Democratic Party defends their interests, and that is why they still belong to it. Given that these workers are convinced that [Social Democratic leaders] … want to fight for the eight-hour day, they will say to us: Yes, quite right, we must fight together, but have you talked about this with [Social Democratic leaders]?
Should we reply by telling them that Scheidemann is a traitor? If they agreed with us in this judgment of Scheidemann, we would not have to preach to them about that, they would be with us. But this judgment is precisely what divides us. That is why, despite this opinion, if we want a united front we must negotiate with the leaders of the Second International. The difference between the Second and the Communist International does not lie in the fact that we are for the dictatorship of the proletariat, while they are determined to fight for socialism with the methods of democracy. No, it is that they do not want to fight at all, not even for a crust of bread. When they have compromised themselves, when we have shown the masses in life that they do not want to fight and why they do not want to fight, then the road to the united front will be open.
Many comrades will say at this point that since we know this, we should avoid strengthening the illusions of the proletariat if it is only in order to then refute them. But this is not a matter of strengthening illusions, but rather of refuting them. They must be refuted not with words but with deeds. There are some odd birds in our party that are afraid the Social Democrats will not allow themselves to be exposed, but will perhaps struggle. I do not think there is anyone of sound mind that would not welcome it if the Social Democrats wanted to struggle. And when the Social Democrats reproach us, saying: ‘You come to us hiding a dagger. You want to embrace us in order to crush us’, we reply, ‘That depends on you. Show that you want to fight, and then we will travel at least a part of the road with you’. We do not fear that in the least.
Tiptoeing Around Lenin
In the latest two pieces from WEH we see a consistent effort on the one hand to downplay affinity towards the figure of Lenin and his arguments – especially related to the party and its relation to the working class – yet implicitly making Lenin’s arguments. This again is a result of the neo-kautsky school exemplified by Lih and Blanc, who try to portray Lenin and the Bolsheviks as Kaustskyists rather than a distinct left wing within the 2nd International (and ultimately formed the 3rd) against both the right and centrist currents which Kautsky and the Mensheviks embodied. WEH even goes so far as to passingly advocate democratic centralism against the decentralized and weak 2nd International structure which led to its impotence in the face of WWI. Or we can see the reference to Lenin’s argument on the labor aristocracy juxtaposed to a more metaphysical argument from Offe and Wiesenthal, yet still circling back to Lenin and Zinoviev’s materialist grounding for opportunism among the labor aristocracy and social democrat parties. In WEH’s conclusion they advocate Lenin’s Iskraist project of a single unifying paper to centralize debate, analysis, reports, and theory to build a party without calling it such.
Rather than get in the weeds on how this misportrayal of Lenin and the Bolsheviks were really “revolutionary social democrat” kautskyists we would instead point the reader to the correct arguments of other writers like Mike Taber and John Marot in response to Blanc here and here. The aversion to Lenin, the classic period of the 3rd International, and the repopularization of kautskyism as a “new” road to worker and socialist power is simply a deadend. We cannot advance if we do not at least start from the synthesis of the 3rd while studying the problem of the thermidor in every revolution. Yes to a democratic mass communist party as the early COMINTERN advocated and practiced. Yes to going “to the masses” as the slogan of the 3rd COMINTERN congress. No to sectarianism embodied in the likes of the KAPD, the council communist legacy, and the splitting of the working class.
The Virginia Worker 
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