FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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In Part II (here),
we discussed the Communist International (CI) policy for colonies, urging cooperation of communists with local capitalists against foreign imperialists. The working class was supposed to fight a “bourgeois democratic revolution,” but not fight for socialism or communism.
In China in the 1920s this line included a close alliance with the nationalist Guomindang (GMD). In April 1927 GMD leader Chang Kai-shek attacked communists and their supporters, murdering many thousands.
This disaster should have triggered a rethinking by the CI of its whole policy of alliance with capitalists, but it did not. At the Sixth Congress of the CI in 1928 the basic platform for colonies stayed the same, promoting a “bourgeois-democratic revolution” led by the working class. [Note 1] A temporary alliance with “the national-revolutionary movement” was allowed “in certain circumstances.” [Note 2]
Part of the explanation of why this wrong line was not changed was mentioned in Part II: the Bolsheviks were convinced that they had won power by following a similar policy. Probably the more important reason, however, was the intense struggle inside the Bolshevik party that was going on in the late 1920s. That struggle included key issues about nationalism and alliances with capitalists.
From the early 1920s, Zinoviev, Radek and Trotsky headed factions within the Bolshevik party, factions that opposed the leadership of Stalin (and Bukharin). The China disaster was an opportunity for the factions to attack that leadership.
The factionalists said that the alliance that the Chinese communists had made with the GMD gave away too much. It restricted the political message that the Communists could give to workers and peasants, and undermined the independence of the communist party. Alliances with capitalists always have as a price rejecting or keeping quiet about the revolution leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is something capitalists will always insist on.
In fact, Zinoviev did not refuse to make deals with national capitalists, he just wanted better ones. He said the Chinese communists should recruit millions of workers and peasants to the “national movement,” and not be “afraid of scaring away the bourgeoisie.” This national movement was not against capitalism, but only for various reforms and to “halt” the imperialists in China. [Note 3]
Trotsky would later claim that he had opposed the communists’ uniting with the GMD years earlier, in 1923. [Note 4] This was simply a lie. As late as September 1926, Trotsky thought it was “perfectly correct” for communists to form an alliance with the GMD. [Noted 5] Later he said he wanted an alliance only with the Left wing of the GMD. In the heat of his factional fight against the party leadership, he went beyond this and hypocritically rejected all deals with capitalists in China. But this does not mean that his line about what alliances the working class movement should make was anywhere near being correct.
Trotsky Against “Socialism in one Country”
The Bolsheviks’ idea of workers’ power in the USSR was an alliance of the urban industrial working class and the rural poor (the poor and middle peasants). Trotsky could not accept this Bolshevik position. He said that socialism is against the interests of the peasantry (not just the rich peasants). Since Russia was a country with a peasant majority, Trotsky argued that socialism could not be built there. He claimed that ruling the USSR by an alliance of the working class with the rural poor was impossible. Only the working class minority could actually rule, hoping to hang on and wait for revolutions in other countries.
This defeatism about trying to create an economy to serve the masses—workers and peasants— in the USSR was firmly rejected by the Bolsheviks. In 1927 the factionalists organized public demonstrations against the party leadership, and were expelled from the party. Trotsky was eventually expelled from the country. Abroad, his propaganda claimed that the USSR had “degenerated” and its leaders had “betrayed” the revolution, taking sides with the imperialist powers that wanted to destroy the USSR.
In the early 1930s, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek, Bukharin and others whose policies had been defeated began to engage in conspiracies to kill Stalin and other top Bolshevik leaders. [Note 6] Overall, they made absolutely no positive contribution to the theory or practice of the communist movement, including the issue of nationalism.
In 1935 at the 7th Congress of CI responded to the rise of Nazism by adopting a line on nationalism and alliances with capitalists that was even more wrong. This will be discussed in Part IV.
[Note 1] "Programme of the Communist International adopted at its sixth congress," in The Communist International: 1919-1943 Documents, vol. II, 1923-1928, Jane Degras, editor, Oxford, 1959, p. 507
[Note 2] ibid, p. 542
[Note 3] G. Zinoviev, "Theses on the Chinese Revolution," in L. Trotsky, Problems of the Chinese Revolution, University of Michigan Press, 1967, p. 369.
[Note 4] L. Trotsky, Letter to Max Shachtman, 12/10/1930:
http://www.oocities.org/capitolhill/congress/1602/textosmarxistas/trottext/china/ch40.htm
[Note 5] See the review of Trotsky's speeches and personal papers in C. Brandt, Stalin's Failure in China, Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. 154 – 165.
[Note 6] In the late 1930s there was a tangle of plots to assassinate the Soviet party leaders. The most important groups were those headed by Zinoviev and Kamanev, Trotsky, Marshall Tukhachevsky, and the "Rights" (Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov). These groups overlapped and, when they were arrested and tried, they implicated each other. Two heads of the NKVD (Yagoda and Yezhov), the organization which gathered evidence on these terrorists, were also in on the conspiracies.
The main evidence of the crimes of these conspirators is the transcripts of the public trials and the interrogations that have been made public since the end of the USSR. These are supplemented by additional material from outside the USSR. The main limitation of the evidence is refusal of the Russian government to disclose some of the most important archive materials, except to a few selected historians, who have strict limits about what they are allowed to reveal. Thus there is no public "smoking gun" for many of the cases, but there is still enough evidence to draw conclusions about many of them.
In October 1933, Trotsky publically called for the violent overthrow of the leaders of the USSR. He wrote: "No normal 'constitutional' ways remain to remove the ruling clique. The bureaucracy can be compelled to yield power into the hands of the proletariat only by force." [A] J. Arch Getty, "Trotsky in Exile: The Founding of the Fourth International," Soviet Studies, vol. XXXVIII, no. 1, January 1986, pp. 24-35.
In the 1930s Trotskyists joined with Zinovievists, Rightists, and other oppositionists to form an opposition alliance ("bloc"). See [B] Pierre Broue (a pro-Trotsky historian), "Trotsky et le bloc des oppositions de 1932," Cahiers de Leon Trotsky, No. 5 (1980) pp. 3 – 38. Also see [A]
In July 1936 Zinoviev was confronted in an interrogation by one his followers, the philosopher N. Karev, who directly accused him. Zinoviev began to admit his involvement in terrorist activities. He wrote that "Whoever plays with the idea of 'opposition' to the socialist state plays with the idea of counterrevolutionary terror…. for myself … [I decided:] Finish your human days conscious of your guilt before the party!" [C] J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, Yezhov: Stalin's "Iron Fist," Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 177, 191.
For the confessions of terrorist organizing by Trotskyists and Zinovievists, see [D] Report of Court Proceedings, The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre, Heard Before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R., August 19-24, 1936 (Moscow), https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/law/1936/moscow-trials/20/zinoviev.htm
For the military conspiracy against the Soviet leaders, including Trotskyists, see [E] Iurii Zhukov, "Zagovar protiv Stalina byl. Tukhachevskomu v nem otvodilas' rol' voennogo diktatora" ["There was a plot against Stalin. Tukhachevsky was to play the role of military dictator"]
http://vm.ru/news/2014/02/17/istorik-yurij-zhukov-zagovor-protiv-stalina-bil-tuhachevskomu-v-nem-otvodilas-rol-voennogo-diktatora-235811.html and [F] Alvin D. Coox (1998) The lesser of two hells: NKVD general G.S. Lyushkov's defection to Japan, 1938–1945, part II, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 11:4, 72-110.
For the conspiracy including the head of Kremlin security to kill the top leadership, see [G] Iurii Zhukov, "Tainy 'Kremlevskogo dela' 1935 i sud'ba Avelia Enukidze," ["Secrets of the 'Kremlin affair' of 1935 and the fate of Avelia Yenukidze"], in Iurii Zhukov, Nastol'naia Kniga Stalinsta [Handbook of Stalinism], Eksmo, Moscow, 2010, pp. 100-170 and [H] G. Furr and V. L. Bobrov, "Marshal S. M. Budennyi o sude nad M. N. Tukhachevski, Vpechatleniia ochevidtsa" ["Marshall S. M. Budenny on the trial of M. N. Tuckachevsky. The impressions of an eyewitness"], Klio, no. 2 (2012) pp. 8-24.
For translations and analysis of some of this material, see [I] G. Furr, Trotsky's Amalgam: Trotsky's Lies, The Moscow Trials As Evidence, The Dewey Commission. Trotsky's Conspiracies of the 1930s, Volume I, Erythros Press, corrected edition, 2016.