The historical cycle of the degeneration of the 3rd International (VI)

THE HISTORICAL CYCLE OF THE DEGENERATION OF THE III INTERNATIONAL (VI)

January 1924 – Death of Lenin

In January 1924, Lenin passed away. The Left assessed Lenin's work in February 1924, published as: Lenin on the Path of Revolution, explaining from a materialistic and dialectical standpoint the role of leadership.^[1]

It would be contrary to Marxist doctrine to claim that the revolution depends on a single individual; therefore, the death or physical survival of an individual alone would not have changed the course of the counter-revolution. However, with the death of this comrade, the battle over leninism began, which opportunists use as a fig leaf to conceal their betrayal of Marxism. During Lenin’s lifetime, it would not have been possible to speak of “leninism” because Lenin was (and claimed to be) above all a theoretical restorer of Marxism in the face of the opportunism of his time, and it is no coincidence that this is the aspect discussed in the first chapter of the text, as for us this was always the main aspect of his work.

In the text, the Left already denounces the opportunistic danger posed by the use of the term “leninism,” which was just beginning to be presented as a doctrine in its own right: “We do not believe it is appropriate – even if no substantial disagreement lies beneath it – to present, as Comrade Zinoviev seems intent on doing, Bolshevism or Leninism as a doctrine in itself, consisting of the revolutionary ideology of the proletariat in alliance with the peasants. This (not to speak of our comrade’s intentions, but of the views of opportunist currents) could serve as a theoretical formula for counterrevolutionaries disguised as the authors of a historic retreat from the substance of the Russian Revolution: while among the finest traditions of the Bolshevik Party remains the brilliant historical intuition with which it confronted the Social Revolutionary program – from which it has «stolen» an essential point – but so that it might be carried out not by the peasant class, but by the working class: for only by the latter, and not by its own forces, can the former be led to liberation.” (Lenin on the Path of Revolution, 1924).

July 1914 – Start of World War I (bankruptcy of the II International)
1917 – February and October Revolution in Russia
1917 – Foreign military intervention and civil war in Russia
March 1918 – Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
November 1918 – Kiel Mutiny
November 1918 – End of World War I
December 1918 – Foundation of the Communist Party of Germany
January 1919 – Assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht by the social democracy
March 1919 – 1^st Congress of the 3^rd International
March-August 1919 – Hungarian Soviet Republic (participation of social democrats dynamite it)
April 1919 – Soviet Republic of Bavaria
March-April 1920 – Kapp/Lüttwitz "putsch" + Ruhr Uprising
May 1920 – Theses of the Communist Abstentionist Fraction of the PSI
July-August 1920 – II Congress of the 3^rd International "21 conditions of admission" (in particular, the 21^st).
August 1920 – Defeat of the red army in Warsaw
September 1920 – Occupation of factories in Italy
December 1920 – Fusion of the 'left' of the USPD with the KPD
January 1921 – Foundation of the Communist Party of Italy
January 1921 – 'Open letter' of the KPD to the SPD and the trade unions
March 1921 – Failure of the March action in Germany
June-July 1921 – III Congress of the 3^rd International "conquest of the masses" (of the majority...)
December 1921 – Resolution previous to the 1^st Enlarged Executive "political united front".
January 1922 – Theses on the tactics of the Communist Party of Italy (Rome)
February 1922 – 1^st Enlarged Executive
April 1922 – Joint Conference with the II International and the II ½ International
June 1922 – 2^nd Enlarged Executive (workers' ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌government).
August 1922 – Submission of the CPC to the Kuomintang
October 1922 – March on Rome
November 1922 – Project‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌ of Thesis presented by the CP of Italy to the IV Congress
November-December 1922 – IV Congress of the 3^rd International "workers and peasants government"
January 1923 – French occupation of the Ruhr
February 1923 – Arrest of the leaders of the CP of Italy, handpicking of Togliatti for the direction
June 1923 – "National Bolshevism" in Germany
October 1923 – Communist ministers in the governments of Saxony and Thuringia (and ulterior military dissolution)

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January 1924 – Death of Lenin
June-July 1924 – V Congress of the 3^rd International "bolshevization"
June 1924 – Assassination of Matteoti and Aventine pantomime
April 1925 – Hindenburg's presidential election in Germany

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January 1926 – Theses of the Left to the III Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (Lyon)
February 1926 – VI Enlarged Executive
March 1926 – Betrayal of the proletarian revolution in China (massacre of Shanghai and Canton in 1927).
May 1926 – Betrayal of the miners' strike in Great Britain (Anglo-Russian Committee)
December 1926 – VII Enlarged Executive "socialism in one country", defeat of the Russian opposition
October 1929 – Crash of 1929
1936, 1938 – Moscow processes
May 1937 – May events during the Spanish civil war
September 1939 – Start of the 2^nd Imperialist World War II
May 1943 – Formal dissolution of the 3rd International

A year later, the danger warned of by the Left had been confirmed, and the anti-Marxists were acting within the International in the name of “Leninism”:

“If by “Leninism” we understand accepting as true whatever those who proclaim themselves to be the true and greatest Leninists find convenient to assert, then we can only smile. We reserve the right to argue and prove that many of the opinions held by those labeled as Leninists are, more than anything else, anti-Leninist and anti-Marxist.

If by “Leninism” we understand swearing by each and every statement Lenin made during his lifetime, then we cannot even agree with that.” (The Opportunist Danger and the International, 1925).

Tactical eclecticism will end up running rampant within the International in the name of “Leninism,” even though, as the Left had demanded a year earlier following Lenin’s death: "To whoever wants to emphasize too much in Lenin the tactician without fixed rules, we will always reproach the unity that binds all Lenin's political work. Lenin is the great figure who, fixing his eyes on the final revolutionary goal, is not afraid to be called in the periods of preparation the dissolver, the centralizer, the autocrat, the devourer of his masters and his friends. He is the ruthless bringer of clarity and precision, even if it means the collapse of false concord and artificial alliances." (Lenin on the Path of Revolution, 1924)

But as the text reiterates, the revolution will take place despite Lenin’s death (and, we might add, despite the counterrevolution carried out in his name): “(…) we remain, armed with a formidable set of arguments, justified in maintaining that, on this arduous path, the history of tomorrow «will pass through Lenin»; it will reenact the revolutionary phases whose Marxist vision he has revived in theory and refined in practice.” (Lenin on the Path of Revolution, 1924).

June – July 1924 – V Congress of the 3^rd International: “Bolshevization”

In the months of June and July 1924, the V Congress of the 3^rd International was held, at which the tactical deviations of the united front and the workers' government were maintained, with all the blame for their poor results placed on individuals.

To achieve this, a real parliamentary farce was unfolded: the heroes of the IV Congress (the leadership of the KPD: Brandler and Thalheimer) were now excommunicated for not correctly applying the tactic of the workers' government (which they had actually applied) and, in their place, new champions emerged, the left wing of the German Party (R. Fischer and Maslow).

A bargaining of principles and tactics began with two essential conditions from that point forward: the new champion had to swear loyalty to the International and spit on Trotsky (who had stirred controversy within the Russian Party with his “Lessons of October”) on one side, and on the Italian Left on the other.

Thus, the “left wing” of the German Party accepted the merger of the Red International of Labor Unions with the Yellow Amsterdam Trade Union Central, proposed by the Executive of the International in exchange for their recognition as a newly chosen group. The correct tactic was the one that accepted as the sole justification for working within unions controlled by opportunists the existence of a clear and distinct international reference point, which was now eliminated by the merger.

In The Policy of the International (1925), the Left offered the following description of the V Congress: “At the V Congress, those leaders of the German Left presented themselves as allies of Zinoviev, making Brandler and Co. the sole scapegoats, and lashed out against Trotsky, who was a pessimist, replacing his Marxist and revolutionary criticism with the banal assertion that, from the moment the leadership had passed to the Leftists, everything was resolved and everything was bound to go splendidly in the German party. (…) At the V Congress, they practiced diplomacy and maneuvering, and nothing more.

In the highly secret meetings of the German delegation, the open disagreement of the radical faction – composed of workers from Berlin, Hamburg, and the Ruhr region – against Fischer’s continuous concessions was never officially disclosed (…) The violent reaction with which the German comrades greeted the proposal for international trade union unity – the bombshell of the V Congress – was deflected (through a web of behind-the-scenes discussions and agreements unrelated to the proceedings of the Congress). They willingly agreed to deliver two or three speeches against the rebellious Italian left. Finally, complete agreement was proclaimed between the International Executive and the German Left on the new tactical theses and on everything else (…)

But, for all that, one might ask: Do you, as a matter of principle, demand that there be open and violent struggle and disagreement at Communist Congresses, with no possibility of a common solution?

We respond immediately that, if unanimity were achieved through the study and objective, higher-level consideration of issues, this would be the ideal; but that artificial unanimity is far more harmful than open disagreement in congressional deliberations, provided that executive discipline is maintained: and that this was a case of artificial unanimity has been proven by the facts, such as the failures of the tactic voted on with such enthusiasm, the excommunication of those who had presented themselves as its most secure pioneers, and the alternating ousting of groups of leaders whose solidarity and discipline with the infallible directives of the International had previously been praised.” (The Policy of the International, 1925).

Another deviation from the V Congress was the institutionalization of the concept of a sympathizing party, which would open the door for Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang to become a sympathizing party at the VI Enlarged Executive Committee meeting in February 1926. And just one month later, in March 1926, it demonstrated its role as the executioner of the Chinese Communists.

The V Congress also introduced the misnamed Bolshevization. The so-called “Bolshevization” introduced the dissolution of territorial organization and the establishment of factory cells as the only possible foundation for the Party. Communist cells already existed within the Parties not only in workplaces but also in any organ where communist militants were present (see the resolutions of the III Congress of the International). Communist cells by themselves were not incompatible with territorial organization; therefore, the dissolution of the territorial organization was intended to enable the already degenerate International to impose strict control over the communist groups.

It is true that this had been the form of organization of the Bolshevik Party in Russia, where the particular configuration of the doble revolution, with its democratic-bourgeois component, favored organization within the factory and hindered it outside. However, it was equally true that in mature capitalist Europe, the goal was to overthrow the bourgeoisie without intermediate stages, and the atmosphere within the factory was as hostile to communist organization as the environment outside during the czarist era. Furthermore, compartmentalizing communist groups within each workplace hindered the Party's primary function: synthesizing impulses and broadening the political horizon toward a common supreme goal. Groups of communist workers became isolated from each other, facilitating corporatism and a narrowing of the scope of action and vision.

This is how our current summarized the effects of so-called Bolshevization in The Opportunist Danger and the International (1925): “As soon as it takes the form of cell organization, over which has omnipotent control a network of functionaries selected on the basis of blind obedience to a set of prescriptions that purports to be Leninism; in a tactical and political work method that deludes itself into believing it can achieve maximum operational alignment with the most unexpected directives; and in a historical approach to global communist action, in which the final word must always be found in the precedents of the Russian Party as interpreted by a privileged group of comrades; we believe that it will fail to achieve its own objectives and will weaken the movement, and we regard it as a misguided reaction to the disappointing results of many tactical experiments of the dominant method – carried out in defiance of our criticisms – within the International. Instead of employing more courageous remedies, it seems to us that it seeks to cloak itself in this “Bolshevization,” which, far from being a strengthening, will amount to a sort of crystallization and “immobilization” of the revolutionary communist movement and its spontaneous initiatives and energies. The process is reversed; the “synthesis” (To arms…!) precedes its constituent elements; the pyramid, instead of being securely erected on its base, is turned upside down, and its extremely unstable equilibrium rests on its apex.” (The Opportunist Danger and the International, 1925).

And in reality, the introduction of Bolshevization was about this: to isolate and compartmentalize different Party units for better control based on mechanical discipline, discipline for the sake of discipline. It was the culmination in the form of organizational degeneration of what had been the previous cycle.

Thus, beginning with the tactical error of revolutionary parliamentarism in mature capitalism and the ambiguous formulation of winning the majority, a slide into tactical deviation of the political united front combined with a tactical-organizational deviation in a federalist direction (not individual adherence but mergers with fragments of parties, admission of sympathizing parties, an internal atmosphere of parliamentary maneuvering) led to theoretical-programmatic deviations such as national Bolshevism in Germany and the workers' government.

Once destroyed the connection between programmatic postulates and tactics, the sole basis of genuine communist organization discipline, the only applicable organizational cement was that of discipline for the sake of discipline, mechanical discipline, and ideological terror within the organization itself, even resorting to the use of the State's police apparatus to resolve internal organizational divergences. Only an internal prison-like regime could ensure discipline when the organizational premises had been destroyed by all the previous mistakes. And thus, communist parties ceased to be communist with no possibility of subsequent correction.

The issue was not addressed by the Italian Left as a democratic demand or for greater local autonomy but, on the contrary, the Italian Left advocated maximum centralization and discipline and a total limitation of the autonomy of both peripheral bodies and governing bodies, based on the only foundation that can produce this result in a Communist Party: unity of doctrine, program, and tactics.

The text Communist organization and discipline (1924), building on the argument of a previous article The Democratic Principle (1922), summarizes:

"Thus, is outlined the scheme of the conclusions towards which we tend in that matter. There is no good mechanical discipline for the execution of superior orders or dispositions “whatever they are”: there is an ensemble of orders and dispositions that respond to the real origins of the movement that can guarantee the maximum of discipline, that is, of unitary action of the whole organism, whereas there are other directives which emanate from the center that can compromise discipline and organizational solidity. (...)

We thus summarize our thesis, and we believe to be thus faithful to the dialectics of Marxism: the action that the Party develops and the tactics that it adopts, that is, the manner in which the party acts towards the “outside” have at their turn consequences upon the organization and its “internal” constitution. Fatally compromises the party that who, in the name of an unlimited discipline, pretends to have it disposed for an action, a tactic, “whatever” strategical maneuver, that is, without well determined limits known by the ensemble of the militants.

The desired maximal unity and disciplinary solidity will be effectively reached only by facing the problem in the basis of this platform, and not pretending that it is already solved prejudicially by a banal rule of mechanical obedience." (Organization and Communist Discipline, 1924).

In The Opportunist Danger and the International (1925), the Left warned that "criticism without error doesn't harm even a thousandth of what error without criticism does," and denounced the International's drift toward prevailing tactical elasticity and the increasing prison-like regime, concluding as follows: "It is necessary to condemn and abandon such methods. Where the situation does not allow for the struggle for power, this does not mean that the communist party does not have a political and action task that goes beyond that of a propaganda school. The attitude that the party publicly assumes in the course of the struggle, even in the phase of withdrawal, will have its indispensable influence on the success or failure that will be reserved for it in the period of future resumption, in overcoming all the complex counterrevolutionary resistances or not." (The Opportunist Danger and the International, 1925).

June 1924 – Murder of Matteotti and Aventino pantomime

As a result of the murder of Matteotti by the fascists, the remaining parliamentary parties (including, shamefully, the Communist Party) founded the authentic parliament at Aventino. If the tactic of revolutionary parliamentarism (which, as the Left had warned, was incorrect in capitalist Europe) had any meaning or reason to exist, then communist deputies should not abandon parliament in a bloc with bourgeois parties but had to remain in it to defend communist positions, especially now that the fascists were introducing physical violence into the parliamentary arena.

By participating in the Aventino bloc, a united front was formed with clearly bourgeois parties, confusing the masses about the bourgeois nature of both Parliament and its duplicate in Aventino.

This is how the situation is summarized in the Theses presented by the Left to the Lyon Congress:

“The Center (comprised of Gramsci, Togliatti, Tasca...) made a mistake by leaving parliament and participating in the initial Aventino meetings, as they should have remained in parliament to make a political attack against the Government and to take an immediate stance against the constitutional and moral prejudice of Aventino. This error represented the determining factor in the crisis outcome in favor of fascism. It cannot be excluded that it might have been advantageous for the communists to leave parliament, but with their own character and only when the situation allowed calling the masses to direct action. This was one of those moments that decide the developments of subsequent situations. Therefore, the error was fundamental and decisive in forming a judgment about the leadership's capabilities and led to a very unfavorable use by the working class of fascism's weakening, first, and the Aventino's resounding failure, later.

The return to parliament in November 1924 and Repossi's declaration were beneficial, as demonstrated by the wave of proletarian approval, but they came too late. The Center hesitated for a long time and only decided under pressure from the party and the Left. The party was prepared on the basis of insignificant instructions and a fantastically erroneous assessment of the situation's prospects (Gramsci's report to the Central Committee, August 1924). The preparation of the masses, which was not aimed at the perspective of Aventino's downfall but its victory, through the proposal that the party made to the opposition to establish itself as Antiparliament, was in every sense the worst. Above all, this tactic deviated from the decisions of the International, which never considered proposals to clearly bourgeois parties. Furthermore, this was one of those tactics that led away from the field of communist principles and politics as well as from the Marxist historical conception. Regardless of any explanation the Center might attempt regarding the goals and intentions behind the proposal, an explanation that would have had very limited impact, it gave the masses the illusion of an Anti-State opposing and fighting against the traditional State apparatus, while, according to the historical perspective of our program, the only basis for an Anti-State can be the representation of the only productive class, that is, the Soviets.

The Antiparliament slogan, with support in the country from the workers' and peasants' committees, meant entrusting the General Staff of the proletariat to representatives of capitalist social groups, such as Amendola, Agnelli, Albertini, etc. Aside from the certainty of not actually reaching such a situation, which could only be labeled as betrayal, merely presenting it as a perspective of a communist proposal meant violating principles and weakening proletarian preparation. (Theses of the Left to the III Congress of the Communist Party of Italy, Lyon, 1926)

April 1925 – Hindenburg's Presidential Election in Germany

The electoral victory in the German presidential elections of the monarchist candidate (Hindenburg) once again led to a sharp shift to the right, with the communists being blamed for keeping their candidate instead of withdrawing it to let the republican bourgeoisie win.

The proposal of the International actually meant extending parliamentary support beyond so-called workers' parties to the openly bourgeois republican candidate, condemning the communist party to permanent blackmail that reduced it to the role of insurance for the bourgeois republican faction against the “lesser evil”.

This tragic farce is illustrated in The Politics of the International (1925):

"Let's follow the facts and documents. In the run-off elections, the German communists kept Thaelmann as their candidate, who received 60,000 more votes. However, General Hindenburg clearly won the presidency of the republic against the bourgeois republican candidate, Marx. The usual recriminations storm down on the German communists. The bourgeois left and social democrats act as if the revolutionaries had signed a contract with them, committing to support them when the right-wing decides to take them on. Suffering this extortion means admitting that communism is nothing more than a byproduct of democracy, a thesis worthy of the school of Treves and Turati (...)

But the Central Left Committee of the German Party, a few hours after Hindenburg was elected, met to declare that they had made a mistake and failed to assess the monarchical danger. They summoned the party's National Committee, which confirmed this judgment, although a strong minority sounded the alarm against the retreat of the Executive Committee of the International and the German Center to positions reminiscent of Brandler and Co. (...)

So what are the consequences of this contradictory presentation of an old and ever-new problem? Here they are: 'In the presidential elections... we should have maneuvered in line with the proposals of the German delegation and the Communist International. This would have led the German working class, forming a bloc on a minimal republican program with the true supporters of the republic (sic, sic, sic, sic!), rallying around the name of a militant republican candidate in the struggle against reaction.' Thus, the resolution says, social democracy would have been unmasked. The Comintern's proposal was to invite them not to withdraw their candidate, Braun, for whom the communists would have voted by withdrawing Thaelmann's candidacy. But if the goal was: a) unmasking the social democracy; b) avoiding the danger of monarchical victory, it is clear that the social democrats, with the figures in hand, would have replied that Braun's votes plus Thaelmann's were not enough to beat Hindenburg, and it was necessary to form the bloc even with the forces of the bourgeois and Catholic democrat Marx. Therefore, the consequence of the policy suggested by the International was the communists' support for a bourgeois candidacy or, at the very least, the simultaneous vote of communists, social democrats, and bourgeois democrats for a candidate, let's say, Braun." (The Politics of the International, 1925).

(The publication of this series, which we began in "The Internationalist Proletarian" n.12 as a result of the collective study work of the general meeting of August 2023, will continue in the following issues of the review)

[1] See the quotations from the text on the role of the leader in the article “Party Life” in this review, pages 7 and 8.

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