Communism - Story of the Communist Party - Guy A. Aldred

Published during World War II, it illustrates how Russian political intervention in China and Europe served Russian foreign policy interests and so worked against the possibilities of proletarian revolution. Also dealt with are the merits and limits of Trotskyism, and Aldred's friendly relations and correspondence with various European and American anti-parliamentarian, anti-Bolshevik and councilist groups in the years after the Russian Revolution.

Originally published as 'For Communism' in Glasgow, May 1935. Revised and republished in Glasgow; The Strickland Press, November 1943.

(The last few pages of the original pamphlet - containing details of Aldred's other available pamphlets - have been omitted here.)

It was not my intention to write a history of the Anti-Parliamentary and Communist movements. Certainly, I had no intention of publishing such a work. I had a number of completed manuscripts on my hands and I did not wish to write a new work whilst these writings were unpublished. In addition to which, I was jealous to collect the political essays that l had published in fugitive form during the past thirty years. A conspiracy of circumstances compelled me to sacrifice these ambitions to what seemed to be the usefulness and well-being of the proletarian struggle.

For a short time in 1934 I resumed my old missionary activity. I visited Leeds, where I spoke under the auspices of the Leeds Anarchist Group, since defunct. In Aberdeen I conducted an intensive campaign, speaking on a free platform, enthusiastically sponsored by the local I.L.P. A very short campaign was conducted in London, where an endeavour was made to rally sections of the old movement with which I had been associated down to the early days of the War, and later during 1926-27. In these towns, so many miles apart, the question arose at my meetings, in almost identical terms : " What is Anti-Parliamentarism? What is its history and background? What movement do you represent? " In every case the questioner seemed to imagine that Anti-Parliamentarism was some breakaway from the Communist Party and the Third International.

It was strange to see how little knowledge even so-called Socialists had of the history of the proletarian movement. It was impossible to continue to refer to this paper and to that pamphlet. What was needed was a complete statement with the facts brought together within the confines of a small work that could be consulted readily. And so this pamphlet began to take form in my mind and assumed an imperative claim to premier place in the matter of publication.

Even so, the matter might have been put on one side but for the international correspondencee into which I, plunged. Contacts with Anarchist and Anti-parliamentarian comrades in Nimes, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Berlin, New York and Chicago, inspired me to write For Communism. This work was published in May 1935. It enjoyed a large circulation.The march of time has compelled its revision. The Second World War has collapsed the old Labour movement in all its phases and has developed a new strategy of struggle.

I have revised the original work with care, deleting as little as possible of the original writing, omitting only that which was unnecessary or undated detail, and adding wherever further statement of fact was essential to a clear vision of the issues involved. Thus revised the 1935 booklet becomes Part l of the present study, Communism. Part II will be a complete history of the crimes against Socialists and Socialism, against liberty of speech, thought, and expression that marked and marred the Soviet regime.

Part I is a complete work in itself, although Part II will make a worthwhile completion, not because of its style of writing„ but on account of its factual value. I believe that the publication of this work serves a useful purpose in these days of gloom, misery, and reaction.
GUY A. ALDRED.

GLASGOW, Nov. 5, 1942

The Communist International was founded in Moscow in 1919. The February Revolution of 1917 had recalled from exile and imprisonment a number of Anarchists who co-operated loyally with the Bolsheviks to effect the October 1917 Revolution. By the time that the Communist International was organised, the persecution of these Anarchists by the Bolsheviks had begun. That persecution continued all the time that Trotsky was an outstanding member of the revolutionary movement in Russia. Lenin, of course, was as much a party to this persecution as Trotsky. This fact has to be borne in mind when one considers that a distinction is made by the Trotskyists between the first five years of the International and the latter period dating from 1924. It is claimed that from 1919 to 1923 the Communist International was a virile, growing movement and that its authority and prestige rose in every land under the guidance of Lenin and Trotsky. In the course of the next nine years the Moscow International degenerated to a zombie.

The workers in all countries were prepared to half consider its existence a fact down to January 1933. But we must regard the second period from 1924 as a nine year crisis of uninterrupted decline. During this period the Trotskyist wing was amputated from the official movement much against the victim's will.

As late as January 1933 the avowed intention of the Trotskyist faction was to reform the Third International and to work in conjunction with the Communist Party in the various countries. The defeat of the German working-class movement and the triumph of Hitlerism caused the Trotskyists to break with their past policy of acting as a faction of the official party and to announce their intention of building up a new Communist International, and new Communist Parties in every country in the world. This included the Soviet Union.

On August 27th and 28th, 1933, the Paris Conference was held of the Left Socialists and Communist Oppositional organisations. Fourteen groupings were represented. This Conference had an unsettling effect on the bodies that sent delegates. The Communist League of America, or International Left Opposition, at its Plenum, on September 17th, 1933, passed a lengthy resolution, divided into seven paragraphs, of no consequence. The Lovestone Group of the U.S.A, found itself isolated. The Gitlow Group, the Workers' Communist League, opposed Lovestone's policy of approach to Stalin. Jitlek and Hais led their Czechoslovakian sections back to Social Democracy, whilst the Neurath Group of Czechoslovakia moved from the International Communist Opposition to the International Left Communist Opposition. The Swiss Brandler section inclined towards the Left Opposition, but the French P.U.P, moved towards Social Democracy.

Irrespective of their turn, whether towards the Left or towards the Right, the Trotskyist sections declared for a 4th International in September, 1933, on the grounds of the degeneration of the 3rd International. In a full declaration of attitude they took their stand on the following points : -
1. REJECTION OF THE 5th AND 6th WORLD CONGRESSES OF THE C.I. Actually, in 1921, Paul Levi openly broke with the Comintern on the grounds of objections to Leninism, which showed that the objection to the World Congress' decision should not begin with the 5th Congress. The history of the betrayal of the Munich uprising and the creation of the K.A.P.D. after the corruption and failure of the Sparticist movement and the K.P.D. during the 1920 events in Germany, show that the Trotskyist movement is somewhat belated in its historical concepts.
2. PERMANENT CHARACTER OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION. This sound proposition is the historic teaching of Socialism, and was never questioned until the period of the Russian Revolution and the urgent Russian need to nationalise that revolution.
3. RECOGNITION OF THE SOVIET UNION AS A WORKERS' STATE; AND THE CONDEMNATION OF STALINISM FOR UNDERMINING THAT STATE BY ITS METHOD OF: (a) ECONOMIC OPPORTUNISM, 1923-28; (b) ECONOMIC ADVENTURISM, 1928-32. To be sound, it should also be stated that the Soviet Union is not a Workers' State. Also, the economic opportunism begins with Lenin and goes back to 1921 and the N.E.P.
4. REJECTS THE STALIN THEORY OF THE JOINT DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT AND THE PEASANTRY, ON THE GROUND THAT THIS SACRIFICES THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION TO THE INTERESTS OF THE PEASANTS. Although this theory has been developed to extreme counter-revolutionary lengths by Stalin, it was implied in Lenin's own policy, and probably only means that a real Socialist revolution in Russia was impossible.
5. DEMANDS PARTY DEMOCRACY.

The workers of the world were not much impressed or disturbed by the Anarchist persecutions. Down to the time of Trotsky's fall and exile, the Communist International commanded a tremendous enthusiasm in all proletarian centres of the world. This does not mean to say that it enoyed the unanimous support of the thinking Communists of the world. The Anarchists of Russia and even in other countries tended to favour the peasantry as opposed to the proletariat. Many Socialists thought that this fact justified their persecution. To my mind, a Social Revolution that continues Siberia and a system of exile and imprisonment is a political, and not a Social Revolution. In course of time it is bound to degenerate to little more than a Palace Revolution. Stalin replaced the Czar as Hitler replaced the Kaiser.

If it is necessary to perpetuate the imprisonment of even counter-revolutionaries the perpetuation argues the strength of the counter-revolution. That in its turn argues the non-success of the revolution. Peasant Anarchist philosophy may well be beyond justification, but the strange historic fact remains that the government that persecuted the peasant Anarchists founded its revolution in a compromise with the peasants and developed a systematic peasant policy of proletarian retreat.

The terrible massacre of the Kronstadt sailors by Trotsky in March 1921, whom Trotsky had previously termed the flower of the Revolution, and the support of Trotsky by Zinoviev and Dibenko, was a shameless and shameful affair. The fortress and city were bombarded for ten days and it cannot be pretended that the sailors were moved by peasant ideas or that they were other than genuine Socialists or Communists. Trotsky's conduct was defended and even applauded in the Communist press of the world by Radek, who immediately after the October 1917 Revolution boasted a luxurious apartment and maid-servant. Radek's apology no longer carries weight for time exposed him as a panderer. He defended Trotsky's own exile and expulsion and the persecution of Rakovsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Radek's 1921 apology was made worthless by his subsequent record and castigation by Trotsky. If we are to accept Radek's apology for Kronstadt in 1921, then we must accept Radek's apology for Stalinism and the Stalinist persecution of Trotsky from 1927 on to the time of his assassination. Radek's own trial and " confession " put him out of court entirely as a witness.

The Kronstadt massacre was succeeded a month lator by the massacre of the Moscow Anarchists when Trotsky shelled their headquarters and finally abolished their propaganda. All this was justified on the ground that Anarchists were counter-revolutionists. Stalin has popularised this cry so thoroughly that no genuine revolutionist takes it seriously. Robespierre assassinated the French Revolution and finally himself by this very same parrot cry of counterrevolution. Men do embrace counter-revolutionary philosophy and they do pursue counter-revolutionary policies; but it does not follow that we must therefore give heed to every clamorous cry of counter-revolution when it is dictated by the hysterical needs of an aspiring bureaucrat, whose aim is to arrest the development of the revolution and to build his sect, or his party, or his clique into the edifice of power.

There were Communist elements, of a definite Anti-Parliamentarian kind, who found no place in the Communist lnternational or else were allowed merely a subsidiary and altogethcr temporary representation at the opening sessions. It may be claimed therefore that the Communist International like the triumph of Leninism in Russia contained in itself the seeds of Stalinism and of later degeneration. That was not obvious at the beginning because the success in Russia of Lenin and Trotsky was an historical success just as the failure of Stalin is an historical failure. The function of Trotskyism is to direct proletarian attention to that failure and in that way to call our attention to the real object and nature of Communist agitation and struggle. For the purpose of comparison, and for this purpose only, and not because we accept the cry, " Back to Lenin," those of us who were Communists before the Russian Revolution of 1917, and remain Communists, now that revolution has passed into history, agree that the Stalin leadership registered the decline of the International to stagnation and death. We differ from Trotskyism in that the Trotskyists think that there was a time when the Communist International really lived as a healthy expression of the workers' struggle. We claim that the Communist International enjoyed only a feverish existence as the after-birth of the Russian Revolution. It was doomed to disaster and to death from the moment of its foundation for its very organisation made it impossible for it to function except as the ramification of the Russian Revolution.

The pet fallacy of Stalinism, "Socialism in One Country," meaning literally, "Capitalism and Dictatorship in Russia," was foreshadowed in every thesis of the Communist International. This fact was not realised by the sections that belonged to the Communist International and it may, therefore, be perfectly true that Trotsky reacted to ideas of Socialism, which were quite foreign to the understanding of Stalin. It is also correct to realise that large sections of the Communist comrades in Russia believed in the proletarian struggle and considered that the Communist International expressed that struggle. To these elements the difference between the two periods of the Communist International will be absolutely real. It is our duty to consider exactly what happened during the evolution of the Stalin leadership.

The Spanish crisis found the Communist International powerless to act because there was no Communist party and no Spanish proletarian policy. Stalinism confronted the fact of the Spanish Revolution with the same blankness of vision as was exhibited by the Second International in August 1914. In every other portion of the globe, even in places where the Comintern had boasted of its mass parties, or its parties on the road to embracing masses, the local section of the International, at the moment of the local crisis, writhed in the agony of impotence.

With insignificant exceptions, not one of the authentic leaders of so-called World Communism during the first years of its organised existence (1919-1924), was to be found in its ranks in January 1933. This comparison includes, and primarily relates to, the leaders of the Russian Party. Everywhere the Communist parties had become sieves into which ever new sections of the working-class were poured by the developing and permanent Capitalist crisis, only to be lost through the holes of bureaucratism and false bourgeois politics. Thirteen years after the founding of the Third International, the overwhelming majority of its greatly reduced membership had not been in the Party ranks for longer than two years; the old members had been lost or expelled.

This condition and development of the Communist International was not a private dispute but one that concerned the whole working-class. It raised several most important questions. There was the question of Anarchism and the class struggle, opposition to a burcaucracy claiming to be exercising the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. There was the fact that to-day there existed a definite Anti-Parliamentary movement that believed in the liquidation of the party in the revolutionary workers' struggle to emancipation and at the point of crisis. There was the question of Leninist-Trotskyism versus Stalinism. Arising out of that there was the further discussion : Is the question one of Stalinism or Leninism or is it one of Bolshevism or Communism? If it can be shown that Stalinism proceeds naturally from Leninism, then of course the issue is not what kind of Bolshevism does the worker support, but rather how quickly should Bolshevism be buried as a Social Democratic negation of Communism. The question of Marxism even arose. We were compelled to consider, whether, in certain phases, Stalinism was not the logical development of Marxism; whether even Marxism itself was not, in certain phases, a negation of Communism.

These questions were not the questions of proletarian despair, but of proletarian struggle and progress. That they arose in this fashion dates the difference in outlook, and even, too, the nature of the struggle that divides the proletariat of today from the proletariat to whom Marx and Engels addressed themselves in their striking and historic Manifesto of 1848.

We no longer discuss bourgeois parties and bourgeois literature, but we consider the history of the proletarian movemenet itself; and even then not the proletarian movement reconciling itself to Capitalism but the proletarian movement in various stages of insurrection. Strangely enough the literature of this movement is very largely in the English language. We follow the story of the rise, progress and decline of Trotskyism. The decline of Trotskyism differs historically from the decline of Stalinism. Trotskyism pours its genius like a stream into the waters of the proletarian revolution but Stalinism is but the fossil remains of a great revolution.

The Left Opposition rose in the Soviet Union, and took shape as a distinct grouping in 1923, headed by Trotsky. At that time, the Soviet Union was passing through what Trotsky termed, " the scissors crisis." This was the crisis of the relative prices and therefore exchange values of manufactured articles and agricultural products. The problem was to bring prices in both sectors into harmony. Inability to solve this problem developed a crisis of unemployment, need, and resulting proletarian discontent which reflected itself in the Communist Party in the expression of dissatisfaction on the part of the members. The NEP had been put into effect in 1921. This had eliminated the atmosphere of War Communism from Russian economy, but it had not destroyed the spirit of dictatorship and military tyranny politically. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat really meant the Dictatorship of the Communist Party and this meant the Dictatorship of an inner circle within the party. The military regime imposed upon the party by the civil war and the Capitalist intervention was now allied to a policy that made concessions to the NEP men and to the peasants. The more divorced this party dictatorship was from a proletarian revolutionary struggle, the more dangerous it became to proletarian development. In this fact is summarised the entire subsequent history of the progress from Leninism to Stalinism.

During the war period the freely elected party apparatus that had arisen during the revolution gave place automatically to a vast hierarchy of officials. The initiative and independence of the rank and file party member were stifled. The entrenchment of the growing bureaucratic caste produced clandestine factional groupings in the party. These groupings reflected the deep dissatisfaction of the party membership but their cabals did not succeed in expressing party democracy. Before illness compelled Lenin to withdraw from active party life, he openly denounced the danger of bureaucratism and indicated the need of workers' democracy inside the party. He urged Trotsky to purge the party of this destructive cancer. The Tenth Party Congress under Lenin's direction adopted a vigorous resolution on the need of party democracy which the Twelfth Party Congress re-affirmed. The resolution remained a dead letter and the bureaucracy entrenched itself. Bucharin supported the bureaucracy at this time. Nevertheless, in one of his speeches, he gave a vivid picture of the bureaucratic conditions prevailing. He declared that every investigation was decided by a question from the chair, "Who is for?" or "Who is against? " The result was all " elections to the party organisation have become elections in quotation marks," since the voting took place without discussion and according to this formula of for and against, it being a bad business to speak against the authorities.

With this confession before us, we can understand why Trotsky found it futile and impossible to send suggestions, that were never considered, to the sub-committee of the C.C. that were born out of the strike-wave crisis of the summer of 1923. The bureaucracy drove him into non-attendance and then made the fact of his non-attendance a basic argument against his activity of protest.

On October 8, 1923, Trotsky addressed a letter to the Central Committee of the party on this question of democracy and also on the condition of national economy. Forty six of the Communist Party leaders followed this up by signing another letter of protest dealing with the same issue. This group attacked the C.C. for having " instituted a regime of factional discipline," which meant the assassination of party democracy. The group developed also its economic proposals of proletarian " Dictatorship of Industry." Preobrajensky, who supported Trotsky, worked out the theory of struggle against the peasant counter-revolution and stranglehold on the proletarian revolution, in The New Economics.

On December 5, 1923, the party leadership, which included Trotsky, unanimously adopted a resolution on the questions at issue. Three days later Trotsky collected the articles he had written on the matters in dispute and published them as a pamphlet, addressed to the consideration of local party conferences, under the title of The New Course. Supporting the resolution, Trotsky denounced the party leadership, and declared the task of the party was to " subordinate the apparatus to itself." He paralleled the degeneration of the Bolshevik " old guard " with the degeneration of the leaders of the Second International. He added that the " bankrupt representatives of the apparatus " were prepared, at that moment, " bureaucratically to make the revolution null and void." He impeached the " factionalism " of the bureaucracy.

Against this pamphlet, it was complained that to oppose the party to its apparatus was not Bolshevism ; to blame the apparatus for factionalism was anti-Bolshevism; and to compare the Bolshevik leadership with that of the Second International was to accuse the Bolshevik leaders of " growing grey in the fight for and not the fight against " Opportunism." It must not be forgotten that, in the succeeding years, as the Bolshevik leaders were discarded one by one, in every case, Stalinism accused them of life-long opportamism !

Trotsky's warnings were denounced as slanders by the section of the Bolshevik " Old Guard " and " Leninist Central Committee" which broke into dozens of fragments in the years that followed. As the individual members succumbed to the persecution of the bureaucratic machine, they must have mused on Trotsky's application of Lenin's phase, that " history knows degenerations of all sorts."

The Trotsky programme for restoring workers' democracy was coupled with a definite policy of planned economy for speeding up the industrialisation of agriculture. The plan idea met with astounding antagonism from the bureaucracy but ten years after was accepted and applied efficiently by the Stalinist apparatus and popularised under the title of the Five Year Plan. The fact that it had been advanced by the Trotskyist Opposition and ridiculed by the Stalin majority is forgotten most conveniently. The Stalinist view, and the essence of the dispute, was stated well by Zinoviev, at that time a violent opponent of Trotsky, and the spokesman of the Stalin majority faction, in his speech of January 6, 1924.

Zinoviev spoke of Trotsky's " obstinate persistence in clinging to a beautiful plan" and declared it to be " intrinsically nothing else than a considerable concession to the old-fashioned view that a good plan is a universal remedy, the last word in wisdom."

" Trotsky's standpoint has greatly impressed many students. We want to have transport affairs managed by Dzherzhinsky; economics by Rykov; finance by Sokolnikov; TROTSKY, ON THE OTHER HAND, WANTS TO CARRY OUT EVERYTHING WITH THE AID OF A 'STATE PLAN'."

Trotsky's theory of a State plan later became the policy of the Stalin group and the sole justification for its continuation in power. The Stalin majority borrowed wholesale the very programme against which they had mobilised the whole Communist movement years before, and for urging which Trotsky was exiled. With the apparatus at their command, the party leaders were able to obtain a majority for their demagogy. The control of the machinery of the Communist International facilitated the " voting down " of the opposition in the so-called parties abroad. Trotsky was voted down by a membership of which not one tenth had seen or read what he actually wrote and stood for. The majority was rigged against Trotskyism with comparative ease largely because of the October 1923 retreat of the Communist Party in Germany. This event developed hysteria in the ranks of the Comintern, intensified the reaction in the Soviet union, and decided the passing of the Communist International.

The situation in Germany in the autumn of 1923 was favourable to the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. But the Communist Party conducted a relentless war against the Anti-Parliamentary K.A.P.D., which had been born in 1920, owing to the collapse, as an organisation of struggle, of the K.P.D, favoured by Moscow, and used the romance of the Russian Revolution as a shield for its own arrogant ineptitude. The German bourgeoise was able to extricate itself from an " inextricable situation," as Trotsky said, because the Communist Party did not realise that the position was " inextricable," and so failed to act. The revolutionary crisis was reached in October, and the Communist Party went on recruiting, and remained passive, admiring its accumulation of dead forces. It developed no initiative and watched the bourgeoise overthrow of the Socialist-Communist coalition of Governments in Saxony and Thuringia. At the critical moment, the Communist leaders retreated and threw both the party and the masses into despair. Responsibility for this debacle rested on the shoulders, primarily, of the Communist International bureaucracy and the leaders of the Russian Communist Party. Stalin, Zinoviev, and Bucharin were more responsible than Brandler and Thalheimer, who became the scapegoats.

Writing to Zinoviev, in August 1923, Stalin declared that if the Communists attempted to seize power, they would crash, and receive " a teaching demonstration " that would become " a general slaughter." He urged that the Fascists must be allowed "to attack first; this will rally the whole working-class around the Communists. Germany is not Bulgaria. Besides, the Fascists in Germany, according to the data I have, are weak. In my estimation, the Germans must be restrained, not spurred on."

Germany was Bulgaria over again but much worse; and Fascism was not weak. Instead of encouraging Brandler and Thalheimer to pursue a policy of struggle, Stalin urged on them a studied programme of inaction.

The official report of the September 1923 Plenum of the Russian Party Central Committee, issued weeks before the German retreat, recorded, in terms of condemnation, Trotsky's view of the matter, as stated in a speech made " before leaving the session of the Central Committee." The report declared that this speech " greatly excited all the Central Committee members." Trotsky stated that " the leadership of the German Communist Party is worthless, its Central Committee permeated with fatalism and sleepyheadedness," and " that under these conditions the German revolution is condemneed to failure." The official report proceeded to describe this statement as a "phillipic called forth by an incident ... which had nothing to do with the German revolution " and "was a contradiction to the objective state of affairs." The report also said: " This speech produced an astounding impression."

Not Trotsky's speech, terrible in its accuracy of forecast and depiction of reality, but the facts on which it was based should have produced the impression.

After the German October defeat had confirmed Trotsky's clarity of understanding, Stalin and Zinoviev denounced Brandler and Thalheimer as being exclusively responsible for the course which the Comintern leadership had directed. For what happened, and for what did not happen, a simple bureaucratic declaration made Brandler culpable.

Trotsky examined the German October, in his brilliant work, " Lessons of October," in which he compared the Bolshevik upheaval of 1917 with the 1923 defeat in Germany. It is interesting to note that the month before the German defeat, the Bulgarian Communist Party had succumbed. This fact explains Stalin's incautious observation to Zinoviev.

Summarising his study of October victory and defeat, Trotsky declared that the typical, and not particular, feature of the German defeat, was the danger of " crisis of revolutionary leadership on the eve of transition to armed uprising." He showed how " the depths of the proletarian party " were " far less susceptible to bourgeoise public opinion " than " elements of the party leadership " and " its middle layers " who unfailingly succumb "to the material and ideological terror of the bourgeoise." Whereas " only a minority" of the Russian Party leadership "was seized` by this dangerous irresolution and vacillation in 1917," and " were overcome by the sharp energy of Lenin," in Germany the entire leadership vacillated. And so the revolutionary situation was passed by. The business of the Communists was to learn the Lessons of October and so limit such fatal crises.

The Stalin faction wished to avoid facing this analysis. When Trotsky referred to the Russian wing of 1917, it was known that he was censuring Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Tomsky, Stalin and company who, in the months preceding the Bolshevik uprising, opposed the idea of insurrection towards which Lenin and Trotsky were steering the party. Stalin and his henchmen knew that an examination into the German retreat would prove that the right wing of 1917 had repeated its failure in 1923. Consequently the leadership of the Communist International demanded that the whole International outlaw Trotsky and his writings.

An interesting example of the excommunication at work was offered by the voting in the American party. The " Lessons of October " was not printed by the party in the English language and 99 per cent. of the membership and leadership of the American party knew nothing about its contents. But they cast the solemn vote in condemnation of Trotsky's view. It was taken for granted that the Opposition was wrong.

As late as the 5th Congress of the Comintern, in 1924, Stalin, Zinoviev, Bucharin, and other Trotsky-baiters, denied that the German defeat had given the bourgeoisie of Central Europe the breathing space it sought and needed. They defined it as a mere episode and declared that the Opposition had lost faith in the Revolution. It was but a step from this denunciation to the assertion that the revolutionary situation was right ahead. From this flambuoyant optimism, Stalinism progressed rapidly to the pessimistic belief that the Revolution in Western Europe was postponed indefinitely. The Stalinist bureaucracy became the liquidators; and so they developed the absurd theory of " Socialism in One Country." By its very formulation, this theory registers the fact that its authors had lost faith in the world revolution. " Socialism in One Country " is the doctrine of capitalist stabilisation. Losovsky, as head of the Red International of Labour Unions, declared, on behalf of Stalinism, that the stabilisation of Europe would last for decades. This was a denial of the Socialist dictum that we are living in a period of wars and proletarian revolution. Lenin certainly embraced this dictum; but it does not follow that he never flirted with the idea of building Socialism in Russia.

Until 1924, the Utopian idea of " Socialism in One Country " was never entertained seriously by the Communist: movement. Marx and Engels had attacked the idea as Utopian and even Stalin admitted that these pioneers of scientific Socialism never considered the possibility of a national Socialist Utopia. Stalin declared that the idea was " formulated first by Lenin in 1915."

Stalinists claim that this theory of "Socialism in One Country," meaning Russia, was a matter of vital difference between Lenin and Trotsky since 1915. On April 12, 1916, writing in his paper, Nashe Slavo, Trotsky replied to Lenin and challenged his conception as " national limitedness." He declared that the Western Capitalist powers were " ripe for the social revolution," but that Russia, Africa, and Asia were not. Trotsky added :
" To examine the prospects of social revolution in a national framework would mean becoming a victim of that same NATIONAL LIMITEDNESS which constitutes the essence of social-patriotism. ... To struggle for the maintenance of the national base of the revolution by methods which break up the international connections of the proletariat means, in fact, undermining the revolution."

In 1922, Lenin informed the Moscow Soviet that ° we have dragged Socialism into everyday life " and prophesied that " Russia of N.E.P. will become Socialist Russia." This statement was false and the fact that Lenin uttered it does not make it true.

The same year Trotsky republished his 1915-16 articles, under the title, " A Peace Programme," with an "Afterword," in which he declared that Russia had " not come to the creation of a Socialist order and " had " not even approached it." He added that " the genuine rise of Socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the most important countries in Europe."

Four years later, Trotsky repeated this view, and argued rightly that the theory of building Socialism in one country is " the theoretical justification of national limitedness." In 1933, he denounced the theory as " a petty bourgeois Utopia."

The Stalinists urge that this is not an attack on Stalin but on Lenin. Even so, such an attack would not be criminal. It may prove that Trotsky is not a" Leninist," but it does not establish Lenin's reputation as a Socialist, and it certainly destroys his claim to be regarded as a clear social thinker.

It is contended that the only concession made to the necessity for world revolution by Lenin was the admission that the only final guarantee that it could exist once it had been built was in the overthrow of the Capitalist states, i.e., world revolution in order to protect Russia against military attack.

The reply to this apology for nationalist error is simple. It is to denounce the absurdity of this one country theory, irrespective of responsibility for authorship. Lenin's attitude did contribute to the development of this reactionary thesis, but there can be no question that history left Stalin to champion and exalt the absurd notion to a vision of " revolutionary " achievement.

Lenin played a most important part in the 1917 revolution, but there is not a single reference to this theory in the programme of the Bolshevik party at the time. The programme of the Young Communist League of Russia, adopted in 1921, under the supervision of Bucharin and the Central Committee of the party, declares that Russia " can arrive at Socialism only through the World Proletarian Revolution, which epoch we have now entered." The 4th Congress of the Comintern in 1922, resolved unanimously that the Russian Revolution " reminds the proletarians of all countries that the Proletarian Revolution can never be completely victorious within one single country, but that it must win the victory Internationally, as the World Revolution. "

Three years before this, Bucharin had declared that the establishment of Socialism in Russia could " begin only with the victory of the proletariat in several large countries." Stalin, in the second edition of his " Problems of Leninism," advanced the cautious formula that " the victorious proletariat of one country," after it " had consolidated its power and won over the peasantry for itself," " can and must build up the Socialist Society." This statement is removed far from the unrestrained nationalistic gospel of " Socialism in One Country," of developed Stalinism. Even so, the formula has been substituted for almost definite opposite statement in the first edition of this work. Here Stalin declared that the final victory of Socialism for the organisation of Socialist construction could not be attained in one country, but required the " joint efforts " of the proletariat of several advanced countries. Which is, of course, the correct view.

The theory of Socialism in one country was not written into the programme of the Communist International until 1928. It had been advanced by Stalin since 1924, and was associated with an unbroken chain of proletarian defeats. The theory undermined the proletarian struggle towards the world revolution and substituted counter-revolutionary political dictatorship over the proletariat for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat towards a world of freedom. It made a farce of the revolutionary claims of the Soviet
Union and Socialist Republic. One of the events which illustrated the growing menace of the theory was the British General Strike of 1926.

Stalinism continued its rake's progress of German debacle and " Socialism in One Country," by pursuing a policy of studied disaster in connection with the British General Strike of 1926. This British policy was the inevitable consequence of the Comintern's German fiasco and its Russian absurdity.

Supporting Stalin's statement that the German proletariat had suffered no defeat, Zinoviev advised the 5th Congress of the Comintern, 1924, that Germany was " approaching a sharpened civil war." This was not a discredited prediction, but a braggart's gesture of bad faith; for the time of prediction had passed and the facts told their own tale of counter-revolutionary triumph. It was not possible for the leaders of the Comintern to save their faces by crying in more trenchant tones their slogan of hysteria: " Socialism in One Country." To maintain their hold on the Russian proletariat, and to ramify their position in other countries, the Russian leaders had to invent revolutionary phenomena and to paint in revolutionary colours movements and men who had nothing in common with the revolution. Judas moved in the direction of Judas; and they had to identify themselves with the discredited Labour politicians left over from the Second International and petty bourgeois thinkers who were regarded as the literary messiahs in garden cities and " so-correct " intellectual centres. The World League Against Imperialism was formed by the Comintern as a refuge for the members of this intriguing alliance, and the Anglo-Russian Committee was called into existence to prop up the fantastic edifice of the 5th Congress. The liquidation of Communism proceeded.

The Anglo-Russian Committee was formed as a result of the British Trade Union Delegation visit to the Soviet Union at the end of 1924. It was composed of the Councils of the Trade Unions of Britain and Russia. For a year prior to the British General Strike, the Communist Party of Great Britain proclaimed the imbecile slogan : " All Power to the General Council." Sunday after Sunday, the Sunday Worker popularised the slogan and it was the watchword of the Communist Party meetings. The reason for this slogan was the reason for the alliance itself. Stalinism had converted the Communist Party into a Soviet Border Patrol and the world revolution, and the struggle of the British proletariat, were subsidiary to the " Socialism in One Country " ideal, to the entrenchment of the Soviet bureaucracy.

As I write, I have before me a copy of the Sunday Worker for May 24, 1925. It commences a series of articles, entitled falsely, "Leaders of the Left," and " No. 1" is " A. B. Swales," then President of the Trades Union Congress, a member of the General Council, and also E.C. Member of the A.E.U. In 1924, he was British Fraternal delegatc to the A.F.L. The Moscow subsidised Sunday Worker said :
" It will be seen that he had held every high office in the trade union movement. And yet - and this is his strongest point as a Labour leader - he is still an ardent rank and filer and views every big problem from the angle of the Worker at the bench.
" Many superficial people when they are dressed ' in a little brief authority ' become very ' uppish ' and begin to ape the mannerisms of ' society.' Not so our friend Swales. He is at one with the Workers, body and soul, in their everyday struggle. And he has nothing but contempt for those leaders who, when they leave the workshop, forget the masses and their struggle. . . .
" At the Trades Union Congress to be held in September at Scarborough he will deliver the Chairman's speech. Knowing him as we do we prophesy that this will not be a thing made up of rhetoric fireworks - it will be something much more important. It will be something stated in plain blunt language, and it will give the whole movement a bold and clever lead. It will personify the simple and rugged strength of a far-seeing and courageous leader.
" Swales is not one of your ' standoffish' kind. At a social gathering he is the soul of merriment and can sing a good song, in a splendid resonant voice, with the best of them."

Stalin and Bucharin endowed the Anglo-Russian Committee with capacities and objectives that were not only beyond it, but alien to its very nature. ln 1926, its year of collapse and patriotic failure, Stalin depicted it as the staunch bulwark of the world-proletariat against " Imperialist war in general," which it most clearly was not. Stalin added " and against an intervention in our country especially on the part of England, the mightiest of Imperial States of Europe."

This phrase is the real explanation of Stalin's belief in the Anglo-Russian Committee, this " organisation of broad movement of the working-class " - for what?

Hymns of praise were sung to Purcell, Cook, Hicks, Swales, Tillet, and Citrine, as the revolutionary organisers of the proletariat in all the languages of the Comintern. The Trotskyist Opposition maintained that it was a false idea to set these British Labour Lieutenants of Capitalism on a revolutionary pedestal. The Opposition added, with a scathing accuracy, that the " more acute the international situation becomes the more the Anglo-Russian Committee will be transformed into a weapon of English and International Imperialism." Stalinism denounced this attitude as antagonism to the United Front, and paid servitude to Sir Austen Chamberlain !

Purcell needed the alliance of the Soviets as a shield from the attacks of the revolutionists in Britain. The Soviets hailed him as one of the organisers of the struggle against the military intervention which alone could prevent Russia from building the Socialist Society. The Trade Union bloc quickly became a political bloc between the reformists of England and the Russian party bureaucracy. This bloc lasted not for a moment but survived the collapse of the General Strike and was maintained by Stalin until well after the Berlin Conference of the Anglo-Russian Committee, held in April 1927.

Into the details of the General Strike of 1926, which was brought about by the Miners' Strike, one need not go in the present pamphlet. That has been dealt with by the present writer fully elsewhere. After nine days of resistance on the part of the workers, that darling of the C.P., the General Council of the Trade Unions, betrayed the struggle and its members made one mad collective rush to Whitehall to confer with the Baldwin Government on how to crush the strike. With patriotic frenzy, these " Left Labour Leaders " hastily wiped off the red veneer with which the Comintern had coated them. The financial aid from the Soviet Union was rejected with indignation as " that damned Russian gold." Purcell and Swales dropped the Red Flag with ungracious haste in favour of the Union Jack. Instead of being " the organisatory centre that embraces the international proletariat for the struggle " they proved to be the reliable prop of the British ruling class against the starving and struggling workers. The only illuminating event of the struggle was Zinoviev's excellent analysis of the position of Cook; and this analysis was in direct opposition to the views advanced by all members of the Stalinist faction and to the policy of the Communist Party in Great Britain. It was one of Zinoviev's brilliant deviations.

During the General Strike days of struggle and treachery, it may be said that the Anglo-Russian Committee was as certainly worthless to the cause of Socialism in Russia as it was to the cause of Socialism in Britain. It had a distinct value only for the British Trade Union leaders and for the British ruling class. Purcell, Swales and Hicks utilised to a maximum the prestige accruing to them out of their formal and inexpensive collaboration with the Bolshevik representatives on the Anglo-Russian Committee. Even when the General Strike had proved a disaster, Stalin and Bucharin still refused to break with these betrayers of the working class. When at last the Stalinists did oppose the Purcells, thcy then denounced not only the leaders but also described Social-Fascists the workers who had been betrayed into following these leaders by the policy of the Comintern and the Anglo-Russian Committee.

The Anglo-Russian Committee made no protest against the bombardment of Nanking by British gunboats; against the police raid upon the Arcos, the Soviet trading organisation in London; against the treachery of the betrayal of the General Strike; but it did adopt a resolution in which the Russians and Englishmen declared that the only representatives and spokesmen of the Trade Union movement were the Congress of the British Trades Union and its General Council: and that the fraternal union incorporated in the Anglo-Russian Committee could not and must not violate or restrict the rights and autonomy of the respective Trade Union movements of each country; nor interfere in any manner whatsoever in their internal affairs.

The Anglo-Russian Committee was a proletarian classic failure. It defended Labour Fakirism in England; identified itself with bureaucracy and despotism in Russia, and proved the natural prelude to the tragedy of the Chinese Revolution.

The collapse of the great Chinese revolutionary movement of 1925-27 is a standing historical condemnation of the Communist International. Clothed in the formal authority of the Russian Revolution and the Comintern, Stalin and Bucharin prohibited the Chinese proletariat from struggling for power. They used the prestige of the Russian Revolution to destroy the Chinese Revolution and they employed the Soviets of Russia to prevent the formation of the Soviets of China. They made history both repeat and parody itself; for they played exactly the same part during the Chinese struggle as they had played in the Bolshevik discussions from April to May 1917, when they objected to the very insurrection that made possible finally Stalin's rise to power. They translated Menshevism into the language of Chinese politics. Napoleon III, as Marx said, was the nephew burlesquing the uncle and his coup d'etat was history repeating itself ; once a tragedy, and then a farce. Stalin and Bucharin presented the farce first and the tragedy afterwards. Napoleon III had abdicated before the Commune; but the Russian "Napoleon The Little's" sought prestige from the capitalist butchery, whilst claiming to be the Communards perpetuating the Commune.

Sun Yat Sen flourished 1866 to 1925. He was the father of the Chinese Nationalist movement and founded the Kou Min Tang. In 1911, he became Provisional President of the Chinese Republic and was head of the Canton Nationalist Government until his death.

Kou Min Tang means, literally, the People's Party. It was founded and organised under that name by Sun Yat Sen in 1911-12. It had a petty bourgeois, nationalist, semi-Socialist, and very semi-Socialist foundation. Under Sun Yat Sen its platform consisted of three planks : Nationalism, Democracy, and Socialism. Its successors forgot the second and third planks and defined the first as Imperialism, Militarism, and Power. The Communists entered the Kou Min Tang in 1922, when it was reorganised, and admitted into the Communist International as a sympathetic party.

As early as 1923, Trotsky was opposed resolutely to the rising Communist Party of China joining the Kou Min Tang, and he was against the acceptance of the Kou Min Tang into the Comintern. Radek and Zinoviev opposed him in this attitude and Rakovsky was in Paris and unacquainted with the facts and incapable of exercising any influence. In 1925, Trotsky again proposed formally that the Communist Party leave the Kou Min Tang. This was rejected unanimously by the other members of the Political Bureau. Up to 1926, Trotsky voted independently and against all others in the Political Bureau on this question. During this year and 1927, he had uninterrupted conflicts with Zinoviev and his supporters on the matter; but in April 1927 Zinoviev embraced the Opposition viewpoint, and presented his thesis on the Chinese Revolution to the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. on the 15th of that month. By way of reward, he was removed from his position in the Communist International and the party's Political Bureau and expelled from the party. He capitulated and was given a minor administrative post. Obviously, the Chinese question, i.e., the support of the Kou min Tang, was the acid test of Bolshevism at this time.

The American Daily Worker, in its issue for April 23, 1925, published the death-bed message of Sun Yat Sen, under the heading:

The communication was dated Pekin, April 22, and stated that, " feeling the approach of his death, Dr. Sun Yat Sen called the members of the Central Committee of the Kou Min Tang" together and had a " message drafted to the Central Executive of the U.S.S.R.," which he signed with his own hand. This message proved that Sun Yat Sen's outlook was similar to that of Mazzini. Like Mazzini he expounded sincere sentiments, but their very sincerity condemned his understanding and revealed his idealistic inability to visualise the social conflict. Sun Yat Sen simply did not realise the meaning of Socialism and possessed no grasp of the Class Struggle. He is not to be condemned for his failure to understand the real issue and he may be worthy of praise for his allegiance to principles that took him into exile and made him the subject of possible assassination for many years. The loftiness of his idealism did not make him the propagandist of the poor and it was absurd for any advocate of proletarian emancipation to place his faith in Sun Yat Sen's programme. It is not Sen that should be condemned for entertaining and proclaiming his ideas but the Comintern for deeming him an ally. That gesture of welcome to the Chinese leader established the futility and impotence of the Russian leaders. But Sen was succeeded by leaders who were unworthy of being ranked with him for idealism. With him they proceeded from the standpoint that China was a semi-colonial country, subjected to the yoke of an alien imperialism. They played their part in the struggle not as prophets but as adventurers. To honour these successors of the founder of the Kou Min Tang was to identify the Comintern with a programme of action that was a long way removed even from the ideals of Sun Yat Sen. The compromise was not only fatal, but it represented a mortal degeneracy.

The text of Sun Yat Sen's message was as follows :
" My Dear Comrades:
As I lie here, with a malady that is beyond men's skill my thoughts turn to you and to the future of my party and my country.
You are the head of a union of free republics which is the real heritage that the immortal Lenin has left to the world of the oppressed peoples. Through this heritage, the victims of imperialism are destined to secure their freedom and deliverance from an international system whose foundations lie in ancient slaveries and wars and injustices.
I am leaving behind me a party which I hoped would be associated with you in the historic work of completely liberating China and other exploited countries from this imperialist system. Fate decrees that I must leave the task unfinished and pass it on to those who, by remaining true to the principles and teachings of the party, will constitute my real followers.
I have, therefore, enjoined the Kuomintang to carry on the work of the national revolutionary movement in order that China may be freed from the semi-colonial status which imperialism has imposed upon her. To this end I have charged the party to keep in constant touch with you, and I look with confidence to the continuance of the support that your government has heretofore extended to my country.
In bidding farewell to you, dear comrades, I wish to express the fervent hope that the day may soon dawn when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics will greet, as a friend and ally, a strong and independent China and the two allies may together advance to victory in the great struggle for the liberation of the oppressed peoples of the world.
With fraternal greetings,
(Signed) Sun Yat Sen."

If Lenin showed the way to freedom in the sense that Sun Yat Sen understood, it must be clear that Leninism was a departure from Marxism and certainly the antithesis of the proletarian revolution. The Comintern was pleased at Sen's tribute and was quite willing to deserve it by wholesale departure from the principles of proletarian struggle. It accepted the party of Sun Yat Sen and declared that it was the embodiment of the bloc of four classes in the Chinese nation; the workers, the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie itself. Stalin declared that the alien oppression was felt by all classes in the Chinese nation with equal severity, and that the Chinese bourgeoisie must be supported by the masses of workers and peasants in the revolt and war against foreign Imperialism. This revolt necessitated a revolutionary anti-Imperialist United Front centred around the Kou Min Tang. The Chinese Communists were ordered to accept the decisions of the Nationalist Government which established compulsory arbitration, and they were warned by Moscow not to organise Soviets because that would menace the " revolutionary centre " in China.

This Moscow policy led directly to the massacre of the vanguard of the Chinese proletariat and the destruction of the Chinese Communist Party. The party was permitted to possess no independent class outlook. It was denied the right to criticise and it issued a joint manifesto with the Kou Min Tang in which it was announced that the difference between the two sections was only " in some details." Chiang Kai Shek conquered large sections of territory with the aid of the Communist Party and its gullible proletarian followers. Wherever he triumphed, the Communist Party and the Trade Unions remained illegal. Under his flag the rich peasants continued to own the land and the Chinese Communist Party continued to restrain the workers from protest whilst it urged the poor peasants not to rise in revolt. Moscow had willed that the function of the Chinese Party was to betray the proletarian and peasant masses and to remain impotent in the real revolutionary struggle. In opposition to Stalin's attitude, the Trotskyist Opposition declared that the Nationalist armies were not the armies of proletarian revolution and that the Kou Min Tang was not the party of the proletariat.

Aided and abetted by Stalin and the Chinese Communist Party, Chiang Kai Shek and the Kou Min Tang executed over one hundred thousand Chinese Communists in 1927-28. Only a short time before these massacres commenced, Stalin had sent Chiang Kai Shek his picture with an expression of regards and solidarity. The ink was hardly dry on the report of Stalin's Moscow Speech praising Chiang Kai Shek as a revolutionary fighter, when the latter wiped out the very flower of the Chinese Revolution. The catastrophe that over took the Chinese Revolution in 1927 was due to the policy of the Communist International. As the Kou Miin Tang swept northwards and became more and more powerful, the Chiang Kai Sheks found it more and more necessary to turn their guns against the poor workers and peasants who were forming their own organisations and throwing up Soviets. The Kou Min Tang was not able to make its real gesture against the poor until it won Shanghai. Persuaded by the Communists that the Kou Min Tang was the party of the workers, the workers of Shanghai declared a general strike in April 1927, overthrew the reactionaries and established a Socialist People's Government. The Communists were represented in this government and urged that word be sent to Chiang Kai Shek that it was now safe for him to enter the city. He took possession of the city, abolished the government and then proceeded to slaughter thousands of Communists and workers. The people recoiled in horror from the Kou Min Tang of Chiang Kai Shek, but the Communist International appealed to them not to lose faith in the Kou Min Tang but to support the Kou Min Tang of the left as opposed to the Kou Min Tang of the right. The Chinese workers were told to put their faith in the Christian General, Feng, and in the Kou Min Tang left-wing leader, Wang Chin Wein. A month later these generals had played the same game as Chiang Kai Shek, and further massacres of Communists and workers were reported from Nanking and Hankow. The Communist Party of China was not merely beheaded. It was literally disembowled.

When Chiang Kai Stick entered Shanghai to consecrate in proletarian blood the victory of the counter-revolution, the French Communist Party telegraphed its congratulations on the formation of the " Shanghai Commune." After the massacre, the Stalinists lauded the bourgeois generals, Feng Yu-hsiang and Wang Chin Wein in the Communist Party press of the world as " our own." It was not for nothing that at a later date the same Communist Party press conducted an infamous campaign of slander against the solitary Dutchman hero of the Reichstag trial, Van Der Lubbe. To be condemned by such hirelings is to be immortalised.

Down to August 1927, Trotsky's demand for an independent Communist Party in China was denounced by Stalin and Bucharin. The opposition adopted the same attitude towards the Wuhan government which was established by the so-called Lefts as it had adopted towards Chiang Kai Shek. But the Stalinists denounced the call of the Trotsky faction to the Chinese proletariat and peasants, to continue their instinctive fight for Soviets. At last the Communist International changed its course and tried desperately to save the situation by commanding the Chinese Party to prepare for an armed uprising. This uprising actually occurred in December 1927, in Canton, and Soviets were organised hastily and mysteriously from above. The masses actually played no part in these Soviets, which were formed artificially long after the revolution had been betrayed. The Stalinist organisers understood revolution so little that they did not realise that Soviets, to be Soviets, must rise spontaneously with the surging forward of the revolutionary movement itself. All that resulted from the desperate appeal of the Comintern to the Communists of China was a massacre of the workers in Canton that crushed the last remnants of the revolution.

The activity of the Communist International in China in 1927 was far worse than the conduct of the Mensheviks during the 1905 Russian Revolution. The Mensheviks never opposed the strikes of workmen or the formation of Soviets. They never opposed the formation of revolutionary grouping of the workers, independent of and critical of the capitalist class parties, and they never argued that the revolution was a democratic revolution against Czarism, and that therefore there must be a bloc of four classes. They never advised the workers not to build up their own press, and they never pretended that workers could take power through any other than the Marxist party. It may be that what the Mensheviks term the Marxist Party was not the party of genuine proletarian strength, but at least the idea was that there was a social war, and that the proletariat must throw up its own political organisation. Compare this attitude with that of the Communist International in China twenty-two years later, and then attempt to gauge to what depths the degeneration of Bolshevism has sunk.

The explanation of this degeneration is to be found in the interest as well as the ignorance of the Stalin bureaucracy. The strategy of proletarian struggle in China as in Russia, was to have the revolution begin as a democratic revolution, and to let it end up as a socialist one. This was the theory of Marx, and although it may not be in accordance with the NEP policy of Lenin, at least he did not deny that it was his purpose. Lenin declared that only the proletariat could lead the struggle for democracy to victory, only the proletariat could lead the colonial struggle for independence, and only through Sovietism could freedom be established. Lenin's conception of the function of the Soviets as organs of post revolutionary industrial administration may have been hazy and unsound. Social administration is the true purpose of the Soviets, but Lenin erred in regarding the Soviets merely as organs of insurrection and civil war, which they are, and not as organs of administration, which is their final and higher function if democracy is to be established. The Soviets are the expression of democracy victorious as well as the instruments of achieving democracy. To recognise this fact is to liquidate the political party in the course of the struggle, and to conceive of the party as being subsidiary to the working class. Lenin lacked the ability to realise this simple truth, and to him the party was more important than the workers. The church was above the congregation and the priest was greater than God. Leninism led to Stalinism, but it did not involve that terrible abandonment of principles that characterised the conduct of the Russian leaders in their attitude towards the Chinese Revolution. That degeneracy came from the fact that the Russian leaders had abandoned the world revolution, and that the Communist International was organised, not to advance, but to arrest, the class struggle.

If the Chinese workers had overthrown the Kou Min Tang and destroyed Chiang Kai Shek and the other adventurers whom Stalin described as Red Generals, a real war against Western capitalism would have commenced. The Russian workers would have been called upon to have united themselves with the Chinese workers; the Russian Red Flag would have become the real Red Flag ; the Communist International would have become a genuine proletarian international; and Moscow would at last have become Red Moscow.

The bureaucrats, eager for diplomatic honours and foreign treaties, did not want anything so real to take place in the East. They only wanted " Socialism in One Country." They wanted recognition, peace, and power. Their motto was : " We have ours; why should we worry." They abandoned the Chinese proletariat as they abandoned the British proletariat in 1926, and the German proletariat in 1923, and as they were to abandon the German proletariat in 1933. They abandoned proletarian Internationalism for a yellow opportunist nationalism, whilst pretending to be the dictators of communist thought, action and struggle.

The struggle of the Trotskyist Opposition for planned economy lasted from 1923 to 1928. Plan was introduced into Soviet economy in July 1920. The entire railroad system was a wreck, and Trotsky was given the job of restoring transportation. His famous " Order No. 1042 " was the first of a series of systematic decrees instructing measures which evolved order and regularity out of collapse and chaos. Lenin described Trotsky's measures as examples of what had to be done in other branches of industry. Trotsky reported to the 8th Congress of the Soviets and with Emshanov prepared a thesis on the need for a plan in economy. This thesis was defended by Lenin. By 1923 Lenin had withdrawn from the party council and Trotsky stood alone in the Executive Council of the part y in defence of planned economy. He insisted that the only material foundation for Socialism in Russia was the development of large machine industry, particularly in the realm of agriculture, and urged that such development was imperative in view of the retardation of the international revolution and the menace of the petty bourgeois strata of the village population. The reply of the bureaucracy was to launch a furious attack upon him. This attack was the beginning of the struggle for what afterwards became known as the Five Year Plan.

The Stalinists urged that the planned economy proposed by Trotsky was too extreme and that it menaced the building of Socialism in Russia. It is obvious that these objections were contradictory. Rykov reported to the 5th Congress of the Comintern that Trotsky's proposals were a petty bourgeois deviation from Leninism and that the Russian party leadership was doing all that could be expected of it in the field of industry and agriculture. Stalin sneered that it was not a plan that the peasant needed but a good rain for his crops. Trotsky's insistence on the danger of the rising Kulaks was derided.

At this time the Kulak was becoming the dominant figure in the countryside and was permeating the party with his ideology. The Leningrad proletariat became alarmed at the inroads made by him and his urban associates, the Nepmen. The Stalin-Bucharin leadership identified itself with the Kulak against the proletariat and so the Leningrad proletariat finally compelled Zinoviev, who had fathered the campaign against Trotskyism, to make a bloc with the 1923 opposition.

Kalinin denounced the poor peasants as " lazy-good-for-nothings " because they did not accumulate. The fact that the President of the Soviet Republic could advance the theory of private accumulation as opposed to planned economy illustrates the capitalistic basis of the Soviet Union. This mediocre official praised the industry of " the economically powerful peasant," the Kulak. Bucharin in a famous or infamous speech, according to the Socialist viewpoint, advised the well-to-do-peasants: " Enrich yourselves." Pravda in April, 1925, praised the Kulaks for being " well-to-do" peasants and added that the " economic possibilities of the Kulaks must be unfettered." Continuing its opposilion to planned economy, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, in 1926, granted the vote to the Kulaks, thus extending political recognition to the exploiting and actually money-lending peasants.

In 1925, Trotsky published his "Whither Russia," in which he urged that the Soviet Republic should adopt an independent agricultural reproduction based on collective accumulation. He declared that this would show a speed of industrial progress unknown and impossible under the private accumulation of ordinary capitalism. His prediction, which time showed to be a serious underestimation of the reality, was the subject for great merriment among the Stalinists. Stalin met the idea with ironical ridicule and Bucharin declared that along the lines of collective accumulation Russia would build Socialism " with the speed of the tortoise " or at a snail's pace.

The 1927 platform of the opposition was suppressed. The bureaucracy refused to have it printed, which only shows how the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat can be used to suppress the enlightenment of the proletariat. The platform was circulated in mimeographed form and its circulation was made a crime punishable by imprisonment or exile. There are Bolsheviks in Siberia to-day who were sent there in 1927 for having circulated a proposal for planned economy which Stalin was compelled to adopt, in a corrupted and perverted form in 1929. These Bolsheviks joined the old Bolsheviks who had been persecuted in 1920 or 1923 for developing a definite Anti-Parliamentarian programme; and they must have joined some Anarchists who had been sent into exile for alleged peasant counter-revolution. How any peasant counter-revolution could exceed in reaction the reaction of the policy of Stalinism it is difficult to understand.

A first Five Year Plan was elaborated on behalf of the Stalinists by Rykov and Krzhizhanovsky. It was the answer to the Opposition and it was virtually the negation of all idea of planned economy. The timid worthless proposal suggested an annual growth of 9 per cent. for the first year, with a decreasing percentage to 4 per cent. for the last year of the plan. The Trotskyist Opposition demanded a categorical condemnation of this plan, and proposed a 20 per cent. annual growth. Six years later the bolder proposal proved an entirely moderate figure compared with the reality.

Answering the Stalinists, the Opposition proposed to raise its funds by a forced loan from the Kulaks. Thereupon the Stalinists raised the hue and cry against " the counterrevolutionary Trotskyists." Stalin, Rykov, and Kuybischev issued a signed manifesto to the whole Russian people, announcing that the Opposition proposed " to rob the peasantry." In the cities, Stalin and Bucharin assured the disturbed proletarians that there was no danger to be feared from the Kulaks owing to their " insignificant percentage." The need for collectivisation, or what Lenin pretended was State Capitalism controlled by a proletarian state, was minimised to vanishing point. As late as 1928, the principal agrarian " specialist " of the Stalinist apparatus, Yakovlov, the Commisar for Agriculture, declared that collective farming would for years to come, " remain little islets in the sea of private peasant farms." The Opposition were all expelled at the 15th Party Congress and Rykov hectored the expelled leaders with the question : " If the Kulak is so strong why hasn't he . . . . ? "

Rykov did not have long to wait. A few months later the Rykov-Stalin Five Year Plan was revised completely, thus justifying the attack upon its inadequacy. If, later, the Russian Five Year Plans revealed essential, positive features, this fact was due to the five year unremitting struggle of the expelled Trotskyist Opposition. Converting the Stalinists to even an elementary idea of the need for planned economy was itself a Five Year Plan.

The ebb tide of reaction was reached by the end of 1927. The outlook of the international proletariat was turning towards the Left. Early in 1928 the " bloodless Kulak uprising " disturbed the Russian workers and pressed the party leadership towards the Left. Stalin felt the time had come to sacrifice the Right Wing.

He made cautious attacks upon obscure representatives and so undermined the authority of his intended victim, but he did not make his frontal attack upon the Right Wing leadership until 1929-30. He then attacked Rykov, Bucharin and Tomsky, and presented these three leaders to the workers as the banner-bearers of the capitalist restoration. Zinoviev's successor, the head of the Communist International, the head of the Soviet Government, and the leader of the Soviet Trade Unions, the man who had been so prominent in the Anglo-Russian Committee, were denounced by Stalin as the agents of the Thermidorian counter-revolution.

For six years Stalin had been in indissoluble alliance with this trio and their indictment was an indictment of himself, and his centrist faction. He borrowed the arguments of Trotskyism and was accused in reply of being a Trotskyist. Trotsky foretold this development in 1926.

The entire 15th Party Congress condemned the Opposition panic-mongers. Molotov, Stalin's intimate, impatiently defended Rykov in December, 1927, with the declaration that the Kulak was nothing new, adding : " It exists, and there is no need to speak about it." A month later witnessed the " bloodless uprising."

Feeling that they were defended by Bucharin, Stalin, Molotov and Rykov, the leaders of the Soviet Government and the leaders of the Comintern, the Kulaks refused to turn over their hoarded stocks of grain unless the Soviets yielded to their price demands. They proclaimed a general strike and declared their intention of starving the cities, the proletarian centres, into submission. The Soviet Government thereupon determined to requisition grain from the villages by armed force. The frightened bureaucrats took flight from the rank opportunism of their Kulak flirtation to sheer adventurism. Bucharin, Rykov and Tomsky had to go the way of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky.

The Stalinist period of " gorilla " adventurism commences with the 9th Plenum of the Communist International early in 1928. It based its arguments on a complete misunderstanding of the importance of parliamentarism. The vote cast for the Communist Party in Germany had increased. So also had the vote cast for the Social Democracy. This voting was interpreted as a first sign of working class resurgence. Inspired by this illusion, the 9th Plenum turned its eyes towards China, and there discovered the rise of a " new and higher " stage of the Chinese Revolution. At this time China was in the throes of counter-revolution.

Undisturbed by the Chinese tragedy and incapable of visioning what was to happen in Germany, the Plenum announced through the medium of Thaelmann and others, that the working masses throughout the world were becoming " more and more radicalised.". It is to be believed, and hoped, that in the course of time this statement will become correct. As an observation of what was occurring in 1928, it left much to be desired in the matter of accuracy.

The sixth Congress was held in the middle of 1928. It carried the absurdities of the 9th Plenum a step further. Trotsky presented to this Congress a warning against the light-minded conception of an automatic horizontal progress of the revolutionary movement throughout the world. This warning was not permitted by the official faction to be passed on to the assembled delegates.

The sixth Congress had several points of similarity with the fifth, which was held in 1924, after the defeat in Germany. On the questions of the nearness of revolution, the relation of social democracy to Fascism, Bolshevisation, and the Right danger, the 1928 congress merely parodied that of 1924. For example, the German revolution having experienced defeat, the 1924 Congress declared that no defeat had occurred, that the German revolution was right ahead. The Chinese revolution having met with disaster, the 1928 Congress acknowledged no defeat, but declared that the Chinese revolution was right ahead. In 1924, social democracy was declared to be " the most moderate wing of fascism," and in 1928 all socialists and non-communist party elements among the workers were termed " Social Fascists." In 1924 the Congress celebrated the victory of " Bolshevisation " at a time when the various " Bolshevist leaderships " imposed on the national sections were undermined. In 1928 the victory of the " unified communist international " was celebrated, whilst the most violent internal struggles were being fought behind the scenes, and the destruction and exile of the right wing was being planned. In 1924, with much ultra-leftist palaver, the fifth Congress made a pretended move to the left, and then swung completely to the right, and entered on the miserable opportunist period of the Anglo-Russian Committee, and the Chiang Kai Shek alliance, the anti-Imperialist league, etc. In 1928 the sixth Congress endorsed adventurist conclusions only to consecrate the revisionist theory of " Socialism in One Country," with the terrible international consequences that we have discussed.

The 1928 struggle against the " Right danger " was a triumph of hypocrisy. It was launched at the sixth Congress by Bucharin, the international right wing leader, after he had resisted the campaign at the fifteenth Congress of the Russian party. Rumours of disagreement were dismissed as " Trotskyist slanders " by the very spokesmen who were crushed organisationally immediately after the Congress, and either expelled outright or saved temporarily from expulsion and execution by hurniliating capitulation. The leaders of the sixth Congress, like those of the fifth, met with a speedy end, once the Congress had concluded.

At the sixth Congress, Stalin made a special report to the Council of Elders, and introduced a resolution signed by himself, Bucharin and every other member of the Political Bureau, declaring that they "must emphatically protest against the circulatior of rumours that there are dissentions among the members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U." The assembled marionettes listened solemnly and approved enthusiastically of this ludicrous deception. A few months later, Bucharin, the political leader of the Congress, the reporter on the programme, the president of the Comintern, with Stalin, the concoctor of the absurdity, was denounced as the leader of the capitalist restoration tendency in the Soviet Union. The right wing was expelled in every country in the world. In the United States of America, Lovestone, Gitlow and Wolfe were expelled as agents of the American bourgeoisie. In India, the notorious Roy, who had made a livelihood denouncing Trotsky as an agent of Chamberlain, was expelled on the charge that he was an agent of Chamberlain. The right wing was cut off in Sweden, France and Czechoslovakia; and in Germany, Brandler and also Ewart were banished from the Comintern.

To any sane mind the declarations of the 9th Plenum, with the commentary of the events of the months following, would have proved a warning against further absurdities. The limits of Stalinist absurdity were not reached even when the Kremlin counter-revolution made its 1939 pact with Hitler, and its 1942 pacts with Churchill and Roosevelt.

The Stalinists were not only undismayed by the events of 1928, but they drew positive inspiration from all that had happened. At the 10th Plenum, in 1929, Molotov celebrated the expulsion and exile of his colleagues of the year before by proclaiming what the Stalinists term " the third period," or the constantly increasing radicalisation of the masses, simultaneously in every country. There can be no fourth period, declared this communist clown, for the third period ends the revolution. One might suspect the revolution was ended, but not in the sense that Molotov meant us to understand his words. Actually, Molotov was preparing the Communist Party for the rise of Hitlerism in Germany.

Losovsky supported Molotov. He explained that the " heightened political sensitivity, of the broad masses is a characteristic sign, of the eve of revolution." Moireva, a member of the E.C.C.I., declared that the world situation recalled the Russian July days, that were the precursors of the October revolution. France was said by this imbecile speaker, with the applause of the assembled congregation, to be destined to head the revolutionary prospects of this third period. The double menace of this French absurdity, and of this period nonsense, was to be found in the fact that from the theory of the third period flowed the theory of Social Fascism which divided the working class movement in Germany during the critical rise to power of Fascism; whilst the fantastic predictions concerning France caused the communist elements in Spain to be taken wholly unawares by the Spanish uprising. This prediction explains why the Comintern had no Spanish policy. It was looking to France for a lead at a time when the French workers were utterly incapable of leading.

Although the theory of Social Fascism did not assist the working class struggle, it justified the entire policy of the Communist International. This was a more important matter to Stalin, Manuilisky, and Bela Kun, that master strategist of the Hungarian revolution, than the emancipation of the workers.

Bela Kun declared that the social democracy, from top to bottom, leader and commonest member, all along the line, was a fusion with the capitalist state. The essential value of this theory was that it justified the " United Front from the top" with Chiang Kai Shek and Purcell, and later it justified also the total negation of the United Front with working class elements organising the social democracy. According to this dogma, it was the essence of Bolshevism to maintain a united front with proved strike breakers in return for their " struggle to defend the Soviet Union." This was the " second period." But in the third period, the Soviet Union, not requiring the same defence, the communist must repudiate all social democrats from Purcell to the unemployed socialist worker because all were fascists.

Stalinism employed the Social Fascism formula to link together the two mutually supplementary periods of its blunders and crimes, and idealised the disorder of its activity in order to encase itself with a protective glamour. The third period, the period of so-called revolution, became in reality the period of the most triumphant counter-revolution, and witnessed the assassination of the German revolutionary movement.

When the Stalinists are accused of assassinating the German working class struggle they explain that on various occasions between 1925 and 1933 they proposed a United Front with the German Social -Democrats. Their assertions in this matter must be correlated to their charge against the Social Democrats in 1924 of being the enemy of the working-class and in 1928 of being the Social-Fascists.

The indictment of Social Democracy as a political principle or organisation is correct. Social Democracy has ever been the enemy of working-class struggle and was so in the days when William Liebknecht organised the famous union of Marxians and Lassalleans, and Engels flirted with the alliance whilst Marx denounced the Anarchists and in most instances wrongly denounced them.

This acknowledgment of a simple political fact does not mean to say that the Social Democratic worker has any more to gain from the perpetuation of capitalist society - or is any less its fundamental class enemy - than the Communist or Anarchist worker.

The approaches that the Stalinists made towards the Social Democrats were always party political approaches concealing the jealous struggle between two parties for political power. The approaches were never class approaches seeking to liquidate the various factions and political sections in the struggle towards emancipation of the working class. They were merely expressions of the Stalinist zig-zag policy forced on the Communist Party by the realities of life itself. They condemned the entire programme of the Comintern and were actually a mockery of the working-class struggle.

Here are the occasions on which the Communist Party sought a United front with the German Social Democrats : -
1925.- Prussian Parliamentary Group of the C. P. offered to unite with the Social Democratic members in a concentration of all forces to fight the Monarchist danger. They proposed that joint demands should be put forward for the cleansing of the Courts, police and army of Monarchists. On the Berlin City Council the C. P. and the S.D.P. Were in a majority. Here the C. P. urged the united programme. It is obvious that these advances were unreal and fantastic. There was no Monarchist danger. The suggestion was merely so much clamour that concealed the rising Fascist danger which had nothing in common with the old Monarchy. The Municipal alliance would have been purely revisionistic and quite unreal. Further, the Social Democrats had the feeling, quite rightly, that the purpose of these approaches was not to advance the cause of the workers, but to dispossess the Social Democrats of their place and pelf, and to secure positions and careers for the Communist Party leaders. The latter were merely disgruntled Social Democrats who believed that since the old Social Democrat movement was living under the shadow of failure, their careerism would be advanced more rapidly if they sheltered beneath the flag of the Russian Revolution. They hoped to gain from the greater glamour.

1926.- In January the C. P. asked the Social Democratic leaders to unite in a plebiscite on the question of returning property to the former German royalty. The Social Democrats did not agree until the campaign was over, and then reversed their decision by moving in Parliament that payment be made to the ex-Kaiser. This issue was altogether unreal and purely political. It had no relation to the Social Revolution, since the revolution destroys the property system itself.

It is quite true that Socialism or Communism should be opposed to royalty on principle, but it is a known fact that in Britain, Walter Newbold (when Communist M.P. for Motherwell) defended the oath of allegiance to the British Monarchy with the approval of the Communist Party, and in terms much more subservient than those employed by George Lansbury, who at least did not disguise his final republican ambition. Saklatvala also as Communist M.P. for Battersea defended the allegiance to Monarchy.

The German C. P. proposal was purely demonstrative and designed to serve the interests of the party as distinct from the workers. It was political opportunism, and had no relation to the economic class struggle.

1928.- The C.P. called on the Social Democracy, with some local successes, despite official Social Democratic prohibitions, to organise joint May Day demonstrations. This again was purely a struggle for party political careerism and the control of working-class organisation. It argued no belief in unity on the part of the C.P., and the refusal to participate did not imply that the Social Democrats were opposed to unity. Indeed, the refusal of the Social Democrats, although dictated by similar motives to those which inspired the approach of the Communists and by no ideas of abstract honour, was the more honourable of the two attitudes. Again it was not a question of working-class unity but of the birds of prey hovering over the carcass.

In October, the C.P. invited the Social Democrats to join in the plebiscite against the building of a German cruiser. In view of the revelations contained in another chapter of this work, revealing how Soviet Russia armed the German bourgeoisie and how Bucharin defended that arming at the Comintern, and Clara Zetkin defended the arming in the Reichstag, this gesture was sheer hypocrisy.

Between 1929 to 1932, the Communist Party made repeated proposals to the Social Democrats for a United Front against wage-cuts effected by compulsory arbitration. All these proposals were rejected.

The above record of approaches to unity is the Communist Party reason for declaring that the Social Democrats prepared the way to Fascism and were the enemies of the working-class. The reason for making these approaches was said to be that the Communist Party was not strong enough to organise the working-class without the aid of the Social Democrats.

In reply to this statement, it may be asked how, if the Social Democracy was the enemy in 1924, and was Social Fascism in 1928, the Social Democracy could be expected to organise the working-class against capitalism. If the Communist Party had been a revolutionary party, its line of conduct and strategy is perfectly clear. It should definitely have attacked the Social Democratic leadership and the Social Democratic organisation, but it should not have attempted to undermine that leadership by intrigue. It should have attacked the leadership, but its own rank and file should have welcomed as comrades in the real issues of economic and social life the rank and file members of the Social Democratic movement.

The Russian Revolution knew how to win over the soldiers of the White Army invaders. It knew how to defeat Deniken's army and to win over its regiments. It knew how to defeat the Cossacks when called out by the counter-revolution against the starving people and to win over the individual Cossack. Despite his reputation as a soldier and expIorer, and he was both, the revolution knew how to defeat Kolchak, win over his army, and have him made prisoner by his own troops, who executed him for counter-revolution.

If the revolution knew how to do this why could not the Communist Party in Germany, with its Russian traditions and influence, win over the rank and file of the Social Democracy. Had it been the movement of the working-class, had it been the spontaneous movement of the masses, it would have destroyed the Social Democratic party and captured its every local for Socialism and Communism. But the German Communist Party was not the movement of the workers. Despite its parades of the Iron Front, despite its wild talk about civil war, it was a political party, highly centralised, inspired by careerism and not by proletarian class struggle. Its purpose was not to destroy the Social Democratic party by struggle but to overthrow it by competition. It wanted capitalism to remain. It wanted Parliamentarism. It wanted careerism. But where yesterday the members of the Reichstag were Social Democrats, to-day and to-morrow they were to be Communist Deputies. And so careerism wrecked the revolution ; careerism dictated by 'lie bureaucrats of the Comintern, careerism dictated by the I ricnds of Chiang Kai Shek, careerism dictated by the Moscow allies of the Kulaks, careerism that defended State Capitalism with the absurd cry: " Socialism in One Country."

The case against the Social Democrats of Germany from 1924 onwards was a strong one. No indictment could be too severe. In 1924, there was an anti-Fascist demonstration of 10,000 workers at Halle. They were fired on and many were killed and wounded by the police under the orders of a Social Democratic Chief Constable, with the agreement of a Social Democratic Governor, and the official concurrence of a Social Democratic Home Secretary or Minister for the Interior, Severing. This sort of conduct continued until Social Democracy was supplanted by Fascism.

On May Day, 1929, in Berlin, the Social Democratic Chief of Police, Zoergibel, prohibited demonstrations for the first time in the history of the German Labour Movement since the days when Most, William Liebknecht and Bebel were imprisoned under the anti-Socialist laws of Bismarck. Thirty-three workers were shot in the streets of Berlin.

Between 1929 and 1932, the Social Democrats supported three successive capitalist governments which ruled in defiance of Parliament and so prepared the way for Hitlerism. These were the governments of Bruning, Papen and Schleicher. The Social Democrats also supported President Von Hindenburg, when he was obviously preparing the way for Fascism by saying that it represented the lesser evil. During this period the Social Democrats supported the governmental policy of wage-cuts.

In the winter of 1930, the Social Democrat, Severing, defended the " Law for the Defence of the Republic " before the Nazis. He explained that it was not directed against them but against demonstrations of the masses. His conduct established the sincerity of his explanation.

In July, 1932, the first semi-Fascist government of Von Papen was established. On the eve of the 20th of this month the CC. of the German Communist Party adopted a resolution, as it said, " before the proletarian public." This resolution was addressed to the S.P.D., that is, the Social Democrats, to the Alpha-Bund, and to the A.D.G.B., and asked these parties if they were " prepared to carry out, together with the Communist Partly, the General Strike for the proletarian demands."

The strange thing about this resolution is that on July 20, 1932, the Communist Party regarded the Social Democrats as a proletarian party. But on July Ist, 1932, they refused to consider the Social Democrats as a proletarian body, but denounced them as Social-Fascists and declared that only the " United Front from below " was possible. They repeated this declaration on August 1st, 1932.

In the Daily Worker (America), Bela Kun, the Hungarian strategist, describes how the German Communist Party appealed to the leadership of the Social Democracy for a United Front against the Fascist terror on the date given, namely, July 20th, 1932. This is in the issue of The Worker for September 21st, 1934. Continuing his life story, Bela Kun three days later answers the question why the Communists did not make the offer to the Social Democratic parties before the Fascist danger in Germany was an immediate one. He admits that no genuine proposal for unity was made in the following answer to this self-posed question.
" We answer as follows:
... To propose a united front at that time to the party leadership of Wels, Severing, Braun, Leipart and the rest would indeed have been purely a manoeuvre designed to unmask them. ... This would not only have been a manoeuvre; it would have been a stupid manoeuvre."

In the face of this declaration of what consequence is the C.P. argument that they renewed this offer of a United General Strike on January 30, 1933, against the first Hitler government and repeated it on March 1st of the same year on the eve of the State elections. Of what consequence is the further explanation that in June 1932, the C.P. members of Parliament offered the United Front to the Social Democrats for the Socialist control of Parliament.

If the Social Democrats were not Socialists and had no Socialist policy, how could there be a Socialist control of Parliament? And what is the worth of a Socialist control of parliament if there remains a capitalistic control, of industry? The very declaration self-exposes lthe politician and presents us with an apology of a counter-revolutionist.

The Stalinists declare that owing to Social Democratic treachery, the conditions for a successful revolution did not exist in Germany in January and March, 1933. But what of the years of Communist Party pretence, the speeches in Moscow, the war on the K.A.P.D., the ineffective political posing; before the marionettes of the Comintern.

Trotsky has devoted four pamphlets to this question of the German Communist Party debacle. The subject is dealt with very thoroughly in his " What Next? " and " The Only Road," both of which are obtainable in English.

Germany is the key country in Europe. After the Paris Commune it gave us parliamentary Socialism, and down to the outbreak of the world war dominated socialist thought and activity. After the Russian revolution Germany recovered its importance in relation to proletarian struggle. Had Germany turned Soviet in 1918, had Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg triumphed, the whole civilised world would have been plunged into the class struggle, and the battle would have been fought on the streets of the cities and in the villages, of Soviets or Parliament, of Soviets or bureacracy, of world socialism or world capitalism. Leibknecht and Luxembourg were assassinated by the social democracy they had pioneered, and German capitalism scored its first victory.

In 1923, the German revolutionary forces tamely surrendered to the reaction, and a decisive turning point was reached in the revolutionary struggle in Europe. Huge demonstrations and meetings were held in the Soviet Union to support the German proletarian revolution that the Cornintern had forbidden to take place. These meetings were held purely for the purpose of camouflage, and to prevent the Russian worker from becoming restless. Actually, the capitalist world was able to breathe deeper and freer. Within ten years it was clear that the class struggle in Germany had reached a crisis, and that the issue must now be fought of world communism or world fascism.

Despite the assassinations of Liebknecht and Luxembourg, despite the terrible Social Democratic betrayals, the German working-class still ranked as the most powerful and the most important in all Europe. It was reputed to have a high intellectual level. It was versed in the doctrines of Karl Marx, which does not say too much for the doctrines of that gentleman.

Contrary to the logic of Marxism the German workers had loyally experienced war, and had emerged from the capitalist battlefield to pass through three revolutions. They were thoroughly industrialised. Six millions of them had voted communist, and eight millions had voted socialist in the last election against Fascism. If parliamentarism signified anything, fourteen million workers stood behind the doctrines of Socialism. Against them was a ruling class that had lost the war, lost its Kaiser, and lost its business prestige and tradition of ruling. The ruling class army was limited to 100,000 men. In addition to this small standing army the ruling class had some political troops like those of the Nazis of Hitler. They were mainly students, youth without military experience, declassed petty bourgeoise and lumpen proletarian elements. This combination of trash could not be considered a match for the well organised war heroes and industrially trained workmen. Yet this inexperienced scum of reaction defeated overwhelmingly and crushed mercilessly the strongest working class in the world. The wonderful German Communist Party, with its much boasted storm troops, 250,000 strong, gave up without a fight.

Whilst this disgraceful capitulation was taking place, the Communist International printed no news of the events, called no emergency Congress, and opened no discussion on the matter. Stalinism no longer considered that the safety of the Soviet Union depended upon the international proletariat. The era of revolution had given place to that of diplomacy, and the Communist International had served its historic purpose of assassinating the world revolution. The death of the German revolutionary movement was the sign, according to the ordinary political revolutionary calendar then in vogue, that the world revolution had been but a dream that was ended. If the world revolution should yet prove to be a reality it will be no thanks to Stalinism or to the old socialist philosophy; it will be because these savants, or professional wise-men of the revolution, worked accord ing to the wrong calendar. In the cant term of the Trotskyist and Stalinist discussions, thev did not understand the tempo of events. Perhaps that explains how they prepared the monumental betrayal of the German and international proletariat by the pursuit of a false line of policy from almost the first day of the forming of the communist International. It is noticeable, as contrasted with the demonstrations in the Soviet Union of 1923, no anti-Nazi demonstration took place in the U.S.S.R. before or after Hitler's rise to power.

In 1929, the Communist Party split the German Trade Unions. It did not argue, as Communists are entitled to argue that Trades Unionism does not express the Class War but the commodity struggle. It did not take its stand against the Trades Unions because they were reformist organisations. It entered into competitive reformism and, withdrew their members and sympathisers from the established Trade Unions. The Trade Unions were 8,000,000 workers strong and they were controlled by the avowed reformists and careerists of the Socialist Party. The Communist Party withdrew 300,000 members and organised into their own paper unions. This did not develop the revolutionary movement but isolated nominally Communist workers from Socialist workers. The power of the careerists of the Socialist movement was cemented and the so-called Communists were left to organise little sectarian groups in each factory or industrial centre. This was not making war on Social Democratic careerism. This was not inspiring the workers by promulgating a new principle. It was only splitting the workers on the field of industry and causing them to lose battle after battle. It was the disaster of intrigue and not the advance of revolution.

Proceeding with their party warfare against the Socialist Democratic party, the Communist Party declared that the chief enemy of the German workers was not Fascism but Social Democracy. The Communist Party may have offered a United Front to the Social Democrats, but to the workers they issued the slogan that the first task of the working-class struggle was to destroy the Socialist movement, the so-called Social-Fascists. If anyone visualises the organisation of Ihc Labour movement, the gathering of actual workers in the small local halls, one must realise, however great the indictment may be of the careerist leaders, that to denounce the working-class locals of the Socialist movement as gatherings of Fascists is the quintessence of absurdity. The result of this absurd slogan was the complete sectarian division of the workers themselves which spread amongst the labouring masses like some unholy religious war. The Fascists had an easy time developing their movement owing to this incapacity of the Communist Party for revolutionary understanding and revolutionary struggle. The Fascists shot Socialist workers in the street and if the Communist Party did not actually applaud it most certainly did not protest. The Fascists shot Communist workers on the street and of course the Socialists made no protest.

The next step in this strange revolutionary struggle, which emphasises Bakunin's point that a social revolution must not be regarded as a political revolution and must not be dominated by the metaphysics of party dogma, was the deliberate alliance of the Communists with the Fascists to destroy parliamentary Socialism and to place the Fascists in power.

In 1930 the referendum was taken to decide the question whether the Landtag, that is the Prussian Parliament, should be abolished. The Communists voted - with the Fascists - against the Socialists and Democrats. Had the Communists and Fascists really won and had the German Parliament been abolished, the result would have been not the establishment of Soviets, but the erection of a Fascist dictatorship.

Everyone knows that the Versailles Treaty was a damnable piece of reaction. Its menace to proletarian development was that it inspired inevitably German militarism and a German war spirit and made that militarism seem a radical expression of Justice. It was the function of Communists to understand this treaty and to explain it in relation to the class struggle. The German Communists took up the slogan " Gegen Versailles " (Against the Versailles Treaty) and so made a United Front with the Nazis. This completely destroyed the class struggle. The Communists made this slogan their chief watchword and so catered to those reactionary national prejudices to which the Nazis were appealing and the result of which made inevitable the rise of hascism. Instead of preaching a German revolution and challenging the capitalist countries to make war on the proletarian Social Revolutionary struggle in Gerrnany, thereby casting aside all capitalist treaties and the diplomats of Europe, the Communists taught the German masses that they were to unite with their capitalist foes within the country to make war on the capitalist enemy of the country. Of what country? The German Fatherland, the German capitalist country, the country that enslaved the workers of Germany. And so, the Communist Party aped the Fascists and raised the slogan of a Folks' Revolution, a People's Revolution. And this criminal folly was indulged by the alleged extreme disciples of Marx in the most advanced industrial country of Europe, in which the Capitalist Republic could have been overthrown and some suggestion of a proletarian state established.

The Communists forgot that the mass of the workers were behind the Socialist Party and that the only way to undermine the Socialist Party was incessant propaganda, more powerful revolutionary struggle, real proletarian appeals to the workers, and not flamboyant ultimatums, senseless parades without force or courage, and the hundred and one theatrical activities in which the Communist Party loved to indulge. When they should have been preparing for revolution, the Communists evinced their hopeless reformism by parading against wage-cuts. It was easier to rally the masses to such parades. It was easier and so thoroughly futile. The Communist Party did the same thing in America during the interlude between two world wars, with its hunger marches and it did the same thing in Britain. It termed these anti-wage-cuts and anti-dole-cuts parades revolution, whereas such protests did not touch the fringe of the question.

In Britain we witnessed the complete transformation of the workers' insurance system and the Poor Law of Public Assistance. We had the complete destruction of local government in the administration of unemployed relief and we had established the Board which is virtually a Court of Administration, the members of which are non-responsible to Parliament, receive judges' salaries, and are appointed by Royal Warrant. The Communist Party protested not against the establishment of such Courts, which is Fascism in local government and is part of the general Fascist undermining of Democracy, but only against the dole cuts that marked the first steps of this administration.

The German Communists forgot that the workers were en masse behind the Socialist Party until the time came to apologise for the triumph of Hitlerism. Then it remembered in order to excuse. But what had the Communist Party been doing since 1919 and what was the worth of all its braggadocio when reporting the triumphs of the Communist Party over the Socialist Party to Moscow? The way to destroy the Socialist Party was to unite all working-class organisations against Fascism and to leave the leadership of the Social Democracy high and dry, its yellow colour betrayed in the time of crisis, as on the occasion when it voted for Hindenburg.

The result of this Communist Party intrigue and inability to distinguish between a party dictatorship and the class struggle, between party political aspirations and proletarian social revolution, was to place Hitler and his gunmen in power in Germany in March, 1933, to destroy all working-class and all radical thought organisation; to see the Trade Unions smashed to bits, their buildings seized, their treasuries confiscated ; to have the Socialist and Communist parties dissolved, and to have all proletarian elements of struggle driven underground. Thousands of Communists and Socialists were killed. Tens of thousands were jailed and held in concentration camps. Others were brutally beaten and terrorised throughout the land. Stalin declared during this period of Socialist collapse that everything was going along as predicted, that the Social Revolution was right ahead in Germany, that Leninism and the Communist International were vindicated.

The events in Germany were the turning point of the world proletarian struggle. They ended the epoch of Social Democracy. So far as the proletariat of Britain and the English speaking countries of the world were concerned the European struggle ceased to count. It gave the British workers no political backing, no organisational hope.

In 1790, France was the Revolutionary centre of the world. After the Paris Commune, Germany became, despite its notorious authoritarianism, the political centre of working-class thought. German Socialism was never satisfactory for it was always heavy and dull and lacked the elan that belongs to revolution. It lacked the spirit of fire and vigour. When it did discover spirit in Karl Leibknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, all it could do was to murder the heroes that embodied it. After Germany and the war debacle there came Russia.

The Soviet Union turned a Social Revolution into a political revolution and a diplomatic intrigue. And now the whole of Europe lies in ruins. Fascism has made inroads among the English-speaking races under the guise of democratic defence and military necessity. It is left to the workers of those races to make the stand for revolution and so rally the workers of the world for Socialism.

It was impossible for the Communist International to destroy the Chinese revolution, the British General Strike, and two German revolutions, without developing a proletarian retreat in Soviet Russia. The fact that the Kulak problem still remains demonstrates the fallacy of regarding Soviet Russia as the workers' fatherland.

The Trotskyist elements, down to their liquidation in 1935, maintained that Soviet Russia was still the socialist fatherland, notwithstanding the errors of Stalinism. But the Trotskyists clung to the idea of the reform of the Third International and of the official Communist Party in the Soviet Union until 1933. It was left to the anti-parliamentarian elements to proclaim correctly, years before, the death of the Third International, and the necessity either of a fourth or a new international, or else of no formal international at all. The anti-parliamentarians were divided on this question, for although they all wished to link up the revolutionary movement in the different countries, some anti-parliamentarians did not see the usefulness of solemn conclaves and mixed language gatherings. The Trotskyists were reluctantly driven to accept the view that the Third International was dead, when the fact could be disputed no, longer. It was only a matter of time for such Trotskyists as retained their integrity of understanding to be driven round to the viewpoint that Soviet Russia is not the socialist fatherland.

On the disputed question of the socialist fatherland, the view of the Anarchists and of the Antiparliamentarians is that although Soviet Russia may retain some elemental after effects of her premature but inevitable working-class revolution - and it would be strange indeed if such a tremendous upheaval served no useful purpose at all -fundamentally she is a capitalist country. Only the world revolution can no longer come from Europe. It has been smashed in Italy, in Germany and in Spain. That world revolution cannot come from Asia, for in Japan Fascism is rising, and in China the Kou Min Tang represents the triumph of the counter-revolution.

In 1934 the final pretended hopes of Communism, the last line of Moscow's red generals, surrendered to Chiang Kai Shek ; in August of that, year, in the district of Hunan, Li Chien Wu, commander of the independent red regiments, and the other red general, Le Tse-liang. The month before, Kung Ho Chung, who had been the pet of the Stalinists for several years, after events compelled them to give up praising Chiang Kai Shek, surrendered to the latter and offered his services for the suppression of Communism in China.

Kung was a member of the general executive committee of the so-called Soviet government of Juikin. He surrendered on July the 27th, and at once proceeded to Chiang Kai Shek's military headquarters at Nanchung. He received an immediate military command, and his anti-communist declarations were widely circulated with a full account of his career as a communist general. Chiang Kai Shek extolled Kung's five years' military prowess, and declared that his alliance was a tremendous event in the history of China. Kung declared that he joined the communists in 1927 with the idea of working for the masses, but that he now realised that Communism was impossible in China, and that to pursue its realisation was to imperil the best interests of the Chinese people. Hence his surrender and his allegiance to the Kou Min Tang.

Kung's surrender meant the complete triumph of the counter-revolution in Asia, and settled reaction in Russia until the World revolution cries a halt. That revolution can be brought about only in the English-speaking countries and only there if parliamentary social democracy and the futile Communist International are repudiated, the existing communist parties and social democratic factions destroyed, and a direct revolutionary movement started amongst the workers. It is the duty of the workers of Britain and America to look no longer to Germany or Russia, but to, unite in building up a new and closely-federated communist movement of action and of struggle.

The destruction of Soviet Russia as the land of Sovietism and the temporary stabilisation of capitalism is said by the Trotskyists to date from the death of Lenin. The process most certainly has been speeded since that time. There can be no doubt that Stalin perpetuated and developed the undermining of the Soviet Republic. Trotsky was quite wrong too make Stalin solely responsible. The present demi-god of Russian bureaucracy but continued the work Lenin began. Stalin hastened the degeneration. That degeneration was the inevitable product of the defeat of the German Revolution in 1923, and the subsequent isolation of the Soviet Union. It is possible that Lenin's reaction to the 1923 movement would have been distinct from that of Stalin and more useful to the general revolutionary cause but it is certain that, as regards the collapse of Socialism in Russia, Stalin had an able master in Lenin.

The world situation from 1918 to 1921 was favourable to the myth - promoted by the Trotskyists, that Leninism was much superior to Stalinism. The Communist International and its hired satellites in all countries talk nonsense when they refer to Comrade Lenin and Comrade Stalin in the same breath. There is no comparison between the two men and it is perfectly clear from their records that there was no sympathy between them. The mantle of Lenin has not fallen upon Stalin any more than the mantle of Jesus has fallen upon the Pope of Rome. On the other hand Lenin was not the uncompromising revolutionary and Stalin is not the perfect Communist anti-Christ. The diiference between the parts played by these two men is explainable partly in the terms of their distinct genius, but it is cqually explainable also in the different circumstances that confronted them.

In the time of Lenin the peculiar equilibrium which prevailed in the capitalist world opposed the capitalist anxious to fight but incapable of victory, to the communist incapable of fighting but unconvinced of defeat. The foreign capitalist did try to overthrow the Soviets between 1918 and 1921. White adventurers were financed by the British Governmerit and honoured by the British king. But the White adventure did not go very far, for the revolutionary peasants and workers of Russia were too determined in their resistance to such alien invasions, and the international proletariat was convinced that Soviet Russia was the Workers' Fatherland. The capitalist class found it was incapable of achieving the task it had set itself; namely the overthrow of the social revolution in Russia. The international proletariat discovered it could not overthrow the capitalist world outside of Russia. And so it came about that Socialist Russia, developing its own germs of anti-Socialism, lived side by side with an external capitalist world, that contained its own germs of Socialism and revolution. The communists grew tired and with the internal struggle developed into tired bureaucrats. The capitalists grew tired and facing their own problems of the economic debacle turned from militarism to diplomacy. Under these circumstances, unless the working-class could develop a spirit of revolutionary aggression, it was inevitable that capitalist stabilisation would outstrip Socialist revolution and the counter-revolution would develop itself in Russia not with the aid of the bayonet but through the power of economy. It was under pressure of these events that Lenin developed his New Economic Policy, a policy which, on his own confession, he intended to introduce not in 1921, but in 1918.

Lenin's speech to the International Communist Congress, 1921, was published in the Communist Review, London, for August, 1921. The report was verbatim. The speech was divided into four parts : (1) International Situation; (2) Position in Russia; (3) The New Policy towards Peasants; (4) Russia and the Word Revolution. Our concern is with part 3, in which Lenin described the New Policy towards the peasants. He defined this policy as " a proletarian sacrifice for the Revolution "' and declared that it implied a system of State Capitalism. He added :
" But this is a new form of capitalism - State Capitalism. State Capitalism in a capitalist society, and State Capitalism in a proletarian Society are two entirely different things. In the first case, it means that Capitalism is controlled and recognised in the interests of the bourgeoisie and against the proletariat. In the second case, it is promoting the interests of the proletariat . . . we exist in the midst of capitalist States. We are alone just now, and until the revolution in highly developed industrial countries has freed us from this, we are compelled to pay toll to international capitalism. We will thus win time; and this means winning everything."

Whether Lenin was right or wrong in his development of the N.E.P. it is certain that his conclusions were wrong. The N.E.P. did not give time to Soviet Russia but it did give time to the counter-revolution. Addressing the Moscow Soviet in 1922, Lenin declared that " we have dragged Socialism into everyday life," and he added the prophecy: " Russia of N.E.P. will become Socialist Russia." This was preparing the way for the Stalin gospel of " Socialism in One Country " and finally for the defeat of Soviet Russia and the entrenchment of the counter-revolution in the socalled Socialist Fatherland. It does not follow that Leninism would have become Stalinism. It does not follow that Lenin's policy would have been Stalin's policy. But one is justified in concluding that Leninism was not identical with Socialism and that it did contain within itself those germs of menace which have since staggered every thinking revolutionist as the fully-matured Robespierrean policy, Stalinism.

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