Revolutionary Internationalism or International National-Bolshevism

To the revolutionary proletarians, demands were made in the years during the so-called revolution and after it, but most strongly on the occasion of the new conflicts in the Far East, in Morocco, which presuppose a high degree of conviction, perseverance, and precisely for this reason, a deep insight into the conditions of the international movement. Anyone who today, after half a century of the modern workers' movement, reads through the programmatic statements of the workers' organizations, today, when, in view of the lessons of the world war and the defeat of the proletarians of all countries that followed, in view of the newly sharpening contradictions of capitalism, in view of the events in the colonies, heightened vigilance, intellectual and programmatic clarity, and conscious organizational preparation would be necessary, more necessary than ever, must admit that the exact opposite is the case. The international movement and organization of the proletariat is one great chaos. What the revolutionary proletariat had already worn off the soles of its shoes decades ago is now elevated to sparkling new wisdom. The most reactionary nonsense celebrates triumphs. A wild party patriotism has seized the minds and robbed them of all ability to think. Everything is mindlessly parroted. Down with the executioners of the Second International, down with Amsterdam — long live the struggle for unity with Amsterdam, this mockery is calmly accepted. Slowly but systematically, minds have been dulled. The most pressing question today is the stance of revolutionary workers toward the events in the colonies. Here, too, and especially here, the most reactionary nonsense is presented with the greatest audacity. Moscow has already undertaken a “contemporary” reworking of the “Communist Manifesto” by replacing the international class struggle with the struggle for the nation. To give this internationally propagated nationalism an internationalist veneer, Zinoviev, in the “Inprekorr” of July 4, added to the slogan “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” the phrase “and oppressed peoples of the world.” Naturally, this includes Germany, which still resists joining the Eastern League of Nations. If it had gone according to Moscow’s wishes, the break with the Entente would have long been complete, and the proletarians of all countries would have had one more oppressed country to deal with. All these countries would then replace the International of the proletariat with the national anthem: “Germany, Germany, — Russia, Russia, — Turkey, Turkey, — Japan, Japan, — China, China, — everything, everything, above all — in the world!” Truly, an internationalism that can be seen.

We must refrain here from proving through quotations that the current commanders of the Moscow International, during the world war, when they still stood in the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat, most sharply opposed their current slogans. They almost single-handedly took up the fight against social democracy and the center, and only gradually, and very sparingly, received support from other countries. Even against the Junius pamphlet, Lenin wrote a critique that left nothing to be desired in terms of sharpness, regarding the alleged nationalist tendency advocated by Rosa Luxemburg in that pamphlet. Today, the Third International engages in political debauchery, has fallen into a theoretical savagery that is unparalleled. What are the reasons?

Today’s Russia is the Russia of the liquidated proletarian revolution. The Russian economy is agrarian-capitalist, Russian trade is capitalist, the Russian state is capitalist, the Russian proletariat is exploited capitalistically. No amount of talk, no ifs or buts, can change that. These facts are least disputed by the Russian government itself. Certainly, certain show booths from past times are still kept open; a kind of government swindle. But all this changes nothing and is only calculated for harmlessly naive proletarians who travel to Russia as delegations, and whose hearts nearly burst out of their shirts at the sight of so many red flags, so many Red Guards. They forget that it is not about flags, not about an army labeled as red and consisting almost exclusively of non-communist peasants and government-loyal workers, just like our Reichswehr and Schutzpolizei, but about whether capitalist exploitation has been abolished, is being abolished, or, on the contrary, is being restored. This capitalistically restoring Russia still has a tradition, still has a credulous following among the international proletariat, which it uses to support its foreign policy, which stems from its capitalist domestic policy. Russia’s foreign policy is a natural struggle against imperialism, which extends its tentacles toward bourgeois Russia just as it does toward every other country in the world. In this struggle, Russia needs allies. The unrest in the colonies comes in handy for expanding its political influence. So that no one is left out — neither the nationalist students, merchants, nor indigenous capitalists of China, nor the proletarians — it is simply said: Proletarians, capitalists, nationalist students of the “oppressed peoples,” and proletarians of the non-“oppressed” peoples, unite, for the sake of Russia. Thus, it is not Russia’s fault if such a brew of national Bolshevism comes about; it arises quite naturally. It is simply “politics.”

To theoretically justify this stance before the international proletariat, the famous distinction between imperialist wars and those against oppressed peoples has been made. In the first case, the slogan of civil war against the war is upheld; in the second case, the proletariat has the duty to fight under the national flag. Whether a country is “oppressed,” “semi-oppressed,” or not “oppressed” at all depends entirely on whether that country is in an alliance with Russia or not. Thus, a country can be oppressed today, and overnight the oppression can cease. The workers of such countries must therefore be damned agile. Apart from that — and here the nonsense of this thesis already becomes apparent — it is, of course, true that the uprising in the colonies is of world-historical significance, and one cannot simply dismiss it with a wave of the hand, because the question is not to be posed so abstractly: proletarian revolution or nothing. The revolutionary proletariat has every reason to closely follow this development to intervene in time, especially since the rebelling labor slaves in the colonies lack any experience.

“In the era of the most highly developed capitalism,” Lenin wrote in 1916 in an essay ‘On the Slogan of the United States of Europe’ (“Against the Current,” page 125), “the plundering of nearly one billion inhabitants of the earth by a handful of great powers is organized. But under capitalism, any other organization would be impossible. To renounce colonies, spheres of influence, capital export? To think of that would be to sink to the level of the little priest who preaches the sublimity of Christianity every Sunday and advises giving to the poor…”

That is indeed the case. With the slogan of the “self-determination of nations,” the Third International, by its own admission, has sunk to the level of the little priest. Capitalism will not and cannot abolish itself. If resistance in the colonies grows so strong that the difficulties for capitalism, which are already insurmountable today, are further intensified, then — then two capitalist worlds will face each other, and the struggle of the colonies will turn into a new world war. This world war, due to the conflicting interests of the imperialist states among themselves, will no longer be a war of the “oppressed” peoples against the oppressors from the outset, but when the die is cast, every state, every power will intervene wherever and whenever there is something to gain. Through the propagation of this nationalism, Moscow pushes these uprisings onto this counterrevolutionary track and demands that the proletariat, as an international class, simply abandon its historical mission. For Russia, the proletariat is merely cannon fodder for its politics.

The uprising of the colonies against the capitalist mother countries is the result of capitalist development itself. With the increasing difficulties in the colonies, the already insufficient sales market is further restricted. With the growing difficulties in the colonies, the international sales crisis must take on even sharper forms. Capitalism has fulfilled its historical mission and is rushing — one way or another — from catastrophe to catastrophe. Where is the power that will stop it, that will overcome it?

This power cannot be a new confederation of states on a nationalist-capitalist basis. This power can only be the internationally solidary proletariat! Where is the voice of the modern Western European industrial proletariat, which, from the standpoint of revolutionary internationalism, stands by the colonial slaves, analyzing the conditions and limits of their national struggle? Where is the proletarian International that knows the colonial slaves, integrates them into the international class army, and thus prevents them from being misused by their own bourgeoisie as future white armies against the international proletariat? Where are the proletarians of the sections of the Third International who confront this betrayal of the international proletariat and finally realize that they are complicit in the 1914 that the Third International is preparing for the international proletariat, and that unity with Amsterdam lies along this line?

It is high time that the workers of Western Europe, above all Germany, realize that they are the only power that can confront capitalism, and only where they face it. The victorious proletariat will deal with the colonial peoples differently than capitalism; through the superiority of the communist social organization, it will be able to become the social teacher of the world. Only through the victory of the proletarian revolution can it master the problems that capitalism is unable to solve. Therefore, no reproach, such as that the Chinese must do something, that a nationalist struggle is better than none, and that one must not hinder this movement by condemning it. That is a lazy and foolish excuse. The movement in the colonies, its character, its strength, its outcome, depends on the stance of the international proletariat. It can be used in a revolutionary sense if the European proletariat “jumps at the throat” of “its” capitalism. Without the activity of the European proletariat, no change can occur. However, if this activity cannot be achieved, if the workers “stand on the ground of given facts” without even fighting against the counterrevolutionary effects of the Third International, if the proletarians of the sections of the Third International do not muster the strength to act in a revolutionary sense, then they themselves create the facts they blame. They themselves admit that parroting “China for the Chinese” is only the consequence of their own passivity.

Thus, the “small handful” of the KAPD and AAU is left with the heavy task, amidst the great heap of betrayal, corruption, dullness, and nationalism, to repeatedly raise the flag of revolutionary internationalism! — Until world history becomes world judgment again, until world history tears the mask from the faces of the political directors, and the workers of all countries recognize friend and foe and finally themselves.