Should the European workers defend Russia?

In the weeks of threat of war, the question of how the workers' attitude toward the war should be determined by their attitude toward Russia also played a role. Should the workers in Western Europe, properly understanding their class interests, take Russia's side against others?

It is a fact, that in wide circles of the Western European workers, even outside the communists and socialists, there are feelings of sympathy for Russia. In spite of Stalin's dictatorship; in spite of the execution of the old Bolshevik leaders; in spite of state capitalism, in which a bureaucracy of civil servants as the new rulers and exploiters pushes down the working masses. Despite all that, one feels, the Russian revolution and the new Russia represents a tremendous leap forward of the world. The revolution remains for the workers the first example of mass self-action of large-industrial masses, which organized themselves according to the council system. And it threw a people of more than 100 million out of pre-capitalist stagnation into the stream of capitalist progress. Instead of stagnation and rotting in primitive barbarism, Russia entered a period of rapid industrial development through the revolution. Where before ignorant petty bourgeois and illiterate raw peasants plodded and starved in the most primitive and shabby manner in their small businesses, there now the factories, the kolkhozes, the schools are growing up, there a new spirit of progress, of technique and science, of effort for new ends, of enthusiasm, of competition has awakened. In evaluating this, one should not be disturbed by the CP's passive propaganda that in Russia the working class reigns supreme and has established a glorious fatherland of the workers; rather, the simple truth must be brought out that this new developing society is a society of exploitation and of growing class conflicts, which can only be controlled by a cruel dictatorship. It must be seen as a historical event, as part of the great world development. Or even more precisely, as a new case in the series of the bourgeois revolutions, which put an end to the backward, feudal or absolutist barbaric conditions of society and are still doing so. The case is the same as with the French Revolution, a century and a half ago. There the rising bourgeoisie and the oppressed peasants together put an end to rigid feudal absolutism, and opened the way for capitalist development. There, too, enthusiasm, energy, idealism among the rising classes, who saw a new freedom and a world of possibilities opening up before them. Out of the sons of the peasants and citizens emerged the captains and generals, the entrepreneurs and politicians, who led the revolution and the new society — just as in the new Russia out of the sons of the workers and peasants emerged the technicians, business leaders, officers and civil servants, who now form an important part of the new ruling class. As with every great advance in history, our sympathy is on the side of the newly emerging class, which fought with such vigor for its ideals. But this does not mean that we identify its cause with our own cause, the cause of the workers. We know very well that the rising class then in France, as the new ruling class, immediately took measures to keep the workers down. In Russia, too, the new class struggle is beginning to develop — perhaps hardly visible yet — between the new ruling class and the workers. And in this we are on the side of the Russian workers, against their exploiters. Even if these are still the bearers of advancing social development there today, their cause is not our cause. Our cause is that of their new enemies, the newly emerging proletarian class. Confusion in thought arises mainly because all types of progress and revolution are thrown together as one, without seeing the distinction in their inner being, in their class character. Since the goal of the working class, the destruction of capitalism, is also a revolution, all kinds of bourgeois revolutions are presented to it as goals, with the message, that it must necessarily support them. Here we call bourgeois revolutions such upheavals, in which in the place of pre-capitalist production some form of capitalism or industrialism takes place, under a new ruling class, thus opening the way for rapid economic development. As long as capitalism spreads around the world, new peoples enter this transition each time, each under different forms determined by pre-capitalism. After the first famous revolutions of the rising bourgeoisie in England and in France in earlier centuries, in the 19th century comes Germany by small steps, comes Japan, then in the 20th century comes Russia, comes other Asian countries, now China, over time India. The revolutionary development in such countries runs parallel to the emerging labor movement in Europe and America. But it is of an entirely different class character.

Is it not true, then, that for their own sake the workers are compelled to help the rising bourgeoisie in their country in the bourgeois revolution? Certainly they always did, because the rise of capitalism was also necessary for their future. Similarly, in the Russian revolution the workers have already done their duty, the Russian in overthrowing Tsarism, the Western European in their opposition to attempts by the capitalist governments in the first years to militarily crush Red Russia. Now a new powerful state has grown up there, with a new ruling class, which is the equal of the other capitalist states, plays the diplomatic game with them, and is perfectly capable of resisting them. How can anyone think that Western European workers have the slightest reason, let alone duty, to help this government against other governments?

This was possible, because of the special nature of the Russian revolution, which is even more pronounced in the further Asian revolutions. All these countries were colonies or exploitation areas of the capital of Western Europe and America. Colonial capital exploits the natural treasures and labor power of a foreign country, sometimes directly by mines, plantations, factories, in addition indirectly by lending money to monarchs, who impose heavy taxes on the peasants for interest. The upper classes in these countries take part in this, partly as agents and officials of the foreign capital, and develop into an early bourgeoisie. The purpose of their revolution is to shake off foreign capital and its domination, become a ruling class themselves and keep all surplus value in the country. This then is simultaneously a bourgeois revolution and a national war of liberation. Because the struggle is against the foreign exploitative capital, it is called socialist, and support is sought from the socialist workers of the ruling country, because their struggle is against the same enemy. Social democrats have therefore often acted as advocates of the independence aspirations of colonial peoples, although they knew, that this aspiration did not come from a working class, but from an emerging national bourgeoisie.

Russia was also in this case; heavily exploited by the Tsarist government as the agent of Western European capital. The Russian revolution was at the same time a throwing off of the debt yoke of this capital. Lenin and the Bolsheviks knew big capital mainly as a foreign peoples' exploiting colonial capital; therefore, their sympathy went out to all those other similarly plundered peoples of Asia , and called on them — Persia, China, India — to fight against oppressive, especially English capital. Thus Russia became the vanguard of a world struggle of the colonial or semi-colonial peoples of Asia against European colonial capital. Identified with this struggle was the struggle of Western European and American workers for communism. As parts of one great army, Western European workers and Indian or Chinese nationalists had to fight world capital under Russia as leader. Then it goes without saying that these workers also had to stand up for Russia itself as soon as it would be attacked.

In reality, the struggle of the big-capitalist workers and that of the Eastern peoples is entirely different in character and purpose. The revolutionary workers want to destroy capitalism in order to eliminate exploitation altogether. The revolutionaries in the East want to chase away foreign capitalism, to become exploiters themselves to reap the fruits of exploitation themselves. If the working class makes its proletarian revolution, it means that in the most developed countries the great technical height of production is perfected by a self-organization of the producing people. When the colonial countries liberate themselves, it means that a first beginning is made to introduce the new technique into their shabby primitive production. The victory of the workers means an amalgamation of production and the producing people into an international world unit. Victories of the Asian peoples in their struggle against world capital mean victories of nationalism, foundation of new national states.

The Russian Bolshevists never understood anything of this contradiction. The congresses of the Third International always identified both types of revolutions and called upon the workers of Western Europe to help liberate the oppressed peoples. While nothing was done to make these workers themselves resilient, while the struggle in Germany and in other countries was muddled with thick words and weak reformism, all attention was drawn together on colonial oppression and the national movements against it. Perfectly natural; for of the former the Russians had no understanding, while in the other they saw flesh of their flesh. Thus they helped the revolutionary Chinese bourgeoisie on its feet, thus they sprinkled propaganda in India. And it is also perfectly natural, that English colonial capital, represented in the ruling Tories, still continued to see in Russia the most dangerous enemy to its Indian rule, by example and propaganda, and therefore raised Nazi Germany as a counterweight. But this opposition goes beyond the working class. The workers need all their strength for their own task, their own liberation, and in so doing they will ultimately render the greatest service to the liberation of the whole world. Much more than if they would try to help raise or support new exploitative classes in the East.

Because in Western Europe the bourgeoisie was so strong that the workers could hardly affect it any more, and because in Russia, with a small beginning of big industry, the bourgeois revolution against rotten Tsarism succeeded mainly through the attacking power of the workers of this industry, the new ruling class of Russia took the lead in the European labor movement. And thus the strong revolutionary impulse, which had emanated from the first workers' actions in Russia after the war, soon went down in an era of weakening. With quasi-marxist slogans and teachings, all aimed at obscuring the profound difference in class character between bourgeois and proletarian revolutions, the labor movement in Western Europe was poisoned. These include the doctrine, that the working class must help Russia and that this must be its guide in international questions. Only by overcoming this doctrine will the working class be able to stand strong for its own liberation.