World Revolution and Communist Tactics
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Author : Anton Pannekoek

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Published: in De Nieuwe Tijd in 1920, in Kommunismus, the Vienna-based Comintern theoretical organ for South-East Europe; in Petrograd under the title Die Entwicklung der Weltrevolution and die Taktik des Communismus, and as a pamphlet including the ‘Afterword’ by the Verlag der Arbeiterbuchhandlung, the publishing house of the Communist Party of Austria. This translation by D.A. Smart was first published in Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism (Pluto, London, 1978).Transcription/Markup: Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003.Proofreading/Reformatting: Micah Muer, 2019.Source: John Gray's Archive.

Theory itself becomes a material force once it takes a
hold on the masses. Theory is capable of taking a hold on the masses...
once it becomes radical. Marx

I

The transformation of capitalism into communism is brought about
by two forces, one material and the other mental, the latter having its origins
in the former. The material development of the economy generates consciousness,
and this activates the will to revolution. Marxist science, arising as a
function of the general tendencies of capitalist development, forms first the
theory of the socialist party and subsequently that of the communist party, and
it endows the revolutionary movement with a profound and vigorous intellectual
unity. While this theory is gradually penetrating one section of the
proletariat, the masses’ own experiences are bound to foster practical
recognition that capitalism is no longer viable to an increasing extent. World
war and rapid economic collapse now make revolution objectively necessary before
the masses have grasped communism intellectually: and this contradiction is at
the root of the contradictions, hesitations and setbacks which make the
revolution a long and painful process. Nevertheless, theory itself now gains new
momentum and rapidly takes a hold on the masses; but both these processes are
inevitably held up by the practical problems which have suddenly risen up so
massively.

As far as Western Europe is concerned, the development of the revolution is
mainly determined by two forces: the collapse of the capitalist economy and the
example of Soviet Russia. The reasons why the proletariat was able to achieve
victory so quickly and with such relative ease in Russia – the weakness of
the bourgeoisie, the alliance with the peasantry, the fact that the revolution
took place during the war – need not be elaborated here. The example of a
state in which working people are the rulers, where they have abolished
capitalism and are engaged in building communism, could not but make a great
impression upon the proletariat of the entire world. Of course, this example
would not in itself have been sufficient to spur the workers in other countries
on to proletarian revolution. The human mind is most strongly influenced by the
effects of its own material environment; so that if indigenous capitalism had
retained all its old strength, the news from far-away Russia would have made
little impression. ‘Full of respectful admiration, but in a timid,
petty-bourgeois way, without the courage to save themselves, Russia and humanity
as a whole by taking action’ this was how the masses struck Rutgers[1] upon his return to Western Europe from
Russia. When the war came to an end, everyone here hoped for a rapid upturn in
the economy, and a lying press depicted Russia as a place of chaos and
barbarism; and so the masses bided their time. But since then, the opposite has
come about: chaos has spread in the traditional home of civilization, while the
new order in Russia is showing increasing strength. Now the masses are stirring
here as well.

Economic collapse is the most powerful spur to revolution. Germany and
Austria are already completely shattered and pauperized economically, Italy and
France are in inexorable decline. England has suffered so badly that it is
doubtful whether its government’s vigorous attempts at reconstruction can
avert collapse, and in America the first threatening signs of crisis are
appearing. And in each country, more or less in this same order, unrest is
growing in the masses; they are struggling against impoverishment in great
strike-movements which hit the economy even harder; these struggles are
gradually developing into a conscious revolutionary struggle, and, without being
communists by conviction, the masses are more and more following the path which
communism shows them, for practical necessity is driving them in that
direction.

With the growth of this necessity and mood, carried by them, so to speak, the
communist vanguard has been developing in these countries; this vanguard
recognizes the goals clearly and regroups itself in the Third International. The
distinguishing feature of this developing process of revolution is a sharp
separation of communism from socialism, in both ideological and organizational
terms. This separation is most marked in the countries of Central Europe
precipitated into economic crisis by the Treaty of Versailles, where a
social-democratic regime was necessary to save the bourgeois state. The crisis
is so profound and irremediable there that the mass of radical social-democratic
workers, the USP, are pressing for affiliation to Moscow, although they still
largely hold to the old social-democratic methods, traditions, slogans and
leaders. In Italy, the entire social-democratic party has joined the Third
International; a militant revolutionary mood among the masses, who are engaged
in constant small-scale warfare against government and bourgeoisie, permits us
to overlook the theoretical mixture of socialist, syndicalist and communist
perspectives. In France, communist groups have only recently detached themselves
from the social-democratic party and the trade-union movement, and are now
moving towards the formation of a communist party. In England, the profound
effect of the war upon the old, familiar conditions has generated a communist
movement, as yet consisting of several groups and parties of different origins
and new organizational formations. In America, two communist parties have
detached themselves from the Social-Democratic Party, while the latter has also
aligned itself with Moscow.

Soviet Russia’s unexpected resilience to the onslaughts of reaction has
both compelled the Entente to negotiate and also made a new and powerful
impression upon the labor parties of the West. The Second International is
breaking up; a general movement of the center groups towards Moscow has set in
under the impulsion of the growing revolutionary mood of the masses. These
groups have adopted the new name of communists without their former perspectives
having greatly altered, and they are transferring the conceptions and methods of
the old social democrats into the new international. As a sign that these
countries have now become more ripe for revolution, a phenomenon precisely
opposite to the original one is now appearing: with their entry into the Third
International or declaration in favor of its principles, as in the case of the
USP mentioned above, the sharp distinction between communists and social
democrats is once again fading. Whatever attempts are made to keep such parties
formally outside the Third International in an effort to conserve some firmness
of principle, they nevertheless insinuate themselves into the leadership of each
country’s revolutionary movement, maintaining their influence over the
militant masses by paying lip-service to the new slogans. This is how every
ruling stratum behaves: rather than allow itself to be cut off from the masses,
it becomes ‘revolutionary’ itself, in order to deflate the
revolution as far as possible by its influence. And many communists tend to see
only the increased strength thus accruing to us, and not also the increase in
vulnerability.

With the appearance of communism and the Russian example, the proletarian
revolution seemed to have gained a simple, straightforward form. In reality,
however, the various difficulties now being encountered are revealing the forces
which make it an extremely complex and arduous process.

II

Issues and the solutions to them, programs and tactics, do not
spring from abstract principles, but are only determined by experience, by the
real practice of life. The communists’ conceptions of their goal and of
how it is to be attained must be elaborated on the basis of previous
revolutionary practice, as they always have been. The Russian revolution and the
course which the German revolution has taken up to this point represent all the
evidence so far available to us as to the motive forces, conditions and forms of
the proletarian revolution.

The Russian revolution brought the proletariat political control in so
astonishingly rapid an upturn that it took Western European observers completely
by surprise at the time, and although the reasons for it are clearly
identifiable, it has come to seem more and more astonishing in view of the
difficulties that we are now experiencing in Western Europe. Its initial effect
was inevitably that in the first flush of enthusiasm, the difficulties facing
the revolution in Western Europe were underestimated. Before the eyes of the
world proletariat, the Russian revolution unveiled the principles of the new
order in all the radiance and purity of their power – the dictatorship of
the proletariat, the soviet system as a new mode of democracy, the
reorganization of industry, agriculture and education. In many respects, it gave
a picture of the nature and content of the proletarian revolution so simple,
clear and comprehensive, so idyllic one might almost say, that nothing could
seem easier than to follow this example. However, the German revolution has
shown that this was not so simple, and the forces which came to the fore in
Germany are by and large at work throughout the rest of Europe.

When German imperialism collapsed in November 1918, the working class was
completely unprepared for the seizure of power. Shattered in mind and spirit by
the four years of war and still caught up in social-democratic traditions, it
was unable to achieve clear recognition of its task within the first few weeks,
when governmental authority had lapsed; the intensive but brief period of
communist propaganda could not compensate for this lack. The German bourgeoisie
had learned more from the Russian example than the proletariat; decking itself
out in red in order to lull the workers’ vigilance, it immediately began
to rebuild the organs of its power. The workers’ councils voluntarily
surrendered their power to the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party and the
democratic parliament. The workers still bearing arms as soldiers disarmed not
the bourgeoisie, but themselves; the most active workers’ groups were
crushed by newly formed white guards, and the bourgeoisie was formed into armed
civil militias. With the connivance of the trade-union leaderships, the now
defenseless workers were little by little robbed of all the improvements in
working conditions won in the course of the revolution. The way to communism was
thus blocked with barbed-wire entanglements to secure the survival of
capitalism, to enable it to sink ever deeper into chaos, that is.

These experiences gained in the course of the German revolution cannot, of
course, be automatically applied to the other countries of Western Europe; the
development of the revolution will follow still other courses there. Power will
not suddenly fall into the hands of the unprepared masses as a result of
politico-military collapse; the proletariat will have to fight hard for it, and
will thus have attained a higher degree of maturity when it is won. What
happened at fever-pace in Germany after the November revolution is already
taking place more quietly in other countries: the bourgeoisie is drawing the
consequences of the Russian revolution, making military preparations for civil
war and at the same time organizing the political deception of the proletariat
by means of social democracy. But in spite of these differences, the German
revolution shows certain general characteristics and offers certain lessons of
general significance. It has made it apparent that the revolution in Western
Europe will be a slow, arduous process and revealed what forces are
responsible for this. The slow tempo of revolutionary development in
Western Europe, although only relative, has given rise to a clash of conflicting
tactical currents. In times of rapid revolutionary development, tactical
differences are quickly overcome in action, or else do not become conscious;
intensive principled agitation clarifies people’s minds, and at the same
time the masses flood in and political action overturns old conceptions. When a
period of external stagnation sets in, however; when the masses let anything
pass without protest and revolutionary slogans no longer seem able to catch the
imagination; when difficulties mount up and the adversary seems to rise up more
colossal with each engagement; when the Communist Party remains weak and
experiences only defeats – then perspectives diverge, new courses of
action and new tactical methods are sought. There then emerge two main
tendencies, which can be recognized in every country, for all the local
variations. The one current seeks to revolutionize and clarify people’s
minds by word and deed, and to this end tries to pose the new principles in the
sharpest possible contrast to the old, received conceptions. The other current
attempts to draw the masses still on the sidelines into practical activity, and
therefore emphasizes points of agreement rather than points of difference in an
attempt to avoid as far as is possible anything that might deter them. The first
strives for a clear, sharp separation among the masses, the second for unity;
the first current may be termed the radical tendency, the second the opportunist
one. Given the current situation in Western Europe, with the revolution
encountering powerful obstacles on the one hand and the Soviet Union’s
staunch resistance to the Entente governments’ efforts to overthrow it
making a powerful impression upon the masses on the other, we can expect a
greater influx into the Third International of workers’ groups until now
undecided; and as a result, opportunism will doubtless become a powerful force
in the Communist International.

Opportunism does not necessarily mean a pliant, conciliatory attitude and
vocabulary, nor radicalism a more acerbic manner; on the contrary, lack of
clear, principled tactics is all too often concealed in rabidly strident
language; and indeed, in revolutionary situations, it is characteristic of
opportunism to suddenly set all its hopes on the great revolutionary deed. Its
essence lies in always considering the immediate questions, not what lies in the
future, and to fix on the superficial aspects of phenomena rather than seeing
the determinant deeper bases. When the forces are not immediately adequate for
the attainment of a certain goal, it tends to make for that goal by another way,
by roundabout means, rather than strengthen those forces. For its goal is
immediate success, and to that it sacrifices the conditions for lasting success
in the future. It seeks justification in the fact that by forming alliances with
other ‘progressive’ groups and by making concessions to outdated
conceptions, it is often possible to gain power or at least split the enemy, the
coalition of capitalist classes, and thus bring about conditions more favorable
for the struggle. But power in such cases always turns out to be an illusion,
personal power exercised by individual leaders and not the power of the
proletarian class; this contradiction brings nothing but confusion, corruption
and conflict in its wake. Conquest of governmental power not based upon a
working class fully prepared to exercise its hegemony would be lost again, or
else have to make so many concessions to reactionary forces that it would be
inwardly spent. A split in the ranks of the class hostile to us – the much
vaunted slogan of reformism – would not affect the unity of the inwardly
united bourgeoisie, but would deceive, confuse and weaken the proletariat. Of
course it can happen that the communist vanguard of the proletariat is obliged
to take over political power before the normal conditions are met; but only what
the masses thereby gain in terms of clarity, insight, solidarity and autonomy
has lasting value as the foundation of further development towards
communism.

The history of the Second International is full of examples of this policy of
opportunism, and they are beginning to appear in the Third. It used to consist
in seeking the assistance of non-socialist workers’ groups or other
classes to attain the goal of socialism. This led to tactics becoming corrupted,
and finally to collapse. The situation of the Third International is now
fundamentally different; for that period of quiet capitalist development is over
when social democracy in the best sense of the word could do nothing more than
prepare for a future revolutionary epoch by fighting confusion with principled
policies. Capitalism is now collapsing; the world cannot wait until our
propaganda has won a majority to lucid communist insight; the masses must
intervene, and as rapidly as possible, if they themselves and the world are to
be saved from catastrophe. What can a small party, however principled, do when
what is needed are the masses? Is not opportunism, with its efforts to gather
the broadest masses quickly, dictated by necessity?

A revolution can no more be made by a big mass party or coalition of
different parties than by a small radical party. It breaks out spontaneously
among the masses; action instigated by a party can sometimes trigger it off (a
rare occurrence), but the determining forces lie elsewhere, in the psychological
factors deep in the unconscious of the masses and in the great events of world
politics. The function of a revolutionary party lies in propagating clear
understanding in advance, so that throughout the masses there will be elements
who know what must be done and who are capable of judging the situation for
themselves. And in the course of revolution the party has to raise the
program, slogans and directives which the spontaneously acting masses
recognize as correct because they find that they express their own aims in their
most adequate form and hence achieve greater clarity of purpose; it is thus that
the party comes to lead the struggle. So long as the masses remain inactive,
this may appear to be an unrewarding tactic; but clarity of principle has an
implicit effect on many who at first hold back, and revolution reveals its
active power of giving a definite direction to the struggle. If, on the other
hand, it has been attempted to assemble a large party by watering down
principles, forming alliances and making concessions, then this enables confused
elements to gain influence in times of revolution without the masses being able
to see through their inadequacy. Conformity to traditional perspectives is an
attempt to gain power without the revolution in ideas that is the precondition
of doing so; its effect is therefore to hold back the course of revolution. It
is also doomed to failure, for only the most radical thinking can take a hold on
the masses once they engage in revolution, while moderation only satisfies them
so long as the revolution has yet to be made. A revolution simultaneously
involves a profound upheaval in the masses’ thinking; it creates the
conditions for this, and is itself conditioned by it; leadership in the
revolution thus falls to the Communist Party by virtue of the world-transforming
power of its unambiguous principles.

In contrast with the strong, sharp emphasis on the new principles –
soviet system and dictatorship – which distinguish communism from social
democracy, opportunism in the Third International relies as far as possible upon
the forms of struggle taken over from the Second International. After the
Russian revolution had replaced parliamentary activity with the soviet system
and built up the trade-union movement on the basis of the factory, the first
impulse in Western Europe was to follow this example. The Communist Party of
Germany boycotted the elections for the National Assembly and campaigned for
immediate or gradual organizational separation from the trade unions. When the
revolution slackened and stagnated in 1919, however, the Central Committee of
the KPD introduced a different tactic which amounted to opting for
parliamentarianism and supporting the old trade-union confederations against the
industrial unions. The main argument behind this is that the Communist Party
must not lose the leadership of the masses, who still think entirely in
parliamentary terms, who are best reached through electoral campaigns and
parliamentary speeches, and who, by entering the trade unions en masse, have
increased their membership to seven million. The same thinking is to be seen in
England in the attitude of the BSP: they do not want to break with the Labor
Party, although it belongs to the Second International, for fear of losing
contact with the mass of trade-unionists. These arguments are most sharply
formulated and marshaled by our friend Karl Radek, whose Development of
the World Revolution and the Tasks of the Communist Party, written in
prison in Berlin, may be regarded as the programmatic statement of communist
opportunism.[2] Here it is argued that the
proletarian revolution in Western Europe will be a long drawn-out process, in
which communism should use every means of propaganda, in which parliamentary
activity and the trade-union movement will remain the principal weapons of the
proletariat, with the gradual introduction of workers’ control as a new
objective.

An examination of the foundations, conditions and difficulties of the
proletarian revolution in Western Europe will show how far this is correct.

III

It has repeatedly been emphasized that the revolution will take a
long time in Western Europe because the bourgeoisie is so much more powerful
here than in Russia. Let us analyze the basis of this power. Does it lie in
their numbers? The proletarian masses are much more numerous. Does it lie in the
bourgeoisie’s mastery over the whole of economic life? This certainly used
to be an important power-factor; but their hegemony is fading, and in Central
Europe the economy is completely bankrupt. Does it lie in their control of the
state, with all its means of coercion? Certainly, it has always used the latter
to hold the proletariat down, which is why the conquest of state power was the
proletariat’s first objective. But in November 1918, state power slipped
from the nerveless grasp of the bourgeoisie in Germany and Austria, the coercive
apparatus of the state was completely paralyzed, the masses were in control; and
the bourgeoisie was nevertheless able to build this state power up again and
once more subjugate the workers. This proves that the bourgeoisie possessed
another hidden source of power which had remained intact and which permitted it
to reestablish its hegemony when everything seemed shattered. This hidden power
is the bourgeoisie’s ideological hold over the proletariat. Because the
proletarian masses were still completely governed by a bourgeois mentality, they
restored the hegemony of the bourgeoisie with their own hands after it had
collapsed.[3]

The German experience brings us face to face with the major problem of the
revolution in Western Europe. In these countries, the old bourgeois mode of
production and the centuries-old civilization which has developed with it have
completely impressed themselves upon the thoughts and feelings of the popular
masses. Hence, the mentality and inner character of the masses here is quite
different from that in the countries of the East, who have not experienced the
rule of bourgeois culture; and this is what distinguishes the different courses
that the revolution has taken in the East and the West. In England, France,
Holland, Italy, Germany and Scandinavia, there has been a powerful burgher class
based on petty-bourgeois and primitive capitalist production since the Middle
Ages; as feudalism declined, there also grew up in the countryside an equally
powerful independent peasant class, in which the individual was also master in
his own small business. Bourgeois sensibilities developed into a solid national
culture on this foundation, particularly in the maritime countries of England
and France, which took the lead in capitalist development. In the nineteenth
century, the subjection of the whole economy to capital and the inclusion of the
most outlying farms into the capitalist world-trade system enhanced and refined
this national culture, and the psychological propaganda of press, school and
church drummed it firmly into the heads of the masses, both those whom capital
proletarianized and attracted into the cities and those it left on the land.
This is true not only of the homelands of capitalism, but also, albeit in
different forms, of America and Australia, where Europeans founded new states,
and of the countries of Central Europe, Germany, Austria, Italy, which had until
then stagnated, but where the new surge of capitalist development was able to
connect with an old, backward, small-peasant economy and a petty-bourgeois
culture. But when capitalism pressed into the countries of Eastern Europe, it
encountered very different material conditions and traditions. Here, in Russia,
Poland, Hungary, even in Germany east of the Elbe, there was no strong bourgeois
class which had long dominated the life of the spirit; the latter was determined
by primitive agricultural conditions, with large-scale landed property,
patriarchal feudalism and village communism. Here, therefore, the masses related
to communism in a more primitive, simple, open way, as receptive as blank paper.
Western European social democrats often expressed derisive astonishment that the
‘ignorant’ Russians could claim to be the vanguard of the new world
of labor. Referring to these social democrats, an English delegate at the
communist conference in Amsterdam[4]
pointed up the difference quite correctly: the Russians may be more ignorant,
but the English workers are stuffed so full of prejudices that it is harder to
propagate communism among them. These ‘prejudices’ are only the
superficial, external aspect of the bourgeois mentality which saturates the
majority of the proletariat of England, Western Europe and America.

The entire content of this mentality is so many-sided and complex in its
opposition to the proletarian, communist worldview that it can scarcely be
summarized in a few sentences. Its primary characteristic is individualism,
which has its origins in earlier petty-bourgeois and peasant forms of labor and
only gradually gives way to the new proletarian sense of community and of the
necessity of accepting discipline – this characteristic is probably most
pronounced in the bourgeoisie and proletariat of the Anglo-Saxon countries. The
individual’s perspective is limited to his work-place, instead of
embracing society as a whole; so absolute does the principle of the division of
labor seem, that politics itself, the government of the whole of society, is
seen not as everybody’s business, but as the monopoly of a ruling stratum,
the specialized province of particular experts, the politicians. With its
centuries of material and intellectual commerce, its literature and art,
bourgeois culture has embedded itself in the proletarian masses, and generates a
feeling of national solidarity, anchored deeper in the unconscious than external
indifference or superficial internationalism suggest; this can potentially
express itself in national class solidarity, and greatly hinders international
action.

Bourgeois culture exists in the proletariat primarily as a traditional cast
of thought. The masses caught up in it think in ideological instead of real
terms: bourgeois thought has always been ideological. But this ideology and
tradition are not integrated; the mental reflexes left over from the innumerable
class struggles of former centuries have survived as political and religious
systems of thought which separate the old bourgeois world, and hence the
proletarians born of it, into groups, churches, sects, parties, divided
according to their ideological perspectives. The bourgeois past thus also
survives in the proletariat as an organizational tradition that stands in the
way of the class unity necessary for the creation of the new world; in these
archaic organizations the workers make up the followers and adherents of a
bourgeois vanguard. It is the intelligentsia which supplies the leaders in these
ideological struggles. The intelligentsia – priests, teachers, literati,
journalists, artists, politicians – form a numerous class, the function of
which is to foster, develop and propagate bourgeois culture; it passes this on
to the masses, and acts as mediator between the hegemony of capital and the
interests of the masses. The hegemony of capital is rooted in this group’s
intellectual leadership of the masses. For even though the oppressed masses have
often rebelled against capital and its agencies, they have only done so under
the leadership of the intelligentsia; and the firm solidarity and discipline won
in this common struggle subsequently proves to be the strongest support of the
system once these leaders openly go over to the side of capitalism. Thus, the
Christian ideology of the declining petty bourgeois strata, which had become a
living force as an expression of their struggle against the modern capitalist
state, often proved its worth subsequently as a reactionary system that
bolstered up the state, as with Catholicism in Germany after the Kulturkampf.[5] Despite the value of its theoretical
contribution, much the same is true of the role played by social democracy in
destroying and extinguishing old ideologies in the rising work-force, as history
demanded it should do: it made the proletarian masses mentally dependent upon
political and other leaders, who, as specialists, the masses left to manage all
the important matters of a general nature affecting the class, instead of
themselves taking them in hand. The firm solidarity and discipline which
developed in the often acute class struggles of half a century did not bury
capitalism, for it represented the power of leadership and organization over the
masses; and in August 1914 and November 1918 these made the masses helpless
tools of the bourgeoisie, of imperialism and of reaction. The ideological power
of the bourgeois past over the proletariat means that in many of the countries
of Western Europe, in Germany and Holland, for example, it is divided into
ideologically opposed groups which stand in the way of class unity. Social
democracy originally sought to realize this class unity, but partly due to its
opportunist tactics, which substituted purely political policies for class
politics, it was unsuccessful in this: it merely increased the number of groups
by one.

In times of crisis when the masses are driven to desperation and to action,
the hegemony of bourgeois ideology over the masses cannot prevent the power of
this tradition temporarily flagging, as in Germany in November 1918. But then
the ideology comes to the fore again, and turns temporary victory into defeat.
The concrete forces which in our view make up the hegemony of bourgeois
conceptions can be seen at work in the case of Germany: in reverence for
abstract slogans like ‘democracy'; in the power of old habits of thought
and program-points, such as the realization of socialism through parliamentary
leaders and a socialist government; in the lack of proletarian self-confidence
evidenced by the effect upon the masses of the barrage of filthy lies published
about Russia; in the masses’ lack of faith in their own power; but above
all, in their trust in the party, in the organization and in the leaders who for
decades had incarnated their struggle, their revolutionary goals, their
idealism. The tremendous mental, moral and material power of the organizations,
these enormous machines painstakingly created by the masses themselves with
years of effort, which incarnated the tradition of the forms of struggle
belonging to a period in which the labor movement was a limb of ascendant
capital, now crushed all the revolutionary tendencies once more flaring up in
the masses.

This example will not remain unique. The contradiction between the rapid
economic collapse of capitalism and the immaturity of spirit represented by the
power of bourgeois tradition over the proletariat – a contradiction which
has not come about by accident, in that the proletariat cannot achieve the
maturity of spirit required for hegemony and freedom within a flourishing
capitalism – can only be resolved by the process of revolutionary
development, in which spontaneous uprisings and seizures of power alternate with
setbacks. It makes it very improbable that the revolution will take a course in
which the proletariat for a long time storms the fortress of capital in vain,
using both the old and new means of struggle, until it eventually conquers it
once and for all; and the tactics of a long drawn-out and carefully engineered
siege posed in Radek’s schema thus fall through. The tactical problem is
not how to win power as quickly as possible if such power will be merely
illusory – this is only too easy an option for the communists – but
how the basis of lasting class power is to be developed in the proletariat. No
‘resolute minority’ can resolve the problems which can only be
resolved by the action of the class as a whole; and if the populace allows such
a seizure of power to take place over its head with apparent indifference, it is
not, for all that, a genuinely passive mass, but is capable, in so far as it has
not been won over to communism, of rounding upon the revolution at any moment as
the active follower of reaction. And a ‘coalition with the gallows on
hand’ would do no more than disguise an untenable party dictatorship of
this kind.[6] When a tremendous uprising
of the proletariat destroys the bankrupt rule of the bourgeoisie, and the
Communist Party, the clearest vanguard of the proletariat, takes over political
control, it has only one task – to eradicate the sources of weakness in
the proletariat by all possible means and to strengthen it so that it will be
fully equal to the revolutionary struggles that the future holds in store. This
means raising the masses themselves to the highest pitch of activity, whipping
up their initiative, increasing their self-confidence, so that they themselves
will be able to recognize the tasks thrust upon them, for it is only thus that
the latter can be successfully carried out. This makes it necessary to break the
domination of traditional organizational forms and of the old leaders, and in no
circumstances to join them in a coalition government; to develop the new forms,
to consolidate the material power of the masses; only in this way will it be
possible to reorganize both production and defense against the external assaults
of capitalism, and this is the precondition of preventing
counter-revolution.

Such power as the bourgeoisie still possesses in this period resides in the
proletariat’s lack of autonomy and independence of spirit. The process of
revolutionary development consists in the proletariat emancipating itself from
this dependence, from the traditions of the past – and this is only
possible through its own experience of struggle. Where capitalism is already an
institution of long standing and the workers have thus already been struggling
against it for several generations, the proletariat has in every period had to
build up methods, forms and aids to struggle corresponding to the contemporary
stage of capitalist development, and these have soon ceased to be seen as the
temporary expedients that they are, and instead idolized as lasting, absolute,
perfect forms; they have thus subsequently become fetters upon development which
had to be broken. Whereas the class is caught up in constant upheaval and rapid
development, the leaders remain at a particular stage, as the spokesmen of a
particular phase, and their tremendous influence can hold back the movement;
forms of action become dogmas, and organizations are raised to the status of
ends in themselves, making it all the more difficult to reorientate and readapt
to the changed conditions of struggle. This still applies; every stage of the
development of the class struggle must overcome the traditions of previous
stages if it is to be capable of recognizing its own tasks clearly and carrying
them out effectively – except that development is now proceeding at a far
faster pace. The revolution thus develops through the process of internal
struggle. It is within the proletariat itself that the resistances develop which
it must overcome; and in overcoming them, the proletariat overcomes its own
limitations and matures towards communism.

IV

Parliamentary activity and the trade-union movement were the two
principal forms of struggle in the time of the Second International.

The congresses of the first International Working-Men’s Association
laid the basis of this tactic by taking issue with primitive conceptions
belonging to the pre-capitalist, petty-bourgeois period and, in accordance with
Marx’s social theory, defining the character of the proletarian class
struggle as a continuous struggle by the proletariat against capitalism for the
means of subsistence, a struggle which would lead to the conquest of political
power. When the period of bourgeois revolutions and armed uprisings had come to
a close, this political struggle could only be carried on within the framework
of the old or newly created national states, and trade-union struggle was often
subject to even tighter restrictions. The First International was therefore
bound to break up; and the struggle for the new tactics, which it was itself
unable to practice, burst it apart; meanwhile, the tradition of the old
conceptions and methods of struggle remained alive among the anarchists. The
new tactics were bequeathed by the International to those who would have to put
them into practice, the trade unions and Social-Democratic Parties which were
springing up on every hand. When the Second International arose as a loose
federation of the latter, it did in fact still have to combat tradition in the
form of anarchism; but the legacy of the First International already formed its
undisputed tactical base. Today, every communist knows why these methods of
struggle were necessary and productive at that time: when the working class is
developing within ascendant capitalism, it is not yet capable of creating organs
which would enable it to control and order society, nor can it even conceive the
necessity of doing so. It must first orientate itself mentally and learn to
understand capitalism and its class rule. The vanguard of the proletariat, the
Social-Democratic Party, must reveal the nature of the system through its
propaganda and show the masses their goals by raising class demands. It was
therefore necessary for its spokesmen to enter the parliaments, the centers of
bourgeois rule, in order to raise their voices on the tribunes and take part in
conflicts between the political parties.

Matters change when the struggle of the proletariat enters a revolutionary
phase. We are not here concerned with the question of why the parliamentary
system is inadequate as a system of government for the masses and why it must
give way to the soviet system, but with the utilization of parliament as a means
of struggle by the proletariat.[7] As
such, parliamentary activity is the paradigm of struggles in which only the
leaders are actively involved and in which the masses themselves play a
subordinate role. It consists in individual deputies carrying on the main
battle; this is bound to arouse the illusion among the masses that others can do
their fighting for them. People used to believe that leaders could obtain
important reforms for the workers in parliament; and the illusion even arose
that parliamentarians could carry out the transformation to socialism by acts of
parliament. Now that parliamentarianism has grown more modest in its claims, one
hears the argument that deputies in parliament could make an important
contribution to communist propaganda.[8] But this always means that the main emphasis falls on the
leaders, and it is taken for granted that specialists will determine policy
– even if this is done under the democratic veil of debates and
resolutions by congresses; the history of social democracy is a series of
unsuccessful attempts to induce the members themselves to determine policy. This
is all inevitable while the proletariat is carrying on a parliamentary struggle,
while the masses have yet to create organs of self-action, while the revolution
has still to be made, that is; and as soon as the masses start to intervene, act
and take decisions on their own behalf, the disadvantages of parliamentary
struggle become overwhelming.

As we argued above, the tactical problem is how we are to eradicate the
traditional bourgeois mentality which paralyzes the strength of the proletarian
masses; everything which lends new power to the received conceptions is harmful.
The most tenacious and intractable element in this mentality is dependence upon
leaders, whom the masses leave to determine general questions and to manage
their class affairs. Parliamentarianism inevitably tends to inhibit the
autonomous activity by the masses that is necessary for revolution. Fine
speeches may be made in parliament exhorting the proletariat to revolutionary
action; it is not in such words that the latter has its origins, however, but in
the hard necessity of there being no other alternative.

Revolution also demands something more than the massive assault that topples
a government and which, as we know, cannot be summoned up by leaders, but can
only spring from the profound impulse of the masses. Revolution requires social
reconstruction to be undertaken, difficult decisions made, the whole proletariat
involved in creative action – and this is only possible if first the
vanguard, then a greater and greater number take matters in hand themselves,
know their own responsibilities, investigate, agitate, wrestle, strive, reflect,
assess, seize chances and act upon them. But all this is difficult and
laborious; thus, so long as the working class thinks it sees an easier way out
through others acting on its behalf leading agitation from a high platform,
taking decisions, giving signals for action, making laws – the old habits
of thought and the old weaknesses will make it hesitate and remain passive.

While on the one hand parliamentarianism has the counterrevolutionary effect
of strengthening the leaders’ dominance over the masses, on the other it
has a tendency to corrupt these leaders themselves. When personal statesmanship
has to compensate for what is lacking in the active power of the masses, petty
diplomacy develops; whatever intentions the party may have started out with, it
has to try and gain a legal base, a position of parliamentary power; and so
finally the relationship between means and ends is reversed, and it is no longer
parliament that serves as a means towards communism, but communism that stands
as an advertising slogan for parliamentary politics. In the process, however,
the communist party itself takes on a different character. Instead of a vanguard
grouping the entire class behind it for the purpose of revolutionary action, it
becomes a parliamentary party with the same legal status as the others, joining
in their quarrels, a new edition of the old social democracy under new radical
slogans. Whereas there can be no essential antagonism, no internal conflict
between the revolutionary working class and the communist party, since the party
incarnates a form of synthesis between the proletariat’s most lucid
class-consciousness and its growing unity, parliamentary activity shatters this
unity and creates the possibility of such a conflict: instead of unifying the
class, communism becomes a new party with its own party chiefs, a party which
falls in with the others and thus perpetuates the political division of the
class. All these tendencies will doubtless be cut short once again by the
development of the economy in a revolutionary sense; but even the first
beginnings of this process can only harm the revolutionary movement by
inhibiting the development of lucid class-consciousness; and when the economic
situation temporarily favors counter-revolution, this policy will pave the way
for a diversion of the revolution on to the terrain of reaction.

What is great and truly communist about the Russian revolution is above all
the fact that it has awoken the masses’ own activity and ignited the
spiritual and physical energy in them to build and sustain a new society.
Rousing the masses to this consciousness of their own power is something which
cannot be achieved all at once, but only in stages; one stage on this way to
independence is the rejection of parliamentarianism. When, in December 1918, the
newly formed Communist Party of Germany resolved to boycott the National
Assembly, this decision did not proceed from any immature illusion of quick,
easy victory, but from the proletariat’s need to emancipate itself from
its psychological dependence upon parliamentary representatives – a
necessary reaction against the tradition of social democracy – because the
way to self-activity could now be seen to lie in building up the council system.
However, one half of those united at that time, those who have stayed in the
KPD, readopted parliamentarianism with the ebb of the revolution: with what
consequences it remains to be seen, but which have in part been demonstrated
already. In other countries too, opinion is divided among the communists, and
many groups want to refrain from parliamentary activity even before the outbreak
of revolution. The international dispute over the use of parliament as a method
of struggle will thus clearly be one of the main tactical issues within the
Third International over the next few years.

At any rate, everyone is agreed that parliamentary activity only forms a
subsidiary feature of our tactics. The Second International was able to develop
up to the point where it had brought out and laid bare the essence of the new
tactics: that the proletariat can only conquer imperialism with the weapons of
mass action. The Second International itself was no longer able to employ these;
it was bound to collapse when the world war put the revolutionary class struggle
on to an international plane. The legacy of the earlier internationals was the
natural foundation of the new international: mass action by the proletariat to
the point of general strike and civil war forms the common tactical platform of
the communists. In parliamentary activity the proletariat is divided into
nations, and a genuinely international intervention is not possible; in mass
action against international capital national divisions fall away, and every
movement, to whatever countries it extends or is limited, is part of a single
world struggle.

V

Just as parliamentary activity incarnates the leaders’
psychological hold over the working masses, so the trade-union movement
incarnates their material authority. Under capitalism, the trade unions form the
natural organizations for the regroupment of the proletariat; and Marx
emphasized their significance as such from the first. In developed capitalism,
and even more in the epoch of imperialism, the trade unions have become enormous
confederations which manifest the same developmental tendencies as the bourgeois
state in an earlier period. There has grown up within them a class of officials,
a bureaucracy, which controls all the organization’s resources –
funds, press, the appointment of officials; often they have even more
far-reaching powers, so that they have changed from being the servants of the
collectivity to become its masters, and have identified themselves with the
organization. And the trade unions also resemble the state and its bureaucracy
in that, democratic forms notwithstanding, the will of the members is unable to
prevail against the bureaucracy; every revolt breaks on the carefully
constructed apparatus of orders of business and statutes before it can shake the
hierarchy. It is only after years of stubborn persistence that an opposition can
sometimes register a limited success, and usually this only amounts to a change
in personnel. In the last few years, before and since the war, this situation
has therefore often given rise to rebellions by the membership in England,
Germany and America; they have struck on their own initiative, against the will
of the leadership or the decisions of the union itself. That this should seem
natural and be taken as such is an expression of the fact that the organization
is not simply a collective organ of the members, but as it were something alien
to them; that the workers do not control their union, but that it stands over
them as an external force against which they can rebel, although they themselves
are the source of its strength – once again like the state itself. If the
revolt dies down, the old order is established once again; it knows how to
assert itself in spite of the hatred and impotent bitterness of the masses, for
it relies upon these masses’ indifference and their lack of clear insight
and united, persistent purpose, and is sustained by the inner necessity of
trade-union organization as the only means of finding strength in numbers
against capital.

It was by combating capital, combating its tendencies to absolute
impoverisation, setting limits to the latter and thus making the existence of
the working class possible, that the trade-union movement fulfilled its role in
capitalism, and this made it a limb of capitalist society itself. But once the
proletariat ceases to be a member of capitalist society and, with the advent of
revolution, becomes its destroyer, the trade union enters into conflict with the
proletariat.

It becomes legal, an open supporter of the state and recognized by the
latter, it makes ‘expansion of the economy before the revolution’
its slogan, in other words, the maintenance of capitalism. In Germany today
millions of proletarians, until now intimidated by the terrorism of the ruling
class, are streaming into the unions out of a mixture of timidity and incipient
militancy. The resemblance of the trade-union confederations, which now embrace
almost the entire working class, to the state structure is becoming even closer.
The trade-union officials collaborate with the state bureaucracy not only in
using their power to hold down the working class on behalf of capital, but also
in the fact that their ‘policy’ increasingly amounts to deceiving
the masses by demagogic means and securing their consent to the bargains that
the unions have made with the capitalists. And even the methods employed vary
according to the conditions: rough and brutal in Germany, where the trade-union
leaders have landed the workers with piece-work and longer working hours by
means of coercion and cunning deception, subtle and refined in England, where
the trade-union mandarins, like the government, give the appearance of allowing
themselves to be reluctantly pushed on by the workers, while in reality they are
sabotaging the latter’s demands.

Marx’ and Lenin’s insistence that the way in which the state is
organized precludes its use as an instrument of proletarian revolution,
notwithstanding its democratic forms, must therefore also apply to the
trade-union organizations. Their counterrevolutionary potential cannot be
destroyed or diminished by a change of personnel, by the substitution of radical
or ‘revolutionary’ leaders for reactionary ones. It is the form of
the organization that renders the masses all but impotent and prevents them
making the trade union an organ of their will. The revolution can only be
successful by destroying this organization, that is to say so completely
revolutionizing its organizational structure that it becomes something
completely different. The soviet system, constructed from within, is not only
capable of uprooting and abolishing the state bureaucracy, but the trade-union
bureaucracy as well; it will form not only the new political organs to replace
parliament, but also the basis of the new trade unions. The idea that a
particular organizational form is revolutionary has been held up to scorn in the
party disputes in Germany on the grounds that what counts is the revolutionary
mentality of the members. But if the most important element of the revolution
consists in the masses taking their own affairs – the management of
society and production – in hand themselves, then any form of organization
which does not permit control and direction by the masses themselves is
counterrevolutionary and harmful; and it should therefore be replaced by another
form that is revolutionary in that it enables the workers themselves to
determine everything actively. This is not to say that this form is to be set up
within a still passive work-force in readiness for the revolutionary feeling of
the workers to function within it in time to come: this new form of organization
can itself only be set up in the process of revolution, by workers making a
revolutionary intervention. But recognition of the role played by the current
form of organization determines the attitude which the communists have to take
with regard to the attempts already being made to weaken or burst this form.

Efforts to keep the bureaucratic apparatus as small as possible and to look
to the activity of the masses for effectiveness have been particularly marked in
the syndicalist movement, and even more so in the ‘industrial’ union
movement. This is why so many communists have spoken out for support of these
organizations against the central confederations. So long as capitalism remains
intact, however, these new formations cannot take on any comprehensive role
– the importance of the American IWW derives from particular
circumstances, namely the existence of a numerous, unskilled proletariat largely
of foreign extraction outside the old confederations. The Shop Committees
movement and Shop Stewards movement in England are much closer to the soviet
system, in that they are mass organs formed in opposition to the bureaucracy in
the course of struggle. The ‘unions’ in Germany are even more
deliberately modeled on the idea of the soviet, but the stagnation of the
revolution has left them weak. Every new formation of this type that weakens the
central confederations and their inner cohesion removes an impediment to
revolution and weakens the counterrevolutionary potential of the trade-union
bureaucracy. The notion of keeping all oppositional and revolutionary forces
together within the confederations in order for them eventually to take these
organizations over as a majority and revolutionize them is certainly tempting.
But in the first place, this is a vain hope, as fanciful as the related notion
of taking over the Social-Democratic party, because the bureaucracy already
knows how to deal with an opposition before it becomes too dangerous. And
secondly, revolution does not proceed according to a smooth program, but
elemental outbreaks on the part of passionately active groups always play a
particular role within it as a force driving it forward. If the communists were
to defend the central confederations against such initiatives out of
opportunistic considerations of temporary gain, they would reinforce the
inhibitions which will later be their most formidable obstacle.

The formation by the workers of the soviets, their own organs of power and
action, in itself signifies the disintegration and dissolution of the state. As
a much more recent form of organization and one created by the proletariat
itself, the trade union will survive much longer, because it has its roots in a
much more living tradition of personal experience, and once it has shaken off
state-democratic illusions, will therefore claim a place in the conceptual world
of the proletariat. But since the trade unions have emerged from the proletariat
itself, as products of its own creative activity, it is in this field that we
shall see the most new formations as continual attempts to adapt to new
conditions; following the process of revolution, new forms of struggle and
organization will be built on the model of the soviets in a process of constant
transformation and development.

VI

The conception that revolution in Western Europe will take the
form of an orderly siege of the fortress of capital which the proletariat,
organized by the Communist Party into a disciplined army and using time-proven
weapons, will repeatedly assault until the enemy surrenders is a neo-reformist
perspective that certainly does not correspond to the conditions of struggle in
the old capitalist countries. Here there may occur revolutions and conquests of
power that quickly turn into defeat; the bourgeoisie will be able to reassert
its domination, but this will result in even greater dislocation of the economy;
transitional forms may arise which, because of their inadequacy, only prolong
the chaos. Certain conditions must be fulfilled in any society for the social
process of production and collective existence to be possible, and these
relations acquire the firm hold of spontaneous habits and moral norms –
sense of duty, industriousness, discipline: in the first instance, the process
of revolution consists in a loosening of these old relations. Their decay is a
necessary byproduct of the dissolution of capitalism, while the new bonds
corresponding to the communist reorganization of work and society, the
development of which we have witnessed in Russia, have yet to grow sufficiently
strong. Thus, a transitional period of social and political chaos becomes
inevitable. Where the proletariat is able to seize power rapidly and keep a firm
hold upon it, as in Russia, the transitional period can be short and can be
brought rapidly to a close by positive construction. But in Western Europe, the
process of destruction will be much more drawn out. In Germany we see the
working class split into groups in which this process has reached different
stages, and which therefore cannot yet achieve unity in action. The symptoms of
recent revolutionary movements indicate that the entire nation, and indeed,
Central Europe as a whole, is dissolving, that the popular masses are
fragmenting into separate strata and regions, with each acting on its own
account: here the masses manage to arm themselves and more or less gain
political power; elsewhere they paralyze the power of the bourgeoisie in strike
movements; in a third place they shut themselves off as a peasant republic, and
somewhere else they support white guards, or perhaps toss aside the remnants of
feudalism in primitive agrarian revolts – the destruction must obviously
be thorough-going before we can begin to think of the real construction of
communism. It cannot be the task of the Communist Party to act the schoolmaster
in this upheaval and make vain attempts to truss it in a straitjacket of
traditional forms; its task is to support the forces of the proletarian movement
everywhere, to connect the spontaneous actions together, to give them a broad
idea of how they are related to one another, and thereby prepare the unification
of the disparate actions and thus put itself at the head of the movement as a
whole.

The first phase of the dissolution of capitalism is to be seen in those
countries of the Entente where its hegemony is as yet unshaken; in an
irresistible decline in production and in the value of their currencies, an
increase in the frequency of strikes and a strong aversion to work among the
proletariat. The second phase, the period of counter-revolution, i.e. the
political hegemony of the bourgeoisie in the epoch of revolution, means complete
economic collapse; we can study this best in Germany and the remainder of
Central Europe. If a communist system had arisen immediately after the political
revolution, organized reconstruction could have begun in spite of the Versailles
and St Germain peace treaties, in spite of the poverty and the exhaustion. But
the Ebert-Noske regime no more thought of organized reconstruction than did
Renner and Bauer;[9] they gave the
bourgeoisie a free hand, and saw their duty as consisting solely in the
suppression of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie, or rather each individual
bourgeois, acted in a characteristically bourgeois manner; each of them thought
only of making as much profit as possible and of rescuing for his personal use
whatever could be saved from the cataclysm. It is true that there was talk in
newspapers and manifestoes of the need to rebuild economic life by organized
effort, but this was simply for the workers’ consumption, fine phrases to
conceal the fact that despite their exhaustion, they were under rigorous
compulsion to work in the most intensive conditions possible. In reality, of
course, not a single bourgeois concerned himself one jot with the general
national interest, but only with his personal gain. At first, trade became the
principal means of self-enrichment, as it used to be in the old days; the
depreciation of the currency provided the opportunity to export everything that
was needed for economic expansion or even for the mere survival of the masses
– raw materials, food, finished products, means of production, and after
that, factories themselves and property. Racketeering reigned everywhere among
the bourgeois strata, supported by unbridled corruption on the part of
officialdom. And so all their former possessions and everything that was not to
be surrendered as war reparations was packed off abroad by the ‘leaders of
production'. Likewise in the domain of production, the private pursuit of profit
intervened to wreck economic life by its total indifference towards the common
welfare. In order to force piecework and longer working hours upon proletarians
or to get rid of rebellious elements among them, they were locked out and the
factories set at a standstill, regardless of the stagnation caused throughout
the rest of the industry as a consequence. On top of that came the incompetence
of the bureaucratic management in the state enterprises, which degenerated into
utter vacillation when the powerful hand of the government was missing.
Restriction of production, the most primitive method of raising prices and one
which competition would render impossible in a healthy capitalist economy,
became respectable once more. In the stock-market reports capitalism seems to be
flourishing again, but the high dividends are consuming the last remaining
property and are themselves being frittered away on luxuries. What we have
witnessed in Germany over the last year is not something out of the ordinary,
but the functioning of the general class character of the bourgeoisie. Their
only aim is, and always has been, personal profit, which in normal capitalism
sustains production, but which brings about the total destruction of the economy
as capitalism degenerates. And things will go the same way in other countries;
once production has been dislocated beyond a certain point and the currency has
depreciated sharply, then the complete collapse of the economy will result if
the pursuit of private profit by the bourgeoisie is given free reign – and
this is what the political hegemony of the bourgeoisie amounts to, whatever
noncommunist party it may hide behind.

The difficulties of the reconstruction facing the proletariat of Western
Europe in these circumstances are far greater than they were in Russia –
the subsequent destruction of industrial productive forces by Kolchak and
Denikin is a pale shadow by comparison. Reconstruction cannot wait for a new
political order to be set up, it must be begun in the very process of revolution
by the proletariat taking over the organization of production and abolishing the
bourgeoisie’s control over the material essentials of life wherever the
proletariat gains power. Works councils can serve to keep an eye on the use of
goods in the factories; but it is clear that this cannot prevent all the
anti-social racketeering of the bourgeoisie. To do so, the most resolute
utilization of armed political power is necessary. Where the profiteers
recklessly squander the national wealth without heed for the common good, where
armed reaction blindly murders and destroys, the proletariat must intervene and
fight with no half-measures in order to protect the common good and the life of
the people.

The difficulties of reorganizing a society that has been completely destroyed
are so great that they appear insuperable before the event, and this makes it
impossible to set up a program for reconstruction in advance. But they must be
overcome, and the proletariat will overcome them by the infinite self-sacrifice
and commitment, the boundless power of soul and spirit and the tremendous
psychological and moral energies which the revolution is able to awaken in its
weakened and tortured frame.

At this point, a few problems may be touched on in passing. The question of
technical cadres in industry will only give temporary difficulties: although
their thinking is bourgeois through and through and they are deeply hostile to
proletarian rule, they will nevertheless conform in the end. Getting commerce
and industry moving will above all be a question of supplying raw materials; and
this question coincides with that of food-stuffs. The question of food-supplies
is central to the revolution in Western Europe, since the highly industrialized
population cannot get by even under capitalism without imports from abroad. For
the revolution, however, the question of food-supplies is intimately bound up
with the whole agrarian question, and the principles of communist regulation of
agriculture must influence measures taken to deal with hunger even during the
revolution. Junker estates and large-scale landed property are ripe for
expropriation and collective exploitation; the small farmers will be freed from
all capitalist oppression and encouraged to adopt methods of intensive
cultivation through support and assistance of every kind from the state and
cooperative arrangements; medium-scale farmers – who own half the land in
Western and South-Western Germany, for example – have a strongly
individualistic and hence anti-communist mentality, but their economic position
is as yet unassailable: they cannot therefore be expropriated, and will have to
be integrated into the sphere of the economic process as a whole through the
exchange of products and the development of productivity, for it is only with
communism that maximum productivity can be developed in agriculture and the
individual enterprise introduced by capitalism transcended. It follows that the
workers will see in the landowners a hostile class and in the rural workers and
small farmers allies in the revolution, while they have no cause for making
enemies of the middle farming strata, even though the latter may be of a hostile
disposition towards them. This means that during the first period of chaos
preceding the establishment of a system of exchanging products, requisitions
must be carried out only as an emergency measure among these strata, as an
absolutely unavoidable balancing operation between famine in the towns and in
the country. The struggle against hunger will have to be dealt with primarily by
imports from abroad. Soviet Russia, with her rich stocks of foodstuffs and raw
materials, will thus save and provide for the revolution in Western Europe. The
Western European working class thus has the highest and most personal interest
in the defense and support of Soviet Russia.

The reconstruction of the economy, inordinately difficult as it will be, is
not the main problem for the Communist Party. When the proletarian masses
develop their intellectual and moral potential to the full, they will resolve it
themselves. The prime duty of the Communist Party is to arouse and foster this
potential. It must eradicate all the received ideas which leave the proletariat
timid and unsure of itself, set itself against everything that breeds illusions
among the workers about easier courses and restrains them from the most radical
measures, energetically oppose all the tendencies which stop short at
half-measures or compromises. And there are still many such tendencies.

VII

The transition from capitalism to communism will not proceed
according to a simple schema of conquering political power, introducing the
council system and then abolishing private commerce, even though this represents
the broad outline of development. That would only be possible if one could
undertake reconstruction in some sort of void. But out of capitalism there have
grown forms of production and organization which have firm roots in the
consciousness of the masses, and which can themselves only be overthrown in a
process of political and economic revolution. We have already mentioned the
agrarian forms of production, which will have to follow a particular course of
development. There have grown up in the working class under capitalism forms of
organization, different in detail from country to country, which represent a
powerful force, which cannot immediately be abolished and which will thus play
an important role in the course of the revolution.

This applies in the first instance to political parties. The role of social
democracy in the present crisis of capitalism is sufficiently well known, but in
Central Europe it has practically played itself out. Even its most radical
sections, such as the USP in Germany, exercise a harmful influence, not only by
splitting the proletariat, but above all by confusing the masses and restraining
them from action with their social-democratic notions of political leaders
directing the fate of the people by their deeds and dealings. And if the
Communist Party constitutes itself into a parliamentary party which, instead of
attempting to assert the dictatorship of the class, attempts to establish that
of the party – that is to say the party leadership – then it too may
become a hindrance to development. The attitude of the Communist Party of
Germany during the revolutionary March movement, when it announced that the
proletariat was not yet ripe for dictatorship and that it would therefore
encounter any ‘genuinely socialist government’ that might be formed
as a ‘loyal opposition’, in other words restrain the proletariat
from waging the fiercest revolutionary struggle against such a government, was
itself criticized from many quarters.[10]

A government of socialist party leaders may arise in the course of the
revolution as a transitional form; this will be expressing a temporary balance
between the revolutionary and bourgeois forces, and it will tend to freeze and
perpetuate the temporary balance between the destruction of the old and the
development of the new. It would be something like a more radical version of the
Ebert-Haase-Dittmann regime;[11] and its
basis shows what can be expected of it: a seeming balance of hostile classes,
but under the preponderance of the bourgeoisie, a mixture of parliamentary
democracy and a kind of council system for the workers, socialization subject to
the veto of the Entente powers’ imperialism with the profits of capital
being maintained, futile attempts to prevent classes clashing violently. It is
always the workers who take a beating in such circumstances. Not only can a
regime of this sort achieve nothing in terms of reconstruction, it does not even
attempt to do so, since its only aim is to halt the revolution in mid-course.
Since it attempts both to prevent the further disintegration of capitalism and
also the development of the full political power of the proletariat, its effects
are directly counter-revolutionary. Communists have no choice but to fight such
regimes in the most uncompromising manner.

Just as in Germany the Social-Democratic Party was formerly the leading
organization of the proletariat, so in England the trade-union movement, in the
course of almost a century of history, has put down the deepest roots in the
working class. Here it has long been the ideal of the younger radical
trade-union leaders – Robert Smillie is a typical example – for the
working class to govern society by means of the trade-union organization. Even
the revolutionary syndicalists and the spokesmen of the IWW in America, although
affiliated to the Third International, imagine the future rule of the
proletariat primarily along these lines. Radical trade-unionists see the soviet
system not as the purest form of proletarian dictatorship, but rather as a
regime of politicians and intellectuals built up on a base of working-class
organizations. They see the trade union movement, on the other hand, as the
natural organization of the proletariat, created by the proletariat, which
governs itself within it and which will go on to govern the whole of the
work-process. Once the old ideal of ‘industrial democracy’ has been
realized and the trade union is master in the factory, its collective organ, the
trade-union congress, will take over the function of guiding and managing the
economy as a whole. It will then be the real ‘parliament of labor’
and replace the old bourgeois parliament of parties. These circles often shrink
from a one-sided and ‘unfair’ class dictatorship as an infringement
of democracy, however; labor is to rule, but others are not to be without
rights. Therefore, in addition to the labor parliament, which governs work, the
basis of life, a second house could be elected by universal suffrage to
represent the whole nation and exercise its influence on public and cultural
matters and questions of general political concern.

This conception of government by the trade unions should not be confused with
‘laborism’, the politics of the ‘Labor Party’, which
is currently led by trade-unionists. This latter stands for the penetration of
the bourgeois parliament of today by the trade unions, who will build a
‘workers’ party’ on the same footing as other parties with the
objective of becoming the party of government in their place. This party is
completely bourgeois, and there is little to choose between Henderson and Ebert.
It will give the English bourgeoisie the opportunity to continue its old
policies on a broader basis as soon as the threat of pressure from below makes
this necessary, and hence weaken and confuse the workers by taking their leaders
into the government. A government of the workers’ party, something which
seemed imminent a year ago when the masses were in so revolutionary a mood, but
which the leaders themselves have put back into the distant future by holding
the radical current down, would, like the Ebert regime in Germany, have been
nothing but government on behalf of the bourgeoisie. But it remains to be seen
whether the far-sighted, subtle English bourgeoisie does not trust itself to
stultify and suppress the masses more effectively than these working-class
bureaucrats.

A genuine trade-union government as conceived by the radicals is as unlike
this workers’ party politics, this ‘laborism’, as revolution
is unlike reform. Only a real revolution in political relationships –
whether violent or in keeping with the old English models – could bring it
about; and in the eyes of the broad masses, it would represent the conquest of
power by the proletariat. But it is nevertheless quite different from the goal
of communism. It is based on the limited ideology which develops in trade-union
struggles, where one does not confront world capital as a whole in all its
interwoven forms – finance capital, bank capital, agricultural capital,
colonial capital – but only its industrial form. It is based on marxist
economics, now being eagerly studied in the English working class, which show
production to be a mechanism of exploitation, but without the deeper marxist
social theory, historical materialism. It recognizes that work constitutes the
basis of the world and thus wants labor to rule the world; but it does not see
that all the abstract spheres of political and intellectual life are determined
by the mode of production, and it is therefore disposed to leave them to the
bourgeois intelligentsia, provided that the latter recognizes the primacy of
labor. Such a workers’ regime would in reality be a government of the
trade-union bureaucracy complemented by the radical section of the old state
bureaucracy, which it would leave in charge of the specialist fields of culture,
politics and suchlike on the grounds of their special competence in these
matters. It is obvious that its economic program will not coincide with
communist expropriation, but will only go so far as the expropriation of big
capital, while the ‘honest’ profits of the smaller entrepreneur,
hitherto fleeced and kept in subjection by this big capital, will be spared. It
is even open to doubt whether they will take up the standpoint of complete
freedom for India, an integral element of the communist program, on the
colonial question, this life-nerve of the ruling class of England.

It cannot be predicted in what manner, to what degree and with what purity a
political form of this kind will be realized. The English bourgeoisie has always
understood the art of using well-timed concessions to check movement towards
revolutionary objectives; how far it is able to continue this tactic in the
future will depend primarily on the depth of the economic crisis. If trade-union
discipline is eroded from below by uncontrollable industrial revolts and
communism simultaneously gains a hold on the masses, then the radical and
reformist trade-unionists will agree on a common line; if the struggle goes
sharply against the old reformist politics of the leaders, the radical
trade-unionists and the communists will go hand in hand.

These tendencies are not confined to England. The trade unions are the most
powerful workers’ organizations in every country; as soon as a political
clash topples the old state power, it will inevitably fall into the hands of the
best organized and most influential force on hand. In Germany in November 1918,
the trade-union executives formed the counter-revolutionary guard behind Ebert;
and in the recent March crisis, they entered the political arena in an attempt
to gain direct influence upon the composition of the government. The only
purpose of this support for the Ebert regime was to deceive the proletariat the
more subtly with the fraud of a ‘government under the control of the
workers’ organizations’. But it shows that the same tendency exists
here as in England. And even if the Legiens and Bauers[12] are too tainted by counter-revolution, new radical
trade-unionists from the USP tendency will take their place just as last year
the Independents under Dissmann won the leadership of the great
metalworkers’ federation. If a revolutionary movement overthrows the Ebert
regime, this tightly organized force of seven million will doubtless be ready to
seize power, in conjunction with the C P or in opposition to it.

A ‘government of the working class’ along these lines by the
trade unions cannot be stable; although it may be able to hold its own for a
long time during a slow process of economic decline, in an acute revolutionary
crisis it will only be able to survive as a tottering transitional phenomenon.
Its program, as we have outlined above, cannot be radical. But a current which
will sanction such measures not, like communism, as a temporary transitional
form at most to be deliberately utilized for the purpose of building up a
communist organization, but as a definitive program, must necessarily come
into conflict with and antagonism towards the masses. Firstly, because it does
not render bourgeois elements completely powerless, but grants them a certain
position of power in the bureaucracy and perhaps in parliament, from which they
can continue to wage the class struggle. The bourgeoisie will endeavor to
consolidate these positions of strength, while the proletariat, because it
cannot annihilate the hostile class under these conditions, must attempt to
establish a straightforward soviet system as the organ of its dictatorship; in
this battle between two mighty opponents, economic reconstruction will be
impossible.[13] And secondly, because a
government of trade-union leaders of this kind cannot resolve the problems which
society is posing; for the latter can only be resolved through the proletarian
masses’ own initiative and activity, fueled by the self-sacrificing and
unbounded enthusiasm which only communism, with all its perspectives of total
freedom and supreme intellectual and moral elevation, can command. A current
which seeks to abolish material poverty and exploitation, but deliberately
confines itself to this goal, which leaves the bourgeois superstructure intact
and at the same time holds back from revolutionizing the mental outlook and
ideology of the proletariat, cannot release these great energies in the masses;
and so it will be incapable of resolving the material problems of initiating
economic expansion and ending the chaos.

The trade-union regime will attempt to consolidate and stabilize the
prevailing level of the revolutionary process, just like the ‘genuinely
socialist’ regime – except that it will do so at a much more
developed stage, when the primacy of the bourgeoisie has been destroyed and a
certain balance of class power has arisen with the proletariat predominant; when
the entire profit of capital can no longer be saved, but only its less repellent
petty-capitalist form; when it is no longer bourgeois but socialist expansion
that is being attempted, albeit with insufficient resources. It thus signifies
the last stand of the bourgeois class: when the bourgeoisie can no longer
withstand the assault of the masses on the Scheidemann-Henderson-Renaudel line,
it falls back to its last line of defense, the Smillie-Dissmann-Merrheim line.[14] When it is no longer able to deceive
the proletariat by having ‘workers’ in a bourgeois or socialist
regime, it can only attempt to keep the proletariat from its ultimate radical
goals by a ‘government of workers’ organizations’ and thus in
part retain its privileged position. Such a government is counterrevolutionary
in nature, in so far as it seeks to arrest the necessary development of the
revolution towards the total destruction of the bourgeois world and prevent
total communism from attaining its greatest and clearest objectives. The
struggle of the communists may at present often run parallel with that of the
radical trade-unionists; but it would be dangerous tactics not to clearly
identify the differences of principle and objective when this happens. And these
considerations also bear upon the attitude of the communists towards the
trade-union confederations of today; everything which consolidates their unity
and strength consolidates the force which will one day put itself in the way of
the onward march of the revolution.

When communism conducts a strong and principled struggle against this
transitional political form, it represents the living revolutionary tendencies
in the proletariat. The same revolutionary action on the part of the proletariat
which prepares the way for the rule of a worker-bureaucracy by smashing the
apparatus of bourgeois power simultaneously drives the masses on to form their
own organs, the councils, which immediately undermine the basis of the
bureaucratic trade unions’ machinery. The development of the soviet system
is at the same time the struggle of the proletariat to replace the incomplete
form of its dictatorship by complete dictatorship. But with the intensive labor
which all the never-ending attempts to ‘reorganize’ the economy will
demand, a leadership bureaucracy will be able to retain great power for a long
time, and the masses’ capacity to get rid of it will only develop slowly.
These various forms and phases of the process of development do not, moreover,
follow on in the abstract, logical succession in which we have set them down as
degrees of maturation: they all occur at the same time, become entangled and
coexist in a chaos of tendencies that complement each other, combat each other
and dissolve each other, and it is through this struggle that the general
development of the revolution proceeds. As Marx himself put it:

Proletarian revolutions constantly criticize themselves, continually
interrupt themselves in the course of their own development, come back to the
seemingly complete in order to start it all over again, treat the inadequacies
of their own first attempts with cruelly radical contempt, seem only to throw
their adversaries down to enable them to draw new strength from the earth and
rise up again to face them all the more gigantic.

The resistances which issue from the proletariat itself as expressions of
weakness must be overcome in order for it to develop its full strength; and this
process of development is generated by conflict, it proceeds from crisis to
crisis, driven on by struggle. In the beginning was the deed, but it was only
the beginning. It demands an instant of united purpose to overthrow a ruling
class, but only the lasting unity conferred by clear insight can keep a firm
grasp upon victory. Otherwise there comes the reverse which is not a return to
the old rulers, but a new hegemony in a new form, with new personnel and new
illusions. Each new phase of the revolution brings a new layer of as yet unused
leaders to the surface as the representatives of particular forms of
organization, and the overthrow of each of these in turn represents a higher
stage in the proletariat’s self-emancipation. The strength of the
proletariat is not merely the raw power of the single violent act which throws
the enemy down, but also the strength of mind which breaks the old mental
dependence and thus succeeds in keeping a tight hold on what has been seized by
storm. The growth of this strength in the ebb and flow of revolution is the
growth of proletarian freedom.

VIII

In Western Europe, capitalism is in a state of progressive
collapse; yet in Russia, despite the terrible difficulties, production is being
built up under a new order. The hegemony of communism does not mean that
production is completely based on a communist order – this latter is only
possible after a relatively lengthy process of development – but that the
working class is consciously developing the system of production towards
communism.[15] This development cannot
at any point go beyond what the prevailing technical and social foundations
permit, and therefore it inevitably manifests transitional forms in which
vestiges of the old bourgeois world appear. According to what we have heard of
the situation in Russia here in Western Europe, such vestiges do indeed exist
there.

Russia is an enormous peasant land; industry there has not developed to the
unnatural extent of a ‘workshop’ of the world as it has in Western
Europe, making export and expansion a question of life and death, but just
sufficiently for the formation of a working class able to take over the
government of society as a developed class. Agriculture is the occupation of the
popular masses, and modern, large-scale farms are in a minority, although they
play a valuable role in the development of communism. It is the small units that
make up the majority: not the wretched, exploited little properties of Western
Europe, but farms which secure the welfare of the peasants and which the soviet
regime is seeking to integrate more and more closely into the system as a whole
by means of material assistance in the form of extra equipment and tools and by
intensive cultural and specialist education. It is nevertheless natural that
this form of enterprise generates a certain spirit of individualism alien to
communism, which, among the ‘rich peasants', has become a hostile,
resolutely anti-communist frame of mind. The Entente has doubtless speculated on
this in its proposals to trade with co-operatives, intending to initiate a
bourgeois counter-movement by drawing these strata into bourgeois pursuit of
profit. But because fear of feudal reaction binds them to the present regime as
their major interest, such efforts must come to nothing, and when Western
European imperialism collapses this danger will disappear completely.

Industry is predominantly a centrally organized, exploitation-free system of
production; it is the heart of the new order, and the leadership of the state is
based on the industrial proletariat. But even this system of production is in a
transitional phase; the technical and administrative cadres in the factories and
in the state apparatus exercise greater authority than is commensurate with
developed communism. The need to increase production quickly and the even more
urgent need to create an efficient army to fend off the attacks of reaction made
it imperative to make good the lack of reliable leaders in the shortest possible
time; the threat of famine and the assaults of the enemy did not permit all
resources to be directed towards a more gradual raising of the general level of
competence and to the development of all as the basis of a collective communist
system. Thus a new bureaucracy inevitably arose from the new leaders and
functionaries, absorbing the old bureaucracy into itself. This is at times
regarded with some anxiety as a peril to the new order, and it can only be
removed by a broad development of the masses. Although the latter is being
undertaken with the utmost energy, only the communist surplus by which man
ceases to be the slave of his labor will form a lasting foundation for it. Only
surplus creates the material conditions for freedom and equality; so long as the
struggle against nature and against the forces of capital remains intense, an
inordinate degree of specialization will remain necessary.

It is worth noting that although our analysis predicts that development in
Western Europe will take a different direction from that of Russia insofar as we
can foresee the course which it will follow as the revolution progresses, both
manifest the same politico-economic structure: industry run according to
communist principles with workers’ councils forming the element of
self-management under the technical direction and political hegemony of a
worker-bureaucracy, while agriculture retains an individualistic,
petty-bourgeois character in the dominant small and medium-scale sectors. But
this coincidence is not so extraordinary for all that, in that this kind of
social structure is determined not by previous political history, but by basic
technico-economic conditions – the level of development attained by
industrial and agricultural technology and the formation of the proletarian
masses – which are in both cases the same.[16] But despite this coincidence, there is a great difference
in significance and goal. In Western Europe this politico-economic structure
forms a transitional stage at which the bourgeoisie is ultimately able to arrest
its decline, whereas in Russia the attempt is consciously being made to pursue
development further in a communist direction. In Western Europe, it forms a
phase in the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in Russia a
phase in the new economic expansion. With the same external forms, Western
Europe is on the downward path of a declining culture, Russia on the rising
movement of a new culture.

While the Russian revolution was still young and weak and was looking to an
imminent outbreak of revolution in Europe to save it, a different conception of
its significance reigned. Russia, it was then maintained, was only an outpost of
the revolution where favorable circumstances had enabled the proletariat to
seize power so early; but this proletariat was weak and unformed and almost
swallowed up in the infinite masses of the peasantry. The proletariat of
economically backward Russia could only make temporary advances; as soon as the
great masses of the fully-fledged Western European proletariat came to power in
the most developed industrial countries, with all their technical and
organizational experience and their ancient wealth of culture, then we should
see communism flourish to an extent that would make the Russian contribution,
welcome as it was, seem weak and inadequate by comparison. The heart and
strength of the new communist world lay where capitalism had reached the height
of its power, in England, in Germany, in America, and laid the basis for the new
mode of production.

This conception takes no account of the difficulties facing the revolution in
Western Europe. Where the proletariat only slowly gains firm control and the
bourgeoisie is upon occasion able to win back power in part or in whole, nothing
can come of economic reconstruction. Capitalist expansion is impossible; every
time the bourgeoisie obtains a free hand, it creates new chaos and destroys the
bases which could have served for the construction of communist production.
Again and again it prevents the consolidation of the new proletarian order by
bloody reaction and destruction. This occurred even in Russia: the destruction
of industrial installations and mines in the Urals and the Donetz basin by
Kolchak and Denikin, as well as the need to deploy the best workers and the
greater part of the productive forces against them, was a serious blow to the
economy and damaged and delayed communist expansion – and even though the
initiation of trade relations with America and the West may considerably favor
a new upturn, the greatest, most self-sacrificing effort will be needed on the
part of the masses in Russia to achieve complete recovery from this damage. But
– and herein lies the difference – the soviet republic has remained
intact in Russia as an organized center of communist power which has already
developed tremendous internal stability. In Western Europe there will be just as
much destruction and murder, here too the best forces of the proletariat will be
wiped out in the course of the struggle, but here we lack an already
consolidated, organized soviet state that could serve as a source of strength.
The classes are wearing each other out in a devastating civil war, and so long
as construction comes to nothing, chaos and misery will continue to rule. This
will be the lot of countries where the proletariat does not immediately
recognize its task with clear insight and united purpose, that is to say where
bourgeois traditions weaken and split the workers, dim their eyes and subdue
their hearts. It will take decades to overcome the infectious, paralyzing
influence of bourgeois culture upon the proletariat in the old capitalist
countries. And meanwhile, production lies in ruins and the country degenerates
into an economic desert.

At the same time as Western Europe, stagnating economically, painfully
struggles with its bourgeois past, in the East, in Russia, the economy is
flourishing under a communist order. What used to distinguish the developed
capitalist countries from the backward East was the tremendous sophistication of
their material and mental means of production – a dense network of
railways, factories, ships, and a dense, technically skilled population. But
during the collapse of capitalism, in the long civil war, in the period of
stagnation when too little is being produced, this heritage is being dissipated,
used up or destroyed. The indestructible forces of production, science,
technical capabilities, are not tied to these countries; their bearers will find
a new homeland in Russia, where trade will also provide a sanctuary for part of
Europe’s material and technical riches. Soviet Russia’s trade
agreement with Western Europe and America will, if taken seriously and operated
with a will, tend to accentuate this contradiction, because it furthers the
economic expansion of Russia while delaying collapse in Western Europe, thus
giving capitalism a breathing space and paralyzing the revolutionary potential
of the masses – for how long and to what extent remains to be seen.
Politically, this will be expressed in an apparent stabilization of a bourgeois
regime or one of the other types discussed above and in a simultaneous rise to
power of opportunist tendencies within communism; by recognizing the old methods
of struggle and engaging in parliamentary activity and loyal opposition within
the old trade unions, the communist parties in Western Europe will acquire a
legal status, like social-democracy before them, and in the face of this, the
radical, revolutionary current will see itself forced into a minority. However,
it is entirely improbable that capitalism will enjoy a real new flowering; the
private interests of the capitalists trading with Russia will not defer to the
economy as a whole, and for the sake of profit they will ship off essential
basic elements of production to Russia; nor can the proletariat again be brought
into a state of dependence. Thus the crisis will drag on; lasting improvement is
impossible and will continually be arrested; the process of revolution and civil
war will be delayed and drawn out, the complete rule of communism and the
beginning of new growth put off into the distant future. Meanwhile, in the East,
the economy will develop untrammeled in a powerful upsurge, and new paths will
be opened up on the basis of the most advanced natural science – which the
West is incapable of exploiting – together with the new social science,
humanity’s newly won control over its own social forces. And these forces,
increased a hundredfold by the new energies flowing from freedom and equality,
will make Russia the center of the new communist world order.

This will not be the first time in world history that the center of the
civilized world has shifted in the transition to a new mode of production or one
of its phases. In antiquity, it moved from the Middle East to Southern Europe,
in the Middle Ages, from Southern to Western Europe; with the rise of colonial
and merchant capital, first Spain, then Holland and England became the leading
nation, and with the rise of industry England. The cause of these shifts can in
fact be embraced in a general historical principle: where the earlier economic
form reached its highest development, the material and mental forces, the
politico-juridical institutions which secured its existence and which were
necessary for its full development, were so strongly constructed that they
offered almost insuperable resistance to the development of new forms. Thus, the
institution of slavery inhibited the development of feudalism at the twilight of
antiquity; thus, the guild laws applying in the great wealthy cities of medieval
times meant that later capitalist manufacturing could only develop in other
centers hitherto insignificant; thus in the late eighteenth century, the
political order of French absolutism which had fostered industry under Colbert
obstructed the introduction of the large-scale industry that made England a
manufacturing nation. There even exists a corresponding law in organic nature, a
corollary to Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ known as the
law of the ‘survival of the unfitted': when a species of animal has become
specialized and differentiated into a wealth of forms all perfectly adapted to
particular conditions of life in that period – like the Saurians in the
Secondary Era – it becomes incapable of evolving into a new species; all
the various options for adaptation and development have been lost and cannot be
retrieved. The development of a new species proceeds from primitive forms which,
because they have remained undifferentiated, have retained all their potential
for development, and the old species which is incapable of further adaptation
dies out. The phenomenon whereby leadership in economic, political and cultural
development continually shifts from one people or nation to another in the
course of human history – explained away by bourgeois science with the
fantasy of a nation or race having ‘exhausted its life force’
– is a particular incidence of this organic rule.

We now see why it is that the primacy of Western Europe and America –
which the bourgeoisie is pleased to attribute to the intellectual and moral
superiority of their race – will evaporate, and where we can foresee it
shifting to. New countries, where the masses are not poisoned by the fug of a
bourgeois ideology, where the beginnings of industrial development have raised
the mind from its former slumber and a communist sense of solidarity has awoken,
where the raw materials are available to use the most advanced technology
inherited from capitalism for a renewal of the traditional forms of production,
where oppression elicits the development of the qualities fostered by struggle,
but where no over-powerful bourgeoisie can obstruct this process of regeneration
– it is such countries that will be the centers of the new communist
world. Russia, itself half a continent when taken in conjunction with Siberia,
already stands first in line. But these conditions are also present to a greater
or lesser extent in other countries of the East, in India, in China. Although
there may be other sources of immaturity, these Asian countries must not be
overlooked in considering the communist world revolution.

This world revolution is not seen in its full universal significance if
considered only from the Western European perspective. Russia not only forms the
eastern part of Europe, it is much more the western part of Asia, and not only
in a geographical, but also in a politico-economic sense. The old Russia had
little in common with Europe: it was the westernmost of those politico-economic
structures which Marx termed ‘oriental despotic powers', and which
included all the great empires of ancient and modern Asia. Based on the village
communism of a largely homogeneous peasantry, there evolved within these an
absolute rule by princes and the nobility, which also drew support from
relatively small-scale but nevertheless important trade in craft goods. Into
this mode of production, which, despite superficial changes of ruler, had gone
on reproducing itself in the same way for thousands of years, Western European
capital penetrated from all sides, dissolving, fermenting, undermining,
exploiting, impoverishing; by trade, by direct subjection and plunder, by
exploitation of natural riches, by the construction of railways and factories,
by state loans to the princes, by the export of food and raw materials –
all of which is encompassed in the term ‘colonial policy'. Whereas India,
with its enormous riches, was conquered early, plundered and then
proletarianized and industrialized, it was only later, through modern colonial
policy, that other countries fell prey to developed capital. Although on the
surface Russia had played the role of a great European power since 1700, it too
became a colony of European capital; due to direct military contact with Europe
it went earlier and more precipitately the way that Persia and China were
subsequently to go. Before the last world war 70 per cent of the iron industry,
the greater part of the railways, 90 per cent of platinum production and 75 per
cent of the naphtha industry were in the hands of European capitalists, and
through the enormous national debts of czarism, the latter also exploited the
Russian peasantry past the point of starvation. While the working class in
Russia worked under the same conditions as those of Western Europe, with the
result that a body of revolutionary marxist views developed, Russia’s
entire economic situation nevertheless made it the westernmost of the Asiatic
empires.

The Russian revolution is the beginning of the great revolt by Asia against
the Western European capital concentrated in England. As a rule, we in Western
Europe only consider the effects which it has here, where the advanced
theoretical development of the Russian revolutionaries has made them the
teachers of the proletariat as it reaches towards communism. But its workings in
the East are more important still; and Asian questions therefore influence the
policies of the soviet republic almost more than European questions. The call
for freedom and for the self-determination of all peoples and for struggle
against European capital throughout Asia is going out from Moscow, where
delegations from Asiatic tribes are arriving one after another.[17] The threads lead from the soviet
republic of Turan to India and the Muslim countries; in Southern China the
revolutionaries have sought to follow the example of government by soviets; the
pan-Islamic movement developing in the Middle East under the leadership of
Turkey is trying to connect with Russia. This is where the significance of the
world struggle between Russia and England as the exponents of two social systems
lies; and this struggle cannot therefore end in real peace, despite temporary
pauses, for the process of ferment in Asia is continuing. English politicians
who look a little further ahead than the petty-bourgeois demagogue Lloyd George
clearly see the danger here threatening English domination of the world, and
with it the whole of capitalism; they rightly say that Russia is more dangerous
than Germany ever was. But they cannot act forcefully, for the beginnings of
revolutionary development in the English proletariat do not permit any regime
other than one of bourgeois demagogy.

The interests of Asia are in essence the interests of the human race. Eight
hundred million people live in Russia, China and India, in the Sibero-Russian
plain and the fertile valleys of the Ganges and the Yangtse Kiang, more than
half the population of the earth and almost three times as many as in the part
of Europe under capitalist domination. And the seeds of revolution have appeared
everywhere, besides Russia; on the one hand, powerful strike-movements flaring
up where industrial proletarians are huddled together, as in Bombay and Hankow;
on the other, nationalist movements under the leadership of the rising national
intelligentsia. As far as can be judged from the reticent English press, the
world war was a powerful stimulus to national movements, but then suppressed
them forcefully, while industry is in such an upsurge that gold is flowing in
torrents from America to East Asia. When the wave of economic crisis hits these
countries – it seems to have overtaken Japan already – new struggles
can be expected. The question may be raised as to whether purely nationalist
movements seeking a national capitalist order in Asia should be supported, since
they will be hostile to their own proletarian liberation movements; but
development will clearly not take this course. It is true that until now the
rising intelligentsia has orientated itself in terms of European nationalism
and, as the ideologues of the developing indigenous bourgeoisie, advocated a
national bourgeois government on Western lines; but this idea is paling with the
decline of Europe, and they will doubtless come strongly under the intellectual
sway of Russian bolshevism and find in it the means to fuze with the proletarian
strike-movements and uprisings. Thus, the national liberation movements of Asia
will perhaps adopt a communist world view and a communist program on the firm
material ground of the workers’ and peasants’ class struggle against
the barbaric oppression of world capital sooner than external appearances might
lead us to believe.

The fact that these peoples are predominantly agrarian need be no more of an
obstacle than it was in Russia: communist communities will not consist of
tightly-packed huddles of factory towns, for the capitalist division between
industrial and agricultural nations will cease to exist; agriculture will have
to take up a great deal of space within them. The predominant agricultural
character will nevertheless render the revolution more difficult, since the
mental disposition is less favorable under such conditions. Doubtless a
prolonged period of intellectual and political upheaval will also be necessary
in these countries. The difficulties here are different from those in Europe,
less of an active than of a passive nature: they lie less in the strength of the
resistance than in the slow pace at which activity is awakening, not in
overcoming internal chaos, but in developing the unity to drive out the foreign
exploiter. We will not go into the particulars of these difficulties here
– the religious and national fragmentation of India, the petty-bourgeois
character of China. However the political and economic forms continue to
develop, the central problem which must first be overcome is to destroy the
hegemony of European and American capital.

The hard struggle for the annihilation of capitalism is the common task which
the workers of Western Europe and the USA have to accomplish hand-in-hand with
the vast populations of Asia. We are at present only at the beginning of this
process. When the German revolution takes a decisive turn and connects with
Russia, when revolutionary mass struggles break out in England and America, when
revolt flares up in India, when communism pushes its frontiers forward to the
Rhine and the Indian Ocean, then the world revolution will enter into its next
mighty phase. With its vassals in the League of Nations and its American and
Japanese allies, the world-ruling English bourgeoisie, assaulted from within and
without, its world power threatened by colonial rebellions and wars of
liberation, paralyzed internally by strikes and civil war, will have to exert
all its strength and raise mercenary armies against both enemies. When the
English working class, backed up by the rest of the European proletariat,
attacks its bourgeoisie, it will fight doubly for communism, clearing the way
for communism in England and helping to free Asia. And conversely, it will be
able to count on the support of the main communist forces when armed hirelings
of the bourgeoisie seek to drown its struggle in blood – for Western
Europe and the islands off its coast are only a peninsula projecting from the
great Russo-Asian complex of lands. The common struggle against capital will
unite the proletarian masses of the whole world. And when finally, at the end of
the arduous struggle, the European workers, deeply exhausted, stand in the clear
morning light of freedom, they will greet the liberated peoples of Asia in the
East and shake hands in Moscow, the capital of the new humanity.

Afterword

The above theses were written in April and sent off to Russia to
be available for consideration by the executive committee and the congress in
making their tactical decisions. The situation has meanwhile altered, in that
the executive committee in Moscow and the leading comrades in Russia have come
down completely on the side of opportunism, with the result that this tendency
prevailed at the Second Congress of the Communist International.

The policy in question first made its appearance in Germany, when Radek,
using all the ideological and material influence that he and the KPD leadership
could muster, attempted to impose his tactics of parliamentarianism and support
for the central confederations upon the German communists, thereby splitting and
weakening the communist movement. Since Radek was made secretary of the
executive committee this policy has become that of the entire executive
committee. The previously unsuccessful efforts to secure the affiliation of the
German Independents to Moscow have been redoubled, while the
anti-parliamentarian communists of the KAPD, who, it can hardly be denied, by
rights belong to the CI, have received frosty treatment: they had opposed the
Third International on every issue of importance, it was maintained, and could
only be admitted upon special conditions. The Amsterdam Auxiliary Bureau, which
had accepted them and treated them as equals, was closed down. Lenin told the
English communists that they should not only participate in parliamentary
elections, but even join the Labor Party, a political organization consisting
largely of reactionary trade-union leaders and a member of the Second
International. All these stands manifest the desire of the leading Russian
comrades to establish contact with the big workers’ organizations of
Western Europe that have yet to turn communist. While radical communists seek to
further the revolutionary development of the working masses by means of
rigorous, principled struggle against all bourgeois, social-patriotic and
vacillating tendencies and their representatives, the leadership of the
International is attempting to gain the adherence of the latter to Moscow in
droves without their having first to cast off their old perspectives.

The antagonistic stance which the Bolsheviks, whose deeds made them exponents
of radical tactics in the past, have taken up towards the radical communists of
Western Europe comes out clearly in Lenin’s recently-published pamphlet
‘Left-Wing’ Communism, an Infantile Disorder. Its
significance lies not in its content, but in the person of the author, for the
arguments are scarcely original and have for the most part already been used by
others. What is new is that it is Lenin who is now taking them up. The point is
therefore not to combat them – their fallacy resides mainly in the
equation of the conditions, parties, organizations and parliamentary practice of
Western Europe with their Russian counterparts – and oppose other
arguments to them, but to grasp the fact of their appearance in this conjuncture
as the product of specific policies.

The basis of these policies can readily be identified in the needs of the
Soviet republic. The reactionary insurgents Kolchak and Denikin have destroyed
the foundations of the Russian iron industry, and the war effort has forestalled
a powerful upsurge in production. Russia urgently needs machines, locomotives
and tools for economic reconstruction, and only the undamaged industry of the
capitalist countries can provide these. It therefore needs peaceful trade with
the rest of the world, and in particular with the nations of the Entente; they
in their turn need raw materials and foodstuffs from Russia to stave off the
collapse of capitalism. The sluggish pace of revolutionary development in
Western Europe thus compels the Soviet republic to seek a modus vivendi with the
capitalist world, to surrender a portion of its natural wealth as the price of
doing so, and to renounce direct support for revolution in other countries. In
itself there can be no objection to an arrangement of this kind, which both
parties recognize to be necessary; but it would hardly be surprising if the
sense of constraint and the initiation of a policy of compromise with the
bourgeois world were to foster a mental disposition towards more moderate
perspectives. The Third International, as the association of communist parties
preparing proletarian revolution in every country, is not formally bound by the
policies of the Russian government, and it is supposed to pursue its own tasks
completely independent of the latter. In practice, however, this separation does
not exist; just as the CP is the backbone of the Soviet republic, the executive
committee is intimately connected with the Presidium of the Soviet republic
through the persons of its members, thus forming an instrument whereby this
Presidium intervenes in the politics of Western Europe. We can now see why the
tactics of the Third International, laid down by Congress to apply homogeneously
to all capitalist countries and to be directed from the center, are determined
not only by the needs of communist agitation in those countries, but also by the
political needs of Soviet Russia.

Now, it is true that England and Russia, the hostile world powers
respectively representing capital and labor, both need peaceful trade in order
to build up their economies. However, it is not only immediate economic needs
which determine their policies, but also the deeper economic antagonism between
bourgeoisie and proletariat, the question of the future, expressed in the fact
that powerful capitalist groups, rightly hostile to the Soviet republic, are
attempting to prevent any compromise as a matter of principle. The Soviet
government knows that it cannot rely upon the insight of Lloyd George and
England’s need for peace; they had to bow to the insuperable might of the
Red Army on the one hand and to the pressure which English workers and soldiers
were exerting upon their government on the other. The Soviet government knows
that the menace of the Entente proletariat is one of the most important of its
weapons in paralyzing the imperialist governments and compelling them to
negotiate. It must therefore render this weapon as powerful as possible. What
this requires is not a radical communist party preparing a root-and-branch
revolution for the future, but a great organized proletarian force which will
take the part of Russia and oblige its own government to pay it heed. The Soviet
government needs the masses now, even if they are not fully communist. If it can
gain them for itself, their adhesion to Moscow will be a sign to world capital
that wars of annihilation against Russia are no longer possible, and that there
is therefore no alternative to peace and trade relations.

Moscow must therefore press for communist tactics in Western Europe which do
not conflict sharply with the traditional perspectives and methods of the big
labor organizations, the influence of which is decisive. Similarly, efforts had
to be made to replace the Ebert regime in Germany with one oriented towards the
East, since it had shown itself to be a tool of the Entente against Russia; and
as the CP was itself too weak, only the Independents could serve this purpose. A
revolution in Germany would enormously strengthen the position of Soviet Russia
vis-à-vis the Entente. The development of such a revolution, however, might
ultimately be highly incommodious as far as the policy of peace and compromise
with the Entente was concerned, for a radical proletarian revolution would tear
up the Versailles Treaty and renew the war – the Hamburg communists wanted
to make active preparations for this war in advance. Russia would then itself be
drawn into this war, and even though it would be strengthened externally in the
process, economic reconstruction and the abolition of poverty would be still
further delayed. These consequences could be avoided if the German revolution
could be kept within bounds such that although the strength of the
workers’ governments allied against Entente capital was greatly increased,
the latter was not put in the position of having to go to war. This would demand
not the radical tactics of the KAPD, but government by the Independents, KPD and
trade unions in the form of a council organization on the Russian model.

This policy does have perspectives beyond merely securing a more favorable
position for the current negotiations with the Entente: its goal is world
revolution. It is nevertheless apparent that a particular conception of world
revolution must be implicit in the particular character of these politics. The
revolution which is now advancing across the world and which will shortly
overtake Central Europe and then Western Europe is driven on by the economic
collapse of capitalism; if capital is unable to bring about an upturn in
production, the masses will be obliged to turn to revolution as the only
alternative to going under without a struggle. But although compelled to turn to
revolution, the masses are by and large still in a state of mental servitude to
the old perspectives, the old organizations and leaders, and it is the latter
who will obtain power in the first instance. A distinction must therefore be
made between the external revolution which destroys the hegemony of the
bourgeoisie and renders capitalism impossible, and the communist revolution, a
longer process which revolutionizes the masses internally and in which the
working class, emancipating itself from all its bonds, takes the construction of
communism firmly in hand. It is the task of communism to identify the forces and
tendencies which will halt the revolution half-way, to show the masses the way
forward, and by the bitterest struggle for the most distant goals, for total
power, against these tendencies, to awaken in the proletariat the capacity to
impel the revolution onward. This it can only do by even now taking up the
struggle against the inhibiting leadership tendencies and the power of its
leaders. Opportunism seeks to ally itself with the leaders and share in a new
hegemony; believing it can sway them on to the path of communism, it will be
compromised by them. By declaring this to be the official tactics of communism,
the Third International is setting the seal of ‘communist
revolution’ on the seizure of power by the old organizations and their
leaders, consolidating the hegemony of these leaders and obstructing the further
progress of the revolution.

From the point of view of safeguarding Soviet Russia there can be no
objection to this conception of the goal of world revolution. If a political
system similar to that of Russia existed in the other countries of Europe
– control by a workers’ bureaucracy based on a council system
– the power of world imperialism would be broken and contained, at least
in Europe. Economic buildup towards communism could then go ahead without fear
of reactionary wars of intervention in a Russia surrounded by friendly
workers’ republics. It is therefore comprehensible that what we regard as
a temporary, inadequate, transitional form to be combated with all our might is
for Moscow the achievement of proletarian revolution, the goal of communist
policy.

This leads us to the critical considerations to be raised against these
policies from the point of view of communism. They relate firstly to its
reciprocal ideological effect upon Russia itself. If the stratum in power in
Russia fraternizes with the workers’ bureaucracy of Western Europe and
adopts the attitudes of the latter, corrupted as it is by its position, its
antagonism towards the masses and its adaptation to the bourgeois world, then
the momentum which must carry Russia further on the path of communism is liable
to be dissipated; if it bases itself upon the land-owning peasantry over and
against the workers, a diversion of development towards bourgeois agrarian forms
could not be ruled out, and this would lead to stagnation in the world
revolution. There is the further consideration that the political system which
arose in Russia as an expedient transitional form towards the realization of
communism – and which could only ossify into a bureaucracy under
particular conditions – would from the outset represent a reactionary
impediment to revolution in Western Europe. We have already pointed out that a
‘workers’ government’ of this kind would not be able to
unleash the forces of communist reconstruction; and since after this revolution
the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois masses, together with the peasantry, would,
unlike the case of Russia after the October revolution, still represent a
tremendous force, the failure of reconstruction would only too easily bring
reaction back into the saddle, and the proletarian masses would have to renew
their exertions to abolish the system.

It is even a matter of doubt whether this policy of attenuated world
revolution can achieve its aim, rather than reinforce the bourgeoisie like any
other politics of opportunism. It is not the way forward for the most radical
opposition to form a prior alliance with the moderates with a view to sharing
power, instead of driving the revolution on by uncompromising struggle; it so
weakens the overall fighting strength of the masses that the overthrow of the
prevailing system is delayed and made harder.

The real forces of revolution lie elsewhere than in the tactics of parties
and the policies of governments. For all the negotiations, there can be no real
peace between the world of imperialism and that of communism: while Krassin was
negotiating in London, the Red Armies were smashing the might of Poland and
reaching the frontiers of Germany and Hungary. This has brought the war to
Central Europe; and the class contradictions which have reached an intolerable
level here, the total internal economic collapse which renders revolution
inevitable, the misery of the masses, the fury of armed reaction, will all make
civil war flare up in these countries. But when the masses are set in motion
here, their revolution will not allow itself to be channeled within the limits
prescribed for it by the opportunistic politics of clever leaders; it must be
more radical and more profound than in Russia, because the resistance to be
overcome is much greater. The decisions of the Moscow congress are of less
moment than the wild, chaotic, elemental forces which will surge up from the
hearts of three ravaged peoples and lend new impetus to the world
revolution.

Notes

[1]. The tribunist S. J. Rutgers attended the First Congress of the Comintern and returned to Amsterdam in late 1919 to establish the Western European Auxiliary Bureau of the Third International there. He may well have been the author of the left orientated article on parliamentary and trade-union tactics in the sole issue of the Bureau’s Bulletin, which resulted in its funds being abruptly frozen by Moscow. [Translator's note.]

[2]. Pannekoek is here confusing the titles of two texts written by Radek while in prison: The Development of the German Revolution and the Tasks of the Communist Party, written before the Heidelberg congress, and The Development of the World Revolution and the Tactics of the Communist Parties in the Struggle for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, written after it. The latter is meant. [Translator's note.]

[3]. The following paragraph is quoted up to ‘village communism’ by Gorter in his Open Letter to Comrade Lenin. [Translator's note.]

[4]. The conference in question was convened to set up the Auxiliary Bureau. [Translator's note.]

[5]. The first trade-union organizations in the late 1860s in the Ruhr were the work of Catholic priests. In the late seventies, however, Bismarck dropped his campaign against Catholicism and its political representative, the Zentrum (the forerunner of the CDU), for the sake of a united front against the Social-Democratic Party. [Translator's note.]

[6]. This expression had been used to justify the collaboration with the socialists in the Commune of Hungary which the former Hungarian Communist Party leaders controlling Kommunismus blamed for its collapse in August 1919. In 'Left Wing’ Communism Lenin urges the British Communists to campaign for the Labor Party where they have no candidate of their own; they will thus ‘support Henderson as the rope supports a hanged man', and the impending establishment of a government of Hendersons will hasten the latter’s political demise. (Peking edition, pp.90-91.) [Translator's note.]

[7]. The remainder of this paragraph and the two following are quoted by Gorter in the Open Letter. [Translator's note.]

[8]. It was recently argued in Germany that communists must go into parliament to convince the workers that parliamentary struggle is useless – but you don’t take a wrong turning to show other people that it is wrong, you go the right way from the outset!

[9]. Karl Renner was the leader of the revisionist wing of the Austrian Social Democratic Party; Otto Bauer was Austrian Foreign Secretary from November 1918 to July 1919. [Translator's note.]

[10]. See, for example, the penetrating criticisms of Comrade Koloszvary in the Viennese weekly Kommunismus.

[11]. The absence of obvious and intimidating methods of coercion in the hands of the bourgeoisie in England also inspires the pacifist illusion that violent revolution is not necessary there and that peaceful construction from below, as in the Guild movement and the Shop Committees, will take care of everything. It is certainly true that the most potent weapon of the English bourgeoisie has until now been subtle deception rather than armed force; but if put to it, this world-dominating class will not fail to summon up terrible means to enforce its rule.

[12]. Ebert, Haase and Dittmann were members of the Council of People’s Commissioners given supreme authority by the November revolution. [Translator's note.]

[13]. Karl Legien was President of the General Commission of Trade Unions from 1890 and of its successor, the ADGB (Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund), from its formation in 1919; Gustav Bauer, another trade-union leader, became Minister of Labor in 1919 and subsequently Chancellor. [Translator's note.]

[14]. Respectively socialist and trade union leaders. [Translator's note.]

[15]. This conception of the gradual transformation of the mode of production stands in sharp contrast to the social-democratic conception, which seeks to abolish capitalism and exploitation gradually by a slow process of reform. The direct abolition of all profit on capital and of all exploitation by the victorious proletariat is the precondition of the mode of production being able to move towards communism.

[16]. A prominent example of this kind of convergent development is to be found in the social structure at the end of ancient times and the beginning of the Middle Ages; cf. Engels, Origins of the Family, Ch. 8.

[17]. This is the basis of the stand taken by Lenin in 1916 at the time of Zimmerwald against Radek, who was representing the view of Western European communists. The latter insisted that the slogan of the right of all peoples to self-determination, which the social patriots had taken up along with Wilson, was merely a deception, since this right can only ever be an appearance and illusion under imperialism, and that we should therefore oppose this slogan. Lenin saw in this standpoint the tendency of Western European socialists to reject the Asiatic peoples’ wars of national liberation, thus avoiding radical struggle against the colonial policies of their governments.


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