Arthur Rosenberg 1934
The winter of 1920-21 was an especially hard and difficult one for Soviet Russia. The Civil War had been terminated in 1920 by the defeat of the White General Wrangel, and the expulsion from Russia of the last counter-revolutionary troops. Peace had also been concluded with Poland after a series of successes and defeats. The cessation of warfare did not result in any improvement in the condition of the Russian nation. The year 1920 had with all its other evils brought a bad harvest. Famine reigned in the villages as well as in the towns. The passive opposition and dislike of the peasants for communism increased, and in the towns factories were for the most part idle. Civil war had not helped to restore the disorganised system of transport. Freezing and starving workmen became desperate. The Russian proletariat had been called upon to defeat the White and Polish armies and to restore productivity to the factories. In his hope of peace at home and in his belief in the progress of the world revolution, the Russian workman had accomplished heroic deeds. Peace had come. But the sacrifices required of him only became heavier. Doubts began to be entertained as to the permanence of the existing system. In any case the government was expected to take action to overcome the misery of the masses of the nation.
The tense atmosphere surrounding the Bolshevik Party discharged itself towards the close of the year in the form of a curious debate. Its subject was the trade-union question. At this time the membership of the Russian Communist Party was about 600,000. Nevertheless, it was impossible to open the ranks of the ruling party in a state containing 130 million inhabitants to professional revolutionaries alone. Necessity had turned Lenin’s Bolshevik Party into a mass organisation. At the same time care was taken to preserve the Bolshevik tradition by maintaining the authority of the party leaders and insisting upon the strictest discipline on the part of the members. New members were only admitted with the greatest caution. The ruling party was only a minority of the Russian proletariat as well as a tiny fraction of the Russian nation. An entirely different picture was presented by the organisation of the Russian trade unions. Membership of a trade union was obligatory upon all workmen, employees and civil servants. The trade unions in 1920 comprised six million members. Of these six million, however, only one million were actually factory workers. All Russians who could in the widest possible interpretation of the term be called proletarian were members of the trade unions. The management of the trade unions, like the control of the soviets, lay in the hands of the Communists. Nevertheless, the Communists employed in the management of the trade unions held different views in many individual questions, notwithstanding the strict party discipline, from those held by fellow members who, for example, were employed in the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs or in the Red Army. The Communist officials of the trade unions were forced to listen daily to the complaints and demands of the members and were thus involuntarily turned into mouthpieces for conveying the grievances of the workmen to the party leaders.
The worse the condition of the Russian workmen the greater the depression in the trade unions and the stronger the conviction among many workmen that they would be given more food and fuel if the trade unions had a greater voice in the government of the country. The most fundamental of all the problems of Soviet Russia was thus brought into prominence. The dictatorship of the proletariat — it was said — existed in Russia. The state was a working-class state. Was it not therefore absurd that the workman as a member of a trade union should make accusations and bring complaints against his own state? Absurd or not — the fact remains that the Russian workman felt himself to be placed at a disadvantage in comparison with the soldier or peasant through mistakes on the part of the governing bureaucracy. It thus came about that towards the end of 1920 the complaints of the trade unions raised the question of the nature of the Soviet state and its relationship to the working man.
Discontent with existing conditions was rife. Change might be achieved in two ways. The trade unions could defend the interests of their members without regard for the general political life of the state and the theories of the ruling bureaucracy. (If the trade unions adopted this policy it would be tantamount at least to an indirect admission that Soviet Russia was not a working-class state.) Or the exact contrary would occur and the trade unions be incorporated in the machinery of government. This would amount to a fresh proof that Russia could not and must not be anything else than a working-class state. Trotsky recommended the adoption of the latter policy. He hoped to overcome the existing crisis by mobilising the whole strength of the proletariat. The trade unions should be amalgamated with the civil administration. Although Trotsky showed great caution in formulating his proposals in detail, his purpose was clear: the restoration in Russia of working-class democracy by means of the trade unions. If six million trade unionists seized control of production and economic life in general (the ideal of productive democracy here makes its appearance), there would be an end to the dictatorship of the higher officials of the Communist Party.
Lenin promptly saw through Trotsky’s disguised attack on the Bolshevik system of organisation and energetically took up the cudgels in its defence. He openly told the opposition that Soviet Russia was a workers’ and peasants’ state and not a workers’ state alone. For this reason the trade unions must be allowed to put forward complaints and demands directed against state officials. Phrases like ‘productive democracy’ could only result in undermining the dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party and in endangering the revolution. His immense prestige with the party enabled Lenin to secure the rejection of Trotsky’s proposals. In this discussion of the trade-union problem the leading men in Soviet Russia refrained from calling things by their true names. They contented themselves with vague allusions to avoid arousing a feeling of panic in the nation. But Trotsky’s aim was clear: no concessions to the peasants and therefore the development of working-class democracy. On the other hand Lenin was opposed to any weakening of the dictatorship, but in case of necessity was ready to make concessions to the peasants, and it would appear that as early as the winter of 1920-21 he had developed the fundamental principles of his subsequent so-called ‘New Economic Policy’.
Despite his defeat Trotsky remained at the head of the Red Army and continued to take a leading part in the work of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Lenin entertained no thoughts of dispensing with Trotsky’s services merely on account of a difference of opinion with him in the trade-union question. Trotsky indeed realised during the winter of 1920-21 that he was not in a position to win over the Bolshevik Party to his ideas. Although for years past it had seemed as if Bolshevism had become coloured with ‘Trotskyism’, this impression now revealed itself as false. Moreover, Trotsky was incapable of conceiving the notion of mobilising against the party the non-Bolshevik masses with whom he had helped to make the revolution. For the time being Trotsky submitted to Lenin and the majority in the party and in 1921 he offered no opposition to the fateful decision to embark on a new economic policy.
Trotsky’s caution was not shared by other members of the Communist Party in Russia. A radical opposition grew up in the party during the debate over the trade-union question. This opposition was led by two former metal-workers and highly-respected and long-standing members of the party — Shlyapnikov and Lutovinov. Among their demands was the following: ‘The organisation of the administration of the national resources and production is placed under the control of the All-Russian Conference of Producers united in trade associations. This conference shall elect a central committee to administer the entire economic life of the republic.’ Framed in these dry words, this amounted to a demand for the exclusion of the Bolshevik Party and its replacement by self-government on the part of the producers among the population. Lenin designated these proposals of the working-men’s opposition as an anarcho-syndicalist heresy. Nevertheless, Shlyapnikov and his supporters in reality only desired a return to the soviet democracy of 1917 in the form in which it had been put forward by Lenin in his pamphlet State and Revolution. Shlyapnikov and his supporters contented themselves with carrying on a legal propaganda within the Bolshevik Party and its affiliations. Other workmen and the soldier sons of peasants were less restrained, and, in March 1921, a rebellion broke out in Kronstadt. The island-fortress of Kronstadt, lying at the gates of Petrograd, was and is the main base of the Russian Baltic Fleet. The Russian Navy was a hot-bed of revolution as early as 1905 and in 1917 the Kronstadt sailors furnished the Bolsheviks with their staunchest troops. Of this ‘Old Guard’ many had since fallen on the battlefields of the Civil War or been sent to other posts by the Soviet government. The great traditions of the revolution continued, nevertheless, to be associated with Kronstadt. And it was in this very place of sacred revolutionary memories that in March 1921 the soldiers and sailors revolted against the Soviet government and took authority into their own hands. A Provisional Revolutionary Committee of soldiers, sailors and workmen took over the administration of Kronstadt. The programme of the revolutionaries contained among other points the following:
Out of regard for the fact that the present soviets no longer reflect the state of opinion among the workers and peasants, new soviets should at once be elected by a secret ballot and with free electioneering facilities for all workers and peasants. Liberty of the press and of speech for workers and peasants, for anarchists and the left-wing socialist parties! Liberty for the trade unions and peasants unions! Liberation of all imprisoned socialists and of all workers and peasants arrested for pursuing the aims of their several movements! The abolition of all Communist propaganda sections in the army in order that no single party shall have the advantage over others in propaganda and receive funds from the state for its prosecution! Equal rations for all engaged in work! Freedom for the peasants to dispose of the land which they cannot cultivate themselves!
This is virtually tantamount to the demand put forward by the Workers’ Opposition: overthrow of party dictatorship and return to soviet democracy. It is unquestionable that the exiled enemies of the Soviet government greeted the Kronstadt rebellion with enthusiasm, sought to support the rebels, and even to some extent subscribed to their battle-cry of ‘Soviets without Communists’. The Soviet government made use of this knowledge in its propaganda against the rebellion and laid special emphasis upon the sympathy displayed by the White Guards for the Kronstadt rebels. At the same time Lenin never regarded the Kronstadt rebellion as an ordinary White Guard rising of the type led by Denikin and Wrangel. He looked upon it as the symptom of the deep enmity between the Bolsheviks and the masses of the Russian nation.
The Soviet government did all that lay in its power to prevent the movement from spreading to other districts. Picked regiments of the Red Army were sent across the frozen waters of the Baltic and stormed the fortress after heavy losses. Its capture did not put an end to the grave menace. What had happened today in Kronstadt might take place tomorrow in twenty other districts in Russia. The revolution had given the masses communism and in addition famine and servitude. If they must starve, they were at least determined to starve in freedom. Although it was Trotsky’s Red Army which stormed Kronstadt, his views on the trade-union question found their support in the Kronstadt rebellion and the demands put forward by the Workers’ Opposition.
Lenin recognised the need for swift action in these terrible weeks. Although he was resolved not to give democracy to the masses, Lenin was anxious to provide them with bread even at the cost of sacrificing Communist ideals. All hopes of a speedy salvation for Soviet Russia through revolution in Europe had been proved to be illusory. On the subject of the emotions animating the leading men in Russia at the time of the First and Second World Congresses of 1919 and 1920 Trotsky, in 1921, wrote as follows:
The First Congress met at a time when Communism was in its infancy as a European movement and when there seemed to be some probability that the almost spontaneous rising of the working classes would destroy the middle class before it had had time to find its bearings and establish itself firmly after the war... And the rising was in truth spontaneous. The losses were enormous. Nevertheless, the middle class withstood this first assault and in consequence was strengthened in its self-confidence... The Second Congress met in 1920 at a decisive hour and at a time when it was already realised that the middle class could not be overthrown in the course of a few weeks or months, but that for this to be accomplished deliberate and careful political and other preparations were necessary. At that time the situation was critical. It will be remembered that the Red Army was marching on Warsaw. In view of the revolutionary condition of Germany, Italy and other countries, it was believed that in its function as a force additional to and strengthening the forces in operation in Europe, this military blow (which was of no importance by itself) might serve to dislodge the avalanche of revolution from the ledge on which it had come to rest. This did not happen. We were driven back.
In the summer of 1920 the Russian armies, after winning a series of battles against the Poles, wildly pursued their retreating enemy up to the gates of Warsaw. From a military standpoint this was a hazardous action and one that exposed the numerically weak and ill-equipped Red Army to the risk of meeting with a decisive defeat. This offensive was a desperate political experiment on the part of Lenin, who wished to see if the advance of the Red Army into the Polish Corridor would cause the outbreak of a working-class revolution in Germany. Germany, however, remained quiet and the Red Army was forced to retreat.
In September 1920 Italian workmen seized possession of the factories without their action resulting in a political revolution. In March 1921 armed conflicts occurred at Mansfeld in central Germany between Communist miners and the police. The Central Committee of the KPD wanted to support the miners by proclaiming a general strike. Since, however, only a small proportion of working men obeyed the Communist order to strike, the ‘general strike’ was a complete fiasco. There seemed indeed to be no likelihood of the outbreak of a working-class revolution in Germany or Italy — not to mention any other countries — in the near future. Since the Communists in Germany and Italy were unable to accomplish what had been expected of them by the Second World Congress, Soviet Russia was forced to rely upon itself. Lenin had embarked on the October Revolution in 1917 with a very cautious socialist programme. He had never promised the masses to introduce communism into Russia. The Wartime Communism of the years 1918 to 1920 came into existence through the force of circumstances and not by the desire of Lenin or as a result of Bolshevik ideas. Even in these years Lenin remained sceptical of the extent of what had been achieved in the way of socialism. He did not believe it possible to abolish the millions of tiny peasant proprietors by a stroke of the pen.
In the spring of 1921 Lenin embarked upon his retreat from Wartime Communism to the ‘New Economic Policy’ (known as NEP). The confiscation of grain from the peasants ceased and instead the peasant was required to deliver a certain proportion of his harvest to the state as a tax in kind. The rest was left to him to dispose of as he wished and he was free to sell it when and how he chose. Thus the right of private ownership that had been disguised by Wartime Communism with a network of requisitions was restored at a single stroke. Simultaneously free trade was restored and retail trade and small industries started again. As a result there followed a return to the employment of currency after the fashion of foreign countries. Wartime Communism had been at pains to do away with currency, and therefore the restabilisation of the rouble was now necessary. The state retained control over big industry, railways, banks, and also reserved the monopoly of foreign trade. Private ownership once more came into existence beside and beneath this state control.
The NEP did away with the equality of mankind in the form in which it had existed under Wartime Communism — the equality imposed by a common lack of food. Once more a minority of workers stood beside a majority of peasants and other members of the middle class. Moreover, the economic condition of the landowning peasant was far better than that of the factory-worker in the towns. In addition there existed a Red Army with professional officers and NCOs, an army of state and party officials of all kinds, employees and technicians in all industries, teachers, doctors, writers and artists. All these professions revived the moment their followers received a living wage in hard cash. The grey monotony of Wartime Communism changed under the NEP into a brilliant kaleidoscope of classes and professions in which — truth compels the admission — the factory-worker occupied the lowest rank. It was left to the further development of the NEP in the succeeding years to show how this social condition would fit in with the so-called political dictatorship of the proletariat.
The new economic system that came into being through the NEP was called by Lenin ‘state capitalism’. At the Third World Congress of the Communist International in July 1921, Lenin delivered a speech on this subject in which he said inter alia:
Taxes in kind obviously imply freedom of trade. The peasant has the right after payment of his taxes in kind to exchange the remainder of his corn. This freedom of exchange implies freedom of capitalism. We make no secret of that and I repeat it. We make no secret of it whatsoever. We should indeed be degraded if we attempted to make a secret of it. Free trade means freedom for capitalism — for a new form of capitalism; a capitalism that we shall build up anew in certain aspects. We are doing that openly. It is state capitalism. State capitalism in a land in which capital is the governing authority, and state capitalism in a proletarian state, are two very different things. State capitalism in a capitalistic state means capitalism recognised and controlled by the state for the benefit of the middle class as opposed to the proletariat. In a proletarian state this process benefits the working class and enables it to defend itself against a middle class that is still too powerful.
Thus socialism still possessed for Lenin the same narrow and moderate interpretation that it had had in 1917. Lenin termed factories belonging to a working-class state, or to a working-class and peasant state, socialist undertakings; and he held that socialist factories of this description could also exist within the limits of a system of state capitalism. Even after the October Revolution Lenin considered a system of state capitalism in Russia to denote an advance on the existing backward condition of the country.
The development of capitalism [he wrote] under the control and regulation of a proletarian state (that is to say, in the sense attached to the term ‘state capitalism’), is good and absolutely necessary in an exceptionally poor and backward country of small peasants (only of course up to a certain degree, and in so far as its development is capable of hastening an immediate improvement in the agricultural system of the peasants). If the state retains control of the chief factors in economic life such as foreign trade, heavy industry, railways and banks, then it will be in a position to control and regulate the private capitalism that would develop in the country and in the middle class.
Of great assistance to the state in its regulation of retail trade, in Lenin’s opinion, was the cooperative association. In one of his last articles, in May 1923, Lenin expressed the view that the cultural level of the Russian peasant should be raised to the point at which he was ready for membership of a cooperative society in a civilised state. Russia would have attained socialism, in Lenin’s view, when the organisation of these societies had been perfected throughout the land. Lenin wrote:
A society consisting of the educated members of an association for common ownership of the means of production and based on the class victory of the proletariat over the middle class — that is the socialist order of society... We now have the right to say that the simple growth of cooperative societies (under the above-mentioned ‘small’ reservation) is in our eyes identical with the growth of socialism. We must, however, admit simultaneously that we have fundamentally altered our conception of socialism. This fundamental change consists in the fact that formerly we laid, and were forced to lay, the greatest emphasis upon political warfare, upon the revolution and upon the seizure of power. Now the chief emphasis must be laid upon peaceful, organising, ‘cultural’ work... Only this cultural revolution is wanting for Russia to become a completely socialist country. This cultural revolution, however, makes unheard-of demands both of a purely cultural (overcoming illiteracy) and of a material nature, since in order that we may turn into a civilised country it is necessary to have a certain material basis and to promote a certain development of the material means of production.
Something more will be said subsequently about the remarkable doctrinal consequences that resulted from Lenin’s theory of cooperative associations. In the Russia of 1921-23 such an organisation of the peasantry into cooperative societies could only be an ideal for the future. The immediate problems were the isolated peasant industries and state capitalism. It was because Lenin decided upon the transition from Wartime Communism to state capitalism that he resolutely refused to make any concession whatever to any form of democracy. The working-class minority in Russia could only maintain itself as against the great majority of small owners, especially in the new capitalist conditions, by means of a relentless dictatorship. For the same reason the Communist Party must be the undisputed leader of the proletariat and must itself maintain the strictest discipline and unanimity.
Lenin’s changeover to the NEP brought the desired results in the succeeding years. The Bolshevik dictatorship maintained itself in power. Discontent among the masses vanished with the disappearance of famine. After seven years of depression and unemployment Russian industry experienced an upward movement. A radical change came over the relations between the Bolsheviks and foreign states and workers. A Russia organised on a basis of state capitalism was no longer dependent upon the irresistible advance of the world revolution. It could exist peacefully within a capitalist world. From 1921 Lenin sought to obtain foreign capital for the reconstruction of Russia. Foreign investors might rent ground, mines, forests, etc. They were permitted to start industries from whose profits a part went to the Soviet government as rent or tax and the remainder was left at the free disposition of the investors. Lenin saw nothing irreconcilable with his system of state capitalism in the presence in Russia of these great foreign capitalist undertakings. Despite the endeavours of the Soviet government since 1921 the number of concessions granted to foreign capitalists has been relatively small.
After 1921 Soviet Russia was formally recognised by a large number of foreign powers. Others entered into relations with her without giving her government formal recognition. Soviet Russia made her appearance as a buyer and seller on the capitalistic world market. Soviet ambassadors and trade delegations took up their residence in foreign capitals. Both parties — Soviet Russia and the capitalist states — grew accustomed to each other and began to take each other into their calculations. Lloyd George endeavoured to get the Soviet government to cooperate in his plans for reconstructing Europe and was responsible for the invitation sent to the Soviet government to take part in the Genoa Conference in 1922. It was at this conference that Soviet Russia and the middle-class German republic concluded the Treaty of Rapallo. A glaring light was thrown upon the changed attitude towards the international situation adopted in Moscow since the spring of 1921 at the Third World Congress of the Communist International in July 1921. The resolutions concerning the world situation passed by the Third Congress on the proposal of the Russian Communist Party first defined a four-year period of revolution dating from March 1917 (overthrow of the Tsar) to March 1921 (miners’ strike in central Germany). It was then laid down that: ‘This great wave failed to pass over and bear away with it capitalism either in Europe or in the world at large.’ The resolution goes on to declare:
The years elapsing between the Second and Third Congresses of the Communist International saw a number of insurrections and struggles on the part of the working class which in many cases ended in defeat. (The offensive undertaken by the Red Army against Warsaw in August 1920, the proletarian movement in Italy in September 1920, the insurrection of German workmen in March 1921.) The first period of revolution after the war appears virtually to have reached its conclusion. It was characterised by an elemental offensive force, a lack of system in methods and aims, and by the tremendous panic which it induced in the ruling classes. The self-confidence of the middle class as a class and the apparent strength of their state organisations unquestionably increased and fear of communism lessened if it did not wholly disappear. The leaders of the middle class armed themselves with the power of their state apparatus and have in all countries taken the offensive against the working-class masses both on the economic and on the political front.
A victorious world revolution was once more held up as the ideal and a complete recovery of capitalism declared to be impossible. At present the proletariat was forced to adopt the defensive. It could not wage war for supreme power in the state and must therefore content itself with lesser conflicts and more moderate demands of an economic nature. The resolutions of the Third Congress on this subject run:
All agitation and propaganda and the entire work of the Communist parties must be animated by the consciousness that no lasting improvement in the condition of the masses of the proletariat is possible within the capitalist order of society, and that only the overthrow of the middle class and the destruction of the capitalist states affords the possibility of commencing the work of improving the state of the working classes and of rebuilding the economic system destroyed by capitalism. This consciousness must not, however, find expression in an abandonment of the struggle for the daily necessities of life required by the proletariat before it is capable of securing them for itself by establishing its own dictatorship... All objections to making such partial demands, all complaints on the part of reformists against participation in this semi-warfare, are symptoms of the same incapacity to comprehend the essential nature of revolutionary action that manifested itself in the opposition of individual Communist groups to participation in the trade unions and in parliamentary life. It is not enough to proclaim to the proletariat the aim to be striven for without intensifying the everyday struggle that is alone capable of leading the proletariat towards the battle for the final objective.
The interest of the debates in the Third Congress centred round the insurrection of the German workers in March — the so-called ‘March Action’. It has already been mentioned above that local disputes in central Germany resulted in conflicts between police and workmen, and that the KPD then attempted to support their party colleagues in central Germany by means of a general strike throughout the country. In this connexion the so-called ‘offensive theory’ made its appearance in the ranks of the KPD — a theory according to which a revolutionary party must resolutely and permanently continue the offensive for the purpose of achieving power without regard for unfavourable circumstances. This theory sounds fantastic and dangerous. In order to understand it properly it is necessary to recall the resolutions passed by the Second World Congress in the summer of 1920. These were:
The proletariat of the world is confronted with its final struggle. The age in which we are now living is an age of actual civil warfare. The decisive hour approaches. In almost every land in which there is a labour movement of any importance the working class is confronted with a succession of fierce armed conflicts.
If the Second World Congress was in the right, then countries like Italy and Germany were already in a state of open civil warfare. In civil warfare, however, as Marx, Engels and Lenin repeatedly insisted, a ruthless and clever offensive is the sole possible weapon for use by insurrectionaries. The mistake made by the KPD in March 1921 is in reality the mistake made by the Second World Congress in taking an exaggerated view of the tenseness of the situation in Europe. In the resolutions passed by the Third World Congress no mention is made of this error on the part of the International — also on the part of Lenin and Zinoviev — and the failure of the ‘March Action’ is laid wholly at the door of the KPD. The resolutions of the Third Congress on this subject ran:
The March Action was forced upon the VKPD (United German Communist Party) by the government’s attack upon the Central German proletariat... In this first great struggle since its foundation the VKPD made a number of mistakes, of which the most important is to be found in its failure to emphasise the defensive nature of the struggle and in its designating it an offensive action. The VKPD thereby laid itself open to the accusation on the part of the unscrupulous enemies of the proletariat — the middle class, the SPD and the USPD — of fomenting insurrections by the proletariat. The effect of its failure was only increased by a number of members of the party who declared an offensive to be the chief weapon in the armoury of the VKPD in present circumstances.
The criticism made by Lenin and other leading members of the congress in the debates was sharper. The European working class must be convinced by the members of the congress that the Communist International regarded all idea of an armed revolution in the immediate future as wildly adventurous and that a return must be made to the prewar policy of unarmed economic struggle. The resolutions of the Third Congress are open to the gravest objections in regard both to their appraisal of facts and to their logic. The notion of an epoch of world revolution developed by Lenin in his great speech to the Second Congress was still valid. The revolt of subject peoples against imperialism was still in progress in countries outside Europe. At the same time the inner contradictions in the capitalist system revealed themselves with increasing clearness in Europe and the United States — indebtedness, the results of the Peace Treaties of 1919, depreciation of currencies, and unemployment. All these factors were as much in evidence in 1920 as in 1921 and 1932. The fundamental characteristics of an epoch of world revolution had undergone no change in the interval between the Second and Third World Congresses. Moreover, no important change had taken place between the summer of 1920 and that of 1921 in the leading European states. Severe as was the suffering caused by the loss of life in the March Action in 1921 for mourning working-class families, the action itself was only an unimportant episode in the postwar history of Germany and not to be compared with events such as the Kapp Putsch in 1920 and the economic crisis in 1923. Of all the problems crowding upon Germany not a single one had been solved in 1921. Indeed, the Franco-German tension, the reparations question, and the depreciation of the mark and growing industrial distress were threatening to produce a new crisis in the immediate future — the crisis that actually came in 1923.
Lenin had truly prophesied the advent to power of a Labour government as the first step in a revolutionary development in England. This opinion was as sound in 1920 as in 1921. The situation had undergone no change. Moreover, the political and social condition of France had remained unaltered during the same year. The growth of fascism in Italy had brought about a state of actual civil war in that country. Nevertheless nothing of a decisive nature had occurred in Italy. Thus the situation in Europe and that of the world at large had not altered in any way between the Second and the Third World Congress. Soviet Russia alone had changed. In the summer of 1920 Lenin hoped, by forcibly hastening on the revolution in countries like Germany and Italy, to establish labour governments in those states that would be friendly to Soviet Russia. This is the explanation of the fervour displayed in the resolutions of the Second World Congress. By the summer of 1921 Russia had withdrawn into herself and come to rely upon her own resources. She adapted herself to life without the world revolution. Lenin ceased to believe in a speedy and successful working-class revolution in Europe. Hence the symbolic importance of the March Action in Germany for the Third World Congress. It was falsely taken to indicate the close of that period of active revolutionary movement among the European working class that had begun in the World War. In truth, its importance for the Communist International lay simply in the fact that it practically coincided with the changeover to the NEP. The Third World Congress seized the opportunity to demonstrate in the March Action the mistakes of its former policy.
It would indeed have been only right if the Third Congress had corrected certain exaggerations on the part of the Second Congress in its estimation of the universal extent of a state of civil war. Instead it went to the other extreme. Since Lenin no longer believed in the possibility of a revolution in Europe in the immediate future, he overlooked the tense revolutionary condition of Italy and Germany. It was still within the bounds of possibility that the Italian workmen would defeat the fascists and achieve power, and that the disordered social and economic condition of Germany might lead to the establishment of a socialist labour government. It is true that the resolutions passed by the Third Congress held forth the victory of the united Italian proletariat over the fascists, and of communism in Germany as objectives to be pursued. At the same time, however, these resolutions announced a defensive policy on the part of the proletariat and directed the eyes of workmen towards the pursuit of predominantly economic aims. It is indeed in the highest degree questionable whether political parties artificially organised from above, as were the Communist parties in Central and Western Europe, were capable at all of revolutionary action. And in so far as the capacity for revolution existed the decisions of the Third Congress paralysed it.
The majority of European workmen supported the Third International during the years 1919 and 1920. As a result of dissensions, and their rejection of large sections of the working class, the Communists found themselves once more in the minority. The SPD, strengthened by the addition of a part of the USPD which had not gone over to the Third International, had a far greater membership than the Communist Party in Germany. The Social-Democrats in 1921 were once more supported by a clear majority of the workmen in England and Italy, Sweden and Denmark, Holland and Belgium, Austria and Switzerland. Only in France, Czechoslovakia and Norway were the Communists in 1921 supported by the majority of organised workmen. Communism was forcibly suppressed by the governments in the Baltic and Balkan States, Poland and Hungary. The syndicalists, who were supported by the majority of the Spanish workmen, left the Third International; and their example was followed in Germany by the small KAPD (German Communist Labour Party). Communism hardly existed in non-European countries.
In the years following upon 1921 it would have been possible in these circumstances to reconstruct the Socialist International to include the majority of the working class. The Communists were in the minority from an international standpoint. In the course of a great revolutionary movement an active minority can become the majority of the nation. This was shown by the change that came over Russia in 1917. The Third International now demanded of the Communists that they should win over the majority of the working class in all countries by means of a skilful and successful leadership of the proletarian struggle for the daily necessities of life. This task proved incapable of accomplishment. The Social-Democrats possessed a long and successful tradition of leadership in the proletarian economic struggle and especially in the trade unions. The Communists might at the most excel the Social-Democrats in the conduct of revolution; they could never do so in the matter of wages. The Communists had gained for themselves the support of great numbers of European workmen by summoning them from the peaceful daily struggle for existence to engage in an armed struggle for political power. Now, however, the Communists were to lead back the workmen to this daily struggle, that is, to invade a sphere from which the trained and experienced Social-Democrats could not be driven. Moreover, if there were in Europe a permanent Social-Democrat majority opposed to a Communist minority of workmen, if both pursued the same aims in the daily struggle, if both worked together in the trade unions, then the question in Europe at the close of the Third World Congress would become one of deciding what reasons there were for the separate existence of Communist parties. Up to the meeting of the Third World Congress there had been a distinct and unmistakable difference between Social-Democrats and Communists. The Communists proclaimed the necessity for an immediate armed working-class revolution; the Social-Democrats denied the possibility of such a revolution in existing circumstances. Now the Communists declared that this aim could only be realised in some far-distant future. They did, indeed, promise the workmen that they should one day participate in a revolution and that on that occasion the Social-Democrats would again be found wanting. A permanent cleavage in the working class could not be justified by this promise of something that was to happen in a conditional future.
The contradictory and ambiguous nature of the resolutions passed by the Third World Congress are to be explained by the fact that Lenin and all the leading Bolsheviks were perplexed as to the future of the Communist International. If a great wave of revolution was one day to come again the Communist parties would once more be able to take the lead. For the moment the only alternative before them was an alliance with the Social-Democrats. In October 1921 the Executive of the Communist International proposed to the Social-Democrat parties and trade unions the building of a ‘United Front’ for the purpose of carrying on the struggle for the daily necessities of the proletariat.
The opinions entertained on the subject of the Third World Congress by the most critical minds in the European labour movement found their ablest expression in the writings of the brilliant Dutch Marxist Hermann Gorter, who wrote immediately after the conclusion of the Third World Congress as follows:
The Third Congress of the Moscow, or Russian, International has decided the fate of the world revolution for the present. The trend of opinion that seriously desired world revolution — that is to say German, English and Western European revolutions in the first place — has been expelled from the Russian International. The Communist parties in Western Europe and throughout the world that retain their membership of the Russian International will become nothing more than a means to preserve the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Republic. The Western European revolution and the world revolution are pushed into the background in order to enable the Russian Revolution to live a little longer. Thus the world revolution is condemned to disappear for years to come.
The Russian Revolution was only superficially a proletarian and communist revolution. In reality it was far too little proletarian and communist and far too greatly peasant and democratic... Out of this partially-concealed contradiction arose the domestic policy of the Soviet Republic and the Communist Party — the dictatorship of the party leaders, the rigid discipline, over-centralisation, etc.
At the head of the Third International stands a party which is compelled, and will be still more compelled, to pay more regard to peasant and middle-class democracy than to the proletariat, and that forces, and in the future will still further force, the International to follow its example. It is a party that with the one hand supports English and German capitalism by foreign trade and concessions, and with the other hand supports the German and English proletariat. The tactics pursued by this Third — Russian — International are of the same ambiguous nature in the case of all countries and all parties. In other words, a Third International forced by world capitalism and Russian democracy to adopt a policy of compromise and opportunism and in which revolution will become more and more a matter of phrases possibly alternated with insurrections.
These sentences of Gorter’s contain exaggerations and are coloured by the personal sympathy entertained by the writer for the German ‘Communist Labour Party’. But he has correctly defined the fundamental problem: whether after 1921 the government of a Soviet Russia organised in accordance with the principles of state capitalism would be capable of directing the proletariat of the world in its struggle with capitalism.