Die Neue Zeit
28th November 2009, 06:12
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/795/letters.php
I find James Turley’s put-down of Gerry Downing and what would appear to be the CPGB majority’s dismissive attitude towards anti-fascism and the ‘no platform’ tactic disturbing (Letters, November 19).
Karl Radek’s praise for the fascist Schlageter, at the Communist International, of all places, demonstrates that the seeds of the German Communist Party’s tragically mistaken strategy towards the Nazis and the Social Democrats had already been laid. To counterpose this to Trotsky’s attack on Thalheimer and Brandler is absurd. I realise that it is easy to find a quote from Trotsky or the old masters in support of your view and I therefore hesitate to do so, but Trotsky was quite clear as to the follies of the KPD, the German party: “One of the necessary conditions for the liberation of the party from bureaucratic bondage is a general examination of the ‘general line’ of the German leadership, beginning with 1923, and even with the March days of 1921 … The party will not rise to the height of its great tasks if it does not freely evaluate its present in the light of its past” (‘The turn in the CI and the situation in Germany’).
I have no doubt whatsoever that Trotsky, had he lived, would have regretted his statement about the “monstrous” exaggeration of the forces of fascism. The extermination of millions and the ravages of fascism bear witness to his complacency.
And let us remind ourselves of the KPD’s record. Ruth Fischer, one of the worst Stalinists, appealed to anti-semitic students to hang Jewish capitalists from street lamps in the August 22 1923 edition of Vorwärts, the KPD’s paper. Hermann Remmele, subsequently elected to the Reichstag and the executive committee of the Communist International, in a debate with the fascists had, according to the KPD paper, remarked: “How such anti-semitism arises I can easily understand. One merely needs to go down to the Stuttgart cattle market in order to see how the cattle dealers, most of whom belong to Jewry, buy up cattle at any price, while the Stuttgart butchers have to go home again empty-handed because they just don’t have enough money to buy cattle” (Rote Fahne No183, August 10 1923).
The fact that not one of the KPD’s Reichstag deputies from 1930 onwards was Jewish is testament to the policy of appeasement of anti-semitism that the KPD pursued as a result of the policy laid out in Moscow. This was a policy which led to the return, under the Nazi-Soviet pact, of German communists into the tender clutches of the Gestapo.
I am more interested in learning lessons from past mistakes than swapping quotes from Trotsky. One of the lessons the left should have learnt is that ‘debating’ with fascism is a dead-end road. There are undoubtedly times when one may well be faced with no alternative. ‘No platform’ is a tactic, but it is one that should not be lightly discarded. Certainly, it should not be jettisoned when the left is in a position to enforce it. That is precisely the road of the KPD and ‘social fascism’.
Tony Greenstein
Brighton
Although the politics of social corporatism are quite real (http://www.revleft.com/vb/classical-economic-rent-t103272/index.html), there is indeed a marked difference between learning from the democratist Ferdinand Lassalle's informal cozyness with reactionary scum like Bismarck (in order to advance the position of the 19th-century German workers' movement at the expense of the liberal bourgeoisie) or simply pulling off a young Walter Ulbricht-as-agitator at a Nazi meeting headed by spin master Joseph Goebbels himself, on the one hand, and the aforementioned anti-Semitic opportunism above on the other.
I find James Turley’s put-down of Gerry Downing and what would appear to be the CPGB majority’s dismissive attitude towards anti-fascism and the ‘no platform’ tactic disturbing (Letters, November 19).
Karl Radek’s praise for the fascist Schlageter, at the Communist International, of all places, demonstrates that the seeds of the German Communist Party’s tragically mistaken strategy towards the Nazis and the Social Democrats had already been laid. To counterpose this to Trotsky’s attack on Thalheimer and Brandler is absurd. I realise that it is easy to find a quote from Trotsky or the old masters in support of your view and I therefore hesitate to do so, but Trotsky was quite clear as to the follies of the KPD, the German party: “One of the necessary conditions for the liberation of the party from bureaucratic bondage is a general examination of the ‘general line’ of the German leadership, beginning with 1923, and even with the March days of 1921 … The party will not rise to the height of its great tasks if it does not freely evaluate its present in the light of its past” (‘The turn in the CI and the situation in Germany’).
I have no doubt whatsoever that Trotsky, had he lived, would have regretted his statement about the “monstrous” exaggeration of the forces of fascism. The extermination of millions and the ravages of fascism bear witness to his complacency.
And let us remind ourselves of the KPD’s record. Ruth Fischer, one of the worst Stalinists, appealed to anti-semitic students to hang Jewish capitalists from street lamps in the August 22 1923 edition of Vorwärts, the KPD’s paper. Hermann Remmele, subsequently elected to the Reichstag and the executive committee of the Communist International, in a debate with the fascists had, according to the KPD paper, remarked: “How such anti-semitism arises I can easily understand. One merely needs to go down to the Stuttgart cattle market in order to see how the cattle dealers, most of whom belong to Jewry, buy up cattle at any price, while the Stuttgart butchers have to go home again empty-handed because they just don’t have enough money to buy cattle” (Rote Fahne No183, August 10 1923).
The fact that not one of the KPD’s Reichstag deputies from 1930 onwards was Jewish is testament to the policy of appeasement of anti-semitism that the KPD pursued as a result of the policy laid out in Moscow. This was a policy which led to the return, under the Nazi-Soviet pact, of German communists into the tender clutches of the Gestapo.
I am more interested in learning lessons from past mistakes than swapping quotes from Trotsky. One of the lessons the left should have learnt is that ‘debating’ with fascism is a dead-end road. There are undoubtedly times when one may well be faced with no alternative. ‘No platform’ is a tactic, but it is one that should not be lightly discarded. Certainly, it should not be jettisoned when the left is in a position to enforce it. That is precisely the road of the KPD and ‘social fascism’.
Tony Greenstein
Brighton
Although the politics of social corporatism are quite real (http://www.revleft.com/vb/classical-economic-rent-t103272/index.html), there is indeed a marked difference between learning from the democratist Ferdinand Lassalle's informal cozyness with reactionary scum like Bismarck (in order to advance the position of the 19th-century German workers' movement at the expense of the liberal bourgeoisie) or simply pulling off a young Walter Ulbricht-as-agitator at a Nazi meeting headed by spin master Joseph Goebbels himself, on the one hand, and the aforementioned anti-Semitic opportunism above on the other.