The first attempt to condemn communism.

[General Winter]

September 21 marked eighty three years from the date of the beginning of the process of Leipzig - the famous legal process about the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 that the Nazis has organized with a single purpose: to discredit and to put out of low and morality the international communist movement. Nazis chose their main target: the deputy of parliamentary faction of the Communist Party of Germany in the Reichstag Ernst Togler and a group of the Bulgarian Communists, headed by Georgi Dimitrov, who lived at that time in Germany.

Togler fainthearted and eventually ended up as a Gestapo agent and henchman of Goebbels. Bulgarian Communists Tanev and Popov spoke very little of German in order to be able to defend successfully.

But Georgi Dimitrov, who spoke several languages, including German, very quickly became the accuser instead of the accused. All the power of the Nazi penal system and all the propaganda were powerless before the powerful intellect and spirit of the man.

The Nazis were unable to crack up the great revolutionist by physical force: Dimitrov was shackled in prison in anticipation of the court for five months. It was then when he knew about the death of his wife. But despite the torturing prison conditions and cruel stroke of fate, Georgi Dimitrov was able to prepare for trial. From the earliest days of judgment the intellectual and spiritual superiority of Dimitrov over his accusers and judges became obvious. His questions to witnesses gave the lie to them, his speech denounced the Nazis as provocateurs, his answers to the judges sounded like an accusation of the Nazis.

What was conceived by the Nazis as a lawsuit against the Communists, Dimitrov turned into a trial of Nazism, showing the whole world the vile and ugly nature of this phenomenon.

In the end, the Nazis were forced to abandon the direct radiobroadcasts of the process. Dimitrov said the famous: "You are afraid of my questions, attorney" and it could not more accurately reflect this legal process.

Nazi penal system was powerless against the force of the spirit and the intellectual superiority of the Bulgarian Communist and the Nazi court had to justify the Communists.

But Dimitrov was not satisfied and prepared a lawsuit against the Nazi regime for defamation, demanding at the same time to replace the phrase "lack of evidence" on "for lack of crime in the act".

Dimitrov was not alone during the process - the Leipzig process has not left the rest of the world untouched. Liberation Dimitrov and his comrades was demanded by Romain Rolland, Albert Einstein, Henri Barbusse, and an International Commission of Inquiry, created of the best lawyer of the world, held a counter-trial of the burning of the Reichstag in London, where they fully proved the guilt of the Nazis.

It was the first moral and political victory over the Nazis and that was the Communists who won it,who selflessly and uncompromisingly fought against Nazism since the first till the last day, during all the years of this anti-human regime.

Anticommunists, reading these lines, of course,will immediately seize upon the so called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact .

In this regard,I want to remind anticommunist gentlemen a number of historical facts:

1.Soviet authorities expelled from the Soviet Union all German journalists during the trail,and in turn, withdrew Soviet journalists from Germany.It happened after German authorities didn't allow Soviet journalists to attend the process.At that time it was an unprecedented diplomatic incident.

2.Soviet Communists and German Nazi met in open battle in 1936 during the battle of the Republican Spain.

3.In 1938 the Red Army was ready to help Czechoslovakia.In other words, the Soviet Union even in 1938 was ready to start a full-scale war against Nazi Germany.Poland foiled plans of the USSR having refused to provide a coridor for the Soviet troops.At the same time, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully tried to create a coalition with Western countries against the Third Reich, known as "the system of collective security."That's why it is obvious that the above-mentioned agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was a forced agreement with an enemy, not with a friend.

Back tho the process of Leipzig: one of the consequences of this process was the Nazi's rejection of the trail of еру leader of the German Communists Ernst Thalmann.Nazis fearing re fiasco killed Thalmann killed without trial in 1944.

In short, the Leipzig process is a good reminder to all anti-communists who try to condemn communism.

[SkepticalofYourDogma]

>citations needed

[Heretek]

Sounds like you've got some Bolshevik-tinted glasses on there.

The "first attempt to condemn communism" was not anything to do with the Nazis. It was something along the lines of expelling people (like Marx) from their native countries or being executed. Then of course there is the Paris Commune and the reaction by the powers of Europe to crush it. Discounting these, there is of course the fabled First Red Scare, the crackdown in the west, and for my particular example the United States, of the 1900's-1920's. With the prevalence of workers movements campaigning for their rights, the forces of capital reacted with everything they could in the face of this existential threat. Force, in the form of union-busters, the Chicago Haymarket Affair, and general violence, and Coercion in the form of criminalizing criticism of government, anti-union laws, and the forceful drafting or imprisonment of communist agitators. There is of course the general culture of repression that preceded the 20th century, with monarchies and republics alike systematically targeting the workers' agitators. Not the Nazis, a phenomenon native to the 20s and 30s alongside the rise of fascism.

What communist cares about a moral or political victory? Entirely liberal and subjective, hindsight, hypocritical morals of the bourgeois, should not be one of the factors upon which our success is based. Place it in a particular liberal moral, and suddenly the Nazi crusade against vile communism is justified, the Israeli atrocities are excused as they are still 'the victims' and what was done to 'them' is excused by projection upon others. At one point concentration camps are evil. At another, they are simply an ugly topic not to be discussed. Such is the pointlessness of liberal morality.

Politics? Why are we participating in liberal politics, the construction of the bourgeois to maintain their dictatorship over production? A political victory is simply parliamentarian, something with no power to actually abolish capital, for capital will not allow itself to abolish itself. To participate and base the victory of the movement within the victories of parliamentarianism is inherently reformist, gradualistic backwardness that has plagued social democracy and the traitors of the Second International for over one hundred years. And they are now the primary causes of the new rise in populism.

1. The authoritarian measures taken by governments to restrict freedom of speech, one of the few fundamental liberal 'rights' we can benefit from, that allows us to organize, should not be applauded as 'socialist.'

2. Fascists and Nationalists met Republicans, liberals, and what was left of the communists and anarchists in open battle after the Fascist powers and the Soviet Union decided to use the civil war as a testing ground for new means of war in preparation for the next one of Europe. Perhaps there was revolutionary nature in the beginning of the war, but it very quickly devolved into a competition of bourgeois for separate interests independent of the actual 'people' of the war. Many non-Bolshevik communists were completely disillusioned with the realities of Soviet priorities, namely the gutting of the local left and subversion to the Soviets rather than A)winning the war or B)local workers actually controlling themselves.

3. So when the 'progressive' enemies of the working class are enemies of the working class, you join the fascists, the very open polar opposite of the working class and class struggle, the very embodiment of the ultimate enemy of the working class. And the rights of nations? Sovereignty? What bearing do these have on the working class but to divide? Even for Bolsheviks, to support 'non-socialist' (leninist) nations flies in the face of national liberation, it is instead national preservation; even less proletarian, surely. To hell with bourgeois sovereignty, to hell with the rights of national bourgeois, "Destroy All Nations!" This "collective security" is the security of the bourgeois, the maintenance of the status quo!

Fascists will kill all detractors and opponents, with or without trial. They exist to serve as the ultimate force of the counter revolution. That they eliminate anything of an anti-national or anti-nazi nature is not and should not be a surprise.

Reminder of what? Don't do it? Do it? If anything it is the latter, for the Nazis successfully repressed communists during their reign. I would much rather we do not remind the populists the much more open and barbaric methods of their past, though I'm sure they've considered it.

[SkepticalofYourDogma]

Dude. Asking for citations when you are stating historical facts is not 'bolshevik tinted glasses'. Have you ever stopped to think that some people care about what can be proven and what cannot?

[Heretek]

Dude. Asking for citations when you are stating historical facts is not 'bolshevik tinted glasses'. Have you ever stopped to think that some people care about what can be proven and what cannot?

I did not address this to you or your vague need for citations. I quote several historical facts that are rather indisputable (1912 is before 1936, I imagine). I am attacking the user who has in other threads shown to be a Stalinistic dogmatist. To allow things to exist without criticism, especially while you have evidence to the contrary, is inherently negligent and apathetic. Perhaps having read more than my first line would have helped.

[General Winter]

The fighter against Stalinistic dogmatist shows the same position : he does not see anything bad in Franco's victory because the war in Spain "very quickly devolved into a competition of bourgeois" and if there is so then it's no matter who win.The rejection of anti-fascist struggle,capitulation before reactionary under the leftist slogans - that's the essence of the left anti-communism.

[Heretek]

The fighter against Stalinistic dogmatist shows the same position : he does not see anything bad in Franco's victory because the war in Spain "very quickly devolved into a competition of bourgeois" and if there is so then it's no matter who win.The rejection of anti-fascist struggle,capitulation before reactionary under the leftist slogans - that's the essence of the left anti-communism.

Between the nationalism of Germany and the nationalism of the USSR, I choose neither. The workers shouldn't either. Your festishization of the Soviets is disgusting, really. To compromise the position of the left, to pursue opportunistic alliances that destroy the position of the working class as an independent struggle against capitalism, to undermine the very principle of socialism, that of internationalism, for the interests of the Russian bureaucracy, is inherently nationalistic, 'anti-communist.'

To not approve of the murdering and co-opting of other communists and anarchists for a national agenda, to object to the historic targeting of anyone whom is not a Stalinist for suppression and violence by the west and east alike, to argue the party for the workers should be by and for the workers, is 'anti-communist?' You are delusional upon your petty nationalism and glorification.

[Exterminatus]

While it is undoubtedly tragic that WW2 conflict was fought on national lines (this in itself being a sign of the failed Soviet communist project), to claim that there were practical possibilities during WW2 for some true, authentic communism is simply empty talk and opportunistic shitmongering. It's almost the equivalent of those retarded internet sects of 12 people who speak of the dichotomy between "revolution against reformism" today, as if there is an existing revolutionary movement that is constantly being blocked by the reformists like Sanders and Syriza. Of course we can have at least some sympathy for people like Bordiga by understing the trajectory of their life struggle and their (very often justified) disappointment with the mainstream communism. But these left communists today? They are all worthless shit talkers.

[Heretek]

While it is undoubtedly tragic that WW2 conflict was fought on national lines (this in itself being a sign of the failed Soviet communist project), to claim that there were practical possibilities during WW2 for some true, authentic communism is simply empty talk and opportunistic shitmongering. It's almost the equivalent of those retarded internet sects of 12 people who speak of the dichotomy between "revolution against reformism" today, as if there exists revolutionary movement that is constantly being cockblocked (what a stupid term to use, but i can't remember the word right now) by the reformists like Sanders and Syriza. Of course we can have at least some sympathy for people like Bordiga by understing the trajectory of their life struggle and their (very often justified) disappointment with the mainstream communism. But these left communists today? They are all worthless shit talkers.

I never asserted there was a possibility of 'authentic communism.' There most certainly wasn't, not after the betrayal of the Second International. But to concentrate whatever class consciousness and struggle there was into the national conflict simply serves to repress any potential struggle that could have evolved from the worker's dissent against it. What would you have us do, stick our fingers in our ears, bow to the statues of Lenin and Stalin? I have noticed you have responded positively to Rafiq before, so here's something he said: Nothing is safe from ruthless, relentless critical thought. There are no safe places to hide in your petty thoughts, society must and will question everything and anything that exists, including what people think and do.

You're not much better, scum. And the push-back against the modern reformist 'main-streamers' is not a left communist phenomenon. Even some Stalinists have worked through their skulls with an ice pick to object to it. It is an objection to populists profiting off of socialism, to social democrats repeating themselves from the first world war. Look at you, also contributing to the 'internet sect' phenomenon, only here there are maybe 20 people. Useless shit talking, you complain, and yet here you are.

[Exterminatus]

I never asserted there was a possibility of 'authentic communism.' There most certainly wasn't, not after the betrayal of the Second International. But to concentrate whatever class consciousness and struggle there was into the national conflict simply serves to repress any potential struggle that could have evolved from the worker's dissent against it. What would you have us do, stick our fingers in our ears, bow to the statues of Lenin and Stalin? I have noticed you have responded positively to Rafiq before, so here's something he said: Nothing is safe from ruthless, relentless critical thought. There are no safe places to hide in your petty thoughts, society must and will question everything and anything that exists, including what people think and do.

You're not much better, scum. And the push-back against the modern reformist 'main-streamers' is not a left communist phenomenon. Even some Stalinists have worked through their skulls with an ice pick to object to it. It is an objection to populists profiting off of socialism, to social democrats repeating themselves from the first world war. Look at you, also contributing to the 'internet sect' phenomenon, only here there are maybe 20 people. Useless shit talking, you complain, and yet here you are.

The problem is that people simply don't understand that WW2 was not merely an inter-imperialist conflict (of course it was this, but it was also much more). In WW2, the entire project of Enlightenment was at stake. Can anyone imagine the world where Fascism has triumphed (especially in the West)? WW2 was the war for preserving the legacy of all progressive movements and achievements of the past centuries, from 1789 to the present. I mean, can anyone actually imagine that there would even be talk of communism in a fascist world? Can people even imagine conditions we would face in such predicament? And in the face of this threat, some of you still talk of "oppossing all sides" and other worthless leftist phrasemongering. What would have happened if all the partisans, soldiers etc.. didn't courageously stand up against the hell that was Nazi occupation in Europe? Well at the very least, there would be more chances that the communist idea would be extinguished for all times.

We should be deeply thankful to all those souls who died fighting fascism, for it is because of their noble sacrifice that the red spark of communism can burn again. Despite the fact that the first communist revolution failed, we can at the very least respect the fact that in the end it did save the kernel from which the new world can be reborn in the future.

Regarding the accusations of me worshipping Lenin and Stalin, it is simply preposterous. For one, i rarely speak good of Stalin, i don't even understand this accusation. However, i will always be ready to argue that we haven't had a revolutionary more able and skilled than Lenin in our tradition. If people understand this respect as "worship" i would advise them to deeply rethink the level of depth of their own immersion in the ruling liberal ideological order.

[Heretek]

The problem is that people simply don't understand that WW2 was not merely an inter-imperialist conflict (of course it was this, but it was also much more). In WW2, the entire project of Enlightenment was at stake. Can anyone imagine the world where Fascism has triumphed (especially in the West)? WW2 was the war for preserving the legacy of all progressive movements and achievements of the past centuries, from 1789 to the present. I mean, can anyone actually imagine that there would even be talk of communism in a fascist world? Can people even imagine conditions we would face in such predicament? And in the face of this threat, some of you still talk of "oppossing all sides" and other worthless leftist phrasemongering. What would have happened if all the partisans, soldiers etc.. didn't courageously stand up against the hell that was Nazi occupation in Europe? Well at the very least, there would be more chances that the communist idea would be extinguished for all times.

We should be deeply thankful to all those souls who died fighting fascism, for it is because of their noble sacrifice that the red spark of communism can burn again. Despite the fact that the first communist revolution failed, we can at the very least respect the fact that in the end it did save the kernel from which the new world can be reborn in the future.

Regarding the accusations of me worshipping Lenin and Stalin, it is simply preposterous. For one, i rarely speak good of Stalin, i don't even understand this accusation. However, i will always be ready to argue that we haven't had a revolutionary more able and skilled than Lenin in our tradition. If people understand this respect as "worship" i would advise them to deeply rethink the level of depth of their own immersion in the ruling liberal ideological order.

I oppose united frontism on principle of subverting the working class, and I've already made my case. You have made yours. I suggest we move on to other points.

When I speak of 'Stalin and Lenin worship,' I am not only speaking to you. I am speaking to the thread as a whole (the op user), in general Stalinism. Perhaps you should assess your own allies.

I will argue, however, that due to the failure of the international revolution, and culminating in the implementation of the NEP, Bolshevism and Lenin ceased to be communist revolutionaries, and that the Red Russian Revolution became again a bourgeois revolution (the February Revolution, which was the bourgeois of Russia attempting to transition to liberalism).

[Exterminatus]

I oppose united frontism on principle of subverting the working class, and I've already made my case. You have made yours. I suggest we move on to other points.

When I speak of 'Stalin and Lenin worship,' I am not only speaking to you. I am speaking to the thread as a whole (the op user), in general Stalinism. Perhaps you should assess your own allies.

I will argue, however, that due to the failure of the international revolution, and culminating in the implementation of the NEP, Bolshevism and Lenin ceased to be communist revolutionaries, and that the Red Russian Revolution became again a bourgeois revolution (the February Revolution, which was the bourgeois of Russia attempting to transition to liberalism).

The thing is, one cannot simply oppose a certain direction of communist politics on some eternal "principle" as if those decisions are made in a vacuum. What is needed is a general assessment of the strength and movement of various social forces at play (i.e. the capital, the revolutionary movement, various sections of the bourgeoisie, petite elements and others). For example, opposing the Sanders momentum or Syriza/Varoufakis today is wrong because there is no actual worker's movement to which these parties can be juxtaposed. In WW2, there was no organic, authentic communism that could have challenged any of the major actors. In this atmosphere, and with knowledge of what is at stake as i already explained, to dabble in revolutionary phrasemongering is nothing short of betrayal of all the past and potential future struggles for emancipation and communism.

[LionofTepelenë]

Well, I'd say the first critique of Communism as an ideology should most likely come from Proudhonian mutualists of the 1st international. I'm not really sure, since the term communist is something thrown around so leniently, you could even say that Marx was the first person to criticize Communism.