“Great Betrayals”: Dumping “Communist,” “Socialist,” and Various Other Labels

[Die Neue Zeit]

[Another Chapter 4 section done for The Class Struggle Revisited ]



“Great Betrayals”: Dumping “Communist,” “Socialist,” and Various Other Labels

"I do not consider the term ‘communism’ suitable for general use today; rather it should be reserved for cases in which a more exact description is required and even then it would call for an explanatory note having virtually fallen out of use for the past thirty years." (Frederick Engels)

As noted earlier in this chapter, the original Marxist movement came in the form of “social democracy.” By 1914, however, Kautsky’s parliamentary reductionism gave way to cheap parliamentary opportunism, and the ambiguity of “democracy” in “social democracy” was replaced with unambiguous national chauvinism favouring the bourgeoisie:

The conduct of the leaders of the German Social-Democratic Party, the strongest and the most influential in the Second International (1889-1914), a party which has voted for war credits and repeated the bourgeois-chauvinist phrases of the Prussian Junkers and the bourgeoisie, is sheer betrayal of socialism. Under no circumstances can the conduct of the leaders of the German Social-Democratic Party be condoned, even if we assume that the party was absolutely weak and had temporarily to bow to the will of the bourgeois majority of the nation. This party has in fact adopted a national-liberal policy.

[…]

The betrayal of socialism by most leaders of the Second International (1889-1914) signifies the ideological and political bankruptcy of the International. This collapse has been mainly caused by the actual prevalence in it of petty-bourgeois opportunism, the bourgeois nature and the danger of which have long been indicated by the finest representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of all countries.

In 1917, Lenin announced what ultimately became known as the “April Thesis.” In it, he suggested a break with the so-called “social democracy” and the adoption of the label “Communist,” harkening back to the early writings of Marx and Engels – and even the “idle threat” Kautsky himself once made “when the opportunist Bernsteinians seemed to be close to conquering the German party officially” (as Lenin remembered towards the end of 1914).

Shortly after this, the “October Revolution” (November 7, 1917) took place, and the Bolsheviks were thrust into the halls of political power, and shortly afterwards Russia was plunged into civil war by pro-WWI elements, ranging from pseudo-“socialists” to monarchists. Necessary emergency measures were taken to ensure the very survival of the new regime, from political restrictions on workers’ basic democratic rights to labour discipline to one-man management (essentially restrictions on independent organization). These measures were facilitated by the near-substitutionist merger of the party organization and the state-administrative apparatus, which in turn was facilitated by the creation of Uchraspred (the Records and Assignments Department of the party’s Central Committee). This merger occurred in spite of the anti-bureaucratic minority warnings made during the Eighth Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

With the end of the civil war, Lenin failed to realize the uncontrollable ramifications of some of the aforementioned emergency measures, and aggravated the situation by advocating a “temporary” ban on factions – albeit in response to Trotsky’s desire to militarize the trade unions, which could have threatened to split the party. This failure came about in spite of writing about the need for a control function on the work of the party’s Central Committee and its Political Bureau (as well as on the organs of state administration) as a response to the increased bureaucratization of the party apparatus, which still proved to be pale when compared to the need for independent organization for the decimated Russian working class.

Then came “Comrade” Stalin and patrimonialism in relation to Uchraspred, which enabled him and his supporters to turn restrictive necessities into outright virtues which, as Moshe Lewin remarked, proved to be ultimately disastrous for both the police state and the “Communist Party” allegedly in charge of it:

In the 1930s, the organization calling itself the 'party' had already lost its political character; it had been transformed into an administrative network, wherein a hierarchy ruled a rank and file... The process of 'statization' which was so important in the Soviet phenomenon, and probably reached its main characteristic when it came to the political system, reached its final stage. When the system entered into a prolonged phase of 'stagnation,' the party, unable to do anything, powerless to impose far-reaching measures on ministries and other agencies, foundered along with everything else.

To make things worse, the various “Communist” parties of today are quite liberalized, and are anything but.

Meanwhile, outside the Soviet Union, Trotskyist revisionism, usually organized around the “Socialist” label, degenerated into modern circle-ism (or, in the Shachtmanite experience, neo-conservatism), while both so-called “social democracy” and so-called “democratic socialism” degenerated into welfare electoralism, thereby losing the original but class-ambiguous idea of extending political democracy to economic affairs (as well as the less pronounced but equally idea of extending political democracy for its own sake). To top things off for the “Socialist” label, government bailouts for corporations are now seen as “socialism for the rich” and capitalism for the rest of us!

What is to be done, then, for these two terms which have become, in the words of August Bebel, “totally unfamiliar concepts, double-duth words”? To paraphrase one Grigory Zinoviev at the Second Congress of the Communist International:

The question of the name is not formal, but a highly political question of great importance. The differences between the revolutionary Marxists and the various ”Communists,” “Revolutionary Communists,” “Marxist-Leninists,” “Socialists,” “Socialist Workers,” etc. that have betrayed the banner of the working class in their own particular manner must be made clear to every single worker!



REFERENCES:

Engels to Karl Kautsky, 13 February 1894 (Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 50, p. 269)

The Tasks of Revolutionary Social-Democracy in the European War by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...14/aug/x01.htm]

A German Voice on the War by Vladimir Lenin [http://www.marxists.org/archive/leni...914/dec/05.htm]

Is the term "communist" beyond saving (at the moment)? [http://www.revleft.com/vb/term-commu...765/index.html]

The Soviet Century by Moshe Lewin [http://books.google.ca/books?id=ETQp...ummary_r&cad=0]

Theses on the Conditions of Admission to the Communist International by Grigory Zinoviev [http://www.marxists.org/history/inte...gress/ch07.htm]

[PRC-UTE]

Interesting reading, I'll give it a deeper look later.

[Tower of Bebel]

What is "modern circleism"? What would be the difference with the old circles and what are the similarities?

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/modern-sec...891/index.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/done-chall...557/index.html

Differences:

- Each sect considers itself as having the “correct line” and everyone else as being wrong

Similarities:

- Disunity
- Limited contact between groups
- Reach of past circles and modern sects is quite limited (even geographically)

[tanuki_time]

Or you can join the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) or YCL (Young Communist League). Then there won't be any confusion.

cpusa dot org

[Bastable]

Thanks for uploading this!

I must say I have to agree, the words "communist" and "marxist" seem to leave a bad taste in peoples mouths, and people around here equate "socialism" with the Australian Labour Party.

I don't suppose a new name is proposed later in the chapter?

[Prairie Fire]

Jake, I was more or less nodding along with you (some of your history needs a bit of tweeking) in this article, until the Zinoviev quote.

Zinoviev voted against armed insurrection during the October revolution (and therefore came out against the formation of the worlds first socialist state,), as well as his border-line treasonous ratting to the bourgois press about the imminent revolution, his infamous Nov.4 desertion from the Central comittee http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/FCCb17.html), and other various fuck-ups (especially in the comintern), etc.

In short, Zinoviev was a "revolutionary" who initally strongly opposed the revolution, A "Leninist" who was facilitating negotiations to liquidate Lenin from the Bolshevik party ,but mostly a master opportunist, who always tried to make safe bets, and sided with whoever he had to, in order to try and stay afloat in the party (while denouncing them later,).

Due to this history, the above quote might as well have come from Mickey Mouse,as it has no content based on the context of where it's coming from.

Anyone can talk about what's good for the working class, but in light of the context of Zinovievs many back-stabbings against the Bolshevik party, the workers and peasants of Russia, the Central Comittee, and communist parties of other countries (he was Comintern chairman, remember,), his words mean next to nothing.

To address the purpose of this article, true a name of a group must be significant in relevence to modern struggles. This is part of why I like Marxist-Leninist: To the point, not too long, not overly demonized or attached to negative connotations to most people, and carries the history of class struggle and revolution with it.