All talk of some supposed "Fourth International" has always annoyed me, even before I gravitated towards the maoist realm of revolutionary communism. This annoyance has less to do with my feelings about Trotskyism and more to do with rationality. Look: you can't call yourself an International if your "internationalism" is about as international as a successful academic conference. And you especially can't call yourself an International when there's about fifteen competing "Fourth Internationals", all led by sectarian groups who think they're the legitimate heirs to this bullshit venture.
Anyone who thinks that there is such a thing as a legitimate "Fourth International" really needs to stop and consider history in a rational manner for more than one minute. Such a consideration would make them realize that this supposed "International" suffered from two primary flaws at the moment of its inception: a) the fact that it consisted primarily of first world intellectuals and their friends, a few petty-bourgeois comprador third world individuals here and there notwithstanding; b) the fact that the vast majority of communists and communist movements still adhered to the Third International (which actually was an International) and saw Fourth "Internationalists" as a bunch of "wreckers", perhaps even bourgeois agents (not that they necessarily were, but this charge was more common than the Fourth International's claim about international status has ever been and ever will be), and so to claim some sort of international in this context was about as sensical as claiming that world capitalism had been defeated.
So if you call yourself an International but are not even connected to the organic movements in the global peripheries, and are mostly represented by an odd smattering of intelligentsia grouplets at the centres of imperialism, then you fall short of the mark of anything approaching the "internationalism" required for such a name. (And since the Pabloists were kicked out of the Fourth International, and branded as "revisionists", then you really have rejected any solidarity with the vast majority of the world's revolutions!) Maybe this sort of "international" branding worked for the First and Second Internationals, that really were based within a primarily European context, but after the Third International, which finally succeeded in reaching a truly international membership and passing motions representing this membership, an International that goes back and becomes little more than echo of the First International under Marx and Engels (repeated as farce, it bears saying) then it's pretty clear you're existing in defiance of the International that even Trotsky, when he was a revolutionary leader, participated in… And just because this same Trotsky was behind the founding of a pseudo-International two years before he died, one has to wonder if this was simply the result of the bitterness of exile. After all, it wasn't until around five years before his death that he started thinking about opposing the actual International that had kicked him out of its ranks.
This Third International was, to date, both the first and last event that was both communist and international. Organizations and individuals from around the world, many of whom were active in revolution, were present; motions were passed, many of which the supposed Fourth International would ignore, and there was actually something worth calling internationalism. No wonder the vast majority of the communist world continued to recognize the Third International, and have nothing but spite for the supposed Fourth, for a very long time. No wonder the Fourth pseudo-international failed to gain traction when many of its assumptions seemed to exist in defiance of what was established, in a much more internationalist manner, during the course of the Third.
And yet the defenders of the Fourth International like to pretend that they are actually internationalist and their supporters are spread throughout the world. They become very defensive when it comes to the actual revolutionary history of the world at large, pretending that they are an actual international force when they are little more than groups predominantly concentrated at the global centres of capitalism whose tiny supporting grouplets at the peripheries have been marginalized, sometimes viciously, by actual and organic revolutionary movements who have little patience for petty-bourgeois naysayers who emerge from the ranks of the compradori to sing the praises of the first world. Whether or not it is politically correct to treat Fourth "Internationalist" as enemies of the people is, perhaps, and issue worth contemplating; at the same time, however, the fact that the representatives of this pseudo-International are both marginal and generally in the camp of the privileged classes in the global peripheries means that they are not at all the internationalists they pretend to be. When you take your orders from Europe and the US, after all, and you are a tiny group of semi-privileged intellectuals who are utterly disconnected from the organic movements in your social context, you aren't representing a global movement worthy of being treated as an International.
Hell, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement [RIM] never dared to call itself an International. Indeed, when it was founded and even went so far as to call for a new stage of revolutionary communism, it also asserted that it was not a new Communist International. Interestingly enough, unlike the Fourth International, the RIM was an international organization that was connected to actual organic revolutionary movements throughout the world: it emerged in connection to the Peruvian Peoples War, it helped broker the unification of the Peoples Wars in India (which produced the Communist Party India(Maoist) which is currently cutting India in half), it once counted the Nepalese Peoples War in its ranks, and it produced the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan that is soon to enter its own revolutionary moment. And yet, despite its legitimate connection to worldwide revolution, the RIM was careful to define itself as not being the next International.
Unlike the jilted and jaded marxists who founded the Fourth International, who were never connected to any concrete revolutionary movements anywhere and (unfortunately or fortunately) were driven from the ranks of the majority of social movements, at the time, in which they were involved, the RIM did not pretend to the same level of international significance despite the fact that they often did possess revolutionary significance. This is because, at the time, the RIM recognized that a new Communist International could only emerge after the next world historical revolution. That is, unlike the First and Second International, the Third International was significant because it was declared by the first communist led world historical revolution. After this moment, it would make no sense to declare an International unless it also possessed world historical resonance.
Even the Chinese Revolution, which was also a world historical revolution, did not dare to found a Fourth International because of its experience, at the time, of the disintegration of the Third. Indeed, one of the reasons the previous RIM found it difficult to imagine a new Communist International was because of how the Chinese Revolution had experienced chauvinism in an International body commanded by a revisionist Soviet Comintern. But the Fourth International, with its arrogant pomposity, figured it could just restart the entire International business and demand that the world follow its lead, even though it possessed no theory proven by world historical revolution, as if it could go back to the days of the First International.
This is always the problem––attempting to restart the dialogue of communist theory according to some "pure" notion of marxism that existed prior to the revolutions in Russia and China. Rather than figuring out a way to go forward, and make sense of the successes through the calamity of obvious failure, there has most often been a backwards-looking tendency to just restart, restart, restart. One must wonder, then, why the so-called Fourth International didn't call itself a new First International since its very existence, from the outset, stood in defiance of the Third, Second, and First to begin with. Even the Third didn't go so far as to delegitimize the failures of the Second; it understood that the Second failed at its final point but, before that, it had learned a lot from the much more limited second––indeed, as Lars Lih has pointed out, Lenin wouldn't have even been able to write What Is To Be Done? if it hadn't been for the influence of the Second International's prime theorist, Karl Kautsky, regardless of the fact that Lenin ended up walking away, along with every legitimate revolutionary, from this International at its conclusion. And from the ashes of that International, Lenin and his allies succeeded in initiating the first truly international International.
So why did the Fourth [supposed] Internationalists walk away from the Third when it hadn't reached its conclusion without learning anything but sectarianism? After all, the Chinese revolutionaries only turned their backs on this International when it it actually did reject its own principles and become truly revisionist. The Fourth Internationalists, however, have never bothered to even accept the originary and revolutionary principles of the Third International––they have taken little more from the historic moment of that International's founding than the word international. And a bunch of competing Fourth Internationalist sects who hate each other, and who have little or no connection with actually existing revolutions [unless one counts the propensity to name every revolution "false"], do not logically count as international.
Which is why I am more or less rationally offended by people who speak of a "Fourth International." Being someone trained in philosophy––and who tends to spend a fuck of a lot of time worrying about definitions, semantic precision, and logical coherence––I am generally offended by people who speak of an "international" and yet do not seem to understand how the term international needs to be logically satisfied. It is one thing to speak of internationalism when your understanding of the world was narrower (i.e. during the time of Marx or Kautsky), but it makes no sense to transpose the same understanding to a reality that has been irrevocably changed by world revolutions and global communications. Indeed, Hellenic historians could speak of Alexander "conquering the world" because their world was only a tiny sliver of the actual world… Today's historians, however, wouldn't make the same mistake.
So let's be clear: there is no such thing as the "Fourth International" because it has never fit the terms of an international––none of the organica revolutionary movements since the Third International have given a fuck about the dictates of a fourth imaginary International and have generally, though in qualified terms, only declared fidelity to what was established in the Third International. Fourth Internationalists, therefore, lack any semantic reason to use the term international and should immediately stop doing so since they are in defiance of rational thought.
[Hilariously enough, a post on a non-existent "international" has produced the most comments in a long while and so, due to this furor, I will again crudely pander for monetary support by pointing out that interested readers can donate the equivalent of a cup of coffee––or what they would pay for some shitty 4th Internationalist paper foisted upon them by an annoying sectarian at a demo––to MLM Mayhem here.]
Anyone who thinks that there is such a thing as a legitimate "Fourth International" really needs to stop and consider history in a rational manner for more than one minute. Such a consideration would make them realize that this supposed "International" suffered from two primary flaws at the moment of its inception: a) the fact that it consisted primarily of first world intellectuals and their friends, a few petty-bourgeois comprador third world individuals here and there notwithstanding; b) the fact that the vast majority of communists and communist movements still adhered to the Third International (which actually was an International) and saw Fourth "Internationalists" as a bunch of "wreckers", perhaps even bourgeois agents (not that they necessarily were, but this charge was more common than the Fourth International's claim about international status has ever been and ever will be), and so to claim some sort of international in this context was about as sensical as claiming that world capitalism had been defeated.
So if you call yourself an International but are not even connected to the organic movements in the global peripheries, and are mostly represented by an odd smattering of intelligentsia grouplets at the centres of imperialism, then you fall short of the mark of anything approaching the "internationalism" required for such a name. (And since the Pabloists were kicked out of the Fourth International, and branded as "revisionists", then you really have rejected any solidarity with the vast majority of the world's revolutions!) Maybe this sort of "international" branding worked for the First and Second Internationals, that really were based within a primarily European context, but after the Third International, which finally succeeded in reaching a truly international membership and passing motions representing this membership, an International that goes back and becomes little more than echo of the First International under Marx and Engels (repeated as farce, it bears saying) then it's pretty clear you're existing in defiance of the International that even Trotsky, when he was a revolutionary leader, participated in… And just because this same Trotsky was behind the founding of a pseudo-International two years before he died, one has to wonder if this was simply the result of the bitterness of exile. After all, it wasn't until around five years before his death that he started thinking about opposing the actual International that had kicked him out of its ranks.
This Third International was, to date, both the first and last event that was both communist and international. Organizations and individuals from around the world, many of whom were active in revolution, were present; motions were passed, many of which the supposed Fourth International would ignore, and there was actually something worth calling internationalism. No wonder the vast majority of the communist world continued to recognize the Third International, and have nothing but spite for the supposed Fourth, for a very long time. No wonder the Fourth pseudo-international failed to gain traction when many of its assumptions seemed to exist in defiance of what was established, in a much more internationalist manner, during the course of the Third.
And yet the defenders of the Fourth International like to pretend that they are actually internationalist and their supporters are spread throughout the world. They become very defensive when it comes to the actual revolutionary history of the world at large, pretending that they are an actual international force when they are little more than groups predominantly concentrated at the global centres of capitalism whose tiny supporting grouplets at the peripheries have been marginalized, sometimes viciously, by actual and organic revolutionary movements who have little patience for petty-bourgeois naysayers who emerge from the ranks of the compradori to sing the praises of the first world. Whether or not it is politically correct to treat Fourth "Internationalist" as enemies of the people is, perhaps, and issue worth contemplating; at the same time, however, the fact that the representatives of this pseudo-International are both marginal and generally in the camp of the privileged classes in the global peripheries means that they are not at all the internationalists they pretend to be. When you take your orders from Europe and the US, after all, and you are a tiny group of semi-privileged intellectuals who are utterly disconnected from the organic movements in your social context, you aren't representing a global movement worthy of being treated as an International.
Hell, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement [RIM] never dared to call itself an International. Indeed, when it was founded and even went so far as to call for a new stage of revolutionary communism, it also asserted that it was not a new Communist International. Interestingly enough, unlike the Fourth International, the RIM was an international organization that was connected to actual organic revolutionary movements throughout the world: it emerged in connection to the Peruvian Peoples War, it helped broker the unification of the Peoples Wars in India (which produced the Communist Party India(Maoist) which is currently cutting India in half), it once counted the Nepalese Peoples War in its ranks, and it produced the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan that is soon to enter its own revolutionary moment. And yet, despite its legitimate connection to worldwide revolution, the RIM was careful to define itself as not being the next International.
Unlike the jilted and jaded marxists who founded the Fourth International, who were never connected to any concrete revolutionary movements anywhere and (unfortunately or fortunately) were driven from the ranks of the majority of social movements, at the time, in which they were involved, the RIM did not pretend to the same level of international significance despite the fact that they often did possess revolutionary significance. This is because, at the time, the RIM recognized that a new Communist International could only emerge after the next world historical revolution. That is, unlike the First and Second International, the Third International was significant because it was declared by the first communist led world historical revolution. After this moment, it would make no sense to declare an International unless it also possessed world historical resonance.
Even the Chinese Revolution, which was also a world historical revolution, did not dare to found a Fourth International because of its experience, at the time, of the disintegration of the Third. Indeed, one of the reasons the previous RIM found it difficult to imagine a new Communist International was because of how the Chinese Revolution had experienced chauvinism in an International body commanded by a revisionist Soviet Comintern. But the Fourth International, with its arrogant pomposity, figured it could just restart the entire International business and demand that the world follow its lead, even though it possessed no theory proven by world historical revolution, as if it could go back to the days of the First International.
This is always the problem––attempting to restart the dialogue of communist theory according to some "pure" notion of marxism that existed prior to the revolutions in Russia and China. Rather than figuring out a way to go forward, and make sense of the successes through the calamity of obvious failure, there has most often been a backwards-looking tendency to just restart, restart, restart. One must wonder, then, why the so-called Fourth International didn't call itself a new First International since its very existence, from the outset, stood in defiance of the Third, Second, and First to begin with. Even the Third didn't go so far as to delegitimize the failures of the Second; it understood that the Second failed at its final point but, before that, it had learned a lot from the much more limited second––indeed, as Lars Lih has pointed out, Lenin wouldn't have even been able to write What Is To Be Done? if it hadn't been for the influence of the Second International's prime theorist, Karl Kautsky, regardless of the fact that Lenin ended up walking away, along with every legitimate revolutionary, from this International at its conclusion. And from the ashes of that International, Lenin and his allies succeeded in initiating the first truly international International.
So why did the Fourth [supposed] Internationalists walk away from the Third when it hadn't reached its conclusion without learning anything but sectarianism? After all, the Chinese revolutionaries only turned their backs on this International when it it actually did reject its own principles and become truly revisionist. The Fourth Internationalists, however, have never bothered to even accept the originary and revolutionary principles of the Third International––they have taken little more from the historic moment of that International's founding than the word international. And a bunch of competing Fourth Internationalist sects who hate each other, and who have little or no connection with actually existing revolutions [unless one counts the propensity to name every revolution "false"], do not logically count as international.
Which is why I am more or less rationally offended by people who speak of a "Fourth International." Being someone trained in philosophy––and who tends to spend a fuck of a lot of time worrying about definitions, semantic precision, and logical coherence––I am generally offended by people who speak of an "international" and yet do not seem to understand how the term international needs to be logically satisfied. It is one thing to speak of internationalism when your understanding of the world was narrower (i.e. during the time of Marx or Kautsky), but it makes no sense to transpose the same understanding to a reality that has been irrevocably changed by world revolutions and global communications. Indeed, Hellenic historians could speak of Alexander "conquering the world" because their world was only a tiny sliver of the actual world… Today's historians, however, wouldn't make the same mistake.
So let's be clear: there is no such thing as the "Fourth International" because it has never fit the terms of an international––none of the organica revolutionary movements since the Third International have given a fuck about the dictates of a fourth imaginary International and have generally, though in qualified terms, only declared fidelity to what was established in the Third International. Fourth Internationalists, therefore, lack any semantic reason to use the term international and should immediately stop doing so since they are in defiance of rational thought.
[Hilariously enough, a post on a non-existent "international" has produced the most comments in a long while and so, due to this furor, I will again crudely pander for monetary support by pointing out that interested readers can donate the equivalent of a cup of coffee––or what they would pay for some shitty 4th Internationalist paper foisted upon them by an annoying sectarian at a demo––to MLM Mayhem here.]
I agree that the Fourth International was essentially a stillborn project, and that Trotskyism today is farcical. That said, it's actually impressive the Left Opposition remained within the Third International, or critically supportive of it, anyhow, as long as it did considering the intense attacks on their members which became openly murderous in the mid to late 1930s. If the Fourth Internationalists were so irrelevant, why did Stalin place such a priority on infiltrating and killing them? The GPU/NKVD infiltration of Trotsky's organization was extremely thorough, as any raving Healyite will tell you.
ReplyDeleteThey were irrelevant as an International, but they were relevant as an organization that was seen as openly wrecking the communist movement. Look at it this way: a tiny dogmatic sect like the Sparts can disrupt meetings with just a few individuals; thus a version of the Sparts throughout Europe, the US, and a few parts of Latin America could also sabotage actual revolutionary movements with their sectarianism. Ho Chi Minh also had Trotskyists in Vietnam killed, and though I don't agree with this tactic, my point here is that they weren't liquidated because they were seen as some competing force with revolutionary hegemony (they were extraordinarily tiny and part of the comprador and national bourgeois classes), but because they were loud enough and intellectually influential enough to sabotage an organic revolution by telling peasants not to join the revolution, etc.
Deletehttp://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/209/Polanski.html
DeleteLol!
DeleteCorrection: The Comintern dissolved itself in 1943, citing new international and local conditions in each country that demanded a diversity of approaches and eliminating the appearance that all local parties were "controlled" by the Cominterm from Moscow. See http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv8n2/dimitrov.htm
ReplyDeleteFurther, the successor to the Comintern, the somewhat more informal Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) was dissolved in 1956 by Krushchev and therefore did not feature into the Sino-Soviet disputes. Issues of its journal, For a Lasting Peace and For a People's Democracy can be found here http://sovietlibrary.org/Library/index.php?dir=Cominform%2F
The dispute over revisionism did however feature in the International Meetings of Communist and Workers Parties (http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Conferences+of+the+Communist+and+Workers+Parties) in 1957 and 1960.
None of the successor bodies to the Communist International were considered Internationals as such and therefore the disputes among the parties and the chauvinism experienced by the CPC at the hands of Soviet revisionists was not transmitted through the Comintern.
Thanks for the clarification.
DeleteI think the winding-down of the Comintern demonstrates that the Trotskyists were onto something. Closing shop in 1943, as a goodwill gesture to Churchill and Roosevelt, was not some act of Stalinist perfidy or malice (as some Trotskyists see it) but an extension of the "socialism in one country" logic that subordinated the international communist movement to the pragmatic foreign policy maneuvering of the USSR. Again, I think this mentality was understandable, given the focus on preserving the socialist foothold in Russia at all costs, but it definitely indicated that the Third International had turned from a lively and diverse revolutionary party into something else entirely.
DeleteI think letting the Spartacists stand in as your go-to Trotskyists is problematic in that they represent one remaining part of the split in international Trotskyism after World War II. The Pabloites reoriented themselves to Stalinist communist parties (and social democratic parties, like in the UK) because the Russian success in Eastern Europe led them to believe that Stalinism could still play a revolutionary role, whether it was conscious of this role or not. A nuisance, maybe, but hardly "wreckers."
Two more short things: First, it was Kautsky who "walked away" in Lenin's opinion, hence Lenin's characterization of him as "the renegade." Lenin believed that he was in keeping with the revolutionary tradition that the "stinking corpse" of the Second International had departed from. Second, did you know there's a League for a Fifth International? THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. Jokes aside, an interesting post, thanks.
Just to clarify, I don't think the Sparts are the best representatives of the Fourth International; I was using them as one example for how a tiny group of people who are not internationally significant can cause problems. And yes, I agree with your analysis in the final paragraph but, as usual, I was glossing over a lot of details in my mention of the Second International.
DeleteScrew the Fifth International I'm all about the SIXTH!
Well, Cam, it may be your opinion that the Comintern was dissolved "as a goodwill gesture to Churchill and Roosevelt" but it's not supported by fact. Dmitrov's comments speak for themselves, as do the comments of member parties. The move was justified (and suggested by many member parties before it occurred) as something that would actually help strengthen and advance the position of Communist and Workers Parties in their own countries in the new conditions. You're under the sway of the classic conflation of "socialism in one country" with "socialism in only one country." I can't help but notice, however, that while you mention the revolutions in Eastern Europe, you exclude the closely-following Chinese revolution and other successes of "Stalinist" parties thereafter. Clearly the dissolution of the Comintern, something justified by the particular conditions of the time, did not prevent the Chinese people from standing up. And please keep in mind that the tension in Soviet policy between peaceful coexistence and international revolution existed just as much during Lenin's time. Peaceful coexistence was only elevated to an overriding principle by Krushchev.
DeleteAnyone today who believes themselves a part of the "Fourth International" is clearly deluding themselves. The organization hasn't existed as part of a coherent international since the death of Trotsky. It has long since split into a plethora of sects.
ReplyDeleteYou make a lot of good points, but I can't help but feel that your criticisms of the Fourth International neglect a lot of the very real failures of the Third International. Their most glaring failure was the insane line that the real enemy of the German Communists was the Social Democrats - "social fascism". The KPD's failure to create a United Front was the primary reason Hitler was able to come to power, and we're all clearly aware of the calamitous results of that.
When the horrendous ultra-leftism of the Third International results in the Nazis taking power and threatening world war, don't you think that might be considered one of the circumstances in which a "reboot" is not only desirable, but necessary?
Regardless of the history of the Fourth International, I'm happy being part of a coherent modern international - the International Marxist Tendency. Given that our strongest section is in Pakistan, I don't know if Trotskyism is as Eurocentric as you believe anymore.
The Third International was a massive affair consisting of multiple congresses and your focus on its analysis of social democracy is: a) extremely narrow in light of everything else it established; b) ahistorical in that it doesn't seem to understand the actual historical conjuncture. No, the KPD's failure to creature a United Front was *not* the primary reason Hitler was able to come to power and this is rather insulting considering what actually happened to communists in that context. The fascists came to power because the SPD sold out the labour movement and collaborated with the freikorps; to suggest otherwise is pretty much to spit on the graves of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknicht who were handed over to the freikorps by the SPD. So in this context the Social Democrats were the enemy of the German communists because they did produce fascism. Your analysis, I'm afraid, smacks of serious historical revisionism. The fact is that the SPD stood aside and allowed the fascists to gain power, went so far as to undermine the revolutionary work of communists in Germany, and so was precisely the threat... Not the "ultra-leftism" which you are clearly charging the Spartacist Uprising with which, in my opinion, is pretty insulting to the revolutionaries in that context.
DeleteThus, to speak of the Third International as "ultra-leftist" is extremely erroneous. I would suggest that you actually read the minuted volumes, available online of the Third International's congresses before reducing it to the analysis of Social Democracy as well as utterly misunderstanding/misrepresenting this analysis. What about everything else established in the Third International that you apparently know very little about? The debates and decisions made regarding the national question and anti-colonialism, for example, were one of its hallmarks––and that was only the Second Congress which takes up two volumes of minuted notes. These were sophisticated understandings of the international communist movement that cannot be reduced and straw-personed as you have done. As the adage goes: "without investigation, there should be no right to speak."
And Trotskyism *is* eurocentric for two reasons: a) it has no connection with organic revolutionary movements in the global peripheries (just because a few petty bourgeois intellectuals in Pakistan are Trotskyist doesn't mean it is a viable revolutionary force there, sorry it just isn't); b) most importantly, *it's entire theory of world revolution demands that the peripheries wait to CATCH UP with the global centres and that the "advanced proletariat" at the centres of capitalism will lead the revolution––THIS is why its praxis is riven with eurocentric assumptions. This is also why Trotskyists have been killed by revolutionary movements in the peripheries because, being tiny little sects with no connection to concrete revolutionary movements, they have placed themselves at odds with the masses and taken counter-revolutionary positions.
I don't think "Mulciber" is referring to the Spartacist uprising - he's referring to the "Third Period" which WAS tragic and ultra-leftist and many anti-revisionist scholars have pointed this out. This "Third Period" was - with the exception of a few - not popular among the rank and file of the KPD (see Poulantzas's book on fascism)...The point that Poulantzas and many other non-Trotskyist scholars make is not that the KPD and other Leftists should have pulled a popular front tactic out (see how well that worked in Spain - ha!) - but that it was extremely unhelpful when - whether we like it or not - millions og German workers were in the SPD - for the KPD to label the SPD "Social Fascists" right at the time the worker's movement needed unity - and could have achieved that unity under more creative KPD folks like Radek etc. Did the SPD right sell out the labour movement? Sure. But this shouldn't stop us from having a tough minded analysis of the stupidity of the third period.
DeleteWhich has nothing to do with the analysis that emerged in the congresses of the Third International, and everything to do with how the SPD behaved previously as the organization that allowed fascism to thrive. Thus, what I was saying was that to claim that the KPD's actions in the 3rd Period were the "primary" reason that Hitler came to power [as Mulciber says] is ahistorical for two reasons: a) it was not the primary reason that fascism was thriving but, rather, the opportunism of Social Democracy had previously allowed it to thrive; b) and the Third International was not just an international about this––and I should point out that the term "social fascism" emerged after the congresses of the third international––and its line on social democracy and opportunism makes utter sense in light of how the Second International betrayed the workers movement.
DeleteTherefore, the Third Period has less to do with the Third International's actual political line, and more to do with the particular circumstances Germany. Nor am I certain that it can just be dismissed as "ultra-left" (and I have a problem with this charge in these contexts because it is precisely what opportunists sling in order to disguise their own opportunism) due to the SPD's behaviour until that point. Perhaps the KPD should have worked with the SPD, but would you work with an organization that betrayed the revolution, handed your comrades over to the freikorps to get executed, and then was like "hey now let's work together against those fascists we helped grow."? The failure to develop a united front in this context has more to do with a larger historical problem than mere "ultra-leftism", and nothing at all to do with the Third International.
All of this is to say that your comments about the Third Period are points I'm well aware of, but have nothing to do with my response to Mulciber who now, I'm beginning to think, might have been conflating the "Third International" with the "Third Period". Plus, let's be clear, the term "Third Period" is something of a misnomer since it originates from Trotskyist historians trying to find reasons for Stalin's evil and point out that Trotsky had the correct line vis-a-vis Germany at the time which also might not be correct. Again, none of this has to do with the Third International generally, unless what the Third International established regarding "social democracy" and "opportunism" is to be seen as synonymous with the KPD's theorization of "social fascism" in the 30s, which it isn't.
In/re third period being the primary reason fascism came to power, I agree that this isn't the case. But I think in the circumstances of Germany in the 20s and 30s, there was a left wing to peel off of the SPD (see Broue's work) - who knows? I do know that the SPD rank and file of the late 20s was not the SPD that sold out the revolution (there are countless volumes that detail this but the recent work of Ben lewis and Lars Lih suffice)... I do think third period was dumb but I agree it wasn't the prime determinant of the rise of fascism. (And I disagree that third period is a term from Trot historians - it was the name the Cominetern themselves used). Alls I'm saying is that it was dumb policy. The Social Democrats were an enemy, yes, but not on the same level as fascism. "First Hitler, then us" was unforgivable and simply bad prognostication. This was one point in which Trotsky was more foresighted - as were independent Marxists eg the Frankfurt School - than the KPD. Plenty of anti-revisionist historians make this point. I don't think that its defensible at this point.
DeleteI think you're right that Mulciber conflated the Third International with Third Period. I also know that Stalin gave the KPD a lot of leeway - one can't blame this one on Stalin as on the KPD leadership.
DeleteI never said the KPD didn't have a bad policy, I just refuse to believe it is as simply as Trostkyists and "independent" marxists put it in the context of the Weimar Republic. As you yourself pointed out, the coalition strategy didn't work elsewhere against the fascists and there is no reason to assume it would have worked in Germany. More to the point, this type of arguing is what we in philosophy would call a fallacy since it's a false hypothetical––in that it bases its argument on "what would have worked" when you can't prove, obviously, if the alternative solution, upon which the argument is premised, would have worked either––so I reject it on the principle that it is incoherent and irrational and a waste of time to make since there is no historical proof to the contrary. Simply name-dropping books doesn't help here since this is yet another logical fallacy, appeal to the authority of the many; contrary arguments can also drop the name of books, or point out that Lih's argument about the SPD is not as simple as you make it seem and is closer to the argument I've been making (which in some ways has nothing to do with your argument, but oh well), and this is the problem with just conjuring names and book titles up in lieu of rational debate.
DeleteYes, the Third Period is the name the Comintern used but no one uses it now except for Trot historians who make a very big deal about it. This is probably because that Comintern no longer exists but the whole "we define ourselves against Stalinism" thing continues to haunt the remains of the Fourth International.
I agree that the Social Democrats weren't an enemy on the same level of fascism, and there should have been a proper approach to this sort of thing, but I never argued otherwise. My point was only that this was not the primary problem that produced fascism, uniting might not have solved anything anyhow, and there was good reason (regrettably) to mistrust the SPD which had nothing to do with "ultra-leftism" and more to do with the history of the German revolutionary movement. None of this is to claim that the KPD's position was correct, because I don't think it was, but that it was not simply "stupid" or some irrational quirk that emerged out of a secret commitment to ultra-leftism. We must also remember that the story of the KPD's "ultra-leftism" was something the SPD had been promoting for a long time, as all rank opportunists do for anyone that is actually left, and a charge people continue to promote now, trying to cite the rise of fascism as an example and ignoring the role opportunists actually played at the beginning of fascism, in order to attack committed revolutionaries.
I don't think Poulantzas or Franz Neumann were Trots. But your points are salient.
DeleteWhen I talked about the ultra-leftism of the Third International helping Hitler come to power, I was really only focused on the "third period", so I may have accidentally conflated the two terms. Prior to that the Third International had been following more of an opportunist line.
DeleteJMP, you make some very good points about the SPD that I neglected in my original post. It actually helps explain the ultra-left tactic that the KPD took at this period; I can understand German communists would detest the Social Democrats. At the same time, the Nazis were clearly the bigger threat.
Of course Trotskyist historians make a big deal about the "third period"! Hitler's coming to power - and thus the Second World War and the Holocaust - can be directly traced to the inability of the German workers' parties (or more specifically, their leadership) to unite against the fascist threat.
Also, when you say that "the coalition strategy didn't work elsewhere against the fascists and there is no reason to assume it would have worked in Germany", you're conflating Stalin's tactic of the Popular Front (which he encouraged during the Spanish Civil War) with Trotsky's tactic of the United Front. Unlike the United Front, which calls for unified action by all the workers' parties and organizations (which in the case of Germany would mean the SPD and KPD), the Popular Front puts the class struggle on the backburner and urges workers to ally themselves with a mythical "progressive bourgeosie". The Popular Front is the same dangerous nonsense that led Chiang Kai-Shek to massacre hundreds of Chinese Communists after Stalin urged them to join forces with him.
See my comments about what I feel is a false dichotomy between the "popular" and "united" front below: this is a difference that is only emphasized by Trotskyists and is somewhat ahistorical. Especially since Trotsky's tactic was just something raised in an "anti-Stalinist" manner and had no resonance with concrete practice anywhere. Furthermore, I've pointed out that this is also a fallacy in that it's a false hypothetical: to say a certain strategy is wrong by referring to another strategy that hasn't been tested as proof is logically identical to saying that the General Theory of Relativity is wrong because it ignores some other random competing theory that hasn't passed the falsification test.
DeleteAnd my point about the third period is two fold. One, it isn't as big a deal as you think it is because it is the end result of a larger process of opportunism which produced fascism to begin with––this was a snowball effect that was rolling due to the SPD's selling out of the revolution to the point of actually working against a legitimate revolution in Germany and turning revolutionaries over to the proto-nazi movement while allowing this movement to grow––and, two, it has nothing to do, really, with the Third International . Indeed, there is no mention of "social fascism" in the Third International whatsoever and, as comrade Jordachev as correctly pointed out, Stalin wasn't responsible for the KPD's badly advised decision to reject any coalition strategy. Trotskyist historians actually try to ascribe the Third Period to some "stalinist" plot, which it isn't, and indeed it's quite clear that Stalin's error might have been more an error of tailing the KPD than some nefarious plot. Nor does Trotsky's theory of the "United Front" really ameliorate this problem: it is not a united front when you unite with class enemies but, if we're going to buy this semantic division, more of a popular front and the SPD was a class enemy––by this time it was a bourgeois party, at least according to its leadership, and it had proved itself as such by concentrating on the parliamentary arena *and* allowing the nazis to grow. What would you do if you were the KPD in this context? Trust a bunch of proven fascist collaborators?
But these points, it must be noted, are tangental. Again, the Third International's theorization of Social Democracy has nothing to do with the so-called "Third Period" aside from producing a general (and actually correct) theory of opportunism that might have been over-emphasized by the KPD. To ascribe this to the Third International is erroneous and ahistorical––really it is more the product this kind of thinking: "Stalin was leading the Third International and so everything Stalin did was wrong." But the Soviet Union under Stalin was also the reason World War Two was won, and Trotsky and the Fourth International had nothing at all to do with this victory and didn't even have *marginal* influence in this victory, and so to complain about possible Stalinist influence over the KPD's erroneous lines––and go so far as to claim this is a product of Third Internationalist ideology––amounts to the falsification of history. And that, more than anything, is what I found problematic in your position.
[cont. from above, comment was too long]
DeleteAlso, please don't make these very simplistic comments about China and Chiang Kaishek that gloss over the very complex realities at play. Yes, Stalin was utterly wrong when he demanded that the communists work within the Kuomintang, BUT SO WAS TROTSKY. Indeed, Trotsky pushed the same line as Stalin only called it the United Front! Even Isaac Deutscher, who is a faithful Trotskyist, is clear that this was Trotsky's line when it came to China, and critiqued it in his *Prophet* trilogy. This is why both Li Lisan (affiliated with Stalin and Moscow) and Chen Duxhiu (affiliated with Trotsky) argued identical political positions when it came to China: work within the ranks of Chiang Kaishek's Kuomintang to reform it and turn it into a communist party. BOTH castigated Mao for going to the countryside, mobilizing the peasants, and producing a new communist party that was no longer a faction in the Kuomintang, following both Stalin and Trotsky. And they were both wrong.
Mulciber - I think you need to understand a bit about communist history. As I often say, it cannot be whiddled down to "Stalinism" vs. "Trotskyism". Stalin and Trotsky's lines (which intersected far more than they diverged) were two of many prominent lines with popular bases within the international worker's movement.
DeleteFirst off - I posted lower on this thread a piece by John Ridell on United Fronts. It was not "Trotsky's tactic". Not everything that the Bolsheviks developed while Trotsky was still a militant can be claimed by Trotsky. No one disagrees that a united front would have been preferable in Germany. I think everyone here agrees on that - the point is what were the determinations that prevented it, and it goes beyond splits in the Left. It is sectoral, regional, etc. And to be clear - as the Trotskyist historian Mandel is - the "Social Fascism" third period stuff was not directed from Moscow. Molotov and Stalin opposed it.
The prominent Trotskyist (or Pabloist) historian/economist Ernest Mandel, to use one example does NOT blame merely the Third Period for the rise of Naziism. I can't think of a single Trot historian who does so - though they tend to emphasize it more than others, serious scholarly historians don't make such logical leaps. The inability of the German worker's movement to unite was one objective factor, but the ability of the German state apparatus and National Socialism to peel off layers of potential support etc. - the split in the Junker elite - there are so many factors. The Third Period was stupid - but - and this is right in Mandel's excellent book on the Second World War - the prime reason is that even united, the Left in Germany was likely to weak. One of the reasons it was so weak was the longterm animus within the Left. Another is that the working class in Germany was very segmented....
I don't know if you have a library account but there's a pamphlet by Arthur Rosenberg - somewhat of a follower of Radek/Luxemburg (left-communist, more or less) reprinted and translated in the last issue of HM that looks at the complexities of the Nazi social base which actually was able to appeal to a lot of what some would call the "labour aristocracy", e.g. the highly skilled professionals, clerks, etc. The Left did not have a foothold, either among social democrats or communists - among workers as much as we'd like to think it did...The SDP was prominent in Western and Central Germany, while the KDP was powerful in the South, the East and (former) Prussia...so in many ways they weren't competing anyhow.
Interesting responses. I'll try to see if I can find that Arthur Rosenberg pamphlet.
DeleteJMP, I do think you give entirely too much credit to Stalin for winning the Second World War. The consensus among historians is that Stalin was caught with his pants down on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. Right up until the invasion he ignored warnings that Germany was planning to attack, and his purging of the Red Army leadership in the late 30s helped weaken the military right when it was needed most. Stalin meddled less than Hitler did in military affairs and came to trust the judgment of his generals. But the Soviet Union achieved victory over Nazi Germany DESPITE Stalin's leadership, not because of him.
Actually, Mulciber, you really need to read more historical accounts than the ones received from bourgeois common wisdom. One historical example, in fact, is Deutscher's biography of Stalin (and it should be noted that it is not pro-Stalin because Deutscher was a Trotskyist at the time) which actually argues the exact opposite of your position (aside from the fact of Stalin meddling less in military affairs, which I agree with, though I would argue that he was directly responsible for the overall political strategy). In fact, as Deutscher proves (and there is documented evidence of this that everyone except academic historians of WW2 pay attention to) Stalin was quite aware that Nazi Germany was going to attack Russia long before Europe wised up and asked Britain to form a common front with the USSR. Churchill was interested but had no clout, Chamberlain refused, the British parliament figured that the Nazis would annihilate the Soviet Union––and *this* was the reason for the Hitler-Stalin pact which was forged, as Deutscher and others have pointed out, to simply give Russia time to prepare for the war and build up the necessary armaments. They were surprised because it ended earlier before they were fully prepared, but not overly surprised since it was expected.
DeletePlease stop relying on a consensus that does not exist as you imagine it does––even the great Trotskyist historians and intellectuals who lived through that period (like Deutscher and Mandel) argued the position I've just outlined. If you're interested in looking at it in more detail, it's worth starting with the Deutscher book and moving unto other more critical historiographies from there. Since you define as a Trostkyist, I'm sure you would enjoy both Deutscher's biography of Stalin and his trilogy "prophet" biography of Trotsky (if you haven't read those ones already, which I'm guessing you have since it's a classic).
Actually, I don't really disagree with anything you wrote in that first paragraph. The Hitler-Stalin Pact was indeed signed because of the refusal of the western "democracies" to ally with the USSR against Germany. Even after the pact was signed, Stalin knew that the Germans would attack at some point - he just didn't know when. That said, I stand by what I said about Stalin's initial unpreparedness after the invasion. The evidence is fairly conclusive that Stalin at first refused to believe that Hitler had broken the pact.
DeleteSad to say, I still haven't had the chance to read Deustcher's biography of Trotsky. Right now I'm about 11 chapters into "Capital, Vol. 1", and after that I've got a copy of Lenin's "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" that is crying out to be read. But after that I'll need some new communist-related text, so if you could recommend to me one or two great books on Mao's China, that would be much appreciated. :-)
(I know you technically already did that in the comments section of another post, but I wouldn't mind having one or two titles in particular that you would see as essential reading)
For Mao's China I would recommend three books: 1) William Hinton's "Fanshen" which is a great social history; 2) Maurice Meisner's *Mao's China and After" [make sure you get the 3rd edition] which, though not necessarily a pro-communist book and somewhat liberal, is the standard in bourgeois academia and is not anti-Mao even if it's not really communist; 3) Mobo Gao's *The Battle For China's Past* which does a good job of retelling the revolutionary history of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution by challenging more recent right-wing historiographies of the period. There's others, but I think this is a good sampling of the variety of different styles and authors out there.
DeleteThe purging of the officers was probably a very good move by Stalin, seen as how they were suspected of being counter-revolutionaries. How can you fight a serious war when you have potential traitors leading your troops? This was largely a result of Trotsky's policy of allowing former officers in the Russian army to integrate into the Red Army. Obviously these people didn't suddenly drop their bourgeosie ideology, and there is some evidence produced in biographies by some counter-revolutionaries who had infiltraited the party that these elements were prepairing to overthrow the government in the event of war with Germany. The Great Purge, excessive as it might have been, actually might have prevented such division and plots within the party and the military. Please don't just buy into the IMT line as I once did. There is a world of truth out there beyond Alan Woods.
DeleteAnother thing I would mention is that the IMT section is Pakistan is so full of problemms i don't even know where to begin. I'm sure you know of the spilt that broke the group in half, because one of the leaders wanted to be more integrated into the bourgeosie party, and he and his supporters were expelled, though they were expelled by a minority....I've spoken with the supporters of both factions when I was still in the IMT, and to be perfectly honest, they both seem dubious and wrong in their positions. Depending on who you believe, both sides have approximately 800 members, which is good for a Trotskyist group, but not significant in any other way in a country as large as Pakistan. They've also been building that group for over twenty years on opportunist politics that have now resulted in a devistating split with one group going ultra-opportunist, and the other wanting to more or less maintain the standard opportunism. Not really something to brag about, even though I also used to do it at one time.
Thanks for factoring in with this comments. We should also be clear that Trotsky, had the situation been the reverse, would have probably done the same thing. During the civil war, when he was a commander in the Red Army, he had a lot of counter-revolutionaries shot; he even advocated (and ordered) the purging of anarchists from the Red Army. So it seems rather hypocritical for Trotskyists to complain about tactics of which Trotsky himself was guilty.
DeleteGlad also for your comments about Pakistan. 800 members in Pakistan after trying to build an organization for twenty years is not substantial. There are a lot of other leftist groups in Pakistan who have far more members who have spent less time building... Nor is a quantitative member count necessarily mean a group is significant in a revolutionary sense.
I think this post is about your stance on Trotskyism and no so much rationality over the use of fourth international (FI). You’d be hard to find more than a handful of FI members here. Most Trots carry affiliations with international groups that don’t claim this title and who tend to think it was a mistake for the Trot groups in the 30s to adopt the FI moniker.
ReplyDeleteIt’s with some surprise that I see this old chestnut “Whether or not it is politically correct to treat Fourth "Internationalist" as enemies of the people is, perhaps, and issue worth contemplating...” Really?
One would be poorly equipped to learn from history by following official versions of either Third International (TI) or FI. Pavel writes “Dmitrov's comments speak for themselves, as do the comments of member parties. The move was justified (and suggested by many member parties before it occurred) as something that would actually help strengthen and advance the position of Communist and Workers Parties in their own countries in the new conditions.” So during a world war, various national sections decide it’s time disband TI when, especially after the experience in WWI, an international is needed more than ever? Just like after the war, the sections also spontaneously decide to embark on the Canadian Road to Socialism, the British Road to socialism, etc? Give me a break!
First of all, don't conflate a commenter's position with mine. Plus, if you're going to respond to it do, reply to him and not make it a comment about my general post which has nothing to do with the arguments made by other commenters.
DeleteSecondly, perhaps my feelings of the Fourth International do have to do with my feelings about Trotskyism in general, which have more recently grown pronounced for very good philosophical reasons, but they are also the result of a conversation I had with someone recently who claimed that the Fourth International was a real and vital International.
Finally, you misread and misunderstood the semantic meaning of the sentence, but this has more to do with my strident writing than anything else. Still, what I meant should have been obvious in context. What I was saying was that people in the Fourth International were, on a global scale, treated as enemies of the people and saying, obviously, that we should question whether or not this was politically correct, not that we should seriously contemplate treating them *now* as enemies of the people. The comment has to do with the people affiliated with the Fourth International at that time, how they were treated, and why it is worth contemplating that this might have been erroneous, not the way you're trying to interpret it.
Comrade you run a very excellent blog and i always appreciate your thoughts. I would like to know what exactly is the difference between a Popular Front and a United Front?
ReplyDeleteHahaha, seriously? The theoretical differences between these two fronts is filled with a lot of sectarian squabbles, and some of the more ortho-trot groups make a big deal about it, so I don't know if it is particularly useful to worry about the difference of fronts that clearly do not possess the same possible existence they did from 1917-1950. Personally I don't really know the difference because I've heard multiple and competing definitions.
DeleteYeah you know in my experience i have encountered these sort of sectarian squabbles in relation to the PF and UF. This why i was asking for some clarification. I thought i would kind of get an answer of saying that the "more ortho-trot groups make a big deal about it" cause when i say that im a Maoist, i get these accusations hurled at me that i am a class collaborationist and trying to make alliances with the bourgeoisie and etc.
DeleteI guess since im from america and since we were/are the bastion of anti-communism this anti-communism is going to take its own "light" form amongst the left. And i guess one of the forms is this some kind of trotskyism, trying to be the more "democratic" option from the authoritarian "stalinism", and ends up repudiating the relevant communist tradition which the US opposed, thus repudiating communism as a whole period IMO even if it doesnt intend to.
Ah, okay I see why you asked the question. A lot of ortho-trot groups will attack Maoists because of their [very bad] understanding of the theory of New Democracy which argued, in the case of China's semi-feudal and semi-colonial context, that the forces of production necessary to build socialism could only occur through an alliance with the national bourgeoisie. The argument here was that the national bourgeoisie were still revolutionary to a certain extent in that they wanted to see China free from foreign domination. Trotskyists tend to misunderstand what was only a strategy for countries suffering from semi-colonial domination and a semi-feudal mode of production, and was never as thorough as they thought it was (after all, the national bourgeoisie were limited in their abilities and continued to complain they were being lied to by the communists), as some sort of class collaborationism. They also think this is the hallmark of "maoism" because they don't generally understand what Maoism is aside from this theory of New Democracy... I think they focus on it because it is trying to solve the same problems as Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution (i.e. how to build socialism in the global peripheries) but, unlike Trotsky's pretty abstract and idealist theory, actually worked––so they don't like this, and go out of their way to mischaracterize it and complain about how it was supposedly applied in other countries where "maoists" collaborated with the ruling class (and the examples they give have nothing to do with the theory of New Democracy let alone "maoism"), red herring arguments like Indonesia, etc.
DeleteJohn Ridell has a good piece on United Front vs. Popular Front - somewhere online...but to simplify. United Front - only Left and workers/popular orgs. Popular Front - US in the 30s, France, Spain - coalition of Left with liberal bourgeois parties.
DeleteThanks... I think the problem with this definition, which is also the definition you'll find on wikipedia, is that it is not the way other groups have understood the concept of "popular" or "united" front, which is why I think it has to do with a lot of semantic stupidity. For example, outside of the Trot debates on this issue (who keep making the main distinction between these fronts that, to be clear, originate from Trotsky's writing), the term Popular Front has meant something entirely different for communist movements at the global peripheries. For example, the PFLP saw the term "popular front" as having to do with the popular masses, meaning primarily the workers and peasants––and it is important to note that the PFLP was in a broader coalition and, within that coalition, was the party that maintained a very left line and was not at all like the popular front defined as such by Trotskyist theory. Point being: the whole united versus popular front debate is something that belongs in the 1930s, though perhaps the meaning of who or what we should unite with at given conjunctures is worth examining.
DeleteHere's a good piece from my favorite Pabloist http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=724
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