Ecological catastrophism and global superstitions: capitalism gets a makeover



Children, airheads and schemers

Protests “in defense of the climate” have taken place since last spring in almost all the major cities of the world.

The well‑publicized “movement” Fridays for Future persuaded the youngest schoolchildren to cut school to “ask” governments to “act”.

Such an undignified spectacle was promoted by the regime’s media and governments. In New York, the mayor justified absence from lessons, in Italy the Minister of Education issued a similar circular, as in Canada in Toronto, Montreal... Jubilant demonstrations came from all sides, from petty bourgeois dementia to the bigwigs’ hypocrisy. Even the United Nations has awarded the movement the “UN Champion of the Earth” award.



The “Hubbert peak” and an unstoppable capitalism

While fearing the possibility that capitalism could destroy the world, certain “scientists” have been rediscovering the “Hubbert peak” theory, according to which the extraction of oil should have peaked around 1980, given the finite nature of the reserves. This prediction, which proved completely wrong, in ignorance of the Marxist theory of differential rent and of the explosive nature of the capitalist mode of production, would delegate the rationality of energy production to capitalism by resorting to “alternative” sources, in the belief that capitalism can “choose” anything, in particular by obeying the petty spitefulness of ecologists, far less for the good of future generations.



Or, “accelerationism”!

From the opposite side of the river to the ecological dreams of a capitalism that needs to “wind down”, are, latest news, the “accelerationists”: pushing capitalism forward in all its intensifications and inequalities until it explodes, it becomes impossible, intolerable, thus releasing, some delude themselves, socialism. A Futurism, (which was also a leftist movement) of the 21st century.

As if capitalism had not gone too far already, at least for a century in the West and now everywhere; its future is only crisis and war, and total counter-revolution.

In reality, the catastrophic progress of capital does not need, and is insensitive to, both the “pushes” of the latter as to the “restraints” of the former; it makes its own fatal way, which only the political intervention of a revolutionary class can break, not certainly correct.



Treacherous ecologism

Under the conditions of telesales and remote shopping, which enables capitalism to obscure the techniques applied for the production and use of energy (see, for example Volkswagen and similar), it is difficult to make a quantitative study or a reliable comparison on the real efficiency of the various solutions and machines. Here too the self‑absorbed, and irredeemably false, character of science and technology in this society is evident. We will therefore confine ourselves to some minimal notes.

The diligence with which salesmen in green uniforms apply greenwash by the bucketload to make so‑called “renewable” systems seem “ecologically clean” is not enough kid us, as sworn enemies of capitalism and true and only allies of Mankind and Nature.

Those who accept capitalism must accept the constant increase in the volume ofproduction. But, to produce more and more means of production and commodities at an insane rate of growth, a greater consumption of energy is needed.

It is said then: just resort to “renewable sources”. But nobody can prove that the use of these types of energy production, on a capitalistically hyperbolic scale, is not equally deadly towards nature.

Another example is resorting to biomass and biogas; all things considered, this is no less “dirty” than oil and natural gas. The production of cereals and other species to be used as fuel, although renewable, is not indifferent to nature. Those crops must also draw on the fertility of the earth as well as the sunlight. Furthermore, the extensions of these crops are often removed from the green lungs of the world, such as the Amazon rainforest or the tropical forests of Southeast Asia and India. Finally, the production of these “biofuels”, which diverts land from food production, would upset food price dynamics, leading to a worsening of nutrition levels for the lower classes.

Again: photovoltaic production involves the difficult dismantling of highly poisonous materials. The same for fuel cells.

There is a lot of talk currently about the electric car. A modest calculus, accessible even to non “specialists”, as we happily admit to being. Energy contained in a diesel tank: 30 liters by 9.4 kWh per liter = 282 kWh. Motor efficiency 33%: useful energy 93 kWh. To “fill up” the equivalent in electric accumulators (lithium or non‑lithium), with a normal power socket of 1 kW takes 93 hours! And not to mention the heat losses. But they pretend to produce, and sell, the “hybrid” car, which costs much more and in the end is still driven by a combustion engine!

With this we certainly do not want to defend the use of fuels from fossil sources. We only want to declare that all the “new solutions” that are so insistently proposed arise under the sole thrust of the whimsical and ruthless law of profit, of immediate and corporate interest and that, in the present society, they are only an expression of the ignorance, or deceit, of those who defend them.

We do not believe it is necessary to highlight how under all this interest in the “new technologies” (which are often not new at all) are also hidden the selfishness of the great nations, whose minimum energy autarchy is necessary, for imperialist reasons, in particular in the case of a war clash. Energy is a weapon.

It is clear that the energy crisis is only such for capitalism, which is based by its nature on squandering every human and material resource. No technology can ever reduce the thankless use that capitalism makes of natural resources. Only a post‑capitalist society can begin to study seriously and face real rational reforms in this essential sector of the relationship between living species and the environment.

Before then, it is not a matter of convincing the polluters, but of overthrowing the political power of the polluter class. This will not be done by a vague movement of enlightened and mindful individuals drawn from all classes, but by a movement of proletarians, for the most part uninformed about “ecology”, but convinced of the need to defend their living and working conditions, and guided by their communist party not towards the immediate “salvation of the planet” but to its precondition, the revolutionary destruction of bourgeois institutions.

100 Years after the Proletarian Revolution in Hungary

One hundred years ago, in March 1919 in Hungary the proletariat proclaimed the Soviet Republic, the proletarian dictatorship, the State power of the working class. It was led by the Communists, mostly former prisoners of war in Russia, who had fought alongside the Bolsheviks in the Revolution of 1917.

In Hungary, at the end of the war, the organized and rebellious working class, supported by poor peasants, during the bourgeois phase of the revolution had overthrown the monarchy. But it had given up power because its class consciousness was not yet sufficiently developed to take power on its own.

But with a strong subversive energy, the Hungarian proletariat was approaching its young Communist Party and its adequate and clear passwords of Soviet power and armed insurrection. These found fertile ground and soon took root among the workers.

Following the defeat in the war and the disintegration of the armed forces, the agitation and organizing activity of the Communist Party (MKP) invited the workers to arm themselves. The crisis was precipitating. In short, industrial workers occupied the factories and large agricultural properties with weapons in hand, driving out their owners.

But in most cases those weapons did not fire: the bourgeoisie had sought protection and salvation from the revolution in the Hungarian Social Democratic Party, but this, not having control of the masses, could not openly play the infamous part of Noske.

The Social Democrats, lackeys of the cowardly bourgeoisie in power, pretended to come to terms with the Hungarian Communist Party, and that they accepted its program.

Just four months earlier, on 1 November 1918, when the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was evident, the ministers appointed by the PSDU, Kunfi and Böhm, in the new “democratic” coalition of the bourgeois government, had sworn loyalty in the hands of the Archduke Joseph; a government which, in order to win the support of the victorious Entente, had agreed that Hungary would serve as a military base for the armed intervention against Soviet Russia by the Entente itself.

Kunfi in his oath speech had said: «It is a heavy task, for a Social Democrat as I am, what I have to say, but nevertheless I say it, that we do not want to act with the method of class hatred and class struggle. We appeal to everyone so that, by eliminating class interests, putting confessional views in the background, they want to help us in the great task».

Kunfi himself, with the revolution that was pressing, in March 1919 presented himself with the other socialtraitors in the prisons where the communists were imprisoned, persecuted by their government, to simulate acceptance of the program of the Communist Party, which provided for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

However in Hungary the revolution wins. The armed working class, effectively managed by the communist party alone, takes all power in its hands. The bourgeoisie relinquishes power without the need to shed a drop of blood.

In place of government ministers, who have resigned, People Commissioners are appointed. On March 21, the Revolutionary Government Council was formed, which immediately declared the Republic of the Councils and fully implemented the immediate political and economic program of the proletariat.

In a short time it carried out a powerful complex, profound and extensive work of expropriation and economic reorganization.

Immediate destruction of the bourgeoisie’s political representation bodies.

Then the bodies for controlling production and distribution began immediately, starting with large factories and banks.

Measures were taken to defend the working class: 8‑hour working day, 6 for the young, unification of wages, paid holidays. Manor houses assigned to the peasant councils and nationalization of the land. By expropriating rented houses, tens of thousands of workers and proletarian families obtained adequate housing. Homes for disabled and elderly workers were housed in aristocratic palaces and thousands of sick or abandoned children were housed in luxury homes on Lake Balaton.

Determined food requisitions were made where rich peasants had organized armed counter-revolutions, which, although frequent, were easily repressed.

But the power relations between the two parties, communist and social democratic, were clearly in favor of the second, which mistakenly was not excluding from power; to it went the presidency of the Governing Council (Sándor Garbai) and eleven out of thirteen Commissariats; only two Commissariats to the Communists: that of Foreign Affairs (Béla Kun) and that of Agriculture (Károly Vántus) and the office of deputy commissioners.

Soon the role of the Social Democrats is revealed, who disclose their true face as traitors and crutches of the bourgeoisie against the power of the Soviets. The expropriated bourgeoisie, the aristocracy and the clergy plot for the counterrevolution and arm themselves against the Republic of the Soviets. The Entente forces militarily encircle Hungary and invade it. The imperialist marauders gathered in Versailles with the economic bloc decree its death by starvation.

The Social Democrats adopt a wavering and weak policy towards aristocratic and bourgeois classes. Under the pretext of having to consider religion a private matter, they prevent the control of the clergy, so much so that the priests in the villages can, undisturbed, incite the farmers to starve the cities and act against the revolution. Aristocrats, military officers and every bourgeois with reactionary beliefs roam the country freely because the Commissioner for Justice, a Social Democrat, opposes any attack on “personal freedom”.

As a consequence of the “moderate” application of the dictatorship imposed by the Social Democrats, the greedy elements of the bourgeoisie and especially the petty bourgeoisie infiltrate Soviet institutions. The Social Democrats also find economic provisions too radical and sabotage them where possible, thanks also to the mass of former State employees and bourgeois parasites, left in the administration for “humanitarian reasons”. Providing food supplies for the capital becomes increasingly difficult. The superstitions of democratic ideology prevent the application of the measures decided against recalcitrant peasants.

The right and center Social Democrats plot from the inside for the weakening of the Republic of the Councils and for its overthrow. They convene secret meetings, often travel to Vienna to negotiate with the Austrian Social Democratic authorities and Entente diplomats.

Both Lenin and Béla Kun will later admit that the alliance with social democracy was a mistake.

On June 24, with some armored river ships on the Danube, about 300 cadets of the former military academy attempt to take Budapest, and begin to shell the Hungaria Hotel, headquarters of the Councils government. The rebellion, duly prepared with the help of the Entente Missions, is easily rejected. But the weak retaliation has as a consequence a resurgence of the counter-revolutionary agitation, especially in the provinces: the governing Council graces the 300 rebel cadets; the thirteen organizers are sentenced to death, but they too are pardoned due the intervention of the Missions.

But the Hungarian revolution, isolated and surrounded on all sides, cannot resist.

In August, the Romanian army enters Budapest and occupis Hungary militarily. All economic measures of the dictatorship are revoked.

The bourgeoisie wants to take revenge and, as per its tradition, in a bloody and exemplary way. In a few weeks, the counter-revolution turns Hungary into a proletarian cemetery. They assassinate tens of thousands of the best comrades, as many tens of thousands of them are crammed into prisons and internment camps, tortured to death with beating and starvation.

The facts speak clearly on what the bourgeoisie is able to do to restore its dominion. On the other hand, the dictatorship of the proletariat, accused by the bourgeois of infinite horrors, in four months had only caused little more than two hundred victims, and the great number of these occurred in armed clashes.

Lenin draws the lesson of the defeat of the proletariat dictatorship in Hungary.

«A series of articles, in the central organ of the Austrian Communist Party, the Red Flag (Die Rote Fahne, of Vienna), revealed one of the fundamental causes of this collapse [the fall of the dictatorship of the proletariat]: the betrayal of the “socialists”, Who in words passed on the side of Béla Kun and declared themselves communists, but in fact they did not implement a policy corresponding to the dictatorship of the proletariat; they wavered, hesitated, appealed to the bourgeoisie, and in part directly sabotaged the proletarian revolution and betrayed it.

«The brigands of imperialism (that is, the governments of England, France, etc.) which had surrounded the Hungarian Soviet Republic with their world power, wildly crush, by means of the Romanian executioners, the Hungarian Soviet government, taking of course advantage of the uncertainties that occur within it».

Lesson that will be clearly formulated by our party: the dictatorship of the proletariat can only coincide with the exclusive dictatorship of the communist party. We will write in “Proletarian dictatorship and class party”:

«The proletarian State can only be animated by a single party and it would be senseless to require that this party organizes in its ranks a statistical majority and be supported by such a majority in “popular elections” – that old bourgeois trap. One of the historical possibilities is the existence of political parties composed in appearance by proletarians, but in reality influenced by counterrevolutionary traditions or by foreign capitalisms (...) This too will be a crisis to be liquidated in terms of force relations (...) the communist party will rule alone, and will never give up power without a physical struggle».

The Hungarian revolutionary attempt, such as the contemporary one in Germany and the Paris Commune of half a century before, ended in defeat. They were “assaults to heaven” against the overwhelming, shrewd and ruthless forces from the international bourgeois conservation. We do not make it a question of human responsibility but of an objective historical immaturity. The communist revolution of tomorrow, thanks to their sacrifice, will everywhere proceed safely and unyielding to the definitive victory of the working class.

The Labor Movement in the United States of America



Part 9

Some further observations on the last years of the 1st International

The formation of the party between 1871 and 1883:

caught between Marxism, Lassalleanism and Anarchism



The history of political parties in the United States began as far back as the 1820s with the Working Men’s Party. However, this path was soon abandoned, and the mass of workers from the few existing industries, dockyards and artisan workshops dedicated themselves to building trade union organizations, which promised an effect defense of living and working conditions. A very rich history, which we have described in the party work reports presented at the general meetings. On the political level, however, the results are poor, and the American working class goes through the disappointing experiences of cooperativism, collaboration with bourgeois parties, various moralist movements, up to involvement in the 1861-65 war of secession.

The War from this point of view marks a watershed. The need to assume a political role, to fight effectively in the name of the whole class, is felt and translates into the attempt to transform a union body, the National Labor Union, into a real party. The experiment is of short duration but the increased class participation that results, favoured also by the eight hours movement, is instrumental in paving the way for a more modern political movement of the class. Above all, it will make possible the activity of the International Workingmen’s Association, the First International.



Party and Trade Union

A characteristic of the labor movement in the United States over much of its history has been a separation, a lack of connectedness between its economic and political components, between the party and the trade unions. For the Marxist school it is essential to define the roles and establish the correct relationship between these two manifestations of the movement.

This important question was often considered in the debates of the First International, which had been constituted as an association of generic workers’ organizations. However, at its Conference in London, held between 17-23 September 1871, it stated:

“Considering the following passage of the preamble to the Rules: ’The economical emancipation of the working classes is the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means’;

“That the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association (1864) states: ’The lords of land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economical monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour... To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes;’

“That the Congress of Lausanne (1867) has passed this resolution: ’The social emancipation of the workmen is inseparable from their political emancipation’;

“That the declaration of the General Council relative to the pretended plot of the French Internationalists on the eve of the plebiscite (1870) says: ’Certainly by the tenor of our Statutes, all our branches in England, on the Continent, and in America have the special mission not only to serve as centres for the militant organization of the working class, but also to support, in their respective countries, every political movement tending towards the accomplishment of our ultimate end – the economical emancipation of the working class’;

“That false translations of the original Statutes have given rise to various interpretations which were mischievous to the development and action of the International Working Men’s Association;

“In presence of an unbridled reaction which violently crushes every effort at emancipation on the part of the working men, and pretends to maintain by brute force the distinction of classes and the political domination of the propertied classes resulting from it;

“Considering, that against this collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes;

“That this constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate end – the abolition of classes;

“That the combination of forces which the working class has already effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to serve as a lever for its struggles against the political power of landlords and capitalists,

“The Conference recalls to the members of the International:

“That in the militant state of the working class, its economical movement and its political action are indissolubly united”.

Marx dealt with the question in a very decisive way in a letter to his American disciple Bolte, dated 23 November 1871:

“The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point.

“On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force an eight-hour day, etc., law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.

“Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, i.e., the political power of the ruling classes, it must at any rate be trained for this by continual agitation against and a hostile attitude towards the policy of the ruling classes. Otherwise it will remain a plaything in their hands.”



Lassalleanism and Marxism

The question had already been posed by the first authentic representatives of Marxism from the moment they set foot on American soil. The first among many, Joseph Weydemeyer, had fought a bitter battle against the utopian illusions of Wilhelm Weitling, reasserting correct organizational models for working class organization, defence, and for taking power.

When, a year later, the General Council of the First International was moved to America, the programme of “authoritarian communism” would continue to be advocated by its new General Secretary, Marx’s loyal friend and follower, Friedrich Sorge.

The stance taken by the Lassallean faction, highly influential at the time and with a significant presence within the International, was very different. According to them, economic struggles were necessarily doomed to failure because they were dictated by immutable economic laws. Instead of trade unions they believed organisations of tradesmen should be created, which emulated the earlier precedents of Weitling and Owen, and which concentrated on building an alternative economy based on mutual aid, self-sufficiency and cooperatives. To install this economy on a larger scale, which would require cheap credit and State aid, the workers were urged to support Lassallean candidates at elections. Slowly the remaining citizens would be persuaded of the validity of their programme,and more and more voters would come around to the idea, until finally political power was achieved. Meanwhile, by conducting election campaigns at city, State and national level, they could gain access to public finances. This vision of a municipal and national state socialism, appealed especially to artisans and the self-employed.

Clearly the co-operativist veneer concealed what was substantially an individualist perspective, and its inter-classist appeal would thus attract small proprietors as well. These would include the adherents of the Greenback movement, who supported monetary reform, and it was no accident that the Lassaleans would support them as well.

Of the Greenbackers, so-called because of the color of the paper currency, Sorge would write: “They wanted (and still want) to abolish gold and silver currency and exchange it for paper money in necessary quantities, which would be redeemable only against very low-interest-bearing state bonds; in other words, it would be practically unredeemable. How this idea could find such a wide circulation just after the war during which the working classes, indeed the majority of the population, often suffered heavy losses through the fluctuating rate of exchange (during the war paper money dropped to two fifths of its nominal value) is a riddle to anyone who forgets that it is a well-understood interest of the possessing classes to divert the workers from their own interests, to lead the workers’ aspirations in the wrong direction; not to allow the labor organizations to grow strong, to weaken them”.

Opposing the Lassallean faction, from the standpoint of their much more comprehensive and complex vision, the Marxists advocated a very different kind of political organization. The goal of the political party for the Marxists was to conquer political power.

Both Marxists and Lassalleans were agreed at this stage that political organisation involved organising in the electoral sphere. In this they were opposed to the anarchists who rejected any political manifestation of the working class.

But it would actually be in the United States, where the franchise was first extended to broad strata of the working class, that the first cracks in the optimistic thesis of a ‘peaceful’ way to working class power via elections, making use of the working classes numerical strength, would start to appear.

As the vanguard of the working class, the Marxists were quick to notice this, and by 1876, at the Union Congress in Philadelphia they noted that “The ballot box has long ago ceased to record the popular will, and only serves to falsify the same in the hands of professional politicians”. Given the presence of an “enormous amount of small reformers and quacks” in this “middle class Republic”, and “Considering, That the corruption and mis-application of the ballot box as well as the silly reform movement flourish most in the years of presidential elections, at such times greatly endangering the organisation of workingmen”, party members and workingmen were invited to abstain from the ballot box and direct their efforts towards organising themselves.

If the notion that conquering working class power through the ballot box still remained, bolstered by the great strides forward made by the party in Germany, it nevertheless could only have any chance of success if there was a mass base to build on, which had both a clear sense of its own class identity and interests, and the resolution and determination to pursue them.

Such a base, the Marxists believed, could only be achieved through long and patient work in the trade unions, and within the sphere of mass campaigning organisations based on the trades unions. The process of building up these organisations, which would also involve fighting for reforms to improve working class living standards and conditions, would serve as a necessary training ground. The evident reluctance of the ruling classes to concede any legislative reforms which improved the condition of the working class, with every step along the way a gruelling struggle for the basic necessities, would open the eyes of the workers and urge them towards an ultimate political solution.

The unemployment struggles of 1873 temporarily lessened the internal conflict within the International but the ultimate failure of these struggles would be used by the Lassalleans to bolster their notion that the only effective solution was action on the political plane (which for them meant using the electoral process) directed towards gaining concessions from the State as regards their demands for co-operative forms of labour organisation, most of which were entirely compatible with capitalism.

The Marxists replied that the demonstrations of the unemployed should be continued, for they secured relief for homeless and hungry families, stimulated workers to think along socialist lines, and presented opportunities for bringing home to the workers the message that only socialism could end the exploitation of the masses. Moreover, when political action was undertaken, it had to be based on the working class and not, as the Lassalleans advocated, as part of a coalition of whatever groups were prepared to join in their campaign for state aid to cooperative enterprises.

Unprepared to abide by the International’s resolutions, the Lassalleans split from the International in 1874 and established the Workingmen’s Party of Illinois in the West, and the Social-Democratic Workingmen’s Party of North America in the East. Their failure in the 1874 elections would however force them to accept the importance of trade union organisation at later party conventions.



The Influence of the Party in Germany

In Germany, meanwhile, the two workers’ parties, the General German Workers’ Association and the Marxist influenced, pro-International ‘Eisenacher’ party, led by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, were moving towards reconciliation. In 1874, even before their eventual merger a year later, the two parties had reached impressive dimensions, polling in that year 350,000 votes in the elections and returning nine deputies to the Reichstag.

At the famous Gotha Congress in 1875, the two parties would work out a program they considered mutually acceptable, and join together to form the Social-Democratic Party.

In America Sorge was very impressed with the program for the Gotha Congress, drawn up by Liebknecht, which stressed the primary importance of organizing workers into trade unions (indeed one reason Sorge was ousted from General Council of the International in the fall of 1874 was because of his outspoken support for Liebknecht).

But it was the successes of the German workers’ parties at the polls which would impress socialists in the United States, and by the fall of 1875, socialist unity was the predominant issue in both Marxist and Lassallean circles.

In his historic Critique of the Gotha Programme, originally drafted at the time of the Unity Congress in 1875, Marx heaped much gall on the sugary “unity”, and condemned the many concessions made to the Lassalleans. In the period of the Anti-socialist laws in Germany (1878-1890), which were introduced after two anarchist attempts on the life of the Kaiser, Marx and Engels had been emphatic about not criticising the Lassalleans in the German party in public, although engaging in a vigorous polemic with them via internal party circulars and letters. Only in 1891, when the Gotha Programme was finally abandoned at the time of the Halle Party Congress, did Engels finally feel compelled to issue Marx’s critique for publication, considering it to have ‘far-reaching significance’ in its settling of accounts with Lassallean economic principles and tactics.

In the United States, however, the battle between the two factions would come very much out into the open.



The ‘Iron law of wages’

Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme and the letter to Bracke which accompanied it of May 5, 1875, and Engel’s letter to Bebel of March 18-28, 1875, are readily available and provide a very comprehensive analysis of Lassalleanism. We will therefore restrict ourselves here to merely providing an overview of Lassalle’s doctrine, sufficient to provide a backdrop to the uneasy relationship between the so-called ‘political’ (Lassallean) and ‘trade union’ (Marxist) wings of the socialist movement in the United States in the seventies and eighties.

In the substantially Malthusian ‘Iron law of wages’ Lassalle held that workers’ wages would always oscillate around a bare minimum since any temporary improvement in wages would inevitably produce a higher birth rate amongst workers. This would then increase competition for jobs and bring wages back down again. Conversely, if wages sunk too low, the birth rate would go down, emigration would increase and wages would creep back up again. According to Marx on the other hand, as outlined in the first volume of Capital, wages were more or less determined by the relative proportion of the industrial reserve army to those in work, which meant, for example, that wages could potentially rise during a period of increased birth-rate if a contemporaneous boom was employing extra workers in a still greater proportion, and if workers had sufficient strength to impose the rise.

If one important consequence to be drawn from Marx’s analysis was the importance of linking up the struggle of the unemployed proletariat with the employed proletariat, another was that trade union activity was necessary and could produce important results.

Lassalle’s view of the worthlessness of economic battles would actually lead him to oppose the repeal of the anti-combination laws, and this would be branded by Marx as particularly pernicious since it did not just follow from Lassalle’s mistaken theory of the ‘Iron law of wages’, but expressed his refusal to accept and encourage the direct expression of working-class self activity.

The ‘Iron Law’, which deemed any working class defensive action as entirely useless, implied there was left but one alternative to the worker, and in particular to artisans or skilled craftsmen: they should become entrepreneurs themselves, set up their own cooperatives, and since they did not possess capital, the state should provide it. As one of Lassalle’s biographers commented, Lassalle wasn’t so much a Marxian (although he thought he was) as a Hegelian. “He does not think in terms of a class struggle. What he wants is not the socialist State, but the social State; not the State of oppositions but the State of compromises”.

Lassalle’s view reflected the class relations in Germany at the time; a country where the pace of capitalist development had been slowed down by a canny landed aristocracy which used its highly elaborate and all encompassing state structure (endorsed on a philosophical level by the Hegelian professors, who were State employees themselves) to bind both the bourgeoisie and proletariat to its requirements by means of state planning and social reform, with the state operating as the ultimate arbiter while at the same time playing off the different classes against each other. And perhaps Lassalle was to some extent an unwitting dupe in this drama. Bismarck was only too happy to appear as an aristocratic ally of the oppressed workers against the bourgeoisie, and adapt elements of Lassalle’s programme to the needs of the class he represented. And by combining these elements with the work of the conservative monarchist Rodbertus, who was briefly Prussian minister in 1848, Bismarck would forge a formidable weapon to destabilise the rising workers’ movement: ‘State Socialism’.

Lassalleanism, with its notion of workers setting up co-operatives funded by the State, would all too readily lend itself to the notion that any State, rather than a workers’ State in particular, could enact socialist reforms.

And since it was very much the particular contradictions of Bismarck’s Germany that were thus reflected in Lassalle’s ideas, their survival on American soil would very much depend on them being taken up by his disciples in the German émigré community.



The Formation of the Workingmen’s Party of the U.S.

On the occasion of Sorge’s resignation from the International in 1874, Engels wrote to him on September 12: “with your resignation the old International is anyhow entirely wound up and at an end. And that is well. It belonged to the period of the Second Empire, during which the oppression reigning throughout Europe prescribed unity and abstention from all internal polemics to the workers’ movement, then just awakening” (Sept 12-17, 1874).

The time had come to form a class party. The Workingmen’s Party of the United States would arise as the first Marxist party in the United States two years later, and would be mainly composed of sections and ex-sections of the First International. In fact it was very much a case of a handover from the one to the other and the founding unity congress of the new party took place within a week of the congress which had formally dissolved the International, and at the same venue in Philadelphia.

Within the new party, after various attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable, the earlier controversies that had raged between the Lassallean and Marxist factions inevitably broke out again. The language and ideas of the new party platform were Marxist, and were indeed mainly drawn up by Sorge, but it was nevertheless the result of a compromise. If it adopted the trade union policies of the International, it was obliged to accept the Lassallean request that a national instead of an international organization be established. On the key issue of political action and trade unionism, the platform took the position: “The political action of the party is confined to obtaining legislative acts in the interest of the working class proper. It will not enter into a political campaign before being strong enough to exercise a perceptible influence”. The view that an organisation of workers in economic organisations needed to be in place before an effective battle could be mounted in the political sphere was supported by the old members of the International (Sorge, McDonnell, Otto Weydemeyer, and Speyer).

The national executive committee, eventually to be located in Chicago and dominated by the Lassalleans, opposed this line and a resolution was passed empowering it to permit local sections to enter political campaigns when circumstances were considered favourable. In addition, despite the objections of Sorge and the other Marxists, the platform endorsed the Lassallean principle of governmental transfer of industrial enterprises to producers’ cooperatives.

While the Lassalleans’ insisted on the inherently conservative nature of the trade unions, and that the party’s fight to win political power effectively made the unions redundant, the Marxists insisted that there was no conflict between trade unionism and political action, and that the two actually complemented each other. To be sure, the trade union viewpoint tended to be narrow, but it was not inherently hostile to socialism and, with the party’s guidance, the trade unions could be brought to see that improvements such as higher wages and shorter hours, while important, would not fundamentally solve the problems of the working class under capitalism. The struggle for these immediate demands was however important, both to better the conditions of the working class and to train them in the movement for socialism.

The Marxists could point to clear evidence of adhering to this position in their practical work. Increasingly strong connections had been established between the Marxists and Ira Steward and the Eight Hour League (‘The Boston Group’) after the latter had split from the Greenbackers in 1872. Sorge had mailed Steward manuscript copies of translations of complete sections of Capital, including the complete section “The Working Day”, and Steward informed Sorge that he and George E. McNeil, the spokesman for the New England labor movement and fellow leader of the eight-hour movement, were greatly impressed by what they had read and wanted to familiarize Americans with it. In Sorge’s words, “with the help of the Old Internationalists, the leaders of the Boston Eight Hour League were induced to enter the Workingmen’s Party. This gave rise to well-justified hopes for expanding the party and its principles in the New England states. The Executive in Chicago, the West, had no comprehension of the situation and through its clumsiness forced the new Englanders out again”.

The objections of the Marxists to the party engaging in premature electoral campaigns would be ignored and the party’s Lassallean-dominated executive committee along with its pro-Lassallean corresponding secretary, Philip Van Patten, pressed on regardless. New Haven would accordingly nominate a ticket in the fall election of 1876 and it was soon followed by sections in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Chicago, all in defiance of the official platform. When the electoral results showed that the socialist candidates in New Haven, Chicago, and Cincinnati had gained a large vote and that six Party members had been elected in Milwaukee, the Lassalleans were more than ever determined to ignore the official regulations. They mounted an intensified attack on the Marxist view that political action should await the formation of strong trade unions.

The Lassalleans now felt strong enough to try and deprive the Marxists of their control of the party’s English speaking organ, the Labor Standard, which was under the editorship of the Marxist J.P. McDonnell. Various dirty tricks, including manipulation of funds and control of the printing press were deployed to try and remove this important mouthpiece from the Marxists, but it continued to advocate a pro-union stance, which it backed up with the publication of articles by Engels, giving news of trade union activities and labor struggles in Europe.

Whilst all this was going on the great uprising of 1877 broke out, and further successes at the polls in 1877 appeared to confirm the Lassallean perspective on the value of electoral intervention. Over the opposition of the former internationalists, the Lassalleans summoned a special convention (Sorge, McDonnell, Weydemeyer, and Speyer would refuse to attend) in Newark, New Jersey, on December 26, 1877, where the “political action” socialists gained complete control of the party. The Labour Standard was stricken from the list of the party’s organs and, in Sorge’s words, ‘a thorough cleanout of the rest of the Internationalists took place (…) the statutes, the program, and the name of the organization were changed and manipulated after the famous overseas model’. The Socialist Labor Party was born.

The ‘famous overseas model’ which Sorge referred to was the German SDP, and he would further comment that “It is well known that at the German unity congress in Gotha the Lassalleans stamped their program and tactics with their coloring and their ideas, but that the Eisenachers, the German Internationalists, soon took over the leadership of the later admirable development of the Socialist Party of Germany. In the United States the situation was reversed. At the unity congress in Philadelphia the American Internationalists for the most part enforced their views (even though they were in the two-to-five minority). After a short time, however, they saw their views weakened, ignored, and finally completely changed by the new party and its representatives. The Old Internationalists saw the danger in this process within the new organization during the years 1876-1878. Their warnings and protests were answered arrogantly or not at all. Under these conditions they viewed their activities as pure Sisyphean labor. So they withdrew more and more, mostly into the trade unions, and so cleared the field for the pure socialistic agitation of the younger immigrants who occupied and ruled it from then on” (Sorge).

Sorge, McDonnel, Weydemeyer, and Speyer would thus withdraw from the party to join with Ira Steward, George E. McNeill and George Gunton in forming the International Labor Union.

Since we have already referred to this organisation in the last chapter of this study in Communist Left no. 44/45, we will merely add that one of the instructions which the Hague Congress issued to the General Council of the International, when the latter moved to New York City in 1872, was that it should concentrate on establishing, precisely, an international labor union. According to P.S. Foner, “Although its life was only five years and it did not survive 1882, the International Labor Union is important for what it represented and what it attempted to do. It was the first great effort to organize all unskilled workers in one union and by uniting them with the trade unions of skilled workers to achieve nationwide labor solidarity irrespective of nationality, sex, race, creed, color, or religion”.



The Socialist Labor Party

The now renamed party, reorganised mainly with a view to conducting political campaigns, met with considerable success at the polls during the Spring and Fall elections in 1878. The vote in Chicago in the spring election was about 8,000 and two socialist aldermen were elected. In the following Fall the Socialists in Chicago elected four members to the legislature, one senator and three assemblymen. By the beginning of 1879, the party had grown to about 100 sections in 25 different states, with a total membership of 10,000, and the election success continued. But this was to be the high water-mark. The Marxist warnings about a precipitate rush into electoral politics without sufficient preparation and without trade union support would soon be proved correct. The Socialist vote in the autumn elections in Chicago in 1879 fell from 12,000 to 4,800 and the “political action” socialists were quick to attribute this to the recovery of the economy. As Philip Van Patten, the party’s national secretary would put it: “The plundered toilers are rapidly being drawn back to their old paths, and are closing their ears to the appeals of reason. They are selling their birthright for a mess of pottage by rejecting the prospect of future emancipation in their greed for the trifling gains of the present”. But, Lassallean though he was, he would equally now make a concession to the Marxists, declaring “The only reliable foundation today is the trade union organization (…) And while political efforts of a spasmodic nature will often achieve temporary success, yet the only test of political strength is the extent to which trade union organization backs up the political movement”.

He was indeed correct to say that the party’s electoral successes were in no small part due to the support they had received from the trade unionists, and in areas where this was lacking the results were dismal. In Chicago, where the party had its most resounding electoral successes, Albert R. Parsons, founding member of the International Labour Union and also elected president of the Amalgamated Trade and Labor Unions of Chicago and Vicinity, had been a key instigator in the forging of a formal alliance between the trade unions and the Socialist Party.



The split in the SLP

In 1880, the organized Socialist movement split into two irreconcilable factions; this event, as well as being due to the differences already described, was accelerated by two events that occurred in that year.

The first involved a socialist candidate in the local elections in Chicago being fraudulently deprived of his seat by the election judges, evidencing that the bourgeoisie could manipulate the electoral machinery of democracy to obtain the results it desired.

The second event was the split in the Socialist Party prompted by the manner of participation in the presidential elections of 1880. The majority was in favour of an alliance with the gGreenbackers, who called for government credit to fund producers’ co-operatives, a request analogous to what the Lassaleans were calling for, and thus of interest to sections of the Socialist Labor Party.

The Greenback movement, which for many years “had led a quiet life in the Far West”, reappeared in a new form in the late 1870s. According to Sorge: “knowing full well that they could not find a large following in the industrial East without major concessions to the workers, they added a few labor demands to their program – it was only on paper anyway – and with this induced the SLP executive to enter the alliance with them and send a strong delegation to the greenbackers’ nominating convention in Chicago during the summer of 1880” (…) “ironically enough, by the time the Socialists had made up their minds to work with the Greenback-Labor coalition, the workers had already left the movement”.

Indeed, the result of the Executive’s alliance with the greenbackers was the walkout of the Chicagoans, who in Sorge’s estimation were “the strongest and most active group of progressive workers, who rejected any kind of alliance with the ‘reformers’.” This group with Albert Parsons at their head, and taking the trade unions with him, proceeded to nominate their own independent candidates in the local elections and the party was greatly weakened by their secession and its consequences, which would involve anarchism being seen as a viable alternative.



The Workers Militias

A further reason for the split had been the position the executive had taken towards the ‘Educational and Defensive societies’ (Lehr und Wehr Vereine) which had been organised by the socialists of Chicago and Cincinnati.

Although these workers’ militias, mainly composed of members of the SLP, had started to form in 1875 they became much more widespread in the wake of the repression following the Great Strike of 1877, during which the combined forces of the police, territorial militias and the federal army launched violent attacks against the workers. In Chicago workers had been targeted for particularly brutal repression due to their highly organised support for the strike. At a meeting of the furniture workers “the infamous Chicago police broke in, dispersed its members, killed one union official, and laid the groundwork for the bitter and justified hate of the Chicago workers for the nightstick [truncheon] heroes” (Sorge). After 1877 great fortified armouries were built in the large industrial cities, and the minds of military men were quickly directed towards methods of riot control and numerous pamphlets were issued on the subject.

For several years it wasn’t very wise for workers who wanted to keep their jobs to join trade unions, or support radical movements; many were forced to sign a pledge they wouldn’t join the unions, or even support the eight-hours movement. The inevitable result was that the workers’ movement was forced underground. Sorge viewed the demise of the International Labor Union as partially conditioned by the workers’ need for secrecy; especially in the company enclaves in which “whole towns – landed property, houses, schools, churches, everything without exception – belonged to the factory owners, which in such places ruled as despotically as the Czar of Russia”.

Enormous pressure was being applied to workers, their organizations and the movement in general, up to and including physical violence and killings, and this meant that many workers viewed armed self-defence and consequently armed political action – and the Paris Commune was still fresh in people’s minds – as a reasonable response. Many saw the secret organisation in the workers’ militias, the acquisition of arms and the drilling in the woods, as preparation for the forthcoming final battles with capitalism – the revolution – in which they meant to meet the police with guns and bombs.

The national executive committee of the party was opposed to these essentially military organisations. According to Van Patten, in his report to the convention: “As they carried the red flag and acknowledged their socialistic tendencies the public were informed that the socialists were determined to accomplish by force what they could not obtain by the ballot”.

In 1878 all members of the SLP in these clubs were ordered to leave.

The sponsors of the military labor organizations resented this interference of the executive committee, and when the convention assembled they moved for a vote of censure against the latter. The motion was adopted by a small majority after a heated debate. On the whole, however, the convention was dominated by the moderate rather than the radical elements, and the latter soon developed an open dissatisfaction with the party administration.



The Social Revolutionary Clubs

In November 1880, a number of members of the New York sections of the party left the organization and formed a Social Revolutionary Club, which adopted a platform modelled in the main after the Gotha programme of the German Social Democratic Party, but interspersed with some violent anarchistic phrases. The leading spirit of the new movement (according to an early history of American socialism by Morris Hillquit) was Wilhelm Hasselmann, who had been one of the representatives of the Lassallean party in the unity negotiations at the Gotha Congress, and had been described by Engels in a letter to Sorge as having visibly discredited himself, along with the other Lassallean deputies, in the Reichstag. It was after his expulsion from the German party in 1880, following a joint declaration against Bebel and parliamentarism, that he would emigrate to the United States and agitate for the Social Revolutionary Club in New York. Soon other revolutionary clubs sprang up in Boston, Philadelphia and Milwaukee, all cities with a large immigrant population who were particularly receptive to anarchist ideas after the experiences of repression in their homelands and the new and bitter experiences since their arrival in the United States. Of greatest significance were the Chicago clubs of which Paul Grottkau, August Spies, and Albert R. Parsons were the leading members.

“A national convention of Social Revolutionary Clubs was held in Chicago in 1881. The meeting was called by the New York club, which had participated in a London congress, where efforts were made to revive the International Working People’s Association (IWPA) –the so-called Black International – the organization of anarchists founded by Bakunin. Returning from the London convention, where they had affiliated their club with the IWPA, the New York Social Revolutionaries brought back with them the doctrine of “propaganda by deed”. They advocated conspiratorial action and individual terror against the ruling class as the only way to rouse the masses to revolt”.

“The 1881 convention of the Social Revolutionary clubs did not result in a unified organization, but a name – the Revolutionary Socialist Party – and a platform were adopted. The platform urged the organization of trade unions on “Communistic” principles and asserted that aid should be given only to those unions which were “progressive” in character. The platform also denounced the ballot as “an invention of the bourgeoisie to fool the workers” and recommended independent political action only in order to prove to workers “the iniquity of our political institutions and the futility of seeking to reconstruct society through the ballot.” The chief weapon to be used in combating the capitalist system was the “armed organizations of workingmen who stand ready with the gun to resist encroachment upon their rights” (Foner).

The features of the new movement continued to fluctuate between a radical socialism and an out and out anarchism.

A faithful expression of the heterogeneous movement was Johann Most, a disciple of Dühring and translator of an abbreviated (but appalling, according to Marx) version of Das Kapital. Elected twice to the German Reichstag, and twice incarcerated for ‘riotous speeches’, in 1878, immediately after the enactment of the 1878 anti-socialist law, he was expelled from Berlin.

In London he started to publish Die Freiheit (Freedom) which even if considered as a semi-official organ of the SPD, smuggled illegally into Germany, soon became a vehicle for Most’s anarchist views, especially after his expulsion, along with the aforementioned Wilhelm Hasselmann, from the SPD in 1880.

In a letter to Sorge of 19 September, 1879, Marx says that while Bernstein (Aaron, uncle of Eduard) and others had criticised Most’s paper for being “too revolutionary”, he and Engels “reproach him because it has no revolutionary content but only revolutionary phraseology. We reproach him not for criticising the German Party leaders, but first for making public row instead of conveying his opinions to them, as we do, in writing, i.e., in letters”. In another letter Engels characterises Die Freiheit’s content as ‘empty shrieking’, and he considered Most’s ambition to be to publish “the most revolutionary paper in the world, but this is not achieved by just repeating the word revolution in every line”.

In 1881, after publishing an article glorifying the assassination of Tsar Alexander II and calling for the deed to be emulated, Most was imprisoned and sentenced to hard labor for 16 months. It was shortly after he had served out this sentence that Most arrived in New York.

The great mass-meeting arranged for Most’s reception in the large hall of the Cooper Union Institute in December 1882 turned into a veritable ovation for the “victim of bourgeois justice,” and his tour of propaganda through the principal cities of the country in the early part of 1883 resembled a triumphal procession.

To quote Foner again: “Most helped pave the way for a congress of American anarchists at Pittsburgh in October, 1883. Twenty Six cities were represented at this convention where the International Working People’s Association was formed. Most, Parsons and Spies were its outstanding delegates”.

This new anarchist movement, reborn on American soil with a more pro-union stance, would prove an outlet for the workers’ anger and revolutionary sentiments, within the narrow limits of individualism and voluntarism.

After the events of Haymarket in 1886, the bourgeois state would bring the full weight of its repressive apparatus down on the worker’s movement.

We will trace the sequence of events leading up to those events in a subsequent chapter, and also plot the later course of the Socialist Labor Party as it navigated its way through these events.

(to be continued)

The Economic and Social Structure of Russia Today



“Struttura economica e sociale della Russia d’oggi”,

in Il Programma Comunista, no 10, 1955 to 4, 1956



(continues from issue 42)



Part One

Struggle for power in the two revolutions



1 – The 1914 War

The relationship between the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 cannot be ignored. This well‑known point is one we have recalled on an infinite number of occasions. The entire historical development which ties the Marxist parties of Europe and of Russia together, and which links the prospects for the future that had formed to the particularities of their internal political life and faction struggles, were all shaped by that volcanic historical crisis, that political earthquake in August 1914 from which 41 years now separate us.

Although our intention here is not to write history and the essential things everybody already knows, we nevertheless still need to recall the main points.

In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, a mainly Slav province which had passed from the Ottoman to the Austrian Empire after the Balkan Wars, on the 28th of June Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the elderly Franz Joseph, is passing through in an open‑topped car with his wife. They are mortally wounded by shots from the revolver of a young Bosnian nationalist.

In the tragic weeks that followed, the government in Vienna announced that the assassin and his accomplices had confessed under interrogation to being agents of the independence movement and the Serbian government. On 23 July, supposedly secretly spurred on by Kaiser Wilhelm, the Austrian foreign minister would issue its historic ultimatum to Serbia, imposing a series of political and internal police measures. A 48 hours deadline was set. Serbia’s response was weak in tone but it didn’t agree to all of the conditions. On the 23rd, Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, attempted to mediate by calling a conference. This was rejected by Germany. On the 28th, a month after the assassination, Austria declared war on Serbia.

On the 29th Russia mobilized, on the 30th Germany did the same, on two frontiers. On the 31st Germany ordered Russia to revoke the mobilization order within 24 hours, and after receiving no response it declared war on the 1st of August. On the 3rd it declared war on France, on the 4th it invaded Belgium but without a declaration of war. Only on 6 August did Austria declare war on Russia.

As we all know, the Belgian government decided to mount an armed resistance to the invasion and Great Britain declared war on Germany for having violated international pledges to respect Belgian neutrality. Count Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Foreign Minister, famously countered this by asking how Britain could go to war over ‘a scrap of paper’.

It would later emerge that the British, only a few days before, had assured Berlin it would not intervene if Germany went to war with France and Russia, tacitly encouraging the Kaiser’s government to launch itself into the abyss.

But before we look at the immediate effects of the war on Russia, which is the subject of our present inquiry, we need to mull over another aspect of that tragic month: the collapse of International socialism.

The circumstances at the time, it should be borne in mind, were very different from when war broke in 1939. In 1914 there was a clash in every country between two clear alternatives: the internationalist class position on the one hand, and a unanimously national, patriotic position on the other. And this really was the case everywhere. By 1939 everything had changed, and in given countries there was to be found a bourgeois defeatism which founded movements against the war based on being open “partisans of the national enemy”. In the first historical cycle nationalism would triumph, in the second it split into two nationalisms. The cycle in which internationalism will get back on its feet is yet to happen.



2 – Nightmarish Collapse

Two days after Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia, the German socialist party issued a powerful anti‑war manifesto condemning it as «deliberately calculated to provoke war», and declaring that «not a single drop of German soldier’s blood must be sacrificed to the Austrian despot’s lust for power».

But by the time the International Socialist Bureau was summoned to an emergency meeting in Brussels on the 29th and 30th July, the situation was already coming to a head. Old Victor Adler, the leader of the Austrian socialists, would say in the opening address: «We are already at war. Don’t expect any further action from us. We are under martial law. Our newspapers are suppressed. I am not here to deliver a speech to the meeting but to tell you the truth that now, as hundreds of thousands of men march towards the borders, any action is impossible».

Bebel, who had died at the end of 1913, was no longer around; for the Germans Haase and Kautsky attended and debated directly with Jaurès and Guesde on the remote possibility that the war between Austria and Serbia might not necessarily extend to the rest of Europe (magnificent the stance of the few socialists in Serbia).

A general strike against mobilization was proposed only by Keir Hardie (the small British Socialist Party taking a not unworthy stance as well) and by Balabanoff, representing Italy along with Morgari. And who met this with a frosty response? The orthodox Marxist, Jules Guesde: «A general strike would only be effective in countries where socialism is strong, thus facilitating the victory of backward nations over the progressive ones. What socialist would want the invasion of his country, its defeat at the hands of a more retrograde country?».

Lenin was not there, but in a village in the Carpathians with his wife who was sick; Rosa was suffering from a heart complaint. Magnificent was the adroit and non‑orthodox Jaurés, thundering out at a great mass‑meeting with the immense crowd echoing the call: Down with war! Down with War! Long Live the International! Two days later the nationalist Vilain would kill the great tribune with two revolver shots, in Paris.

The only thing the meeting could do was to bring forward to the 9th August the world socialist congress which was due to take place in Vienna on the 23rd. But, as Wolfe correctly pointed out, those ten days would shake the world a lot more than the decades that followed [B.D.Wolfe, “Three who made a revolution”, New York, 1948].

Meanwhile between 31 July and 4 August in Berlin there were back to back meetings of the socialist party leadership and parliamentary group, with their 110 strong contingent of deputies in the Reichstag.

Mueller was dispatched to Paris where they considered the same question, although most of the French comrades said: France has been attacked, we have to vote Yes to war credits, and you Germans No. In Berlin 78 votes to 14 decided in favour of war credits with a declaration declining responsibility for the war. On the 4th all 110 were registered as voting for the credits (including the 14, amongst whom the president of the German Social Democratic Party Haase, and even Karl Liebknecht, for discipline’s sake) though one, just one, Fritz Kunert from Halle, slipped out of the Chamber before the vote.

The same day press dispatches from Paris brought the same baleful news: war credits for national defence passed unanimously.

In the two capitals crowds demonstrated in the streets to the cry of Up the War! Trotsky was in the capital of Austria at the time, where he was astonished to hear the cries of exalted joy from the young demonstrators. What ideas are inflaming them? he asked himself. The national ideal? But isn’t Austria the very negation of any national ideal? But Trotsky always put his faith in the masses, and in his autobiography he found an entirely optimistic explanation for this agitation aroused by the mobilization, a leap in the dark by the dominant classes.



3 – Seven Theses on War

Following his eventful crossing from Austria – where he was an enemy alien – into neutral Switzerland, Lenin was without reliable news on the stance taken by the Russian socialists. It was said that all the social democrats in the Duma, Mensheviks included, had refused to vote for war credits. But some things still stuck in his craw: in the pre‑vote debate, Kautsky, who he still considered his teacher, had opined for abstention, but afterwards, with a thousand and one sophisms, he would justify and defend the vote in favour set by the majority. Lenin then learned that in Paris Plekhanov had become a propagandist for enrolment into the French army. For days Lenin was consumed with rage and fury until finally he adjusted to the necessity of having to start all over again, and to defenestrate the new traitors. As soon as he could get six or seven Bolshevik comrades together, he presented them with seven concise theses on war. There was him, Zinoviev and their partners, three Duma deputies and perhaps the French-Russian Inessa Armand as well.

One: the European war has the clearly defined character of a bourgeois, imperialist and dynastic war.

Two: The conduct of the leaders of the German Social-Democratic Party, in the Second International (1889‑1914), who have voted for war credits and repeated the bourgeois-chauvinist phrases of the Prussian Junkers and the bourgeoisie, is a direct betrayal of socialism.

Three: The conduct of the Belgian and French Social-Democratic leaders, who have betrayed socialism by entering bourgeois governments, is just as reprehensible.

Four: The betrayal of socialism by most of the leaders of the Second International signifies the ideological and political bankruptcy of the International. This collapse is mainly caused by the present prevalence within it of petty-bourgeois opportunism.

Five: false and unacceptable are the justifications given by the various countries for their participation in the war, namely: national defence, defence of civilization, of democracy and so on.

Six: It is the first and foremost task of Russian Social-Democrats to wage a ruthless, all‑out struggle against Great-Russian and tsarist-monarchist chauvinism, and against the sophisms used by the Russian liberals and constitutional democrats, and a section of the populists, to defend such chauvinism. From the viewpoint of the working class and the toiling masses of all the peoples of Russia, the defeat of the tsarist monarchy and its army, which oppress Poland, the Ukraine, and many other peoples of Russia would be the lesser evil by far.

Seven: the slogans of Social-Democracy at the present time must be all‑embracing propaganda, involving the army and the theatre of hostilities as well, for the socialist revolution and the need to use weapons, not against their brothers, the wage slaves in other countries, but against the reactionary and bourgeois governments and parties of all countries... the urgent necessity of organising illegal nuclei and groups in the armies of all nations... appeal to the revolutionary consciousness of the masses against the traitorous leaders... agitation in favour of republics in Germany, Poland and Russia.

The text was adopted with a few amendments, or rather additions:

1. An attack on the so‑called “centre” which had capitulated in the face of the opportunists and which needed to be kept out of the new international. This direct attack on Kautsky may not have been written by Lenin.

2. A recognition that not all workers had succumbed to war fever and in many cases had been hostile to chauvinism and opportunism. This was possibly prompted by news about those countries where part of the movement was on the right path (Serbia, Italy, England, some Greek and Bulgarian groups, etc).

3. An additional note on Russia whose source, Wolfe believes, is undoubtedly Lenin, in that it constitutes «a characteristic formulation of the requirements and of the slogans of a democratic revolution in Russia». And we wanted to put it here because it takes us directly to our main theme: «Struggle against the tsarist monarchy and Great-Russian, Pan‑Slavist chauvinism, and advocacy of the liberation of and self‑determination for nationalities oppressed by Russia, coupled with the immediate slogans of a democratic republic, the confiscation of the landed estates, and an eight‑hour working day».

A few weeks after the war broke out in 1914 the view of revolutionary Marxists is therefore clear.

In Europe: liquidation of the Second International and foundation of the Third.

In Europe: struggle to liquidate the war not through peace but by the overthrow of capitalist class rule (socialist revolution), subject to the toppling of the dynastic regimes.

In Russia: war lost, end of Tsarism, democratic revolution effected through radical measures. Transition to a socialist revolution only in tandem with a similar European revolution.



4 – No “New Theory”

This cycle is recounted in the official Stalinist History of the Bolshevik Party in such a way as to conclude wiht Lenin, confronted with the opportunist collapse of the European movement, supposedly creating the “new theory” of revolution in one country. It is therefore in this sense, and to this end, that it lays claim to Lenin’s entire inexhausible crusade against the social-patriots: «such as the Bolsheviks’ theoretical and tactical conception regarding the questions of war, peace and revolution».

It is instead abundantly clear, using pretexts even more specious than Guesde’s and Kautsky’s, that the astounding orders given to the Communist Parties during the Second World War, who were hurled onto a joint front with the bourgeoisies, left not a single stone of Lenin’s theory of war, peace and revolution standing, insofar as it was just the “old theory” of Marx, which the traitors of 1914 had similarly torn to shreds, and which Lenin, to their eternal shame, had gloriously reinstated. What else is the victory of the retrograde country which Guesde talked about in Brussels if not the eternal lie of the victory of the fascists over France or England which had to be avoided at all costs?

The official falsification relies on two of Lenin articles from 1915 and 1916. The 1915 one is entitled “On the Slogan for a United States of Europe”. Lenin, quite rightly, had a number of reservations about this slogan. The way it appeared in the seven theses was as republican United States of Europe, coordinated with the call for republics in Russia, Germany and Poland. (Today all done, but when will we add England to the list?). Later on the Party rightly decided to postpone this political slogan, as it could lead to misunderstandings. According to Lenin the United States of Europe between capitalist States (not just dynastic) is an inadmissible formula; but not bacause it is a pre‑socialist, democratic formula since such demands may still be useful, but because in this case such a body would be reactionary. An excellent and prophetic opinion on the various federations and European leagues propounded on all sides today, Stalinist ones included. «A United States of Europe under capitalism is tantamount to an agreement on the partition of colonies».

Excuse us if we persist in the digression, but today they would be in second place behind America in any case, which now has the lion’s share of that partition. But this just makes the likelihood of a federal Europe being either “reactionary or impossible” even more likely.

Either against America, as Lenin viewed them in 1915, or under America, as we think likely today (or even under Russia, or under an entente between them) the United States of Europe would inevitably be against the colonies and against socialism.

As far as we are concerned, Lenin clearly states, war presents a more revolutionary situation than European federalism (rather different this than adopting the theory, etc, etc, of the various above-mentioned sacresties!)

Our slogan would be United States of the World, says Lenin. But even that doesn’t really suit us, firstly, because it clashes with socialism, «In the second place because it could generate the mistaken opinion that the victory of socialism in one country is impossible, and wrong ideas about the relations such a country would have with other ones».

It is here we want them, these gentlemen. It is the period subsequent to this that official history invokes: «Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible initially in some or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat in that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organized socialist production, will arise against the rest of the capitalist world attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries, [here finishes the citation by the great allies of Roosevelt, and before him Hitler, by the castrators of the revolution and of Lenin’s thinking, but we’ll go on] stirring uprisings in those countries against the capitalists, and in case of need using even armed force against the exploiting classes and their States».



5 – Simultaneous Revolution?

The other citation which the afore-mentioned text would like to put on record is from an article written in Autumn 1916 The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution, in which is openly treated the hypothesis of a capitalist country in which the proletariat has taken power and then conducts a war against countries that are still bourgeois, importing the revolution. This scenario, which we have covered on many occasions, is a million miles away from the ghastly buffoonery of “peaceful co‑existence”, “peaceful emulation” and “defence against aggression”, inasmuch as such a war would be a class war, of unadulterated aggression, and above all an unconcealed declaration to the proletariat of the world to stand by and prepare for the moment when it will be possible to attack the strongholds of capitalist exploitation.

The crude sleight of hand lies in slipping from one of these theses to the other: taking political power in one country – building socialism in one capitalist country where power has been conquered – building socialism just in Russia. And it is this last thing which we mantain belongs in cloud cuckoo land, as will be borne out by the palpable economic facts in the second part of this report.

This then is the load of rubbish which supposedly justifies the new theory (only to then to be quickly bury it, new or not). «This theory differed radically from the conception which was widespread among Marxists in the pre‑imperialist phase of capitalism, when Marxists held that socialism couldn’t win in one country but would triumph at the same time in all the civilized countries». And then: Lenin destroyed this wrong theory, etc, etc.

This is just a fairy tale, every word of it made up, and Lenin had nothing to do with it. And did anyone ever really believe in this fable of simultaneous socialism in all countries anyway? Neither the left, nor with greater reason the right of Mrxism. And the civilized countries, which ones are they then? France, England and America, but Russia – certainly not. And Germany? To hear the bigots of 1914, of 1941, and those of today, who in order to attack the European Defence Community revive that much abused bogeyman of the thuggish, armed German, Germany is more uncivilized... than the Hottentots!

However, before continuing to dispel the central ambiguity that animates the entire narrative of proletarian history ad usum Kraemlini, it is necessary to make an observation. This alleged dualism between two theories, an old and a new one, the one arising from the circumstances of pre‑imperialist capitalism and followed, with related tactics, by the Second International, and the other supposedly discovered and installed by Lenin, and based on the experiences of the most recent imperialist phase (stage), is not a defining mark of the Stalinist brand of opportunism alone.

The opportunism of the 2nd International also had an overblown (and lousy) new theory of its own: one which boasted of having done justice to a forty-eightist and catastrophist Marx, authoritarian and terrorist, and modelled itself not on the bristly, coruscating “red terror doctor”, but an the most honourable parliamentary social-democrat in his top hat and tails (we even saw such creatures in Moscow), who loathed the class party and courted instead the pacifist and gradualist economic unions, ever ready to put the dampers on any mass action, and who finally, between the white fury of Vladimir Ulyanov, and of us lattest dupes, voted through war credits for the imperialist massacre. It was the revisionist theory of Bernstein and Co., singing their eternal, whorish refrain: the... times... have... changed.

So then, the same old story about the old nineteenth century theory of big bearded Karl, and the new twentieth century theory they have the nerve to attribute to Lenin, but which is the legacy of a simian army of bare‑arsed baboons who aren’t even fit to gibber his name; a theory typical of many small groups who don’t like to call themselves Stalinists, because they aren’t aware they are, and who – as we have rammed home on so many occasions – devote themselves to dry‑docking the ship of the revolution which supposedly ran aground because they weren’t around, poor cercopithecoids, to design the new theory, fortified by what Marx didn’t know and Lenin had only just begun to spell out; it is the legacy of the many small groups which every now and again, in a horrible “bouillabaisse” of doctrines and onanistic interpretations announce they are going to “reconstruct the class party”. Let us leave these gentlemen to their execitations (which above all fail to address the capricious aim that really motivates them: of attracting attention) and get back to the Kremlinesque machinations.



6 – Down with Disarmament!

The other contribution to the theory of the “revolution in one country” is drawn by those Moscow bishops’ council from another article, from Autumn 1916, which treats another theme: namely it smashes to smithereens, as the article from 1915 did the United States of Europe, another slogan, in support of disarmament, which the left‑wing elements of the socialist movement, during the war, especially in the Socialist Youth International, were going to launch in opposition to social-chauvinism.

The article is a powerful attack on pacifism, a cansistent theme in Lenin’s work, and thoroughout the decades of Marx’s “old theory”, and inseparable from the desperate resistance which radical Marxists have always mounted against the philanthropic-humanitarian pietism of the radical petty bourgeoisie and libertarians and against the gradualist visions of late nineteenth century reformism, which in a general cesspit of trade-union-big-wig corporativism and democratic electoralism wished to stifle power, violence, dictatorship, wars between States and wars between classes; a contemptible view and a world away from Marxism in its original, unadulterated form, avenged by the nimble fingers of those who patched it back together after it was ripped to shreds by those traitors. Today it must be proposed again, against the collectors of signatures, in the face of the bold supporters of the pen’s mighty crusade against the cannon and the atomic bomb [Cf. “The ‘Disarmament’ Slogan”, October 1916].

In the article “The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution”, which in our expositions (which invent or discover nothing, but only repropose the historical material, endowment of the anonymous, eternal movement, within the framework of well‑defined develop-mental phases) is placed in the right context, here is the passage that suits the officials: «The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production [applica et fac saponem!...]. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all [Lenin’s italics] countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the other countries will remain, for a certain period, bourgeois and pre‑bourgeois. This is bound to create not only friction, but a direct attempt on the part of the bourgeoisie of other countries to crush the socialist State’s victorious proletariat. In such cases, a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war. It would be a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bourgeoisie».

Pure gold, this passage. But so are the sentences which precede it: «The victory of socialism in one country does not at one stroke eliminate all wars in general. On the contrary it presupposes war».

A bit different from claiming, as the Stalinists do, that they are in a socialist country, and therefore preparing universal peace! They are in a bourgeois country, and their pacifism is just as hypocritical as the bourgeoisie when they were anti‑1914, then anti‑1939, and now anti‑third world war (1970?). It will end up the same way.

And then there are the sentences that come immediately after: «Engels was perfectly right when, in his letter of 12 September 1882 to Kautsky, he clearly stated that it was possible for already victorious socialism to wage “defensive wars”. He was alluding in fact to the defence of the victorious proletariat against the bourgeoisie of other countries» [“The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution”, September 1916)]. Poor altar boys! In the very writings they are relying on to show us Lenin giving birth to the new theory, the latter, in one of his typically clear explanations, demonstrates that what he is saying was already well known to the Marxists “of the second pre‑imperialist period”, that is, a good 38 years before; and certainly Engels knew all this not because he dreamed it up that autumn evening, but because he was drawing on the ABC of Marxism, which History gave birth to around 1840.

What interests us is the historical context and overall structure of the article. Since we can’t reproduce it all we will give an idea of its powerful framework.



7 – Youthful Exuberance

Lenin had been struck by Grimm’s theses in the Jugend-Internationale. In the minimum programmes of the old parties there was inserted the item: people’s militia, arming the people. The war had rendered this a topical problem, and it is well‑known that the anarchistic trade unions supported the “refusal to serve” argument. Their spokesman at the Stockholm conference in 1907 was Hervé, who had supported the correct thesis of the general strike in a speech which was theoretically disjointed (and was deemed as such by Lenin). So the young left Marxists resolved to replace the slogan arming the people with disarmament. Lenin was against it.

We should recall that among the socialist youth of Italy at that time the anti‑militarist problem was also being discussed at length; and not only on the theoretical level but in high‑profile trials as well. The idealist individualist stance – I am against the spilling of blood and will not take up arms – was condemned as typically bourgeois. When the question touched on Italy’s entry into the war, we stated that by declaring ourselves neutralist we were misrepresenting our revolutionary position: “neutrality” of the bourgeois State was not our goal, nor a role for it as a mediator, or as a proponent of the absurd idea of universal disarmament, a notion no less bourgeois than that of individual disarmament. In peace and in war we said (shameful to admit we weren’t even aware of Lenin): «We are enemies of the bourgeois State and want to strangle it. Following mobilization, whatever the strength of our forces may be, we won’t offer it neutrality, and we won’t disarm the class struggle».

My young friends and comrades, says Lenin, you want to argue for disarmament because that is the clearest, most decisive, most consistent expression of the struggle against all militarism and all war. But you are wrong. It is a premise which is idealistic, metaphysical, and nothing to do with us: for us being against war is the ultimate point of arrival, not the point of departure. The abolition of war in itself is not a slogan we defend. War is one of the historical facts which mark the stages of the capitalist cycle in its ascent and decline: to abolish war is, fortunately, meaningless, if it weren’t it would mean stopping that cycle before a revolutionary outcome was achieved. But that is how we express it. Lenin goes – sometimes too much – for the concrete. He explains the cases when we are not against war.

First of all he goes into the bourgeois revolutionary wars supported by Marxists. For which see our extensive treatments of the subject [Cf. among others the “Fili del Tempo” which appeared in nos. 10‑14/1950 and 4‑6/1951 of “Battaglia Comunista”, the party’s fortnightly publication at that time]. The thesis that in Europe such wars came to an end in 1871, which was formulated by Marx at the time as «the national armies are as one against the proletariat!», is replaced by Grimm with the “obviously wrong” formula of in the era of this unbridled imperialism national wara are not possible. Lenin would have been happy to put his signature to thas if it had been followed by the words in the European camp, between the European powers, prophetically slapping down the apologetics for French and Italian “national liberation” offered in 1945. His counterblast here is that national wars outside of Europe, in Asia, in the East, are still entirely possible, and indeed they still are today.

Secondly, civil wars are wars which will not end until the division of society into classes ends: another exception to the famous “any” wars.

Finally Lenin mentions the future revolutionary war, which is no longer bourgeois but socialist. So, three kinds of just war, i.e., wars we might have to support. According to Lenin, the correct formulation is as follows: «To accept the defence of the fatherland slogan in the 1914‑16 imperialist war is to corrupt the labour movement with the aid of a bourgeois lie». This response, he says, hits the opportunists much harder than any platonic slogan calling for disarmament or against any defence of the fatherland. He proposed adding that henceforth any war waged by these powers: England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States is bound to be reactionary, and the proletariat must work for the defeat of its ‘own’ government in such wars, taking full advantage of it in order to unleash revolutionary insurrections.

This is a theory which hinges on the entrenched anti‑pacifism of Marx and Engels. So then, Stalinists, what is this new theory? Did the age of full imperialism come to an end in 1939 perhaps? And instead one had to defend the fatherland first in Germany and Austria, deriding it elsewhere – and then in France, England, Italy, in order to save them from Germany? Evidently a third theory is called for, then a fourth and so on ad infinitum; but still the stuck record you love so much spins round and round: the... times... have... changed; the... times... have... changed.

But it is still the same old opportunism, smelling as bad as ever.



8 – Guns and Workers

Since it concerns the youth movement, Lenin, after having said one shouldn’t include the call for disarmament but substitute people’s militia with proletarian militia, points out the importance of learning how to use arms if an insurrection is to be mounted, another point we have been fighting for decades, even if unfortunately we have only seen it applied purely in the service of bourgeois ideologies, in illegal movements, sure, but emanating from bourgeois States and armies. Lenin even mentions the arming of proletarian women. «How will proletarian women react? Only by cursing all war and everything military, only by demanding disarmament? The women of an oppressed and really revolutionary class will never accept that shameful role. They will say to their sons: “You will soon be grown up. You will be given a gun. Take it and learn the military art properly. The proletarians need this knowledge not to shoot your brothers, the workers of other countries, as is being done in the present war, and as the traitors to socialism are telling you to do. They need it to fight the bourgeoisie of their own country, to put an end to exploitation, poverty and war, and not by pious wishes, but by defeating and disarming the bourgeoisie”».

The latter passage is not likely to get quoted by Stalinists. As a matter of fact inviting women to come up with pious wishes is exactly what they do; wishes so pious indeed that they actually invoke Pope Pius XII as the greatest example of a disarmer (and compared to such a rabble, he was a respectable one at that).

In order to get young people to better understand dialectics, which even many oldies still can’t digest, Lenin followed his thesis through, to the point of leaving intact – theoretically – the expression defence of the fatherland and defensive war. One needs to know how to properly interpret a text in such cases. Marxist literature, having established that the catchphrase “against all wars”, so beloved of liberals and libertarians, had no place within it, and that a not always straightforward historical distinction needs to be made between the various wars and different types of war, had nevertheless ended up inheriting, in order to make such distinctions, the common formulation: when attacked you defend yourself. Despite the fact that this is a million miles away from transposing, as do philistines, the piddling little rules of individual morality onto the historical plane, one ended up by calling wars of defence wars which were supported, or at least not sabotaged. It is well known that the First Address of the First International on the Franco-Prussian War contained the expression: On the German side, the war is a war of defence. And in fact it was Napoleon III who had boldly launched the attack. But the fact is that at the end of that historical cycle Marx was more interested in seeing the ruination of Bonaparte than the hated Prussians, and Bonaparte (see the rich harvest of quotations) is considered an ally of the Tsar: nothing would have changed if it was Moltke who had made the first move, and the call had been zur Paris, zur Paris rather than à Berlin! à Berlin!



9 – Fatherland and Defence

So what does Lenin have to say about it, at least in the officially sanctioned Italian translation? [The translation of the citation used here is from the 1964 Progress Publishers English language edition of “The Military Programme”, so it also was officially sanctioned!]. «To accept “defence of the fatherland” in the present war [1916] is no more nor less than to accept it as a “just” war, conforming to the interests of the proletariat – no more or less, we repeat, because invasions may occur in any war. It would be sheer folly to repudiate ‘defence of the fatherland’ on the part of oppressed nations in their wars against the imperialist great powers, or on the part of a victorious proletariat in its war against some Galliffet of a bourgeois State» (General Galliffet, the “Butcher of the Commune”).

We, who would never alter our theory’s “propositions” or “theorems”, but occasionally have the temerity to rearrange their symbols, have italicised the words invasions may occur in any war, to clearly identify our annotation.

Just as the slogan “Oppose all wars” is not dialectical, so no less metaphysical and bourgeois is it to state «We are against wars, unless they are wars of defence, and the national territory is threatened by an enemy invasion, given that the defence of the fatherland is considered sacrosanct by the citizens of every country».

This is in fact the formula of opportunism which explains how on the same day the French and the Germans, in their respective unanimities, voted for national war. The words invasions may occur in any war recalls an article published in Avanti! in 1915, entitled on “Socialism and National Defence” [December 21, republished in “Storia della Sinistra Comunista”, 1912‑1919].

With the stock phrase “duty to defend the nation” you don’t actually just accept some wars, you accept all wars. Once the bourgeois States have issued the order to open fire, ‘over here, and over there’, both territories are in danger; it may happen that one of the armies abandons its own territory for strategic reasons, becoming an “aggressor” in the process, and there are many historical examples of this.

Therefore we draw distinctions between one kind of war and another, and even if we sometimes use popular terms (although in fact we’d like to ban them altogether) such as just or defensive war, to signal a war we support or which we believe to be useful in a revolutionary sense, we are in fact asking ourselves the historical-dialectal question: “is such and such a war in the interests of the proletariat? Does it, as Lenin put it, conform to the interests of the proletariat?” As regards the war in 1914 the answer was No. Nowhere. And though it was clearly a case of a neutral country being attacked, the Belgian socialists were wrong as well; and the brave comrades in no less attacked Serbia were right.

For example in 1849 Marx and Engels supported Austria, which was plainly the aggressor, against little Denmark, and, as the Trieste report on the Factors of Race and Nation clearly shows, they did the same in all of the wars up to 1870. They would have supported the Napoleonic invasions and rejected the characterization of the German wars at the beginning of the century as just, defensive wars, or even as wars of independence, as the bourgeois and petty-bourgeoisie in general viewed it. Back then it was in the interests of the revolution that the first Napoleon should win, and not the Holy Alliance.

However Lenin is always worried that the party, when making decisions, rather than drawing on the overall perspective of our complete, complex, and never sharply dualistic view of living history, might draw instead on stock phrases, which as often as not are bourgeois. We would find it more exact to say not that in given cases we admit the legitimacy of war and the country defended, but that in given times and places when faced with war we will sabotage it, and in others we will defend it. The word ‘country’ is too a‑classist, and Lenin, in the same more widely distributed 1916 theses, puts a nice slant on the sentence in the Manifesto about countries; and us proletarians not having one.

In any case, it is extremely dangerous to adopt slogans of the ‘Disarmament’ variety and it signifies a total relapse into bourgeois ideology.



10 – Victory in One Country

It wasn’t a pointless digression to comment on the all‑out war which broke out in 1914, even if it involved repeating ideas we have expounded on before, mainly with the aim of emphasising that our theory of war and peace is set and hasn’t changed for over a hundred years. As mentioned earlier, it is strictly linked to our historical theme, the revolution in Russia.

Having explained the two texts by Lenin which condemn two fanciful and stupid ideas: the United States of Europe, and global European disarmament, we return to the point which Stalinists have been so keen to distort: the revolution in one country.

When reading our texts, it should be borne in mind they weren’t written just to fill some gap on a library bookshelf, adding another abstract chapter to an abstract subject or discipline, but arose within the life of a bitter dispute which was the historical substructure of a real battle of opposing forces and interests. We are in a living struggle taking place between Lenin and those who supported the war. It is neces