Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
WHO WERE THE ENEMIES IN THE WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST WHOM BOLSHEVISM GREW, GAINED STRENGTH AND BECAME HARDENED?
First of all, and principally, in the struggle against opportunism, which, in 1914, grew definitely into social chauvinism, and finally deserted to the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. This was naturally the chief enemy of Bolshevism within the movement of the working class, and this remains the chief enemy also on an international scale. This enemy claimed, and claims, most of the attention of the Bolsheviks, whose work in this sphere is already well known abroad.
Something else, however, must be said of the other enemy of Bolshevism in the working-class movement. It is not sufficiently known abroad that Bolshevism grew up, formed, and hardened itself in long years of struggle against petit-bourgeois revolutionism, which resembles, or borrows something from, anarchism. It differs in one respect or another, in all essentials, from the conditions and requirements of a consistent proletarian class-struggle. For Marxians it is well-established theoretically—and the experience of all European revolutions and revolutionary movements fully confirms—that the small owner (the social type which in many European countries is very numerous and widespread), who, under capitalism, is constantly oppressed and suffering, and whose conditions of life often take a sharp and rapid turn for the worse, moves easily when faced with ruin to extreme revolutionism, but is incapable of displaying consistency, organization, discipline and firmness. The petit-bourgeois, "gone mad" from the horrors of capitalism, is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The weakness of such revolutionism, its futility, its liability swiftly to transform itself into obedience, apathy, phantasy and even into a "mad" infatuation with some bourgeois "fashionable" tendency—all this is a matter of common knowledge. But a mere recognition in the abstract, a theoretical recognition of these truths, does not at all free revolutionary parties from old mistakes, which always appear unexpectedly in a somewhat new form, in new trappings, in more or less original surroundings.
Anarchism was often a kind of punishment for the opportunist sins of the working-class movement. Anarchism and opportunism were two deformities, one complementary to the other. It is partly due to Bolshevism that, notwithstanding the fact that the population of Russia, in comparison with European countries, is largely of a petit-bourgeois make-up, anarchism exercised a comparatively insignificant influence during the revolutions of 1905-1917; for Bolshevism has always carried on a merciless and uncompromising fight against opportunism. I say, it is partly due to Bolshevism, for a still greater part in weakening the influence of anarchism in Russia was played by the fact that it had the opportunity to flourish in full bloom in the seventies of the nineteenth century, and to reveal completely its uselessness as a guiding theory of the revolutionary class.
Bolshevism, at its inception in 1903, was imbued with the tradition of merciless struggle with petit-bourgeois, semi-anarchist and dilettante-anarchist revolutionism. This tradition always obtained in the revolutionary social democracy, and gained special strength in Russia in 1900-1903, when the foundations were being laid for a mass party of the revolutionary proletariat. Bolshevism continued the fight with the party which, more than any other, expressed tendencies of a petit-bourgeois revolutionism, namely, with the "Socialist-Revolutionaries." This fight was conducted on three main points. First, this party, rejecting Marxism, stubbornly refused to understand (it would be more correct to say that it could not understand) the necessity of a strictly objective estimate of all the class forces and their inter-relation in every political action. Secondly, in its individual terrorism and attempts at assassination, this party saw its peculiar claim to "revolutionism" and "leftness"—a thing which we Marxists rejected. It is, of course, self-evident that we rejected individual terror only from considerations of expediency; for those who would "on principle" condemn the terror of the great French Revolution, or terror generally, on the part of a victorious revolutionary party, besieged by the bourgeoisie of the whole world, had been scorned and ridiculed by Plekhanoff in 1900-1903, when he was a Marxist and revolutionary. Thirdly, the "Socialist-Revolutionaries" thought it "leftness" to giggle at the comparatively insignificant sins of the German Social Democrats, while they themselves imitated the extreme opportunists of that party, as, for example, on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat or the agrarian question.
History, by the way, has now on a large, universal scale, confirmed the opinion always advocated by us, that the revolutionary German Social Democracy (note the fact that Plekhanoff, even in 1900-03, demanded the expulsion of Bernstein from the Party, and the Bolsheviks, always continuing this tradition, in 1913 exposed the whole baseness, knavery and treachery of Legien) was the nearest approximation to that party which is necessary to the revolutionary proletariat to enable it to attain victory. Now, in 1920, after the ignominious failures, bankruptcy and crises during the war and the first years after, it can be seen plainly that of all the Western parties it was the German revolutionary social democracy which gave the best leaders, restored itself, healed it wounds and gained new strength before all the others. This may be seen in the example of both the party of the Spartacists and the left, proletarian, wing of the "Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany," which carries on an incessant fight with the opportunism and characterlessness of the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Ledebours, and Crispiens.
If we now take a general view of the historical period now completed—namely, from the Paris Commune to the first Socialist Soviet Republic—we shall see in very clear perspective the whole attitude of Marxism towards anarchism. Marxism was right after all, and, if the anarchists rightly pointed to the opportunism in the conception of the State, a conception pre-dominant in most of the Socialist Parties, it was not the fault of Marxism. First, this opportunism was due to misrepresentation and even downright concealment of Marx's views on the conception of the State. (In my book, The State and Revolution, I called attention to the fact that for thirty-six years, 1875 to 1911, Bebel kept unpublished a letter by Engels which very vividly, pointedly, directly and clearly denounced the opportunism of the popular social-democratic conception of the State.) Secondly, it was the truly Marxian tendencies in the European and American Socialist Parties that were responsible for modifying these opportunist conceptions by accepting Soviet power and recognizing its advantages over bourgeois parliamentary democracy.
There were two instances in which Bolshevism carried on an especially arduous struggle against a "turn to the left" within its own party; one was in 1908, on the question whether or not to participate in the most reactionary "parliament" and in the legal workers' societies, bound by the most reactionary laws and regulations; and again in 1918 (the Brest Treaty) on the question of whether any "compromise" is admissible.
In 1908 the "left" Bolsheviks were expelled from the Party for their stubborn refusal to understand the necessity of participating in the most reactionary "parliament." The "left," among whom there were some very excellent revolutionaries, who subsequently became, and continue to be, prominent members of the Communist Party, sought vindication in the policy of the boycott of the Duma in 1905, a particularly successful experience. When the Czar, in August, 1905, proclaimed the convocation of a consultative "parliament," the Bolsheviks came out with a declaration of boycott, in contradistinction to all the opposition parties and the Mensheviks. The October Revolution of 1905 actually swept away that "parliament." At that time the boycott proved right, not because non-participation in reactionary parliaments is right, but because when we studied the objective situation we saw that it led to the rapid transformation of mass strikes into political, then into revolutionary strikes, and after that, into a rising. Besides, the struggle then was revolving around the question whether to leave it in the hands of the Czar to convoke the first representative assembly or to attempt to take the convocation of the assembly out of the hands of the old government. In so far as there was not, and could not be, the certainty that we were faced with an objective situation developing in a similar direction and as a similar pace the boycott ceased to be sound policy.
The Bolshevik boycott of "parliament" in 1905 enriched the revolutionary proletariat with highly valuable political experience, having shown that, by combining legal with illegal, parliamentary with non-parliamentary, forms of struggle, it may become necessary, and even essential, sometimes to be able to reject parliamentary forms. But to transfer this experience blindly, imitatively, uncritically, into different surroundings and different conditions is the greatest possible mistake. A small error easily corrected [1] was the boycott of the Duma by the Bolsheviks in 1906. Very serious and not at all easy to correct was the mistake of boycotting the Duma in 1907, 1908 and after, when a rapid rising of the revolutionary wave, resulting in an armed insurrection, could not be expected, and when, on the other hand, all the historical circumstances now strengthened by the bourgeois monarchy dictated the necessity of combining legal with illegal forms of work. Now, when we look back upon the complete historical period, whose connection with the following periods has fully revealed itself, it becomes particularly clear that the Bolsheviks would not have been able to preserve, certainly not to strengthen, develop and reinforce the stable nucleus of the revolutionary party of the proletariat in 1908-1914 if they had not succeeded in maintaining by a rigorous struggle, that it is obligatory to participate in the most reactionary parliament and in many other organizations bound by the most reactionary laws (Workmen's Insurance Societies, etc.).
In 1918 things did not go so far as to bring about a "split." The "left" Communists formed a separate group or "faction" within our party, but it was short-lived. The same year, the most prominent representatives of "left Communism," as, for example, Comrades Radek and Bukharin, openly admitted their mistake. It seemed to them that the Brest Treaty was, on principle, inadmissible, and a compromise with imperialists dangerous to the party of the revolutionary proletariat. In truth it was a compromise with imperialists, but it was a compromise which, in the given surroundings, was imperative.
Today, when I hear criticism, for instance by the Socialist Revolutionaries, of our tactics in signing the Brest Treaty, or when I hear the remark of Comrade Lansbury, made by him in a conversation with me: "Our English trade unionists say that they should be allowed compromises, since Bolshevism allowed itself compromises," I usually reply first of all by way of a simple and "popular" comparison:
Imagine that your automobile is held up by armed bandits. You hand them over your money, passport, revolver, the machine. In return you are spared the pleasant company of the bandits. The compromise is plainly there. "Do, ut des" (I "give" you money, arms, the automobile, in order that you "give" me the possibility of going in peace). But one can hardly find a sane man who would pronounce such a compromise "inadmissible on principle," or would proclaim the compromiser an accomplice of the bandits—even though the bandits, having got into the automobile, used it and the fire-arms for new robberies, as was the case with me. Our compromise with the bandits of German imperialism was such a compromise.
But, when the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia, the Scheidemanns (and to a great extent the Kautskians) in Germany, Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler (let alone the Messrs. Renner and Co.) in Austria, the Renaudels, Longuets and Co. in France, the "Independents" and the "Laborites" and the Fabians in England, effected in 1914-1918, and in 1918-1920, compromises with the bandits of their own bourgeoisie, and sometimes with those of the bourgeoisie of the "Allies," against the revolutionary proletariat of their country, that is where these worthies were guilty of aiding and abetting.
The conclusion is clear: To reject compromises on "principle," to reject every admissibility of compromises generally, no matter of what kind, is a piece of childishness hard even to take seriously. He who wishes to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to sift the concrete cases of such compromises which are inadmissible, which stand for opportunism and treachery, and to direct all the force of his criticism against these concrete compromises, mercilessly exposing them, fighting them to a finish, and not allowing "experienced Socialists" and parliamentary Jesuits to dodge and shirk responsibilities by resorting to discussions of "compromises generally." The "leaders" of the British trade unions, as well as of the Fabian Society and the "Independent" Labor Party, use just this method of dodging responsibility for the betrayal they committed. Theirs was a compromise which indicated the worst kind of opportunism, treason and betrayal.
There are compromises and compromises. It is necessary to be able to analyze the situation and the concrete facts of each compromise or of each species of compromise. It is necessary to learn to distinguish the man who gave the bandits money and arms in order to lessen the evil caused by this gentry and to facilitate the business of capturing and shooting them, from the man who gives to bandits money and arms in order to share the booty. In politics it is not always so easy to make distinctions as in this childishly simple little example. But whoever took it into his head that he could contrive for the workers a formula which would give beforehand ready solutions of all cases, or who would assert that in the political experience of the revolutionary proletariat there will be no difficulties, no intricate problems to solve, would be merely a charlatan. To leave no room for misunderstandings, I shall attempt to outline very briefly a few fundamental rules for the analysis of concrete compromises.
The party which compromised with German imperialism by signing the Brest Treaty had been evolving internationalism in deed since the end of 1914. It did not fear to proclaim the defeat of the Czarist monarchy and to repudiate the "defence of the Fatherland" in a war between two imperialist plunderers. The members of this party in the Duma preferred the road to penal servitude in Siberia rather than the road leading to ministerial portfolios in bourgeois governments. The revolution, which overthrew Czarism and established the democratic republic, subjected the party to a new and tremendous test; the party rejected all temporizing with "its own" imperialists, but prepared their overthrow and did overthrow them. Having taken over the political power, not the smallest fragment was left, either of the property of the landlords or of the capitalists. After publishing and repudiating the secret treaties of the imperialists, this party proposed peace to all the peoples, and yielded to the Brest plunderers only after the Anglo-French imperialists had caused our peace proposals to miscarry, and after the Bolsheviks had done everything humanly possible to hasten the revolution in Germany and other countries. That such a compromise made by such a party in such a situation was absolutely correct, becomes clearer and more self-evident to everyone from day to day.
The Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia (like the leaders of the Second International in 1914-20 the world over) began their betrayal by justifying the "defence of the Fatherland," that is, the defence of their marauding bourgeoisie. They continued their betrayal by entering into a coalition with the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary proletariat of their country. Their bloc, first with Kerensky and the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats), then with Koltchak and Denikin in Russia, like the bloc of their confrères abroad with the bourgeoisie of their respective countries, was the bridge which led them to alliances with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Their compromise with the bandits of imperialism consisted from beginning to end in their willing participation in imperialist robbery.
- ↑ What is said of individuals may be said, with necessary modifications, of politics and parties. The wise man is not he who makes no mistakes. There are not, and cannot be, such men. He is wise who makes slight mistakes and who is able to correct them easily and quickly.