«Tarallucci e vino» a Belgrado
Il canovaccio del riammogliamento russo-jugoslavo fu intessuto, come si può ricavare dalle notizie apparse sulla stampa negli scorsi mesi, nelle sale appartate delle ambasciate. Messa a punto la trama e distribuite le parti, la prima scena, che forse rimarrà anche la scena madre, si è svolta all’aeroporto di Belgrado. Il 26 maggio, gli apparecchi di linea russi vi atterravano sotto gli sguardi attenti delle più alte cariche del governo e dell’Unione dei comunisti di Jugoslavia. Appena messo piede sul dominio di Tito senza perdere altro tempo, oltre quello speso nell’abbracciare il «caro compagno Tito» e i «cari compagni membri del governo e dirigenti dell’Unione dei comunisti di Jugoslavia», gli ospiti russi aprivano i rubinetti della eloquenza. La rappresentazione aveva inizio così. Toccava a Nikita Kruscev, segretario del Comitato centrale del P.C.U.S. e capo della delegazione russa nella capitale jugoslava, pronunciare il discorso di saluto ai padroni di casa. Che disse? Tranne qualche passo scabroso, come quello alludente alla cacciata di Tito dal Cominform, il discorso di Kruscev potrebbe essere senza difficoltà retrodatato, poniamo, al 1947, cioè all’epoca del primo matrimonio russo-jugoslavo o, se preferite, stalino-titino, quando Tito era la pupilla degli occhi di Stalin e Togliatti si recava ad ossequiarlo a nome del P.C.I. Dopo il preambolo di prammatica, Kruscev, che da qualche tempo comincia non sappiamo bene perché ad apparirci stranamente somigliante a Pietro Nenni, eleva un lirico canto sul tema della comune lotta russo-jugoslava contro la Germania fascista nella seconda guerra mondiale. Su tale punto ci sarebbe da dire molto, visto che la guerra contro la Jugoslavia, che fu iniziata e conclusa nella prima metà dell’aprile 1941 da Germania e Italia, avveniva mentre era ancora in vigore il patto Stalin-Hitler dell’agosto 1939, e quindi mentre la Russia era alleata del nazifascismo, che invadeva e occupava la Jugoslavia. Allorché, nel giugno 1941, la Germania saltò alla gola dell’ex alleato russo, fu giocoforza per il governo di Mosca fare causa comune con francesi, polacchi, jugoslavi, greci, alla cui sconfitta aveva tranquillamente assistito, e in una certa misura aveva contribuito esportando derrate e materie prime in Germania. Ma in materia di rovesciamento delle alleanze e di saltimbanchismo ideologico abbiamo fresco fresco il romanzo del secondo matrimonio russo-jugoslavo. Lasciamo dunque da parte per ora la lugubre storia di carneficina e di sangue in cui sono racchiusi i rapporti tra l’hitlerismo e lo stalinismo. Tuttavia, occorre dire che all’epoca della stipulazione dell’alleanza russo-tedesca, che pure chiudeva un periodo di violentissima lotta politica che era sfociata nelle guerra di Spagna, i dirigenti del governo russo non ricorsero, pur non rifuggendo dal falsificare freddamente la teoria marxista della guerra imperialistica, ai miserabili mezzi da ciarlatano usati da Kruscev per cancellare la violenta e virulenta campagna sessennale contro il «titoismo». Venendo a parlare della rottura delle relazioni russo-jugoslave, Kruscev osava, con una sfacciataggine introvabile persino nel più incancrenito parlamentare borghese, personalizzare le cause del conflitto e tirare in ballo l’ombra sinistra di Beria, che funge evidentemente da capro espiatorio di turno del Cremlino. Conviene riportare dall’Unità
(28-5-1955) le testuali parole del n. 1 del Partito comunista della U.R.S.S., per mostrare come lo stalinismo scrive la storia di se stesso. «Noi deprechiamo — esclamava enfaticamente Kruscev — quanto è accaduto e respingiamo decisamente tutte le esagerate montature di quel periodo. Per quanto ci riguarda, noi teniamo conto indubbiamente, a proposito di quelle montature, del ruolo di provocazione svolto nelle relazioni tra la Jugoslavia e I’U.R.S.S. dei nemici del popolo Beria, Abakumov ed altri, che da tempo sono stati smascherati. Noi abbiamo effettuato un attento esame dei documenti, sui quali erano basate le gravi accuse e gli insulti che sono stati rivolti allora contro i dirigenti del governo della Jugoslavia. I fatti dimostrano — continuava Kruscev — che questi documenti furono fabbricati da nemici del popolo, agenti detestabili dell’imperialismo, che si erano infiltrati nelle file del nostro partito attraverso l’inganno. Siamo profondamente convinti che il tempo in cui le nostre relazioni erano oscurate è passato». Sono fatti come il discorso di Kruscev, venuto da Mosca a raccontare che la rottura delle relazioni russo-jugoslave e l’espulsione del partito comunista jugoslavo dai ranghi del Cominform fu dovuta alla falsificazione di non si sa quali documenti ad opera dei «nemici del popolo Beria, Abakumov ed altri»; sono fatti del genere a dare l’esatta sensazione delle deficienze dello Stato russo. La forma di Stato più consona agli interessi del capitalismo è, come Lenin insegna in «Stato e Rivoluzione», la repubblica democratica parlamentare. La Russia, dall’avvento al potere di Stalin fino all’assunzione del decorativo Bulganin, ha percorso a passi di gigante, spingendo le masse lavoratrici con lo scudiscio e lo stakhanovismo, tutta quanta l’evoluzione capitalistica, inutilmente mascherata nelle forme del capitalismo di Stato. Quel che manca veramente in Russia è appunto il parlamentarismo democratico, quale lo vediamo nel vecchio occidente capitalista. È proprio nelle situazioni eccezionali, quale è stato il capovolgimento della linea politica seguita per sei anni nei riguardi della Jugoslavia, che i supremi duci del Cremlino debbono sentirne acutamente la mancanza. Noi non siamo affatto settari, non diciamo perciò che il talleyrandismo diplomatico e il saltimbanchismo ideologico, per cui la stessa formula dottrinaria è usata per giustificare due politiche diametralmente opposte, siano monopolio del Cremlino. Un esempio di clamoroso rinnegamento di decisioni politiche importanti, solennemente e pubblicamente adottate, è stato fornito, l’anno scorso, dal rigetto della CED da parte della Francia. Autrice del trattato istitutivo della CED era stata, come si ricorderà, la stessa Francia, ma, allorché lo scaltro gioco del Parlamento e del governo di Parigi ne provocò l’affondamento, riuscì oltremodo difficile, se non impossibile, individuare precisamente il settore politico che potesse essere indicato come il responsabile del voto negativo. Ciò perché quasi tutti i partiti rappresentanti in Parlamento si divisero furbescamente all’epoca in partigiani e oppositori della CED. Simili trucchi, dietro ai quali la classe dominante manovra, non vista, le sue pedine politiche, non sono concessi dal rigido strumento di governo, costituito dal partito unico, che nel caso della Russia è il P.C.U.S.
E di essi sì, che ne avrebbero bisogno gli sprovveduti machiavelli del Cremlino, allorché si presentano situazioni critiche nelle quali bisogna trasformare un Hitler da feroce nemico in amico oppure purgare un Tito dalle eresie imputategli e rifarne uno specchiato cavaliere della fede. In siffatti casi un meccanismo parlamentare sarebbe molto utile al Cremlino.
Nell’impossibilità di ricorrere al gioco della contrapposizione dei gruppi parlamentari «liberamente eletti dal popolo» e alla alchimia delle votazioni delle camere elettive, i parlamentari senza parlamento che hanno in pugno le redini del P.C.U.S. e del governo di Mosca, debbono ripiegare sulle idiote personificazioni delle correnti politiche, ed allora salta fuori la panzana, indegna persino di un
romanzo a fumetti, delle provocazioni di Beria nelle relazioni russo-jugoslave. Ma le evidenti falsificazioni della realtà, le sfacciate menzogne, le feticistiche satanizzazioni di uomini e di gruppi politici cui vengono attribuiti sovrannaturali capacità di influenzare le relazioni fra gli Stati e i partiti, nuocciono al prestigio dello Stato russo. Troppe volte il partito comunista dell’U.R.S.S. ha rinnegato se stesso, gettando il discredito sullo stato di Mosca. La funzione crea l’organo. Il P.C.U.S. diventa sempre più un organo insufficiente a svolgere le innumerevoli e spesso contraddittorie funzioni che il dilatarsi della potenza dello Stato russo accresce senza posa. Vedete, invece, cosa succede nei grandi stati capitalistici di antica origine: quando la classe dominante è costretta a dare nuove soluzioni ai suoi problemi, cambia il governo e, se necessario, si fabbrica un nuovo parlamento, come ha fatto in questi giorni la borghesia britannica, sicché i nuovi governi possono tranquillamente demolire il lavoro dei predecessori, senza passare per questo per voltagabbana e spergiuri. Allora, signori del Cremlino, quando vi deciderete ad applicare allo Stato quella riforma in senso parlamentare, di cui avete tanto acuto bisogno?
La riconsacrazione del partito di Tito ha significato, per i dirigenti moscoviti, la sconfessione di una sconfessione. Cacciando i «titini» dal Cominform e assoggettando il governo di Belgrado ad una inaudita campagna di denigrazione, durante la quale nessuna ingiuria fu risparmiata a Tito, il partito e il governo di Mosca procedettero nel giugno 1948 alla sconfessione della politica post-bellica di amicizia e accordo con la Jugoslavia, che Kruscev doveva esaltare sbarcando sul territorio jugoslavo. L’odierna manovra di Mosca viene a sconfessare la sconfessione promulgata dal Cominform. Ma i morti, coloro che furono portati al patibolo, in Ungheria, in Bulgaria, in Cecoslovacchia, perché accusati di simpatie e di connivenza con la ribellione titoista, quelli che stanno ancora imputridendo nelle tombe, non risusciteranno per il fatto che Kruscev e Bulganin si recano a Belgrado a chiedere scusa per la guerra santa contro la Jugoslavia di Tito. Chi erano quei morti, quei giustiziati? All’indomani del degradamento di Tito, quando sull’Unità e l’Avanti! i comunisti jugoslavi cominciarono ad essere trattati da fascisti e da «quinta colonna» dello imperialismo americano, e Tito apparve nelle caricature dei disegnatori stipendiati dal social-comunismo come un doppione balcanico del maresciallo hitleriano Goering, e Rankovic, ministro degli interni di Tito e grande epuratore delle correnti filo-cominformiste jugoslave, si attirava sul capo i più orribili epiteti del vocabolario stalinista, dei quali il meno feroce era «boia» o «massacratore», in quel tempo non dimenticato, noialtri internazionalisti fummo accomunati, nelle roventi filippiche dei galoppini, del P.C.I. e della C.G.I.L, ai «traditori di Belgrado», alla «cricca fascista di Tito e Rankovic».
Nelle fabbriche, non sulla stampa di partito di via delle Botteghe Oscure ove siamo ufficialmente ignorati, i poveri tirapiedi dei capicellula e degli attivisti social-comunisti, ci fecero passare per «agenti di Tito». Era una accusa diffamatoria come tante altre che quotidianamente ci vengono elargite da lorsignori. Ma chi lo comprese? Avemmo un bel ribattere che noi il maresciallo Tito e i suoi scherani li avevamo seppelliti nella foiba senza fondo del nostro incondizionato schifo e disprezzo, fin da quando Togliatti si recava a lustrargli gli stivali. L’avevamo definito un figlio del «socialismo in un solo paese» staliniano che quel principio aveva portato alle conseguenze estreme ma perfettamente logiche: liquidatore, quindi, del comunismo e instauratore di un regime di accelerata industrializzazione sotto la falsa egida socialista. La rottura era avvenuta, come avvenne di fatto, sul terreno di contrastanti interessi nazionali e statali: la riconciliazione avviene sul duplice terreno di una convergente ideologia e di interessi statali che, nella fase di corsa all’abbraccio fra
Occidente ed Oriente, tendono a collimare. Per noi Tito, come Stalin o Malenkov o Kruscev, è il nemico di sempre; per Togliatti e compari è il parente stretto col quale si bisticcia o ci si rappattuma a seconda degli interessi di bottega.
Non c’è nemico «assoluto», fra borghesi: Mosca non si concilierà mai coi rivoluzionari, e viceversa; ma ha mille motivi e titoli per riconciliarsi, quando e come le piace, coi controrivoluzionari. Fra macellai di guerre patriottiche c’è sempre modo d’intendersi.
The Economic and Social Structure of Russia Today (Pt. 2)
Part I: 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! Trotski 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 Trotski 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:
- 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.
- 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).
- 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… time… 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 necessary to follow this robust dialogue that would soon become an armed struggle conducted on several very different fronts.
The Revolutionary Marxists say: In no country can this war be supported, no defence of the war, but in all countries sabotage of the war and also of defence of the homeland.
The opportunists and also the more dangerous centrists hypocritically respond: we are ready to do it. But only on condition we can be 100% certain, while we are stopping our own State’s army from the rear, that the other side is stopped as well. If there is no such assurance, we would merely be defending the enemy’s war.
Is is clear that such an apparently logical objection, as easy to grasp as all of the populist theses the miserable activists are talking to the proletariat about these days, includes bankrupting the revolution. Thus, for example, during the war with Austria, we managed to prevent, through a superhuman effort, the socialist parliamentary deputies in Italy from voting for war credits, but when the collapse of Caporetto occurred, it was only because the bourgeoisie did us the honour of attributing it to our propaganda (how would a Togliatti deal with such a historic problem? Would he say it was to allow the Veneto fall, glorifying Sicily? However nothing ever collapsed thanks to anuthing he did), that our honourable deputies suddenly wanted to vote through the funds for the defence of Mount Grappa, and take the same road the Germans and French had taken in 1914. Whether it was good or bad to have prevented it one cannot say: certainly it cast a spotlight on the opportunist plague, which later needed to be branded with a red hot iron.
Lenin wasn’t the kind of person who would bother to argue such a point. He often said that only an imbecile is incapable of understanding that every revolutionary party has to sabotage the wars of its own State. In truth getting the point over for us was actually much harder and not so straightforward, and taking it forward us a lot about the impossibility of proceeding always by means of crystal-clear expressions; and about the authentic glory of “revolutionary obscurity”, the master of which, in our view, was the great Karl.
However Lenin is unyielding on this point and would give his cast iron demonstrations the unequivocal title: Contro Corrente [Refers to a collection of Lenin’s articles from the years 1914‑1916. These were originally published outside Russia in the “Sozial-demokrat” and in “Kommunist”, and later republished by the Petrograd Soviet in 1918 under the title “Contro Corrente”].
History didn’t allow him, great as he was, to anticipate a horrible possibility: the danger of getting sucked back, powerless and impotent, into the slimy depths of the current; which we all thought had been reversed but unfortunately hadn’t been.
It is necessary to sabotage war on both sides of a front WITHOUT setting the condition that the sabotage be conducted with equal force; without minding if it might even be non‑existent on the other side. It is equally necessary in such a situation, with an enemy army crossing the undefended frontier, to try and liquidate one’s own bourgeoisie, one’s own State, to take power, to install the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Along with “fraternization”, with international agitation, and with all the means at the disposition of the victorious power, the rebel movement within the enemy country will also be stimulated.
The response is simple, as far as Centrism is concerned. But if despite everything such a movement fails, the enemy State and army continues to function, and they go on to occupy the revolutionary country and overthrow the proletarian State, what do you do then?
Lenin had two responses to this: one is from the history of the Commune, which wouldn’t hesitate, having managed to defeat the bourgeois cops of France, to greet the Prussians with cannonades as well, but under no circumstances would it lower the red flag of revolution. The other response to the twisted apologists of the imperialist and counter-revolutionary, bourgeois war, was precisely: war. Our war, revolutionary war, socialist war.
Against the same enemy then? So it’s the same war defended by us? snigger the philistine contradictors. No, because the new war is class war, because it isn’t conducted alongside the bourgeois State and its general staff, already swept aside; because its victory won’t be a victory for any imperialist coalition, but for the world revolution.
11 – Ditched Resolution (La carta cambiata) (1)
This historic point concerns the possibility of a revolutionary manoeuvre by the International against the traitors of 1914, as entirely opposed to what was done in 1939 and 1941.
Opportunism is the watchword of non‑revolution, the class truce within individual nations conceded to all of the belligerents, until war is over.
We will show that it is vulgar sleight of hand to equate this shameful and barefaced traitor’s expedient with the movement’s alleged precautionary adherence to a theory which requires “simultaneous revolution” in every country.
Lenin’s formula is the rejection of this watchword, the rejection of the class truce in all countries, whether at war and or at peace; it presses forward to realise the revolutionary event regardless of whether a State wins or loses, and above all if takes revolutionary advantage of the defeat.
Wherever the reverses of war gave the proletarian party the possibility of doing so, it had to take power: this would need to the policy in Germany, in France – and, of course, in Russia.
France without Germany would have had a socialist government; or Germany without France. Both such governments could have taken resolute anti‑capitalist measures and above all throttled the war industrialists; and then the immediate requirement on the winning side would not be to disarm, but to organize a revolutionary army to stop the capitalist enemy, to stop their own revolution from being stangled.
The building of communism in Russia, or in a prevalently feudal and patriarchal “one” country in general, has nothing to do with the latter thesis, and cannot be based on it: it is something else altogether.
So what should revolutionaries in Russia be trying to achieve? By God, how many times do we have to say it: not socialism, but a democratic republic. The hypothesis of socialism in one country is obvious, but spell it out and it reads: Capitalist country.
So there it is: the ace up your sleeve, Mr. Card Sharper, has been played.