1970 Introduction

      The Lyon Theses appeared at such a crucial juncture in the history of the communist movement that they might justifiably be considered both a point of arrival and a point of departure in the difficult and hard-won genesis of the world party of the working class.

      The Left leadership of the Italian Communist Party that emerged from the Congresses of Leghorn and Rome was replaced on a provisional basis following the arrest of its main leaders in February 1923, and permanently after their acquittal in October of the same year. After some initial resistance (mainly by Terracini but also by Togliatti), the new ”centrist” leadership gradually aligned itself with the positions of the International, despite the fact that at the national conference in Como (May 1924), they were still only in a minority compared to the bulk of the party, which, almost unanimously, stood firm on its initial positions. Despite this situation, the Left would adopt the same standpoint as it would later at the 5th Congress of the Communist International, that is; it would not only not press its claim to the leadership, but it would assert that such an eventuality depended on a decisive and unequivocal change in the politics emerging form Moscow. Thus, in the draft theses presented by the ”Left” at the above-mentioned conference at Como we read: «If the leadership of the party and the International remains opposed to what we have outlined here, if it remains as indeterminate and imprecise as it has been up to now, the duty imposed upon the Italian Left will become one of criticism and verification, with a calm but firm rejection of the artificial solutions arrived at by means of lists of executive committees and various concessions and compromises, these being, for the most part, demagogic cloaks for that much vaunted and abused word unity». In the same vein, Bordiga not only turned down the offer of the vice-presidency of the International at its 5th congress, but also refused to take any part in the leadership of the Italian Communist party. Meanwhile, the Italian leadership orientated itself more and more in the direction wished for by Moscow, a process defended by the right wing Tasca-Graziadei current.

      The theses, drawn up by the left current of the Italian Communist Party to oppose those of the already semi-stalinized centre, were presented to the 3rd party Congress held at Lyon in January 1926. They therefore appear a few months after the 13th congress of the Russian party; the congress at which Kamenev and Zinoviev would launch a rebellion which would see virtually the entire Bolshevik old guard rise up in protest, as passionate as it was unexpected, directed against the ”embellishment of the NEP”; the ”peasants enrich yourself” slogan of Bukharin and the ”red professors”; and against the stifling regime installed by Stalin within the party. The theses also appear scarcely a month before the 6th Enlarged Executive of the Communist International; which would turn the big guns of bureaucratic oratory on the one international force, the ”Italian” Left to be precise, which had stood up and denounced the profound crisis in the Comintern, and thereby pave the way for the later stigmatisation of the Russian Opposition in November and December.

      The international Communist movement had reached a fatal crossroads. At the 14th congress of the Russian Communist Party, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Krupskaya became aware that they were involved in a struggle inside the Russian State, and were speaking on behalf of one set of social and material forces against another; forces which were a thousand times more powerful than the particular individuals which took their turns at the rostrum, for hadn’t they themselves, until very immediately before, been co-responsible with the rest of the leadership for the collective policies? In this context, the Italian Left knew that the body of theses it was drawing up (which as usual, overstepped the narrow confines of the ”Italian Question” and examined the entire, global field of communist tactics) expressed a historic trajectory, which in the space of a few months would manifest itself in China and, due to a rare and for many years unique convergence of objective circumstances, England; in other words both within a semi-colonial country and within the epitomy of an imperialist metropolis.

      The year of the supreme test was 1926, and in the final analysis, the outcome of the titanic struggles fought by the Chinese workers and peasants and the British proletariat would determine the destiny of both Soviet Russia and the Communist International. During 1926 the Russian Opposition would sense the terrible urgency of unravelling the tangled knots building up in the toothcomb of history, and Trotski and Zinoviev would smooth over past differences in order to form a desperate coalition against the looming peril of the counter-revolutionary forces. Trotski in particular would put up a remarkable fight, and emerge defeated only towards the end of 1927. The defeat of the Russian Opposition, the failure of the Chinese revolution, and the defeat of the General Strike in England would mark the destruction of the entire international communist movement. The last battle of those two years of proletarian Internationalism would be fought out in Moscow, in a hand-to-hand combat against the encircling army of ”socialism in one country”, and it is a battle which remains forever inscribed in indelible characters in a chapter destined to inspire future generations of the marxist vanguard.

      The Russian Opposition, however, didn’t manage to bequeath a general balance-sheet of this course of historical developments, which in fact had got underway long before 1926, and nor did it see the extreme debacle of that year as the product of earlier events. It could denounce the evil but could not root it out. This it could not do because the Opposition itself had been co-responsible, and sponsor, for this very course, and Stalin and Bukharin were able to continually nail the Opposition to the cross of co-responsibility with their mean-minded polemics, well aware that their great antagonist was caught prisoner in a web which both sides had helped to weave.

      The same cannot be said of the ”Italian” Left. Even if weak in the international stakes, it was still the only section of the International that grasped the situation correctly. After years of sounding the alarm about the objective consequences of the tactical eclecticism of the Comintern (henceforth imposed by a welter of organisational restrictions, ”ideological terror”, and pressure from the State power) only the Left had the lcapacity (rather than the ”right”) to draw the global lessons from the last five years. Indeed all the pre-congress discussions in Italy had hinged on these issues back in 1925. Thus the Left would recognise in the fait accompli a situation it had already predicted. At the 6th Enlarged Executive of the Communist International the Italian Left took a lone stance against the rest, with Zinoviev as the main antagonist. It was the Left alone who requested that the ”Russian question” (the question of ”socialism in one country” and the officious disciplinary regime which had been imposed by Stalin on every party in the Comintern) should be placed on the agenda of an emergency international conference. The upshot of this request, had it been granted, would have been that the monopoly on discussions and decisions regarding Russia would have been removed from the Bolshevik Party. The request was devolved to the presidium who decided to ”postpone” any debate until the highly orchestrated Enlarged Executive held in November/December – at which time it was consigned to the archives. The next congress of the International would eventually take place two years later, by which time the remaining revolutionary opposition was in ruins and the Left’s request wouldn’t even get a passing mention. But the Left did not see the Russian Question as an isolated issue. By offering to the international movement a body of theses as a platform on which to build an organic and complete solution to tactical problems, set within the framework of a vision just as organic and complete in terms of its programmatic postulates, the Left was already treating the vital Russian question as just one link within a chain of life and death questions for the International. And in so doing, the Left was hoping to lay the basis for the International to return to its initial positions on a firmer foundation than ever before.

    During the meeting of the 7th Enlarged Executive, Trotski would have a thousand and one reasons for stating that the Bolshevik party, if it staked everything on the world revolution, could remain firmly entrenched in power for not one, but fifty years. But would such a stupendous ”gambit” be possible without – as the Left put it – ”inverting the pyramid”? Which consisted of the Comintern balancing unsteadily on top of the crisis-ridden Russian party. Would such a gambit pay off without first totally overhauling, from top to bottom, the Comintern’s internal regime, and, without, most importantly of all, ruthlessly re-evaluating the tactics whose many unpredictable and unexpected twists and turns had been the cause of so many disasters? To these questions Trotski was never really able to provide satisfactory answers, or let’s say that in a hybrid conjunction with the dazzling demand for permanent revolution, his solutions consisted of treading the same unreliable path to ”flexible” manoeuvres as his adversaries.

      We emphasise we weren’t trying to defend ”democracy” when we urged that the pyramid should be inverted. But rather than contrasting the vile decentralisation of the ”national ways” to the necessity of centralisation, we demanded a transposition onto the international scale of our vision of ”organic centralism”. This conception sees the summit linked to the base of the pyramid by one single and uninterrupted thread of doctrine and programme; from which it both receives and synthesises the impulses or else collapses. And it is simply pointless to say that the West was unable to provide Bolshevik Russia and the Comintern with the vital oxygen it needed (in ever increasing quantities) because at the time it was too busy laying the basis for an all-powerful all-pervading democratism. What the Left was defending was a principle, valid always and everywhere even if not of immediate realisation for contingent reasons, the principle, that is, that conceived of the International as culminating in one single party of the revolutionary proletariat, with ”national” sections still in existence if deemed necessary. The last and final step would be the victorious proletarian State, which would be most vulnerable of all due to the isolated nature of its victory (especially in economically backward countries like Russia). Therefore, the coercive power of this State should, indeed must, never be used (as forcefully established by the Left at the 6th Enlarged Executive) to ”resolve” disciplinary questions within the International, or within the party at the head of the class dictatorship.

      The solutions to these problems we find instead in the section of the Lyon Theses devoted to general Questions (and in the related section on International Questions), and because they really do represent a general solution, they have to be either accepted or rejected, and accepted or rejected as a whole. There is no middle path.

      The Left, by continuing to defend their analysis, certainly ran the risk of being crushed by the hostile forces which were beginning to gain the upper hand, and indeed this is precisely what happened, but it is equally certain that their analysis laid the only basis on which a regroupment of forces was possible; only on the basis of a global, rather than a partial, settlement of tactical and programmatic questions would an international resurgence of the proletarian revolution, and its party, become a real possibility.

      The Lyon Theses are therefore not only a point of departure both for the present and for the future, but also sum up the history of the stormy years between 1919 and 1926. What they emphatically are not is the result of the cerebral outpourings of any particular individual. They constitute the dynamic balance-sheet of real forces which struggled in the arena of class struggle during a period in which the revolutionary battles of an entire century were compressed; battles which tested to the utmost the resolve with which communist parties would keep to their faith without deviating from its teachings. And Marxism would be nothing if it didn’t know – like Marx and Lenin themselves – how to convert even defeat into a premise of victory. From this derives the profound significance and relevance of the 1926 theses.

      It is therefore important to clarify how the many threads, which run through the Left’s long battle fought inside the International, converge and are resolved in the Lyon Theses, and how we can use the theses to retrace our steps back to 1920, and uncover the connection between this battle and the series of historical events, of which it is both the dynamic summation, and the anticipator of future developments.

      As the first two volumes of our Storia della Sinistra prove, it is an incontestable fact that the Left was the only section of the international socialist movement which adopted the same positions of principle towards the world war so ardently defended by Lenin and the small vanguard of the ”Zimmerwald Left”. This meant that at the time of the October Revolution, and for a couple of years after, only the Italian Left adhered to the Bolshevik dictatorship and its organ of leadership, the Russian party. Its support was also a lot deeper and more principled than the formalistic adhesion, inspired by casual enthusiasm, which followed the sudden conversion of the majority of the French Socialist Party; or the sudden rapprochement of International centrism, which even if we credit their ”leaders” with sincerity – the most generous hypothesis – was demagogic and confused. Furthermore, it was the only section to assert, from the end of 1918 onward, that an irrevocable rupture was needed not only with the socialist right but also with even more treacherous centre, and that the formation of communist parties on the basis later set out at the 2nd Congress of the International in 1920 constituted the essential conditions for a revolutionary solution to the post-war crisis.

      The stance taken by the Italian Left at the 2nd Congress (and remember it was participating without an official mandate as a mere ”current” of the PSI) will therefore hardly surprise us. Not only did the Left support the main theses outlined at the congress, namely: on the role of the party within the revolutionary proletariat; on the conditions for the constitution of soviets; on the national and colonial questions, and on the union and agrarian questions, but it backed none of the official PSI delegation’s objections to these theses (some of which would be resurrected later on in Italy or at future world congresses). The Left also made an important contribution to the formulation of the vitally important Conditions for Admission to the Communist International by insisting that they should be made even stricter, and above all safeguarded against the dangerous temptation of adapting them to ”local” situations.

      It is indeed true that at this congress Lenin and the Left disagreed about ”revolutionary parliamentarism”, as the historiography of opportunism with its servile concoction of lies, omissions and distortions will never cease to remind us. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that the disagreement by no means marked a fundamental difference since the common objective was to get rid of democratic and parliamentary institutions by means of the revolutionary violence of the proletariat. Indeed, Lenin and Bukharin, in their theses on the use of the ”electoral and parliamentary tribune”, clearly show that they considered such tactics as subordinate and temporary, and the disagreement revolved rather on a different evaluation of the effects of such a use: whilst Lenin considered it useful, the Left saw such a tactical measure as undermining the revolutionary preparation of the proletariat in the countries of fully developed capitalism, since it was bound to reinforce the, alas, deeply ingrained democratic tradition.

      In fact, within the framework of this collective battle to erect within the International ”insurmountable barriers” against reformism, the directives which the left proposed to the entire movement, whether concerning the programme or organisational methods of member parties, already had the global perspective, the ”decided once and for all” quality, which would later find definitive, lapidary expression in the Lyon Theses.

      We emphasise that the Left’s perspective had not been shaped in the brain of any particular individual, but originated from the accumulated experience derived from the proletarian battles which had taken place in the West in countries with fully democratic regimes, with the inevitable corollaries reformism and centrism. And if it found expression as vigorous polemics against the leadership of the International, this was not out of a predilection for ”theoretical luxuries”, or due to any scruples about moral integrity or aesthetic perfection, but was due to exquisitely ”practical” motives – though let it be well understood that for Marxism, theory and action are dialectically inseparable. The Left’s attitude was shaped by a healthy preoccupation not so much with the present – that is with a historic phase which was far from having exhausted its revolutionary possibilities – but with the future Western and central Europe was at the heart of this preoccupation, since this area was considered with good cause as the keystone of communist global strategy, but the maturation of the subjective conditions for the revolution – above all the party – was lagging behind the development of the objective conditions since the historical situation tended to favour theoretical confusion, inefficiency and disorganisation. The immediate problem then for the proletarian movement of the time was the pressing necessity for a centralised, global leadership. In the firm grip of the party of Lenin and Trotski the gaps that existed in the relatively ”open” and ”flexible” formulations could be seen as perhaps inevitable calculated risks. But what if laterthe gigantic revolutionary wave were to recede, the prospect of a rapid offensive faded, and the danger of ”social-democratic recidivism” – as Trotski put it – arose; a danger far more serious for a movement in retreat than on the eve of an insurrection? What would prevent the reformist scum, neither expelled from the parties nor incorporated into them, from rising to the top and corrupting the movement? With the war over, and with the prospect of revolution fading, it was easy enough for the Cachins and the Crispiens to accept the International’s theses on ”power to the Soviets”; ”dictatorship of the proletariat” and ”the red terror”, and accept them with the same ease and impromptu haste as they had previously embraced the cause of national defence and imperialist war six years before. But surely once the objective pressures, which had produced this unconscious reaction on their part, were no longer there; the fissure separating them from genuine communists would widen once again to a chasm? And would even the International, leaving aside the external pressures that weighed on it as a result of inauspicious circumstances, be protected from what the Lyon Theses called ”the repercussions the means of action have on the party in the dialectical play of cause and effect”?

      There is an unbroken thread then which runs between 1920 and 1926, and this explains how the Lyon Theses were able to take up contemporary issues, draw lessons from them, and place them within a definitive general framework in such a way that they are still relevant to the new generations charged with the real balance-sheet of their practical realisation. The links in our dialectical chain then are already forged: doctrine, programme and system of tactical norms must form a united whole, be known to all, and binding on all, and the organisation must be homogeneous, disciplined and efficient. Once the party has mastered these conditions on which its very existence depends, it is capable of preparing itself and the proletariat for a revolutionary solution to the crises of capitalist society without jeopardising the possibility of rebuilding the revolutionary movement in periods of reaction. When the links in the chain start to slacken off, and once this slackening is justified on a theoretical level then all is lost; both the possibility of victory in mounting revolutionary situations, and the possibility of resurgence in periods of reaction. The party itself is then destroyed, for it can only be the organ of the revolution insofar as it has anticipated, thanks to consistent theory and practice, «how a certain process will turn out when certain conditions have been realised» (Lenin on the Path of the Revolution, 1924) and «what we should do given various possible hypotheses on how objective situations might turn out» (Lyon Theses – General section).

      The history of the International is unfortunately also a history of a gradual departure from these cardinal principals; a history of how the party was unintentionally destroyedwhilst trying to save it. 1926 is the year of ”Socialism in One Country” and everything that necessarily goes with it (like ”bolshevization” and the crushing of the left opposition under the stifling rule of discipline for discipline’s sake) and the significance of this cursed formula is nothing other than the assassination of the world party. It is the year in which the Comintern really died and what followed was just a macabre dance around its coffin.

* * *

      The collapse would occur on three levels (kept separate merely for ease of exposition although in fact they overlap) which would finally converge and destroy the genuine unity of the international communist movement, and replace it, in 1926-27, with a merely superficial unity founded on authoritarianism, which was good merely to disguise, and endorse in advance, the complete freedom with which the central authority was wiping out every last trace of the original programme. Later on, when external pressure from the party ”apparatus” and the Russian State power had finally ceased, a new purpose would be found for this merely formal ”unity”; that of providing justification for a thousand and one ”national roads” to an unrecognisable ”socialism”. Let us then recall step-by-step how this tragedy unfolded.

      We had persistently demanded that the communist parties, or, more precisely, the International as one single world communist party, should be constituted on the basis of a definite once-and-for-all, take-it-or-leave-it, theoretical and programmatic platform – something along the lines of the synthetic proclamation made in the first point of the Lyon Theses(General questions). This theoretical and programmatic platform would have to rigorously exclude not only ruling class doctrines: whether spiritualistic, religious and idealistic in philosophy, and reactionary in politics; or positivistic, Voltairean and free-thinking in philosophy, and masonic, anti-clerical and democratic in politics, but also other schools of thought which enjoyed a certain following in the working-class, namely: reformism, which is pacifist and gradualist; syndicalism, which devalues working-class political action and the necessity for the party as supreme revolutionary organ; anarchism, which repudiates the principle of the historical necessity for the State and of the dictatorship of the proletariat as means of transforming the social order and suppressing class divisions, and finally the spurious and ambiguous ”Centrism”; which synthesises and condenses deviations analogous to the above under the cover of pseudo-revolutionary phraseology.

      Despite the necessity for such a theoretical and programmatic barrier, it wouldn’t materialise. The French party – deaf to the union struggle, rotten to the core with the democratic and parliamentary virus, and even occasionally verging on the chauvinist (the Ruhr, Algeria) – was quick to take advantage of this state of affairs. It soon discovered that the famous ”particular conditions in each country” was a very convenient basis on which to continually take issue with the central authority. Thus, through the breach opened up by the absence of a theoretical barrier stepped masonic and populist Jacobinism (Frossard! Cachin!). Meanwhile, the Scandinavian parties were busily engaged with their theory of ”religion as a private affair”, and in 1923, with the last revolutionary tremor in Germany only a few months away, the entire Enlarged Executive Committee felt the obscure need to scratch this same itch – precisely when there was a pressing necessity to concentrate all forces on a potentially revolutionary outcome to the German crisis, whose negative or positive shockwaves would affect the entire movement. As a reaction against the prevailing gradualist and parliamentary atmosphere, the dormant syndicalism in the French party and the workerism in the German party would be revived and strengthened and encourage minimalist and democratic sentiments. And soon the mixture of Sorelianism and Idealism a la Benedetto Croce, advocated by the Ordine Nuovo current, would also be given the green light. The Ordine Nuovo, or ”New Order” current, which had been kept severely ”in line” when the International had stood firm on its initial positions and when the Italian party was led by the Left, would be given free rein when the tables were turned, and they arrived at the helm of the party under Moscow’s sponsorship. Finally, as though it was the industrial bourgeoisie announcing its latest product, the deadly theory of Socialism in One Country was launched in a blaze of publicity. This supreme insult to Marx, Engels and Lenin and a century of proletarian internationalism having been accomplished, it was now a case of anything goes because nothing was ruled out by a clear, unvarying definition of doctrine and programme.

      By providing a framework for the question of the relations between economic determinism and political will, between theory and action, and between class and party, the ”General section” of the Lyon Theses would lay the foundations for a future rebirth of the movement by avoiding the stumbling-blocks of inert pacifism on the one hand, and frantic voluntarism on the other; and the orgy of so-called ”bolshevization”, and the depressing saturnalias of ”the building of socialism”, were but simply new versions of these mistaken responses.

* * *

      The Left had asked (and we now arrive at the second main feature of the International Party’s collapse) that even at the cost of a certain schematisation, one unique and binding set of tactical norms should be established which were firmly anchored to principles, and then – on this secure footing – linked to the forecast of a range of alternative possibilities which might emerge from the dynamic clash between the classes. To demand such a thing might appear tainted with abstraction, a metaphysical formula even, but events, the harsh events of the next forty years would prove that it was – to use a controversial adjective that stills causes much gnashing of teeth – a very concrete demand. We had seen how necessary it was when the ”Conquest of the Masses” slogan was issued, then that of the ”Political United Front”, and then the ”Workers’ Government” slogan, and we had observed the main organisationalrepercussions which occurred as a result of the tortuous manoeuvres to win over reformist groups and even entire reformist and centrist party wings. Words, as well as slanderous statements, and especially watchwords and slogans, have their own peculiar destiny. The 4th Congress met on the cusp of a year of bitter failures (1922) and the equally agonised year of 1923 during which the first serious internal crisis, without Lenin’s steel resolve to resolve it, would shake the great Russian party (the Letters to the Congress of that year show how committed the great revolutionary was to steering the Executive Committee in a very different direction). Nevertheless new waves of proletarian struggles sweeps through Germany, Bulgaria and Estonia, and the first flames of revolt are ignited in the Orient. And yet within this setting of light and shade the guiding thread of great principles would gradually get lost, yielding to a tactical eclecticism that was completely unable to take advantage of the last chances which that historical phase was still providing.

      This in its turn hastened the decline of the Bolshevik party, and thus the International. The events of those times show, as never before, to what extent unstable tactics react on principles and provoke a chain reaction at all levels. In the second section of the Lyon Theses, which deals with International Questions, the unfortunately inexorable process which would lead the International from its years of glory to a state of complete degeneration is referred to, but it is nevertheless worth going into further detail.

* * *

      Whilst the events we referred to earlier were taking place, the fascists had come to power in Italy and launched an offensive against the communist movement. In 1923 the main leaders of the Left wing of the Communist Party of Italy were arrested and prevented from speaking out in that crucial year. Meanwhile in Germany, there was an immense crash of the Mark; the French occupation of the Ruhr; generalised turmoil amongst all social strata, and the appearance on the scene of the first nucleus of the nazi party (NSDAP). The Communist party in Germany, after common action by the brother parties on either side of the Rhine had failed to materialise, would be faced with the thankless task of ”choosing” which of the many possible interpretations of the United Front and ”workers’ government” most conformed to the theses of the 4th Congress and to the German situation. Faced with this dilemma, the ”two spirits” which co-existed in the party (and which had done so since its formation) disagreed on both issues. As regards the united front, the question was; should unity be brought about ”from above” – a viewpoint defended and recommended by the leaders – or ”from below”, as defended and preached by a wavering and fluctuating ”left-wing”? As for the question of ”workers’ government”, the leaders took this to mean parliamentary support for a social democratic government (though in the sense of a social-democratic/communist government coalition), and, because of the ruling bourgeois government’s policy of promoting passive resistance to the heavy blows inflicted by the allied forces, there was a policy of benevolent neutrality towards them. But did not ”workers’ government” really mean «the general mobilisation of the masses towards a revolutionary taking of power»? This latter position was the one defended, though in an undefined way, by the ”left-wing” minority.

      Disagreements weren’t however confined to these two relatively recent issues. New questions had arisen after masses of frequently armed workers, particularly in the Ruhr and Rhineland, began attacking both the occupying forces and the bourgeois national government, giving corporeal form to the spectres of the 1921 ”March Action”: should these courageous actions be considered merely as examples of infantile ”adventurism” and stopped (the leadership’s position, who pleading the unpreparedness of the masses, and pointing to the over-optimistic estimation of the balance of forces made by the ”left’ current, would defend their position by seeking refuge on the slippery slope to ”legalitarianism” which they would noisily proclaim towards the middle of the year) or, on the contrary, should efforts be made to co-ordinate the struggles, and provide leadership and discipline, as the Left maintained – correct in line of principle, but in a rather rhetorical and activist way rather than being the result of careful consideration?

    The confusion and disarray which this criss-crossing of contradictory directives was causing in the party, precisely at a time when the social and political atmosphere was hotting up, prompted the Comintern Executive to organise a ”reconciliation conference” in April 1923 to remedy the situation. Here the leadership’s tactics were condemned, on the one hand, as showing a tendency towards ”adaption of the communist party to the reformist leaders”, whilst on the other hand the minority’s impatience and calls for ”immediate revolution” were curbed. But gangrene was already infecting the wound and conferences alone were not enough to effect a cure – even if they were of the ”reconciliation” variety. As Moscow went on to issue increasingly contradictory instructions, as fast as one wound was patched up, another would open. And worse was yet to come.

      At first tentatively, then increasingly explicitly, the way was being cleared in the ruling circles of the party for a much more elastic interpretation of the ”conquest of the majority” slogan. Rather than the formula being restricted to the sense of conquest of the broadest strata of the proletariat, its meaning would be extended to include the conquest of ”the people”, understood in a generic and imprecise sense, in general. In order to accomplish this, so the leaders said, it was necessary to address an appeal to the afflicted petty-bourgeois masses, who were victims both of the devaluation of the Mark, and of nightmarish visions of revamped nationalism. Attracting this layer of society would only be possible by attempting to show them (proclaimed the leadership on May 17th) that they could «only defend themselves and the future of Germany by allying themselves with the communists against the real (?) bourgeoisie» and entrusting the guardianship of ”German national values” to the party organisation. A slogan that had been fiercely stigmatised in 1921 when a small workerist group proclaimed it – ”National Bolshevism” – now resurfaced again, but this time the International didn’t respond. Such a highly erroneous notion as this was the horrible fruit of two monumental deviations from Marxism. The first consisted in more or less explicitly equating the national question in the colonies or semi-colonies, with the national question in a country in the highest phase of capitalism (the Enlarged Executive of June 12-23 wouldn’t hesitate in declaring: «strong insistence on the national element in Germany is AS MUCH a revolutionary fact as insistence on the national element in the colonies»; and as if this wasn’t bad enough, Radek would now declare in the notorious ”Schlageter Address” that, «what is known as German nationalism isn’t just nationalism; it is a large national movement with significant revolutionary content». And as for Zinoviev, in his closing speech to the Executive he would rejoice at the fact that a bourgeois newspaper had recognised the finally assumed character of the KPD as ”national-bolshevik”, and see this as proof that the party had finally acquired a mass ”psychology”.

      The Left, for the reasons given previously, wasn’t able to make itself heard during this dramatic turn of events, and would have to wait until the eve of the 5th Congress to declare that: «We deny that it is possible to justify a rapprochement in Germany between the communist movement and the national and patriotic movement on the basis alluded to (the theses of the 2nd Congress on national and colonial questions). Despite the pressure exerted by the Entente powers on Germany, acute and oppressive though it is, we mustn’t allow ourselves to conclude that Germany is to be equated with a small country with an undeveloped capitalism. Germany is still an extremely large country, formidably equipped in the capitalist sense, and with a proletariat which politically and socially is more than advanced (…) It is a terrible minimisation of the great German proletariat to restrict its’ task to mere national emancipation. This proletariat and its’ revolutionary party is expected to win not for itself, but in order to safeguard the existence and economic evolution of Russia and the Soviets; to engulf the western fortresses of capital in the deluge of the World revolution (…) Thus, forgetting that communist political solutions originate from principles can lead to political solutions being applied when the conditions that prompted them aren’t there, under the pretext that any expedient, no matter how complicated it be, can be useful». (”Il Comunismo e la Questione Nazionale”, article in Prometeo, No. 4 – April 15th, 1924). For our interpretation of fascism, see the two reports given by Bordiga to the 4th and 5th congresses of the Communist International. This text appears in Italian in Comunismo no 12, and in French in La Gauche Communiste no 7.

      The second deviation from marxism resided in more or less explicitly condoning the notion that an autonomous revolutionary potential existed in the petty bourgeoisie (citing Radek again: the KPD must show itself to be not only «the party which struggles for the industrial workers’ bread, but the party of the proletarianised fighting for their liberty, a liberty coinciding with the liberty of the entire people, with the liberty of all who labour and suffer in Germany»). It is a short step from this to interpreting fascism as against big capital – when in fact the opposite is the case, i.e., fascism is the mobilisation of the petty-bourgeoisie at the instigation of and in the interests of big capital against the proletariat.

      As part of its drive to attract the petty-bourgeois ”vagabonds in the void”, the KPD would masquerade as fellow travellers of the nazi NSPD; and with speakers from both groups alternating on the same platforms to fulminate against Versailles and Poincare, it would cause consternation and dismay even amongst the Czech party! This ”honeymoon period” would only last, it is true, for a few months in 1923, but, to the shame of the KPD, the de facto break in the ”alliance” was instigated not by them but the by the nazis!

      An inexorable chain of events had therefore been set in motion. During the meeting of the Enlarged Executive in June there was no serious discussion about the increasingly explosive German situation, and it was decided instead to agonise over such issues as Norwegian ”federalism”; the Swedish party’s ”neutralism” towards matters of religion; and the umpteenth attempt at a merger between the Italian Communist and Socialist parties – despite the high price demanded by the latter… not to merge at all. By not making firm decisions, the Enlarged Executive endorsed the theses of the leadership of the KPD that it should become a pole of attraction for the proletarianized petty-bourgeois masses by nurturing their dreams of national redemption.

      And yet the German problem in 1923 was in fact an exquisitely international issue, and the ”nationalist programme of revolution” was the worst of solutions since it would have the inevitably damaging repercussions of stoking up conservative and counter-revolutionary tendencies amongst the French and British petty-bourgeoisie, thus cancelling out any hypothetical advantages that ”conquering” the petty bourgeoisie, on such bastard terrain, might confer in the Weimar republic. None of the resolutions made by the Executive betray the least hint of these dangers. In fact, using a parallel logic, the Executive decided to extend the application of the slogan ”Workers’ Government”, and, entranced by the proliferation of peasant parties, not just in the Balkans but also in the United States (La Follette), the new slogan would become ”workers’ and Peasants’ government” in all countries, including Germany! It is true that the theses certainly warn against a parliamentary and social revolutionary interpretation of the new tactical recipe; but the first interpretation was, as we have seen, authorised by the indeterminacy and possibilisms of the 4th Congress, whilst the second derived from a mechanical and crude transplantation of the slogan ”Workers and Peasants Dictatorship” from countries on the eve of a double revolution, to countries of ultra-developed capitalism. Yet another defining feature which had always distinguished the revolutionary marxist party from all other parties had now been discarded.

      Less and less anchored on firm principles, the International allowed itself to be blinded yet again by contingency and the fear of being overtaken by social democracy in ”conquering the masses”. The vitally important issue of a forceful push towards the poor peasantry was now presented in terms of a manoeuvre, which in the space of a few years would be theorised into an autonomous global role for the peasant class: a theory which fails to consider the peasant class in terms of its varied and contradictory components, or to make any precise characterisation of its relations with the industrial and agrarian proletariat, both in the highly developed capitalist countries and in the immense colonial and semi-colonial areas, especially Asia. This theorisation will be carried out by Bukharin in particular from the time of the 5th Enlarged Executive in March 1925 (this matter is referred to in part 2 of the Lyon Theses).

      And yet the pivotal point in that decisively important year of 1923 was nevertheless still Germany. In fact we can say that the tactical oscillations and eclecticism of the Comintern in response to the German situation in the 2nd half of 1923 (worse even than the bungling in Bulgaria and Estonia, episodes we won’t deal with here), mark the disastrous turning-point which prepared the way to the defeats in China and England, and for the fatal crisis which would beset the Russian party, and therefore the International, in the ensuing years.

      Moscow had for a long time adopted a passive stance towards events in Germany, perhaps because of the lack of consistency and homogeneity of the KPD, but suddenly, in July 1923, the International decided to sound the alarm about the fascist peril and express its conviction (whether well-founded or not is another issue) that a pre-revolutionary cycle was about to start up. Yet nevertheless the directives remained cautious and vague for a long time to come. When Moscow sanctioned the cancellation, following a government ban, of the great ”anti-fascist day” previously fixed for 23 July, it had the knock-on effect of rekindling the disagreements between the leadership and the German left; between red-hot Berlin and the sleepy provinces; between an already mobilised proletariat and the sluggish ”labour aristocracy”. At the beginning of August, with the Cuno government clearly in its death throes, the leadership of the KPD decided the time had come to mobilise the masses under the watchword ”Workers’ and Peasants’ Government”, whilst from its Berlin stronghold the ”Left-wing” decided that «the intermediate phase of the workers’ government is becoming, in practice, ever more unlikely». With a new wave of impressive strikes breaking out everywhere, and in the confusion caused by this bewildering succession of conflicting instructions, big capital, having definitely decided to liquidate the campaign of ”passive resistance” against the occupation of the Ruhr (which had failed anyway) and reconcile itself to the Entente, and particularly with England – installed Stresemann in power.

      The reaction from Moscow was by now almost predictable. Suddenly, its earlier wait-and-see policy, which was fundamentally pessimistic, was transformed into the most frenetic optimism: «Revolution is knocking at the doors of Germany – wrote the organ of the Profintern in September – it is only a matter of months». Amidst generalised confusion, and with the entire general staff of the KPD in attendance, Moscow decided that preparations for the storming of power should be made immediately, and even a date was fixed. But what was the basis for this decision? On that score there was no doubt, it was because the 4th Congress supported it, which in their turn had been backed by the 3rd Enlarged Executive. On October 1st, at the very peak of the economic and social crisis, Zinoviev advised Brandler, the secretary of the German party, that he reckoned «the decisive moment would be within four, five or six weeks», and that it was therefore «necessary (…) to pose in concrete form the problem of our entry into the Saxon government (dominated by social-democrats) on condition that Zeigner (the president of the reformist council) and his followers are really disposed to defend Saxony against Bavaria and the fascists». Thus despite the betrayals of 1918, 1919, and 1921, faith is entrusted in the social democrats’ ”will” to renounce being… themselves! In the short pamphlet entitled Problems of the German Revolution written at this precise juncture by the President of the International, Zinoviev correctly declared that «the next German revolution would be a classical proletarian revolution» (that is ”pure”). However his estimation of the level of discipline of the German Proletariat and of their general organisational ability was wildly optimistic, for along with the German worker’s undoubted talent for organisation went an obsession with it which both Rosa Luxemburg in 1918, and Trotski in 1920, had discerned as one of the causes of failure in the crucial test of war – in the absence of strong leadership from the party. Wildly optimistic too was Zinoviev’s appraisal of the German workers’ ”culture” (the other face of a large labour aristocracy) and he would also attribute a revolutionary role «to the petty-bourgeois city-dwellers, minor and middle-ranking officials, small traders etc.», and end up hypothetisizing that «the role played in the Russian Revolution by the war-weary peasantry, will be assumed, up to a point, in the German Revolution by the large petty-bourgeois masses in the cities, propelled by the development of capitalism to the brink of disaster and the economic precipice» !!

      In this incredible evaluation a shadow lurks nonetheless. Whilst according to Zinoviev there was no doubt that the united front had achieved the desired aim of drawing into the struggle «the most backward strata of the working class, bringing them closer to the revolutionary vanguard»; and that «the time when the enormous majority of German workers, who today still place their hopes in Social-democracy, will finally convince themselves that the decisive struggle must be conducted without and against both the right and left wings of the SPD is drawing near», nevertheless, still the hour had not yet sounded. For it to sound, a whole new ”round” of further experiences was necessary, and not only of the political united front, but also of ”workers”’ coalition governments, and that was why communists should enter the Saxon Government, with the dual aim of «1) helping the revolutionary vanguard of Saxony to find its feet and to occupy a fixed area, making it the launching pad for future battles, and; 2) giving left-wing social-democrats the chance to expose their politics in practice, thus disappointing and dispelling the last illusions of social-democratic proletarians»!! On the other hand, the experiment of Government involvement, which could happen only «with the agreement of the Comintern» makes sense «only if it offers firm guarantees that the State apparatus is starting to genuinely serve the interests of the working class, only if hundreds of thousands of workers are armed for the struggle against Bavarian and German fascism in general, and only if, not only in words but in facts, mass expulsions of bourgeois functionaries from the State apparatus commenced… and that economic measures of a revolutionary character be introduced without delay such as to hit the bourgeoisie in a decisive way». Put in another way, according to the famous telegram from Zinoviev to Brandler of the 1st October, it was necessary to « arm 50 to 60 thousand men in Saxony immediately…, and the same in Thuringia».

      At this point everything is contradictory: there is the announcement of a revolutionary situation which is allegedly ”favoured” by the intervention of the great petty-bourgeois masses in a subversive capacity – although it is stated that it will take place within a parliamentary-governmental framework; praises are heaped on the successes of the united front for drawing the greater part of the working class towards the party – although this will mean submitting to a coalition with the most discredited of the World’s social-democracies; there are sermons about ”the conquest of power” by classical revolutionary means – though a government with a social-democratic majority is supposed to implement the measures of arming the proletariat, expelling bourgeois officials and introducing dictatorial measures against the bourgeoisie; it is resolved to ”unmask” the SPD by such means – when in fact all that’s achieved is that the communists end up erasing all the distinguishing features of their own party; there is the claim by the KPD that by revealing the SPD’s failure it «would use facts to convince the majority of the German working class that they were not just a vanguard, as in 1919-21, but had millions of workers behind them» – although they present the latter with the humiliating and shameful reality of a government alliance in which three communist ministers, including the party secretary Brandler, are bound hand and foot to the social-democratic ministers, the murderers of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

      Moreover, at a time when «they have millions and millions of proletarians behind them», they don’t call on them to take power, but to wait patiently and trust to their reformist accomplices to supply a few guns! In other words a coalition is proclaimed on the eve of the insurrection! The scorn which Trotski heaped on such a relapse into (even worse) capitulatory hesitations by the Bolshevik minority when faced with the conquest of power in October 1917 was certainly justified, even if, evading the main question, he didn’t see that this ”social democratic recidivism” was the direct result of the ”elastic” tactics of the united front and ”worker’s government”, which he himself had supported and defended both before and after 1925. Trotski expected to utilise and then immediately after surmount the ”algebraic formulae” of the ”united front” and the ”workers’ government”, in order to put the question of the revolutionary conquest of power in its full magnitude and urgency. A brilliant analysis of Trotski’s audacious interpretation, along with our criticisms, appeared in an article called ”La politica dell’Internazionale”, published in issue no.15 of ”L’Unità” in October, 1925. This text analyses very clearly the process of involution of the C.I. and was an essential contribution to the ongoing revolutionary battle. It has been republished in our Italian review Comunismo, no. 15, in our ”History of the Left” series.

    The date of the insurrection in Germany is then fixed… to be launched from the springboard of a social-democratic/communist government, then the German party HQ exert their influence to have it postponed; everything happens as though revolution was a technical matter, not the result of a very timely and precise objective situation and of adequate subjective preparation by the party (which in fact for months had been preaching to proletarians about the virtues of semi-legal methods, of steering the party towards this or that group, and about trusting to governmental and quasi-governmental solutions). The party is cautioned to make sure that «in today’s Germany, which has reached a turbulent boiling point, and where today or tomorrow the vanguard will launch the decisive conflict drawing the proletarian heavy infantry behind it, the correct tactic of the united front isn’t converted into its exact opposite». However, everything is done to ensure that precisely such an eventuality arises, and in one or two of the regional States, isolated in the great ocean of Germany (whose central power is completely in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the more or less regular troops of Bavaria, eternal reserve of the German counter-revolution) the party policy is to chain itself to the cart of a social-democracy with a proven record of betrayal. It is proclaimed that: «In Germany on the eve of revolution, the general formula of the ”Peasants’ and Workers’ government” is already inadequate… and we must, not only by propaganda but by mass agitation, show and make clear, not only to the vanguard but also to the masses, that it is a matter of nothing less than the proletarian dictatorship, or the dictatorship of the workers in the cities and the fields», and all this can be achieved, it is claimed, whilst remaining in a social democratic Government which specifically excludes dictatorship and terror both in its programme and in its traditions.

      The epilogue to the whole sorry affair is played out a few days later. On 20th October, the central government of the Reich dispatched an ultimatum to the government of Saxony calling for the immediate dissolution of the still tiny workers’ militias, threatening that if not obeyed the Reichswehr would be put on standby. The party decides to declare a general strike throughout Germany, but, lacking confidence both in itself and uncertain off getting support from proletarians disorientated by the conflicting instructions and contradictory objectives, Brandler thinks he should first ”consult” the masses – represented by a meeting of workers, political functionaries and unions at Chemnitz – and then, convinced it was no longer the best moment, the order to cease work is cancelled. One Reichswehr detachment is enough to depose the Saxon Government, but a delay in the notice of cancellation of the strike to the Hamburg proletariat means that there is an isolated strike there which is crushed by force within 24 hours. Instead of the proletariat marching under the leadership of the party the marching would be left to the army, led by the Kaiserist generals retained in their posts by Ebert and Scheidemann. Any focus of resistance would be rapidly stifled: the German episode of 1923 was over.

      It would be easy in the course of the following months, particularly for the Plenum of the Moscow Executive of 8-12 January 1924, to blame the disaster on the insufficiencies, errors and weaknesses of the German leadership. But it would be just as easy for the latter to respond that, small errors apart, they had in fact been abiding by Comintern directives, themselves conforming to the resolutions of the 4th Congress. In order to salvage the salvageable, namely the ”unity” of a chronically divided party, the leadership would be reshuffled and the ”culprits” condemned, though the latter would be retained as a suspect minority in the new ”left-wing” leadership; a leadership which a year later would be recognised as… a lot worse than the one before. But worst of all, accompanying all this was the umpteenth global scale ”tactical switch”.

      Henceforth, there was to be no more united front from above – as had been practised by various parties, particularly the German party, because of ”a mistaken interpretation” of the resolutions of the 4th Congress – instead united front from below was to be the order of the day: «The moment has come to openly proclaim that we are renouncing all negotiations with the Central Committee of German social-democracy and the central leadership of the German trade-unions; we have nothing to discuss with the representatives of social-democracy. Unity from below, that is our watchword. The united front from below, already in part accomplished, is now feasible even in opposition to the afore-mentioned gentlemen». There was to be no more subtle distinctions between right and left wing social-democrats: «the social-democrats of the right are open traitors; those of the left, on the other hand, only conceal the counter-revolutionary actions of the Eberts, Noskes and Scheidemanns under phrases. The KPD rejects any negotiations not only with the leadership of the SPD but also with the leaders of the ”left-wing”, at least until these heroes find the courage to break with the counter-revolutionary gang led by the social-democratic party» (the front door is closed but the back door left open).

      The interpretation according to which the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government was «a Government within the framework of bourgeois democracy, as a political alliance with social-democracy» was held no longer possible: «the slogan of the workers’ and peasants’ Government, translated into revolutionary language, is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat… it is never, in any case, a tactic of agreement and parliamentary transaction with the social-democrats. Quite the contrary, even the parliamentary activity of communists mustno more opposing «better governments» to «worse Governments»: «fascism and social-democracy are the right and left hand of contemporary capitalism».

      The 5th Congress of the Communist International, taking place between 17th June – 8th July 1924, on the one hand reflected the profound confusion of the various parties after two disastrous years of abrupt tactical about-turns and ambiguous edicts; even Togliatti asked for it to be clearly stated exactly what one was supposed to be doing!  And on the other, reaffirmed the practice of crucifying the leaders of the national sections on the altar of the Executive’s infallibility. Once again, the Left raised its lone voice, firmly but calmly shunning local and personal fripperies. If it had ever been in the habit of congratulating itself on the correctness of its predictions, the proletarian blood spilled in vain being the terrible proof of it; or of calling for the heads of ”guilty” and ”corrupt” leaders to roll to make way for more “innocent” and “incorruptible” heads, then this was the moment.

But that wasn’t what the Left asked for or wanted: what it asked for and wanted was for the scalpel to be courageously applied, to surgically remove those deviations from principle of which those ”errors” were the inevitable product and the “heads” merely the chance expression. ”United front from below”? Fine: on condition that the loophole of the ”exceptions” put forward in the initial proposal was closed, and on condition that an unequivocal statement was made to the effect that the United Front « could never be founded on a block of political parties… but only founded on working-class organisations, of no matter what type as long as their constitutions were such that communists would be able to conquer the leading positions». No invitations to join the united front then to other political organisations, like the left and right social-democrats, who were unable «to struggle on the final road to world communist revolution» or «even uphold the day-to-day interests of the working class», and to whom it would have been criminal «for us to appear to be giving a certificate of revolutionary capacity, thus throwing away all our principles, all our work preparing the working class». Struggle against social democracy «the third bourgeois party» ? Certainly; but how then to justify, in that case, the new «bombshell» of the proposed fusion between the International Red Union and the hated Trade-Union International of Amsterdam? Workers’ Government «synonymous with dictatorship of the proletariat» ? We had paid too dearly for employing just one ambiguous phrase: we called for «a third-class funeral not only for the tactic of Workers’ Government, but even for the very expression itself». We called for this because «dictatorship of the proletariat, this tells you: the proletarian power will be exercised without giving any power of representation to the bourgeoisie. This also tells you that proletarian power can be conquered only by revolutionary action, through armed insurrection of the masses. When you say Workers’ Government, it can also be understood (if one so wishes) to mean the same thing; but, if you choose not to interpret it in that way, you can take it to mean (Germany! Germany!) another type of government, one characterised neither by the exclusion of the bourgeoisie from the organs of political representation, nor one achieved through the conquest of power by revolutionary means (rather than by legal means)». But isn’t the formula of ”workers’ government” more easily understood by the masses, came the response? To which we replied: «How can a simple peasant or worker understand the concept of the Workers’ Government, when, after three years, we, the leaders of the workers’ movement, haven’t even managed to understand it and define it in a satisfactory way ourselves?».

    But the problem went deeper still. The International veering ”to the left” in 1925 might have brought us some comfort, if we had posed the problem in terms of a petty revenge. But we didn’t see it that way: «What we have actually criticised in the International’s method of work is the tendency to sway from left to right to suit particular situations, or to suit various interpretations of these situations. As long as the problems of flexibility, and a highly questionable eclecticism are not discussed in depth, as long as this flexibility continues and new oscillations take place, a swing to the left inevitably makes one fear an even bigger swing to the right (need we add that precisely that happened in ensuing years?). In the current situation it isn’t a swing to the left we need, but a total rectification of the instructions issuing from the International: this rectifying might not be done in the way we suggest but do it nonetheless, and in a clear-cut way. We want to know where we are heading».

      And finally: it is us, the Left, who want global centralisation and discipline more than anyone; but such discipline «can’t be entrusted to the good will of this or that comrade, who after twenty meetings or so signs an agreement in which the Left and Right are finally united». It is «in reality, in action, in leading the proletarian revolutionary movement towards global unity» that this discipline can be achieved, and to achieve that «we need clear tactics and organisations constituted on a coherent basis, with clear boundaries set between other parties and ourselves». The Left dared to announce to this congress (which scarcely touched on the Russian question, as though it were a dangerous taboo) that the ”assurance” against a relapse into opportunism shouldn’t be sought any longer in the Russian party alone, because it was the Russian party which needed, urgent need, of us, and in us searches for the ”assurance” which we, in vain, require of it. «The time has come for the world proletariat’s International to render to the Russian CP some of the innumerable services it has received from it. From the point of view of the revisionist danger, the latter finds itself in the most dangerous situation of all, and the other parties must help bolster it against this danger. It is from the International that it must draw most of the strength it will require to get through the extremely difficult situation with which it is grappling» (All these quotations are from a speech made by the Left’s representative at the 5th Congress of the International. They are drawn from the German account of the conference, pp.394-406. The Italian account which appeared in Nos. 7-8, 1924 of Stato Operaio is incomplete, whilst the French account is scandalously mutilated).

      A great battle, a lost battle! The internal crisis in the Bolshevik Party would be accentuated by the debacle of the German October. The reflux of the revolution in the West and the opportunist theorisations concocted to explain it would spawn the monstrosity of ”socialism in one country”. United front ”from below” gave way to renewed enthusiasm for united front from above, and in Germany there were even waltzings with bourgeois radicalism. In Italy, during the Matteotti crisis, there was Gramsci’s disastrous proposal, to the ”oppositions”, of constituting an anti-parliament, a proposal that again attributed an autonomous role to the petty-bourgeoisie and paved the way to the ”popular fronts” against fascism. There was the ignoble doctrine of ”the means justify the end”, vouched for by a scholasticised ”Marxism-Leninism” which had sunk to relying on vulgar Machiavellian formulas, and so on and so forth. To each of these falsehoods there is a reply in the general part of the Lyon Theses (the International and Italian parts which sum up the ”historical background” we don’t stress quite as much). What followed is well known: the emasculated international became a pliable instrument of Russian foreign policy and abandoned every one of its principles. Eventually the Comintern itself would be dissolved in order to obtain a war alliance with the ”democracies”; and to clear the way to all the ignominies of the post-war period.

* * *

      We have seen – and we now arrive at the third aspect of the debacle – that running in parallel with the tactical manoeuvres (in fact anticipating them to a certain extent), and in the continued false belief that it was possible to speed up the concentration of large proletarian forces around the Party, a process had got underway of gradually abandoning the rigorous organisational criteria which the Twenty-one Points had vindicated as the necessary premise for constituting the International on a sound and consistent basis. The idea began to gain hold, opposed by us, that there was still possibly room for manoeuvre, with a view to recognising ”national peculiarities”, within the draconian ”conditions of admission”. It was precisely in homage to such ”peculiarities” that the International accepted virtually the entire French ex-Socialist party as members with the only outcome being that one was increasingly obliged to admit, as each new session of the International went by, that one was faced with the badly disguised spectre of the same old parliamentarist, and even chauvinist, social-democracy. Earlier still, the International had endorsed the fusion of the KPD with the ”left-wing” Independents, and here again the only outcome was the spectacle of the latter edging themselves out again after having caused widespread contamination in the party and aggravating the original ailments. The International was practising at the summit precisely that ”federalism”, i.e. towards the Italian Socialist Party, which the Norwegian and Danish parties were reproached for in 1923, and the same thing would happen in each country every time there arose the vaguest possibility of recruiting numerically greater forces. Eventually alongside the communist parties, self-styled sympathiser parties would be welcomed on a virtually equal footing into the ranks of the revolutionary international.

      Now that a whole series of tactical innovations was being reeled off and breathing life into the centrifugal currents which lay dormant within every party, with the string of sudden changes generating confusion and disillusionment amongst even the most hardened militants, the question of ”discipline” was inevitably posed not as the natural and organic product of a prior theoretical homogeneity and a healthy convergence of practical action, but as a sick reflection of the operational discontinuity and the lack of doctrinal harmony. To the same degree that errors, deviations and capitulations were identified, and attempts made to remedy them by rearranging Central Committees and Executives, the ”iron fist” was also applied, and idealized as the standard method within the Comintern and its sections; and used as a highly effective antidote not against adversaries and false friends, but against fellow comrades. The era of the infernal merry-go-round of trials against… ourselves, had begun, which the Left would describe at the 6th Enlarged Executive, as: ”the sport of humiliation and ideological terrorism” (often instigated by ”humiliated ex-opponents”): and you don’t get trials without gaolers.

     Discipline towards the programme in its original, clear and precise form was no longer observed; it was said that any confusion arising from this lack of discipline could be prevented by recreating ”genuine Bolshevik parties” in vitro. And we all know how these caricatures of Lenin’s party turned out under Stalin’s heel. At the 4th Congress they warned: “Discipline can be guaranteed only by defining the boundaries within which our methods are applicable, by clearly defining our programmes and fundamental tactical resolutions, and through our organisational measures”. At the 5th Congress we repeated that it was pointless pursuing dreams of a trouble free discipline if clarity and accuracy was lacking in the fields on which all discipline and organisational homogeneity depended; that indulging in dreams of a single world party would be in vain if the continuity and the prestige of the international organ was continually being destroyed by conceding, not only to the periphery but to the leaders, the “freedom to choose” the principles which determined practical action and therefore action itself; and that it was hypocritical to invoke the idea of ”bolshevisation” if it didn’t signify intransigent ends, and adherence of the means to these ends.

      Since a military style discipline was still not considered enough, a new organisational recipe was unearthed: the parties would be reconstructed (only five years after their formation!) on the basis of the factory cell considered as a model deriving from the historical patrimony of Bolshevism. A form, then, was supposed to solve the definitively revolutionary problem of force. We responded that a formula which was suitable for pre-1917 Russia and never promoted as an immutable dogma by Lenin couldn’t just be transposed to the West, and that to apply it mechanically would mean a clear break with the principles which govern the formation, and the real genesis and development, of the revolutionary party. What it in fact meant was a relapse into ”labourism” (6th Enlarged Executive), since the Marxist party isn’t definable simply in terms of the social composition of its members, but by the direction it takes. The party is that much more vital and alive precisely insofar as it avoids becoming imprisoned within the narrow and corporative horizons of the factory-gaol. We demonstrated how this ”revision”, vaunted as an antidote to bureaucratisation, would, on the contrary, result in a hypertrophy of officialdom since all that remained to link cell to cell and factory to factory was precisely… officialdom.

      We extended the question to include a much wider and more general problem which in 1925-26 incorporated all the questions destined to consume the Russian Party during its internal struggle, we denounced – before it was too late – the frantic and manic ”struggle against factionalism”; the witch-hunt that would celebrate its saturnalias during the ignoble campaign against the Russian Left in 1926-28 (…) a witch-hunt which had been shunned by the Bolshevik party in its glorious heyday, even against the open enemy (destroyed if necessary, but not subjected to the cowardly act of mud-slinging) and which, spreading beyond the borders of the Russian State, would produce first the obscene figure of the public prosecutor, then the professional informer, and finally the executioner. Just as the proletarian revolution is bountiful, so the counter-revolution is cannibalistic (Marx’s words). The first sign of the counter-revolutionary ”star” in the ascendant – sign, not cause will be the ferocious, slimy, hypocritical cannibalism of ”Leninist” phraseology, and no-one will practise it with more zeal than the Johnny-come-lately recruits, the ”converted” mensheviks, the sackcloth-and-ashes social patriots and the inevitable ”yes” men who gathered in the encroaching gloom, they who had been ”no” men, or at most ”maybe” men, in the great light which we thought would never be blotted out again.

      From here on we would expand on the even more burning issue of salvaging the October Revolution in the crucial year of 1926. We launched a last appeal, despite all the prohibitions and the threatened sanctions (which were anything but metaphorical) calling on all parties and their world congresses to discuss the crisis in the Russian party: «since the Russian Revolution is the first big step towards World Revolution, it is also our revolution, its problems are our problems, and every member of the revolutionary International has not only the right but the duty to contribute towards resolving it» (6th Enlarged Executive). We knew only too well that it was a crisis in the Communist International which was at issue. Broaching a subject which today’s historians have turned topsy-turvy (it’s their job!) we would recall that the greatness of the Russian party lay in their application of a strategy and tactics forecast for the fully evolved capitalisms to a backward country, within the framework of a global vision of the October Revolution. In order to build a solid foundation to combat rehashed opportunism, the International should «seek solutions to the strategic questions» (especially those concerning the relations between the victorious dictatorship of the Russian proletariat and the struggling proletariat in the rest of the world, between the State and the Party and, very importantly, between the State and the Communist International and also concerning the immense arc of the world revolutionary strategy and associated tactics) «solutions which aren’t circumscribed by the Russian experience». We appealed not for a plastering over of the cracks but for a radical change in the modus operandi of the International. There is no such thing as a perfect party, and in the case of the Russian party in 1926 the ”subjective” guarantee of non-corruption – inevitably uncertain and relative – had become irrelevant in any case since it was not secondary matters but central questions of principle which divided this stupendous organ of theoretical and practical battle which had once been the party of Red October. If that powerful bulwark of the world revolution of the passionate post-war years were to be saved from the impending menace of a ”veer to the right”now or never!

      The meeting of the 6th Enlarged Executive in February 1926 marked the end of the C.I as the International Communist Party. It was the last time the Left put in an official appearance. See the Left’s report on this meeting in ”Comunismo” no 1; there is also the Protokoll Erweiterte Exekutive, etc, Moskau, 17 Februar bis 15 Marz 1926, pp. 122-144, 283-289, 517, 577, 609-611 and passim.

      As the Left had urged in vain at each successive Congress, the communist proletarian movement had to be reconstructed from top to bottom on the basis of the ”lessons of October”, and a frank and fearless appraisal of the action of the Communist International. The Lyon Theses and the associated commentary presented to the Enlarged Executive of February-March 1926, were meant to bring this to the attention of an endangered revolutionary Russia as a contribution from the international movement. We were gagged and dispersed: but even if our appeal, our contribution, would fall on deaf ears, it is relevant for the present and future generations.

* * *

      It would be non-marxist to seek the sole explanation for a catastrophe that is still sending out shockwaves today in the deviations of the Comintern from 1922 to 1926. Too many factors had converged, too many objective determinations had ensured that the course of history was, and was bound to be precisely as it was. The party’s actions are nevertheless an objective element, and, in given circumstances, a crucial element. Recognising the origins of opportunism, we said at the 4th Enlarged Executive, didn’t mean, nor could it mean, accepting opportunism as an inevitable, historically necessary fact: «even if the economic situation and future prospects are unfavourable to us, or relatively unfavourable, we shouldn’t accept opportunist deviations in a spirit of resignation, or justify them under the pretext that their causes reside in the objective situation, and if, despite everything an internal crisis does occur», we declared at the 4th Enlarged Executive, «its causes and the means to cure it must be sought elsewhere, that is, in the work and the politics of the party». A curious deduction: in the eyes of an International whose congresses had eventually ended up as shabby trials where parties, groups and individuals would be called to account for the tragic setbacks in Europe and the World, which all came to be explained as the product of ”unfavourable circumstances” and ”adverse” situations.
 
     In fact it wasn’t trials which were needed but a radical critical revision based on impersonal facts which aimed to uncover the infinitely complex play of cause and effect between objective and subjective factors, and which showed that although the influence of party on these objective facts – considered for a moment in themselves independently of our collective action – was limited, it was still in our power to safeguard, even at the price of unpopularity and lack of immediate successes, the sole conditions under which the subjective factors would be enabled to influence history and stimulate it to bear fruit.
 
     The party would be nothing if it weren’t, objectively and subjectively, both for its militants and the undifferentiated working class, the uninterrupted conducting thread which remains intact through the flux and reflux of varying circumstances, or, even if broken, which remains unaltered. The struggle to keep the thread from breaking, the struggle to keep it intact during the long years of victorious stalinism, the struggle to preserve it and reconstruct the World Party of the Proletariat around it, therein lies the meaning of our battle.