The Opportunist International

This article emphasizes that opportunism, eternal defender of “national particularities” and other “special local conditions” which would render impossible a line of action acceptable to all countries, and would give the maximum of freedom, flexibility, and autonomy of action necessarily to national parties, follows, in reality, the same line of action and advances the same arguments in all countries and in all circumstances. Readers of today will be able to, additionally, certify that Zimmerwald’s argument (Lenin’s action with non-Bolshevik elements), has already been used to combat the “sectarianism” of the Left.

In Moscow Serrati could only repeat to Lenin: our reformists, the Turatis, the Treves, D’Aragonas, Dugonis, are in no way comparable to your Mensheviks.  You mustn’t believe that they are or that they could become the saboteurs of the revolution.  The Russian comrades thought the opposite, like us, that there is no difference between them.

And voila we stumble upon further proof: “Justice” from Reggio (paper of the PSI) on December 24^th published a report from the Central Committee of the Menshevik party, adopted May 12^th, 1920, on the subject of the reconstruction of the International. “Justice” pronounces subscribing to “most of the theoretical affirmations made by the Mensheviks” with only one reservation on the proposition to constitute a 4^th International.  “On the contrary, it’s necessary to enter into the 3^rd International to work in common in the assurance that the decisions taken at the Second Congress are modified, permitting the International to regroup all socialist forces in one body”.

This program of global opportunism, that is to say, penetrating into the 3^rd International to remove its true character and historical content, which resides in the severe selection of “socialist forces”, would certainly be equally accepted by the Mensheviks, if the door hadn’t already been closed in their faces.  Leave the “Justice” to receive such treatment and you will see that it will be the same for the 4^th, or the 2^nd and a Half International; like the rest of this note of “Critique Sociale” that we have given in the preceding number.

But a coincidence of thought between Italian and Russian opportunists is particularly interesting.  

The Justice is enthused for the Menshevik declaration according to which “the process of revolutionary development follows and will follow in each country its own path following the degree of development, etc.”  It doesn’t see, myopic Justice, the flavor that this affirmation has when it’s in the mouth of the Russian Right (of various stripes).  They, in perfect accord with opportunists of the world over, affirm that the Communist International wants to impose on all countries the copy of the Russian revolutionary tactic.  But these gentlemen discover ingeniously their own game, in retaking from the Mensheviks, in the sense that those in Russia, precisely in Russia, oppose revolutionary tactics in pretending that they’re inapplicable in such a backwards country.  And in turn Western reformists discover their game, in retaking from the Mensheviks this pretext of national conditions, but in applying the inverse, against the revolutionary method supported by communists from their own countries.

The famous particularities do not impede the emergence and development of communist parties in all countries, but neither impedes in each country the flowering of the same opportunism, strong in the same equivocal arguments – and that an infallible characteristic of opportunists is precisely the famous thesis of environmental differences and consequently necessary autonomies from which all parties should make use of to approve all revolutions, except the one in its own country; to conserve the right to accept communist principles and proletarian dictatorship and rise up against it at the highest moment, simply because it’s neither the time nor place.

Confront the reasoning of reformists (from Reggio) with those of the Mensheviks, and this conclusion appears very clearly: they act, both of them, in a way to be able to be against revolutionary communist tactic, for contingent or local reasons, but in avoiding any and all precise declaration and anti-revolutionary principle.  This is what opportunism consists of – waiting until one finds a more exactly appropriate word for this interesting historical phenomenon.  

Another important remark. Opportunists of the Italian center (unitary socialist-communists) take over as well the thesis of differences of national conditions and situations.  But in their case as well we state that their specific arguments against a rigid application of the International’s decisions are identical to the arguments of opportunists of other countries.  This has been noted several times.  But here is another example.

It’s known that a hobby-horse of unitary communists is the Zimmerwald-Kienthal argument transformed in a legend that in this same number an article of C.N. reduces to its veritable proportions.  Another is the merit of having “defended the Russian Revolution”.  Even better, listen to the “Populaire” of Paris, Longuet’s (and others expelled from the International’s) anti-communist organ, speculates himself on the same polemical motif, to praise the conference led in Bern by the “rebuilders”: “The assembly was highly representative of the best socialist elements from the whole world, men of which some in the great ordeal from 1914 to 1918 didn’t falter or fold a single instant, militants who in the middle of universal breakdown, held high and strong amidst the torment the red flag of international Revolutionary Socialism, who were the organizers of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences and the first defenders of the Russian Revolution”.

And “wham” for the differences!”  Those who are its partisans in different countries sing in perfect international harmony the same anticommunist tune.  And this is the best proof of the universal value which constitutes the pillar of our method, the result of the current historical period; the Marxist revolutionary process with violent revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat; the passage to the defense of the bourgeoisie and to counterrevolution by right socialism which contests this process; the clean division between communists and the new International and elements which, following the traditions of the day before, even when they deny it in speech, serve to support a shaky capitalism.  All this is a fact in all countries; and it’s in true Marxist spirit, working on a mass of incontestable facts furnished by the contemporary history of all nations, that the International Congress has elaborated general norms which serve everywhere to guarantee the organization of communists of the traps of opportunism.
Later experiences – and notably the oppositions and reserves proposed to conditions of admission – confirm that this measure was vital and undeniable; and they furnish the elements to establish an ever greater vigor for the future – as the opponents of all countries sink under our gaze in the inexorable whirlwind which leads to the center of counterrevolution.