working class divided and disarmed. of twentieth century history. TO UNDERSTAND Hitler's rise to we must examine the politics of the two main German working class parties, whose disastrous decisions opened the door to rascist.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD), which nea me support or most in dustrial workers and the majority of the working class, nad evolved as a classi cal reformist party.
Despite adopting a formal marxist programme in 1891, its leaders had in the final decade of the nineteenth contury been drawn increasingly into the bankrupt politics of bourgeois parliamentarism and trade union refor mism.
The relatively democratic constituSPD reinforced deep-seated illusions (criticised by Engels) that working class interests could be better served by peaceful reforms than by revolutionary struggle.
In 1902 the craven 'new realist-style reformism of SPD leader Eduard The political challenge to reformism raised by Lenin in the Second International, and opposition from a vocal left wing in the SPD itself, could not prevent an accelerating political degeneration. Page 10 January 30, No. 36 SIXTY years ago Adolf Hitler's Nazis rode to power in Germany in the teeth of the most powerful working class in the world. While Hitler's tactics welded together an alliance of radical reaction, the politics of the mass Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the German Communist Party (KPD) left the Yet tragically the real lessons from this historic defeat, the scars from which still disfigure world politics, have yet to be learned by many in today's workers' movement and organisations of the revolutionary left. Our last issue looked at the events leading up to Hitler's triumph. Here JOHN LISTER looks back at the political issues raised for marxists by one of the turning points Bernstein was singled out for ruthless criticism by Russian marxist leader Lenin, as he drew the dividing line between reform and revolution in his key amphlet What is to be Done? The very conception, 'ultimate aim was declared to be unsound, and the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was absolutely rejected. It was denied that there is any counterdistinction in principle between liberalism and Socialism. The theory of the class struggle was rejected on the grounds that it could not be applied to stricty democrac county, sovemea according to the will of the majority, This political challenge to reformism raised by Lenin in the Second International, and opposition from a vocal left wing in the SPD itself, could not prevent an accelerating political degeneration. The search for reforms within capitalism led logically to support for capitalism itself. From 1910 an even more right wing SPD leadership began to purge left op ponents. By 1914, the majority of parlamentary deputies of the still marxist SPD voted in favour of credits to aid the war-drive of their own capitalist class. A left minority, including Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, committed to class struggle, internationalist politics, fought on inside the SPD, only The German Communist Party (KPD) was formed in January 1919 Within weeks it had lost its key leaders, as right wing SPD leaders Noske and Scheidemann presided over military moves to crush the revolutionary workers upsurge and the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. laboration continued throughout the 1920s. By 1931, Trotsky could sum up the party's politics in brief, caustic The rottenest portion of putrefying capitalist Europe is the Social. Democratic bureaucracy. It entered upon its historic journey under the banner of Marx and Engels. For its goal it took the overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie. The powerful upsurge of capitalism caught it up and dragged it in its wake. In the name of reform, Democracy betrayed the revolution, at first by its actions and later by its very words. „..
"The war came. Social Democracy supported the war in the name of future prosperity. Instead of prosperity, decay set in. Then the problem resolved itself no longer in concluding from the inaderevolution; nor was it one of reconciling the workers with capitalism by means of reforms. The new policies of Social Democracy now consisted in making society safe for the bourgeoisie at the cost of sacrificing reforms.
Sacrificing gains
"But even this was not the last stage of degeneracy. The present crisis that is onvulsing capitalism obliged Social Democracy to sacrifice the fruits achieved after protracted economicand political struggles, and thus to reduce the German workers to the level of existence of the fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. There is no historical spectacle more tragic and at the same time more repulsive than the fetid disintegration of reformism amid the wreckage of all its conquests and hopes."
There were more than sufficient grounds therefore for German Communists and revolutionaries in the I9zus ana 1ysus to nate and despise ine politics of German Social Democracy. A river of blood had long separated the SPD's reformist leaders from the marxist movement: but gut reactions along these lines can lead to poor political Any objective assessment of the German working class showed that despite all its betrayals, the SPD still retained mass support, and unions linked with the SPD still organised the lion's share of German workers.
This problem could not simply be surmounted by Workers with illusions in the Social Democrats had to go through experiences that would break those illusions and lead them towards revolutionary politics.
Lenin had set out to challenge kneeerk ultra-left positions in the fledgling Communist Parties in his pamphlet Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disor, circulated to all delegates at the Second Congress of the Communist International (Comintern).
In it he warned that to win power Communists must win the support of masses, and this in turn meant were to be found:
"To refuse to work in the reactionary unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders.. "You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, severingly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations - even the most reactionary - in Which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found."
Lenan aiso telerated tane and atain a painful fact of revolutionary life:
.. revoluton is impossible without a change in the view of a majority of the working class, a change brought about by the political experience of the masses, never by propaganda alone." (emphasis added)
rotsky in the leadership of the early Stalinism and the 1920s at 9305 Stalinism in the 1920s and serumnica to unis teme tae and again. The Comintern itself moved on from its inital tack of demarcating itself from social democracy to spell out the tactics or we unrea tront by waich the communists were to approach the broad mass of workers and show them in
The victims: Communist militants rounded up by fascists after the Reichstag fire practice the need for a new, revolution.
"In ... clashes - insofar as they involve the vital interests of the entire working class ... - the working masses sense the ing the onslaught of capitalism or unity in taking the offensive against it. Any party which mechanically counterposes tself to this need of the working class for unity in action will untailingly be condemned in the minds of the workers." (March 1922)
United front Trotsky summed up the 'united front' tactic of the Fourth Comintem Congress in this way:
...posing before the workers who do not yet trust the Communists the following proposition:
You do not belleve in revolutionary methods and in the dictatorship (of the proletariat). Very well. But we Compropose to you and your or ganisation that we fight side by side to gain those demands which you are advancing today.' "This is an unassailable argument. It educates the masses about the Communists and shows them that the Communist organisation is the best for partial struggles as well."
Unfortunately many leading elements of the KPD never developed beyond the gut reaction leftist response to social democracy, while in the USSR the emergent Stalinist bureaucracy was incapable of training a genuinely revoluti y leadership The KPD's line towards the SPD therefore became increasingly sectarian from 1924 onwards, ine problems were com pounded by the elimination of minority and factions within the KPD Phoney as the Thälmann leadership (known as This was a historical conjuncture in which the home-grown, gut- reaction ultra-leftism of the KPD leaders was inensified to new levels by the wildly irresponsible Third Period' policy of the Kremlin, under which social democrats were denounced as 'social fascists' (as described in our last issue).
Isolation
The KPD's sectarian attacks on the SPD, even in the teeth of Hitler's mounting fascist threat, was made easier by the growing isolation of the party from the ndustrial workins 8 percent of KPD members were classed as industrial workers, only half of these were employed, and a mere 3 percent worked in big industrial plants most of which were controlled by proSPD unions.
Features А ЗДРАВО Lenin warned against 'infantile' ultra-leftism The situation worsened in the slump. By 1932 80-85 percent of KPD members were unemployed, meaning that most of them had no contact with the SPD strongholds. Any possible political resistance to KPD sectarianism was hampered by the rapid turnover of party members in this period, meaning that the equivalent of the entire membership changed every two years.
It was very much against the stream therefore for Trotsky in 1931-32 to attempt to resurrect the traditions of the Comintern and Bolshevism in the KPD by fighting for the policy of the united front against Hitler:
Way Social Democracy as a whole, with all its internal antagonisms, is forced into sharp conflict with the fascists. It is our task to take advantage of this conflict, and not to unite the antagonists against us.
The front must be directed against Fascism. And this common front of direct struggle against Fascism, embracing the entire proletariat, utilised in the struggle against Social Детостасу, directed as a flank attack but no less effective for that.
"It is necessary to show by deeds a complete readiness to make a bloc with the Socal Democrats against the Fascists cases in which ey will accept a bloc. To say to the Social Democratic Last your leaders aside and join our "non-party" united front means to add just one more hollow phrase to a thousand others. (...)
"It is necessary, without any delay. finally to elaborate a practical system of measures - not with the aim of merely 'exposing Social Democracy (before the Communists), but with the aim of actual struggle against Fascism."
(Germany: The Key to the International Situation)
The heightened class polarisation and the depth of the capitalist crisis in Germany also offered opportunities for the Communists programme as a basis oint action SPD workers. Trotsky again referred back to the traditions of Bolshevism and the carly Com, intern in stressing the need for transitional demands, (with a special focus on the fight in highly-organised factories for workers controlover production, and the develop. an alternative economic plan centred on links between Germany and the USSR as a means of attracting the best militants. But Trotsky's arguments and the efforts of the small German Left Opposition were quite untarianism of Thälmann's Kremlin-backed KPD leadership.
Still denouncing and fighting Social Democracy as the main enemy, the KPD was itself crushed by Hitler and the Nazis. Trotsky's grimmest warnings of the consequences of such a historic defeat were tragically contirmed.
But Stalin's Communist International showed itself completely unable to learn from or even to note the terrible errors that had seen made. Even alter the defeat, with leadi Ger Stains German Stalinists languishing in bureaucratised Comintern retrospectively endorsed the political line that had brought defeat.
New International It was this evidence that the Com. intern had ceased to play any kind of revolutionary role which persuaded that it was beyond recovery, finished as a useful instrument for the working class. In the worst possible circumstances, amid the roar of the defeat of Europe's most powerful working class, he issued the call for the building of a new, revolutionary International to develop the struggle for marxism.
later, have the lessons een learned by todays revolutionar left? Sectarianism of the worst kind is still rife among organisations many of which would claim to stand or derive from the Trotskyist tradition. Some the errors on the united front attacked by Trotsky in the 1930s appear chillingly familiar for British marxists today.
The illusion that the Labour Party in Britain can simply be circumvented by building an alternative mass revolutionary party lingers on in various guises. Trotsky challenged these illusions in a KPD which had a membership of almost 300,000Oh, no!' the functionaries keep drumming, 'weshall "first" liquidate Social democracy. How? Very simply, we shall order our party organisations to recruit 10v.uou new members witn such and such a period. Instead of political struggle - merely propaganda; instead dialectical strategy bureaucratic plans."
Recruitment
Trotsky emphasised that even large scale individual recruitment to an already large party was no substitute for building influence in the mass organisa"...the numerical growth of the party solves nothing. Within a tottering nation shot through by crisis and contradictions, an extreme left party can find new supporters in tens of thousands, especially if its entire apparatus is directed to the sole purpose of capturing members, depends upon the interrelation between employed Communist who is elected to the Factory Committee or to the administration of a trade union bears a greater significance than a thousand new members, picked up here and there, who enter the party today in order to Many in today's British left will recog: nise the absurdly sectarian caricature of a 'united front which has been erected purely and simply as a front organisabon by one of the left currents, and in which they will not brook any challenge precisely this method when implemented by the mass-based KPD:
"The task of the party consists in leaming, from the experience derived from the struggle, how to demonstrate to the proletariat its right to leadership. While trary, nolas to une opinion fat is can demand point-blank obedience from the "Every united front which doesn't first place itself under the leadership the Communist party, reiterates Die Rote Fahme, is directed against the interests of The very historical which the Communist Party as yet to solve - that of uniting overwhelming majority of the workers is turned by the bureaucrat into an ultimatum....
Rank and file
And while sectarian currents of the British left persist in grouping their rank and file supporters outside rather than carrying the fight into the organised labour movement, they would do well to remember Trotsky's angry rejection of the KPD's suicidal tactic of building breakaway, self-isolating 'Red Unions:
"Alll the while it is precisely within the trade unions that an exceptionally fruitful field is now open for action. ... The 200,000-300,000 workers who are now organised in independent Red unions could serve as a priceless leaven within the reformist unions."
It is high time these basic lessons were learned and absorbed by the British left, not to be kept as relics in a class struggle museum, but as a guide to action today's class struggle. A look at the events of sixty years ago in Germany serves as a stark reminder of the costs of getting things wrong. It was this evidence that the Comintern had ceased to play any kind of revolutionary role which persuaded Trotsky that it was beyond recovery, finished as a useful instrument for the working class.
No. 36 January 30, 1993 Page 11
Letters