[What I understood to be Internationalism's four-part series on "The Legacy of DeLeonism," reviewed in DB108, turned out to have five parts. Number 118, the Summer 2001 issue, contains "Confusions on the Russian Revolution and American Exceptionalism." Titled "Part VI," it actually appears to be the fifth part of the series. Like other issues containing the series, Number 118 can be obtained for $1 from PO Box 288, New York, NY 10018. -fg]

DeLeonism, the Russian Revolution, and American Exceptionalism : A Review of Internationalism's Confusions

          DeLeonism, the Russian Revolution, and American Exceptionalism : A Review of Internationalism's Confusions

          A confusion in Internationalism's lexicon refers to something it opposes. The "confusions" named in their article are the actions and positions taken by the Socialist Labor Party after the successful Bolshevik-instigated and -led insurrection in St Petersburg in 1917.

          The SLP's first reaction to news of the Russian Revolution appeared in the November 24, 1917 issue of the Weekly People. The article by Arnold Petersen, the party's National Secretary, supported what the SLP understood to be the action of the Soviets but made the point that Russia was far from the level of industrialization that would make it possible to organize a socialist society.

          Internationalism's treatment of the subsequent history of the SLP's position on the Soviet Union is utterly fictitious. The author sets it forth as follows: "The SLP quickly soured on the Russian Revolution because it failed to establish a government of Socialist Industrial Unions, and sought to create a centralized revolutionary movement dedicated to the violent overthrow of capitalism in the formation of the Third International in 1919." Actually the SLP remained a supporter-albeit critical--of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union until 1939 on the grounds that it was building the industrial base that would make possible real socialism as the SLP understood it.

          The SLP's response to the organization of the Third International is another, more complicated matter. From the beginning Lenin and the Bolsheviks were aware that the successful culmination of the revolution required revolutions in the industrialized nations. It was important then to foster support for the revolution among workers in the West, and what would be more helpful than to influence the groups in the world socialist movement that had not supported their respective capitalist class in the recent war? In the U.S. these were the IWW with perhaps 10,000 members, the rather splintered left wing of the Socialist Party--perhaps another 10,000, and the SLP with 5000 members.

          To gather this support from revolutionary workers, Lenin and the Bolsheviks organized a Third International in 1919, one that was designed to fit the needs of the new revolutionary government of Russia. Absent from the founding Congress were delegates representing the revolutionary movements of industrialized Western Europe and North America. Getting support from Western revolutionaries became a major project of the new international. They courted leaders of anti-reformist factions in the old social democratic parties and subsidized the groups and publications that followed their policy lead.

          In the U.S. they concentrated their efforts on the IWW membership but with very little success. They did succeeded in the leftwing of the Socialist Party, which furnished the bulk of the members and the leadership of what became the Workers' (later the Communist) Party. Although Lenin was critical of the SLP, it was clearly one of the revolutionary groups he hoped to attract.

          Nonetheless the SLP did not receive a formal invitation to join the new international and thus was not a part of the debate over the "21 Points" for affiliation presented by Lenin at the Second Congress in 1920. It was this set of conditions for membership in the international that prevented SLP affiliation, for they were clearly designed for a revolutionary movement in industrially and politically backward countries.

          The idea that the working class majority must reach a sufficient level of understanding to make a consciousness decision to abolish capitalism and the wages system was foreign to Lenin and the Bolsheviks as was the idea that the revolutionary party could openly carry on a program of socialist education. As a result the 21 Points demanded that any party seeking affiliation must organize an underground section of the party to carry on illegal work, agitate among the armed forces, call for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and work within the capitalist union movement. All of theses points were anathema to the SLP. Having quoted the SLP's summary of these points along with its comments: that the points were "irrational," "anti-Marxist," and "idiotic," the article in Internationalism goes on to attribute the SLP reaction to the 21 Points to " ...their naive faith in bourgeois democracy and a peaceful overturn of capitalism..."

          For the SLP the news was beyond belief. Convinced that at the very least the new international had been misinformed about conditions in the U.S., the party had Petersen write a long personal letter to Lenin to set him straight. It then decided to send two observers to the Third Congress in 1921 to lay the SLP's case before the International. They made their way to Moscow and arrived in time to see the Bolshevik-dominated Congress ridicule and reject the arguments of the two delegates from the German left wing communist group, the KAPD Communist Labor Party. This was a sizable group whose objections to the 21 Points resembled those of the SLP in many respects. It had split from the International-approved Communist Party of Germany a year earlier. The SLP observers' report noted the authoritarian use being made of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, and compared the role of the new International in the revolutionary socialist movement to that of the Vatican in the Catholic Church. At its 1924 National Convention the SLP passed a resolution condemning the Third International for its harmful interference in the revolutionary socialist movement in the U.S. and elsewhere.

          Titled "American Exceptionalism and DeLeonism's Self-Proclaimed Superiority to European Socialism," the concluding section of Internationalism's article deals with an aspect of SLP thinking that one might think any Marxist would agree with: that the tactics of revolutionaries in a given country will reflect the economic and political conditions that obtain there. In fact, De Leon rather charitably attributed the pre-WWI reformism of European socialism to the need for socialist parties to clear away the pre-capitalist institutions that still existed there.

          Unfortunately an accident of history placed the Bolsheviks-probably the most authoritarian revolutionary movement in the world in one of the most economically backward countries-in a position to command the forces of revolutionary socialism worldwide. And command they did! Having organized the Third International with little or no input from the revolutionaries in industrially advanced nations, they-actually Lenin himself-promulgated a set of 21 conditions for affiliation to the new International that effectively committed any party wishing to join it to the conspiratorial, insurrectionary tactics that had succeeded in St. Petersburg and Russia in 1917.

          With universal suffrage and a political tradition that offered at least the possibility of the peaceful abolition of capitalism and an economy developed to the point where it could produce goods and services in excess of needs, the U.S. was ready for revolution whenever the working class chose to move. The 21 Conditions flew in the face of the SLP's commitment to a peaceful and legal revolution, to the rejection of boring into the capitalist union movement, to reform-oriented parliamentary politics, and (implicitly) to the outdated idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

          The announced purpose of this five-part series was " to come to grips" with DeLeonism. Standing in the way was the fact that in many respects the positions held by the SLP and DeLeonists in general resemble those held by Internationalism. Consider these:

          Like Internationalism - - -

1. the SLP is anti-reformist

2. the SLP opposes the capitalist union movement

3. the SLP does not regard the former USSR as socialist

4. the SLP regards the revolution as nothing less than the abolition of the state and the wages system

5. the SLP does not support national liberation movements as socialist

          Trying to "come to grips with"-actually, to discredit--a group whose history and present positions are as revolutionary as your own or more so, creates real problems. So it was for Internationalism. Their solution was to accentuate the negative. Thus De Leon's anti-reformism was wrong because it became SLP policy before 1914. The SLP position on capitalist unions also preceded 1914 and was also wrong. True, the SLP opposed WWI, but its opposition wasn't strong enough to satisfy Internationalism. The SLP's rejection of the Second International didn't come soon enough. The SLP didn't join the Third International-despite the International's rejection of basic features in the SLP's program and principles. Apparently, like Internationalism's Italian left communist ancestors, it should have knuckled under to the dictates of the Bolshevik politicians running the International regardless of the effect on the revolutionary movement in its home country.

          As I read Internationalism's effort "to come to grips with" DeLeonism I wondered if the author had considered the possibility of writing a convincing argument for some of their positions. They could, for example, have sought to convince readers of the need for a blood-in-the-streets violent revolution. They could have written a convincing argument for a dictatorship of the proletariat under a more benevolent revolutionary party than the Bolsheviks. Another possibility would have been to argue the superiority of workers' councils to socialist industrial unions. Instead they presented a rehash of the lies, exaggerations, half truths, and distortions served up by three generations of professional "labor historians," Stalinist apologists, and socialist politicians.

- Frank Girard