Left-Wing Communism : An Infantile Disorder Melmoth/Hayes

Sixty years ago in May. 1920, delegates attending the second congress of the Third International were each presented with a copy of a pamphlet written by Lenin entitled "Left-Wing" Communism An Infantile Disorder. In this pamphlet Lenin subjected those organisations labeled "left communists" to a series of withering criticisms and arguments, which are today common currency for the leftists who consider Lenin's text a classic expose of Marxian 'tactics' and 'dialectics, Who were they, these left communists, these 'ultra-lefts', so heavily censured by Lenin?

THE LEFT COMMUNIST MOVEMENT

It was precisely because the left communists defended the original principles of Bolshevism and of the Third International that they were led to take the course of opposition to their compromise and betrayal after 1920. Lenin's pamphlet itself was a sign of this early degeneration.

And because the left communists were marxists, they were able to appreciate the implications of the now epoch of capitalist decadence ushered in by the war, and in particular the historic importance of the soviets or workers' councils which played such a central role in the October revolution.

The strongest grouping of the left communist current at this time (and the recipient of most of Lenin's gall) was the KAPD (the Communist Workers' Party of Germany). The KAPD had been formed in early 1920 by the majority expelled from the KPD in 1919 for refusing to carry out parliamentary activity. The German left communists understood correctly that there could be no further useful function for such bourgeois institutions, which had become the main rallying point for the counter-revolutionary forces and could only act to destroy the workers' own organs of power, the workers' councils. In this way, the left communists defended the real spirit of the Third International itself which had proclaimed the entry of capitalism into "an era of wars and revolution", and had denounced bourgeois democracy as completely obsolete. Working class fighters like the KAPD understood the need to work for the formation of workers' councils as the historically-discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, against all lies and mystifications about the parliamentary 'road' or 'tribune'.

In Italy, left communism was represented by the Abstentionist Communist Fraction of the Italian Socialist Party, around Amadeo Bordiga, which defended an intransigent marxist line against the confusionist and social democratic swamp of the PSI. It was the left-wing 'Bordigist' grouping which formed the original nucleus and leadership of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1921

In Britain it was the Workers' Dreadnought group of Sylvia Pankhurst which fought for communist clarity, most particularly on the vital question of parliamentarism and the attitude of communists to the reactionary, bourgeois Labour Party. Also mentioned, and to some extent lumped together with the left communists, in Lenin's pamphlet, were the shop stewards around people like William Gallacher on the Clyde. The first shop steward movement in Britain was an attempt to move the working class away from reformism and the trade unions through 'rank and file' unionism tinged with pre-war.syndicalism. Alas, because of the inability of the stewards' movement to become political, especially on the vital questions of breaking with the union machine and the role of a working class party, it was doomed to incoherence, eventual impotence and integration into the official union apparatus through the British CP. :Individuals like Gallacher did take up left-wing, anti-parliamentary positions but tended to be inconsistent owing to their syndicalist hang-ups. Gallacher himself was soon 'converted' by Lenin and later became Westminster's pet 'Communist' MP, combining parliamentary careerism with hackwork in the Stalinist CP.

In his pamphlet, Lenin liberally applies the 'leftist' tarbrush to all and sundry, from the British stewards to the American IWW, thus establishing the confusion that the left communist were svndicalists or anarchists.

THE SECOND CONGRESS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL

The left communists were not, an the leftists like to think, struck dumb by Lenin's pamphlet, later to crawl away under the spell of his rhetoric and logic. They defended their positions at the second and third congresses of the Comintern. before they were finally expelled. At the time of its publication, Anton Pannekoek one of Lenin's favourite targets in his polemic, wrote that:

"Its significance lies not in its content, but in the person of the author, for the arguments are scarcely original and have for the most part already been used by others. What is new is that it is Lenin who is now taking them up." ('Afterword to World Revolution and Communist Tactics', in Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism. Pluto Press, p.143)

It was no accident that Lenin's polemic against the left communists was made at the time of the second congress of the Comintern. For three years the Russian revolution had remained isolated. with Russia convulsed by civil war and beset by the dire economic difficulties of the 'war communist' period. In an effort to alleviate these difficulties, the Bolshevik state had been forced to seek compromise with the outside world, in particular through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The enormous pressures of running a state economy began to make inroads into the previous clarity of the. Bolshevik party, and brought old confusions to the surface. Caught up in the apparatus of the 'workers state', the Bolsheviks more and more began to compromise their role as 'guiding light' of the world revolution. Bolshevik predominance in the Comintern became a negative influence as they became entangled in the bolstering of the Russian bastion. This was the process analysed and attacked by the left communists in the interests of the world revolution.

After the fiasco of the 'March Action' in Germany in 1921 the Bolshevik state (and the world revolutionary movement an a whole) started to resign itself to a period of isolation. This isolation can be seen as the underlying influence in the Comintern's reversal of attitude towards the left flank of social democracy, ie. to the German 'Independents' - the USPD -and. the centrists of the PSI led by Serrati with the right~wing of the PSI led .by Turati lurking in the wings. This reversal. was already clear by the second Congress. The application of the PSI. for membership in the Comintern and their ready acceptance of the famous 'twenty one conditions' was attacked by the left communists because they understood., that you can't teach an old dog new tricks; and these social democratic dog 'bit very fiercely at the first opportune moment! The lefts pointed to the dangers of courting the deceptively alluring "mass parties" like the PSI and denounced this policy of the Comintern leadership as a betrayal of its original opposition to social democracy. The German, Dutch and other left communists considered that the best .'practical' way forward. would be to develop to the utmost the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat, in particular with regard to parliament and the unions. This rejection of a compromise with social democracy was to lead eventually-to the exclusion of the left communists from the International, while the right-wing became more and more the dominant force.

Against all this opportunism, Gorter and the KAPD affirmed that social democracy everywhere was exclusively bourgeois: "Instead of applying the same tested tactic in all countries, thereby making the Third International internally strong, we are now once again turning to opportunism just an Social Democracy once did. Now everything must be included: the trade unions, [German] Independents, the French centre, parts of the [British] Labour Party. In order to preserve Marxist appearances conditions must be set which must be signed (!!) and Kautsky, Hilferding, Thoman, etc, are excluded. The masses, the middle-class masses, are however, included and pulled in by every means. "The best revolutionaries such as the KAPD are excluded!" (quoted from Herman Gorter' s 'Reply to Lenin', extract published in International Communism In the Era of Lenin. (Doubleday/Anchor. p.219)

This critique of the Comintern's policy was based on the left communists' experience with social democracy in Western Europe,.and in particular with parliamentary.activity and the trade unions.

THE POSITIONS OF THE LEFT COMMUNISTS

In his Reply to Comrade Lenin, Herman Gorter demonstrated that Lenin and the Bolshevik Party had not fully appreciated the class-nature of social democracy and the trade unions. This was especially true for the unions which the KAPD, confronted with some of the strongest in the world, was well placed to understand. It was not as Bolshevik practice implied, just a matter of bad leaders:

"By their nature the unions are not good. weapons for the revolution in Western Europe, even if they had not become Instruments of capitalism, even if they were not in the hands of traitors, and even if they were in the hands of any leaders you might care to use; who were not, not, by their nature, bound to turn their members into slaves and passive instruments, the unions would still be just an useless."

Here Gorter had discerned something which in entirely missing in Lenin's analysis. For Lenin, and later the Comintern, It was really a matter of providing the correct revolutionary leadership to workers inside the existing trade unions. For the German Left, the unions could not be turned Into instruments for the overthrc of capitalism since they had been integrated into the machinery of the state, alongside the social democratic parties. The unions, like the social democratic parties, had to be destroyed.

This point Garter and the KAPD constantly stressed. Lenin -and the Comintern leadership, in the right-turn towards 'mass' parties and 'mass' trade unions which would give maximum but passive support to the Russian state never understood the significance of the anti-union movement in the working class, which was strong in Germany and led to the emergence of large workers' organizations explicitly anti-union and for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The existence of such organisations and the AAUD (General Workers' Union of Germany) was a strong refutation of Lenin's sophistry on this question.

In attempting to relate to the lessons of the class struggle, Gorter and the KAPD follow In the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg who in her Mass Strike pamphlet could discern the growing historical changes within the movement: the mass character of the workers' struggles, their growing political significance, and the inadequacy of the old kinds of organisation. The KAPD took up this analysis in the new conditions of capitalist decadence, after social democracy had definitively betrayed the working class. Inevitably their work is pitted with weaknesses, but they had grasped the basic truths. They did not throw out the role of the party, as Lenin maintained. In fact they were for the tightest discipline and centralism within the party. The role of the party however is seen in a new light with the change in period and especially with the emergence of the soviet which for the KAPD performed the revolutionary function of destroying the capitalist state and exercising proletarian power, providing the direction for the mass of humanity towards communism. Against accusations of anarcho-syndicalism, Gorter replied: "When you say that there should be an iron discipline and absolute military centralisation in the Communist Party, this is not only wrong because we also want iron discipline and strong centralization, but because this issue means to us something different from what it means to you." (Reply to Lenin)

The role of the party, as the KAPD stated in 19 1 21, was to group together the "most conscious and prepared proletarian fighters": "The communist party must have a thoroughly worked o,ut programmatic basis and must be organized and disciplined in its entirety from below, as a unified will. It must be the head and weapon of the revolution ... The main task of the communist party ... is ... to be the one clear and unflinching compass towards communism. (It) must show the masses the way in all situations, not only in words, but also in deeds. In all the issues of the political struggle before the seizure of power, it must bring out in the clearest way, the difference between reforms and revolution, must brand every deviation to reformism as a betrayal of the revolution..." (Theses on the Party)

For the KAPD. the Comintern's drift towards compromise with social democracy at the second congress, was precisely such a "deviation to reformism" and a "betrayal of the revolution". For the Bolsheviks and the Comintern leadership the admittance of the left social democrats, the Kautskyites and all the rest of them, was merely another tactic, a move to establish an influence in those mass organisations which still retained a presence in the working class. This was a capitulation to ambiguity -- the idea that, because of their membership, the social democratic parties and the old trade unions were still working class. For the Comintern, it all became a matter of having the right leaders to make them revolutionary again. The official tactics of 'revolutionary' parliamentarism and trade union work reflected more and more this ambiguity, hardening into an objectively counter-revolutionary practice, a veritable Frankenstein's monster providing a base of strength for Stalinism later on.

In the last fifty years the working class has paid dearly for these ambiguities and early compromises of the Third International. The price has been years of compounded illusions in the working class nature of the trade unions and the social democratic parties. Lenin's original polemic against the left communists is now used by the leftists - the Trotskyists, Maoists, etc - to justify their own deeply- entrenched interests in the defence of such reactionary bodies, and to attack revolutionaries who support and stengthen the workers' own growing understanding of the need to struggle against the left-wing of capital.

The positions of the left communists, for all their confusions and half-finished character, have today become vital foundations in the defence of class positions. For us, those 'infantile' organisations have provided a programmatic point of departure for the next revolutionary wave. It in no accident that their work has been buried or deliberately distorted. But today, their fight is our fight, their lessons our lessons, only doubly enriched today. The left communists may have disappeared in the bourgeois counterrevolution, but their work is not forgotten, and will be taken up by new generations of workers who will raise the battle-cry of the KAPD: "The revolution is proletarian or it is nothing!"

Melmoth/Hayes