History of Opportunism in the Second International “Defense of the Fatherland”

Owing to the history of the development of the labor movement and revolution before both WWI and WWII there is a defining characteristic of parties in revolutionary periods. Contradictions between opportunist trends and Bolshevism are intensified, lines are clarified, and opportunist forces which had grown during peace time now try to smother revolution. The entire movement becomes engulfed in bitter conflict over the path forward for the class. Today we see nothing different. Thus, there is a direct connection between the at-present fractured Communist movement and the victory gained by opportunism in the west. As a consequence this requires revolutionaries to educate the working class on the importance of the conflict, its causes, and finish the split started by opportunists who will try by hook or crook to ally with the bourgeoisie.

But why, one might ask, do these opportunists who speak in Communist ways try to fight against revolution? Do they not speak of revolution themselves? Do they not follow Lenin and organize themselves into Communist parties? So how can there be “opportunist” Communist parties? How can opportunism have captured so many? And how are we sure who the real opportunists are today?

Remember that the parties of the Second International right up to the start of WWI had considered the looming war to be one of imperialist plunder. They understood that there was no progressive or just characteristic to the war at all, and the war was purely to divide markets. In 1912 the Ninth Congress of the Second International passed the Basle Manifesto which in words took a revolutionary stand against the coming imperialist war. Many socialists in Europe at the time could not see through the phrase mongering of the Second International leadership. After its passage Lenin remarked, “They have given us a large promissory note; let us see how they will meet it.”

The Basle Manifesto only passed because of the general anti-war atmosphere among the workers who had put pressure on their opportunist leaderships to adopt an anti-war position. The founder and most influential party of the Second International, the German Social-Democratic party, had shortly after passing the Basle Manifesto held a party congress in 1913 where it upheld Germany’s colonies. This clearly indicates that while the parties of the Second International were forced to adopt an anti-war position on the outside, they had every intention to support the war. The words of the Second International in the Basle Manifesto would not translate into deeds.

On July 28, 1914, Austria attacked Serbia. On August 3^rd the German Social-Democratic party voted 78 to 14 in the Reichstag in support of joining the war saying that Russia was soon to invade Germany and then declaring “in the hour of danger we shall not desert the fatherland.” The other European parties adopted the same justification and carried out the same line in their respective countries. The opportunists in the Second International had carried out the greatest betrayal to the working class in history at that time. They disguised their betrayal in a thin veil of “Marxism” saying that the German nation-state was threatened, that they must defend their workers against the invaders, and that Germany was the country with the most advanced Social-Democracy in Europe and necessitated defense. Of course, the parties in the Entente countries had their own social-chauvinism and raised the defense of their own countries to be paramount. Thus, these parties all fell into collaboration with the imperialists to wage an unjust war.

The German Social-Democratic party as the most influential party in the Second International played a large role in influencing other parties to follow suit in this greatest betrayal. It signified the ideological and political collapse of the Second International. The war had nothing in common with the interests of the working class. It was an unjust and reactionary war to loot and plunder.

The opportunists in the Second International cited the writings of Marx and Engels who had supported the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 where Germany was liberated from the oppression of Napoleon III who had kept Germany in a state of feudal decentralization. This act made the war a progressive one on Prussia’s part by allowing the growth of the bourgeoisie, and therefore the proletariat, in Germany. Yet nothing about the conditions of WWI would lend itself to being compared to a struggle for national liberation. The leaders of the German Social-Democratic party grasped at straws trying to justify the involvement of the German proletariat in a war of plunder.

Karl Kautsky, who was the most prominent Marxist of the time and member of the German Social-Democratic party, said: “The Situation is different with the great solidly-based national countries. Their independence is certainly not threatened but apparently their integrity is not threatened either.” This may appear to be an argument against supporting the war, but he then follows this with, “But from this follows also the further duty of the Social-Democracy of every country to regard the war exclusively as a defensive war, to set up as its goal only protection from the enemy, not his ‘punishment’ or diminishment”. Thus in order to consider the war “just” Kautsky considered it “defensive” and the duty of German socialists to “defend the fatherland”.

The Basis of Opportunism

In Lenin’s work “The Collapse of the Second International” he says in chapter I,

“If we would formulate the question in a scientific fashion, i.e., from the standpoint of class relations in modern society, we will have to state that most of the Social Democratic parties, and at their head the German Party first and foremost—the biggest and most influential party in the Second International—have taken sides with their General Staffs, their governments, and their bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. This is an event of historic importance, one that calls for a most comprehensive analysis.”[1]

This comprehensive analysis Lenin mentions is that the betrayal of the socialist parties in the Second International stems from the economic basis, and significance, of the ideologically and materially influenced labor movement within Europe by the bourgeoisie. This is possible through super-profit derived bribes given to parts of the working class who are outside of industrial production and primarily engaged in what the English economist J. A. Hobson—in 1902 reflecting on the emergence of imperialism—saw as the inevitable predominance of “personal or minor industrial services” and the “final stages of production” within imperialist countries.

But the roots of opportunism in the labor movement were first expressed in the colonial and industrial monopoly maintained by Great Britain from 1848 to 1892. The analysis of this period comes best from Frederick Engels who remarked that the skilled tradesmen of his time had become “an aristocracy among the working-class.” Conditions in Great Britain as a result of its industrial monopoly had produced a stratum of the working class who had become “comfortable” and in good relations with the capitalist class. So much so that Engels considered this section of the working class to have become “bourgeois” in its outlook. In other words, this bought off section of the working class had become perverted and itself perverted the labor movement and turned it social-chauvinist.

This perversion of the labor movement is substantiated economically by the conditions of imperialism. Here we do not speak of chance mistakes in tactics. Opportunism is adapting the labor movement to the interests of the bourgeoisie. There is an economic basis to this corruption of the labor movement which introduces bourgeois ideology. And there are two main forms in which this corruption presents itself. Firstly it manifests as those who enjoy a privileged position among the working class and seek to maintain that position, i.e., the AFL-CIO “Higher Strategy of Labor”. Secondly, those in the privileged stratum who as a result of pressure from monopoly have been cast down into the ranks of the lower stratum of the working class but bring with them the interests of the bourgeoisie in left-disguise regardless of intentions.

This privileged stratum of the working class both ideologically and materially influenced by the bourgeoisie did not remain a solely English phenomenon. The loss of Great Britain’s industrial monopoly and the emergence of imperialism among several European countries meant that this privileged stratum of the working class had become a condition of all countries with monopoly capital. The establishment of this privileged strata of workers in all the advanced capitalist countries is why in nearly all socialist parties within the Second International following the most influential and whose leadership was populated primarily by these “comfortable workers” went to the defense of their respective “Fatherlands” when the division of the world market could no longer proceed under peaceful politics and threatened the “comfortable” conditions of the social-chauvinists.

Certainly, today it is a fact of life that manufacturing in the advanced capitalist countries is no longer what it once was. Services are the predominant industries in all imperialist countries. Hobson was quite correct in that regard. A large portion of workers in the imperialist countries only facilitate the realization of commodities. This means that merchant capital has become predominant in the circulation of commodities. The bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries have become parasites on the oppressed countries of the world, which they have forced to surrender a greater share of the surplus-value of commodities produced to create super-profits for the imperialists.

In the rest of the labor movement, the domination of opportunism over the most advanced sections of the working class is a result of the industrial restructuring of the advanced capitalist countries. The party’s loss of a firm footing in the industrial centers is why the Central Committee of the PCUSA stated in its Industrial Concentration Strategy and Plan that, “the restructuring of the basic industries in the United States [as well as Europe] meant the decline and deterioration of the old industrial sector of the working class.” The decline of what we might call “blue collar” factory work today has had a corresponding decline in the proportion of party members who came from the lower strata of the working class and the domination of the privileged upper strata – what we call petty-bourgeois radicals today.

This is not unique to the conditions of the US, but one that affects all Communist parties in the advanced capitalist countries. The incessant, seemingly overwhelming problem of opportunism, left or right, is simply part and parcel of the conditions of building a Communist party in the belly of the beast. Meaning this restructuring, i.e., decimation of the organized industrial sectors of the economy, reflected itself in the party. 

It is an important question to ask why the Communist Party of Germany failed to utilize the revolutionary situation. The Comintern considered the failure due to the lack of connection with workers in the factories, but why was this the case? Lenin’s answer to this question in “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder calls attention to a few factors in the German CP. For one, the German party adopted very childish notions of purity, going as far as to refuse to do any party work in “reactionary unions.” Thus the party had willingly cut itself off from sections of the workers leaving these workers under the influence of traitors and the bourgeoisie.

Secondly, Lenin says,

“In Germany, as in other European countries, people had become too accustomed to legality, to the free and proper election of ‘leaders’ at regular party congresses, to the convenient method of testing the class composition of parties through parliamentary elections, mass meetings, the press, the sentiments of the trade unions and other associations, etc. When, instead of this customary procedure, it became necessary, because of the stormy development of the revolution and the development of the civil war, to pass quickly from legality to illegality, to combine the two, and to adopt the ‘inconvenient’ and ‘undemocratic’ methods of singling out, or forming, or preserving “groups of leaders”—people lost their heads and began to think up some supernatural nonsense. Probably, the Dutch Tribunists who had the misfortune to be born in a small country where traditions and conditions of legality were particularly privileged and particularly stable, and who had never witnessed the changeover from legality to illegality, became confused, lost their heads, and helped to create these absurd inventions.”[2]

Since the German Communist Party had in part separated itself from the labor movement and did not have the experience to navigate the revolutionary situation, it failed to become a leader of the workers. How could it be that a Communist party is separated from the workers? Because the German Communist Party, like most Communist Parties of the west, were organized outside of the labor movement. Being outside of the daily struggle of workers was not the case for the Bolsheviks where out of the labor movement grew the Russian Social Democratic Party and then finally the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Some Reflections On The Issue Of Industrial Structuring

The history of how Communist Parties were developed in the advanced capitalist countries offers potential insight into why the CPUSA had such an issue dealing with the decline of organized industrial sectors. In 1931 the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted several factors which retarded the growth of Communist parties in the imperialist countries. I will quote the pertinent observations,

“The illegal condition of the Bolshevik Party prompted it to establish Party groups in the factories, where it was easier and more convenient to work. The Party structure of the Bolsheviks thus began with the factories, and this yielded excellent results both during the years of the reaction, after the February revolution, and particularly during the October Revolution of 1917, the civil war and the great construction of Socialism. During the reaction following upon 1908, when in places the local party committees and the party leadership (the C.C.) were broken up, there still remained in the factories and mills a certain base, small party cells which continued the work. After the February Revolution, when the elections to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies were held, the factories and mills also served as the basis for the elections. It is noteworthy that the elections to the municipal and district councils and the Constituent Assembly, which were based not upon occupational but upon territorial principles, were also carried out by the Bolshevik Party very successfully after the February and October Revolutions, despite the fact that the party had no territorial organizations [emphasis mine – ed.], and its agitation was concentrated in the factories and barracks. The cells and the district and city committees conducted the election campaign without creating special territorial organizations for the purpose. During all periods the lower party organizations of the Bolsheviks existed at the place of work rather than at the place of residence.

Abroad the situation was entirely different. There elections were not held in the factories but in the election districts, in the places where the voters lived. The main task pursued by the Socialist Parties was to gain electoral victories, to fight by means of the ballot, and the Party organization was therefore built along residential lines, which made it easier to organize the Party members for the election campaign in the respective election districts.

[T]he organizations of the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries were built without permanent organizational connections with the factories. […]

That the absence of Party organizations in the factories strongly affects the work of the Communist Parties is shown by such an example, for instance, as that of Germany, in 1923, when the Party failed to utilize the revolutionary situation for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, this being due not only to the absence of a truly revolutionary leadership, but also to the absence of extensive and firm connections with the workers in the factories.”[3]

Most Communist Parties in the west were born from Socialist Parties who had no connection to the labor movement. Their primary source of membership came from cells that followed the same geographical-political party structure as bourgeois parties, i.e., city, county, state lines. As a result, the proportional share of cells within the party that are based in the factories are numerically outnumbered by geo-political cells which unify workers who are disconnected from large-scale production within the party. In other words, geo-political organization can be a boon to the white-collar city-petty bourgeoisie and corrupted workers within the party. 

As the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted above, in the illegal period of the Bolshevik Party they were a closed party and only admitted small numbers of candidates. Primarily due to oppression by the Tsar, trustworthiness was one of the main factors used to evaluate candidates. The core cadre of the party became steeled in experience and capable of teaching. When the party became legal after the 1905 Revolution it became a mass party and accepted many new members. Lenin remarked in Party Organization and Party Literature in 1905 that “We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements.”

As well, Lenin in 1916 in his article “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” very clearly outlines the importance of where the party focuses and draws its strength,

“Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the ‘defenders of the fatherland’ in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.”[4]

If we have a broader reflection on the experience of the Bolsheviks we find that at very few points in their history did they ever accept a mass of new membership into their ranks and that they had from the beginning been based chiefly on the factories. The issue of petty-bourgeois radicalism had scarcely been a problem within their ranks until periods of the intensification of the revolutionary situation in Russia. Later in 1920 in Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Lenin remarks that the Bolsheviks at this point were now very apprehensive in allowing the party to grow too quickly during the October Revolution because of the fact that “careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably strive to attach themselves to the ruling party.”[5] This development signified a greater danger of the penetration of corrupting elements at that point in time.

The dangerous combination of petty bourgeois radicalism with a mass party structure is why the consequence of the policies adopted and implemented by the 7^th Congress of the Comintern in the pursuit of the Popular Front, which sought to bring together the broad masses and all progressive people against fascism, resulted in western parties which were ill-equipped to defend themselves from the sudden and large influence of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Western parties had not chiefly based themselves upon the factories, i.e., upon the lowest paid and unbribed sections of the working class. History has proven that all the western parties were unable to digest the “inconsistent elements” as they transitioned into mass parties. It is historical fact that only in the eastern European countries did the Popular Front result in the formation of Socialist Republics since this is where the parties were chiefly situated in the factories rather than along geo-political lines . Thus these parties could withstand allowing a certain portion of the higher stratum of the working class and petty bourgeois to enter the party.

In the 2021 issue of The Communist the General Secretary Angelo D’Angelo and I wrote that,

“What many call Browderism was in reality then a global right-opportunist phenomena which stemmed from imperialism and its effect on the policies of the international Communist movement during the war. Browderism is only how it manifested under the conditions of the US. This also explains why all the advanced capitalist countries fell victim to their own national variants of Browderism. Nevertheless, in essence, it can be said to have arisen in part out of an upward swing in conditions, a lull in the growth of the movement and from political immaturity. As well as the social composition of the parties in the advanced capitalist countries. Plainly, from opportunism.”[6]

It is evident from the experiences of the Bolsheviks and our own parties in the advanced capitalist countries that the predominance of cells organized along geo-political lines is a carryover from the Socialist Party, and that it can be self-defeating by allowing petty-bourgeois radicals to suffocate Bolshevism within the party. It is inevitable then that issues of daily conflict and splits occur over matters immaterial to the long-term goals of the Communist Party. This also means a greater chance for individuals (careerists and charlatans) who do not come from the lower-strata of the working class to rise to leadership positions within the party since the work of the party (i.e. its cells) is detached from struggle within large enterprises.

Marx was a thousand times correct to say that socialism is birth marked with characteristics of capitalism. It is also true to say that western Communist parties are birth marked with the characteristics of their former socialist parties. However, addressing the predominance of the geo-political method of organizing is only a small part of the struggle against opportunism within our party. It is through the geo-political organization of cells that renegades and opportunists are able to more easily gain leadership positions only to corrupt entire sections of the party. Primarily due to the fact that there are fewer workers connected to shops with thousands of other workers and because the work of the geo-political cells are not focused on the immediate needs of any one workplace. The work of these cells mainly revolves around periodical agitation in public places; in other words, no leading role in the labor movement or direct connection to it.

Yet, the struggle against opportunism does not end with fixing the method of cell organization. The struggle against opportunism within the CPSU is evidence that even in parties where shop cells are predominant that opportunism finds other ways to sap at the strength of the party. It is evident though that in today’s world all Communist parties have been affected by industrial restructuring. The industrial basis of western Communist parties has become weakened, and the opportunity for petty-bourgeois radicals to steal leadership of the parties has grown. It is not a coincidence then that like never before Communist parties have reached an impasse over very basic questions of socialist construction or the history and legacy of the Comintern.

Industrial Concentration is the foremost task of any Communist Party, but it is obvious that this policy has not been carried out by the parties of the world who refuse to see the truth of what the war in Ukraine represents. There is no central world leadership to teach its importance. In the vacuum left by the CPSU, many parties have become aimless and have decayed into complacency over the years of industrial restructuring.

The CPUSA in 1949 as a matter of its party education instilled upon all party members that:

“The policy of concentration is not a policy for a special group of comrades, nor a special sphere of work which is carried alongside of other tasks. There must be no counterposing of industrial concentration as ‘one specific activity’ to other mass activities. Winning the workers in the big shops and working class communities is a political task (the struggle for the political policies of the party – which embrace both economic and political issues). Industrial concentration must be the heart and core of the work of all party organizations and all party leaders.”[7]

By regaining a foothold in the big shops the party will secure the social composition of the party as decidedly working class and offer an advantage to the party in its struggle against opportunism within the Communist movement.

The Ultra-Left and Ukraine

Grave issues within the international Communist movement have meant a major difference of perspective about support and non-support for the current Russian military offensive. To understand the current situation it is important to understand the class character of war in the modern age. The historical features of war have changed owing to the development of society and capitalism to its highest stage. By contrast during the period starting from around 1776 with the American Revolution and ending with the Paris Commune in 1871, the major wars and civil wars at this time were bourgeois-progressive and often had a national-liberation characteristic.

All honest socialists participated in the overthrow of feudalism. Most notable among them was Karl Marx who constantly gave guidance and clarity to the character of the US Civil War through the First International, the International Workingmen’s Association. Marx saw clearly that it was a progressive war which could overthrow the feudal Bourbon-Landlords of the South and end chattel slavery. By overthrowing the slave masters in the South the conditions for socialism, which was impossible beforehand, now existed.

Such a war to overthrow the backwards aristocracy was instrumental in allowing capitalism to develop, which was a progressive step, but capitalism most of all concentrates capital and industry. Today, US capitalism has reached its highest stage—imperialism. All the major industries are concentrated into the hands of billionaire associations, and all the major capitalist nations have divided the world amongst themselves. When “peaceful” diplomacy fails to satisfy its re-division, war and violence is waged. Making war in the age of imperialism is the result of fierce competition over markets. This means peace between capitalist countries can only be transitory, and peaceful diplomacy among them only stalls the impending outbreak of war which represents the continuation of capitalist diplomacy in a violent form. As well, the war will bring many changes to Russia which will develop further as a capitalist nation should it defeat NATO and Ukraine.

As analyzed in the PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference, the US is in a fierce competition with Russia and China for markets to export the highly industrialized commodities produced in the US. When Trump tried to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, it was explicitly done in order to offer Europe “Freedom” gas and oil, but at a higher cost than the EU was able to secure from Russia.

Immediately upon Russia committing to conflict in Ukraine, Germany indefinitely suspended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and the EU and US ceased importing Russian oil and natural gas. As much as 40% of EU energy was imported from Russia. The US had tried to capture this market by attempts to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia under Trump “peacefully”. Such a market is extremely important, which is why the US since 2014 had cultivated fascism and knowingly egged on NATO membership in Ukraine in order to get control over the energy markets of the EU and force Russia into a military response and subsequently isolate them from energy markets.

However, this maneuvering by the US has heavy costs. The PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference analyzed the situation in Europe and noted that a divide between the EU and US was growing. This still remains largely true, even with Germany forgoing trade with Russia to its detriment. As the crisis of capitalism deepens it strains the ability of the US to maintain its alliances in NATO, meaning there is a weakening unity among members given the heavy handedness of the US forcing the EU into subpar deals. Shortly before the conference last year, China had signed the “largest trade deal in history” with the EU to the exclusion of the US.

Forcing EU NATO members to accept greater costs, and have less of a share of global profits in order to pad the pockets of US imperialists will result in worsening diplomacy between the US and EU. Even as Germany once more does the bidding of the US, Germany has signed a historic military spending bill, as much as 10x its previous military spending after being forced to suspend Nord Stream 2 bringing their total spending to an astounding €100 billion[8]. Germany and the EU have begun to lose confidence in the ability of the US to protect their profits, with the US under Trump even outright trying to strong-arm the EU into paying more for NATO[9]. In order for the EU to finally shake off US control, it will require a historic build-up of military forces.

However, there is also a more serious implication of a growing schism in global capitalism trending toward the build-up of these military forces around the world for an impending global conflict which can bring humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation. This time is far more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis since Russia is no longer socialist and therefore is not guided by the same Communist morality.

As in 1914, all the American and European capitalists paint this war as one for the “freedom of nations.” In actuality, the capitalists egg on and cultivate this war for the oppression of nations, to fortify existing colonies, and to prolong capitalist rule. Though at the same time, as during WWII, the scourge of fascism walks the earth (cultivated by the US and NATO) giving an impetus to the growth of the grossest reaction the world over, and renders social revolution under such conditions as existing in Ukraine impossible. There can be no socialist revolution while the working class is kept under the thumb of fascism. Thus the defeat of fascism in the Ukraine is both essential and progressive.

This is why the PCUSA affirms its position that, because Russia has made it clear that its ambitions for the war serve to resolve the mounting crisis in Russia itself, that the ousting of the Bandera fascists and defense of the DPR and LPR can be used as a justification for a war of conquest, i.e. reclaiming the “common motherland” of the Tsarist Empire. Until the point when the actions of Russian capital move toward conquest, the PCUSA stands with all anti-fascist people in support of the Donbass and support the war against the Bandera fascists in Kiev. In our own country, we must remember that the American workers have no interest in waging a war for plunder, that it is forced upon them. The American workers are mentally ruined and physically worn out not only as a result of the growing intensification of their exploitation under US capitalism, but from decades of predatory wars, epidemics, and the acute suppression of their organization by a mass of labor misleaders. It is the  duty of all communists in the US during these times to build resistance against our country’s engagement in the cultivation of punitive fascist wars to re-divide the world market.

[1] Lenin, V.I., “The Collapse of the Second International” in Collected Works, Vol. 21; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974, pp. 207-208.

[2] Lenin, V.I., “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, pp. 32-33.

[3] Piatnitsky, O., The Bolshevization of the Communist Parties By Eradicating The Social-Democratic Traditions; Workers Library Publishers: New York, 1932,  p. 15-17.

[4] Lenin, V.I., “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” in Collected Works, Vol. 23; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974a, p. 120.

[5] Lenin, Op. Cit., 2022, p. 42.

[6] Dirte, Timothy, “Opportunism and the Collapse of the Third International” in The Communist, Vol. 1, 2021, p. 52.

[7] Study Course on The Communist Party, The Working Class, and Industrial Concentration: Outline and Guide for Schools, Classes, Study Groups; The National Education Depart of the Communist Party USA: New York, 1949, p. 18.

[8] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-hike-defense-spending-scholz-says-further-policy-shift-2022-02-27/

[9] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nato-trump/trump-says-nato-countries-burden-sharing-improving-wants-more-idUSKCN1RE23P

The post Imperialism and the Split Among “Communists” appeared first on The Communist.

The lack of class-oriented trade unionists stems from the capitalist led McCarthyite purge of Communists and class-oriented unionists within our unions after WWII. The vacuum left by the purges was filled with a terrible swarm of charlatans,  mobsters, and reactionary elements who descended on our unions and did everything they could to make sure that American labor would not regain the strength it once had. With no strong Communist guidance our unions floundered and decayed, culminating in their absolutely pitiful representation of just 10.8% of American workers. A figure which is nearly the same as in the period of American labor history before the creation of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This low figure is not from a lack of interest in union representation (in a recent Gallup poll, 67% of Americans supported unions), but from an inability to achieve it. That means that the momentous achievement of union representation backed by federal legislation and recognized as a constitutionally protected right has been all but neutered.

Federal recognition meant increasingly stronger federal oversight and interference in unions. The bosses were forced to recognize our unions but since they still control the government, they knew that in the long run they would take control of the unions away from class-oriented workers and render them toothless.

Once unions were federally recognized and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) passed,  the State Department began to support right-wing candidates for union leadership, ultimately resulting in the expulsion of class-oriented trade unionists from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the CIO right after WWII. The State Department did this so that it could use the unions as tools of US Foreign Policy, and prevent the unions from being influenced by foreign unions. This change in the leadership of the unions prevented US labor from affiliating with the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), of which the CIO was a founding organization. This change in leadership was accomplished through the passage of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, more commonly known as the Taft-Hartley Act, which among other anti-union statutes, forced union leadership to sign anti-Communist affidavits effectively banning Communists from union leadership. Unions who refused to honor this stipulation were expelled from the CIO. In the case of the United Electrical Workers (UE), the CIO in conjunction with the State Department, General Electric and Westinghouse corporations led a dual-unionist campaign to replace UE as the union representative in their factories.

Today, with such close connections among  the AFL-CIO, US State Department and the Department of Labor, many “leaders” of labor were quick to announce support for the fascist government of Ukraine. The US State Department is using our unions to give a veneer of union backing to those thugs, who have led a massive anti-union campaign in the Ukraine, including the notorious House of Trade Unions massacre that took place in Odessa in 2014.[1]  We believe that the rank-and-file see through all those maneuvers. US involvement in Ukraine is an imperialist attempt to privatize Ukraine and balkanize Russia.

Many groups in the labor movement today claim to be trying to win back our unions from the entrenched and corrupt leadership that is primarily supported by the US State Department. Tragically they parrot the same language as the State Department. As reactionaries took leadership of the unions, the government cultivated “left” groups who they knew would promote instability and confusion in the labor movement through operation COINTELPRO.[2]

The effect of COINTELPRO is still felt today. Many of these “leftists”  are just reactionaries turned inside out. They are two sides of the same coin. They promote sectarianism, a holier than thou attitude and a general disdain for discipline, organization, and the working-class generally. They end up being useful tools for the bosses. Take for example the “Reform Caucus” in the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), who sued their own union with frivolous accusations. This caused Amazon to file against ALU in order to invalidate the election at Amazon warehouse JFK8, using the Reform Caucus’ lawsuit as evidence. The difference between the right-wing shills working with the State Department and the “left-wing radicals” is that the right-wing shills are getting paid for their treachery. The “left-wing” fools are wrecking the labor movement without pay.

It is up to all honest hard working people to approach the current situation with class-oriented trade unionism. Don’t let the “left-wing” sectarians gossip and weaken our unions, and don’t let the right-wing stifle democracy either. Now is a time of reflection, of learning, and growth for all of us to find the pathway to bringing a class-orientation back to our unions. It all starts with getting back to the basics, to the fundamentals of why we have unions in the first place, and then fighting for the burning issues of labor today.

History has shown that the only way to achieve these goals is to organize and educate a vanguard of the working-class movement. Willam Z. Foster explains this clearly in “The Principles and Program of The Trade Union Educational League”:

“One of the latest and greatest achievements of working-class thinking … is a clear understanding of the fundamental proposition that the fate of all labor organization in every country depends primarily upon the activities of a minute minority of clear-sighted, enthusiastic militants scattered throughout the great organized masses of sluggish workers. These live spirits are the natural head of the working-class, the driving force of the labor movement. They are the only ones who really understand what the labor struggle means and who have practical plans for its prosecution. Touched by the divine fire of proletarian revolt, they are the ones who furnish inspiration and guidance to the growing masses. They do the bulk of the thinking, working and fighting of the labor struggle. They run the dangers of death and the capitalist jails. Not only are they the burden bearers of the labor movement, but also its brains and heart and soul. In every country where these vital militants function effectively among the organized masses the labor movement flourishes and prospers. But wherever, for any reason, the militants fail to so function, just as inevitably the whole labor organization withers and stagnates. The activities of the militants are the “key” to the labor movement, the source of all its real life and progress.”[3]

[1] see “Ukrainian workers living standards have declined under Fascism,” also in this issue.

[2] COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was an illegal secret FBI operation to infiltrate and disrupt American political organizations, e.g., the CPUSA, labor organizations, the civil rights movement, the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, the New Left and others.

[3] Foster, William Z, “The Principles and Program of The Trade Union Educational League” in The Labor Herald, Vol 1, Issue 1, March 1922, p. 5.

The post Present Day Leadership Bankrupts the American Trade Union Movement appeared first on The Communist.

The situation preceding the general crisis of world capitalism before World War II called for this basically correct policy as well as that of thoroughly fighting against forces on the left that ultimately serve to weaken and break the workers resistance against capitalist aggression. With the practical effect being the victory of fascism if the workers are beaten. These forces are what we call social-fascists.

However, once the victory of fascism was achieved in Germany, Italy, and Japan, the conditions ostensibly called for a more advanced policy. The presence of fascism had a deleterious effect on the entire world and threatened to pull the whole of humanity down with it. No longer could the struggle against social-fascists be carried on in the same way.

The international situation called for the policy of a People’s Front. This differs from the United Front as its basis of unity extends beyond the working class and seeks to unite an entire people, the progressive elements which for one reason or another stand against fascism and against the capitalists offloading the crisis onto the workers.

As well, the stronghold of world socialism, the USSR, was under threat of invasion by the German fascist forces. The defense of the international position of communism required a tacit alliance on the lines of anti-fascism between the socialist camp and the capitalist camp which had not fallen into fascism. Dimitrov, secretary of the Comintern, explains the reasoning for this at the 7th congress of the Comintern in 1938:

“We Communists employ methods of struggle which differ from those of the other parties; but, while using our own methods in combating fascism, we Communists will also support the methods of struggle used by other parties however inadequate they  may seem, if these methods are really directed against fascism.

“We are ready to do all this because, in countries of bourgeois democracy, we want to block the way of reaction and the offensive of capital and fascism, prevent the abolition of bourgeois-democratic liberties, forestall fascism’s terrorist vengeance upon the proletariat and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intellectuals, and save the young generation from physical and spiritual degeneracy.

“We are ready to do all this because in the fascist countries we want to prepare and hasten the overthrow of fascist dictatorship.

“We are ready to do all this because we want to save the world from fascist barbarity and the horrors of imperialist war.

“Ours is a Congress of struggle for the maintenance of peace, against the threat of imperialist war”

”

The struggle of the French people, led by the Communist Party of France on the lines of a People’s Front against the rising tide of fascism before WWII proved effective at preventing the rise of fascism in France before Hitler invaded. The resolve of the French people to resist fascism was a boon to the world anti-fascist movement. Even though with the defeat of France during WWII, their people carried on the anti-fascist fight which was best represented by the heroic resolve of the French Partisans. 

The Communist Party USA, seeked the same success as the tendrils of fascism crept over our own country in the wake of the Great Depression. The threat of fascism in the US was real and presented a revolutionary situation as Stalin outlined at the ECCI in 1929. Twice US finance capital seeked to overthrow the bourgeois-republic, first with the American Liberty League, and a few years later with the American First Committee. 

As Dimitrov and Stalin outlined at the 7th congress, the fascists rummage through history and uphold or revise it in order to validate and achieve support for their anti-democratic and anti-people aims. CPUSA general secretary Browder took on the task of combating this by trying to show the progressive side of American history which the capitalists all too often obscure and suppress. 

Simultaneously, the cooperation between the Soviet Union and the USA in anti-fascist efforts produced great expectations about the possibility of a lasting alliance. In fact, the feeling was so pronounced that many in the party leadership came to see the US bourgeoisie as basically progressive, beyond the context of the Anti-Fascist People’s Front. 

During the war, the party even went as far as to restrict its agitation among the workers in order to further alliances with center-left forces. This meant ceasing criticism against social democrats and the like, as well as ending political education among the workers to further relations with bourgeois organizations or even calling attention to the anti-worker policies of the big capitalists.

In order to achieve the unity required for the People’s Front, the concept of National Unity was needed. This concept was essentially an all-class alliance against fascism. As Browder explained in Victory – and After, it had the goal of “uniting the entire nation, including the biggest capitalists, for a complete and all-out drive for victory.” 

The defeat of fascism, as argued by Dimitrov and Stalin, necessitated the party to uphold the progressive elements of our national history, to open the scope of our agitation to appeal to all elements of society and lead the American people against fascism. This meant that the party would appeal to cultivated bourgeois sentiments among the people in regards to the “Founding Fathers” and the first American Revolution. This was showcased by “Jeffersonian Democracy” being enshrined in the CPUSA constitution and argued to be the American path towards communism. 

By 1940 however, the CPUSA had left the Comintern in order to further its National Unity policy.[1] This is due to the capitalist Allies accusing the comintern of fomenting the “Bolshevization” of the US and others. For the Party’s policy to succeed, it required it to make every effort to prove its commitment to the American people and their national interests. It was feared that not having left the Comintern would have hurt the campaign of National Unity. In fact, Browder later argued in 1944 after the Teheran conference that it was essential for the Communist Party to not “push” the progressive elements of US capital towards reaction.

Because of the policy of National Unity and bringing into the fold both the workers and big capitalists against fascism, it was said to have required on the part of the big capitalists a progressive interest to do so. Browder suggested in his 1944 work Teheran – Our Path in War and Peace that this National Unity was possible owing in part to the immaturity of US capitalism and the classes therein not fully understanding their own class interests or positions.[2] His ultimate point being that US capitalism constituted a peculiarity of world capitalism, ie., not bound to the same laws of capitalist political-economy which was true of all other capitalist countries.

This progressive interest was in the petty-bourgeois concern for “free-enterprise.” On this line of appealing to US capital’s concern for “free-enterprise,” rested the Anti-Fascist People’s Front, ie, the alliance of the CPUSA and the US bourgeoisie to redivide the world market. And this “peculiarity” of the immaturity of US capitalism was said to have stemmed from the same conditions of the US that gave rise to “Jeffersonian Democracy.” This referred to a particular period of the US that saw Jefferson elected on a popular campaign against large landowners and bankers who retarded the development of industry. 

Jefferson’s campaign consisted of both working class elements and that of the industrial bourgeoisie that was prevented from developing under the conditions of the monopoly-landowners, otherwise known as the planter class, or land speculators. This unity of the American workers and elements of the bourgeoisie in opposition against certain monopoly forms (particularly land and slave owners) formed the basis of the “peculiarity” of US capitalism which set it apart from world capitalism. The American values which comprise this unity such as rights of free speech, assembly, worship, trial by jury, expansion of the franchise, and the like all aided Jefferson’s ability to garner the support of the budding bourgeoisie. 

As early as 1938, this perspective on Jefferson and US capitalism became the party line: “A full and complete application of Jefferson’s principles, the consistent application of democratic ideas to the conditions of today, will lead naturally and inevitably to the full program of the Communist Party, to the socialist reorganization of the United States, to the common ownership and operation of our economy for the benefit of all.” Though, four years prior in 1934 the slogan of “Communism Is Twentieth Century Americanism” had already been popularized by the party leadership. And here the concept of “Americanism” refers to the democratic ideals of Jeffersonian democracy, a wholly bourgeois concept. 

With this foundation of a progressive essence to US capitalism, the context of the unity between the capitalist and socialist camps against fascism took on a different perspective than initially thought of as that of a tacit strategic alliance. Not only the possibility[3] for a progressive interest among the capitalists became considered by party leadership, but its actuality.[4] And if the US represents a progressive form of capitalism capable of peacefully, inevitably, leading to communism, then it should be the work of communists to aid the development of US capitalism.[5]

This campaign of unity with the national interests of the US bourgeoisie in its progressive drive against fascism, required, too, that in the spirit of proving communist commitment to the US that the party withdraw from the Comintern in 1940. This is because the capitalist “allies” wasted no effort in accusing all the communist parties and the Comintern itself of acting in a concerted effort to “Bolshevize” them. It is a long standing accusation of the party as receiving orders from Moscow. Stalin explained the dissolution to Reuters shortly after its finalization in 1943:

“The dissolution of the Communist International is proper because:
(a)   It exposes the lie of the Hitlerites to the effect that “Moscow” allegedly intends to intervene in the life of other nations and to “Bolshevize” them. From now on an end is put to this lie.

(b)   It exposes the calumny of the adversaries of Communism within the Labour movement to the effect that Communist Parties in various countries are allegedly acting not in the interests of their people but on orders from outside. From now on an end is also put to this calumny.

(c)   It facilitates the work of patriots of all countries for uniting the progressive forces of their respective countries, regardless of party or religious faith, into a single camp of national liberation—for unfolding the struggle against fascism.

(d)   It facilitates the work of patriots of all countries for uniting all freedom-loving peoples into a single international camp for the fight against the menace of world domination by Hitlerism, thus clearing the way for the future organization of a companionship of nations based upon their equality.”

Furthermore, the conditions of World War II for the Soviet Union meant intense battles mainly being fought on the eastern front. The allies refused to attack from the west until after the comintern was dissolved. 

In the international context of the alliance between the capitalist and socialist camps, this international camp against fascism, led many to believe a new world was on the horizon. The prospect of both camps working together for the benefit of all was a seemingly tangible possibility. Many assurances from both sides were made on the post-war order of the world. 

In fact, peaceful coexistence was not a new idea. Lenin also considered it not only possible, but a necessity for building socialism while encircled by capitalism. This is because a global revolution at the same time was not possible. So naturally, socialism would crop up in one country or another while existing side by side with capitalist states. Peace as a matter of foreign policy is then not negotiable, it’s a requirement of survival for the proletarian state until socialism has sufficiently encircled capitalism. [6] 

Yet, in the conditions of the Anti-Fascist People’s Front, the threat of fascist terror proved to be a far more pressing concern, and rendered the antagonism between the two systems secondary while fascism existed. In 1947, Stalin explained that “[t]he difference between them [capitalism and socialism] is not important so far as co-operation is concerned. The systems in Germany and the United States are the same but war broke out between them. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. systems are different but we didn’t wage war against each other and the U.S.S.R. does not propose to. If during the war they could co-operate, why can’t they today in peace, given the wish to co-operate?“[7]

Peaceful coexistence as a practical possibility was thus built upon the concessions of the international communist movement to unite both camps against fascism. And owing to the progressive aspirations of the people from both camps toward a post-war world, no sacrifice was too sacred to further the Anti-Fascist People’s Front, up to and including the dissolution of the Communist International. Thus, the international communist line was set on the facilitation of national interests to build “national unity”, rather than an international centre for proletarian revolution. 

However the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) thoroughly repudiates the long believed purpose of the dissolution of the comintern. The characterization of the war by the comintern to be initially that of an imperialist war to redivide the world market was abruptly changed to being anti-fascist once Germany invaded the USSR. The KKE argues that the real character of the war as being an imperialist war was inescapable and unavoidably part and parcel of the underlying conditions of the war but underestimated in the line of the Anti-Fascist People’s Front. The KKE explains in its report on the Comintern by the Section of the International Relations of the Central Committee of the KKE:

This position underestimated the fact that the character of the war is determined by which class wages the war and for what purpose, whether it is originally and at that particular moment on the defense or on the attack. The struggle against fascism and the liberation from foreign occupation, for democratic rights and freedoms, was detached from the struggle against capital.

The contradictions in the CI’s (Communist International) line on the character of World War II were also influenced by the aspirations of the USSR’s foreign policy and by its attempt to defend itself from an imperialist war. However, in any case, the needs of the foreign policy of one socialist state cannot supplant the necessity of a revolutionary strategy for every capitalist country. The ultimate security of a socialist state is determined by the worldwide victory of socialism or its prevalence in a powerful group of countries and hence, the struggle for revolution in each country.

Further, the change in policy of the communist parties to this new reality meant doing away with previous methods of work as was done before the rise of fascism. To prevent a collapse of the international camp, and its tenuous alliance, the role of the communist party was redirected away from an exposure of the oppressive policies of the bourgeoisie. The party saw such agitation as a threat which could culminate in driving progressive capital towards reaction. [8]

Through this context of national unity, progressive capitalism, and peaceful coexistence, the dissolution of the Communist Party USA took place and its re-formation into the Communist Political Association (C.P.A.) in 1944. This was an organization not for the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie, but for “Marxist edification” of the American people who by means of the existing bourgeois political structure of the country would realize socialism peacefully in alliance with progressive monopoly capital. The party of a new type, Leninism itself, finally being rejected.

It is quite easy and convenient to attribute all of the incorrect policies of the party during the war period to Browder. He was of course the general secretary of the party in the period. The theoretical leader of the party. However, this would fall into the easiest traps of analyzing this period. The Popular Front, National Unity, Progressive Capital, and Peaceful Coexistence were not solely Browder’s ideas. These all came from the international movement and its leaders. As well, almost every communist party in the advanced capitalist countries fell into similar mistakes.

Ultimately, we cannot ignore the reason why the Communist International was dissolved to further the national unity campaigns of the parties in the advanced capitalist countries in order to gather bourgeois support against the Axis. Neither can we ignore the extent to which peaceful coexistence was believed to be not only possible, but probable in a post-war world. That hostile attitudes and imperialist interests would dissipate in the absence of the unifying threat of fascism was not seriously considered.

What many call Browderism was in reality then a global right-opportunist phenomena which stemmed from imperialism and its effect on the policies of the international communist movement during the war. Browderism is only how it manifested under the conditions of the US. This also explains why all the advanced capitalist countries fell victim to their own national variants of Browderism. Nevertheless, in essence, it can be said to have arisen in part out of an upward swing in conditions, a lull in the growth of the movement and from political immaturity. As well as the social composition of the parties in the advanced capitalist countries. Plainly, from opportunism.

By virtue of our analysis coming some 80 years after the policies of the Popular Front, some truths are self-evident. Such being that many parties in the absence of the Communist International fell into social-democracy, the capitalist camp vehemently attacked and subverted the People’s Democracies of Europe, and finally, had a hand in the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The long desired peaceful coexistence, its technical possibility, and historical necessity only resulting in the loss of the international position of the communist movement. 

Perhaps the alliance between the capitalist and socialist camps was only possible through the shared interest in destroying the rise of fascism, and ultimately in furthering imperialist interests. Stalin further qualified such an alliance as being possible only if the underpinning impetus to its continuation in the context of shared interests overcoming the fundamental contradiction between states remained intact.[9] Alliances between capitalists states are predicated on the build-up of forces for the re-division of markets, this is indisputable, alliances between imperialist bourgeois-democracies and socialism are, as evidenced by the practical result of the second world war, predicated on the existence of a threat to both bourgeois-democracies and socialism. 

The “desire,” so to speak, which conditions the unity between the two camps against fascism stems from the very nature of fascism. Without this threat, the domination of imperialism becomes the overriding interest of the capitalist camp if it is not all along. 

The economic logic of imperialism necessitates war, it requires the penetration of new markets. Peace between the socialist and capitalist camps can then only ever be tenuous at best. The capitalists will never stop looking for weak points in the proletarian state to subjugate it to the interests of capital. The only way to maintain peace between the camps then is through trials of strength, otherwise the capitalists will attack with force and destroy the socialist state.[10] Lenin was very clear that peaceful coexistence was limited and conditional:

“the very thought of peacefully subordinating the capitalists to the will of the majority of the exploited, of the peaceful, reformist transition to Socialism is not only extreme philistine stupidity, but also downright deception of the workers, the embellishment of capitalist wage slavery, concealment of the truth.”[11]

In fact, the entire purpose of the Communist International was to serve as an organizing body of the world proletariat to combat the encirclement of the young Soviet Republic, the stronghold of socialism.

In the final analysis, the Axis was defeated, but at a severe cost to the international communist movement which still struggles against fascist reaction today. The factors which contributed to the degradation of the western communist parties are situated in a deeper analysis of the conditions of capitalism retarding the ideological development of the workers and subsequently the communist parties therein. 

Reflecting on the collapse of the Second International in 1972, Gus Hall remarked, 

“The unity between parties was first diluted to a formal unity. But very quickly even the formal ties became obstacles to carrying out opportunist policies. World and class ties between parties became an embarrassment. Each party stated its internationalism would be expressed through effective work, each within each of the national entities.

The leaders of these socialist parties very quickly made “new” discoveries. They decided Marx was wrong. There were no laws of capitalist development that applied universally. There were no worldwide concepts of the class struggle. In each country they discovered “fundamental” national peculiarities that overshadowed international similarities. The working-class interests were watered down to where they did not appear in contradiction with the interests of the ruling class.

The class struggle became purely a “people’s struggle.” Class concepts became national concepts. No party openly condemned internationalism, they just put it on the shelf for “the duration.”

Many of the parties became large mass parties. This was good. But what was not good, was that they became broad popular parties by going along with popular concepts of nationalism and classlessness. They became mass parties by giving up their advanced working-class positions. Their growth was fed by opportunism”

A very apropos analysis of the Second International that has an all-too coincidental similarity to the objective consequences of the 7th Congress of the Comintern line. Opportunism is at the heart of its self-dissolution. 

    *    *    * 

Some Implications and Consequences

If the Popular Front line of the 7th Congress of the Comintern is examined to its end in 1943 it is unquestionable that its primary thesis forms the foundation for several party leaders later on. Let us outline this connection.

As stated previously, it was fully argued under the 7th congress line that the previous periods of the Comintern were a mistake and were ultra-leftist. The development and popularity of fascism had come out of the “failure” of the communist movement to have adequately embedded itself in the large petty-bourgeois, and nationalist populations. The new line was to correct this mistake by shifting the movement away from “left-sectarian” methods. 

In effect, a move away from combating the bourgeoisie ideologically to form the popular front through concessions to it was the systematic dismantlement of proletarian internationalism. “Peaceful Coexistence” as a matter of foreign policy thereafter for the communist movement became perverted to mean outright submission to the capitalists who were now “progressive.”

The “broad masses” as defined in the line of 7th Congress of the Comintern were not compelled out of necessity to unite with the communists here as much as was the case in war torn Europe. While all western communist parties eventually devolved into social democracy over several decades, the US party did so not two years after the 7th Congress. No one can deny the fascist threat which loomed and looms in the US, yet the US party was destroyed easily by opportunism. 

Again, we cannot stress enough that Browder is merely applying the line of 7th Congress of the Comintern to its logical end. All understandings of Browderism while correct superficially are hollow when examined at a deeper level. Browder was many things, but in the final analysis their failure is primarily to be found in their uncritical approach to the line of 7th Congress of the Comintern. We must also mention that while Foster was correct in recognizing the folly of what came under Browder’s leadership, they failed to see its real connection to the 7th Congress of the Comintern.

Even after the disastrous effects under Browder, Foster and the CP leadership failed to see what truly upended the communist movement. As a further consequence, the CPUSA never abandoned the rightist line of the 7th Congress of the Comintern and to this day puts forward the path to socialism as through a “peaceful revolution” literally at the ballot box. The “Communist Party” of the US is purposefully ignoring the class character of bourgeois democracy. This is why with the deaths of Foster and later Gus Hall, the last vestiges of militancy in the CP died as well. Rank opportunism having claimed victory in the CPUSA.

The distortions of Marxism-Leninism by the 7th Congress of the Comintern must be studied and fought against to rebuild and bring about Socialism-Communism. 

Timothy Dirte is the Educational Secretary of the Party of Communists USA and Editor-in-Chief of “The Communist”.

[1] In fact, Browder says as much in the early 1943 issue of The Communist when the Comintern was dissolved.

[2] First of all, it would be well to clear up a certain paradox which gives rise to many confusions. The paradox can be stated in this form: that American capitalism is the most advanced in the world, but not the most mature. It is the most advanced, in that it is the strongest, it has brought the technique of production to its highest known point, and it has carried over and preserved the least proportion of pre-capitalist social, political, and economic forms. It is not the most mature, in the sense that it does not exhibit the full evolution of its inherent tendencies of development, it retains some of the characteristics of a young capitalism, and lags in self-understanding and self-consciousness. (E. Browder, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, 1944)

[3] Regulation and limitation of monopoly capital, in a society in which it plays a dominant role, are not simple and easy matters. If big capital unites its forces against the rest of society, and fights for unrestricted domination, then it is extremely doubtful whether it can be regulated successfully, short of a major political and social struggle, and a crisis resulting in a socialistic system replacing the present one.

   If, however, in the ranks of big capital there is a sufficient number of men of vision and understanding who recognize the suicidal results to their own system that inevitably flow from a failure strictly to subordinate its operations to a broadly conceived and definitely planned program of national and international expansion of well-being for all – then such men, integrated in or working with the democratic-progressive camp of the people, can become the decisive leaders of big capital in a maximum of self-limitation to meet a minimum of governmentally-imposed regulation that will effectively curb the anti-social and anti-national tendencies of big capital, sufficient for it to participate in the national unity in support of the program of Teheran. (Ibid)

[4] There is a growing volume of evidence that there are such men of vision and understanding in the ranks of big capital. Their number will grow, and their initiative and leadership will become stronger, to the degree that it is made evident that there exists a practical platform upon which they can unite, and are uniting, with the broad democratic-progressive camp inclusive of the organized labor movement, which promotes the general interest of the whole nation. (Ibid)

[5] Therefore, the policy for Marxists and all adherents of socialism in the United States is to face with all its consequences the perspective of a capitalist United States in the period of postwar reconstruction of the world, to evaluate all plans on that basis, and to collaborate actively with the most democratic and progressive majority in the country in a national unity sufficiently broad and effective to realize the policies of Teheran. (Ibid)

[6] [..]the lesson all workers and peasants must master is that we must be on our guard and remember that we are surrounded by men, classes and governments openly expressing their extreme hatred for us. We must remember that we are always at a hair’s breadth from all kinds of invasions. (“On the Domestic and Foreign Policies of the Republic, Report Delivered at the Ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets”, Collected Works, fourth Russian ed., Moscow, Vol. 33, p. 122.)

[7] J. V. Stalin Coexistence, American-Soviet Cooperation, Atomic Energy, Europe, 1947.

[8] We must all learn to welcome their appearance and prove in practical life that such cooperative effort in the spirit of national unity is both possible and profitable. Nothing can be more fatal for the perspective of Teheran, so far as the United States is concerned, than an attitude of uniform and undifferentiated hostility to the ranks of big capital from the side of the labor and liberal sectors of our democracy. That only drives the intelligent capitalists back into the arms of their most reactionary fellows and unites the most powerful group in American society solidly against all progress.

   There can be no effective national unity in America to secure and unfold the program of Teheran that does not include big capitalists able to fight for and win at least a certain minimum of participation on the part of their whole group. (E. Browder, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, 1944)

[9] Of course, if there is no desire to co-operate, even with the same economic system they may fall out as was the case with Germany. – J. V. Stalin Coexistence, American-Soviet Cooperation, Atomic Energy, Europe

[10] That is the way it always is  —  when the enemy is beaten, he begins talking peace. We have told these gentlemen, the imperialists of Europe, time and again that we agree to make peace, but they continued to dream of enslaving Russia. Now they have realized that their dreams are not fated to come true. (“Speech Delivered at the First All-Russian Conference on Party Work in the Countryside”. Alliance of the Working Class and the Peasantry, FLPH, Moscow 1959, p. 326.)

[11] V.I. Lenin, Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920

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