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International Communism / Karl Horner [Anton Pannekoek], 2018Source: Communism is spreading throughout Europe, consciously leading the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in order to establish the proletarian dictatorship. Not in all countries has the struggle thrived to the same height of development and thus to the same degree of inner clarity. In the most backward countries, it is only just showing itself as a spontaneous rebellion against the bourgeoisie and the old social democracy, without progressing to a new view. In the most advanced countries it has led to a new spiritual orientation, to a new way of looking at things, which we call communism. But everywhere the new direction finds the whole bourgeois world, including the previous social democracy, against itself. The center and stronghold of communism and proletarian revolution is the Russian Republic. Spontaneously growing up from practical necessity, here the forms were created that determine the essence of communism and serve as models for the workers of other countries: the forms of proletarian class rule in contradiction to the formal bourgeois democracy to which social democracy everywhere adhered to. The bourgeoisie could not object much to the exploitation of formal democracy by the workers in the earlier period, nor could it do much against this: it also showed not to be directly dangerous. But against the establishment of the class rule of the proletariat, against the proletarian dictatorship, it must defend itself by all means, for this is directed against its existence as an exploiting class. Hence the constant struggle by all means against Bolshevik Russia. First, German imperialism cut off the best areas of food and raw materials from it. On all sides it was surrounded by enemy border states. Then the Entente imperialism took action as its most stubborn and powerful enemy. It incited the Czechoslovakians in the Urals, sent them weapons and auxiliary detachments, and pressed forward from the north, from the Arctic Ocean. But it sought to destroy the Soviet republic in a different way as well, by means of conspiracy. In the Geneva newspaper “La Nouvelle Internationale” of 23 November, a letter by Mr. Marchand is printed, a correspondent of “Figaro” and a patriot without Bolshevik sympathies, [which he] addressed to President Poincaré on 4 September; there the author describes with indignation the conspiracy of the Entente consuls in Petrograd, at which he was present, and that aimed at causing an artificial famine and thereby a rebellion, by blowing up the railway bridges in Petrograd. This conspiracy has also been brought to light by the Soviet government and it sheds light on the means that the Entente imperialism considers permissible in the struggle against communism. With the collapse of German imperialism, the Entente governments got their hands free in the East. They sent the Balkan army to Odessa and Bessarabia and a fleet to Estonia. It seemed that a large military expedition should attack Russia from all sides. Afterwards apparently doubts have come. On the one hand, the matter was probably not so easy militarily: sending a large army into the endless steppes to force a population of fifty million who liberated themselves back into the old subjugation has great difficulties. And then, in England and France, an ever greater unwillingness among the masses showed itself against having themselves be used for such a war. This greatly paralyzes a direct war of aggression. This does not mean that Entente capital gives up its intentions and wants to leave Russian communism undisturbed. It persists in its intention to weaken it as much as possible. It supports the troops in the enemy border zones, the Cossacks, the Ukrainians, the Finns, the Czechoslovakians, the reactionary Russian generals, by making available to them officers and above all guns and war material – which has now been released on a massive scale; and it also tries to form armies against the Soviet government out of the hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war, who are now being transported back from Germany under its supervision. At the same time the English government – according to its proposal in Paris – wants to cunningly weaken the moral power of the Soviet government by inviting to a compromise and a restoration of bourgeois democracy, in order to demonstrate the infamy of Bolshevism to its own workers at the hand of the rejection of this impertinence. While communism is still asserting itself strongly in Russia, it is spreading further and further in the defeated central European states. In Germany, the struggles so far have brought an outward defeat which proves that communism has not yet generally taken hold of all the working masses; but they have caused the core of the proletariat now to clearly see the contradictory character of communism and social democracy. In Hungary and Austria, communism is spreading more and more among the workers; terrible unemployment and food shortages are driving them into opposition to the governments formed by social democrats. But what about the Entente countries themselves? We are immune to Bolshevism, a French politician declared, by our victory; Bolshevism is a disease of defeated peoples. To a certain degree he was right. First of all, defeat in war increases the misery of war to the highest degree, and then a defeated government is so weakened that it can easily be overthrown. In the Entente countries the symptoms are therefore different and the movement is necessarily backward and less conscious. The English proletarians are not yet massively for communism, but they are also not willing to fight against communism. They were willing to go to war against German imperialism, against “Kaiserism”; but now they are stormily pressing for demobilization. Thus they paralyze the government to a great extent in the struggle against foreign communism. That is the main reason why a stronger action against Russia – and in the future against Germany – cannot be taken. But besides there is no doubt that communism itself is gaining ground even in these countries. We learn little about it, because the strictest censorship still controls correspondence and newspapers. But the very fact that this censorship is still so strictly applied proves how much the governments there fear the intrusion of Bolshevik ideas and truthful news from Russia. From the time of the English parliamentary elections there was an account of a meeting in London where Muir of the Gas Workers Union defended Bolshevism; similar events may have occurred elsewhere; and in Glasgow Maclean (*), a communist thoroughly educated by Marxism who led shipyard strikes during the war and was arrested for many years, received a large number of votes. In England, the communist movement leans on the spontaneous strike movement, that already flared up in the working masses in the years before the war, against the will of the big trade unions; it does not find itself confronted with a significant and congealed socialist movement, but rather with an old, rusty trade union movement that is exercised for practical reasons, but has no spiritual power over the minds because it has no spiritual content of its own. In France too, censorship seeks to prevent the intrusion of Bolshevism and the leakage of news to the outside world. But this is not entirely successful. A Dutch newspaper (“N. Rotterdammer”) recently reported from Paris on 15 January: “Last Sunday, the socialist League of the Seine Department (of Paris) had called for a large meeting to discuss demobilization, the most burning and difficult issues of the moment in France. The meeting had hardly been opened by the deputy Aubriot, when it became clear that the revolutionary spirit completely dominated the meeting and that the majority socialists Albert Thomas, Renaudel, Bracke were considered there just as the Spartacus people in Germany regarded Ebert and Scheidemann. Albert Thomas had even preferred to stay away. The deputy Bracke was constantly interrupted by shouts during his speech: Long live Lenin, Long live Trotsky, Long live Liebknecht. This shows how the acts of communism in Russia and Germany already find their echo by the Parisian workers. It shows the mood of sympathy, under the influence of the own dissatisfaction against their government – admittedly also not much more. We do not need to have illusions that a revolution in the Entente countries is near. But this mood does effectuate that the governments are incapable of putting down the revolution in other countries. And if the revolution continues in Central Europe, then a new and enormous driving force will act from there on the countries of the victors. Editorial notes*) John Muir © Allthough the Communist Left in general abstained from claiming copyrights or rights on “intellectuel property”, some publications on this site might be copyrighted; if they are, their use is free for personal consultation only. Non-copyrighted material, provided for non-commercial use only, can be freely distributed. Including a reference to this source is appreciated, as well as a notification. As for commercial use, please contact us. Compiled by Vico, 25 December 2018 |
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(1879-1931), Scottisch revolutionary socialist during the First World War, in 1924 Minister of Pensions;