By
Neil Harris
APART from the “official” Comintern tactics,
there were two other techniques of working: “entryism” and the “front” and although
both became associated with communism’s enemies, both began life with the Comintern.
After the breach
between Trotsky and Stalin, the underground Trotskyite factions found it
increasingly difficult to operate inside communist parties and eventually left
to create independent parties. When these failed to gain any following, “entryism”
(The French Turn) into the parties of social democracy was used as a technique
to try to connect with the working class. On occasions Trotskyite parties would
split in two with one wing working as an open party while the other operated as
a secret faction inside social democracy, as in Britain.
Entryism was
always going to fail, either because the Trotskyites were forced to hide so
deeply inside social democracy that their revolutionary politics were
suffocated, or because over time they just turned out to be closet reformists
themselves. Their problem was that wherever entryism became a long-term tactic,
it exposed both Trotsky’s origins as a Menshevik as well as his followers’
inherent Menshevism. It fostered the illusion that a secret revolutionary
faction could win power through bourgeois elections by using social democracy
as a Trojan horse. The real attraction of entryism was always the seductive
appeal of reformism: the time for establishing an independent revolutionary
party never came.
In any event, if
ever they got close to power, the intelligence agencies simply exposed their
activities and this gave the social democratic leadership the opportunity to
expel them – as with the “Workers Revolutionary Party” or “Militant” in the British
Labour Party.
It may surprise New Worker readers to learn that
entryism was not a tactic invented by Trotsky, it was already in use by the
Comintern in the 1930s. In Britain for example, the Young Communist League
(YCL) put cadres into The Labour League of Youth to win the League over to the
Third International. When that failed there was a pre-planned mass defection of
members to the YCL. These included the writer Ted Willis and Jack Gaster, who
later became a prominent communist lawyer. This influx boosted the YCL briefly
but at that time it was militant and growing rapidly anyway. It is unclear what
long term benefit the tactic produced and it was never used by the CPGB again.
In countries
like Germany and Italy, where Fascism had seized power, Comintern policy was
for underground communists to enter fascist organisations designed to control
the working class, in order to subvert them and to provide much needed cover
for comrades whose lives were constantly at risk.
The final tactic
was the use of independent non-party organisations as a means of mobilising
non-communist political activists to a single issue cause the party supported.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the “front” was very successful in mobilising people
to progressive causes like famine relief in the young Soviet Union, Republican
Spain, or anti-fascism. In Britain, drawing from that international experience,
the CPGB set up numerous autonomous organisations, of which the National
Council for Civil Liberties (which became “Liberty”), Tribune newspaper and the Left Book Club are just a few of the more
famous examples. Plainly Britain was a better place for the work that these
organisations did, but it is unclear what long term benefit such use of cadres’
energy brought either the party or the class.
Ironically the “Front”
was to be enthusiastically adopted by enemies of progress like the US State
Department, who still funnel money into separate organisations under their control,
which in turn are used to finance another layer of apparently “independent”
non-governmental organisations which just happen to support US foreign policy.
The difference is that while communists never hid their involvement in the
organisations they supported, for the State Department it was always about
subterfuge.
While critics like to pretend that the
International’s tactics failed, that is not the case. Certainly applying the
same thesis throughout the world simultaneously exposed weaknesses, while the
democratic structure of the organisation slowed its ability to change course in
a dynamic, rapidly changing era. However, throughout the life of the Third International
communism was a growing force. It was the parliamentary era of the 1950s
onwards that saw the decline and eventual liquidation of European communist
parties.
The parties of
the International were ideologically stronger, bigger and more influential
after 1924 during the united front policy than they were in 1919 in the midst
of the revolutions, when they were led by Lenin.
The “third
period” policy was also a positive development; when it ended in 1935 the
communist parties, although numerically smaller in some cases, were
ideologically and organisationally stronger than in 1924 – these were now truly
Bolshevik parties.
Likewise they
rapidly grew in numbers and influence in the years of the popular front; in
1939 they were larger and stronger than they had been at any time before. Even
in those countries where fascism took power, communism had an underground
presence and an influence that extended far beyond its membership.
By the end of
the war many European communist parties had been through illegality, armed
action and even the “dual power” that Lenin described in the Russian revolution.
But all that experience was to be wasted after the war. From the “[‘British Road to Socialism]” to the Italian
“Salerno Turn”, most European parties adopted the parliamentary road and soon
fell from the position of ideological and organisational strength they had had
in 1939.
It’s no
coincidence that this decline began not long after the dissolution of the Comintern,
when most communist parties had adopted forms of left social democracy. That
strategy was always doomed to fail; the working class simply decided that if
they were going to vote for social democracy they might as well vote for the
real thing. It was the “socialist” parties of the second international that
prospered, while the “parliamentary” communist parties dwindled.
The argument of
the reformist communists in private, and increasingly in public, was that they
were being held back by the “undemocratic” image of the Soviet Union. The Eurocommunists
felt that no one would accept their democratic credentials while they retained
a connection with the Soviets. Actually what they really feared was that anyone
would confuse them with being a revolutionary party. Ironically when the Soviets collapsed it
wasn’t long before the euro communist parties followed them into oblivion.
The most
important lesson from all this is one that should have been learnt long ago –
communists can never compete with reformism, the reformists are much better
qualified to make opportunistic compromises with the class enemy. Working people
can see this and choose reformist parties because in normal times they want
reformist solutions. They turn to revolutionary parties when there is a
revolutionary situation; as Lenin said: “when they cannot go on living in the
old way”. This is why the size of a communist party is not important, only the
strength of its ideology and its militancy.
Revolutionaries
should stick to what they are meant to be doing – fighting the class struggle,
making revolution. And of course Lenin never imagined that being in a bourgeois
parliament could bring about socialism – he only supported the tactic as a
means of propaganda, a platform from which to address the working class. Of all
the successful revolutionaries: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho, Kim Il Sung and Fidel –
none of them were ever candidates in bourgeois elections. For Lenin it was
always the politics of the “deed” that mattered.
If the only strategy
is revolution, what are the tactics?
The mistake made by those who cannot
escape from the past is that they cannot benefit from the experiences of that
past. To associate tactics only with those whose names have become attached to
them is to lose the chance to use techniques that work. To adopt one tactic and
stick with only that until the bitter end is to adopt the attitude of a first
world war general repeatedly sending his troops to their deaths, even if it is being
done in the name of Lenin, Stalin or Trotsky.
While Lenin’s
revolutionary policy during the “first period” of workers’ revolutions
following the First World War was a failure, there were two reasons for this:
the communist parties were still too small and isolated to succeed but more
importantly the revolutionary situation had passed before those parties were
ready to take advantage of it. Because revolutionary situations are an
objective condition the policy could never have succeeded, even with Lenin’s
leadership. It is only with hindsight that we can see this now, therefore we
should salute the courage of those who sought to make revolution at that time.
Crucially for
communists, in 1919 Lenin set out 21 requirements for admission to the Comintern
which were designed to exclude reformists and still do so very effectively
whenever they are applied.
Where two
conditions apply there are also times when Lenin’s “revolutionary period”
policy or the later “third period” thesis are the right policies for communists
to take in relation to social democracy.
Those conditions
are that firstly there is an imminent revolutionary situation and secondly that
the leadership of social democracy is trying to portray itself as [the] champion of socialism to maintain
its leadership of the class. In the past social democracy put policies before
the working class that promised “socialism” without the need for revolution,
such as: subsidised social housing, nationalisation of unprofitable industries,
progressive taxation to reduce inequality, free healthcare, education and
social welfare.
These policies
weren’t their choice; they were forced into adopting them by the strength of
working class consciousness at home and by their fear of the Soviet Union
abroad – the working class under arms. There was never any intention of
threatening the real basis of capitalism – the private ownership of the means
of production. These were empty promises forced onto them because they were
competing with communists for the same radicalised working class. In such
situations the communist party’s task is to ruthlessly expose the opportunism
of social democracy’s leaders, their treachery and their class collaboration,
in order to win the workers over to the communist party and revolution.
Today the
situation is very different. By the 1950s, social democracy had given up
pretending to be either revolutionary or Marxist, it no longer needed to do so
to win workers votes. By the 1980s it had stopped pretending to stand for
socialism. Today, social democratic leaders are even trying to distance
themselves from any association with the working class at all.
In these changed
circumstances there is no danger of working people being misled into believing
that there is anything revolutionary about social democracy and it would be a
strange and very ignorant worker who ever imagined that Labour had any
connection with socialism. There is more danger from those who seek to create a
new workers’ party – to the left of labour. This project would just be a more
left-wing version of the same reformist social democracy, in the form of an
illusion that has yet to be discredited.
But times can
quickly change and a working class that is defeated and demoralised will one
day be radicalised again. It is the nature of unprincipled opportunism that
social democratic ideologues would then start courting those radicalised
workers with revolutionary sounding phrases. Whether those ideologues come from
right or left social democracy, it is at such a time that communist policy
towards social democracy must become one of merciless opposition, to destroy it
as a rival and a diversion. In such a “third period” it is to third period
policies we need to turn.
However today,
when defeated and demoralised workers divide their votes between social
democracy and liberalism it is because their aspirations are limited to winning
small benefits – mere crumbs from the capitalists’ table. At these times the
leadership of social democracy is an irrelevance and our tactic can only be
that of the united front from below, by-passing the leadership altogether to
create an alliance between revolutionary and social democratic workers. These
social democratic workers are not our enemies; no revolution could succeed
without the working class making it happen. Right now when the majority of
workers are reformists, we need to find ways of working with them without either
losing our revolutionary principles or hiding them. The real enemy within the
labour movement is always the leadership of social democracy.
If there is a
policy that is full of danger for European communists then it is the “popular
front”, the belief that there can be some progressive alliance with social
democracy in a bourgeois parliament.
After the Second World War the entry of
communist parties into coalition governments allowed European bourgeois states
to survive the immediate post-war crisis. When that threat had passed the
national bourgeoisie quickly made an alliance with American imperialism and the
social democrats fell over themselves to join in. Their communist allies became
an overnight embarrassment.
The result was
that under the popular front all the concessions were made by the
revolutionaries while all the advantages went to social democracy. And yet in
the 1930s, the “Devils Decade”, a united working class was needed to defeat
fascism. The sacrifices made were undoubtedly correct, Franco in Spain and
Salazar in Portugal showed how long-lived a ruthless dictatorship can be. The
problems with the popular front did not lie in the principle of forging
alliances to defeat fascism; it lay in a series of errors:
Firstly, the
popular front in parliament became a permanent fixture rather than a short-term
emergency measure. Once agreed, it could never be ended without creating the
split in the working class that the bourgeoisie were working for. The communist
party’s desire to keep the class united meant the party was trapped – only the
social democrats were free to break the alliance.
Secondly, the
only reason to have such an alliance should be to defeat fascism, no other reason
could justify the compromise. But after the war communist parties entered into
alliances simply because they were on offer. The effect was to prop up a
weakened capitalist state and a defeated bourgeoisie until the crisis was over
and outside help arrived.
Thirdly, once
there was a parliamentary alliance with social democracy, it demonstrated to
the workers that there was little real difference between the right wing of
social democracy and the left wing, which now just happened to be in the form
of an external communist party rather than a left wing inside social democracy
as it had been before 1919.
Fourth, the
popular front transferred the battleground from the streets and workplaces (the
battlegrounds of choice for workers) to parliament – the form which the
bourgeois dictatorship takes in the modern era.
Fifth, while the
popular front was apparently at its most successful (when it was in government)
it made the communist party reliant on the bourgeois state to take action against
fascism on its behalf. This would only happen if it suited the bourgeoisie to
do so. If the workers got too strong, the army and police, unaffected by the
popular front, would simply take control themselves or allow the fascists to
take power instead. The popular front may have been in government but it didn’t
hold state power.
Sixth, this was
the opposite of “dual power”, as Lenin understood it. That was the defining
moment in a revolutionary situation when the formal state held by the
bourgeoisie no longer had the ability to rule alone; the workers, armed and
organised were gaining authority and control separate to the bourgeois state.
That situation, for example, began to appear in our General Strike, when road hauliers
had to apply to the workers Councils of Action for permission to move fuel and
foodstuffs. It was clearly the situation in Northern Italy in 1944 before Togliatti
returned and disarmed the partisans.
For all these reasons we would not chose
the parliamentary popular front as the means to fight fascism and fascism is
the only emergency that could ever justify such an alliance. This is one reason
why our position has always been that communists have no place in bourgeois
parliaments and we oppose standing candidates in bourgeois elections.
When fascism is
a threat again, and it is always available to the bourgeoisie as an option,
there certainly needs to be a working class alliance – ideally between
reformist social democrats inside parliament and fighting militant communists
on the outside. That is the only form of “popular front” that would work and
leave the party unaffected by the reformism and opportunism fostered by Parliament
and government. The reality is that the possibility of any such alliance
between militant, revolutionary communists and the leadership of social
democracy is zero and always will be.
The united front
from below, in the form of an alliance between revolutionary and reformist rank
and file workers, remains the only viable policy until a revolutionary
situation develops. The failure of this policy has always been in the way it
was misused.
For Trotskyites
it was only ever a cynical means to try to expose the leadership of social democracy. They would propose an alliance as an
ultimatum – follow our lead or be discredited in the eyes of the workers.
Unfortunately for them, the social democratic workers always chose to follow
their social democratic leaders.
On the other
hand, the “parliamentary” communists only ever proposed the united front as a
way of achieving a popular front in disguise – they actually always worked for
an alliance with the leadership of social democracy because they were social
democrats themselves.
For us what is
important is finding an honest and open way of working with social democratic
workers while remaining revolutionaries clearly separating our party from
reformism. What we can offer is a fighting unity in the class struggle where it
matters: in the workplaces, unions, on the streets and in the estates.
The simplest
example would be our work in the unions, normally used by left groups as a
battleground not for ideas and action but as a platform for election to the
lucrative full-time posts that so often are the extent of their ambition. At
one swoop the frontline of the class struggle is converted to a mere electoral
struggle (administered by the liberals of the Electoral Reform Society) for the
well-paid jobs, pensions and plush offices of a reformist trades union
movement.
A fighting
militant democratic union of active members is far more valuable than any
inactive, undemocratic union even if it is led by well paid “left-wing”
full-time officers.
Social democrat workers need to see that
the party is always to be found where the battle is at its hardest, committed
to a fighting working class unity in the class struggle while at the same time
being a beacon pointing to the revolutionary seizure of state power rather than
election to bourgeois parliaments.
