34개의 게시물을 찾았습니다.
What’s Wrong with the SPGB?
Review article of “What’s Wrong with using Parliament?” by The Socialist Party [of Great Britain], 24pp July 2010, £1.00.
In the light of the referendum on a change in the voting system (see “The alternative vote referendum…” ) we thought we would take another look at the only genuinely socialist organisation which attempts to sell us the parliamentary road to socialism. Over the years we have debated the issue of how we will get to a socialist society several times with the SPGB (1) in both meetings and our press. Indeed several people have contacted us after listening to a tape our 1994 debate which you can still buy from the Socialist Party. Last year they brought out a new short pamphlet, What’s Wrong with Using Parliament?, to restate their belief that socialism can only come about via parliament. It is that which we are reviewing here.
The reasons for debating with them, and not other parties claiming the title “socialist” is not simply because they have a culture of debate (propaganda and education are their main activities) but because they share with us a real understanding of what socialism is. Unlike the Stalinists, Maoists and Trotskyists they do not believe that some form of state ownership of the means of production is socialism, or even a step towards it. Like them we are “an organisation of equals. There is no leader and there are no followers”. (Introducing the Socialist Party at the beginning of the pamphlet). But differences over how socialism can be achieved have dug a chasm between themselves and revolutionaries. This pamphlet only underlines that distinction.
The pamphlet is neatly laid out and lucidly written. Bizarrely it has a contructivist design (more usually associated with the October Revolution which they reject!) on the cover (with a red wedge flying into Big Ben). The contradiction on the cover however is trivial compared with the contradictions inside. The pamphlet claims to be aimed at “Anti-parliamentarians and Anarchists” but only Anarchists are quoted. This is no accident since the SPGB claims Marxist orthodoxy for its views on parliamentarism and to deal with Marxist critiques would be more difficult. It also frees the SPGB from dealing with the really big issue of working class consciousness (a word which does not appear anywhere in the pamphlet). The pamphlet is a tale of two halves with the first being the SPGB’s defence of using parliament and the second dealing with five arguments against using parliament taken from Anarchist publications in the second. Here we can only deal with some of these
They set out the premises of the debate accurately enough
what distinguishes us amongst those who want a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of life, is our view that parliament can and should be used in the course of establishing such a socialist society. (p.5)
But this quickly leads us to the first contradiction. Although they recognise that parliament is a capitalist institution, that voting atomises ands reduces to passivity the mass of the population who only get to put a cross on a piece of paper every 5 years or so, they still argue that
what better way is there to challenge that “democracy and freedom” than by using the accepted legitimate channels and thereby be able to call [liberal democracy’s] bluff.
But who is bluffing? The capitalists, who have instituted a political system that not only does not challenge their rule but is the ideal framework for it, or the SPGB who would legitimise working class impotence by supporting it? The increasingly derisory electoral performance of the SPGB over the last 107 years might be taken as sufficient proof of the point that there is no route to socialism via bourgeois institutions but it is a lesson that the SPGB refuses to learn. Instead the pamphlet is full of straw man type arguments which they dig out (and not always fairly) from the anarchist texts they criticise. One of these is to criticise this argument
Socialism cannot come through the Parliament. If we look at a country like Chile we can see why. In 1973 the people elected a moderate socialist government led by President Allende. This democratically-elected government was toppled by a CIA backed military coup. Repression followed in which the workers movement was smashed and thousands of militants lost their lives.
“What is Anarchism?”, www.struggle.ws/pdfs/whatis.pdf
The essential part of the SPGB reply is that this is because Allende was not a real socialist and did not have “enough” popular support. But in this argument Allende’s “authenticity” is not the point. The bourgeoisie do not distinguish between real socialists and state capitalists. All they see is a threat to their property and in Chile there was a mass movement seeking to redress the balance for the working class (however deluded we all agree they were). The fact is, as we noted a long time ago, the SPGB are more devoted to parliament than the “democratic” bourgeoisie! The capitalist class will not shrink from switching to a Mussolini or a Pinochet once they see that the rules of the democratic game do not deliver the desired results. The problem is exactly the opposite one. Most Chilean workers believed, like the SPGB, that the elections had guaranteed their legitimate right to rule when in fact it did not touch the essential organs of the state. This error is underlined earlier in the pamphlet when the SPGB write
Gaining control of the state will at the same time give control of this social organ which can be used to co-ordinate the changeover from capitalism to socialism. Of course, it couldn’t be used in the form inherited from capitalism.
Like so many caveats the last line is meaningless if you do not actually say that the first thing the workers will have to do in the course of their revolution will be to smash/dismantle the capitalist state and its organs of repression. This argument is an old one as the founding Declaration of Principles of the SPGB (printed a the back of the pamphlet) also argue that all they will have to do is have the state, the machinery of oppression “converted” and it will guarantee workers’ emancipation. For the SPGB winning a majority in parliament is the same as gaining control of the state (p.7) but how different do they think the scenario will be to that in Chile? Allende lasted 3 years because he was slow to move against the old state apparatus. If he had acted faster his government would have not have lasted as long. The point is that the state has to be destroyed in the course of the majority taking over, not via a parliamentary majority after a leisurely debate. Waiting to gain such majority will only allow those who hold all the reins of power to prepare their various contingency plans.
The SPGB are also so desperate to assert the importance of parliament that they attempt to deny that bourgeois state power lies elsewhere. When Class War argue that the real power of the state lies in the organs of repression, the permanent bureaucracy etc they are accused of “conspiracy theory” which then can be called “absurd”. But the spontaneous bowing of parliament to the needs of capitalism is plain for all to see and the SPGB accept this on p. 17. You don’t need a conspiracy theory to see that vested interests via lobbying, and think tanks set the agendas and define the limits of policy (one reason why any attempt to reform anything under capitalism sinks in the mire of its own contradictions). Political donations, control of the media, appointments of MPs and ex-Ministers to company boards etc are all part of the way in which capitalism ensures that capital dominates the political agenda. For the SPGB this is irrelevant since for them parliament is the main state organ and thus when they get a majority all these extra-parliamentary organs (including the armed forces and the police) will be so stunned by socialist argument and parliamentary legitimacy that they will be neutered.
There are other ways in which the SPGB don’t seem to take on the reality of what they are proposing. If they are for pure socialism (and we believe they are) what are their non-reformist minority MPs going to do whilst awaiting the time when they have 300 plus members in parliament (currently they have none and never have had one) to vote capitalism down? The people who elected them will expect some results in the course of a parliament, unless of course they no longer count on parliament, but then that begs the question as to why did they vote at all. Our new SPGB MPs will arrive in parliament to take the loyal oath to Her Majesty the Queen, and then what? The only concrete activity that the SPGB put forward is that they can use Parliament as a tribune to denounce the system. And after 5 years of doing that they expect to win a majority the next time round? They criticise the anarchists for putting forward “unrealistic alternatives” but nothing seems further from reality than the SPGB’s cosy view of the capitalist political system. The Anarchist Federation, for example, are castigated for envisaging the possibility that the capitalist class will actually put up a fight to defend its property (p.20)! It is clear that what the SPGB stands for is social pacifism and what they stand against is genuine class action. Capitalism will be safe for ever with these comrades.
In fact, what characterises genuine class action is beyond the SPGB. On p.19 they quote the Anarchist leaflet “What is Anarchism?”.
The authors of the ‘What is Anarchism?’ web-page leaflet mentioned above, which claims that “socialism cannot come through parliament”, agree with us that the revolution against capitalism must be a majority, participatory revolution. Central to our politics is the belief that ordinary people must make the revolution. Every member of the working class (workers, unemployed, housewives, etc.) has a role to play.
The trouble is they don’t seem to have thought through the implications of this. If on the eve of the revolution a majority of the population are in favour of it and are organised to participate in it, why should they not demonstrate this by putting up their own candidates to oppose and beat those who do support the continuation of the capitalist system? Naturally, these candidates would stand as mandated delegates not as unaccountable representatives. Being the majority, this would be reflected in a majority of seats in parliament. And if some pro-capitalists in the boardrooms, the armed forces or the police attempted a coup, what, as already pointed out, could they do against a participating majority committed to establishing socialism?
Once there is an organised, determined majority the success of the socialist revolution is assured, one way or the other. It is then a question of the best tactic to pursue to try to ensure that this takes place as rapidly and as smoothly as possible. In our view, the best way to proceed is to start by obtaining a democratic mandate via the ballot box for the changeover to socialism. The tactical advantage of doing this is that, when obtained, it deprives the supporters of capitalism of any legitimacy for the continuation of their rule.
This is the Monty Python path to socialism. The Anarchists talk of “revolution” as a single process (in our view, an error) but at least they see it as starting a process. The SPGB cannot conceive of a “revolution” until 50% plus 1 of the population is ready. For them “revolution” is a quiet vote, a polite discussion in parliament and the change in ownership of the means of production by legislative enactment? A splendid “tactic” which does not even actively involve most of the working class!
But here we are entering a Lewis Carroll world where “words mean what we say they mean”. Revolutions are certainly about more than change in government. They are fundamental shifts in class relationships and they either change the basic way we produce things or they fail. They are also messy unpredictable things but you would not think so reading this pamphlet.
In fact the pamphlet is entirely devoid of any reference to real struggles of real workers. It is a utopian plea to participate in the arena where the ruling class is strongest in order to defeat it. However the SPGB are absolutely certain that only they hold the key to the future of the working class. Anyone who advocates anything different is “unrealistic”.
The pamphlet arrives at this happy conclusion only by leaving out any discussion of how a real revolution can take place. The SPGB has long been an opponent of real class struggle which it equates with violence. In its founding Principles it states:
It is dangerous and futile to follow those who support violence by workers against the armed force of the state. Violent revolution has sometimes meant different faces in the capitalist class, always meant dead workers, and never meant the liberation of the working class. Unless workers organize consciously and politically and take control over the state machinery, including its armed forces, the state will be ensured a bloody victory.
Political democracy is the greatest tool (next to its labour-power) that the working class has at its disposal. When the majority of workers support socialism, so-called “revolutionary” war will not be required. The real revolution is for workers to stop following leaders, to start understanding why society functions as it does and to start thinking for themselves.
Between voting and violence there is nothing for the SPGB. In reality the very nature of capitalism is constantly throwing up class conflict even at times of relative class peace.
They see workers coming to understand the need for socialism only by “thinking for themselves” as individuals. This is the same appeal the capitalist makes in trying to stop workers take class action. In reality workers always “think for themselves” but they think different things at different times. When capitalism guarantees them a reasonable livelihood they accept it, and its media claims, to be the best of all possible worlds. However when the system begins to fail and enters into one of its periodic crises workers begin to “think for themselves” but not necessarily individually since their common experience begins to teach them more than all the lectures of the SPGB (or anyone else). This does not mean the end of the system but it does lead to collective resistance on an initially economic level. There is no mechanical link between the economic and political struggle (on this we can agree) but the struggles themselves have the potential to plant the germs of conscious opposition to capitalism. In some cases this consciousness takes political direction and this leads to the formation of class political organisations who make it their task to articulate the lessons of past historical achievements of the class. In doing so they help to define the communist programme.
At first is only a minority who tend to coalesce around a political party of the subordinate class. This minority is doomed for long periods to seem isolated and out of touch but the very contradictions of capitalism at certain point create wider class movements in which this minority works for revolution. Massive these movements might be but they still remain a minority of society. It will be a large minority (as in Egypt or Tunisia recently) which will launch the assault on the state. What transforms this minority into something more is the revolutionary act itself:
Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and … the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, … a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.
History suggests that this does not come piecemeal but rapidly. Even those who have been expecting it will be overwhelmed by its force. In the course of it the movement may be peaceful (the bigger and more widespread the more peaceful it is likely to be) but even an overwhelming movement such as in Cairo may have to be extraordinarily courageous in the face of last ditch fight to the death by capitalists defending their property. The collapse of the forces of the state under this mass pressure is the best scenario for the collapse of capitalist order in any one area.
This is, of course, only the beginning of the story. The overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism are not necessarily one and the same thing. People will be anti-capitalist before they understand fully what it means. This will be done via combination of propaganda/education and experience. The very process of revolution will lead people to practically solve the problems of how to organise by setting up assemblies, local committees and even workers’ councils based on recallable delegates. In the process people’s perceptions will also change. They will be ready to abandon the former mores of capitalism with its greed and selfishness. They will be more ready to listen to those who defend real socialism. Not all at once, but as the research into the behaviour of the mass movements in the French and Russian Revolutions have shown people began to behave differently in the process of mass action. Marx put this graphically in The German Ideology
… revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.
In contrast to the passive role of the voter under capitalism people will become, to use the words of the Anarchist Federation (quoted in the pamphlet), “energised”. It is only at this point when the old ruling class is on its knees that the implementation of a real socialist programme by the immense majority will be possible (provided that active within this movement are those campaigning for it).
Marx summed this up in the Theses on Feuerbach
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
We do not know how this revolution will develop, or where it will take us, but we do know it will go beyond the mind-numbing passivity of voting for a capitalist parliament. Perhaps even the “changing of circumstance” will affect the SPGB and they will join the rest of us who also
Jockwant a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of life.
(1) Although it has since shortened its name to the Socialist Party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain still retains the full title in some circumstances so we will call it the SPGB here. It is not to be confused with its SPGB’s splitters, the Socialist Party of Great Britain which produces Socialist Studies [for our debate with them see “The Fairy Story of the Parliamentary Road to Communism” in Revolutionary Perspectives 39] nor the Socialist Party of the former Militant Tendency after it was expelled from the Labour Party.
Our alternative : resist the capitalist regime!
As the government rains attack after attack on our living standards – whether through cuts in health, education, benefits and local services, through redundancies in both the private and public sector, through tuition fee increases or the abolition of EMA, or through the steadily rising price of basic necessities – the TUC has for months now been telling us to fix our gaze on the Big Demo on the 26th March. The bosses of the trade unions have argued that a very large turn-out on the day will send a clear message to the Lib-Con government, which will start carrying out its spending review at the beginning of April, involving even more savage cuts than the ones we have seen already. It will show that more and more working and unemployed people, students and pensioners, in short, a growing part of the working class, are opposed to the government’s programme of cuts and are looking for an “alternative”.
And there’s no doubt that people are increasingly fed up with the argument that we have no choice but to submit to the blind laws of a crisis-torn economic system. No choice but to accept the tough medicine that the politicians assure us will, at some point in the future, make everything all right again. There’s also no doubt that a growing number of people are not content to sit at home and moan about it, but want to go out on the street, encounter others who feel the same way, and form themselves into a force that can make the powerful of the world take notice. This is what was so inspiring about the unruly student demonstrations and occupations in the UK at the end of last year; this is why the enormous revolts that are spreading throughout North Africa and the Middle East are such a hopeful sign.
But if these movements tell us anything, it’s that effective action, action that can actually force the ruling powers to back down and make concessions, doesn’t come about when people tamely follow the orders of professional ‘opposition’ leaders, whether people like El Baradei and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the TUC and the Labour Party in the UK. It comes about when people begin to act and think for themselves, on a massive scale – like the huge crowds who began to organise themselves in Tahrir Square, like the tens of thousands of Egyptian workers who spontaneously came out on strike to raise their own demands, like the students here who found new and inventive ways of countering police repression, like the school kids who joined the student movement without waiting for an endless round of union ballots…..
The TUC and the Labour Party, as well as the numerous ‘left wing’ groups who act as their scouts, are there to keep protest and rebellion inside limits that are acceptable to the status quo. The TUC didn’t say very much in the period from 1997 to 2010 while its Labour friends launched a vast array attacks on workers’ living standards, attacks that the present government is just continuing and accelerating. That’s because the social situation was different – there was less danger that people would resist. Now that this danger is growing, the ‘official’ opposition is stepping in with its expertise in controlling mass movements and keeping them respectable. The trade unions do this on a daily basis by handcuffing workers to the legal rigmarole of balloting and the avoidance of ‘secondary’ action. And now, with March 26, they are doing it on a national scale: one big march from A to B, and we can all go home. And during the march itself the TUC will be working directly with Scotland Yard to ensure that the day goes entirely to their jointly agreed plans.
True, some of the more radical trade unions and political groups call for more than a one-off march: they want the TUC to ‘coordinate strike action’, even call a ‘general strike’. But these approaches just reinforce the idea that the best we can hope for is to get the official opposition to act more effectively on our behalf, rather than organising and spreading the struggle ourselves.
If there is to be a real opposition to the ruling class and its assault on our lives, it’s not going to be content with one big demo: it has to be part of a much wider movement of strikes, occupations, demonstrations and other actions, controlled directly through mass meetings and willing to defy laws aimed at rendering resistance passive and divided.
And when we are taking part in demonstrations, whether local rallies or big national marches, let’s use them to make links between different centres of resistance, different sectors of the working class. Let’s organise our own street meetings where instead of listening to celebrity speakers we can freely exchange experiences from our own struggles and prepare for the battles of the future. Let all those who stand for independent, self-organised workers’ struggles use them as an opportunity to meet up and decide on how to connect to wider numbers of their class.
And let’s also use such occasions to challenge not only the deadening methods advocated by the official opposition, but also the false perspective they offer us for the future. The TUC ‘alternative’ of ‘jobs, growth, justice’, for example, is completely misleading: this system is in an irreversible crisis and can’t guarantee anyone’s job; even if was possible without vast increases in state debt, capitalist growth can only be based on increasing workers’ exploitation and further despoiling the environment; and a society based on the exploitation of one class by another can never achieve justice. In sum: inside of capitalism, there is no ‘alternative’ except increasing austerity and barbarism. The only real alternative is to fight against this regime of capitalism and in doing so prepare the ground for a total transformation of society.
WR 5/3/11
Cancun World Climate Conference - Another Predictable Capitalist Failure
Many people might not even have noticed that the latest UN climate conference was held in the Mexican resort of Cancun during the first 2 weeks of December. It was hardly reported in the bourgeois press and where it was mentioned the expectations of success were well and truly damped down. After the fiasco of the 2009 Copenhagen conference, which was supposedly “the last chance to save the planet”, but which nonetheless ended in complete failure, this conference was a low key affair and major political leaders kept well away. The failure of Copenhagen was not, of course, accidental but clearly reflected the views of a powerful sector of the capitalist class who wish to carry on polluting as usual and have a direct interest in undermining the scientific basis of global warming.
The challenges, which their paid prize fighters have mounted to the science, have succeeded in taking the issue out of the headlines and producing a more widespread scepticism about climate change than existed before Copenhagen. Global warming now appears as something we don’t need to worry about any longer.1 This is absolutely not the case. There is general agreement among climate scientists that the threats to life on earth, posed by climate change, are now more severe than a year ago. Capitalist “civilisation” is like a juggernaut, out of control and heading for a precipice.
The Cancun conference was the 16th conference the UN has held to try to control man-made (anthropogenic) global warming and, like the preceding conferences, failed to do this. No binding agreement to do anything about emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) was reached. Today, the only international agreement for reducing the emission of GHGs, which are the principal cause of global warming, remains the Kyoto agreement. This agreement, which expires in 2012, and which covers only a quarter of global GHG emissions, because the US has refused to ratify it and countries such as China, India and Brazil were excluded from the start, is virtually useless. The Cancun conference committed the 200 participating countries to keep talking about the issues while agreeing to some fairly ill defined proposals. It is a measure of the inability of the main capitalist powers to address climate change that the pathetic outcome of this conference was described in the press as a “victory for multilateralism” or to quote UK Prime Minister Cameron a “significant” step forward.
The main conference agreements were:
Climate change is only part of a general ecological disaster which capitalism is inflicting on the planet. According to the US National Academy of Sciences report of 2002 the world economy’s demands on the planet exceeded the earth’s regenerative capacity in 1980 and by 1999 it had exceeded it by 20%. (4) The current figure is 30%. (5) This means it would take 1.3 years for the planet to regenerate what we use in a year! In other words regeneration is not occurring. It is little wonder that 60% of the world’s ecosystems, such as coral reefs, mangrove swamps and wetlands, are in now degraded and in decline. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment concluded that 15 out of the 24 natural processes on which our survival depends are in decline or are becoming unsustainable. Key processes under threat are provision of water via the water cycle, provision of food and timber, pollination of all types including crops, soil formation, photo synthesis and nutrient recycling. (6) Global warming, which itself represents a breakdown in another natural cycle, the carbon cycle, is making all this a lot worse. It is estimated, for example, that for each 1°C rise in temperature yields of major cereals’ such as wheat and rice will drop by 10%. If the Cancun ambition of a 2°C rise in temperature is achieved there is, therefore, likely to be a drop in food production of at least 12%. Many species alive only a few decades ago are now extinct, while others are heading for extinction and if we continue on the present trajectory Homo sapiens will also be added to the list.7 The simple truth is that instead of living in a sustainable metabolic relationship with nature, as we did in the hunter gather epoch or to a lesser extent in slave and feudal societies, capitalist society is trashing the planet, and this cannot continue indefinitely.
The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is now 390 parts per million (ppm) a rise of 3 ppm from the time of the Copenhagen conference. This concentration is 20% more than it was in 2000 and 40% more than it was in 1990. The principal concern of climate scientists is that if the concentration of GHGs rises above 450 ppm the process of global warming will spin out of control and nothing human beings do will any longer have any effect. The so called “tipping point” will have been reached.
This point is also, according to climate scientists, equivalent to a 2°C rise in temperature. This means the upper limit of temperature rise adopted by the Cancun Conference would put us at the tipping point. However, scientists calculate that even if the voluntary Copenhagen and Cancun reductions are met they will lead to a 4 to 5oC rise in temperature, and if they are not met we can expect a 7°C rise. (8) When one considers that the average temperature difference between that of the last ice age 12 000 years ago and the and average for the last 500 years is only 3oC9 one can imagine the catastrophic effects such temperature rises will create.
What exactly do the capitalist class propose to do about all this?
The capitalist class is divided in its response to this issue along three broad lines:
The first grouping do not hold out any solution whatsoever to the ecological crisis and if they retain their grip on the global political response to this problem the world will probably reach the “tipping point” in one or two decades. It seems likely, however, that as the global situation deteriorates their influence will decrease and the second grouping will become the most important.
The second group wish to rely on carbon trading and green technology.
As we have pointed out in previous texts10 , carbon trading is a complete swindle. The key issue remains the consideration that emissions trading schemes are controlled by the capitalist class and it is they who determine the carbon caps. The way the world’s major scheme, that in the EU, works it is at present more profitable to pollute than to install non-polluting technology. The carbon market is a capitalist market like any other and prices of carbon go up and down. At present 1 tonne of carbon, which in 2008 was traded at €30, is valued at €15. This makes it cheaper to offset and keep polluting, which is precisely what is happening. The offset mechanism, far from increasing the carbon sinks in the developing countries, often results in destruction of natural forests by imported timber plantations and displacement of indigenous peoples.
It is also allowing the major polluting nations to gain control of swathes of land in the peripheral countries. The scheme serves mainly to transfer the burden of the effects of global warming from the metropolitan capitalist countries to the peripheral countries.
Green technology can, at best, mitigate the problems of ecological destruction it cannot prevent them. As will be discussed below, capitalist society demands continual accumulation of capital and consequently continual growth. There is thus an absolute contradiction between a social system which demands continual, i.e. infinite, growth and a planet with finite resources. The capitalist system is simply incompatible with preservation of the earth’s ecosystem and any solution of the problems we face must start with the overthrow of capitalist production. Green technology, under capitalism represents a new field of profit generation and a new field of capital accumulation and must inevitably run up against the same problems of continual accumulation versus finite resources. Green technology served up as a solution to global warming is a fraud.
The third group held an alternative Climate Conference of its own at Cochabamba in Bolivia in April 2010 and produced a manifesto. The main items the manifesto calls for are:
The demands for the reduction of GHG emissions and temperature stabilisation would have to be imposed by the state and would demand statecapitalist control of the economy on a global scale. While it is true that the demands for GHG reduction and limitation of temperature rise are ones which could reverse the trend towards runaway global warming, they remain reforms within the compass of the capitalist system of production.
They would not be able to overcome the contradiction between the need for continual accumulation and the finite nature of the earth and would not be able to solve the ecological crisis in the longer term. The Bolivian president, Morales and his Venezuelan counterpart, Chavez, have nationalised the energy resources of their countries in defiance of the US. This has enabled them to present their anti-Americanism as anti-imperialism, and their versions of state capitalism as different from that of the former Soviet Union, and as a movement toward socialism. But state capitalism remains capitalism and workers remain wage labourers separated from the means of production and the dynamics of capitalism remain intact. The Cochabamba demands were, needless to say, completely rejected by the Cancun Conference.
“La Via Campesina” group in its statement following the conference called again for acceptance of the Cochabamba manifesto but added its own demand for something called a “cosmovision”. They stated: “We must go beyond the anthropocentric model. We must rebuild the cosmovision of our peoples, based on a holistic view of the relationship between the cosmos, mother earth, the air, the water and all living beings. Human beings do not own nature but rather form part of all that lives.” Such a vision is one which predates class society. Unfortunately we live in class society and we cannot go back to previous forms of existence. To get out of the mess we are in we need to move forward to socialist production and a classless society. The amorphous nature of such statements illustrate how the peasantry is unable to see a future beyond their doomed way of life. Where the solutions they offer are not reactionary, they are utopian.
It is the capitalist system of production which has led us into this mess and continuing with capitalism will only take us into worse trouble still. The capitalist system is a system in which production is for profit not for human needs. One of the consequences of this is that capitalism has a continual need to accumulate capital. This means it needs to grow continually. When growth stalls the system collapses into crisis. Empirical studies have shown that since the start of capitalism in the late 18th century, capitalism has grown at an average rate of 2.25% per year. (11) This means that the global economy doubles in size on average every 30 years. The period since World War 2 has seen much more rapid growth as shown in Table 1 below: In the 50 years since the war the world economy grew by a factor of approximately 7.
Table 1. Gross Domestic Product in $bn at 1990 purchasing power parity (12)
| Country | 1950 | 1973 | 1990 | 2003 | 2030 est. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| W. Europe U | 1396 | 4097 | 6033 | 7857 | 12556 |
| USA | 1456 | 3537 | 5803 | 8431 | 16662 |
| Japan | 161 | 1243 | 2321 | 2699 | 3488 |
| All rich countries | 3193 | 9399 | 15015 | 20264 | 35120 |
| Russia | 315 | 872 | 1151 | 914 | 2017 |
| Latin America | 416 | 1389 | 2240 | 3132 | 6074 |
| China | 245 | 739 | 2124 | 6188 | 22983 |
| India | 222 | 495 | 1089 | 2267 | 10074 |
| Africa | 203 | 550 | 905 | 1322 | 2937 |
| World | 5341 | 16022 | 27136 | 40913 | 96580 |
Capitalism has always treated nature as a resource to be exploited mercilessly to maximise profits. Bellamy Foster, in his book “The Ecological Revolution” expressed this as follows:
The class/imperial war which defines capitalism as a world system, and that governs its system of accumulation, is a juggernaut that knows no limits. In this deadly conflict the natural world is seen as a mere instrument of world social domination. Hence, capital by its very logic imposes what is in effect a scorched earth strategy. The planetary ecological crisis is increasingly allencompassing, the product of the destructive uncontrollability of a rapidly globalising economy, which knows no law other than its own drive to exponential expansion (13).
Exponential growth is not compatible with finite resources. This alone shows how futile it is to try and reform aspects of the system and deal with its worst excesses while the central dynamic tendencies of the system remain intact.
Any slowing down of emissions of GHG represents a threat to accumulation and a threat to growth. It is for this reason that even the more intelligent members of the capitalist class cannot countenance this. Nicholas Stern, for example, in his 2006 report for the UK government admits that GHG emissions are driven by economic growth yet he proposes to continue accumulation as usual and concludes that GHG concentrations will have to rise to between 500 and 550 ppm before they can be stabilised, because anything else would be too costly.
This level is, of course, well beyond the tipping point and would have catastrophic effects, but for capitalism doing anything about it is considered too costly.
The capitalist system is leading us to ruin and the task of replacing it is becoming ever more urgent. As we wrote in RP 53:
CPThere is a glaring need for a new world order: a global community without national borders where production can be planned directly to meet human needs and can take account of environmental consequences of alternative courses of action; a community without the intermediary of money and commodity production, where economics becomes a question of social allocation of time, particularly working time, and no longer a question of what is immediately financially profitable….Capitalism remains, by definition, a system dependent on generating profit, the source of which is the surplus labour workers are obliged to yield to capital over and above the wages they receive. It is this system which has to be abolished and only the concerted force of an internationally unified and politically conscious working class will have the power to do so…. a new world is possible — and necessary. Perpetually campaigning to reform this or that aspect of capitalism is not the way forward. The only way to halt capitalist ‘business as usual’ and save the planet for humanity is by world working class revolution. The spark for that will come from the politically conscious minority who have organised to campaign in the only revolutionary way possible: amongst the working class for the communist political programme.
(1) Minor errors which have come to light in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 4th report such as locations of temperature readings in China or predictions of shrinking Himalayan glaciers have been used to discredit the whole report.
(2) According to Grace Garcia from Friends of the Earth Costa Rica, “Only a gang of lunatics would think it is a good idea to invite the World Bank to receive climate funds, with their longstanding track record of financing the world’s dirtiest projects and imposition of death-sentencing conditionalities on our peoples.” Quoted by Patrick Bond see links.org.au .
(3) See Patrick Bond links.org.au .
(4) Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences 99 No 14.
(5) See Water and Environment Management WEM Vol 14 No 8.
(6) See Millennium Ecosystem Assessment UN 2005 7 The latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ shows that 17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed species are threatened with extinction. The results confirm that 21% of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12 per cent of all known birds and 32% of all known gymnosperms (conifers and cycads) are threatened with extinction.
(7) “The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting,” says Jane Smart, Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group. “January sees the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity. The latest analysis of the IUCN Red List shows the 2010 target to reduce biodiversity loss will not be met.
(8) See Patrick Bond links.org.au node/2041 .
(9) See James Lovelock “Revenge of Gaia” pg 67.
(10) See RP 52 “Environmental Disaster or Communism” and RP 53 “After all the hot air at Copenhagen Global Warming is set to continue” available at leftcom.org .
(11) See David Harvey “The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism” pg 27.
(12) See David Harvey “The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism” pg 27.
(13) J Bellamy Foster “The Ecological Revolution” pg 46.
Revolutionary Communist Tradition : ICT
혁명적 공산주의 운동의 전통 I C T
by 이형로
ICT(공산주의 국제주의자 경향)는 1983년 IBRP(혁명당 국제서기국)로 결성되었다가, 2009년 ICT로 이름을 바꾸었고 현재 6개국(영국,이태리,프랑스,독일,미국,캐나다)에 지부를 두고 있다. IBRP는 1983년 이탈리아의 PCint(국제공산주의자당)와 영국의 CWO(공산주의노동자조직)에 의해 결성되었는데, 이것은 PCint의 제안으로 1977년부터 열린 좌익공산주의 국제대회의 과정에서 얻은 결실이었다.
이탈리아 좌익공산주의 전통과 PCint
프로메테오와 빌랑
이탈리아 좌익공산주의는 1928년 팡탱(Pantin)에서 이탈리아공산당(PCI)의 좌익분파가 결성되면서 시작되는데, 이 대회의 목적은 새로운 당을 만드는 것이 아니라 “중도주의”를 제거함으로써 인터내셔널에 재결합하는 것이었다. 즉 “이태리분파”로서가 아니라 “코민테른의 좌익분파”로서 자신을 규정하는 대회였다. 이들은 프로메테오(Prometeo)와 빌랑((Bilan)을 발행했는데, 프로메테오는 원래 이탈리아공산당 나폴리 지역의 보르디가 분파의 혁명적 잡지였다. 당시 이탈리아 좌익분파는 일국사회주의 건설 노선에 반대했던 국제 좌익반대파에 동의했지만, 그것을 주도한 트로츠키와의 강령적 차이1)에 의해 1930년대부터 선을 긋게 되고, 특정경향의 국제적 분파를 거부하며 1933년 제4인터내셔널을 만들려는 트로츠키의 시도에 반대한다.
한편, 벨지움과 프랑스에서는 이런 흐름이 1930년대에 걸쳐 나타나게 되는데, 1933년 브러셀에서 좌익분파의 이론지인 빌랑을 발간한다. 빌랑 주변의 이탈리아 좌익분파는 당시의 임무들을 정확히 정의했는데, 첫째, 전쟁에 직면해서, 국제주의의 기본적인 원칙들을 배신하지 않을 것, 둘째, 러시아 혁명의 실패의 대차 대조표를 작성할 것, 그리고 미래의 계급투쟁 부활시 나타나게 될 새로운 당들에게 이론적인 기초 역할을 할 수 있도록 적절한 교훈들을 이끌어낼 것 이었다. 스페인 내전은 당시 혁명가들에게 혹독한 시험대였고, 많은 혁명가들이 반파시즘의 나팔소리에 사로잡혀, 그 전쟁이 제국주의적이며 다가올 세계전쟁의 예행연습에 불과하다는 사실을 깨닫지 못했다. 하지만 빌랑은 이에 흔들리지 않고 1차대전시에 레닌이 양쪽진영 모두를 비판했듯이, 파시스트들과 부르주아의 공화파들 양자 모두에 대항하는 계급투쟁을 호소했다. 이러한 비타협적 투쟁과 미래의 프롤레타리아 당을 위한 강령적 기초를 세우는 임무를 가장 충실히 수행했음에도 불구하고, 이탈리아 좌익분파는 파시스트와 공산당의 2중 탄압 속에 고립될 수밖에 없었고, 1943년 전쟁의 시기에 다시 부활하게 된다.
전쟁중에 창설 된 PCint
전쟁 시기 감옥이나 가택연금 상태 속에서도 데이먼(Onorato Damen) 주변의 핵심활동가들은 2년 동안 비밀리에 파시스트 하에 생존하면서 1945년 PCInt를 창설한다. PCInt는 2차 제국주의 학살전쟁이 끝난 후 프랑스에서 망명생활을 하고 있던 이탈리아 좌파의 많은 멤버들이 다시 이탈리아로 돌아오고, 전후 계급투쟁의 파고 속에서 금 새 수천 명의 당원을 얻게 된다.
이때 망명중인 프랑스 동지들의 대부분이 돌아왔지만, ICC의 창설자인 Marc Chirik 주변의 프랑스 좌익공산주의자들은 1944년 파리에서 별도의 분파인 GCF를 창설한다. GCF 또한 강령적 기반은 빌랑과 좌익분파의 전통을 계승하고 있었다. 이들은 PCInt의 창설에 대해 반혁명의 시기에 당을 건설한다는 것과, 당의 성격이 모호하다는 비판을 하면서 당 참여를 거부했는데, 많이 알려지지 않은 실제 이유 중의 하나는 새로운 세계대전이 임박했다고 판단하여 당을 건설하는 것이 시기상조라 생각했기 때문이었다.
그리고 이탈리아 공산당의 주류였던 보르디가는, 스탈린주의를 이탈리아 공산당에 이식한 그람시에 의해 축출된 이래 파시스트 시절과 전쟁기간 동안 집에만 머물러 있었고, 당의 출판물 발행에만 협조를 했을 뿐 결코 당에는 가입하지 않았었다. 단지 1945년 전쟁의 끝 무렵에 이탈리아 남부로부터 보르디가 주위에 모여 있던 수많은 동지들이 당에 가입했을 뿐이다. 1948년 선거 참여를 두고 ‘혁명적 의회주의’에 대한 견해 차이로 데이먼 그룹과 보르디가 그룹은 대립하기 시작했는데, 이후 소련 제국주의의 특징, 공산당의 성격, 노조개입, 당과 계급의 문제 등에서 대립하게 되고, 데이먼 그룹이 다수의 지지를 얻는다. 하지만 1949년 이후 보르디가의 노골적인 개입은 당내 반대 블록을 형성하는데 성공했고 결국, 3년 후에 또 하나의 국제공산주의자당을 분리시키는데 성공한다. 보르디가는 1952년 자신의 조직을 설립2)하고 Il Programma Comunista를 발간한다.
1930~40년대 반혁명과 전쟁의 암흑 속에서도 진정한 이탈리아의 좌익분파들은 프롤레타리아트 혁명의 본질과 공산주의 운동의 전망을 세우는데 공헌했고, 그곳에서 살아남은 PCInt는 단지 양적으로만 성장한 것이 아니라, 오늘날 국제적인 혁명적 공산주의 운동의 흐름으로 자리 잡게 된다. 트로츠키의 반스탈린주의 대오에 가려지고, 1921년 좌익에 의해 세워진 이탈리아 공산당(PCI)과 그 주류인 보르디가의 명성에 축소되어 제대로 된 평가를 받을 수 없었던 PCInt야 말로 이탈리아 좌익공산주의로부터 직접 탄생했으며, 자본주의와의 피할 수 없는 결전의 과정을 비타협적 투쟁과 혁명적 전통을 지키면서 이어오고 있다.
좌익공산주의 국제대회와 국제서기국(IBRP)의 건설
고립을 넘어 국제대회로
좌익공산주의자들은 19세기말부터 기회주의에 대항해 투쟁해 온 제2인터내셔널의 좌익분파에 기원을 두고 있는데, 당시부터 그 투쟁이 분산된 형태로 이루어져왔다. 이러한 좌익공산주의 세력의 분산은 코민테른과 반혁명기를 거쳐 1970년대까지 지속되었는데, 68년의 파업투쟁과 함께 프롤레타리아트 계급이 역사의 무대에 부활하면서, 수많은 그룹들로부터 새로운 사회에 대한 문제제기가 시작된다. 그 중에서도 유일하게 혁명적 일관성을 추구한 좌익공산주의의 전통이 새롭게 조명되었는데, 옛 GCF(프랑스 좌익공산주의 분파)의 공산주의자들은 이탈리아 좌익분파의 옛 그룹들을 고무시켰고, 1975년 프랑스, 이탈리아 등의 6개 그룹이 ICC를 창설한다.
한편, PCInt도 이탈리아에서의 고립으로부터 벗어나 세계의 여러 좌익공산주의 그룹들에게 국제회의를 제안한다. 1차대회는 1977년 밀란에서 열렸는데 이는 단순히“좌익공산주의 세력의 국제 연결망”을 만들기 위해서가 아니라, 전 세계 공산주의 혁명운동의 분산을 극복하고 집중화와 재구성을 위한 PCInt의 노력이었다. 대회에서는 1936년 그들의 국제대회에서 채택한 정치조직의 계급적 성격을 판단하는 기준을 토론했다. 2차대회는 6개 조직의 참여와 3개 조직의 동의 속에서 1978년 파리에서 열렸는데, 대회 주제는 자본주의 위기와 자본주의 사멸의 경제적 기초, 당의 역할이었고, 보르디가주의 전통의 많은 그룹에게 걸림돌이었던 민족해방투쟁에 대한 토론이 있었다.
3차대회는 1980년 파리에서 있었는데 자본주의의 위기상황과 제국주의 전쟁에 대한 전면적 반대, 노동자계급으로부터 노동자정당과 노조의 영향의 제거를 합의했다. 하지만 당에 대한 논쟁은 합의점을 찾지 못한 채 대회가 끝나갈 무렵, PCInt와 CWO는“혁명적 계급운동과 혁명적 권력의 전체 지도력이 필수불가결한 조직으로서의 프롤레타리아트당”이라는 새로운 기준을 제시했는데, 이것은 '평의회주의'에 대한 정확한 반대였다. 즉 당 문제에 대한 ICC의 명료하지 못한 입장과 혁명당 건설에 관심이 있는 세력들과 함께 하려는 PCInt의 의도 때문에 그랬던 것이다. 제4차대회는 1982년 런던에서 열렸고, CWO는 2차대회에서 4차대회까지 참석하면서 PCInt와의 토론을 통해 IBRP(혁명당국제서기국)를 결성하는 계기를 만든다.
독일과 이탈리아 좌익공산주의의 만남, 그리고 혁명당 국제서기국의 건설
좌익공산주의 국제대회의 역사가 말해주듯이 서기국의 결성은 하루아침에 이루어진 것이 아니었다. CWO(공산주의노동자조직)는 1975년 영국에서 만들었고, 륄레, 호르터, 판네쿡 등의 독일 좌익공산주의의 영향을 강하게 받았다. KAPD(독일공산주의노동자당)를 계승하여 CWO가 만들어지기 시작한 것을‘공산주의노동자조직’이라는 조직이름이 증명해준다. CWO는 독일 좌익공산주의의 전통으로부터 시작되었지만, 앞서 말한 3차례의 국제대회를 거치면서 PCInt로부터 자신들의 강령에 대한 비판을 받게 된다. 그것은 CWO가 독일 좌익공산주의에 기원을 둔 평의회주의에 강한 영향을 받아서, 프롤레타리아혁명에서 당의 중요한 역할을 이해하지 못하고 있다는 것이었다. 결국 미래의 단일조직을 위한 길을 열어놓기 위해 CWO는 아주 기나긴 토론의 과정을 거쳐 이 비판에 대해 점진적인 수용을 하게 된다.
1984년에 작성된 IBRP의 강령은 다른 나라의 혁명적공산주의 그룹들이 결합하는데 기본적으로 인정할만한 원칙적인 내용으로 작성되었고, IBRP의 입장을 다른 지역에 이식하기 위한 PCInt나 CWO의 복제물을 만드는 것이 아니라, 다른 그룹들이 관계를 맺을 수 있는 기준역할을 하고자 했다. 자본주의의 위기가 심화될 때 이러한 그룹들이 지역의 조건들을 기반으로 자신들의 영역에서 노동자계급의 투쟁 속에서 뿌리를 내리고 생겨나기를 기대한 것이다. 서기국에는 1984년 이후 프랑스와 독일, 미국, 캐나다와 남미의 그룹들이 가입하게 되고, ICC와 함께 현재 최대의 국제적인 좌익공산주의 조직의 위치를 차지하고 있다.
ICT의 정치입장
ICT의 정치입장은 강령에 잘 나타나 있고, 웹사이트(http://www.leftcom.org/ko)에 한국어로 번역되어 있기 때문에 여기서는 당 문제에 관련된 주장을 몇 가지 소개하겠다.
먼저 ICT의 정치적 입장은 기본적으로 이탈리아 좌익공산주의 전통에 기반 하는데, 이는 독일 좌익공산주의 전통에 기반 한 다른 조직들과 차이점으로 나타난다. 특히 ICT는 이탈리아 좌익의 주류였던 보르디가주의를 극복하고 독자적 좌익분파를 형성한 데이먼주의를 전통으로 하고 있다. 그래서 당 문제 등에 있어서 레닌주의와 보르디가주의 모두를 극복했다고 하는 데이먼의 영향을 많이 받았고, 경제이론은 폴 매틱의 이론을 일부 수용하고 있다. 정치적 입장에 대한 이런 점들이 ICT를 좌익공산주의 경향 내에서의 레닌주의 경향으로 보이게도 한다. 물론 ICT의 다른 한축인 CWO는 출발이 독일 좌익공산주의 전통이었기 때문에, 양쪽의 장점을 모두 받아들인 것도 사실이다. 특히 좌익공산주의 그룹 중 유일하게 노조문제에 대해 그것의 자본주의적 본질과 자본의 기구화를 인정하면서도, 적극적으로 노조를 이용(노조자체의 이용이나 노조개조·장악은 반대함)하여 광범위하게 노동자계급을 만나고 그들 안에서 공산주의 그룹을 만들 것을 주장한다.
당 문제에 대하여
첫째, 데이먼은 당은 계급이 아니라 계급의 가장 의식적인 부분이라고 주장했다. 또한 프롤레타리아계급의 독재는 노동자계급의 평의회나 소비에트를 통해서만 전체 계급을 위해 실현될 수 있기 때문에, 당이 더 이상 그것을 지배할 권리를 갖지 않는다고 했다. 왜냐하면 당은 이미 공산주의의 필요성을 깨달은 가장 의식적인 노동자계급을 재구성하는 계급의 안내자이기 때문에, 당이 권력을 갖는 것이 아니라 단지 평의회 안에서 공산주의 강령을 위해 싸워야 한다고 했다. 반면 보르디가는 당이 곧 계급이기 때문에, 당과 계급사이에 구분이 있을 수 없다고 하면서 혁명정당이 존재하지 않는 한 계급에 대해 말할 수 없다고 했다. 이것은 계급의식의 조건과 관계없이 공산주의 사상을 외부로부터 계급내부로 들여올 수 있다는 것을 의미했으며, 당이 권력을 장악하는 것을 의미 했다.
둘째, 당 조직에 대해 데이먼은 혁명가 조직의 기본원리는 민주집중제 라고 주장했다. 즉, 하부모임에서 상부모임을 선출하고 상부모임은 다수의 구성원에 의해 거부될 때까지 모든 구성원들을 강제해내는 방법으로 이끄는 방식을 주장했다. 반면 보르디가는 이 민주집중제를 "민주주의 제도"일 뿐이라고 비난하면서, 오직 공산주의 강령에 대한 충성만이 혁명가 조직의 성격을 규정한다고 주장했다. 그것은 불변의 공산주의 강령이 1848년 이후 여전히 바뀌지 않았음을 의미했고, 노동자계급이 러시아혁명의 경험에서 배웠던 것들이 강령에 포함되지 않았음을 보여준 것이다. 보르디가주의자들이 처음에 공산주의강령을 공표했던 국제공산주의자당을 새롭게 건설하기 위해 떠났던 1951년까지 이 논쟁은 3년 가까이 계속되었었다. 그 후 보르디가주의자들은 몇 차례 분리되었고, 오직 자신들만이 진정한 프롤레타리아트당이라고 주장하는 4개의 서로 다른 보르디가주의 그룹들이 현재까지 존재한다.
셋째, 당과 계급의식에 대해 ICT는, 계급의식은 쉽게 깨지고 일시적이며 결국 소멸해버리기 때문에, 계급의식은 노동자계급의 모든 이론적인 성과들을 압축시키는 강령을 가진 조직(혁명정당)의 물질적 토대를 취해야 한다고 주장한다. 이때 당은 프롤레타리아 계급과 조직적으로 함께 해야만 유지될 수 있고, 계급의식을 발전시키기 위해 모든 프롤레타리아의 계급투쟁에 복무해야 한다고 했다. 그리고 당이 없다면 혁명은 불가능하다면서, 노동자계급의 역사는 계급을 지도하고 이끌어가는 역할을 하는 의식적인 당이 있어야 혁명이 성공할 수 있다는 것을 보여주었다고 한다. 판네쿡도 혁명에 있어서 노동자계급이 단지 두개의 무기만을 가지고 있다고 했다. 그것은 계급의식과 그들의 조직(당)이다. 물론 판네쿡과 그 후예들이 스탈린주의 반혁명의 중압 아래서 조직문제에 대한 한 가지 관점인 당을 버렸지만, 공산주의 혁명의 최후의 승리에 있어 당은 평의회만큼 필수적인 것이라 했다.
마지막으로 ICT는, 러시아에서 소비에트가 몰락하고 볼셰비키당이 권력을 장악한 것은 문제였지만, 러시아혁명의 실패가 볼셰비키당 때문이었다는 주장에는 반대한다. 비록 당이 반혁명의 도구가 되었을 지라도, 당이 평의회와 함께 혁명의 필수적인 도구라는 사실은 변하지 않았고, 단지 당이 프롤레타리아트와 조직적으로 함께 하지 않았을 때 반드시 실패한다는 사실을 보여주었다고 주장한다. ICT의 관점에서는 혁명이 진행되고 있을 때 당과 계급 그리고 평의회 사이의 간격은 매우 좁혀져서 구분하기 어려워진다는 것이며, 여기서의 계급의식은 당과 혁명 강령에 가까워진다는 것이다. 그런데 당과 함께 가야할 혁명적 프롤레타리아트 계급이 러시아에서는 "내전"(실제로 러시아 땅에서 벌인 국제 자본주의의 신흥 소비에트국가에 대한 전쟁)이라 불리는 동안에 급감한다. 전쟁으로 인한 견딜 수 없는 경제적 곤궁과 시골로의 많은 프롤레타리아들의 탈출은 평의회를 약화시켰고, 1921년 3월 권력의 실제중심에서 그들은 소멸에 이르게 된다. 이 때 볼셰비키당은 전체 노동자계급의 역할을 하는 일에 착수하지는 않았지만, 국제 자본주의에 대항한 세계노동자계급의 투쟁이 중단된 상태에서, 특히 독일혁명의 실패로 인한 고립 속에서 독자적으로 싸울 수밖에 없었다. 이것이 실제 상황이자 결과였으며, 그 속에서 볼셰비키는 수많은 오류를 범했고, 결국 반혁명의 도구가 되었다. 하지만 만약 세계혁명이 그들을 도와줬다면 그들은 그 반대의 상황을 만들었을 수도 있었을 것이다.
세계혁명당 건설을 위하여
우리는 오늘날에도 여전히 이 참담한 결과 속에서 함께 살고 있으며, 그중 하나는 수많은 사회주의자들과 전투적 노동자들이 역사를 왜곡하고 계급을 배신한 세력들의 그늘에 놓여있다는 것이다. 따라서 러시아 혁명의 실패를 가장 최초로 객관적으로 분석하고, 반혁명의 암흑 속에서도 비타협적으로 투쟁하며 원칙을 지켜왔던, 이탈리아 좌익공산주의의 전통에서 미래의 혁명을 전망하는 것은 오늘날 혁명가들의 기본임무가 되었다.
그곳에서 직접 탄생하고 그 전통을 이어가고 있는 ICT는, 자본주의 최대의 위기상황에 직면하여 세계적인 계급투쟁과 세계혁명당을 위한 진전된 행보와 새로운 공헌을 위해 혁명적 공산주의자들과 함께 혁명적 계급투쟁의 전면에 나서고 있다. 이 시기에 전 세계에 걸쳐 성장해나가는 전투적 노동자계급과 새로운 혁명가들이 좌익공산주의자들과 만나 소통하고 서로 논쟁하면서, 궁극적으로 하나의 대오로 모여 혁명적 공산주의 진영을 공고히 한다면, 세계의 프롤레타리아 계급에게 세계혁명의 전망을 만나게 해주는 가교역할을 할 것이며, 세계혁명당의 건설에 스스로 공헌하게 될 것이다. 한국의 사회주의자들은 이제 서야 혁명정당을 향한 발걸음을 힘겹게 시작하고 있다. 하지만 다수의 사회주의자들은 아직까지 어느 곳에서도 혁명적 전통을 접하지 못한 채, 심지어 왜곡된 써클주의 운동의 구조 속에서 반혁명적 변종 사상들에 상시적으로 노출되어 있다. 이렇게 척박한 환경에서 자라나고 계급투쟁의 과정에서 스스로 노동자계급 속에 뿌리내리고 있는 한국의 공산주의자들이야 말로, ICT와 같은 좌익공산주의자들과 함께 세계혁명당을 건설하는 씨앗이 될 수 있을 것이다.
1) 프로메테오는 첫째, 스페인 문제와 민주적 슬로건에 대해 트로츠키가 ｢스페인 혁명과 공산주의자의 임무｣에 “공화국 슬로건은 자연적으로 프롤레타리아트의 슬로건”이라고 한 것에 대해 이탈리아 좌익분파는 트로츠키가 코민테른의 프롤레타리아트 독재체제를 포기했다고 비판하고 제국주의 시대에는 전쟁 아니면 혁명이라는 하나의 구호 밖에 없다고 주장했다.
둘째, 독일 문제와 통일전선에 대해 1931년 트로츠키가 독일공산당과 독일사민당의 통일선선을 주장한 것에 대해 이탈리아 좌익분파는 “중도주의 혁명”은 이루어질 수 없다고 비판한다.
셋째, 분파와 당 문제에 대해 1931-32년에 러시아 국가에 모든 공산당들이 복속한 것에 대해 이탈리아 좌익분파는 모든 나라의 좌익분파의 실질적 발전이 당이며 혁명적 상황에서만 존재할 인터내셔널의 인위적 구성이 당이 될 수 없다고 비판한다.
2) 보르디가주의자들은 그 후에 경직된 분파주의를 위한 이론적 정당화를 하면서 스스로를 지구상의 가장 유일한 프롤레타리아트당으로 간주했다. 이러한 분파주의는 분명히 반혁명의 대가중의 하나였다. 한편으로는 어렵게 성취한 정치적 입장 주위에 불변하는 공식의 벽을 쌓음으로써 적대적 환경 속에서 원칙을 고수하는 시도였고, 다른 한편으로는 계급으로부터 고립되고 소그룹의 세계 속에 존재하는 혁명가들을 프롤레타리아 운동의 진정한 요구로부터 분리시킨 써클 정신을 강화시켰다.
Whose future is it? Tomorrow is ours if we know how to build it
Whose future is it? Looking around at how workers (whether permanent, casual, temporary) are living the response isn’t encouraging. Wages and earnings have been falling for years. This is so extreme that the army of those who slave away to find that their wages don’t reach the fourth, or third, or even second, week of the month is increasing. Casualisation is widening, especially amongst the young. Unemployment is increasing by leaps and bounds though hidden a little by the cassa integrazione (1) (for those who can get it) which means a drastic lowering in the quality of life.
On the other hand those who have the “good luck” to keep their jobs (permanent or temporary) are forced to submit to a clear worsening of working, and thus living, conditions. It is not just that they have inadequate wages they have to work faster and longer with more hours, more effort, fewer wages and lower pensions. The bosses’ frame of reference is the “global worker”, of relocated factories (and services) to places where labour costs are less, a lot less; where the bosses’ tyranny is absolute; where not only organised protests but even simple complaints are punished with the sack, prison or worse. The condition of the global worker, of immigrants exploited like slaves, tricked and beaten by the bosses and the forces of the state as at Pomigliano (2); this is the model for the “new” working relationship.
We thus in a paradox of a society where thirty somethings (or even older) are maintained by parents who are forced, sometimes literally to die in their workplace. This paradox is called capitalism. A capitalism which, in order to find a way to overcome the crisis by attacked wage workers for decades, blew up speculative bubbles until they inevitably exploded, antagonising growing sectors of the proletariat and petty bourgeoisie to whom the traditional occupational ways out have been blocked through cuts in social services, culture and research.
The intensification of exploitation, the plundering of resources (from so-called “community goods” to indirect and deferred wages) the the devaluing of studying (graduates whatever their degree get ridiculous incomes) the capitalist class cannot do anything else in order to breathe life into a rate of profit needing oxygen. All this is on the agenda of every government whatever its political colour.
Capitalism decrees and the Government executes. The unions convince the workers of the need for sacrifices haggling only over details in order to put a (partial) brake on the stinginess of the bosses and to save face. At least until yesterday. Today CISL-UIL are only an affiliate of Confindustria and the Government whilst eh CIGL want to go down the road of negotiations (3) but it has been this policy which has brought us to this point with concession after concession.
What therefore is to be done? It is right to demonstrate but it is not enough. A demonstration only means something when it is part of a real struggle, of an intensity at least equal to the social war which gave rise to it. But the unions don’t want this or are incapable of it (the two go together) so the working class has to takes defence of its own class interests into its own hands in this crisis these are even more implacably opposed to that of the capitalist class.
In what way? The most combative workers must create struggle committees to begin to break the sense of resignation, in order to stimulate and organise other workers, outs die of and if necessary against the unions whether we like it or not. Workers’ assemblies have to decide the manner and goals of the struggle. Let’s unite the various disputes in the enterprises in crisis, let’s fight all layoffs and casualisation. Let’s make the workers’ strength against the bosses felt, let’s create coordinating bodies during the struggle, independent of the unions in order to unite all the workers whether full time or temporary in struggle in every sector. For us it also indispensable to root this process in the internationalist and communist class party which will unite the most aware workers who are not simply resigned to the blackmail of this rotten society in order to radically question this system of exploitation – capitalism.
The future will be ours if we know how to prepare for it.
Internationalist workers (PCInt/Battaglia Comunista)
(1) Literally “integration cash” – money paid for a certain period to those laid off. Originally in the 70s it was assumed that workers in this state would be re-employed (re-integrated). Now it is just one step on the way to total unemployment.
(2) This refers to the struggle of the FIAT workers at the Pomigliano factory near Naples for more information of our comrades involvement see leftcom.org and leftcom.org
(3) CISL, UIL and CIGL are the three main union confederations which used to be linked to the Catholics, Socialists and old Communist Party. The policy of doing deals with bosses via negotiation is called “concertazione”. Confindustria is the bosses’ organisation like the CBI in the UK.
1919년 <공산주의 인터내셔널>의 창설
국제공산주의흐름1)
2009년에 기념해야 할 수많은 기념일 가운데 매체와 역사가들이 짧게 언급하고 그 의미를 의도적으로 왜곡하면서 제대로 다루지 않는 기념일이 있다. 1919년 3월 열린 <공산주의 인터내셔널(이하 코민테른)>의 창립대회가 그것이다.
코민테른 창설의 기념은 계급투쟁이 오늘날 위기로 고통받는 자본주의의 현실이며, 프롤레타리아트가 착취받는 계급일 뿐 아니라 혁명계급으로 존재하고 있으며, 이는 부르주아지 자체의 종말을 예고하고 있다는 점을 2009년의 부르주아지에게 상기시키고 있다.
1. 1919년 국제적인 혁명물결
코민테른의 창설은 전체 자본가계급과 그들의 열광적 하수인들에게는 불쾌한 기억을 일깨우고 있다. 특히 그들에게는 국제적인 혁명 물결의 솟구치고 피할 수 없는 조류에 직면한 1차 세계대전 말의 공포를 상기시키고 있다. 그것은 1917년 10월 러시아에서 프롤레타리아 혁명의 승리, 참호에서의 반란, 독일에서 빌헬름 황제의 퇴위와 노동계급의 반란과 폭동에 직면한 휴전 서명, 그리고 독일 노동자들의 봉기, 러시아 노선에 따른 바바리아와 헝가리에서의 노동자평의회 공화국 건설, 영국과 이탈리아에서 노동 대중 사이의 파업, 소비에트 러시아에 대한 적대적 개입을 거부한 몇몇 영국 군대뿐만 아니라 프랑스 함대와 군대의 반란 등이었다.
그 당시 영국 정부의 수상인 로이드 죠지는 만일 그가 러시아 정복을 돕기 위해 천 명의 영국 군대를 파견한다면 그 군대는 반란을 일으킬 것이라고 했다. 그리고 만약 영국의 군사점령이 볼셰비키에 맞서 이루어진다면 영국은 볼셰비키가 되고 런던에 소비에트가 건설될 것이라고 1919년 1월 선언했다. 그것은 러시아 노동자평의회 권력에 대한 국제 부르주아지의 경악을 가장 잘 표현한 것이었다.
“유럽 전체는 혁명정신으로 가득 찼다. 노동자들 사이에는 전쟁 조건에 반대하는 불만감뿐만 아니라 분노와 반항감이 깊이 쌓여 있다. 정치적·사회경제적 측면에서 모든 기존 질서에 대해 유럽의 이 끝에서 저 끝까지 모든 인민대중이 의문을 제기하고 있다” (E. H. 카의 「볼셰비키 혁명」 3권, 135쪽에서 인용)
우리는 오늘날 코민테른의 창설이 1917년으로부터 적어도 1923년 말까지, 유럽으로부터 아시아(중국)로, 그리고 캐나다(위니페그)와 미국(시애틀)의 ‘신’세계로부터 라틴아메리카에 이르는 전 세계의 혁명물결에서 정점이었다고 알고 있다. 이러한 혁명 물결은 세계를 자본주의 국가들 사이의 분할로 이끈 1차 세계대전, 4년간의 제국주의 전쟁에 대한 국제 프롤레타리아트의 응답이었다. 1914년 전쟁이 꿀꺽 삼킨 제2인터내셔널 사회민주주의의 당들과 개별 투사들이 제국주의 전쟁에 대해 취한 태도는 그들이 혁명과 코민테른을 맞아 어떤 태도를 취할 것인가를 결정했다.
“코민테른은 각기 다른 나라들의 제국주의 부르주아지가 2천만 명을 희생시킨 1914~18년의 제국주의 전쟁이 끝난 후 만들어졌다. ‘제국주의 전쟁을 기억하라’ 이 말은 코민테른이 모든 남성 노동자와 모든 여성 노동자에게 한 첫 번째 말이다. 그들이 어디에 살건 어떤 언어로 말하든지 그들에게 한 말이다. 자본주의 사회가 존재하기 때문에 한줌의 제국주의자들이 4년이라는 긴 세월 동안 각기 다른 나라들의 노동자들이 서로의 목을 베도록 강제했다는 점을 기억하라. 부르주아지의 전쟁이 유럽과 전 세계에서 가장 가공할 기근과 가장 소름끼치는 참상을 불러일으켰다는 점을 기억하라. 자본주의를 전복하지 않고는 이러한 강도 같은 전쟁의 반복이 가능할 뿐 아니라 불가피함을 기억하라” (2차 대회에서 채택한 코민테른의 문건, 제인 데그라스, 「코민테른 1919-43: 문헌집」)
2. 코민테른의 제2인터내셔널과의 연속성
(1) 제2인터내셔널과 제국주의 전쟁
1848년 「공산주의자 선언」에서 칼 맑스는 “노동자는 조국이 없다”라고 자본주의에 맞서는 프롤레타리아트 투쟁의 근본적 원칙 하나를 정립했다. 이 원칙은 노동자들이 민족 국가의 문제에 관심을 갖지 말아야 한다는 뜻이 아니라 반대로 민족문제와 그들의 역사적 투쟁의 하나의 기능으로서 민족 전쟁의 문제에 대해 노동자의 입장과 태도를 규정해야 한다는 뜻이다. 전쟁의 문제와 프롤레타리아트의 태도는 제1인터내셔널(1864~73)과 제2인터내셔널(1889~1914)에서 논쟁의 중심에 있었다. 19세기 동안 프롤레타리아트는 특히 러시아 짜르 체제와 같은 봉건적이고 군주적 반동에 맞서는 민족해방 전쟁에 무관심할 수 없었다.
제2인터내셔널 내에서 레닌과 로자 룩셈부르크는 선두에 서서 20세기 벽두에 발생한 자본주의의 시기 변화를 인식할 수 있었다. 자본주의 생산양식은 정점에 다다랐으며 전 지구를 지배하게 되었다. 이제 레닌이 말한 것처럼 “자본주의의 가장 높은 단계인 제국주의”의 시기가 시작되었다. 이 시기에 다가올 유럽전쟁은 식민지의 분할과 그 영향력을 둘러싼 자본주의 국가들 사이의 제국주의 세계 전쟁일 것이었다. 날이 갈수록 프롤레타리아 투쟁의 원칙을 저버렸던 기회주의 진영에 맞서서, 이러한 새로운 상황에서 인터내셔널과 프롤레타리아트가 무장하는 전투로 이끈 것은 제2인터내셔널의 좌익이었다. 이 투쟁의 중대한 순간에 러시아 1905년 대중파업 경험으로부터 교훈을 이끌어낸 로자 룩셈부르크가 제국주의 전쟁을 대중파업과 프롤레타리아 혁명과 연결시킨 1907년 슈투트가르트의 인터내셔널 대회가 있었다.
“나는 이 문제[러시아에서의 대중파업과 전쟁(편집자)]에 대해서 우리가 위대한 러시아 혁명[1905년(편집자)]의 교훈을 이끌어내야 한다는 것을 여러 동지들에게 상기시키는 것을 러시아와 폴란드 대표들의 이름으로 말하라고 요청받았습니다. … 러시아 혁명은 전쟁의 결과로 일어났을 뿐만 아니라 그 전쟁을 끝내려고 일어났습니다. 혁명이 없었다면 짜르 체제는 의심할 여지없이 전쟁을 지속시켰을 것입니다.” (로자 룩셈부르크, BD 울프 「레닌, 트로츠키, 스탈린」에서 인용)
좌파는 룩셈부르크와 레닌이 제출한 대회의 중대한 수정결의안을 채택했다.
“그래도 전쟁이 일어난다면, 사회주의자들은 가능한 한 빨리 그 전쟁을 끝내고 전쟁이 촉발시킨 경제적·정치적 위기를 모든 수단을 동원하여 인민에게 일깨우고, 그럼으로써 자본주의 지배의 몰락을 서두를 의무가 있다.” (코민테른 1차 대회에서 채택한 ｢사회주의 경향들과 그들의 베른대회에 대한 결의문｣에서 인용)
1912년 제2인터의 바젤 대회는 유럽에서 점증하는 제국주의 전쟁의 위협에 맞서는 위와 같은 입장을 다시 확인했다.
“프랑스-프러시아 전쟁이 코뮌의 혁명적 반란을 탄생시켰고, 러일전쟁이 러시아에서 혁명세력을 움직였다는 것을 부르주아 정부들이 잊지 않게 하자. 노동자계급의 눈으로 볼 때, 자본가들의 이익, 왕조의 경쟁, 그리고 외교 협정의 남발을 위해 노동자계급이 스스로를 학살하는 것은 범죄다.” (앞 글)
(2) 제2인터내셔널의 배반과 죽음
1914년 8월 4일 1차 세계대전이 일어났다. 기회주의 때문에 구멍이 숭숭 뚫리고 애국주의 홍수와 전쟁열에 쓸려 제2인터는 깨어져 부끄럽게 목숨을 다했다. 주요 당들은 (특히 누구보다 기회주의자들 수중에 있었던 프랑스와 독일 사민당과 영국의 노동당은) ‘조국방어’와 ‘외세침략’에 맞서기 위한 부르주아지와의 ‘신성한 동맹’을 요구하며 전쟁채권에 찬성표를 던졌다. 프랑스에서는 계급투쟁을 포기하면서 장관직을 보상으로 받기까지 했다. 그들은 “맑스주의의 황제”라고 불렸던 카우츠키가 계급투쟁은 “평화 시기”에만 가능하고 “전쟁이 끝날 때까지는” 불가능하다고 선언하면서 전쟁과 계급투쟁을 구분했을 때, “중도주의”(인터내셔널의 좌파와 우파 사이의 중간)로부터 이론적 지원을 받았다.
“계급의식이 있는 노동자들은 인터내셔널 붕괴에 대해 슈투트가르트와 바젤에서 열린 인터내셔널 대회의 발언들과 결의문들 속에 담긴 가장 거룩한 선언들, 그리고 그들의 신념을 공식 사민당들의 다수가 명백하게 배신한 것으로 이해한다.” (레닌, 「제2인터내셔널의 몰락」)
소수의 당들만이 이러한 폭풍 속에서 우뚝 섰다. 특히 이탈리아, 세르비아, 불가리아 그리고 러시아의 당들이 그랬다. 다른 곳에서는 고립된 혁명가들과 혁명 그룹이 있었는데, 로자 룩셈부르크와 호르터와 판네쿡 주위의 네덜란드 “트리뷴주의자들”은 프롤레타리아 국제주의와 계급투쟁에 충실했으며 재조직화를 시도했다.
제2인터내셔널의 죽음은 프롤레타리아트에게는 심대한 패배였다. 이는 그들이 참호 속에서 피를 흘리게 했다. 수많은 혁명적 노동자들이 살육당했다. “혁명적 사회민주주의자들”은 그들의 국제 조직을 잃어버렸다. 그것은 재건해야 했다.
“제2인터는 기회주의에 패배해 죽었다. 기회주의자를 타도하자. 변절자뿐 아니라 기회주의로부터 해방된 제3 인터내셔널 만세!” (레닌, 「사회주의 인터내셔널의 정세와 임무」, 1914. 1. 10)
(3) 찌머발트와 키엔탈 대회: 공산주의 인터내셔널의 건설을 향한 발걸음
1915년 9월 “국제사회주의자들의 찌머발트 대회”가 열렸다. 이어서 스위스의 키엔탈에서 1916년 4월 2차 대회가 열렸다. 전쟁과 억압이라는 어려운 조건에도 불구하고 독일, 이탈리아, 러시아, 프랑스를 포함한 11개국의 대표들이 참여했다. 찌머발트 대회는 전쟁을 제국주의 전쟁으로 인식했다. 대회의 다수파는 ‘거룩한 동맹’의 진영으로 넘어갔거나 그들과 분리되어 관망하는 사민당들의 기회주의 우파를 비난하기를 거부했다. 이러한 중도주의 다수파는 “평화”라는 표어를 방어하는 평화주의자였다.
볼셰비키 분파의 대표인 레닌과 지노비예프의 주도 아래 통일된 “찌머발트 좌파”는 분립의 필요성과 제3인터내셔널의 건설을 주창했다. 평화주의에 맞서 그들은 “혁명적 행동이 없는 평화 투쟁은 공허하고 기만적인 문구”(레닌)라고 선언하고, “제국주의 전쟁을 내전으로 전환하자”는 슬로건으로 중도주의를 반대했다. “이 슬로건은 구체적으로 슈투트가르트와 바젤대회의 결의문으로 나타난다.”(레닌)
이들 대회를 통해 <좌파>는 힘을 얻었지만, 다른 대표들을 깨닫게 할 수 없어 소수파로 남았다. 그렇지만 이에 대한 평가는 긍정적이었다.
“두 번째 찌머발트 대회(키엔탈)는 의심할 여지없이 한 걸음 진전이다. (…) 그러면 앞으로 우리는 무엇을 해야 하는가? 앞으로 우리는 우리의 결의와 혁명적 사회민주주의 제3인터내셔널을 위한 투쟁을 지속해야 한다. 찌머발트와 키엔탈 대회는 우리의 길이 올바르다는 것을 보여주었다.” (지노비예프, 1916. 10. 6)
지노비예프가 1918년 3월에 말했듯이, 각기 다른 나라 좌파 사이의 회의와 그들 사이의 공동투쟁을 통해 “형성 중인 제3인터내셔널의 첫 번째 핵”을 만들 수 있었다.
(4) 프롤레타리아트가 슈투트가르트와 바젤 대회의 결의문을 수행하다
1917년 러시아 프롤레타리아 혁명은 유럽 전역에 혁명적 물결을 열어 젖혔다. 프롤레타리아의 위협은 제국주의 대학살이 종지부를 찍었다는 점을 국제 부르주아지에게 확인시켰다. 레닌의 슬로건은 현실이 되었다. 러시아 그리고 국제 프롤레타리아트가 제국주의 전쟁을 내전으로 전환시켰다. 이처럼 프롤레타리아트는 유명한 슈투트가르트 결의를 적용함으로써 제2인터내셔널 좌파의 명예를 드높였다.
1차 세계대전은 사회민주당의 의회주의적 우파를 부르주아지 진영으로 결정적으로 몰아넣었다. 혁명적 물결은 중도주의의 평화주의자들이 부르주아지에 맞서 싸우도록 했지만 그들의 다수는 특히 카우츠키 같은 지도자들은 부르주아지 진영으로 뛰어들었다. 더 이상 인터내셔널은 존재하지 않았다. 사회민주주의로부터 분리된 분리파들이 만든 새로운 당들은 “공산주의”당이라는 이름을 채택하기 시작했다.
혁명적 물결은 고무되었으며 프롤레타리아트의 세계당, 제3인터내셔널의 건설을 요구했다.
(5) 코민테른의 건설 : 제2인터내셔널의 정치와 원칙과의 연속성
코민테른[공산주의 인터내셔널]이라는 이름을 채택한 새로운 인터내셔널은 이미 죽은 제2인터내셔널 당들의 우파로부터 조직적으로 분리하는 것을 기반으로 1919년 3월에 건설되었다. 그러나 제2인터내셔널의 원칙과 그 공헌을 거부하지 않았다.
“이에 생명을 다한 공식적 사회주의당들의 냉담, 거짓 그리고 부패를 쓸어버리면서, 우리 공산주의자들은 제3인터내셔널에서 하나가 되어 바베프로부터 칼 리프크네히트, 그리고 로자 룩셈부르크로 기다랗게 이어지는 혁명 세대들의 영웅적 노력과 순교의 직접적 계승자라고 우리를 생각한다.
제1인터내셔널이 발전의 미래 경로를 미리 비추고 그 도정을 가리켰다면, 그리고 제2인터내셔널이 수백만의 노동자들을 모으고 조직했다면, 제3인터내셔널은 열린 대중행동의 인터내셔널이고 혁명적 실현의 인터내셔널이며, 행위[실천]의 인터내셔널이다.” (코민테른의 선언)
코민테른의 기반을 이룬 흐름, 분파, 전통 그리고 입장은 제2인터내셔널의 좌파가 발전시키고 방어한 것들이었다.
“1차 대전 이전에 프롤레타리아트가 발전시킨 제2인터내셔널이라는 역사적 대열로부터 선발해 재편한 그룹을 통해서만, 제국주의 전쟁에 맞서는 프롤레타리아 투쟁을 끝까지 밀어붙일 수 있음을 우리의 경험은 증명하고 있다. 왜냐하면 이 그룹만이 프롤레타리아 혁명을 위한 선진적 강령을 만들 수 있고 그래서 새로운 프롤레타리아 운동의 기초를 놓을 수 있기 때문이다.” (������빌랑������(공산주의 좌파의 이탈리아 분파의 이론지), 1936년 8월, 34호, 1128쪽)
레닌, 로자 룩셈부르크, 안톤 판네쿡 같은 개인은 물론이고 볼셰비키, 독일, 네덜란드, 이탈리아 좌파 같은 사회민주당들의 그룹과 분파를 보더라도, 제2인터내셔널과 찌머발트의 좌파와 제3인터내셔널의 좌파 사이에는 정치적이고 유기적인 연속성이 있다. 코민테른의 첫 번째 대회는 제2인터내셔널의 부분이었던 러시아 공산주의당(볼셰비키)(이전의 러시아 노동자 사회민주주의당(볼셰비키))과 독일 공산주의당(이전의 스파르타쿠스)의 주도로 소집되었다. 볼셰비키는 찌머발트 좌파의 주도 세력이었다. 찌머발트 좌파는 제2인터내셔널과 제3인터내셔널 사이의 진정한 유기적·정치적 연결고리였는데, 그들은 제2인터내셔널의 좌익으로서 과거에 벌였던 투쟁을 평가하면서 그 시대의 요구를 다음과 같이 정립했다.
“찌머발트와 키엔탈 대회는 제국주의 살육에 항의하기 위해, 결의가 있는 모든 프롤레타리아 세력을 이런저런 방식으로 통일시키는 것이 필요했던 상황에서 열린 매우 중요한 대회였다. (…) 찌머발트 그룹은 자기 전성기를 가졌다. 찌머발트에 모인 진실로 혁명적인 세력은 모두 더 전진해 코민테른에 합류한다.” (찌머발트 대회 참가자 선언)
우리는 두 인터내셔널 사이의 연속성을 강력히 주장한다. 우리가 계통적 측면에서 살펴본 바와 같이 코민테른은 느닷없이 나타나지는 않았다. 그 강령과 정치적 원칙도 마찬가지다. 두 인터내셔널 사이의 역사적 연결고리를 인식하지 못하는 것은 역사가 어떻게 작동하는지 이해하지 못하는 무정부주의에 굴복하는 것이다. 또한 코민테른을 단지 노동자 대중의 혁명운동의 산물로만 바라보는 것이다.
이러한 연속성을 인식하지 못한다면 코민테른이 왜 그리고 어떻게 제2인터내셔널과 결별했는지를 이해할 수 없다. 왜냐하면 슈투트가르트 결의에 표현된 두 인터내셔널 사이의 연속성이 있지만, 두 인터내셔널 사이에는 단절도 있기 때문이다. 그 단절은 코민테른의 정치 강령 속에, 그 정치적 입장에, 그리고 “세계 공산주의당”으로서의 조직적이고 전투적인 실천 속에 구체화되었다. 사실 단절은 물리적인 유혈 탄압을 통해 이루어졌다. 그것은 제2인터내셔널의 성원인 멘셰비키와 사회혁명당이 참여한 케렌스키 정부가 러시아 프롤레타리아트와 볼셰비키를 억압하고, 독일에서는 노스케-샤이드만 사민주의 정부가 프롤레타리아트와 공산주의당을 억압해서 단절이 이루어졌다.
이러한 “연속성 속의 단절”을 인식하지 않으면, 1920년대의 코민테른의 퇴행, 그리고 그 내부의 투쟁, 그리고 1930년대 ‘이탈리아’, ‘독일’ 및 ‘네덜란드’ 공산주의 좌파의 외부투쟁 및 그들 세력의 배제를 이해할 수 없다. 오늘날 공산주의 그룹들과 그들이 방어하는 입장은 이런 좌파들이 공산주의 원칙을 지키고, 코민테른 및 1917~23년의 혁명적 물결을 비판적으로 재평가했던 그들의 노력의 산물이었다.
프롤레타리아트의 정치적 유산인 제2인터내셔널의 유산을 인식하지 않으면, 코민테른의 기반, 오늘날까지 중요한 몇몇 기반의 타당성, 1930년대 공산주의 좌파의 공헌을 이해할 수 없다. 다른 말로 그것은 오늘날 혁명적 입장을 지속적으로, 확신과 결단을 가지고 방어할 수 없음을 뜻한다.
3. 코민테른의 제2인터내셔널과의 단절
(1) 코민테른의 정치 강령
1919년 1월 말 트로츠키는 코민테른 창립대회의 초대장을 썼다. 그 대회는 새로운 인터내셔널이 채택할 정치 강령의 원칙을 결정했다. 사실 이 편지는 제안된 ‘코민테른 강령’이고 그를 잘 요약하고 있다. 그것은 두 개의 주요 공산주의당들의 강령에 기초하고 있다.
“우리 의견으로는 새로운 인터내셔널은 여기서 강령으로 제시되었고, 독일 스파르타쿠스 동맹과 러시아 공산당(볼셰비키)의 강령에 기초해서 구성된 다음의 제안들에 기초해야만 한다.” (데그라스, 앞글)
사실 스파르타쿠스 동맹은 1918년 12월 29일 독일 공산주의당이 창설된 이후에는 존재하지 않았다. 1919년 1월 베를린 프롤레타리아트에 대한 끔찍한 탄압기 동안에, 사민주의 세력이 로자 룩셈부르크와 칼 리프크네히트를 죽여 독일 공산주의당은 두 명의 주요 지도자를 잃었다. 이처럼 바로 창립 순간에 코민테른은 국제 프롤레타리아트와 함께 첫 번째 패배의 고통을 겪었다. 창립 두 달 전 코민테른은 그의 명성, 힘 그리고 이론적 능력에서 레닌과 트로츠키에 필적할 두 명의 지도자를 잃었다. 지난 세기 말 그녀의 저작에서 코민테른의 정치 강령의 기초가 될 핵심들을 가장 많이 발전시킨 사람은 로자 룩셈부르크였다.
(2) 돌이킬 수 없는 자본주의의 역사적 쇠퇴
로자 룩셈부르크에게는 1914년 전쟁이 자본주의 생산양식의 쇠퇴기를 열어 놓았다는 점이 명백했다. 제국주의 살육 이후 이러한 입장은 더 이상 논쟁의 여지가 없었다.
“오늘날 인류는 둘 중 하나를 선택해야 하는 상황에까지 이르렀다: 혼돈 속에서 멸망하느냐 아니면 사회주의에서 구원을 발견하느냐” (독일 공산주의당 창립대회에서 강령에 대한 연설)
이러한 입장은 코민테른에서 강력하게 재확인되었다.
“1. 현 시대는 해결할 수 없는 모순을 지닌 자본주의가 파괴되지 않는다면, 그와 함께 유럽 문명의 전체를 끌어내릴, 전체 자본주의 세계체제의 몰락과 해체의 시대이다.” (「초청장」, 데그라스, 앞글)
“새로운 시대가 태어난다! 자본주의 소멸과 내부 해체의 시대가! 프롤레타리아트의 공산주의 혁명의 시대가!” (코민테른 강령, 앞글)
(3) 자본주의 쇠퇴 시대의 정치적 함의
코민테른의 지형 위에 서 있는 모든 사람들에게 자본주의의 쇠퇴는 삶의 조건과 프롤레타리아트의 투쟁에 중요한 결과를 가져왔다. 보기를 들어 카우츠키와 같은 중도주의 평화주의의 사상과는 반대로 전쟁의 끝은 전쟁 전 시기의 삶과 강령으로 회귀하는 걸 의미할 수 없었다. 이는 죽은 제2인터내셔널과 코민테른 사이의 단절의 한 지점이었다.
“한 가지는 분명하다. 세계대전은 세상의 전환점이다. (…) 우리의 투쟁을 위한 조건과 우리들 자신은 세계대전으로 발본적으로 변화되었다.” (룩셈부르크, ｢유니우스 팜플렛｣으로 알려진 ｢사회민주주의의 위기｣, 1915)
제국주의 전쟁으로 자본주의 사회의 쇠퇴기가 열렸다는 것은 국제 프롤레타리아트에게 삶과 투쟁의 새로운 조건을 의미했다. 1905년 러시아 대중파업, 그리고 노동대중 단일 조직의 새로운 형태인 소비에트가 최초로 등장한 것이 자본주의 쇠퇴기의 개막을 예고했다. 룩셈부르크(｢대중파업, 당 그리고 노동조합｣, 1906)와 트로츠키(1905년 그의 책)는 이러한 대중운동의 본질적 교훈을 끌어냈다. 룩셈부르크와 함께 모든 좌파는 제2인터내셔널 내에서 대중파업에 대한 논쟁을 이끌었으며 노동조합과 사민당 지도부의 기회주의에 맞서서 그리고 사회주의로의 평화적이고 점진적 진화라는 그들의 전망에 맞서서 정치 투쟁을 전개할 수 있었다. 사민주의적 실천과 결별하면서 코민테른은 다음과 같이 선언했다.
“기본적인 투쟁방법은 자본의 정치권력에 맞서 공개적인 무장투쟁으로 나아가는 프롤레타리아트의 대중행동이다” (｢초청장｣, 데그라스, 윗글)
(4) 혁명과 프롤레타리아트의 독재
노동대중의 행동은 부르주아 국가와의 충돌로 나아간다. 코민테른의 가장 소중한 공헌은 국가에 대한 혁명적 프롤레타리아트의 태도에 대한 것이다. 사민주의의 “개량주의”와 결별하고 파리코뮨과 1905년 러시아 그리고 무엇보다 자본주의 국가를 파괴하고 노동자 평의회로 권력을 행사한 1917년 10월 혁명의 역사적 경험의 교훈과 맑스주의 방법을 새롭게 함으로써, 코민테른은 스스로 명쾌하게 그리고 어떠한 모호함도 없이 프롤레타리아트의 독재, 노동자 평의회 안에 조직된 노동대중의 독재를 선언했다.
“2. 프롤레타리아트의 임무는 지금 즉각 권력을 장악하는 것이다. 국가권력의 장악은 부르주아지의 국가기구의 파괴와 새로운 프롤레타리아 권력기구의 조직을 의미한다.
3. 이러한 새로운 권력기구는 노동계급의 독재를 구현해야 하고 몇몇 곳에서는 농촌의 반(半)프롤레타리아트, 빈민의 독재를 구현해야 한다. (…) 소비에트 및 그와 비슷한 기구의 권력을 통해 그 구체적 형식을 확인할 수 있다.
4. 프롤레타리아트의 독재는 자본의 즉각적 전유와 생산수단의 사적 소유의 폐지와 국가 재산으로의 전환을 위한 지렛대여야 한다.” (윗글)
이 문제는 레닌이 제안한 “부르주아 민주주의와 프롤레타리아 독재에 대한 테제”를 채택했던 창립대회에서 본질적인 문제였다.
(5) 부르주아 민주주의와 프롤레타리아트의 독재에 대한 테제
이 테제는 민주주의와 독재 사이의 그릇된 대립을 비난하면서 시작한다.
“어떤 문명화된 자본주의 국가에서도 ‘추상 속의 민주주의’는 없다. 오직 부르주아 민주주의만 있을 뿐이다” (윗글)
파리코뮌은 부르주아 민주주의의 독재적 성격을 드러냈다. 자본주의에서 ‘순수한’ 민주주의를 방어하는 것은 사실 기껏해야 자본의 독재의 형식인 부르주아 민주주의를 방어한다는 것을 의미한다. 집회의 자유나 출판의 자유는 노동자들에게 무엇인가?
“‘출판의 자유’는 ‘순수 민주주의’의 또 다른 대표적 슬로건이다. 여기에서도 또 가장 좋은 인쇄소와 막대한 종이더미를 자본가가 장악하고 있는 한, 또 자본이 신문·잡지에 대한 권력을 유지하고 있는 한, 그리고 이 권력은 세계에서, 예를 들어 미국처럼 민주주의와 공화제도가 발전하면 할수록, 더욱 더 명확하게, 더욱 더 첨예하게, 더욱 더 냉소적으로 나타나는데, 이런 조건이 계속되는 한 이 자유가 기만이라는 것을 … 노동자는 알고 있다. 노동자를 위한, 노동자와 농민을 위한 참된 평등과 진정한 민주주의를 쟁취하기 위해서는 우선 먼저 문필가를 고용하거나 출판소를 사들이거나 신문을 매수할 수 있는 가능성을 자본으로부터 박탈해야 한다. 그러기 위해서는 자본의 멍에를 뒤집어버리고, 착취자를 타도하고 그들의 반항을 분쇄할 필요가 있다.” (「테제」, 윗글)
전쟁과 혁명을 경험한 후 카우츠키주의자들이 한 것처럼 순수한 민주주의를 요구하고 방어하는 것은 프롤레타리아트에 맞서는 범죄라고 「테제」는 계속 말하고 있다. 각기 다른 제국주의와 소수 자본가들의 이해 때문에 수백만의 인민이 참호에서 학살당했고 ‘부르주아지의 군사독재’는 민주적이건 아니건 간에 모든 나라에 세워졌다. 사민주의 정부가 칼 리프크네히트와 로자 룩셈부르크를 체포하고 투옥한 것처럼 부르주아 민주주의가 그들을 학살했다.
“이러한 사태 하에서는 프롤레타리아의 독재가 착취자를 압도하고, 그들의 저항을 극복하는 수단으로서 완전히 정당할 뿐만 아니라, 전쟁을 일으켰고 지금도 새로운 전쟁을 준비하고 있는 부르주아 독재에 대한 유일한 방위수단으로서 노동대중 전체에게 절대로 필요하다.
프롤레타리아 독재와 다른 계급의 독재 사이의 근본적 차이는 (…) 이를 포함한다. 즉 (…) 프롤레타리아의 독재는 착취자 즉 주민 중에서 극소수인 대지주와 자본가의 반항을 무력으로 억누르는 것이다. (…)
사실, 이미 실제로 창출되어 있는 프롤레타리아 독재의 여러 형태, 즉 러시아 소비에트권력, 독일의 노동자평의회, 직장위원회, 이와 유사한 다른 나라의 또 다른 소비에트적 제도, 이 모두는 다름 아닌 노동자계급, 즉 주민 대다수에게 민주적 권리와 자유를 누릴 수 있게 한다. 그것은 가장 민주적인 부르주아 공화국조차 전혀 보장할 수 없었던 또 그와 유사한 것조차 존재하지 않았던 민주적 권리와 자유가 실제로 가능해진다는 것을 뜻한다.” (윗글)
오직 세계적 차원의 프롤레타리아 독재만이 자본주의를 파괴하고, 계급을 폐지하며 공산주의로 가는 길을 보증할 수 있다.
“국가권력의 폐지는 맑스를 포함해서 모든 사회주의자들의 목표다. 이러한 목표가 달성되지 않으면 자유와 평등의 진정한 민주주의는 달성될 수 없다. 그러나 오직 소비에트와 프롤레타리아 민주주의만이 실제로 이 목표로 나아가게 한다. 왜냐하면 노동인민의 대중조직을 국가행정에 지속적이고 제한 없이 참여하게 함으로써 어떤 종류의 국가도 완전히 소멸시킬 준비를 시작할 수 있기 때문이다” (윗글)
국가의 문제는 혁명적 물결이 유럽을 휩쓸고 모든 나라의 부르주아지가 러시아의 프롤레타리아트에 맞서 내전을 벌일 때, 그리고 자본과 노동, 부르주아지와 프롤레타리아트 사이의 적대감이 극에 달할 때 중요한 문제였다. 러시아 프롤레타리아트의 독재와 혁명의 확장, 즉 소비에트 권력을 유럽에 국제적으로 확장할 필요성은 혁명가들에게 구체적으로 제기되었다. 그것은 러시아 프롤레타리아 독재의 국가와 혁명적 물결의 편에 설 것인가 아니면 그에 맞설 것인가의 문제였다. ‘[프롤레타리아 독재]편에 선다는 것’은 코민테른에 가입해 사회민주주의와는 체계적으로 정치적으로 단절한다는 것을 의미했다. ‘맞선다는 것’은 부르주아 국가를 방어하고 결정적으로 반혁명 진영을 선택한다는 것을 의미했다. 이 둘 사이에서 머뭇거렸던 중도주의 흐름에게는 그것이 단절과 소멸을 뜻했다. 혁명 시기는 ‘중도 기반’의 멍청한 정책을 가질 어떤 틈도 남겨두지 않았다.
4. 오늘과 내일 : 코민테른의 과업을 지속하기
1914~18년 전쟁이 결정적으로 보여준 시기 변화는 제2인터내셔널과 제3인터내셔널 사이의 단절을 결정짓는다. 우리는 이를 국가의 문제에서 살펴보았다. 자본주의의 쇠퇴, 그것이 프롤레타리아트의 삶과 투쟁 조건에 미친 결과는 일련의 새로운 문제를 제기했다. 즉, 아직도 선거 참여와 의회의 활용이 가능한가, 노동자평의회가 출현했는데도, 자본가들과 ‘성스런 동맹’에 참여했던 노동조합이 아직도 노동계급의 조직인가, 제국주의 전쟁의 시대에 민족해방투쟁에 대해서는 어떤 태도를 취해야 하는가가 그런 문제들이었다.
코민테른은 이러한 새로운 문제에 응답할 수 없었다. 그것은 1917년 10월 혁명 1년여 뒤, 그리고 베를린 프롤레타리아트가 겪은 첫 번째 패배로부터 두 달 뒤에 창설되었다. 그 뒤를 이은 여러 해 동안 국제 혁명의 물결은 패배하고 쇠퇴했으며 러시아의 프롤레타리아트는 점점 고립되었다. 이러한 고립은 프롤레타리아 독재 국가의 퇴행에서 결정적 요인이었다. 이러한 사태들 때문에 코민테른은 기회주의의 성장에 저항할 수 없었다. 반대로 코민테른은 죽었다.
코민테른을 평가할 때, 우리는 그것이 <국제공산주의당>이었다고 명확하게 인식해야 한다. 그것의 실질적 퇴행 때문에 그것을 부르주아 조직으로만 보려는 사람은 그걸 제대로 평가할 수 없고, 그 경험으로부터 교훈을 끌어낼 수도 없다. 트로츠키주의는 초기 4차 대회를 계승해야 한다고 무비판적으로 주장한다. 창립대회가 제2인터내셔널과 단절했던 지점들에서, 그 후속 대회는 퇴행했다는 점을 그들은 결코 보지 못했다. 1차 대회는 사회민주주의로부터 분리했다. 그런데 3차 대회는 그에 반대해 ‘통일전선’ 속에서 사회민주주의와 함께 할 것을 제안했다. 사회민주주의가 부르주아 진영으로 결정적으로 넘어갔다는 것을 인식한 후인데도, 코민테른은 3차대회에서 사회민주주의를 부활시켰다. 사민주의당과의 동맹정책은 1930년대에 트로츠키주의가 ‘입당주의’ 정책을 채택하게 했다. 입당주의란 곧 코민테른 1차 대회의 원칙을 정면으로 무시하면서, 사민주의당에 들어가는 것이었다. 레닌이 말한 것처럼 이러한 동맹 또는 항복의 정책은 스페인 내전에서 부르주아 공화 정부를 지지하고, 찌머발트와 인터내셔널을 배신하고 제국주의 2차 세계대전에 참여하는 반혁명으로 트로츠키 흐름을 빠져들게 만들었다.
이미 1920년대에 코민테른 내부에서 이러한 퇴행에 맞서 투쟁하려는 새로운 좌파가 만들어졌다. 그들은 특히 이탈리아, 네덜란드 그리고 독일 좌파였다. 1920년대 동안 배제된 이러한 좌익 분파들은 코민테른과 혁명적 물결을 비판적으로 재평가함으로써 죽어가는 코민테른과 ‘미래의 당’ 사이에서 연속성을 보증할 정치투쟁을 지속했다. 1930년대에 공산주의 좌파의 이탈리아 분파의 잡지가 「빌랑(Bilan)」(“평가”)이었다는 것도 나름대로 이유가 있었던 것이다.
인터내셔널의 원칙과 연속성을 갖고, 이들 그룹들은 제2인터내셔널과 단절하는 데에서 나타난 약점을 비판했다. 1930년대 동안의 반혁명과 2차 제국주의 전쟁의 암흑기 속에서 그들이 펼쳤던 이름 없는 노력 덕분에 오늘날 공산주의 그룹들이 부활해서 존재할 수 있게 됐다. 그들은 코민테른과 조직적 연속성을 지니지 않지만 정치적 연속성은 지니고 있다. 이들 그룹들이 만들어내고 방어한 입장들은 자본주의 쇠퇴의 새로운 시기를 맞아 코민테른 안에서 제기된 문제들에 답을 주고 있다.
따라서 ‘공산주의 좌파 분파들’이 이루어낸 비판적 재평가의 기초 위에서 코민테른은 오늘날 살아 있고, 미래의 <세계공산주의당>에서 살아있게 될 것이다.
오늘날 점증하는 착취와 가난에 직면해 프롤레타리아트는 다음과 같은 <찌머발트 좌파>의 입장과 동일한 입장을 채택해야 한다.
경제 전쟁에서 부르주아지와는 어떠한 신성한 동맹도 없다!
민족 경제를 구하기 위한 어떤 희생도 반대한다!
계급투쟁 만세!
경제 전쟁을 내전으로 전환하라!
경제적 파국, 사회적 해체 그리고 제국주의 전쟁의 전망에 직면해 1919년에서와 같이 오늘날도 역사적 대안은 똑같다. 그것은 자본주의 파괴와 전 세계 프롤레타리아 독재의 수립인가 아니면 인간성의 파괴인가, 사회주의인가 아니면 야만인가다.
미래는 공산주의의 것이다.
<번역 : 오세철>
In September 2009 the Anarchist Federation (AF) published a pamphlet entitled “Against Nationalism”. The pamphlet was produced as a response to wave of support for Palestinian nationalism and its political expression, in the shape of HAMAS, which the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2008/2009, elicited from the so-called “left”.
The pamphlet considers the historical evolution of nationalism and imperialism and some of the arguments advanced by socialists for supporting or opposing national struggles. The AF makes clear from the outset that they have always opposed national struggles even those of “oppressed nations.” The pamphlet also correctly identifies national struggles as interclass struggles which undermine the workers’ struggles, which, in contrast, are international. The reservoir of support for bourgeois nationalism in the British “left” ensured that voices were raised against the conclusions of this pamphlet. David Broder, of the Commune group responded with a critical review of the pamphlet in a text entitled “the earth is not flat” and the issue was made a subject of debate in the Commune’s day school in June. At the day school, which the CWO attended, the key issues were raised with different members of the Commune taking totally opposing positions on this question. Left Communists in general and the CWO in particular, consider that history has settled the issue of the national question and the theorists who have given their support to national struggles in the period from the First World War onwards have been shown to be decisively wrong. Today support for nationalism is no longer a mistaken tactic, as might have been argued in the period leading up the World War 1, it is counter-revolutionary.
We are therefore taking this opportunity to comment on the pamphlet and the issues which have been raised in the review and the subsequent debates.
The AF pamphlet looks at nationalism as an ideology described as a “narrative constructed by the capitalist state.” It exposes its use in creating class collaboration and inducing the working class to fight the capitalist’s wars and points out that the interests of wage workers “stand in opposition to those of the capitalist nation state.” It, correctly points out that successful national struggles result in a re-ordering of the machinery of exploitation of the working class and do not in any way bring liberation to the working class, giving the examples of Vietnam and Zimbabwe to illustrate the point. The pamphlet calls for “class struggle in the arena of war and in the antagonist nations” as the only strategy which could be supported. Generally we endorse the political conclusions reached by the pamphlet.
However, the pamphlet has a number of weaknesses which make it unable to adequately refute the politics of the bourgeois left.
The principal weakness of the pamphlet is that it examines nationalism as “ideology” but does not attempt to expose the material roots of this ideology or see it in its historical perspective.
The analysis therefore fails to take into account the dynamics of capitalism as an economic system, and the developments which it has undergone from the 19th century to the present, developments which are reflected in ideological changes in the key ideas of nationalism.
In the 19th century, formation of national states served the purpose of developing the national capital, often behind protective tariff barriers, capitalising agriculture and converting the agricultural population and artisans into wage labourers. In doing this capitalism was eradicating feudalism and creating the proletariat as a class within capitalism, thereby carrying out a progressive role. This role could be described as progressive since it was creating the class of wage labourers as a distinct class within capitalist society. This class was an exploited class on which the whole capitalist system depended and a class with a clear interest in ending their exploitation. It was, therefore, a class in “radical chains” which could be the agent for the socialisation of the means of production and the construction of a higher form of social organisation, namely communism. The general content of the nationalist struggle was the consolidation of the national state through a struggle against feudalism and consequent development of the capitalist system and the working class. While this was the content of nationalism, proletarian political organisations could give political support to the bourgeoisie in carrying out these tasks. The nationalist struggle could, therefore, be supported where it favoured the interest of the working class. Support for the national bourgeoisie was, in this period, a tactical issue. However, at the end of the 19th century the phase of formation and consolidation of capitalist states was, in Europe at least, generally completed. For the major capitalist states there was now a need for the national capital to secure sources of raw materials, theatres for export of capital, markets and trade routes on a worldwide scale. Capitalism, as a global system, had entered a new phase, that of imperialism.
Wars of national formation gave way to imperialist wars, of which the First World War was the most dramatic manifestation. Changes in the material needs of the major capitalist states produced a change in the ideological content of nationalism. In the period from the start of 20th century to the present, nationalism became synonymous with support for the imperialist struggle to project the interests of the national capital worldwide, that is, a struggle against other capitalist states. The change in the content of nationalism demanded that the political attitude of communists to national struggles had to be re-evaluated. Whereas, in the earlier period communists could give tactical support to bourgeois national struggles, because of their generally progressive character, in the later period these struggles became part and parcel of wider imperialist struggles in which workers slaughtered each other in the interest of their national bourgeoisie. National struggles were now directly opposed to the interests of the working class and were counter-revolutionary.
By seeing nationalism as an ideology or “a narrative constructed by the capitalist class” the AF loses sight of its historical dimension and declares that they have always opposed it. In a similar way the Stalinists, Trotskyists and various leftists, not recognising the historical character of nationalism, see the present as basis of nationalism as essentially the same as that of the 19th century.
They conclude that support for nationalist struggles is still a tactical question and consequently pick and choose which nationalist gang they support on a tactical basis. The tactic is generally based on their assessment of how a particular bourgeois nationalist struggle would weaken the interests of the major imperialist powers. If we leave aside, for the time being, the argument advanced for this tactical support, it is clear that it is the same failure to understand the historical nature of nationalism underlies both the positions of the AF and the “leftists” against whom the pamphlet is directed.
This is the case despite the oposing conclusions they reach.
The AF characterises all nation states as imperialist and see the state as being essentially imperialist.
The state — they argue — secures the material basis of its own power: it increases its own resources, wealth and ability to protect itself. It is therefore not simply a puppet of corporate interests but is an interested party in its own right… the nation state has imperialism in its very blood (1).
This passage highlights two key issues which run through the pamphlet, the nature of imperialism and the nature of the state. We will consider the issue of imperialism first. The AF’s characterisation of all states as imperialist is too simplistic to stand serious scrutiny2. While it is true that imperialism stems from the operation of capitalism and so all states have a drive to imperialism, in practice, for the lesser states these ambitions are unrealisable.
Imperialism is a global system, a phase in the global operation of capitalism, and all states are therefore forced to participate in the system and do so, in one way or other. However, this participation is not the participation of equals. The minor powers participate as junior partners of the major powers or junior members of a bloc of powers.
What underlies imperialism is a process of transfer of surplus value to the dominant imperialist powers and it is clear that this transfer cannot benefit all states. The major beneficiaries and controllers of this process have been in the past and today still are the metropolitan capitals of the Europe and North America and Japan. The role of the minor powers is that of lieutenants of the major powers. Often their role is principally to ensure the smooth transfer of surplus value from their workers to the metropolitan capitals which exploit them. In other words to ensure the rule of capital is not threatened in their area of the globe. Although the dominance of the powers controlling the system, and their resulting privileges, are always under threat from rising powers such as Russia, China, India and others, this challenge of rising powers in no way changes the operation of the system as a whole. It simply means new powers rise to dominate the system. As we have seen in the 20th century, although the top dogs of imperialism have been changed by world wars the global system has remained essentially unchanged.
Since all states participate in this system the only real anti-imperialist struggle is a struggle to overturn the whole system. Of course, the only struggle capable of doing this is a class struggle directed to the overthrow capitalism. The so-called “anti-imperialist” struggles, so beloved of the leftists, are in reality inter imperialist struggles. Their real content is the alteration of a nation’s status within the concert of imperialism. The famous liberation struggles of Africa, South America and Vietnam have really been struggles to change the position of the various states from that of being clients of US imperialism to that of being clients of Russian imperialism. The same goes for the more recent struggles of countries in Africa, Asia or South America to reorient themselves from the US towards China…
Although the AF reaches a similar conclusion to the above, this conclusion is reached empirically.
There is no understanding of the global systemic nature of imperialism and the consequent impossibility of individual nations to free themselves from it. The arguments of the leftists that there are imperialist nations and dominated nations, and support for the dominated nation weakens imperialism, similarly stems from a failure to understand imperialism as a phase of capitalism from which there is no escape, short of the system’s overthrow. The weakening of one imperialist power simply means the strengthening of another. Although the AF ridicules the arguments of the leftists, it cannot expose the false premise on which these arguments are constructed because it does not itself understand why this premise is false.
Instead of seeing imperialism as a global phase of capitalism, the AF attempt to argue it emanates from the state, or in their words the “state has imperialism in its blood.” Throughout the pamphlet there is a tendency to see the state as the root of all that is wrong with the world. Hamas, for example, is condemned because it is a “proto-state force” rather than because it is a bourgeois political force. However, at the same time the pamphlet recognises that the principal axis, around which social struggles revolve today, is the class struggle within capitalism. The pamphlet also recognises that most of the imperialist actions carried out by the state are dictated by the needs of capitalism. A dual explanation of imperialism is thus presented, firstly as something resulting from the forces of capitalism and secondly resulting from the inherent imperialist tendencies of the state. This simply confuses the explanations which the pamphlet offers. In reality,
excluding periods of revolution, the state can only be an expression of the economic structure of society, and can only reflect the interests and needs of the dominant class in society. When this class is progressive the state is progressive and when it is reactionary the state is reactionary. The state has no inherent qualities in the way the AF claims. In the last analysis, despite the AF’s denials, the state in the present world is the expression of the interests of national capital as a whole. However, with increased globalisation of capitalism, states are no longer simply expressions of the national capital since the national capital has been replaced by international capital3. States have become agents of international capital and the imperialist bloc to which they belong.
The imperialist phase of capitalism was ushered in by the First World War. Left Communists view this war as a critical turning point, a turning point which indicated that the progressive phase of capitalism was clearly over and that the world, not just the metropolitan countries of Europe and America, was ripe for proletarian revolution and the establishment of a higher form of economic and social organisation, namely communism. It is from this premise that we argue the Bolsheviks were justified in fighting for an immediate proletarian revolution in 1917, since revolutions in Europe could have transformed the Russian revolution into a stage in a world communist revolution.
If the proletarian revolution was on the agenda in 1917, it followed that workers should now struggle to achieve this and could no longer give support, of any kind whatsoever, to their class enemies, the national bourgeoisie. This was recognised by Lenin in his April Theses of 1917 which led to the Bolsheviks dropping their programmatic support for the national bourgeoisie in creating bourgeois democracy in Russia.
Instead they saw the October Revolution as a first step in the world revolution.
Lenin however, despite having an analysis of capitalism after 1916 which demonstrated that that it had entered a new epoch “of parasitism and decay” tended to argue that the national question was a political and not economic issue. Indeed he had polemicised with his comrades Bukharin and Piatakov in 1915- 16 who, sharing Lenin’s analysis of imperialism argued that there was no longer any right to selfdetermination.
They argued:
The task of the workers is to mobilise the proletariat of both the oppressing nation and the oppressed, under the slogan of a civil, class war for socialism (4).
Lenin, arguing from his disgust with the old Tsarist Empire, the “prison house” of more than 200 nationalities, maintained the abstract right of self-determination.5 At the height of the Russian Revolution Lenin lost the argument. At the 1919 Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) the views of Bukharin and Piatakov won the day and all reference to “self-determination” was removed from the Party programme.
Bukharin and Piatakov were not alone in opposing the rights of nations to self-determination. It was opposed on a class basis by many revolutionaries in the period leading up to the First World War.
The clearest opponent of this policy was Rosa Luxemburg who argued that workers should now fight on the basis of class, not nationality, and that national liberation divided the working class and left national workers at the mercy of their own bourgeoisie. She had herself concluded in a polemic over her native Poland in 1896 that the Polish bourgeoisie was “tied to Russia with chains of gold”. She even split from the Polish Socialist Party (PSP) over its out and out nationalism (with no reference to socialism) to form the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) on internationalist positions. This party grew rapidly in the 1905 revolution as workers “flocked into the SDKPiL and made common cause with the Russian workers (6)”. The workers and Luxemburg had both witnessed how the Polish national bourgeoisie in 1905 broke worker’s strikes, which were at the time combined with strikes by Russian workers, to further their nationalist cause. Small wonder that the SDKPiL won over the majority of the PSP. Its minority under Pilsudski became openly chauvinist and later would join the Western powers in attacking Soviet Russia militarily. There can be no clearer example of the incompatibility of socialism and nationalism. However this is to anticipate. In December 1905, Luxemburg described how, in practice, the national cause was used to defeat that of the working class.
Under the slogan ‘National Democratic Railroad’ railroad workers broke the railroad strike forcing the striking workers to return to work at gun point. Under the national slogan, the National Democracy began a crusade against the general strike and other forms of strikes claiming they were ruining ‘the country’s national wealth’…Under the national slogan, the National Democracy organised… ‘Polish Falcons’ …armed fighting squads destined for murdering socialists and making strikes impossible… (7)
How familiar such a description sounds to us today. These words could have been written about Turkey in 1920, China in 1927, the liberated colonies, Zimbabwe, South Africa; in short, they apply to most of the significant national liberation struggles from the Second World War to the present day.
The Bolsheviks may have outlawed national self determination from their programme in 1919 but still allowed the right of secession to the outlying areas of the former Tsarist Empire, including Poland. At the time it was mercilessly criticised by Rosa Luxemburg. She wrote:
The nations (granted national self determination) used their freshly granted freedom to ally themselves with German imperialism against the Russian Revolution as its mortal enemy, and, under German protection to carry the banner of counter-revolution into Russia itself….The Bolsheviks were to be taught, to their own great hurt and that of the revolution, that under the rule of capitalism there is no self determination of peoples, that in a class society each class of the nation strives to “determine itself ” in a different fashion; and that for the bourgeois classes the standpoint of national freedom is fully subordinated to that of class rule. The Finnish bourgeoisie, like the Ukrainian petite bourgeoisie, was unanimous in preferring the violent rule of Germany to national freedom, if the latter should be bound up with Bolshevism (8).
Some have argued that the Bolsheviks had little choice and that Luxemburg’s argument is unfair but in this they are missing her point.
Not one of these nations was really independent but as she makes clear they were all the tools of imperialist powers. The clarity of her position was best summed up in 1916 in Either-Or
In this era of unfettered imperialism there can be longer be national wars … For no suppressed nation can freedom and independence blossom forth from the politics of imperialist states and the imperialist war. Small nations, whose ruling classes are appendages and accessories of their class comrades in the large nations, are merely pawns in the imperialist game played by the major powers.
from Rosa Luxemburg, Selected Writings, ed. R. Looker, p.223
The majority of Bolsheviks had accepted this in 1919 but as the revolutionary tide in Europe ebbed away and the Russian Revolution remained isolated, the Bolsheviks searched for desperate expedients which could maintain the revolutionary momentum.
One of these was to support national bourgeois movements in colonies or semi-colonies of the major powers. Lenin, in line with what he had written at the end of his pamphlet on Imperialism — the Highest Stage of Capitalism, now argued that such movements would weaken the imperialist powers by cutting off the “super profits” they extracted from the colonies.
Without these super profits the imperial powers would be unable to bribe the “workers aristocracy” in the imperial countries to head off the revolutionary ambitions of the metropolitan workers.
The Comintern adopted this policy (despite the opposition of communists like M.N.Roy and Sultan Zade who held positions close to that of Luxemburg) and its political conclusion was that the workers’ political organisations in the colonies should put themselves at the disposal and under the control of the national bourgeois forces.
The theoretical basis of this policy was that bourgeois revolutions were still on the agenda in certain parts of the world and were progressive.
It was in clear contradiction to the April Theses which saw capitalism as ripe for revolution in 1917 and so called into question the whole basis of the October Revolution. If bourgeois revolutions could take place in one part of the world and socialist revolutions in another then capitalism was not yet a global system ripe for revolution, as was claimed in the founding theses of the Comintern. Such a perspective also opened the door to the possibility of constructing socialism in one country since the bourgeois revolutions in the colonies or semi-colonies, were supposed to support the socialist revolution in the metropolitan capitalist countries. We will not comment here on the theoretical issues of “super profits” and “workers aristocracy” beyond noting that history has shown these ideas to be wrong. Since the Second World War we have seen decolonisation and national bourgeois revolutions throughout the colonial and semi colonial world and imperialism has not been significantly affected.
The major imperialist powers no longer directly administer these areas, this is now carried out by a local section of the bourgeois class, but the surplus value still keeps flowing to the metropolitan countries. These regions are today dominated by international capital more thoroughly than ever before, despite their nominal independence.
The policy of subordination of the proletarian political forces to the national bourgeoisie was a complete disaster and led to the massacre of tens of thousands of workers by the national bourgeoisie, the destruction of workers organisations and the extinction of revolutionary struggle. The most tragic example of this was in China in 1927.9 This is the legacy which the counterrevolution has handed down to their inheritors in the Stalinist and Trotskyist movements, and it has underpinned their policies on the national question since the Second World War. Trotsky, himself, reiterates these policies clearly reproducing all the contradictions they contain. In 1939, 12 years after the Chinese disaster, he could still write:
Imperialism is that stage of capitalism when the latter, after fulfilling everything in its power, begins to decline. The cause of this decline lies in this, that the productive forces are fettered by the framework of private property as well as the boundaries of the national state. Imperialism seeks to divide and re-divide the world. In place of national wars there come imperialist wars. They are utterly reactionary… (10)
Yet on the next page we read:
The struggle of oppressed peoples for national unification and national independence is doubly progressive because, on the one side, this prepares more favourable conditions for their own development, while, on the other side, this deals blows to imperialism (11).
If the nation state is a fetter to capitalism, as the first quotation clearly states, how could creation of new nation states prepare favourable conditions for national development? How could such struggles be progressive? If capitalism is in decline, as the first passage states, then workers should be struggling for socialist revolution not national bourgeois revolution. Further, if imperialist wars are utterly reactionary, as Trotsky clearly states, how, one might ask, could the Trotskyist movement support the Second World War, which was quite clearly an imperialist war? We are dealing here with a mass of contradictions rather than a theory (12). Much effort has been spent by Trotsky’s successors trying to make these contradictions less apparent.
Theories have been developed proposing that certain types of support for the bourgeoisie are not full support, but rather critical support, which we are told is quite different from support. Distinctions have been drawn between the national movement and the agents of that movement enabling one to support the movement but not the national bourgeoisie who stand behind it. However, all such sophistry cannot hide the fundamentally bourgeois nature of these political positions.
However, despite the reactionary nature of these positions, they have retained a wide following in the socalled “left.”
The Commune’s review of the AF pamphlet, written by David Broder, criticises it from the positions of the Comintern and the “leftists” described above. He argues that European nationalism and colonial or semi-colonial nationalism are different since they are different in origin. From this he concludes that the national bourgeoisie can be progressive in the peripheral countries. He gives Cuba as an example and argues that statecapitalist development in Columbia would undermine the Columbian bourgeoisie’s alliance with the US and so, presumably, also be progressive. He attempts to draw a distinction between the nationalist cause and the nationalist movement which supports it, thereby opening the door to support for Palestinian nationalism and critical support for Hamas etc.
Seizing on the AF categorising of all states as imperialist, he rhetorically asks where Bolivian, Congolese or Afghan imperialism is to be found.
Concluding it is non-existent, he opens the door for the support of these nations, and their national bourgeoisie, against the US. All these arguments have been dealt with above and are not worth reconsidering.
The issue of political support by workers organisations for the national bourgeoisie is the critical question. Although it is not specifically stated the review implies that support for the national bourgeoisie is a tactical issue and must be given in certain cases. The review concludes that,
Communists must not sideline or dismiss the national question in order to focus solely on class politics (13).
Communists should therefore, in his view, support bourgeois nationalist politics.
In opposition to support for bourgeois nationalist politics the AF advocates, as we have noted above, class struggle as the only means to overcome nationalism and achieve class unity. This is actually criticised by Broder! He argues it is wrong for 3 reasons. Firstly workers can struggle for class interests and still be racist or xenophobic. He cites Lindsey oil refinery workers striking under the slogan “British jobs for British workers.” Secondly, he argues, class concerns are not the only concerns workers have.
Palestinian workers, for example, share no class interests with Israeli workers; their primary concern must be to end national oppression by the Israeli state. Thirdly, he claims, obtaining better living conditions in capitalist society is “not communistic as such.” These arguments are profoundly wrong.
Firstly racism, xenophobia, sexism etc. are all ideological weapons of the bourgeoisie whose very purpose is to divide workers and weaken class struggle. What binds workers together is their position as wage labourers in capitalist society. This is based on class and only class. It is precisely in class struggle that this unity becomes apparent since the fight is from a common position for a common cause. Similarly it is only in the heat of class struggle that what Marx called the “muck of ages” which includes racism, nationalism, sexism etc. can be repudiated.
Secondly it is quite wrong to claim that Palestinian and Israeli workers have no common interests. They share common class interests. These common interests are the only path to breaking the nationalist prisons which have led to the present appalling situation. To advocate Gazan workers support their national bourgeoisie in the shape of Hamas is utterly reactionary. The case of South Africa is worth posing as a counter example. Before 1994 it was argued that white and black workers shared no common interests whatsoever yet today, as they together face a bourgeoisie reducing their living conditions and breaking their strikes, a bourgeoisie at whose head stands the ANC, the common interests that existed all along are glaring apparent.
The tragedy, which also applies to Palestine, is that this was disguised so effectively by leftism. The result was that workers were used on both sides to fight the bourgeoisie’s battles and kill each other in the name of nationalism, and this has sown nothing but confusion.
Broder’s third objection appears to come from a complete misunderstanding of the circumstances which could provoke revolution. It is obvious that workers will not make the revolution if capitalism is able to grant them improved living conditions. The revolution will only be made when workers understand that capitalism offers them nothing but deprivation and war. There has to be a total crisis of the economic and social system before it becomes clear to workers that they need to overthrow it. Before this stage can be reached international class unity and class consciousness has to be generated. This can only come from a long series of struggles in which obstacles along the road one of which is “nationalism” are exposed, both practically and theoretically, as complete lies.
The ICT (14), of which the CWO is a part, argues that nationalist struggles are simply disguised imperialist struggles and the wars they provoke are imperialist wars.
The only response communists can give to imperialist wars is the adoption of the politics of revolutionary defeatism. That is:
The orientation of this policy is towards turning the imperialist war into a civil war and the overthrow of bourgeois power. This was the policy adopted by the Bolsheviks during the First World War which was a decisive step towards the October Revolution. Today it remains the only proletarian response able to open the way to a communist world.
CP
(2) Counter examples can be given. How, for example, are states like Lesotho or Bangladesh imperialist?
(3) An indication of the international nature of capital can be seen from a few statistics of the UK and US. In the UK for example 42% of the shares on the London Stock Market are foreign owned. An iconic company such as BP is 60% foreign owned 39% of this by US capitalists. Many other previously famous UK companies are now foreign owned, ICI, Pilkington, Powergen,, Corus, BAA, P&O, Cadbury, Thames Water, to name only a few. While in the US the three largest providers of direct investment at the end of 2009 were France, UK and Germany having cumulative investments of $1.19 trillion, $1.0tn and $1.00tn respectively.
(4) See Horace B Davis’ introduction to The National Question selected writings of Rosa Luxemburg. Monthly Review Press. 1976 p. 27
(5) For a more detailed critique of Lenin’s fears about “great Russian chauvinism” (especially in relation to Stalin), see Georgia on His Mind, Lenin’s Final Fight against Great Russian Chauvinism in Revolutionary Perspectives 47 or leftcom.org
(6) op.cit p.13
(7) “The Nation State and the Proletariat”. in The National Question selected writings of Rosa Luxemburg.
Monthly Review Press.
(8) “The Nationalities Question in the Russian Revolution” in The National Question selected writings of Rosa Luxemburg. Monthly Review Press.
(9) For a good description of these events see The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution by Harold Isaacs and for a comment on Turkey see Publications from Left Communists in Turkey in Revolutionary Perspectives 48.
(10) L Trotsky Lenin on Imperialism
(11) Ibid
(12) For more on these contradictions ee our pamphlet Trotsky, Trotskyism, Trotskyists. £3 from the CWO address.
(13) See D Broder “The earth is not flat.” thecommune.wordpress.com
(14) Internationalist Communist Tendency previously known as the IBRP.
당과 당 건설 문제에 대하여
-로렌골드너, 사노신과의 인터뷰 중에서
골드너 : 로자 룩셈부르크는 수많은 나라들을 연구했고 모든 경우에 탈중앙집권화는 항상 반동으로 이어진다고 주장했다. 로자 룩셈부르크를 자유주의적 반중앙집권주의자로 표현하는 사람들은 존재하지 않는 로자 룩셈부르크를 만드는 것이다. 1910년 경 독일 사회민주당 내의 당 논쟁에서 그녀가 당규율을 위반했다고 생각하는 특정 인물들에 대해 그녀는 매우 강력하게 제명을 요구했다.
한편, 나는 불행하게도 로자 룩셈부르크가 너무 일찍 죽어서 공산주의 당에 대한 자신의 독자적인 관점을 발전시키지 못했다고 생각한다. 동지들이 알다시피, 그녀가 죽던 해에, 그녀는 제3인터내셔널의 설립에 매우 회의적이었다. 왜냐하면 서유럽에서 독립적인 공산당의 발전에 앞서 새로운 인터내셔널이 설립되면 불가피하게 러시아 공산당이 운동을 지배하게 될 것이라고 보았기 때문이다. 그리고 그것은 실제 그렇게 되었다. 그런데 많은 정통 레닌주의자들과 뜨로쯔끼주의자들은 로자 룩셈부르크가 사회민주당으로부터 독자적인 그녀 자신의 당을 건설하기 위해 좀 더 일찍 행동하지 않았다고 비판한다.
로자 룩셈부르크는 또한 제1차 세계대전 전에 판네쿡(Pannekoek), 호르터(Gorter), 롤란드 홀스트(Roland Holst) 등 네덜란드 평의회 공산주의자들과 매우 친했는데 그들은 1908년에 네덜란드 사회민주당을 탈당하면서 로자에게 물었다. “왜 동지는 탈당하지 않는가? 독일 사민당이 개량주의에 굴복했다는 것은 명백하다.” 그러자 로자는 “가장 나쁜 사회민주주의 대중정당이 현실성 없는 외각의 분파보다 낫다”라고 대답했다. 이 문제에 대해서 정통 뜨로쯔끼주의자들이나 레닌주의자들과 토론할 때 로자나 그녀와 같은 사람들이 혁명정당을 제때 만들지 못해서 독일 혁명이 실패했다고 그들이 말하면 내가 항상 그들에게 묻는 것은 다음과 같은 것이다. “왜 혁명정당이 없었는가? 그 문제에 대한 구체적인 역사의 답은 무엇인가?” 그러면 그들은 머뭇거리기만 하는데 왜냐하면 “그들은 레닌의 말을 들었어야 한다”라는 답만 하도록 되어 있기 때문이다. 그러나 바로 이 문제에 있어 강조해야 할 것은 로자 룩셈부르크가 1910년에 카우츠키와 결별했으며 카우츠키가 제2인터내셔널에 소속된 독일 사회민주당의 보수적인 인자일뿐이라는 것을 그녀가 깨달았다는 점이다. 사실상, 로자 룩셈부르크는 레닌보다 앞서서 독일 사회민주당 중앙이 이미 썩었다는 것을 알고 있었다. 1914년에 레닌이 사회민주당이 전쟁 공채에 찬성표를 던졌다는 성명을 실은 뉴스를 독일로부터 받았을 때, 그는 그것이 실제로는 악선동이며, 모두 거짓말이라고 생각했다. 그러므로 레닌이 독일 사회민주당에 대해 로자 룩셈부르크보다 더 많은 환상을 가졌다는 것은 분명하다. 그렇기 때문에 로자 룩셈부르크와 당 좌익이 왜 더 일찍 분리되어 나오지 못했는가에 대한 질문은 레닌주의와 뜨로쯔끼주의의 당물신주의 (당절대주의)로 거슬러 올라가는 다소 비역사적인 질문이다. 내 생각으로는 정당이 만들어지는 조건에 대한 레닌주의와 뜨로쯔끼주의 관점은 일종의 무에서 유가 나올 수 있다는 관점이다.
사노 신: 내 생각에는 로자가 좌익과 함께 당에서 분리하지 않은 것은 잘못되었다.
골드너 : 그렇다면 동지는 언제 그녀가 분리했어야 한다고 생각하나?
사노 신: 적어도 1차 세계대전 동안에 그렇게 했어야 했다.
골드너 : 그러나 그들은 그렇게 했다. 좌익은 1915년, 1916년에 독립사민당을 설립했다. 그러나 물론 그것은 불충분했다. 그래서 공산주의 분파가 성장해서 거기에서 나왔다. 내가 생각하기에, 역사는 노동자 정당들, 혁명정당들이, 볼쉐비키 당이 구체적인 상황에서 성장한 것과 마찬가지로, 구체적인 상황에서 성장한다는 것을 보여준다. 그리고 새로운 정당의 건설이 가능해지는 것은 바로 파열이 일어나는 순간이라는 것이다. 과거에도 독일사회민주당에 반대파가 있었다. 1891년, 당의 청년조직이 분리해 나가면서 당이 완전히 부르주아적으로 변했다고 말했다. 그러나 그들은 작은 분파에 불과했으며 곧 사라지고 말았다. 내 견해로는 사회민주당과 분리하여 독립 정당이 된 좌익의 실패는 사실상, 독일 노동계급내에 존재했던 개량주의의 무게와 1918년 이후에 보여지는 것처럼 소수만이 혁명을 지지하고 있던 상황의 반영이라고 본다.
사노 신 : 물론이다.
골드너 : 좋다. 나는 분명히, 내가 말한 모든 것에서 레닌의 관점보다는 로자 룩셈부르크의 관점에 더 동조한다고 말했다. 그러나 내가 또한 말한 것처럼, 로자가 1919년에 살해당했기 때문에, 그녀의 저작에는 일관된 당이론이 없으며 단지 실천과 그녀의 볼쉐비즘에 대한 비판에서 볼 수 있는 의견 정도뿐이다. 오늘날 필요로 하는 정말로 근본적인 것은 혁명적인 조직이 사회민주주의와 볼쉐비즘의 실패를 정말로 깊이 이해해야만 한다는 것이다.
사노신 : 질문이 더 있지만 일단 정리하기로 하고 다음문제로넘어가자. 동지는 볼쉐비끼 당 모델에 대해서는 부정적으로 생각하지만 당의 필요성을 부정하지는 않는다고 했다. 동지는 당의 역할에 대해 어떻게 생각하는가?
골드너 : 다시 한번 말하건데 러시아 혁명가들과 인텔리겐차들은 매우 독특한 환경에서 성장했다. 비록 레닌과 러시아 맑스주의자들이 1870~80년대 발전한 인민주의 전통을 거부하긴 했지만, 인텔리겐차의 문화는 여전히 인민주의에 강하게 영향을 받았으며 이들이 농민이 압도적인 사회에 존재하는 아주 소수집단이라는 사실은 인텔리겐차의 형성에 깊은 영향을 주었다고 생각한다 .
사노신 : 그렇다면 동지가 생각하시는 당의 개념은 뭔가?
골드너 : 당에 대한 내 자신의 개념에 관해서 말하자면 나는 오늘날 혁명정당은 사회민주주의와 볼쉐비즘의 실패에 대해 진지한 이해가 필요하다고 생각한다. 농민문제를 이야기할 때 더 자세하게 살펴보겠지만, 두 당의 모델은 농민인구가 대다수이고 중요한 농업문제를 가진 사회에 의해 깊은 영향을 받았다고 생각한다.
사노신 :과거의 실패에 대한 진지한 이해가 뜻하는 바는 무엇인가?
골드너 : 볼쉐비즘의 가장 치명적인 결함 중에 하나는 혁명을 당과 동일시하는 것이다. 그들은 당이 혁명이라고 생각하는데 나는 계급이 혁명이라고 생각한다. 물론 계급은 당을 필요로 한다. 나는 사회민주주의와 볼쉐비끼의 경험으로부터 생겨난 오류는 당의 역사적 역할에 대한 형식주의적 이해였다고 생각한다. 오늘날 존재하고 있는, 여전히 레닌주의적 당개념을 가지고 있는 그룹들은 자신들의 활동을 무엇보다 자기 당의 성장을 위한 것으로 본다. 그래서 더 넓은 사회적 투쟁에 있어 혁명가들의 적극적인 개입이란 사람들을 자기조직으로 끌어들이는 것으로 귀착된다.
사노신 :대중적 혁명투쟁 정세하에서만 당이 자라난다고 하는 점에 일반적으로 동의하긴 하지만 그럼에도 불구하고 일상적인 시기에도 대중에게 영향력을 미치고 대중 속에 기반을 만드는 노력들은 항상 해야 되는 것 아닌가. 예를 들어 얼마 전에 우리가 만난 ICC 동지들 같은 경우에 사실상 노동자들의 투쟁이 일어났을 때만 거기에 개입한다는 사고 자체가 상당히 수동적으로 보였다. 거기에 대해서 어떻게 생각하는가?
골드너 : 투쟁이 없는 상황에서 어떻게 하면 수동적이지 않은 건지 먼저 묻고 싶다.
사노신 : 예를 들어 ICC가 얘기했던 것은 프랑스 CPE 투쟁처럼 아주 큰 투쟁들이 발생할 때그런 데에 확성기를 들고 가서 선전선동하고 신문 팔고 한다는데그것이 활동의 전부인 것 같다. 사실상 일상적으로 공장이라든가 작업장에서 일어나는 투쟁들도 있기 때문에 그런 투쟁들에 개입하는 것들이 필요하지 않은가. CPE같은 대규모의 투쟁이란 몇 년에 한 번씩만 일어나는 건데 그런 투쟁에만 개입한다는 것은 너무 수동적인 것 같다.
골드너 : 일단 ICC에 대해서 얘기를 하자면 ICC는 좋은 로드맵을 갖고 있지 않은 조직의 아주 적절한 예이다. 1980년대에 ICC는 혁명적인 계급투쟁의 주기가 오고 있다는 환상을 갖고 있었다. 정확한 시기는 기억나지 않지만, 그들은 1980년대 중반이 격렬한 계급투쟁의 시기라고, 적어도 서구 유럽과 미국에서는 그렇다고 생각했다. 그러나 실제로는 노동자급이 엄청난 패배를 겪은 시기였다. 이전에 ICC에 속해 있던 사람들이 얘기해주기를, 프랑스나 벨기에의 어느 도시에 신문을 잔뜩 들고 파견되어 현장에 도착했는데 아무도 없었다고 한다.
사노신 : 잘못된 로드맵을 갖고 있으면 다 헛탕이라는 건가.
골드너 : 일단은 그런 로드맵은 노동자계급과 실질적인 연관이 없는 투쟁에 자기 조직원들을 소모시킨다. 동시에 큰 투쟁이 있는 곳에 개입하는 것은 내가 봤을 때…그곳에서는 누구나 발언의 기회를 가질 수 있다. 우리가 잊어버리지 말아야할 것은 1918년 11월 독일 혁명이 일어났을 때 백만 명이 베를린 시내에 모였는데 광장의 한쪽 끝에서는 로자 룩셈부르크와 리프크네히트가 독일 소비에트 연방을 만들자고 외치고 있었고 다른 쪽 끝에서 사회 민주주의자들이 독일 공화국의 설립을 주장하고 있었으며 광장 양쪽에서 모두에서 관중들은 열렬히 환호하고 있었다는 사실이다.
사노신 : 동지의 의견 중에서 ‘당의 역할이 자신의 세력을 확장시키는 것이 아니라 노동자계급을 단결시키는 것이다’ 라는 점에는 전적으로 동의하는데 좀 이해가 안되는 게 당이 그렇다면 혁명적인 시기에만 필요하다는 것인지, 아니면 일상적인 시기에도 당이 필요하다는 것인지. 만약 일상적인 시기에도 필요하다면 그건 어떤 역할을 하고 어떤 형식인건지. 얼핏 들으면 혁명적 시기에만 당이 필요하다는 것으로 들리는 면이 있다.
골드너 : 어쩌면 조직이 형성되는 초기에 ‘당’이라는 단어를 쓰는 게 적절하지 않을지도 모르겠다. 많은 소규모 그룹들은 좋은 로드맵을 가지고 있으면서 리그룹먼트(regroupment)나 프리파티포메이션(pre-party formation), 혹은 그와 비슷한 것으로 스스로를 칭하고 있다. 그들은 최근 몇 십 년, 그리고 현 시기 자신들의 역할은 때로는 개인적차원에서, 때로는 작은 그룹차원에서 토론을 하고 글을 쓰며 사람들의 관심을 끌어내는 일, 말하자면 자기의 조직을 설립하는 것보다 토론 네트워크를 구축하고 가능한 곳에는 투쟁에 개입하는 것이 훨씬 중요하다는 것을 이해하고 있다.
사노신 : 한국 사회주의 그룹들의 전형적인 활동중에는 공장에 직접적으로 사람을 투입해서 현장에서 투쟁을 하고 선동을 할 수 있도록 하는 활동이 포함되어있다. 그런데 ICC는 이런 활동에 대해서 대리주의(substitutionism)라고 얘기하면서 이해하지못하는 것 같은데 동지는 어떻게 생각는가.
골드너 : ICC가 그렇게 말했다니 반갑다. 왜냐하면 실제로 많은 경우에 그러한 대리주의로 되기 때문이다. 내가 잘 알고 있는 미국과 유럽에서의 경험이나 미흡하게나마 조금 알고 있는1980년대 남한의 “학출” 활동가들의 운동을 살펴보면 중산층 사람들이 공장에 들어가는 것이 그들에게는 무척 중요한 일이지만 노동계급의 발달에 정말 기여할 가능성은 제한적이고 종종 그 성과가 없다. 내 생각에 공장 노동자들을 포함한 노동계급의 관심을 끌지 못하는 혁명적 조직은, 말했다시피 자신의 진정한 위치, 역할에 대해 올바른 이해를 결여하고 있다고 본다 . 그리고 이 문제는 사람들을 공장으로 보내는 것으로 해결되지 않는다.
사노신 : 또 다른 질문은 직업적 혁명가에 대한 것인데 예를 들어 ICC 동지들은 자신들 모두가 노동자이므로 이러한 용어를 사용하지않는다고 한다. 동지는 직업적 혁명가에 대해서 어떻게 생하는가?
골드너 : 전반적으로 건강한 태도라고 생각한다. 레닌과 그가 쓴 <무엇을 할 것인가?> 의 잔재 중 하나가 직업적 혁명가를 혁명을 체화하고 있는 혁명적 의식의 담지자라고 보는 것이다. ICC가 거기에서 벗어나려고 한다는 건 좋은 일이라고 생각한다.
사노신 : 그런데 직업적 혁명가라는 개념과 동지가 언급한 의식적 분자와의 차이는 무엇인가?
골드너 : 의식적 분자란 우리 같은 사람들, 즉 혁명적인 진전을 위한 준비의 필요성을 인식하고 그 가운데 자신의 위치를 파악할 수 있는 적절한 로드맵을 갖고 있는 사람들이라고 생각한다. 또한 이러한 의식적 분자들은 개인으로든 소규모 그룹으로든 혁명적 상황에서 모아질 재편성(regroupment)의 과정에 관계하는 사람들 뿐 아니라, 가장 잘 싸우는 전투적인 노동자들 역시 포함한다고 말하고 싶다. 나는 미국에 있는 헌신적인 투사들을 몇 명 아는데 그들은 볼쉐비끼-레닌주의의 성향의 아주 진지한 사람들이며, 언젠가 혁명의 일부가 될 것이라고 확신한다. 하지만 당과 계급의 관계에 대한 질문, 예를 들어 “레닌이 없었다면 러시아 혁명이 일어났을까?”와 같은 질문을 그들에게 던지는 것은 흥미롭다. 왜냐하면 아까 말했다시피 그들의 글은 항상 상황이 나아지려면 혁명 정당이 필요하다는 내용으로 마무리되기 때문이다. 그렇다면 왜 당이 없는 것인지, 왜 역사는 당신들이 주장하는 식의 당이 필요하다는 것을 사람들에게 보여주지 못해왔는지 내가 질문을 하면 그들은 대답을 하지 못한다. 그래서 “레닌이 없었다면 러시아 혁명이 일어났을까?” 물어보면 그들은 “당연히 안 일어났다”고 한다. 그러면 나는 “그건 좀 비참한 것 아닌가. 그 모든 게 한 사람에게 달려있다니 이 거대한 사회적 진보의 약점을 보여주는 것 아닌가”라고 말한다.
그러나 나는 1916년, 1917년, 1918년 이전엔 어느 때라도 소수파가 사실상 분파가 아니라 일관된 방식으로 분리해 나올 수 있었을 때는 없었다고 생각한다. 물론, 내가 틀렸을지도 모른다. 그러나 이 문제를 우리가 앞서서 토론한 문제로 돌아가서 생각해 보면, 러시아와 함께 독일 사회민주당의 혁명적 성격에 대해서 일반적으로 받아들여지던 과대평가가 있었다고 보는데 그래서 내가 볼때는, 당에서 분리하여 독립적인 정당을 건설하기 위한 어떠한 미성숙한 시도도 매우 커다란 부담감이 되었을 것으로 생각된다.
어떤 다른 중요한 자본주의 국가에서도 제2 인터내셔널이나 사회민주당과 분리하기 위한 시도가 제1차 세계대전끝나기 전까지는 없었다는 것을 명심하자. 러시아 혁명이 승리하면서, 그리고 볼쉐비끼 모델이 일반적인 모델로 받아들여지면서, 이렇게 무에서 유가 만들어지는 것 같은 레닌주의적 정당에 대한 환상이 생겼다. 그리고 많은 나라에서 이러한 식의 당이 보다 일찍 만들어졌어야 했는데 그러지 못했다고 생각하게 되었는데 이는 당이 건설되는 방식에 대한 매우 비역사적인 관점을 만들어냈으며 오늘날까지 정통 뜨로쯔끼주의나 레닌주의로 계속 살아남아 있다. 예를 들어 현대 뜨로쯔끼주의 글들과는 다르게, 파리 꼬뮌에 관한 팸플릿에서, 맑스는 “당만 있었더라면…”하면서 글을 마치지는 않았다고 하는 사실은 매우 중요하다. 내가 생각하기에 그러한 전반적인 사고방식은 레닌과 레닌 이후의 레닌주의자들에 의해서 노동계급에 소개되었고 발전해왔던 것이다. 나는 맑스와 엥겔스에게는 계급이 당을 조직하는 것이지 당이 계급을 조직하는 것이 아니라는 이해가 존재했다고 생각한다. 물론, 당은 계급을 조직한다. 그러나 그것은 계급의 산물이지 그 반대가 아니다. 여러 나라들에서 당의 약화는 우선 계급의 약화를 반영한다. 그러므로 내 혁명정당에 대한 관점에 대해 보자면…그 답을 지금 이 주제와 함께 이야기해도 되겠는가?
동시에 나는 또한 독일-네덜란드 평의회 공산주의자들의 당자체에 대한 거부의 태도에 대해서도 반대한다. 1920년대초에는 독일-네덜란드 평의회 공산주의자들 역시 혁명정당을 주장했다는 것을 기억하는 것이 중요하다. 1930년에 평의회주의 이데올로기가 어느정도 견고해지면서, 당을 주장하는 요소들은 완전 사라져버렸다. 그러므로 오늘날 혁명조직이 사회민주주의와 볼쉐비즘의 실패를 깊이 이해해야 한다고 말할 때, 내가 의미하는 바는 정치조직보다 계급의 경험이 우위에 있다는 것을 명확히 이해해야 한다는 것이며 이는 전위란 전투적 노동자들과 의식적 혁명가들로 구성된 선진층이라는 것을 의미한다는 것이다. 그러나 의식적인 혁명가가 혁명과정에 필수적이라는 것을 항상 기억해야 하는 것도 중요하다. 그들은 보통 노동자들이나 심지어 전투적인 노동자들조차 모르는 것을 알고 있다. 그들이 투쟁에 개입하는 것은 공산주의자의 임무가 노동계급의 단결을 촉진하는 것이라는 맑스의 생각을 적용하는 것이다. 그리고 현존 사회에 대한 강령적 대안을 제시하기 위해 투쟁을 이용해야 하며 무엇보다도 전형적인 전위 그룹이 하듯이, 조직의 새로운 멤버를 모집하는 수단으로 투쟁을 생각해서는 안 된다. 나는 혁명가들이 투쟁을, 현재 이슈가 되고 있는 투쟁 자체를 넘어선, 현존사회를 넘어선, 새로운 사회의 대안을 소개할 수 있는 공간으로 생각해야 한다고 말했다. 전위란 계급의 선진적 부분에 확고히 응축되어 있는 역사의 경험이라는 점을 인식해야 하며 그러한 것이 어떤 구체적 조직으로 체화되거나 결정화될 필요는 없음을 인식해야 한다. 혁명적 조직은 혁명 몇 달 전에 대중조직으로 성장할 것이다. 그러나 지금과 혁명의 시기 사이에, 혁명적 조직이 어디에 있는지, 노동계급이 사회 어디에 있는지에 대한 매우 명확한 지도를 그리는 것이 매우 중요하다. 역사적 경험은, 특히 1968년 이래 역사적 경험은 우리에게 자본주의의 틀 내로 자신을 안주시키는 조직은 강력한 투쟁의 시기가 아닐 때는 자본주의 사회의 일부가 된다는 것을 가르치고 있기 때문이다. 지난 30~40년 동안 전위그룹들이 추구한 대안이란 역사적 경험을 자신들의 조직안에서 구체화하고 있다고 상상하는 것이다. 내가 비판하고 있는 것은 폭발적인 투쟁의 순간에 생겨나는 선진적인 계급의식을 자신의 조직을 건설함으로써 구체화시키고 있다고 상상하는 그들의 관점이다. 그리고 그렇게 함으로써, 그들이 계급의 운동과 분리된 인위적인 조직이 되면서 그 다음의 급진화 단계에 있어 걸림돌이 되는 것이다.
예로 들수 있는 것은 우리가 이미 토론해왔던 프랑스의 트로츠키주의 그룹들이다. 그들은 노동조합 조직이나 사회당 혹은 공산당 조직에 침투한다는 전략을 가지고 있었는데 그러한 전략이 성공을 거둔 것은 그들이 헌신적이 투사였기 때문이지 그들의 강령을 사람들이 받아들였기 때문은 아니다. 나는 이러한 종류의 인위성이 혁명조직의 발전과정에서 주의해야 할 위험요소라고 생각한다. 매우 조심스러운 예를 들자면, 나는 지난 30년 동안 어떤 혁명적 전위조직에도 소속된 적이 없다. 그러나 나는 참여할 수 있는 투쟁들에 참여하며 최대한 나의 전망을 도입하려고 노력한다. 그리고 나는 글을 써서 그것을 나의 웹사이트에 올리고 또한 그 글들은 세계의 여러 잡지들에 실려서 읽혀지는데 사람들은 동의 하기도 하고 동의하지 않기도 한다. 하지만 나는 그들을 내조직으로 끌여들이고 있지 않다는 사실 자체에 어떠한 상실감도 느끼지 않는다. 그러한 것들은 운동전반에서 항시 행해지고 있기 때문이다. 물론 나는 나의 개인적인 경험을 당조직에 대한 관점으로 제시하는 것은 아니다. 그러나 나는 당이 운동에 공헌해야 하는 것이지 우위적 입장에서 운동을 지도한다는 태도를 가져서는 안된다고 생각한다. 1960년대와 1970년대 서구에서 일어난 폭발적인 투쟁들중 단 하나도 전위정당에 의해 시작된 것은 없었으며 그것은 지극히 당연한 일이다. 레닌은 1905년과 그 전시기에 다음과 같은 똑 같은 말을 했다. “그렇다. 대중파업의 물결이 일고 있는데 우리가 그것을 시작하지는 않았지만 어떤 시점에선 정치조직이 중요해진다.” 그러나 내가 잊어버리고 얘기못한 것인데 1905년 이후에 레닌은 다음과 같이 말한다. “내가 틀렸다. 분명히 <무엇을 할 것인가?> 에서 내가 말했던 것은 옳지 않다. 왜냐하면 러시아에서의 소비에뜨, 노동자평의회 그리고 이중권력의 구성은 노동자계급의 투쟁이 당의 개입없이 노동조합 의식을 뛰어넘는다는 것을 입증하고 있기때문이다.” 그러나 불행하게도, 레닌은 <무엇을 할 것인가?> 의 문제점을 바로 잡기위해 ‘무엇을 하면 안되는가?’ 라고 불릴 팸플릿을 쓰지는 않았다. 현대 볼쉐비키-레닌주의 전통에는 1917년 이전 볼쉐비키당이 어떠했는가에 대한 많은 신화가 있다. 하지만1905년 이후에 또는 1905년 패배 이후에 볼쉐비끼는 커다란 침체에 빠졌고, 아마도 1912년까지는 국내조직력이 매우 약화되어 있었다는 점을 기억하는 것이 중요하다. 그리고 레닌이 1917년 4월 러시아로 돌아왔을 때, 그는 스딸린과 지노비에프, 그리고 모든 주요 지도자들이 케렌스키 정부를 지지하고 있음을 알게되었다는 사실을 인식하는 것은 훨씬 더 중요하다. 동지들이 알다시피, 뛰어난 정치전략가였던 레닌은 4월 테제와 그 다음에… 그러니가 내가 지금 말하고자 하는 것은 레닌과 그 다음엔 뜨로쯔끼가 그 해 안에 프롤레타리아 혁명이 일어날수 있는 가능성을 얘기하기 전까지 당기구 자체는 상황에 대해서 완전히 잘못된 판단을 내리고 있었다는 것인데 당 기구는 보수적이었지만 이러한 예외적인 상황에서 이들 특별하게 뛰어난 개인들이 존재하여 상황을 바꿀수 있었던 것이다. 귀환 직후 4월 테제를 발표했을 때, 레닌의 태도에 대해 볼쉐비키 당의 대부분은 그가 미쳤다고 생각했다. 그러자 레닌이 말했던 것은 다음과 같았다. “노동계급이 하고 있는 것을 보라. 노동계급이 당보다 백배나 더 급진적이다.” 레닌은 노동자들이 케렌스키 정권에 대립해서 나아가고 있는 러시아 상황의 급진화를 인식했던 것이다. 그래서 예컨데, 나는 동지들이CLR 제임스의 저작들을 읽어보기를 적극 권한다. 그는 이 문제에 대해서 많은 글을 썼는데 그는 러시아 혁명 이후의 혁명가들의 역할은 노동계급의 행동을 관찰하고 기록하는 것이라고 믿었다. 다시 말하면, 그는 혁명정당에 대한 레닌의 이론을 완전히 부정했던 것이다.
나는 제임스의 의견에 동의하지는 않는데 나의 웹사이트에 보면 제임스와 그의 관점에 대한 논문 2개를 찾을 수 있을 것이다. 하지만 나는 제임스의 생각에는 중요한 통찰력이 있다고 생각한다. 즉 그에게 있어 레닌의 전략적 탁월함이란 그가 노동계급이 무엇을 하고 있는지에 주목하면서 스스로 무엇인가를 만들어내는 존재로서의 당이 아니라 노동계급이 하고 있는 일에 반응하는 존재로서 당을 보고 있다는 점이다. 제임스의 중요성은 노동계급이 지금 하고 있는 것이 당정책의 가이드가 되며, 당의 역할은 계급투쟁의 역동성을 잘 표현해 내는 것이라고 한 레닌의 발견이다. 따라서 내가 여기서 말하고자 하는 바는 현대 레닌주의자와 뜨로쯔끼주의자들과는 다르게 레닌은 그의 전성기에 있어 당물신주의자는 아니었다는 점이다. 불행하게도 1917년 이후 우리가 거론했던 상황속에서 레닌주의적 당조직의 가장 부정적인 면들을 발생시킨 많은 일들이 일어났다. 여러 해가 지난 1930년대에, 빅토르 세르쥬는 다음과 같이 말했다. “스딸린주의의 바이러스가 레닌주의 안에 있었다는 것은 사실이다. 그러나 한편으론 레닌주의안에는 다른 방향으로 발전할 수 있었던 많은 다른 바이러스들도 있었다는 것을 인식하는 것이 중요하다” 라고 말이다. 다른 질문이 없다면 이문제는 여기서 끝내자.
로자 룩셈부르크의 비판은 러시아에서는 합법적으로 존재할 수 없었던 서구 유럽의 대중적 노동운동 경험으로부터 나왔다. 로자 룩셈부르크는 독자적인 당 이론을 발전시킬 기회가 없었는데 그녀는 1차 대전이 발생한 이후까지 독일 사민당에 머물렀으며1909년 독일 사민당과 결별하라고 호소하는 독일 네덜란드 극좌파의 권유를 거절했기때문이다. 내가 로자 룩셈부르크에게 동의하는 것은 중앙집권주의(centeralism)에 대한 거부가 결코 아니다.
로자 룩셈부르크는 현명한 중앙 위원회의 가장 훌륭한 지도보다 대중운동의 실수들이 더 중요하다고 말했다. 그녀는 1919년 1월 암살당했기 때문에 독일 공산당의 발전에 영향을 끼칠 기회가 없었는데 그녀 자신이 매우 확고한 중앙집권주의자라는 것을 기억하는 것이 중요하다. 그녀는 독일 사민당안에서 규율을 깨는 사람들을 제명시킬 것을 강력하게 주장했었고 민족문제에 대한 글들을 보면 로자는 레닌보다 훨씬 더 중앙집권적이다. 그녀는 짜르 제국 내의 폴란드, 핀란드, 그루지야 및 기타 다른 나라들에게 독립을 주는 것에 대해 레닌을 비판했다.
문제는 중앙집권주의 자체가 아니라 어떤 식의 중앙집권주의냐는 것이다. 이와 유사하게 독일-네덜란드의 좌파 공산주의자들, 즉 극좌파들도 혁명정당을 지지했다. 내 생각으로 볼 때 가장 중요하게 강조해야 할 것은 로자와 독일-네덜란드 극좌파, 그리고 보르디가가 러시아 모델의 보편성을 의문시했다는 점이다. 나는 러시아 모델이 러시아 인텔리겐챠의 특별한 역사와 농민이 압도적으로 많은 사회에 의해 깊은 영향을 받았다고 생각한다. 그리고 볼쉐비즘이 서유럽에 적용될 수 있는 모델이 아니라는 초기 서유럽 사람들의 비판이 옳았다고 생각한다. 알다시피 로자는 창설당시 제3 인터내셔널 건설을 반대했다. 로자는 그 때 창건하면 제 3 인터내셔널을 러시아가 지배하게 될 것이라고 생각했기 때문이다. 그리고 그녀의 예상은 옳았다.
내 견해로는 전위란 한편으로는 의식적인 혁명분자이지만 동시에 노동계급의 가장 전투적인 계층이기도 하다. 이 말은 당이 체현하고 있다고 하는 역사적 의식이란 실제로는 전체로서의 계급 속에 있다는 것을 의미한다. 최근의 예를 들면, 지난 6개월간 이랜드 투쟁의 경험은 이랜드 노동자들뿐만 아니라 노동자계급의 다른 사람들도 포함하고 있는데 많은 노동자들이 이랜드 투쟁의 중요성을 이해하고 있다. 무슨 일이 벌어지든, 투쟁이 승리하든 패배하든, 비정규직 문제에 대한 이해와 노동자들의 연대의 필요성에 대한 이해는 남을 것이다. 그러나 그것이 당으로 형식화될 필요는 없다. 역사는 혁명적 상황 밖에서는 자본주의 사회의 틀 내에서 형성된 조직은 그 사회의 일부가 된다는 것을 보여준다. 그래서 내 관점에서는 혁명 정당이란 기본적으로 혁명 전 마지막 시기에 대중 정당이 되는 정당이다. 미국과 유럽에서 내가 경험한 대부분의 볼쉐비끼-레닌주의적 정당들은 내가 얘기한 것처럼 사람들을 자기 조직으로 끌어들이기 위해 투쟁에 개입하고 존재한다. 혁명적 조직과 당의 역할은 주요목적을 자신의 성장에 초점을 맞추는 것이 아니라, 자본주의와 계급투쟁의 발전에 대한 이해를 일반화시키는 것이어야 한다고 생각한다. 내가 가장 중요하게 강조하고자 하는 것은 혁명적 상황이 아닌 시기에 있어 볼쉐비끼 레닌주의 정당들이 가지고 있는 당의 형식화된(formal) 성격에 대한 것이다. 미국과 유럽의 많은 소규모 전위조직들은 기본적으로 자신들이 혁명이라고 주장하며 돌아다닌다. 그들은 혁명을 자기들이 성장할 때 성장하는 무언가로 이해한다. 하지만 실제로 역사는 혁명조직이란, 실제로는 조직으로서 형식화된 어떤 것이 아니라 혁명 전 마지막 순간에 노동자의 선진적 층으로부터 형성되는 어떤 것이라는 사실을 보여준다. 하지만 또한 전위 정당의 그런 형식성을 지켜본 사람들이 그 경험으로부터 당 자체를 반대하거나 당은 필요없다고 하는 잘못된 결론을 내리고 있다고 생각하는데 내 의견은 그렇지 않다. 나는 계급의식이 있는 인자들이라면 이랜드 투쟁 같은 상황에 개입하면서, 맑스가 <공산당 선언> 에서 말한 대로 공산주의자의 임무는 언제나 노동자 계급을 단결시키는 것이라는 방식으로 투쟁을 밀고 나가야 한다고 생각한다. 맑스가 <공산당 선언> 에서 “노동계급을 공산당으로 단결시켜라”라고 하지는 않았다는 것을 상기하자. 오늘날의 전형적인 볼쉐비끼-레닌주의자나 뜨로쯔끼주의자들의 글을 보면 어떤 투쟁에 대해 얘기할 때 항상 끝을 이렇게 맺는다. “노동자들에게 혁명적인 전위 정당만 있었더라면, 투쟁은 다른 방향으로 진행되었을 텐데…” 여기에서 말하는 혁명적인 전위 정당은 물론 자신들을 지칭하는 것이다. 1848년이나 파리꼬뮌에 대해서 쓴 맑스나 엥겔스의 저작들을 보면 그런 식의 의견은 찾아볼 수 없다. 맑스나 엥겔스는 왜 그렇게 썼고, 나중에 20세기에 와서 볼쉐비즘으로부터 영향을 받은 사람들은 왜 내가 방금 말한 식으로 썼는지를 이해하는 게 중요하다.
내가 생각하고 있는 당이란 의식적인 혁명적 인자들로서 투쟁에 개입하고 노동자 계급을 단결시키기 위해 투쟁을 확대하려 노력하며 진정한 계급의식은 계급의 가장 전투적인 부위의 경험 속에서 구체화된다는 것을 이해하는 사람들이다. 혁명적 조직이 가져야 하는 가장 중요한 것은 역사적인 로드맵이다. 자신들이 어디에 있는지, 계급투쟁은 어디에 와 있는지, 그리고 계급투쟁과의 관계 속에서 자신들이 어디에 존재하는지에 대해 아주 현실적으로 이해할 수 있도록 하는 로드맵말이다. 로드맵이 없거나 틀리면 당이 곧 혁명의 구현이라거나 혁명 자체라는 관점을 더욱 부풀릴 것이기 때문이다.
다시 한번 간단한 반대의 경우를 얘기하자면, 나는 약 30년 동안 어떤 혁명적인 조직에도 속해있지 않았다. 하지만 가능한 한 투쟁에 참여하고 인터넷을 통해 전세계로 퍼져나가는 글을 쓰며, 또한 동지들같은 사람들을 만나고 하면서 한 개인으로서 영향을 미치고 있다. 무언가가 꼭 조직으로 형식화될 필요는 없다. 모든 것은 이미 운동 안에 있다.
물론 진지한 로드맵을 가지고 있는 조직에 가입하고 싶은 마음이 있다. 노동자들의 일상생활과 투쟁에 개입할 가능성이 있는 그러한 조직말이다. 하지만 그러한 참여는 주기적으로 발생하는 큰 투쟁에 비해서 일상적인 상황은 아주 제한적이라는 것을 분명히 이해하는 가운데 이뤄져야한다. 비유를 하자면 오늘날 존재하는 많은 조직들은 마치 큰 파도가 밀려온 뒤 해변에 남은 나뭇가지들 같은 것이다. 그러니까 많은 ‘형식화된 조직’들이 그 나뭇가지들이다.
보르디가주의자들이 가장 좋은 예라고 생각하는데 그들은 80년 전에는 중요하고 대중적인 운동이었지만 오늘날에는 쓰나미가 지나가고 난 후 떠밀려온 나뭇가지들과 같다. 마찬가지로 미래를 바라본다면 일상의 시기는 다음 쓰나미가 덮치기 전의 해변과 같다고 생각하면 된다. 이러한 생각들이 내가 로드맵, 그리고 상황에 맞게 조율해내는 능력을 말할 때 의미하는 것들이다. 최근 한국 역사에서도 알 수 있듯이 상황은 조용한 일상에서 갑자기 거대한 운동으로 변하기도 한다.
당시의 분위기는 너무 열광적이어서 일반 노동자들은 한쪽 끝에 있는 사회 민주주의자들과 다른 쪽 끝에 있는 공산주의자들 간의 차이를 구별하고 있지 않았다. CPE투쟁 당시 파리에 있지는 않았지만 그 집회에서 사람들이 ICC에게 갖는 관심은 다른 뜨로쯔끼주의 그룹에서 온 훌륭한 발언자에게 갖는 관심과 다르지 않았을 거라고 생각한다. 그 자리에 없었기 때문에 조심스럽긴 하지만 그것이 나의 느낌이다.
LO같은 그룹에 대해서 얘기해 보자면 그들은 40여년이상이나 소식지를 발간하는 공장 위원회를 조직하에 두어왔으며 최근에는 지역 위원회를 시도하고 있고 여름에는 이동 버스를 타고 이지역 저지역들을 돌며 선전활동을 하는등 여러가지를 시도하고 있다. 동지들은 어떤 활동들인지 감을 잡을 것이다. 하지만 그러한 활동은 물론 유용하겠지만 항상 염두에 두어야할 것은 자본주의 하에서 일상이 주는 중압감 때문에 그런 활동의 중요성이 과대평가될 위험이 있다는 것이다.
1921 - Kronstadt: Beginning of the Counter-revolution
Today we are the witnesses of a tragedy of a social revolution being contained within national frontiers, as a result of the passivity of the peoples of Europe faced with intelligent and well-armed reactionary forces. It is thus stifled and reduced to playing for time with the enemy within and without. We have seen many mistakes made, many errors revealed and from the libertarian point of view, many precious truths have been confirmed.
Thus wrote Victor Serge in June 1921 in the preface to his essay The Anarchists and the Experience of the Russian Revolution. The essay (1) was an appeal to the anarchists to recognise what was proletarian and positive about the October Revolution. Although it was written before the rising at Kronstadt in March 1921 against the Bolsheviks, Serge makes no reference to that tragedy in his introduction written a few months later. Indeed he states that his conclusions are “more true now than they were a year ago”. What the quotation highlights is the fact that the isolation of the “social revolution” to one territory was now becoming an unbearable burden. Not only did Kronstadt throw a “flash of light which illuminated reality” as Lenin said, but the events of the Tenth Party Congress (adoption of the NEP and the banning of factions), the failure of the March Action in Germany and the adoption of the united front policy, in all but name, at the Third Congress of the Comintern, made 1921 a highly significant year in the degeneration of both the Russian and international revolution. This article is aimed at weighing up the significance of that decline eighty-five years ago.
135 years ago, the Paris Commune of 1871 gave a glimpse of what the working class could achieve and how it could run society for itself. But after 74 days, the Commune was crushed by the bourgeois government of Thiers backed by the international power of the capitalist class. Confined to a single city it was isolated and defeated with 20,000 Parisian workers massacred in cold blood in a single week in May 1871. In response, the Communards shot their bourgeois hostages. The number of ruling class victims of the Commune was 84. Thus it is always the white terror of the ruling class that exceeds in numbers and horrors the red terror of the working class. As Marx noted, the problem of the Commune was that it was isolated to a single city. The problem of the Russian proletariat was that their revolution was isolated to a single country.
The Russian Revolution of October 1917 remains the only occasion in history when a contingent of workers actually overthrew the capitalist state power over an entire territory. For this reason we continue to examine and try to understand it. The fundamental question is to explain how a revolution which began by offering the widest liberation to the working class and thus to humanity, could have become by 1928 one of the greatest tyrannies of the twentieth century. Looking back on the events of eighty-five years ago with the benefit of hindsight, we can understand that 1921 was a significant turning point on the road to defeat for the revolution. At the time it did not appear so to many of the participants. That 1921 was a year of crisis they could plainly see; over one million dead from famine, with many more from typhus and other diseases. The outbreak of strikes against the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) and the Kronstadt Revolt brought home the harshness of the situation. And to add to the woe, the international revolution not only failed to occur as the Bolshevik leaders expected but suffered a hammer blow with the defeat of the March Action in Germany.
Our task here is not simply to chronicle what went on but to explain what it means for us today. We are aware that there will be no revolution like the Russian experience again. Nor are we using “the condescension of the present” as E.P. Thompson called it. Any revolutionaries who seek simply to slavishly replicate what happened in Russia deserve only ridicule (as do those Trotskyists who consider the question of leadership to be just a question of the right individuals in strategic positions). We need to avoid the trap into which so many so-called Marxists and revolutionaries fall in seeing the past as a blueprint for the future. However, only by learning from what really happened can we arm ourselves for the struggles ahead. And the first step in this learning process is to debate what the significance of the past is.
Already some “libertarian Marxists” (2) and anarchists will be screaming that the revolution was lost long before 1921. We don’t deny that soviet power in the territory of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (the name USSR was not adopted until 1923) was already an empty shell by the end of 1920 (although there were healthy pockets of it in 1919) (3). Nor do we deny the excesses of the Cheka during the Civil War where it became a state within the state. But the Red Terror arose out of the Civil War. In November 1917, the Bolsheviks were letting former tsarist generals go free if they promised not to take up arms against them. A few months later the same Tsarist generals were not only leading invasions of Russia, armed by British and French imperialism but were literally crucifying any workers they suspected of Bolshevik sympathies. Although both sides resorted to terror in this class war it was hardly on the same scale. Here we can point to the evidence of the US Commander in Siberia, General William S. Graves who reported that:
I am well on the side of safety when I say that the anti-Bolsheviks killed one hundred people in Eastern Siberia to every one killed by the Bolsheviks. (4)
Nor do we claim that the revolution had abolished capitalist relations of production, except in so far as there had been a total economic collapse as soon as the Bolsheviks came to power. Since at least 60% of industry was devoted to war production, achieving peace meant unemployment. As Edward Acton observed:
In the aftermath of October, the country suffered an economic collapse on the scale of a modern Black Death… The capital lost no less than a million inhabitants in the first six months after October as workers streamed from the capital in search of bread. (5)
Even those workers who had jobs still had to spend their time looking for food and demoralisation was compounded by mass absenteeism. Attempts by Bolsheviks on the factory committees at this time to increase labour discipline led to new delegates being elected who were more compliant with the workers’ demands. Eventually though even these factory committees began to be more concerned with labour discipline and output. In the anarchist/libertarian demonology this was, of course because the Bolsheviks had suppressed the workers’ initiative in the factory committees. But this is too simplistic as S.Smith showed in his Red Petrograd.
…one cannot see in this the triumph of the Bolshevik Party over the factory committees. From the first the committees had been committed both to maintaining production and to democratising factory life, but the condition of industry was such that these two objectives now conflicted with one another.
pp.250-1
But the Civil War was taking further toll on the revolution. The Bolshevik Party had been a party predominantly of workers in 1917. By 1920, these workers had become officials in the Red Army, the Cheka and the bureaucracy. By 1922, over two thirds of the party membership were administrators of one kind or another. At the same time the fight against imperialist invasion and the Whites had led to a closing of ranks. Inner party discussions declined and increasingly, the local elected posts were filled by the local party secretary simply appointing delegates to higher bodies. The practice of democratic centralism within the Party (where lower bodies elected all higher bodies) had virtually collapsed. What was left was only centralism. It needed only a Stalin to become the Party Secretary in charge of these local secretaries to have in his hands the levers of power. But that was still some time in the future. When Serge arrived back in Petrograd after being deported from France in January 1919 he reported,
We were entering a world frozen to death… At a reception centre we were issued with bread and dried fish. Never until now had any of us known such a horrid diet. Girls with red headbands joined with young bespectacled agitators to give us a summary of the state of affairs: “Famine, typhus and counter-revolution everywhere. But the world revolution is bound to save us”. (6)
And it was this belief in the world revolution which lay at the heart of the hopes of the Russian working class even at the beginning of 1921 when they had suffered and were suffering so much. Serge was asked “what is the French proletariat waiting for” by his young hosts but it was the German proletariat that most Bolsheviks had the highest hopes in.
The whole Bolshevik programme cannot be understood without reference to its international character. The insistence on outright opposition to the imperialist war in 1914 distinguished the Bolshevik party as the only major European party to oppose the war with revolutionary demands (7). It was the Bolsheviks who led the split at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal Conferences with the centrist and pacifist socialist majority. And when the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia they shared exactly the sentiment of Rosa Luxemburg that
The question of socialism has been posed in Russia. It cannot be solved in Russia.
At the Third Congress of Soviets in January 1918 Lenin stated:
The final victory of socialism in a single country is, of course, impossible. Our contingent of workers and peasants which is upholding Soviet power is one of the contingents of the great world army. (8)
And in March, at the time of the acceptance of Brest-Litovsk he repeated this:
It is the absolute truth that without a German revolution we are doomed. (9)
In his April Theses of 1917, Lenin had posed the need for a new International to replace the Second which had gone over to imperialism in August 1914. The war itself began to provide the material basis for this international as workers and former social-democrats stepped up their resistance to their own governments. The First World War’s end was hastened by the strikes in Vienna, in Hamburg and Bremen and all across Germany. When news reached Moscow of the Vienna rising, Radek, one of the Bolshevik leaders, recorded the spontaneous demonstration that occurred outside the Kremlin.
I have never seen such a sight. Workers, both men and women, and Red Army soldiers filed past until late evening The world revolution had arrived. The masses of the people were listening to its iron step. Our isolation had ended. (10)
This was a bit premature. Although many workers and ex-soldiers around Europe were increasingly supportive of the soviet idea, this had not taken the concrete form of new communist parties in most countries. Even in a place like Germany the revolutionaries had failed to distinguish themselves clearly from the social-chauvinist Socialists. Although Luxemburg and Liebknecht had formed the Spartakus League, they remained inside the German centrist USPD (which included Kautsky and Bernstein) as they feared isolation from the mass of the class. This only confused the workers and isolated the Spartakists from the smaller but politically clearer groups such as the Bremen Left and the International Socialists (IKD). Given too that the social-democrats did not openly oppose soviets but worked behind the scenes to destroy them, it meant that the Spartakists were not seen as the only supporters of workers councils (as had been the case with the Bolsheviks in Russia). If we return to the Victor Serge quote at the top of this text, the greater sophistication of the Western European bourgeoisie which incorporated so-called socialists into their defence, was a major factor in defeating the spread of revolution in Germany and beyond.
As it was, the news that the Second International was reforming in January 1919 forced the Bolsheviks to send out feelers for a new international which they intended would meet in Berlin. Before it could meet, Liebknecht had precipitated the Spartakist uprising which was crushed by the Social-Democrats in alliance with the proto-fascist Freikorps. In the reprisals which followed hundreds of workers were shot in cold blood and Liebknecht and Luxemburg were brutally murdered. The planned first meeting of the new International was now moved to Moscow. The move was meant to be temporary until revolution broke out in the West. However this was the first step in the process of intertwining of the fate of the Russian Revolution and the International. And because it was the Russian party which physically and ideologically dominated the International, it very quickly became an organ for defending soviet power in Russia whatever problems it was going through. In the event, the First Congress of the Communist International did little more than declare its existence. The fifty delegates who assembled in Moscow did not all have formal mandates, a factor which only led to further Bolshevik dominance of the new body. This wasn’t quite how Lenin saw it when he announced in Communist International that:
The new third “International Workingmen’s Association” has already begun to coincide in a certain measure with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (11)
By this he meant that the process of unfolding of the world revolution would also be accompanied by the advance of socialism in Russia. Unfortunately for the proletariat the process was to go in the opposite direction. The growing counter-revolution in the USSR would also destroy the revolutionary aim of the Third International.
However this could not be seen in 1919, when world revolution and capitalist counter-revolution were locked in deadly embrace and the existence (however feeble) of the Third International was a banner around which workers everywhere could rally. Early in the year, revolution had broken out in Bavaria and Hungary where Soviet Republics were proclaimed. The Allied powers (Britain, France and the USA) were faced with mutinies in their own armies in Russia. Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister announced that the British intervention was not only finished but the revolts on the Clyde and in South Wales were alarming the British state at home.
… if a military enterprise were started against the Bolsheviki, that would make England Bolshevist and there would be a Soviet in London. (12)
Lenin was talking about July 1919 as “our last difficult July” since within a year there would be the victory of “the international Soviet republic”. However the heady atmosphere which so threatened capitalism did not last. By the end of May, the Bavarian Soviet Republic, isolated even in Germany, had collapsed. It was followed in August by the Hungarian Soviet Republic which succumbed due to internal squabbles and the invasion of a Romanian Army supplied by the Allies. By the autumn, the Whites in Russia had reached their most threatening. Yudenich was at the gates of Petrograd, Kolchak was moving from Siberia and Denikin from the Ukraine. In October and November…
the continued existence of the regime hung by a thread. (13)
To add to the misery the young German Communist Party, which had lost its best leaders in the murders of January to March 1919, was split by Paul Levi at its Heidelberg Congress in October 1919. The Party had adopted the tactics of using existing parliamentary and trades union means to increase its influence but only by the narrowest of votes. Not content with this victory Levi (against the advice of the Bolsheviks) proposed the expulsion of all those who had voted against the majority. The Left wing which constituted half the party and controlled its North German sections (including Berlin) went away to form the German Communist Workers Party (KAPD). Similar difficulties occurred in different forms in other countries. Lenin tried to win all those who rejected social-democratic reformism to the Third International, including anarcho-syndicalists. At this time he also told the British groups negotiating to form a party that he himself was in favour of using trade unions and parliamentary tactics but did not condemn those who called for different tactics.
By the end of 1920, the civil war had been won but Russia remained isolated and the price of victory was, as we saw at the start of this article, almost a Pyrrhic one. Industrial production was only a fifth of that of 1913 and agricultural production had declined by a half. The Bolshevik economist, L. Kritsman described the situation as one of economic collapse “unparalleled in the history of humanity”. (14) The policy of sending out military detachments to the countryside during the Civil War to forcibly requisition grain had led to 113 peasant revolts (50,000 followed the ex-SR Antonov in the Tambov region alone). The Bolsheviks had succeeded in retaining state power but as Bukharin (and other leading Bolsheviks, including Lenin] later acknowledged in 1921, they had held on to state power but had lost the proletariat in the process. For Lenin this material fact was the single most important reason for the Kronstadt Revolt of March 1921.
There is no more emotive name in the history of the Russian Revolution than Kronstadt. It is the litmus test of everyone’s understanding of the way in which the revolution slid to defeat. For most Trotskyists and Stalinists it was either a plot of the White reaction who took advantage of the terrible conditions at the end of the civil war to incite a revolt against the proletariat or it was (in the Socialist Workers’ Party version) (15) because the Kronstadt sailors were now all peasants and this was a revolt of the petty bourgeoisie. For anarchists it was the real “third revolution” against the Bolshevik dictatorship and for the historians of the capitalist class it has been a gleeful episode to demonstrate that any alternative to their system ends in bloodshed. E.H Carr devotes only two one line references to the Kronstadt Revolt in his The Bolshevik Revolution Volume 1. This only underlines that his is a history of the Soviet state and not of the revolutionary proletariat. For revolutionaries today the issue cannot so easily be ducked since it frames how we answer the questions posed by the last revolutionary experience.
By 1921, soviet power had become an empty shell. Elections to the soviets were under the watchful eye of the Cheka. Similarly armed guards patrolled the factories as Taylorism and one-man management were imposed on the most revolutionary working class in history. The workers accepted this as long as the Civil War against the Whites created an exceptional situation. At the same time they had also accepted the abandonment of the election of officers in the armed forces as Trotsky brought in members of the old officer class to defeat the Whites. But by the time the last White General had been run out of Russia in December 1920 there were already signs that the emergency regime was to continue. Grain requisitioning carried on, Trotsky had even announced that his Red Army methods should be imposed on the whole workforce (the militarisation of labour debate) and there were no new elections for the Soviets. Everywhere the talk was of “iron discipline” and more dictatorship. Little wonder that the Party, now increasingly a party of functionaries rather than workers was prey to bureaucratisation. This bureaucratisation in turn led to the emergence of opposition from proletarian groups within the Bolshevik Party: groups like the Democratic Centralists led by Ossinsky and Sapronov, the Workers’ Opposition led by Shlyapnikov and Kollontai and Miasnikov’s Workers’ Group. These oppositions, whatever their weaknesses and errors, wanted a return to the revolutionary principles of 1917. No wonder Lenin could say in February 1921,
We must have the courage to look in the face of harsh reality. The Party is sick, the Party is shaken by fever. And unless it succeeds in quickly and radically curing its own illness, a break will occur which will have fatal consequences for the revolution. (16)
But before the Party debates could begin at the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party in March the workers of Petrograd and Moscow went on strike. In Petrograd the strikes were mass affairs demanding freedom of the press, release of political prisoners and a return to democracy in the state. Some demanded the opening of local food markets to counter growing shortages (which would eventually become famine in 1921). Counter-revolutionaries also tried to take advantage of the situation by putting forward demands for a return of the Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks’ reaction was one of panic. Troops were sent in to break up strike meetings and the leaders arrested. The Cheka put around the lie that the movement was dominated by peasant elements (since only the hardcore proletariat was left in Petrograd by this time). The clinching factor in the ending of strikes was the arrival of new bread supplies since it was the announcement of cuts in the bread ration which had sparked the strikes in the first place.
The Kronstadt Revolt that broke out in the naval base was a direct response to the strikes in Petrograd and the repression that followed. On 28th February, delegates from Petrograd reported on the situation and the programme of the sailors of the battleship Petropavlovsk was adopted. It called for new Soviet elections and for freedom for all socialists and anarchists. It is noticeable that the programme did not call for freedom for the bourgeoisie and the sailors overwhelmingly rejected a reactionary proposal to recall the Constituent Assembly. Economically the programme advocated fairer rationing, limited handicraft production and the peasants to produce freely so long as they did not use hired labour. It was in fact far less “capitalist” than the New Economic Policy which Lenin had already begun to float before the revolt broke out.
Kalinin, later Stalinist President of the USSR, was sent to Kronstadt where he simply denounced the sailors (who were not yet in open revolt). The response was the production of the Kronstadt Izvestia (Kronstadt News) which declared:
The Communist Party, master of the state, has detached itself from the masses. It has shown itself incapable of getting the country out of its mess. Countless incidents have recently occurred in Petrograd and Moscow which show that the party has lost the confidence of the masses. (17)
The response of the Bolshevik Government was to announce that it was “a White Guard plot” led by an ex-tsarist general called Kozlovsky. The fact that émigré papers in Paris had spoken of trouble at Kronstadt earlier helped furnish the proof that was needed, despite the known rejection of the counter-revolution by the Kronstadters. Fundamentally, the Bolsheviks saw counter-revolution as something which could only come from abroad and therefore the Kronstadters must objectively be working for that counter-revolution. There were very important strategic considerations which heightened the panic in government circles. As long as the sea around Kronstadt was frozen it could be reached, but once the ice melted as the spring thaw took hold then Kronstadt would be out of reach and potentially become a base from which a foreign capitalist force could operate. This is why there was no possibility of lengthy negotiations. Trotsky sent the Kronstadters an ultimatum (which incidentally did not include the phrase that the sailors would be “shot like partridges”. This was in fact in a leaflet sent by the Petrograd Defence Committee under Zinoviev). This was rejected on March 7th 1921, when the Kronstadt Izvestia denounced Trotsky as “the dictator of Soviet Russia”. The first attack took place the next day but failed with 500 government troops killed.
There now came a hiatus as the Tenth Party Congress of the Russian Communist party (Bolshevik) began on the same day. If further evidence was needed to suggest that 1921 was a significant turning point in the fate of the Soviet revolution then it was duly provided by the Tenth Congress. There were three big issues at this conference. The first was the role of the trades unions in the Soviet system, the second was the policy to be adopted towards the peasantry, given that the emergency system of the Civil War period had reduced agricultural production to half that of 1913 and the third was the banning of factions in the Party.
The trade union issue was dominated by the debate with the Workers Opposition led by Alexandra Kollontai and Alexander Shlyapnikov. The Workers Opposition wanted the trade unions to take over the running of production, but as they only had the support of about fifty delegates the final resolution “On the role and tasks of trade unions” rejected this. Instead it was decided that the unions would be “schools of communism”, therefore they could not be part of the state apparatus. In this light it was also agreed that the trade unions “are the one place… where the selection of leaders should be done by the organised masses themselves.” This itself is evidence of the extent of the decline of soviet power since it implies that there is to be no revival of Soviet democracy.
On the 15th of March, the Congress also accepted the need for a New Economic Policy so that the grain requisitions would be replaced with a tax in kind. In practice this was even more of a concession to the peasants than the Kronstadters themselves were demanding. Many Bolsheviks opposed it, including Ossinsky of the Democratic Centralist group. Riazanov described it as the “peasant Brest” meaning that it was another concession to a class enemy. Lenin’s reply was that, “only an agreement with the peasantry can save the revolution”.
In fact NEP presaged a full-scale attack on the working class since it led to the privatisation of smaller firms. Without state support they laid off workers and this led to a rapid rise in unemployment and a fall in wages. The Bolshevik Party was now both the ruling party of a state which was attempting to hold on until the world revolution and carrying out the peasant counter-revolution at the same time. Despite this, as long as the Bolshevik Party remained true to its traditions of open debate revolutionaries could still preserve some hope for the future. The final resolution of the Tenth Party Congress, however, called for the banning of factions (and the Workers’ Opposition and Democratic Centralists were mentioned by name in the resolution). Whilst it did not have the effect that was perhaps intended (factions continued to re-appear until 1927) it did commit Bolsheviks to defend the Party more strongly than ever. Indeed Lenin seems to have over-reacted to the threat posed by the various tendencies over the trade union debate. He mistakenly thought the Workers Opposition was supporting the idea of the unions against that of the party. Just how far he was mistaken was demonstrated by the fact that whilst Bolsheviks in Kronstadt defended the Kronstadt Naval base, the rest of the Party rallied together to suppress it. This included the oppositions who comprised part of the 300 strong contingent of party delegates which took part in the final storming of Kronstadt and which was ultimately successful on March 18th. Ironically the crushing of the Kronstadt Commune came exactly fifty years after the Paris Commune had been formed. Serge found the celebrations of the Paris Commune a little sickening given that 10,000 of the attackers lost their lives on the ice whilst 1,500 defenders died and a further 2,500 were captured. Some of these were shot by the Cheka. Serge though supported the attack himself. His agonised appraisal of the situation was as good as any contemporary could give us.
After many hesitations, and with unutterable anguish, my Communist friends and I declared ourselves on the side of the Party. This is why. Kronstadt had right on its side. Kronstadt was the beginning of a fresh liberating revolution for popular democracy; “The Third Revolution!” it was called by certain anarchists whose heads were stuffed with infantile illusions. However the country was absolutely exhausted, and production practically at a standstill; there were no reserves of any kind, not even reserves of stamina in the hearts of the masses. The working class elite that had been moulded in the struggle against the old regime was literally decimated. The party, swollen by the influx of power seekers, inspired little confidence. Of the other parties only minute nuclei existed, whose character was highly questionable…
If the Bolshevik dictatorship fell, it was only a short step to chaos, and through chaos to a peasant rising, the massacre of the Communists, the return of the émigrés, and in the end, through sheer force of events, another dictatorship, this time anti-proletarian. (18)
Much the same was later said by Bolshevik leaders even if they repeated the Cheka lie that Kronstadt was “a White Guard plot” before it was crushed. Bukharin wrote that it was no such thing but that they had to stamp out the revolt of “our erring proletarian brothers”. Lenin later stated more accurately that the Kronstadters neither wanted the government of the Whites nor of the Bolsheviks but “there is no other”. And this was accepted internationally at the time. Even the KAPD who was already moving into opposition to the Third International accepted in 1921 that the suppression of Kronstadt was necessary.
However, it is one thing to say that all internationalists at the time supported the crushing of Kronstadt and another not to draw lessons from it. Whilst Trotsky could still write in his biography of Stalin in August 1940 that the suppression of Kronstadt was “a tragic necessity”, today we can take a rather longer look at its historical lessons. Here we cannot look at Kronstadt in isolation. As it turned out, whichever side won was a victory for the counter-revolution. However, whilst the defeat of the Kronstadt sailors was a defeat for soviet power inside Russia, the prospect of international revolution still lay open and this was the critical factor in the opinions of the revolutionaries of the time.
The real problem lay in the fact that the Party was the state. The lesson is that the Party has to be the party of the international proletariat whatever its members do inside the soviets of a particular territory. It may be in the future that there will be occasions where party members clash again in a revolutionary situation due to material privation, as in 1921, but the Party of the future as a body will be international. And this does not just mean in spirit. It will not be physically tied to one territorial entity. If soviet power means what it says then the soviets in each territory may vote for Party delegates and remove them but the Party itself stands only for the programme of international proletarian revolution. It is not the state nor does it wield state power even in the temporary workers’ state of the transition from capitalism to communism. (19) For revolutionaries at the time, the young workers’ state had survived a critical moment. For us, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that whatever happened at Kronstadt, the counter-revolution was on the march. We are still suffering the consequences of that today.
Kronstadt was not the only event in that month that indicated the ebbing of the revolutionary wave. In Germany, as we saw above the Communists had split between the KAPD and the KPD in 1919 and all attempts to re-unite them fell on deaf ears on both sides. For its part the KPD oscillated from its birth between putschism and passivity. Its participation in the so-called March Action was a disaster which not only cost it two thirds of its membership (falling from 450,000 to 180,000 in three months) but really sapped the morale and revolutionary will of the working class. Partly the KPD responded to a provocation of the Army (which tried to disarm workers), partly to the encouragement of Radek and Bela Kun to help break the isolation of soviet Russia and partly to be seen to act more decisively than it had done during the Kapp Putsch where it had let the SPD organise the strikes which overthrew that right wing attempt at a coup. At the end of the Action the KPD leader Eberlein tried to stimulate the workers to carry on fighting by blowing up KPD buildings — a tactic which backfired when it was exposed by the ruling class. The final fiasco came when workers in Hamburg who wanted to carry on ended up fighting workers who saw the Action was over.
Long before the defeat of the March Action in Germany, Soviet Russia was negotiating its survival in the post-war imperialist set up. This did not mean the automatic abandonment of the world revolution, simply a recognition of the weakness of the soviet economy and the need to re-establish foreign trade. On March 16th 1921, two days before the final suppression of Kronstadt, the British Government signed the Anglo-Soviet Trade agreement which involved de facto recognition of the Bolshevik government in return for the suspension of all propaganda against the British in Afghanistan and India. However, secret negotiations had being going on longer with the German Army and Government so that even though the March Action was taking place a German trade mission under Rathenau came to Moscow. Krasin, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Trade even warned German workers at this critical point that striking would impede deliveries to the Soviet Union!
Further evidence that the revolutionary wave was dying out came at the Third Congress of the Third (Communist) International in June — July of 1921. Here Trotsky told the delegates that in 1919 they had expected world revolution in a matter of months. Now they were talking about “a question of years”. The debacle of the March Action and the Kronstadt Revolt lay heavy on the minds of the Bolshevik leaders who organised the main debates. No longer was the framework one of intransigent defence of revolutionary positions in the 21 Conditions adopted by the Second Congress. At this point the main concern was how to achieve a mass basis for Communist parties. Given that the revolutionary wave was ebbing this meant seeking alliance with the very Social Democrats who had joined the imperialist camp in 1914 and had connived at the murder of hundreds of communist by the crypto-fascists. The Third Congress of the International was thus another watershed in the counter-revolutionary turn of 1921. It also indicated how the fate of the International would remain bound up with the course of the counter-revolution in Russia. This first became clear in the debate on what had previously been called “the national and colonial question”. Previously, the International had had an exaggerated policy of seeing national struggles against imperialism as linked to the struggle for communism. Now (only nine months after the Baku Congerence) it did not even refer to “national and colonial struggles” but to the “eastern question”. A Russian trade treaty with the British Empire plus treaties with Persia (Iran) and Turkey meant that these governments were not to be offended. Small wonder that the Indian Communist, M.N. Roy delivered the only really heavyweight verdict on the debate by denouncing Comintern policy as “pure opportunism” “more suitable for a congress of the Second International” (20).
The same thing was also true of the shift in policy towards social democracy in general. The united front with the butchers of the working class would have been proclaimed at the Third Congress if it had not already been associated with the disgraced German KPD leader Paul Levi who had been expelled at the beginning of the year. Instead the exhortation of the Bolshevik leaders in the Third Congress was “to the masses”. But the Communists had already been using this idea even when trying to split the social democratic parties. So what could the new slogan mean? Nothing other than a rapprochement with social democracy at all levels. Whilst our political ancestors who then led the Italian Communist Party had no trouble with the slogan, they did choose to apply it differently. To them going “to the masses” meant joining in strikes and other actions with workers in the social democratic parties but continuing to oppose the class collaborationism of their leaders. By December when the Russian Party adopted the slogan of the “united front” for the first time, it was clear that the idea was not about working with the rank and file but with the leaders — this was the first step in abandoning the revolutionary path on an international scale. It was not announced as such but de facto it was already that. If 1921 showed that the revolution inside Russia had now swung against the working class, it was also the beginning of the process that led to abandoning the proletarian principles of internationalism. In the verdict of our comrades in the Internationalist Communist Party the Third Congress was the turning point in the history of the Communist International:
The contradictions which loomed on a global scale continued to grip the first revolutionary experience. To have made the revolution in any country, to have momentarily defeated in armed conflict its own bourgeoisie did not mean socialism was being built but only the establishment of the necessary political conditions for it. It is absolutely essential to destroy the political instrument through which the bourgeoisie exercises its class domination and to replace it with another, proletarian one, organised on the basis of an iron class dictatorship but this, in itself, is not enough.
In order to have gone on effectively towards socialism, the revolution needed a sufficiently developed political structure and an economy which was totally autonomous from the world market, conditions which Russia in those years lacked. Which is why the only salvation from Russia’s backwardness lay in revolutionary victory in some western, or better still, some industrially advanced country. It followed from this that the Communist International and the Bolshevik Party which, like it or not, was the backbone of the Comintern, had to make every effort to accelerate or at least promote, uncompromising revolutionary solutions on the basis of the first two Congresses.
However it was dressed up, abandoning the political autonomy of the class party and the dictatorship of the proletariat served neither to convince the leaders of social democracy nor to re-unite the masses around a programme of revolutionary compromise but only to confuse the international proletariat, blunt its political weapon of struggle and obscure its goals. The legitimate doubt arises that behind the official analysis of the Bolshevik leaders, and the Comintern itself, there was the idea that the situation was less favourable than previously foreseen. It was thus deemed worthwhile assisting the still-precarious Russian situation by an international alliance with social democracy to give it a firmer guarantee of safety than extend the revolution. Only in this way can we understand how the tactical adjustments to the united front and the workers’ government emerged from ambiguity to assume their real shape. (21)
On May Day 1922, the slogan of “world revolution” was missed out for the first time from the slogans issued by the Russian Communist Party.
To the revolutionaries of the time however the significance of this was not so obvious. Setbacks will always occur in any process and revolutionaries have to maintain a rational optimism that such setbacks can be reversed. Trotsky defended the adoption of “to the masses” as “the strategy of temporary retreat” but how long is “temporary”? By 1922 Bordiga was openly criticising “the danger of seeing the united front degenerate into a communist revisionism” (22). By 1924, he was demanding the abandonment of the “united front” and the “workers’ government” slogans as total confusions. By this time however, further degeneration had set in with all the Communist Parties affiliated to the International subject to “bolshevisation” i.e. their leaders were chosen for their compliance to Moscow and to the interests of the Soviet state’s foreign policy. Gramsci replaced Bordiga on Moscow’s insistence and he used various organisational means to destroy the hold that the Italian Communist Left held over the Communist Party of Italy (even if it did take until the Lyons Congress of 1926) (23). By this time our political ancestors in the Communist Left had formed the Committee of Intesa (alliance) whose Platform summed up their verdict on the whole fiasco of the Comintern’s policy.
It is mistaken to think that in every situation expedients and tactical manoeuvres can widen the Party base since relations between the party and the masses depend in large part on the objective situation (24).
To conclude then, 1921 was not just a chain of disconnected setbacks but represented the real end of the revolutionary wave and the definitive beginning of the reversal of the process which had put world proletarian revolution on the historical agenda. To the revolutionaries of the time it was obvious that a massive retreat on an international scale was taking place. The Bolsheviks took the view that they had to hold the original proletarian bastion together until the world revolution arrived. But the weakness of the Russian proletariat meant that increasingly the Bolshevik Party transformed itself not simply into the director of the state but into the state itself. And this state was increasingly one of nascent Soviet capitalism against the working class. Thus we have one of the most confusing counter-revolutions in history where the party that had been the highest expression of working class consciousness in 1917 was transformed by the historical circumstance of the Russian proletariat’s isolated war against imperialism into the agent of proletarian defeat. None of this went unremarked by the oppositions inside the Bolshevik Party and even by Lenin himself. At the Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party in March 1922 he told delegates:
[…] and if we take that huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much whether it can be truthfully said that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth they are not directing, they are being directed. (25)
However, only with the enormous benefit of hindsight can we see that 1921 was the year in which the revolution was lost and this has to be part of our balance sheet of the Russian experience. What we draw from that experience is not the councilist one that all parties are bourgeois (as Otto Ruhle concluded, before running off to work for the Mexican Government of the Party of the Institutionalised Revolution!). Because the working class has no property to defend, its consciousness (encapsulated in its programme) can only take form as a collective body. And because some workers, by virtue of their experience, will come to revolutionary ideas before others they have to take the lead in organising themselves. This means a political body which is not based on compromise with the capitalist class but is its constant adversary. This to us can only imply a revolutionary party. What 1921 and the decline of the revolution demonstrate, however, is the need for that party to be international and centralised prior to the revolutionary outbreak. That same party remains outside all governmental or statist functions as a body whatever its local membership have to do. At a local level, power is wielded by the armed workers’ councils. They are the only state bodies until the bourgeoisie is suppressed world wide. The Party is a political vanguard which defends the programme of communism rather than any territory claiming to be en route to communism. There may be those who would argue that this is as utopian as it is idealist but we have to remember that in 1921 itself, at the Tenth Party Congress:
For a brief moment Lenin flirted with the idea of effecting a separation between Party and state. He briefly urged a clear specification and demarcation of the respective spheres of each and proposed that the organs of the state be given much greater autonomy and freedom from Party interference. (26)
Harding later tells us that Lenin recognised “almost instantly” that his proposal would not work. But this was because the situation in 1921 made it impossible to re-write the past. The Bolsheviks could not abandon state power because the soviets were already empty shells. Had this proposal been made in November 1917 and had the soviets retained political life, then it would have been possible. In 1921, the Bolsheviks were reduced to the Micawber position of holding on to state power in the hope that “something would turn up” in the shape of world revolution.
All this is simply utopian if the working class is not moving en masse and breathing life into the international party and the workers’ councils. Ultimately the only guarantee of victory is the relatively rapid extension of the revolution to at least the major imperialist countries, for, until they are paralysed they have the capacity to destroy any revolutionary initiative. By imposing an international civil war on an already exhausted soviet republic they were able to destroy it materially. Whilst the Bolsheviks won militarily on Russian territory the failure of the world revolution elsewhere meant that the class struggle was lost politically. The adoption of NEP and the united front in 1921 were the epitaphs of that political defeat. The working class is still living with the consequences.
IBRP(1) See Victor Serge, The Revolution in Danger [translated by Ian Birchall] (Redwords,1997)
(2) We don’t accept the term “libertarian Marxist” as for real Marxists, Marxism is libertarian or it is nothing. Stalinism etc. is not Marxism. For our wider views on the Russian Revolution see our pamphlet 1917 [£2 from the Sheffield address]. A new version which has been extended to take in the counter-revolution is in preparation.
(3) See the contrast between Arthur Ransome’s, Six Weeks in Russia 1919 and The Crisis in Russia 1920 [both published by Redwords,1992]
(4) Quoted in W.P. and Z. K. Coates, Armed Intervention in Russia 1918-22 [London 1935] p.229.
(5) Rethinking the Russian Revolution [Edward Arnold,1990] p.204.
(6) Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Oxford,1963) pp.70-1.
(7) Although the heroic opposition of the smaller Balkan Socialist parties in Serbia and Bulgaria should also be recorded.
(8) Lenin, Selected Works, Vol.2 p.505.
(9) Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.33 p.98.
(10) Quoted in The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power (ed. John Riddell, Pathfinder Press, New York 1986 p.33).
(11) Quoted in E.H.Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution Vol.3 (Pelican edition,1966) p.133.
(12) Carr, ibid. British troops were not withdrawn for another six months and not before London dockers had refused to load the Jolly George supply ship bound for Archangel and Murmansk.
(13) Carr, op. cit. p.138.
(14) L. Kritsman, The Heroic Period in the Great October Revolution (1926) p.166.
(15) See P. Binns, T. Cliff and C. Harman, Russia: From Workers’ State to State Capitalism, (Bookmarks 1987) p.20. They are doing no more than repeating Trotsky’s own false accusations in his 1938 article, Hue and Cry over Kronstadt.
(16) Quoted in Kronstadt 1921 Analysis of Popular Uprising in the time of Lenin in Revolutionary Perspectives 23 p.22.
(17) Ida Mett, The Kronstadt Commune.
(18) Serge, op.cit. pp.128-9
(19) We also reject the idealism of the International Communist Current which thinks that it is enough to say that “all actions of violence within the proletariat are to be outlawed” (see International Review 100, p.21) as if this solves the problem. Not only is this simply a pious resolution with which anyone can agree but it does also pose another question. The decision of who is proletarian and who is not, still has to be made, and we certainly would be nervous of passing any test imposed by the ICC!
(20) See E.H.Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution Vol.3 p.386.
(21) I nodi irrisolti dello stalinismo alla base della perestrojka (Edizioni Prometeo 1989) pp.20-21 [Lit. 18,000 from our Milano address — see page 2].
(22) See G. Williams, Proletarian Order, p.213
(23) See our phamplet Platform of the Committee of Intesa 1925, [2 pounds from CWO address — see page 2].
(24) ibid. p.18.
(25) Lenin, Collected Works,Volume 33.
(26) N. Harding, Lenin’s Political Thought [MacMillian 1977] p.296.
레온 트로츠키의 사망 70년을 맞아
At 70 years after the murder of Leon Trotsky
위대한 혁명의 기억속에서, 미래의 혁명의 관점에서 트로츠키가 저질렀던 실수로 부터 배워야 한다
In memory of great revolutionary, to learn from his mistakes done in view of future revolutionary
On August 20, 1940 a gunman penetrated the deception of Stalin in Mexico in the house where Trotsky had taken refuge after his expulsion from the USSR in January 1929, and a long flight across Turkey, France and Norway. Taking advantage of an unguarded moment, pull out an ice ax dall'impermeabile, launched a violent blow to the head, killing one of the last survivors of the protagonists for Red October Stalinist terror at home.
1905. Trotsky we remember the role as chairman of the first Soviet (proletarian mass assemblies created to organize the political struggle of class against the bourgeoisie and tsarism) in Petrograd, a tireless organizer and promoter organization of workers' councils nerve center of the insurrection of 1905, its capacity - even before Lenin - to identify what organizational form the source of future organs of bourgeois power of the proletariat and the means of reorganization of the new world.
1917. Trotsky is still in the course of 1917, to accede unconditionally to the April Theses Lenin and the draft according to which the revolution was possible even in semi-feudal Russia for two fundamental reasons:
it was the weak link of the Exchequer imperialist world, the difficulties of the Tsarist regime that could be exploited to open a gap in the international capitalist camp, the prospect of world revolution;
Although Russia was still at a very backward (despite the "islands" of strong industrialization), his working class had proven to fulfill the revolutionary tasks by virtue of his ability to lead an open class struggle, giving life during it, their future bodies of power, the soviets.
1918-20. In the aftermath of the war, Trotsky still plays a major role in both the peace deal with the Germans, is enormous work of organizing the defense of Soviet power against the assaults of whites. For three years he lived on an armored train from which he organized and directed the Red Army on several fronts in the war against encirclement by the reactionaries.
1921. Defeats the armies of white, but without the essential contribution of the international revolution that came to the rescue of the Russian proletariat, the Bolsheviks found themselves in front of an isolated situation unexpected in its size. The revolution, isolated, made a slow retreat and political organization. Almost all of his players fell victim to events which could not decipher, immense. The sad curtain of the counter during the '20s fell on Russia gradually assuming the face of Stalinism. Revolutionaries should have had a penalty and a firmness such as to understand what was happening and, at least, do not let the thread breaks, thus preserving the communist program and the possibility of new revolutions. As we have argued, among others, in "1921, the beginning of the counter and in the book" The counterrevolution - The unresolved Stalinism, "it was when the revolution was defeated external enemies who became factual account of its isolation, and from there the trouble began to get serious.
The International. From the third congress of the (June-July 1921), in a desperate attempt to artificially extend the influence of foreign communist parties, the international will give the password "to the masses!" Before, dangerous opportunism in the opening world party of the proletariat. Then give an indication of the united front with the social democracies and, finally, again in the vain hope of winning workers with tactical expedients instead due to the coherence and strength of its program, will launch the fourth congress of the slogan "workers' government . Trotsky support and interpreter will turn this incredible tactics which, denying the constitutional principles of revolutionary (that is, bourgeois state machine must be broken by force, there was intermediate between the political dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and dictatorship of the proletariat, Social Democracy is the left bank of storage class), it undermined the coherence and anchoring to Marxism as delivering the masses, to which, while it was going to absolutely heel, would also deny the only means by affiliated parties which could withstand the retreat and prepare for future assaults: policy coherence, adherence to the Marxist method and program communities were gradually made meatballs, many failed attempts at revolution, and finally, the opposition was dispersed. The same interpreter and advocate of Trotsky held tactic again in 1938 by founding the Fourth International and giving a program - the transition program - will resume and expand all compromises, and opportunism in the openings were pregnant in the third and fourth congress of 'International.
Russia. Thus, while the Italian communist left, from 1921-23, denounced the danger of turning in the International opportunist and as loudly demanded that the question of "where is going to Russia?" Was tabled by day of the International and was not treated as a purely internal Russian party (on the other hand, if the revolution had won in Russia, this was possible because it was framed in a strategic global) short, while the revolution already had started to go downhill, Trotsky instead of seizing the opportunity and develop a long battle to return to the communist program, was completely absorbed by the sterile internal clashes between his faction, which favored heavy industrialization, and that of Stalin and Bukharin, pro-free enterprise for the farmers. Defeated on this ground (and not on what the fate of the world revolution!), Folded silently suffering for party discipline, a defeat which he could not make out the huge real contours. Fell once more to the field again in 1927 in defense planning and industrialization accelerated (!), The first Russian opposition had failed politically, the Communist program came out totally transformed, the exploited were completely deprived of the only tool that could make their victorious struggle the party and the revolutionary program, now Stalin had his hands free for go to physical extermination.
The end. After the defeat, went into exile, while in Russia began the massacre of the entire Bolshevik old guard. This happened just when Stalin, a sudden and drastic change, closing the period of freedom to the peasants and gave off the first five-year plan of heavy industrialization and the "collectivization" forced in the countryside. Stalinism, once defeat the opposition, they implemented the program for the triumph of the counterrevolution, demonstrating the strength of the irrefutable facts that even the program that had adopted the Trotskyist opposition in 1923 was in fact a program harmony with the interests of world revolution.
The tragedy in the tragedy. Trotsky was never able to rework to the core experience of the Russian Revolution, so intensely intertwined with his life at times identify with. Come per As Bordiga and other revolutionaries who survived those years, to draw a comprehensive and fruitful balance immense experience will prove very difficult, and the attempt to somehow justify Russia (Trotsky, until his death deny that Stalin had restored capitalism) will result in the complex series of theoretical and political aberrations that are called the Fourth International and Trotskyism. The main feature of which over decades has been faithfully to the transition program, the search for every possible tactical apparently necessary to implement a communist, but, in fact has become very vague and indistinct. That, unfortunately, the political legacy of Trotsky - Trotskyism - of which he was convinced and conscious creator, can not be ascribed as products of the counterrevolution and, as such fought.
Lotus Lotus
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