European Socialism and Communism

424 Pages·2014·1.549 MB·English

by  Communist Research Cluster

European Socialism and Communism
Communist Interventions, Volume I
Communist Research Cluster
2014

Reasoning about history is inseparably reasoning about power
Guy Debord

Preface
We present here a history of twentieth-century communism through primary sources, divided into
fourteen chapters arranged in chronological order. Each chapter deals with a historical moment or
theoretical debate, and contains an amount of reading appropriate for one week’s time. We hope
that this reader will provide the foundation for seminars and reading groups.
Tarrying with the history of twentieth-century communism is difficult: these texts issue a clar-
ion call for human emancipation. At times, their authors seem almost hubristic. They confidently
proclaimthatthefuturebelongstocommunism.Yet,ifthesepagesbeginwithaconfidentoutlook,
they end in despair. The twentieth century looks, to us, much as Walter Benjamin suggested the
past did to the Angel of History: “Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one
single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet.”
Why should we feel compelled to revisit this history, today?
In compiling these texts, we hope to transmit a series of revolutionary perspectives. However –
andthispointbearsrepeating–wedonotthinkthatonecanfindanswerstotheburningquestions
of the present moment in the revolutionary theories of the past. It would be foolish to search these
pages for the “right” perspective to adopt.
Nevertheless, a historical awareness may prove useful, for at least two reasons. It has the po-
tential to free us from overly simple perspectives on our own times. In part, that is because history
gives a sense of the complexity of revolutions: they tend to leap out in unexpected directions. Rev-
olutions take place on a grand scale, involving not just handfuls of revolutionaries, but millions
of people acting in concert and conflict. Historical awareness also shows us the ways in which the
viewswealreadyholdare,incertainrespects,derivativesofhistoricalpositions.Engagingwiththe
revolutionary traditions of the past helps us understand the positions we hold, in terms of their
origins and limitations. Now is the time to free ourselves from the burdens of old ideas – while
remaining intransigent about the communist potential of the present moment.
Access to the history of revolutionary theory has typically been restricted to small cliques
passing down their traditions, with their own associated reading lists, to acolytes. That is one of
themainreasonswehaveputtogetherthepresentreader:wehopeitwillenablepeopletoundertake
theirownrevolutionaryeducation,ontheirownterms.Atatimewhenmanypeoplearequestioning
capitalism,webelievethehistoryofideasaboutwhatitwouldtaketooverthrowcapitalismdeserves
to be propagated more widely.
In defense of the particular selections we have made, we offer the following brief points:
1) We do not suggest that this reader – which begins with some of the founding texts of the
Second International and continues to the end of the twentieth-century labor movement – covers
the entire canon of revolutionary theory. We hope to produce other readers in the future. Two
will focus on race and on gender. Another reader may deal with anarchism and another with the
i
ii PREFACE
nineteenth century. Yet another may look at the United States.
2) Within the history of socialist and communist theory, we have focused on texts that deal
specifically with revolution. Much was left out: texts on nationalism and imperialism, as well as
texts about crisis, culture, and so on. In part, that was because we wanted to avoid the topics
that make regular appearances on academic syllabuses (for that reason, the Frankfurt School was
cut), as well as topics that are overly technical. But also, we hope that this reader can serve as
a reminder that most of the debates in the history of communism were actually about how to
overthrow capitalism.
3) Many self-described revolutionary organizations are dedicated to promoting their worldview
at the expense of others. A reader that refuses to consider perspectives that do not align with the
prejudices of the editors will be poorer for it. We try to present a history that is non-sectarian.
However,wemustadmitthatthisreadercontainsmanytextsfromsmall,orshort-lived,heterodox
traditions. We believe that it was on the margins of communist history that many of the most
interesting positions emerged.
Althoughthereadingshereinarerewardingtoperuseintheirownright,theyaremoreevocative
when paired with a companion historical text which provides greater insight into the context in
which these texts were penned. For this purpose, we recommend Forging Democracy: The History
of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 by Geoff Eley (Oxford University Press, 2002). PDFs of this text
can be found online, for those who know where to look. For each week, along with the required
readings we note the corresponding Eley chapters or other alternative readings that serve the same
purpose. Further readings for each week’s topic matter can be found at the end of the reader.
Each week’s reading is preceded by an introduction. We have tried to keep these concise and
informative, in order to let the texts speak for themselves.
Pleasenotethatwehaveabridgedthesetextsinordertokeepthemshortandfocused.Wehave
tried to indicate the locations of these abridgments with ellipses, but be forewarned abridgments
may not always be clearly marked. We also sometimes omit the footnotes that accompany the
originaloralatereditionofthetext.Inaddition,insomecases,wehavemademinortypographical
changes and corrected errors from prior digitizations.
WeoweadebtofgratitudetotheMarxistsInternetArchive(marxists.org)andalsolibcom.org,
two resources without which preparing this reader would have been impossible; most of the texts
herein were taken from one of these two sources. We encourage anyone interested in further inves-
tigating these ideas to browse their libraries.
We hope that this reader plays a small part in contributing to what Anton Pannekoek called
the “deep revolution of ideas.”
Communist Research Cluster
Oakland, CA
2014
[email protected]
http://communistresearchcluster.wordpress.com
Contents
Preface i
1 Orthodoxy 1
1.1 Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle (1892) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Karl Kautsky, Erfurt Program (1891) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2 Revisionism 33
2.1 Eduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (1899) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2 Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (1900) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3 Social Democracy After 1905 61
3.1 Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike (1906) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.2 Anton Pannekoek, Marxist Theory and Revolutionary Tactics (1912) . . . . . . . . . 85
4 Betrayals of 1914 93
4.1 Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet (1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.2 Zimmerwald Manifesto (1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.3 Draft Resolution of the Leftwing Delegates (1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4.4 Declaration of the Left Wing (1915) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5 The Russian Revolution 113
5.1 Vladimir Lenin, April Theses (1917) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.2 Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution (1917) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.3 Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution (1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
6 Left-Wing Communism 147
6.1 Anton Pannekoek, World Revolution and Communist Tactics (1920) . . . . . . . . . 148
6.2 Vladimir Lenin, Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder (1920) . . . . . . . . . 159
6.3 Herman Gorter, Open Letter to Comrade Lenin (1920) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
6.4 Grigory Zinoviev, Theses on the Conditions of Admission to the Communist Inter-
national (1920) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
7 German and Italian Revolutions 175
7.1 Programme of the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD) (1920) . . . . . . 176
7.2 Otto Ru¨hle, The Revolution is Not a Party Affair (1920) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
7.3 Fritz Wolffheim, Factory Organizations or Trade Unions? (1919) . . . . . . . . . . . 185
7.4 Amadeo Bordiga, Party and Class (1921) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
7.5 Amadeo Bordiga, Towards the Establishment of Workers’ Councils in Italy (1920) . 195
7.6 Antonio Gramsci, Unions and Councils (1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
7.7 Antonio Gramsci, Unions and the Dictatorship (1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
iii
iv CONTENTS
8 Communism and Gender 211
8.1 Alexandra Kollontai, Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Rela-
tions (1921) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
8.2 Alexandra Kollontai, Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle (1921) . . . . . . . . . 216
9 Fascism and War 225
9.1 Leon Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth Interna-
tional (1938) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
9.2 Anton Pannekoek, State Capitalism and Dictatorship (1936) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
9.3 Anton Pannekoek, The Failure of the Working Class (1946) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
9.4 Karl Korsch, The Fascist Counter-revolution (1940) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
9.5 Gilles Dauv´e, When Insurrections Die (1979) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
10 Stalinism 253
10.1 Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1936) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
10.2 C.L.R. James, Russia – A Fascist State (1941) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
10.3 H.H. Ticktin, Towards a Political Economy of the USSR (1974) . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
10.4 Christopher Arthur, Epitaph for the USSR: A Clock Without a Spring (2002) . . . . 276
11 May 1968 in France 281
11.1 Cornelius Castoriadis, On the Content of Socialism, Part I (1955) . . . . . . . . . . . 281
11.2 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (1967) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
11.3 Ren´e, Preliminaries on Councils and Councilist Organization (1969) . . . . . . . . . 302
11.4 Gilles Dauv´e, Leninism and the Ultra-Left (1969) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
12 Second-Wave Feminism 317
12.1 Mariarosa Dalla Costa & Selma James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of
the Community (1971) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
12.2 Silvia Federici, Wages Against Housework (1974) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
13 Italy’s Creeping May (1968-77) 341
13.1 Mario Tronti, Lenin In England (1964) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
13.2 Mario Tronti, The Strategy of the Refusal (1965) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
13.3 Silvia Federici & Mario Montano, Theses on the Mass Worker and Social Capital
(1972) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
13.4 Sergio Bologna, The Tribe of Moles (1977) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
14 Eclipse of the Worker’s Movement 379
14.1 Adam Przeworski, Social Democracy as a Historical Phenomenon (1980) . . . . . . . 379
Epilogue 403
Further Reading 407
Appendix 415
Week 1
Orthodoxy
Orthodox Marxism refers to a political and philosophical trend that emerged after the death of
Karl Marx which attempted to develop and refine Marx’s theories. Orthodox Marxism served as
the intellectual underpinning for the plethora of socialist political parties that were founded at the
end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century.
TheGermanSocialDemocraticParty(SPD)wasbyfarthelargestandmostinfluentialsocialist
party by 1900. Karl Kautsky was one of its leading figures who, together with August Bebel and
Eduard Bernstein, authored 1891’s Erfurt Program, the SPD’s official platform. This program was
thesuccessortothe1875GothaProgram,theSPD’sinitialplatformwhichMarxfamouslycriticized
in his Critique of the Gotha Program.
KautskypublishedhiscommentaryontheErfurt Program inThe Class Struggle,whichbecame
a highly influential tract of orthodox Marxism. Selections from Chapters 5 and 4 of The Class
Struggle are the reading for this week (Note: Chapter 5 precedes Chapter 4 below), as well as the
text of the Erfurt Program.
The Eley reading for this week is Chapter 3.
1.1 Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle (1892)
V. The Class Struggle
1. Socialism and the Property-Holding Classes
The last paragraphs of our declaration of principles reads as follows:
This social transformation means the liberation, not only of the proletariat, but of
the whole human race. Only the working-class, however, can bring it about. All other
classes, despite their conflicting interests, maintain their existence on the basis of the
private ownership of the means of production, and therefore have a common motive for
supporting the principles of the existing social order.
Thestruggleoftheworking-classagainstcapitalistexploitationisnecessarilyapolitical
struggle. The working-class cannot develop its economic organization and wage its eco-
nomic battles without political rights. It cannot accomplish the transfer of the means
1
2 WEEK 1. ORTHODOXY
of production to the community as a whole without first having come into possession of
political power.
To make this struggle of the workers conscious and unified, to keep its one great object
in view, this is the purpose of the Socialist Party.
In all lands where capitalist production prevails the interests of the working-class are identical.
With the development of world-commerce and production for the world-market the position of the
workers in each country becomes increasingly dependent on that of the workers in other countries.
The liberation of the working-class is, therefore, a task in which the workers of all civilized lands
are equally concerned. Being conscious of this fact the Socialist Party proclaims its solidarity with
the class-conscious workers of all lands.
TheSocialistParty,accordingly,struggles,notforanyclassprivileges,butfortheaboli-
tionofclassesandclass-rule,forequalrightsandequaldutiesforall,withoutdistinction
of sex or race. In conformity with these principles it opposes in present day society, not
onlytheexploitationandoppressionofwage-workers,butalsoeveryformofexploitation
and oppression, be it directed against a class, a party, a sex, or a race.
The introductory sentence of the first of these paragraphs needs little explanation. We have
alreadyshownthat the triumphofsocialismisintheinterestofourentiresocialdevelopment.Ina
certainsenseitisevenintheinterestoftheowningandexploitingclasses.These,liketheirvictims,
suffer from the contradictions of the modern method of production. Some of then; degenerate in
idleness, others wear themselves out in the ceaseless race for profits; while over them all hangs the
Damocles’ sword of bankruptcy.
But observation teaches us that the great majority of the owners and exploiters are bitterly
opposed to socialism. Can this be due simply to lack of knowledge and insight? The spokesmen
among the adversaries of socialism are, on the contrary, the very persons whose positions in the
government,insociety,andinscienceshouldfitthembestofalltounderstandthesocialmechanism
and to perceive the law of social evolution.
And so shocking are the conditions in modern society that no one who wishes to be taken
seriously in politics or science dares any longer to deny the truth of the charges preferred by
socialism against the present social order. On the contrary the dearest thinkers in all the capitalist
political parties admit that there is “some truth” in those charges; some even declare that the final
triumph of socialism is inevitable unless society suddenly turns about and reforms – a thing these
gentlemen imagine can be done offhand, provided the demands of this or that party be promptly
granted.Inthismannereventhoseamongthenon-socialistpartieswhobestunderstandthesocialist
critique of capitalist society save themselves from accepting the conclusions of this critique.
The cause of this remarkable phenomenon is not difficult to discover. Although certain impor-
tant interests of the property-holding classes plead against the private ownership of the means of
production, other interests, more immediate and easily discernible, demand its retention.
This is especially the case with the rich. They can expect no immediate gain from the abolition
of private property in the means of production. The beneficent results that would flow therefrom
wouldbeultimatelyfeltbythemaswellasbysocietyingeneral,butsuchresultsarecomparatively
distant. The disadvantages which they would suffer are, on the other hand, self-evident; the power
and distinction they enjoy today, would disappear at once, and not a few might be deprived, also,
of their present ease and comfort.