Harrison George
“Considerable discussion is going on in our Party at the present time as to the meaning of the term ’blocs.’ Some maintain that a bloc means putting up a joint list of candidates; others deny this, and say that it means a common platform. All these disputes are silly and scholastic. The essence of the matter is not altered a whit, whether you call the narrower or the wider agreements blocs. The essence of the matter is not at all whether agreements of a narrower or wider nature may be concluded. Whoever thinks so is caught in the meshes of the petty and trivial parliamentary system, and forgets the political essence of that system.
“The essence of the dispute is the question of the right line to be pursued by the socialist proletariat when entering into agreements with the bourgeoisie, such agreements being, generally speaking, inevitable in the course of a bourgeois revolution.
“The Bolsheviks may differ in regard to details, as for example: whether election agreements are necessary with this or that party of the revolutionary bourgeoisie; but that is not the issue between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The issue remains the same: Should the socialist proletariat in a bourgeois revolution follow in the rear of the liberal, monarchist bourgeoisie, or march in front of the revolutionary, democratic bourgeoisie... The absolutely insincere discussion about whether blocs should be more or less close serves to obscure the political question: With whom and for what purpose are blocs permissible?” – Lenin, Dec, 1906 (From Selected Works, Vol. III, pp. 404-406).
HAVING EXAMINED VERN SMITH’S CRITICISM of the “coalition” policy as carried out in California’s 1946 elections, we turn to his general observations on coalitions, upon which his objection to the application of the coalition policy of the Communist Party was founded. His continuing statement reads:
“As a sugar coating for Communist Party members, the ’coalition’ is represented to them as like those in which the Communists participate in most European countries. Dimitroff’s article in Political Affairs (August, 1946) denouncing the Leftists who would break up the coalition there and ’take up their weapons and strike right and left’ and set up a proletarian dictatorship, was read in part at the August 15 (1946) San Francisco County membership meeting, as a warning against leftism in the Communist Party here.
“Now this is plain demagogy. The European Communist parties are in a totally different situation from the American. More than that, they have already gone through a stage that the American leadership apparently means to skip.
“Most European countries, particularly Dimitroff’s Bulgaria, have coalitions of Communist parties, Socialist parties, and other parties representing workers, farmers, and the intellegentsia. In these coalitions, primarily made up of the parties of the producing masses, the Communist Party is always the dominant force. It makes some concessions to the others, but it is the main leader. Dimitroff in that very article mentioned the leading importance of the Communist Party in the coalition.
“These Communist parties use the coalition to further strengthen themselves, but they never could have done anything if they had not come to it strong. The coalition leads, as Dimitroff said in the article, to socialism as a goal already on the calendar, though some stages intervene. The Communist Party in none of these countries arrived at such a position of authority by sending its members to vote for or work for the handiest capitalist candidate. If they vote for or work for a capitalist, or even a socialist, candidate, they do so on the basis of an agreement, by which his party votes for and works for a Communist somewhere else.
“They didn’t get there by supporting ’at any cost’ some capitalist candidate, however many nice things he may have said when bidding for the labor vote.
“In western Europe (France and Czechoslovakia being typical countries there), the situation is even clearer. The coalition there consists of agreement to work together and to participate in the same government by Socialists and Communists, mainly, and mainly by action of their elected delegates to the National Assembly or parliament. The Communist parties came to this situation, not even by merging in an election campaign on a coalition basis, but by running independently, winning several million votes, and then with their million members in each party, they could talk on terms of equality with the other parties. Even then they coalesce with parties rather near to them, not with the middle groups.
“In both cases, western and eastern Europe, the Communist parties first gained strength, then entered coalitions in which the Communists were, to say the least, a powerful factor in distribution of power and formation of policy.
“That is not the situation in America.
“Naturally, we can afford what amounts to a temporary coalition for a parade up Market street, with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a more permanent one for the general fight against lynching. We participate in our own name and show our face. Likewise, the Communist Party should be glad to have the liberals form a Third Party, and should participate, provided the character of the group was such as was described by Dimitroff in his report to the 1935 Comintern Convention, in which he made as a first requirement that the new organization should not be anti-Communist, and should represent the interests of the progressives.
“But even then, there would be absolutely no guarantee that the new ’coalition’ would remain in the least progressive or in the least free from red-baiting, if the Communists were not there openly, and in constantly growing numbers. Any Communist support of even Third Party capitalist candidates, whatever they say in election speeches, or however many workers vote for them, is wasted if it, in fact, is gained ’at any cost’ that liquidates the Communist Party and turns it into a mere vote-getting machine for the capitalist candidate.
“The best thing for the Communists to do immediately is to go to the workers and farmers with a Communist program, and get some class conscious members. When there are enough, then it will not be difficult here, as it is not in Europe, to go to liberal and progressive parties, to unions and other organizations, and make partnerships with them for election purposes. Then they will agree with us on many things, for we will have the votes. Until then, coalition can cost too much, though if you can get some of it without sacrificing fundamental principles and the chance to grow, it will not hurt.”
Now, from this extensive quotation, more than one conclusion can be deduced.
Firstly, it is clear that Smith is not opposed to coalitions “in general.” On the contrary. But he makes conditions. He attempts, not without flaws, to remain true to the Marxist-Leninist demand that every coalition be examined as to what classes are involved, and their relationship within the coalition; and that the identity and line of the Communist Party be always definite – that it doesn’t get “liquidated” by failure to differentiate itself and its program from the program of its allies.
In that attempt, Smith’s virtue is that he attacks the highly dangerous illusion now fostered by the Party leadership in practice (though in words a concession is made to the principle that “labor must lead”), that almost any kind of coalition is desirable. So insidiously and yet so universally is this idea smuggled into Party thinking, that the membership can only get an impression about coalitions comparable to the “poem” of Gertrude Stein:
“As a cow is a cow is a cow. ” A love story.”
The idea is cultivated that “a coalition is a coalition,” and something of “a love story” between ourselves and our allies, something to hurrah about – excepting only any coalition with the monopolists of Mr. Browder – irrespective of with whom and on what terms it is made. It might be well, in this connection, to read from Marxism and Revisionism (Little Lenin Library, Vol. 29, p. 11), what Lenin had to say:
“The experience of alliances, agreements and blocs with the social-reformist liberals in the West and with the liberal reformists (Constitutional Democrats) in the Russian Revolution, convincingly showed that these agreements only blunt the consciousness of the masses, that they weaken rather than enhance the actual significance of their struggle by linking the fighters with the elements who are least capable of fighting and who are most vacillating and treacherous.”
Now it would be a leftist mistake to conclude from this that Lenin was against any and all alliances, blocs and coalitions. Lenin, the master strategist of the proletarian revolution, was and remains the great teacher of when and how and with whom to make alliances – and of equal importance, when to break them – but always for the advancement of the proletarian revolution in either making or in breaking them. Lenin also taught us (in his Two Tactics, p. 72) of the need to recognize the “... provisional character of our tactics to ’strike together’ with the bourgeoisie, and the duty to carefully watch our ’ally’ as if he were an enemy.”
Yet his words should sound a sober warning that any coalition proposed by our Party leadership must justify itself before the membership by its reference to the teachings of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin on the subject of coalitions, alliances and blocs, and by comparing present proposals with those of the past, by examples both good and bad, as proven by international experience and the fundamental laws of proletarian revolution as fully explained by Marx, Lenin and Stalin.
This simply is never done by our present leadership. The only faint gesture toward this imperatively necessary practice, was when, at the December, 1946, Plenum of the National Committee, Comrade Dennis was compelled, by the glaring contrast between the leftward swing of all elections in Europe, and the reactionary victory in the United States elections of November, 1946, to explain matters. Though lacking those essential points which would reflect directly upon the current practices of our Party, Dennis’s explanation only verified the assertion of Vern Smith, that the present electoral successes of the Communist parties of Europe, and the firmness and power of the democratic coalitions there, are due to the fact that the Communist parties “come to them strong.” Here is exactly what Dennis said on that point:
“With regard to the recent American and European elections, there is also a notable difference in the magnitude, status and influence of the respective Communist parties. Unlike the situation in many European countries, our Party has not yet succeeded in attaining the strength and influence of a really broad, mass party.”
Even earlier, in his Plenum report of February, 1946, Comrade Dennis bore out Vern Smith’s statement, by saying that “the situation is ripe, actually,” for: “... a mass Marxist party that can lead and rally millions, and that can function as an accepted and valued partner in a broad anti-fascist and democratic people’s coalition.”[19]
It is imperative to pause here, to assay the political meaning of those few words casually uttered by Comrade Dennis. His ultimate political ambition for our Party is, very clearly, that it attain a position in relationship with our allies that it is far from having attained, namely, to be an “accepted and valued partner” in a “broad, anti-fascist and democratic People’s coalition.”
As may be seen in the quotation from Lenin given at the head of this chapter, Lenin had no such modesty in the fight to win bourgeois democracy, as Comrade Dennis does in the fight to “save” it. Lenin, moreover, accused the Mensheviks of “tacitly conceding the hegemony in the democratic struggle” to the liberal bourgeoisie. (See Selected Works, Vol. III, pp. 404 to 413.)[20]
Comrade Dennis makes the same “tacit concession” of hegemony in the democratic coalition to the liberal bourgeoisie. As thoroughly imbued as Lenin said the Mensheviks were, “with the spirit of Christian humility,” he aspires, for our Party, only that it be “accepted,” and as a “partner”; not more. Perish the thought that the “vanguard” should “march in front” of any of our allies!
In short, Comrade Dennis, though he may repeat the word “vanguard” a thousand times in every speech, has already, ideologically, surrendered the vanguard role of the Communist Party in the coalition. And to the liberal bourgeoisie. This is inescapable. Because, if the Communist Party cannot be a vanguard of the proletariat, the proletariat itself cannot be a vanguard to anybody or anything. Thus, Dennis surrenders the role of the proletariat within the coalition to the liberal and treacherous bourgeoisie. This he does, though he repeats ten thousand times in every speech that “labor must lead.” More, this ideological surrender is inevitably followed by organizational surrender. This came into full view only at the July, 1946, Plenum, where, in his best obscurantist style, Comrade Dennis reported, in part:
“It must be borne in mind that the decisions and blessing of the Leftwing are not the only prerequisites for the successful running of independent candidates and tickets on a representative and effective basis. What is also required is the collaboration and active support of the Murray-Hillman forces and other progressive elements, including the co-operation of certain conservative-progressive groupings now associated with the Democratic and Republican parties.” (Political Affairs, September, 1946, p. 803.)
The Left cannot move without the Center. The Center cannot move (and doubtless wouldn’t if it could!) without the Right – those “certain” peculiar creatures described as “conservative-progressive” groups, though only Comrade Dennis can say what a “conservative-progressive” is, who are “now associated” with the two parties of monopoly capitalism; the parties of the bourgeoisie.
Who has the hegemony? The bourgeoisie, of course!
Small wonder that one count of the leadership’s indictment of Vern Smith was that he had said that that Plenum marked “a swing to the Right.” But aside from this, and referring again directly to his statement, he was clearly within reason when he advised that “the best thing for Communists to do immediately is to go to the workers and farmers with a Communist program (not necessarily excluding immediate demands – HG), and get some class conscious members.”
Where Smith errs, or appears to err (since he had already said that the Party “should participate” in a “Third Party,” providing it isn’t anti-Communist), is in his implication that no electoral coalitions be entered into until there are what he calls “enough” Communists so “it will not be difficult.”
Smith evidently looked at the “difficulties” and how our Party in California succumbed to them because it did not really follow a firm Bolshevik line. But the remedy is to correct the line, not to dodge the difficulties. Lenin never avoided a coalition merely because there were few Bolsheviks. This touch of “leftism” in Smith’s statement clearly was a revulsion at the unprincipled parliamentarism practiced by the California Communist Party in the 1946 elections.
The old, old story: Right opportunism begets “Leftism.” But how is it that the “Left” is expelled, while the Right is given absolution? Does not this prove that the fight against deviations is waged only against the Left? That the “fight” against the Right is only a sham and pretense?
Nor can one read what Comrade Dennis said in his report to the December, J946, National Committee, under the heading of “United Front of Communists and Non-Communists” (see pamphlet The People Against the Trusts), without profound suspicion that, quite generally, our practice (as distinct from our program) in building a democratic coalition, is one vast and awful California.
With a note of pride, Comrade Dennis began by reporting that there are a “number” of national trade unions in which Communists are permitted to maintain membership. But he phrased it more “acceptably” by saying that such Communists have “established a united front relationship.” Comrade Dennis refers to the CIO, since he had just spoken approvingly of “the working collaboration within the CIO between the Left wing and the Center forces headed by Phil Murray.”
As Comrade Dennis made this report after the CIO National Convention adopted – with Communist support! – the notorious Murray-sponsored resolution wherein the CIO officially “resents and rejects Communist interference,” one may be pardoned a reluctance to accept Comrade Dennis’s definition of such a situation being, or bearing any resemblance to, a “united front relationship.” Except against the workers. It hides the face of the Party, and certainly is no “Lenin style” of “coalition.”
Going further, and more in line with what “coalitions” are supposed to be, Comrade Dennis reported:
“So far as official relations between Communists and most non-Communist groups are concerned, there are only a few states and a score of cities in which the Communist Party participates officially as an integral part of the various people’s and democratic front alliances, such as in certain united front activities and committees for progressive legislation, for peace and for the rights of the the Negro people. But in every instance where this condition prevails, there is a vigorous and effective, united people’s democratic movement.”
This is good; this is putting correct policy into practice. But as the sole genuine attainment of our democratic coalition policy, it is a pitiable failure of the policy generally. It is obviously too narrow and weak a foundation for the grandiose plan for a “third” party – within which the Communist Party could even hope to be “accepted,” even as a mere “participant,” and still less even dream of being “the vanguard.” Yet, in the Arabian Nights outgivings of our leaders at present (early 1947), such a “third” party is promised as a possible winner of the 1948 presidential election! Providing, of course, the liberal bourgeoisie, who have, by grace of our own Party’s surrender, the real hegemony in the coalition, do not end their electoral vacillations by remaining in the Democratic Party. In which case, our leadership has already indicated our Communist Party would dutifully tail after the liberal bourgeoisie, loudly crying at every step: “We are independent! We are independent!”
(Postscript, September, 1947: How little of “independence,” and how much of “tailism” the leadership has permitted the Party, can be seen even in the June, 1947, decision of the National Committee to “postpone” the National Convention; giving, as its excuse, “... so that the Communist Party can make its final decisions concerning the 1948 elections at the time when other political parties will be making theirs.”)
But even this microscopic achievement is overshadowed by what follows in the Dennis report:
“Then, too, there is the current and widespread situation in which there are scores, or rather hundreds, of unofficial understandings and friendly relations between Communists and various individual (sic!) trade union and political leaders for promoting progressive policies. These co-operative relationships are generally fruitful and productive, though the off-the-record form (sic!) of this co-operation, definitely impairs and circumscribes the effectiveness and the benefits to be derived from such collaboration.”
Verily! In California we have seen how this “off-the-record” form of backstairs intrigue “impairs” not only any possible “benefits,” but Communist policy itself. It is a secret source of corruption of Communists, nourishing “pie-card” tendencies and contempt for the workers. When we put it on the record and expose its fraudulence, as done in Part IV of this Thesis, we see that it is “fruitful” only for the Ed Pauleys and Earl Warrens, the outright spokesmen for imperialism – and, of course, their “come-on” men of the Kenny type, whose “liberal progressivism” leads our Party into such traps.[21]
But what of other conclusions to be drawn from Vern Smith’s statement on coalitions? What of his claim that the “coalition” as practiced in California is “represented” to our membership as “like” those in Europe? He says that Dimitroff’s article in Political Affairs (August, 1946) was read – in part – to a membership meeting as “a warning against leftism in the Communist Party here.”
This, says Smith, “is plain demagogy.” And he adds: “The European Communist parties are in a totally different situation from the American. More than that, they have already gone through a stage that the American leadership apparently means to skip.”
First, the question: Is the situation in Europe, and in Dimitroff’s Bulgaria particularly, different than the situation facing the CPUSA? It is absolutely different!
(The difference is observable not only in the objective relationship between classes, but even in the relationship of forces within the working class, which made it possible for the Communists of Bulgaria – and in Poland as well – to unite with the revolutionary-inclined workers of other parties in a revolutionary “Workers Party,” at the very time the Browder-Dennis leadership of the CPUSA was liquidating our Party into the “Roosevelt progressive” wing of the bourgeois Democratic Party, as a “political association.”)
Secondly, why did Vern Smith feel it necessary to call detailed attention to this difference? Because our national leadership, responsible for publishing Dimitroff’s article (actually, a British Broadcasting Corporation radio version of a Dimitroff speech), did not call attention to that difference. It did not draw special attention to the fact that Dimitroff was speaking to American Communists, nor suggesting that they follow Bulgaria’s example in the solution of American workers’ problems.[22]
Our Party leadership picked up this BBC version of Dimitroff’s speech, and threw it “cold” into the American scene, seven months after Dimitroff spoke. It was then, Smith says, immediately used, or better said, mis-used, demagogically to impress the Party membership in San Francisco with the “danger of leftism.”
Later, in the People’s World, December 13, 1946, James S. Allen used Dimitroff’s position as his leading item in a generalized article on eastern Europe, bearing, in both headline and text, a tendencious misrepresentation.
The top headline read: “A PEACEFUL TRANSITION.” The lower headline: “New Democracies Chart a New Road to Socialism.” (Lenin has taught us to be suspicious of such “new” roads.) Without going too lengthily into the text, it may be said that it supports the whole lie of the headlines by the simple expedient of very accurately telling half-truths.
The half-truth is that, now, certain countries (definitely named by Dimitroff as being “Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Finland and Bulgaria” (but as definitely not including any imperialist country like the United States), do have, now, when Dimitroff spoke, the possibility of a “peaceful transition” to Socialism.
But what is ignored entirely in the headlines over Allen’s article, and what is slurred over and virtually concealed in his text, is the all-important and decisive fact of how this present “possibility” was preceded by the most violent and un-peaceful conditions of civil war between the armed people of the “underground” (a true coalition, led by Communists, in which workers and peasants predominated, though attracting many intellectuals, petty bourgeois, etc., but based upon a formal agreement of parties and organizations, not of individuals), and the combined forces of Nazi-occupiers and the national ruling-class collaborationists. That was a civil war in which the armed people – and those unarmed as well – were, moreover, aided in its final phase by nothing less “peaceful” than the terrific fighting machine of the counter-attacking Red Army of the Soviet Union.
Who, in his right senses and with honest purpose, can describe the years’-long savage fight of the “underground,” wherein so many tens and hundreds of thousands lost their lives, as “peaceful”?
Who, in the wildest flight of fantasy, can picture the glorious Red Army of the Workers’ Fatherland, sweeping westward through Europe on its road to Berlin and Vienna, exterminating Nazis and handing over (those who did not flee in terror) the national ruling-class collaborators to the emerging “underground”–as something “peaceful”? Who does not know that the battles of the Red Army “merged,” as Stalin said they would on July 3, 1941, with “the struggle of the peoples of Europe,” who fought with their Red Army ally “for their independence, for democratic liberties.” Who does not know that in that war, the old reactionary ruling class governments, who had placed their bets on the “invincibility” of the Wehrmacht, were overthrown?
Yet Allen’s article, implying that everything already won, as well as the Socialism yet to be won, was won “peaceably” (and by avoiding every mention that here in America matters are quite opposite, also implying that maybe we, too, can win Socialism “peacefully”), advances a specious argument that nobody has made, and proceeds to demolish it by declaring: “Communists from the time of Marx, have never insisted that they must win Socialism only by violent revolution.[23]
Of course, Communists have “never insisted” on winning Socialism by violence. Of course, as Allen states, that outcome is determined by “the strength of the reactionary resistance to social changes.” But does Comrade Allen then point out that “There have been no cases in history where dying classes have voluntarily departed from the scene... where the dying bourgeoisie has not exerted all its remaining strength to preserve its existence”? (Stalin in Leninism, p. 100.) No, Comrade Allen does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he leaves the impression that there is a “new” road, a “peaceful” road, to Socialism.
And he seeks to prove the existence of such a “new” road by misrepresenting the means whereby the present democracies of eastern Europe attained state power as tasting nothing of violence. But the facts show that it was in a veritable storm of violence that the Marxist-Leninist law of revolution was fulfilled, the law of the necessity of the destruction, the shattering and physical elimination of the class content, even if not the form, of the old state apparatus, by a new class power – more precisely in the case of eastern Europe – by a new combination of class power, in the form of such coalitions as rule Bulgaria, under the banner of The Fatherland Front, in which the Communists are the leading party.
Neither the martyrs of the “underground,” nor the Red Army men who sleep their last sleep in the soil of these new democracies, nor the collaborators with the Nazis who are still being tried and shot, would recognize the savagery of their struggle in the picture given by Allen, that the “old governments” were “replaced” – merely “replaced,” not over-thrown! – and that (by a use of pleasant words by Comrade Allen) : “... power practically lay in the streets, and was picked up by the liberation movements.” Just “picked up” by liberation movements who only chanced to be going by, apparently, on the road to some other goal! As if those liberation movements had not been formed, and had not fought for years, for this very aim! As if they could possibly have had the cohesion and strength to “pick up” state power, had they not passed through those very years and forms of struggle! [24]
The liberation movements, built and tested, consolidated organizationally and politically as “the underground,” a coalition of Communists and non-Communists, led by the former, seised state power. Only then did they legalize it. Under the protection of the Red Army occupying Bulgaria, a plebiscite was held on September 9, 1945, in which the monarchy was voted out, and a republic voted in; a republic coming naturally under the rule of the coalition of the Fatherland Front, in which the Communists were, truly, a vanguard. The old state apparatus was destroyed in its class content by a complete purging of the police and the army and the old state bureaucracy.
Does the possibility this situation opens up of a peaceful transition to Socialism, contradict Marx? Not if we understand Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism, on pages 51 and 52 of which Stalin says that Marx: “conceded that possibility, and he had good grounds for doing so in regard to the England and the United States of 1870-80, when monopoly capitalism and imperialism did not yet exist and when these countries, owing to the play of special forces in their development, had as yet no developed militarism or bureaucracy.”
Does the fact that Bulgaria is now a “people’s republic,” with the consent and support of Dimitroff and the Communist Party, and not a “Soviet type” of republic, somehow refute Lenin? Or impugn the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy of the Bulgarian Communists? Certainly, if we were to accept the opportunist implications about it which our leadership seems to wish us to accept, it would appear so. And already, having also accepted such opportunist implications of it, there are a few “leftist” murmurings (though Vern Smith’s statement is free from this conception), to the effect that: “Revisionism has deeply penetrated every country’s movement – Dimitroff’s ’peaceful Socialism’ is the ’theoretical vanguard’ of this phony revisionism.”
However, the acceptance of such an opportunist conception of the situation in Bulgaria as somehow impugning Lenin and the Marxist-Leninist integrity of the Bulgarian Communists would be utterly wrong. It must be remembered, firstly, that in Bulgaria and many other eastern European countries (and in some colonies and semi-colonies, as well, as Dimitroff said in specifying Indonesia as one example), the bourgeois-democratic revolution has yet to be completed, and the physical, material basis laid for Socialism. Moreover, not only the national, but the international factors must be taken into account.
What we have in Bulgaria today is, in class content, what Lenin described as the “revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.”[25]
The revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry is not the distinctly different “dictatorship of the proletariat.” And, because of the peculiar circumstances of the national and international relationship of class forces, wherein the petty bourgeoisie, nationally, has literally no big bourgeoisie to dominate it; and where, although there is a struggle, the preponderant influence, internationally, is that of the land of Socialism, the USSR, there arises the possibility that the dictatorship of the proletariat may not be, as Dimitroff implied (but did not directly assert), “essential for the transition to Socialism.”[26]
Such a situation did not exist in the Russia of 1917-18, as Dimitroff pointed out. He was absolutely correct when he said that:
“The crux of the matter, and we Marxists should know this well, is this: Every nation will effect its transition to Socialism, not by a mapped-out route, not exactly as in the Soviet Union, but by its own road, dependent on its historical, national, social and cultural circumstances.”
But if we recognize that the internal developments in Bulgaria are deeply influenced by the power of the Soviet Union, we must also recognize that Dimitroff, as head of the Communists of Bulgaria, was also speaking as the head of the Fatherland Front, and, what’s more, as Premier, and with full cognizance of the diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Anglo-American imperialism over this very question of the nature of the governments in the countries of eastern Europe. Hence his emphasis on the Fatherland Front program:
“What, concretely, is our policy at this stage (Note well! – HG) of social development, that is, in the Fatherland Front era? It can be briefly outlined as follows: From the point of view of our Party, as the Party of the working class and the working people, it is now and in the future the complete implementation of the Fatherland Front program, the creation of those essential conditions which will make it possible for our people to go over to Socialism.”
Later on, Dimitroff says:
“... When, one day, the question of a transition of the people from the present social organization to a new socialist order arises in this country, then the Communists, leaning on the people, will build a new socialist society, not in struggle against the peasants, craftsmen and intelligentsia, but together with them...
“This course of social development, comrades, may, to some, appear slower than the policy of ’take up your arms; hit right and left, and set up your dictatorship!’ However, the former course is not only possible and realistic, but it is also undoubtedly much less painful for the people.”[27]
This was, clearly, the politically correct thing for Dimitroff to say, even if he does not exclude from the perspective the alternative possibility that some remnants of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie, in conjunction and conspiracy with Anglo-American imperialism, might still seek to settle the future of Bulgaria by force of arms; an alternative that he, still politically correct, did not mention. But what justification can one find for the use, in a San Francisco membership meeting of the Communist Party, of Dimitroff’s speech to denounce all who do not agree that the “coalition” with Kenny (and with Ed Pauley, Earl Warren, Harry Truman and the Oil Trust) is the same sort of coalition as in eastern European countries? Obviously Dimitroff’s speech justifies nothing of the kind.
Neither does Dimitroff, nor the birth and development of the new type of democracies of eastern Europe, justify the “peaceful transition” falsehood of the Allen article, and its plain implication that American Communists might well hope for the same “easy” victory for Socialism by the path of “coalition.”
Nothing that Dimitroff said or could say, nor anything to be found in all that is written or spoken by Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin, could justify the Right Opportunist concept inherent in the speech of the General Secretary of the CPUSA, Eugene Dennis, at Madison Square Garden on September 19, 1945, when, after a long recital of attainments in which Communists have pioneered, such as “the organization of the automobile industry,” the “enactment into law of federal unemployment compensation,” etc., he declared:
“As befits a vanguard party, we Communists were always a step or two ahead of the American people and the working class. But each of our Visionary dreams’ of yesterday was rooted in the needs and aspirations of the working class and the people – that is why many of them have already become the realities of today. Our ultimate goal of Socialism, which we keep ever bright before us, is but an extension of this democratic process.”[28]
What is the sum total of all this juggling with Dimitroff’s speech of February, 1946? What is its political meaning? It means nothing less than that our present leadership is trying to smuggle a new Teheran policy into our Party’s thinking, mis-using both Dimitroff’s words and the circumstances under which they were spoken, exactly as Browder (and Dennis) mis-used Stalin’s words, and the circumstances at Teheran under which they were uttered, to inject, anew, into the minds of our Party membership, the “Teheranist” opportunist outlook that there is, for America and the American proletariat, a perspective of “peaceful transition” to Socialism.
To those of us who fought in the ranks of the Left Wing of the pre-1914 Socialist Party, against the reformist Right Wing leadership, the Dennis declaration that Socialism is “an extension” of capitalist reforms, like unemployment insurance, stinks with the same putrid opportunism as the utterances of Morris Hillquit and other revisionists of that era, who delighted in explaining that Socialism “comes” through “gradual reforms,” won “peacefully at the ballot box,” and triumphantly pointed to the post-office, municipal garbage disposal and city water supply, as “socialist” achievements already “adopted by capitalism.”
The plain thought conveyed by Dennis, that bourgeois democracy grows or extends into Socialist democracy, is utterly anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist. It is, however, a logical sequence of his continual failure to differentiate one “democracy” from another. He never refers to “our bourgeois democracy,” but to “our American democracy.” And as to his opportunist nonsense about its “extension” into Socialism, Lenin gives him the lie in his too-little known book The State and Revolution (Little Lenin Library, Vol. 14, p. 73), as follows:
“But from this capitalist democracy – inevitably narrow, subtly rejecting the poor, and therefore hypocritical and false to the core – progress does not march onward, simply, smoothly and directly, to ’greater and greater democracy,’ as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, progress marches onward, i.e., towards Communism, through the dictatorship of the proletariat; it cannot do otherwise, for there is no one else and no other way to break the resistance of the capitalist exploiters.”
This thought expressed by Dennis is not a “slip of the tongue.” It runs through all his speeches and writings, this opportunist conception of the State and of bourgeois democracy. Lenin well said in his preface to The State and Revolution that “The struggle for the emancipation of the laboring masses from the influence of the bourgeoisie in general, and the imperialist bourgeoisie in particular, is impossible without struggle against the opportunist superstitions concerning the ’state.’ ”
Therefore, Comrade Dennis by his chatter about Socialism being but “an extension” of the bourgeois “democratic process,” is aiding in the continued subjection of the proletariat to the influence of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
He is, moreover, flatly violating the plain words of the National Convention Resolution (Part II, Section 6) wherein our Party condemned the Browder-Dennis leadership for tendencies to “obscure the class nature of bourgeois democracy, to false concepts of social evolution.”
[19] Why, then, if the situation in February, 1946, was “ripe” for it, do we not have such a Party? Surely Comrade Dennis cannot point to any “left sectarian” policies of either the years of Browder’s, or of his own, leadership, as responsible. Rather it is that there was, and is, a Right Opportunist sectarianism barring the entrance of masses to our Party. There is a clear under-estimation of the radicalization of the toiling masses, which is, of course, not evenly spread among them; but is greater among the most exploited, and less, even to the point of absence, among the upper stratum, the aristocracy of labor and its invariable mouth-piece, the trade union bureaucracy.
Now, our National Convention Resolution says: “While not yet accepting Socialism as an ultimate goal, the American people today agree that fascism must be destroyed... are ready to protect and extend the Bill of Rights... are determined to fight for greater peace and democracy, for the right to work, greater job and social security.”
That, it must be kept in mind, is the program for the projected coalition. But the National Convention Resolution (although not the draft resolution prepared by the former National Board on June 2, 1945), went further in setting forth a program for our Party. In the Convention Resolution, which amended the draft of the former Board distinctly to the left, it was specified that:
“As class-conscious American workers, as Marxists, we Communists will do all in our power to help the American working class and its allies to fight for and realize this program. At the same time, we will systematically explain to the people that substantial gains for the masses secured under capitalism are inevitably precarious, unstable and only partial, and that Socialism alone can finally and completely abolish the social evils of Capitalist society, including economic insecurity, unemployment and the danger of fascism and war.” (Sec. 4.)
But how does our leadership carry out the National Convention Resolution? Firstly, it ignores the convention demand, just quoted, to “systematically explain” Social ism to the masses; and it centers attention exclusively on the Resolution’s correct, though inadequate, statement that the “American people” do not “yet” accept Socialism. From this premise, our leadership, in practice, makes no differentiation between one part of “the people,” tiresomely and opportunistically described as “the majority of the people,” who do not “yet” accept Socialism, and the other part of the same “people” who would accept it, if only somebody would carry out the National Convention Resolution and tell them about Socialism. Instead, our leadership reverts to the opportunist (by omission of Socialist propaganda) draft resolution of the former National Board (five of whom are on the present Board), and pursues a course of keeping Socialism a secret from the whole “American people.”
“Many letters have come to us,” reported Comrade Williamson to the same February, 1946, Plenum of the National Committee, “asking whether we are going to be satisfied with ’tipping our hat’ to Socialism. Generally, the comrades are correct.”
But what happens after that Plenum? Comrades who learned from Dennis that the situation was “ripe” to build the Party, and from Williamson that they shouldn’t merely “tip the hat” to Socialism, are expelled as “leftists” precisely because they insist that the National Convention Resolution should be carried out and Socialism “systematically explained” in relation to the limited and inadequate program of the coalition, and while fighting for that program.
One can imagine how these expulsions, carried through under the false charge that the expelled comrades demanded an “immediate” or “direct” fight “for Socialism,” will discourage the remaining membership from propagandizing for Socialism to the “American people.”
(“Only vile sophists renounce revolutionary agitation because they don’t know when the revolution will be.” – Lenin, in letter to Shlyapnikov; cited by Ralph Fox, in Lenin, A Biography, p. 203.)
It is virtually an infallible recipe for keeping workers out of our Party! And as for our “Marxist” leadership, the only time they talk about Socialism is when they are “explaining” why they are expelling the members who have urged them to talk about it!
Thus, to “the American people” the Communist program in the struggle of the coalition, is “not distinguishable from that of bourgeois democrats,” which the National Convention Resolution condemned as a part of “Browder revisionism” (in Section 6, Part II).
[20] That the winning of bourgeois democracy and the saving of it from fascist attack, are comparable, is not only self-evident, but is spoken of by T. A. Jackson, in his Dialectics (an excellent work, published by International Publishers, New York), as follows:
“Mutatis mutandis (with change for change) the role of the ’middle class’ in the Revolution of the Twentieth century has, so far, been so close a reproduction of the cowardly, treacherous role it played in the Revolution of 1848-9, as to be highly significant. The difference in the outcome – Fascism instead of simple return to arbitrary Monarchism – is a measure of the difference in degree of development and of revolutionary maturity in the proletariat. It is this which is the ultimate determining cause; of Fascism” (p. 465).
We thus see that, while the role of the “middle class” is the same, the role of the proletariat, because of its greater maturity, is infinitely more decisive; hence all the less reason for the party of the proletariat to run snivelling at the tail of the petty bourgeoisie, begging it to take the leadership in the fight against fascism.
[21] Communists should never forget the truth uttered by Anton Pannekock, and quoted with high approval by Lenin in Marxism and Revisionism, page 18, which says:
“The positive aim of the liberal progressive policy of the bourgeoisie, is to mislead the workers, to introduce a split in their ranks, to transform their politics into an impotent appendage of an impotent, always impotent and ephemeral, would-be reformism.”
This follows from the party of the proletariat abandoning the Marxist analysis of social movements as being based upon the conflicting material interests of economic classes – the abandonment of even the concept of class struggle, and the adoption of the anti-Marxist, bourgeois analysis of social movements as being based upon the conflicts arising from the “reactionary ideas” of individuals clashing with the “progressive ideas” of other individuals – and the adoption of a class collaborationist concept of the possibility of the proletariat relying for leadership in its own struggles, upon “enlightened” capitalists and “far-sighted” capitalist politicians as against “reactionary elements.” Engels touches upon this phase of revisionism in his criticism of the French Workers Party in 1882, saying, in his letter to Bebel (Oct. 28, 1882) that: “We (Marx and Engels) regarded the bourgeoisie as a class, and hardly ever involved ourselves in conflicts with individual bourgeois.”
To support a Kenny as against a Warren, or support a Wallace as against a Hoover, while opposing them all as defenders of capitalism and enemies of the proletariat and of socialism, is one thing; but to support the one absolutely and without reserve, because his “ideas” are “progressive” in comparison with the “reactionary ideas” of the other, is not only to abandon the Marxian concept of the class character of social movements, but to desert Marx’s dialectical materialism and adopt the anti-Marxist concept of philosophical idealism. Lenin’s advice to British Communists (See Left Communism, An Infantile Disorder) on how simultaneously to support and to oppose Henderson and MacDonald, is an example of the correct policy for any Communist Party.
[22] Contrary to the possible impression a casual reader might get, in overlooking a footnote in fine type that appeared with the article, Dimitroff did not send a copy of his speech to America for our perusal. He delivered his speech to the Workers Party Congress in Sofia, Bulgaria, on February 27, 1946. It was, later, broadcast by radio from Belgrade to Yugoslavia. The British Broadcasting Corporation in London (government owned) picked it up and recorded it. The imperialist BBC was the source from which our Party got it. Hence, though the text might be faithful to the original, there is no guarantee that it was fully so, since it was strained through an imperialist propaganda agency, the BBC. In my experience of Communist editorship, I would not publish matter of such importance, filtered through such an agency, without plainly warning the reader that it was not verified by the original speaker, Dimitroff himself.
[23] How sweetly reminiscent of Browder, when, in the flower of his opportunism, he wrote about “Lenin’s Teachings” in Political Affairs (January, 1945) almost the same words as Allen:
“Let us make it very clear,” said Browder on page 7 of that journal, “that, since Marx, it has never been in the program of the Communist movement to ’wreck capitalism.’ That is an anarchist or Trotskyist concept which has nothing in common with Marxism.” Again on page 9: ”The working class... cannot prepare the ground for Socialism by trying to ’wreck’ capitalism.”
By an adroit misapplication of some quotations from Engels and Lenin, Browder went on from this edict that the proletariat must not try to “wreck capitalism,” to his own policy of “making capitalism work,” and with a perspective of that “for many generations,” the coming to Socialism would be by something called a “transformation,” a word surely implying “peacefulness,” for it would be founded not on the will of men or the war of classes, but on a wholly impersonal “condition of the material forces of production.” So, today, with our leaders assuring us that Browderism is “defeated,” that word “transformation,” or “reorganization,” is the accepted term, the word “revolution” is frowned upon, and! democratic illusions are fostered by the sly injection of the idea that Socialism can be won by “peaceful means,” here in the United States.
Was that sort of ideology “Marxist” when Browder taught it to our Party? Browder, and with him the whole leadership, told us that it was Marxist. In that same article, Browder emphasized that “more study was needed,” that his policy of “making capitalism work” was “confirmed by the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin” (p. 10). Is the same ideology, only more cleverly concealed and subtly taught, Marxist now? Our leaders assure us that it is all very “Marxist.”
But this only proves Lenin correct, when he wrote that, openly anti-Marxist ideology among the working class having been “ousted,” in the nineties of the last century, anti-Marxism only shifted its tactic, and, falsely assuming a Marxian point of view, went on with its fight – ”with the struggle of a trend hostile to Marxism within Marxism.” (Marxism and Revisionism, by Lenin, Little Lenin Library, Vol. 29, p. 6.)
[24] The same phrase about state power “lying on the street,” has been used by the Vice-Premier of Poland and general secretary of the Polish Workers’ Party, Wladyslaw Gomulka, in a speech to Polish workers on November 29, 1946. It is a nice “literary” phrase anybody can use, so Comrade Allen should not be accused of its monopoly. But Gomulka, at least, qualified it by mentioning that state power was “lying on the street” “at the moment of the liberation of Poland.” So we see that power was “lying on the street” as a result of the “liberation” of Poland by the Red Army, and only “at the moment” of that liberation, a liberation in which, moreover, the “democratic camp” had assisted in previous “moments,” or it would not have had the strength to “pick it up ” The use of such a loose and inaccurate phrase may be excused on the part of those who already have power in their hands. But the use of such phrases by American Communists, to project a misleading idea that the American proletariat will not have to fight for their own liberation, is an entirely different matter. There is evident a fixed policy to represent the Communist Parties of Europe as being opportunistic, in order to excuse the opportunism of our own Party. Joseph Starobin is particularly adept in this fraudulence.
[25] This only bears out the forecast made by Comrade Dimitroff at the Seventh Congress, where during the discussion on the possibilities of a united front government taking power, he remarked, in part, as follows:
“It would be wrong to imagine that the united front government is an indispensable stage on the road to the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. That is just as wrong as the former assertion that there will be no intermediary stages in the fascist countries and that fascist dictatorship is certain to be immediately superseded by proletarian dictatorship.
“The whole question boils down to this: will the proletariat itself be prepared at the decisive moment for the direct overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of its own power, and will it be able in that event to secure the support of its allies? Or, will the movement of the united proletarian front and the anti-fascist people’s front at the particular stage be in a position only to suppress or overthrow fascism, without directly proceeding to abolish the bourgeois dictatorship? In the latter case, it would be an intolerable piece of political short-sightedness, and not serious revolutionary politics, to use this alone as a ground for refusing to create and support a united front government or a people’s front government.
“It is likewise not difficult to understand that the establishment of a united front government in countries where fascism is not yet in power is something different from the creation of such a government in countries where the fascist dictatorship holds sway. In the latter countries a united front government can be created only in the process of overthrowing fascist rule. In countries where the bourgeois democratic revolution is developing, a people’s front government may become a government of the democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry.”
[26] Stalin, in his Foundations of Leninism (P. 33, 1932 edition) says that: “... if the present capitalist encirclement will give way to a Socialist encirclement, a ’peaceful’ course of development will be quite possible for some of the capitalist countries.”
One cannot, of course, apply this categorically and mechanically to the present situation in eastern Europe. But its consideration is not amiss in view of the way Dimitroff himself speaks:
“As a result of the war and under the influence of the great work of the Soviet Union, a deep change has been wrought in many countries. This is the case in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Finland and Bulgaria... ”
[27] Since in basic Communist theory, set forth as follows in the forth as follows in the “Program of the Communist International” adopted by its Sixth Congress: “While representing the rule of a single class, the dictatorship of the proletariat at the same time represents a special form of class alliance between the proletariat, as the vanguard of the toilers, and the numerous non-proletarian sections of the toiling masses, or the majority of them” (p. 49), it is inconceivable to deduce from the above quotation from Dimitroff, that he has irrevocably and permanently foresworn the dictatorship of the proletariat as a transition to Socialism. But is this pointed out by our leadership? Not at all!
[28] Socialism is a system of production relations between men, quite distinct from “this (bourgeois) democratic process,” or even the more democratic process of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nor can socialism be won, like “unemployment compensation laws,” by “extending” bourgeois democracy. This is not even “tipping our hat” to Socialism, but revising Marxism-Leninism, which holds that Socialism can be won only through a revolutionary change in class rule; from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, sometime concealed by a facade of bourgeois democracy, to the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is proletarian democracy. But the latter is by no means an “extension” of the former.
Marxism views historical development as composed not only of “evolutionary changes” in the means of production, but as also of “revolutionary leaps” in the relations of production, in the revolutionary change of class power. Thus, Stalin says (Dialectical and Historical Materialism, p. 14) that:
“The transition from Capitalism to Socialism and the liberation of the working class from the yoke of capitalism, cannot be effected by slow changes, by reforms, but only by a qualitative change of the capitalist system – by revolution. Hence, in order not to err in policy, one must be a revolutionary, not a reformist.
“Further, if development proceeds by way of the disclosure of internal contradictions, by way of collisions between opposing forces on the basis of these contradictions, and so as to overcome these contradictions, then it is quite clear that the class struggle of the proletariat is quite a natural phenomenon. Hence, we must not cover up the contradictions of the capitalist system, but disclose and unravel them; we must not try to check the class struggle, but carry it to its conclusion.”