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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 45, 30 September 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Brandler-Lovestone “International”, or whatever is left of it, held a plenary meeting, following right upon the heels of the gigantic German experiences, and once more demonstrated its incapacity to distinguish the face of the revolution form its rear. The sum total of its deliberations it crystallized into new efforts to pull the revolutionary movement backward to the Stalinist Right-Centrist bloc. A resolution adopted imposes this orientation as binding upon its affiliated groups. But hardly was the ink on the signatures dry before its biggest affiliate, the Swedish (Kilbom) Communist party, which was not represented at the meeting, broke the binding decisions and attended the Paris conference of Left Socialist and Communist parties. Meanwhile the split-off Gitlow group in the United States has come out openly against the Brandler policy and proclaims the collapse of the Brandler-Lovestone “International”.
This is true; this “international” is collapsing. After Jilek and Hals of Czechoslovakia led their trade union following back to the social democracy in the Amsterdam International, the French P.U.P. started to tread the same ideological path. The Neurath group of Czechoslovakia took the opposite course to the Left Opposition, and the Swiss Brandler section is permeated with and learning from the ideas of the Left Opposition. Stagnant ideologically, this “international” is diminishing organizationally. With all its opportunist practicality it neither embraced masses nor brought correct ideas into the movement. From the German experiences it has learned nothing. Its orientation to pull the movement backward becomes so much more distinctly fallacious in this epoch of deep going differentiations in which groups and parties, formerly social democratic, are groping their way toward Communism.
The Brandler-Lovestone meeting brought forward a document which theoretically verifies what has been said above. This document is characteristic for its lamentations over the ultra-Leftism pervading the Comintern, for Its fulminations against “Trotskyism” and for its overtures to the Stalin regime on the basis of live and let live.
But it is precisely these partners of the former Right-Centrist bloc who prepared the ground for the “ultra-Leftism” – it should be called by its correct name, bureaucratic adventurism – which they lament so much. It is their opportunism which prepared the zig-zags to the “Left”, to adventurism by the fact of Centrism, having no consistent Marxian position. In pursuing its empiricist outlook and methods It recoils from opportunism to adventurism when pressed by events and
the catastrophes resulting from its own policies. These Right wing lamentators have no complaints to make over the disastrously false and opportunist bloc with Chiang Kai-Shek in the Chinese revolution or the bloc with the strike-breaking bureaucrats in the Anglo-Russian Committee, or the many other similar combinations.
Their fulminations against “Trotskyism”, that is, against the Left Opposition, are all borrowed from Stalin, and they have made no improvements upon them. It is quite natural that these people should find, themselves at one with Stalin in this respect for today after the terrible German catastrophe, it has been demonstrated more clearly than ever that the Left Opposition, with its orientation for new national parties and for a new Inter national, represents the main kernel of the progressive forces within the proletarian movement. Moreover, these people also know that it is only through such fulminations that the requirements can be met for application for re-entry into the Stalin bureaucracy.
In essence this Right wing document, except for its lamentation over “ultra-Leftism”, absolves Stalinism from any complicity in the German defeat. It says – we quote from the document published in the Workers Age, of September 15:
“Especially is it necessary to expose all attempts to attribute the tactical mistakes of the C.I. and the C.P.G. and the defeat of the German working class to the alleged national interests of the Soviet Union. The assertion that the theory of the construction of socialism in one country has made the Russian Communists sacrifice the interests of the workers of other countries, must be branded as dangerous anti-bolshevism.”
This is their type of crusade against so-called Trotskyism. But first of all this itself contains a politically dishonest distortion of the views of the Left Opposition in substituting the “national interests of the Soviet Union” for the bureaucratic interests of the Stalin regime. Between these a definite distinction must be made. Comrade Trotsky, more than anyone else has repeatedly pointed out that “between the interests of the Soviet State and those of the international proletariat there is and there can be no contradiction. But it is false to the roof to transfer this law over to the Stalinist bureaucracy.” This is precisely what the authors of this opportunist document have done. By this they brand themselves as flunkies of the Stalinist bureaucracy anxious to crawl back into its good graces.
If it is not the theory of Socialism in one country, with its resulting reactionary national position, which is bringing the Stalinist bureaucracy into contradiction with the interests of the Soviet Union as well as the interests of the world revolution, how then explain the Comintern responsibility in the German catastrophe? But with this the authors of the document were not concerned and hence they stated further: “The I.C.O. fights to liquidate the false tactics of the C.I., not, however, to oppose the policy of the C.P.S.U. in the Soviet Union.” By this they only further reveal themselves, not as revolutionary theoreticians but as “practical” opportunists of give and take. You let us have our policies for our respective countries; we will let you have yours. For them as for the reformists the international situation is a sum of the national situations. But this is also what led the social reformists to their August 4.
This “remarkable” document concludes with a proposal from the Brandler-Lovestone “International” to the Comintern for the “setting up of a working bloc, which ... can establish joint action for carrying out united front tactics, for a common struggle against reformism, centrism and Trotskyism”.
Here we come to the very crux of the issue: the reestablishment of the Right-Centrist bloc for a common struggle against the Left Opposition, against the progressive force within the revolutionary movement. The struggle against reformism and centrism is thrown in only for embellishment.
There need be no denial of the fact that much of the Brandler-Lovestone criticism of the Stalinist bureaucratic adventurism has been stated correctly; but it is animated by entirely different motives and is heading for an entirely different course from ours. From the German experiences they draw the conclusion for the practical absolving of responsibility and for the further strengthening of the Stalinist bureaucratic regime. We draw the conditions leading to the creation of new national parties and a new International. Theirs is the course toward the strengthening of reactionary nationalism as against revolutionary internationalism.
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Last updated: 25 October 2015