The historical cycle of the degeneration of the Third International (IV)

THE HISTORICAL CYCLE OF THE DEGENERATION OF THE III INTERNATIONAL (IV)

1922 – Theses on the tactics of the Communist Party of Italy, Rome

One month after the startling resolution of the Executive Committee of the International on the united front and one month before the First Enlarged Executive meeting was convened to discuss this issue, the Communist Party of Italy, led by the Left, approved the Theses on the Tactics of the Communist Party of Italy - Rome (1922).

The Theses of Rome on tactics provide a structured response to the question of what type of 'united front' is consistent as a tactic derived from communist principles in mature capitalism and the overcoming of which limits turn this tactic into submission to social democracy and an emptying of the communist content of the parties. The Theses contain a complete solution to the problem of tactics in mature capitalism and a specific delimitation of the possibilities for the application of the tactic of the 'united front', excluding the 'political united front' or 'from above' and advocating the sole correct variant of the 'labor union's united front' or 'from below'.

The Left was able to respond so quickly and comprehensively from the leading position of the Communist Party of Italy, with the support of the vast majority of the party because the Left had developed its previous struggle as an uncompromising Marxist current in an environment of developed and mature capitalism. This environment was prevalent in Europe, but it was not the environment in which the Bolsheviks had to carry out their actions in the context of the doble revolution, which began with an anti-feudal revolution (and, therefore, a democratic-bourgeois one) in which other classes besides the proletariat played a revolutionary anti-feudal role. That is why the Bolsheviks did not have and could not provide a solution to the problems of tactics under mature capitalism and democracy.

For this material reason, it was the Italian Left that had the 'vaccine' against that mature democratic environment, the result of its previous experiences, which it had already contributed in points 5, 6, and 12 of the third part of the Theses of the Communist Abstentionist Faction of the PSI (1920).

1922 – I Enlarged Executive

The First Enlarged Executive of February 21 to March 4, 1922 approves the December declaration of the Executive of the International on the united front in its erroneous interpretation of political united front.

That same Enlarged Executive approves the participation of the 3rd International in the joint conference with the 2nd and 2 ½ Internationals in April.

July 1914 – Start of World War I (bankruptcy of the II International)
1917 – February and October revolution in Russia
1917 – foreign military intervention and civil war in Russia
March 1918 – Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
November 1918 - Kiel mutiny
November 1918 – End of World War I
December 1918 – Foundation of theCommunist Party of Germany
January 1919 – Assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht by the social democracy
March 1919 – 1st Congress of the 3rd International
March-August 1919 – Hungarian Soviet Republic (participation of social democrats dynamite it)
April 1919 – Soviet Republic of Bavaria
March-April 1920 – Kapp/Lüttwitz "putsch" + Ruhr uprising
May 1920 - Theses of the Communist Abstentionist Fraction of the PSI
July-August 1920 - II Congress of the 3rd International "21 conditions of admission" (in particular, the 21st)
August 1920 – Defeat of the red army in Warsaw
September 1920 – Occupation of factories in Italy
December 1920 – Fusion of the 'left' of the USPD with the KPD
January 1921 – Foundation of the Communist Party of Italy
January 1921 – 'Open letter' from KPD to SPD and trade unions
March 1921 – Failure of the March action in Germany
June-July 1921 – III Congress of the 3rd International "conquest of the masses" (of the majority...).
December 1921 – Resolution previous to the 1st Enlarged Executive "political united front"

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January 1922 –Theses on the tactics of the Communist Party of Italy (Rome)
February 1922 – 1st Enlarged Executive
April 1922 – Joint conference with the II International and the II ½ International
June 1922 – 2nd Enlarged Executive "workers' government".
August 1922 – Submission of the CCP to the Kuomintang.
October 1922 – March on Rome
November 1922 – Project of Thesis presented by the CP of Italy to the IV Congress
November-December 1922 – IV Congress of the 3rd International “workers and peasants government”

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January 1923 – French occupation of the Ruhr
February 1923 – Arrest of the leaders of the CP of Italy, handpicking of Togliatti for the direction.
June 1923 – "National bolshevism" in Germany
October 1923 – Communist ministers in the governments of Saxony and Thuringia (and ulterior military dissolution)
January 1924 – Death of Lenin
June-July 1924 – V Congress of the 3rd International "bolshevization"
June 1924 – assassination of Matteoti and Aventine pantomime
April 1925 – Hindenburg's presidential election in Germany
January 1926 – Theses of the Left to the III Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (Lyon)
February 1926 – VI Enlarged Executive
March 1926 – Betrayal of the proletarian revolution in China (massacre of Shanghai and Canton in 1927)
May 1926 – Betrayal of the miners' strike in Great Britain (Anglo-Russian Committee)
December 1926 – VII Enlarged Executive "socialism in one country", defeat of the Russian opposition
October 1929 – Crack of 29
1936-1938 – Moscow processes
May 1937 – May events during the Spanish civil war
September 1939 – Start of the 2^nd Imperialist World War II
May 1943 – Formal dissolution of the 3rd International

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A representative of the Left in the Enlarged Executive synthesized the situation follows: "It is possible, we think, that with the means suggested by the Executive the masses will be won over; but we shall never again have Communist parties; we shall have parties that will resemble like drops of water the old Socialist parties."

During the sessions, the positions of the Italian Left will be distorted and presented in such a way that even we would be against it. Then the blows are directed against this scarecrow created for the occasion, instead of analyzing the positions and arguments really put forward. On this occasion it fell to Trotsky to apply this method, which will become more and more habitual against the Left, to pass off the theses of the political united front. It is enough to read the Rome Theses in comparison with Trotsky's speech to realize his ignorance of the positions of the Italian Left or his conscious misrepresentation of them.

An article published in March 1922, emphasized: "For us, the independent existence of the communist party is still a vague formula if the value of that independence is not specified based on the reasons that have compelled us to build it through the split, which identifies it with programmatic consciousness and the organizational discipline of the group. The content and programmatic direction of the party, which in its militancy, and in the broader sense that encompasses trade unions and other fields, is not a crude machine but precisely at the same time a product and a factor of the historical process, can be unfavorably influenced by erroneous tactics. (...)

These tactical limits are not outlined by theory but by reality, and this is so true that, without being pessimists, we foresee that if we continue to exaggerate this method of unlimited tactical oscillations and agreements between opposing political parties, we will gradually undermine the results of bloody experiences of the class struggle, not achieving brilliant successes, but extinguishing the revolutionary energies of the proletariat, running the risk that once again opportunism celebrates its revelries over the defeat of the revolution, whose forces it already portrays as uncertain and wavering, and heading down the road to Damascus." (The Task of Our Party, in 'Il Comunista' on March 21, 1922).

1922 – II Enlarged Executive: 'workers' government'

During the Second Enlarged Executive Committee, the slogan of the 'worker's government' was officially launched, a logical consequence of the conquest of the 'majority' in the Third Congress and the 'political united front'. The slogan of the 'worker's government' is not only a tactical deviation but also, and above all, a programmatic deviation because Marxism does not admit any 'worker's government' other than the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Furthermore, this slogan was never precisely defined and underwent various mutations in the following years. Behind the pretense of making the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat accessible to the masses, the true objective of participating in bourgeois governments, labeling them as worker's because they were controlled by social democrats, was poorly concealed.

Anyone who wants to make the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat accessible to the working masses has no need for pseudonyms or substitutes. Pseudonyms and substitutes are only suitable for those who want to generate confusion or hide their true intentions. We had learned, first from Marx and then from Lenin that:

"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions."(Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848).
“The whole point is that a bourgeois State which is exercising the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie through a democratic republic cannot confess to the people that it is serving the bourgeoisie; it cannot tell the truth, and has to play the hypocrite.

But the state of the Paris Commune type, the Soviet state, openly and frankly tells the people the truth and declares that it is the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Lenin, 1918)

1922 – March on Rome

Despite the efforts of the party, the general action was late (in August 1922) and the proletarian defeat was inevitable.

In August 1922, at the peak of a violent defensive battle on all fronts of the Italian proletariat, the Alliance of Labor decided to proclaim a general strike. Note that the powerful CGL had to rely on the clandestine network of the Communist Party of Italy to communicate the directives for the strike on August 1^st, using a secret code. However, the reformists saw it only as a means of pressure to resolve the governmental crisis in the direction of a liberal-social democratic coalition.

The General Confederation of Labor (CGL) had so little faith in this policy, and especially in its ability to control the masses, that the 'secret' strike order was publicly disclosed by a social democratic and confederal organ, 'Il Lavoro,' thus allowing the State and the blackshirt squads to act promptly. The strike itself was suspended after 24 hours, while the masses mobilized without the slightest desertion and continued to fight with splendid valor against the repressive forces.

Since then, fascism, openly supported in its violent struggle by the forces of the State led by liberal democracy, became the master of the country, and only later was the legal formalization of its dominance choreographed with the march on Rome.

1922 – August: Submission of the CPC to the Kuomintang

On July 1, 1921, the Communist Party of China was founded in Shanghai, which was to act in accordance with the Theses on the national and colonial question approved at the Second Congress of the International.

However, already in August 1922 the envoy of the International Maring imposed the decision that the members of the Communist Party of China must also join the Kuomintang, arguing that it should be "transformed from within", an imposition completely contrary to the theses of the Second Congress.

For a more detailed account of the process of betrayal of the Chinese proletarian revolution, see in this review the article "Lessons from the defeat of the Chinese proletarian revolution of 1926-1927".

1922 – Draft Thesis presented by the CP of Italy at the IV Congress of the Communist International

The Left prepared the Draft Theses presented by the CP of Italy to the IV Congress of the Communist International (1922) but they were not even discussed during the Congress.

The draft Theses synthesizes the content of the Rome Theses and emphasize that, in the correct Marxist approach, even the united front from below should not be mechanically applied, without assessing whether its foreseeable development does not lead to a strengthening of communist influence or not:

"Therefore, the tactic of the united front is a means to gain preponderant ideological and organizational influence for the party.

The instinctive tendency of the masses towards unity should be used when it can serve the favorable use of the united front tactic; it should be fought when it leads to the opposite result.

Consequently, the serious tactical problem of the united front has limits beyond which our action would not fulfill its own objectives. (...)" (Draft Thesis presented by the CP of Italy at the IV Congress of the Communist International, 1922).

1922 - IV Congress of the 3rd International

The IV Congress of the Third International definitively ratifies the tactic of the "political united front" as well as that of the "workers' government" and its twin, the "workers' and peasants' government".

What all Marxists had learned to criticize as a betrayal even during the time of the Second International was now enshrined as the star tactic of the Communist International.

Lenin, in Marxism and Revisionism (1908), describes with alarming precision the end point of the slippery slope that the Communist International was beginning to slide down:

"The experience of alliances, agreements and blocs with the social-reform liberals in the West and with the liberal reformists (Cadets) in the Russian revolution, has convincingly shown that these agreements only blunt the consciousness of the masses, that they do not enhance but weaken the actual significance of their struggle, by linking fighters with elements who are least capable of fighting and most vacillating and treacherous. Millerandism[i] in France — the biggest experiment in applying revisionist political tactics on a wide, a really national scale — has provided a practical appraisal of revisionism that will never be forgotten by the proletariat all over the world.

A natural complement to the economic and political tendencies of revisionism was its attitude to the ultimate aim of the socialist movement. “The movement is everything, the ultimate aim is nothing" — this catch-phrase of Bernstein’s expresses the substance of revisionism better than many long disquisitions. To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty politics, to forget the primary interests of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice these primary interests for the real or assumed advantages of the moment — such is the policy of revisionism. And it patently follows from the very nature of this policy that it may assume an infinite variety of forms, and that every more or less “new” question, every more or less unexpected and unforeseen turn of events, even though it change the basic line of development only to an insignificant degree and only for the briefest period, will always inevitably give rise to one variety of revisionism or another." (Lenin, Marxism and Revisionism, 1908).

(The publication of this series, which we began in "The Internationalist Proletarian" n.12 as a result of the collective study work of the general meeting of August 2023, will continue in the following issues of the review).

[i] Millerandism is precisely the entry of proletarian parties into bourgeois governments.

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