What could this be, words from a Maoist sect's leaflet vintage 1967? Actually, the words are by Joseph Stalin, from "Foundations to Leninism". That Stalin could represent himself as the foremost Marxist thinker in the world from the late 1920's to the 1950's does more to explain the current crisis in socialism today than anything else. Not only did this hogwash pass for Marxism during this period, if anybody attempted to present a political alternative they would end up with broken teeth or a bullet to the head.
This type of simple-minded nonsense has pretty much disappeared from the world of Marxism, except for the occasional Maoist manifesto here and there. We can read the following in "World to Win", a theoretical journal started by retro-Maoist Robert Avakian and his co-thinkers in other countries. "By looking at the life and teachings of Mao Tsetung, a new generation who themselves never witnessed the dramatic changes wrought in revolutionary China could begin to understand that the poor and oppressed could indeed rise up and transform the world through revolution; that the imperialists' declarations that 'communism is dead' reflect their hatred and fear of the very class of proletarians that can and will do away with them forever; and that to move forward to all the way liberation, the understanding forged by Mao Tsetung in the Chinese revolution and summed up as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the indispensable weapon for victory."
It was Stalin's intention to turn Marxism into this sort of crude dogma. He wrote in 1925 that the 'new type' of Communist leader should be no man of letters; he should not be burdened by the dead weight of social democratic habits; and he should be feared as well as respected.
Not only did Stalin do his best to persuade others to follow this model, he used state terrorism to eliminate those who refused to conform. In August 1936, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, Mrachkovsky and others stood trial. In January 1937, Piatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov, Muralov, Serebriakov and others faced charges. Marshal Tukhachevsky and a group of the highest generals of the Red Army appeared before a secret tribunal in June 1937. Finally, in March 1938, Rykov, Bukharin, Krestinsky, Rakovsky, Yagoda and others came before Soviet "justice". All of these individuals were leading Bolsheviks when Lenin was alive. Any one of them had more political experience, theoretical understanding and leadership qualities than any individual Marxist in the United States today. Soviet courts charged them with attempting to assassinate Stalin, restore capitalism, wreck the nation's military and economic power, and murder masses of Russian workers.
Controlling the Soviet Union did not satisfy Stalin. He made sure that every Communist Party in the Comintern obeyed him as well. He made the Chinese Communist Party submit to the strict discipline of the Kuomingtang. Soviet propaganda built up the image of General Chiang Kai-shek as the great leader of Chinese national re-birth. Socialism was not on the agenda in China, just an anti-feudal revolution under his leadership.
Mao obeyed Stalin's orders even after Chiang purged a thousand communists from the Kuomingtang and subsequently had them murdered in 1926. Chiang's forces arrested, tortured and killed over 50,000 Communists and their sympathizers as he consolidated his power in the second great purge in 1927. Mao managed to escape into high grass just over two hundred yards from the wall where the firing-squad was about to shoot him.
Let us take a close look at Stalin's intervention into the American Communist Party in order to understand how unlike Lenin's Bolshevik party these Comintern parties had become. Let us review what Lenin understood as Bolshevism in the early 1900's: simply put, democratic centralism in action and a newspaper that allowed various tendencies within Marxism to contend with each other.
In the initial fervor over the Russian Revolution, radicals all over the world made the decision to form parties on the Bolshevik model. They did not really have a very clear idea of just what such a party should be. They often brought often their own political experiences to bear on the formation of new organizations--as they should have. The American Communist leader, Charles E. Ruthenberg, explained Bolshevism early in 1919 as something that was not "strange and new." Bolshevism was merely the consequence of the same type of education and organization that the Socialist movement had been and was carrying on in the United States. His Socialist-syndicalist background showed in his description of the infant Bolshevik state as a "Socialist industrial republic". His instincts were completely correct.
By 1920, everything changed. A resolution passed at its second convention of the American Communist Party stated, "The Communist Parties of the various countries are the direct representatives of the Communist International, and thus indirectly of the aims and policies of Soviet Russia." Among the people voting for the resolution was James P. Cannon, who went on to form the Trotskyist movement in the United States. He retained the same hierarchical understanding of the relationship between an international center and member parties, except he switched allegiance from the Comintern to the pope-like authority of Leon Trotsky.
Let us examine the case of Jay Lovestone's fall from leadership of the American Communist Party to illustrate how harmful Stalin's heavy-handed interventions were.
In the 1920's, Bukharin was the top leader of the Communist Party and the Comintern. Bukharin spoke for the right wing of the Bolshevik party and had allowed the NEP to get out of hand. Rich peasants withheld their grain from Soviet authorities and food riots began to appear. Stalin allied with Bukharin for most of the 1920's but grew alarmed at the threat posed by the Kulaks. Stalin broke with Bukharin and lurched far to the ultraleft. He destroyed Bukharin politically while preparing a war against the Kulaks.
The moves against Bukharin did not appear all at once and it was Lovestone's misfortune to back him long after clues had come out of the Kremlin that Bukharin was in disfavor. The sixth world congress of the Comintern marked the beginning of the end for both Bukharin and any of his international supporters.
It was difficult for Americans to figure out what was going on behind the hearsay and gossip emanating from the Kremlin. People rose up the party ladder on the basis of their ability to anticipate Stalin's moves. James P. Cannon said, "They were required to 'guess' what it meant and to adapt themselves in time. Selections of people and promotions were made by the accuracy of their guesses at each stage of development in the factional struggle. Those who guessed wrong or didn't guess at all were discarded. The guessing game was played to perfection in the period of Stalin's preparation to dump Bukharin. I don't think many people knew what was really going on and what was already planned at the time of the Sixth Congress."
A faction opposed to Lovestone in the American party submitted a document called "The Right Danger in the American Party". It basically accused Lovestone of overestimating the power of US capitalism and underestimating the militancy of American workers. This faction included William Z. Foster, future CP leader, and James P. Cannon, future Trotskyist leader. This document tied Lovestone politically to the fading Bukharin. Lovestone, not sensitive to the power shifts already taking place in the Kremlin, told this gathering of the Comintern that yes, indeed, he did solidarize himself with Bukharin. At that point Stalin put a check-mark next to Lovestone's name in his little black book.
At the December 1928 plenum of the American party, Lovestone, commenting on the conjunctural situation of American capitalism, invoked Bukharin's authority: "What did Comrade Bukharin say about this? I still quote Comrade Bukharin. For me he does not represent the Right wing of the Communist International; although for some he does. For me Comrade Bukharin represents the Communist line, the line of the C.E.C. of the C.P.S.U. Therefore Comrade Bukharin is an authority--of the C.I." Stalin became enfuriated when he heard this.
Lovestone eventually began to get nervous over growing signs that Bukharin was on the outs. He decided to send his friend and old classmate from City College, Bertram Wolfe, over to the Kremlin to serve as American representative to the Comintern. (Wolfe, as Lovestone, eventually became a professional anti-Communist.)
Wolfe learned immediately that Stalin had plans to remove the Lovestone leadership. When Wolfe attempted to see Stalin to clear the air, Stalin refused to meet with him. When Wolfe tried to meet with Bukharin, Kremlin authorities told him that Bukharin was too sick to meet with anybody. Wolfe, who had become ill himself, did learn of a special presidium set for discussion of these problems on a day's notice. He stayed up the whole night, with a temperature of 104, drinking coffee and vodka, and preparing his defense of the Lovestone majority.
The next day he spoke under great emotional and physical stress. After a half hour, he collapsed at the podium. Only one person in the vast assembly, Eliena D. Stassova, head of the International Red Aid, came forward to assist him. She gave him two aspirins and pleaded with him to stop his speech. Wolfe refused unless the meeting was postponed. The presidium refused postponement and the feverish Wolfe continued with his speech.
A few days later, Wolfe bumped into Bukharin in front of the Hotel Lux, where Comintern officials lived. Wolfe confessed surprise at the hale and hearty appearance of the reputedly ailing Bukharin. Bukharin answered sardonically, "By a vote of five to four, I am too ill to function as Chairman of the Communist International."
On the eve of the Sixth Convention of the American Communist Party, Lovestone's strength seemed formidable. There were 104 delegates, and 95 supported Lovestone. There were two delegates whose votes were more important than all the rest combined, and whom Lovestone could never persuade. They were the Comintern's representatives to the convention: Philipp Dengel, a German CP'er and Harry Pollitt from England. Wolfe, the American representative to the Comintern, had not learned that the Kremlin had sent the two to the convention.
Dengel and Pollitt proposed to the convention that William Z. Foster, a member of the tiny minority faction, replace Lovestone. Stalin directed Lovestone to report to Moscow where he would function in the Comintern. Lovestone, to his credit, went ballistic and for the first--and last--time in the history of American Communist, a convention decided to disobey the Comintern.
Lovestone decided to have a showdown with Stalin in order to defend the legitimacy of his leadership. He put together a "proletarian delegation," headed by Lovestone and two other leaders, Benjamin Gitlow and Max Bedacht. The delegation also included William Miller, a Detroit machinist; Tom Mysercough, a mine organizer; William J. White, a steel organizer; Alex Noral, a farm expert; Ella Reeve Bloor, an organizer from California; Otto Huiswould and Edward Welsh, African-Americans.
The American Commission heard from delegations from the majority and minority factions in America. The commission included Stalin himself who generally remained aloof from such matters. This signaled its importance. Lovestone spoke for the majority and Foster for the pro-Stalin minority.
Stalin eventually delivered his judgment on the issues in a speech on May 6, 1929. He was conciliatory to the majority politically, especially in light of Lovestone's perceptible shift to the right, but insisted on handing control of the party over to the Foster minority. When it came time for the American delegation to vote on Stalin's proposal, Lovestone declared: "Whatever work is given to me I will do. But we have a deep conviction that such as an organizational proposal as the one aiming to take me away from our Party today is not a personal matter but a slap and slam in the face of the entire leadership."
The Lovestone majority composed more than ninety percent of the party. This did not impress Stalin. He explained in a speech to the delegation what the true relationship between the American Communists and the Kremlin was. "You declare you have a certain majority in the American Communist Party and that you will retain that majority under all circumstances. That is untrue, comrades of the American delegation, absolutely untrue. You had a majority because the American Communist Party until now regarded you as the determined supporters of the Communist International. And it was only because the Party regarded you as the friends of the Comintern that you had a majority in the ranks of the American Communist Party. But what will happen if the American workers learn that you intend to break the unity of the ranks of the Comintern and are thinking of conducting a fight against its executive bodies-- that is the question, dear comrades? Do you think that the American workers will follow your lead against the Comintern, that they will prefer the interests of your factional group to the interests of the Comintern? There have been numerous cases in the history of the Comintern when its most popular leaders, who had greater authority than you, found themselves isolated as soon as they raised the banner against the Comintern. Do you think you will fare better than these leaders? A poor hope, comrades! At present you still have a formal majority. But tomorrow you will have no majority and you will find yourselves completely isolated if you attempt to start a fight against the decisions of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. You may be certain of that, dear comrades."
Later in the day, Stalin became more blunt. He told Wolfe, "Who do you think you are? Trotsky defied me. Where is he? Bukharin defied me. Where is he? And you? When you get back to America, nobody will stay with you except your wives." He also warned the Americans that the Russians knew how to handle strike-breakers: "There is plenty of room in our cemeteries."
After Stalin completed his fulminations, he strode toward the American delegation and offered his hand to Edward Welsh, an African-American delegate. Welsh turned to Lovestone and asked loudly, "What the hell does this guy want?" and refused to shake Stalin's hand.
In the following year, nearly everybody in the party lined up with Foster, because they saw that Lovestone was in disfavor. The American Communist Party certainly did not heed the advice Lenin gave to Zinoviev in an unpublished letter. "If you are going to expel all the not very obedient but clever people, and retain only the obedient fools, you will most assuredly ruin the party."
If the Communist Party were merely the creature of the Kremlin described above, we could conclude our discussion. The writings of Theodore Draper supplied much of the information in the section above. Draper was a historian who tended to focus on the control of the Kremlin over Communist Party leaderships. History, for Draper, revolves around such relationships.
We have to look at the CP dialectically. There was a whole other side to the CP at the grass-roots level that we can characterize as dynamic, militant and successful. People like Maurice Isserman and Mark Naison, part of a new generation of historians, have begun to focus on this aspect of CP history. Studying the writings of historians such as these is very important to those of us who are trying to construct a new socialist movement in the United States. More can be learned from their writings about how socialists can reach the masses than all of the literature generated by American Trotskyism.
In an essay "Remaking America: Communists and Liberals in the Popular Front", Naison discusses how the CP made the decision to implement the Popular Front in a very aggressive manner. Browder and the American Communists made a big effort to stop speaking in "Marxist-Leninese" and discovered many novel ways to reach the American people.
They concentrated in two important areas: building the CIO and fighting racism. There is an abundance of information about its union activities, but new research is bringing out important facts about its links to the Black community.
A "Saturday Evening Post" writer observed in 1938 that CP headquarters "is a place where every Negro with a grievance can be sure of prompt action. If he has been fired, the Communists can be counted on to picket his employer. If he has been evicted, the Communists will guard his furniture and take his case to court. If his gas has been cut off, the Communists will take his complaint, but not his unpaid bill to the nearest office... There is never a labor parade, nor a mass meeting of any significance in the colored community in which Communists do not get their banner in the front row and their speakers on the platform."
On the cultural front, the CP dropped its traditional rigidity in the most amazing fashion. In 1936, for example, the "Daily Worker" actually polled its readers to see if they wanted a regular sports page. When they voted in favor six to one, the paper hired Lester Rodney, who was not even a party member. Rodney, largely on his own initiative, opened up a campaign to integrate major league baseball.
John Hammond, a friend of the CP, put together a series of Carnegie Hall concerts that brought the best jazz talent together in an interracial setting. The success of these concerts inspired Hammond to such an extent that he started a nightclub called Cafe Society that also invited a racially mixed audience. On opening night, Teddy Wilson, Billie Holiday and the comedian Jack Gilford performed.
The party also spawned a new folk music culture. On the west coast, Woody Guthrie offered his services to California farm workers organizing under party auspices. Eventually Guthrie wrote a column in the west coast CP daily newspaper.
On the east coast, the party drew the black folksinger Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly) close to its ranks. He was a fixture at parties and meetings. Eventually Leadbelly made a disciple of a 21 year old journalist-musician by the name of Pete Seeger. Naison observes, "Guthrie, Ledbetter and Seeger, employing rhythms and harmonies harking back to 16th century England and Africa, but writing of contemporary themes, created music that both sentimentalized and affirmed the populist aspirations of US radicals, enabling them to feel part of the country they were trying to change."
As the Popular Front deepened, party leader Earl Browder began to become more and more infatuated with the idea of the CP functioning semi-officially as part of the New Deal administration. When the Popular Front period started, he advocated support of the petty-bourgeois Farmer-Labor party. He soon came to realize that open support for FDR made more sense. There was lingering support in the CPUSA for the Farmer-Labor party when this overture was first presented to the party. Daily Worker editor Clarence Hathaway was calling for an orientation to the Farmer-Labor party as late as 1937.
Browder was for FDR all the way and took his case to Moscow, where it was presented to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) in April, 1937. The delegation included William Z. Foster who resisted open support for FDR. The Comintern listened to the two arguments pro and con FDR and realized that Browder's plan dove-tailed with the USSR's foreign policy needs more closely. If war broke out, allies would be necessary and what better ally could there be than an American president who depended on Communists for a base of support. The Comintern approved Browder's proposals.
Foster was not happy. He continued his campaign against Browder. He appealed once again to the Comintern at the end of the year. Foster argued that if the CPUSA was going to be taken seriously as a member of a Popular Front, it should be accepted as a party, like the CP of France had been accepted into Leon Blum's Popular Front. Foster accused Browder of "tailing" FDR.
The Comintern considered the Foster-Browder dispute for two weeks before coming to a conclusion. It sided with Browder and stated, that his approach to major political and tactical questions was correct and "with this Comrade Foster should also agree." At this point, Foster entered the Comintern's doghouse. Dmitri Manuilsky, a Soviet Communist leader, enumerated Foster's shortcomings in public. Eugene Dennis, the American party's Comintern representative, taunted Foster by reminding him that Browder's position enjoyed domestic and international support.
And so Browder enjoyed Kremlin backing for the next 8 years until 1946 when the vicissitudes of the Cold War forced Stalin to shift to the left. Browder's pro-Democratic Party orientation became an inconvenience at this point and it was unlikely that someone as deeply committed to bourgeois politics would be tractable enough to move the American party in the sharp leftward direction that under way.
So Browder was dumped.
The way he was dumped will tell you a lot about the unsavory character of the world Communist movement under Stalin. In April, 1946 the theoretical journal of the French Communist Party published a scathing attack by Jacque Duclos, second in command of the party, on Browder. It took him completely by surprise. The article included quotes from numerous internal documents of the American party that only could have been made available from Moscow. Put bluntly, the Kremlin broke Communist discipline by supplying the French hack with these documents behind the back of the American party.
The crowning irony, of course, is that the French party itself was deeply compromised by the same sort of politics as Browder's. The French CP dissolved its armed Resistance detachments, the true state power in France in 1945 and threw its support behind DeGaulle as part of the negotiations between Stalin and the West at Yalta and Potsdam.
Browder was a remarkable figure. When and if the American people can ever get it together to build an authentic revolutionary party, the example of the American CP during the Browder years will be worthy of study. Browder insisted on the need for American socialists to be able to communicate with the working class in terms that they could understand. He was dead-set opposed to jargon and ultra-left sectarianism, god bless him. As I have stated a million times before, the Popular Front is a period that much good can be learned from. It was a period of "tailing" FDR; it was also a period when Communists sank roots in working class communities and fought racism and injustice.
The party we need to be build in the United States will have to build exactly the same kinds of ties to labor, the black community and artists and intellectuals. Except this time we will not have to answer to the Kremlin, only to the American people.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)