Paul Hampton begins a review article looking at the main documents and themes in John Riddellâs Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Haymarket 2012).
Toward the United Front is a tremendous work of scholarship in the tradition of David Riazanov. Its 1,300 pages repay reading â it is a manual for revolutionary socialist strategy, in the words of many of its finest representatives.
The Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern), which took place in Russia in November-December 1922, was perhaps the greatest gathering of Marxists ever to assemble. Present were Lenin, Trotsky, Radek, Zinoviev, Preobrazhensky, Krupskaya, Marchlewski, Bukharin and others from the Russian Communist party. They debated with Zetkin, Gramsci, Rosmer, Serge, Souvarine, Meyer, Nin, Thalheimer, Tresso, Eberlein and Murphy from European Communist parties, Cannon and Swabeck from the US, as well as Asian Marxists such as Katayama Sen, Chen Duxiu, Tan Malaka, Liu Renjing and MN Roy. The clash of ideas was evident throughout, with âleftâ criticism from Bela Kun, Varga, Bordiga, Fischer and Urbahns. In total, 350 delegates from parties in 61 countries met for a month to hammer out global socialist strategy.
The African-American poet Claude McKay confessed with too much hyperbole that he feared speaking to âsuch an intellectually developed and critically minded world audienceâ more than facing a lynch-mob. In his closing speech, Zinoviev said that it was the first time the Comintern had met as âa genuinely international world partyâ and that the congress was âa great university for us allâ. Arguably the Fourth Congress was the most important Comintern meeting, with the greatest relevance to todayâs socialists, because it discussed strategy and tactics in circumstances of retreat but before the Comintern itself was ossified and cauterised by Stalinism.
Riddellâs volume contains for the first time in English all the speeches and resolutions from the main proceedings. These texts are particularly important for the Marxist tradition developed by Workersâ Liberty. Our forerunners published translations of parts of the congress record in the 1970s, when the texts were hard to find in English, in an effort to learn from the experiences of these revolutionaries. Reading the volume helps understand why we use terms like transitional demands, the united front and the workersâ government.
The watchword of the congress was, in the words of Clara Zetkin, âClarity, clarity and again clarity!â The sentiment was echoed by the youth leader Richard SchĂŒller, who recalled the old slogan: âFirst clarity, then majorityâ. Their underlining conception of hegemony was clear: Communist Parties sought to win the majority of the organised labour movement to their ideas as part of a strategy to win the majority of workers to self-liberation. But Communists did not stop at that: the intention was to win the leadership of all struggles against oppression and for democracy; they discussed the role of peasants, womenâs liberation, anti-imperialism, racism and the national question.
There were a number of areas where the congress refined important Marxist ideas.
Delegates elucidated the meaning of perspectives in terms of the global political-economic situation, the balance of class forces and the conjuncture they found themselves in. From this assessment of reality, in which large and sometimes mass Communist parties had been formed but nowhere outside Russia did they represent more than a minority of workers, they elaborated strategies to win the majority of workers, as well as other oppressed groups.
A further field of development was the Marxist âholy trinityâ, of the programme (including transitional demands), the united front and the crowning demand for a workersâ government. These informed assessments of fascism, of relations with other workersâ parties as well as work in the trade unions.
The discussion of the international political situation at the Fourth Congress took place on the same ground as laid down by the Third Comintern Congress in June-July 1921. The basic assessment, made by Leon Trotsky, was that the post-war revolutionary wave had ebbed, capitalism had temporarily stabilised, the working class was on the defensive and the Communist parties were in a minority. At the Fourth Congress, Trotsky expressed it in the following way: âAn Italian journalist once asked me how we assess the world situation at present. I gave the following banal answer: âCapitalism is no longer capable of ruling... The working class is not yet capable of taking power, that is the distinctive feature of our timeââ.
Karl Radek shared this assessment. He said: âWhat characterises the world we live in is that although world capitalism has not overcome its crisis, and the question of power is still objectively the core of every question, the broadest masses of the proletariat have lost the belief that they can conquer political power in the foreseeable future.â Tersely, he told the congress: âThe conquest of power is not on the agenda as an immediate taskâ.
In his report of the Comintern executive committee, Gregorii Zinoviev proposed that âthe Fourth Congress merely confirm the theses of Trotsky and Varga at the Third Congress on the economic situationâ.
There was however some difference of emphasis among the Bolsheviks about the time-scale of these perspectives. Zinoviev argued that âwhat we are now experiencing is not one of capitalismâs periodic crises but the crisis of capitalism, its twilight, its disintegrationâ. The resolution On the Tactics of the Comintern stated that âWhat capitalism is experiencing today is nothing other than its downfall. The collapse of capitalism is inevitableâ. However, Trotsky warned that âif the capitalist world lasts another several decades, well, that would be a sentence of death for socialist Russiaâ and Radek stated that the policies of the Communist International âembrace a perspective for an entire epoch, but must still be cut to the shape of the next immediate periodâ.
Another aspect of assessing the global capitalist system at the congress was the comments about imperialism.
The Second Congress in 1920 had largely adopted a Leninist analysis of imperialism, dividing the world mostly into oppressor imperial states and oppressed colonies. What was noticeable at the Fourth Congress was the virtual absence of references to Leninâs views, even though his pamphlet Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism had been published in German and French in 1920 (it was first published in English in 1928).
Instead, most contributions appear to have been influenced by Rosa Luxemburgâs very different theory of imperialism. Willem van Ravesteyn, the main reporter on the âEastern Questionâ, made this connection explicit: âComrades, our unforgettable pioneer and theoretician Rosa Luxemburg provided proof in her greatest and best theoretical work that the process of capital accumulation cannot take place without a surrounding non-capitalist territory, on which it acts destructively. In other words, without older, precapitalist modes of production that it destroysâ. He added later: âBecause the liberation of the Islamic and other Eastern peoples signifies that their tribute to European capitalism immediately ceases. The accumulation of capital cannot proceed without this tributeâ.
Similarly, August Thalheimer quoted Luxemburg and criticised Kautsky, Hilferding and Lenin on imperialism. Even Nikolai Bukharin, who had criticised Luxemburgâs book on imperialism, argued that the growth of capitalism was based âessentially on bourgeoisieâs colonial policy and the flowering of industry on the European continent was rooted mainly in the exploitation of the colonial peoplesâ.
Some of these conceptions were also articulated in the supplementary theses at the Second Congress in 1920. The author of those theses was the Indian Communist MN Roy. However at the Fourth Congress he introduced some dissent. He argued: âImperialism is right now making the attempt to save itself through the development of industry in colonial countries... India... was during the war permitted adequate industrial development⊠Of course we can raise the objection that this cannot happen, because it is in imperialismâs interests to keep the colonial countries backward in order to absorb all goods produced in the dominant countries. Well and good, but that is a very mechanical way to view the questionâ.
This rebuke is an important counter to dependency-type theories of imperialism that have carried over to today. Capitalism has been able to develop without colonies since World War Two and capitalist development has not been confined to core European and North American states. To deny capitalist development across the globe, or that many states are not really politically independent, that they remain neo-colonies are both theoretically wrong in the present but also effectively arguments used to justify workersâ subordination to nationalist forces.
A somewhat underdeveloped assessment was made of the nature of fascism. The discussion was highly prescient. A month before the gathering, Mussolini had organised his march on Rome and had come to power in Italy. Getting to grips with this development was vital for the whole international.
A number of comments at the Fourth Congress indicated that a specific analysis of fascism was still lacking. Amadeo Bordiga, leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), argued that âfascism does not represent any new political doctrineâ and that âour analysis leads to the conclusion that fascism has added nothing to the traditional ideology and programme of bourgeois politicsâ. In his opening report, Zinoviev gave unstinting praise to the Italian party despite the defeat it had suffered: âIf we were to develop a policy manual for Communist parties, then Italy will provide the most important chapter, the most important exampleâ .
However, this line was contested. Two days before the opening session, the German Communist party (KPD) adopted a motion instructing its delegation to urge an international campaign against fascism. Delegates from Germany, Switzerland, and Czechoslovakia raised the issue during the congress proceedings. Bukharin argued that âfascism is not merely an organisational form that the bourgeois had in the past; it is a newly discovered form that is adapted to the new movement by drawing in the massesâ. Similarly, Radek said that the fascists represented bourgeois counter-revolution, were wreckers of workersâ organisations who maintained the power of the bourgeoisie. He said: âI believe Mussolini is something different [from other bourgeois politicians]... and his distinctive character is extremely importantâ.
By the time it came to the debate on Italy, Zinoviev had changed his tune and adopted the main points of his adversaries. He criticised the PCI for making âgross errorsâ such as failing to work with the Arditi del Popolo to form workersâ defence guards. Instead he said the united front against fascism was needed. However, Zinoviev still managed to equate social democracy with fascism, in terms that would be adopted disastrously by Stalinâs third period during the rise of Hitler.
Although some progress had been made, it was still a long way from Trotskyâs more sophisticated assessment in the early 1930s.