Theses on Tactics and Strategy – and the lessons of March 1921 in Germany

In this post, I have summarised the “Theses on Tactics and Strategy” agreed by the Third Comintern Congress, particularly emphasising the discussions at the Congress on the lessons of the defeated 1921 'March Action' in Germany.

Posters from the 1921 March Action 

These Theses on Tactics, drafted by the Russian delegation, but finalised in consultation with the German delegation in particular, were introduced by Radek. They can be read in full online but, in brief summary only, these are some of the key points raised within them:

• To emphasise, drawing on the ‘World Perspectives’ previously presented by Trotsky to the Congress, that tactics and strategy needed to recognise that world capitalism had manged to weather the immediate post-war storm. However, there was no prospect of it securing a sustained period of stability and that workers’ struggles would therefore again intensify.
• That the key task of the International was to “gain decisive influence over the majority of the working class”, adding that “The Communist International does not aim to form small Communist sects seeking to exert influence on the working masses through propaganda and agitation. Rather, from the earliest days after its formation, it has clearly and unambiguously pursued the goal of taking part in the struggles of the working masses, leading these struggles in a Communist direction, and, through the struggle, forming large, tested, mass revolutionary Communist parties”.
• That “the Communist International is on the road to forming mass Communist parties, but it is far from having gone far enough”. (The theses went on to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of its sections in a number of key countries).
• That “the Communist parties have to advance demands whose achievement meets an immediate, urgent need of the working class, and fight for these demands regardless of whether they are compatible with the capitalist profit system” [an approach later developed in more depth by Trotsky in his “Transitional Programme”].
• After listing the threat from organised strikebreaking and fascist bands in a number of countries, that “Communists are obliged to rally the best and most active forces in the factories and trade unions to create their own workers’ contingents and defence organisations in order to resist the Fascists and deter the ‘gilded youth’ of the bourgeoisie from harassing strikers”.
• Further, that “acts of individual terror may represent symptoms of revolutionary indignation that must be defended against the lynch justice of the bourgeoisie and its Social Democratic lackeys. However, they are in no way conducive to raising the proletariat’s level of organisation and readiness for struggle, because they awaken in the masses the illusion that the heroic deeds of individuals can replace the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat”. [see, for example, the actions led by individuals like Max Hoeltz below]

However, perhaps the key point that the Theses sought to draw out, and address, was – although with wording that could also satisfy some of the ‘left’ pressure to highlight the need for ‘offensive’ struggle when appropriate  – was the danger of sections of the International impatiently trying to artificially accelerate the tempo of events without having first prepared and won broad support for proposed actions amongst the working-class as a whole.

The Theses made clear:

• That, yes, mass Communist Parties “must do everything necessary to bring the working masses into a struggle for their interests” although “the struggle’s goals must grow out of the specific situation and be comprehensible to the masses”. They are also “obligated to broaden every defensive struggle of any depth and breadth into an attack on capitalist society … to do everything possible, when conditions are appropriate, to lead the working masses directly into this struggle”.
• However, “taking the offensive depends, first, on an intensification of struggles, both nationally and internationally, within the bourgeois camp itself. When struggles within the bourgeois camp have grown to proportions that make it possible that the working class will be facing divided enemy forces, the party has to seize the initiative, in order, after careful political and – if possible – organisational preparation, to lead the masses into struggle”.
• Further, “the second condition for offensive attacks on a broad scale is an intensive ferment in the decisive sectors of the working class that provides grounds for hope that the class will be ready to struggle against the capitalist government in unified fashion. When the movement is growing, the slogans of the struggle should become more comprehensive. Similarly, if the movement is receding, the Communist leadership of the struggle has the duty of leading the masses out of the struggle in as orderly and unified a fashion as possible”.
• And critically, “whether the Communist Party is on the defensive or the offensive depends on the specific circumstances” but that, in the ‘March Action’ in Germany, “the party made a number of errors. The most serious of these was that it did not clearly stress the defensive character of the struggle. Instead, its call for an offensive was utilised by the unscrupulous enemies of the proletariat to denounce the VKPD to the proletariat for instigating a putsch.”

It is this latter point that I will concentrate on in the rest of this post, particularly looking at the debates around the ‘March events’ of 1921 in Germany.

France – why the French Communists were not in a position to propose resisting the ‘call-up’

Before focusing on Germany, it’s worth noting another example of mistaken tactics highlighted in the Theses – this time by some of the French Communists. The Theses warned how “impatient and politically inexperienced revolutionary forces attempt to apply extreme methods - more appropriate to a decisive revolutionary proletarian uprising – to individual issues and tasks, such as the proposal to appeal to conscripts in the army’s class of 1919 to resist the military call-up. If put into practice, such methods set back for a long time genuine revolutionary preparation of the proletariat for winning power”.

A debate on the “call-up” issue had taken place just prior to the World Congress, at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI). Laporte, from the French Young Communists, had argued that the French party should be calling on youth to resist conscription orders into the French army. Trotsky, backed up by Lenin, had pointed out why this would be a mistake, in opposition to the ‘leftist’ Béla Kun from Hungary, who had backed Laporte’s position.

In his speech to the ECCI in reply to Laporte, Trotsky pointed out that a Party could only make such a call when it was confident that it was in a position to back-up youth who would otherwise be executed for their refusal – and that would have to mean being ready to take revolutionary action to take on the French state. But that was not – yet – the situation in France.

 “The proposed action is to refuse to obey the military call-up. In other words, an action that is permissible for a proletarian party only when the working class is on the verge of revolution. Only under those conditions can the conscripts called up into the army defy this order. This would have been justified, politically and historically, only in circumstances where the entire class to which the party belongs was drawn into a decisive revolutionary movement.

It is not enough to have intense revolutionary feelings. Clear-headed revolutionary thinking is needed. … you say that when the president of France issued the decree for mobilisation, the time had come to tell the workers to make the revolution. It’s up to you to demonstrate that to us, to show us that when the president signed the decree mobilising the class of 1919, the moment had come for social revolution in France – a moment determined by the entire economic and political situation, by the state of mind of the working class, by the party’s capacities and state of organisation …

… What would have happened if the party had actually acted on your appeal …  the bravest ones would be executed, and the others would obey the decree – isn’t that true? And what would be the result? For the party, the result would be completely disastrous, because it would be shown by this action to be a part of purely verbal demagogy, because – at a critical moment, when it does not have the capacity to make the revolution – it turned to the youth. And in so doing, it indicated to the capitalist state who were the bravest among these youth, saying, ‘Kill them.’”

However, Trotsky adds that he understood the frustrations of the young comrades like Laporte, with their genuine determination to bring about a revolution, at a French party leadership that didn’t always show that determination, particularly in challenging the ‘anti-political’ syndicalist tendencies within the French trade unions. However, “the comrades making criticisms [like Laporte], while imbued with a desire to make the revolution, have not gained a full understanding of the conditions that make it possible”.

Lenin also intervened in the ECCI debate in a sharp reply to Béla Kun where he stated that, “I have come here in order to protest the speech by Comrade Béla Kun in which he attacked Comrade Trotsky instead of defending him, as he was obligated to do if he was a real Marxist”.

Germany – learning lessons from the March Action of 1921

However, the chief example of the dangers of impatiently trying to force events had been the ‘March Action’ of the German Communists (the VKPD) in March 1921 in response to a deliberately provocative mobilisation of armed police into one of its strongholds.

The events had ended in a serious defeat which was already leading to in a collapse in the membership of the German party. With these events having taken place just three months before the Third Congress, and in such an important section of the International, differences over the tactics and strategy that had been employed were understandably to the fore in the Congress debate.

The wording of the Theses had been drafted in consultation with the German and other delegations, in an attempt to get an agreed Congress position in response to this setback. However, it was clear that while most Congress delegates recognised that the tactics that the VKPD had adopted had been in error, some delegates, for example from the German and Italian delegations, supported the actions that had been taken.

Trotsky explained in his contribution how the Theses had been drawn up: “We conducted lengthy, exhaustive, and at times impassioned negotiations and discussions over the theses, including with members of the German delegation. Various proposals were made, including by the German delegation, in a process of mutual concessions. Our theses are the result of this rather laborious process. I do not claim that these theses were approved by every party, group, and tendency, but I do say that from our point of view, the theses were viewed as a compromise in the sense of a modification to the left. I will take up later just what this term ‘left’ signifies. For now, I want only to stress emphatically that we view the theses as the limit of the concessions to the [minority] current represented here”.

He also stressed that, while some personal clashes were inevitable in such an impassioned debate, the focus had to be on the political conclusions – and, not just for German comrades, but for every section of the International to discuss and take on board because, “the German party is the first in what we, from our Russian geographical point of view, regard as Western Europe that has developed into an independent, firmly defined, large party and has, for the first time, led a major independent action. And because the new, very new Italian party and the larger French organisation that is also very new as a Communist Party confront conditions that are very similar in this respect, I believe that every delegation, and especially those I have mentioned, have a great deal to learn from this question”.

What had happened in March 1921?

A document agreed by the Fourth International in 1936 summarised the background to the events of March 1921 – and the position taken on it by the Third Congress – as follows:

“Opportunist centrism, which did not lead the masses but wanted to be led by them, found its complement in ultra-radicalism, which instead of winning the masses from within by cooperation in their organisations, their struggles, and experiences, put an ultimatum to them from outside. These ultra-lefts declared themselves against participation in parliamentary elections, for leaving the mass trade unions and forming “pure” revolutionary unions, and for isolated action of the vanguard. These tendencies led in Germany to the formation of the KAPD (Communist Workers’ Party of Germany) in 1920.

But even the official Communist Party of Germany had not been able to rid itself of adventuristic tendencies. This was shown, above all, in the course of the March events when the party, instead of confining itself to defensive tactics against the provocative challenge of the Social Democrats in the government, led the isolated vanguard to an armed offensive and suffered shipwreck.

But the greatest danger was that now a whole school of theorists had established itself in the party who transformed the tactics of March into a principle (Thalheimer, Froelich, Maslow, Koenen, etc.) The Third Congress condemned ultra-left adventures and issued the slogan, “To the masses,” recognising that the first great post-war wave (1917-1920) was now ebbing, and that a breathing space had occurred which it was necessary to utilise by preparing better and more thoroughly for the coming struggles”.

To explain the actual events in more detail, I have drawn on Pierre Broué’s comprehensive study of the German Revolution, alongside the personal notes that Trotsky made at the time which provide another useful resource.

The events need to be placed in the context of the convulsive situation in Germany after the World War and the defeated German Revolution of 1918-19.  The capitalists had become more confident that they could push back the potentially mighty German workers’ movement but then saw how an attempted right-wing coup – the “Kapp Putsch” of March 1920 – had been defeated by a mass general strike.

While workers’ discontent remained high, by 1921, Trotsky’s notes commented that “a certain relative equilibrium seems to have been established. The apparatus of the bourgeois state has acquired a certain self-confidence”, while, at the same time, “the apparatus of Social-Democracy and the trade unions have regained a relative stability and have once again become the principal factor of passivity and conservatism in the working masses”.

In this situation, Trotsky notes, with the more ‘advanced’ sections of the workers being held back by their leaders, it was the less historically organised, more ‘backward’ layers of the class that were quickest to display their anger, for example the unemployed and the miners of Saxony.

The mining area of Mansfeld had seen ongoing clashes taking place ever since the Kapp putsch. As well as strikes, action had included armed raids, with the ‘Robin Hood’ style guerilla actions led by Max Hoeltz gaining popularity. 

(Hoeltz had left the KPD for the KAPD [see Trotsky above] – a party who were still invited to attend the Third Comintern Congress as a sympathising section, but whose ultra-leftism had been criticised by Lenin in his "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder”. Following Hoeltz’s arrest after the March Action, the Third Comintern Congress passed a motion recognising him as a “brave fighter” but also as one who “did not act wisely”).

In mid-March 1921, Hörsing, the Social Democrat security chief, decided to send in police forces to occupy the Mansfeld area to ‘restore order’. As Broué puts it, “the official explanation of Hörsing’s measure was that it was to put a stop to the rise in crimes ranging from theft to sabotage and attacks on the security staff in factories. However, there was no doubt that Hörsing’s real aim was to disarm the workers – who had kept their weapons after the Kapp Putsch – and, at the same time, to break up a Communist stronghold”.

A thousand police moved in on March 19^th. The German Communists (VKPD) called on workers to mount armed resistance, and, by March 21^st, for the sporadic strikes that had broken out in response to the police occupation to be turned into a complete general strike. But the strikers found themselves in a minority and the general strike did not materialise.

As Trotsky’s notes put it, “Hörsing’s police offensive … was by all accounts not understood by the masses as the beginning of a campaign by the counter-revolution against the proletariat as a whole … and the analysis of Hörsing’s action made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party (irrespective of whether this analysis was at the given moment correct) was not able to be assimilated by the masses as the decisive motivation for action as a consequence of the absence of solid facts as also as a consequence of the extreme brevity of preparatory agitation”.

The VKPD and KAPD sought to organise protest actions across the rest of Germany, including a joint demonstration in Berlin, but that had been poorly supported. On March 24^th, they called for a nationwide general strike, which they tried to enforce through mobilising sympathetic workers and the unemployed to picket factory gates. Perhaps a few hundred thousand stopped work but, again, overall, the call was a failure.

To show how far the VKPD had misjudged the mood of the organised workers, Broué gives the example of Wilhelm Sült, a VKPD union steward who had led a strike in Berlin’s power stations in the previous year, backed by an overwhelming vote of 1800 to just 60 against. However, now Sült failed to win backing for action. At the end of the March Action, Sült was arrested then shot supposedly ‘while trying to escape’ from the police headquarters. His fellow trade unionists massed for a demonstration at his funeral – yet had not been willing to strike alongside him.

With the mass of the workers failing to respond to calls for action, Hoeltz and another KAPD sympathiser, Karl Plättner, led armed urban guerilla attacks across occupied Saxony instead. But those rash tactics alarmed even some of the KAPD’s most loyal supporters – such as the workers occupying the giant Leuna factory in Halle. In the end, they were one of the last groups of workers to hold out, surrendering under bombardment on 29 March. Eventually, the VKPD ‘Zentrale’ (Central Committee), had to recognise what had long since been the reality, and, on April 1^st, withdrew its call for a ‘general strike’.

Broué records some of the facts resulting from these mistaken tactics – within a few weeks, the VKPD had lost around 200,000 members, i.e. around half of its membership; its newspapers were banned and members arrested; by June, already 400 trade unionists had been sentenced to 1,500 years of hard labour, 4 to death; thousands of strikers were dismissed and blacklisted.

Communists under arrest at the end of the March Action

Had the ‘March Action’ been supported by the Communist International?

To what extent some of the Comintern’s Executive Committee [ECCI] members had encouraged the mistaken tactics of the VKPD in calling the ‘March Action’ is a subject of debate.

Trotsky’s notes recorded the earlier growth in support for the German Communists, support which, with the right tactics and strategy, could have given the German Communists a significant influence. It noted that, “since the bloody battles of 1919 the working class has gone through a molecular process of internal re-grouping whereby its whole accumulated experience has found its most finished external expression in the creation of the Communist Party with a membership of almost half a million”.

This mass party had come about from the fusion of the majority of the USPD ‘Independents’ – whose 1920 Congress in Halle had voted to accept the “21 conditions” of membership set out by the Second Comintern Congress – with the smaller existing German Communist Party (KPD), to form the Unified Communist Party – the VKPD.

But Lenin and Trotsky recognised that, even with that sizeable membership, the German Communists still needed to win the mass of the working-class towards a revolutionary position. That was why the Third Congress resolution on Organisation had welcomed the “united front” approach adopted by the VKPD in the “Open Letter” that it had issued to other parties and trade unions at the start of 1921, proposing a joint struggle on wages and the attacks of the employers. These Theses on Tactics also referred to the Open Letter “as a model of a starting point for campaigns”.

However, Broué and others suggest that others within the ECCI - namely Zinoviev, Bukharin and Radek - had, to a lesser or greater degree, been encouraging the VKPD leadership to ‘take the offensive’, a position which had then led to the disastrous strategy adopted by the VKPD during the March Action.

A memoir from Paul Frölich, part of the German delegation to this Third World Congress, recalled – accurately or otherwise –  that “the mood in leading Russian circles was very depressed … . The civil war had left in its wake scarcely anything but ruins. The war with Poland had led to defeat. The Kronstadt uprising had been a glaring alarm signal. The New Economic Policy (NEP) had been introduced … There was a very strong fear among the Bolsheviks that after the October Revolution, they might now be the pioneers of a capitalist Russia. They yearned for relief from the proletariat of the West”.

What’s clear is that Bela Kun, sent by the ECCI to work with the German party, had a poor record for taking mistaken positions, not least in the course of the Hungarian Revolution itself in 1919. His arrival in Germany certainly helped divert the VKPD from the previous patient ‘united front’ approach of the ‘Open Letter’ to the impatient strategy of ‘taking the offensive’.

However, Frölich stressed that Kun had managed to win support for the VKPD to take to an offensive policy because the German leadership itself also felt this was a correct assessment: “We should guard against the conclusion that the March Action was undertaken either directly or indirectly at the command of the ECCI. At this time, the ECCI had a great moral authority … but they did not yet have in their hands the means of pressure to enforce their directives … We would not have acted — or failed to act — because of a command from them”.

The pre-Congress discussion

Lenin and Trotsky clearly also shared some concerns about the positions taken by some members of the ECCI. Broué gives an account by Trotsky of a pre-Congress discussion at the Russian Party’s Political Bureau where he and Lenin successfully blocked together on the content of the draft texts: “Vladimir Ilyich said at that time: ‘Well, we are forming a new faction.’ During further negotiations as to the text of the resolutions to be introduced, I served as the representative of the Lenin faction whilst Radek represented the Zinoviev faction. . . . Moreover, comrade Zinoviev rather categorically accused Radek at that time of ‘betraying’ his faction in those negotiations; that is, of making presumably too great concessions”.

Broué also recounts the shock the German delegation received when arriving in Moscow for the Third Congress and realising quite how angry Lenin was with them for making such mistakes. No doubt Lenin had gauged that he needed to ‘go in hard’ to make sure his concerns were understood. He quotes from a memoir from Fritz Heckert saying that Lenin told them that “the provocation [by Hörsing] was as clear as day. And, instead of mobilising the masses of workers for defensive aims, in order to repel the attacks of the bourgeoisie and in that way to prove that you have right on your side, you invented your ‘theory of the offensive’, an absurd theory which offers to the police and every reactionary the chance to depict you as the ones who took the initiative in aggression, against which they could pose as the ones defending the people”.

Paul Levi

Broué adds that Lenin and Trotsky also explained to their allies in the German delegation – like Clara Zetkin – that the final text would have to have some degree of compromise to avoid a more serious division. One of those compromises would be for the Congress to confirm the expulsion of Paul Levi, previously one of the KPD leaders and key architect of the ‘Open Letter’ approach. While his opposition to ‘putschism’ might have been correct, Levi had turned his criticisms into a written public attack on the Party and the International following the ‘March Action’.

Broué quotes from Zetkin’s memoirs that Lenin had explained that “He [Levi] did not criticise, but was one-sided, exaggerated, even malicious … He lacks the spirit of solidarity with the party. And it is that which has made the rank and file comrades so angry, and made them deaf and blind to the great deal of truth in Levi’s criticism, particularly to his correct political principles … and so a feeling arose – it also extended to non-German comrades – in which the dispute concerning the pamphlet, and concerning Levi himself, became the sole subject of this contention, instead of the false theory and the bad practice of the ‘offensive theory’ and the ‘leftists’. They have to thank Paul Levi that up to the present they have come out so well, much too well. Paul Levi is his own worst enemy”.

Trotsky also made clear he shared the collective position reached on Levi’s expulsion. In the ‘personal notes’ referred to earlier, Trotsky emphasised that, even though a series of errors had been made by the VKPD leadership, the March Action had, above all, also exposed the treachery of the Social Democrats in attacking the workers’ movement. He added that “if after some unsuccessful economic strike in which the state with its police, press and yellow trade unions assisted the capitalists against the workers – if after such an unsuccessful strike one of the trade union leaders launched a campaign against that trade union accusing it of every deadly sin instead of condemning the yellow leaders, the police, the bourgeoisie and so on, the behaviour of such a … leader would be equivalent to the behaviour of comrade Levi”.

In an article in Pravda in 1922, Trotsky added that “By virtue of his egocentric attitude, Levi had invested his struggle against the crude theoretical and practical mistakes connected with the March events with a character so pernicious that nothing was left for the slanderers among the Independents [the USPD, political opponents of the KPD] to do except to support him and chime in with him. Levi opposed himself not only to the March mistakes but also to the German party and the workers who had committed these mistakes. In his fright lest the party train suffer a wreck in rounding a dangerous curve, Levi fell, because of fear and malice, into such a frenzy and devised such a “tactic” of salvation as sent him flying out of the window and down the embankment. The train, on the other hand, although heavily shaken and damaged, rounded the curve without being derailed. …

... Thereupon Levi decided that the Communist International was unworthy of its name unless it forced the German Communist Party to accept Levi once again as its leader. Levi’s letter to the congress was written in exactly that spirit. There was nothing left for us to do except shrug our shoulders. An individual who talks so heatedly about Moscow’s dictatorial rule, demanded that Moscow by a formal decision impose him upon the Communist Party out of whose ranks he had propelled himself with such remarkable energy”.

What did the agreed Theses say about these ‘March Events’ ?

So, a great deal of energy, effort and discussion were required to produce what, alongside the general line of the Theses as a whole - were, in the end, just four paragraphs under the heading “the Lessons of the March Action”. Knowing the context, it’s easier to appreciate the careful balance that was struck in the final agreed text:

1. It makes clear that the ultimate responsibility for the situation lay with the government: “The March Action was forced on the VKPD by the government’s attack on the proletariat of Central Germany”.
2. However, it also makes clear that errors were made – particularly from those who wanted to insist that “the offensive” was always the correct method of struggle: “In this, the VKPD’s first great struggle since its foundation, the party made a number of errors. The most serious of these was that it did not clearly stress the defensive character of the struggle. Instead, its call for an offensive was utilised by the unscrupulous enemies of the proletariat – the bourgeoisie, the SPD, and the USPD – to denounce the VKPD to the proletariat for instigating a putsch. This error was compounded by a number of party members who contended that, under present conditions, the offensive represented the VKPD’s main method of struggle. The party opposed this error in its newspapers and through its chair, Comrade Brandler”.
3. The final text still described the March Action as a ‘step forward’ - a wording used previously by Radek and Zinoviev in pre-Congress discussion – in the sense that the VKPD had led hundreds of thousands of workers in struggle  – but now had to learn from the experience: “The Third Congress of the Communist International considers that the March Action was a step forward. The March Action was a heroic struggle by hundreds of thousands of proletarians against the bourgeoisie. And by courageously taking the lead in the defence of the workers of Central Germany, the VKPD showed that it is the party of Germany’s revolutionary proletariat. The congress believes that the VKPD will be all the more successful in carrying out mass actions if, in the future, it better adapts its slogans for the struggle to actual conditions, studies these conditions closely, and carries out the actions in unified fashion”.
4. And finally, it approved, and explained, Levi’s expulsion for breach of party discipline: “In order to carefully weigh the possibilities for struggle, the VKPD needs to take into account the facts and considerations that point to the difficulties of a proposed action and work out carefully how they may be countered. But once the party leadership has decided on an action, all comrades must abide by the party’s decisions and carry out this action. Criticism of an action should be voiced only after it has concluded, and then only within the party structures and in its newspapers, and after taking into consideration the party’s situation in relationship to the class enemy. Since Levi disregarded these self-evident requirements of party discipline and conditions for criticism of the party, the congress approves his expulsion from the party and considers any political collaboration with him by members of the Communist International to be impermissible”.

Speeches during the Debate

Of course, as with any compromise, there would inevitably have been delegates, from either side of the debate, that might not have been happy with it, particularly as it included a clear criticism of the “theory of the offensive” which some sections erroneously still really agreed with. 

Zetkin, in her contribution, made her opinion clear that “a large part of the responsibility for the way in which the March Action was handled” lay with the “representative of the Executive” – in other words, calling out Bela Kun without actually naming him.

However, even sharper contributions became inevitable when the German delegation said they would be backing amendments from the Italian and Austrian sections to the agreed draft – clearly stepping back from the compromise position that had been agreed upon.

According to Broué, the German delegate Heckert attacked Lenin and defended the March Action. Appel, on behalf of the KAPD, also launched an attack on the supposedly “opportunist” ‘Open Letter’ of the VKPD. The Italian Terracini attacked Trotsky and argued that, just because a revolutionary party was small, that didn’t prevent it from successfully leading a revolution, giving the example of the Bolshevik Party in 1917 as evidence!

Lenin, in reply, said bluntly that “If the Congress is not going to wage a vigorous offensive against such errors, against such "Leftist" stupidities, the whole movement is doomed”. He defended the ‘Open Letter’ as “a model political step. This is stated in our theses and we must certainly stand by it. It is a model because it is the first act of a practical method of winning over the majority of the working class. In Europe, where almost all the proletarians are organised, we must win the majority of the working class and anyone who fails to understand this is lost to the communist movement.”

Lenin took up Terracini’s points about the size of the Bolsheviks by saying that he “has understood very little of the Russian revolution. In Russia, we were a small party, but we had with us in addition the majority of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country. Do you have anything of the sort? We had with us almost half the army, which then numbered at least ten million men. Do you really have the majority of the army behind you? Show me such a country! If these views of Comrade Terracini are shared by three other delegations, then something is wrong in the International! Then we must say: ‘Stop! There must be a decisive fight! Otherwise, the Communist International is lost’.”

In Trotsky’s contribution, he made clear that, when the Theses said the March Action was a “step forward”, in Trotsky’s view this was because “the Communist Party was no longer an opposition inside the USPD or a Communist propaganda group but a solid, unified, independent, centralised party, and that it is capable of intervening independently in the proletarian struggle, which occurred for the first time in the March Action. … But the congress must tell German workers that it was an error, and that the party’s attempt to play a leading role in a great mass movement was unsuccessful. We must establish that this attempt was unsuccessful, in the sense that if there should be a repetition, this excellent party really could be destroyed”.

In answer to those like Terracini who had defended “the theory of an offensive struggle”, Lenin had made clear that, of course, a revolutionary party ought, in a general sense, be ready to go on the offensive. But Trotsky took up the issue more sharply, saying that “this celebrated philosophy of the offensive, which is completely non-Marxist, has arisen from the following curious outlook: ‘A wall of passivity is gradually rising, which is ruining the movement. So let us advance, and break through this wall!’ …  I believe that in struggling against the so-called Left, we do not at all feel that we are to the right of these ‘Lefts.’ We see no party to the left of us, because we are the International, the Communist, Marxist International, the most revolutionary party possible. That means we are a party that is capable of utilising all situations and all possibilities, not only to conduct struggles but also to achieve victories. That is our true goal. It is sometimes forgotten that we learn the art of strategy, precisely and soberly estimate the enemy’s power, and analyse the situation, rather than rushing into battle to break the wall of passivity or, in the words of another comrade, ‘to activate the party’.”

Trotsky also took up the attacks on the International for being supposedly one where the centre gives orders and, if you don’t obey them, you get expelled – as Levi, for one, was loudly alleging. On the contrary, “it would of course be absurd for the Executive to adopt this tactical philosophy of intensifying struggles through more or less artificial mass actions, sending off orders to this country and that. Quite the contrary. We have now grown strong and thus face the responsibility of leading the mass movement as an independent, centralised party. This places on us the responsibility to analyse the situation in every country quite precisely, with a cool eye, and then – when it is possible and necessary – attack with passionate determination. That is exactly what our proposed theses say”.

But he also stressed that debating where errors may have been made wasn’t about attacking individuals, even if emotions had sometimes run high in the debate. “If everyone could form an opinion on their own, then we would have no need for an International. Our task lies precisely in perceiving a danger even if it is very small, expressing it clearly, drawing attention to it – even, if you will, exaggerating it. For me or you to exaggerate a danger – delivering a warning in a loud voice – is no great problem. But the opposite danger, that of missing such an error, allowing it to grow to the point where it collides against a provocation, leading us into a perilous adventure – that is a great danger indeed. That explains the passion with which many comrades have spoken on this issue”.

In good part thanks to Lenin and Trotsky’s determined intervention, the Congress concluded in voting unanimously in support of the agreed wording on the March Action.

What should the German Communists have done instead in March?

To answer this question, it’s worth looking at a speech that Trotsky gave to a July 1921 meeting of the Moscow Party, recorded as “A School of Revolutionary Strategy”. In this speech, Trotsky notes that “The offensive was in reality launched by the Social-Democratic policeman Hörsing. This should have been utilised in order to unite all the workers for defence, for self-protection, even if, to begin with, a very modest resistance”. Only then, on judging the response to that initial agitation, could a judgement have been made as whether to issue a call for a general strike and perhaps then to move from the ‘defensive’ to the ‘offensive’. 

Alternatively, “should the conditions and the moods of the masses fail to correspond with the more resolute slogans, then it is necessary to sound a retreat, and to fall back to previously prepared positions in as orderly a manner as possible. Therewith we have gained this, that we proved our ability to probe the working masses, we strengthened their internal ties and, what is most important, we have raised the party’s authority for giving wise leadership under all circumstances”.

Before calling on other workers to come to their support, “the party had a chance to rally the workers of Berlin, Dresden and Munich to the aid of the workers of Central Germany – and this could perhaps have been accomplished in the space of a few days, provided there was no leaping over the events, and the masses were led forward systematically and firmly … 

... In the initial stages this support might have assumed varied forms, until the party found itself in a position to issue a generalised slogan of action. The task of agitation consisted in raising the masses to their feet, focusing their attention upon the events in Central Germany, smashing politically the resistance of the labour bureaucracy and thus assuring a genuinely general character of the strike action as a possible base for the further development of the revolutionary struggle”.

No doubt with Bela Kun in mind, Trotsky drew an interesting comparison between the experience of the Russian Bolsheviks and the Hungarian Communists where “circumstances [in Hungary] unfolded in such a way that the Communists gained power almost without any revolutionary struggle. Thereby the questions of revolutionary strategy in the epoch of the struggle for power were naturally reduced to a minimum. … It is not at all accidental that certain prominent Hungarian Comrades, who have rendered big services to the international, reveal a tendency to simplify in the extreme the tactical questions facing the proletariat in a revolutionary epoch; and to replace tactics with a slogan of waging an offensive. … Only a traitor could deny the need of a revolutionary offensive; but only a simpleton would reduce all of revolutionary strategy to an offensive”.

In summary, Trotsky emphasised that the “cold-bloodedly executed” strategy of the leading clique of the German bourgeoisie was clearly to provoke into action and pick-off isolated sections of the working class  – so as to inflict a defeat and then imprison or murder its best activists.  Under these conditions, what is required is “not merely enthusiasm but cool calculation, lucid appraisal, serious preparation” instead of being told that “it is our duty to pursue only the strategy of the offensive, i.e., attack under all conditions because, you see, we have entered the epoch of revolution. This is approximately the same thing as an army commander’s saying: ‘Since we are at war, it is therefore our duty to assume the offensive everywhere and at all times.’”

A final word – to the youth

Trotsky had concluded his speech in the World Congress debate by addressing the understandable impatience of youth who feel that the older generation are being too cautious; “He thinks that I am older, while he is younger. I already have some grey hairs, while he is more determined. He considers it to be a matter of temperament and says, ‘You are too cautious.’ Then I say to myself that the greatest danger lies in the fact that certain comrades do not understand the nature of danger. He is politically inexperienced in a revolutionary sense. ... He thinks we are moving to the right. No, that is not the case … It is a big, complex world, and it is quite a task to figure things out”.

In July, he addressed some of the best of the youth directly at the Second Congress of the Communist Youth International, giving a speech on “The Balance Sheet of the Third Congress” in the knowledge that there would be similar ‘leftist’ tendencies present.

In his speech, he sounded a warning which is worth reflecting on in the conditions facing us today, a century later:

“One must not delude himself that a class which is historically bankrupt in the economic sense loses instantaneously and, as it were, automatically the instruments of its rule. No, on the contrary, historical experience teaches us that whenever a ruling class, which has held power in its hands for centuries, comes face to face with the danger of losing power, its instinct for power becomes sensitive in the extreme; and it is precisely during the epoch of economic decline of the social order, which had been established under the rule of this class, that the ruling class reveals utmost energy and greatest strategical sagacity in maintaining its political position”.

“Many of us imagined the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie much simpler than it actually is, and as reality has now proved to us. … But all the efforts of the bourgeoisie, all the energies expended by it in maintaining class equilibrium, manifest themselves invariably at the expense of the economic soil on which the bourgeoisie rests, at the expense of its economic base.

“The bourgeoisie and the working class are thus located on a soil which renders our victory inescapable – not in the astronomical sense of course, not inescapable like the setting or rising of the sun, but inescapable in the historical sense, in the sense that unless we gain victory all society and all human culture is doomed. History teaches us this. It was thus that the ancient Roman civilization perished. The class of slave-owners proved incapable of leading toward further development. It became transformed into an absolutely parasitic and decomposing class. There was no other class to supersede it and the ancient civilization perished”.

“As warriors of revolution, we are convinced – and the objective facts corroborate us – that we as the working class, that we as the Communist International, will not only save our civilization, the centuries-old product of hundreds of generations, but will raise it to much higher levels of development. However, from the standpoint of pure theory, the possibility is not excluded that the bourgeoisie, armed with its state apparatus and its entire accumulated experience, may continue to fight the revolution until it has drained modern civilization of every atom of every atom of its vitality, until it has plunged modern mankind into a state of collapse and decay for a long time to come”.

But to avoid such an outcome, Trotsky explained, again referring back to the 'March days' in Germany:

“A decisive battle requires a corresponding preparation. … Preparation for us means the creation of such conditions as would secure us the sympathy of the broadest masses. We cannot under any conditions renounce this factor. The idea of replacing the will of the masses by the resoluteness of the so-called vanguard is absolutely impermissible and non-Marxist. Through the consciousness and the will of the vanguard it is possible to exert influence over the masses, it is possible to gain their confidence, but it is impossible to replace the masses by this vanguard. And for this reason, the Third Congress has placed before all the parties, as the most important and unpostponable task, the demand that the majority of the toiling people be attracted to our side”.

“In the March days – and I say this quite openly – we did not have behind us one-fifth or even one-sixth of the working class and we suffered a defeat … But if we were to say today in accordance with the foregoing theory of offensive: only a new offensive can remedy the situation, what do we stand to gain thereby? We shall then have behind us no longer one-sixth of the working class but only that section of the former one-sixth which has remained fit for combat. … Under these conditions we would suffer an even greater and much more dangerous defeat. No, Comrades, after such a defeat we must retreat. In what sense? In the simplest sense. We must say to the working class: Yes, Comrades, on the basis of facts we have become convinced that in this struggle we had only one-sixth of the workers behind us. But we must number at least four-sixths, or two-thirds, in order to seriously think of victory; and to this end we must develop and safeguard those mental, spiritual, material and organisational forces which are our bonds with the class ...

From the standpoint of offensive struggle this signifies a strategic retreat for the sake of preparation. It is absolutely unimportant whether one calls this going leftist or going rightist. It all depends on what one means by these words. If by leftism is understood a formal readiness to move forward at any moment and to apply the sharpest forms of struggle, then this, of course, signifies a rightward trend. But if the words “left party” or “left tendencies” are understood in a more profound historical sense, in a dynamic sense, in the sense of a movement which sets itself the greatest task of the epoch and fulfils it through the best means, then this will constitute a step forward in the direction of the left, revolutionary tendency”.