George Novack on First Two Internationals

7/29/2019 George Novack on First Two Internationals

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"The Evolution of the Comintern (1919-36)" is reprinted fromDocuments o f the Fourth International (1933-40) copyright 1973 by Pathfinder Press, Inc. "The History of th e Left Op-position (1923-33)" first appeared as two series of articlesfrom December 1, 1972, to March 30 , 1973, and from Decem-be r 28 , 1973, to February 1, 1974, in Th e Militant, 14 CharlesLane, New York, N.Y. 10014. I t is reprinted in a revisedversion by permission.

Copyright 19 7 4 by Pathfinder Press, Inc.All Rights ReservedFirst Edition, 1974

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-79908ISBN Cloth 87348-367-7, Paper 87348-368-5Manufactured. in the United States of America

Pathfinder Press, Inc.41 0 West StreetNe w York, N.Y. 10014

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contents

Introduction

Th e Firs t and Second Internationalsby George Novack

Th e Historical Necessity of InternationalismTh e First International (1864-76)Th e Rise of th e Labor and Socialist International

(1889-1904)Th e Spread of Opportunism in th e Socialist

International ( 1904-14)Th e Firs t World War and th e Collapse of the

Second Ihternational

The Evolution of th e Comintern (1919-36)

Th e History of th e Left Opposition ( 1923-33)by Dave Frankel

Stalinism and Internationalism (1935-73)by Fred Feldman

Sources and Further Reading

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I I

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! (Above) Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, leaders oftherevolutionary wing o f the German Social Democracy. (Below)Eduard Bernstein (left) and Karl Kautsky (right), theoreticianso f th e r ight and center.

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The First World Warand the Collapse ofthe Second International

In October 1912 Montenegro declared war on Turkey andshortly afterward al l th e Balkans were ablaze. The danger thatth e European powder magazines would be set off by sparks

from this conflict wa s obvious. The International SocialistBureau organized antiwar meetings and arranged an Extraordinary International Socialist Congress which met in Basle onNovember 24-25, 1912.

Although arranged on less than a month's notice, the congressbrought together 555 delegates from twenty-three countries.It was intended as an impressive show of force and international working-class solidarity against the threat of a generalizedwar. On the second d ay of the congress, the delegates unanimously approved a manifesto drafted by the Bureau,

Th e Basle Manifesto stated for the first time that th e comingEuropean war could only have an imperialist character. Itreaffirmed the principled position on the workers ' struggleagainst war that had been adopted at the congresses in Stutt-gar t in 1907 and Copenhagen in 1910. It underlined th e threatthat social revolution would follow th e outbreak of war. Re-calling th e examples of the Paris Commune following th eFranco-Prussian War in 1871 and th e 1905 revolution inRussia during th e Russo-Japanese War, th e manifesto declared:"It would be insanity fo r th e governments not to realize thatth e very idea of th e monstrosity of a world war would in-evitably call forth the indignation an d the revolt of the workin g class" (Landauer, European Socialism, p. 495).

Lenin and the Bolshevik representatives at th e 1912 congress were "extremely pleased" with this resolution. They regarded th e Basle Manifesto as an important statement of theMarxist attitude toward imperialist war. Nonetheless, Lenin wasaware that words were on e thing and deeds another. He waswell acquainted with th e patriotic and conciliatory currentswithin th e Second International. According to Zinoviev, Lenin

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78 The F i r s t Three In te rna t iona l s

criticism. Th e ne w epoch will teach th e proletariat to combineth e ol d weapons of criticism with the new criticism of weapons"(p.xiii ).

An d so it turned out in 1917. That wa s in th e second decadeof the twentieth century. Today we ar e in the eighth. Th e International of the final conflict and the decisive victory thathe spoke of has still to be brought into being. The cadres ofthe Fourth International are determined to build it.

TH E EVOLUTION OF THECOMINTERN (1919-36)

1. Th e imperialist world war of 1914-1918 was the clearestindication that the capitalist mode of production had becomea fetter on th e productive forces, and that conditions had be-come ripe for the victory of th e proletarian revolution. However, the Second International, whose bureaucracy had adapteditself to bourgeois society during th e long period of capitalistexpansion, betrayed the interests of th e proletariat at the decisive moment of th e outbreak of war, and occupied the position of defense of the fatherland, i.e., defense of the frontiersof th e bourgeois national state, w h i c h - together with the systemof private p r o p e r t y - h a d become- a brake on the further de-velopment of productive forces.

2. Only a very small number of revolutionary Marxists drewfrom the shameful treachery and miserable collapse of the

Second International th e conclusion that a Third Internationalwas necessary. I t is true, in most countries an oppositionformed agains t the chauvinist standpoint of th e Social Democratic parties, bu t such opposition had in th e beginning mainlya pacifist-centrist character. At the international conferences ofthe opponents of imperialist slaughter at Zimmerwald (1915)and Kienthal (1916) the supporters of the building of th e ThirdInternational remained in the minority and were termed b y al lcentrists and social-imperialists as fanatics, utopians, and sec-tarians.

3. Th e victory of the Russian Revolution in October 1917was th e victory of the revolutionary principle of strugglingagainst the enemy at home and of turning imperialist war intocivil war, which since 1914 had been counterposed by th ehandful of revolutionary Marxists, and especially the leadership of th e Russian Bolsheviks, to the principle of defending

''the fatherland. The Bolshev iks - after overcoming analogoustendencies in their ow n r a n k s - broke with the ambiguous cen-trist majority of Zimmerwald and raised the banner of th eThird International.

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