Part 2 of ‘Party Organization in Lenin’s Comintern’
By John Riddell: The Comintern’s 1921 organizational theses, discussed in Part 1 of this study, were next mentioned in a world congress by Lenin himself, in his address to the Fourth World Congress in 1922. At the end of what was to be his last speech to the world movement, he expressed concern regarding the resolution. Although “prepared to subscribe to every one of its fifty or more points,” Lenin said, the resolution was “too Russian” and incomprehensible to non-Russian Communists. “Everything in it is based on the Russian experience”; non-Russians “will not understand it” and “cannot carry it out.” Lenin said. “The most important thing for all of us, Russian and non-Russian comrades alike,” is to take time to study.[1]
Only Clara Zetkin spoke to his remarks. Highlighting Lenin’s remark “that we all have much to learn,” Zetkin interpreted this as an appeal for patience. Declaring that “to win time is to win everything,” Zetkin added a characteristically elegant quotation from the German poet Goethe: “Time is my estate, and time my field to plough.”[2]
Read more…Part 1: Defining Democratic Centralism
See also Part 2: Applying Democratic Centralism
By John Riddell: Many socialist groups today seek to shape their organizational principles in the spirit of “democratic centralism” identified with V.I. Lenin. Yet as historian Lars Lih has demonstrated (“Fortunes of a Formula” and “Further Fortunes of a Formula”), Lenin himself used the term only occasionally, and then with widely varying emphasis. The formula’s meaning for socialists today is in fact derived mainly from its application by the Communist International (Comintern) in Lenin’s lifetime and under his guidance (1919–23).
This article will examine how this principle was expressed in the internal functioning of the Comintern’s national parties and also in their relationship to the Comintern’s leadership, the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI).
Read more…How a mass march relaunched women’s struggle for liberation in the US. An interview by Nancy Rosenstock with Ruthann Miller, reposted with permission from Jacobinmag.com.
Introduction
In August 1970, campaigners for women’s liberation mounted a huge demonstration that recharged feminism in the US. Ruthann Miller, the protest coordinator, was a socialist activist. She talks here to Nancy Rosenstock about the march, and the need to combine feminist and socialist politics.
The Strike for Equality put forward three main demands: free abortion on demand — no forced sterilization; free, community-controlled 24-hour childcare centers; and equal opportunities in jobs and education.
The Women’s Strike for Equality in August 1970 was a landmark in the development of second-wave feminism. On August 26, 50,000 women marched down New York City’s Fifth Avenue, defying the efforts of the police to confine them to the sidewalk as they mounted the largest feminist demonstration that the United States had seen.
Read more…The following article is reposted with thanks from Richard Fidler’s Life on the Left. First published in ‘Green Left Weekly,’ October 22, 2020.
By Federico Fuentes*: Bolivians have overwhelmingly voted the left-wing Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) back into office in a resounding reversal of last year’s coup.
With almost 90% of the October 18 vote counted, MAS presidential candidate Luis Arce has won with 54.5%, thumping his nearest rival, Carlos Mesa (29.26%).
Arce even managed to win more votes than former MAS president Evo Morales did in the October 2019 elections. While Morales won that election, opposition protests against supposed fraud culminated in a police-military coup that forced him into exile just weeks later.
Read more…What Today’s Left Learned from Ottawa’s Turn to Repression
Reposted with permission from Life on the Left.
By Richard Fidler: Fifty years ago this month the federal government, invoking the War Measures Act – its first use in peacetime – occupied Quebec with 12,000 troops, arrested without a warrant almost 500 citizens, and carried out 36,000 police searches of homes, organizations and publications.
Recollections of Montreal Under the War Measures Act
By John Riddell: It was October 16, 1970, fifty years ago today. Turning on CBC radio over breakfast that day, I was startled to learn that the War Measures Act had been decreed across the entire country. The Canadian equivalent of martial law, War Measures were invoked on the excuse that the country faced an “apprehended insurrection.”
During that night, hundreds in Quebec had been arrested. Secretly. No charges. No phone call. No right to a lawyer or court hearing. All civil liberties were suspended. Quebec was under military occupation. A few hours later, television news started showing photos of soldiers in battledress armed with assault rifles and of tanks in the streets of downtown Montreal.
Read more…Daniel Gaido’s review of The Communist Movement at a Crossroads
The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922–1923, edited by Mike Taber. Trans. John Riddell. Historical Materialism Book Series. Chicago: Haymarket, 2019. $50. Pp. 808.
By Daniel Gaido: Taber and Riddell have published the minutes of the three Enlarged Plenums of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) held while Lenin was still alive, between February 1922 and June 1923.
A Monumental Edition
This volume is part of Riddell’s monumental edition of the proceedings of the first Four Congresses of “The Communist International in Lenin’s Time,” held between 1919 and 1922. It also includes a volume of documents from “the preparatory years” (1907–1916) before the foundation of the International, a documentary collection on the German revolution of 1918–1919, and a third volume with the minutes of the Congress of the Peoples of the East held in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1920.
The complete series so far include eight books in nine volumes, to which a ninth book will be added entitled The Communist Women’s Movement, 1920–1922:
1. Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International: Documents, 1907-1916: The Preparatory Years, New York: Pathfinder, 1984, 604 pp.
2. The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents, 1918-1919: Preparing the Founding Congress, New York: Pathfinder, 1986, 687 pp .
3. Founding the Communist International: Proceedings and Documents of the First Congress, March 1919, New York: Pathfinder, 1987, 503 pp.
4. Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920, Volume 1: New York: Pathfinder, 1991, 632 pp.
Volume 2: New York: Pathfinder, 1991, 592 pp.
5. To See the Dawn! Baku, 1920: First Congress of the Peoples of the East, New York: Pathfinder, 1993, 368 pp.
6. To the Masses! Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921, Leiden: Brill, 2015; Chicago: Haymarket, 2016, 1,299 pp.
7. Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922, Leiden: Brill, 2011; Chicago: Haymarket, 2015, 1,310 pp.
8. The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922-1923, Leiden: Brill, 2018; Chicago: Haymarket, 2019. 796 pp.
The following centennial appreciation of the September 1920 Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East first appeared in Jacobin, and is reprinted with permission.
By John Riddell: A century ago this month, the new Soviet government summoned anti-colonial revolutionaries from across Asia to a gathering in Baku. The Baku Congress proved to be a watershed in the fight against European colonial domination and the rise of the Global South.
In Baku, Azerbaijan, one hundred years ago this month, an unprecedented assembly of anti-colonial activists proclaimed the advent of a global struggle for colonial freedom. About 2,050 participants, drawn from thirty-seven mostly Asian and Muslim peoples, approved the call for a “holy war” for the liberation of peoples of the East in September 1920.
Even today, decades after most colonies achieved at least formal sovereignty, the call of Baku resonates in a world shaken by rising struggles against racism and white supremacy.
Read more…Just how much progress was made in the fight for equality? Anne McShane focuses in particular on Central Asia. See also Part 2 of this study, Zhenotdel: Clubs, Cooperatives, and the Hujum.
Introduction by Mike Taber: Anne McShane is a Marxist activist from Britain and Ireland who writes regularly for Weekly Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). McShane has developed these views in more detail in her PhD thesis, “Bringing the Revolution to the Women of the East: The Zhenotdel Experience in Soviet Central Asia through the Lens of Kommunistka.” McShane has begun work to edit her thesis up into a book.
The 2017 article below, which we are running in two parts, is reposted with permission from Weekly Worker.
Discussion of these questions has practical importance for the struggle for women’s liberation today. The Russian Revolution of 1917, and the early years of the Soviet Republic, blazed a revolutionary path for achieving women’s full rights and equality in society. By focusing on Soviet Central Asia, McShane enables readers to get a new appreciation of the profound impact of the Russian Revolution on this question.
Read more…Part 2 of a two-part series. For Part 1, see “Soviet Russia, Zhenotdel, and Women’s Emancipation, 1919-1930.” Reposted with permission from Weekly Worker.
By Anne McShane: Women’s clubs in central Asia could not by their very nature have the same direct relationship with Soviet organs as delegate meetings. There could not be internship schemes, at least initially, because of seclusion and the cultural barriers that prevented men and women working together. Instead women would become involved in economic activity, education and cultural activities through the club.
The April 1921 conference stated that the bureau itself would provide the link to the soviets. It pledged to lead a campaign within the party “to strengthen the struggle against prejudice toward women, which has deep roots among men in the population”. The Zhenotdel committed itself to “assist the party to educate the male proletariat and peasantry in the spirit of communism and an acknowledgement of the shared interests of men and women”.
With the crisis in the bureau following Kollontai’s removal and the slashing of funds to it resulting from the NEP, work in central Asia virtually collapsed. Then in 1923 Serafima Liubimova, a supporter of Kollontai, was appointed regional secretary and relaunched the organisation at a conference in March of that year. Delegates agreed to “organise women’s clubs within which there will be artels, trade schools, elementary schools, libraries, crèches and other facilities to support women”.
Read more…By Barry Sheppard: August’s Republican National Convention centred on two interrelated themes. One was the adulation of Donald Trump as the strong leader who can save the country, and who must hold onto power, come what may.
The other was the mobilisation of a blatant, racist assault on the Black Lives Matter movement. BLM activists were accused of being “violent thugs.” intent on physically destroying the country, and which Trump would crush in the streets.
Trump’s presence and speeches dominated each session, culminating in his long acceptance speech, with the White House as his backdrop.
“We must never allow mob rule,” he said. Read more…
From the Second World Congress to the March Action
See also Part 2: The Third World Congress and Its Outcome
Table of Contents
Part 1: From Second World Congress to ‘March Action’
Part 2: The Third World Congress and Its Outcome
Bibliography
Long Live the Communist International
The Third World Congress and Its Outcome
See also Part 1: “From Second World Congress to March Action“
Table of Contents
Part 1: From Second World Congress to ‘March Action’
Part 2: The Third World Congress and Its Outcome
Bibliography
Cuban doctors en route for South Africa
The Confederation for Democracy and Socialism, an alliance of five groups based in Senegal, has released the following call for an end to the 59-year-old blockade maintained by the United States against Cuba. Translation from the original French by Ameth Lô (GRILA).
“Cuba is a firm and reliable friend of Africa and Africans,” note the Senegalese socialists. “When the World Health Organization called for cooperation, Cuba, as always, was among the first countries to step forward.” Cuba has sent its specialized medical brigades to combat the Covid-19 virus in ten African countries.
For the original French text, see Afriques en Lutte. Read more…
Genocidal Apartheid and Anti-Colonial Resistance
Presentation to a Socialist Action (Canada) panel discussion, August 6, 2020. The other speakers were Peter Kulchyski, professor of Native studies, University of Manitoba and Maria Paez Victor of the Circulo bolivariano Louis Riel.
By John Riddell: Half a century ago, I helped in publication of Richard Fidler’s pamphlet Red Power in Canada, published in 1970 by the League for Socialist Action. It included the program of a visionary Indigenous group on the West Coast, the Native Alliance for Red Power, that called for Indigenous sovereignty and reparations.
Three years earlier, our rulers had organized celebrations of what they called “Confederation” – the formation of the state of Canada. This extravaganza was met by wide scepticism, and not only among First Nations. Masses of Quebeckers called Confederation “les cent ans d’injustice.” Socialists in the rest of Canada picked up on this, as in a “centennial issue” of Young Socialist Forum whose front cover declared, “One Hundred Years of Injustice.” Read more…