Hello Thomas. Thank you for this extremely important reference and all your efforts to make this material available. I have found the six-volume series to be a valuable and easily accessible source for working-class history into the early 1920s..

* https://archive.org/details/IntWorkingClassMovVol1 – The Origins of the Proletariat and Its Evolution as a Revolutionary Class

* https://archive.org/details/IntWorkingClassMovVol2 – The Working-Class Movement in the Period of Transition to Imperialism (1871-1904)

* https://archive.org/details/IntWorkingClassMovVol3 – Revolutionary Battles of the Early 20th Century

* https://archive.org/details/IntWorkingClassMovVol4 – The Socialist Revolution in Russia and the International Working Class (1917-1923)

* https://archive.org/details/IntWorkingClassMovVol5 – The Builder of Socialism and Fighter Against Fascism

* https://archive.org/details/IntWorkingClassMovVol6 – The Working-Class Movement in the Developed Capitalist Countries After the Second World War (1945-1979)

Please to read “How violence became the midwife of the Weimar Republic and to whom it served”. Published yesterday at Sputnik Germany. Valtin’s “Out of the night” gives first hand flavour. As a military historian what I wrote is standard fare. This side came up short. Analyze. I could elaborate in detail but… The party did not not need more generals. It needed sturdy sergeants. Close discussion.

Robert, what you are writing is fantasy. You must engage with the factual record and provide evidence. Otherwise, there is no point in continuing this exchange.

I’m no fan of any version of heroic proletarian voluntarism. Trotsky got that right when building the Red Army. The 1921 uprising didn’t lack for working class support. The Freikorps didn’t have anything behind it. The uprising failed due to bad military leadership. They didn’t know their business. From a military perspective this get classed alongside Winfield Scott lumbering up Queenston Heights with his amateur comedy soldiers. The only lesson available is Don’t Do Foolish Things Like This. If they’d had a few Michael Collins in Hamburg could have turned different. Phil Sheridan would have been really nice. Tough guys with grit. Knew their business.

The Comintern leaders were out of their depth on such matters. But they should have known this. There could and should have been created an experienced military staff to provide expertise in all types of combat – street, guerilla, regular formation. To gather up weaponry, resources, forwarding officers, fighters, material to each place of opportunity. As best as could be done. To enhearten the locals, stiffen and focus their resolve. “Here comrades, we present as Red Army fighters to fight and die alongside you. We bring weapons as we could and experienced commanders”. You get my drift.

Instead, we got a lot of bossy, interfering apparatchiks essaying demoralization out of Moscow. And the CHEKA. What was needed was everything in between.

Nobody could have done better at what they were good at than the Bolshevik Comintern leaders. But nobody is good at everything and this lot let the historic opportunity evaporate. A want of alacrity when it was needed most. No sense crying over spilled milk but best not do that again.

If Robert’s view is a politically accurate one, we should also ask if Trotsky should have tried to mobilize the Red Army to prevent the rise of Stalinism.

I’m reminded of Lenin’s remark in his report to the Extraordinary Conference of the RCP(B) in March 1918: “…politics begin where millions of men and women are; where there are not thousands, but millions, that is where serious politics begin…”

I suggest a re-reading of the entire report which in many ways is a completely adequate answer to the theory Robert McMaster has put forward.

For example:

“The German revolution has the misfortune of not moving so fast. What do you think? Must we reckon with the revolution, or must the revolution reckon with us? You wanted the revolution to reckon with you. But history has taught you a lesson. It is a lesson, because it is the absolute truth that without a German revolution we are doomed—perhaps not in Petrograd, not in Moscow, but in Vladivostok, in more remote places to which perhaps we shall have to retreat, and the distance to which is perhaps greater than the distance from Petrograd to Moscow. At all events, under all conceivable circumstances, if the German revolution does not come, we are doomed. Nevertheless, this does not in the least shake our conviction that we must be able to bear the most difficult position without blustering.

“The revolution will not come as quickly as we expected. History has proved this, and we must be able to take this as a fact, to reckon with the fact that the world socialist revolution cannot begin so easily in the advanced countries as the revolution began in Russia—in the land of Nicholas and Rasputin, the land in which an enormous part of the population was absolutely indifferent as to what peoples were living in the outlying regions, or what was happening there. In such a country it was quite easy to start a revolution, as easy as lifting a feather….

“Of course, an intellectual, or a Left Bolshevik, can try to talk his way out of difficulties. He can try to talk his way out of such facts as the absence of an army and the failure of the revolution to begin in Germany.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/7thcong/01.htm

Hi Robert– The policy you are advocating here had a great deal of support in the early Comintern, and particularly in the ranks of the German Communist Party. It even had a name, which I translated as “The Theory of the Offensive.”

The German party undertook such an offensive in March 1921. It did not lack in bold and courageous fighters (see the Hamburg uprising). But the offensive lacked support in the working class, and the party suffered a severe defeat.

This experience was discussed at great length in the Comintern’s 1921 World Congress. I suggest you go to the proceedings of that congress (the book is called “To the Masses”). You will then be able to argue your views on the basis of facts — the only way to do it convincingly.

The experience of 1923 is often cited as a counter-example. There is no documentary collection in English. You can go to Pierre Broue’s history of the German revolution and also, of course, Trotsky’s comments in “Lessons of October,” which is on line.

I’m not trying to rattle your cage here comrade. There will never be a collective genius as was the Third International. They pointed the way forward. They just did not lead the way forward. They got stuck by the branding of their past. They could not seize the moment as Lenin and Trotsky did at critical moments.

Just as the Levellers failed to consolidate power in the regiments. As the Blanquists failed to deliver armed power. As the Mackenzie and Papineu rebellion fizzled. Wyatt at the gates of London. Wat Tyler. The Chartists. All lacked Bolshevik toughness.

A few hundred tough Soviet militants, well armed, to protect Liebknecht and Luxembourg. Battle hardened workers infiltrating Poland, arming the local militants, deploying them to battle. The Soviet Union got showboat General McLellan’s but needed Grant, Sherman and Sheridan. Guys with grit. Guys who would never quit. The International left Poland, Finland, the Baltics. How weak can you get? Got no militant workers in these spots? Rise up. We are not Russians, we are revolutionary workers and we fight with you as you will presently do elsewhere. Stand up and fight, damned you. This is your time.

Didn’t happen.

Robert, my view used to be somewhat similar to yours. But intensive work on the documentation forced me to reconsider my views. I explained this experience on my blog in article that you will find here. https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/the-comintern-in-1922-the-periphery-pushes-back/
The greatest setback in the Comintern’s early years was certainly in Italy, and it was a case of a failure to act by the central leadership when faced with fundamental errors by front-line leaders.