An exchange on ultraleftism at the 1921 Comintern Third Congress
To read the speeches go to:
** Leon Trotsky, ‘Clear-headed revolutionary thinking is needed’
** Béla Kun, ‘The French Communists are guilty of opportunist conduct’
** V.I. Lenin, ‘Trotsky was a thousand times right’
The three speeches posted here constituted a turning point in efforts at the Communist International’s Third Congress, held in 1921, to reorient the movement away from adventurist leftism and toward the mass movements of working people. They were delivered June 16-17 at a pre-conference session of the Comintern’s Executive Committee. Read more…
Leon Trotsky
Newly published speeches by Lenin, Trotsky, and Béla Kun, part 1
See also:
** Béla Kun, “The French Communists are guilty of opportunist conduct”
** V,I. Lenin, “Trotsky was a thousand times right”
** “Newly published speeches by Lenin, Trotsky, and Béla Kun”
Leon Trotsky gave the speech on 16 June 1921 to the Communist International Executive Committee plenum held to prepare the International’s Third Congress, which opened six days later. Trotsky replied to the two initial speakers in this session, Edy Reiland (1896-1967) of Luxemburg and Maurice Laporte (1901-87) of France, both of whom criticized what they considered to be opportunist errors of the Communist Party of France. Read more…
Béla Kun
Newly published speeches by Lenin, Trotsky, and Béla Kun, part 2
See also:
** Leon Trotsky, “Clear-headed revolutionary thinking is needed”
** V.I. Lenin, “Trotsky was a thousand times right”
** “Newly published speeches by Lenin, Trotsky, and Béla Kun”
Béla Kun, an exiled leader of the Hungarian communist movement and a leader of the Comintern Executive Committee, spoke immediately after Trotsky. Kun, who was known for his “leftist’ views, had come under criticism for his role in the March Action, an unsuccessful general strike called by the German Communist Party in March 1921. For explanation of the term ‘Turkestaner,’ see endnote 1. Read more…
V.I. Lenin, 1920
Newly published speeches by Lenin, Trotsky, and Béla Kun, part 3
See also:
- Leon Trotsky, “Clear-headed revolutionary thinking is needed”
- Béla Kun, “The French Communists are guilty of opportunist conduct”
- “Newly published speeches by Lenin, Trotsky, and Béla Kun”
Lenin’s speech, given 17 June 1921 at the Communist International’s Third Congress, followed remarks by Trotsky on ultra-leftist errors within the French Communist movement and a response by Hungarian Communist Béla Kun.
The speech posted below is absent from editions of his Collected Works, presumably because his expression of strong support for the views of Leon Trotsky offended the anti-Trotskyist editors of these collections.
Part 1 of ‘Rosa Luxemburg and Polish socialism (1893-1919)’
By Eric Blanc. The following text is an edited excerpt from ‘The Rosa Luxemburg Myth: A Critique of Luxemburg’s Politics in Poland (1893–1919)’, published in Historical Materialism 2018, 26, 1: 1-34. Click here for subscriptions to Historical Materialism.
Spanish translation available in “Sin Permiso“
Rosa Luxemburg
Introduction
Rosa Luxemburg’s contributions to the revolutionary movement and the development of Marxism are undeniably important. Yet many writers today uncritically romanticise Luxemburg as a humanistic, undogmatic, and democratic alternative to Social Democracy, Leninism, and/or Stalinism. Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, for example, argues that Luxemburg ‘inaugurated the heritage of an alternative understanding of Marxism with a revolutionary humanist face, as distinct from liberalism, social democratic revisionism as well as Stalinist authoritarianism. It is through the lens of Rosa Luxemburg that it is possible to understand what went wrong with Soviet socialism and how we can reposition our understanding of socialism in the twenty-first century.’[1] Read more…
U.S. Fifth Fleet is based 200 km. from Iran’s seacoast.
By John Riddell: The four articles on social protests in Iran published on January 2 and 9 in Socialist Project’s online blog, The Bullet, offer little on-the-spot news but raise major issues of political analysis that deserve attention. In particularly, the articles do not link progressive struggles by worker and social movements within the country to issues raised by the external threats against Iran.
For the Bullet articles, see:
- Anti-Regime Protests in Iran (January 2, 2017), with posts by:
- International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran.
- Tudeh Party of Iran.
- Frieda Afary.
- The Rage of the Poor in Iran, by Araz Bağban (January 9, 2017).
I have been a partisan of the national and social liberation process in Iran for half a century, but always from afar. I lack close knowledge of conditions in Iran and cannot judgment on workers’ and social struggles there. Still, I am concerned regarding the four Bullet articles’ treatment of external threats. Read more…
Part 3 of ‘The Comintern and Asia 1919-25’
See also
Part 1, Toward a global anti-imperialist strategy
Part 2, Should Communists ally with revolutionary nationalists?
Chen Duxiu
By John Riddell. The most advanced experience of Communist alliance with national revolutionists occurred in Indonesia (Dutch East Indies) prior to the Baku Congress. However, it was not mentioned at the congress, even though one of its architects – the Dutch Communist Maring (Henk Sneevliet) – was present in the hall. Maring had been a leader for many years of revolutionary socialist Dutch settlers in Indonesia, who had achieved the remarkable feat of transforming their group into one predominantly indigenous in leadership, membership, and programmatic orientation. The key to success had been a close alliance with a mass national-revolutionary organization of the type described by the Second Congress, called Sarekat Islam.
Their tactic, which they called a “bloc within,” involved building a Communist fraction within the Islamic organization both by sending comrades into the movement and recruiting from its ranks. The bloc with Sarekat Islam, which started up before the Comintern was formed, had resulted in consolidation of a small but viable Communist party in Indonesia.[1] Read more…
Part 2 of ‘The Comintern and Asia 1919-25’
See also Part 1, Toward a global anti-imperialist strategy.
Part 3, Fruits and perils of the ‘bloc within’
Turar Ryskulov (1894-1938)
By John Riddell. As described in part 1 of this series, the Comintern leadership concluded at the end of 1919 that “[T]he civil war of the working people against the imperialists and exploiters in all the advanced countries is beginning to be combined with national wars against international imperialism.”[1]
But how would the proposed alliance of workers’ and national uprisings be effected? This strategic issue was addressed in the Comintern’s Second Congress, held in Moscow 9 July-7 August 1920. The civil war was now won, and Soviet troops were advancing into Poland. Despite the continuing blockade, 218 delegates attended the congress, including 33 representing groups in 12 countries and peoples in Asia. Although most of these groups were no more than small nuclei, Lenin, in his opening report, stressed the significance of their presence in the first truly global congress of world socialism. The congress, he said, was taking the first steps toward union in struggle of the revolutionary proletarians with the masses of countries representing 70% of the world’s population who “find it impossible to live under the conditions that ‘advanced’ and civilized capitalism wishes to impose on them.”[2] Read more…
Manabendra Nath Roy
By John Riddell. The revolutionary activists who founded the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 had little contact with movements for national and colonial liberation outside Russia. Nonetheless, only a year later, in July 1920, the Comintern adopted a far-reaching strategy for national and social revolution in dependent countries, later termed the anti-imperialist united front.
See also Part 2: “Should Communists Ally with Revolutionary Nationalism?”
Part 3: Fruits and perils of the ‘bloc within’
This policy was adopted much earlier than the analogous united-front approach in the industrialized capitalist powers of the West. Moreover, the quest for unity in oppressed countries of Asia and Africa was pursued with persistence, while the united front in Europe was applied by fits and starts. Read more…
Analysis of the Communist International 1919-24
The texts listed below, under subject headings, are being considered for inclusion in a forthcoming collection of writings, whose working title, is “Lenin”s Comintern Revisited: Studies in Global Revolutionary Politics,” by John Riddell. Other materials for this book will be posted as they become available.
I will be glad to receive your suggestions, objections, and criticisms, either directly via email or Facebook or as comments to this website. — JR
Comintern as a Whole
- ‘Toward the United Front’: Translations for the Twenty-First Century
- The Legacy of the Second International
- 1907: The Birth of Socialism’s Great Divide
- 100 years ago: How the Comintern was founded
- The Comintern’s Second Congress: A Centennial Introduction
- The Comintern’s Great Turn of 1920-21
- The Comintern in 1922: The periphery pushes back
- Weighing the legacy of Lenin’s Comintern – reply to Paul Kellogg
- Translators and Global Workers’ Unity
- Introduction to ‘The Communist Movement at a Crossroads
- Part 1: First and Second Enlarged Plenums (1921-22)
- Part 2: Third Enlarged Plenum (1923)
- Part 3: A Sharp Break; An Ongoing Legacy (1923-24)
Colonial and National Freedom
- How socialists of Lenin’s time responded to colonialism
- Nationality’s role in social liberation: the Soviet legacy
- The Russian Revolution and National Freedom
- The Russian Revolution and the Global South
- The Comintern and Asia (1919-1925):
- The Baku Congress of 1920
- The Congress of Toilers of the Far East (1922)
- The League Against Imperialism (1927-37): An early attempt at global anti-colonial unity
- Black Liberation and the Communist International
- Indigenous Socialism and the Latin Americanization of Socialism
Democratic Centralism
- Lenin the unifier: The Comintern compromise of 1921
- Party democracy in Lenin’s time – and ours
- Did the Russian NEP trigger the German March Action? — An exchange
- Party Organization in Lenin’s Comintern (two parts)
Women and the Comintern
- The Communist Women’s Movement (1921-26)
- Clara Zetkin in the lion’s den
- Clara Zetkin’s struggle for the united front
Germany
- Gregory Zinoviev at his best
- Lenin the unifier: The Comintern compromise of 1921
- Why did Paul Levi lose out in the German Communist leadership?
- Triumph, disarray, defeat – German workers 1918-1933
The Soviet Republic
- Reassessing Leon Trotsky’s biography of Stalin
- The Russian Revolution and national freedom
- Did Trotsky retreat from viewing USSR as a workers’ state?
- Dissecting the failure of Soviet ‘socialism’
- Nationality’s role in social liberation: The Soviet legacy
Workers’ and Farmers’ Government
- A ‘workers’ government’ as a step toward socialism
- The Comintern’s unknown decision on workers’ governments
- The Comintern’s workers’ government: Study guide
United Front, Strategy
- Clara Zetkin’s Struggle for the United Front
- Fumble and Late Recovery: Comintern and Italian Fascism
- The origins of united front policy
- On the Meaning of ‘Popular Front’
- The Shape of Socialist Strategy
- Daniel Bensaid and the shape of socialist strategy
- Review: The Communist Movement at a Crossroads (“The United Front: Adoption and Application” — two parts)
- How Socialists Resist Rightist Coups (three parts)
Goals and techniques in the Comintern era
The following memo, dating from 1999, describes how the work of translators contributed to building international solidarity in the era of the Russian revolution.
It was written for the information of those translating conferences of the socialist movement in Canada and is published here for the first time.
Book references are to volumes on the Communist International that were published by Pathfinder Press and are still in print; for details, see below.
For Spanish translation see La Izquierda Diario.
Umair Muhammad
To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921, edited and translated by John Riddell. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016. $50.00. Pp. x, 1299.
By Umair Muhammad. From June 22 to July 11, 1921, the Communist International (Comintern) convened its Third Congress in Moscow. Hundreds of delegates, representing groups and political parties affiliated with the Comintern from 55 countries, were in attendance. To the Masses, edited and translated by John Riddell, makes the full proceedings of the Third Congress available to the English-speaking world for the first time. Read more…
Antonio Gramsci
Background note by John Riddell: The following text by Rjurik Davidson forms Part Two of Rjurik’s four-part study, “Between Como and Confinement: Gramsci’s Early Leninism.” It represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the evolution of Antonio Gramsci’s approach to united working-class action in the period preceding his imprisonment in 1926.
In late 1922, the majority of the Italian Socialist Party expelled its right-wing reformist wing and proposed fusion with the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) and the Communist or Third International (Comintern). The fusion was opposed by PCI leadership, headed by Amadeo Bordiga, but upheld by the Comintern World Congress in December.
Bordiga promised to apply the world congress decision, although some Comintern leaders later charged him with dragging his feet. A Socialist Party referendum then narrowly rejected fusion. Subsequently, the wing of the SP that continued to press for fusion was known as the Terzini. Read more…
Allan Goldstein
Allan Goldstein, a lifelong friend of the socialist movement, died in Toronto December 6, 2017, at the age of 88. Some years ago, he granted me an interview on his memories of the socialist movement in which he was active in his teenage years. I have transcribed it from cassette tape and provided some explanatory details in footnotes. — John Riddell
Allan Goldstein: When I encountered the socialist movement, I was in Harbord Collegiate and was interested in politics. Upstairs of where I lived on Grey St. there was a couple, the Midaniks; the husband, Bill, supported the CCF [Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, predecessor of the New Democratic Party]. His brother [J.Sydney Midanik] was also a CCFer, ran for the CCF at one point, and became a trustee and later the chairman of the Board of Education. I was impressed by what Midanik said about the CCF and politics in general. Read more…
Clara Zetkin
By Mike Taber and John Riddell.
The following article is the introduction to a newly published collection Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win by the German Marxist Clara Zetkin (Haymarket Books, 2017), 131 pp. The text is reprinted with permission from International Socialist Review.
Seldom has there been a word more bandied about, yet less understood, than fascism. For many, the fascist label is simply an insult, directed against particularly repellent and reactionary individuals or movements. It’s also customarily used as a political description of right-wing military dictatorships.
The term took on new significance during the 2016 US presidential election, in which the ultimate victor Donald Trump was routinely compared to Benito Mussolini and other fascist leaders. “Fascist comparisons are not new in American politics,” stated an article in the May 28, 2016, New York Times. “But with Mr. Trump, such comparisons have gone beyond the fringe and entered mainstream conversation both in the United States and abroad.”
Take 50% OFF all Haymarket Books through Tuesday, January 2nd! Get a FREE Ebook bundled with every book purchase! Sale price: Zetkin, Fighting Fascism, US$5.98.