Stalin and the Comintern

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect:

"Our Party alone knows where to direct the cause; and it is leading it
forward successfully. To what does our Party owe its superiority? To
the fact that is a Marxian Party, a Leninist Party. It owes it to the fact
that it is guided in its work by the tenets of Marx, Engels and Lenin.
There cannot be any doubt that as long as we remain true to these
tenets, as long as we have this compass, we will achieve success in our
work."

Can you imagine if someone showed up on our list posting nonsense
like that above. How long do you think it would take Zodiac to have
everybody laughing at such nonsense? Of course, the words are by
Joseph Stalin, from "Foundations to Leninism". That Stalin could
represent himself as the foremost Marxist thinker in the world from
the late 1920's to the 1950's does more to explain the current crisis in
socialism today than anything else. Not only did this hogwash pass for
Marxism during this period, if anybody attempted to present a political
alternative they would end up with broken teeth or a bullet to the head.

This type of simple-minded nonsense has pretty much disappeared
from the world of Marxism, except for the occasional Maoist
manifesto here and there. We can read the following in the
"theoretical" journal of the Maoist International Movement. "By
looking at the life and teachings of Mao Tsetung, a new generation
who themselves never witnessed the dramatic changes wrought in
revolutionary China could begin to understand that the poor and
oppressed could indeed rise up and transform the world through
revolution; that the imperialists' declarations that 'communism is dead'
reflect their hatred and fear of the very class of proletarians that can
and will do away with them forever; and that to move forward to all
the way liberation, the understanding forged by Mao Tsetung in the
Chinese revolution and summed up as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is
the indispensable weapon for victory."

It was Stalin's very intention to turn Marxism into this sort of crude
dogma. He wrote in 1925 that the 'new type' of Communist leader
should be no man of letters; he should not be burdened by the dead
weight of social democratic habits; and he should be feared as well as
respected.

Not only did Stalin do his best to persuade others to follow this model,
he used state terrorism to eliminate those who refused to conform. In
August 1936, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, Mrachkovsky and others
stood trial. In January 1937, Piatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov, Muralov,
Serebriakov and others faced charges. Marshal Tukhachevsky and a
group of the highest generals of the Red Army appeared before a secret
tribunal in June 1937. Finally, in March 1938, Rykov, Bukharin,
Krestinsky, Rakovsky, Yagoda and others came before Soviet "justice".
All of these individuals were leading Bolsheviks when Lenin was
alive. Any one of them had more political experience, theoretical
understanding and leadership qualities than any individual Marxist in
the United States today. Soviet courts charged them with attempting to
assassinate Stalin, to restore capitalism, wreck the nation's military
and economic power, and to murder masses of Russian workers.

Controlling the Soviet Union did not satisfy Stalin. He made sure
every Communist Party in the Comintern obeyed him as well. He
made the Chinese Communist Party submit to the strict discipline of
the Kuomingtang. Soviet propaganda built up the image of General
Chiang Kai-shek as the great leader of Chinese national re-birth.
Socialism was not on the agenda in China, just an anti-feudal
revolution under his leadership.

Mao obeyed Stalin's orders even after Chiang purged a thousand
communists from the Kuomingtang and subsequently had them
murdered in 1926. Chiang's forces arrested, tortured and killed over
50,000 Communists and their sympathizers as he consolidated his
power in the second great purge in 1927. Mao managed to escape into
high grass just over two hundred yards from the wall where the firing-
squad was about to shoot him.

Let us take a close look at Stalin's intervention into the American
Communist Party in order to understand how unlike Lenin's Bolshevik
party these Comintern parties had become. Let us review what Lenin
understood as Bolshevism in the early 1900's: simply put, democratic
centralism in action and a newspaper that allowed various tendencies
within Marxism to contend with each other.

In the initial fervor over the Russian Revolution, radicals all over the
world made the decision to form parties on the Bolshevik model. They
did not really have a very clear idea of just what such a party should
be. They often brought often their own political experiences to bear on
the formation of new organizations--as they should have. The
American Communist leader, Charles E. Ruthenberg, explained
Bolshevism early in 1919 as something that was not "strange and
new."  Bolshevism was merely the consequence of the same type of
education and organization that the Socialist movement had been and
was carrying on in the United States. His Socialist-syndicalist
background showed in his description of the infant Bolshevik state as a
"Socialist industrial republic". His instincts were completely correct.

By 1920, everything changed. A resolution passed at its second
convention of the American Communist Party with the following
wording. "The Communist Parties of the various countries are the
direct representatives of the Communist International, and thus
indirectly of the aims and policies of Soviet Russia." Among the
people voting for the resolution was James P. Cannon, who went on to
form the Trotskyist movement in the United States. He retained the
same hierarchical understanding of the relationship between an
international center and member parties, except he switched allegiance
from the Comintern to the leading bodies of the Fourth International. I
will have much more to say about this matter in my next post.

I want to examine the case of Jay Lovestone's fall from leadership of
the American Communist Party to illustrate how harmful Stalin's
heavy-handed interventions were.

In the 1920's, Bukharin was the top leader of the Communist Party
and the Comintern. Bukharin spoke for the right wing of the
Bolshevik party and had allowed the NEP to get out of hand. Rich peasants
withheld their grain from Soviet authorities and food riots began to
appear. Stalin allied with Bukharin for most of the 1920's but grew
alarmed at the threat posed by the Kulaks. Stalin broke with Bukharin
and lurched far to the ultraleft. He destroyed Bukharin politically
while preparing a war against the Kulaks.

The moves against Bukharin did not appear all at once and it was
Lovestone's misfortune to back him long after clues had come out of
the Kremlin that Bukharin was in disfavor. The sixth world congress
of the Comintern marked the beginning of the end for both Bukharin
and any of his international supporters.

It was difficult for Americans to figure out what was going on behind
the hearsay and gossip emanating from the Kremlin. People rose up
the party ladder on the basis of their ability to anticipate Stalin's
moves. James P. Cannon said, "They were required to 'guess' what it
meant and to adapt themselves in time. Selections of people and
promotions were made by the accuracy of their guesses at each stage of
development in the factional struggle. Those who guessed wrong or
didn't guess at all were discarded. The guessing game was played to
perfection in the period of Stalin's preparation to dump Bukharin. I
don't think many people knew what was really going on and what was
already planned at the time of the Sixth Congress."

A faction opposed to Lovestone in the American party submitted a
document called "The Right Danger in the American Party". It
basically accused Lovestone of overestimating the power of US
capitalism and underestimating the militancy of American workers.
This faction included William Z. Foster, future CP leader, and James
P. Cannon, future Trotskyist leader. This document tied Lovestone
politically to the fading Bukharin. Lovestone, not sensitive to the
power shifts already taking place in the Kremlin, told this gathering of
the Comintern that yes, indeed, he did solidarize himself with
Bukharin. At that point Stalin put a check-mark next to Lovestone's
name in his little black book.

At the December 1928 plenum of the American party, Lovestone,
commenting on the conjunctural situation of American capitalism,
invoked Bukharin's authority: "What did Comrade Bukharin say about
this? I still quote Comrade Bukharin. For me he does not represent the
Right wing of the Communist International; although for some he
does. For me Comrade Bukharin represents the Communist line, the
line of the C.E.C. of the C.P.S.U. Therefore Comrade Bukharin is an
authority--of the C.I." Smoke started to pour from Stalin's ears when
he heard this.

Lovestone eventually began to get nervous over growing signs that
Bukharin was on the outs. He decided to send his friend and old
classmate from City College, Bertram Wolfe, over to the Kremlin to
serve as American representative to the Comintern. (Wolfe, as
Lovestone, eventually became a professional anti-Communist.)

Wolfe learned immediately that Stalin had plans to remove the
Lovestone leadership. When Wolfe attempted to see Stalin to clear the
air, Stalin refused to meet with him. When Wolfe tried to meet with
Bukharin, Kremlin authorities told him that Bukharin was too sick to
meet with anybody. Wolfe did learn of a special presidium set for
discussion of these problems on a day's notice. He stayed up the whole
night, with a temperature of 104, drinking coffee and vodka, and
preparing his defense of the Lovestone majority.

The next day he spoke under great emotional and physical stress. After
a half hour, he collapsed at the podium. Only one person in the vast
assembly, Eliena D. Stassova, head of the International Red Aid, came
forward to assist him. She gave him two aspirins and pleaded with
him to stop his speech. Wolfe refused unless the meeting was
postponed. The presidium refused postponement and the feverish
Wolfe continued with his speech.

A few days later, Wolfe bumped into Bukharin in front of the Hotel
Lux, where Comintern officials lived. Wolfe confessed surprise at the
hale and hearty appearance of the reputedly ailing Bukharin. Bukharin
answered sardonically, "By a vote of five to four, I am too ill to
function as Chairman of the Communist International."

On the eve of the Sixth Convention of the American Communist Party,
Lovestone's strength seemed formidable. There were 104 delegates,
and 95 supported Lovestone. There were two delegates whose votes
were more important than all the rest combined, and whom Lovestone
could never persuade. They were the Comintern's representatives to
the convention: Philipp Dengel, a German Cp'er and Harry Pollitt from
England. Wolfe, the American representative to the Comintern, had
not learned that the Kremlin had sent the two to the convention.

Dengel and Pollitt proposed to the convention that William Z. Foster,
a member of the tiny minority faction, replace Lovestone. Stalin
directed Lovestone to report to Moscow where he would function in
the Comintern. Lovestone, to his credit, went ballistic and for the first-
-and last--time in the history of American Communist, a convention
decided to disobey the Comintern.

Lovestone decided to have a showdown with Stalin in order to defend
the legitimacy of his leadership. He put together a "proletarian
delegation," headed by Lovestone and two other leaders, Benjamin
Gitlow and Max Bedacht. The delegation also included William
Miller, a Detroit machinist; Tom Mysercough, a mine organizer;
William J. White, a steel organizer; Alex Noral, a farm expert; Ella
Reeve Bloor, an organizer from California; Otto Huiswould and
Edward Welsh, African-Americans.

The American Commission heard from delegations from the majority
and minority factions in America. The commission included Stalin himself who
generally remained aloof from such matters. This signaled its importance.
Lovestone spoke for the majority and Foster for the pro-Stalin
minority.

Stalin eventually delivered his judgment on the issues in a speech on
May 6, 1929. He was conciliatory to the majority politically, especially
in light of Lovestone's perceptible shift to the right, but insisted on
handing control of the party over to the Foster minority. When it came
time for the American delegation to vote on Stalin's proposal,
Lovestone declared: "Whatever work is given to me I will do. But we
have a deep conviction that such as an organizational proposal as the
one aiming to take me away from our Party today is not a personal
matter but a slap and slam in the face of the entire leadership."

The Lovestone majority composed more than ninety percent of the
party. This did not impress Stalin. He explained in a speech to the
delegation what the true relationship between the American
Communists and the Kremlin was. "You declare you have a certain
majority in the American Communist Party and that you will retain
that majority under all circumstances. That is untrue, comrades of the
American delegation, absolutely untrue. You had a majority because
the American Communist Party until now regarded you as the
determined supporters of the Communist International. And it was
only because the Party regarded you as the friends of the Comintern
that you had a majority in the ranks of the American Communist
Party. But what will happen if the American workers learn that you
intend to break the unity of the ranks of the Comintern and are
thinking of conducting a fight against its executive bodies--that is the
question, dear comrades? Do you think that the American workers will
follow your lead against the Comintern, that they will prefer the
interests of your factional group to the interests of the Comintern?
There have been numerous cases in the history of the Comintern when
its most popular leaders, who had greater authority than you, found
themselves isolated as soon as they raised the banner against the
Comintern. Do you think you will fare better than these leaders? A
poor hope, comrades! At present you still have a formal majority. But
tomorrow you will have no majority and you will find yourselves
completely isolated if you attempt to start a fight against the decisions
of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. You
may be certain of that, dear comrades."

Later in the day, Stalin became more blunt. He told Wolfe, "Who do
you think you are? Trotsky defied me. Where is he? Bukharin defied
me. Where is he? And you? When you get back to America, nobody
will stay with you except your wives." He also warned the Americans
that the Russians knew how to handle strike-breakers: "There is plenty
of room in our cemeteries."

After Stalin completed his fulminations, he strode toward the
American delegation and offered his hand to Edward Welsh, an
African-American delegate. Welsh turned to Lovestone and asked
loudly, "What the hell does this guy want?" and refused to shake
Stalin's hand.

In the following year, nearly everybody in the party lined up with
Foster, because they saw that Lovestone was in disfavor. The
American Communist Party certainly did not heed the advice Lenin
gave to Zinoviev in an unpublished letter. "If you are going to expel all
the not very obedient but clever people, and retain only the obedient
fools, you will most assuredly ruin the party."

If the Communist Party were merely the creature of the Kremlin
described above, we could conclude our discussion. The writings of
Theodore Draper supplied much of the information in the section
above. Draper was a historian who tended to focus on the control of
the Kremlin over Communist Party leaderships. History, for Draper,
revolves around such relationships.

We have to look at the CP dialectically. There was a whole other side
to the CP at the grass-roots level that we can characterize as dynamic,
militant and successful. People like Maurice Isserman and Mark
Naison, part of a new generation of historians, have begun to focus on
this aspect of CP history. Studying the writings of historians such as
these is very important to those of us who are trying to construct a new
socialist movement in the United States. More can be learned from
their writings about how socialists can reach the masses than all of the
literature generated by the Socialist Workers Party, arguably the most
successful Trotskyist party in history. (Of course, the SWP has
disavowed all connections to Trotskyism and functions more as a cult
around leader Jack Barnes than anything else. More about this in my
next post.)

In an essay "Remaking America: Communists and Liberals in the
Popular Front", Naison discusses how the CP made the decision to
implement the Popular Front in a very aggressive manner. Browder
and the American Communists made a big effort to stop speaking in
"Marxist-Leninese" and discovered many novel ways to reach the
American people.

They concentrated in two important areas: building the CIO and
fighting racism. There is an abundance of information about its union
activities, but new research is bringing out important facts about its
links to the Black community.

A "Saturday Evening Post" writer observed in 1938 that CP
headquarters "is a place where every Negro with a grievance can be
sure of prompt action. If he has been fired, the Communists can be
counted on to picket his employer. If he has been evicted, the
Communists will guard his furniture and take his case to court. If his
gas has been cut off, the Communists will take his complaint, but not
his unpaid bill to the nearest office... There is never a labor parade,
nor a mass meeting of any significance in the colored community in
which Communists do not get their banner in the front row and their
speakers on the platform."

On the cultural front, the CP dropped its traditional rigidity in the
most amazing fashion. In 1936, for example, the "Daily Worker"
actually polled its readers to see if they wanted a regular sports page.
When they voted in favor six to one, the paper hired Lester Rodney,
who was not even a party member. Rodney, largely on his own
initiative, opened up a campaign to integrate major league baseball.

John Hammond, a friend of the CP, put together a series of Carnegie
Hall concerts that brought the best jazz talent together in an
interracial setting. The success of these concerts inspired Hammond to
such an extent that he started a nightclub called Cafe Society that also
invited a racially mixed audience. On opening night, Teddy Wilson,
Billie Holiday and the comedian Jack Gilford performed.

The party also spawned a new folk music culture. On the west coast,
Woody Guthrie offered his services to California farm workers
organizing under party auspices. Eventually Guthrie wrote a column
in the west coast CP daily newspaper.

On the east coast, the party drew the black folksinger Huddie Ledbetter
(Leadbelly) close to its ranks. He was a fixture at parties and meetings.
Eventually Leadbelly made a disciple of a 21 year old journalist-
musician by the name of Pete Seeger. Naison observes, "Guthrie,
Ledbetter and Seeger, employing rhythms and harmonies harking back
to 16th century England and Africa, but writing of contemporary
themes, created music that both sentimentalized and affirmed the
populist aspirations of US radicals, enabling them to feel part of the
country they were trying to change."

The party we need to be build in the United States will have to build
exactly the same kinds of ties to labor, the black community and artists
and intellectuals. Except this time we will not have to answer to the
Kremlin, only to the American people.

Bibliography:

"New Studies in the Politics and Culture of US Communism", edited
by Michael Brown, Randy Martin, Frank Rosengarten and George
Snedecker

"Stalin a Political Biography", Isaac Deutscher

"American Communism and Soviet Russia", Theodore Draper

Answer to quiz:
1. A party member is one "who recognizes the Party's programme and
supports it by material means and by personal participation in one of
the Party's organizations." (This was the Bolshevik motion.)

2. A party member is one "who recognizes the Party's programme and
supports it by material means and by regular personal assistance under
the direction of one of the party's organizations." (This was the
Menshevik motion.)

Two people answered correctly: Scott Marshall, a defender of CPUSA
orthodoxy and Marcus Strom who wants to build Trotskyist parties
without flaws. Draw your own political conclusions.



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