Re:racism, eurocentrism

[Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Burges wrote:

>it was Eurocentric
>to expect a revolution in Germany in 1918-19

I don't know if it was eurocentric to expect a revolution in Germany or
not in 1918, but the Marxian prediction was that it would happen. The
fact that it did not happen can still be explained in marxian terms
(call it eurocentric) 1) german social democratic party was taking a
more reformist and pacifist direction under the dominance of Kaustskian
orthodoxy till 1905. Kautsky dominated the second international as a
leading theorist standing in opposition to Lenin and Luxemburg (before
these two divorced) 2).On top of all,  the first world war disappointed
the international solidarity of working classes and their anti-war
expectations. The most significant  exception being the Russian,
european working classes, including Germany,  turned to their own
classes in the defense for war. Basically, this co-optation and
anti-imperialist rivalry divided the working classes in almost every
country. Realizing this problem, Russian revolutionaries standing
against the war and nationalism, organized the Third Communist
International (Comintern) in 1919 as a successor to Second
International.

The other reason was that Marxian theory was a taking social democratic
direction in Germany at that time. Bernstein, who voted for war credits
in 1914, came back to the SDP after the war and his revisionism became
the orthodoxy of the party up to now. On the other hand, the austro
marxism of Hilferding was reformist too. The most notable exception was
Luxemburg, of course, and her Spartacus League. I think Luxemburg should
be given credit at this point, because as the founder of the social
democratic party of Poland, she strongly opposed  the polish left party
line on polish nationalism.


 >3) the Eurocentric policy of the Comintern led to disastrous
alliances with the bourgeoisie in countries like China, Turkey and
>Indonesia.

As I said before that this eurocentricism as a "concept" per se is not
analytically useful. Let's use instead anti-capitalism, anti-racism,
anti-imperialism, or whatever. Historically speaking, capitalism
definitely  took place in Europe, Britain as the classical
example--primitive accumulation, enclosure movement,  decline of the
agricultural population, commercialization of the country side, private
property rights, etc.. (or according to Wallerstein Netherlands first.
let's not go into this at the moment). The anti-eurocentric attempt to
prove otherwise is a hopeless exercise to extrapolate the conditions to
other countries who have different conditions in the final analysis. In
my view, Lenin successfully realized this problem, though he could not
come to grasp with totally.Offering a model based on the realities of
Russian society, he argued that the class contradiction in Russia was
between two modes of production, feudal and capitalist and their
dominant classes; feudalists and capitalists.  What was immediately on
Lenin's agenda was an anti-feudalist, democratic bourgeois revolution,
the historical mission he attributed not to bourgeois classes (unlike
the west), but to working classes and peasantry. As Lenin said "working
classes carried the bourgeois revolution to its logical
conclusion--socialism" in Russia. (emphasis is mine since I can not
exactly remember the quote now)

Was Comintern's policy eurocentric? I guess the question is wrongly
formulated. Yes,  it was if we mean by this universalistic, but  i don't
see a problem with that. Regarding Comintern's alliances with national
bourgeoisie, it depends on which _period_ we are talking about.
Originally, Lenin's Comintern (1919) aimed to advocate communism world
wide so it rejected non-communist regimes in principle. During Lenin's
time, it had four congresses (1919, 1920, 1921, 1922). Given that it
failed to achieve its internationalist ideal, it began to divert from
its principles in 1935 under the dominance of Stalin, and by forming
populist and national bourgeois allies. Basically, the comintern
degenerated under Stalin, becoming a tool of Kremlin Bureaucracy.But the
original idea was internationalist.

Regarding Turkey(since it was metioned), Lenin's Comitern principle was
to form alliances with Turkish communists in their fight against their
own bourgeoisie.For example, the Turkish Communist Party, founded in
1920s,  was NOT a third world nationalist party. As a member of the
comintern, TKP party principles were in accordance with the
internationalist principles set by the Comintern, while recognizing  the
realities and needs of the Turkish society in the mean time. On the
contrary, Turkish nationalist party, the founding party of the regime,
was _Republican Peoples Party_ (populist, nationalist). These should not
be confused.  This is not suggest that TKP did not have a nationalist
bias, but it  is not a problem unique to "third world" countries
(whatever this means since I reject to use this concept ). Even the
United States Communist Party could not successfully deal with the
problem of African American discrimination, so was left with
compromising with the nationalist regime.Racial discrimination was
subsumed under larger class goals, and was obscured. This is observable
in the 1928-30 Comintern resolutions of the Black National Question in
the US Communist party.  Every communist party is born into ideological
and historical circumstances which is it is a part of .We can not
abstract a party from its cirsumstances. What we can do best is to learn
from our past not to repeat the same mistakes in the present, so every
communist party should be anti-nationalist, anti-sexist,
internationalist and anti-racist in principle.

In the "national and colonial question" submitted to the second congress
of comintern (1920), Lenin says the following about oppressed
nationalities. His emphasis here is *both* internationalist and
anti-imperialist in favor of  the principle of "equality of nations".
Regarding the alliance with national bourgeoisie, he perfectly realizes
that they are unreliable, and  he says  in the last paragraph "The
Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with
bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, BUT  SHOULD
NOT  MERGE WITH IT, and should under all circumstances uphold the
independence of the proletarian movement even
 if it is in its most embryonic form"

and goes on:

"In conformity with its fundamental task of combating bourgeois
democracy and exposing its falseness and hypocrisy, the Communist Party,
as the avowed champion of the proletarian struggle to overthrow the
bourgeois yoke, must base its policy, in the national question too, not
on abstract and formal principles but, first, on a precise appraisal of
the specific historical situation and, primarily, of economic
conditions; second, on a clear distinction between the interests of the
oppressed classes, of working and exploited people, and the general
concept of national interests as a whole, which implies the interests of
the ruling class; third, on an equally clear distinction between the
oppressed, dependent and subject nations and the oppressing, exploiting
and sovereign nations, in order to counter the bourgeois democratic lies
that play down this colonial and financial enslavement of the vast
majority of the world's population by an insignificant minority of the
richest and advanced capitalist countries, a feature characteristic of
the era of finance capital and  imperialism.

 "From these fundamental premises it follows that the Communist
International's entire policy on the national and the colonial questions
should rest primarily on a closer union of the proletarians and the
working masses of all nations and countries for a joint revolutionary
struggle to overthrow the landowners and the bourgeoisie. This union
alone will guarantee victory over capitalism, without which the
abolition of national oppression and inequality is impossible"

"Consequently, one cannot at present confine oneself to a bare
recognition or proclamation of the need for closer union between the
working people of the various nations; a policy must be pursued that
will achieve the closest alliance, with Soviet Russia, of all the
national and colonial liberation movements. The form of this alliance
should be determined  by the degree of development of the communist
movement in the proletariat of each country, or of the bourgeois
democratic liberation movement of the workers and peasants in backward
countries or among backward nationalities"

"In all their propaganda and agitation -- both within parliament and
outside it -- the Communist parties must consistently expose that
constant violation of the equality of nations and of the guaranteed
rights of national minorities which is to be seen in all capitalist
countries, despite   their "democratic" constitutions. It is also
necessary, first, constantly to explain that only the Soviet system is
capable of ensuring genuine equality of-nations, by uniting first the
proletarians and then the whole mass of the working population in the
struggle against the bourgeoisie; and, second, that all Communist
parties should render direct aid to the revolutionary movements among
the dependent and underprivileged nations (for example, Ireland, the
American Negroes, etc.) and in
the colonies.

"first, that all Communist parties must assist the bourgeois-democratic
liberation movement in these countries, and that the duty of rendering
the most active assistance rests primarily with the workers of the
country the backward nation is
colonially or financially dependent on;

 second, the need for a struggle against the clergy and other
influential reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries;

third, the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive
to combine the liberation movement against European and American
imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans,
landowners, mullahs,"

"the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic
national   movements in colonial and backward countries only on
condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian
parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together
and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the
struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own
nations. The Communist
International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois
democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge
with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of
the proletarian movement even
 if it is in its most embryonic form"


--

Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222