C. L. R. James, World Revolution 1917-36
International Council Correspondence, Vol. III (1937), No 9-10 (October)
This elaborated statement of the trotskyta position is distinguished from other such works in the fact that here the bourgeois ideology underlying the whole of bolshevist thought comes more clearly to light than ever before. It is essentially no more than an idealization of Lenin, of the same sickening sort as the idealization of Stalin in the ranks of the party faithful. History is seen by James, tho somewhat apologetically, as a struggle between principles incorporated in two individuals. Books like this show clearly that the bolshevik movement is related to the workers only in the same sense as is the bourgeoisie: the workers are to be used for the needs of the Party, as they are now used for the profit requirements of capital. Apart from this, all the slogans of the Trotsky movement turn up again; the book contains not a single new thought. The whole work is characterized by such nonsensical statements as the following: “Unless a new International is created, the U.S.S.R. as a workers’ state is doomed”. In other words, the Russians have to be saved against their own will; for so far, they have killed off their would-be saviors. But the fatherland must be defended, even if this very same fatherlan represents only another sort of fascism. Occasionally, however, a doubt creeps into James’s mind as to the quality of Lenin’s organizational principles. The centralism exercised in the bolshevik party was good for the workers, he says, only because Lenin was such a good revolutionist, while with a Stalin at the head it becomes bad. So that the whole history of the labor movement, which in James’s opinion depends on the existence of a party, is now in reality seen to depend on the qualities of the leader (not even leaders, but leader). And this book is dedicated to a “marxist” group!
Many attacks launched in this book upon the stalinist regime are justifiable only on the assumption that the author is ignorant of the pre-Stalin policy of the Communist International. That Stalinism is partly also the product of the Lenin-Trotsky era in Russia, James can not admit, for that would mean to abandon his bourgeois approach to history. Whatever James says about the pre-Stalin period of the C.I. is simply wrong. He speaks, for instance, of the “anarchist tendencies” of the (german) Spartakists, which frightened the than existing workers’ councils and precluded an alliance between them and the Spartakists. Leaving the objective conditions to one side, we may say that it was not the anarchistic but the social-democratic tendencies among the Spartakists which precluded a more revolutionary and consistent policy on the part of this organization. The little success of the Spartacus League might be attributed to a lack of what James calls the Spartakists which precluded a more revolutionary and consistent policy on the part of this organization. The little success of the Spartacus League might be attributed to a lack of what James calls anarchist tendencies. The early failures of the C. I. are just as closely connected with Lenin and Trotsky as the later failures with Stalin’s administration. “The Socialists, in 1918”, James says, “were afraid of starting socialism with a ruined economy”. They must already, then, have not at all in our interest (the interest of the C. I.) to have the revolution break cut in a Europe which is bled and exhausted and to have the proletariat receive from the hands of the bourgeoisie nothing but ruins”.
Farther on, in speaking of the Kapp Putsch, James says: “The german C. P. put itself at the head of the fighting”; but he does not say that this was done only in support of the democratic regime against the reactionaries, and that after the defeat of Kapp the C. P. helped to disarm the workers and to deliver them over to the capitalists. James goes on to blame the C. P. for its aggressive tactic in Central Germany in 1931; but the fact is that the C. P. was not aggressive at all, but sabotaged the whole struggle. Brandler, then in power, explained the uprising as the work of the Communist Labor Party (K.A.P.D.), for which the C. P. was not responsible. For this service, he became an honorary member of the C. I., to the delight of Lenin and Trotsky. The K.A.P.D. was, in James’s opinion, “infested with syndicalist tendencies and did not consolidate itself”. The truth is that the K.A.P.D. was always an outspokenly marxist organization; it existed down to 1933, and still plays its part in the illegal german movement. But funniest of all, James actually writes: “If Brandler had met in Moscow, not Stalin… but Lenin, there would have been a revolution in Germany in 1923”. How simple world history really is! James’s new Song of Lenin provides material for a few good laughs, but otherwise it is devoid of all value.