Briand [1] senses the need to improve the fate of 350 million Europeans who are the bearers of the highest civilization yet find it impossible to live through a single century without a dozen wars and revolutions. MacDonald [2] has in the interests of pacifying our planet made the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. The United States of Europe, disarmament, freedom of trade and peace are on the agenda. Capitalist diplomacy is everywhere preparing a pacifist broth. Peoples of Europe, peoples of the world—get out your soup spoons and gulp it down!
Why? Surely the socialists are in power in the most important countries of Europe or else are preparing to take power? Yes, that is just why! It is already apparent that Briand’s plan and MacDonald’s plan pursue the pacification of mankind from diametrically opposed directions. Briand wants to unify Europe as a defensive measure against America. MacDonald wants to earn the gratitude of America by helping her oppress Europe. The two trains are rushing headlong at each other in the effort to save the passengers from the crash.
The Anglo-French Naval Agreement of July 1928 [3] was liquidated on a wink and a nod from the United States. This fact forms sufficient proof of the current world balance of power. “Don’t you think,” hinted America, “that I can accommodate myself to the negotiations which you are holding around the English Channel?—But to hold a serious conversation you must take the trouble to cross over the Atlantic Ocean.” So MacDonald booked his passage. That proved to be the most practicable part of the pacifist programme.
At Geneva [4] the future unifiers of the European continent felt not much better than the bootleggers on the other side of the ocean: they were glancing over their shoulders in fear at the American police. Briand began and finished his speech with an avowal that the unification of Europe would in no case and under no circumstances be directed against North America. God forbid! On reading those lines American politicians must have experienced a double feeling of satisfaction: “Briand is pretty scared of us ... but he doesn’t fool us ...”
While repeating Briand’s words about America Stresemann [5] at the same time engages in a veiled polemic against him. Henderson [6] polemicises with them both but especially with the French Prime Minister. The Geneva talks must have developed along roughly the following lines:
Briand: In no case against the United States.
Stresemann: Absolutely right, but someone has ulterior motives—America can count only on Germany.
MacDonald: I swear upon the Bible that fidelity in friendship is a quality belonging only to the British, and more especially to the Scots.
The weakness of present-day Europe is caused first and foremost by its economic fragmentation. The strength of the United States in turn lies in its economic unity. They are asking: how can matters be arranged so that the unification of Europe is not directed against America, i.e. without changing the balance of power to America’s disadvantage?
The Daily Herald [7], MacDonald’s semi-official organ, in its issue of September 10th, called the idea of a United States of Europe “grotesque” and even provocative. Should, however, such a fantasy be realized, then the United States of Europe would erect a monstrous tariff barrier against the United States—so argued MacDonald’s semi-official organ—and as a result Britain would be caught in a vice between two continents. And the Daily Herald then went on to add: How could one expect aid from America if the course was set for the unification of Europe? “To act in this way would be insanity or worse.” It could not be put more plainly.
From Disarmament and the United States of Europe,
(dated 4th October, 1929) Byulleten Oppozitsii, October 1929
Alongside the problem of unifying Europe, that of the reduction of armaments has just been put on the order of the day. MacDonald has declared that the road of gradual disarmament is the surest way of guaranteeing eternal peace. That is how a pacifist confutes us. If all the countries disarmed, it would obviously be a serious guarantee for peace. But such disarmament is excluded in the same way as the voluntary destruction of the customs walls. At the present time, there is only one great power in Europe that is really disarmed. But its disarmament was accomplished only as a result of a war by which Germany also tried to “unify Europe’ under its domination.
The question of “gradual disarmament”, if it is examined closely, assumes the aspect of a tragic farce. In place of disarmament, the cessation of armaments is first substituted, in order to end finally in parity of the fleets of the United States and England. At present, this “aim” seems bound to be the great guarantee of peace. That amounts to saying that the regulating of revolvers is the surest way to suppress duelling. To decide the matter, it would rather be necessary to view it in the opposite sense. The fact that the two greatest naval powers haggle so furiously for a few thousand tons, clearly shows that each of them is trying to assure itself in advance, by diplomatic means, the most advantageous position m the coming military conflict.
What, however, does the creation of “equality” between the American and British fleets represent from the point of view of the international situation? It means the establishment of a great “inequality” between them—in America’s favour. And that is understood perfectly by all the serious participants in this game, above all by the Admiralties of London and Washington. If they preserve silence on these matters, it is only out of diplomatic timidity. But we have no reason to imitate them.
After the experience of the last war, there is no one who does not understand that the next war to set the titans of the world by the ears, will be both long in preparation and in duration and not lightning-like. The issue will be determined by the respective powers of production of the two camps. This means that the war fleets of the powers will not only be supplemented and renewed, but in great measure created in the very course of the war.
We have seen the extraordinary place occupied by the German submarines in the military operations during the third year of the war. We have seen how Britain and America, in the very course of the war, created gigantic new armies and armaments, infinitely superior to the old armies of the European continent. It follows that the soldiers, sailors, cruisers, cannons, tanks and aeroplanes existing at the outbreak of hostilities only constitute a point of departure. The decisive problem will depend upon the measure in which the given country will be able to create, under the enemy’s fire, cruisers, cannons, soldiers and sailors. Even the Tsarist government was able to prepare a certain reserve at the beginning of the war. But what was above its power was to create a new one in the battle.
For Britain, in case of war with America, there is but one theoretical condition of success: that it be capable of assuring, before the outbreak of war, a technico-military preponderance in order to balance off to a certain extent the incomparable technical and economic preponderance of the United States. The equalization of the two fleets before the war means that from the very first months of the war America will have an incontestable advantage. Not for nothing did America threaten a few years ago to turn out cruisers in an emergency like so many pancakes.
In the negotiations of Hoover [8] and MacDonald, it is not a question of disarmament or even the limitation of naval armaments: it is solely a question of rationalizing the preparation of war. The type of ships is becoming obsolete. At present, when the great experience of the war and the flood of inventions it let loose are improved only for military needs and usage, the delay in eliminating various kinds of arms of military technique will be infinitely briefer than before 1914. Consequently the main part of the fleet can be revealed to be obsolete even before it has been put into action. Under such conditions, is there any sense in accumulating ships in advance? Rationalization in this matter requires having such a fleet as is necessary in the first period of the war and which, up to that point can serve as a laboratory for testing and experimenting with new inventions and discoveries, in view of the fact that in the period of war it would be necessary to pass over to standardized construction and production in series. All the great powers feel more or less interested in the “regulation” of armaments, especially the very costly naval armaments. But destiny has transformed this “regulation” into the greatest prerogative of the economically strongest country.
During these last years, the war and navy departments of the United States have applied themselves to adapting the entire American industry to the needs of the coming war. Schwab, one of the magnates of maritime war industry “ concluded his speech to the War College a short time ago with the following words: “It must be made clear to you that war in the present period must be compared with a great big industrial enterprise.”
The French imperialist press, naturally, is doing all it can to incite America against Britain. In an article devoted to the naval accord, Le Temps writes that parity of the fleets by no means signifies the equalization of sea power, since America cannot even dream of securing naval leases comparable to those which Britain has held for centuries. The British naval bases give it an incontestable advantage. But the accord on the parity of the two fleets, in case it is concluded, will not be the last word of the United States. Its first demand is “freedom of the seas”, that is, a regime that will appreciably limit Great Britain’s use of its naval bases. The second: “the open door”, is of no less importance; under this slogan, America will raise not only China but also India and Egypt against British domination. America will conduct its expedition against the British bases not on sea but on land, that is, across the colonies and dominions of Great Britain. America will put its war fleet into action when the situation is ripe enough for it. Of course all this is music of the future. But this future is not separated from us by centuries, nor even by decades. Le Temps need not be uneasy. The United States will take over piece-meal all that can be taken in morsels, changing the relation of forces in all fields – technical, commercial, financial, military—to the disadvantage of its principal rival, and it will not lose sight of the latter’s exceptional naval bases for a single instant.
The American press has spoken scornfully of the British acclaim for Snowden [9] when he wrested twenty million dollars at the Hague Conference [10] to Britain’s profit, that is, a sum that the American tourists spend for their cigars. Is Snowden the victor? asked the New York Times. “No! The real victor is the Young Plan [11], that is, American finance capital. Thanks to the Bank of International Settlements, the Young Plan gives America the possibility of holding its hand firmly on the golden pulse of Europe. From the financial irons forged on Germany’s feet there extend strong chains which fetter the hands of France, the feet of Italy and the neck of Britain. MacDonald, who is now fulfilling the duties of keeper to the British lion, points with pride to the collar, and calls it the best instrument of peace just think: to attain this aim, it was enough for America to give its “magnanimous aid” to Europe so that it might liquidate the war and to consent to equalize its fleet with that of the weaker Britain.
Since 1923, I had to conduct a struggle to have the leadership of the Communist International consent, finally, to take notice of the existence of the United States and to understand that Anglo-American antagonism constitutes the fundamental line of the groupings and conflicts in the world. This was considered a heresy even at the time of the Fifth Congress of the CI (middle of 1924). I was accused of exaggerating, of enlarging the role of America. A legend was conceived according to which I had prophesied the disappearance of European antagonisms in the face of the American peril. Ossinsky, Larin and others smeared up not a little paper in order to “dethrone” powerful America. Radek [12], following the bourgeois journalist, affirmed that an epoch of Anglo-American collaboration is ahead of us, confusing temporary and episodic relations with the essence of world developments.
Little by little, however, America was “recognized” by the official leadership of the Communist International which began to repeat my formulae of yesterday, not failing, of course, to add each time that the Opposition exaggerates the role of America. The correct estimation of America was at that time, as is known, the exclusive prerogative of Pepper and Lovestone. [13]
From the moment when the orientation to the Left was established, the reservations disappeared. Now it is obligatory upon the official theoreticians to predict that Britain and America are moving inevitably towards war. On this subject I wrote, some time in February of last year, to the deported comrades: “The Anglo-American antagonism is at last seriously recognized. It seems that Stalin and Bukharin [14] are beginning to understand what it is all about. Nevertheless, our papers are simplifying the problem too much when they picture the situation as if Anglo-American antagonisms were becoming continuously aggravated and must lead to war right away. There is no doubt that there will still be a few crises in the course of its development. War would be a too dangerous business now for the two rivals. They will still make many efforts to come to an understanding and make peace. But at the end of all this there is a bloody denouement towards which they are proceeding with great strides.”
The present stage assumes anew the aspect of military “collaboration” between America and Britain and even some French journals fear to see the rise of an Anglo-Saxon dictatorship. It is evident the United States can use, and will use, their “collaboration” with Britain to hold Japan and France in check with the same bridle. But all this will be a stage not towards an Anglo-Saxon domination but towards an American dictatorship weighing down on the world, including Great Britain.
From Disarmament and the United States of Europe,
(dated 4th October 1929) Byulleten Oppozitsii, October 1929
Mr. MacDonald esteems the results achieved on his American journey [15] as the loftiest triumph of peace politics. As I am speaking here in an interview, wherein one does not so much explain one’s opinion as proclaim it, I shall allow myself to turn to a speech that I made in 1924 about the relations between America and Europe. At that time, if I remember aright, Curzon [16] was foreign minister and was engaging in sabre-rattling against Soviet Russia. In a polemic against Lord Curzon (which now, of course, has lost all political interest) I observed that he was only treading on Russia’s heels in consequence of the unsatisfactory power of the United States and by the world situation generally. His protests against Soviet Russia were to be interpreted as the result of his dissatisfaction at having to negotiate accords with the United States that were not of equal advantage to both parties. “When it comes to the point,” I said “it will not be Lord Curzon who will execute this unpleasant task; he is too spirited. No, it will be entrusted to MacDonald. All the pious eloquence of MacDonald, Henderson and the Fabians [17] will be needed to make that capitulation acceptable.”
From an interview with The Manchester Guardian, 28th March 1931
The most recent electoral victories [18] of the British Labour Party do not at all invalidate what is said above. Even if we were to allow that the next parliamentary elections will give the Labour Party an absolute majority, which is not assured in any case; if we were further to allow that the party would actually take the road of socialist transformations—which is scarcely probable—it would immediately meet with such fierce resistance from the House of Lords, the king, the banks, the stock-market, the bureaucracy, the press, that a split in its ranks would become inevitable, and the Left, more radical wing would become a parliamentary minority. Simultaneously the Fascist movement would acquire an unprecedented sweep. Alarmed by the municipal elections, the British bourgeoisie is no doubt already actively preparing for an extra-parliamentary struggle actively while the tops of the Labour Party lull the proletariat with the successes and are compelled, unfortunately, to see the British events through the rosy spectacles of Jean Longuet. [19] In point of fact, the less the leaders of the Labour Party prepare for it, the more cruel will be the civil war forced upon the proletariat by the British bourgeoisie.
From Ou va la France?, La Verité, 9th November 1934
In the period before the war Karl Kautsky [20] and the leaders of the British Labour Party seemed to be standing at opposite poles of the Second International. [21] Our generation, which then was young, in the fight against the opportunism of MacDonald, Henderson, and their brethren, not seldom made use of weapons taken from Kautsky’s arsenal. But in truth even in those days we went a great deal further than that wavering and ambiguous teacher was willing to go. Even before the war, Rosa Luxemburg [22], who had a closer knowledge of Kautsky than others, had ruthlessly exposed the pinchbeck in his radicalism. These last years, anyhow, have thrown a full light on the facts: politically Kautsky belongs to the same camp as Henderson. If the former still goes on quoting from Marx, while the latter chooses rather the psalms of King David, this difference in habits does no harm whatever to their solidarity. All that is essentially uttered in this book against Kautsky can likewise almost unreservedly be applied to the leaders of the British trade union movement and of the Labour Party.
One of the chapters in the book is given to the so-called Austrian school of Marxism (Otto Bauer, Karl Renner and others). [23] Essentially this school fulfilled the same function: with the help of sterilized formulae from Marxism it gave shelter to a policy of cowering opportunism and, coward-like, it refused to make those bold decisions which were inevitably called for by the course of the class struggle. Events put both Kautskianism and Austrian Marxism to a ruthless test. The once powerful social-democratic parties of Germany and Austria, raised (against their own will) by the revolutionary movement in 1918 to the heights of power, freely yielded up bit by bit their positions to the bourgeoisie, until they were seen to have been ruthlessly crushed by it. The history of these two parties will be found to be a priceless illustration in the question of the part played by revolutionary and counter-revolutionary violence in history.
For the sake of continuity I have kept the title for the book under which the first English edition came out: The Defence of Terrorism. But it must at once be said here that this title, which is that of the original publishers and not the author’s, is too wide and may even give grounds for misunderstanding. What we are concerned with is not at all the defence of “terrorism” as such. Methods of compulsion and terrorisation down to the physical extirpation of its opponents have up to now advantaged, and continue to advantage in an infinitely higher degree the cause of reaction, as represented by the outworn exploiting classes, than they do the cause of historical progress, as represented by the proletariat. The jury of moralists who condemn “terrorism” of whatever kind have their gaze fixed really on the revolutionary deeds of the persecuted who are seeking to, set themselves free. The best example of this is Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. In the name of the eternal principles of morality and religion he was unwearied in condemning violence. But when the collapse of the capitalist system and the sharpening of the class struggle made the revolutionary fight of the proletariat for power an actual and living question for Britain also, MacDonald left the Labour camp for that of the Conservative bourgeoisie with just as little bother as when a passenger changes from a smoking compartment to a non-smoking. Today the pious enemy of terrorism is keeping up by the help of organized violence a “peaceful’ system of unemployment, colonial oppression, armed forces and preparation for fresh wars.
The present work, therefore, is far away from any thought of defending terrorism in general. It champions the historical justification of the proletarian revolution. The root idea of the book is this: that history down to now has not thought out any other way of carrying mankind forward than that of setting up always the revolutionary violence of the progressive class against the conservative violence of the outworn classes.
The incurable Fabians, it is true, keep on saying that, if the arguments of this book are true for backward Russia, they are utterly without application to advanced lands, especially to old democracies like Great Britain. This consoling illusion may have worn a cloak of persuasiveness up to fifteen or ten years ago. But since then a wave of Fascist or militarized police dictatorships has overwhelmed a great part of the European states. The day after I was exiled from the Soviet Union, on February 25, 1929, I wrote—not for the first time, indeed—with reference to the situation in Europe: “Democratic institutions have shown that they cannot withstand the pressure of present-day antagonisms both international and national—more often, both together ... On the analogy with electrical science democracy may be defined as a system of safety switches and fuses to guard against too strong currents of national or social hostility. There has never been one period in the history of mankind even within the slightest degree so filled with antagonisms as our own. The overloading of the current shows itself more and more at various points in the European system. Under the too high tension of class and international oppositions the safety switches of democracy fuse or burst. This is the essence of the short-circuit of dictatorship. The first to give way, of course, are the weakest switches. Internal and world oppositions, however, are not losing strength, but growing. It is hardly a ground for consolation that the process has taken hold only of the edge of the capitalistic world; gout begins with the big toe, but, once it has begun, it reaches the heart.”
In the six years that have gone by since these lines were written the “short-circuits” of dictatorship have arisen in Germany, Austria, and Spain—in this last after a short-lived revolutionary flowering of democracy. All those democratic illusionary dreamers who tried to explain Italian Fascism as a passing phenomenon that had arisen in a relatively backward land as the result of an after-war psychosis, met with the sternest refutation from the facts themselves. Among the great European countries the parliamentary regime is now left only in France and in Britain. But after what has happened in Europe anyone would have to be extraordinarily blind if he believes France and Britain to be safe from civil war and dictatorship. On February 6, 1934, French parliamentarianism was given its first warning. [24]
Extraordinarily superficial is the idea that the comparatively strong resisting power of the British political system arises out of the great age of its parliamentary traditions, and that as the years go on it automatically draws fresh strength from these for resistance. It has nowhere been found that old things, other circumstances being the same, are set firmer than new things. The fact is that British parliamentarianism holds together better than the others amid the crisis of the capitalist system only because their former world domination allowed the ruling classes of Great Britain to heap up an immense wealth, which now goes on lighting up the gloom of their days. In other words: the British parliamentary democracy holds together not through a mystic power of tradition, but from the plump savings which have been handed down from thriving times.
The future lot of British democracy depends not on its inner characteristics, but on the lot of British and world capitalism. If the jugglers and wonder-workers in power were really to find out the secret of giving youth to capitalism there is no doubt that along with it bourgeois democracy would find its own youth again. But we see no grounds for believing in the jugglers and wonder-workers. The last imperialistic war, indeed, came as an expression, and at the same time a proof, of the historical truth that world capitalism has drunk its progressive mission to the last drop. The development of the productive powers comes to rest against two reactionary barriers: private ownership of the means of production and the frontiers of the national state. Unless these two barriers are swept away, that is to say, unless the means of production are concentrated in the hands of the community, and unless there is an organized planned economy which can gradually enfold the whole world, the economic and cultural collapse of mankind is foredoomed. Further short-circuitings by reactionary dictatorships would in such a case inevitably spread to Great Britain also; the successes won by Fascism are seen to be no more than the political expression of the decay of the capitalist system. In other words: even in Britain a political state of things is not impossible wherein some coxcomb such as Mosley [25], will be able to play an historical part like that played by his teachers Mussolini and Hitler. From the Fabians we may hear it objected that the British proletariat have it quite in their own hands to come to power by way of Parliament, to carry through peacefully, within the law and step by step, all the changes called for in the capitalist system, and by so doing not only to make revolutionary terrorism needless, but also to dig the ground away under the feet of counter-revolutionary adventurers. An outlook such as this has at first sight a particular persuasiveness in the light of the Labour Party’s very important successes in the elections—but only at first sight, and that a very superficial one. The Fabian hope must, I fear, be held from the very beginning to be out of the question. I say “I fear,” since a peaceful, parliamentary change over to a new social structure would undoubtedly offer highly important advantages from the standpoint of the interests of culture, and therefore those of socialism. But in politics nothing is more dangerous than to mistake what we wish for what is possible. On the one hand, a victory for the Labour Party at the elections would by no means bring with it the immediate concentration of real power in its hands. On the other hand, the Labour Party does not, indeed, aim at full power, for”, as represented by its leaders, it has no wish to expropriate the bourgeoisie. Henderson, Lansbury [26] and the others have nothing about them of the great social reformers; they are nothing else than small bourgeois conservatives. We have seen social democracy in power in Austria and Germany. In Britain we have twice beheld a so-called Labour Government. Today there are social democratic governments at the head of Denmark and of Sweden. In all these cases not one hair has fallen from the head of capitalism. A Henderson-Lansbury Government would not differ in the slightest from a Hermann Müller Government in Germany. [27] It would not dare to lay a finger on the property of the bourgeoisie, and would be doomed to try paltry reforms, which, while disappointing the workers, would irritate the bourgeoisie. Far-reaching social reforms cannot be carried out amid the conditions of crumbling capitalism. The workers would be more and more insistent in demanding more determined measures from the Government. In the parliamentary section of the Labour Party the revolutionary wing would split off, the right wing would be drawn more and more openly to a capitulation on the MacDonald pattern. As a counter-weight to the Labour Government and a safeguard against revolutionary action by the masses, big capital would set about energetically supporting (this it has already begun to do) the Fascist movement. The Crown, the House of Lords, the bourgeois minority in the House of Commons, the bureaucracy, the military and naval commands, the banks, the trusts, the main body of the press, would merge into a counter-revolutionary bloc, ever ready to bring up the bands of Mosley or of some other more efficient adventurer to help the regular armed forces. In other words the “parliamentary outlook” would inevitably and fatally lead along the road to civil war, a civil war which, the less the leaders of the Labour Party were ready for it, would threaten the more to take on a long drawn, embittered, and for the proletariat, unfavourable character.
The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the British proletariat must not reckon on any historic privileges. It will have to struggle for power by the road of revolution and keep it in its hands by crushing the fierce resistance of the exploiters. There is no other way leading to Socialism. The problems of revolutionary violence, or “terrorism”, therefore have their practical interest for England also. That is why I agreed to a new English edition of this book ... If in Britain in spite of the highly favourable conditions, the Communist Party is still an organization without importance, without influence, without authority, and without a future, then the responsibility for this lies above all with the Soviet bureaucracy.
Everything in Britain is heading for a revolutionary explosion. A happy issue from the economic crisis—and this is quite a possibility in itself and even inevitable—could never have more than a transitory character, and would quickly yield once more to a fresh and devastating crisis. There is no way to salvation through capitalism. The coming into power of the Labour Party will have only this meaning for progress, that once more it will show—infinitely clearer even than before—the bankruptcy of the methods and illusions of parliamentarianism amidst the crumbling ruins of the capitalist system. And so the absolute need for a new, a truly revolutionary party will stand forth clear-cut before our eyes. The British proletariat will enter upon a period of political crisis and theoretical criticism. The problems of revolutionary violence will stand in their full height before it. The teachings of Marx and Lenin for the first time will find the masses as their audience. Such being the case, it may be also that the present book will turn out to be not without its use.
From the Introduction to the Second English Edition of
Terrorism and Communism, 10th January 1935
Baldwin [28] thinks that Europe is a lunatic asylum; England is the only country that has kept her reason: she still has the King, the Commons, the Lords: England has avoided revolution, tyranny, and persecution (see his speech in Llandrindod). [29]
As a matter of fact, Baldwin understands exactly nothing about what is taking place before his very eyes. There is a much greater distance between Baldwin and Lenin, as intellectual types, than between the Celtic druids and Baldwin. England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases.
Before the last labourite government, just at the time of the election, the Webbs, Sydney and Beatrice [30], came to visit us at Prinkipo. These “socialists” were quite willing to accept Stalin’s socialism in one country for Russia. They expected, not without gloating, a cruel civil war in the US. But for England (and Scandinavia) they reserved the privilege of peaceful evolutionary socialism. In order to account for unpleasant facts—such as the October Revolution, outbursts of the class struggle, and fascism—and at the same time preserve their Fabian prejudices and predilections, the Webbs—to suit their Anglo-Saxon empiricism—had created a theory of “types” of social development and made a bargain with history to obtain a peaceful type for England. In fact, at that time Sydney Webb was about to receive from his King the title of Lord Passfield, so that he might peacefully reconstruct society as His Majesty’s minister. [31]
Of course, the Webbs are closer to Baldwin than to Lenin. I listened to the Webbs as if they were emanations from the next world, although they are very educated people. It’s true that they boasted of not belonging to any church.
In Stresa [32], three socialist turncoats, Mussolini, Laval [33] and MacDonald, represent the “national” interests of their countries. The most contemptible and incompetent is MacDonald. There is something of the flunkey running all through him, even in his posture when talking to Mussolini (see the newspaper picture). It is so characteristic of this man that during his first ministry he hastened to grant a position to Mosley, the aristocratic coxcomb who had only recently joined the Labour Party as a short cut to a career. And now that same Mosley is trying to change sane old England into merely another ward of the European lunatic asylum. And if he does not succeed in this, somebody else certainly will—the minute Fascism is victorious in France. This time the possible advent to power of the Labourites will give a great stimulus to the development of British fascism and in general will open up a stormy chapter in the history of England, contrary to all the historical and philosophic conceptions of the Baldwins and the Webbs.
In September 1930, about two or three months after the Webbs, Cynthia Mosley [34], the wife of the adventurer and daughter of the notorious Lord Curzon, visited me at Prinkipo. At that stage her husband was still attacking MacDonald “from the left”. After some hesitation I agreed to a meeting which, however, proved banal in the extreme. The “Lady” arrived with a female travelling companion, referred contemptuously to MacDonald, and spoke of her sympathies toward Soviet Russia. But the enclosed letter from her is an adequate specimen of her attitude at that time. [35] About three years later the young woman suddenly died. I don’t know if she lived long enough to cross over to the fascist camp.
About that time or a little later I received a letter from Beatrice Webb in which—on her own initiative—she tried to justify or explain the refusal of the Labour Government to grant me a visa. (This letter ought to be looked up, but I am without a secretary now. I did not answer her: there was no point ...)
From Diary in Exile (1935), first published 1958
For the first time a powerful government provides a stimulus abroad not to the respectable right, but to the left and extreme left press. The sympathies of the popular masses for the great revolution are being very skilfully canalized and sluiced into the mill of the Soviet bureaucracy. The “sympathizing” Western press is imperceptibly losing the right to publish anything which might aggrieve the ruling stratum of the Soviet Union. Books undesirable to the Kremlin are maliciously unmentioned. Noisy and mediocre apologists are published in many languages. We have avoided quoting throughout this work the specific productions of the official “friends”, preferring the crude originals to the stylized foreign paraphrases. However, the literature of the “friends”, including that of the Communist International, the most crass and vulgar part of it, presents in cubic metres an impressive magnitude, and plays not the last role in politics. We must devote a few concluding pages to it.
At present the chief contribution to the treasury of thought is declared to be the Webbs’ book, Soviet Communism. [36] Instead of relating what has been achieved and in what direction the achieved is developing, the authors expound for twelve hundred pages what is contemplated, indicated in the bureaux, or expounded in the laws. Their conclusion is: When the projects, plans and laws are carried out, then communism will be realized in the Soviet Union. Such is the content of this depressing book, which rehashes the reports of Moscow bureaux and the anniversary articles of the Moscow press.
Friendship for the Soviet bureaucracy is not friendship for the proletarian revolution, but, on the contrary, insurance against it. The Webbs are, to be sure, ready to acknowledge that the communist system will sometime or other spread to the rest of the world. “But how, when, where, with what modifications, and whether through violent revolution, or by peaceful penetration, or even by conscious imitation, are questions we cannot answer.” This diplomatic refusal to answer—or, in reality, this unequivocal answer—is in the highest degree characteristic of the “friends”, and tells the actual price of their friendship. If everybody had thus answered the question of revolution before 1917, when it was infinitely harder to answer, there would have been no Soviet state in the world, and the British “friends” would have had to expend their fund of friendly emotion upon other objects.
The Webbs speak as of something which goes without saying about the vanity of hoping for a European revolution in the near future, and they gather from that a comforting proof of the correctness of the theory of socialism in one country. With the authority of people for whom the October revolution was a complete, and moreover an unpleasant, surprise, they give us lessons in the necessity of building a socialist society within the limits of the Soviet Union in the absence of other perspectives. It is difficult to refrain from an impolite movement of the shoulders! In reality, our dispute with the Webbs is not as to the necessity of building factories in the Soviet Union and employing mineral fertilizers on the collective farms, but as to whether it is necessary to prepare a revolution in Great Britain and how it shall be done. Upon that question the learned sociologues answer: “We do not know.” They consider the very question, of course, in conflict with “science.”
Lenin was passionately hostile to the conservative bourgeois who imagines himself a socialist, and, in particular, to the British Fabians. By the biographical glossary attached to his Works, it is not difficult to find out that his attitude to the Webbs throughout his whole active life remained one of unaltered fierce hostility. In 1907 he first wrote of the Webbs as “obtuse eulogists of English philistinism,” who “try to represent Chartism, the revolutionary epoch of the English labour movement, as mere childishness.” Without Chartism [37], however, there would have been no Paris Commune. [38] Without both, there would have been no October revolution. The Webbs found in the Soviet Union only an administrative mechanism and a bureaucratic plan. They found neither Chartism nor Communism nor the October revolution. A revolution remains for them today, as before, an alien and hostile matter, if not indeed “mere childishness.”
In his polemics against opportunists Lenin did not trouble himself, as is well known, with the manners of the salon. But his abusive epithets (“lackeys of the bourgeoisie”, “traitors”, “boot-lick souls”) expressed during many years a carefully weighed appraisal of the Webbs as the evangels of Fabianism—that is, of traditional respectability and worship for what exists. There can be no talk of any sudden change in the views of the Webbs during recent years. These same people who during the war supported their bourgeoisie, and who accepted later at the hands of the King the title of Lord Passfield, have renounced nothing, and changed not at all, in adhering to Communism in a single, and moreover a foreign, country. Sidney Webb was Colonial Minister—that is, chief jail-keeper of British imperialism—in the very period of his fife when he was drawing near to the Soviet bureaucracy, receiving material from its bureaux, and on that basis working upon this two-volume compilation.
As late as 1923, the Webbs saw no great difference between Bolshevism and Tsarism (see, for example, The Decay of Capitalist Civilization, 1923). Now, however, they have fully recognized the “democracy” of the Stalin regime. It is needless to seek any contradiction here. The Fabians were indignant when the revolutionary proletariat withdrew freedom of activity from “educated’ society, but they think it quite in the order of things when a bureaucracy withdraws freedom of activity from the proletariat. Has not this always been the function of the Labourites’ workers’ bureaucracy? The Webbs swear, for example, that criticism in the Soviet Union is completely free. A sense of humour is not to be expected of these people. They refer with complete seriousness to that notorious “self-criticism’ which is enacted as a part of one’s official duties, and the direction of which, as well as its limits, can always be accurately foretold.
Naïveté? Neither Engels nor Lenin considered Sidney Webb naïve. Respectability rather. After all, it is a question of an established regime and of hospitable hosts. The Webbs are extremely disapproving in their attitude to a Marxian criticism of what exists. They consider themselves called to preserve the heritage of the October revolution from the Left Opposition. For the sake of completeness we observe that in its day the Labour Government in which Lord Passfield (Sidney Webb) held a portfolio refused the author of this work a visa to enter Great Britain. Thus Sidney Webb, who in those very days was working on his book upon the Soviet Union, is theoretically defending the Soviet Union from being undermined, but practically he is defending the Empire of His Majesty. In justice be it said that in both cases he remains true to himself.
From Appendix to The Revolution Betrayed, 1936
1. Aristide Briand (1862-1932) – one of the outstanding examples of renegacy in the French Social Democratic Movement. In the 1890s he belonged to the left wing of the labour movement as chief agitator for the “Direct Action Group” which later fused with the syndicalists. Made a right about face even before 1914, entering the ranks of the saviours of the French bourgeoisie and carving out a career as one of the political leaders of French imperialism. In the middle ’20s tried to resume his career as one of the conservative leaders of the “left Bloc”. Signed the Locarno Treaty, 1928, and the Briand-Kellogg Pact “outlawing war”.
2. Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Scottish Labour politician, member of Independent Labour Party (ILP), adopted pacifist position during World War I, prime minister in the first (1924) and second (1929-1931) Labour governments, defected in 1931 with Philip Snowden and Jimmy Thomas to form National Government with the Conservatives after the Labour government split on the question of cutting unemployment benefits, served as prime minister until 1935.
3. Drawn up according to the full quota of ships requested by Britain at the talks of the previous year with the United States and Japan, which had broken down over Britain’s refusal to lower this quota. The Anglo-French agreement also permitted unrestricted re-equipment in small vessels including submarines, which were the speciality of the French. The US Embassy in London issued a strong public protest in September 1928 when these terms became known. MacDonald, once in office, hastened to make a deal with the Americans and the agreement with the French was pushed aside in favour of the London Conference settlement of 1930, which fixed a ratio of 5 : 5 : 3 vessels between the US, Britain and Japan, and placed a five-year moratorium on naval shipbuilding. For all the long negotiations it involved this “agreement” was no more than a cover for the ongoing preparations for the next imperialist war.
4. The meeting-place of the League of Nations which Lenin called the “thieves kitchen”. It was formed in 1919 by the victors in the First World War—the United States excepted—and for many years refused to admit the defeated states. It soon became an arena for the diplomatic manoeuvring surrounding the preparation of the Second World War.
5. Gustav Stresemann (1878-1929) was a German bourgeois politician who became leader of the right-wing People’s Party during the Weimar Republic. Known in his earlier years as a spokesman for the German general staff and an advocate of unrestricted submarine warfare, he was Chancellor on a number of occasions and German foreign minister from 1923-29. In this capacity he negotiated Germany’s entry into the League of Nations in 1926 and secured a gradual reduction in the reparations imposed by the Versailles Treaty. He devoted considerable energy to re-drawing the post-war map of Europe in the interests of German capitalism, and died in office only days before the 1929 crash.
6. Arthur Henderson (1863-1935), a leader of the British Labour Party, who rallied the party to support World War I and became a government minister. He later served as Home Secretary in the first Labour government (1924) and Foreign Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-1931).
7. This paper began life in 1911 as the strike bulletin of the London printers. In its early period it adopted a generally left line, treating syndicalism sympathetically and taking an anti-war position, though generally from a pacifist standpoint. By 1922, however, it had fallen into financial difficulties, and was taken over by the TUC and the Labour Party, thereafter reflecting the views of the leadership. Used as a weapon against dissidents by the 1929 government.
8. Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), Republican President of the United States, 1929-32. A Quaker, Hoover was identified with the laissez-faire, less protectionist wing of American capitalism which was held in retrospect to have contributed to the Wall Street crash and the development of the slump, and in the election of November 1932 he was defeated by F.D. Roosevelt.
9. Philip Snowden (1864-1937), British Labour politician; member of the Independent labour party (ILP); pacifist during World War I; Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first (1924) and second (1929-31) Labour governments; proposed the cut of unemployment benefits that split the government in 1931, went with Ramsay MacDonald to form the National Government, a coalition with the Conservatives.
10. This took place in August 1929 to revise the post-war settlement between the European powers, particularly in the matter of German reparations. Snowden, representing the British government as Chancellor of the Exchequer, nearly wrecked it by refusing to accept a reduction of £2m per year in Britain’s share. In return for this gesture of defiance on behalf of declining British imperialism he was awarded the Freedom of the City of London. It was left to Henderson as Foreign Secretary to restore good feeling with the other imperialist powers.
11. The agreement reached at the Hague Conference, relieving Germany of allied control in return for a final settlement, at a reduced rate, of reparations payments. A new Bank for International Settlements was set up through which Germany was to pay at the re-negotiated rates over a period of 59 years.
12. Ossinsky, Larin and Radek were all leaders of the Soviet Communist Party who supported the Opposition at one period or another and later capitulated to Stalin. N. Ossinsky (1887-1938?) was a Bolshevik of long standing who, though signing the Letter of 46 in 1923, generally supported Bukharin both as a “Left Communist” in 1918 and in his right-wing phase in the mid-1920s. However, he testified against Bukharin at the Third Moscow Trial and then disappeared. M.A. Larin (1882-1932) was a Menshevik until 1917, and after taking part in some opposition groups became a zealous supporter of Stalin, apparently among the first to suggest the use of force against party oppositions. Both Ossinsky and Larin were members of one group in 1923-4 which called for “Workers’ control” as against “workers’ management”. Karl Radek (1885-1939?) was born into a Jewish family in Galicia and was active in both the Polish and German workers’ movements, He later joined the Bolsheviks and the Left Opposition, but capitulated to Stalin in 1929. After serving as Stalin’s secretary he was condemned and imprisoned at the Second Moscow Trial, the manner of his death remaining unknown.
13. John Pepper (1886-1939), born Pogany, a Hungarian, and Jay Lovestone (1898-1990), an American, were associated with Bukharin in the International Right Opposition. This tendency developed in opposition to Stalin’s ultra-left turn in 1928-9, and had organizations in a number of countries, particularly the United States and Germany, which maintained their existence until around 1939. Pepper had been ultra-left at the time of the Third Congress of the Communist International, and in the later 1920s was described by Trotsky as “a political parasite”. He was expelled from the Hungarian Party and went to live in the United States. Lovestone, who occupied various leading positions in the CPUSA in the 1920s, was expelled in 1929 and ran various organizations supporting his views in the 1930s. Later he moved to the extreme right and became a pillar of American imperialism through his work in the labour movement and the building of CIA-backed anti-communist union organizations in various countries.
14. N.I. Bukharin (1888-1938), Bolshevik who joined the Party in 1906, was at this time still working with Stalin against the opposition as he had been doing since 1923. It was late in 1928, in launching his ultra-left turn, that Stalin broke with Bukharin removing him in the following year from his posts as editor of Pravda and chairman of the Comintern. On capitulating to Stalin he was assigned to “educational work”. Framed and murdered by Stalin in the last of the Moscow Trials, 1938.
15. In October 1929, shortly after the formation of the second Labour government.
16. Curzon, George Nathaniel (Lord Curzon) (1859-1925) – Aristocrat educated at Eton and Oxford. Viceroy of India 1898-1905; strengthened the apparatus of colonial rule, partitioning Bengal and fortifying the North-West Frontier against a threat from Tsarist Russian imperialism. Became an earl in 1911, joined Lloyd George’s War Cabinet in 1916; Foreign Secretary first under Lloyd George in 1919 and then under Bonar Law and Baldwin, 1922-24. A leader of the right wing of the Conservative Party in this period, he combined traditional hostility to Tsarist Russia with his class loyalty to act as an arch-enemy of Soviet Russia, against which he carried out endless diplomatic manoeuvres.
17. The Fabian Society was set up in 1884 by a group of mystics who had formerly constituted the Fellowship of the New Life. it soon secured the support of a Colonial Office clerk called Sidney Webb and an obscure novelist and music critic, Bernard Shaw. Fabians advocated various social reforms which they sought to achieve by putting pressure on Liberals, trade union leaders and anybody else prepared to listen. Falsely claiming to have brought about most progressive legislation since the time of its foundation, the Fabian Society has nevertheless exercised a strong ideological influence within the Labour Party as the chief alternative to Marxism and the struggle to overthrow capitalism.
18. Following on MacDonald’s treacherous turn to coalition with the Tories and the disastrous losses for Labour in the 1931 General Election, the determination of the working class to fight back against the slump was reflected in a series of by-election victories, eight in all, between April 1932 and October 1934. On 25th October 1933 the Conservative candidate for Fulham East, who had campaigned for a strengthening of the armed forces, was defeated by the Labour candidate, who accused him of preparing war. A conservative majority of 14,521 was replaced by a Labour majority of 4,840. On 1st November, Labour won control of 200 boroughs in municipal elections, and in March 1934 captured the London County Council.
19. Jean Longuet (1876-1938) was a French lawyer and socialist who held a pacifist position in the First World War but invariably voted for war credits. Founder and editor of the newspaper Le Populaire, At the Strasbourg Congress in 1918 the majority of the French Socialist Party adopted Longuet’s policy. After the Tours Congress in 1920 where the communists gained the majority he supported the minority and joined the centrist Two-and-a-half International which returned later to the Second International. [He was also a grandson of Karl Marx. – Ted Crawford]
20. Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) was one of the leading theoreticians of the German Social Democratic Party and the Second International. By the outbreak of the First World War he had abandoned revolutionary Marxism and took up an indecisive position between revolutionary opposition to the war and patriotic support for the German bourgeoisie. As such he became the theorist of “centrism” in the socialist movement and strongly opposed the Russian Revolution.
21. The Second International was formed in 1889, when the French and German Marxist groups, together with several others, gathered at a congress in Paris. The International Socialist Bureau, its only central organ, was established in 1900. The revolutionary high point of the Second International was the Amsterdam Congress of 1904 at which the revisionism of Bernstein and the ministerialism of Millerand-Jaurès were, in effect, condemned. Despite its formal adherence to revolutionary Marxism, the practice and theory of reformism was gradually gaining the upper hand within it, triumphing when World War broke out and the International collapsed into its national constituent parts, most of which supported the bourgeoisie of their respective countries in the imperialist war. In the pre-war period Kautsky and the German social democracy had been regarded as orthodox Marxists, while the Labour Party was established on an openly reformist basis.
22. Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), leader of the left wing of German Social Democracy from early in the century. She was a leading figure in the struggle against revisionism and parliamentarism in the Second International. After the 1905 revolution in Russia she fully supported the Bolsheviks and at the 1907 Congress at Stuttgart she, together with Lenin, introduced the revolutionary anti-war amendment carried by congress. She took a revolutionary position from the outbreak of the First World War and joined in the formation of the Spartacus League. Imprisoned during the war, she wrote articles on a range of theoretical questions and in particular advocated the formation of a new International. After the 1918 revolution she took part in organizing the Communist Party and founded Rote Fahne, its central organ. After the January uprising she was arrested and assassinated along with Karl Liebknecht.
23. This view of the world was first put forward by some of the leaders of Austrian Social Democracy in the period before 1914. Karl Renner (1870-1950), who was later Chancellor in 1918 and President in 1946, and Otto Bauer (1881-1938) were the proponents of theories about cultural autonomy within the Austrian Empire. They were associated with the ideas put forward in the magazine Der Kampf founded by them in 1907, particularly by Max Adler (1873-1941), which tried to reconcile Marxism with the philosophical idealism of Kant. It was a position similar to that of Bogdanov in Russia, attacked by Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. During the First World War, the Austro-Marxists generally took a pacifist stand similar to Kautsky’s in Germany. Afterwards they associated themselves with centrist international currents, providing the home of the “Vienna Union” or Two-and-a-half International, returning to the fold of the Second International in 1923.
24. On 6th February, 1934 the Radical government led by Daladier was brought down amid riots by armed fascist bands in the pay of big capital, and the right-wing Bonapartist regime headed by Doumergue was installed. See Trotsky’s Whither France?
25. Oswald Mosley (1896-1980), British politician best known as the founder of the British Union of Fascists; originally elected as a Conyervative MP in 1918, he became dissatisfied with the party’s politics and became an Independent MP in 1922; in 1924 he joined the Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party, aligning himself witht he left; by 1930 he had became dissatisfied with the lack of radicalism of the second Labour government and left the party in early 1931 to found the New Party, which initially attracted support from various sections of the political spectrum, including a number of well-known left-wingers; following a tour of Europe Mosley became attracted to fascism and set up the British Union of Fascists modelled on Mussolini’s Fasist Party in 1932.
26. George Lansbury (1869-1940), British socialist politician and newspaper editor; helped found the Daily Herald in 1912; edotor (1912-22); opposed World War I and welcomed the February and October Revolutions; as Mayor of Poplar in East London he led the Poplar Rebellion in 1921, when councillors refused to forward rates (property taxes) collected to the london County Council and distributed them to alleviate poverty – the councillors were jailed and council meeting had to be held in Brixton Prison; the revolt led to changes in local government financing to the benefit of poorer areas; leader fo the Labour Party 1932-1935.
27. Hermann Müller (1876-1931), a leader of the German Social Democracy, was the Foreign Minister who signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and Chancellor 1928-30. Headed by the Social Democracy, this administration was essentially a coalition with other bourgeois parties, paving the way for the Bonapartist Brüning government of 1930 which in turn provided the conditions for the victory of fascism in 1933.
28. Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), British Conservative politician; prime minister three times 1923-1924, 1924-1929 and 1935-1937; prime minister during the General Strike.
29. Llandrindod Wells is a spa in Radnorshire, Wales. Baldwin spoke there on 8th April, 1935 to the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches. He defended the government’s White Paper on defence, and urged an increase in the size of the Air Force.
30. Sidney Webb (1859-1947) and Beatrice Potter Webb (1858-1943) were leaders of the Fabian Society, which was an explicitly reformist and gradualist group that had great influence on the development of the Labopur Party; during the 1930s they expressed great admiration for Stalin.
31. An amusing touch: Sydney Webb informed me, with particular emphasis, that he was able to leave England for a few weeks only because he was not standing for Parliament. He obviously expected me to ask, “Why?” in order to inform me about his pending elevation to the peerage. I saw in his eyes that he was expecting a question, but refrained from asking anything in order to avoid causing any embarrassment. The question of the peerage never even occurred to me; rather I thought that Webb, in his old age, had renounced active political life, and naturally I did not want to pursue that subject. Only later, when the new ministry was formed, I understood what had been going on: the author of research reports on industrial democracy was proudly looking forward to bearing the title of lord!—L.D.T.
32. This conference in April 1935 between the British, French and Italian governments, represented the last attempt to keep together the anti-German alliance of imperialist powers which had won victory in 1918 and enforced the Treaty of Versailles in the following year. Nothing concrete could be agreed, and by October relations had been disrupted by the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Mussolini was now in open alliance with Hitler; Laval went on later to become a leader of the Vichy regime of Nazi collaborators.
33. Pierre Laval (1883-1945), French politician and lawyer; originally a socialist he moved to the right during World War I; a prominent figure in French governments of the 1930s, he was prime minister four times (1931-32 and 1935-36, then under the Vichy regime 1940 and 1942-44); tried for treason after World War II and executed.
34. Cynthia Mosley (1898-1933), daughter of Lord Curzon and wife of Oswald Mosley; followed the same trajectory as her husband from the Conservative Party through the Labour Party and the New Party to the British Union of Fascists.
35. The copy of Cynthia Mosley’s letter which was pasted into Trotsky’s diary reads as follows:
“Istanbul, 4th September, 1930
“Dear Comrade Trotsky, I would like above all things to see you for a few moments. There is no good reason why you should see me as (1) I belong to the Labour Party in England who were so ridiculous and refused to allow you in, but also I belong to the ILP and we did our very best to make them change their minds, and (2) I am daughter of Lord Curzon who was Minister for Foreign Affairs in London when you were in Russia! On the other hand I am an ardent Socialist. I am a member of the House of Commons. I think less than nothing of the present Government. I have just finished reading your life which inspired me as no other book has done for ages. I am a great admirer of yours. These days when great men seem so very few and far between it would be a great privilege to meet one of the enduring figures of our age and I do hope with all my heart you will grant me that privilege. I need hardly say I come as a private person, not a journalist or anything but myself—I am on my way to Russia, I leave for Batum-Tiflis-Rostov-Kharkov and Moscow by boat Monday. I have come to Prinkipo this afternoon especially to try to see you, but if it were not convenient I could come out again any day till Monday. I do hope however you could allow me a few moments this afternoon. Yours fraternally, Cynthia Mosley.”
36. Published in 1935 when the Webbs were in their 70s. Previously they had been anti-Soviet but now they made Russia respectable. They praised the Russian system of planning and policy of “peace and non-interference”; they discovered that “force of example is the most promising way of spreading Soviet ideas” and that “Stalin is universally considered to have justified his leadership by success”. The Moscow Trials are glossed over as a necessary part of the birth pangs of the “New Civilisation”. The book was part of the brief vogue for Russia among some British intellectuals in the 1930s—it was visited and written about by Bernard Shaw, Lord Lothian and Lady Astor as well as the Webbs. The full title of the first edition was Soviet Communism—a New Civilisation? By the time of the second edition in 1937, the question mark had disappeared. R. Palme Dutt, reviewing it in Labour Monthly, described it as “a definite victory for the world revolution!”
37. The first political movement of the British working class. Chartism took up the traditional demands of universal manhood suffrage and other parliamentary reforms, and tried to achieve them by methods including petitions, strikes and armed insurrections during the period from 1837 to 1848. The strikers were beaten back to work and the insurrectionists were transported to Australia. The three petitions presented to Parliament in this period had enormous working class support, but were contemptuously rejected with large displays of force and arguments about the sanctity of property and the constitution.
38. The Paris Commune of 18th March to 28th May 1871 was the first time in history that revolutionary struggles of the working class produced a workers’ government. Not proceeding to seize the banks and smash all the major institutions of the capitalist state, it was drowned in blood by government troops after heroic resistance by the Communards.
Last updated on: 2.7.2007