The Left in History: Revolution and Reform in Twentieth Century Politics
By Willie Thompson
Pluto Press, 1997, 263 pp., $44.95.
Review by Jonathan Singer
What are the political lessons from the left's history in the 20th century? Willie Thompson suggests two: the need "to evolve a convincing alternative" to capitalism, which is "the main part of the problem"; and to "achieve ... an intellectual — not organisational — hegemony over the present remnants of the existing left", that is, to reject building a Leninist party.
Thompson's The Left in History is an argument with Leninism — for its "revolutionism" and against its "partyism".
The "revolutionary seriousness and will to power" of Leninism are not a problem, writes Thompson. "There is no reason to believe that this was conceived in the first instance as a party dictatorship over the masses."
Thompson tells us that Lenin "was undoubtedly correct" in his analysis of the betrayals of social democracy. He follows this analysis to discredit social democracy, along with Stalinism, as an alternative to capitalism.
Thompson agrees that Leninism was essential to the transformation of war into revolution: "In Russia, the perspectives adhered to by Lenin and Trotsky mobilised the energies of the masses, released incalculable hopes and aspirations and enabled their regime to prevail against all comers".
However, according to Thompson, Leninism combined its revolutionary drive with "the conviction that Marxism offered a comprehensive scientific account of reality and guide to action", from which followed "a historical super-confidence, a total certainty in the fall of the bourgeoisie on a global scale and the triumph of socialist revolution".
'Inherent conservatism'
This led to an attempt to apply the Bolsheviks' perspectives internationally, which "proved to be singularly inappropriate", in particular because of "the inherent social conservatism of the working classes in developed Europe".
Thompson's argument is that Leninism "wildly misjudged" the European masses, who "remained simply unwilling, whatever their level of social dissatisfaction and resentment might be, to undertake the overthrow of their electorally established regimes".
In Germany in 1919, the politics of the Social Democratic leadership of the Council of People's Representatives "corresponded much better with mass feeling" than did the politics of the revolutionaries.
Thompson contends: "Had there been an experienced and effective communist party in Germany at the time, the outcome would have been the same and it would have made no difference if it had been led by a dozen individuals all of Lenin and Trotsky's calibre."
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Thompson claims the leadership of the Communist International (Comintern), including Lenin, mistakenly "attributed the problem to inadequate leadership, i.e., that the foreign communist parties were insufficiently like the Bolsheviks, and tried to rectify the deficiency by 'bolshevising' them and finding leaders willing to act as yes-persons for the Comintern executive. The result, as might have been expected, was to destroy initiative and stifle the ability of the non-Soviet parties to react effectively to local circumstances."
Thompson asks, "Why [did] Stalinism, with only minimal struggle or opposition, [take] over all the parties of the International well before Stalin was ... in any position to enforce his point of view?".
He responds: "Stalinism, as a style of party management (as distinct from personal dictatorship in the state and more distinct still from relentless political terror), prevailed universally, not mainly because the Stalin-controlled Comintern directed all the member parties along such a course but because it actually fulfilled the requirements of revolutionary parties or revolutionary regimes functioning under varying degrees of siege condition, whether political or economic".
False premises
Thompson's argument denies three facts: support for the overthrow of capitalist rule was more advanced in Germany at the beginning of its revolution in November 1918 than it had been in Russia when the revolution began there; the Russian communists' argument with their German counterparts in the early 1920s was not that "the German deficiency plainly lay in the absence of a disciplined and tightly organised political force with an unbending will to power comparable to the Bolsheviks"; and Stalinism had not taken over all the Communist parties well before Stalin completed the elimination of his rivals in 1929.
Mass support for the social transformation from capitalism to socialism did not exist in Russia in February 1917, any more than it existed in Germany in 1918. This support developed only as the masses learned from their experiences.
In Germany in November 1918, unlike Russia in February 1917, the provisional government already formally drew its authority from the workers' and soldiers' councils, not the pre-existing parliamentary body. The situation corresponded to what Lenin called for from March to June 1917, and what the Petrograd soldiers and workers demanded in July 1917 in Russia — Soviet power under social democratic leadership (the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries), with the right of the Bolsheviks to compete with them peacefully for political leadership.
Despite this advantageous starting point, the German workers and small farmers failed to learn to make a revolution from their political experiences.
Lenin's April 1920 book, 'Left-Wing' Communism — An Infantile Disorder, was addressed to the Comintern's "left" revolutionaries, first and foremost in Germany.
Lenin asked "why the Bolsheviks ... [were] able to build up the discipline needed by the revolutionary proletariat" that was "an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie". He pointed out that "only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence" could answer that question.
The revolutionary party's "devotion to the revolution ... tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism" are only one condition for maintaining the party's discipline, Lenin argued. It must also be able "to link up, maintain the closest contact, and ... merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people — primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people". A third condition is "the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard ... provided the broad masses have seen [this], from their own experience".
This takes us far beyond Thompson's concerns about demands for discipline, calibre and will. The Russian communists were raising the question of how to create an "experienced and effective" party able to guide a revolutionary proletariat so that it can make a difference.
Labour aristocracy
The fundamental character of the Leninist criticism of the German revolutionaries was not that their party leadership was inadequate, but that their party was.
In contrast to Bolshevism, which from 1903 had been a distinct current in the workers' movement, the German revolutionaries completed their split from the opportunist wing of the social democratic party only in December 1918. Moreover, the German revolutionaries then abstained from the 1919 constituent assembly and the trade unions. As a result, communist politics had not been tested within the masses, nor had it begun to politically educate them.
This was especially important because the strength of the reformist trend in the German Social Democratic Party had been growing for many years before 1914, when the character of the party was definitively exposed when it voted for war.
Leninism argued this trend's material basis was imperialist super-profits, which allowed privileges to be granted to a small section of the working class. These "crumbs" created a "labour aristocracy" which, trained in winning partial gains, developed class-collaborationist politics that could be broken only by political confrontation and new experiences of struggle.
Thompson glosses over the source of social democracy's capitulation to capitalism. He attributes to Lenin a thesis of "treacherous leaders" while failing to explain why the European working class's social conservatism was "inherent".
The criticism by the Russian Bolshevik leaders of their "left" colleagues in Europe did not equate to the imposition of leaders on the communist parties. This began only after another defeat for the revolutionary forces in Germany in 1923.
Even so, "Bolshevisation", which was declared at the fifth Comintern congress in 1924, had varying effects in the parties of the Comintern. In some cases, the results were positive.
In Italy, between 1924 and 1926, Antonio Gramsci, appointed secretary of the Communist Party, built an inclusive leadership team that headed a reorientation and reorganisation of the party in the face of fascist repression. In Australia, the Communist Party was rebuilt under the leadership of Jack Kavanagh after its leading figure, Jock Garden, rejoined the Labor Party.
By 1929, these leaderships were sidelined, replaced or expelled in favour of leaders prepared to conform to Stalinism's dominance.
Some revolutionary parties in the Leninist tradition, such as the Vietnamese, did not suffer from "party Stalinism", however harsh the conditions of their struggle. These examples confirm the need for a Leninist party to lead a revolution by uniting oppositional forces to overthrow capitalism.
Thompson carries over his argument against a single decisive international leadership into one against revolutionaries winning organisational hegemony on the left in national politics. This is a grave political weakness in a book that otherwise offers a valuable historical survey of the left.
Thompson's conclusions seem in part to be the result of examining the entrails of the shattered forces of the left, rather than looking for examples of renewal. The 1998 Asia-Pacific Solidarity Conference in Sydney, where a number of left parties from various trends within the Leninist tradition demonstrated that they are both politically significant in their country's politics and capable of learning from each other, showed that there are reasons to be optimistic.