International Supplement of THE COMMUNIST Vol. II, Supplement to No.
JUNE 1, 1920.
Greetings to Communists Abroad Letter From LENIN News from abroad is scarce and scanty. The blockade by the wild beasts of Imperialism is strangling us, and all the forces of the most powerful nations of the world are used against us for the re establishment of the exploiters. The fierce hatred which the capitalists of Russia and of the entire world feel towards the Soviet Republic is camouflaged by high. sounding phrases about the real democracy.
The fraternity of exploiters is true to its own traditionu: it roprosents bourgeois democracy to he tines, including Messrs. Adler, Kautzky, and the majority of the leaders of the independent socialdemocratic party of Germany, which is independent of the revolutionary proletariat, but dependent on petty bourgeoise prejudices.
The scarcer the news from abroad, the greater is our joy in Russia at the universal and gigantic successes of Communism among the workers of all lands, and at the severance by the masses of all ties with the treacherous leaders, who. from Scheideman down to Kautzky. have gone over to the bourgeoisie.
All we know of the Italian Socialist Party is that the Congress has decided by overhelming majority to adhere to the Third International, and to adopt the program of the proletarian dictatorally become Communist, although, unfortunately, it has retained the old name. We send out a hearty welcome to the Italian workers and their party.
has already two Communist papers: The national, edited by Raymond Pericat, and Le Nom Défendu, edited Georges Anquetille. Several proletarian organizations have joined the Third International. Evidently the working masses are on the side of Communism and the Soviet Power.
As to the German Communists, we have learnt that a number of towns possess Communist newsmost of which bear the title The Red Flag. The Berlin Red Flag has an illegal existence, and is having a heroic contest with the butchers Scheidemann and Noske, who are rendering flunky service to the bourgeoisie by their acts, ag do the independents by their words and by their propaganda of petty ideas.
We are full of admiration and enthusiasm for the heroic stand made by the Berlin Red Flag.
shows that there are honest and sincere to be cowed, in spite of persecution and the foul murder of their best leaders. Communist workers in Germany are carrying on a heroic struggle to to last the German proletariat has given forces to whom the words proletarian revolution have become a reality.
We send our greetings the German Communists!
The Scheidemanns, and Kautzkys, the Renners and Friedrich Adlers, have shown themselves base traitors and betrayers of Socialism, and partisans of the bourgeoisie. They all signed the Basel mani.
festo an taikea then of the proletarian revolu.
tion. and all proved to be in reality nothing but small bourgeois democrats, knights of bourgeoiserepublican and helpers of the countseoigetionary Musions and bourgeoisie.
The fiorco persocution of the German Communists has made them more determined. If, at the present time, they are to a certain extent disunited, this only bears witness to the broadness and the mass character of their movement, and to the growth of Communism in the very heart of the working masses. Disunion is inevitable in a movement which is being so fiercely persecuted by the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisle and its lacqueys, Scheldemann Noske, and which is compelled to organize illegally.
It is also only natural that a movement which is growing so rapidly in the midst of persecution should engender sharp dissensions. There is nothing alarming in this: those are only growing pains.
Let the Scheidemanns and Kautzkys express malicious joy in the Vorwaerts and the Freiheit at dissensions among the Communists. These heroes of a decomposing small bourgeoisie are reduced to covering up their own rottenness by sneers at the Communists. Only the deliberately blind can refuse to recognize the real truth about the situation in Germany, which is the shameful betrayal of the proletarian revolution by the scheidemanns and Kautzkys, who have sided with the counter.
revolutionary bourgeoisie, Heinrich Laufenberg, in his admirable pamphlet Between the First and Second Revolution, has clearness of judgement. Disgensions amongst the proved and substantiated this fact with remarkable followers of Scheidemann and Kautzky ar the dissensions of decomposing and dying parties which possess leaders without followers, generals without armies.
The masses are leaving the Scheldemanns, and are going over to the Kautzkys, because of the Left wing of the latter This is evident from the perusal of any report of the mass meeting. The Left wing combines the unimaginative. cowardly old prejudices of the small, paltry. petty bourgeoisie regarding parliamentary democracy, with the Communist recognition of the proletarian revolution.
the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the Soviet It is anly under the pressure of the masses that the worthless leaders of the Independents pay 11p service to all this, for in reality they remain small bourgeis democrats of the type of Louis Blanc and other foolish persons of 1848, whom Marx so mercilessly branded and ridiculed.
All these dissensions are quite irreconcilable.
There can be no peace between proletarian world revolutionaries and the small bourgeoisie, which, like its proto type of 1948. worships bourgeois democracy, oblivious of the latter bourgeois charHaase and Kautzky, Friedrich Adler and Otto Bauer, may twist and turn, they may full reams of paper and alelver no end of speeches, but the fact remains that, in reality, they are incapable of understanding the dictatorship of proletariat and the Soviet Power.
and that they are nothing but small bourgeois democrats, Socialists a la Louis Blanc and Ledru Rollain. In fact they are, in the best case, tools In the hand of the bourgeoisie, and in the worstits conscious lacqeys.
The Independents, the followers of Kautzky and the Austrian Social Democrats, ar seemingly a united party, but in reality a large proportion of the members disagree with the leaders on everything which is essential. These members will engage in the proletarian, revolutionary struggle for Soviet power as soon as a new crisis arises, but the leaders will remain then, as now, counterrevolutionaries. Verbally, it is not aifficult to sit between two stools, and Hilferding in Germany, and Friedrich Adler in Austria, are proving them selves past masters in this art.
However, in the thick of the revolutionary strug.
sle, people who try to reconcile the irrecondialisti will be like so many soap bubbles. The heroes of 1848 proved themselves to be such, and the same may be said of brothers the Mensheviki and Social revolutionaries in Russia in 1917 19, and of the Knights of the Berne yellow Second International The dissensions of the Communists are of a different nature, and it is only the wantonly blind who cannot see the fundamental difference. Those are the dissensions among the representatives of a mass movement of a remarkably quick growth.
Those are dissensions which have a common, solid.
fundamental basis: the recognition of the proletarian dictatorship and Soviet power.
On such a basis dissensions have no terror: they are growing pains and not senile decay. Bolshevism has also experienced dissensions of this kind and splits in the Party on account of them, but when the decisive moment came for the conquest of power and the establishment of a Soviet republic, Bolshevism became united. It attracted all the best elements of Socialist thought, nearest to it in conception, and gathered around itself the entire vanguard of the proletariat and a gigantic majority of the workers.
The same thing will happen to the German Communists. From Workers Drednought. To be continued. Power.
to Greetings to American Communists FROM THE AMSTERDAM SUB BUREAU OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL Amsterdam, March 20th. long as the capitalist class owns and controls as long as Anglo American capitalism remains in Comrades: the machinery of production.
power, and we have reason to believe that the We have learned with utmost indignation how The Social Revolution is making great strides decisive struggle between capitalism and Comruthlessly the ruling class of America is perse in Europe; the light that has arisen in Russia munism will be waged on the American continent.
cuting you. The brutality with which it strikes floods the West; the ideas of the mass struggle. Nothing short of the fall of American capitalism at the best workers for the cause, flogs and the Soviet system, and the dictatorship of the will mean the end of that gigantic historical tortures, imprisons and deports hundreds of brave proletariat as means of realizing the reorgani drama of which the world war seems to have men and women, fills our hearts with the same zation production on Communist lines gain been the prologue. The rulling classes of America bitter feeling of being powerless to assist you daily in strength and sweep onward like an irre know this, and that is why they crush Comagainst your cruel oppressors, as we so often sistible flood. In the whole of Central Europe munism before it has deeply struck root into experienced when, in former days, the sad stories capitalism is waiting for its death blow; in the the American soil. But you, comrades, will not reached us of the suffering of the Russian revo Latin countries, France, Italy and Spain it is let them commit this crime; you will not let them lutionaries.
considerably weakened. being undermined by destroy your organization or compel you to But at the same time, the heroic way in which economical and political difficulties. Till now desert it; you will find ways and means to shift you are bearing up under the blow, fills us with Anglo American Capitalism stands almost un your methods of action, you will place your admiration and with confidence in the future shaken, powerful and strong. Great Britain still organization beyond the reach of your enemies of the American working class. We know you relies on her colonial empire; she hopes to be and carry on, undaunted, the agitation amongst are as yet only a vanguard; we know how Amer able to avert the revolution by affording to the the masses. You will rally these to the flag ican capitalism, by combining the brutality of the masses some slight betterment of their lot by of Communism, that is of world wide, uncomformer Russian autocracy with the hypocrasy lightening their chains a little through the exploita promizing class war. And when the economic that is the proper gift of the Anglo Saxon bour tion of hundreds of millions of their brethren crisis that is spreading over the world, reaches geoisie, has succeeded till now in misleading the of the colored races. Well, we think these hopes your country. when the revolutionary storm.
masses of the workers.
will soon be disappointed. Revolt already raises kept back neither by mountain ranges nor broad But we also know that persecutions have al its head in Egypt and in the Indies. As for oceans, rages over the American continent. ways been in the great epochs of the proletarian the United States, the employing classes hope when millions of starving workers no longer, class struggle the seed of the church. So it to retain their power by widening the chasm like in former times, cry out for bread, but fight was with Chartism, so after the promulgation of between a small aristocracy of labor, led by for power, then you will lead the way to the genthe anti socialist law in Germany under the rule treacherous leaders, and the masses of the workof Bismark; so in Russia after the terrible reeral attack on the capitalist system. Your persecuers. They hope to retain it by fooling and bying tions, your martyrdom to day, your heroic action of the years 1907 1910. Socialism always the minority, by coercing and victimizing the arose triumphant out of all persecutions. And struggle against fearful odds, all of this will vanguard of the masses.
so will Communism in our own days. Far from design you for leaders of the masses just as It is the glorious task of the American Comthe striking fear in the hearts of the fighters pledged and determination of the Russian munism to carry on, on broader lines the task Bolsheviks designed them to take the lead in to the revolution, the White Terror in America that the first took in hand, to lend the revolutionary struggle of 1917 will arouse in thousands of workers a new con the masses to the assault of capitalism; to become Yours for the International Revolution sciousness of the realities of the class war, and the nucleus, the heart and the brain.
the true nature of bourgeois democracy. It will of a strong The Executive Committee of the Amsterdam and determined working class movement.
turn the thought of thousands and thousands Sub Bureau of The Communist International, The arising of such a movement is of the to the principles of Communism and make them Wynkoop.
utmost importance for International Communism realize that there is neither freedom, nor justice. and for the cause of the Social Revolution. We Rutgers.
nor any hope of a better life for the masses as all know that the world revolution cannot triumph.
Henriette Roland Holst.