THE MILITANT September 15, 1929.
Page The Cult of the Third Period The Party Election Program in New York ship of nearly every communist party declined, as did their trade union influence, press circulation and political activity the nuclei. The membership of the American Party, it may be recalled, fell from 16, 325 architects conveniently forget to mention the facts in 1925 to 7, 277 in 1928. The proceedings of the Sixth By Maurice Spector of the Chinese Revolution, the British General Strike Congress will show that every monolithic party was The cloud by day and pillar of fire by night that and the Viennese uprising. It is merely spoken of as rent by violent factional struggles that resulted in the Stalin conjures up to shield its disas a period of relative stabilization, defensive strugfresh splits in Czecho Slovakia, the United States, Gertrous ultra left zig zag, is the so called Third Per gles of the workers, successful socialist ocnstruction many in addition to those which had already taken iod invented in the theses of the Comintern Congress in the growing political influence of the place in France, Holland, Belgium and the Soviet last July. Now in every Daily Worker contribu Communist Parties, and inner consolidation of the Union. The authors of the second and third periods tion to the fraudulent enlightenment campaign this Comintern. Nine tenths of this characterization is equally misrepresent the real situation in the Soviet third period is invoked with deadly monotony as the falsehood and the remaining tenth needs qualificaUnion, where under their regime the growth of the restorationist elements culminated in a bloodless uplatest all sufficient, all hallowing fetish before which tion.
the credulous party member must make the sign of The method of optimistic lying to maintain the rising of the Kulaks creating the grain crisis of 1927the cross.
prestige of the leadership and keep up the morale S, and they omit to record the unparalleled developInsight into the motives for the invention of the of the home populace is not Marxist but was habit ment of bureaucracy in party and state apparatus.
CONCLUDED IN NEXT ISSUE Third Period may be gained from the study of a ually resorted to by the general staffs in their comnot dissimilar manoeuvre executed by the Zinoviev muniques during the late world war. The history of SLOGANS for GASTONIA Stalin leadership at the Fifth Congress (1924) at the the second period was falsified to stifle discussion beginning of the present crisis in the Soviet Union and and prevent the heavy accounting that otherwise Stal The New York district of the Young Communist the International. The German revolutionary situa in and Bucharin would have had to render. They would League publishes a monthly District Bulletin for the tion of 1923 precipitated by the occupation of the have had to explain why they failed to give the cor membership. In the August 1929 issue we find the Ruhr and economic collapse, the most favorable op rect bolshevik leadership that would have utilized the following: On page is a big headline which reads: portunity for the workers conquest of political power revolutionary possibilities of this period to develop SMASH the GASTONIA FRAME UP. On Page since the Russian, was lost not only by the impotent offensives for the overthrow of the stabilization. They 3, among the slogans advanced for International Youth Brandler Thalheimer strategy but the no less feeble would have had to admit that they displayed no re Day, is included this one: FIGHT THE GASTONIA direction of the Zinoviev repeated the lais volutionary initiative but pursued such right wing FRAME UP! On page 9, at the conclusion of an ser faire policy that disgraced him in the crucial test and centrist policies that objectively helped to strength official editorial entitled Soviet Union Invaded. we of 1917. The sagacious Stalin advocated allowing the en capitalism, that they staked nearly all on the Kuo find the slogan: Fight the Gastonia Frame Up! On Fascisti to get power first! Following the debacle, mintang bourgeoisie, undermined the independence of page 19, in article entitled Sacco Vanzetti Memthe bureaucratic Zinoviev Stalin bloc dominating the the Chinese Communist Party, and opposed the pro orial. we read: This demonstration will be of utmost had to salvage their papal infallibility in pagation of the Soviets. They would have been found importance this year because of the attempts to repeat the Comintern at all costs, particularly as they were guilty of transforming the British Communist Party the Sacco Vanzetti case by the legal murder of the entrenching themselves for the thermidorian falsifica and the Minority movement into adjuncts of the Bri Gastonia framed up textile strikers. All emphasis tion of the legacy of Lenin under the guise of a cru tish General Council, incapable of offering any sub ours. sade against trotskyism. The slogan that was in stantial resistance to the betrayal of the General Strike.
The Bulletin of the grasps the central feature vented for this purpose was Bolshevization. osten Under the shadow of their regime, the Viennese up of the Gastonia case and raises the correct leading sibly aimed at social democratic traditions in the com rising found the Communist Party helpless and be slogan of the campaign for defense, as pointed out bemunist parties.
wildered, the Sacco Vanzetti demonstrations developed fore in the Militant. It is to be hoped that the Pary really outside the orbit of the Comintern influence, the THE FIFTH CONGRESS elders will learn elementary lessons like this from French Party after heroic proclamations against the the Youth.
The Fifth Congress was accordingly fixed up to American Legion, turned tail and retired for polite look very left The proceeded to throw demonstration to a Parisian suburb and the Red Day IN THE NEXT ISSUE the blame for all that had gone wrong on the German organized by the Czech Party against Fascism was The next issue of the Militant will contain, among leadership, on the objective situation, on the Rusturned into a farce by the passivity of the leader other material, the following: complete review of sian Opposition, on the form of party organization, ship.
the conference in Cleveland, and a report on everybody and anything but itself. The ultra lefts The extension of the political influence of the Com on the proceedings by one of the delegates; an article whom Zinoviev had long patronized in reserve dis Give us munist parties and their inner consolidation during placed the Brandlers and Thalheimers.
on the significance of Hendin quitting the Comthis period are equally myths. The machine man Piat munist Party; another article by comrade Trotsky on fifty such as Maslow said Stalin in a session of the nitski brochure Organization of the World Party Brandler and Thalheimer; and many other articles of International Control Commission, and we will have establishes for the critical reader that the member vital importance.
no more anxiety on the score of the German Revolution. The chameleon Varga, taking on protective coloration, helped Zinoviev to furnish the Congress with a suitably misleading estimate of the world situation. significance of American intervention for The New York district of the Communist Party is the stabilization of Europe, for the revival of socialThe Platform demands that judges shall not be apdemocracy, and as a source of future revolutionary upcirculating a mimeographed Platform of the Class pointed. They shall be elected by the working people heavals, was completely missed. Armed insurrection Struggle for the municipal and state election cam and should be removable at any time by the will of was retained on the agenda as an immediate prospect paign in 1929, with the central slogan of Class against the majority of their electors. These are shadows and the putsch in Esthonia was a subsequent by proClass. that is, with the same slogan applied with such from the graves of Allan Benson and Charles Edward duct.
disastrous results in England, and in France for al Russell. Why not the general initiative, referendum But the left course did not endure very long. Like most two years.
and recall?
a bolt from the blue to the Congress itself, came the This is the charger that the Party parliamentary The Platform raises as its main demand in the tranannouncement that the Russian unions were negotiat generals Weinstone, Trachtenberg, al. have now sit muddle the five cent fare and free transfers! It ing a bloc with the British General Council for inter changed to after having rode so bellicosely (it was not staunchly calls for free milk for all pre school childnational trade union unity and resistance to the war so many months ago) in the ranks of an unconditional ren, and free diet kitchens and food stations for mo.
danger. This orientation on unity with the Amster united front with Jacob Pauken, Roewer of Boston thers. Why not municipal meat markets and cremadam bureaucracy was the entering wedge of the series and the Milwaukee socialists. We opposed the notorious tories? They are also contained in the municipal of opportunist acts which was the yielding of the Right Panken maneuver of Weinstone and company (before campaign books of the old Socialist Party, edited then Center bloc in the Russian party to the increasing pres the Comintern decision as well as afterwards) and we by the same Trachtenberg who so calmly appropriates sure of outside capitalist stabilization and the intern oppose the slogan of Class against Class with the them now for the Communist municipal platform.
al pressure of the kulak, nepman and bureaucrat. At same vigor.
There is, by the way, a startling identity of the Party a time when the stabilization was again showing its What is wrong with this slogan? Everything. It demands in general with those of the old See weaknesses in Great Britain, when the revolution was flies in the face of every principle of Marxism and the 1920 Campaign book and the 1914 Congressional developing in China, and a new stage of struggle be Leninism, which teach us that there is no fixed relacampaign book of the tween capitalist and socialist elements was opening in tion and existence of only two organized, well defined The sections on the Negro problem are indistinguishthe Soviet Union, Stalin promulgated the slogan Fire and homogeneous classes, that outside of the proletar able from the standpoint of any advanced liberal or to the Left. formulated the theory of socialism in one iat there is only one reactionary mass. It excludes the with the exception of the slogan country with its implication of capitalist stabilizathe possibility for the workers to win allies among the of the right to self determination. There is no attempt tion for decades, and came into sharp conflict with the urban petty bourgeoisie and the rural peasantry for to indicate the class purpose behind segregation, disLeningrad Opposition headed by the left centrist Zino the struggle against the big bourgeoisie. It contains crimination, and other persecutions of the Negro, and viev at the Fourteenth Party Congress (1925. The precisely that error, raised to the th degree, of which no call for a united struggle of Negro and white workswing to the right of the Marxist line in the Russian the Stalinists have falsely accused Trotsky of enter ers. The same can be said with little change of the party was thereupon automatically effected in the taining with regard to the theory of permanent re housing demands. The main complaint of the Party whole International. By means of such dishonest ex volution. It is a hypnotic formula intended to cover on mothers pensions provided under the New York pedients as the Open Letter to the German Party, the up the failure to mobilize the workers on the basis State law is that they are entirely inadequate. Fisher Maslow leadership was eliminated to cut the of their immediate demands and needs, a substitute e. am acceptance of the basic principle.
Leningrad Opposition off from a base in Western Eu which cannot mobilize the masses because it is abOnly at the very end of the Platform is the comrope, and the so unanimously elected at stract, since it assumes that the workers (especially ing imperialist war dealt with. The danger of war the Fifth Congress was bureaucratically re construct in the United States) have attained a high degree is not inextricably knitted with all the other problems.
ed in the image of Stalin at successive plenums with of class conconsciousness and differentiation, and class It is not connected with rationalization, with the perout mandate from any Congress and in violation of organization. The American workers, who have not yet secution of and drive upon the workers, with the whole the statutes.
even. entered upon the path of independent political relation of forces and the struggle between the workJUGGLING WITH PERIODS action, who do not yet even vote for the reformist so ers and the master class in the United States. No, Four years elapsed between the Fifth and Sixth cialists, will not and cannot be set into motion by this it is still raised as some special, isolated question, for Congresses, during which time the re vamped slogan. Even in a directly revolutionary situation, the which special methods, a specific line of policy must was the obedient instrument and rubber stamp slogan is worth nothing. The Bolsheviks in 1917 moof the ruling Right Center (Rykov Bucharin Stalin)
bilized the workers for the revolution with the concrete, be applied. There is not even a mention of the Kelbloc. We have seen how the analysis of the interna immediate, practical slogans of Bread, Peace and logg Pact (has Weinstone, as well as Stalin and Rykov, signed it. there is no mention of the heart of tional situation was made at the Fifth Congress to Land If all these political and theoretical considsuit factional ends. This procedure was repeated at erations are not sufficient, then the experiences in the war danger, e. the struggle between England and France and England will more than supplement them.
the but the main and only emphasis is put on the Sixth Congress four years later, when Bucharin and Stalin did their juggling with the periods. The One would think that with such a very revolutionthe less likely danger of war between Russia and the official Communist International (Vol. VI. No ary (in reality it is revisionist sectarian) central slo But the demands raised against the war danger are 10) recently smuggled in an editorial admission that gan, the rest of the platform would be in the same most outrageous. Abolition of the present mercenery in 1926 on the basis of the partial stabilization tone. But that is not the case. The platform army and navy and state militia. thoroughly pacifof capitalism, a revolutionary crisis developed in the contains the incredible number of ninty eight de ist and anti Leninist slogan which disgraces far West and East. This is what the Communist Op mands, by actual count.
ComThis is equivalent to munist document. Immediate withdrawal from the position, of course, said in those years when it was raising no immediate demands.
is far world court. There is more petty bourgeois and pacifmost important to say it. But for transparent reasons worse the thoroughly opportunist character ist nonsense in the platform than we have space for.
the theses of the Sixth Congress (1928) define the of most of these demands. We would need a vol The Platform is a bad one, a very bad one, it should interval between the Fifth and Sixth Congresses, inume to analyze all of them; we will point out only a be condemned and withdrawn. It is corrupted with petclusive of 1926 7, the second period of the post war few of them here, demands not calculated to mobilize capitalism. in a way to suggest that it was not a the workers for struggle against capitalism on the ty bourgeois and reformist poison. There is a burning need for a platform of class struggle directed period of revolutionary possibilities. In the re capibasis of their immediate demands, but calculated to in against the twin Parties of the bourgeoisie and their tulation of the attributes of this second period. its still reformist and pacifist illusions in the workers. socialist train bearers.
What is