Saturday, February 8, 1980 THE MILITANT Page Throughout the World of Labor Step Backward by French Syndicalism The Revolution Proletarlenne bas just changed its label. Its Arst number of the year calls itselt revolutionary syndicalist and no longer syndicalist Communist. That makes for clarity. The editors of the consider moreover that there can exist no more genuine proletarian revolutionaries, no more real Communists than the genuine revolutionary syndicalists.
The formula would have been correct enough had there been added. before the war. But today, the substitution of the revolutionary syndicalist label for that of the syndicalist Communist, implies very plain retrect, acomplished progressively, and materializing only today.
In the first number, Loriot takes it upon himself to show us that it is not a question of an external formality but rather of a new content, of a final rupture with Communism, that is, with the revolutionary experience of the last Afteen years. The article of Loriot, entitled The Bankruptcy of the Communist International and the Independence of the Trade Union Movement adds nothing essential to the arguments expounded two years ago in his pamphlet on The Problems of the Proletarian Revolution. One finds developed there the same Utopia of a single trade union gathering, one class party of the proletariat (of the type of English Laborism. One finds there the same absence of political perspectives (does Loriot trust to the wholly false analyses of Chambelland. the same errors concerning the course of the Russian revolution and the same appeal to the politically enlightened elements of the proletariat opposed to the social elements ignora and misery bring to consider violence more as an end than a means. In the meantime, there are in France many T, members to whom the newly organized minority of the has just been added, there is a Communist party and there is also the Communist Opposition. But Loriot does not dwell on these details At any rate, he does not point out by what processes, thanks to what circumstances, there will issue from all this a single mags trade unionism supplanting all the parties in the accomplishment of the revolution.
However, Lorlot has added something custom ST. opn91178 snopold jy 07 of the role of the Left Communist faction.
He does not believe that the present posttion of comrade Trotsky and the small groups of the Communist Opposition, which like him, are devoted to the task of regenerating the is correct. Ile gives only empirical reasons. tew Communiste come to us, for five years no substantial Communist nucleus has been able to organize outside the no influence has been obtained over the party from the outside, etc. The healthy elements are leaving the party and will be replaced by others only to the extent that the Opposition groups will entertain the idea of the possible regeneration of the Finally, here is the preemptory conclusion. The French workers are not content with being liberated from the command of the bureaucrats, who do not think that the party which generates the Communist bureaucracy is capable of ridding itself of this institution, who see the salvation of the proletariat and its revolution in a class and not a sectarian trade union organization, controlling its internal political formations and independent of parties on the outside, will leave the Leninist Opposition to pursue the chimera o! the resurrection of dead past.
We think quite the contrary, because for us the resurrection of the dead past is the resurrection Impetus of the proletarlan under the new capitalist crisis and not the perspective or thirty or forty years of relative peace between the classes. The party or the trade union are not, for us, instruments of the working class created by the whim of a few individuals; they are the result of certain class relations in struggle. They arise in certain circumstances against which one cannot act, and live in munlsm. There is every reason to think The Results of the Sovietthe same manner. Like the trade unions, that their position will become still plainer the Communist party corresponds to certain in this sense.
needs of the class strugle. In the present PIERRE NAVILLE.
China Conflict epoch, It corresponds to the necessity of Paris, January 17, 1930 In its last stage, the conflict re accomplishing the proletarian revolution, realed as is konwn the complete military of working immediately on the basis of the revolutionary post war struggles in Russta, impotence of the present Chinese power, Germany, Austria and elsewhere.
Lovestone German Freinds This shows clearer than anything that we have in China not a victorious bourgeois We are entirely disinterested in the In the years that followed the defeat revolution, as Louzon, Urbahns and others academic character of the discussion: which of 1923, the Right wing never stood up think, for a victorious revolution would is the better proletarian organization to against the policy of Zinoviev or against have consolidated the army and power. We accomplish the revolution? We do not deny that of Stalin. Its leaders formulated no have in China a victorious counter revoluthe importance and the role of the trade political Judgement on the subject of in tion, directed against the overwhelming union. That would be foolish. We know that the reformist trade unions often ternational questions, even though Brand majority of the nation, and therefore incapler and Thalheimer, living in Moscow, were able of creating an army.
play an important role in the very well informed on the internal policy At the same time, it shows in a orientation of the magg. But we also know of the Comintern. Today they explain their striking manner the inconsistency of the that the reformist trade unions often play the role of a brake in revolutionary action.
silence by the obedience to discipline. Menshevik policy of Stalin Martinov based We want to base ourselves on the experBut the real reason for their silence since the beginning of 1924 on the assumpfence resulting from the development and was their desire to conquer the German tion that the national Chinese bourgeoisie the crisis of the Comunist parties, that is, party by means of this same bureaucratic is capable of heading the revolution. In from the development of the class strugle apparatus whose faults they refrained from reality, the bourgeoisie was only capable, itsell.
disclosing. Not knowing whether it was with the political support of the Comintern The degeneration of the parties plays they dared not take a position for one or Stalin or Bucharin who would prevail, and the material aid of the imperialists, of smashing the revolution and thus reducing pretty nearly the same role for the pure the other. Today, they convert this cow the Chinese state to complete Impotence.
syndicalists as petty bourgeois opportunfem for the leadership of the party and the ardice into a theory, saying: We have no The Soviet Chinese conflict, in its business mixing in the Internal affairs of It is a hollow phrase. The military stage, revealed thus the enormous the Russian Communist Party. That is a preponderance of the proletarian revolaLeft Opposition gives it a precise and convery singular attitude for internationalist tion, even though weakened by the wrong crete sense. It designates by that a false revolutionaries. Why was it necessary to policy of the leadership for the last few policy. It is not a formal decrepitude, due to old age or disillusions. It is perseverobserve discipline up to 1928, and why years, towards the bourgeois counter revdoe it cease, beginning with that date?
ance in a false political line, whose conolution, which had at its disposal the subAnd did not Brandler say during a meeting stantial diplomatic and material support of sequences can be fatal, and have in fact been fatal, notably in England and in China.
of his faction at Leipzig that he hoped to imperialism.
receive the German party from the hands Those who have only disillusions cannot The victory of the October revolutof Stalin Before his. departure from Mosprofit by experience; they call everything tion over the April counter revolution (the cow Stalin is said to have told him that if, into question again and admit having deoverthrow by Chiang Kai Shek in April, in the future, the Right wing should gain ceived themselves in the past. Thoso who 1927. can in no sense be considered sufficient influence in the German party, he assimilate the objective and subjective victory for Stalin policy. On the com would conduct his policy with it.
reasons that determine this false political trary, the latter has suffered a series of line work to reconstitute the nuclei around The Right wing views the defeat of heavy defeats. The very seizure of the which will be gathered subsequently the October, 1923 as a legend. According to railroad was Chiang Kai Sheks payment correctly orientated party.
its spokesmen, there was no defeat and it for the services rendered by Stalin. Stalin Loriot and the turn their backs maintains this point of view in spite of subsequent gamble on Feng Yu Hsiang was the flat refutation produced by the years Just as completely inconsistent. The Oppoto Communism. That is a fact. They Justify that followed, by the economic and polit sition warned against the adventurist comthose who expelled them. Monatte has writical stability of capitalism.
binations with Feng Yu Hsiang agaleat ten that Sellier was right to expel him from the party. Thus, they also have no That is why they are always for the Chiang Kai Shek after April 1927, Just as tactic of the united front with the social energetically as it protested against the interest at all in the fate of the and consequently of the Russlan revolution. In 1923. And logically, one of them, Paul democracy, in the manner extolled by them bloc of Stalin with Chiang Kal Shek.
It will be said that they hava in mind to Boettcher, applies this tactic to England Kellogg Pact suffered a no less heavy blow. The unprincipled gamble on the Justity (if not to legitimatize) the attacks and declares that the defeat of the of Monmousseau. At the same time, they The adhesion of the Soviet government to there is due to the fact that this kind of abandon all political perspective, no matter the pact of American Imperialism was just a united front was not sufficiently realized how small. The speech of Chambelland at as shameful a capitulation of the Soviet there.
the last congress of the is government as it was useless. By his adlamentably weak in this respect. Louzon Thalheimer is hostile to the struggle herence to the pact, that pretended instrurecommends the surrender of the Chinese against the Kulak. But generally speak ment of peace, Stalin openly assisted the Eastern Rallway by Russia at the same ing, the Right wing does not take a posle American government to deceive the worktime that he underlines the great success tion in Russian questions.
ing masses of America and Europe. What of Stalin in the collectivization of agricul in Saxony, its faction was very strong was the aim of this adherence? Evidently ture. Repelled by Russian Bolshevism, for many years; it nevertheless suffered to gain the good will of the United States the retreats into a narrowly French a heavy defeat in the elections. It received and thereby hasten diplomatic recognition.
attitude. It hardly seems to suspect the only 22, 500 votes and no mandate. Iome As should have been expected, this aim was existence of millions of foreign born workers diately after the electoral results, many not achieved, for the American government in France and the unity of the international functionaries of the first order belonging bad no reason to pay in cash for what it struggle, even with the scattered organiz to the Right wing faction went over to got for nothing. New York took the first ations, the social democratic party.
opportunity, basing itselt on the Kellogg Obviously, we fight on a ditferent path. In Leipzig, it attempted to form a party Pact, to play the role of protector of China We do not speak of regenerating the grouping together the remnants of the In against the Soviet republic. Moscow was as one re infuses blood into an old organdependent Socialist party and the Ledebour obliged to reply with a sharp rebuke. That ism. But we have no reason to abandon group. At a meeting of these groupings, was right and inevitable. But it is perthe general principles of the We want the representatives of the Independent Soc fectly clear that the compulsory demonto make up for it in the revolutionary 1al Democratic party declared that the stration against the American government struggle which it is less and less capable could not be defended while attempt to intervene disclosed the whole of conducting properly, but which only an Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks criminal light mindedness with which Staorganization of its type can conduct. We were imprisoned. And he is member lin adhered to the Kellogg Pact.
do not prejudge its developments. It may of the committee for the defense of the There still remains the question of be, and so far as France 18 concerned, it the revolutionary Communist detatchment is probable, that the Communist organiz The Right wing boasts, in Leipzig, under the leadership of Tchu Deh. Pravda ation as it exists today is incapable of re of being in touch with the French Oppost reported about it on the eve of the transicovery. But what is essential is to take a tion The French Opposition is the Alsation of the conflict into a military stage.
correct position under present circum tian group of Hueber, which is intimately After that, we hear no more about those stances.
connected with the clerical autonomists. Chinese workers and peasants whom someThe fact that the present cadres of To defend themselves for this relationship body sent into armed battle under the banthe Right wing leaders declare that they ner of Communism. What were the aims official Communists are not susceptible to regeneration does not at all mean that we are not completely in accord with the of the struggle? What was the role of the Party in it? What was the fate of this are not capable of development. Or develop Alsatians, but why not make use of the ment is not bound to the retrogression of Alsatian organ while they have the possi detatchment? And finally, in what mysterthe party or to its regeneration. It 18 bility of writing in it!
ious kitchen are all these questions debound to a correct revolutionary political The attempt of the Right wing to found cided. line, different from that of the party. We a new party of the type of the Second On this last point, no less important do not address ourselves only to the healthy and a Half International, will not succeed.
than all the rest, a final balance cannot yet nuclel still existing in the party (they That period is historically passed.
be drawn. But everything speaks for the fact that bureaucratic adventuriam here, are few) but also and above all to the mass Our own task, the task of the Left like everywhere else, bears the responsibthat stands outside the party. Our activity Opposition, is to win the workers who have is bound to that of the workers who are not ility for the weakening and exhaustion of gone to the Right, driven by discontentthe reserves of the Chinese Revolution.
satisfied by the policy of the party, but who ment with the bureaucratic policy of the remain Commaniste, inside or outside the The Leninbund, not clear on the January 3, 1930 LTROTSKY party. Lorlot and his friends bind their formal questions and the work to be accom will be unable to do it except by remedying fate those who cannot be satisfied by the plished, has not been able to assemble the this grave defect.
policy of the party, but who abandon Com. revolutionary forces of the Opposition. It Leipzig. January 1930. ROMAN WELL Orga. of the Syndicalist League of France, whose leaders include Monatte, Chambelland, Torlot, Louzon, etc. etc.