Book Review: The Reds: Part II The CPA from origins to illegality by Stuart Macintyre Reviewed by Peter Symon General Secretary, Communist Party of Australia The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, November 3rd, 1999. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** Stuart Macintyre says, "By background and temperament, the Australian communist was a radical and militant, a nay-sayer and a trouble-maker; by training and conviction that person was an organiser and improver." But then to cancel this positive evaluation he continues: "The party channelled the spirit of rebellion into obedience, banished transgression, imposed regularity..."(p.419). We are told of "the courage, the generosity and exuberance of ordinary members alongside the cynical, grudging solemnity of those who directed them"(p.414). This is a familiar tactic - to pose membership against leadership - something that is not uncommon today in some circles. So we have the "authoritarian" JB Miles and L Sharkey as well as Lenin the "fanatic" and "conspirator", while Ho Chi Minh is referred to as "the dogged Vietnamese"(p.42). We read of "intriguers, adventurers and petty despots"(p.414). Macintyre writes: "By 1939 it was apparent that this Australian communist was not in fact a revolutionary ... a whole range of public activities made it [the Party] part of civil society ... The very qualities that enabled it to withstand illegality during the Second World War fatally compromised its revolutionary mission"(p.419). Here we have the attack on the Party from "left" positions. The fact that Party members were "part of civil society" is seen as an abandonment of the Party's "revolutionary mission". In what way are communists to work and fight for a better society other than by being part of it? Being active among the people who make up every society does not mean that revolutionary objectives are abandoned. It was not the Party members of the '30s, '40s and '50s, with a rebellious spirit, who were responsible for the Party's liquidation. It was not the members who comprised the Party's many workplace and suburban branches who destroyed the former Party in the 1990s. The ideology of Stuart Macintyre and those who think like him is much the same as that which overwhelmed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at about the same time (early 1990s) and led to the temporary capitalist restoration in that country. This ideology is bourgeois in essence and has proven in practice to be closer to liberal democracy based on private property than it is to socialism, national liberation and anti-imperialism. When adopted by a communist party it leads to liquidation. When it takes control of a party in a socialist country it leads to the liquidation of socialism. Trotsky One strand of Macintyre's anti-communist ideology seems to be that of Trotskyism. He writes of "Leon Trotsky, the former colleague of Lenin ..." Trotskyists often claim that Trotsky was the closest to Lenin as if to shelter under Lenin's wing. But, for many decades, Trotsky was an opponent of Lenin and there are innumerable articles and speeches of Lenin to substantiate this. Macintyre's book reproduces a cartoon of Trotsky published in the "Workers' Weekly" (forerunner to the "Tribune") and in a caption he writes: "The Stalinist terror demonised Trotsky as the evil genius behind every trace of opposition. When the communists turned on the Spanish POUM they accused Trotsky of sabotaging the defense of Spain in order to assist the fascists."(p.318) (POUM was a Trotskyist organisation during the Spanish civil war.) We are told that the "Spanish communists turned on the other parties of the left..."(pp.300-301) The historical truth is the very opposite. La Passionaria, a heroine of the Spanish Civil War tells the real story of these events in her autobiography They Shall Not Pass. She writes: "The Anarcho-Trotskyists felt the strength of these organisations [the Communist Party, the United Socialist Party and the trade unions - PS] when their counterrevolutionary putsch, encouraged by the fascist radio, ended in defeat. "The leaders of the counterrevolution found themselves alone. The workers of Catalonia refused to support the movement. When a few factories stopped production, it was not because the workers wanted to join the rebels but because their lives had been threatened."(pp.282-283) Soviet Union and Fascism We have to leave to another occasion any full comment on the book's tendentious version of the 1939 Treaty between the Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany. The author asserts that this represented: "His [Stalin's] abandonment of the last vestiges of anti-fascism..."(p.386). Macintyre in effect blames the Soviet Union for "the ensuing war"(p.384). This is asserted of the same Stalin who, as leader of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Army, defeated the Nazi armies in World War II. We are told that "The reasons for British and French appeasement of the dictators and American isolationism escaped the intensely suspicious Stalin: he was convinced that the capitalist statesmen wanted to manoeuvre Germany into war with the Soviet Union."(p.381) If this was not the reason for Western appeasement what was? Macintyre does not say. Instead of giving the reader some other explanation for the West's appeasement of Nazism we are left with Stalin's "suspicions" which seems to be the intention of the author. Macintyre claims that following Dimitrov's definition at the 7th Congress of the Communist International in 1935 the CPA now "understood fascism to be the most imperialist, reactionary and chauvinist wing of finance capital"(p.288). Dimitrov's definition was much more trenchant. Fascism is "the open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital." ("Against Fascism & War", Georgi Dimitrov, International Publishers, New York p.2) Dimitrov went on: Fascism is "the organisation of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations." (Ibid p.3) In effect, Macintyre pulls the teeth of Dimitrov's description of fascism. It would be beneficial to give the reader accurate quotations. The "Communist Manifesto" Macintyre devotes several pages to the "Communist Manifesto" published in 1848. In tendentious comments that are rather typical, the author completes one part of his summary by writing: "Communism would complete history"(p.34). A reference note follows this as though it is a statement from the "Manifesto". But the "Manifesto" says no such thing. Perhaps Macintyre is attempting to lay at the door of communists the claim made by some bourgeois commentators following the dismemberment of the Soviet Union that this was the "end of history". History is the story of the progress, struggles, changes in human society and their study and to suggest that history comes to an end at any time (short of the end of human existence) is nonsense and Marx and Engels would never make such a stupid statement. Stuart Macintyre quotes the "Communist Manifesto" saying that communists "do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties". He counterposes this to "Lenin's creation of a separate communist party" which, thereby, "transmuted Marxism into communism"(p.36) - whatever that means. The suggestion here is that communism is not Marxism. Macintyre follows this up, (again presenting the text as though it accurately reflects Lenin's writings) by claiming: "The class war did not allow for freedom of criticism"(p.38). A reference note follows this. What Lenin was actually writing about was the Menshevik slogan of "freedom of criticism" about which Lenin wrote in "What is to be Done": "if we judge people, not by the glittering uniforms they don or by the high-sounding appellations they give themselves, but by their actions and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that `freedom of criticism' means freedom for an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, freedom to convert Social- Democracy into a democratic party of reform, freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into socialism."(Lenin Collected Works Vol.5 pp.354-355) Far from Lenin asserting that "the class war did not allow for freedom of criticism" we read this in the "Theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International": "Communists are in duty bound, not to gloss over shortcomings in their movement, but to criticise them openly so as to remedy them the more speedily and radically." ("On the Unity of the International Communist Movement" Progress Publishers 1966, p.194) The author writes that among the 21 conditions (there were only 20) for membership of the Communist International adopted by the Second Congress of the International in 1920 was a condition "binding them to a form of organisation dedicated to seizure of power, and then the elimination of parliamentary democracy in favour of Soviet dictatorship".(p.63) The author lists as his source a work written by Jane Debras and published by the Oxford University Press. However, in the "Terms of admission into the Communist International" in the Progress Publishers book mentioned above there is nothing even remotely resembling Macintyre's formulation. In fact, there is only one passing reference to parliament among the terms of admission to the Communist International. There is in the resolutions adopted by the Second Congress of the Communist International criticism of "a wrong attitude towards the revolutionary Communists' obligation to work in bourgeois parliaments and reactionary trade unions".(Ibid, p.194) There are references to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the resolutions meaning by that the conquest of political power by the working class. The dictatorship of the proletariat is described as "the most determined and revolutionary form of the proletariat's class struggle against the bourgeoisie".(Ibid, p.198) Religion Macintyre quotes JB Miles warning against use of the oft quoted phrase that "Religion is the opium of the people"(p.306) when discussing the attitude of some CPA members to religion. That Marx used this phrase is true and that others have used it as a slogan and a club is also true. It has been, almost invariably, ripped out of context. One would expect an historian to put such statements into their correct context and thereby help us all. The full paragraph written by Marx in which this phrase occurs is: "<MI>Religious<D> distress is at the same time the <MI>expression<D> of real distress and the <MI>protest<D> against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the <MI>opium<D> of the people." (Italics in the original) (``Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law'' "Marx-Engels Collected Works", Vol.3, p.175) It does a great disservice to the profundity of Marx's intellect and historical analysis when this phrase is taken out of context and used merely as a dismissive slogan. Typical of many anti-Communists, Macintyre attacks the former Communist Party of Australia from both "left" and "right" positions. On the one hand he claims that the Party "compromised its revolutionary mission". On the other, he demonstrates his preference for liberal capitalism and the policies which go with that outlook - views which have nothing to do with bringing an end to capitalism and building a socialist society. Despite all the innuendo and distortions, the liberation of humanity remains the greatest cause of our times and that is what communists in all their diversity, strengths and limitations, stood for when the CPA was founded in 1920 and stand for today. This cause is not dead. It did not fail but was betrayed from within in several countries. Historically, the worldwide communist movement is getting its "second wind" and the new century, about to begin, will again be a century of new socialist revolutions even though that may take some time. Part I of this review appeared in last week's "Guardian". -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:ART: BOOK REVIEW: THE REDS - PART II
Communist Party of Australia Tue, 02 Nov 1999 22:33:27 +1100
