Before writing about the Fourth International in this series of articles
about attempts to build a worldwide Marxist international, I decided to
take up the “centrist” internationals nicknamed two-and-a-half and
three-and-a-half respectively, mostly out of derision by their
adversaries. The first is formally known as the International Working
Union of Socialist Parties and existed in the 1920s, largely as a
collection of leftwing socialist parties sympathetic to Austro-Marxism.
Since it was launched by Austrians such as Friedrich Adler and Otto
Bauer, it was only natural for it to be based in Vienna and was also
referred to as the Vienna International. The second, known as the
International Revolutionary Marxist Centre, was arguably to the left and
included Spain’s POUM as its best known member party. Since the
headquarters was based in London, it was referred to as the “London
Bureau”. The British section was called the Independent Labor Party (it
had also been attached to the Vienna International) and included George
Orwell as a sympathizer. His “Homage to Catalonia” describes his
involvement with the POUM in Spain.
Not long after I joined the Trotskyist movement in 1967, I learned that
there was such a thing called “centrism”, a political current that
supposedly was revolutionary in words, but counter-revolutionary in
action. From what I can ascertain, this is drawn from Lenin’s
characterization of Kautsky’s ideas in chapter six of “State and
Revolution”: “This is nothing but the purest and most vulgar
opportunism: repudiating revolution in deeds, while accepting it in
words.” Since Kautsky was considered a kind of arch-demon in our
movement, it was easy to understand why centrism became a curse word.
The only problem is that pretty much everybody outside of our ranks,
except for the Stalinists and the social democrats, could be referred to
as a centrist if they did not go along with the entire Trotskyist
catechism. This included just about every guerrilla group in Latin
America, and implicitly Fidel Castro until he received absolution after
1963 or so.
Another definition of centrism can be found in Trotsky’s writings and
complemented Lenin’s definition above. Trotsky characterized centrism as
a current that oscillated between revolutionary and reformist politics.
In addition to groups like the POUM, he felt that the definition applied
to the Comintern since it was committed to socialism in one country.
It is very difficult to find documents from the “half” internationals
either on or off the Internet, and I say that as someone with access to
one of the best research libraries in the U.S. but you will find plenty
of stuff directed against them.
read full article:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-3-the-centrists/
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