my conviction that Comrade K. Radek's article, "The Third World Congress on the March Action, and Future Tactics" (in Die Rote Fahne,[149] the Central Organ of the United Communist Party of Germany, issues of July 14 and 15, 1921), sins quite considerably against this general and unanimously adopted decision of the Third Congress. This article, a copy of which was sent me by one of the Polish Communists, is quite unnecessarily -- and in a way that positively harms our work -- directed not only against Paul Levi (that would be very unimportant), but also against Clara Zetkin. And yet Clara Zetkin herself concluded a "peace treaty" in Moscow, during the Third Congress, with the C.C. (the "Centrale") of the United Communist Party of Germany, providing
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for joint, non-factional work! And we all approved of the treaty. In his misplaced polemical zeal, Comrade K. Radek has gone to the length of saying something positively untrue, attributing to Zetkin the idea of "putting off" (verlegt ) "every general action by the Party" (jede allgemeine Aktion der Partei ) "until the day when large masses rise" (auf den Tag, wo die grossen Massen aufstehen werden ). It goes without saying that by such methods Comrade K. Radek is rendering Paul Levi the best service the latter could wish for. There is nothing Paul Levi wants so much as a controversy endlessly dragged out, with as many people involved in it as possible, and efforts to drive Zetkin away from the party by polemical breaches of the "peace treaty" which she herself concluded, and which was approved by the entire Communist International. Comrade K. Radek's article serves as an excellent example of how Paul Levi is assisted from the "Left".
Here I must explain to the German comrades why I defended Paul Levi so long at the Third Congress. Firstly, because I made Levi's acquaintance through Radek in Switzerland in 1915 or 1916. At that time Levi was already a Bolshevik. I cannot help entertaining a certain amount of distrust towards those who accepted Bolshevism only after its victory in Russia, and after it had scored a number of victories in the international arena. But, of course, this reason is relatively unimportant, for, after all, my personal knowledge of Paul Levi is very small. Incomparably more important was the second reason, namely, that essentially much of Levi's criticism of the March action in Germany in 1921 was correct (not, of course, when he said that the uprising was a "putsch"; that assertion of his was absurd).
It is true that Levi did all he possibly could, and much besides, to weaken and spoil his criticism, and make it difficult for himself and others to understand the essence of the matter, by bringing in a mass of details in which he was obviously wrong. Levi couched his criticism in an impermissible and harmful form. While urging others to pursue a cautious and well-considered strategy, Levi himself committed worse blunders than a schoolboy, by rushing into battle so prematurely, so unprepared, so absurdly
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and wildly that he was certain to lose any "battle" (spoiling or hampering his work for many years), although the "battle" could and should have been won. Levi behaved like an "anarchist intellectual" (if I am not mistaken, the German term is Edelanarchist ), instead of behaving like an organised member of the proletarian Communist International. Levi committed a breach of discipline.
By this series of incredibly stupid blunders Levi made it difficult to concentrate attention on the essence of the matter. And the essence of the matter, i.e., the appraisal and correction of the innumerable mistakes made by the United Communist Party of Germany during the March action of 1921, has been and continues to be of enormous importance. In order to explain and correct these mistakes (which some people enshrined as gems of Marxist tactics) it was necessary to have been on the Right wing during the Third Congress of the Communist International. Otherwise the line of the Communist International would have been a wrong one.
I defended and had to defend Levi, insofar as I saw before me opponents of his who merely shouted about "Menshevism" and "Centrism" and refused to see the mistakes of the March action and the need to explain and correct them. These people made a caricature of revolutionary Marxism, and a pastime of the struggle against "Centrism". They might have done the greatest harm to the whole cause, for "no one in the world can compromise the revolutionary Marxists, if they do not compromise themselves".
I said to these people: Granted that Levi has become a Menshevik. As I have scant knowledge of him personally, I will not insist, if the point is proved to me. But it has not yet been proved. All that has been proved till now is that he has lost his head. It is childishly stupid to declare a man a Menshevik merely on these grounds. The training of experienced and influential party leaders is a long and difficult job. And without it the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its "unity of will", remain a phrase. In Russia, it took us fifteen years (1903-17) to produce a group of leaders -- fifteen years of fighting Menshevism, fifteen years of tsarist persecution, fifteen years, which included the years of the first revolution (1905), a great and mighty revolution.
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Yet we have had our sad cases, when even fine comrades have "lost their heads". If the West-European comrades imagine that they are insured against such "sad cases" it is sheer childishness, and we cannot but combat it.
Levi had to be expelled for breach of discipline. Tactics had to be determined on the basis of a most detailed explanation and correction of the mistakes made during the March 1921 action. If, after this, Levi wants to behave in the old way, he will show that his expulsion was justified; and the wavering or hesitant workers will be given all the more forceful and convincing proof of the absolute correctness of the Third Congress decisions concerning Paul Levi.
Having made a cautious approach at the Congress to the appraisal of Levi's mistakes, I can now say with all the more assurance that Levi has hastened to confirm the worst expectations. I have before me No. 6 of his magazine Unser Weg (of July 15, 1921). It is evident from the editorial note printed at the head of the magazine that the decisions of the Third Congress are known to Paul Levi. What is his reply to them? Menshevik catchwords such as "a great excommunication" (grosser Bann ), "canon law" (kanonisches Recht ), and that he will "quite freely" (in vollständiger Freiheit ) "discuss" these decisions. What greater freedom can a man have if he has been freed of the title of party member and member of the Communist International! And please note that he expects party members to write for him, for Levi, anonymously!
First -- he plays a dirty trick on the party, hits it in the back, and sabotages its work.
Then -- he discusses the essence of the Congress decisions.
That is magnificent.
But by doing this Levi puts paid to himself.
Paul Levi wants to continue the fight.
It will be a great strategic error to satisfy his desire. I would advise the German comrades to prohibit all controversy with Levi and his magazine in the columns of the daily party press. He must not be given publicity. He must not he allowed to divert the fighting party's attention from important matters to unimportant ones. In cases of extreme necessity, the controversy could be conducted
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in weekly or monthly magazines, or in pamphlets, and as far as possible care must be taken not to afford the K.A.P.-ists and Paul Levi the pleasure they feel when they are mentioned by name; reference should simply be made to "certain not very clever critics who at all costs want to regard themselves as Communists".
I am informed that at the last meeting of the enlarged C.C. (Ausschuss ), even the Left-winger Friesland was compelled to launch a sharp attack on Maslow, who is playing at Leftism and wishes to exercise himself in "hunting Centrists". The unreasonableness (to put it mildly) of this Maslow's conduct was also revealed over here, in Moscow. Really, this Maslow and two or three of his supporters and confederates, who obviously do not wish to observe the "peace treaty" and have more zeal than sense, should be sent by the German party to Soviet Russia for a year or two. We would find useful work for them. We would make men of them. And the international and German movement would certainly gain thereby.
The German Communists must at all costs end the internal dissension, get rid of the quarrelsome elements on both sides, forget about Paul Levi and the K.A.P.-ists and get down to real work.
There is plenty to be done.
In my opinion, the tactical and organisational resolutions of the Third Congress of the Communist International mark a great step forward. Every effort must be exerted to really put both resolutions into effect. This is a difficult matter, but it can and should be done.
First, the Communists had to proclaim their principles to the world. That was done at the First Congress. It was the first step.
The second step was to give the Communist International organisational form and to draw up conditions for affiliation to it -- conditions making for real separation from the Centrists, from the direct and indirect agents of the bourgeoisie within the working-class movement. That was done at the Second Congress.
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At the Third Congress it was necessary to start practical, constructive work, to determine concretely, taking account of the practical experience of the communist struggle already begun, exactly what the line of further activity should be in respect of tactics and of organisation. We have taken this third step. We have an army of Communists all over the world. It is still poorly trained and poorly organised. It would be extremely harmful to forget this truth or be afraid of admitting it. Submitting ourselves to a most careful and rigorous test, and studying the experience of our own movement, we must train this army efficiently; we must organise it properly, and test it in all sorts of manoeuvres, all sorts of battles, in attack and in retreat. We cannot win without this long and hard schooling.
The "crux" of the situation in the international communist movement in the summer of 1921 was that some of the best and most influential sections of the Communist International did not quite properly understand this task; they exaggerated the "struggle against Centrism" ever so slightly ; they went ever so slightly beyond the border line at which this struggle turns into a pastime and revolutionary Marxism begins to be compromised.
That was the "crux" of the Third Congress.
The exaggeration was a slight one; but the danger arising out of it was enormous. It was difficult to combat it, because the exaggerating was done by really the best and most loyal elements, without whom the formation of the Communist International would, perhaps, have been impossible. In the tactical amendments published in the newspaper Moskau [150] in German, French and English and signed by the German, Austrian and Italian delegations, this exaggeration was definitely revealed -- the more so because these amendments were proposed to a draft resolution that was already final (following long and all-round preparatory work): The rejection of these amendments was a straightening out of the line of the Communist International; it was a victory over the danger of exaggeration.
Exaggeration, if not corrected, was sure to kill the Communist International. For "no one in the world can compromise the revolutionary Marxists, if they do not compromise themselves". No one in the world will be able to prevent
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the victory of the Communists over the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals (and under the conditions prevailing in twentieth-century Western Europe and America, after the first imperialist war, this means victory over the bourgeoisie) unless the Communists prevent it themselves.
Exaggeration, however slight, means preventing victory.
Exaggeration of the struggle against Centrism means saving Centrism, means 1strengthening its position, its influence over the workers.
In the period between the Second and the Third Congresses, we learned to wage a victorious struggle against Centrism on an international scale. This is proved by the facts. We will continue to wage this struggle (expulsion of Levi and of Serrati's party) to the end.
We have, however, not yet learned, on an international scale, to combat wrong exaggerations in the struggle against Centrism. But we have become conscious of this defect, as has been proved by the course and outcome of the Third Congress. And precisely because we have become conscious of our defect we will rid ourselves of it.
And then we shall be invincible, because without support inside the proletariat (through the medium of the bourgeois agents of the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals) the bourgeoisie in Western Europe and America cannot retain power.
More careful, more thorough preparation for fresh and more decisive battles, both defensive and offensive -- that is the fundamental and principal thing in the decisions of the Third Congress.
". . . Communism will become a mass force in Italy if the Italian Communist Party unceasingly and steadily fights the opportunist policy of Serratism and at the same time is able to maintain close contact with the proletarian masses in the trade unions, during strikes, during clashes with the counter-revolutionary fascist organisations; if it is able to merge the movements of all the working-class organisations and to transform the spontaneous outbreaks of the working class into carefully prepared battles. . . ."
"The United Communist Party of Germany will be the better able to carry out mass action, the better it adapts its fighting slogans to the actual situation in future, the more thoroughly it studies the situation, and the more co-ordinated and disciplined the action it conducts. . . ."
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Such are the most pertinent passages of the tactical resolution of the Third Congress.
To win over the majority of the proletariat to our side -- such is the "principal task" (the heading of Point 3 of the resolution on tactics).
Of course, we do not give the winning of the majority a formal interpretation, as do the knights of philistine "democracy" of the Two-and-a-Half International. When in Rome, in July 1921, the entire proletariat -- the reformist proletariat of the trade unions and the Centrists of Serrati's party -- followed the Communists against the fascists, that was winning over the majority of the working class to our side.
This was far, very far, from winning them decisively; it was doing so only partially, only momentarily, only locally. But it was winning over the majority, and that is possible even if, formally, the majority of the proletariat follow bourgeois leaders, or leaders who pursue a bourgeois policy (as do all the leaders of the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals), or if the majority of the proletariat are wavering. This winning over is gaining ground steadily in every way throughout the world. Let us make more thorough and careful preparations for it; let us not allow a single serious opportunity to slip by when the bourgeoisie compels the proletariat to undertake a struggle; let us learn to correctly determine the moment when the masses of the proletariat cannot but rise together with us.
Then victory will be assured, no matter how severe some of the defeats and transitions in our great campaign may be.
Our tactical and strategic methods (if we take them on an international scale) still lag behind the excellent strategy of the bourgeoisie, which has learned from the example of Russia and will not let itself be "taken by surprise". But our forces are greater, immeasurably greater; we are learning tactics and strategy; we have advanced this "science" on the basis of the mistakes of the March 1921 action. We shall completely master this "science".
In the overwhelming majority of countries, our parties are still very far from being what real Communist Parties should be; they are far from being real vanguards of the genuinely revolutionary and only revolutionary class,
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with every single member taking part in the struggle, in the movement, in the everyday life of the masses. But we are aware of this defect, we brought it out most strikingly in the Third Congress resolution on the work of the Party. And we shall overcome this defect.
Comrades, German Communists, permit me to conclude by expressing the wish that your party congress on August 22 will with a firm hand put a stop once and for all to the trivial struggle against those who have broken away on the left and the right. Inner-party struggles must stop! Down with everyone who wants to drag them out, directly or indirectly. We know our tasks today much more clearly, concretely and thoroughly than we did yesterday; we are not afraid of pointing openly to our mistakes in order to rectify them. We shall now devote all the Party's efforts to improving its organisation, to enriching the quality and content of its work, to creating closer contact with the masses, and to working out increasingly correct and accurate working-class tactics and strategy.
With communist greetings,
N. Lenin
August 14, 1921