Leninism versus Stalinism

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EDITOR’S NOTE – The compilation of quotations published herewith is taken from the German pamphlet Leninism Against Stalinism prepared by comrade Oskar Fischer and published by the German Left Opposition. Other parts of this pamphlet will be reprinted in subsequent issues.

Foreword, by L. Trotsky

The victory of German Fascism closes a distinct epoch of political history and opens a new one. In the course of the past year the Stalinist bureaucracy did all that was possible without it, to render the Fascist victory easier. Addressing itself to the proletariat of the world, the Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists) criticized implacably the policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy and gave its answers to all problems as they were posed by events.

At present no proletarian revolutionary can close his eyes to the conflict between the two factions raging within the camp of Communism. Comrade Oscar Fischer has performed an important and instructive task by collecting and classifying according to subject the clearest and most inclusive statements that were given in answer to theoretic and practical questions, on the one hand by the Stalinist bureaucracy, and on the other by the Left Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists). I hope that this rare collection of citations will soon find its way to every thinking worker. There will be no advance unless we learn by the tragic mistakes and defeats of the past.

L. Trotsky

What Stalinism Said About Democracy and Fascism

From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 35, 15 July 1933, p. 2.

Stalinism did not recognize as its task, to arouse the working class against the threatening danger of Fascism. On the contrary, the Stalinists took pains to “demonstrate” anew day in day out, that “between democracy and Fascism there is no basic difference.” Nothing was more qualified to make the workers underestimate the danger of Fascism than this distorted formula of Stalinism.

* * * *

They in our ranks who erroneously act along the line of a belief in the existence of a basic contradiction between bourgeois democracy and Fascism, between the social democracy and. Hitler’s party, are harmful and fatal to the Communist movement. Indeed, this is our chief danger.

(Manuilsky, Report, XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I., April 1931, Kommunistische Internationale, No. 16, April 1931, page 703)

From this we draw the first conclusion – that only a bourgeois liberal can construe a counter-distinction between bourgeois democracy and a Fascist regime, and can assume that we are dealing here with two basically different political forms ...

(Manuilsky, Report, XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I., Kommunistische Internationale, No. 16, April 1931, page 703)

The fact that the bourgeoisie is obliged to suppress the workers’ movement by means of Fascist methods does not mean that the upper classes no longer rule as before. Fascism is not a new kind of governmental method to be distinguished from the system of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. He who thinks so is a liberal.

(Manuilsky, Report, XI Plenum, April 1931, Komm. Internat., No. 17–18, May 1931, page 773)

The Fascist dictatorship offers no basic distinction from bourgeois democracy, through which also the dictatorship of finance capital is carried out.

(Resolution of the C.C. of the C.P.G. on the decisions of the XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I., May 1931)

The Leipzig party convention confirmed fully the correctness of the resolution of the IX (?) Plenum of the E.C.C.I., which declared that in our parties the counter-posing of Fascism and bourgeois democracy is a liberal interpretation.

(Martynov, Komm. Internat., May 1931, No. 2, page 895)

But even worse is the fact that in spite of the conclusions of the XI Plenum, in spite of the masterly clarification of the problem as presented in the final words of comrade Manuilsky, there have appeared in our ranks tendencies towards a liberal counter-distinction of Fascism and bourgeois democracy, of the Hitler party and social Fascism.

(Thaelmann, Some Mistakes in Our Theoretic and Practical Work, Die Internationale, November–December 1931, page 487)

Germany demonstrates ... that the transition of democracy to Fascism is an organic process, which does not have to take on the form of unusual and explosive occurrences but can be accomplished gradually and in a “bloodless” way.

(Werner Hirsch, Fascism and the Hitler Party, Die Internationale, January 1932, page 28)

The objective situation in Germany is a striking and incontrovertibly practical argument against the liberal counter-distinction between Fascism and democracy, Social Fascism and Hitler Fascism. – By no means at all, therefore, is it the task of Communists to search with extra-strong spectacles for any possible differences between democracy and Fascism.

(Werner Hirsch, Die Internationale, January 1932, page 31)

On the other hand, as the National Socialist movement swells out, the Hitler party, too, offers stronger support for the bourgeoisie. This process will soon – at the latent in Connection with the Prussian elections – place again on the order of the day the question of the open participation of the Nazis in the government. Through this, the role of the socialist party of Germany will in no wise be weakened.

(Thaelmann, Some Mistakes in Our Theoretic and Practical Work, Die Internationale, November–December 1931, page 485)

Also in the event that the Nazis are taken into the government, there can be no question that the bourgeoisie will refuse the cooperation of the social democracy in the carrying out of the Fascist dictatorship.

(Die Internationale, January 1932, page 4)

The XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I. has swept aside the artificially constructed counter-distinction between bourgeois democracy and Fascist dictatorship. By this it has rendered an invaluable service to the Communist parties in their fight against social Fascism. The XII Plenum has demonstrated that so-called “classic” Fascism does not exist and cannot exist, and that all confusing theories, basing themselves on the history of Italian Fascism, about the Fascist need of first striking down the working class, are bloodless abstractions.

(Schwab, The Nature of the Fascist Dictatorship, Konmunistische Internationale, No. 10, January 1933, page 19)

What the Left Opposition Said About Democracy and Fascism

From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 35, 15 July 1933, p. 2.

What Stand Did the Left Opposition Take?

Fascism makes its appearance as the second representative agent of the bourgeoisie. Like the social democracy, but to a greater degree. Fascism possesses its special army, its particular interests and its own logic as a movement. We know that in order to save and stabilize bourgeois society in Italy, Fascism not only had to oppose sharply the social democracy but the traditional bourgeois parties as well. We must not imagine that all the political organs of the bourgeoisie worked in perfect concord. Fortunately things do not work out that way. Economic anarchy is supplemented by political anarchy. Now, too, Fascism, which has been nourished by the social democracy, will have to smash the latter in order to reach power.

(Trotzky, The Austrian Crisis, November 1929)

No matter how true it is that the social democracy, by its whole policy, prepared the blossoming of Fascism, it is no less true that Fascism comes forward as a deadly threat primarily to that same social democracy, all of whose magnificence is inextricably bound up with parliamentary-democratic-pacifist forms and methods of government.

(Trotzky, The Turn in the Communist International and the German Situation, September 1930, page 13)

The XI Plenum of the E.C.C.I. came to the decision that it was imperative to put an end to those erroneous views which originate in “the liberal interpretation of the contradictions between Fascism and bourgeois democracy, as well as between the parliamentary forms of bourgeois dictatorship and the outright forms ...” The gist of this Stalinist philosophy is quite plain: From the Marxist denial of the absolute contradiction, it deduces the total negation of any contradiction at all, even of a relative contradiction. This error is typical of vulgar radicalism.

(What Next, page 28)

A contradiction does exist between democracy and Fascism. It is not at all “absolute” or, putting it in the language of Marxism, it does not at all denote the rule of two irreconcilable classes. But it does denote different systems of the domination of one and the same class.

(Page 29)

The statement that the transition from democracy to Fascism may take on an “organic” and a “gradual” character can mean one thing and one thing only and that is: without any fuss without a fight, the proletariat may be deprived not only of its material conquests – not only of its given standard of living, of its social legislation, of its civil and political rights – but also of the basic weapon whereby these were achieved, that is, its organizations. The “bloodless” transition to Fascism implies under this terminology, the most frightful capitulation of the proletariat that can be conceived.

(Page 36)

In a Fascist regime, at least during its first phase, capital leans on the petty bourgeoisie which destroys the organizations of the proletariat. Italy, for instance! Is there a difference in the “class content” of these two regimes? If the question is posed only regards the ruling class, then there is no difference, if one takes into account the position and inter-relation of all classes, from the angle of the proletariat, then the difference appears to be quite enormous.

(Page 34)

In order to try to find a way out, the bourgeoisie must absolutely rid Itself of the pressure exerted by the workers’ organizations, these must needs be eliminated, destroyed, utterly crushed.

At this juncture the historic role of Fascism begins. It sets on its feet those classes that are immediately above the proletariat and who are ever in dread of being forced down into ranks; it organizes and militarizes them at the expense of finance capital, under the cover of the official government, and it directs them to the extirpation of proletarian organizations, from the most revolutionary to the most conservative.

Fascism is not merely a system of reprisals, of brutal force, and of police terror. Fascism is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society. The task of Fascism lies not only in destroying the Communist advance guard but in holding the entire class in a state of enforced disunity. To this end, the physical annihilation of the most revolutionary section of the workers does not suffice. It is also necessary to smash all independent and voluntary organizations, to demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat, and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three quarters of a century by the social democracy and the trade unions. For, in the last analysis, the Communist party also bases itself on these achievements.

(What Next?, Page 12)