The Relation of Criticism to Support

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Our Correspondents

The question of [critical] support is more and more in need of theoretical discussion, because according to official doctrine, any criticism that accompanies support, by its very existence, cancels out that support and places the critic directly in the camp of counterrevolution. The question is presented in either-or fashion – either there is support without criticism or there is criticism, but from the other side of the barricades. Is this kind of approach correct?

Let's take the attitude of the Communist toward the present-day British working class movement and its organizations. Did we support the General Strike and the miners' strike? More energetically than anyone else. Did we criticize the leadership? Not enough by far. But that was our failing, not something to our credit. (I am speaking of the official line.) Is criticism compatible with support? One would think there would be no question here. In most cases criticism is the most important part of support.

One could argue that the General Council [of the British Trades Union Congress] is one thing and the leadership of our country another. But the only thing that follows from that is a difference in the kind of criticism, its depth or sharpness. That is a problem that must be considered substantively in each case. The crux of the matter is, however, that since 1923 two closely interrelated principles have become firmly rooted among us: (1) any criticism at all constitutes an "ism" – an "ism" of the right or of the left; and (2) any criticism of the blunders or oversights, or especially of the wrong line, of the leadership helps the "bourgeoisie" and is therefore counterrevolutionary.

From this not very elaborate "doctrine" (which would more accurately be called nonsense) there follow, however, certain political consequences of enormous importance. At each particular stage the parties of the Comintern are being cut up into right and left parts, so that no room remains for any criticism. At the root of this practice lies the a priori assertion of the leadership's infallibility. Of course this "doctrine" would not last one day if the leadership were not linked with the state. The state, being in an economically backward country, faces its own particular dangers. These dangers give rise to shifts of position. The most important guarantee against retrogressive shifts is international class control. But in fact the opposite happens. Every new shift domestically results in the Comintern being cut in two along a new line.

The official rejoinder is that not every criticism is counterrevolutionary, only the kind infected with an "ism." Splendid. But let them show us a single case of criticism that would not be taken as an "ism," that would be accepted as valid. The history of the Comintern for the past four years and more shows no such instance.