Written: 23 February 1933.
Source: The Militant, Vol. VI No. 21, 1 April 1933, pp. 1 & 3.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2015. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.
This brochure addresses itself to the social democratic workers, even though personally the author belongs to another party. The disagreements between Communism and social democracy run very deep. I consider them irreconcilable. Nevertheless, the course of events frequently puts tasks before the working class which imperatively demand the joint action of the two parties. Is such an action possible? Perfectly possible, as historical experience and theory attest: everything depends upon the conditions and the character of the said tasks. Now, it is much easier to engage in a joint action when it is a question for the proletariat not of taking the offensive for the attainment of new objectives, but of defending the positions already gained.
That is how the question is posed in Germany. The German proletariat is in a situation where it must retreat and give up its positions. To be sure, there is no lack of windbags to cry that we are allegedly in the presence of a revolutionary offensive. These are people who obviously do not know how to distinguish their right from their left. There is no doubt that the hour of the offensive will strike. But today the problem is to arrest the disorderly retreat and to proceed to the regrouping of the forces for the defensive. In politics as in the military art, to understand a problem clearly is to facilitate its solution. To get intoxicated by phrases is to help the adversary. One must see clearly what is happening: the class enemy, that is, monopoly capital and large feudal property, spared by the November revolution, are along the whole front. The enemy is utilizing two means with a different historical origin: first, the military and police apparatus prepared by all the preceding governments which stood on the ground of the Weimar constitution; second, national-socialism, that is, the troops of the petty bourgeois counter-revolution whom finance capital arms and incites against the workers.
The aim of capital and of the landowning caste is clear: to crush the organizations of the proletariat, to strip them of the possibility not only of taking the offensive but also of defending themselves. As can be seen, twenty years of collaboration of the social democracy with the bourgeoisie have not softened by one iota the hearts of the capitalists. These individuals acknowledge but one law: the struggle for profit. And they conduct this struggle with a fierce and implacable determination, stopping at nothing and still less at their own laws.
The class of exploiters would have preferred to disarm and atomize the proletariat with the least possible expense, without civil war, with the aid of the military and police means of the Weimar republic. But it is afraid, and with good reason, that “legal” means by themselves would prove to be insufficient to drive back the workers into a position where they will no longer have any rights. For this, it requires Fascism as a supplementary force. But Hitler’s party, fattened by monopoly capital, wants to become not a supplementary force, but the sole governing force in Germany. This situation occasions incessant conflicts between the governmental allies, conflicts which at times take on an acute character. The saviors can afford the luxury of engaging mutually in intrigues only because the proletariat is abandoning its positions without battle and is beating the retreat without plan, without system and without direction. The enemy is unleashed to such a point that it does not constrain itself from discussing right in public where and how to strike the next blow: by frontal attack; by bearing down on the Communist Left flank; by penetrating deeply at the rear of the trade unions and cutting off communications, etc. ... The exploiters whom it has saved discourse on the Weimar republic as if it were some worn-out bowl; they ask themselves if it should still be utilized for a while or be thrown into the discard right away.
The bourgeoisie enjoys the full freedom of maneuvering, that is, of the choice of means, of time and of place. Its chiefs combine the arms of the law with the arms of banditry. The proletariat combines nothing at all and does not defend itself. Its troops are split up, and its chiefs discourse languidly on whether or not it is at all possible to combine forces. Therein lies the essence of the interminable discussions on the united front. If the vanguard workers do not become conscious of the situation and do not intervene peremptorily in the debate, the German proletariat may find itself crucified for years on the cross of Fascism.
It may be that here my social democratic interlocutor interrupts me and says: Don’t you come too late to propagate the united front? What did you do before this?
This objection would not be correct. This is not the first time that the question of a united front of defense against Fascism is raised. I permit myself to refer to what I myself had the occasion to say on this subject in September 1930, after the first great success of the national-socialists. Addressing myself to the Communist workers, I wrote:
“The Communist party must call for the defense of the material and moral positions which the working class has succeeded in conquering in the German state. The fate of the political organizations, of the trade unions, of the newspapers and printing plants, of the clubs, of the libraries, of the working class, etc., is directly at stake. The Communist worker must say to the social democratic worker: ‘The policy of our parties is irreconcilable; but if the Fascists come tonight to sack the hall of your organization, I will hasten to your aid with arms in hand. Do you promise me that if a danger threatens my organization you will run to my aid?’ There is the quintessence of the policy of the present period. All the propaganda must be attuned to this diapason.
“The more seriously, persistently and reflectively we carry on this agitation ... the more we will propose in each factory, in each worker’s quarter and ward, active organizational measures for the defensive, the less will be the danger of being taken by surprise by the attack of the Fascists and the more certitude we will have that this attack, instead of smashing the ranks of the workers, will cement them.”
The brochure from which I take this extract was written two and a half years ago. There is not the slightest doubt today that if this policy had been adopted in time. Hitler would not be chancellor at the present time and the positions of the German proletariat would be unassailable. But one cannot return to the past. As a result of the mistakes which were committed and the time which was allowed to pass, the problem of defense is posed today with infinitely greater difficulty: but the task remains just as before. Even right now it is possible to alter the relation of forces in favor of the proletariat. Towards this end, one must have a plan, a system, a combination of forces for the defense. But above all, one must have the will to defend himself. I hasten to add that only he defends himself well, who does not confine himself to the defensive but who, at the first occasion, is determined to pass over to the offensive.
What attitude does the social democracy adopt towards this question?
The social democratic leaders propose to the Communist party to conclude a “non-aggression pact”. When I read this phrase for the first time in the Vorwaerts, I thought it was an incidental and not very happy pleasantry. The formula of the non-aggression pact, however, is today in vogue and at the present time it is at the center of all the discussions. The social democratic leaders are not lacking in tried-out and skillful policies. All the more reason for asking how they could have chosen such a slogan which runs counter to their own interests.
The formula has been borrowed from diplomacy. The meaning of this type of pact consists in this: two states which have sufficient causes for war engage themselves for a determined period not to resort to the force of arms against each other. The Soviet Union, for example, has signed such a rigorously circumscribed pact with Poland. Granting that a war were to break out between Germany and Poland, the said pact would in no way obligate the Soviet Union to come to the aid of Poland. Non-aggression and nothing more. In no way does it imply common action for defense; on the contrary, it excludes this action: without this, the pact would have a quite different character and would be called by a quite different name.
What sense then do the social democratic leaders give to this formula? Do the Communists threaten to sack the social democratic organizations? Or else is the social democracy disposed to undertake a crusade against the Communists? As a matter of fact, something entirely different is in question. If one wants to use the language of diplomacy, it would be in place to speak not of a non-aggression pact, but of a defensive alliance against a third party, that is, against Fascism. The aim is not to halt or to exorcize an armed struggle between Communists and social democrats – there could be no question of a danger of war – but of combining the forces of the social democrats and the Communists against the attack with arms in hand which has already been launched against them by the national-socialists.
Incredible as it may seem, the social democratic leaders are substituting for the question of the genuine defense against the armed actions of Fascism, the question of the political controversy between Communists and social democrats. It is exactly as if one were to substitute for the question of how to prevent the derailment of a train, the question of the need for mutual courtesy between the travellers of the second and third classes.
The misfortune, in any case, is that the ill-conceived formula of a “non-aggression pact” will not even be able to subserve the inferior aim in whose name it is dragged in by the hair. The engagement assumed by two states not to attack each other, in no way eliminates their struggle, their polemics, their intrigues and their maneuvers. The semi-official Polish journals, in spite of the pact, foam at the mouth when they speak of the Soviet Union. For its part, the Soviet press is far from making compliments to the Polish regime. The fact of the matter is that the social democratic leaders have steered a wrong course in trying to substitute a conventional diplomatic formula for the political tasks of the proletariat.
More prudent social democratic journalists translate their thought in this sense: they are not opponents of a “criticism based upon facts” but they are against suspicions, insults and calumnies. A very laudable attitude! But how is the limit to be found between permitted criticism and inadmissible campaigns’? And where are the impartial judges? As a general rule, the criticism never pleases the criticized, above all when he can raise no objection to the essence of it.
The question of whether or not the criticism of the Communists is good or bad is a question apart. If the Communists and the social democrats had the same opinion on this subject, there wouldn’t be two parties in the world, independent from each other. Let us concede that the polemic of the Communists is not worth much. Does that fact lessen the mortal danger of Fascism or do away with the need for joint resistance?
However, let us look at the other side of the picture: the polemic of the social democracy itself against Communism. The Vorwaerts (I am simply taking the first copy at hand) publishes the speech which Stampfer delivered on the subject of the non-aggression pact. In this same issue a cartoon has as its caption: The Bolsheviks are signing a non-aggression pact with Pilsudski, but they refuse to draw up a similar pact with the social democracy. Now, a cartoon is also a polemical “aggression”, and it so happens that this particular one is most unfortunate. The Vorwaerts completely forgets the fact that a non-aggression treaty existed between the Soviets and Germany during the period when the social democrat Mueller was at the head of the Reich government.
The Vorwaerts of February 15, on the same page, defends in the first column the idea of a non-aggression pact, and in the fourth column makes the accusation against the Communists that their factory committee at the Aschinger Co. betrayed the interests of the workers during the negotiations for the new wage scale. They openly use the word “betrayed”. The secret behind this polemic (is it a criticism based on facts or a campaign of slander?) is very simple: new elections to the factory committee of the Aschinger Co. were to take place at this time. Can we, in the interests of the united front, asks the Vorwaerts put an end to attacks of this sort? In order for that to happen, the Vorwaerts would have to stop being itself, that is, a social democratic journal. If the Vorwaerts believes what it prints on the subject of the Communists, its first duty is to open the eyes of the workers to the faults, crimes and “betrayals” of the latter. How could it be otherwise? The need for a fighting agreement flows from the existence of two parties, but it does not do away with the fact. Political life goes on. Each party, even though it adopts the frankest attitude on the question of the united front, cannot help thinking of its own future.
Let us assume for the moment that a Communist member of the Aschinger Co. factory committee declares to the social democratic member: “Because the Vorwaerts characterized my attitude on the question of the wage-scale as an act of treason, I do not want to defend, together with you, my head and your neck from the Fascist bullets.” No matter how indulgently we wanted to view this action, we could only characterize the reply as utterly insane.
The intelligent Communist, the serious Bolshevik, will say to the social democrat: “You are aware of my enmity to the views expressed by the Vorwaerts. I am devoting and shall devote all my energy to undermining the dangerous influence which this paper has among the workers. But I am doing that and shall do it by my speeches, by criticism and persuasion. But the Fascists want to do away arbitrarily with the existence of the Vorwaerts. I promise you that jointly with you I will defend your paper to the utmost of my ability, but I am waiting for you to say that at the first appeal you will likewise come to the defense of the Rote Fahne, regardless of your attitude towards its views.” Is this not an irreproachable way of posing the question? Does not this method correspond with the fundamental interests of the whole of the proletariat?
The Bolshevik does not ask the social democrat to alter the opinion he has of Bolshevism and of the Bolshevik press. Moreover, he does not demand that the social democrat make a pledge for the duration of the agreement to keep silent on his opinion of Communism, Such a demand would be absolutely inexcusable. “So long”, says the Communist, “as I have not convinced you and you have not convinced me, we shall criticize each other with full freedom, each using the arguments and expressions that he deems necessary. But when the Fascist wants to force a gag down our throats, we will repulse him together!” Can an intelligent social democratic worker counter this proposal with a refusal?
The polemics between Communist and social democratic newspapers, no matter how bitter it may be, cannot prevent the compositors of the papers from forming a fighting agreement to organize a joint defense of their presses from the attacks of the Fascist bands. The social democratic and Communist deputies in the Reichstag and the Landtags, the municipal counsellors, etc., are compelled to come to the physical defense of each other when the Nazis resort to loaded canes and chairs. Are more examples needed?
What is true in each particular case is also true as a general rule: the inevitable struggle in which social democracy and Communism are engaged for the leadership of the working class cannot and must not prevent them from closing their ranks when blows threaten the whole working class. Isn’t this obvious?
The Vorwaerts is indignant because the Communists accuse the social democrats (Ebert, Scheidemann, Noske, Hermann Mueller, Grzesinsky) of paving the road for Hitler. The Vorwaerts has a legitimate right to indignation. But this remark is too much: how can we, it cries out, make a united front with such slanderers? What have we here? Sentimentalism? Prudish sensitiveness? No, that really smacks of hypocrisy. As a matter of fact, the leaders of the German social democracy cannot have forgotten that Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel often asserted that the social democracy was ready, for the sake of definite objectives, to come to an agreement with the devil and his grandmother. The founders of the social democracy certainly did not demand that during this occasion the devil should check his horns in the museum and that his grandmother should become converted to Lutheranism. Whence then comes this prudish sensitiveness among the social democratic politicians who, since 1914, have made united fronts with the Kaiser, Ludendorff, Groener, Bruening, Hindenburg? Whence come these two weights and two scales: one for the bourgeois parties, the other for the Communists?
The leaders of the Center consider that every infidel who denies the dogmas of the Catholic Church, the only Savior, is one of the damned and shortly destined for eternal torments. That did not prevent Hilferding, who has no particular reason for believing in the immaculate conception, from establishing a united front with the Catholics in the government and in parliament. Together with the Center the social democrats set up the “Iron Front”. However, not for a single instant did the Catholics cease their unbearable propaganda and their polemics in the churches. Why these demands on Hilferding’s part with regard to the Communists? Either a complete cessation of mutual criticism, that is, of the struggle of tendencies within the working class, or a rejection of all joint action. “All or nothing!” The social democracy has never put such ultimatums to bourgeois society. Every social democratic worker should reflect upon these two weights and two measures.
Suppose at a meeting, even today, someone should ask Wels how it happens that the social democracy, which gave the republic its first chancellor and its first president, has led the country to Hitler. Wels will surely reply that to a large extent it is the fault of Bolshevism. Surely the day has not passed that the Vorwaerts will fail to repeat this explanation ad nauseam. Do you think that in the united front with the Communists it will forego its right and its duty to tell the worker’s what it considers to be truth? The Communists certainly have no need of that. The united front against Fascism is only one chapter in the book of the struggle of the proletariat. The chapters that went before cannot be effaced. The past cannot be forgotten. We must build on it. We preserve the memory of Ebert’s alliance with Groener and of Noske’s role. We remember under what conditions Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht died. We Bolsheviks have taught the workers to forget nothing. We do not ask the devil to cut off his tail: that would hurt him and we would not profit by it. We accept the devil just as nature has created him. We have no need of the repentance of the social democratic leaders nor of their loyalty to Marxism; but we do need the will of the social democracy to struggle against the enemy which is actually threatening it with death. For our part, we are ready to carry out in the joint struggle all the promises which we have made. We promise to fight courageously and to carry the fight to a finish. That is quite enough for a fighting agreement.
However, it still remains to be known why the social democratic leaders speak at all: regarding polemics, non-aggression pacts and the disgusting manners of the Communists, instead of answering this simple question: in what way shall we fight the Fascists? For the simple reason that the social democratic leaders do not want to fight. They cherished the hope that Hindenburg would save them from Hitler. Now they are waiting for some other miracle. They do not want to fight. They lost the habit of fighting long ago. The struggle frightens them.
Stampfer wrote regarding the actions of the Fascist banditry at Eisleben: “Faith in right and justice has not yet died in Germany.” (Vorwaerts, February 14)
It is impossible to read these words without being revolted. Instead of a call for a fighting united front, we get the consoling words: “Faith in justice has not died.” Now, the bourgeoisie has its justice, and the proletariat its own, too. Armed injustice always comes out on top of disarmed justice. The whole history of humanity proves this. Whoever makes an appeal to this self-evident “ghost” of “justice” is deceiving the workers. Whoever wants the victory of proletarian justice over Fascist violence, must agitate for the struggle and set up the organs of the proletarian united front.
It is impossible to find in the entire social democratic press a single line indicating genuine preparation for the struggle. There is not a single thing, merely some general phrases, postponements to some indefinite future, nebulous consolations. “Only let the Nazis start something, and then ...” And the Nazis started something. They march forward step by step, they tranquilly take over one position after another. These petty bourgeois reactionary malefactors do not care for risks. Now, they do not need to risk anything at all: they are sure in advance that the enemy will retreat without a fight. And they are not mistaken in their calculations.
Of course, it often occurs that a combatant must retreat in order to get a good start for a leap forward. But the social democratic leaders are not inclined to make the leap forward. They do not want to leap. And all their dissertations are made in order to conceal this fact. Just a short time ago they kept asserting that so long as the Nazis do not quit the ground of legality, there is no room for a fight. Now we get a good look at what this legality was: a series of promissory notes on the coup d’état. Still, this coup d’état was possible only because the social democratic leaders lull the workers to sleep with phrases about the legality of the coup d’état and console them with hope of a new Reichstag yet more impotent than those that preceded it.
The Fascists can ask for nothing better.
Today the social democracy has even ceased speaking of struggles in the indefinite future. On the subject of the already-begun destruction of the working-class organizations and press, the Vorwaerts “reminds” the government not to forget that “in a developed capitalist country the conditions of production group the workers in factories”. These words indicate that the leadership of the social democracy accepts in advance the destruction of the political, economic and cultural organizations created by three generations of the proletariat. “In spite of this” the workers will remain grouped by the industries themselves. Well then, what good are proletarian organizations if the question can be solved so simply?
The leaders of the social democracy and the trade unions wash their hands, and relegate themselves to the sidelines while waiting. If the workers themselves, “grouped together by the industries”, break the bonds of discipline and begin the struggle, the leaders, obviously, will intervene as they did in 1918, in the role of pacifiers and mediators and will force themselves on to the workers’ backs to re-establish the positions they have lost.
The leaders conceal from the eyes of the masses their refusal to fight and their dread of the struggle by means of hollow phrases about non-aggression paces. Social democratic workers your leaders do not want to fight!
Here the social democrat will again interrupt us to say: “Since you do not believe in our leaders’ desire to fight against Fascism, isn’t your proposal for a united front an obvious maneuver?” Even more, he will repeat the reflections printed in the Vorwaerts to the effect that the workers need unity and not “maneuvers”.
This type of argument has quite a convincing sound. In actuality it is an empty phrase. Yes, we Communists are positive that the social democratic and trade unions functionaries will continue to evade the struggle to the best of their ability. At the critical moment a large segment of the working class bureaucracy will pass directly over to the Fascists. The other segment, which succeeds in exporting its carefully hoarded financial resources to some other country, will emigrate at the opportune moment. All these actions have already begun and their further development is inevitable. But we do not confuse this segment, today the most influential in the reformist bureaucracy, with the social democratic party or the entirety of the trade unions. The proletarian nucleus of the party will fight with sure blows, and it will carry behind it a good-sized section of the apparatus. Exactly where will the line of demarcation pass between the turncoats, traitors and deserters, on one side, and those who want to fight, on the other? We can only find this out through experience. That is why, without possessing the slightest confidence in the social democratic bureaucracy, the Communists cannot abstain from addressing themselves to the whole party. Only in this manner will it be possible to separate those who want to fight from those who want to desert. If we are mistaken in our estimation of Wels, Breitscheid, Hilferding, Crispien and the rest, let them prove that we are liars by their actions. We will declare a mea culpa on the public squares. If all this is merely a “maneuver” on our part, it is a correct and necessary maneuver which serves the interests of the cause.
You social democrats remain in your party because you have faith in its program, in its tactics and in its leadership. This is a fact with which we reckon. You regard our criticism as false. That is your privilege. You are by no means obliged to believe the Communists on faith, and no serious Communist will demand this of you. But on their side the Communists have the right to put no confidence in the functionaries of the social democracy and not to consider the social democrats as Marxists, revolutionists, and genuine socialists. Otherwise, the Communists would have no need for the setting up of a separate party and a separate International. We must take the facts as they are. We must build the united front not in the clouds, but on the foundation which all the previous development has laid down. If you sincerely believe that your leadership will lead the workers to struggle against Fascism, then what Communist maneuver can you distrust? Then what is this maneuver of which the Vorwaerts is continually speaking? Think this out carefully: Is this not a maneuver on the part of your leaders who want to frighten you with the hollow word “maneuver” and thus keep you away from the united front?
(Conclusion in the next number)
L. Trotsky
Last updated on: 3 September 2015