The last war, which was by and large a war for colonies, was at the same time a war conducted with the help of colonies. The colonial populations were drawn into the European war on an unprecedented scale. Indians, Negroes, Arabs and Madagascans fought on the territories of Europe – for the sake of what? For the sake of their right to continue to remain the slaves of Britain and France. Never before has the infamy of capitalist rule in the colonies been delineated so clearly; never before has the problem of colonial slavery been posed so sharply as it is today.
A number of open insurrections and the revolutionary ferment in all the colonies have hence arisen. In Europe itself, Ireland keeps signalling through sanguinary street battles that she still remains and still feels herself to be an enslaved country. In Madagascar, Annam [1] and elsewhere the troops of the bourgeois republic have more than once quelled the uprisings of colonial slaves during the war. In India the revolutionary movement has not subsided for a single day and has recently led to the greatest labour strikes in Asia, which the British government has met by ordering its armoured cars into action in Bombay.
The colonial question has been thus posed in its fullest measure not only on the maps at the diplomatic congress in Paris but also within the colonies themselves. At best, Wilson’s [2] programme has as its task: to effect a change of labels with regard to colonial slavery. The emancipation of the colonies is conceivable only in conjunction with the emancipation of the working class in the metropolises. The workers and peasants not only of Annam, Algiers and Bengal, but also of Persia and Armenia [3], will gain their opportunity of independent existence only in that hour when the workers of Britain and France, having overthrown Lloyd George and Clemenceau [4], will have taken state power into their own hands. Even now the struggle in the more developed colonies, while taking place only under the banner of national liberation, immediately assumes a more or less clearly defined social character. If capitalist Europe has violently dragged the most backward sections of the world into the whirlpool of capitalist relations, then socialist Europe will come to the aid of liberated colonies with her technology, her organization and her ideological influence in order to facilitate their transition to a planned and organized socialist economy.
From the Manifesto of the Communist International to the Workers of the World,
adopted by the First World Congress on 6th March 1919
The toilers of the colonial and semi-colonial countries have awakened. In the boundless areas of India, Egypt, Persia, over which the gigantic octopus of British imperialism sprawls – in this uncharted human ocean vast internal forces are constantly at work, upheaving huge waves that cause tremors in the City’s stocks and hearts.
In the movements of colonial peoples, the social element blends in diverse forms with the national element, but both of them are directed against imperialism. The road from the first stumbling baby steps to the mature forms of struggle is being traversed by the colonies and backward countries in general through a forced march, under the pressure of modern imperialism and under the leadership of the revolutionary proletariat.
The fruitful rapprochement of the Mohammedan and non-Mohammedan peoples who are kept shackled under British and foreign domination, the purging of the movement internally by doing away with the influence of the clergy and of chauvinist reaction, the simultaneous struggle against foreign oppressors and their native confederates – the feudal lords, the priests and the usurers – all this is transforming the growing army of the colonial insurrection into a great historical force, into a mighty reserve for the world proletariat.
The pariahs are rising. Their awakened minds avidly gravitate to Soviet Russia, to the barricade battles in the streets of German cities, to the growing strike struggles in Great Britain, to the Communist International.
The socialist who aids directly or indirectly in perpetuating the privileged position of one nation at the expense of another, who accommodates himself to colonial slavery, who draws a line of distinction between races and colours in the matter of human rights, who helps the bourgeoisie of the metropolis to maintain its rule over the colonies instead of aiding the armed uprising of the colonies; the British Socialist who fails to support by all possible means the uprisings in Ireland, Egypt and India against the London plutocracy – such a socialist deserves to be branded with infamy, if not with a bullet, but in no case merits either a mandate or the confidence of the proletariat.
From the Manifesto of the Second Congress of the Communist International,
adopted 7th August 1920
“The Allied powers do not intend to recede from the great principle of the self-determination of small nations. They will only repudiate this principle when they are faced with the fact that some of the temporarily independent nations prove themselves to be a peril to universal peace by their incapacity to maintain order, by their bellicose and aggressive acts, and even by constant, childish and unnecessary insistence on their own dignity. The Great Powers will not tolerate such nations, as they are determined to preserve universal peace.”
With these energetic words the British General Walker impressed on the Georgian Mensheviks’ minds the conception of the relativity of the national right to self-determination. [5] Politically, Henderson [6] stood, and still stands, behind his general. But “on principle”, he is willing to turn national self-determination into an absolute principle, and to direct it against the Soviet Republic.
National self-determination is the fundamental democratic formula for oppressed nations. Wherever class oppression is complicated by national subjection, democratic demands take first of all the form of demands for national equality of rights – for autonomy or for independence.
The programme of bourgeois democracy included the right of national self-determination, but this democratic principle came into violent and open conflict with the interests of the bourgeoisie of the most powerful nations. The republican form of government seemed to be quite compatible with the domination of the Stock Exchange. Capitalism with the greatest ease established a dictatorship over the machinery of universal suffrage. However, the right of national selfdetermination has assumed and is still assuming in many instances the character of an acute and immediate peril of the dismemberment of the bourgeois states, or of the secession of their colonies.
The most powerful democracies have been transferred into imperialist autocracies. The financial oligarchy, the City, reigns supreme over the disfranchised human ocean of Asia and Africa through the medium of the “democratically” enslaved people of the home country.
From Chapter 9 of Between Red and White (1922)
One more question must be cleared up: on what does the Second International base its demand that we, the Soviet Federation, the Communist Party, should evacuate Georgia! Even if we were to admit that Georgia has been forcibly occupied, and that this fact is the expression of our Soviet imperialism, what right has Henderson, a member of the Second International, a former British Cabinet Minister, to demand that the proletariat organized in a State, that the Third International, that revolutionary Communism, should disarm Soviet Georgia “merely for the sake of his pious eyes”? When Mr. Churchill [7] makes these demands, he makes as well a significant gesture in the direction of the long barrels of the naval guns and the barbed wire of the blockade. Upon what does Henderson rely? Is it the Holy Scriptures, or a party programme, or his own record? But the Holy Scriptures are nothing but a naïve myth, Mr. Henderson’s programme is a myth, if not a naïve one, and as to his record, it is a severe indictment against him.
Not so long ago Henderson was a Minister in one of the democracies, viz., of his own – the British democracy. Why then has he not insisted that his own democracy, for the defence of which he was ready to make all sacrifices, including the acceptance of a Ministerial portfolio from the Liberal-Conservative Lloyd George, should begin to put into practice not our principles (heaven forbid) but his own – Mr. Henderson’s? Why has he not demanded the evacuation of India and Egypt? Why did he not, at the right time, support the demands of the Irish for their complete liberation from the yoke of Great Britain?
We are aware that Henderson, as well as MacDonald [8], does protest, on certain appointed days, by means of mournful resolutions against the excesses of British imperialism. But these feeble and irresolute protests have never imperilled, and do not now imperil, the interests of British capitalism, and have never led, nor are they leading, to courageous and decisive action. They are only intended to salve the conscience of the “socialist” citizens of the ruling nation, and to serve as an outlet for the dissatisfaction of the British workers. They will not help to break the chains of the colonial slaves. The Hendersons regard British domination over the colonies not as political questions, but as a fact in natural history. They have never declared that Hindus, Egyptians, and other enslaved peoples have the right (nay, that it is their duty) to rise in armed revolt against British domination. Neither have they undertaken as “socialists” to render armed assistance to the colonies in their struggle for liberation. On this point there can certainly be no doubt whatever, that this is a question of the most elementary, ultra-democratic duty, and that for two reasons: first because the colonial slaves certainly constitute an overwhelming majority, as compared with the infinitesimal ruling British minority; secondly, because this same minority, and especially its official socialist section, recognizes the principles of democracy as the guiding principle of its existence. There is India. Why does not Henderson organize a rising in favour of the evacuation of British troops from In ia? For there can be no more evident, monstrous and shameless violation of the laws of democracy than the domination of all the consolidated forces of British capitalism over the prostrate body of this unhappy and enslaved country” It seems to us that Henderson, MacDonald and the rest of them ought unceasingly to beat the tocsin, demand, appeal, denounce and preach revolution to the Indians and to all British workers against this inhuman trampling upon all the principles of democracy. But they remain silent, or worse still, they from time to time, with obvious boredom, sign a reasonable resolution, which is as stale and meaningless as an English sermon, and has for its aim to prove that, while supporting colonial domination, they would like its roses without the thorns, and that, in any case, they are not willing to allow these thorns to prick the fingers of loyal British socialists. For “democratic and patriotic” considerations, Henderson ensconced himself with the greatest equanimity in a Ministerial armchair, and it did not appear to strike him that his armchair was resting on the most anti-democratic pedestal in the world – the domination of a numerically insignificant capitalistic clique, through the medium of some tens of millions of Britishers, over several hundred millions of coloured Asiatic and African slaves. And, what is worse still, on the plea of defending this monstrous domination concealed under the cloak of democratic forms, Henderson allied himself with the unashamed military and police dictatorship of Russian Tsarism. In so far as you were a member of the British War Cabinet, Mr. Henderson, you were a Minister of Russian Tsarism. Do not forget that.
Henderson, of course, would not even dream of asking the Tsar, his patron and ally, to remove the Russian forces from Georgia, or from the other territories which he had enslaved. At that time he would have described such a demand as rendering a service to German militarism. He looked upon every revolutionary movement in Georgia directed against the Tsar in the same light as upon a rising in Ireland, viz., as the result of German intrigue and German gold.
In the end one’s brain reels from all these monstrous crying contradictions and inconsistencies! Nevertheless, they are in the order of things, for British domination, or rather the domination of its ruling upper ten thousand over one quarter of the human race, is looked upon by the Hendersons not as a question of politics, but as a fact in natural history. These democrats, with all their Fabian [9], emasculated and feeble socialism have always been and always will be the slaves of public opinion. They are thoroughly imbued with the anti-democratic exploiter, planter, and parasite views on races which are distinguished by the colour of their skins, by the fact that they do not read Shakespeare, or wear stiff collars.
Thus, although having Tsarist Georgia, Ireland, Egypt and India on their consciences, they dare to demand from us their opponents, and not their allies, the evacuation of Soviet Georgia. But, strange as it may seem, this ridiculous and thoroughly inconsistent demand is an unconscious expression of the respect of petty-bourgeois democracy for the proletarian dictatorship. Unconsciously, or half conscious1y, Henderson and Co. are saying: “Of course one cannot expect bourgeois democracy (whose Ministers we become when invited), to take the democratic principle of self-determination seriously. One cannot expect the socialists of this democracy, or the respectable citizens of the ruling nation who conceal our slave ownership with democratic fictions, to aid the colonial slaves against their slave owners. But you, the revolution, personified in the proletarian state, are obliged to do what we, owing to our cowardice, mendacity and hypocrisy, are unable to do.”
In other words, while formally placing democracy above all else, they recognize, willingly or unwillingly, that one can put demands to the proletarian state which would seem ridiculous and even silly, if they were put to bourgeois democracy, whose ministers or loyal representatives they are.
However, they express this unwilling respect for the proletarian dictatorship, which they reject, in a way which is in keeping with their political vagaries. They demand that the dictatorship should maintain and defend its power, not by its own methods, but by the methods which (in words, but not in deeds) they consider obligatory for democracy, but which they never apply themselves. We have already dealt with this in the first manifesto of the Communist International. Our enemies demand that we defend our lives in no other way than according to the rules of French duelling – that is to say, by the rules laid down by our enemies – but they do not consider such rules binding for themselves in their struggle against us.
From Chapter 10 of Between Red and White (1922)
Comrades, the premise of this theory [of socialism in one country] is the unevenness of imperialist development. Stalin accuses me of not recognizing or insufficiently recognizing this law. Nonsense! The law of the unevenness of development is not a law of imperialism but it is a law of all human history. In its first phase capitalist development abruptly heightened the disparity between the economic and cultural level of development of different nations; imperialist development, i.e. the highest phase of capitalism, has not increased this disparity of levels but on the contrary has considerably facilitated their levelling out. This levelling Out can never in any way be complete. The difference in tempos of development will disrupt this levelling out over and over again, thereby rendering impossible the stabilization of imperialism at any given level. Lenin attributed this unevenness by and large to two factors: first to the tempo; and secondly to the level of economic and cultural development of the different countries. As far as the tempo is concerned imperialism has brought unevenness to an extremely high point; as regards the level of different capitalist countries the very difference in tempo has brought about certain levelling tendencies. Whoever does not understand this does not understand the very root of the question. Take Britain and India. Capitalist development is in certain parts of India proceeding faster than did the capitalist development of Britain at its very start. Yet the difference, the economic gap between Britain and India – is this today greater or less than fifty years ago? it is less. Take Canada, South America, South Africa on the one hand and Britain on the other. The development of Canada and South America has gone ahead at a furious rate over the recent period. The “development” of Britain consists of a slump or even a decline. Thus the tempo is more uneven than ever before in history. But the levels of development of these countries have today drawn closer together than thirty or fifty years ago. What conclusions flow from this? Very important ones. just the very fact that the tempo of development in some backward countries has of late become feverish while on the other hand in some old capitalist countries development has slowed down and even gone into reverse, and this very fact totally excludes the possibility of realizing Kautsky’s hypothesis of systematically organized super-imperialism ... [10]
From a speech to the 7th Plenum of the Executive Committee
of the Communist International, 9th December 1926
The South African possessions of Great Britain form a dominion only from the point of view of the white minority. From the point of the black majority, South Africa is a slave colony.
No social upheaval (in the first instance, an agrarian revolution) is thinkable with the retention of British imperialism in the South African dominion. The overthrow of British imperialism in South Africa is just as indispensable for the triumph of socialism in South Africa as it is for Great Britain itself.
If, as it is possible to assume, the revolution will start first in Great Britain, the less support the British bourgeoisie will find in the colonies and dominions, including so important a possession as South Africa, the quicker will be their defeat at home. The struggle for the expulsion of British imperialism, its tools and agents thus enters as an indispensable part of the programme of the South African proletarian party.
The overthrow of the hegemony of British imperialism in South Africa can come about as the result of a military defeat of Great Britain and the disintegration of the empire. In this case, the South African whites could still, for a certain period – hardly a considerable one – retain their domination over the blacks.
Another possibility, which in practice could be connected with the first, is a revolution in Great Britain and her possessions. Three quarters of the population of South Africa (almost six million of the almost eight million total) is composed of non-Europeans. A victorious revolution is unthinkable without the awakening of the native masses. In its turn, that will give them what they are so lacking today – confidence in their strength, a heightened personal consciousness, a cultural growth.
Under these conditions, the South African republic will emerge first of all as a “black” republic; this does not exclude, of course, either full equality for the whites or brotherly relations between the two races – depending mainly on the conduct of the whites.
The revolutionary party must put before every white worker the following alternative: either with British imperialism and with the white bourgeoisie of South Africa or with the black workers and peasants against the white feudalists and slave owners and their agents in the ranks of the working class.
The overthrow of the British domination over the black population of South Africa will not, of course, mean an economic and cultural break with the previous mother country, if the latter will liberate itself from the oppression of its imperialist plunderers. A Soviet Britain will be able to exercise a powerful economic and cultural influence on South Africa through the medium of those whites who in deeds, in actual struggle, have bound up their fate with that of the present colonial slaves. This influence will be based not on domination but on proletarian mutual co-operation.
But more important in all probability will be the influence that a Soviet South Africa will exercise over the whole of the black continent. To help the Negroes catch up with the white race in order to ascend hand in hand with them to new cultural heights, this will be one of the grand and noble tasks of a victorious socialism.
From Remarks on the Theses of the Communist League of South Africa,
Byulleten Oppozitsii, July 1935
1. A secret anti-French society set up in Madagascar in 1916, mostly by native government officials opposed to colonial rule established in 1896. Annam, which covers the central area of modern Vietnam, also saw many revolts against French authority, established there in 1884. These were led by local royalists, native troops and others.
2. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), President of the United States 1913-1921; re-elected on an anti-war platform in 1916, Wilson brought the US into the war in April 1917; architect of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations.
3. Algiers was even at this point a centre of resistance to French colonial rule in North Africa. The events in Bengal referred to are perhaps those of 1907-9, though such manifestations of revolt continued in India in the following year. The weak Persian and Armenian regimes of this period were being bolstered up by the British in efforts to prevent the strengthening of local popular movements or the expansion of Soviet power. A Soviet government was later set up in Armenia in 1921.
4. David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Welsh Liberal politician, responsible as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) for the introduction of old age pensions, unemployment benefit and sickness benefits; prime minister from 1916 to 1922. – Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), leading French bourgeois politician. He emerged as a radical during the period of the Paris Commune (1871). In the 1890s he became popular through his part in the case of Dreyfus, defending him along with Zola and Jaurès. As a prominent deputy Clemenceau more than once occasioned the fall of a government with his energetic speeches, being nicknamed “the breaker of ministries”. From 1902 he held Cabinet office, for part of the time as Prime Minister. In this office from 1917 to 1920 Clemenceau was hailed as the “architect of victory” and was the leading figure at the Versailles peace conference in 1919. At the same period, he was the inspirer of intervention against Soviet Russia.
5. Details of the struggle over the Red Army’s invasion of Georgia can be found in Volume One, and also in the full text of Between Red and White (1922)
6. Arthur Henderson (1863-1935), a leader of the British Labour Party, who rallied the party to support World War I and became a government minister. He later served as Home Secretary in the first Labour government (1924) and Foreign Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-1931).
7. Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British politician, started as a Conservative, switched to the Liberals in 1904, returning to the Conservatives in 1924, served as minister in various positions in both Liberal and Conservative governbments; served as prime minister 1940-1945 und again 1951-1955.
8. Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Scottish Labour politician, member of Independent Labour Party (ILP), adopted pacifist position during World War I, prime minister in the first (1924) and second (1929-1931) Labour governments, defected in 1931 with Philip Snowden and Jimmy Thomas to form National Government with the Conservatives after the Labour government split on the question of cutting unemployment benefits, served as prime minister until 1935.
9. The reformist Fabian Society set up to pursue an explicitly gradualist transition to socialism as opposed to a revolutionary one. Leading members included, George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
10. Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), the theorist of German Social Democracy, made some of the first Marxists studies of imperialism as early as 1898. However, unlike Lenin, he saw imperialism not as a product of advanced capitalism, but a a result of the activities of pre-industrial, aristocratic elements. Thus after the outbreak of World War, in a series of articles reprinted in 1915 under the title Die Internationale und der Krieg, Kautsky could envisage the possible disappearance of capitalist wars through the establishment of a system he called super-imperialism, by which international finance capital would exploit the world. This theory ignored the dynamic of imperialism and the conflicts it must inevitably provoke.
Last updated on: 1.7.2007