Issuing body: Enlarged Plenum of the International Secretariat Published in: Bulletin intérieur, n° 2, October 1934, of the Groupe bolchevik-léniniste de la SFIO
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THE "FRENCH TURN": FROM PROPAGANDIST CIRCLES TO MASS WORK
1. These last ten years have been characterised by the growing decadence and ossification of the Communist International which, in the first five years of its existence, gathered under its banner the most revolutionary elements of the proletariat. The greater part of the present cadres of the ICL come from the ranks of the CI. The majority of the ICL's groups and sections were, at various periods, eliminated by the bureaucracy, as a preventive measure, so as not to allow a struggle for the principles of Leninism to be waged within the Communist Party. Constituting themselves as the Left Opposition, the Bolshevik-Leninists had set themselves the primary task of regenerating the Communist International. Over the course of ten years, they fought tirelessly against the centrist drift and the adventurist zigzags of the Stalinist bureaucracy. There is no major question, no major event, to which the Bolshevik-Leninists have not responded in good time, whether as an international organisation or as a section. There is no major question on which their analysis and their prognoses have not been confirmed by events. But the conservative power of the bureaucratic apparatus has had the upper hand. The events in Germany connected with the victory of fascism made manifest the internal degeneration of the CI and definitively buried the hopes of its regeneration as a party of the revolutionary vanguard.
2. Renouncing the role of a faction of the Comintern, the Bolshevik-Leninists, on the basis of the old programme enriched by new experience, constituted themselves as an independent organisation, setting themselves the task of the struggle for new parties and a new International, the Fourth. The new orientation of the ICL, strengthened from the outset by the adhesion of the Dutch Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), created the necessity of re-examining the whole field of the international workers' movement; of taking account of the changes that had occurred, of correctly assessing the new groupings so as to find in each country the most favourable points of application for the Marxist lever.
3. The degeneration and compromises of the CI inevitably lead to the absolute, or at least relative, strengthening of the Social Democratic parties. The preservation of these parties, and still more their growth through the influx of fresh elements, has led and will inevitably continue to lead in turn to the formation within them of internal groupings, to the sharpening of factional struggles, to splits. Nothing demonstrates more strikingly the total loss of the CI's power of attraction than the fact that, in recent years, the centrist left-wing groupings, even those that have broken with Social Democracy or been expelled from it, have not joined the ranks of the CI, but have attempted and continue to attempt to lead an independent existence (ILP, OSP-SAP, AWP, etc.).
The Social Democratic parties have undergone an evolution in a number of countries. After long years of adaptation by Austrian Social Democracy to bourgeois governments, its proletarian wing has entered into armed struggle with the bourgeoisie. The Spanish party, which only yesterday participated in a bourgeois government and exercised systematic repression against alleged revolutionary excesses, today finds itself compelled to call the masses to armed insurrection in defence of democratic liberties.
On the other hand, the Belgian Labour Party places its still very moderate left wing under the guillotine's blade. Dutch Social Democracy revises its programme in a reactionary spirit. All these processes occur under the action of the same factors: the crisis of capitalism and of the democratic state, counter-reforms in place of reforms, the growing misery of the masses, the threat of war looming in various countries. These fundamental factors produce varied effects and create multiple and contradictory tendencies among the groupings and in their mutual relations.
4. Domestic policy has lost all equilibrium; it is characterised by sudden manoeuvres, of which the striking image is that socialists who were bourgeois ministers yesterday are today arrested by its police. The objective situation of Social Democracy within the bourgeois state undergoes a 180-degree turn in a short space of time. As regards its degree of consciousness, this changes much more slowly, and in an uneven and even heterogeneous manner in the various groups: in certain strata of the apparatus, towards corporatist Bonapartism (the French neo-socialists, certain Dutch elements, and others), or, on the contrary, towards revolution. The level of consciousness of Social Democracy lags so far behind its own objective situation within the bourgeois state that it finds itself thrown into armed insurrection without having had time to renounce its democratic and reformist prejudices.
5. Under these conditions, there is, there can be, nothing more dangerous or more harmful than the usual clichés. To content oneself with abstractions — "reformism," "Second International" — means ignoring or blurring the difference between the Social Democracy that forms the bourgeois government and the Social Democracy that takes part in the revolution against the bourgeoisie. Between these two extreme poles lie numerous intermediate stages, which must be carefully studied, measuring the extent of the gap and the pace of development, in order each time to apply one's lever as effectively as possible towards forming genuinely revolutionary proletarian parties.
6. Let us repeat once more that if the CI had not been crushed by the Soviet bureaucracy, but had continued and developed the policy of the first four congresses, it would long ago have ensured the triumph of the revolution in several countries of Europe and Asia. On the other hand, if the degenerate apparatus of the CI, leaning on the authority of the USSR, had not obstructed the path of development of the vanguard of the world proletariat, the ICL could have become, over the past ten years, the autonomous pivot of the revolutionary party. In either case, the proletariat would have known victories and not defeats or capitulations. However, in the policy actually pursued, one must start not from imaginary but from real conditions, in which the world workers' movement is presently placed and which, in their fundamental features, have been characterised above.
The ICL is the only international organisation that possesses a correct general conception of the world situation and of the tasks incumbent on the proletariat. But it does not possess sufficiently important strength to become a centre of attraction for the masses who, under the sword of Damocles of fascism and war, are afraid to break away from the great organisations. The ICL cannot act as an independent party of the proletariat; it is only the weapon for the creation of independent parties. This weapon must be used according to the situation in each country.
7. Psychology, conceptions, and habits are usually behind the development of objective relations in society, in the class, even within the revolutionary organisation. The dead seize hold of the living. The preparatory period of propaganda gave us the cadres without which we could not take a single step forward, but the same period bequeathed to the organisation, as an inheritance, extremely abstract conceptions concerning the construction of the new party, the new International. In their chemically pure form, these conceptions are expressed in the most finished manner by the Bordigist sect, who hope that the workers' vanguard will, through literature that is tedious to read, become convinced of the correctness of their position and will sooner or later group itself precisely around their sect. To this, these sectarians often add that revolutionary events inevitably push the working class towards us. This passive expectation, cloaked in idealist messianism, has nothing in common with Marxism.
Revolutionary events always inevitably pass over the head of every sect. Through propagandist literature (if it is good) one can educate the first cadres, but one cannot gather together the proletarian vanguard, which lives not in a circle or a schoolroom, but in a class society, in the factory, in the mass organisations — a vanguard to whom one must know how to speak the language of its own experience. The best-prepared propagandist cadres inevitably decompose if they do not make contact with the daily struggle of the masses. The Bordigists' expectation that revolutionary events will, of themselves, push the masses towards them, as a reward for their "correct" conceptions, represents the crudest of all illusions. During revolutionary events, the masses do not inquire after the address of this or that sect, but pass it by. In order to grow more quickly during the period of the rising tide, during the preparatory period, one must know how to find points of contact at the level of consciousness of broad circles of workers. One must establish correct relations with the mass organisations. One must take a correct starting position corresponding to the concrete state of the proletarian vanguard, as embodied in our various groupings. And for this, one must see in oneself not a substitute for the new party, but only a weapon for its creation. In other words, while entirely preserving intransigence of principle, one must radically free oneself from the sectarian survivals that persist as a purely propagandist inheritance.
8. Those of our comrades who have most conspicuously displayed sectarian tendencies allege that the centrists of the Socialist Workers' Party (SAP) and the Independent Socialist Party (OSP) have always accused us of sectarianism, and that we would therefore now be acknowledging its validity, as well as the incorrectness of our criticism of Paul Louis's Norwegian Socialist Party (NAP), etc. With such arguments, these comrades once again demonstrate how easily sectarianism cohabits with opportunism. The leaders of the SAP and the OSP accused us of sectarianism not for our weak sides, but precisely for our strong sides: theoretical tenacity, hostility to every programmatic confusion, to unprincipled conciliation, to sterile combinations. Opportunists have always accused, and always will accuse, Marxists of "sectarianism," of "Talmudism," of a "tendency to split hairs." We must react with the severest condemnation of the apologetic position taken by some comrades towards the leaders of the SAP, of their manifest inclination to revise our criticism of the centrist leaderships in general. To free ourselves from the sectarian survivals of the propagandist period means for us not renouncing Marxist criteria, but on the contrary learning to carry them into a broader field, that is, to combine them with the struggle of ever broader layers of the working class.
9. It is only in the light of the considerations set out above that one can correctly assess the radical turn accomplished by our French section, which, after ample discussion, entered the SFIO on the basis of the decision of its national conference. Opposition to this turn was dictated by considerations of two kinds: some, like Bauer and his supporters, saw in this entry an abandonment of "Leninism," a "capitulation to reformism," and "a passing over to the positions of the Second International." Others feared — and this fear was in itself entirely natural — that our French section might not be able to develop its positions within the SFIO, might be forced to furl its flag, and might thereby compromise the ICL. Comrade Naville and his group took an eclectic position on this question, resorting to arguments of both kinds at once. The purely passive "intransigence" of comrades Naville and Lhuillier was but the complement of their opportunist policy of the preceding period, when they hindered systematic work within the SFIO, replacing it with adaptation from outside to the policy of its leadership. Finally, comrade Bauer, under the influence of the fact that his position had been rejected, began to cover his fundamentally sectarian, Bordigist, attitude with the purely empirical argument that the Communist League's entry into the SFIO was "inopportune." The most recent declaration of Bauer, Lehmann, and others, of 20 September 1934, constitutes a mechanical combination of sectarianism and opportunism, covered here and there with the fig leaf of "realistic, concrete" considerations.
10. As regards the natural and entirely legitimate fears of other sections that the turn of our French section might bind it hand and foot, an incomplete, not definitive, but nonetheless extremely important answer has already been given by the facts.
The Plenum notes that the position openly taken by the GBL within the SFIO (action programme, three issues of la Vérité, pamphlets on the militias, work among the youth) has nothing in common with a capitulation, but represents the application and development of the principles and methods of the ICL in the new orientation and under new conditions. In particular, the Plenum notes the indisputable progress of la Vérité as compared with the preceding period. This alone settles the question of whether the entry was "opportune" or "inopportune." The theoretical discussion on the character of the SFIO, on its regime, etc., has received empirical verification. The objective situation and the internal state of the SFIO at the present stage are such that they give the Bolshevik-Leninists a serious possibility of taking part in the internal life of the party and of carrying on propaganda for their conceptions on the basis of the real struggle of a considerable part of the proletarian vanguard.
Considering that the discussion on the turn in France has given rise to a sharp factional struggle between "entrists" and "non-entrists," in the course of which faults have been committed on both sides, the Plenum, while condemning the fact that comrade Naville's faction, through its factional activity, has committed acts outside our organisation harmful to its political life, reminds the League of the necessity of a healthy political and organic life and invites all members of the minority who remain attached to their ties with the ICL to enter immediately into the BL group of the SFIO, on the basis of common discipline. Consequently, any member of the minority who henceforth allows himself insinuations against our French section, so as to compromise it in the eyes of socialist workers, will by that very fact place himself outside the ranks of the ICL.
The Plenum requests the International Secretariat regularly to provide all sections with materials characterising the work of the French section in the new situation, so that the ICL as a whole may make use of the new experience thus acquired.
Resolution of the enlarged Plenum of October 1934, in Bulletin intérieur, n° 2, October 1934, of the Groupe bolchevik-léniniste of the SFIO.