[The following is an English translation of the first part of a 1929 text from L’Ouvrier Communiste on the Leninism and the national question, you can also find it in French here.
We have translated and published this text for its immense value as a polemic piece against certain conceptions still circulating today, however, we do not agree with everything written.
In specific, we would take issue with the presentation of Lenin’s position as concerned the national question, which is rather closer to Stalin’s conception of the same.
As we understand it, Lenin’s defense of national independence movements, while horribly misguided and harmful, was based on tactical concerns as well as a certain ‘maneuverist’ logic rooted in social democracy that sought to take advantage of the conflicts between different capitalist class fractions for the benefit of the proletarian revolutionary movement.
While the history of our class movement has definitively proved the falsity of Lenin’s thesis and the whole logic underlying it, it would be unserious and arguably dishonest to equate this ill-formed conception with Stalin’s unconditional defense of nationalism as a principle of socialism.]
Leninism or Marxism: Imperialism and the National Question
China’s present conflict with Russia and the threats of war which flow from this inter-imperialist incident, as indeed from all those which current events bring us from day to day, signal the imminent possibility of a new world war and force us to pay renewed attention to the problem which the outbreak and development of the 1914 war so brutally placed before the Marxist Left of the 2nd International.
On this terrain, very important differences had arisen between the Leninist elements (reduced in this case to Lenin and Zinoviev, who alone edited the Socialdemokrat) and the majority of the Left (mainly composed of elements from Germany, Poland and Holland). It is not unimportant to note the isolation of Russian Bolshevism in its particular position on the national question in relation to other currents. It is no coincidence that Bolshevism or Leninism was already in contradiction with Western proletarian ideology on this terrain.
For too long these divergences, of fundamental importance for the development of the international revolution, have been kept under wraps by the various elements of the 3rd International. Like the majority, the so-called oppositionists, labelled Leninists, Trotskyists or Bordigists, have always pretended to ignore the antagonism of the Luxemburgist and Bolshevist tendencies. Prometeo, which recently published an article by Amadeo Bordiga on the “national question”, fails to point out how the content of this article seems to move away from Leninism and towards Luxemburgism. It should be added that Bordiga himself contributed to keeping in the shadows these differences, which had existed for some fifteen years on the Marxist left, by veiling them in the cloak of Bolshevik discipline. It was only in his 1924 lecture on Lenin that he made a vague allusion to this divergence and expressed, in a diplomatic phrase, his sympathy for the anti-Leninist tendency of the Marxist left in the 2nd International.
In fact, the death of Luxemburg and the exclusion of leftist elements such as the Dutch Tribunists and the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (K.A.P.D.) from the 3rd International, allowed Leninism to dominate the tactics of the Comintern in the national question as well as in all other questions.
It is therefore necessary, first of all, to highlight the Marxist position on this particular problem, as it unquestionably emerges from the quotations attributed to Zinoviev and Lenin themselves. In Against the Current, reference is made to Marx’s dictum in the Communist Manifesto: “the workers have no fatherland”. Let us reproduce in full the passage from the Manifesto where Marx and Engels set out their thinking on the question of the fatherland in relation to the working class:
“Workers have no homeland. What they do not have cannot be taken from them. As the proletariat of each country must first conquer political power, set itself up as the ruling class of the nation, become the nation itself, it is still thereby national, though by no means in the bourgeois sense of the word.”
“National demarcations and antagonisms between peoples are already disappearing more and more with the development of the bourgeoisie, the freedom of trade, the world market, the uniformity of industrial production and the corresponding conditions of existence. The proletariat in power will make them disappear even more. Its joint action, in civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions of its emancipation.”
Lenin here gives an exact interpretation of Marx’s text by recognising that the socialist revolution cannot win within the limits of the old fatherland, that it cannot preserve itself within national borders, that its common action, as Marx rightly says, in the civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions of emancipation. It is clear that, here, Karl Marx expects in the proletarians of the advanced countries a high degree of internationalism already before the revolutionary victory, and that he sees in it a basis for the development of the revolution. The expression “nation”, applied to the social whole which the proletariat dominates and which it gradually identifies with itself, is formal, like the meaningless residue left by the bourgeoisie in its downfall. It in no way allows us to affirm that Karl Marx thought of the distinct existence of any “socialist fatherland”.
It is clear, moreover, that national borders lose their economic and political significance already under the bourgeois regime and that they are destined to be completely abolished by the development of proletarian power.
The subsequent development of the capitalist economy has thoroughly demonstrated the accuracy of this thesis by achieving the universal unity of the market for raw materials, exports and capital. The last war unmasked nationalism as an ultra-reactionary residue which no longer expresses the interests of an autonomous social formation but serves as an ideological disguise for imperialist realities.
The petit bourgeoisie of all stripes and the labour aristocracy rooted in the great monopolies are vehicles of patriotism only to the extent of their subjection to big capital, which makes them its puppets, alternating the comedy of national defence with that of Wilsonism, Locarnism, etc. The working class has no reason to be attached to any national demarcations, as proletarian internationalism shows. It is obvious that the historical basis of its struggles and revolutionary experiences will lead the proletariat to abolish borders as soon as it has seized power in more than one country. The ethnic character of the nationalists is losing all value, the fusion of the most disparate ethnic elements has long since become commonplace, and so national borders can no more resist the tide of bourgeois civilisation than ethnic borders.
Thus, the internationalist thesis of Marxism lends itself to no misunderstanding; the expression which sums it up: “the workers have no fatherland” is irrevocably clear, marking the real division between bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism; subsequent historical development has unmasked the distinctly bourgeois character of patriotic and national ideology. And yet, Lenin did not completely erase from his “Marxist” conception the influence of this patriotic ideology, which the Marxist elements of the West entirely rejected.
It is interesting to note that when Lenin polemicises with the reformists he assumes ultra-leftist attitudes, whereas when he polemicises with the ultra-leftists he assumes reformist attitudes. [1] This eclectic stance is generalised across all issues. The oscillations of his centrism are very well characterised in works such as The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky on the one hand and Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder on the other. In the passage quoted from Against the Current (page 18 of the first volume) Lenin polemicises against the reformists and social traitors. He becomes purely internationalist, recalling the inequivocal Marxist expression: “the workers have no fatherland“.
In Page 213, polemicising against the Dutchman Nieuwenhuis and comparing him to Gustave Hervé, he asserts that the latter was talking nonsense [2]:
“When he concluded from the axiom that “every country is nothing but a cash cow for the capitalists” that “the German monarchy or the French republic is all the same to the socialists.”
“When, in the resolution he proposed to the Congress, Hervé declared that for the proletariat it was “absolutely indifferent” whether the country was under the domination of this or that national bourgeoisie, he was formulating and defending an absurdity worse than that of Nieuwenhuis. It is not at all indifferent to the proletariat to be able, for example, to speak its mother tongue freely, or to suffer national oppression in addition to class exploitation. Instead of drawing this deduction from the premises which herald socialism, that the proletariat is the only class which will fight to the end, certainly against all national oppression, for the complete equality of the rights of nations, for the right of nations to self-determination, Hervé instead declares that the proletariat does not have to concern itself with national oppression, that it ignores the national question in general.”
Naturally Lenin adopts in this circumstance his favourite method of analogies in order to be able to reject a theory due to the betrayal of a single man. But that is of little importance to us. What is more important is the content of this passage, which sums up Lenin’s theory of the national question. And, what’s more, he claims to derive this particular conception of his and the Bolsheviks from the premises that herald socialism!
But he has already admitted with Marx that “the workers have no fatherland” and that the national question can have no interest for the working class. Marx clearly says that you can’t take from them (the proletarians) what they don’t have. And yet it is clear from this passage by Lenin that the fatherland can be taken from the workers, that it is not only a privilege of the ruling classes, but also an advantage of the exploited classes. Indeed, “it is not indifferent to suffer national oppression on top of class exploitation“. Here the contradiction between Marxist and Leninist thought is clear. For Lenin, the proletariat must be interested in the national question, it must be against all national oppression, in other words against all oppression of the fatherland, which, according to Marx, it does not have and cannot take away. For Lenin, the proletariat is even the paladin of national defence, because it represents the only class which will fight to the bitter end, in particular against all national oppression.
These are undoubtedly the sources of National-Bolshevism. And once we have thought through the meaning of Lenin’s thought, we will not be surprised that Bukharin said in 1923:
“The 1923 conflict between France and Germany was not simply a repetition of the 1914 conflict. It has rather a national character. Consequently, the KPD must make it clear to the German working class that it alone can defend the German nation against the bourgeoisie, which is selling out the national interests of its country.”
Leninist thought also fails to realise the artificial side of the so-called national sentiments expressly nourished by the bourgeoisie. It does not realise that among certain privileged strata of the population chauvinist feelings are a simple result of their economic conditions. That, today, love of country is relegated to these strata, which we have already mentioned.
And indeed, in the spirit of Leninist thought, was Germany not an oppressed country? There can be no doubt about it. German regions were oppressed by the French occupation, and it was the “duty” of German workers to fight to the bitter end for the liberation of these regions! For the liberation of Germany from the oppression of the Entente. Everyone is familiar with the results of the application of Lenin’s tactics in Germany in 1923.
It is clear from this disastrous experience that when the proletariat sets out to defend “its fatherland”, “the oppressed nation”, it achieves only one result, and that is to strengthen its own bourgeoisie. But it will be necessary to point out one more very obvious contradiction, which exists in the articles of Against the Current in order to realise the equivocal nature of National-Bolshevism. In the article another article (page 70 of the first volume) he writes as follows:
“As long as capitalist states exist, i.e., as long as imperialist world politics dominates the internal and external life of states, the right of nations to self-determination is of no importance either in peace or in war. What is more, in the present imperialist environment there is no room for a war of national defence, and any socialist policy which disregards this historical environment and seeks to orient itself from the isolated base of a single country is, from the outset, built on sand.”
As we have just seen, imperialism has eliminated any possibility of a national war in the Marxist sense of the word, and Karl Marx’s opinion of 1871 has found a solid basis in the subsequent development of capitalist imperialism. Now, in the passage quoted above, it would seem that Leninism is close in its general line to this opinion. But this is not the case. In his polemic against the Polish Social-Democrats (page 129 of the second volume) Lenin develops his thought in contrast with them:
“Obviously the Polish authors pose the question of ‘defence of the fatherland’ quite differently from our party. We reject the defence of the fatherland in the imperialist war (…) Obviously the authors of the Polish theses reject the defence of the fatherland in a general way, that is to say even for a national war, perhaps believing that national wars, in the imperialist era, are impossible.” [3]
It is clear that in this passage Lenin affirms that for him national wars are not yet over and that he accepts the defence of the fatherland in a national war. It is clear that here Leninist ideology is in contradiction with Marxism and with itself. For Lenin, reality oscillates between two poles which negate each other. On the one hand, he recognises the terrible reality of the imperialist war, which apparently originated in a national conflict; on the other, he clings desperately to a stale and outdated nationalism, which he wants to revive by force. And it is for this very reason that he looks for examples in national insurrections which have successively unmasked their reactionary character, and which have brought no advantage to the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. Lenin states (page 139 of the second volume) the following:
“Socialists want to use for their revolution all the national movements which are being unleashed against imperialism. The clearer the struggle of the proletariat against the common front of imperialisms now becomes, the more essential becomes the internationalist principle which says: a people that oppresses other peoples cannot be free itself.” [4]
In his polemic with the Junius Pamphlet (page 154 of the second volume) Lenin’s thinking on this question becomes increasingly clear. For Lenin there is a clear dividing line between national wars and imperialist wars:
“Only a sophist (page 158) could try to erase the difference between an imperialist war and a national war…”
And further down he even mentions the possibility of a great national war:
“If imperialism outside Europe also continued for twenty years or so, leaving no room for socialism, for example because of an American-Japanese war, then a great national war in Europe would be possible.”
Junius (Luxemburg) maintained, as a consistent Marxist, that there could be no more national wars, and Lenin exclaimed that it would be wrong “to extend the assessment of the present war to all the wars possible under imperialism, to forget the national movements which can be produced against imperialism“. And he adds that even a great national war is possible! Here the contradiction between his thinking and Marxist thinking becomes more and more acute, because for Zinoviev himself the war of 1870-71 closed the era of great national wars in Europe.
In vain, on pages 122-23 of the same work, Lenin tries to extricate himself in his polemic against the Polish social democrats, by having recourse to Engels’ thought contained in the work The Po and the Rhine. His contradiction with Marxism is no less obvious. Engels believes that the borders of the great European nations were determined in the course of history, which saw the absorption of several small and unviable nations, increasingly integrated into one large one by language and the sympathies of the populations. Engels’ thesis is already very weak from the historical point of view. But above all Lenin is obliged to observe that reactionary, imperialist capitalism is breaking down these democratically defined borders more and more often. It should be said that this way of understanding the influence of capitalism in the changes to the old borders, which Engels would consider “natural”, does not at all correspond to the main idea of Marxism contained in the above-mentioned passage of the Communist Manifesto:
“Already the national demarcations and antagonisms between peoples are disappearing more and more with the development of the bourgeoisie, the freedom of trade, the world market, the uniformity of industrial production and the conditions of existence that correspond to it.”
Marx did not regard this process of the disappearance of national demarcations as a reactionary phenomenon, as Lenin claimed. Lenin considers the whole process, and the Polish social democrats’ approach to it, as “imperialist economism”. Here is what he has to say about it:
“The old “economists” [5], leaving only a caricature of Marxism, taught the workers that “what is economics” matters only to Marxists. Do the new “economists” think that the democratic state of victorious socialism will exist without borders (like a complex of sensations without matter?). Do they think that borders will be determined only by the needs of production? In reality, these borders will be determined democratically, i.e., in accordance with the will and sympathies of the population. Capitalism uses violence to influence “sympathies” and thereby adds new difficulties to the work of bringing nations together.”
There is a clear contrast between Leninist and Marxist thought. For Marx, the bourgeoisie and the economic organisation of capitalism make borders disappear and eliminate national difficulties; for Lenin, capitalism increases these difficulties. It may be noted that the bourgeoisie was progressive in 1848 and reactionary in the imperialist phase. This would not be a very useful distinction, because the rise of the world economy has not ceased since then, even through formidable crises, to bring national populations closer and closer together, and sometimes to merge those national elements.
Lenin’s thinking appears to us here as a historical anachronism, a step backwards. He wants to achieve the unity of peoples by going back to a historical basis, which Marxism considered as far back as 1848 to be in danger of disappearing. Lenin’s thinking in this area, which is largely ignored by Western communist militants, can thus only be defined as reactionary.
Instead of fighting national feelings, which the bourgeoisie has every interest in keeping alive, it encourages them, legitimises them, and makes them a moral basis for the development of socialism.
No one will doubt for a moment, when reading Lenin’s polemic against Junius, that all the sophistry is on his side. Indeed, what is the only argument he can add against Luxemburg? The subtle pretext that dialectics can slip into sophistry. And to do this he appeals to the dialectic of the Greeks, which has nothing to do with materialist dialectic, which is not a method outside reality, but a method within reality itself. For this national war (little Serbia rebelling against big Austria) had been transformed into an imperialist war, not in the abstract but in reality. It clearly proved that sophistry was on Lenin’s side in the domain of national wars and questions.
But before reviewing the historical events which have come to confirm this judgement, it will not be amiss to set out Lenin’s thinking more clearly by means of a quotation which cannot give rise to any dispute as to its content. In the article against the Junius pamphlet (page 158, second volume) Lenin clearly affirms his belief in national wars and extends his theory to the colonial question:
“National wars are not only probable, they are inevitable, in an age of imperialism, on the side of the colonies and semi-colonies. In the colonies and semi-colonies (China, Turkey, Persia) there are populations totalling up to a billion men, i.e., more than half the world’s population. National emancipatory movements in this area are either already very strong or are growing and maturing. The continuation of the national emancipatory policy of the colonies will inevitably lie in the national wars they wage against imperialism. Wars of this kind may bring about a war of the great imperialist powers of today, but they may also bring about nothing, that will depend on many circumstances.” [6]
So far, we have noted the contradictions between Marxism and Leninism on the national question. We have pointed out the sharp contrast between the National-Bolshevik thesis of Leninism and the Marxist internationalism of the German, Polish and Dutch Leftists. Those who have read or will read Bordiga’s article Communism and the National Question in Prometeo of September 15, 1929, will notice that this contrast (while hidden) also existed between Italian Leftist thought and Leninist thought.
This was not pure chance. Anti-Marxist Leninism concealed a profound difference in objective conditions between Russia and the other European countries on the national question. The objective bases of the coming Russian revolution were not purely socialist, and in Leninist thought there was that strange contamination of proletarian and bourgeois elements which clashed with the clearly working-class thought of the West. The objective conditions of Russia were reflected in the contrast with the thought of the future leader of the October Revolution.
These considerations, which have their theoretical basis in the conception of historical materialism, and which contain the judgement of the national conception of Leninism, would not be sufficient if they were not supported by the historical bankruptcy of National-Bolshevism. Many Communist militants have believed up to now that the tactics applied by Leninism, Bukharinism and Stalinism had nothing to do with Bolshevism; they thought that these tactical lines of the Communist International were a degeneration of the pure line of Bolshevism. This was also due to the diplomatic attitude of some leftist opponents, who, as we pointed out at the beginning of this article, hid serious differences with Leninism by appealing to the degeneration of Bolshevism. Zinovievist, Bukharinist, Stalinist and even Trotskyist nuances are in no way detached from authentically Leninist National-Bolshevism.
That’s why we’ve had to resort to numerous quotations from Lenin, so that non-fanatical Communist workers who read and think can understand that National-Bolshevism has a single source, which is Leninism.
But let us move on to the analysis of the historical process subsequent to the theoretical foundation of National-Leninism, in order to see its anti-proletarian nature and its definitive bankruptcy.
We have already seen that Lenin, in contrast to the Marxist thesis of 1871, envisaged the possibility of a great national war in Europe and we have seen that Lenin also considered it the duty of the proletariat to defend the oppressed nation. For the Leninists in 1923, in the period of the occupation and the economic war in the Ruhr, Germany was waging a national war. They claimed that, following the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had become an oppressed nation. This is why Bukharin, in the quotation already cited, felt that the German proletariat had to defend the nation. Zinoviev, in the Rote Fahne of 17 June 1923, asserted that the Communists were the true defenders of the fatherland, the people and the nation. Bukharin and Zinoviev were Leninists at the time, pure Bolsheviks. Hadn’t Lenin, in Against the Current, foreseen the “great national war”? Certainly, Zinoviev had forgotten his earlier article on the marauders, but hadn’t Lenin forgotten in 1916 his considerations from 1914 against the reformists? Radek, who praised Schlageter and argued amicably with the fascist Réventlow on the pages of Rote Fahne, was also a consistent Leninist, because he thought of defending the “oppressed” German nation against the imperialism of the Entente and the treacherous German bourgeoisie.
It is true that Ruth Fischer went a little beyond the bounds of Leninism when she justified fascist anti-Semitism in front of racist students in order to save the oppressed fatherland, but this was only a lapse of conduct due to an excessive temperament. There was nothing Leninist about Paul Frœlich when he wrote in the Rote Fahne of August 3, 1923:
“It is not true that we Communists were anti-nationalists during the war. We were against the war, not because we were anti-German, but because the war only served the interests of capitalism… by this very fact we do not deny national defence where it is put on the agenda!”
Lenin said that he rejected the defence of the fatherland in an imperialist war, but not in a general way? We see clearly that neither Zinoviev, nor Bukharin, nor Radek, nor Frœlich betrayed Leninism in their 1923 strategy. It was Leninism alone which was killing the German revolution, it was National-Bolshevism which, by claiming to save the nation from the German bourgeoisie, was saving the bourgeoisie from the German proletariat. It distracted the attention of the proletariat from its main objective: the struggle against international capitalism, and thus detached those without a fatherland in Germany (i.e., the proletariat) from those without a fatherland in other nations, by chattering about national oppression, the national betrayal of the German bourgeoisie and other petit-bourgeois siren songs. What were the results of the consistent application of Lenin’s national tactics in Germany in 1923? The results were that the proletariat was soundly defeated, that the German bourgeoisie was strengthened to such an extent that Bukharin at the Sixth Congress of the Communist International was forced to reveal to us the resurrection of German imperialism!
This is how Lenin’s national ideology, at least as far as the “great European national war” is concerned, found its tomb in the 1923 in Germany. And behind this tomb appears the bloody image of the author of the Junius pamphlet who cries out: “There are no more national wars possible under capitalist imperialism“.
But if the great European national war found its grave in 1923 in Germany, the small national wars of the colonies and semi-colonies (Turkey, Persia and China) also died in the swamp of imperialist reaction. They too were unable to escape the influence of the historical environment dominated by capitalism. The history of the Chinese and Turkish national wars is the well-known story of Kemal Pasha and Chang-Kai-Shek. These are two bloody tragedies in which the proletariat and the communists of Turkey and China played the role of the victim. The Russia of Lenin, of Bolshevism, of “socialist” construction, gave the weapons for these national wars to Chang-Kai-Shek and Kemal Pasha; the latter, immediately drawn into the circle of imperialist policy, formed a united front with the imperialists against the proletariat; they turned the weapons which Russia supplied them against the proletariat and the communists. And yet pure Leninist tactics were applied in these circumstances, whatever Trotsky and his followers may say. The Chinese proletariat, the Turkish proletariat were told to defend their homeland oppressed by the imperialists and the agents of the imperialists; the crusade of the oppressed nations against imperialism was proclaimed. Didn’t Lenin himself advocate the use of a united front of oppressed nations against imperialism? It certainly cannot be argued that the struggle in defence of the oppressed nation could be reconciled with the revolutionary interests of the workers, because the struggle of the proletariat against capitalism and international imperialism is the struggle against its own bourgeoisie, not in the name of its nation, but in the name of the international proletariat. What mattered most in China for the Chinese and international proletariat was the entry of the Chinese working class into the revolutionary proletarian struggle and not into the national struggle, which was reactionary in its essence, and could not lead in any case to the national emancipation of China, but only to the interlinking of the Chinese bourgeoisie with the forces of imperialism. Can we today call national wars conflicts that cannot escape the historical influence and pull of imperialism? Of course not. Therefore, the ideology of national wars, of the non-capitalist, non-imperialist homeland, has failed utterly, resulting only in terrible defeats and a sea of proletarian blood. And thus the holy crusade of the oppressed nations against the oppressor imperialism is transformed into a liaison of the indigenous bourgeoisies and against the world proletariat.
If in China and Turkey the legend of the national war ended in tragedy, in Afghanistan and Persia it died as a mockery of history in the farce of Amanullah.
The colonies themselves (Egypt, India, etc.)—these countries which encompass millions of men and which Lenin hoped to unleash in their national fire against the imperialism of the capitalist colossus, do not allow us a national war. For in the Swaraj, the Wafd, etc., the native bourgeoisie has already lost its national aggressiveness, and it seeks compromise, a submissive alliance with the imperialist colossus. And yet the staunch Leninists are still preparing new nationalist crusades, i.e., new massacres of colonial proletarians, instead of preparing the socialist revolution by developing the consciousness of the proletariat in the same countries.
What conclusions can be drawn from this analysis of factual matters on the national question?
That there is no national question for the proletariat, that the workers can derive no advantage from the existence for them of a homeland, and that they have no concern with “national oppression”, with the right of nations to self-determination. The proletariat develops its movement, makes its revolution as a class and not as a nation. Immediately after the victory of the proletariat in several nations, borders can only disappear. The Leninist thesis of the national autonomy of socialist states is nonsense. Lenin asserts that as long as the state exists, the nation remains a necessity. But the nation is only a product of the bourgeois state and not of the proletarian state. Proletarian states can only tend towards unification and the abolition of borders. Better still, socialism as an economic and social order can only be realised on the basis of the total disappearance of borders. The abolition of national economic differences cannot be achieved without the abolition of national borders, which are artificial and a matter of historical convention. The proletarian dictatorship, the workers’ state, which is not the bourgeois state, can only be universal and not national, democratically unitary and not federative. Marxist communists do not want to build the United States of Europe or of the world; their goal is the universal republic of workers’ councils.
Marxist Communists must therefore propagate among the broad masses of workers the hatred of the fatherland, which is a means for capitalism to sow division between the proletarians of different countries. They must advocate among the broad masses of workers the need for fraternisation, for the international union of all proletarians in all countries. They must fight fiercely not only all the chauvinist, fascist or social-democratic tendencies which poison even working-class circles, but also all the masked tendencies which try to give any basis to the national ideal. They must fight against the legends of national wars and popular anti-imperialist crusades. They must use historical experience to anchor in the depths of the proletarian masses faith in the victory of socialism, on a purely classist and internationalist political basis.
We must therefore focus all our efforts on the rebirth of true Marxist internationalism, which has been confused by the social reformists and the National-Bolshevists.
We are well aware that our propaganda alone cannot achieve this effort to bring internationalism back to the masses and to develop it to a degree hitherto unknown. We know that our propaganda, while necessary, will not have the slightest influence unless subsequent developments in the historical process confirm it. But we also know that these developments can only push the proletariat towards the positions that the true internationalists have never betrayed, which were the positions that Rosa Luxembourg maintained until her death.
L’Ouvrier Communiste n°2 & 3 – October 1929
Notes
[1] (Citation Missing)
[2] Second volume, NDR.
[3] Lenin’s emphasis, NDR.
[4] Lenin’s emphasis, NDR.
[5] The ‘economists’ formed a tendency in Russian social democracy which attached absolute importance to the struggle for partial economic demands.
League of Internationalist Communists 