Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder/Appendix 2
APPENDIX II.
COMMUNISTS AND INDEPENDENTS IN GERMANY.
In my brochure I have ventured an opinion to the effect that a compromise between the Communists and the "Left" wing of the Independents is necessary and useful to Communism, but that it will be difficult to effect this. The newspapers which I have subsequently received have confirmed both aspects of my opinion. A "statement" of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party on the military outburst of Kapp-Luttwitz and on the "Socialist Government" has been published in No. 32 of the Red Banner (Die Rote Fahne, the organ of the Communist Party of Germany, March 26, 1920.) From the point of view both of basic principle and of practical conclusions, this statement is perfectly correct. Its basic position is that an objective basis is lacking at the present moment for proletarian dictatorship, in view of the fact that the majority of the town workers are in favor of the Independents. The conclusion arrived at was: the promise of a "loyal opposition" to the Government, that is to say, a repudiation of an armed coup d'etat, provided that this be "a Socialist Government excluding all capitalist and bourgeois parties."
Undoubtedly this was correct tactics. But, if it is hardly worth while to dwell on trifling inexactitudes, yet it is difficult to pass over in silence such a glaring misunderstanding as the one caused by the official statement of the Communist Party; the government of social traitors is called "Socialist"; it is hardly possible to speak of "the exclusion of bourgeois-capitalist parties" when the parties of both Scheidemann and Messrs. Kautsky-Crispien are petit-bourgeois-democratic; it is hardly permissible to write such things as those contained in paragraph 4 of the declaration, which is to the following effect:—
In order further to gain the sympathy of the proletarian masses in favor of Communism, a state of things under which political freedom can be fully utilized and under which bourgeois democracy could in no case manifest itself as a dictatorship of capital—such a state of things is of great importance from the point of view of the development of proletarian dictatorship. .. .. ..
Such a state of things is an impossibility. Petit bourgeois leaders, the German Hendersons and Snowdens (Scheidemann and Crispien) cannot possibly abandon bourgeois democracy, which in its turn cannot but be a capitalist dictatorship. From the point of view of the attainment of practical results, as correctly pursued by the Central Committee of the Party, there was no necessity at all to write such a statement, incorrect in principle and politically harmful. If one wishes to indulge in parliamentary language, it is sufficient to say "So long as the majority of the town workers follow the Independents, we Communists cannot possibly interfere with the workers in their desire to live out their last illusions of middle class democracy (consequently, also bourgeois-capitalist illusions) in practical experience with their own governments." This is sufficient for the justification of the compromise, for which there is a real necessity, and which means that, for a certain period, all attempts at a violent overthrow of the government which enjoys the confidence of a majority of the town workers must be abandoned. In every-day mass agitation, unconnected with any form of officialdom or Parliamentary politeness, it is, of course, quite possible to add: "Let such knaves and fools as the Scheidemanns and the Kautsky-Crispiens actually reveal the full extent to which they are themselves deceived and to which they deceive the workers; their 'pure' government will itself make the 'cleanest' possible sweep of the Augean stables of Socialism, Social Democracy and all other forms of social treason."
There is no foundation for the statement that the present leaders of the German Independent Social-Democratic Party have lost all influence; in reality, they are more dangerous to the proletariat than the Hungarian Social Democrats, who styled themselves Communists and promised to "support" the dictatorship of the proletariat. The real nature of these leaders has asserted itself repeatedly during the German Kornilov period—i.e., during the Luttwitz-Kapp coup d'etat. The short articles of Karl Kautsky serve as a miniature, but vivid, example. These are entitled "Decisive Moments" and appear in the Freiheit, the organ of the Independents (March 30, 1920). There is also the article by Arthur Crispien entitled "The Political Situation" (ibid April 14, 1920). These men are absolutely incapable of thinking and reasoning like revolutionaries. They are sentimental middle-class democrats, who are a thousand times more dangerous to the proletariat when they proclaim themselves to be adherents of the Soviet system and of proletarian dictatorship; for, as a matter of course, they will, upon every critical and difficult occasion, commit acts of treason—"sincerely" confident all the time that they are assisting the proletariat! Is it not a fact that, when the Hungarian Social-Democrats quailed and whined before the agents of the Entente capitalists and the Entente executioners, they claimed that all the time their one desire was to "assist" the proletariat? And these were men who had undergone a Communist baptism, but who, owing to their cowardice and lack of character, considered the position of the Soviet Government in Hungary as hopeless.