The Left and the War

I. The Revolution Betrayed

A. Struggle for Power After Lenin

1. The NEP (New Economic Policy)--re-introduced the market (in a limited way) to the Russian economy. Begun by Lenin and Trotsky in 1921, it allowed farmers to sell their produce (particularly grain) as long as they paid a tax in kind (that is, in the produce they grew) to the state. Banking and heavy industry remained under the control of the state. The agricultural sector grew much faster than the industrial sector as a result of this. Industry then began to charge higher prices for the goods it produced, forcing farmers to grow more to buy these consumer goods--or to withhold goods from the market to await higher prices. There also emerged speculators, known as “NEP-men” who bought the grain from farmers and held it to await the rise in price.



2. Lenin dies 1924--setting off a power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky

3. Stalin the Bureaucratic Infighter--Stalin proves more adept at the bureaucratic infighting, increasingly marginalizing Trotsky, eventually forcing him into exile.



4. “Socialism in One Country”--Stalin argues, contrary to his previous position (and in contrast to Trotsky’s argument of the Permanent Revolution) that in order to keep socialism alive, the revolution must be protected in the Soviet Union at all costs. This entails enforced orthodoxy from Moscow, and the ending of the NEP.

a) This communist orthodoxy is enforced through the Third International (also known as the Communist International, or Comintern). Those who strayed from this orthodoxy were branded “fascists,” and thrown out of the Communist Party.

b) This action had varying effects. Where the socialist movement was weakest it had the greatest effect, since socialists seeking to change the political structure in their country had little choice but to go along or become estranged from the movement; this was particularly potent in countries like the United States

5. State Socialism--in ending the NEP, Stalin ended the market experiment in the Soviet Union. All peasant farms were collectivized--i.e., the state took control of them. Farmers were forced to live on communes, and the state seized all that was produced. Those who resisted were either executed or exiled to the gulag work camps. In order to compete with the west, the state also exercised more stringent control of the factories in the countries, banning independent labor unions (which had operated in the country previously), while also implementing the most oppressive aspects of capitalist control of workers, and Soviet industry strove to catch up to western capitalist industry.

II. The Threat from the Right

A. Hitler and Germany

1. Reichstag Fire--blamed on Communist infiltrators. Although only five Communists were arrested for the crime--and only one was convicted--all known communists were hunted down, arrested, and sent to concentration camps.

2. Fascist intimidation--the German Social Democrats attempted to placate the Nazi Party by declaring May 1--International Workers’ Day--a day of national unity; on May 2 the Social Democrats were rounded up and sent to concentration camps as well.

B. Austria and the Christian Right

1. Dolfuss--Englehart Dolfuss was the leader of a fascist Christian Social Party, who seized power in 1933 due to a power struggle in the lower house of parliament in Austria. He ruled as a dictator until he was assassinated by Nazi agents in 1934.



2. Austrian Social Democrats--were defeated in a three-day civil war attempting to resist the (temporarily) united forces on the right; as a result of the defeat, the party was outlawed and its leaders were either arrested or fled the country.



3. Anschluss--the threat of war made by Mussolini kept Nazi forces from uniting Austria with Germany until 1938--the event known as Anschluss, popularly remembered at the end of the movie The Sound of Music.

C. France and the Popular Front--the attempted coup d’etat on the part of political parties on the right led to the unification of socialists and communists and the Radical Party (the liberal political party, despite its name).

1. Rise of Hitler--in Germany caused a change of policy on the part of Stalin (who had ordered Communist parties around the world not to cooperate with other political groups on the left--particularly Socialists). This led the French Communist Party to unite with the Socialists and Radicals--although the did not receive any cabinet positions as a result of this unification. Leon Blum, a moderate leftist, was elected prime minister.



2. Political Unity--because the focus was on political unity, rather than on the possibility of socialist revolution, the leadership of both the Socialists and Communists reigned in the spontaneous rank-and-file rebellion that this new unity inspired. French workers had a long history of syndicalist action (worker control at the point of production), but the Popular Front leadership worked hard at tamping this rebellion down.

3. Spanish Civil War--to appease the right-wing of the Radical Party, when fascist Francisco Franco led the army against the duly elected Socialist government in Spain, Blum declared that France would remain neutral, and see that no arms were shipped to the Spanish government to assist them in putting down this rebellion. The Communists objected to this, and abstained in a no-confidence vote taken in its aftermath (rather than vote in support of the government), but this development revitalized the right in France.

4. End of the Popular Front--the business interests were emboldened by the failure to support Republican Spain, and began to move politically against the Popular Front, culminating in the defeat of strikes protesting the government rolling back the 40 hour work week. The working-class became more disillusioned with the leadership of left-wing political parties, and drifted away in large numbers.



5. Vichy France--when war seemed imminent between France and Germany in August 1939, the French ruling class outlawed the French Communist Party. When France was defeated in the war that followed with the occupation of Paris on July 22, 1940, those same ruling elites collaborated with the Nazis to divide the country, surrendering the northern half to Germany while retaining Vichy France in the south.

D. Spanish Civil War--like Russia, Spain had retained feudalism far longer than many of its European neighbors, and retained that feudal influence through a number of royalists and conservative Roman Catholics. These forces resisted both political liberals and later republicans. This resistance also fed the development of more radical political elements; anarchism became on important political movement in Spain in the years before the civil war.

1. Second Spanish Republic--a center-left coalition, enacted such radical measures as the Agrarian Law of 1931, which distributed land among poor peasants (who were treated much like serfs by wealthy landowners before the passage of the law), cutback in military spending and reforms, and anti-clerical laws--all of which spurred opposition from the right



2. Generalissimo Francisco Franco--was head of the army in Spanish Morocco, and the leader of the attempted coup on the part of Spanish Army Generals. Franco received support from both Hitler and Mussolini; Germany in particular supplied arms, training, and troops to try out new military tactics that we have come to identify as blitzkrieg.

3. Republican forces--relied on support from the Soviet Union, and from Mexico--along with thousands of volunteers from around the globe, including Eric Blair, the British writer better known by his pen name, George Orwell.



4. Fascism triumphant--the Soviet Union was unwilling to provide the level of support that the fascist forces provided Franco, and after three years of war the royalist forces prevailed. Spain remained a fascist dictatorship until Franco’s death in 1975.

E. War and Civil War in China--the Kuomintang, led by General Chiang Kai-shek, had cooperated with the then newly established Chinese Communist party in the 1920s to fight against Japan and several European countries, but turned on them to consolidate power into his own hands; the communists, in the famous Long March, moved to a part of the country out of Chiang’s control, and began working for their own rise to power. The Kuomintang army, in part because of the large scale of corruption introduced by Chiang, proved little resistant to Japanese forces in the late 1930s, when Japan once again invaded China.



F. The Left in the United States--the failure of recovery in the United States led to a resurgence of the left in the country. The left had been decimated after the repression in 1919, although a dedicated cadre remained. These people remained dedicated to organizing the working-class, however, and when the began collaborating with elements of the resurgent Democratic Party in an American Popular Front, the labor movement in particular gained a new influence in the political process