AWW and Communaut caught in Trotskyism, with no way out?

German, Spanish

AWW recently translated into English a second discussion paper on organizing from the German Communaut: “Dilemma With No Way Out? – Continuation of the organizational debate”: https://www.angryworkers.org/2024/01/31/dilemma-with-no-way-out/
After some searching, I found the German original on Communaut’s site: https://communaut.org/de/organisationsdebatte.
At the time, I did not see the German original of 24-3-2022. Because it receives my earlier position, “Bolshevism as an alternative to self-imposed powerlessness?” https://leftdis.wordpress.com/2021/11/26/bolshevism-as-an-alternative-to-self-imposed-powerlessness/ , with limited approval, largely disapproval, here is a brief response in the light of some events since then.

The fact that Communaut, like AWW, has not published a unified analysis of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, nor of the recession of the German economy in a context of the abandonment of German ambitions to a more independent position of the EU vis-à-vis the USA, is telling of the predominant influence of left bourgeois views within both organizations. It seems to me a serious matter for organizations that want to support independent workers’ struggles if they cannot put forward anything about the consequences of the preparations for a Third World War between the USA and China-Russia-Iran for the life-situation of the workers.
The pursuit of a mass party, combined with the wish to maintain the existing small group at all costs, has led the groups within Communaut and AWW to an opportunistic silence about inter-imperialist wars and the encapsulation of Germany within the U.S. bloc. The proletarians in Ukraine, in Russia, in “Palestine,” in Israel, in Germany are paying the price of these and coming wars, from which they have nothing to expect, in which they cannot support any warring side, certainly not under the ideological pretext of the right of nations to self-determination or of struggles of oppressed nations against “imperialism.” *)

“Dilemma…” likes to invoke Lenin. Whatever his weaknesses and faults, Lenin was a revolutionary Marxist and proletarian internationalist during World War I until its end. Initially in exile in Switzerland, Lenin on his own, with only Zinoviev’s support, stood up to the rest of the party, which was certainly not a mass party and certainly not comparable to the SDP in Germany, which “Dilemma …” serves as an example. Inspired by whom? Was it not Trotsky who tried to infiltrate and take over social democratic parties in the 1930s?

To put it plainly, “Dilemma …” bases itself, like previous articles by its authors, on the theoretical positions that the Bolshevik Party in power, Lenin, Trotsky, and Radek in the lead, imposed on the parties of the Communist International the EKKI. These theoretical principles are found particularly among Trotskyists. These positions of the Comintern have been opposed by the Italian Communist Left around Bordiga and especially by the KAP in Germany and Holland, later the “Gruppe Internationale Kommunisten (Holland).” Without invoking all the positions taken by the German-Dutch Left, I defend their positions and those of Lenin up to and including the October Revolution of 1917, despite his weaknesses. ‘Bolshevism,’ like ‘Leninism,’ is an artificial ideology constructed from within the Kremlin by a party that came into government under unchanged capitalist relations of production and which inevitably had to defend the domestic and foreign interests of Russian capital, without understanding this itself.

Fredo Corvo, 8-2-2024

*) On actual wars:

• War, exploitation, and capitalist domination: How and why confront them?
• The working class and the war Israel – Palestine
• The inter-imperialist war in Ukraine – From Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Gorter, and Lenin to “Council-Communism”
• What struggle against the war? Current and historical differences with Leninism / Trotskyism

Some historical texts:

• L’Ouvrier Communiste, “Imperialism and the National Question” (1929)
• Paul Mattick, “Luxemburg versus Lenin” (1935)
• Internationalisme (GCF), “On the National and Colonial Question” (1945/1946)
• Anton Pannekoek, “Class Struggle and Nation” (1912)
• Herman Gorter, “Imperialism, the World War and Social Democracy” (1914)
• Anton Pannekoek, “The economic necessity of imperialism” (1916)
• Rosa Luxemburg, fragmentos sobre la guerra, la cuestión nacional y la revolución