We continue to translate [in French] and publish Vercesi’s text tracing the degeneration of the Communist International. The first two parts, including the first three chapters of the original contribution, retraced the episodes of the Anglo-Russian committee during the Great Strike of 1926 in Great Britain, then the crisis within the Russian party and the International leading to the victory of Stalinism (see RW 25), and finally the bloody defeat of the workers’ insurrections in China in 1927 (see RW 26). After this came the “3rd period”, as the degenerated International itself called it, which is the object of the part we publish here. It began before the outbreak of the economic crisis of 1929 and ended with the coming to power of the Nazis in Germany. In addition to recounting the process of degeneration of the International, Vercesi’s contribution also recalls the different positions that the Left of Italy, unfortunately alone, opposed at each stage of this process. There was no fatalism in its conception of the “course of history”. On the contrary, its positions, orientations and slogans could have helped establish lines of defense behind which the proletariat, or at least parts of it, could have rallied to defend its living conditions. Thus, by asserting its class unity, the proletariat could have limited the scope of counter-revolution, starting with Germany, instead of dissolving proletarian forces in the struggle “against social fascism”, then “fascism”. The course towards imperialist war, as obvious as it was, was not inevitable.

The Tactic of the Offensive and Social-Fascism

In the bosom of the socialist parties of the Second International, both before 1914 and when, in the immediate post-war period, between 1919 and 1921, communist parties were founded in all countries, we saw the reformist right and the revolutionary left hold complete opposite positions to each other in the organizational field of the political positions, with the former holding a position of unity and the latter looking to split away from the former. In Italy, it was the Abstentionist Fraction that – in strict accordance with the decisions of the 2nd Congress of the Communist International of September 1920 – took the initiative to split away from the “old and glorious Socialist Party”. While all the currents of this party, reformist right and maximalist left, including Gramsci and the Ordine Nuovo, were for unity “from Turati to Bordiga”.

The Communist International – under Lenin’s leadership – correctly followed Marx’s method in building the fundamental organ of the proletarian class: the class party. This can only arise on the basis of a rigorous definition of a theoretical program and of a corresponding political action which finds in the organization of the Party, exclusively limited to those who adhere to this program and to this action, the instrument capable of determining that shift of situations which is allowed by the degree of their revolutionary maturity. The fact that both the right wing and all the other intermediate political currents are for unity should not be surprising since, in the end, they act on a line that seeks the preservation of the bourgeois world. On the contrary, the Marxist left can only aim at the revolutionary takedown of this bourgeois world by realizing its principles in the ideological, theoretical and organizational field through that decisive split which determined the historical autonomy of the proletariat.

At the core of the Third International, the process is manifested in a different way. The influence, at first, and later the capture of this organization by capitalism is accomplished through the expulsion from its core of every current that does not submit to the counterrevolutionary decisions of the leading center. The fact that determines this modification is the presence of the proletarian State which – in the present historical phase of State totalitarianism – cannot tolerate any stumbling block, obstacle or opposition. If it is true that the bourgeois-democratic State can still tolerate those discussions or oppositions which, since they take place at the periphery of its activity, will never be able to disturb the evolution determined by the center found in the process of development of financial monopolism. On the other hand, as regards both the degenerating proletarian State and the bourgeois State of fascist type (resulting from the most advanced stage of the struggle between classes compared to the democratic one), the dictatorship of the ruling center is achieved by the exclusion of any possibility of opposition tendencies acting even in a peripheral field.

It is well known that, at Lenin’s time, the Russian Party experienced an intense activity of discussions within it, and that, until 1920, even organized fractions could exist within it. But this was then the period in which the adaptation of the politics of the proletarian State to the needs of the world revolution was being laboriously sought. Then the question was reversed and it became a matter of adapting the Party’s policy to that of the State, which was more and more obeying the changing and contradictory contingent necessities of its alignment with the general cycle of the historical evolution of the international capitalist regime into which it was about to be incorporated.

The ruling center must have absolute, monopolistic power over all organs of the State; it begins with expulsions from the Party, and ends with the summary execution not only of those who adamantly oppose the established course of the counterrevolution but even of those who attempt to save their lives by abjuring their previous opposition. Despite the capitulations, the different oppositions within the Russian Party are annihilated by violence and terror. Trotski, for his part, remains steadfast in his uncompromising opposition to Stalin; but, as he traces over the course of the Russian Revolution the pattern of the French Revolution, he considers that the reversal of the function of the Russian State from revolutionary to counter-revolutionary can only be realized with the appearance of the Russian Bonaparte. Until this appearance, since the intense industrialization of Russia was impossible and a military attack of the rest of the capitalist world against Russia presented itself as inevitable, the conditions also exist for “straightening out” the International both from within and, when this proves impossible because of the purge regime in full swing in the International, also through the left-wings of the socialists.

The Italian Left, on the contrary, in strict connection with the same positions of Marx, Lenin and with the indicated procedure followed for the foundation of the Party in Livorno, never engaged in either Zinoviev’s way of capitulating to Stalin or Trotski’s way of straightening out the International, but from the starting point of programmatic opposition in the political field it carried on the consequent fractionist course, constantly raising the problem of the substitution of the counter-revolutionary political body with a revolutionary one which remained in the orientation of the world revolution.

In a word, the socialist parties of the Second International were progressively corrupted by the force of inertia of the historical forces of bourgeois preservation which tried to attract in their circle the Marxist and proletarian tendency by keeping it chained in the core of a “United Party”. On the contrary, in the communist parties, because of the existence of the “proletarian” State, bourgeois pollution could only be achieved first through disciplinary elimination, and then through the violent extermination of every tendency which did not adapt itself to the changing needs of the counter-revolutionary evolution of this State: of those oriented towards the left as well as of the others towards the right; after the trial of Zinoviev there will be also that of the rightists Rykov and Bukharin.

On the political level, while the process of development of the reformist right follows a logical sequence which allows us to find the principles of the betrayal of 1914 and of Noske in 1919 in the theoretical assault of Bernstein and revisionism of the end of the last century, as far as the degenerative course of the Communist International is concerned, we will see a succession of political positions in violent contrast with each other. Trotski sees, at the dawn of the “third period”, which we will be giving particular attention in this chapter (at the time of the Sixth Congress in 1928), a likelihood of a leftist orientation which would “straighten out” the International developing; our current, on the other hand, sees it as an episode of this whole developing process which was to lead the communist parties to become one of the essential instruments of world capitalism, a process which was destined to reach its completion unless it was broken by the victory of the fractions of the Marxist Left within the communist parties.

Moreover, our current did not conclude that, from the ever-increasing distance between the degenerating politics of the International and the program and interests of the proletariat, new parties had to be formed. The fact that this distance was widening while the historical process did not lead to an opposing reaffirmation of the proletarian class, urged us to not throw ourselves into adventures of the kind Trotski proposed, which went so far as to advocate, after Hitler’s seizure of power in January 1933, entryism into the opposition of the socialist parties. Our fraction continued to prepare the conditions for proletarian recovery through a real understanding of the evolution of the capitalist world, into whose orbit Soviet Russia had also entered.

We have already seen, in the chapter devoted to the Chinese events of 1926-27, that the characteristic of the tactics of the International is given not only by opportunist positions, but by positions which are violently opposed to the immediate and finalist interests of the proletariat. The International cannot remain halfway, it must go all the way: the needs of the counter-revolutionary evolution of the State which is at its core demand it, which, after the triumph of the theory of “socialism in one country”, after having broken with the interests of the world proletariat, it could not simply remain suspended in mid-air, and had to go directly and violently to the side of the preservation of the capitalist world, against the interests of the workers.

When revolutionary possibilities existed in China, up to March 1927, the politics and tactics of disciplining the proletariat to be complacent towards the bourgeoisie were advocated; when these possibilities no longer existed, we turned to insurrectionism in Canton in December 1927; thus bringing to completion that political course which was to lead to the crushing of the Chinese proletariat.

In 1928 the gigantic economic crisis matures, breaking out in America the next year and from that spreading to the whole world. In 1928, the International’s tactics were still imbued with the criteria that was followed in England with the Anglo-Russian Committee and in China with the bloc of four classes.

The “insurrection” in Canton was still only an episode, which, as we have seen in the previous chapter, was even criticized – albeit in hushed tones – at the Enlarged Executive in February 1928. The events were to show, however, that this was by no means an incidental episode but a foreshadowing of what was to come in the tactics of the “third period” that would only be established in the following year. In the meantime, in France, the tactic of “republican discipline” (which went by the name of “Clichy tactic”) was applied and led the communists to ensure the election of socialist and radical-socialist senators against the right wing of Poincaré and Tardieu; in Germany the policy of the “popular” referendum against concessions to princes [1]; while the Italian Party – in correlation with the policy followed in the first period of the Aventine in June-November of 1924 [2] – launched the directive of the “Antifascist Committees” (a bloc that postulates the adhesion of socialists, reformists and all opponents of fascism). On the other hand, the CC of the Party wrote in a letter addressed to our current and published in issue no. 4 of August 1, 1928 of Prometeo (foreign edition): “We must also take the lead (underlined in the original) in the fight for the republic, but we must imbue this fight with class content at once. Yes, we must say, we too are for the republic guaranteed by an assembly of workers and peasants.” The Italian republic has come and it – as we all know – is “guaranteed” by the assembly of workers and peasants, who in the barracks of Montecitorio watch anxiously over the success of the reconstruction of capitalist society after the upheavals caused by the war and the military defeat.

In 1928 the International remained within the framework of the tactics of 1926 and 1927 and acted as the left wing of the political blocs of bourgeois democracy.

Then it changes radically.

Let’s begin by examining the theoretical aspect of the new tactics, which would be progressively decided by the 9th Enlarged Executive (March 1928), by the 6th World Congress of the International and by the simultaneous 4th Congress of the Red Trade Union International in the summer of 1928, by the 10th Enlarged Executive of July 1929 and finally by the 11th Enlarged Executive of 1931.

In the “Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution” the 2nd Congress of the International had warned: “The concept of the party and that of the class must be kept strictly separate». The “tactic of the third period”, after having completely distorted the criteria of class delimitation, goes so far as to demagogically identify the class as those within the Party.

In the economic and social field, Marxism defines the proletarian class as the wage-earning worker in the capitalist regime and considers all those who live off their wages as part of it.

The transformation is now radical: those who compose most of the class are the part of the workers affected by the massive economic crisis, that is, the unemployed to whom the Nazi demagogy is also addressed. The Party, consequently, does not establish a plan of total mobilization of the proletariat, but limits its action to the mobilization of the unemployed. Correspondingly, unorganized workers are thus considered more conscious than the workers in the trade unions, and the “Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition” is founded, while any work in the trade unions led by “social-fascists” is neglected. The proletariat is thus split in two: the part controlled by the Party, which includes the vanguard, is separated from the rest of the working class and launched into offensive actions, which offered the best conditions for the success of capitalist repression.

In the political field, the new tactic does not aim to hit the capitalist class as a whole, but it isolates a section of its forces – social-democracy – which will be called “social-fascist”. In Germany, where at that time the main evolution of world capitalism was taking place, where the liquidation of the democratic staff was being prepared to be replaced by the Nazi one while the corresponding modification of the structure of the capitalist State was underway, the Comintern instead of preparing the proletariat’s class action against capitalism, called the masses to fight “social-fascism” in isolation as enemy number one, even making the Communist Party a supporter of Hitler’s attack for this end. And when Hitler took the initiative of a “popular” referendum to overthrow the Social-Democratic government of Prussia, the Party was in fact aiming at the same goal, since it didn’t intervene in the referendum in a general action against the capitalist class, but remained within the framework of the struggle against “social-fascism”.

On a more general political level, the Party’s policy is synthesized in the formula of “class against class”. The proletarian class is now defined as those in the Party and all organs annexed to it (Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition, Anti-Imperialist League, Friends of the USSR and the many other peripheral organizations): everything outside the Party and its annexes (and don’t forget that all the Marxist currents had been expelled from the Comintern) is the bourgeois class or more specifically “social-fascism”. The mass organizations no longer derive from the base of the capitalist economy but result from the initiative of the Party, while the union fractions are practically eliminated and for they lack a reason for existing, for the unions – acting outside the orbit of the Party, – are “social-fascist” organizations.

It is in this period that the great deity of the “political line of the Party” arises. How far removed we were from Lenin’s time when the tactical positions of the Party were subjected to the verification of events and a frantic attempt was made to determine their validity! By now the “political line” was consecrated as a divine institution and it became a crime not only to question its infallibility, but also not understanding its real hidden meaning. This was absolutely impossible, since the “political line of the Party” obeyed only the ever-changing specific needs of the Russian State to its new role as an instrument of world counter-revolution, and the only one who could reflect its vicissitudes was the executive center at the head of this State. As a result, there were repeated and abrupt turns of events which regularly left those Party leaders who, because they had not completely abandoned the faculty of reasoning and reflecting, showed that they were not “true” Bolsheviks, since they refused to defend today the total opposite of what they said yesterday with the same amount of passion.

One could, on the basis of a superficial analysis, consider that the successes achieved in the field of industrialization in Russia, the economic and therefore military strengthening of the Russian State and the simultaneous unleashing of the “revolutionary” offensive in other countries should have led to a violent retaliation against the Russian State by capitalism. Not only this did not happen, but shortly after Hitler’s rise in Germany, the United States officially recognized Russia, which – according to the statements of the Comintern leaders themselves – was a very important diplomatic victory, while the doors of the League of Nations – what Lenin accurately described as “the society of brigands” – opened to the entrance of Soviet Russia. This was the logical epilogue of the course followed by Comintern policy.

In fact there was a very close link between the successes of the five-year plans (made possible also thanks to the help of capitalism, which imported raw materials into Russia in exchange for grain exports, while bread rations were in extreme lack) and the policy of the “revolutionary offensive”. In Russia the “colossal victories of socialism” were actually the result of the intensified exploitation of the proletariat, and in other countries the proletarian class was made to be – thanks to the tactics of the “third period” – completely unable to fight back the capitalist offensive. And Russia’s victory in the field of industrialization and in the diplomatic field, along with Hitler’s conquest of power in Germany, were two aspects of the same course: the victorious course of the counter-revolution of world capitalism, both in Russia and in all other countries.

* * *

Let us now turn to a brief analysis of the official documents of the Comintern and the events that characterize the tactics of the “third period”. Why “third”? The Sixth World Congress specifies it the following way: 1st period (1917-23), between the revolutionary victory in Russia and the revolutionary defeat in Germany. That of the “acute crisis” of capitalism and the revolutionary battles; 2nd period (1923-28). That of the “capitalist stabilization”; 3rd period (which began in 1928 and was to end in 1935, when the change away from “social-fascism” to the Popular Front took place). That of the “radicalization” of the masses.

Let us begin by pointing out that this schematization of the situations has nothing to do with Marxism, which does not distinguish “periods” but represents the process of development that strictly ties situations together and in which the Marxist criteria of the struggle of the classes allow us to see the favorable and unfavorable fluctuations. These fluctuate, in the period from 1917 to 1927, from the revolutionary victory in Russia, and its reflection in the founding of the Communist International, - victory of international and internationalist principles – to the negation of this very principle, when, in the footsteps of the defeat of the revolution in China, the national and nationalist theory of “socialism in one country” will triumph.

The classification of the Sixth Congress left, for example, in the first period of the revolutionary advance the November 1922 in Italy, [3] an event that had an exceptional importance not only for the Italian sector but for the entire political evolution of the capitalist world.

As for the characterization of the “third period”, the Sixth Congress will characterizes its analysis in the following way:

War is imminent. Whoever dares to deny this imminence is not a “Bolshevik”. War not only between imperialisms (at this time the fundamental constellation is presented in the framework of the violent opposition of England and the United States), but also the war of all imperialisms against Russia: both England, which will see in it the “precondition for its further struggle against the American giant”, and the United States, which, if it has no urgent interest in overthrowing “socialism in Russia”, cannot but aim at extending its dominion in this country as well, would be “inevitably” led to it.

The aggravation of the class struggle. “The proletariat does not remain on the defensive, but goes on the offensive.” The masses are all the more “radicalized” the more disorganized they are.

“The new role of social democracy that became ‘social-fascist’.” In 1926-27 social democracy is an ally to whom (see the Anglo-Russian Committee) the Comintern abandons the direction of the proletarian movements. Now it’s enemy number one. The Nazis unleash the offensive in Germany: the Party will not set up a plan of struggle against capitalism and on the basis of class struggle, but exclusively against “social-fascism”. At the same time, since the mass trade union organizations are framed as being a “social-fascist” organizational apparatus, it follows that it is necessary to abandon the masses there and move on to the construction of another organization: the “Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition”, which defends “the political line of the Party”.

Note the flagrant contradiction existing between the two theses: that of the revolution and that of the war. He who admits only one of them is a heretic. Therefore, the Marxist is a heretic by definition, by virtue of the materialist interpretation of history, which immediately notes that if one of those thesis is true, the other cannot but be false since such a thesis can only be based on the the reverse of what is actually observed in such situations in the course of the historical process that lead the war to its opposite: revolution.

The events proved that, point by point, the cornerstones of the new tactic were to be completely refuted. Indeed:

The war was not at all imminent in 1919 and when it broke out in 1939, the constellations were completely different, with England becoming the ally of the United States and these two imperialisms – the richest imperialisms – becoming in turn allies of the “socialist country”.

It wasn’t the working class that went on the offensive, but capitalism, which obtained its successes in Hitler’s victory in January 1933 and finally in the unleashing of the Second World Imperialist War.

We did not enter a “social-fascist” era, in Germany it’s just plain fascism that ultimately triumphs. Capitalism temporarily liquidates social democracy, except to call it back in the course of the war, when, in cahoots with democrats and national-communists on one side, fascists and national-socialists on the other, the capitalist world will plunge into the war of 1939-45.

* * *

Let us now turn to a brief summary of the most important facts, which characterized the “tactics of the third period”.

We have already indicated that the predominant political fact was Hitler’s coming to power in January 1933. There were many other political events in which this tactic had the chance to show its “virtues”, but, within the limits of a single article, we’ll limit ourselves to the essential, that is to say the events in Germany. It was in September 1930, only five months after German capitalism had dismissed the coalition government headed by the Social Democrat Mueller, that the fascist advance began. Contrary to what occurred in Italy in 1921-22, German Nazism followed a predominantly legalitarian tactic. The democratic mechanism is perfectly suited to achieve the conversion of the capitalist State from democratic to fascist, something that does not surprise a Marxist at all and that even the current national-communist and socialist dupes in government in Italy and elsewhere know. Instead of attacking the proletarian class-based strongholds, as the fascists did in Italy, with violence and under the protection of the democratic police, the German Nazis employ the method of the progressive legalitarian dismantling of the State apparatus of the leading positions held by their accomplices: the parties of democracy and German Social Democracy. This fact alone, of the possibility offered to capitalism of not having to necessarily resort to the extra-legal violence of fascist squads, is proof the profound modification which has taken place in the situation, in which the threat of the proletarian class party no longer acts.

This reality was, naturally, reversed by the Comintern. In an article by Ercoli [4] (Stato Operaio, September 1932) we read among other things: “the first difference (between the Nazi assault in Germany and the Fascist one in Italy – editor’s note), the most important one, the one that immediately jumps to the eye, is the one between the period in which the March on Rome took place and the present period. At that time we were at the end of the first postwar period and on the eve of the period of stabilization of capitalism. Today we are at the heart of the third period, at the heart of an economic crisis of unprecedented breadth and depth, of a crisis that has had and has its most serious manifestations precisely in Germany... Secondly, it is necessary to stop the attention on the line of development of the mass movement.” “Downward line” (in Italy), while in Germany “the decisive fights are still ahead of us and the mass movement is developing on an upward line, in the direction of these decisive fights.” In reality the decisive fights of the masses lay neither ahead nor behind and just a year later Hitler was handed the government by Hindenburg. The Party, which a few days earlier had organized a “colossal” demonstration at the Sportpalast in Berlin, was to completely fall apart on the same day of Hitler’s rise to power.

The essential moments of the Nazi advance are: August 9, 1931, the plebiscite against the Social Democratic government of Prussia, a plebiscite requested by Hitler.

The elections for the presidency of the Reich on March 13, 1932. On the level of electoral tactics the question of the party’s intervention both in the plebiscite organized by the Fascists and in the elections with a candidate of its own, against Hindenburg and Hitler, can offer no doubt. The Communists could not lend themselves to the Social Democratic maneuver and had to intervene; but there were two ways of intervening. The Marxist way of turning these two electoral manifestations into opportunities to spread propaganda aimed at mobilizing the proletariat on a class basis against the capitalist regime, which meant engaging in a fight against the evolution that was taking place in the capitalist State from democratic to fascist, an evolution that could only be fought by the proletariat and its party against all capitalist forces (democratic and fascist) which were solidly united in their support of Nazism; and the way that comes from the “tactic of the third period”, consisting in detaching these two electoral manifestations from the real process in which they were embedded by making them two episodes of validation of the “political line of the party” which no longer fights the bourgeois class but only one of its forces: “social-fascism”. The plebiscite organized by the fascists to overthrow the Prussian social-democratic government of Braun-Severing becomes the “red plebiscite” to be used as a validation of the “party policy”. In the presidential elections the masses are called upon to vote against Hitler and Hindenburg and for the party leader Thälmann, but not for the proletarian dictatorship. Rather, it was for the realization of the “program of national emancipation”. Now, since that, in said elections, there were so many episodes in the transformation of the bourgeois State from democratic to fascist, the Party’s participation, which didn’t struggle against capitalism but against “social-fascism”, could only lead to facilitate the said transformation of the State. That is to say, in the first case it was a question of realizing the expulsion of the socialists from the Prussian government, and in the second case of entrusting the Party with the objective of “national emancipation”. It is therefore clear that the Party was taking a position competing with that of the Nazis, and if the events of the time led to the victory of Nazism, nothing excludes that in the present situation the same program will be raised by the “unified socialist party” of Germany which, under the hegemony of Russian imperialism, speaks of “national emancipation” against the same “national emancipation” that Anglo-Saxon imperialism wants to achieve for its own profit. [5]

As for the party’s policy in the social field, it also came from the above-mentioned criteria of the struggle against “social-fascism”, of the multiplication of skirmishes, of the “politicization of strikes”.

Wherever the catastrophic economic crisis creates a movement of resistance by the workers and specially of the unemployed, the party immediately intervenes to make it an episode of “revolutionary” agitation with the result always being the minority getting machine-gunned while the rest of the demoralized working masses observe the victorious advance of the capitalist offensive. The most characteristic episode of this tactic occurred in the demonstration of May 1, 1929 in Berlin, when Zörgiebel – the social-democratic police chief, and a worthy successor of Noske – was able to kill thirty three workers without any mass involvement, as the masses didn’t participate in the demonstrations against “social-fascism” in the slightest.

While the Nazi movement moved forwards in gigantic steps, “L’Internationale Communiste” in its issue of May 1, 1932, after the presidential elections, noted “the peculiar recoil of the party in the industrial regions, a recoil which is manifested precisely in those regions where the National Socialists have achieved a series of great victories.”

But that is not why the drum of demagogy will be silent. Thälmann declares, “we will sow disintegration in the camp of the bourgeoisie. We will widen the breach in the ranks of social democracy and increase the process of effervescence in the bosom of this party. We shall form still deeper breaches in the Hitler camp.”

This tactic, which, as we have seen, is ultimately one of competing with Nazi policy, receives no other justification from the International than the evocation of the role previously played by the Social Democrats. The Stato Operaio issue of July-August 1931, in an article intended to justify the policy of the German party, writes: “Who accuses the Communists of being the allies of Fascism?.. They are the police ministers of Prussia, the executioners of workers, and Mr. Pietro Nenni, [6] a fascist from the beginning. These considerations are enough to judge the cause.”

When Hindenburg, on January 30, 1933, handed power over to Hitler, we witnessed in essence the replication in Germany of that victory of international capitalism which had been consecrated in Russia in December 1927, when the “theory of Socialism in one country” triumphed. A simple inversion of terms in the same formula. In Russia socialist nationalism, in Germany national-socialism. Thus were established the premises that kickstarted the path of the world towards the second world imperialist war, after the intermediate stages of Ethiopia and Spain. [7]

The defeat inflicted on the international proletariat in Germany does not arouse much of a reaction within the International against the tactics followed by the Comintern. Manuilski rejoiced at this and declared at the plenary meeting of the Executive of the International (see the Stato Operaio issue of February 1934): “The attitude on the German question was a touchstone for the degree of Bolshevization of the sections of the Communist International, for their Bolshevik temperament, for their ability to face head-on the abrupt turns of the situation. It must be recognized with satisfaction at this Plenum that the Sections of the Comintern have passed this test with honor. Reflect on what would have happened if these events had occurred a few years ago when the Bolshevization of the Parties of the International was being accomplished through continuous crises. They would undoubtedly have provoked a profound crisis in the Comintern.” It’s impossible to be more cynical and at the same time so explicit about the meaning of “Bolshevization”. Manuilski tells us unequivocally: it is the full success of Bolshevization that immunizes the International from any reaction against the success of the tactics of competing with Hitler’s offense in Germany. After this decisive test, the Comintern proved itself perfectly suited for the next phase of warmongering policy in Spain, right before it became the accomplice of the democratic and fascist forces in the course of the Second World Imperialist War.

The events in Germany were to accentuate the gap between Trotski’s political positions and those of our current, a gap which had already manifested itself not only on international questions in Trotski’s criticism of the Comintern’s policy during the German events of 1923, a criticism which Bordiga judged insufficient (see “The Trotski Question” by A. Bordiga), but also – as we have seen in previous chapters – on the Russian and Chinese questions.

Trotski, tracing on the German situation the tactics followed by the Bolshevik Party between 1905 and 1917, and particularly the tactics applied in September 1917 at the time of Kornilov’s threat against Kerensky’s government, started from the premise that Social Democracy was historically a force of opposition to the fascist attack, and concluded that a united front should be advocated to oppose the Nazi attack. And our current was accused by Trotski of “Stalinism” because it repeated, with respect to the German situation in 1930-33, the policy followed by the Party of Italy in 1921-22, which consisted of a united trade-union front for partial claims resulting in a mobilization of the working class, as a whole, against the capitalist class. On the other hand, as far as the question of power is concerned, for us the central position of the Proletarian Dictatorship had to remain unchanged and could not know any substitute. Trotski not only did not accept the controversy with our current, but, intolerant of its criticism of the International Opposition, he could find no other solution than the administrative one of our expulsion from said International Opposition, sanctioned in 1932. Trotski did not understand that it was not possible to judge the evolution of the capitalist State of 1930-33 according to the evolution which had been determined in the period preceding the First World Imperialist War. If before the capitalist State evolved according to the democratic procedure, this depended on the historical particularities of the period. In the period of financial imperialism, and where the struggle between the classes had reached its culminating point, the State was led – by the new historical circumstances – to evolve in a totalitarian and fascist direction, and all the political forces of capitalism could only favor and contribute in solidarity to this outcome. The result was that social democracy, although destined to be one of the victims of this process, could only be a factor in its development, while only the proletarian class and its class party could determine the rupture of this course of the capitalist State. This course could be explained not by historical precedents but by the dialectics of the struggle between classes in its most advanced phase.

The International, founded for the triumph of the world revolution, thus establishes the “tactics of the third period”, which facilitates and supports the triumph of Nazism in Germany. The path that had begun in 1927 continues tragically and only the scattered patrols of the Italian left remain in the barricades to defend Marxist positions.