From Louis C. Fraina, a valuable document for students of Communist history, particularly the origins of ‘Left Communism.’ For reasons of organization, democracy, and the difficulty with communication and travel to Soviet Russia, in 1919 the new Communist International created a number of geographically based sub-bureaus. The first meeting of the Amsterdam Bureau was held in February, 1920 and attended by 16 delegates from the Communist Parties of Russia; Germany (including the Opposition); the United States (the writer Louis C. Fraina); the British Socialist Party, the British Workers’ Socialist Federation (Sylvia Pankhurst), and Shop Stewards and Workers’ Committees; the Swiss, Belgian and Dutch movements, with Council Communists Herman Gorter and Anton Pannekoek attending with voice. An Executive Committee of Henriette Roland-Holst, S.J. Rutgers and D.I. Wynkoop was elected before the meeting was broken up by police. The report includes resolutions texts.

‘The Amsterdam International Communist Conference’ by Louis C. Fraina from The Communist (Ruthenberg Faction). Vol. 2 Nos. 4 & 5. April 25, and May 8, 1920.

THE Conference of the Communist International, convened in Holland February 10-17, was an event of primary importance in the development of the International. In spite of the enormous difficulty experienced by Communists in moving from one country to another, the Conference met; and in spite of the Dutch police breaking up the meetings before our work was completed, the Conference transacted enough of its business to make it of fundamental value, particularly in the development of a Communist International functioning actively and unitedly on a world basis, and in initiating the formulation and discussion of problems of party tactics and immediate action decisive for victory in the final struggle.

Organizations represented in the Conference were as follows: Communist Party of Russia, represented by mandate; Communist Party Germany (Opposition); Communist Party of America; Communist Party of Holland; England: British Socialist Party, Workers’ Socialist Federation, and the Shop Steward and Workers’ Committees; Communist Group of Switzerland; and the Communist Group of the Socialist movement of Belgium. In all, 16 delegates were officially present; in addition, with a voice but no vote: a member of the Communist Party of Hungary, formerly in the Soviet Government there; a Chinese comrade; a representative of the Communist movement of the Dutch East Indies; and comrades Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter. After the Conference was dispersed there arrived delegates from the Communist Party of Germany (Central Committee), the Communist Party of Austria, the Communist Party of Roumania, and the Left Wing of the Socialist Party of Spain. F. Loriot, of the Left Wing of the French Socialist Party, sent a letter expressing regrets at not being able to come, and describing the French movement, its prospects and its defects, particularly lamenting the faith in “the unity of the party” which prevents the emergence of a Communist Party. The delegates who did come but could not participate in the Conference discussed problems with the Executive of the International sub-Bureau created by the Conference.

DECISIONS OF THE CONFERENCE.

1. The Conference adopted a declaration on Soviet Russia calling upon the workers of all countries not to allow peace with Russia to come through capitalist necessity, but to compel peace by means of revolutionary pressure upon the governments, urging three methods of action, mass demonstrations of protest, demonstration strikes, and coercive strikes, coercive strikes being the decisive move to compel the acquiescence of the governments. The declaration repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of action, and authorizes the International sub-Bureau to issue a call for an international General Strike as the situation matures. The declaration, moreover, provides against repeating the fiasco of the July 21 strike initiated by the Socialist Party of Italy, by-

a) Instructing the Bureau to establish connections with each country to measure the sentiment prevailing and insuring a period of intense preparatory agitation and organization.

b) Providing that the General Strike for Russia shall include political and economic demands in accordance with the revolutionary requirements in each country, thereby making the movement for Soviet Russia an integral part of the immediate revolutionary struggle of the proletariat

c) Avoiding the fundamental mistake of the July 21 strike of working through the bureaucracy of the trades unions, and urging that preparations for a General Strike shall proceed through the branches of the unions, extra-union organizations (such as the Shop Stewards and Workers’ Committees of England), and the creation of extra-union organizations, if necessary.

2. The Conference adopted a thesis on Unionism, which I prepared and introduced in the name of the Communist Party of America, and which was adopted unanimously. This thesis constitutes the first authoritative utterance of the International on the Communist conception of unionism (in general, it agrees with a declaration of G. Zinoviev on Unionism); and it indicates, moreover, that the conception of Unionism developed by the Communist Party of America (which has been misrepresented and stupidly attacked equally by the I.W.W. and the Socialist Labor Party) is the identical conception of the Communist International. This is a summary of the thesis:

a) Unions are necessary organizations for the immediate struggle of the workers; in spite of their limitations they can, particularly as industrial unions, become active means of revolutionary struggle and a factor in the Communist reconstruction of society.

b) The trades unions, while means of resisting and often improving the most degrading conditions of Capitalism, are incapable of actually and materially improving the general condition of labor.

c) The trades unions developed during the epoch of small industry, and of intense national economic development (1870-1900); this circumstance, combined with the artisan conception of craft skill as a form of property, produced a property and pretty bourgeois ideology and the concept of limiting the struggle within the limits of Capitalism and the nation. The trades unions represented, and still largely represent, the skilled workers in the upper layers of the working class, the “aristocracy of labor.”

d) The dominant trades unionism accepts Capitalism; and, under Imperialism, Capitalism seduces the “aristocracy of labor” with a share in the profits of Imperialism, by means of higher wages, labor legislation, and improved conditions generally; the upper layers of the working class using the trades unions to “stabilize” labor in industry and promote Imperialism.

e) Realizing its economic impotence (an impotence produced by nonrevolutionary purposes and an archaic craft form of unionism unable to cope with the concentrated industry of modern Capitalism) the dominant trades unionism turns to parliamentary action in the form of Laborism; and, as Laborism, trades unionism in its dominant expression merges definitely in State Capitalism and Imperialism. The tendency is for Laborism and Socialism to unite.

f) Laborism becomes the final bulwark of defense of Capitalism against the oncoming proletarian revolution. Accordingly, merciless struggle against Laborism is necessary; but while expressing itself politically as parliamentarism and petty bourgeois democracy, the basis of Laborism is trades unionism; the struggle against trades unionism, therefore, is an indispensable phase of the struggle against Laborism.

g) This struggle against trades unionism must proceed by means of the Communist Party’s general agitation to drive the unions to more revolutionary action, the formation of extra-union organizations such as the Shop Stewards, Workers’ Committees and economic Workers’ Councils, the organization of direct branch- es of the Communist Party in the shops, mills and mines, and the construction of industrial unions.

h) The agitation for and construction of industrial unions is a factor of the utmost importance in developing Communist consciousness and the final revolutionary struggle. But industrial unionism must recognize its limitations; it must develop the concept and practice, in cooperation with the Communist Party, of the general political strike. Industrial unionism cannot under Capitalism organize all the workers or an overwhelming majority; the concept of organizing, under Capitalism and gradually, workers’ control of industry in terms of industrial unions, is an expression, inverted in form, of the concept of parliamentary acquisition of power gradually and peacefully the “penetration” of Capitalism by Socialism.

i) The objective of the class struggle is the conquest of the power of the state. The industrial unions (or the parliaments) are not the means for the conquest of power, but mass action, Soviets and proletarian dictatorship. The parliamentary and doctrinaire industrial union (Syndicalist) conception both evade all actual problems of the revolution.

j) After the conquest of power and under the protection of proletarian dictatorship, industrial unionism comes actually to function in the Communist reconstruction of society in terms of control and management of industry by the industrially organized producers.

3. The Conference adopted a thesis on Social Patriots and Unity, which I prepared and introduced in the name of the Communist Party of America, after adding one amendment strengthening the proposals. The thesis stresses the fact that the social-patriots and opportunists are the worst enemy of the proletarian revolution, with whom there can be no Communist unity or co-operation; and, moreover, it particularizes and accomplishes five very definite and practical things:

a) Provides that the Communist International reject the admission of any party or group (such as the Longuet “majoritaires” in France or the American Socialist Party) even should these affiliate with the Third International.

b) Rejects definitely the proposals of Jean Longuet, Morris Hillquit and the Independent Socialist Party of Germany for the organization of “another International” to include the social-patriots and opportunists of the Second International “and also” the Bolsheviki and the Communists.

c) Emphasizes the incompatibility of a Communist Party tolerating social-patriots and opportunists in the party (indirectly condemning the Socialist Party of Italy for not expelling its social-patriots and opportunists, particularly in the parliamentary group).

d) Uncompromisingly repudiates Communist Party co-operation with social-patriot or opportunist organizations, with bourgeois or social- patriotic parties, with parties affiliated with the Second International, or with the agents of Capitalism in the Labor movement. (This implies that the Communist Party about to be organized in England by unity of the British Socialist Party, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Labor Party, Workers’ Socialist Federation and the South Wales Socialist Society, must reject affiliation with the Labor Party the British Socialist Party favors this affiliation, the others are against).

e) Rejects the concept of Communist unity “in general”, urging that unity must be based not upon formal acceptance of general principles, but agreement upon fundamental action.

The tendency of the thesis on Social-Patriots and Unity is to preserve and strengthen the revolutionary integrity of the Communist International, to prevent the International being swamped under the onrush of undesirable elements from the Second International.

4. The Conference did not act on the problem of Parliamentarism, being dispersed by the police. There were before the Conference three proposals on this problem–a thesis introduced by Anton Pannekoek, a series of amendments introduced by myself in the name of the Communist Party of America, and a resolution introduced by Sylvia Pankhurst (Workers’ Socialist Federation of England) the tendency of which was to reject the Communist use of parliamentarism. The resolution of Sylvia Pankhurst would have received her own vote, and perhaps that of the delegate representing the Opposition in the Communist Party of Germany. The original thesis and the amendments would, I think, have been adopted substantially if not actually as proposed; they thus formulate the problem:

a) Parliamentarism is not the means for the conquest of political power the proletariat must create its own organs of struggle and of state power, the Soviets and proletarian dictatorship. The Communist use of parliamentarism is secondary to the mass struggle of the proletariat, being used for purposes of agitation only and to emphasize the political character of the class struggle.

b) Even in the epoch of Imperialism, when parliaments degenerate in function and become side-shows, the revolutionary use of parliamentarism and participation in election is important in mobilizing the proletariat for action and the conquest of power.

c) The tendency to opportunism latent in parliamentarism must be resisted by (1) emphasizing its agitational and secondary character, and (2) rigorous party control of parliamentary representatives and their immediate expulsion should they develop an opportunist or non-Communist tendency.

d) Limiting the number of public offices for which nomination are made, the limitation to be determined by the conditions in each country (as, for example, the Communist Party of America excluding nomination for executive offices of the bourgeois state).

e) In periods of intense class struggle, although not yet revolutionary, a temporary abstention from parliamentarism may most effectively promote our revolutionary purposes; in that event, a Boycott of the Elections becomes necessary.

d) In the period of actual revolution, the complete repudiation of parliamentarism may become necessary.

While the Communist use of parliamentarism in this sense was insisted upon, the Conference did not make mandatory the acceptance of parliamentarism; in the thesis on Social-Patriots and Unity the conditions proposed as the basis on which Communist groups should unite are mass action, Soviets, Soviets, proletarian dictatorship, and no compromise (including acceptance of the necessity for a Communist Party as the unifying and directing force in the revolutionary struggle).

5. The Conference devoted a large part of its labor to the problem of organization – of making the International actually function on a world basis, of unifying and centralizing the movement. While the Executive Committee in Moscow still remains the supreme executive authority, the Conference organized supplementary machinery for purposes of immediate contact, expression and unity.

a) The Conference decided to create an International sub-Bureau composed of one delegate from each country (where in a country there is more than one organization affiliated with the International, the one vote is divided equally). Meetings of the sub-Bureau may be held when there are present the representatives of five out of the six following countries: England, Germany, France, Italy, Holland and the United States.

b). An Executive Committee was elected composed of Henriette Roland-Holst, S.J. Rutgers and D.I. Wynkoop. The Executive is located in Holland; it is to act for the sub-Bureau and to issue a Bulletin in German, English and French.

c) The sub-Bureau and the Executive Committee are empowered to complete certain phases of the work of the Conference. Their chief task is to link up the world movement with the Central Executive of the International in Moscow; and to facilitate this task the Conference created two subsidiary bureaus–(a) A Central European Bureau, for activity in Germany, Austria, Poland, Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria; (b) the American Bureau of the Communist International, to be organized provisionally by the Communist Party of America; this Bureau to call a Pan- American Conference of Communist organizations at which the Bureau it to be organized on a permanent basis. It has since transpired that a representative of the International recently organized a Latin-American Bureau in Mexico City, which publishes an organ “El Soviet,” and which has issued a call for a Conference. The mandate given to the Communist Party of America by the International Conference must, accordingly, be exercised in conjunction with the Latin-American Bureau the machinery of which must be utilized and transformed into the larger activity of the American Bureau of the Communist international through the intervention of our party. The American Bureau is to represent the International on the American continents, unite the movement of Latin-America, the United States and Canada, and issue proclamations affairs immediately concerning the proletariat of the Americas.

THE executive Committee is to publish in one volume the reports on the movement in various countries publish in one volume the reports on the movement in various countries; while the sub-Bureau, after adequate study of the situation in each country, is to issue a comprehensive declaration on prospects, tactics and action. This declaration on prospects, tactics and action will survey the whole international movement, measure the maturity and relation of forces, interpret revolutionary experience and the prospects of revolution, and indicate the phases of immediate struggle most calculated to promote the revolution.

The Conference and Problems of the International

A vital phase of the theses adopted at the Conference is that they provide the material for an answer to many of the problems now agitating the International. Among these problems are: 1) unionism; 2) the functions of a revolutionary political party; 3) shall Communists stay in the old opportunist organization to “capture” the party, or shall they split; 4) the basis of admission to the Communist International.

1. The split in the Communist Party of Germany is, fundamentally, the product of antagonistic conceptions of unionism. The Central Committee of the party favors working in the old trades unions “boring from within,” and rejects absolutely the agitation for and construction of industrial unions. The Opposition favors an intense struggle against the trades unions, considering the breaking of their power indispensable for the proletarian revolution, urging the agitation for and construction of industrial unions. (The Opposition, however, rejects the non-political and non-Communist concepts of the I.W.W., conceiving mass action, Soviets and proletarian dictatorship as the means for the conquest of power). On this problem of unionism, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany holds a position of hesitation, evasion and compromise, justifying its “boring from within” policy on the plea that the trades unions include the bulk of the proletarian masses, and a Communist Party must not isolate itself from the masses–a plea familiar to the students of the Russian, British and American movements as being repeatedly used, by the Menshevik and the compromiser. This compromise tendency expresses itself in another form by the Communist Party (Central Committee) participation in the Betriebsrate (shop committees) formed by the government and under direct government control, after dissolving the militant Betriebsrate formed during the Revolution; and participation in these government organization is justified on the plea that “we must not isolate ourselves from the masses.” The Central Committee, moreover, argues that Germany being in a state of revolution, it is futile to develop a program of initiating new forms of industrial organizations which would necessarily require a span of years for its fulfillment, thereby hampering instead of promoting the immediate revolutionary struggle for power. Communist policy on industrial unionism, as on other problems, considers the moment in the struggle, and adapts itself to the requirements of the moment; emphasis varies as conditions vary. The agitation for industrial unionism justifies itself even should actual organization never materialize, in the sense that it is imperative to break the faith of the proletariat in the trades unions and in the machinery of the trades unions as means for revolutionary action. In the United States, which is not in a state of revolution, more emphasis is necessary on the organization aspects of industrial unionism than in Germany. The defect in the policy of the Communist Party (Central Committee) is that it has no policy on unionism; and that it is, in tendency at least, compromising, is proven by participation in the government Betriebsrate. The struggle against the trades unions and for industrial unionism (even should new organizations never materialize) is a necessary factor in developing revolutionary consciousness and struggle.

2. Another fundamental problem concerns the functions of a revolutionary political party of the Communist Party. Two tendencies are apparent: a) that represented by the British Socialist Party (inherited in spirit from the moderate Socialism of the Second International) which maintains that the political party must not “dictate” to the economic movement, the unions to initiate mass action and general political strikes, the Communist Party performing simply the function of agitation; b) that represented (but as yet only in tendency) by the Opposition in the Communist Party of Germany, which maintains that the unions (revolutionary) and the political party are equal to each other, ever-emphasizing the industrial organizations a conception which in tendency, particularly when accompanied by rejection of the revolutionary use of parliamentarism, proceeds directly to elimination of the political party. Now it is a fundamental Bolshevik (and Communist) conception that the political party is the spearhead of the revolutionary movement, dominant and decisive in the revolutionary struggle for power. The function of the Communist Party is action, not simply agitation; it must necessarily assume the initiative in developing general political strikes, in mobilizing and directing the mass action of the proletariat for the conquest of political power. The thesis on Social-Patriots and Unity adopted at the Conference proposes four fundamentals on the basis of which Communist groups still in the old opportunist organizations should unite, and the first is; “Mass action as the fundamental means for the conquest of power the Communist Party as the unifying and directing factor in this mass action.”

3. The Conference decisively rejected the concept of “unity of the party”--that concept which degrades revolutionary initiative and audacity, and which, at this moment, prevents a Communist Party being organized in France and Spain, and keeps the Left Wing Independents of Germany still in the party of the betrayers of the Revolution. In Spain and in France the Left Wing is out to “capture” the Socialist Party by the process of inner transformation. The Communist struggle in an old party stultifies itself if it allows “the unity of the party” to penetrate its consciousness: nor must it become a movement to “capture” the party, thereby weakening the struggle to capture the revolutionary masses in the party. The machinery of the old party can never become an adequate movement to “capture” the party, aspirations and practice; the simple fact of a split, of a decisive break from the old and the creation of a new party in itself contributes enormously to the development of revolutionary ideology and practice. The ideology of “capture” of the party is usually identified with that of “unity of the party” and each is Menshevik in tendency. To persist in the struggle to “capture” the party and avoid a split means to make an end the means, to compromise our revolutionary purposes; the “capture” of a party, with the retention of the Centre (and perhaps of the Right) is antagonistic to uncompromising revolutionary practice. Our most dangerous enemy is the Centre; the “capture” of a party (or its ideology) means to agree and unite with the Centre, while to split the party means immediate and rigorous separation from the Centre. The Conference emphasizes the necessity of rigorous separation of the Communists from the social-patriots and opportunists, urging Communist groups still in the old party organizations to split and unite in the Communist Party. The concept of “unity of the party”, which some Communists still cherish, is as much a phase of the petty bourgeois ideology of moderate Socialism as are reformism and parliamentarism. This “unity of the party “concept dominates the Socialist Party of Italy, preventing the expulsion of the social-patriots and opportunists, and prevents even disciplining the parliamentarians who openly flout the party’s revolutionary aspiration and practice. This situation in Italy has its immediate and peculiar reasons, perhaps; but still it is a serious defect produced largely by the concept of “unity of the party.’

4. One of most important and immediate problems is the basis of admission to the International. The problem may be put this way; Communist parties or groups in almost e- very country have affiliated with the Communist International; but, the old International now being broken in pieces, there are Socialist parties in some of these countries seeking admission to the Communist International–the Left Wing Independents of Germany, the American Socialist Party, the Left Wing of the Independent Labor Party of England, the Socialist Party of Spain; and others who may seek admission, such as the French Socialist Party (Longuet Majoritaires), etc. What shall be done with these? The spirit of the discussion and thesis of the Conference mean to double bolt the door of the Communist International to these undesirable Centre and wavering elements. This answer to the problem is emphasized by two declarations issued recently by the Executive Committee of the International in Moscow, one to the Independent Socialist Party of Germany, the other to the Socialist Party of France, in which these organizations are condemned in severe style, and informed that they are mistaken if they imagine they can enter the Communist International without purging themselves of the social-patriots and the social-traitors.

Imagine the Socialist Party of France being admitted to the Communist International without having first disposed of the centre and the Right, of Jean Longuet as well as Marcel Cachin!–Sympathy for the Russian Revolution or deciding to join the Communist International are not enough: there must be acceptance of revolutionary principles and practice. Imagine the American Socialist Party being admitted to the Communist International while it repudiates Communist fundamentals: mass action, Soviets and proletarian dictatorship; and while it is still dominated by Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, Meyer London, Seymour Stedman, by all its infinite variety of opportunists and social-patriots! On this problem the Communist International will act uncompromisingly, ruthlessly; it will meet the problem by rigorous exclusion.

The Conference met at a moment of intense agitation in the International, serious problems of immediate policy and practice pressing for consideration and answer. The conference met these problems in a style that places the Conference definitely in the Left Wing of the International–a circumstance of supreme importance in the development of our movement.

This ‘The Communist’ was a split from the Communist Party of America in April, 1920 by Charles Ruthenberg, Jay Lovestone, and others, referred to as the Central Executive Committee group, over the majority’s reluctance to unite with the Communist Labor Party as mandated by the Communist International. Laying the groundwork for the May 1920 Bridgman, Michigan convention that would form the United Communist Party, this version of ‘The Communist’ only lasted three issues. The new UCP stuck with tradition and called their official journal…’The Communist. Emulating the Bolsheviks who in 1918 changed the name of their party to the Communist Party, there were up to a dozen papers in the US named ‘The Communist’ in the splintered landscape of the US Left between 1919 and 1923. All them claimed adherence to the new Third International and sought that body’s endorsement. They were often published at the same time and in the same format, making it somewhat confusing to untangle their relationships.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thecommunist/thecommunist4/v2n04-a-apr-25-1920.pdf