Another in his series on working class street organizing in an environment of rising fascism. Would love to know who ‘L. Alfred’ is, my guess he was a member of the Rotfrontkämpferbund.

‘The Question of Proletarian Self-Defence’ by L. Alfred from Communist International. Vol. 6 No. 27. December 15, 1929.

THE question of proletarian defence or self-protection covers a wide area embracing a number of lesser questions concerning principles, tactics and organisation. It would be too bold to attempt to solve or to “exhaust” the problem in one article. What we want to do is to refer to some facts and some conclusions drawn from general experience which should make it easier to approach the problem from the correct angle. An exchange of opinion on this question is urgently necessary, the more so since this problem, which is an immediate one, has received very little attention in the Communist Press.

The organisation of proletarian defence is a practical necessity for the working class in the whole capitalist world. This necessity arises from the intensive preparations for civil war being carried on by the international bourgeoisie and from the more frequent use of civil war methods on the part of the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the working class.

These facts are not new in themselves; for the bourgeois state has always been a machine for the forcible subjection of the working masses. Elements of civil war have never been lacking in the régime of bourgeois democracy. Throughout the entire periods of its domination, the bourgeoisie has continually made use of armed force, of direct methods of civil war, in its fight against the working class.

Nevertheless, there is a tremendous difference between the bourgeoisie preparations for civil warfare now and, let us say, before the war. The international bourgeoisie has drawn all the lessons and practical conclusions from its experience in its struggle against the revolutionary movement during and after the war. The capitalists are aware of the fact that the coming imperialist war against the Soviet Union will also signify a civil war against the working class all over the capitalist world. This gives rise to what is new in their preparations for civil war.

After the world war the international bourgeoisie worked out quite new methods to suppress revolutionary mass movements, to suppress “internal unrest.” It introduced new and previously unknown forms of organising its armed forces for this job. There is also something new in the intensity with which this problem is now being handled by the bourgeois war experts who are now trying to coordinate the international experience of the fight against the working class and working class organisations.

In bourgeois military literature the question of the armed suppression of revolutionary mass movements has become a central question, while before the war there was very little written on this subject. In almost all capitalist countries, particularly in those where great armed class struggles have occurred, a very comprehensive literature has arisen in which the military specialists and police experts of the bourgeoisie have examined, entering with great thoroughness into the least detail, the experiences of these struggles and have worked out the methods for suppressing such struggles in the future. On the other hand, very little indeed has been done to make available to the working class the rich international experience of the armed class struggle.

In Germany, which has more experience of civil war than any other capitalist country, this literature is very rich and comprehensive. The most famous of Germany’s civil war strategists are Generals Maercker, von der Goltz and Loffler, Police Officers Hartenstein, Schmitt and their social democratic colleague Schutzinger and the bloodhound Noske, with his memoirs From Kiel to Kapp. We must recognise the fact that the German civil war strategists have formulated the tactical and strategical principles of civil war against the working class better and more clearly than any other sections.

Activity in the sphere of civil war theory can be observed not only in Germany—it is an international phenomenon. We shall quote just a few facts from the great number which prove this contention: the book which appeared a short while ago by Rowecki, a Polish colonel, on street fighting; the French General Staff’s famous “Plan Z” to suppress insurrections and riots among the Paris workers; detailed instructions on street fighting in England, North America, Sweden; the plentiful civil war literature in Finland, etc.

Another fact that is new and characteristic or the post-war period of the bourgeoisie’s civil war preparations is indicated by the special methods of army organisation, the desperate struggle for a reliable army, which is one of the most essential peculiarities of bourgeois militarism in the present period. The armies of general defence, the “people’s armies,” have shown themselves to be unreliable from the point of view of the bourgeoisie when it comes to a question of armed struggle between the classes. Consequently the bourgeoisie has set up special civil war armies, armies of mercenaries, recruited from reliable or declassed elements. This tendency is expressed more or less clearly in all capitalist countries. Another peculiarity is the arming of volunteer bourgeois military organisations, formed from members of the ruling class and from those elements which are ideologically akin and devoted to it. Examples of such organisations are the Heimwehr in Austria and the Steel Helmets in Germany.

These avowedly counter-revolutionary, fascist military organisations are not the only ones which form part of the bourgeoisie’s system of civil war preparations against the proletariat; there are also semi-fascist and social-fascist bodies such as the Schutzbund in Austria and the Retchsbanner in Germany. Recent events in Austria show this very clearly. The social democratic Schutzbund is declared by the leaders of Austrian social democracy to be the proletariat’s only possible defensive organisation against fascism. But the more openly the fascists attack, the clearer becomes the real purpose for which the social fascist leaders are using the Schutzbund. More and more frequently sections of the Schutgbund turn out in close alliance with the police against the revolutionary workers. This was the case on 15th July, 1927, and in recent months also during the frequent encounters between workers and fascists. The Schutzbund is an organisation to make the Austrian workers defenceless, to defeat and suppress their revolutionary activities; it is an organisation fighting for the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. It is only differentiated from the Heimwehr in the fact that the majority of its members are workers, who are not fascist and among whom, on the contrary, there exists an honest desire to fight fascism, but who have not yet fully realised the social fascist role of the Schutzbund and of Austrian social democracy.

These “scientific” civil war preparations of the bourgeoisie are characteristic of the whole post-war period. From a superficial examination they might appear to be an indication of the strength of present-day capitalism. In reality they are a characteristic phenomenon of capitalism in decline. If capitalism felt itself to be strong, it would have no fear of the revolutionary, suppressed workers; it would not think it necessary to take such desperate and terrorist measures to maintain its supremacy. On the contrary, capitalism would use other and more refined methods of holding the masses in check. Although the international bourgeoisie’s feverish preparations for civil warfare are a sign of the internal weakness of the capitalist system, it would be a crude error to underestimate their danger to the working class. These preparations show that the capitalists have decided to maintain their supremacy at any cost.

In the question of workers’ defence, as in all practical questions of the class struggle, we must first of all decide on the nature of the question in the present phase of the struggle. We can only find the answer to this question by a thorough examination of the peculiarities of the present moment.

To-day the preparations for civil warfare have passed beyond the scientific and organisational stage; they have entered upon a new stage. The whole machinery of bourgeois suppression is finding more and more practical employment, acts of open violence are a daily occurrence all over the capitalist world, even in “civilized” countries, in countries of complete bourgeois democracy, such as France and Austria where, a few years ago, they were rare and isolated cases. Every day the newspapers publish reports of such acts of violence, of armed attacks on workers’ meetings and demonstrations, of the armed occupation of local headquarters of workers’ organisations, of mass arrests of the most active revolutionary workers, etc. The international character of this attack was demonstrated on 1st August, when the capitalists everywhere mobilised their armed forces and in many cases engaged in an actual fight. It would be very instructive for revolutionary workers to learn about all the details of the bourgeoisie’s mobilisation and use of its forces before and on 1st August. From the great abundance of material on this subject we quote, as a characteristic illustration, from the issue of 31st July, 1929, of the French newspaper Le MeSsager d’Athene, published in Athens:

“Yesterday evening, at the Home Ministry, a long consultation took place under the chairmanship of the minister Argyropoulos. There were present the commander of the 1st Army Corps, the Prefects of Attica and Boetia, the commanders of the Gendarmerie, the police presidents of Athens and Pyrea, leaders of the “security services” and ministerial departmental chiefs. The discussion dealt with the measures that should be taken to maintain order tomorrow, 1st August, in connection with the events announced by the Communists…The Minister for Home Affairs accepted the plan of M. Calyvitis (Athens police chief) to suppress any Communist demonstration in Athens. According to this plan the capital will be divided into twelve sectors; in each of which groups of police will be concentrated, while gendarmes will patrol the rest of each sector…Each sector will be placed under the command of a high police officer, who will have at his disposal a company of infantry. Public buildings will have a military guard. At the same time a number of arrests will be carried out (it is said about 500).”

It is also characteristic of the present phase of the class struggle that the workers have begun, quite spontaneously, to take up their defence against the civil war methods of the bourgeoisie. This has happened before, but only in isolated instances and isolated countries. In general proletarian defence against fascism and against capitalism’s preparations for civil war bore, even last year, a preponderantly ideological and propagandist character. An ideological campaign against bourgeois terrorism is more necessary than ever now. The idea of proletarian defence must be systematically and emphatically spread among the workers. The establishment of antifascist defence corps to spread this idea must now be taken in hand with the utmost energy. But an ideological struggle will no longer suffice. The intensification of the class struggle, the bourgeoisie’s activities in suppressing the workers, the growth of working class militancy have all proceeded so far that it is essential to deal in all seriousness with the question of the direct, physical defence of the workers and their organisations against the acts of violence carried out by the bourgeoisie’s armed bodies of suppression.

It must be strongly emphasised that the question of the concrete forms of proletarian defence cannot by any means be limited to the question of special defence organisations, particularly in the present phase of the struggle. The question will have to be dealt with in a much broader fashion if we are to approach it correctly. We think it will be useful at this point to recall Lenin’s words in his article on Guerrilla Warfare:

“In the first place Marxism differs from all other and more primitive forms of Socialism in that it does not bind the movement to any particular form of struggle. It recognises the most varied forms of struggle, and it does not “invent” them, but only generalises, organises and endows with consciousness those forms of the revolutionary class struggle which arise spontaneously in the course of the movement. Hostile to all abstract formulae and doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands the closest attention to the mass struggle which is proceeding and which, as the movement develops, as the class-consciousness of the masses increases, as economic and political crises grow more acute, gives rise to new and most varied methods of defence and attack.”

If we want to attack the question of proletarian defence from the correct angle, we must first of all have the greatest possible elasticity in the tactics and organisation of defence. It is, for example, quite clear that the question of the creation of special organisations is one whose correct solution is possible only on the basis of the practical needs of the mass struggle in strike movements, in the defence of workers’ organisations and their headquarters, etc.

In particular we must develop new tactics in street demonstrations. With increased police provocation, prohibitions and attacks on one hand, and the growth of working class militancy on the other, demonstrations must keep clear of the old pattern. Until quite recently even Communist demonstrations in most countries were in general modelled on the old social democratic example. Demonstrations were made with the permission of the police. The demonstrators walked through the streets, accompanied by the police, to the traditional meeting place, where the traditional programme was run through.

Although on 1st August the demonstrations in many cases were on the old pattern, that day and the whole of the summer of 1929 gave numerous examples of a quite new and different form of demonstration, important indications of growing proletarian militancy. By learning from these concrete examples of characteristic episodes of the class struggle today, by generalising, organising and giving consciousness to the forms of struggle which arose in their course, according to Lenin’s advice, we shall approach correctly the question of proletarian defence.

Demonstrations nowadays must be freed from all the old organisational traditions, must keep in mind all possible provocations by the police and by fascists. This requires very careful preparation and the working out in good time of concrete plans for every single demonstration. These plans must keep in view possible measures of police repression and take counter-measures accordingly. The chief thing in organising demonstrations is to assure firm and unbroken leadership of the demonstrating masses by the Party. A leadership must be created for every demonstration. This leadership, the demonstration “general staff,” must be equipped with all the necessary means of following the course of the demonstration and of reacting as quickly as possible to events. In no case should the militant workers on the streets be left without the leadership of the Party. Even on 1st August cases occurred where speakers as well as slogans were not on the spot which, during the course of the demonstration, became centres of mass resistance. It happened that the speaker waited alone at the appointed meeting place for the arrival of the demonstrators, while these, left to themselves, fought the police in the streets. With even little preparation, the existence of a demonstration leadership which was aware of the enemy’s counter-measures and was in contact with the marchers would have made such grave mistakes impossible.

What measures are necessary to mislead the police, what is to be done in case of unprovoked attack, how far the Organisation of mass resistance should go, whether the demonstration should disperse and re-assemble at another place, whether special divisions should be allocated to protecting the main body, to hold up the police until the main body is secure, how the demonstration leadership should maintain contact with the different columns of demonstrators, how to organise and conduct the “shock troops” for calling the masses on to the streets and into the demonstration, what steps should be taken to protect speakers, local headquarters and papers—we shall not enter more closely into these and similar questions of the practical organisation of demonstrations now. If we make a correct judgment, concrete and thorough, of the situation, the forces and possibilities of the enemy, the feeling of the workers, it will not be difficult to find a correct answer in every case. The chief thing, which cannot be too strongly emphasised, is that this work must be handled in a practical and concrete fashion. Then everything else will fall into line. Demonstrations must throw off their festival appearance and become means whereby to mobilise the activity of the masses. This means the organisation of demonstrations straight from the factory, with or without a strike, marching from one factory to another, calling upon the workers to join the demonstration. These demonstrations should not make for the traditional meeting place, but for such places as government buildings, Parliament, town halls, barracks, in order to exercise revolutionary mass influence on the soldiers; to the prisons and police stations to demand the liberation of political prisoners and of workers arrested in the course of demonstrations.

The appearance of the demonstrations is very important. They must have a revolutionary and proletarian aspect, they must be effective. This requirement is met by demonstrations straight from the factories of workers in their working clothes, of cripples and invalids of the imperialist and civil war, demonstrations of women workers and orphans, etc.

With the accentuation of the struggle, proletarian defence in the factories has new and varied tasks to meet. It may be observed that a worker who does not yet dare to fight the police is ready to fight against the strikebreaker, the spy and the fascist in the factory. During strike movements proletarian defence in the factories is absolutely essential. If we consider that the main weight of the whole proletarian struggle is concentrated in the factories, and that even street demonstrations are more and more taking the factory as their starting-point, it is clear that proletarian defence must be built up on the basis of the factory.

As far as the special organisations of workers’ defence is concerned, they can be developed gradually from the practical measures of defence which are taken in the course of the struggle in different instances, and which have been proved expedient. Only on this basis is it possible to create a living organisation of workers’ defence which will fulfil its purpose.

These defence corps should not be secret fighting organisations within the Communist Parties, but united front organs of Communist, non-party and social democratic workers, whether they are broad mass organisations or small groups for special purposes. If possible, they will be legal, if not, they must be established despite their prohibition, of course on the basis of the practical requirements of the revolutionary mass movement.

It is the armed forces of capitalism, the army, the police and fascist bodies, against which the workers have to defend themselves in the first instance. It is these forces which are used against strikers and demonstrators, which carry out arrests, confiscate the newspapers and occupy the premises of local working class organisations. Consequently the question of the workers’ attitude to these bodies is one of the most important questions of workers’ defence.

This attitude cannot be the same to the different kinds of capitalism’s armed forces. While the workers recognise methods of bitter struggle against openly fascist, bourgeois military organisations, it would be a great mistake to take up the same attitude to all the forces, particularly to those which are recruited mainly from proletarian and semi-proletarian elements. This applies particularly to the army. In regard to the army, the most suitable tactics, particularly in the present stage of the struggle, are those of fraternisation, with the object of drawing the soldier masses over to the side of the revolutionary working class, or of neutralising them during the struggle. With this object in view the soldiers must be kept informed by widespread propaganda work, of the workers’ struggle; the slogans of the common struggle and the idea of fraternisation of soldier and worker must be popularised among the greatest possible mass of soldiers. If this fraternisation is to be carried out in fact, active and courageous preliminary work in this direction must be carried on among the soldiers.

It may be objected that fraternisation tactics are only correct in conscripted armies, but that in the case of modern mercenary armies and police forces, which are the first to be set against the workers, these tactics will accomplish nothing.

It is true that with the growing tendency to create reliable mercenary armies serving the bourgeoisie, our job of disintegrating capitalism’s armed forces becomes more and more complicated. This emphasises the necessity of active defence against those forces. But it is possible to exaggerate the bourgeoisie’s success in its efforts to create a reliable army. For example, the German Schutspolizei is a typical example of the civil war army. It won its spurs in this field during the May Days in Berlin. But, considering that a large number of members of this police force voted for the Communists during the elections, it is evidently possible to win some success among them by active work. We have already mentioned such semi-fascist and social fascist organisations as the Schutzbund in Austria, the Reichsbanner in Germany, the Strzelec in Poland. The attitude of the proletariat towards these organisations is at the moment one of the most important questions of proletarian defence. As far as the particular position in Austria is concerned, where the question of proletarian defence is at the present moment very acute, there can be no question of serious proletarian defence against fascism in actual practice, if the Communists do not succeed in making the workers in the Schutzbund quite clear as to the real, social fascist role of that organisation and in leading them in the struggle against the social democratic leaders and against fascism. This requires more than the formulation and publication of expedient slogans in the Party press; it requires active, courageous, day-to-day and thorough work, agitational and organisational, among the members of the Schutzbund directly. To underestimate the importance of this work and to neglect it would be a serious political mistake at the present time.

The ECCI published the magazine ‘Communist International’ edited by Zinoviev and Karl Radek from 1919 until 1926 irregularly in German, French, Russian, and English. Restarting in 1927 until 1934. Unlike, Inprecorr, CI contained long-form articles by the leading figures of the International as well as proceedings, statements, and notices of the Comintern. No complete run of Communist International is available in English. Both were largely published outside of Soviet territory, with Communist International printed in London, to facilitate distribution and both were major contributors to the Communist press in the U.S. Communist International and Inprecorr are an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/ci/vol-6/v06-n27-dec-15-1929-CI-riaz-orig.pdf