Issue No. 129, Summer, 1988
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-' Australasian ~ NUMBER 129 SUMMER 1988/1989 IfO cents Social Patriots Enlist for New Pacific War • own 1 • 1- For Proletarian Internationalism! Dwarfed by a huge Australian flag emblazoned with "heart of a na tion," second-hand dealer Bruce Whiteside proclaimed: "We are again facing a threat of invasion." The 1300 people packed into this hall on Queensland's Gold Coast in May, including the state Labor Party deputy leader .T')m Burns, erupted into massive applause. Later the announcement of a bomb threat provoked cries of "the Japanese have done it" and Tokyo stock exchange, largest in the world. Rise of Japan Inc fuels chauvinist fears in White Australia. "yellow peril," ment, which is now triggering a (Australian, 28-29 May). The 31 ~ational Action posters proclaim- The coming of Japan as the filthy anti-Japanese backlash in October morning edition of ing "White Australia, the workers' Asian economic. "superpower," Australia. The hysterical, racist Yomiuri Shimbun, circulation 9.6 cause!" and "Oppose the Japanese symbolised by the rise of the Gold Coast meeting prompted the million and one of Japan's two property invasion." value of the yen against both the Japanese consulate to complain main bourgeois dailies, carried a, Anti-Japan chauvinism extends US and Australian dollars, has led that "people were confusing mem- page four headline "Rising anti- far beyond the tiny fascist fringe. to a surge in Japanese tourism and ories of World War II with the Japanese feeling in Australia." Its Treasurer Keating weighed in, a mini-boom in property invest- realities of. modern-day Japan" article featured photos of fascist Continued on page six Russian Nazis Raise Their Heads Soviet Workers Must Crush Pamyatl Recent statements in Soviet Leningrad which does not evoke "t" ~':' newspapers report an ominous memories of this hero city's %: development. An outfit calling 900-day stand against the Nazi $; itself the "Russian National invaders and of the million or ¥ Patriotic Front Pamyat" has more who died to defend this been staging weekly demon western gateway to the Soviet strations in the city of Lenin homeland. From the somber ft grad. An Italian tourist who mass graves of the Piska .~ witnessed a Pamyat demon revskoye Memorial Cemetery, stration wrote to Moscow News . burial place of . more than (14 August), "A weekhas passed, 500,000 Leningraders who died in and I'm still horrified. I felt as the Nazi siege, it is but a few if i' d attended a real fascist minutes' drive to the Rumyant meeting of the 1930s." "Sur sevsky Garden. Yet here, every rounded by bodyguards in black Thursday, in this public park in shirts," Pamyat leader Dmitri the heart of Leningrad - the Vassiliev rails against Jews while city of Lenin, the birthplace of his cohorts blame the Chernobyl the internationalist October nuclear disaster on "enemy Revolution - Pamyat has staged forces." The blood of every its disgusting spectacle. The decent Soviet citizen boils over proud people of Leningrad can't Pamyat's racist outrages. allow this to continue. Leningrad must be cleansed of Leningrad writer Valery Vos this fascist filth! koboinikov described one of the Novost: Press There is scarcely a street in Continued on page eight Pamyat fascists march in Moscow, May 1987. Registered by Australia Post - Publication no NBF0710 down by the CI in 1921. The Res olution's applicability to the SL reflects our roots in earlier com munist organizations in this country, from whom we have sought to choose the best prac tice. In stark contrast, the 1921 Leninist Resolution on Organization Trotskyist organizations of Europe and the ex-colonial world had The article below is reprinted their fragile human threads of from Workers Vanguard no 460 (9 continuity with the early Commu September) biweekly organ of the nist movement snapped by war Spartacist League/U S. and fascism and Stalinist terror. Study of the Resolution has The Prometheus Research Li GUidelines on the been hampered by the lack of an brary, archive and library of the Organizational Structure adequate English-language trans Central Committee of the Sparta lation (the translations produced cist League [US], is pleased to of Communist Parties, by the Comintern in the 1920s are announce the publication of on the MethOds and Content flawed and also fail to include the "Guidelines on the Organizational of Their Work amendments adopted by the Structure of Communist Parties, Congress in its final session). on the Methods and Content of The translation published in Their Work." This 94-page bulletin ReSOlution of the Prometheus Research Series No 1 Third Congress 01 the Con,munist International contains a complete and accurate 12 July i921 appears to be the first accurate translation of the final German New TranSlation 01 th, Final German Text one ever based on the final InClUding RePorts and DiSCUSSion Irom the Congress text of the Organizational Resol With IntrOdUction and Notes German-language text. The bull ution of the 1921 Third Congress etin includes a survey of the vari of the Communist International ous language versions of the (CI), with accompanying introduc Resolution including the Russian tory and documentary material. It in "A Note on Translation." Also is the first in the Prometheus included are the reports on and - -= P'OM""",,-.~---~~-.--.- .,,""" 1""" Research ~eries, whichSeeks~to LIl\'> ~, .. discussion of the Organizational make available important ma Resolution at the 22nd and 24th terials from the history of the in sessions of the Congress. This ternational communist lTlovement. material appears here for the first time in English. When the Third Congress of revolutionary material of the first organized in the International At the Fourth Congress of the the Communist International met four congresses of the Communist Federation of Trade Unions in Moscow in the summer of 1921, Communist International in 1922, International of Lenin and ("Amsterdam International") and the revolutionary wave \Vhich had Lenin repeatedly stressed the Trotsky's time. in the reformist Second and swept Europe following the Octo importance of "Guidelines on the Historians of the CI of this centrist "Two and a Hal fIt Organizational Structure of ber Revolution had for the most Internationals. part receded. As against those period (eg, the eminent EH Carr) Communist Parties, on the have persistently diminished Members of organizations on Methods and Content of Their ultraleftists who argued that the the left which base themselves on International must continue the Lenin's role in drawing up the Work," in private meetings with the "cell structure" used by the "offensive" against the capitalist Resolution, especially misinter various delegations, and in his preting his remarks endorsing it at Comintern as it degenerated after only speech to the Congress. His world order, Lenin and Trotsky in 1924 will be particularly sisted that the young International the CI' s Fourth Congress, his last remarks remain the best testi intervention into the political life interested in "Guidelines on the mony to the 1921 Resolution's take stock of the lull in the class Organizational Structure of the struggle. In the main Congress of the International. The Introduc significance for the international tion to Prometheus Research Communist.. Parties, on· the communist movement: resolutions, which included not Methods and Content of Their Series No l-ci"ocuments· the- Tm: "That resolution must be car only the Organizational Resol Work." In contrast to the practice portant role Lenin played in the ried out. It cannot be carried ution but also the "Theses on Tac of the Stalinized Comintern, drafting of the Organizational out overnight; that is absol tics," the Bolshevik leadership which in order to straitjacket Resolution. The Resolution em utely impossible. The resol attempted to codify the 20 years internal discussion abolished party bodies Lenin's developed under ution is too Russian, it reflects of experience in struggle against units based on territorial organiz standing of the party and his the Russian experience. That the tsarist empire - the unique ation (eg, a neighborhood branch struggle to shape an authentic is why it is quite unintelligible Russian experience which pro or citywide local) in favor of revolutionary vanguard out of the to foreigners, and they cannot duced the party capable of leading small "cells" ostensibly based on partially sorted-out components be content with hanging it in a the world's first successful pro the factories, the 1921 Organiz of former social-democratic corner like an icon and praying letarian revolution - so that the ational Resolution advocates that parties which formed the bulk of to it •••• They ••• must study new Communist parties in the rest cells and fractions operate in of the world could study its the would-be Communist parties in a special sense, in order in Europe in 1921. Lenin was par ~o.!!l~!!s:_tion with territorial units-:- that they may really under lessons. "Guidelines on the Organ The Spartacist League began izational Structure of Communist ticularly concerned that the stand the organization, struc German party forge itself into a to study the 1921 Organizational ture, method and content of Parties, on the Methods and Resolution in the early 1970s Bolshevik vanguard and the Resol revolutionary work. If they do Content of Their Work" is an under the impact of building the ution was drafted in German. With that, I am sure that the pros important component of the great party's first industrial fractions. Germany very unstable and the pects of the world revolution An educational session of the will be not only good, but Spartacist League German party one of the biggest SL/US 1975 summer camp was excellent." in the Comintern, the perspective then devoted to presentations on GPO Box 3473, GPO Box 2339, of world revolution reduced itself the Resolution.