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The Communist Movement $27.00 the set £11.90 the set The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform by Fernando Claudín Translated by Brian Pearce Part One: The Crisis of the Communist International Part Two: The Zenith of Stalinism Modern history, the history of Europe and much of the rest of the world since World War 1, cannot be understood apart from the role of the Communist movement. And the world Communist movement is known almost exclusively from the woefully inaccurate ac- counts and interpretations of orthodox, anti- Communist scholars on the one side and Communist scholars on the other. In these contrasting interpretations, the element of agreement often outweighs the points of con- flict: this element of agreement is a mythology that describes world Communism, through- out its existence, as a dedicated insurgent phenomenon, “revolutionary” in its own eyes, “subversive” in those of its opponents. Fernando Claudín’s exhaustive and mas- terful history, the first adequate study from the Marxist viewpoint, will finally destroy all such tottering mythologies. The author here combines, in this massive work, the disci- plines of historical scholarship with the revo- lutionary standpoint from which alone it is possible to develop a critique of the theory and practice of the world Communist move- ment. His meticulous documentation offers to the reader a guarantee of historical accu- racy, while the revolutionary convictions with which the work is suffused bring to life the issues and battles it interprets and relives. The first volume opens with the dissolution of the Communist International in 1943, dur- (continued on back flap) THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT FERNANDO CLAUDIN THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT FROM COMINTERN TO COMINFORM PART ONE THE CRISIS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL Translated by Brian Pearce MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS NEW YORK AND LONDON Part One copyright © 1975 by Brian Pierce Part Two copyright © 1975 by Francis MacDonagh All rights reserved Originally published by Editions Ruedo Ibérico, copyright © 1970 by Editions Ruedo Ibérico Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Claudin, Fernando. The Communist movement. Translation of La crisis del movimiento comunista. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Communism—History. I. Title. HX40.C59813 335.43 74-25015 ISBN 0-85345-366-7 First Printing Monthly Review Press 62 West 14th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011 21 Theobalds Road, London WC1X 8SL Manufactured in the United States of America From Marx to Mao M L Digital Reprints 2017 www.marx2mao.com To my daughters, Carmen and Tania CONTENTS Note to the French Edition ix Note to the English Edition ix Preface by Jorge Semprun Introduction PART ONE : THE CRISIS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL . THE DISSOLUTION The Last Episode of a Long Crisis The Irony of History An Admission of Bankruptcy . THE CRISIS OF THEORY Lenin’s Theoretical Schema Moribund Capitalism ? Lenin’s Last Questionings Stalin as Revisionist: Complete Socialism in a Single Country Causes of the Paralysis of Theory . MONOLITHICITY The Soviet Model Transplanted Ultra-Centralism and Russification The Itinerary of Monolithicity . THE CRISIS OF POLICY The German Experience The People's Front Experience The Colonial Experience vii The Chinese Revolution The Last Act Notes to Part One 1 See Part Two for Index viii NOTE TO THE FRENCH EDITION For the French edition I have revised the Spanish text, making some changes which, in the main, concern points of detail, and are aimed at clarifying certain formulations and making some factual allusions more precise, or including new bibliographical references. The only change of substance is the merging of the last chapters of the two parts (the titles of which in the Spanish version are ‘Notas finales’ and ‘Primer epilogo’) into a single chapter – an epilogue – which concludes the book. In this new text I have discarded some questions which seem to me of secondary importance, while expanding my treatment of others to which I had not paid sufficient attention in the concluding chapters of the Spanish version. F.C. NOTE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION The conscientious work done by Brian Pearce in pro- ducing the English translation to Part One has enabled me to correct some errors in the original text, and also some that occurred in the French version. I take this opportunity to thank him. ix PREFACE ‘It seems,’ wrote Isaac Deutscher in , in one of the articles collected in his book Heretics and Renegades, ‘that the only dignified attitude the intellectual ex-Communist can take is to rise au-dessus de la melee.’ At first sight this seems strange advice. Let us examine it more closely. In these pages, written in , Deutscher analyses the reflections on Communism published by certain writers – Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, André Gide, Louis Fischer, Richard Wright and Stephen Spender – who had been either members or fellow-travellers of the party, and he comes very quickly to the conclusion that it would have been better if all of them had remained silent. It is obvious that Deutscher does not like the intellectuals who were expelled from the party, or at least not those who were expelled after , that is, after the defeat of the left opposition. They find it too easy, he seems to be saying, to play the role of renegades, towards which all circumstances impel them – the objective conditions, the anathemas of the expulsion procedure, and the condescending sarcasm of those whose expulsion took place a little earlier. Actually, one is always expelled at the wrong moment, either too late or too soon. Too late in relation to the objective facts about Stalinism, the U S S R and the societies that have resulted from the expansion of Russia's sphere of influence in the world, facts that one has concealed from oneself over a long period, in the ideological haze surrounding the priorities of action and the tricks played by ‘historical reason’. Too soon in relation to the possibilities of being understood and followed within the party itself, where one wages a battle in which one is always in the minority, a battle that is lost in advance. But this twofold lateness – delay in achieving awareness in relation to the objective density of the Preface course of events, and lagging behind by the bulk of the militants as compared with the advanced minorities who want to see a ‘new course’ adopted – does not result from a chance situation which could be dis- posed of by means of ridicule. It possesses the rigorousness, the rigorous characteristics, of a historical law applicable to all the periods and all the crises of Communism. Isaac Deutscher, then, is mistrustful of the intellectuals with whom the Communist Party parts company, or who break with it. He advises them to engage no further in politics, but to remain above the battle: in short, to cease to be involved. Deutscher would doubtless have approved of the attitude taken up by Roger Vailland, with his abrupt switch from an alienating fideism to the agnosticism of a grand seigneur. With that taste for historical analogies which has produced such great theoretical ravages among revolutionaries, Deutscher offers as an example to the ex-Communist intellectuals the attitudes taken in the past by such men as Jefferson, Goethe or Shelley. Why does he bring forward these startling names? Because, in his opinion, it is possible to establish a historical parallel between the Stalin epoch and the epoch of Napoleon. Accordingly, the ex-Communist intellectuals ought to copy Jefferson, Goethe and Shelley because the latter were able to appreci- ate that ‘despite Napoleon’s violence and frauds, the message of the French revolution survived to echo powerfully throughout the nine- teenth century,’ and so they never joined in that chorus of Liberals which played into the hands of the Holy Alliance. It is, as we see, a curious historical comparison. Has the message of the October revolution continued to be spread, despite the ‘violence and frauds’ of Stalin? Has the ‘Jacobin’ essence of Leninism continued to make itself felt despite the Soviet ‘Thermidor’? Do the intellectuals expelled from the Communist movement inevitably become renegades because the party is the embodiment of Historical Reason? Deutscher does not formulate these conclusions categorically, but he seems to be suggesting them, with a mixture of ideological illusion and despair which is highly characteristic of the period when he wrote his article. Today, however, we live in a different period; and Fernando Claudin is not a writer who joined the Communist movement on the basis of the Preface People’s Front platform of defence of culture and peace and then was expelled from it for the crime of petty-bourgeois humanism. A leader of the Young Communists in Madrid and a student of archi- tecture, Fernando Claudin abandoned, in or about , all personal ambitions in order to become a functionary of the revolution. (The fact that the revolution has not functioned in accordance with the pre- scriptions of its functionaries is quite another matter.) Since that time, right down to his expulsion from the Communist Party of Spain in February , his life has been merged with the life of the Communist movement, with the history of the Spanish revolution, its successes, setbacks and mistakes. The years of the bourgeois republic, the civil war, defeat and emigration, underground activity against Franco – all these episodes were experienced by Claudin in posts of central responsibility in the Communist Party machine. It was at the end of that
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