Wednesday, 15 November 1922 the Capitalist Offensive
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Session 11 – Wednesday, 15 November 1922 The Capitalist Offensive Speaker: Radek Convened: 12:30 p.m. Chairperson: Kolarov Chair: Four reporters have spoken on the Russian Revolution. I believe that there is no delegation wishing to put forward a different viewpoint. If it is only a matter of making a declaration of solidar- ity with the Russian proletariat, the Congress has already done so in handsome style on a number of occasions. The Presidium has therefore decided to give the floor only to delegations that wish to defend a point of view different from that of the reporters. Does anyone wish to speak? Since that is not the case, we will go to the next agenda point, which is ‘The Capitalist Offensive’. I give the floor to the reporter, Comrade Radek. Radek: Comrades, brothers and sisters: The topic of all the policy debates that we have conducted and will conduct here is actually a single question: the world offensive of capitalism against the proletar- iat and the proletariat’s measures for self-defence. Whether we are discussing the combat readiness of the French Communist Party, or the united front, or the workers’ government, the practical issue under- lying these tactical questions is always and only the offensive of capitalism. In discussing this offensive, we often define the question too narrowly, conceiving of it as directed mainly toward reducing wages and lengthening the 374 • Session 11 – 15 November 1922 working day. On the other hand, the Social Democrats divide the world- revolution, as a whole, into two phases that are artificially kept apart: the proletariat’s offensive and capitalism’s counteroffensive. They regard this second phase as definitive for the foreseeable future, indeed as a victory of counter-revolution. In my opinion, therefore, we will best understand the situation and also the stance the Communist International should adopt by reviewing in broad strokes the development of the world-revolution in the concrete forms it is displaying before our eyes. At the risk of presenting the most important events to you only as subject headings, I will nonetheless undertake this task. 1. The offensive of the proletariat The Russian Revolution, which we discussed so extensively under the previous agenda-point, was understood by the proletariat as an event of international importance. But there is no doubt that the world bourgeoisie understood to a much greater degree than the world proletariat that the Russian Revolution was the first episode in an international offensive by the proletariat. It is enough to read the secret memoranda sent in 1917 and the beginning of 1918 by the leaders of the Central Powers [Germany and Austria-Hungary] to their governments. I refer here to the memorandum of Count Czernin, which shows that immediately after the March Revolution, before the October victory, the leaders of the Central Powers understood extremely well that, following on a period of war in which the bankruptcy of Social Democracy had enabled various bourgeois cliques to battle each other on the backs of the passive popular masses, the Russian March Revolution had knocked a breach in the capitalist defences, and a new historical force had appeared on the world stage. In his memoirs, Ludendorff describes how Germany’s military situation compelled him to let the Bolsheviks through to Russia, although he recognised the danger, and how he therefore felt himself all the more obliged to crush the Russian Revolution.1 It was world capital- ism’s undoing that Ludendorff’s internal contradictions gave the Russian Revolution a breathing space in which to get organised. Comrades, after the defeat of Germany, the second wave of proletarian rev- olution began. The collapse of Germany and Austria, which threw the crowns of Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns into the street, into the mire, created a situa- tion where the proletariat, worn down and exhausted by the War and Social- 1. In April 1917, a group of Russian revolutionists in Switzerland – Bolsheviks except for a few members of the Bund – received permission from German authorities to travel by train through Germany to neutral Sweden, from which they proceeded to Petrograd. Among the forty travellers were Lenin and Radek..