'For a Revolutionary Workers' Government': Moscow, British

John McIlroy and Alan Campbell ‘For a Revolutionary Workers’ Government’: Moscow, British Communism and Revisionist Interpretations of the Third Period, 1927–34 Hitler’s accession to power brutally sealed the fate of the German Communist Party (KPD). With 360,000 members, the strongest affiliate of the Communist International (Comintern) was dis- solved in March 1933, its militants interned or executed.1 Its liquidation was the most tragic West European consequence of the disastrous, ultra-left policy of the Third Period, determined by the Comintern, rooted in Russian considerations and accepted, sometimes with reluctance, by national communist parties. Such has been the verdict of a wide range of historians. It is a conclusion which has recently come under attack from academics anxious to revise our understanding of these turbulent years.2 This article engages with this new revisionism. We sketch the anatomy of the Third Period and its consequences for European communist parties. Next, we outline the arguments of recent historians who, contrary to traditional judgements of the impact of the Comintern’s ‘new line’ upon the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), suggest both that there were strong indigenous pressures inevitably leading to its adoption and that its consequences were more positive than previously assumed. We go on to subject these arguments to critical scrutiny in the light of evidence from the recently accessible Comintern archives. Our survey reaffirms the validity of previous evalua- tions of the Third Period. European History Quarterly Copyright © 2002 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol. 32(4), 535–569. [0265-6914(200210)32:4;535–569;028254] 536 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 4 Class Against Class According to the theory of the Third Period propounded at the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern in August 1928, the first phase of revolutionary struggle had ended with the defeat of the 1923 German uprising and had been followed by a second period of ‘partial stabilization of the capitalist system’. The proclama- tion of the new line was inextricably bound up with Russian developments. These included: the factional battle inside the Russian party as Stalin made a leftwards shift and attacked his remaining rival, Bukharin; the Russians’ fear of war in 1927 after Britain broke diplomatic relations; and the problems associated with the destruction of the market, breakneck industrialization and forced collectivization of agriculture. The Third Period was to be marked by capitalist crisis, inter-imperialist wars as well as attacks on Russia, and by ‘the swing to the left of the masses’ throughout the imperialist world. As capital became more centralized, its integration with the bourgeois state became more intimate, while reformist trade union and socialist leaders were increasingly incorporated. Simultaneously, workers’ radicalization was growing: ‘they have already recovered from the severe defeats of the preceding period’.3 The Third Period was the ante- room to revolution, and the political implications were clear: Communist parties were to discard the prevailing strategic axis, the united front with other working-class organizations, break links with social democratic parties and oppose them through independent revolutionary struggle. A further sectarian twist was given to this catastrophism with the elaboration of social-fascism, officially adopted by the Comintern at the Tenth Plenum in July 1929. Whereas earlier formulations had indicated a ‘social-fascist’ tendency within social democracy, fascism and social democracy were now equated in disregard of earlier Marxist analysis. Otto Kuusinen, a Stalinist in the Comintern’s highest echelons, pronounced the difference between fascists and social-fascists as merely that the latter employed ‘a smoke screen’. While labourism in Britain represented social-fascism in the ‘caterpillar stage’, the German SPD had reached the ‘butterfly stage’.4 Despite such spurious entomological precision, the malignant core of the Third Period was that social democracy, not fascism, was the primary enemy. The Plenum added a further ultra-leftist dimension in relation to McIlroy and Campbell, British Communism, 1927–34 537 trade union activity. It was judged that while the working class was now strong enough ‘to take up the counter-offensive’, radicalization was held back by the ‘social-fascist trade union bureaucracy’ in its endeavours to ‘harness the working class to the yoke of capitalist rationalization’. Communists should develop the ‘revolutionization of the rank-and-file members of the reformist unions’ and, under favourable conditions, form new revolutionary unions.5 Only the ‘united front from below’ with the radical- izing rank-and-file of social democratic organizations but not with their leaders — no united front at all, as it required workers to break with their leaders as a precondition for unity — was now permitted. If 1929 marked the extremity of Comintern ultra-leftism, 1930 saw greater caution. It has been argued convincingly that considerations of Soviet foreign policy — in particular the desire to prevent Germany joining an anti-Soviet bloc created by a fear of insurrection and post-1929 mass unemployment — led to a tempering of revolutionary sectarianism. At the Comintern’s Executive Committee (ECCI) in February 1930, where defence of Russia became ‘the most important task’ of all Comintern sections, ritual condemnations of ‘the deviations of the right-wing and conciliators’ in affiliated parties were combined with con- demnation of ‘radical phrasemongering’. Although there were genuflections to the ‘further expansion of the revolutionary surge’ and attacks on ‘the social-fascist trade union machine’, the importance of fighting for ‘partial demands’ was highlighted.6 This marked the commencement of growing attention to the twin dangers of Left and Right deviations, which coincided with problems of collectivization in the USSR and Stalin’s ‘Dizziness from Success’ letter to the Russian party, demanding a fight against ‘those who rush ahead’ as well as ‘those who lag behind’. The theme was taken up at the Sixteenth Congress of the Russian Party in July, and at the Sixth Congress of the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) in August, Kuusinen warned of ‘isolation from the masses’ and against ‘schematic creation of new unions’.7 Through 1931–2 there were uneven, limited, tactical initiatives to restrain the dynamic that the Comintern had unleashed and the consequent sectarian isolation of its affiliates. There were attempts to dampen illusions of impending revolution, emphasiz- ing that social-fascism primarily embraced leaders, not rank- and-file, and stressing that work in reformist unions based on 538 European History Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 4 ‘immediate demands’ was a necessary prelude to capturing the masses from the bureaucracy and creation of revolutionary unions. The constricting strategic axes of crisis, radicalization, social-fascism and the united front from below, within which these initiatives emerged, circumscribed success. It was difficult to restrain sectarianism and ultra-leftism within the confines of a sectarian, ultra-Left line. Even after the Nazi triumph, moves away from Class Against Class were hesitant. Through 1933–4, emphases on widening united front work and mounting pressure in national affiliates remained strategically unrealized, until Stalin finally relented in late 1934 and moves towards the popu- lar front were set in train.8 The Impact of the Third Period on European Communist Parties The Third Period was to have profoundly damaging effects on the Comintern’s European affiliates, as Moscow sought to ensure strict adherence to the new line. The KPD’s suspension in autumn 1928 of Ernst Thälmann, its leftist leader prompted Stalin’s intervention and the decision was reversed, followed by a purge of Heinrich Brandler’s Right faction. Thereafter, the KPD followed the Comintern and German events were held to exem- plify the projected development of the Third Period. The KPD embraced the theory of social-fascism as ‘the decisive form’ that fascism would take in Germany.9 The Comintern’s shift in February 1930 did not involve abandonment of social-fascism as the primary enemy. Nazism was secondary and the dramatic rise of the Hitler vote by almost six million in September 1930 was optimistically dismissed as its ‘high point’. In July 1931 Stalin intervened directly, instructing the KPD to participate in the Nazi-initiated referendum against the Prussian government. Only from Spring 1932 did the Comintern display awareness of the threat, but the Twelfth Plenum in September remained con- fused about how to combat it. There was increased emphasis on the ersatz ‘united front from below’ but unity with the Social Democrats remained anathema. The ebbing of the Nazi vote and the strength of the KPD and social democrats in the November 1932 elections merely underlined the potential for a united front against the Nazis, a potential squandered in the preceding four years of the new line. McIlroy and Campbell, British Communism, 1927–34 539 If the most heinous consequence of the Third Period was defeat for the German working class and destruction of the KPD, other European parties were divided, diminished and damaged. The French Communist Party (PCF) was criticized in 1927 for ‘legalism’ and ‘parliamentary cretinism’ by its Comintern super- visor. In response, the PCF announced that in the

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