This is the beginning of chapter 5 of my book Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History (Humanities Press International 1985 and 1993).  Also online is the introduction to chapter 4 The October Revolution: marxism in power, the section of the chapter on  Lysenko and Lysenkoism, and the end of the chapter on the purges and Soviet intellectual life.  Other extracts from chapter 5 are on the  Bernal  Haldane and Caudwell, as well as the conclusion of the chapter on the end of the Comintern.

The Formation of the Communist International

It seemed in 1919 as if the whole of Europe was about to erupt into one vast revolutionary conflagration.  Soviet Russia was fighting for its life in a hostile world, but its severe isolation was being broken by proclamations from groups of revolutionaries from far and near pledging their loyalty to the new republic and expressing their determination to follow its example. From 1914 on, Lenin had been speaking of the need for the formation of a new  3rd international, one that would not betray the workers' interests as had the 2nd, which lay in shambles from the onset of war.

The October Revolution forced on the whole of the working class movement the sharp choice of whether to stand with it or against it, and the further choice of whether to work to extend it in their own countries or to seek a less radical accommodation within the existing structures of power.  In 1918, communist parties were formed in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Holland, Finland, Latvia and Greece, and soon after in many other countries, as the movement decisively split between communists and social democrats.

In January of 1919, the Russian Communist Party issued a manifesto calling for the creation of a new international and in March, delegates assembled in Moscow. Despite the difficulties in communication and transportation and despite the absence of real unanimity, the Communist International was inaugurated. The congress, which declared itself the founding congress of the Communist International, sent forth a manifesto "To the proletarians of the whole world" in the hope of rallying workers everywhere to side with the cause of revolution and to break with the false promise of bourgeois democracy.

Events were moving very fast.  Everywhere workers inspired by the October Revolution were rising up against their oppressors and soviets sprang up from the Dombrowa coal basin in Poland to Limerick and Tipperary in the faraway west of Ireland.

In March, a Soviet Republic was proclaimed in Hungary with Bela Kun at its head.  Kun had been converted to bolshevism while a prisoner of war in Russia and, upon his return to Hungary in November 1918, had founded Communist Party amid the fluid political situation caused by the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The new government, a coalition of communists and socialists, quickly nationalised everything from industry and land to children's sweets.

The hungarian philosopher Gyorgy Lukacs tried to seize the short period of time given to the regime to "revolutionise souls," to sweep aside the prejudices of the ages, to make way for a new morality and a new culture. As deputy commissar of education, he brought in sweeping measures for educational reform at every level.

Arthur Koestler, who was a schoolboy during the days of the Hungarian Commune, recalls it as a hundred day spring, when the whole town seemed to have been turned upside down, when new teachers spoke in new voices, addressing students as citizens of strange new world, when colourful, futuristic posters transformed the streets into art galleries, when everyone was eating vanilla ice cream and when people on the streets, who didn't expect it to last, kept saying with surprise "it goes on and on".

However, it did not last. By August it was over. The fragile republic, weakened by internal dissension, was overcome by czech and romanian armies and Admiral Horthy's "white terror" prevailed. Those communists who survived went into exile.

Another episode that ended in tragedy took place in Bavaria. There too a soviet republic was declared that spring, though it had from the beginning something of a farcical quality about it. In the confusion following the assassination of Kurt Eisner, head of government, the Munich Workers and Soldiers Council took power in April, against the opposition of the communists. However, when the government, dominated by anarchist-inclined intellectuals, came under attack, the communists came to its defence and subsequently took the helm.

On the 1st of May, however, Munich was encircled by the army and the soviet fell.  A brutal massacre followed and the leaders, including anarchist Gustav Landauer and the communist Eugene Levine, were killed. The Vienna Circle philosopher, Otto Neurath, who had taken up a position as head of the central planning office under the social democrats and had stayed on during the period of the soviet, was arrested and sentenced to prison, the Austrian government negotiated an exchange that brought him back to Vienna. Munich subsequently became a centre of reactionary opposition to Weimar republicanism.

In June, an attempted communist uprising in Vienna was crushed and it hecame clear that the first wave of the postwar revolutionary tide was beginning to ebb.  The mood was one of retreat.  The stresses and strains accompanying it brought crisis to the Comintern in its first uncertain months. Hungarian emigres in Vienna, engaging in a post mortem on the defeat of the commune, embarked on a bitter factional dispute that was to continue through the 1920s.

Most serious, however, were clashes within the German Communist Party (KPD) that resulted in a formal split at their 2nd congress in Heidelberg in October 1919.  After the murder of so many of its leaders within the first few months of its foundation: Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi emerged as party leader.  Levi not only pursued a policy of participation in elections and in the existing trade unions, but ensured the expulsion of all who opposed this policy, resulting in the formation of the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD).

During its first chaotic and unsettled year of existence, the Comintern elicited support from the most varied quarters.  Adherents of the most diverse revolutionist tendencies pledged their support, from such syndicalist and quasi-syndicalist groups as the american "wobblies" (the Industrial Workers of the World) to such sophisticated marxists as those who formed the communist parties in Poland and Germany.  In some countries sections of the Comintern consisted of small sectarian groups, such as the Dutch Communist Party, formed for the purpose, while in others, already existing mass parties, such as the Norwegian Labour Party and the Italian Socialist Party, came over to the Comintern.  At this time, Comintern leaders embraced the variety and diversity and preferred to keep their options open, negotiating in Germany, not only with the KPD, but with the KAPD and the USPD* as well.

However, by the time the 2nd world congress took place in July 1920, it had been decided to put the house in somewhat better order.  In preparation, Lenin wrote Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder and the west european bureau of the Comintern centered in Amsterdam and controlled by the dutch leftists was dissolved. Things were now to be tightened up, both organisationally and ideologically.

The 3rd international, in a radical departure from the precedents set by both the 1st and 2nd internationals, was no longer to be a series of national parties, but a single communist party with branches in different countries.  A party line would be laid down for all and would be enforced by iron discipline according to the principles of democratic centralism.  Between congresses, the highest authority was to be the executive committee, which would have powers parallel to and superseding the powers of the central committees of the individual parties.  It was to be a directive centre of a world revolution, a far cry from the "mailbox" concept that had shaped the secretariat of the 2nd international.

The 2nd world congress adopted a list of 21 conditions to determine the admission of parties to the Comintern. Henceforth, each party was required to carry out systematic propaganda, including within the army and in the countryside, in favour of proletarian revolution; to remove reformists and centrists from all positions in the working class movement and to replace them by communists; to combine legal and illegal methods of work; to supervise the activities of its members in parliament; to denounce pacifism; to support colonial liberation movements; to secure the adherence of all sections of the labour movement to the Red Trade Union International as opposed to the "Yellow" Amsterdam Trade Union International; to organise on the basis of democratic centralism and to conduct periodical purges of its membership; to support all existing soviet republics by all possible means; to revise its party programme in accordance with the policies of the International; to accept all decisions of the Comintern as binding; to take the name of "Communist Party"; and to expel all members who voted against acceptance of the 21 conditions at a congress called for the purpose.²

From the beginning, there had been uneasiness about this situation, particularly among the KPD leadership, and Rosa Luxemburg had early warned against the potential subjection of the international movement to the "russian model."  However, it seemed possible that this danger would be circumvented. The russians at this time fully expected that their pre-eminence would be superseded as soon as a proletarian revolution triumphed in an advanced industrialised society. Indeed, bolshevik leaders were inclined to state the matter quite sharply, pointing to their own backwardness and to the necessity of a more advanced country taking the lead.

However, as E.H. Carr has pointed out, it was only when the revolution obstinately stood still at the russian frontier and the bright hopes of the summer of 1920 faded, that the gap in authority between those who had succeeded in making their revolution and those who had failed widened, leaving the Comintern shaped in a russian mould and ensuring russian dominance.⁴

The congress was followed by bitter debates within the parties on acceptance of the 21 conditions and the period between the 2nd and 3rd congresses saw a series of splits and amalgamations based on the new policies. The lines were drawn and redrawn in the turmoil of sorting out who stood where in the new situation that had emerged.

Following extremely acrimonious proceedings at an extraordinary congress of the USPD in Halle in October 1920, the majority voted to join the Comintern. This majority then amalgamated in December 1920 with the KPD, giving Germany a mass communist party. The minority went back to the SPD. Also in December 1920, the French Socialist Party met in Tours and split, as did the Italian Socialist Party when they met in Leghorn in January 1921.  In France, it was the majority that became the Communist Party, whereas in Italy it was the minority, resulting in the secession of the mass Italian Socialist Party from the Comintern. The czechoslovak party also split, whereas the bulgarian, norwegian, dutch, hungarian and austrian ones accepted the 21 conditions without splitting.

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), formed in London of diverse groups that came together in August 1920, while the 2nd congress was still in session, held another congress in Leeds in January 1921, at which it accepted the 21 conditions and adhered to the Comintern. In March 1921 the Independent Labour Party rejected the conditions of adherence to the Comintern, although the minority, which argued in favour, resigned to join the new CPGB.

The Socialist Party of Ireland became the Communist Party of Ireland and duly expelled its few members not in favour of accepting the conditions.

At the same time, things began to flare up again in Germany.  After police moved in to disarm the Mansfeld strikers in central Germany, the KPD proclaimed open armed insurrection against the government and announced a general strike.  It ended in fiasco, however, as communist strikers fought not only the police, but the mass of workers who did not see their way clear to supporting the strike. The party lost many members and much support.  The failure of the "March action" resulted in another wave of recriminations and Paul Levi, although vindicated in his criticism of the "March action," was expelled from the party for having published his criticism.

Black clouds were darkening the revolutionary horizon everywhere.  In Italy, faced with an upsurge of working class militancy expressed in a wave of strikes, italian industrialists turned to Mussolini, pushing forward the realisation of his fascist fantasies. The increasing unity on the right was in contrast to the growing disunity of the italian left, split not only between communists and socialists, but between rival factions within both the communist and socialist camps.

Such developments had their effect in the change of mood reflected at the 3rd world congress of the Comintern in June and July 1921 in Moscow. The prevailing atmosphere, which contrasted sharply with the heady optimism and militancy of the year before, was one of moderation and restraint.  The congress signalled a tactical retreat on various fronts.

As the Soviet Union shifted its policy from war communism to the new economic policy, so did the Comintern move from its policy of revolutionary offensive to the tactics of the united front.  Fire was now directed not against social democracy but against ultra-leftism. The idea was to seek limited co-operation with the 2nd and 2nd & a half internationals, the Amsterdam International, and anarcho-syndicalist organisations. The emphasis was to be on winning over their rank and file and achieving "unity from below." Thus the day of "front organizations" and "fellow travellers" arrived, masterminded in time by the german communist Willi Munzenberg, of whom it was said that he "used kings as pawns and made pawns feel like kings."⁵

During these years, the Comintern was often preoccupied with the affairs of the KPD, as Germany was seen as the nerve centre for future prospects of world revolution.  The left wing, headed by Arkadi Maslow, Ruth Fischer, and Ernst Thaelmann, believed that Germany was still ripe for imminent proletarian revolution and wished to set the date for the final insurrection, whereas the right wing, led by Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer, were more inclined to caution and opposed to insurrectionist tactics.  In 1923, the fragile Weimar Republic was again in crisis. Some said it was a republic without republicans. Karl von Ossietzky of the anti-militarist review Die Weltbuhne said the situation was just the reverse: the republicans were without a republic.6

In any case, liberalism was constantly losing ground.  The ranks of the KPD were beginning to swell again, but so were the forces of the right, including the rising nazi movement.  More and more the failure of the successive governments of the Weimar Republic seemed to force a choice between looking eastwards to the new revolutionary order in Russia or backwards to a mythical german past.

In October 1923 the KPD, under Comintern direction, undertook a complex strategy for taking power, centered in Saxony and Thuringia.  Communists, including Brandler in Saxony and Korsch in Thuringia, entered coalition government.  The insurrection that was scheduled to follow was a complete fiasco.  Again, party membership dropped and the party was declared illegal.  Again, bitter quarrelling attended the defeat and Brandler and Radek, outspoken opponents of insurrectionism, were made scapegoats for the defeat of the insurrection.  Ironically, the leadership of the party passed to the leftist advocates of insurrection.

The parties of the Comintern were at this time torn by factional struggles, centered for the most part on political debates regarding strategies to be employed in achieving power.  These co-incided with and were exacerbated by the intense factional struggle going on within the russian party, which was then in the process of moving against Trotsky.  On top of this, various parties were in open conflict with the leadership of the Comintern, and directives condemning the "right wing" leadership of the polish patty, the "right deviations" of the british party, and the "ultra-leftism" of the italian party constantly emanated from Moscow.

Philosophy and the Communists: minimalism versus maximalism

During this period, there was, on the whole, a great diversity of opinion on questions of what was to be done by the communist parties and of what it meant to be a communist.*

* In a a marvelous passage in his Memoirs of a Revolutionary (London, 1963, p.177), Victor Serge conveys a vivid impression of the atmosphere in the Comintern in those days and of what its activists, particularly in central Europe, felt about what it meant to be a communist:
 

* An early Comintern statement on the philosophical dimension of communism came from the executive committee (ECCI) in 1923:
 

The agitrop department of the Comintern saw fit to chastise the british party in 1925 for its "aversion to theory" and in 1929 for its omission of "the marxist world conception" from its training manual.  On the other hand, there was keen interest in the philosophical foundations of marxism in workers' educational circles in which the party was fully involved.  The culture of these working class autodidacts was highly systematic and speculative, and militantly atheist, very much in the tradition of the popular materialism of the 19th century secularist movement.*** It was, however, highly derivative.  It was not until the 1930s that Britain became a centre for original philosophical thinking within the marxist tradition.⁹

*Another factor was the tendency to "workerism" in the labour movement, prone to periodic outbursts of anti-intellectualism.  The pages of  Sunday Worker in 1928 and 1929, for example, turn up regular letters from "Clydeside Rivetter" typifying this kind of bullying proletarian chauvinism.  Fortunately, there has always been a countervailing tendency in the movement, such being displayed by the correspondent who protested that this sort of hectoring workerism amounted to "acquiescence in the cultural disinheritance which the bourgeoisie had imposed on the working class." (7 April, 1929, p.4.  I am indebted to Jonathan Ree for this reference.)

**Russell resolutely refused to concede that there was any necessary connection between philosophy and politics, insisting that "the mixture damages both philosophy and politics".  In his 1920 book, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, he argued that there was no logical connection between philosophical materialism and historical materialism.

***This  culture tended to a maximalist approach and had affinities with the impossibilist trend in France and the proletkult movement in Russia.

 
 In the 1920s, one needed to look further to the east for the vital centers of philosophical debate. Central Europe was bursting with it. The intellectual culture of the Weimar Republic was sophisticated and fiery.  Amid the speeches and the street fighting that created an atmosphere of "chaos mingling with apocalypse," the cafes of Berlin vibrated with a spirit of intense intellectuality. Left-wing ideas, avant-garde art forms, and contending philosophical theories were discussed with excitement and with life-or-death earnestness.