Memoirs of a revolutionary (A. Stinas, Greece): Nationalism and antifascism
The
extracts we're publishing from the book by A Stinas, a revolutionary
communist from Greece (1), are an attack on the antifascist Resistance
during the Second World War. They thus contain a pitiless denunciation
of the fusion of three mystifications which are particularly murderous
for the proletariat: the 'defence of the USSR', nationalism and
'democratic antifascism'.
The explosion of nationalisms in what
used to be the USSR and its empire in eastern Europe, like the
development of huge 'antifascist' ideological campaigns, in the
countries of western Europe in particular, make these extracts, written
at the end of the 40s, as relevant as ever (2).
Today it is
becoming harder and harder for the established order to justify its
rule. The disaster that its laws have led to prevent it. But faced with
the only force capable of overthrowing it and building another kind of
society, faced with the proletariat, the ruling class still has at its
disposal ideological weapons that can divide its enemy and keep it
subjected to national factions of capital. Today nationalism and
'anti-fascism' are at the forefront of the bourgeoisie's
counterrevolutionary arsenal.
A. Stinas takes up the marxist
analysis of Rosa Luxemburg on the national question, recalling that
once capitalism reaches its imperialist phase, "... the nation has
accomplished its historic mission. Wars of national liberation arid
bourgeois democratic revolutions are henceforth void of meaning". On
this basis he denounces and destroys the arguments of all those who
called for participation in the 'antifascist Resistance' during the
second world war, on the pretext that its 'popular' and 'antifascist'
dynamic could lead to the revolution.
Stinas and the UCI (Union
Communiste Internationaliste) were part of that handful of
revolutionaries who, during the second world war, were able to swim
against the tide of all the nationalisms, refusing to support
'democracy' against fascism, to abandon internationalism in the name of
the defence of the USSR'(3).
Since they are almost unknown, even
in the revolutionary milieu, partly because their work only existed in
the Greek language, it is worth giving some elements on their history.
Stinas
belonged to that generation of communists who went through the great
international revolutionary wave which put an end to the First World
War. All his life he remained faithful to the great hopes raised by Red
October in 1917 and by the German revolution of 1919. A member of the
Greek Communist Party (in a period in which the Communist Parties had
not yet passed into the bourgeois camp) until his expulsion in 1931, he
was then a member of the Leninist Opposition, which published the
weekly 'Drapeau du Communisme' and which referred to Trotsky, the
international symbol of resistance to Stalinism.
In 1933,
Hindenburg gave power to Hitler in Germany. Fascism became the official
regime there. Stinas argued that he victory of fascism signalled the
death of the Communist International, just as 4 August 1914 did for the
Second International, and that its sections were definitively and
irretrievably lost to the working class. Having begun as organs of the
proletarian struggle, they had now become part of the class enemy. The
duty of revolutionaries all over the world was thus to form new
revolutionary parties, outside and against the International.
A
sharp debate provoked a crisis in the Trotskyist organisation, and
Stinas left it, after being in a minority. In 1935 he joined an
organisation, Le Bolshevik, which had detached itself from
archeomarxism and which now became a new organisation calling itself
the Union Communiste Internationaliste, At that time the UCI was the
only recognised section in Greece of Trotsky's Internationalist
Communist League (ICL); the Fourth International wasn't created until
1938.
From 1937 on, the UCI rejected a fundamental slogan of the
Fourth International: the 'defence of the USSR'. Stinas and his
comrades didn't reach this position through a debate on the social
nature of the USSR, but through a critical examination of the policies
and slogans to be adopted in the face of an imminent world war. The UCI
aimed to eliminate from its programme any aspect which could allow the
infiltration of social patriotism, under the cover of the defence of
the USSR.
During the Second World War, Stinas, as an
intransigent internationalist, remained loyal to the principles of
revolutionary marxism, such as Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg had formulated
and practically applied during the first world war.
Since 1934
the UCI had been the only section of the Trotskyist current in Greece.
During all the years of war and occupation, isolated from other
countries, this group was convinced that the Trotskyists were fighting
along the same lines, for the same ideas, and against the stream.
The
first news they got about the real positions of the Trotskyist
International left Stinas and his comrades open-mouthed. Reading the
French pamphlet 'Les trotskystes dans la lutte contre les nazis'
provided proof that the Trotskyists had fought against the Nazis like
all the other good patriots. They then learned about the shameful
attitude of Cannon and the Socialist Workers Party in the USA.
In
the war, i.e. in conditions which put the organisations of the working
class to the test, the Fourth International had crumbled to dust. Its
sections, some openly through 'the defence of the fatherland', others
under the cover of the 'defence of the USSR', had passed to the service
of their respective bourgeoisies and had in their own way contributed
to the massacre.
In autumn 1947, the UCI broke all political and
organisational links with the Fourth International. In the years that
followed, the worst period of counter-revolution at the political
level, when revolutionary groups were reduced to tiny minorities and
when most of those who remained faithful to the basic principles of
proletarian internationalism and the October revolution were completely
isolated, Stinas became the main representative in Greece of the
Socialisme ou Barbarie current. This current, which never managed to
clarify the completely capitalist nature of the social relations in the
USSR, developed the theory of a kind of third system of exploitation,
based on a new division between 'order-givers' and 'order-takers'. It
moved further and further away from marxism and finally fell apart in
the 1960s. At the end of his life, Stinas didn't really have any
organised political activity. He moved close to the anarchists and died
in 1987.
Marxism and the nation
The nation is
the product of history, like the tribe, the family, and the city. It
has a necessary historic role and must disappear once the latter has
been fulfilled. The class which bears this form of social organisation
is the bourgeoisie. The national state merges with the state of the
bourgeoisie, and historically, the progressive work of the nation and
of capitalism concur: to create, with the development of the productive
forces, the material conditions for socialism.
This progressive
work comes to an end with the epoch of imperialism, and the great
imperialist powers with their antagonisms and their wars. The nation
has accomplished its historic mission. Wars of national liberation and
bourgeois-democratic revolutions are henceforth void of meaning. The
proletarian revolution is now on the agenda. It neither engenders nor
maintains but abolishes nations and frontiers and unifies all the
peoples of the earth into a world community.
The defence of the
nation is, in our epoch, nothing other than the defence of imperialism,
of the social system which provokes wars, which cannot live without war
and which leads humanity into chaos and barbarism. This is as true for
the great imperialist powers as for the small nations, of which the
ruling classes are, and can only be, the accomplices and associates of
the great powers.
"Socialism is today the only hope of humanity.
Above the ramparts of the capitalist world which is finally collapsing,
these words of the Communist Manifesto are burning in letters of fire:
socialism or descent into barbarism." (Rosa Luxemburg, 1918).
Socialism
is the task of the workers of the entire world, and must be constructed
on a global scale. The struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and for
the construction of socialism unites all the workers of the world.
Geography creates a division of tasks: the immediate enemy of the
workers of each country is their own ruling class. It is their sector
of the international workers' struggle to overthrow world capitalism.
If
the working masses of each country do not become conscious that they
are only a section of a world class, they will never he able to go down
the road of their social emancipation.
It is not sentimentalism
which makes the struggle for socialism in a given country an integral
part of the world socialist society, but the impossibility of socialism
in a single country. The only 'socialism' in national colours and with
a national ideology that history has given us is that of Hitler, and
the only national 'communism', that of Stalin.
The struggle
within a country against the ruling class, and solidarity with the
working masses of the entire world, such are two fundamental principles
of the movement of the popular masses in our epoch, for their economic,
political, and social liberation. That goes for 'peace' as for war. War
between peoples is fratricide. The only just war is that of the people
fraternising beyond nations and frontiers against their exploiters.
The
task of revolutionaries in times of peace as in times of war is to help
the masses become conscious of the ends and means of their movement, to
get rid of the bureaucratic political and union leadership, to take
their destiny into their own hands, and not give any confidence to any
other 'leadership' than that of the executive organs which they
themselves have elected and they can revoke at any moment. It is to
acquire the consciousness of their own political responsibility, and
firstly and above all to emancipate themselves intellectually from
national and patriotic mythology.
These are the principles of
revolutionary marxism that Rosa Luxemburg formulated and practically
applied, and which guided her policy and her action in the first world
war. These principles guide our policy and our action in the Second
World War.
The anti-fascist resistance: an appendage of imperialism
The "Resistance movement", that is, the struggle against the Germans,
under all its forms, from sabotage to the partisan war in the occupied
countries, cannot be envisaged outside of the context of imperialist
war, of which it is an integral part. Its progressive or reactionary
character can be determined neither by the participation of the masses,
nor by its anti-fascist objectives, nor by the oppression of German
imperialism, but as a function of the progressive or reactionary
character of the war.
The ELAS like the EDES (4) were the armies
which continued the war inside the country against the Germans and the
Italians. That alone strictly determines our position towards them. To
participate in the Resistance movement, whatever the slogans and
justifications, means to participate in the war.
Independently
of the feelings of the masses and the intentions of its leadership,
this movement is, owing to the conditions of the second imperialist
massacre, the organ and appendage of allied imperialism…
The
patriotism of the masses and their attitude toward war, so contrary to
their historic interests, have been very well known phenomena since the
preceding war, and Trotsky in many texts has indefatigably warned of
the danger of revolutionaries being surprised and letting themselves be
drawn along by the current. The duty of the internationalist
revolutionaries is to stand against the current and defend the historic
interests of the proletariat against the current. This phenomenon is
not only explained by the technical means utilised, propaganda, radio,
press, processions, the atmosphere of exaltation created at the
beginning of the war, but also by the spirit of the masses, which
results from their previous political evolution, the defeats of the
working class, from its discouragement, from the destruction of
confidence in its own strength and in the means of action of the class
struggle, from the dispersion of the international workers' movement,
and from the opportunist policies which have sapped its energies.
There's
no historical law fixing the point at which the masses, having first
been caught up in the war, will rediscover their own goals. It is
concrete political conditions which awaken class consciousness. The
horrible consequences of the war for the masses will undermine
patriotic enthusiasm. With the growth of discontent, their opposition
to the imperialists and to their own leaders, who are the agents of
imperialism, will unceasingly open and awaken their class
consciousness. The difficulties of the ruling class are growing. The
situation is evolving towards the rupture of internal unity, the
disintegration of the internal front and towards the revolution.
Internationalist revolutionaries contribute to the acceleration of the
rhythms of this objective process by their intransigent struggle
against all patriotic and social patriotic organisations, open or
hidden, by the consistent application of the policy of revolutionary
defeatism.
The results of the war, m the conditions of the
occupation, have had an entirely different influence on the psychology
of the masses and the relations with the bourgeoisie. Their class
consciousness has fallen into nationalist hatred, constantly reinforced
by the barbaric behaviour of the Germans. Confusion is rife, the idea
of the nation and of its destiny have been placed above social
differences. National unity has been reinforced, the masses have
submitted to their bourgeoisie, represented by the organisations of
national Resistance. The industrial proletariat, broken by the
preceding defeats, its specific weight severely reduced, has found
itself prisoner of this frightening situation for the whole duration of
the war.
If the anger and the outrage of the masses against
German imperialism in the occupied countries is 'just', that of the
German masses against allied imperialism, against the barbaric bombing
of workers' areas is equally so. But this justified anger, which is
reinforced by every means by the parties of the bourgeoisie of all
shades, is being exploited and used by the imperialists for their own
interests. The task of revolutionaries remains to stand against the
current, and to direct this anger against 'their' bourgeoisie. Only
this discontent against our own bourgeoisie can become an historic
force which will allow humanity to get rid of wars and destruction once
and for all. The moment a revolutionary in a war alludes simply to the
oppression by the enemy imperialism in his own country, he becomes a
victim of the nationalist mentality and of the social patriotic logic.
He cuts the links which unite the revolutionary workers who remain
faithful to their flag in all the different countries, in the hell that
capitalism in decomposition has plunged humanity…
The struggle
against the Nazis in the countries occupied by Germany is a trick, one
of the means allied imperialism uses to chain the masses behind its war
drive. The struggle against the Nazis is the task of the German
proletariat. It is only possible if the workers of all countries fight
against their own bourgeoisie. The workers of the occupied countries
who fought the Nazis fought for the interests of their exploiters not
for their own interests, and those who pushed them into this war were,
whatever their intentions and justifications, imperialist agents. The
call to the German soldiers to fraternise with the workers of the
occupied countries in a common struggle against the Nazis was an
artificial trick of allied imperialism. Only the example of the Greek
proletarian struggle against its 'own' bourgeoisie, which in the
conditions of the occupation, would have signified a struggle against
nationalist organisations, could have awakened the class consciousness
of the enlisted German workers, made fraternisation possible, and
stimulated the struggle of the German proletariat against Hitler.
Hypocrisy
and trickery are no less indispensable to the pursuit of the war as
tanks, airplanes, and artillery. War is not possible without the
conquest of the masses. But to conquer them, it is necessary to make
them think they are fighting for their own interests. All the slogans
and promises of liberty, prosperity, crushing fascism, socialist
reforms, the popular republic, the defence of the USSR, have this aim.
This work is above all reserved for the 'workers' parties, which
utilise their authority, their influence, their links with the working
masses, the very traditions of the workers' movement, the better to
trick the workers and cut their throats.
The illusions of the
masses in the war, without which it would be impossible, don't make it
any more progressive, and only the most hypocritical social patriots
can use this to justify it. All the promises, all the proclamations,
all the slogans of the SP or the CP in this war have only been
deceptions…
The transformation of a movement into political
combat against the capitalist regime doesn't depend on us and the
persuasive force of our ideas, but on the nature of this movement
itself.
'Accelerating and facilitating the transformation of the
movement of Resistance into a movement of struggle against capitalism'
would have been possible if this movement had been able to create, both
in class relations and in the consciousness and psychology of the
masses, the most favourable conditions for the transformation into a
general political struggle against the bourgeoisie, and thus for the
proletarian revolution.
The struggle of the working class for
its immediate economic and political demands can transform itself in
the course of its development into a general political struggle to
overthrow the bourgeoisie. But it is made possible by the very form of
this struggle: by their opposition to the bourgeoisie and its state,
and by the nature of their class demands, the masses rid themselves of
nationalist, reformist and democratic illusions and the influence of
the enemy classes; they develop their confidence, initiative, their
critical spirit, their confidence in themselves. With the extension of
the field of struggle, the masses participating in it become more
numerous, and the more profoundly the social soil is ploughed, the more
clearly the class fronts distinguish themselves, and the more the
revolutionary proletariat becomes the axis of the masses in struggle.
The importance of the revolutionary party is enormous, to accelerate
the process of coming to consciousness, to aid the workers to
assimilate their experience and to grasp the necessity for the taking
of power by the masses, for the organisation of the uprising in order
to ensure its victory. But it is the movement itself, by its nature and
its internal logic, which gives its strength to the party. It is an
objective process of which the policy of the revolutionary movement is
the conscious expression. The growth of the Resistance movement has,
equally by its very nature, exactly the inverse result: it destroys
class consciousness, reinforces illusions and nationalist hatred,
disperses and atomises the proletariat still more in the anonymous mass
of the nation, subjects it even more to its national bourgeoisie and
brings to the surface the most ferociously nationalist elements.
Today,
what remains of the Resistance movement (hate and nationalist
prejudices, the memories and traditions of this movement which was
easily used by the Stalinists and Socialists) is the most serious
obstacle to a class orientation of the masses.
If there had been
an objective possibility of the Resistance movement transforming itself
into a political struggle against capitalism, the latter would have
manifested itself without our participation. But nowhere have we seen a
proletarian tendency emerge m its ranks, even the most confused…
The
shifting of the military and occupation fronts in this country, as in
nearly the whole of Europe, by the armies of the Axis powers, doesn't
change the character of the war nor give rise to an authentic national
question; it does not modify our strategic objective nor our
fundamental tasks. The tasks of the revolutionary party in these
conditions is to develop its struggle against the nationalist
organisations, to protect the working class from anti-German hate and
nationalist poison.
Internationalist revolutionaries participate
in the struggles of the masses for their immediate economic and
political demands, attempting to give them a clear class orientation
and opposing with all their strength the nationalist exploitation of
these struggles. Instead of blaming the Italians and the Germans, they
explain why the war broke out - a war whose barbarism is the inevitable
consequence of its nature. They denounce with courage the crimes of
their own imperialist camp and their bourgeoisie, represented by the
different nationalist organisations, calling the masses to fraternise
with Italian and German soldiers for the common struggle for socialism.
The proletarian party condemns all patriotic struggles, however massive
and whatever their form, and openly calls the masses to abstain from
them.
Revolutionary defeatism, in the conditions of the
occupation, will encounter frightening and unprecedented obstacles. But
the difficulties cannot change our tasks. On the contrary, the stronger
the tide, the more vigorous must be the attachment of the revolutionary
movement to its principles, the more it must intransigently swim
against the tide. Only this policy will make it capable of expressing
the sentiments of the revolutionary masses tomorrow and of putting
itself at the forefront of their struggles. The policy of submission to
the tide, that is the policy of reinforcing the Resistance movement,
can only add a supplementary obstacle to the workers' attempts to find
a class orientation. It can only destroy the party.
Revolutionary
defeatism, the true internationalist policy against the war and the
Resistance movement, shows today, and will show even more in the
revolutionary events to come, all its strength and all its value.