5 - The rejection of the defence of the USSR: the break with Trotskyism

The outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR plunged Sneevliet’s movement into a profound disarray. This disarray was further accentuated by the preventative arrest by the German police of militants or ex-members of the RSAP and of the NAS, on the night of 24th and 25th June. Their underground work remained undiscovered, and the clandestine network was hardly touched.

Greater still was the disorientation provoked by the attack of the German army on June 22nd, something which Sneevliet had not expected, since the title of his article in the previous issue of  Spartacus was ‘Stalin, toady of the Germans’. The origin of this disarray was more profound. Despite the slogan against ‘National Bolshevism’, the MLL Front had no theoretical position on the USSR. In its press it implicitly took up Trotskyist concepts of ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘parasitic caste’ which it used to define the Russian state. It had the choice between taking up Trotsky’s analysis of the Russian state and calling for the defence of the ‘Workers’ State’, or of rejecting it and calling for the struggle against both imperialisms.

Little by little the MLL Front took position against the defence of the USSR. Its Manifesto of 23rd June was still half defending the USSR in the war: “... the Russian proletariat must not only preserve what is left of the revolution; it must also, at the international level, transform the “war of devastating peoples” into civil war”.69

Behind this position lay the influence of Dolleman and Perthus.

In a second position Sneevliet made his own views felt, taking up the arguments of Rosa Luxemburg on the possibility of a revolutionary defensive war: “Hitlerism and Stalinism dig their own graves in this war. The Russian workers must resist the fascist invasion, but they can only turn the war into a war for revolutionary defence if they destroy the Stalinist regime”.70

Finally, at the end of July, the leap was made. The MLL Front rejected all defence of the USSR. The war in Russia had shifted the imperialist front. The thesis of the Central Committee published in Spartacus took a clear position on the nature of the USSR. Russian society had taken a state capitalist character; the power of the workers had been liquidated. A totalitarian state had been born with a bureaucratic caste at its head; the USSR was a plaything of the big imperialist powers. The conclusion was an unambiguous appeal to internationalism:

 

The Third Front sees no reason to change its position with the new phase of imperialist war. It does not take sides with either of the two fronts in the imperialist war. It remains independent in the definition of its conduct: to conform to its own class aim and undertake its own struggle.

The Germano-Russian war is a subdivision of the second imperialist war.71

 

Of the nine members of the Central Committee, two voted against: Dolleman and Van’t Hart (Max Perthus), supporters of the Trotskyist position of ‘unconditional defence’ of the USSR. The arrest of Perthus on 15th August reduced the number of partisans of this position in the leadership. Dolleman based himself on the youth review72 Het Kompass which published the minority position; the issue was not distributed. In order to avoid a split that now appeared inevitable, on 15th October 1941 Sneevliet - supported by Stan Poppe and Menist - prohibited discussion73 on the defence of the USSR. This ban was lifted at the end of the year. The majority around Sneevliet was strengthened by the support of Vereeken’s ‘Against the current’ (Contre le Courant) group in Belgium, with whom a common manifesto against the war had been drawn up in December74.

Against the Trotskyist current of Dolleman, a partisan of the defence of the USSR ‘arms in hand’,75 the council communist current, around Stan Poppe, asserted itself more and more. Supported by Sneevliet, the latter undertook to settle accounts with Trotskyist ideology. In an article he denounced Trotsky’s positions as “dubious and unreal”. Socialism was not the violence of the Stalinist state, “state socialism”, but the power of the workers’ councils. The USSR was imperialist.76

In another article, Poppe identified with the communist positions of Gorter, citing his book Open letter to comrade Lenin. He took up the book’s principal theses:

- in Western Europe the role of the masses would be greater than the role of the leaders;

- the union organisations had to be replaced by the factory organisations;

- parliamentarism would have to be rejected and fought against.77

This evolution was shown in practice through an appeal by the MLL Front to desert the unions and form factory committees. The break with the old union policy was a break with the old policies of the RSAP. After the ‘normalisation’ of the NVV socialist union by the German authorities in July 1940, the MLL Front had incited its members to work inside it. The NVV had become a cover for Mussert’s NSB. The propaganda in July 1941 in favour of leaving the union movement concluded a whole process of evolution. Instead of a union, the non-permanent form of ‘struggle committees’ in the factories was propagandised.

The sole position of the IIIrd International since the Second Congress which remained intact was that of support for national liberation struggles. The influence of Sneevliet on this point - he had been a militant in Indonesia and China - remained preponderant. However, while an appeal was launched in the Front’s press for the separation of Indonesia and Holland, it had nothing to do with the anti-imperialism which led to support for the local nationalist leadership. The MLL Front defended the positions of the 2nd Congress of the Communist International and not those of the Baku Congress. It proclaimed that the struggle of national liberation was only possible inasmuch as it combined with the socialist revolution in the developed capitalist world.

Notes

69. ‘Aan de nederlandse arebeiders, boeren en intellectuelen’ (‘To the workers, peasants and intellectuals of Holland’), supplement to Spartacus no.10.

70. ‘Brieven aan een Jeugdvriend’, no. 14, July 1941.

71. Spartacus, no.12, beginning of August, 1941.

72. Subsequently, the youth movement of the MLL Front was dissolved. The young militants were individually integrated into the Front.

73. Wim Bot, op. cit., p. 62-63. After the vote, Dolleman sent a letter of resignation to the Central Committee, protesting against the rejection of the “freedom of democratic discussion”.

74. The ‘Manifesto’ appeared in Tegen den stroom of Jan. 2, 1941, organ of the Vereeken group. Vereeken secretly moved to Amsterdam where he drew up, with Sneevliet, the appeal “to the workers of every country”. It called for the transformation of all the wars into a civil war. It concluded with a call for “the new international of the proletariat” and to “mass action under the leadership of the proletarian strike committees”. For a year, on the word of a young Belgian Trotskyist, Sneevliet thought that Vereeken defended British imperialism. Through contacts and an exchange of letters, he was convinced of the contrary. The international contacts of the MLL Front went through the Vereeken group, which was closely linked to the International Communist Committee (ICC) of Frank and Molinier.

75. Cf. Wim Bot, op. cit., p. 668-70.

76. ‘Verdediging van de Sovjet-Unie?’ (Defence of the Soviet Union?), in Tijdsproblemen, no.2, February 1942.

77. Cf. Wim Bot, Op. cit., p.70. Poppe showed that the struggle in the factories could only be political and transform itself into a struggle for power: “In this period we are no longer talking about committees, but directly of councils”.