The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 13, 1924, Page 7

(Continued from previous issue) The many mistakes made by the various Sections of the Comintern in connection with this question are due to the fact that many of our comrades are not yet rid of social democratic ideology. These mistakes can be said to be of four fundamental types, all of which are survivals of the attitude of the Second International on the national question. The first type of these mistakes is“personified in the attitude of some Yugo-Slavian com- rades, especially of comrades Sima Markovitch and Miliokovitch who are | now in prison. I have already given you fg;ures of the national composi- tion of the Yugo-Slavian Communist Party. And yet, according to the op- inions of comrades Markovitch and Miliokovitch the national question in Serbia is a purely bourgeois inven- tion. According to comrade Marko- vitch the question as to whether Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes are three nations or one, is only a purely theo- retical question which should not in- fluence the -practical policy of the party. Comrade Milikovitch goes even further than that. He aserts that in Yugo-Slavia there are no na- tions, but only linguistic differenta- tions. In his pamphlet “National Question in the Light of Marxism” and in a number of articles published in the organ of the Yugo-Slavian Com- munist Parties, “Radnik,” Comrade Markovitch brings forward, as a prac- tical slogan for the Communist Party, the fight for the revision of the con- stitution, that is to say, he places the whole question of national self-deter- mination on a constitutional basis. Very characteristic is Comrade Mark- ovitch’s attitude towards the Mace- donian question. You know that Macedonia plays at present, after its partition between Serbs, Greeks and Bulgarians, the very same role in the Balkans that the Balkans play in Eu- rope. A fierce fight is being waged around Macedonia, and especially around the question of an outlet into the Aegean Sea and the fight for the port of Salonica between the smal! robbers in the Balkans. At the same time, there is in Macedonia a strong national movement for the re-estab- lishment of an independent state. What is Comrade Markovitch’s atti- tuude to this national movement? In his articles he expresses the opinion that the Macedonian question is not by any means a Balkan but a Europ- ean problem, which cannot therefore be finally solved before a victory of the Bwuropean proletariat over the bourgeoisie has been achieved. Ifthe question is put in this way, what will be the result? Only a passive atti- tude of the Communist Party to one of the most burning questions which are agitating the various Balkan nation- alities at present. A careful study of the situation will show you that the origin of this kind of view is to be sought in the Second international. Markoviteh holds the view that the proletariat must accept the bourgeois state such as it has been created by @ series of wars and violations. We find signs of this theory in the inter- pretation of the national question by the “famous” Austrian school of thot. (Otto Bauer and Renner). In connec- tion with the national question this Austrian school of thot insisted on the preservation of the frontiers of the -former Austrian Empire at all cost. Therefore, the entire national ques- tion resolved itself for this school of thot in a country with as many na- tionalities as the former Austro-Hun- ' gary, into a fight for the revision of the constitution. Comrades, we know that our Russian school of thot on the national question declared war to the knife on the Austrian school of thot on that question. And nevertheless, after our polemics with Otto Bauer and after the Communist International has been in existence five years, we witness a revival of the views of this Austrian school among our Yugo- Slavian comrades, Similar mistakes are made by our Greek comrades in connection with the Macedonian ques- tion. A few months ago, when an armed conflict seemed imminent in the Balkans, the Executive Committeé of the Balkan Federation issued a manifesto which called upon the pro- letariat of the Balkan countries to stand up for Macedonian independ- ence. Tle Greek Communist Party not only did not publish this mani- festo, but even sent a reasoned pro- test against the issue of such a docu- ment by the Executive Committee of the Balkan Federation, Where, I ask you, should we search for the canse of such a state of mind? Undoubtedly in the survivals of the views whieh at that time were ener- getically expounded by the Austrian school. The second type of mistake is bound up with certain traces of social imper- ialism. As the Austrian school in the course of the European war stood for the recognition of the integrity of Nations and Colonies - REPORT TO THE FIFTH CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL imperialism? You, French comrades, have 800,000 native workers in France. I ask you, what have you done to or- ganize these workers, to prepare revo- lutionary agitators for the colonies from among their ranks? In your army there are 250,000 black soldiers. Do you think that you will be able to make a social revolution if these 250,000 are on the other side of the barricades? Will your working class be able to win a single strike if the bourgeoisie have at their disposal these black reserve troops which they can incite at any minute against your heroic proletariat? Have you carried on any auti-militaristic propaganda among these black troops? (From the French section: Yes. Yes. Yes.) No. No I do not know of a single serious documentary proof of it. I €o know that we must wage a vigor- ous fight against this attitude in the party. I will cite a certain fact which on the surface may seem to be quite unimpertant, but which is extraordi- narily indicative of the psychology of Colonial Slaves in India in the Service of British Imperialism. the Austrian boundaries, so the Ger- man social-imperialistic school of Cuno and Pepcha and the rest started from the conception of a state in which the productive forces had out- grown the limits of the country. This sckool approaches the position of the obscure Dutch Secial colonizer. Van- Kolya, who at one of the International Congresses of the Second Interna- tional recommended that each. social- ist party should formulate its own colonial policy. However distressing it may be to admit it, we find that this viewpoint even finds reflection in the political conclusions of certain individual party members. About a year ago the Comintern addressed an appeal to the colonial slaves, calling on them to revolt against their subjuga- tes, When this appeal reached one of the Communist sections of the Frenek Communist Party in Algiers, Sidi Rel-Abes, that section passed a resolution coademming such appeals of the Comintern to peoples of an- other race exploited by French im- perialism. In its declaration this section ex- pressed great agitation over the fact that at the very moment when the noble French nation was bringing civilization to the colonies, the organ- ization of the international working class should appear, calling on the colonial people to answer the benevo- lent efforts of the French colonizers witb black ingratitude. (Laughter.) I ask the French comrades whether these possibly excellent Frenchmen, but very indifferent Communists have been excluded from the party. I take the liberty of inquiring further of those comrades the whereabouts of those documents in which the French Communist Party loudly proclaimed the slogan of the separation of the colonies. (Sellier interrupts: “In the program of the Party.”) Where are your declarations supporting the lib- eration of the colonies from French our parties. During the Lyons Con- gress the Comintern addressed an ap- peal to the French workers and the colonial peoples. The editors of the Central organ of the party, “Huma- nite,” in publishing the appeal delib- erately cut out from the text the words “to the colonial peoples.” Is it possible fof a party having an at- titude like this to carry on propa- ganda among the “natives”? I heart- ily wish that in this question at least the French Party would return to the traditions of Jaures. We differ greatly from the dead Jeader of the French Socialist Party in both theory aud practice. Jaures was a pacifist; lhe personified all the genius and all the weakness of a whole epoch in the development of the labor movement. Bat anyone who remembers those years which preceded the war knows that Jaures always expressed himself firmly and decisively against the co- lonial adventures undertaken by the Fremch government. You remember what a courageous campaign Jaures condascted at the time of the Moroc- can adventure which threatened to bathe all Europe in blood. I will cite one more fact from recent events. was there not a single the seven candidates al- to the colonies? Why could you only representatives of the ruling race who have stirred up general in- dignation against themselves, to act as candidates for the colonies? Still greater reproach is due to our Engltvh comrades for their passivity in the matter of colonial propaganda. The British comrades represent a pro- letariat mere infected with colonial wrejudices than all others in the Comintern. Marx once wrote on the understood very well that the Britisht * By P. MANUILSKY proletariat would never succeed in destroying the powerful capitalist or- ganism of the British Empire without the support of those peoples sup- pressed by the English Lords. These words. were uttered many years ago when the British Empire did not yet represent so great a colonial power in the world, occupying one-third of the earth’s surface. Do our English comrades think that the revolutionary process begins with the English pro- letariat liberating itself, and then in the capacity of a Messiah, carrying deliverance to the colonial peoples? We do not think so, In none of the documents on the relations of the British Communist Party to the colonies which have been brot to us for perusal have we found a single declaration in which our Brit- ish comrades have clearly and unmis- takably demanded the separation of the colonies from the British Empire. Show us the documents in which you have defended Ireland’s right to inde- pendence, And yet there are con- stant opportunities for declarations of this kind. Since the labor govern- ment of MacDonald has been in power you have not taken advantage of a single opportunity to bring this question before the proletariat of your country. Under the labor gov- ernment the oppressive. burden of British imperialism weighs down the colonies, as it did before. Lord Read- ing, the celebrated hangman of Brit- ish India, the same viceroy under whom the famous trials were con- ducted against even such moderate revolutionists as Ghandi, the Broth- ers Ali, and others, remains intact in his post. MacDonald’s government tas not taken the trouble even to re- place the 200,000 bureaucrats who are ruling over the population of British India. Where is your fighting spirit, English comrades? Where is your readiness to carry a decisive struggle for freedom into the most far-flung corners of India? The Russian comrades are grateful to. you for launching the slogan “Hands Off Soviet Russia!” at the time of the armed intervention of Russia. But the entire International would rejoice even more if you were now to launch another no less cour- ageous call: “Hands Off the Colo- nies.” 3. To the third class of mistake be- long those connected with the theory of Rosa Luxemburg. Rosa Luxem- burg’s viewpoint might be character- ized as the theory of national nihilism. Rosa Luxemburg based her theory on the assumption that in the imper- ialist epoch every national move- ment is inevitably doomed to be used by the imperialist powers in their own interests. Therefore Rosa Luxemburg believed that the proletarian party should eradicate from its program the clause relating to the self-deter- mination of peoples. Just as Cuno’s theory of government represented the latest phase in the development of imperialism, so Rosa Luxemburg’s theory represented the childhood — stage of the labor movement when the question of the seizure of power seemed a far off problem to the work- ing class. It was only the Leninist Bolshevist school which put forward the question of the seizure of power as a question of the present day, and which was able to connect this problem with the interests of those millions who repre- sent the intermediate stage in the so- cial mechanism and on whose_ be- havior depends, in the last analysis, the victory of the proletarian revolu- tion. We have only to examine some of the resolutions on tactics of our Buropean comrades to realize that we are still not quite free from the infiu- ence of Rosa Luxemburg’s views. I have already cited the resolution of the Yugo-Slavian comrades who sub- ordinate the self-determination of peoples to the victory of the prole- tariat in the Balkans and thruout Eu- rope. A still clearer reflection of (Continued on Page 6)