A comparison with the Stalinists’ approach in the period of the Hitler-Stalin Pact 1939-41

 

By Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 3 October 2024, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

 

The question of Russia’s class character – is it imperialist or not – is a key issue for Marxists today. It is crucial not only to understand the dynamics of the world situation but also in order to advocate the correct tactics in the conflicts and wars in which this power is involved.

 

The RCIT has argued since many years that Russia has become an imperialist power, albeit one with peculiar features. [1] In contrast, many so-called Marxists either deny Russia’s imperialist character or claim that it would be a “lesser-evil” power. An advocate of the latter theory is the “International Marxist Tendency” (recently renamed into “Revolutionary Communist International”) and its long-time leader Alan Woods.

 

At his point, we do not intend to repeat our critique of the IMT/RCI on this issue which we elaborated already in several articles. ^[2] We shall rather discuss an interesting analogy between the IMT/RCI’s approach to Russian imperialism and the approach of the Stalinists to German imperialism in the period of the Hitler-Stalin Pact 1939-41.

 

As we did show in our critique, the IMT/RCI formally accept the thesis that Russia is an imperialist power. However, in their world perspectives documents or in key programmatic statements they usually don’t mention Russian imperialism at all and, if they do so, they direct their fire nearly exclusively against Western imperialism.

 

For example, they recently launched a “campaign to fight militarism and imperialism”. However, both the IMT/RCI’s key statement for this campaign as well as Alan Woods’ explanatory essay only denounce U.S., British and Western imperialism but don’t mention a single time the very fact that Russia is also an imperialist power! All their slogans are exclusively directed against the Western imperialists but don’t mention their Eastern rivals. [3]

 

Behind this is the IMT/RCI’s theory of “lesser-evil” imperialism. Yes, Russia is imperialist, but it is not such a “bad” imperialist like the Western powers and hence, communists should focus to fight against U.S. imperialism and its allies but not so much against Russia.

 

Theoretically, Woods and his comrades try to justify such an approach by calling the U.S. repeatedly as “the most counterrevolutionary force on the planet”. Consequently, even if Russia might be an imperialist power, it would be “a less counterrevolutionary force”. Such a revisionist approach serves as justification for the IMT/RCI’s refusal to defend Ukraine – which is, obviously, not an imperialist state – against the invasion by Russian imperialism. [4]

 

 

 

British imperialism – “the most reactionary force in the world” in 1940?

 

 

 

Differentiating between “bad” and “not so bad” imperialist powers is not an invention of Alan Woods. The Stalinists applied this schema already throughout the 1930s and 1930s. Depending on the foreign policy interests of the Kremlin, they either collaborated either with Britain, France and the U.S. against Nazi Germany or with the latter against the Western rivals. Consequently, they downplayed their attacks against those powers with which it had an alliance.

 

After Hitler and Stalin had concluded their famous pact in late August 1939, the propaganda of the “Communist International” shifted by 180 degrees. Before, the Stalinists had focused on their denunciations against the Nazi Germany and its “fascist barbarians” in power. Now, the fire was directed against “plutocratic” and “warmongering” Western imperialism. [5]

 

An example which shows how the Stalinists justified their approach is an article by the leader of the German KPD, Walter Ulbricht, which he published in the Comintern organ in February 1940. This document, which became well-known (or better notorious) at that time, is a polemic against an article of Rudolf Hilferding, a leader of the German social democrats, who advocated that socialists should join forces with British and French imperialism against Nazi Germany. ^[6]

 

Ulbricht, of course, recognizes the imperialist nature of Nazi Germany in this article. “It is true that by annexing Austria and Czechoslovakia German imperialism proved its aggressiveness.” However, according to the Stalinists, Germany had changed by signing the pact with the USSR and was now interested in peace. (In February 1940 – in the midst of Hitler’s conquering expedition in the whole of Europe!) In contrast, Britain and France were war-mongering powers because they had declared war on Germany on 3^rd September 1939 (after the latter’s invasion of Poland) and later rejected Hitler’s so-called “peace initiative” in his Reichstag speech on 6 October 1939.

 

“The Hitler government deemed it expedient to establish peaceful relations with the Soviet Union, not only because support of the British plan would have made Germany an object of the British plan, a vassal of British imperialism, but also because the strength of the Red Army, the strong international position of the Soviet Union and the sympathy of the working masses of Germany for the Socialist Soviet Union, made this adventure appear hopeless. The ruling classes of Germany decided to adopt a new foreign policy. The German government declared itself ready to establish peaceful relations with the Soviet Union, whilst the Anglo-French war bloc want war against the Soviet Union. The people of the Soviet Union and the people of Germany desire a speedy end to the war in accordance with the interests of the working masses. The Soviet people and the workers of Germany are against the spread of the war. The German working class wants an extensive trade alliance with the Soviet Union. By means of peaceful trade with the Soviet Union and the other nations of East and South-East Europe, Germany can not only satisfy her needs for goods, but can also show that it is not lack of Lebensraum that is the cause of the poverty of the workers; and that it is not the imperialist oppression of other nations, but peace and friendly relations with them – and above all with the great Soviet nation – that the German people want. Many workers who wish for socialism welcome the pact all the more because it strengthens their friendship with the great land of socialism.”

 

Hence, while Ulbricht recognised the imperialist nature of Germany, he emphasised that it is not Nazi Germany which was interested in war but rather British imperialism. Consequently, the Stalinists called Britain “the most reactionary force in the world.”

 

“Hilferding specially stresses that Germany is to be freed from reaction as a result of the war, that is to say, with the aid of British bayonets. He therefore demands of the British and French governments that they achieve a speedy victory. The German Communists and revolutionary workers, who even at the time of the Weimar republic were fighting against the strengthening of the reactionary capitalist forces in Germany, and who made the greatest sacrifices in the struggle against the National-Socialist regime of terror, regard it as criminal madness that some Social-Democrat and Catholic leaders should believe they can end this regime in Germany by means of a reactionary war – a war which means the destruction of millions of workers, immeasurable misery, greater than in the Thirty Years’ War. This war policy is the more criminal because the power which, according to Hilferding, will decide the outcome of the war, is the most reactionary force in the world. English imperialism gives another proof of its reactionary nature in so far as it refused the suggestion, made by Germany and supported by the Soviet government, for the termination of the war.”

 

 

 

Revolutionary Defeatism vs adaption to social-imperialism

 

 

 

We see, the method is similar. In 1940, the Stalinists called British imperialism “the most reactionary force in the world.” Today, Woods and the IMT/RCI call U.S. imperialism as “the most counterrevolutionary force on the planet”. Different times, different main enemies. But the fundamental approach is very similar. The revisionists differentiate between “more” and “less reactionary” imperialist powers. They do so in order to justify a policy of “lesser-evil” imperialism which indirectly supports the supposedly “less reactionary” power. We saw this in Syria when the IMT refused to support the Syrian rebels fighting against Assad and his Russian masters and the same in the Ukraine War.

 

Marxists strongly refuse such revisionist nonsense. There is no more or less “counterrevolutionary” imperialism – all Great Powers are reactionary. Communists fight all Great Powers – those in the West as well as in the East. Consequently, the RCIT advocates a consistent internationalist and anti-imperialist program against all Great Powers – a program which has become known under the term “revolutionary defeatism”.

 

This mean that in any inter-imperialist conflict, communists equally oppose both camps. They refuse supporting their “own” ruling class and propagate irreconcilable class struggle (following the famous phrase of Karl Liebknecht in World War I “The main enemy is at home”). This strategy implies in the case of war, as formulated by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party in 1914, that revolutionaries consider “the defeat of one’s own bourgeoisie is the lesser evil” and strive for the “transformation of the imperialist war into civil war”, i.e. the advance of the proletariats’ struggle for power under the conditions of war.

 

In cases of conflicts between Great Powers and oppressed peoples, we unconditionally support the latter against the imperialist aggressors. In such conflicts, socialists need to apply the anti-imperialist united front tactic – this means siding with the forces representing these oppressed people without giving political support to their respective leaderships (usually petty bourgeois nationalists or Islamists; sometimes even semi-colonial bourgeois states).

 

As we did show in a recently published article, the IMT/RCI’s opposes the program of revolutionary defeatism in theory and practice. ^[7] It directs its fire mainly against the Western imperialists and, thereby, adapts to pro-Russian/Chinese social-imperialism. By this, they hope to build links to sectors of the Stalinist milieu. Such approach resembles the policy of the Stalinist Comintern in the 1930s and 1940s which also focused its fire only against one imperialist camp in order to have a rapprochement with the other camp. [8]

 

Such a policy is certainly neither revolutionary nor communist and authentic Marxists must break with it!