10. The division of Europe and Asia between the victors of World War II is to be settled by power politics and not by negotiation. It is the purpose of this report to summarize the evidence, explain the logical relationships involved, and to justify the conclusions stated. PART II. THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM A. COMMUNIST RELIANCE UPON THEORY Theory is often an unwelcome term, taken as suggestive of unreality and vagueness. There are people occasionally in the course of history, however, to whom theory is a matter of great seriousness, and who act in accordance with what they call their theory. The Communists revel in theory. Arguments are sometimes made that Stalin is a hard-headed pragmatist to whom theory means nothing. He may well seem so to those who meet him on business terms in the course of negotiations. But there is this to remember, that the Communists consider their theory scientific. This being so, those who believe in the theory may be temperamentally more like engineers than like men of theoretical bent in the vague, foggy, unpractical, academic sense. For an engineer to be wholeheartedly intent upon practical aspects of a problem does not at all mean that he does not believe the principles of theoretical mechanics. It may rather indicate how deeply he does believe in them, so deeply that he takes them for granted and pays no conscious attention to them because they are his second nature. One might say that a doctor cares nothing for the germ theory of disease because he never mentions it when he vaccinates a baby. But it would not be true. Americans habitually neglect, or even forget, that there is any theory behind their own institutions. Communists never forget their theoretical principles. In part this difference is a matter of age, for younger movements are always more conscious of theory than older ones. Also in part it reflects the idea that Marxism is a science. They regard their strategy and tactics as derivatives from their theory, by strictly logical deduction. Without a revolutionary theory, there cannot be a revolutionary movement. Only a party guided by an advanced theory can act as a vanguard in the fight.' Stalin himself makes a broader explanatory comment. Revolutionary theory is a synthesis of the experience of the working-class movement throughout all lands-the generalized experience. Of course, theory out of touch with revolutionary practice is like a mill that runs without any grist, just as practice gropes in the dark unless revolutionary theory throws a light on the path. But theory becomes the greatest force in the working-class movement when it is inseparably linked with revolutionary practice; for it, and it alone, can give the movement confidence, guidance, and understanding of the inner links between events; it alone can enable those engaged in the practical struggle to understand the whence and the whither of the working-class movement." Strategy is the application of theory to a broad situation, the identification of the main factors in the situation, and the recognition of Stalin, Leninism, p. 94, lecture at Sverdlov University, April 1924. Printed in part, in supplement I to this report. 4 Lenin, quoted by Stalin, Leninism, pp. 94, 95. 'Stalin, Leninism, p. 94, lecture at Sverdlov University, April 1924. which ones are favorable or unfavorable. Tactics in turn are the direct practical application of theoretical and strategic principles in ordinary daily work. Tactic is the determination of the line to be taken by the proletariat during a comparatively short period of the ebb or flow of the movement, of advance or retreat of the revolution; the maintenance of this line by the substitution of new forms of struggle and organization for those that have become out of date, or by the discovery of new watchwords, or by the combination of new methods with old, etc. Whereas strategy is concerned with such wide purposes as the winning of the war against tsarism or the bourgeoisie, tactic has a narrower aim. Tactic is concerned, not with the war as a whole, but with the fighting of this or that campaign, with the gaining of this or that victory which may be essential during a particular period of the general revolutionary advance or withdrawal. Tactics are thus parts of strategy, and subordinate thereto." A most important element in strategy and tactics is an understanding of when and how to shift from the offensive to the defensive and back again. This is as essential a principle to the revolutionary movement as it is to military strategy. It also reflects the unending practicality and patience with which the Communists are ready to face the shifts of circumstances and the delays of hope. Lenin took particular note of the superiority of communism on the offensive over communism on the defensive in his time, and pointed out that they must learn not only to advance but to retreat. Revolutionary parties must go on learning. They have learned how to attack. Now it is time for them to realize that this knowledge must be supplemented by acquiring a knowledge of how best to retreat. We have got to understand (and a revolutionary class learns this by bitter experience) that victory can only be won by those who have learned the proper method both of advance and of retreat." He also emphasized the long drawn-out character of the struggle, and the many changes that may occur. To wage a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, more prolonged, more complicated, than the most bloodthirsty of wars between States, while renouncing beforehand the use of maneuvering, of playing off (though for a time only) the interests of one foe against the other, of entering upon agreements and effecting compromises (even though these may be of an unstable and temporary character)—would not such renunciation be the height of folly? We might as well, when climbing a dangerous and hitherto unexplored mountain, refuse in advance to make the ascent in zigzag, or to turn back for a while, to give up the chosen direction in order to test another which may prove to be easier to negotiate.R This insistence on what is sometimes called the "Leninist line", or . a zigzag line of advance and retreat, is the theoretical basis for the grand shifts of Communist strategy that have marked the 30 years since the Russian Revolution. This series of great zigzag shifts is the main framework of their policy, and the incidental cause of most of the confusion as to just what their policy is. First, after the revolution, there came the 3 years of war communism, when the party in Russia drove toward the left, nationalizing industries, requisitioning goods, and drafting manpower. Then came the 6 years of the New Economic Policy or NEP, when free enterprise was encouraged, in order to revive production and trade from the terrible break-down left after the civil wars. Next came the Five Year Plan or "Piatiletka." The drive to the left in this period brought the socialization Stalin, Leninism, p. 148. Lenin, quoted by Stalin, Leninism, p. 153. of agriculture, the famine in the Ukraine in 1931, and the slaughter of the cattle which reduced Russian livestock so far that they have never since surpassed their former numbers. It also started the growth of heavy industry which has been the backbone of the growth of Soviet power. Hitler's rise to power in 1933 brought another transition, a swing to the right in foreign relations. In 1935 the new Soviet Constitution was adopted, in a form that apparently accepted the familiar standards of western democracy. The Popular Front became the announced policy, and the alliance of communism with socialism, instead of bitter opposition to the Socialists as misleaders of the working class, was made the basis of political tactics in France and other countries. The Communist role in the Spanish Civil War in alliance with Socialist and democratic elements was the outstanding illustration of what this meant. The great purges of 1937 and 1938 showed how an intensification of leftism in Russia could accompany cooperation with capitalist countries abroad. The Popular Front died in the period of Nazi preparation and appeasement. The preparatory Nazi moves, of course, date back to the occupation of the Rhineland in 1935 and the naval treaty with Britain. The appeasement of the Nazis or the Italian Fascists by the democracies begins at least as early as that and, of course, includes the failure of the League to stop Mussolini's Ethiopian war. It was not until after Munich, however, that the Soviet purges on the one hand and the appeasement by the western democracies on the other brought the shift of Soviet strategy that was announced so suddenly with the Nazi-Soviet pact in August 1939. In the period that followed the Soviets seized what they could entirely on their own. They thereby gained the position in the Karelian Peninsula which later helped save Leningrad, and occupied the Baltic States and eastern Poland. They also discussed with the Nazis a world revolutionary partnership, but set their own demands too high for Nazi acceptance.9 The failure to make a satisfactory deal with Hitler brought the German attack on Russia on June 22, 1941. The United Kingdom promptly announced its acceptance of the Soviet Union as an ally and its own persistence in the fight against Hitler. The United States moved swiftly to include Russia under lend-lease, and the first lend-lease protocol with the Soviet Union was signed before Pearl Harbor. Thus began a new "right" period of collaboration between Communists and other democratic and progressive forces. Some call this the Tehran period. From the time of Tehran until the Soviet repudiation of the Marshall plan in June 1947, there was a 22-year period which can only be regarded as transitional to a new leftward drive. There was evidence throughout this period of some effort to retain the psychological and political assets that had been built up in the time of collaboration. At the same time there was an effort to seize new assets through Communist control of eastern European countries, Communist action to change the balance of power in eastern Asia, and Communist readiness to delay the peace. If there is any major characteristic of their strategy in this period, it was the readiness to grab anything they could get without great risk. These 2%1⁄2 22 years were, of course, years of transition not only in Communist See Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939-41, published by the Department of State, 1948. policy and strategy but also in the psychology and therefore the policy of the United States and other countries. The present time, at least since June 1947, has all the characteristics of past periods of radical leftism. The Communists are pursuing their own objective, not perhaps at the risk of war, but at least at the risk of open enmity. Psychologically the recreation of the Cominform is the clearest of all the symptoms. It represents the liquidation of whatever they gained in western minds by the abolition of the Comintern. It is current facts that cause them to recognize a new situation. But it is theory that guides their estimate of how to act toward a new situation when they see one. Their decision for offensive action in the present situation is a theoretical decision. B. CAPITALISM AND REVOLUTION If Communist theory offers the basis and guide for Communist tactics, how does it do it? The body of their theory is an analysis of cause and effect in modern society, and since it is a theory of cause and effect, it is equally a theory of means and ends. For any theory to guide any tactics, it must offer an analysis of a practical situation, throw the focus of attention upon certain features, explain the meaning of these features, and explain clearly how to act within the situation. Communist theory does just this, it is a sort of field manual for revolutionists, explaining what are the important features of any battlefield, and how action should be adapted to the variations of the field in any particular situation. Capitalism may be taken, for our present purposes, as the starting point in the Communist theory of human society. While they also make great to-do about "materialism" and "dialectics," this is philosophical underpinning which is not essential to the present discussion. Capitalism, as they see it, is the dominating feature of human society in the present age. The whole of human culture in any society is, according to their ideas, shaped and colored by the "mode of production." The present mode of production in all leading countries except the Soviet Union is capitalism, that is private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism, as a system, requires exploitation of the laboring class, or proletariat, and an inhibiting of the whole productive process by the distorted motives of profit. The disparity between the rewards to capital and the rewards to labor must become greater and greater, and finally the progress of production must be halted by the faults of the system. The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself. It is the fact that capital and its self-expansion appear as the starting and the closing point, as the motive and aim of production; that production is merely production for capital, and not vice versa, the means of production mere means for an ever-expanding system of the life process for the benefit of the society of producers. The barriers, within which the preservation and self-expansion of the value of capital resting on the expropriation and pauperization of the great mass of producers can alone move, these barriers come constantly in collision with the methods of production, which capital must employ for its purposes, and which steer straight toward an unrestricted extension of production, toward production for its own self, toward an unconditional development of the productive forces of society.10 The faults of capitalism involve contradictions, that is to say, the generation of forces that work in opposite directions. These contra 10 Marx, Capital, I, p. 293. dictions develop into opposed interests between individuals and classes, and become political forces of explosive strength. The three most fundamental of these contradictions, in the eyes of the Communists, have been listed by Stalin. Among the most important contradictions of the capitalist system, special mention may be made of the three following: * ** First contradiction: The conflict between labour and capital. Second contradiction: The conflict between the various financial groups and the different imperialist powers in their competition for control of the sources of raw material, for foreign territory. * * * Third contradiction: The conflict between the small group of dominant "civilized" nations, on the one hand, and the hundreds of millions of persons who make up the colonial and dependent peoples of the world on the other. * * *11 The development of capitalist industry automatically develops the proletariat as a class. This class has, according to Marxist thinking, certain remarkable attributes. First, it is the most numerous, outnumbering the peasants or bourgeoisie. It also is the class which learns, under capitalism, the value of cooperation and discipline, and the social nature of production. It thereby develops common objectives and a firmness of morale lacking to all others, and gains a sense of how society should be organized in contrast to the capitalist system. It thus becomes of necessity the revolutionary agent for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Lenin said: As While the capitalist class breaks up and dissolves the peasantry and all the lower middle classes, it welds together, unites and organizes the town proletariat. Only the proletariat-on account of its economic role in production on a large scale is capable of leading all the toiling and exploited masses.12 The contradictions in society before the revolution, expressed in conflict between groups and classes, require the creation of a monopoly of force in order to prevent chronic civil war. This monopoly of force, serving as the agency for the maintenance of peace in the presence of contradictions, is the state. The state is the agency of the ruling class, for the preservation of the existing order with all its advantages for that class. As such, it is the agent that defends the existing order through the use of force, and ipso facto is the prime target of revolution. The state is tantamount to an acknowledgement that the given society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has broken up into irreconcilable antagonisms, of which it is powerless to rid itself. And in order that these antagonisms, these classes with their opposing economic interests may not devour one another and society itself in their sterile struggle, some force standing, seemingly, above society, becomes necessary so as to moderate the force of their collisions and to keep them within the bounds of "order." And this force arising from society, but placing itself above it, which gradually separates itself from it-this force is the state.13 The state is nothing else than a machine for the oppression of one class by another class, and that no less in the democratic republic than under the monarchy.14 The character of a class society and of the state as its preservative is what makes revolution necessary. The conditions of capitalism make it impossible that the capitalist class can understand the real necessities for reform and change. Reform on a genuinely adequate 11 Stalin, Leninism, p. 81 f., lecture at Sverdlov University, April 1924. 12 Lenin, The State and Revolution, p. 132. 13 Engels, The Origin of the Family, State and Private Property, in Burns, A Handbook of Marxism, p. 328, quoted by Lenin, The State and Revolution, p. 114. 14 Engels, introduction to Marx, The Paris Commune, p. 20. |