6. Marxist Predictions about Social Democracy in the 1930’s

Communist failure to tie Social Democracy’s colonial record even to its general function as upholder of capitalism had at least one fairly immediate result: predictions by Marxists in the 30s about Social Democracy’s future fell flatter than a bride’s cake.

What, specifically, were those predictions? How and why did they fail?

The grand-daddy of them all was one by Georgi Dimitroff [Dimitrov], remarkable defendant in the infamous Reichstag Fire Trial of Hitler Germany’s early days. Defeating intended legal murder by transforming his accusers into accused, Dimitroff survived his trial to become first president of the Bulgarian Socialist Republic.

Between July 25 and August 20, 1935, in speeches to the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern, he had summarised his own experience of Fascism, postulating how the working class and its vanguard should overthrow it where it existed and prevent its success elsewhere.

His ground-breaking analysis illumined the decay of bourgeois democracy during the twilight of imperialism.

While scrutinising Fascism, Dimitroff found it necessary to discuss Social Democracy:

“Comrades, in view of the tactical problems confronting us, it is very important to give a correct reply to the question of whether Social Democracy at the present time is still the principal bulwark of the bourgeoisie, and if so, where.”

To his own question, he replied:

“It must be borne in mind that in a number of countries the position of Social Democracy in the bourgeois state, and its attitude towards the bourgeoisie, have been undergoing a change.

“In the first place, the crisis has thoroughly shaken the position of even the most secure section of the working class, the so-called labor aristocracy, upon which, as we know, Social Democracy relies for support. This section, too, is beginning more and more to revise its views as to the expediency of the policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie.

“Second … the bourgeoisie in a number of countries is it self compelled to abandon bourgeois democracy and resort to the terroristic form of its dictatorship, depriving Social Democracy not only of its previous position in the political system of finance capital but also, under certain conditions, of its legal status, persecuting and even suppressing it.

“Third, under the influence of the lessons learned from defeat of the workers in Germany, Austria and Spain, a defeat which was largely the result of the Social Democratic policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and, on the other hand, under the influence of the victory of Socialism in the Soviet Union as a result of the Bolshevik policy and the application of living, revolutionary Marxism, the Social Democratic workers are being revolutionised, and are beginning to turn to the class struggle against the bourgeoisie.

“The joint effect of all this has been to make it increasingly difficult, and in some countries actually impossible, for Social Democracy to preserve its former role of supporting the bourgeoisie.”

In a major Left work of the 1930s, Palme Dutt had undertaken to bolster Dimitroff’s vivisection with Fascism’s and Social Democracy’s actual records. Studying conditions at various historical periods of the working classes in advanced countries, he had noted that

“Liberalism enjoyed one last blooming in the earlier or pre-war period of imperialism … The super-profits of imperialism provided the means in the imperialist countries to endeavour to buy off the revolt of the advancing workers with a show of meager concessions to a minority.”

After World War I – at least in the victorious countries – expansion continued of these "meager concessions to a minority.” But, after the Wall Street crash of 1929 signaling the onset of the general crisis of capitalism, Dutt recorded a new development:

“With the rising colonial revolts, the basis of imperialism began to weaken. The stream of super-profits diminished . . . (leading to) the cutting down and withdrawal of concessions already granted.”

Here, surely, was the harbinger of imperialism’s actual demise, the world Left inferred, and a corresponding euphoria enveloped it. Nor was it surprising. The objective situation certainly appeared to support to the hilt their optimism: A united front pact between the French Socialist and Communist Parties had been signed on July 27, 1934, leading rapidly to the fall of the pro-Fascist Doumergue-Tardieu Cabinet. In Austria, the illegal Communist Party had become a mass organisation, absorbing Left Social Democratic and certain other elements, to found a United Socialist Party. In Italy, in the Saar and in Spain, similar developments were taking place.

“On the other hand, Dutt was forced to report, significantly, that “the British Labour Party and a number of other Social Democratic parties … actively opposed the united front and even developed extended disciplinary measures to prevent its realisation.”

In October 1934, a meeting between representatives of the Communist and Socialist Internationals was held; it was felt to augur great things. But in November,

"the Executive of the Second International at Paris, after a four-days’ debate, by a narrow margin rejected the proposal of the united front and broke off negotiations. Nevertheless, the strength of the united front was such that the ban of the Second International on the united front for its separate sections had to be lifted; and a minority declaration of seven parties was issued in support of the united front.

In a preface to the third edition of his book in August 1935, Dutt added that

“Since the book originally appeared, many new developments have taken place, among the most important of which are the new processes taking place in the Social Democratic parties, offering hopes of a healing of the split in the working class and of the passing over of the majority of the workers to the revolutionary cause.”

7. Why the Predictions Failed

If the correctness of any analysis is measured by the accuracy of the predictions to which it gives rise, then it must be noted that neither the Communist-forecast “decisive struggles” not its “united front of the working class” materialised after all.

What is more, the preceding false predictions of what they would accomplish lulled Marxist vigilance, weakened self-reliance in the movements of the oppressed peoples, and supported a misinterpretation, continuing to this day, of the real role on the world revolutionary scene of the Western working classes.

What material factors had Dimitroff and Dutt omitted from their analyses to cause such an outcome?

When establishing his criteria for judging Fascism, Dutt had simply ignored imperialist parasitism, although he had noted:

“The ‘democratic freedom’ of Western imperialism has been built on the foundation of colonial slavery.”

As general conditions favouring the growth of Fascism, Dutt had listed:

“1) intensification of the economic crisis and of the class struggle;

“2) widespread disillusionment with parliamentarism;

“3) the existence of a wide petit-bourgeoisie, intermediate strata, slum proletariat, and sections of the workers under capitalist influence;

“4) the absence of an independent class-conscious leadership of the main body of the working class.”

(It is interesting that nearly all these conditions exist in England as these words are being written, May-June, 1968.)

Dutt documented these “general conditions”, and concluded that Fascism was the

“characteristic instrument of finance-capital which can be brought into play in the most highly-developed industrialised countries when the stage of crisis and of the class struggle requires it.”

Just when was that?

Dutt had an answer:

“Its success or failure, as in every country, depends on the degree of preparedness and militant resistance of the proletariat.”

At this contention, history has thumbed its nose. For instance, what better indication of the "degree of preparedness and militant resistance of the proletariat” can there be than its closeness to revolution? Don’t facts suggest that revolution in that epoch was almost at hand in Italy and Spain, and that it certainly was closer in Germany, vanquished, than in Britain, the US, or even France? If Dutt were correct, why did Fascism not attain power where the proletariat was least “ready”? Obviously, the upheavals of the day did not have the content the Marxists attributed to them. Or else those Marxists were overlooking something big.

Within a remarkably short period after Dutt’s analysis, it became clear that Western workers were blithely ignoring Left advise to “place no faith in the ‘democratic institutions’ of such countries.” Forgetting the great struggles of the 30s, the Western proletariat year after year abandoned itself to the blandishments of exactly those “institutions”: for example, elections from 1940 through 1964 in Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere in the West showed anything but “widespread disillusionment with parliamentarism.” Understandably, for parliamentarism was again rewarding its faithful. (See Table 11, which shows a constant increase in both absolute numbers and percentage of eligibles voting in the US.)

To be fair, Dutt did try to protect his own rear when he said:

“All this is not to argue that Fascism must necessarily develop and conquer in Western countries.”

As things turned out, here at least he came close to prophecy. Fascism actually did conquer some Western countries but not others, despite Dutt’s and other Marxists’ belief that it was an imminent danger even in the West’s "great democracies.” Despite the ferment of the post-Crash decade and the onset of capitalism’s general crisis, the Western “democracies” did not, after all, turn inward on “their own” working classes; they did not, as predicted, institute Fascism “at home”.

What decided which countries Fascism conquered?

Marxists had proven that imperialist war was fought for division or redivision of colonial spoils. In 1918, the defeated — Germany, Austria, etc. — had been deprived of their colonies. More: those colonies had been redistributed. At the stroke of a pen in Versailles, the vanquished had thus been cut off completely from their former “stream of super-profits”, while the “Allies” (who were, of course, the “great democracies”) were cut in on a new, additional source. Military victory against Germany had thus ensured imperialism’s top dogs of a new lease on life.

Equally, military defeat had forced German imperialism and its associates either to find new outlets for their export capital or to turn inward against “their own” working classes. Hitler’s cry for “lebensraum” accurately recorded that, for imperialism, “room” in which to “live” was synonymous with “room” into which ever more – monopolised capital could expand – and that for German capital expansion was indistinguishable from life itself. Somebody was going to have to supply the economically-choking vanquished with necessary “air.” During the great depression, with the First World War too recent to be revived as the usual solution, only one obvious and available outlet existed: “one’s own” working class.

Countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and their like offer examples of what happens when, having reached the stage where capital export has become essential, a capitalist country has no foreign outlet for it. Germany, Austria and Spain demonstrate a corollary: what happens when a developing capitalist economy is deprived of such an outlet. In both cases, the ruling classed did, in fact, turn inward as their “solution”.

Yet, oddly enough, while these examples were actually arising, Lenin’s warning was scarcely dead on the historical air:

"unless the economic roots of this phenomenon (that is, overseas financial activities as the specific source of imperialist parasitism - H. W. E.) are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step toward the solution of the practical problems of the Communist movement and of the impending social revolution can be taken.”

This prophecy has been fulfilled. Uttered in 1921, it had already indicated that “success or failure” for imperialism depended on the growth of parasitism, expressed as ever-widening pools of man-power and resources to be super-exploited by metropolitan monopolies.

If, then. Fascism was a specific stage of imperialism, where else could its “success or failure” lie?

History supports the observation that Fascism has in fact been exercised by imperialism against Western peoples only if they are about to be forced into the role of a “source of super profit”, either to replace a lost, or to substitute for a never achieved, colonial empire. As long as real colonies, territorial or economic, exist, imperialism is “safe”.

For these reasons, any conclusion in 1935 about "imminent Fascism” which did not document this crucial factor was bound to come to grief. International imperialism in the “democracies” still has room to maneuver, to “solve” its difficulties at the expense of peoples in colonial or neo-colonial areas. (Today, direct super-exploitation has ceased to be necessarily the main form of imperialist parasitism. But the principles enunciated in these pages remain the same.)

The system’s central pillar remains that vast colonial labor reservoir, available for super-exploitation.

Fascism’s “success or failure” inside Western “democracies” could simply not be accurately forecast in the way the Marxists of the 30s tried to do it.

Obviously from the foregoing reasoning, too. Fascism’s absence in “democracies” cannot be attributed to "greater benevolence” or “understanding” or, despite their inner conflicts on other issues, to any “differences in interest” among ruling classes or between one section of a given bourgeoisie and another when it comes to preserving their system.

Although Marxist analyses of Fascism had dealt with Social Democracy, they did not, in the writer’s opinion, fully analyse the connection between the two. They merely chronicled it, showing that wherever Fascism triumphed, Social Democracy paved the way for it. As “explanation”, they contented themselves with repeating Lenin’s 1916 formula that Social Democracy was “the principal bulwark of the bourgeoisie” ; without applying his criteria to the conditions of their own day, they could offer no satisfactory explanation for the failure of their predictions and simply dropped the whole subject.

From a historical vantage point three decades later, it now appears that those Marxists could have seen that – if the Western labor aristocracy under the impact of the great depression was indeed “revising its views as to . . . class collaboration” – the bourgeoisies in pivotal Western countries still had a couple of aces up their sleeves. Blinded by glittering generalities, Marxists got those aces slipped over on them. By leaving out of account the ruling class vector, Dimitroff simply drew wrong conclusions about Western labor’s real direction in his day.

When he had said that “the position of Social Democracy in the bourgeois state, and its attitude toward the bourgeoisie, have been undergoing a change”, he had based himself on a firm material foundation: the crisis, he had said, has “thoroughly shaken the position of the . . . labour aristocracy.” Surely the general crisis of capitalism is a solid enough cornerstone for such a prediction? Unfortunately, Dimitroff had relied not just on the crisis, but on a crisis to which he envisaged only one solution: namely, revolution. It proved a serious and costly underestimation of imperialist parasitism.

Social Democracy did not undergo any major change, either in its “position in the bourgeois state” or in its “attitude toward the bourgeoisie”. Nor could it. Moreover, Lenin had already predicted as much. “It may be argued”, he had said,

"that of the (leaders of Social Democracy), some will return to the revolutionary socialism of Marx. This is possible, but it is an insignificant difference in degree, if we take the question in its political, i.e., in its mass aspect. Certain individuals among the present social-chauvinist leaders may return to the proletariat: but the TREND can neither disappear nor ‘return’ to the revolutionary proletariat …

“We have not the slightest grounds for thinking that these (Social Democratic) parties can disappear BEFORE the social revolution. On the contrary, the nearer the revolution approaches, the stronger it flares up . . . the greater will be the role in the labour movement of the struggle between the revolutionary mass stream and the opportunist-philistine stream.”

Those who did not know of, or forgot, such words missed the deduction that, because of its tie with colonialism (implicit in its need for super-wages), Social Democracy had to change tactics when a colonial empire seemed in danger. Its eye remained where Marxists should have kept theirs: on the state of imperialism’s “stream of super-profits.” Social Democracy admirably adapted its tactics to the varying levels of that stream: as long as that kept flowing in, super-wages were sure to follow.

So, although the labor aristocracy was, for the time being, “thoroughly shaken by the crisis”, it was far from “revising its views” about class collaboration itself. Actually, Dimitroff had said only that the labor aristocracy was

“revising its views about the expediency of the policy of class collaboration.”

The operating word was “expediency”. If imperialism is forced to withdraw its bribes, polite class collaboration becomes, indeed, no longer expedient: some new form is required. This was where Fascism came in. And it served its purpose. In noting that the bourgeoisie could no longer afford democracy at home, and so had turned to “the terroristic form of its dictatorship,” Dimitroff had been reporting fact. But this had little to do with what became of Social Democracy. For, both he and Dutt, the latter in irrefutable detail, had proved that this dictatorship generally did not deprive Social Democracy of its “position in the political system” or even of its legal status except in individual cases. Dutt had documented instance after instance where Social Democracy took part in that “terroristic form” of imperialism’s dictatorship.

In this, once it is admitted that its aim is to ensure the continued flow of super-wages to the labor aristocracy, Social Democracy was merely logical. That flow must come from whatever source is available.

In the light of current events, it can only be concluded that Dimitroff must have been motivated by an understandable wish when he suggested that Western workers had learned from the defeat of their class brothers in places like Germany. He was generalising too soon from working class actions of his day when he added that USSR success was revolutionizing Western Workers. If anything, his diagnosis was carried out in reverse.

Within a very short historical period thereafter, led by the shining example of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in victorious, soon- economically-rampant America, a veritable cascade of glittering bribes again began flowing into American working class pockets with effects soon to mock Dimitroffs theses. Restive workers in the U.S. were given on an increasingly grand scale a substantial stake in the status quo. The gift, accompanied by odes of virtually unchallenged praise for a system which makes such things possible, successfully, if temporarily, obscured the fact that even the bribed labor aristocracy is exploited. Marxists like Dimitroff had seen the exploitation, but had grievously underestimated how big a stake in the status quo could be raised, as well as the primacy, enormity and soporific effect “at home” of super-exploitation abroad. They had failed to foresee what a large sector of the Western proletariat were eventually to be bought over, serve alien class aims, thereby to keep alive a system which Marxist analysts of the 30s claimed was on its last legs.

Far from being unable, as Dimitroff had concluded, to maintain its allegedly former role of supporting the bourgeoisie, opportunism was soon rewarded for its police role during tight times by a new stream of super-wages at a level far higher than before. And, for its officials, lucrative Government posts opened up in ever-larger numbers.(In 1934, British TUC officials were represented on six Government committees; in 1949, on 60; in 1954, on 81; and in 1968, on more than 115.5)

The halcyon days of the Western labor aristocracy had been but briefly interrupted. That that interruption was ended at the expense of renewed and deepened colonial slavery was, at the time – and even now – of little concern to comfortable Western workers.

But the price that was to be exacted from Marxism for its miscalculations in this area was to be high, indeed.

The book can be downloaded here. https://annas-archive.gl/md5/6d984f715c1e17ed915108272c4c8fe7