Internal Squabbles of the Socialists
Continuing my series of posts (Number 1 and Number 2) on a little-recognized socialist European politician,
As the Empire collapsed in a wave of strikes and violence, the center-left socialist government took over only to find that ruling wasn't as easy as it looked. During one of the subsequent strikes, the hardline communists stepped in and declared themselves to be the new government. The socialist government found itself aligned with one of the anti-communist, right-wing militias which put down the communist uprising. Thus began one of those "strange bedfellows" stories of which political legend is born. From out of that background, our protagonist found himself proposing a third path to the Marxists and laissez-faire (or liberal, in the continental sense) parties. In the wake of the suppression, the communist party papers began referring to the Social Democrats as "social fascists", and not surprisingly began to paint our man with the same brush. The two sides are fighting for the same soldiers -- the workers -- to participate in more general strikes and confrontational campaigns so they could seize power not through bourgeois democracy, but through demonstration of real political power: direct action, even if it means violence.
There is nothing extraordinary about this set of circumstances. Socialists like any party have their internecine struggles. However, since the time at least of Lenin's creation of the Comintern (the so-called Third International), some of them have been deadly.
One of the ways that our protagonist and his party differentiate themselves is to suggest that the world needs not just universal suffrage of citizens, but strong leadership for people to vote for. This is, after all, -- and aside from the antisemitism that he shared with a number of notable Marxists (see next post) -- a strongly moral man from nearly any perspective. He demonstrated his courage by receiving decoration as a war hero. He is a vegetarian who rails against womanizing. This last point sets him off against other socialists who, since Lassalle, have had some problems in this and other areas. However, it draws obvious parallels with the path taken by Mussolini; not coincidentally, I see it as an parallel with modern Americans who believe in the myth of the strong leader (coincidentally, see this post from Gene Healy at The Agitator blog: Gene hopes to write a book on the problem).
As the Empire collapsed in a wave of strikes and violence, the center-left socialist government took over only to find that ruling wasn't as easy as it looked. During one of the subsequent strikes, the hardline communists stepped in and declared themselves to be the new government. The socialist government found itself aligned with one of the anti-communist, right-wing militias which put down the communist uprising. Thus began one of those "strange bedfellows" stories of which political legend is born. From out of that background, our protagonist found himself proposing a third path to the Marxists and laissez-faire (or liberal, in the continental sense) parties. In the wake of the suppression, the communist party papers began referring to the Social Democrats as "social fascists", and not surprisingly began to paint our man with the same brush. The two sides are fighting for the same soldiers -- the workers -- to participate in more general strikes and confrontational campaigns so they could seize power not through bourgeois democracy, but through demonstration of real political power: direct action, even if it means violence.
There is nothing extraordinary about this set of circumstances. Socialists like any party have their internecine struggles. However, since the time at least of Lenin's creation of the Comintern (the so-called Third International), some of them have been deadly.
- Russia, in the revolutionary period, saw plenty of violence erupt not only between the communists and the Tsar, but also among themselves. It was the Bolshevik against the Menshevik. When the Jewish Bund walked out, Lenin finally captured power for himself, followed by continuous purges of both rightist "White" counter-revolutionaries and leftist factions. The purges accelerated under the ultra-paranoid Stalin, whose actions included the persecution and eventual assassination of Trotsky, the man who led the Red Army against the Kronstadt Rebellion.
- Germany - The rise of the trade unions ended WWI, whereupon the social democrats took over and founded the Weimar Republic. However, a series of minor adjustments, strikes, and growing disillusion culminated in the Spartacist Uprising. The Social Democrats enlisted the aid of the Freikorps to put down the squabble; in the process, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebkenecht were murdered, but their murderers received no more than a slap on the wrist. The Social Democrats left the Freikorps in place as a protection against the Comintern-backed, very violent KPD. All of this set up the Beer Hall Putsch, for which again Hitler and his Freikorps comrades received no more than a symbolic punishment.
- Spain - as Franco and the Nationalists attempted to seize control of the Republic, the anarchists responded and kept him in check until Stalin, by way of the Comintern and NKVD (forerunner to the KGB). The communists turned the fight against the anarchist workers, and Franco carried the day. In many ways, the Spanish Revolution was a proxy war between Stalin and Hitler (and Mussolini) in which the workers' anarchist groups (including the POUM, for whom Orwell fought) were forced to fight both sides and, consequently, lost.
- Italy - Mussolini began life as a virulently socialist student, raised by a father who was a member of the International and who read Marx at the dinner table. Benito rose as high as one could in the party without actually leading it; he was the editor of the party's paper, *Avanti!*, meaning "Forward!" He and Lenin both responded to the collapse of the Second International in the same way: as various members voted for war credits in their national legislatures (Karl Kautsky, for example), they both commented that the International was dead. Eventually, however, Mussolini changed his mind about the war, deciding that war creates a sense of comraderie, that nations must achieve equality before citizens can, and that war was a leading edge of the anti-bourgeoisie revolution. He asserted a new type of system called "fascism" and entered into struggle with his former socialist mates over tactics, but was in fundamental agreement about the ends of politics.
One of the ways that our protagonist and his party differentiate themselves is to suggest that the world needs not just universal suffrage of citizens, but strong leadership for people to vote for. This is, after all, -- and aside from the antisemitism that he shared with a number of notable Marxists (see next post) -- a strongly moral man from nearly any perspective. He demonstrated his courage by receiving decoration as a war hero. He is a vegetarian who rails against womanizing. This last point sets him off against other socialists who, since Lassalle, have had some problems in this and other areas. However, it draws obvious parallels with the path taken by Mussolini; not coincidentally, I see it as an parallel with modern Americans who believe in the myth of the strong leader (coincidentally, see this post from Gene Healy at The Agitator blog: Gene hopes to write a book on the problem).
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