COMMUNISTS AND NATIONAL SOCIALISTS

COMMUNISTS AND NATIONAL SOCIALISTS

Also by Ken Post ARISE YE STARVELINGS: The Jamaica Labour Rebellion of 1938 and its Aftermath REGAINING MARXISM REVOLUTION, SOCIALISM AND NATIONALISM IN VIET NAM Volume I Viet Nam: An Interrupted Revolution Volume II VIET NAM Divided Volume III Socialism in Half a Country Volume IV The Failure of Counter-Insurgency in the South Volume V Winning the War and Losing the Peace SOCIALISM AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT (with Phil Wright) STRIKE THE IRON: A Colony at War, Jamaica, 1939-45 STRUCTURE AND CONFLICT IN NIGERIA, 1960-66 (with Michael Vickers) THE NEW STATES OF WEST AFRICA THE NIGERIAN FEDERAL ELECTION OF 1959 THE PRICE OF LIBERTY: Personality and Politics in Colonial Nigeria (with George D. Jenkins)

Communists and National Socialists The Foundations of a Century, 1914-39 Ken Post Emeritus Professor Institute of Social Studies The Hague

First published in Great Britain 1997 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-14516-4 ISBN 978-1-349-14514-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-14514-0 First published in the United States of America 1997 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-17319-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Post, Ken, 1935- Communists and national socialists : the foundations of a century, 1914-39 / Ken Post. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-17319-7 (cloth) 1. Soviet Union-History-Revolution, 1917-1921. 2. Germany -History-1918-1933. 3. Germany-History-1933-1945. 4. Capitalism-History-20th century. 5. Communism-History-20th century. 6. National socialism. I. Title. DK265.P65595 1997 940.5-dc21 96-37662 CIP K. W. J. Post 1997 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97

For Kurt Martin (1904-95), who lived through most of it

Contents ~ifth~ ~ Preface xi 1 Crisis and Revolution 1 Shaping a century 1 Capitalist globalisation to 1914 3 Basic concepts 6 Social capital and economic depression 8 Crisis and revolution 17 The First World War as capital's self-mutilation 27 2 The Shift to Russia 33 The founders on Russia 34 Russia's 'modernisation' 39 An opening of issues 41 The dress rehearsal 47 Opposing views: Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg 49 3 The First Weak Link 57 The Great Russian Revolution 57 Why a workers' revolution in Russia? 68 4 The Missing Weak Link 76 Germany in the aftermath of defeat 77 Internationalist reactions 82 The early years of the German Communist Party (KPD) 85 5 The Fascist Gambit 95 The emergence of the Nazis 95 From the streets to the halls of power 103 6 Communists in the Face of Fascists 115 The KPD, 'national bolshevism' and the Nazis 115 Understanding National Socialism 121 The KPD and 'Social Fascism' 125 7 National Socialism and Social Capital 142 The German non-exception 142 The politics of class 146 The Nazis as revolutionaries 158 vii

viii Contents 8 A Diversity of Capitals Social capital: recovery and depression Revolutionary prognostications A diversity of terrains 9 Conclusions Notes and References Bibliography Index 163 163 169 172 187 199 208 216

List of Tables 1.1 Comparative industrialisation, 1880-1913 4 3.1 Working-class compositions, Petrograd and Moscow 60 7.1 Basic factors of capitalist reproduction, Germany 1927-28 149 8.1 Annual indices of manufacturing production 169 ix

Preface In these days, when many of us in Western Europe are trying to learn to be good citizens of a united Europe and others further east are hoping to qualify to join, it seems appropriate for historians to look again at the origins and foundations of that phenomenon. This, and a companion but autonomous study, are my contribution, and both focus on the same theme, that of revolution. Given the nature of the far-from radical politics of the European Union and its predecessor, this may seem strange, but my starting point is to ask two questions about the origins of contemporary Europe that centre on revolutions, one that did occur and one that did not. First, why did the revolution that led to the division of Europe into West and East, a gulf that was not bridged by the fall of the state socialist regimes after 1989, take place in tsarist Russia and not in one of the much more developed capitalisms, as radical socialists and anarchists had predicted? Why did the event that led to the Second World War and thus to the post-1945 developments in Europe- the coming to power of the Nazis in Germany- occur, rather than a socialist revolution, which appeared to contemporaries in the early 1930s to be the likely alternative? These are the basic questions addressed in this book. The reader must also be warned of another reason why I have adopted those lines of enquiry. This is a book by someone who believes himself to be a Marxist, attempts to think and write accordingly, and believes that an examination of the record of Marxism as a theoretical position and basis for action is essential at this time. Although they might not appreciate what I have made of their labours in my survey, I wish to record my debt to library staff at the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague for their invaluable help in finding the material I needed. KEN PosT XI