Clara Zetkin: Against opportunism in tax policy

(25 August 1921)

[My own translation of the German text in Bericht über die Verhandlungen des 2. Parteitages der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands (Sektion der Kommunistischen Internationale). Abgehalten in Jena vom 22. bis 26. August 1921. Herausgegeben von der Zentrale der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands. Berlin 1922, S. 336-38, Report on the Proceedings of the Second Party Congress of the Communist Party of Germany (Section of the Communist International). Held in Jena, 22-26 August 1921. Published by the Centre of the Communist Party of Germany. Berlin 1922, pp. 336-38. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

It is not my intention to go into details of the draft presented. Rather, I object to it in its entirety, to its essential character, which in my opinion is too opportunist, or – as the modern word was for everything that one cannot define but which does not suit one – too Menshevik. (Laughter.) I do not see this characteristic in the attempt to meet the bloody needs of the broadest strata of the working people through certain concrete individual demands. No, I see this characteristic in the fact that certain illusions are nourished by the whole attitude of the draft. The reason for this seems to me to lie in two organic errors of the draft, which are closely interrelated to each other.

The first is that the workers, the employees, the civil servants are mainly considered only as consumers and not also as producers, as creators. It is said, for example – and this is characteristic – that today the opposition between direct and indirect taxes has become obsolete. Comrades, I recall that as early as 1852, I believe – I will not swear to the year, but around that time – a certain Karl Marx, in his polemic against Heinzen, poured out the whole bowl of his sarcasm on the distinction between direct and indirect taxes. Marx described the effort to substitute direct taxes for indirect taxes as a hobby-horse of all bourgeois reformers and democrats. And why is that? Because even the sums of direct taxes are ultimately generated by the broadest masses, by the toiling people, through exploited labour, and not by the owners of the wealth who pay the taxes. Because this is so, I think it is a dangerous illusion to carry the notion to the masses that tax pressure can be countered by raising wages. Where do things stand? The plundering of the broadest masses of the working people through taxes and their plundering by the entrepreneurs, also by the state as entrepreneur, are only two sides of one and the same thing. Just as the taxes which property is supposed to pay are passed on to the working masses, so too the entrepreneur, the capitalist state as entrepreneur recoups itself from those to whom it is forced to pay higher wages or higher salaries. This will be the practice as long as the state and private entrepreneurs have power in the economy and political power in their hands.

And this brings me to the other organic flaw of the draft. This draft has taken the whole question too far out of its political context. It considers the struggle against tax pressure, for wage increases, etc., far too much outside the historical context of political conditions and political struggle. According to the draft, it appears, for example, as if the struggle for the raising of production in and of itself meant something for the improvement of the situation of the proletariat. I say: no, comrades! All this and more only comes to life, only becomes fruitful in its effect on the situation of the proletariat, when it goes hand in hand with the increase in power of the proletariat. If this increase of power is not there, if it is not there in the economy, in politics, then all these measures remain paper, they represent nothing but a screw without end. State capitalism, in the direction of which so many measures are demanded here, is not in itself a proletarian demand. What does state capitalism mean? State capitalism means state slavery as long as the proletariat does not have power in the state. That is the great difference which separates the measures of state capitalism in Russia from the measures of state capitalism in Germany. (Very correct.) Comrades, we have to hold onto this. As the draft stands, the demands: "control by workers, by employees", are outwardly wrapped and pasted demands. They are not compatible with cooperation with the organs of the state. The way they are spoken of here, we come to the socialisation attempts of Hilferding and others, to nothing else at all. (Lively agreement.)

Therefore, I would like to request that the draft be referred to a commission for thorough amendment and that the political side of the question be strongly brought to the fore. This resolution is not exclusively about giving suggestions and directions for the parliamentary struggles. No, comrades, the resolution that the Party Congress adopts should be the flag that is carried forward in the mass struggle outside. And therefore it must be sharply expressed that these struggles which are now unfolding must also be sharply oriented in three directions. As far as financial measures are concerned, the expropriation of the expropriators. As far as measures of an economic nature are concerned, on the control of production by the independent workers', employees', civil servants' and peasants' councils. In addition, the attitude for the conquest of political power by the proletariat. All the individual struggles must be combined into a struggle for the conquest of political power and for the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship.