Clara Zetkin: Contribution on the March Action

(Third World Congress of the Communist International, 13th Session , 2 July 1921)

[My own translation from the Minutes of the III. World Congress of the Communist International, Protokoll des III. Weltkongresses der Kommunistischen Internationale, Moskau 22. Juni bis 12. Juli 1921. Hamburg 1921, Third Session, pp. 597-605. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

Comrades! First of all, a few clarifications. Concerning the material on the effects of the March Action which has been made known by myself and my friends, I have the following to explain:

This material has been transmitted to us by the auditors of the party. Since the material has nevertheless been disputed, I have requested the Executive to summon one or the other of these auditors here with the factual basis of their audit result, in order to have the material examined in a completely flawless and objective manner. Later on, we will find out how to evaluate the material presented by the other side.

It is not my intention to respond to all the personal attacks that have rained down on me since yesterday and before. On some of the allegations that seem important to me, I have put a written statement on the record, which you will hear at the end of the session. I said the most important things about another allegation in an interjection yesterday, but I forgot to add one thing. Namely, that Cde. Heckert could have found out about my alleged clinging to the parliamentary mandate from the columns of the "Rote Fahne". There, after a consultation with me, the matter had been set right, after the "Freiheit" had served up this hoax to its readers for a very transparent purpose the day before.

I do not want to talk about the Levi case and my alleged guilt in it here. In the accusations of Cde. Heckert yesterday, I only missed the one allegation that Cde. Paul Levi had not been born of his mother, but that I had given birth to the ostracised sulphur-yellow political monster (laughter). For the Congress, and thus for me, this side of the matter has been settled with the Levi case in the Executive Report – against our objection. Of course, my personal view is that the last word on this will be spoken by Paul Levi himself, if, as I hope, he will continue to work and struggle as a communist on a fundamental ground with us and in the same line with the Communist Party.

Comrades! You have been told here that I have been a wavering, uncertain figure since the foundation of the Communist Party. I will comment on this assertion later in my statement, but I want to say one thing now. I felt considerably comforted by comrade Heckert's assessment of my weakness and inadequacy when, after comrade Lenin's remarks yesterday, it became clear to me what excellent educators, what strong support for theory and political practice I have in the members of the Centre of the German Communist Party.

I object to the construction of a Zetkin case here and to the treatment of a Zetkin case after the Levi case. In my opinion, it has been extremely detrimental to the fundamental discussion and clarification of the controversial question in Germany and here that instead of the bankruptcy of the revolutionary offensive theory of the centre and its retreat to the necessary defensive of the March Action, the case of Levi has been widely discussed. I do not want to contribute to the fact that now a case of Zetkin continues to play the same role for the Congress.

On the matter itself the following. I confess, I say it without reserve, that I have made not one but two mistakes, two great mistakes indeed. Namely, firstly, that in the March Action I did not distinguish sharply and clearly enough the action, the struggle of proletarian masses from the leadership by the centre of the party. Secondly, that I did not separate sharply enough the certainly good, honest will of the party to proceed from propaganda to action from the quite inadequate theoretical and political attitude of the centre to the action. You see, I have never been afraid to say that I made a mistake and that I have learned from the events.

Now to be sure, Comrade Radek reproached me: "You yourself also talked about the revolutionary offensive and thus contributed to the emergence of the wrong theory." Yes, Cde. Radek, sometimes something can happen to you that you never thought of. And if I am supposed to have been guilty of giving rise to the false theory of the Centre because I talked of "revolutionary offensive", then you, Cde. Radek, are my accomplice. For you wrote in the "Internationale" on 15 March, after characterising the earlier attitude of the VKPD: "These facts are certainly sufficient proof of how difficult it became for a part of the leading comrades of the Spartacus League to pass from the imposed defensive of 1919 to the increasing offensive which became possible since the radicalisation of the working masses of the USP in 1920." Comrades, I find myself in agreement with Cde. Radek, but he as well as I, we did not mean by the words "revolutionary offensive" the same thing that corresponded to the political attitude of the centre at the critical moment, but the transition to the highest increased activity of the party, which had to lead to revolutionary action in the closest connection with the masses. And in this sense I am still prepared to use the expression "revolutionary offensive" today, although I know that the transfer of the military-technical to the political, to the field of the class struggle, is not quite accurate, but is imperfect like all comparisons. Comrade Michalak has already said the necessary things about this excellently. For proletarians there is only revolutionary struggle, because the defensive immediately turns into the offensive and the offensive immediately turns into the defensive. And neither the one nor the other is possible without the constant, sure-footed activity not only of the party but of the broadest masses outside the party.

In this sense, comrades, I have spoken of the possibility, and even more of the necessity, of a revolutionary offensive. But my attitude to the demanded offensive was quite different from that of the centre. I delimited precisely the conditions which, in my opinion, were prerequisites for such an offensive. That was, first of all, the most accurate overview of the whole economic and political situation. This was, in particular, clarity about what position the trade union leaders and the trade union members would take at the given moment. It was also the necessity of the closest, most intimate contact of the party with the masses. Further, the choice of the goals of the struggle, note well, not of propagandist rallying slogans of the Communist Party, but of concrete goals of the proletarian mass struggle, which – I would like to say – grew naturally out of the situation, were felt by the broadest masses as a vital necessity and therefore promised to unleash and animate their cognition, will and highest energy. Finally, the necessary organisational attitude of the party.

In my opinion, the revolutionary offensive, as the centre conceived it, sinned against these most elementary preconditions of an advance. The centre did not appreciate the whole concrete situation, but started from theoretical speculations about one-sidedly seen economic, political possibilities which were close at hand, which could occur, but which were opposed by other tendencies. It then evaluated these specific tendencies of economic and political life as already realised facts and even more: as such facts that had already become alive, strong-willed in the consciousness of the masses. Focusing on what could be possible, they had overlooked what really was. They believed that they could force the situation by means of a decision that was fabricated in the test-tube of party bodies and that was supposed to bring about the immediate conversion of an inwardly, politically, spiritually not yet prepared party mass. All this was expressed quite clearly in the main slogan: overthrow the government. It has been denied that it was given. However, there is enough evidence for it. It also emerges from Frölich's Reichstag speech, in which he made the – in my opinion very bold – statement that the historical situation in Germany was the same as on the eve of the declaration of the soviet dictatorship in Hungary. Frölich concluded his speech with: We call upon the proletarians to fight for the overthrow of the government. Certainly, overthrow the government! I would be the last to shrink from bringing it about. But it was not our wishes that came into consideration at that time, but something else: did the broadest masses at that moment recognise the overthrow of the government as their next, immediate goal in the struggle?

(The chairman rings the bell to indicate that the speaking time had expired).

Comrades, I ask if I may speak a little longer. I have been beaten up so much here that I cannot possibly answer in ten minutes.

Zinoviev: I propose to give Cde. Zetkin another quarter of an hour's speaking time. (Agreeing.)

Zetkin (continuing): Comrades, let me summarise briefly. In my view, the attitude was....

Vaughan: I am against the extension of the speaking time.

Zetkin: Then I state that it has been impossible for me to express my view.

Chairman Koenen: Is there any objection to the extension of speaking time? I put to the vote whether Comrade Zetkin should be given another quarter of an hour's speaking time in accordance with the proposal of the Presidium.

The motion is carried.

Chairman Koenen. Cde. Zetkin may therefore speak for another quarter of an hour.

Zetkin (continuing): Comrades, my view is this: Because the Centre had an erroneous political attitude to the revolutionary offensive, it arrived at an erroneous attitude to the March struggle, and was unable to carry out the March action as it should have done. How this had to happen was described by Cde. Radek. I don't want to go into it, I only emphasise what distinguishes my view of things from these explanations. In my view, the mistakes of the March Action were not mistakes of the kind that occur in every struggle and are to some extent unavoidable. Rather, the mistakes were organically rooted in the erroneous theory of the offensive itself. And the clarification of the question of dispute would have been much easier and less painful if the defenders of the revolutionary offensive had entered into an unbiased criticism and examination of the action. What happened instead? In the "Rote Fahne", instead of objective, calm criticism of the movement, a one-sided and tendentious glorification and justification appeared. And this was not of the March struggle as a defensive action of the proletarian masses, but of the theory which, in my opinion, was misleading and harmful. It has been declared that this theory must be decisive for the activisation of the party and the masses for the future revolutionary struggles. In the anthology of the Centre "Tactics and Organisation of the Revolutionary Offensive" it is explicitly stated: "The March Action as a single action of the party would be – in this point our opponents are right – a crime against the proletariat. The March offensive as the initiation of a series of increasing actions is a redemptive act."

You see, comrades, out of this situation arose in Germany the hot, passionate atmosphere of criticism and argument on the question.

Thalheimer: I don't know that book at all.

Zetkin: It has not been published. The praise of the theory of revolutionary theory has been in the "Rote Fahne" day after day. The struggle against it and its vowed practice has grown out of this anxious concern. If the actions necessary in the future, which are a question of life and death for the party, should be carried on according to the same scheme of the new theory, then the party will perish from it and the revolutionary proletariat of Germany will thus lose its necessary leadership.

I must state one more thing here. Our conviction is that the false theory of the revolutionary offensive, which is condemned in the theses of our Russian friends, was not the consequence but the starting point of practice, that the March Action, the manner in which it was carried out, was the first practical test of this theory. It is out of this conviction that our amendment to the corresponding section of the Theses on Tactics has been tabled. And in one more respect our view differs from that of our Russian friends. I express this view of ours frankly, even though I will meet with the fiercest resistance. I and many comrades in Germany and in other countries stand fundamentally on the ground that criticism of the errors and mistakes of the party must not be limited to the party organisations, to the party bodies. This criticism must go out to the broadest public and to the masses themselves. We understand the different view of our Russian friends from the history of the party, from the situation in Russia. Here in Western Europe, however, the situation is different. Suppose we come into a mass meeting and the Scheidemanns and Dittmanns attack us and ask: "What is your stand on this or that action of your party?" If we then wanted to declare: I only discuss this with people who can prove their affiliation to our party by membership book, we would simply make ourselves impossible in public. But there is another more important thing. Our workers themselves would not tolerate this. They demand that one openly discuss the faults and weaknesses of the Party, because such discussions, if kept objective, are educational and enlightening for them. The proletarians have another right to this. They must pay with their sacrifices, with their freedom, with their lives for our politics and for its errors. (Consent.)

As far as the theses on tactics presented here are concerned, I am of the opinion that some passages need even sharper formulation, that the will to fight, to make a strong advance must be expressed even more clearly, more forcefully. But these are small stylistic corrections for the editorial commission. I consider it objectively important that a paragraph be inserted on page 16. Namely, a passage obliging the parties of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg to co-operate in a planned and permanent manner in order to mobilise the working masses in the great western centres of coal and ore extraction in Central Europe for the revolutionary struggle. And the corresponding obligation should also apply to the cooperation of our communist parties in Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, in the eastern centre of coal and ore production in Central Europe. I believe that these are demands which are self-evident and which I do not need to discuss here. I can give the reasons in the Commission.

I will conclude by saying that, in my opinion, it must not be a matter of reconciling people with each other, of cover-up politics. We are all personally a nothing compared to the revolution. It is a question of creating the fundamental ground on which the Communist Party of Germany can face the tremendous battles of the future. In my opinion, this fundamental ground is created by the theses of Trotsky, by the theses of comrade Radek. Both belong together, are an inseparable whole. Together they contain the powerful call to the proletarians of all countries: whatever the situation, you are obliged to summon up the utmost energy, to revolutionary struggle. The Theses united, as a whole, call out to all Communist Parties: You must maintain the necessary elasticity in your tactics in order to be prepared for all situations. You have to gain the advance power to be able to take up the final struggle at any moment, because we do not know whether some events will not bring it about, like the thief coming in the night. But you must also preserve the strength to endure when the final battle does not yet approach so quickly. I welcome the fact that the theses which join together as a unity have emerged from the ranks of our Russian comrades, that they are borne by their theoretical insight and above all by their revolutionary experience. We owe to our Russian brothers, we owe to the Russian proletariat more than merely the knowledge of the methods and ways of struggle in this period when the old world is perishing in the raging and flames of the world revolution. Above all, we owe to our Russian brothers that their example has shown what an important, what a decisive force and power in the revolutionary struggle is the will. A will that grasps with clear vision all concrete possibilities, a will that is thereby unalterably directed towards the final goal, or more correctly: towards the next stage of the goal: the conquest of political power and the establishment of the proletarian soviet dictatorship, as the great gate through which the world revolution passes. (Loud applause and cheers.)