Wandering in the Void: The Dead End of National Bolshevism

In his 1997 text “The Metaphysics of National Bolshevism,” the Russian fascist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin said the coming together of the political left and right under the banner of national Bolshevism represented the future:

The rule of National Bolshevism, its Regnum and Final Empire, is a complete realization of the greatest Revolution in history, continental and universal. It is the return of angels, the resurrection of heroes, the revolt of the heart against the dictatorship of reason.1

Dugin is perhaps the most articulate spokesperson for the political trend known as national Bolshevism, a syncretic and eclectic political movement that portrays itself as “neither right nor left” by combining ultranationalism and revolutionary communist élan. In the Russian Federation, this tendency is represented today by the National Bolshevik Party (NBP). Formed in 1991 by Eduard Limonov, the NBP hoped to bring together elements of the old Stalinist left and the nationalist right. Currently the NBP is largely moribund, but it did anticipate other efforts to generate “red-brown” alliances.

For instance, national Bolshevism can be found among segments of the “anti-imperialist” left in the United States who support Vladimir Putin in his fight against western hegemony. The closest to genuine national Bolsheviks are fringe groups of online trolls known as MAGA “Communists” like Haz Al-Din. Neo-Nazi leader Matthew Heimbach, formerly of the Traditionalist Workers Party, similarly describes himself as a patriotic socialist (“patzi”) and an admirer of Putin. Alt-right leader and white supremacist Richard Spencer has also been a supporter of both Putin and Dugin (though he has shifted since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and is now pro-NATO).

However, there are more serious actors who, while not full-blown national Bolsheviks, have nevertheless adopted portions of their “multipolarity” geopolitical approach. Both the Marcyite Workers World Party (WWP) and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) support Russia, Iran and other reactionary and oppressive forces simply because they are opposed to American imperialism. Unfortunately, their ideas have influenced a whole section of the American left well beyond their official membership.

Dugin and other national Bolsheviks present their ideas as avant-garde, but they actually have a long history dating back over a century. In Germany, figures such as Ernst Niekisch (1889–1967) developed their own brand of national Bolshevism that combined German nationalism with admiration for the Soviet Union. National Bolshevik ideas also resonated with Conservative Revolutionaries like Ernst Jünger and “left” Nazis such as Gregor Strasser and Ernst Röhm.

Following Radek’s advice, the KPD utilized anti-semitic and nationalist rhetoric in its propaganda, hoping to win over the petty-bourgeois supporters of fascism. During this brief experiment, the party not only failed to win over the nationalists but created confusion in its own ranks.

The first major national-Bolshevik initiative occurred in 1923 when Germany stood on the brink of revolution. In his controversial “Schlageter speech” to the Communist International, Bolshevik leader Karl Radek paid tribute to a martyred Nazi hero, Leo Schlageter, and urged the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) to harness the power of nationalism for the socialist cause. Following Radek’s advice, the KPD utilized anti-semitic and nationalist rhetoric in its propaganda, hoping to win over the petty-bourgeois supporters of fascism. During this brief experiment, the party not only failed to win over the nationalists but created confusion in its own ranks.

The experience of the “Schlageter line,” as it came to be known, and other red-brown alliances show that national Bolshevism is a Frankenstein’s monster. Marxist internationalism and anti-oppression politics cannot be combined with reactionary and nationalist elements without fundamentally diluting their emancipatory core. The main lesson of the Schlageter line is that appealing to the far right will never advance the communist cause but only serve to hinder it. To counter the appeal of fascists, Marxists need to be uncompromising revolutionaries who defend their political principles.

The Schlageter legend

Albert Leo Schlageter was born in 1894 and was a devoted German nationalist from his early youth. During World War I, he was a decorated soldier who fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the Western front. Radicalized by defeat, Schlageter believed that Germany was now threatened with destruction by the forces of “Judeo-Bolshevism.” To save the fatherland, he joined the paramilitary Freikorps and the Nazi Party.

The French occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923 led to a political crisis in Germany. Millions of Germans from all classes perceived the invasion as a national humiliation. Like other nationalists, Schlageter was enraged and felt it was his duty to serve Germany once again. Over the course of several months, he led a group of nationalists in the Ruhr who conducted sabotage operations against the French occupiers.

Schlageter was captured by the French and sentenced to death. On May 26, he was executed by a firing squad after receiving final communion from a priest. By now, Schlageter had become a cause célèbre for German nationalists. His corpse was returned home for a final burial accompanied by adoring crowds. The Nazis were quick to take advantage of the outpouring of grief for one of their own. Adolf Hitler sent 70,000 Sturmabteilung (SA, or Stormtroopers) to march alongside the casket, six of whom served as pallbearers.2 In Munich, Hitler spoke before a crowd of 30,000 and paid tribute to Schlageter’s sacrifice for the Volk:

Schlageter’s death should show us that freedom will not be won by protests, but by action alone… when men stand at the helm of Germany who are worthy of such heroism, because they themselves are heroes. And we give this promise today, that we will not rest until the Volk pulsates with the spirit of battle, and until we hear the cry ‘The Volk arises! Let the storm break loose!’3

This was only the beginning of the Schlageter legend.

The Nazi martyr

Following the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, Schlageter became one of the new heroes of the Third Reich. On the tenth anniversary of his death, the Schlageter National Monument was unveiled in Düsseldorf. The monument’s design replicated the cross that stood on Golgotha. Like the Christian savior who rose from the dead to bring salvation, Schlageter had now risen with the new national revolution. Among those in attendance were Hitler and fellow Nazi leader Hermann Göring. At the opening ceremony, Göring addressed the crowd: “Schlageter demonstrated in the way he died that the German spirit could not be destroyed… As long as there are Schlageters in Germany, the nation will live.”4 At the conclusion of the event, the people of Düsseldorf presented Hitler with a silver shrine that supposedly contained the bullet that killed Schlageter.

The philosopher and newly minted Nazi party member Martin Heidegger also hailed Schlageter’s nationalist spirit. As rector of Freiburg University, Heidegger delivered an address in May 1933 in which he praised Schlageter for answering the “call” of the German Volk. Heidegger said Schlageter’s martyrdom symbolized the agony of the German people at the end of World War I. Like the Volk, Schlageter had been betrayed in his great struggle.

Now Heidegger urged the students to carry on Schlageter’s work of national renewal:

Student of Freiburg, let the strength of the autumn sun of this hero’s native valley shine into your heart! Preserve both within you and carry them, hardness of will and clarity of heart, to your comrades at the German universities.5

He was also the subject of a play, Schlageter, written by Hanns Johst, that premiered on Hitler’s 44th birthday on April 20, 1933, and was dedicated to the Führer. Throughout the play, Schlageter appears as a savior, leading the Volk out of darkness to a new dawn. His heroic example would redeem the martyred nation. In the play, Schlageter was portrayed as a pure Nazi hero who completely rejected the culture of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The famous line “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun,” falsely attributed to Göring, originated in Johst’s play:

I know all about that crap from 1918… brotherhood, equality, and freedom… Beauty and worthiness! Then in the middle of it, hands up! You’re disarmed . . . you’re the trash of the Republic! — No to hell with this whole ideological smorgasbord.. . . Now we’ll cut loose! When I hear the word culture . . . I uncock my Browning!6

The end of the play shows Schlageter bound to a stake where his last words serve as a Nazi version of Jesus’s Great Commission: “Germany! A final word! A wish! Command! Germany! Awake! Catch fire! Burn! Burn wildly!”7 No doubt, Johst’s Schlageter was a faithful accolade to the spirit of Hitler and the Third Reich.

“The Wanderer in the Void”

Unlike the Nazis, the immediate reaction of the KPD to Schlageter’s death was to condemn him as merely a capitalist mercenary: “We communists have no reason to spare these bourgeois elitists whose murders of communists and workers are celebrated as deeds of heroism.”8 Yet this was not the last word on Schlageter from the far left.

As Germany lurched toward revolution in 1923, the Communist International was alarmed by the rise of fascism and how to combat it. In Moscow in early June, the Comintern’s Executive Committee held the first major discussion in the workers’ movement on the causes and nature of fascism. One of the speakers was the German communist Clara Zetkin, whose report spoke about the threat posed by fascism: “Fascism confronts the proletariat as an exceptionally dangerous and frightful enemy. Fascism is the strongest, most concentrated, and classic expression at this time of the world bourgeoisie’s general offensive.”9

Zetkin argued fascism was an expression of capitalist crisis and a sign that bourgeois institutions were breaking down. The crisis itself was characterized by intensified attacks on the working class and sectors of the petty bourgeoisie who were sinking to the level of the proletariat. Zetkin highlighted that the rise of fascism was based upon the working class’s failure to seize power and establish socialism. Due to this failure, many workers grew disillusioned along with those who looked to communists for a way out of the crisis. As a result, fascism

became an asylum for all the politically homeless, the socially uprooted, the destitute and disillusioned. And what they no longer hoped for from the revolutionary proletarian class and from socialism, they now hoped would be achieved by the most able, strong, determined, and bold elements of every social class. All these forces must come together in a community. And this community, for the fascists, is the nation. They wrongly imagine that the sincere will to create a new and better social reality is strong enough to overcome all class antagonisms.10

In a crisis situation, Zetkin said that fascism was an instrument of the bourgeoisie to hold onto power. If the crisis becomes acute, then the bourgeoisie will begin funding fascist blackshirts to counter the threat of proletarian revolution. A major characteristic of fascism was the use of organized force to attack and destroy all working-class organizations. She claimed that fascism could play this role because it was not like traditional counterrevolution. Fascism was a mass movement based among the petty bourgeoisie threatened by capitalist collapse. To gain support from this class, fascists utilized anti-capitalist rhetoric. Zetkin argued that fascism’s revolutionary demagogy was just a ruse:

But [fascism] consists everywhere of an amalgam of brutal and terrorist violence together with deceptive revolutionary phraseology, linking up demagogically with the needs and moods of broad masses of producers.11

To defeat fascist terror required action by workers’ defense guards and a united front involving all working-class organizations. However, Zetkin said that if communists wanted to defeat fascism utterly, then military means were not enough. They had to either win over or neutralize many of those attracted to fascism:

We must remain aware that, as I said at the outset, fascism is a movement of the hungry, the suffering, the disappointed, and those without a future. We must make efforts to address the social layers that are now lapsing into fascism and either incorporate them in our struggles or at least neutralize them in the struggle. We must employ clarity and force to prevent them from providing troops for the bourgeois counterrevolution.12

Karl Radek’s speech “The Wanderer in the Void” appeared to answer Zetkin’s question. He began by thanking Zetkin for her “comprehensive and deeply impressive report… on international fascism,” but noted that he had “difficulty following it, because there hovered before my eyes the corpse of a German fascist, our class opponent, who was condemned to death and shot by the thugs of French imperialism — a powerful organisation of another section of our class enemy.”13 For Radek, Schlageter was the key to understanding the appeal of fascism and how communists could fight it.

Radek noted that Schlageter was a “courageous soldier of the counterrevolution” who deserved to be “honoured by us, the soldiers of the revolution.”14 He said that Schlageter represented petty-bourgeois forces who were attracted to the nationalist appeal of fascism and that the Comintern needed to find paths to reach them:

[We] believe that the great majority of the nationalist-minded masses belong not in the camp of the capitalists but in that of the workers. We want to find the road to these masses, and we will do so. We will do everything in our power to make men like Schlageter, who are prepared to go to their deaths for a common cause, not wanderers into a void, but voyagers into a better future for the whole of humanity. That they should not spill their eager, unselfish blood for the profit of the coal and iron barons, but in the cause of the great toiling German people, which is a member of the family of peoples fighting for their emancipation.15

He observed that Schlageter fought against the communists and “regarded the working class as a mob that must be governed.”16 Despite his false consciousness, Radek believed that Schlageter was a true believer in his cause: “We have no reason to believe that it was from selfish motives that Schlageter helped to subdue the starving miners.”17 Despite his pure motives, Radek said that Schlageter was deceived by the bourgeoisie:

Schlageter read in the newspapers how the very people who pretend to be the patrons of the German nationalist movement sent securities abroad so that they might be enriched and the country impoverished. Schlageter certainly could have no hope in these parasites.18

The experience of the Schlageter line and other red-brown alliances show that national Bolshevism is a Frankenstein’s monster. Marxist internationalism and anti-oppression politics cannot be combined with reactionary and nationalist elements without fundamentally diluting their emancipatory core.

Compared to the cowardly German bourgeoisie, Radek said it was the workers who were leading the struggle against the French in the Ruhr. In the coming days, it would fall to the proletariat — not the bourgeoisie — to free Germany. Therefore, Radek concluded it was necessary for communists to position themselves as leaders in the struggle for national liberation:

That is what the German Communist Party and the Communist International have to say at Schlageter’s graveside. It has nothing to conceal, for only the complete truth can pave the way to the suffering masses of Germany, torn by internal strife. The German Communist Party declares openly to the nationalist petty-bourgeois masses that those working in the service of the profiteers, the speculators, and the iron and coal magnates to enslave the German people and to drive them into adventures will meet the resistance of the German Communist workers, who will oppose violence with violence. We will fight with all the means at our disposal against those who, from lack of comprehension, ally themselves with the mercenaries of capital.19

There were no immediate objections from anyone present to Radek’s words. Most Communists accepted Radek’s analysis with little to no reservations. Zetkin voiced her approval: “The noble and profound words of Radek touched my spirit as an old fighter. They sum up the situation and our task.”20 Only the French communist Alfred Rosmer sensed any potential dangers in Radek’s approach:

Radek’s unbelievable declamation was not designed to ease the task of worker militants who had given their activity a carefully judged orientation. On the other hand, it was of great value to the Social Democratic leaders who were remaining passive in face of the advances of the National Socialists and were glad to have a pretext — which seemed excellent — to denounce the ‘collusion of the Communist and fascist leaders’.21

Radek’s speech did not represent his own individual opinion. Rather, he was instructed to deliver it at the urging of the Comintern leadership. As Radek explained at the Fifth Comintern Congress in July 1924: “The Schlageter speech…was given at the [Third] Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee with the agreement — not just silent but written — of the chairman of the Executive Committee [Zinoviev].”22 Grigory Zinoviev was the President of the Comintern and a popular Bolshevik leader. As the Russian Revolution degenerated in conditions of isolation, Zinovievism as a distinct political tendency came into existence, representing the interests of the emerging Soviet bureaucracy. While still committed to many of Bolshevism’s goals, Zinovievism showed itself open to opportunist and bureaucratic maneuvers.

At the same time, the Comintern did not contemplate any ideological concessions to fascism. This was evidenced by the fact that the Comintern Executive adopted a resolution calling for an all-out struggle against fascism:

The conscious revolutionary vanguard of the working class has the task of taking up the struggle against victorious fascism in Italy and the fascism now taking shape around the world. It must disarm and overcome fascism politically and must organise the workers into strong and successful self-defence against its violent actions.23

According to the historian E. H. Carr, “[The Schlageter line] was conceived, not as an attempt to bring about a working alliance with German Fascists against the Versailles treaty, but as an attempt to split their ranks by proving that effective opposition to the Versailles treaty could in the long run be offered only by the communists; it could therefore be logically reconciled with the continuation of a vigorous campaign against Fascism.”24

By adopting the “Schlageter line,” the KPD now had to carefully balance two tasks. On the one hand, they needed to unite all Germans against the Ruhr occupation, which potentially included the nationalist right. On the other hand, they had to fight those who supported the bourgeoisie, which included most of the nationalists. It remained to be seen if the KPD could walk this delicate tightrope.

National Bolshevism

Radek’s Schlageter line bore striking similarities to an earlier strategy developed in 1919. After the signing of the Versailles Treaty, two KPD members, Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolffheim, argued that Germany was now a “proletarian nation” and it must wage a war of liberation allied with Soviet Russia to free itself from the Allies. Laufenberg and Wolffheim envisioned their strategy as a bridge fusing rightwing nationalism and leftwing class struggle. In this “revolutionary war” the German working class would create a red army that would welcome members of the Freikorps and the officer corps.

They presented these ideas to Radek, who mockingly coined the term “national Bolshevism” to describe their theory. As he said later: “In the year 1919 Laufenberg proposed a farrago of communism and nationalism. We declare frankly that one cannot play tricks with ideas and mixtures out of ideas.”25 Yet Radek did not categorically reject national Bolshevism. Even though the party could not tolerate “petty-bourgeois prejudices” in its ranks, it was possible that “under certain future conditions…the Communist Party can establish contact with national Bolshevism.”26 He stated that the KPD must offer a helping hand to sincere bourgeois nationalists and that nationalism could be one of the roads to communism: “Concern for the national question can also be one of the paths leading to Communism.”27

A major characteristic of fascism was the use of organized force to destroy working-class organizations. Zetkin claimed that fascism could play this role because it was not like traditional counterrevolution. Fascism was a mass movement based among the petty bourgeoisie threatened by capitalist collapse. To gain support from this class, fascists utilized anti-capitalist rhetoric.

Others in the Comintern made no such concessions and viewed national Bolshevism as utterly ridiculous. Lenin condemned the strategy as a “preposterous absurdit[y].”28 Elsewhere, he argued that it was an “unnatural bloc between the Black Hundreds and the Bolsheviks,”29 and warned that attempting to ally communism with the far right would inevitably end in betrayal: “If you form a bloc with the German Kornilovites, they will dupe you.”30

Ultimately, Laufenberg and Wolffheim left the party and became founding members of the Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (KAPD) in 1920. They were soon kicked out of the KAPD too. One of the conditions for the KAPD attending the second congress of the Comintern in 1920 was the expulsion of national Bolsheviks from their ranks. Afterward, Laufenberg retired from politics while Wolffheim moved to the fringes of the Nazi party.

By 1923, Radek believed that conditions in Germany had changed. He argued that Laufenberg and Wolffheim’s national Bolshevism “signified an alliance to rescue the generals who had immediately after the [November 1918] victory smashed the Communist Party.”31 Now he claimed that

national Bolshevism signifies the pervasive feeling that salvation is to be found only through the Communists. We represent today the only road forward. Strong emphasis on the nation in Germany today is a revolutionary act, just as it is in the colonies.32

For Radek, the French occupation had reduced Germany to a colony, changing the significance of the national question. Now he concluded it was the duty of the KPD to lead all classes in a struggle for national liberation and social revolution.

The Schlageter line

Radek’s Schlageter speech was published throughout Germany and the KPD adopted the new line with gusto. Over the course of July and August, the KPD launched a mass campaign to reach German nationalists. The most publicized elements of the Schlageter line were the debates held between the KPD and the Nazis. Many of these debates were held in Nazi strongholds on university campuses where they addressed the theme “Why Did Schlageter Die?”

On August 2, KPD leader Hermann Remmele addressed a Nazi meeting and declared: “They told you that Communism would take everything from you. But it is capitalism that has taken everything from you!”33 His words were greeted with great applause. Other Communist speakers declared: “The time is not far off when the Völkische and the Communists will be united.”34

To win over nationalists, KPD leader Ruth Fischer was willing to utilize anti-semitic demagogy:

Whoever cries out against Jewish capital … is already a fighter for his class [Klassenkämpfer], even though he may not know it. You are against the stock market jobbers. Fine. Trample the Jewish capitalists down, hang them from the lampposts. … But … how do you feel about the big capitalists, the Stinnes, Klöckner? Only in alliance with Russia, Gentlemen of the völkische side, can the German people expel French capitalism from the Ruhr region.35

Fischer’s rhetoric was not an isolated incident in the KPD. On August 7, Rote Fahne printed an article that accused prominent members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of being connected to Jewish capitalists.36

Other Communists attempted to steer clear of anti-semitism but found it unavoidable when addressing Nazi crowds. For example, Remmele spoke to a mixed Nazi and Communist crowd in Stuttgart, where he told them that anti-semitism was a tool of the ruling class to distract workers from the real causes of their exploitation. After being interrupted by Nazis, he conceded that there was a “rational kernel” in anti-semitism:

How such anti-Semitism arises I can easily understand. One merely needs to go down to the Stuttgart cattle market in order to see how the cattle dealers, most of whom belong to Jewry, buy up cattle at any price, while the Stuttgart butchers have to go home again, empty-handed, because they just don’t have enough money to buy cattle. (‘Quite right!’ from the Fascists.)37

Later in his speech, Remmele told the crowd that fighting Jewish finance capital was only half the battle:

You, the Fascists, now say [that you want] to fight the Jewish finance capital. All right. Go ahead! Agreed! (Stormy applause from the Fascists.) But you must not forget one thing, industrial capital! (Interjections from the Fascists: ‘We fight that too!’) For finance capital is really nothing else but industrial capital.38

On August 10, Remmele told an audience of 8,000 that he considered a KPD alliance with the Nazis to be less objectionable than one with the Social Democrats. Speaking out of the other side of his mouth, he also let it be known that the KPD was willing to unite with the murderers of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in the SPD.39

Lenin condemned national Bolshevism as a “preposterous absurdity.” He argued that the strategy was an “unnatural bloc between the Black Hundreds and the Bolsheviks” and that attempting to ally communism with the far right would inevitably end in betrayal.

At the insistence of the Nazi leaders, the debates with the Communists ended abruptly on August 14. For the remainder of the revolutionary days of 1923, the KPD and the Nazis went their separate ways.

The judgment of historians on the Schlageter line is mixed. Some have attempted to minimize the line as merely a brief turn by the party that did little lasting damage. In The German Revolution, 1917–1923, the Trotskyist historian Pierre Broué says, “Communist orators sometimes let themselves get carried away in their desire to please their audiences and made dangerous concessions to them.”40 However, he concludes that “the ‘Schlageter line’… corresponded to the needs of the time — and history has proved this to be correct — even if its application went awry at times.”41

Another Trotskyist historian, Chris Harman, states that the Schlageter speech was distinct from both earlier and later forms of national Bolshevism. While the Schlageter line was an “error,” Harman concludes that it was “not the criminal lunacy that some have said.”42

This position is supported by E. H. Carr, who says that the Schlageter line represented a short-term maneuver by the KPD to split the social base of the nationalist right. Still, he argues that the Nazis benefited more than the KPD:

It may fairly be said that both sides [KPD and Nazis] embarked on the project with their eyes open and with full appreciation of the aims of their partners. In the long run the Fascists perhaps showed more skill in using the communists to serve their ends than the communists in using the Fascists.43

The most negative appraisal of the Schlageter line is given by the historian Werner Angress in Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid For Power In Germany, 1921–1923. According to Angress, the Schlageter line “aroused much attention but netted the party few, if any, tangible advantages.”44 Angress argues that while the petty bourgeoisie was acutely suffering in 1923, this did not translate into support for the KPD: “Few of them could be convinced that the German Communists held the answer to their troubles.”45 Furthermore, many of these social layers believed that the KPD’s nationalist rhetoric was insincere.

Angress believes that the KPD was not committed to any single line but was open to any approach in support of their main goal of mobilizing the labor movement against the German state. Like Broué, Harman, and Carr, Angress concludes that the Schlageter line represented a short-term tactical move by the party and not a fundamental revision of their politics:

The Schlageter line was merely one of these tactical moves; it was not considered an all-or-nothing proposition, but was held to serve a useful purpose even if it achieved no more than the neutralization of certain segments of the population ordinarily hostile to Communism.46

Acknowledging all the caveats that the Schlageter line was only a tactical move and not a permanent one, it can be concluded that it brought no political benefit to the communists. For one, the embrace of German nationalism undermined efforts to win over French soldiers in the Ruhr. This also helped to isolate the French Communist Party and their efforts to build solidarity between French and German workers.47 Second, the statements by Remmele and others that they were willing to form an alliance with the Nazis was in violation of the KPD’s official united-front policy with social democracy. The opportunism of the Schlageter line could only make forming a united front with the SPD more difficult. Finally, the Schlageter line did not win over any great number of the petty bourgeoisie to the KPD. Despite the KPD wearing nationalist colors, the parties and leaders of the middle class only saw Marxist red. For the nationalist right, the communists were always the party of class struggle, revolution, and internationalism. No matter how many compromises or tactical maneuvers they made, the KPD could never shake off their revolutionary origins.

National Bolshevism in the Third Period

The Schlageter line was not the last time that the KPD used nationalist rhetoric. In 1928, the now Stalinist-led Comintern launched the Third Period, proclaiming revolution was on the immediate agenda in the capitalist world. As part of this new line, the Comintern declared that social democrats were now “social-fascists” and the main enemy. In Germany, the KPD again mixed nationalist phraseology with their calls for proletarian revolution. In the KPD’s August 1930 election program, they called for a German soviet republic but also advocated German national liberation.48 Some months later in January 1931, the KPD formally adopted the program of a “people’s revolution,” which they proclaimed was the “chief strategic slogan of the party.”49

This was another example of the KPD using the same terms as the Nazis — who also called for a “people’s revolution” — to win over their supporters. In their campaign, the KPD attempted to portray themselves as better defenders of German national interests than the Nazis. In a May 1932 debate, the KPD countered Nazi arguments on “Jewish capitalism” in the following manner: “The Nazis only want to overthrow a section (the Jewish section) of capitalism and leave the rest in existence, but Communism would uproot every last vestige of capitalism.”50 Through the use of Völkisch rhetoric, the KPD was able to win over some members of the SA to their ranks, including prominent figures such as Richard Scheringer.

Fascists are not revolutionaries opposed to capitalism, but only mimic the language and symbols of the far left. For fascists, protests against the system are not framed in terms of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but as a struggle between an authentic national community and a parasitic elite. This approach allows fascists to easily substitute racial struggle for class struggle with the bourgeoisie now portrayed as “international Jews.”

Overall, the KPD’s approach was deeply mistaken. Having already rejected any united front with the SPD, the Communists failed to differentiate between the reformist consciousness of social democrats and the counterrevolutionary rage of Nazi Stormtroopers. While the SPD defended capitalism, this did not mean they were the equivalent to the Nazis. In 1933, the KPD’s failure to form a united front with the SPD ended in disaster. In addition, the slogan of “people’s revolution” did not weaken the Nazi’s nationalist appeal, but merely served to baffle revolutionary workers. As Trotsky noted: “As a slogan, it is inane and charlatanism, market competition with the fascists, paid for at the price of injecting confusion into the minds of the workers.”51

Marxist principles, mass work, and anti-fascism

Whatever else can be said, the debates of 1923 pose genuine questions for revolutionaries: How should Communists understand fascism’s appeal to the petty bourgeoisie? What is the best approach to win over and neutralize those attracted to fascism? There can be no principled objection to a political strategy designed to isolate and neutralize the forces of fascism.

It can be answered unequivocally that the Schlageter line was the wrong answer in every respect to those questions. The practical result of the KPD’s national Bolshevism was tailing the fascist right. By using nationalist and anti-semitic slogans, the KPD was already conceding important ideological ground to fascists. This confused approach also carried with it the peril that sections of the working class could be won over to fascist ideas.

Some advocates of populism such as the post-Marxist theorist Ernesto Laclau are oblivious to these dangers. In fact, Laclau believes that the KPD should have fully embraced the Schlageter line:

It is true that in [the Schlageter line] there were many opportunist elements and that its sporadic application only helped to weaken the German working class faced with Nazism… The correct position would have been to deepen this line and carry it to its logical conclusion: the abandonment of class reductionism.52

In his populist approach, Laclau fails to address the dangers of anti-semitism and nationalism found in the Schlageter line. Fascist campaigns against “Jewish capitalism” are not equivalent to the struggle against capitalism. This is for the simple reason that fascists are not revolutionaries opposed to capitalism, but only mimic the language and symbols of the far left. For fascists, protests against the system are not framed in terms of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but as a struggle between an authentic national community and a parasitic elite. This approach allows fascists to easily substitute racial struggle for class struggle with the bourgeoisie now portrayed as “international Jews.” In their irrationalist framework, the “Jew” becomes the evil puppet master pulling all the strings. The fascist crusade against “Jewish finance” takes on the appearance of a radical revolution, but in reality, it merely rescues a tottering capitalism. Therefore, the fascist call for getting rid of the “Jews” is a false solution to social contradictions since they only offer a pseudo-revolution in the first place.

When it comes to embracing nationalism, Laclau forgets basic internationalist principles formulated in the Communist Manifesto: “The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.”53 The development and expansion of capitalism creates the material basis for internationalism by creating a global working class. The starting point for workers in each country is not “their nation” but recognizing themselves as detachments of the international proletariat.

In imperialist countries, nationalism justifies both papering over class divisions and colonial rule over oppressed peoples. Simply put: communists in oppressor nations cannot wave an imperialist flag without betraying their internationalist commitments. This is precisely what MAGA “Communists” and the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) do when they embrace American chauvinism. Similarly, the electoralism and economism of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) means international solidarity takes a back seat to backing American nationalism and imperialist wars. In practice, they all find themselves supporting nationalism and opposed to both internationalism and socialist revolution.

To build international unity, it is essential that workers in oppressed nations should not feel any misgivings from their comrades in oppressor nations. This means militant anti-racism and anti-imperialist internationalism must play a key role in forging equality and voluntary unity.

It should not be surprising that many workers enter political life with irrational, mystical, and backward notions about how society works. However, it is possible for communists to “meet people where they are at” without politically adapting themselves to outworn prejudices and notions.

Even communist support for national liberation struggles by oppressed peoples is in pursuit of the same universalist goals. National liberation struggles have been a source of immense revolutionary energies by challenging imperialism. However, if the process of national liberation is to truly end class and national oppression, then this requires expression in terms of its guiding political program (i.e. communist and internationalist leadership). Otherwise, national liberation without the goal of communism will only end up changing the flag of the oppressors, as the Irish Marxist James Connolly warned.

Contrary to Laclau or national Bolsheviks, communists cannot appeal to potential supporters of fascism with antisemitic demagogy or nationalist slogans to win them over to revolutionary politics. Rather, workers can only be won to communism with the weapons of Marxist reason.

At the heart of Marxism is the self-emancipation of the working class. The working class freeing itself and becoming fit to rule society occurs through its own revolutionary activity. Creating a socialist society entails a level of political consciousness unprecedented in history. Yet in its class composition, the working class is uneven with different levels of consciousness and levels of development. As Trotsky noted:

In reality classes are heterogeneous; they are torn by inner antagonisms, and arrive at the solution of common problems no otherwise than through an inner struggle of tendencies, groups and parties. It is possible, with certain qualifications, to concede that “a party is part of a class.” But since a class has many “parts” — some look forward and some back — one and the same class may create several parties.54

Therefore, the struggle for liberation requires the concentration of class-conscious workers in a communist party. As an organized vanguard, the party must provide a scientific socialist perspective to newly awakened layers to pull them away from backward ideas. The party operates as a combat organization to coordinate and lead the scattered and spontaneous struggles of the working class.

Communists cannot control where people start from. It should not be surprising that many workers enter political life with irrational, mystical, and backward notions about how society works. However, it is possible for communists to “meet people where they are at” without politically adapting themselves to outworn prejudices and notions. Trotsky stressed that, in its mass work, a party must not adapt its program to momentary or backward moods of the masses, but must educate the workers on their historic mission:

We have repeated many times that the scientific character of our activity consists in the fact that we adapt our program not to political conjunctures or the thought or mood of the masses as this mood is today, but we adapt our program to the objective situation as it is represented by the economic class structure of society. The mentality can be backward; then the political task of the party is to bring the mentality into harmony with the objective facts, to make the workers understand the objective task. But we cannot adapt the program to the backward mentality of the workers, the mentality, the mood is a secondary factor — the prime factor is the objective situation. That is why we have heard these criticisms or these appreciations that some parts of the program do not conform to the situation.55

As evidenced by 1923, there are moments when Communists are under tremendous pressure to “bend with the wind” and tailor their politics to “where the people are at.” Resisting those pressures may lead to — hopefully temporary — isolation. Yet even when it is unpopular, communists must be ready to defend their political principles against those who advocate opportunist shortcuts. As Trotsky argued:

In [reactionary] conditions the task of the vanguard is, above all, not to let itself be carried along by the backward flow: it must swim against the current. If an unfavorable relation of forces prevents it from holding political positions it has won, it must at least retain its ideological positions, because in them is expressed the dearly paid experience of the past. Fools will consider this policy “sectarian”. Actually it is the only means of preparing for a new tremendous surge forward with the coming historical tide.56

National Bolshevism, like every opportunist shortcut, is a dead end. There is no substitute for patient education and principled politics. Otherwise, communists will end up like the national Bolsheviks and other opportunists who are just wandering in the void.

Photo: Arrest of National Bolshevik Party activist Yury Chervochkin in a voting precinct in Odintsovo, a suburb of Moscow, on March 11, 2007.

 

Endnotes

1. Aleksandr Dugin, Templars of the Proletariat (London: Arktos, 2023), 24; See also Richard Wolin, Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 453.
2. Robert G. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany 1918-1923 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1952), 237. Among the pallbearers were Karl Kaufmann, the future Reichstaathalter of Hamburg; Erich Koch, Oberpräsident and Gauleiter of East Prussia; Viktor Lutze, Oberpräsident of Hannover and, after Röhm’s death, chief of staff of the Sturmabteilung; Hans Hayn, Sturmabteilung gruppenführer of Saxony.
3. Quoted in Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1990), 28.
4. Quoted in ibid. 37
5. Martin Heidegger, “Schlageter (May 26, 1933),” in Richard Wolin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 41.
6. Quoted in Baird 1990, 36.
7. Quoted in ibid. 37.
8. Quoted in ibid. 28.
9. John Riddell, The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922–1923 (Boston: Brill, 2018), 580.
10. Ibid. 585.
11. Ibid. 666.
12. Ibid. 602.
13. Ibid. 613.
14. Ibid. 614.
15. Ibid. 618.
16. Ibid. 615.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid. 616.
19. Ibid. 617-18.
20. Ibid. 618.
21. Alfred Rosmer, Moscow Under Lenin (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 198.
22. Quoted in Riddell 2018, 24.
23. Ibid. 667.
24. Edward H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia: The Interregnum 1923–1924 (London: Macmillan, 1954), 181.
25. Ibid 184. See also Pierre Broué, The German Revolution 1917–1923 (Boston: Brill, 2005), 326.
26. Quoted in Abraham Ascher and Guenter Lewy, “National Bolshevism in Weimar Germany: Alliance of Political Extremes Against Democracy,” Social Research, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Winter 1956): 454.
27. Ibid.
28. V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 69.
29. V. I. Lenin, “Speech Delivered at the Ninth All-Russia Conference of the Russian Communist Party,” Marxists Internet Archive.
30. Quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 103.
31. Riddell 2018, 445.
32. Ibid. 445-46.
33. Broué 2005, 729.
34. Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism: A Study in the Origins of the State Party (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948), 283. [Völkischer Beobachter was a Nazi newspaper]
35. Werner T. Angress, Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921–1923 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 339–40. Years later, Fischer defended her remarks as follows: “At a meeting of Berlin University students organized by the Berlin party branch, I was the speaker. The attitude of the nationalists against capitalism was discussed, and I was obliged to answer some anti-Semitic remarks. I said that Communism was for fighting Jewish capitalists only if all capitalists, Jewish and Gentile, were the object of the same attack. This episode has been cited and distorted over and over again in publications on German Communism.” Fischer 1948, 283.
36. Angress 1963, 340.
37. Ibid. 341.
38. Ibid.
39. Broué 2005, 729.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid. 730.
42. Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923 (London: Bookmarks, 1982), 254.
43. Carr 1954, 185-86.
44. Angress 1963, 338.
45. Ibid. 349.
46. Ibid.
47. Broué 2005, 729.
48. E. H. Carr, Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-1935 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 24-25.
49. Ibid. 31.
50. Donny Gluckstein, The Nazis, Capitalism, and the Working Class (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012), 113.
51. Leon Trotsky, “Thaelmann and the “People’s Revolution” (April 1931),” Marxists Internet Archive.
52. Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism – Fascism – Populism (London: New Left Books, 1977), 130.
53. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ““Manifesto of the Communist Party,” Marxists Internet Archive.
54. Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going?(New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972), 267.
55. Leon Trotsky, “Discussions with Trotsky On the Transitional Program,” Marxists Internet Archive.
56. Leon Trotsky, “Stalinism and Bolshevism,” Marxists Internet Archive.