As Marxists we start from the affirmation of the primacy of the class perspective. That is to say the perspective which takes the constitution of the broadest possible unity of wage workers around their common interest in the abolition of the wage relation as the substance and objective of political action. We categorically refuse any division of workers between “progressive” and “reactionary” ethnic groups or endorsement of the collective punishment of certain ethnic groups within the working class on the grounds of a supposed “collective responsibility” for reactionary nationalist crimes.

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In the introductory material of the first volume of this journal we emphasised the minimum requirements for joint work in the line of party construction. Precisely because of the low level of development of communist forces today, the specific question of party construction is usually irresponsibly equated with the general question of the construction of class organisations and the articulation of sequences of intervention within existing class organisations.

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The following text produced by the Democratic Centralist faction of the Left Opposition in response to Trotsky’s essay On The New Stage is noteworthy first of all for its emphasis that in the complex of historical metaphor inherited from the French Revolution it is the rule of Robespierre which marks the first stage of Thermidor. Attention to this point opens up new space for a nuanced appreciation of Stalin as both a reactionary bulwark against the proletarian left and a petty bourgeois revolutionary partisan of the national democratic revolution up to the threshold of socialism. In this regard we should also note that the contraposition between Robespierre’s affinity for compromise in foreign policy and Cloots’s call for internationalisation of the revolution is indicative.

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The following texts, further materials from the Deutschland-Russland-Komintern archival collection concerning the military policy of the KPD in 1924-32, an internal PCI assessment of armed struggle in Italy in 1919-22 and a brief report from the KPD military journal Vom Burgerkrieg on the rarely discussed Krakow uprising of November 6^th, 1923 have not been selected arbitrarily. We intend with their publication to encourage debate on the concrete complexities of politico-military strategy for proletarian class organizations seeking to master the dynamics of crisis periods. The capacity to exercise such mastery is never spontaneously emergent during the crisis period itself. Rather it reflects the “conditioning” internalized by the organization through prior processes of politico-ideological and military-technical preparation and practice.

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Therefore, we have attempted to outline a series of the most essential lessons of the German Party on the politico-military terrain in the present work. The previous M [military] work in Germany suffered primarily from too little mass character. The M-work which the Party has carried out up to the present day, did not act sufficiently within the Party and additionally among the workers. The awareness of its primary necessity did not sufficiently penetrate outside of the small circles who in part carried out or attempted to carry out very valuable work. The work must remain practically meaningless, because its closest possible unity with the total political work of the Party has not been understood. However, it is exactly this work that only has meaning when it is mass work.

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Immediately after the armistice, the problem of containing the restless spirit of the soldiers, whose discipline was relaxing day by day, appeared as a problem for the Government of Italy, while the population was pervaded by a new mentality, a rebellious vitality, which but the lack of leadership would have culminated in insurrection.

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The October and November events in Poland, which formed the end of a strong revolutionary wave, have been almost completely unnoticed and unevaluated by our press. The reason for this can be found partly in the banning of the entire party press and partly in the view that Poland is a secondary theater of the revolutionary war. This view cannot be warned against often enough. Revolutionary Germany cannot be indifferent to how the balance of forces within Poland is shaped.

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The dictatorship of the proletariat is a word and a concept originating with Karl Marx and the choice of expressions alone designates that it does not concern eternal principles but a temporary condition, namely the stage of transition between capitalist and socialist society in which the proletariat has already conquered political power, but must first remove the rubble of the old society in order to clear the road for the new.

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The Marxist thesis on the necessity of dictatorship over society by the political elite of the revolutionary class has been eclipsed by adherence to “democratic metaphysics”. The task of seizing power is obscured by the alleged necessity of winning 51% of the popular vote. The necessity of abolishing wage labour is displaced by sentimentality on the need to respect the popular will and the rights of the individual. This is acceptable if ones aspirations are limited to pandering to the delicate sensibilities of the petty bourgeois which enjoys nothing more then appeals to “democracy” and the “people”. It is far from satisfactory if one intends to build a communist current in the workers’ movement.

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