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Before writing about the Fourth International in this series of articles about attempts to build a worldwide Marxist international, I decided to take up the “centrist” internationals nicknamed two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half respectively, mostly out of derision by their adversaries. The first is formally known as the International Working Union of Socialist Parties and existed in the 1920s, largely as a collection of leftwing socialist parties sympathetic to Austro-Marxism. Since it was launched by Austrians such as Friedrich Adler and Otto Bauer, it was only natural for it to be based in Vienna and was also referred to as the Vienna International. The second, known as the International Revolutionary Marxist Centre, was arguably to the left and included Spain’s POUM as its best known member party. Since the headquarters was based in London, it was referred to as the “London Bureau”. The British section was called the Independent Labor Party (it had also been attached to the Vienna International) and included George Orwell as a sympathizer. His “Homage to Catalonia” describes his involvement with the POUM in Spain. Not long after I joined the Trotskyist movement in 1967, I learned that there was such a thing called “centrism”, a political current that supposedly was revolutionary in words, but counter-revolutionary in action. From what I can ascertain, this is drawn from Lenin’s characterization of Kautsky’s ideas in chapter six of “State and Revolution”: “This is nothing but the purest and most vulgar opportunism: repudiating revolution in deeds, while accepting it in words.” Since Kautsky was considered a kind of arch-demon in our movement, it was easy to understand why centrism became a curse word. The only problem is that pretty much everybody outside of our ranks, except for the Stalinists and the social democrats, could be referred to as a centrist if they did not go along with the entire Trotskyist catechism. This included just about every guerrilla group in Latin America, and implicitly Fidel Castro until he received absolution after 1963 or so. Another definition of centrism can be found in Trotsky’s writings and complemented Lenin’s definition above. Trotsky characterized centrism as a current that oscillated between revolutionary and reformist politics. In addition to groups like the POUM, he felt that the definition applied to the Comintern since it was committed to socialism in one country. It is very difficult to find documents from the “half” internationals either on or off the Internet, and I say that as someone with access to one of the best research libraries in the U.S. but you will find plenty of stuff directed against them. read full article: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-3-the-centrists/ ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
