The hundredth anniversary of
With respect to establishing a credible nuclear deterrent against China, it is 15-20 years behind. If it embarks on a programme to "match" China (1) it can do nothing to prevent nuclear blackmail by China during the long years of Indian preparation; (2) it will spark of a nuclear arms race in
"Die Neue Zeit" the sub-continent, since Pakistan will go ahead with its own nuclear weapons programme; (3) it will make China and the US more hostile about Indian intentions. Even the Soviets will be more suspicious, not to mention
IN 1885 THE leadership of the German Social Democracy decided to establish a theoretical magazine, entitled Die Neue Zeit. Karl Kautsky neighbours which was its editor in chief, and Franz Mehring very quickly became its reason to worry about India's "hegemonistic" ambitions; (4) it will in all editorial writer. It began as a monthly and went weekly in 1891.
probability still fail to "match" China
For a quarter of a century, Die Neue Zeit served the function of the the latter will simply maintheoretical and political organ of international Marxism. In fact, first tain if not extend its lead by making further advances in its own nuclear throughout Europe and then in the rest of the world where the socialist movement took root, the magazine was considered the forum
All this only goes to show the for Friedrich Engels and the Marxist wing of the Second International, fallacy of thinking that going in which was led by the German SPD and, above all, by Bebel and for nuclear weapons will enhance
Kautsky, who were collaborators and friends of Friedrich Engels.
it does fit in with the ambitions of
In the entire history of the workers movement, no other press organ the Indian bourgeoisie and its state has been able to render such service to the world proletariat and its to increase its prestige, authority and revolutionary vanguard as Die Neue Zeit.
control over the South Asian region.
Even here it will create more proband instability
"stability" (read domination) that the
Indian state wants.
What is more, going in for a nuclear weapons programme will have dangerous domestic repercussions.
- Although having a few bombs is not expensive, having a proper nuclear weapons programme is, and updating it constantly or embarking on the escalator of a regional nuclear will mean an enormous diversion of resources sectors and needs such as proper housing, health-care, food, education for the Indian masses.
"nuclear
- Establishing regime" in India means further militarising of civil society, greater erosion in order to of democratic rights
"protect" military secrets or "securiin various forms ty", proscription of against such nuclear protest weapons production and deployment ete. Such a nuclear regime will also mean greater concentration of power in the executive and even less control by the masses over what is literally for them, a life and death issue.
- Finally, such a nuclear could quite weapons programme possibly aggravate a delicate situation communal harmony weakening between Muslims and other communities in India.
Communist
Inquilabi
The
Sangathan [ICS] unequivocally calls for the establishment of a Nuclear
Weapons
Zone (NWFZ)
Free in
South Asia.
38 International Viewpoint 13 January 1986
ERNEST MANDEL
Neue Zeit's contribution was first of all theoretical. It is enough to mention that Marx and Engels' letters, collected under the title of Critique of the Gotha Program were published for the first time in Die Neue Zeit to assure this journal once and for all time a place in the history of Marxism. Also published in Die Neue Zeit were many original articles by Engels, such as "Socialism in Germany" and "The
Question in France and Germany" as well as numerous letters.
contribution to the development of Marxism is far richer than that.
It was in the pages of Die Neue Zeit that were published the first contributions by economists to the Marxist theory of crises (including, I might note in passing, the theory of "long waves"), to the theory of imperialism, and to the theory of money (see the Kautsky, Hilferding and Eugene Varga). The great debates that forged the Marxist movement
It was in the pages and supplements of Die Neue Zeit (the Beihefte) that appeared the first notable applications of historical materialism to ethnology, to the criticism and history of literature and art, to military history, to the history of bourgeois revolutions, and to that of the emergence of modern
The pages of Die Neue Zeit in its heyday amount to more than a thouscontents remains unequaled, and in large part still unknown to readers unversed in German, since most of this material has not been translated.
The magazine also had a more directly political role. It was in Die Neue Zeit to a not inconsiderable extent that the battle was waged between the reformist right in the Second International (led by Bernstein) and the united left of the period, led by Kautsky, Bebel and Rosa Luxem-
It was in Die Neue Zeit that Rosa Luxemburg waged her great battle against Millerandism (the participation of French socialists in the cabinet) and against the reformist deviation of the Belgian POB. It was in Die Neue Zeit that a very deepgoing debate took place around the Russian revolution of 1905, which led Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg to within two hairs breadth of Trotsky's strategy of the permanent revolution.
It was in Die Neue Zeit that the great theoretical and political battles were conducted against the Russian "legal Marxism of Tugan Baranovsky, which were inspired by Plekhanov, Lenin and Martov. It was in Die Neue Zeit that an initial left nucleus formed
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in the Belgian POB around Louis de Brouckeres and Henri de Man.
It was in Die Neue Zeit that the shameful procolonialism of the reformist far right around the Dutch Van Col and the German Schippel were combatted. It was in Die Neue Zeit that the problem posed by the small oppressed nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian empire and the problem of Polish nationalism were subjected to
It is in Die Neue Zeit, moreover, that we find the first Marxist analyses of the revolution in the East, notably the Iranian revolution of 1909, the Chinese revolution of 1911 and the twilight of the Ottoman empire. The list could be continued.
But the examples already mentioned attest to the magazine's character as an instrument of an active Marxism, Marxism involved in the international class struggle, a Marxism that hardly
"pure theoretical research," even if it did not shy away from the most complicated questions the most arduous theoretical
This two-sided character of Die Neue Zeit became apparent when it about the proposal for a weekly. (1) He had too many bad experiences with press organs that did not survive the first rough patch, and he placed a high value on continuity. Later, he became the proposal's most enthusiastic advocate. He did not hesitate to write that every week he 24 waited impatiently for the arrival of Die Neue Zeit to read Franz Mehring's editorial. (2)
However, this transformation itself reflected an organizational fact - the growing strength of the German Social Democracy, its command of activists, financial resources and political influ-
It reflected a concrete political need - to educate every week several thousands of political cadres engaged another role that its founders had not entirely foreseen: common theoretical reference for the Marxist current in many countries where there were already sections of
International and promoted a greater homogeneity.
Lenin never concealed what he owed to Kautsky and to Die Neue Zeit in this respect, even though it was this magazine that published the harshest criticism of his What is to be Done? - the article "Organisational Problems of the Russian Social Democracy" by Rosa Luxemburg.
Since Die Neue Zeit was closely linked to a political and organisational project - that is, the construction of the SPD and the Second International under the aegis of the Bebel team, principal theoretician was Kautsky - the magazine's history blends in with that of the center" of the SPD, which was marked by three periods. War and revolution
The first runs from its foundation up until 1908, reaching its culminating point on the eve of the Russian revolution of 1905 and the general strike for universal suffrage that the latter stimulated in Austria. golden age of Die Neue Zeit, its heyday. It was sidetracked by the centrist position adopted by Kautsky toward the question of the seizure of power in Germany (controversies with the party leadership over his pamphlet Der Weg Zum Macht ("The Road to Power"), which he agreed to censor himself, and then over the agitation for the political mass strike that Rosa Luxemburg
The second period runs from 1908 to 1914-15, during which Die Neue Zeit took a centrist position between the reformist right led by Scheidermann and the revolutionary
Rosa Luxemburg, Leibknecht and Clara Zetkin. still had a foot in the door, because the editorial writer Franz Mehring was
Rosa Luxemburg's articles continued to be published, although followed by answers from Kautsky. He wavered on every political question, as the debates published in Die Neue Zeit indicate.
Kautsky lost his footing on the question of imperialism, going so far as to predict that war would become impossible because of"ultra-imperialism." The article appeared on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War.
He later lost his footing on the question of war, where he remained largely passive confronted with the shameful capitulation of the reformists, starting with the majority of the SPD leadership, to the imperialist war in August 1914, a capitulation that took the form of voting for war credits.
It is true that he exhibited some oppositionist inclinations, supporting the centrist minority in the party lead. ership around Hugo Haase, who broke finally with the SPD in 1916 and founded the USPD. This was the opportunity for the party leadership to remove him as editor in chief of Die Neue Zeit, and replace him with the main theoretician of the right, Cunow.
At this point, the third period of Die Neue Zeit begins, which was to last only four years. In the wake of the German revolution of 1918-1919, Die Neue Zeit was scuttled by the SPD
A "government party" (in coalition with the bourgeoisie), a party involved in rebuilding capitalism, had no use for a theoretical organ devoted in principle Marxism, even if it had become totally revisionist. Subsequently, for a decade longer, the SPD was to publish the magazine Die Gesellschaft, pale substitute for Die Neue Zeit, even in its revisionist form.
Die Gesellschaft was edited by Rudolf Hilferding. It went down with the victory of fascism (on the eve of which Hilferding, repeating Kautsky's exploit in 1914, declared that Hitler could not take power).
The decline and fall of Die Neue Zeit reflected more than the decline of the SPD as an objectively socialist force. Because the attempt of the German Marxist left to replace it with the magazine Die Internationale, which was founded by Rosa Luxemburg in 1915 and then made the official organ of the young KPD (German Communist Party) in 1919, had no real vitality except for a few years.
Although the KPD had brilliant theoreticians (Levi, Thalheimer and Korsch are the best known abroad), Die Internationale never came up to the ankles of Die Neue Zeit. This was not only the result of the terrible pressures exercised by the ripeness of the situation in Germany for revolution
Letter from Engels to Bebel on December 3, 1892.
2. Letter from Engels to Bebel on March 8, 1892. International Viewpoint 13 January 1986
and the priority this meant for tactical questions, as well as by the gravity of factional struggles. It reflected a turning point in history.
The center of gravity of the revolutionary Marxist current had shifted away from Germany. Perhaps also the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and her closest collaborators, Liebknecht, Jogiches, Levine, as well as the death of Mehring and later that of Levi also played a role. The thread of continuity
The center of gravity of the revolutionary Marxist current was manifestly in Russia in February, 1917. number of years, the Marxists living in Russia were put in the forefront in the development Marxism by a powerful chain of events - the revolutionary upsurge; the rise of the Bolshevik Party; the victory of October; the founding of the Third center was in Moscow; the transformation of the new International at its second congress in 1920, after it had won the support of mass parties in about ten countries; and its extension into Asia, above all China and India.
The magazine Communist Inter national, backed up -by Russian Correspondance and then by Inprecor, at that time played a role analogous to that of Die Neue Zeit. The press of the International, edited essentially by Zinoviev and Radek, and relying on numerous contributions by Lenin and Trotsky, as well as valuable foreign collaborators such as Souvarine remained of Leninist continuity in the Soviet Union.
For a time, it seemed that the center of gravity of the Marxist current was going to shift to the United States. The magazine New International and later the Fourth International managed to maintain a continuity for nearly two decades, if not on the level of Die Neue Zeit at least on that of Die Internationale, the Bulletin communiste or the Biuletin Oppositsii.
Once again this crossing of the Atlantic was not simply the result of a political and organisational project inspired by James P Cannon, the founder of the Trotskyist movement in the United States. It reflected the rise of the American proletariat in the big strikes of 1934-37 and 1945-46.
However, this rise was limited in time, cut off by the lack of a political outlet, and this ushered in a long decline following the adopting of the Taft Hartley Law and the onset of the Cold War and McCarthyism. The split in the Fourth International in 1953 was a by-product of this, and undermined the creativity, if not the continuity of this branch of our current.
The only Marxist theoretical revue that has been able to last more than twenty years and maintain a very rich content is the New Left Review in London. From the theoretical point of view, it represents the best since Die Neue Zeit, but from the theoretical point of view only.
The New Left Review's political differences are evident. They flow from the fact that unlike Die Neue Zeit and its various successors, this magazine is not linked to any clear political-organizational project, that is, to building a vanguard party of the working class.
So it is in the French language that the revolutionary Marxist tradition has turned out to be the most constant, from the Bulletin communiste through the Opposition organ Lutte de classe leading to the Quatrime Internationale published underground under the Nazi occupation and the one that has come
This makes more than half a century since Lutte de classe was launched in 1929, a half century interrupted several times by the vicissitudes of the Trotskyist movement in France, as well as the difficulties arising from working-class defeats and organizational and
The modesty of this theoretical production is obvious by comparison with Die Neue Zeit. The political analysis is more impressive, in particular thanks to the contributions from Trotsky in the 1930s. But on the basis of an objective balance sheet, we can say that in general the continuity of Marxist analysis and the development of Marxist thought have been maintained in the face of new and unforseen events and in contrast to the aridity and theoretical poverty of the Communist and Socialist parties. This holds, for example, both for the analysis of fascism and Stalinism and the colonial revolutions, the anti-bureaucratic revolution in the East European countries, the rise of the workers and revolutionary movemnt in Latin America, or the prediction and analysis of May 1968 and those of the present capitalist crisis.
(whose Bulletin communiste often complemented Moscow's publications), New Arabic journal published Victor Serge and the leading Italian and German Communists, accomplished a prodigious labor of Marxist analysis and education.
But this richness lasted less than ten years. Very soon, the ebb of the international revolution and the bureaucratization of the Bolshevik Party, spreading rapidly into the Communist International, transformed these organs into mere tools of the Stalin faction for theoretical miseducation and political disinformation. The tragic destiny of the Second Chinese revolution in 1927, and then the still more tragic defeat of the German proletariat in 1933, sealed definitively the fate of this degenerated International.
In vain, Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition strove to maintain the revolutionary Marxist tradition through the Biuletin Oppositsii (Bulletin of the Opposition"'). The organizational base was too narrow. Then the murder of the cadres of the Opposition in the Stalin terror was to-destroy what
International Viewpoint 13 January 1986
A new journal in Arabic called Al Mitraqa (the Hammer) has just been launched under the auspices of the sections of the Fourth International in Lebanon and the Israeli state in conjunction with the sympathising section in Tunisia. came out in October 1985, and the journal will appear quarterly.
The journal will include an analysis of events in the Arab region as a whole and will also carry articles and features on general internation-
The first issue includes articles on Tunisia, Lebanon, Israel as well as extracts from the Twelfth World Congress of the Fourth International's resolution on Central America.
For more information and orders write to S Jaber, c/o 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France.
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