Wolfgang Abendroth's A Short History of the European Working Class (New Left Books, £2 paperback) is the best short introduction to the history of the European movement available in English.
By its very compression, droth's book brings home with striking clarity the completely international nature of the class struggle. He shows how the fate of a revolution any naivelal European country is inextricably tied up with the development struggle in every other country, and how every major step forward of the labour movement in any country is interconnected with the entire international process In 1848, for instance, it was the February revolution in Paris which led in March to the uprisings in Vienna and Berlin and then the spread of the revolution into Hungor Germany. it was in turn the defeat Czechoslovakia and the whole ot June 1040 in rrance ano ne failure of the revolution to spread to Russia which doomed the German revoluton.
To choose now of all times, as do the European Communist Parties, to unfurl the great banner of 'national roads' and 'national autonomy' must labour be one or ine most tume artempis to turn back the wheel of history ever Aben- OCCH class Together with the international integration of the class struggle has come the constant struggle for the international organisation of revolutionaries. Once again Abendroth's book shows how out of touch with reality and the history of the real revolutionary workers movement are those who believe that book reviews revolutionary parties will be built is first to construct a national organisation and then somehow expect that an International will develop from these national parties.
Marxism itself has always been an international current ideologically, isationally. Notning seemed more ridiculous to Marx, who developed his theory on the basis of French materialism and socialism, brisn portical economy, unan une view that the chief virtue of revolutionaries should be to stick to 'bread countries.
Furthermore, coherence and of course class revolution of 1848.
Same tion of Italy. 1863, tions in Britain, ine rapidly that platonic many quarters now.
politically and organ OUC Party.
German philosophy, and butter issues in their own Wing the Marx's organisa- Imperialism with his political outlook. Every single political organisation which Marx and engers built was sinuild neously created as an international and a national organisation.
The original Communist League (formed in June 1847) was essentially the old Blanquist League of the Just transformed on the basis of its Chartists, wnC showed the original secret society possibility of creating a mass working Class org anisation, and with the ideas of Marx and Engels, which gave the League CIVCU - above all in the production of the Communist Manifesto — a political Blanquists could never supply. was on the basis of this organisation, formed through direct participation in the French and English ism. struggles, TACH Marx intervened and operated in the German ted The second political organisation which Marx constructed, the First International, was of course of exactly the same character. The great experiences out of which this organ isation was formed were the unifica roush rising of American civil war of 1861-65, together with a whole seres or strikes involvine brusa workers and foreign blacklegs. And right Germany Spain, Russia, the United States and Be omer mao cao as counties This tradition of building simultaneously international and national organisations was fully continued by the revolutionary forces even within ceceneraune Second International of 1889-1914. And it was not in the slightest confined to 'exchange of ideas which passes for internationalism in Trotsky, for example, participated at various umes actively in ine German, Austrian and even Rumanian orcanisations as well as the Russian Social Democratic and LabHoSa Luxemburg Was even more remarkable. This Polish revolutionary directed her first notable works against the German Bern stein and the Frenchman Millerand In addition to her work in the Second International itself, notably in draftstungart Resolution on and War, Luxemburg the German and the Polish parties as well as frequently intervening in the Russian RSDLP Higher This absolute intertwining of national and international experience and orcanisation. and the lac that the higher the level of the class struggle the more it was vital and possible to absorb the lessons of the international class struggle, recits highest expression, as Abendroth reminds us, in the most revolutionary of all parties WHICH emerged from the Second International - the Bolshevik Party.
The building of Bolshevik Party was completely tied up with the struggles in international MarxLine very first fight of Lenin within the Russian Party was direcsimultaneously against Russian 'Economists' and the German Bernstein. The building of th bolsnevik rary was combined Dy Lenin with a simultaneous international struggle against reformism in the French and German parties.
Drove Even after the beginning of the First World War. Bolsheviks drove continuously to build their national party and simultaneously to construct a new international org anisation - it is no accident that on the outbreak of war both Lenin and Trotsky proclaimed the necessity for a new International. Furthermore even under the extremely difficult conditions of the First World War, the Bolsheviks were the chief driving force in the practical steps towards a new International in the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences of 1915 and 1916.
It was these conditions, the simof mighty ultaneous development revolutionary struggles in and the tact inat ine Bolsheviks were the most internationally connected and most internationalist parts in ine world which created the conditions for the development of a revolutionary workers party.
ASSERTOIS book vividly reminds us, practical revolutionary leaders have always acted and organised right from the beginning in the international class struggle and international organisation. That's where the ideas are. Not a few of the experiences which created those ideas are in Abendroth's book, and its sweep shows the actual reality o the European revolution. At £2 • a copy it is a snip.