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BOOK REVIEWS
ABENDROTH'S
TOUR
Short History of European Labour By Wolfgang Abendroth New Left Books (Paperback
To give a comprehensive history of over 200 years of the European labour movement in 200 pages is no easy task. But Wolfgang Abendorth in his book, 'A Short History of the European Working Class' (written in 1965, updated in 1971), has achieved this, and so performed a valuable service to all socialists. His aim was to produce "a readable analysis and not a text-book," a "summary" and not "original" material. For socialists after more detailed histories, he refers to Julius Braunthal's History of the International' • and also provides a good bibliography at the end of the book.
From the time of the Industrial Revolution until today, Abendroth shows the progressive force of the European labour movement championing democracy and universal suffrage, fighting for improvements in education and social services, in working conditions and for a living wage. He describes the even greater potential of the labour movement to transform and develop society along socialist lines, so that co-operation and planned industrial growth can lead to the eradication of poverty and misery and war.
However, it needs to be said—as a warning-that at times, in attempting to concentrate too much information into so small a space, that the book becomes like an encyclopedia of the history of different national labour movements, a sort of socialist 'Cook's tour', with the unifying threads getting lost in the detail.
But this does not distract from the great book, although as a historian, he covers better than others.
Abendroth shows how in the early labour struggles up to 1848 the working class movements of Europe were forced to see that the 'democracy' of the capitalists was only democracy for the controllers of capital and property. In France after 1789 and Britain after 1800 (the Combination Act) the new class of capitalists attacked and outlawed the infant working class organisations and denied the workers electoral rights. With the further betrayal of the workers in the 1832 ketorm Act, the first independent working class party was formed in Britain in the Chartists during the 1840s. In Europe, it was the workers that spearheaded the democratic revolutions of 1848.
Abendroth traces the development of the 1st and 2nd Internationals. In particular, his analysis of the German SPD, its Marxist origins and then its bureaucratisation and drift to reformism, is worth reading. "Organisationally the party had generated a whole category of
value of the some topics
parliamentarians, working class bureaucrats and functionaires in the trade unions, the co-ops, the party secretariats, the editorial offices of the party press and as parliamentary delegates. Such people no longer lived for but also off the working class movement." Here were rooted the "feet of clay" of the SPD that led its parliamentarians to vote for subsidies for the imperialist war in August 1914. There are lessons here for us today in the Labour Party and trade unions.
But undoubtedly the most educational section of the book is that dealing with the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, through its isolation and the rise of the bureaucracy; and the abandonment of Marxist policies for the emancipation of labour, by the 'Communist' Parties of Europe and their subjection to become the tools of the foreign policy of the Russian bureaucracy. Aberndroth shows how "socialism in one country" came effectively to mean "socialism nowhere else." He traces the disastrous 'Third Period' policies of the Communist Parties, 1928
The Amsterdam Congress of the Socialist International 1904%
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to 1934, which, by attacking the Social Democratic organisations as "social fascist", hid the real danger of fascism and in Germany handed over the country to the Nazis on a plate "without a pane of glass being broken. Even when Hitler started to systematically eliminate all Communist Party members, along with the Socialists, the Communist Party refused to unite with the SPD workers to defend themselves.
Abendroth shows the quick "about turn" in Stalin's policies when he realised the war Hitler was planning against Russia, the order to the European Communist Parties to form' Popular Fronts with "democratic" capitalist parties against fascists, so that Stalin could win allies amongst the capitalist powers of West Europe. This led to the attack on shorter hours and higher wages won by the French workers in 1934 and to the betrayal of the Spanish workers during the civil war, 1936-39. Following the Munich agreement of late 1938, Stalin did the "unthinkable" in 1939—signed a pact with Hitler. The Communist Parties found this difficult to explain.
During the war that followed, Abendroth shows how the organisational superiority of the CPs over the Social Democratic organisations often made them into mass forces in occupied Europe. In Greece, it was the CP-led ELAS which liberated the country before the British arrived and could have transformed Greece into a workers' democracy. But, maintaining his policy of "unity" with the Western capitalist countries, in whose "sphere of influence" Greece lay, Stalin ordered ELAS to hand over its arms ot the British Army and to the King (safe in Cairo). The successive manoeuvring of the King and the British led to the breaking of the working class
movement.
So the CPs came out of the war much stronger. Their status was also increased by the sacrifices borne in Russia itself and the carrying of the revolution to East Europe, albeit "on the bayonets of the Red Army." But the continued policies of Popular Frontism (in Britain after the war, the CP supported the continuation of the war time coalition under Churchill) acted as a break on the workers' movement. This allowed the United States to consolidate its position in Western Europe through arms and credit (Marshall aid) and so put back the workers' movement for decades. Indeed, in tracing the struggles of Hungarian workers in 1956 (who were opposed to Stalinist bureaucracy but not to socialist ownership) the
Czech workers in 1968 and the Polish in 1969, Abendroth shows that the policies of the Soviet Union have served more to drive the workers of Western Europe in the arms of the right wing social democratic leaders than any other issue.
However, Abendroth's descriptions are not so good tor all countries at all times. In particular his analysis of the British labour movement is not that accurate and tends to be over-simplistic. For example, he claims thai the British trade unions in the late 19th century (much stronger than the German) supported the Liberals out of weakness. Rather, it was because-except for the most advanced worekrs-that they had not yet seen the need for an independent working class party. Abendroth makes no mention of the two great movements in support of the Russian revolutions in Britain and their significancer the Leeds Convention of 1917, which called for the creation of Soviets, and Councils of Action created at the call of the TUC and Labour Party to stop intervention in Russia in 1920. He also consistently has a poor understanding of the changing mood of workers and after the General Strike blames the workers for accepting defeat. Nevertheless, his account of the growth of 'Mondism of workers' councils and the belief in development of "planned capitalism" after the General Strike is an accurate one.
The last chapter, a postscript dealing with the 1965-71 period, tends to overstate the role and potential of the "new left" — the students in particular-and their ability to lead or stimulate working class struggle. But Abendroth does recognise that it is the labour movements of the developed capitalist states who are and will be, the locomotive for change in society. The growing battles of the late 1960s and early 1970s showed the labour movement as a force moving back into action under the threats to their living standards from the developing recession. "The knot of history is being retied," after the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s. This book should help socialists in the task of assimilating the experiences of past struggles so that we can bring about socialism.
Boulter