Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf
Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf
Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf
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NOTES<br />
to revolutionary agitation, even in the face of harsh imprisonment, had made MacLean a working-class hero in Glasgow<br />
and earned him the deepest respect of Lenin. Due to his positions on Scottish nationalism and his unyielding commitment<br />
to a socialist form of Scottish Republicanism, MacLean quickly lost favor with the Comintern and became a virtual political<br />
outcast in British communism. Unlike the Bolsheviks who put great faith in the nationalism of the anti-colonial<br />
movements to destroy imperialism, MacLean asserted that the best revolutionary advances could be made by striking at<br />
the heart of the British Empire. In divergence from English traditions, MacLean argued that Scottish society had traditionally<br />
been based in a form of Celtic Clan Communism. From this basis MacLean hoped to mobilize Scottish nationalist<br />
sentiment towards socialist revolution, arguing that "Bolshevism, to put it roughly, is but the modern expression of the<br />
communism of the mir." (John MacLean, "All Hail, the Scottish Workers Republic!," in the John MacLean Internet Archive<br />
.) MacLean was a convinced convert of Lenin's<br />
theory of imperialism and that an impending imperialist war would soon again break out, this time between the United<br />
States and Britain. By first striking a blow at the heart of the British Empire in Glasgow, MacLean argued that a revolutionary<br />
mobilization of Scottish nationalism by socialists could avert this impending war and lead to the destruction of the<br />
Empire. (John MacLean, "Election Manifesto 1923," in the John MacLean Internet Archive .) Although shunned and outcast from the ranks of the Comintern, MacLean spent the last<br />
years of his life advocating the importance of nationalism as a strategic method for revolutionary socialists. With the advent<br />
of the Popular Front, the concepts, legacies and symbolic martyrdom of both Connolly and MacLean became important<br />
rallying points for British communists.<br />
8. VI Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination" in VI Lenin Internet Archive .<br />
9. "An Appeal to the Young," The Red Flag: Organ of the Young Socialist League 1, no. 1 (1920): 4.<br />
10. James Stewart, "Patriotism," The Red Flag: Organ of the Young Socialist League 1, no. 1 (1920): 10.<br />
11. ECYCI, Remove the Frontiers!,7.<br />
12. Ibid., 8.<br />
13. Ibid., 4.<br />
14. Ibid., 9.<br />
15. Georgi Dimitrov, "The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International," in The United Front: The Struggle<br />
<strong>Against</strong> <strong>Fascism</strong> And War (San Francisco: Proletarian Publishers, 1975), 79-80.<br />
16. See Ibid., 79.<br />
17. VI Lenin, "On the National Pride of the Great Russians," in VI Lenin Internet Archive .<br />
18. Trotsky was by far the most outspoken critic of this new line on nationalism because he saw it as completely incompatible<br />
with Lenin's teachings. Trotsky had previously written, "Lenin’s internationalism is by no means a form of reconciliation<br />
of Nationalism and Internationalism in words but a form of international revolutionary action." Leon Trotsky, "Nationalism<br />
In Lenin," in Leon Trotsky Internet Archive < http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1925/lenin/10.htm>.<br />
Many of the disillusioned communists of the twenties who had already been purged from the "official parties" saw in this<br />
speech by Dimitrov the signal to declare the Third International dead and to form the Fourth International.<br />
19. James Klugmann joined the CPGB in 1933 as a member of the infamous communist student groups at Cambridge University.<br />
Later in the thirties Klugmann became the Secretary of the Paris based World Student Association and was an active<br />
member of the European youth anti-fascist movements. See Graham Stevenson, "James Klugmann Biography," in Compendium<br />
of Communist Biography Online Archive .<br />
20. James Klugmann, "The Crisis of the Thirties: A View From the Left," in Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties, ed.<br />
Jon Clark, Margot Heinemann, David Margolies and Carole Snee (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979), 25.<br />
21. Gil Green, "20 Years of the Communist Party," Young Communist Review 4, no.7 (September, 1939): 25.<br />
22. John Schwarzmantel has reflected on the lack of academic studies of communist nationalism in the West being due primarily<br />
between the negative linguistic associations of the words nationalism and socialism and their co-opting by the Nazi<br />
movement. Schwarzmantel states, "We may also note that much research on nationalism has focused on ‘radical Right’ or<br />
fascist and Nazi nationalism. Movements of this kind achieved an extremely virulent combination of nationalism with<br />
what was claimed to be socialism… In fascist and Nazi movements, a racialist and antidemocratic nationalism was exploited<br />
and manipulated to gain mass support, and was turned against the institutions of working-class politics. One result<br />
of this was that the connection between nationalism and socialism seemed to be the preserve of fascist-type movements,<br />
and to have no wider significance for the study of either nationalism or socialism." John Schwarzmantel, "Nation Versus<br />
Class: Nationalism and Socialism in Theory and Practice," in The Social Origins of Nationalist Movements: The Contemporary<br />
West European Experience, ed. John Coakley (London: Sage Publications, 1992), 47-48.<br />
23. Dimitrov, "The Fascist Offensive," 81.<br />
24. Georgi Dimitrov, "Unity of the Working Class <strong>Against</strong> <strong>Fascism</strong>," in The United Front: The Struggle <strong>Against</strong> <strong>Fascism</strong> And<br />
War (San Francisco: Proletarian Publishers, 1975), 97.<br />
25. Dimitrov, "The Fascist Offensive," 77-78.<br />
26. One of the first publications of the YCLGB stated the youth position on war and nationalism in the following terms, "Declare<br />
war against capitalist war, and fight side by side with the other members of your class for the freedom of the class<br />
you belong to." Within this framework, the call to reach across national borders to other working-class youth was propagated<br />
specifically in terms of fighting against war. Though internationalism was still important for communist youth as<br />
they began nationalist agitation, the traditional motivation to be an internationalist was to prevent imperialist war. James<br />
Stewart, The Hope of the Future: An Appeal to Young Workers (London: YCLGB, 192), 12.<br />
27. Michal, 38.<br />
28. Kuusinen, <strong>Youth</strong> and <strong>Fascism</strong>, 7.<br />
29. Wolf Michal was the communist pseudonym used by the Hungarian Mihály Farkas. Farkas was a leading member of the<br />
Hungarian revolutionary youth movement after WWI and joined the Czechoslovakian Communist Party in 1921 after the<br />
downfall of Bela Kunn's Hungarian Soviet Republic. Farkas was imprisoned for a short period during the twenties, but<br />
continued playing a leading role in international communist youth politics after his release. During the Popular Front era,<br />
Farkas adopted the Wolf Michal pseudonym and served as Second Secretary of the YCI under the leadership of the French<br />
YCLer Raymond Guyot who served as General Secretary of the YCI. See "Mihály Farkas," in The Institute for the History<br />
of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution Archives .<br />
30. Michal, 42.<br />
31. Ibid., 54.<br />
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