Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

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