The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 83, January 2026 Page 7 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement After November 9 th , 1918, two powers were competing in Germany, the Council of People’s Deputies and the Berlin Executive Council. The Spartacus League fought to make the latter the Petrograd Soviet of the German revolution. Since the body was largely made up of SPD majoritarians and independents, Jacques Droz notes in his Histoire générale du socialisme , a real paradox is observed: the Spartacists demand total power for an institution that is clearly satisfied with a strictly reformist program . In truth, even the Bolsheviks in April 1917 launched the slogan All Power to the Soviets when these were dominated by Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) and Mensheviks. The difference was in the reluctance of German revolutionaries to equip themselves with the organisation to steer that outcome. Centrist spontaneity and Bolshevism ...

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 6 From the series Pages from the history of the workers’ movement According to Arrigo Cervetto [ Opere , Vol. 7], “paracentrism” is “the biggest obstacle to the formation of the worldwide Bolshevik party”. The Spartacists at Zimmerwald and Kiental Cervetto was analysing Lenin’s battle against centrism for the creation of the Third International, a battle which saw him isolated at Zimmerwald. He wrote down one of Zinoviev’s quotations from Histoire du parti communiste russe . “We were in the minority at Zimmerwald [1915]. […] In the years 1915 and 1916, we were nothing but an insignificant minority”. “But what is more serious?” – observed Cervetto – “is that the Zimmerwald Spartacists also said they were opposed to us”. In the strategic perspective of the “two separate halves” of socialism – the political conditions in...