The First Five Years of the Communist International

The First Five years of the Communist International

Leon Trotsky

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Author’s 1924 Introduction

1. Towards the First World Congress

May Day and the International

To the Spartacus League of Germany and the Communist Party of German Austria

Order out of Chaos

2. The First World Congress

Invitation to the first World Congress

Manifesto of the Communist International to the Workers of the World

Report on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Red Army

Order of the Day Number Eighty-Three to the Red Army and Navy

3. From the First to the Second World Congress

To Comrades of the Spartacus League

A Creeping Revolution

Great Days

En Route: Thoughts on the Progress of the Proletarian Revolution

A Letter to Our French Comrades

French Socialism on the Eve of Revolution

Jean Longuet

On the Coming Congress of the Comintern

4. The Second World Congress

Speech on Comrade Zinoviev’s Report on the Role of the Party

Manifesto of the Second World Congress

5. From the Second the the Third World Congress

A Letter to a French Syndicalist about the Communist Party

On the Policy of the KAPD

Vergeat, Lepetit and Lefebvre

The March Movement in Germany

The March Revolutionary Movement in Germany

May Day Manifesto of the ECCI

The Unemployed and the Trade Unions

Speech Delivered at the Second World Conference of Communist Women

Letter to Comrade Monatte

Letter to Comrades Cachin and Frossard

On l’Humanité, the Central Organ of the French Party

6. The Third World Congress

The Red Army to the General Staff of the Revolution

Report on the World Economic Crisis and the New Tasks of the Communist International

Summary Speech

Theses on the International Situation and the Tasks of the Comintern

Speech on the Italian Question

Speech on Comrade Radek’s Report on ‘Tactics of the Comintern’

Speech on Comrade Lenin’s Report: ‘Tactics of the Russian Communist Party’

7. From the Third to the Fourth World Congress

The Main Lesson of the Third Congress

Report on ‘The Balance Sheet’ of the Third Congress of the Communist International

Summary Speech

A School of Revolutionary Strategy

From the ECCI to the Central Committee of the French Communist Party

From the ECCI to the Marseilles Convention of the French Communist Party

Speech on Comrade Zinoviev’s Report ‘The Tactics of the Communist International’ at the Eleventh Party Conference

Summary Speech at the Eleventh Party Conference

Flood-Tide

Paul Levi and Some ‘Lefts’

On the United Front

Resolution of the ECCI on the French Communist Party

The Communists and the Peasantry in France

The Lessons of May Day

From the ECCI to the Central Committee of the French Communist Party

French Communism and the Position of Comrade Rappoport

To Comrade Ker

Resolution of the ECCI on the French Communist Party

A Letter to Comrade Treint

From the ECCI to the Seine Federation of the French Communist Party

From the ECCI to the Paris Convention of the French Communist Party (13 September 1922)

From the ECCI to the Paris Convention of the French Communist Party (6 October 1922)

8. The Fourth World Congress

The Fifth Anniversary of the October Revolution and the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International

Speech in Honour of the Communist International

The New Economic Policy of Soviet Russia and the Perspectives of the World Revolution

The Economic Situation of Soviet Russia from the Standpoint of the Socialist Revolution

Resolution on the French Question

A Militant Labour Programme for the French Communist Party

Resolution of the French Commission

9. After the Fourth Congress

Political Perspectives

Report on the Fourth World Congress

Preface to The Communist Movement in France

Is the Slogan The United States of Europe a Timely One?

Can a Counter-Revolution or a Revolution Be Made on Schedule?

To Comrade McKay

Landmarks

Cover

Foreword

The republication of The First Five Years of the Communist International comes at an opportune time, when capitalism is facing the most serious crisis in its whole history. The capitalist world is hurtling towards disaster and this is being felt by billions of workers and youth across the world, who are asking questions about the very future of this system.

There is no way out of this crisis unless the root cause is tackled head on: the capitalist system itself. Unless it is removed, it will continue to condemn humanity to growing poverty, hunger, and war. To achieve this, what is required is an international organisation of the working class, with a clear understanding of the nature of the crisis we face.

The last time a truly mass revolutionary international organisation of the workers existed was shortly after the First World War when the Communist International was created. Its aim was the socialist transformation of the whole world.

We, the genuine Marxists who base ourselves on the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, recognise the first four congresses of the Communist International as genuine forums of Marxist debate, where most of the questions we still face today were hammered out. The resolutions and theses voted at those congresses are a heritage we claim as ours. The debates and speeches of the key leaders are also of extreme relevance today.

Two leaders stood out above all the others, Lenin and Trotsky. Much rewriting of history, with lies and distortions, has been carried out since then. The Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union falsified the role Trotsky had played in the Russian Revolution. The reason for that was that he continued to defend the genuine ideas of Bolshevism, which were a direct threat to the privileges and power that the bureaucracy had acquired in the course of the 1920s.

In 1924, however, Trotsky was still recognised as one of the key leaders of the Communist International and the Soviet Union. Testimony to that is the fact that the present collection of texts was published by the official state publishing house in Moscow in 1924. We are making it available once more, at a time when the urgent task facing the workers of the world is to build a mass revolutionary international organisation like the Communist International.

In this volume, we provide an introduction by Fred Weston that outlines some of the key debates and decisions taken in the first four congresses of the Communist International. This, we hope will serve to place the contribution of Trotsky into the context of the period. Trotsky’s texts, together with the main documents of the first four congresses of the Communist International, should be read and studied carefully by all workers and youth who are seeking a revolutionary way out of the present crisis of capitalism, as they are full of deep insights on the flow of history itself.

Introduction:

The rise of the Comintern and the role of Leon Trotsky

By Fred Weston

The Communist International came into being in 1919. It gathered various forces, some of which were mass parties, some were small groups striving to become parties, and some were currents moving in the direction of revolutionary Communism. What provided the impetus towards the formation of the new International was the wave of revolution that swept the world at the end of the First World War, at the heart of which was the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. The success of the Bolsheviks in leading the workers to power provided the focal point around which the Communist International rallied.

It was for this reason that the two outstanding leaders of the Russian revolution, Lenin and Trotsky, also played a key role in the building of the new International. Lenin’s role is unquestionable, but Trotsky’s has been somewhat blurred by subsequent events. Lenin died too early to witness the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union and the rise of the monstrous Stalinist regime – although he had an inkling of what was beginning to crystallise, as his last letters clearly demonstrate. It therefore fell to Trotsky to defend the real heritage of Lenin; his ideas and methods of work.

With the objective development of events: the defeat of one revolution after another that led to the isolation of the Soviet Union, which had inherited the backward economic conditions left by the tsarist regime, the conditions for the rise of a privileged bureaucratic caste were prepared. It was this rising bureaucracy that used the mantle of Lenin to cover its real role, while at the same time building up a number of myths about Trotsky, all aimed at depicting him as an enemy of Bolshevism.

The articles, resolutions and speeches by Leon Trotsky made available in this book demonstrate how false the picture the Stalinists have attempted to depict was. Trotsky was a key figure throughout the first four congresses of the Communist International. What also has to be underlined is that Trotsky actively participated in each congress of the Communist International in this period, while at the same time building and leading the Red Army, which at the time was fighting the Civil War against the Whites.

Here, we will touch on the main debates that took place during the first four congresses of the Communist International between 1919 and 1922 and provide the background to the texts presented in this volume.

Why an international communist organisation was necessary

Marxists have always been internationalists. This is not for sentimental reasons, but for very concrete practical reasons. Capitalism is an international, indeed a global system and it cannot be successfully combated solely within the confines of one country.

For socialism to be successful it must spread on the international arena. The later degeneration of the Russian Revolution was to prove this in practice. The rise of the monstrous bureaucratic, totalitarian, Stalinist regime was the result of the isolation of the revolution to one country.

The founding fathers of scientific socialism (i.e. Marxism), Marx and Engels never envisaged ‘national roads to socialism’. In 1847, the Communist League led by Marx and Engels was an international organisation that prepared the ground for the founding of the First International in 1864 and later the Second International in 1889.

Marxist organisations, however, do not live in a vacuum, isolated from society. They are made of members who live and work in a capitalist environment and this in turn can impact on their consciousness and understanding. We saw this in the case of the leaders of the parties that made up the Second International. Based on a prolonged period of capitalist upswing, they began to draw mistaken conclusions on the nature of capitalism. They moved away from the idea that capitalism needed to be overthrown, and drew the conclusion that it could be gradually reformed. This led to adaptation to bourgeois society and class collaboration with the capitalists, and eventually to the betrayal of the principles upon which the International had been built.

4 August 1914 was a black day in the history of the international labour movement, for that was the day when the representatives of the German Social Democratic Party voted in favour of the war credits in the Reichstag, the German parliament, together with all the bourgeois political parties.

On the same day, all the MPs of the SFIO – the French Socialist Party, as it was then known – also voted in favour of the war credits in the French parliament. In other countries, the Social Democrats likewise supported their own bourgeoisies in the war, thus collaborating in the terrible bloodshed, where workers were pitted against workers in a fratricidal war.

This marked the de facto death of the Second International as a force for international socialism. The irony was that, in several international congresses, the Second International had sworn that they would never take part in such a slaughter and they would fight to transform the war of nation against nation into a war of class against class.

At the 1907 congress of the Socialist International a resolution on war was voted which expressed clearly that:

In case war should break out anyway, it is their [the working classes’ and their parliamentary representatives’] duty to intervene in favour of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilise the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule. (‘Resolution adopted at the Seventh International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart’, 18-24 August, 1907.)

Again, in an Extraordinary International Socialist Congress held in Basel, 24-25 November, 1912, the same anti-war commitment was reiterated.

The members of the various Socialist, Social Democratic and Labour Parties across Europe had been educated in this fundamental idea: socialists do not support wars between different national bourgeoisies, but strive to raise the working class to an understanding that workers of all countries are brothers and sisters. The resolutions were clear: if the capitalists go to war, the socialists will endeavour to speed up the overthrow of capitalism.

When the hour of reckoning struck, however, all these principles were trampled underfoot by the leaders of these parties as they scrambled to grovel before the capitalists of their own countries. It was the greatest betrayal of the working class we have ever seen in history.

Such a degeneration of the Social Democratic leaders, however, did not emerge overnight, but was part of a long, drawn-out process. The 4 August betrayal merely brought this process into sharp focus.

It was this great betrayal that set in motion the events that were to lead to the establishment of a new ‘Third’ international organisation of the working class, the Communist International. The organisation did not spring up ready-made, however. It had to be struggled for.

By September 1914, there was already talk of the need for a new International. At its November 1914 meeting, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party called for a proletarian International. The following year, in September 1915, the famous Zimmerwald conference was held, with 42 delegates attending. This was a gathering of the left wing within the Second International, among them Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin.

However, even among this more advanced layer there were plenty of vacillating elements who were not prepared to draw all the necessary conclusions. The future Communist International was to emerge from the ‘Zimmerwald Left’, i.e. the most left-wing and consistently revolutionary section of the delegates that gathered in that small Swiss village. At the heart of this revolutionary wing were the Bolsheviks.

Initially, the forces that remained loyal to the best revolutionary traditions of the Second International were very small. What was to give a huge impetus to the building of the new International was the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, which had an enormous impact on the ranks of the old International. Just as the Bolsheviks had emerged as the revolutionary wing of the old Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, left-wing currents began to emerge within the other parties that adhered to the Socialist International.

The First World War ended with revolution breaking out in one country after another. There was a radicalisation to the left taking place in all countries to one degree or another and the seeds of the future Communist International were being sown everywhere.

The Russian Revolution was quickly followed by the German Revolution in 1918, the Hungarian Revolution in 1919, and, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire was torn apart, revolutionary movements swept across central Europe. In Italy, we saw the ‘Biennio rosso’ [the two red years] of 1918-20, which culminated in the occupation of the factories in September 1920.

Similar processes were taking place in many countries, with the most advanced activists looking to the Russian Revolution for guidance. The forces of the future Comintern were developing everywhere. In countries like Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland and many others, strong communist currents were growing within the working-class movement.

The First Congress gathers in March 1919

This wave of revolutions was reflected in the make-up of what was to be the First Congress of the new International. A total of thirty-nine groups were invited, of which fifteen originated inside the old Second International, initially including the whole of the Italian PSI. Other groups such as the IWW and Revolutionary Syndicalists were also invited.

What we see here is an attempt to gather together all the revolutionary currents within the international labour movement, from the left wings of the Socialist Parties to the revolutionary groups that had stood outside these parties. The new International also consciously opened up to groups in the colonial countries. This was something the Second International had neglected, concentrating mainly in the European countries. There were the beginnings of communist movements in many other countries, including China and India, which looked to the new International.

In March 1919, fifty-one delegates representing thirty-four parties from twenty-two countries gathered in Moscow for a four-day conference. Initially, there was some debate about whether that conference should proclaim the new Third International. The German delegates, for example, although agreeing in principle that a new international organisation was necessary, felt that more time was required to prepare for it. In the end, however, the conference declared itself as the First Congress of the Communist International, and this had a huge impact, as news of the new formation reverberated around the world.

The First Congress laid down the basic principles, issuing declarations and appealing to the revolutionary forces globally to join the new organisation. ‘The Manifesto of the Communist International to the Workers of the World’, drafted by Leon Trotsky and adopted unanimously on 6 March, 1919, is made available in this book.

The Manifesto issued a bold appeal to the workers of the world, ending with the words:

Bourgeois world order has been sufficiently lashed by Socialist criticism. The task of the International Communist Party consists in overthrowing this order and erecting in its place the edifice of the socialist order. We summon the working men and women of all countries to unite under the Communist banner which is already the banner of the first great victories.

Workers of the World – in the struggle against imperialist barbarism, against monarchy, against the privileged estates, against the bourgeois state and bourgeois property, against all kinds and forms of class or national oppression – Unite!

Under the banner of Workers’ Soviets, under the banner of revolutionary struggle for power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, under the banner of the Third International – Workers of the World Unite!

When it was founded the Comintern was still made up mainly of small forces with inexperienced leadership. But by 1921 it had spread to all the continents and gathered hundreds of thousands of members. The first four congresses of the Comintern were genuine expressions of Marxist revolutionary theory and practice, a school of revolutionary strategy as Trotsky described it.

Lenin on the founding of the new International

Lenin understood that, without international revolution, the Russian Revolution was in danger of being suffocated. At the Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party in March 1918, for instance, he explained, …if the German Revolution does not come, we are doomed. A few weeks later he stated, But we shall achieve victory only together with all the workers of other countries, of the whole world… In May he returned to the question: … final victory is only possible on a world scale, and only by the joint efforts of the workers of all countries.

In his text ‘The Third International and Its Place in History’ (15 April 1919) Lenin wrote:

For the continuance and completion of the work of building socialism, much, very much is still required. Soviet republics in more developed countries, where the proletariat has greater weight and influence, have every chance of surpassing Russia once they take the path of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Lenin never gave up this view, to the very end of his life. For Lenin, the very essence of the Communist International was to provide the necessary revolutionary leadership in all countries as a means of achieving world revolution. The potential for such a revolution was seen across the globe in many countries. Lenin placed particular importance on the ongoing revolutionary events taking place in Germany.

The birth of the German Communist Party

Germany was the country with the biggest and most developed party of the Second International, the SPD. It had been looked to as a beacon by socialists around the world, including Lenin. It was also where the betrayal on the part of the SPD leaders highlighted how far that party had degenerated. Within the SPD, the divisions between the various currents – from the openly class-collaborationist elements to the revolutionary wing – went back many years. But the 1914 betrayal accelerated the process of inner differentiation.

By April 1915, the ‘Internationale Group’ had begun to organise the revolutionaries within the SPD. These were later to be known as the Spartacists. Two years later, the SPD suffered a mass split to its left which led to the creation of the USPD, the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, which the Spartacists later joined, providing it with the necessary revolutionary backbone. This would then become the basis for the formation of the German Communist Party, the KPD, in the hothouse of the post-war German revolution. The KPD eventually emerged as a clearly identifiable revolutionary party to the left of the SPD.

The betrayal on the part of the SPD leaders, together with the relative weakness of the Communists, however, led to the defeat of 1919, which in turn prepared the conditions for a reactionary bourgeois counter-offensive in 1920 in the form of the Kapp Putsch. But as we have seen many times in history, this whip of the counter-revolution provoked an equal and opposite reaction on the part of the working class. The general strike that paralysed Berlin was an indication of this.

A polarisation of society was taking place, with revolution and counter-revolution marching together, a situation that could only end with the total victory of one or the other. In such a situation, processes that would normally take years or even decades to unfold were moving at breakneck speed.

For example, the USPD had 300,000 members in March 1919, but one year later, in April 1920, it had jumped to 800,000 members. At its Halle congress in 1920, the USPD accepted the ‘twenty-one conditions’ of the Comintern and came out in favour of affiliating to the new International, fusing with the KPD. In the process, the right wing of the USPD split away. The new party adopted the name of the United Communist Party of Germany, and had 500,000 members, making it the biggest Communist Party outside of the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, although it had gathered some of the best and most self-sacrificing militants of the German labour movement, in its struggle against the right wing of Social Democracy it had bent the stick too far in the other direction and was born with a significant section of its leadership suffering from an infantile disorder, as Lenin phrased it, i.e. the sickness of ultra-leftism. This involved the idea of boycotting the trade unions, anti-parliamentarism and premature attempts to seize power, as in the failed March action in 1921. Lenin and Trotsky had to conduct a struggle against this tendency, which came to a head at the Third Congress of the International.

The ultra-left wing of the party, refusing Lenin’s policy of the United Front, subsequently split away and formed the KAPD (Worker Communist Party of Germany) in April 1921. This ultra-leftism was taken up repeatedly in the debates and resolutions of the congresses of the Communist International.

Italian Communist Party emerges from the left wing of the PSI

Parallel events were taking place in Italy in the immediate post-war years, with intense class struggle culminating in the occupation of the factories in September 1920. This was in effect the Italian revolution and, had the leadership of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) adhered to a genuinely revolutionary position, Italy would have joined Russia in the task of building a world socialist system.

The PSI had been so radicalised by the great events taking place that it actually adhered en bloc to the Third International at its founding congress. Unfortunately, the right wing of the party remained within its ranks, which meant a clarification was necessary. This kind of problem explains why the Comintern at its Second Congress in 1920 adopted the famous ‘twenty-one conditions’ as a means of guaranteeing the revolutionary essence of the new International, but more on this later.

While formally adhering to the International, the leadership of the PSI, and in particular the PSI leaders of the CGL trade union confederation, betrayed the 1920 movement of the working class. Because of the vacillating position of the party leaders, the moment was lost and the pendulum began to swing in the direction of counter-revolution. The 1920 defeat prepared the objective conditions for the rise of the Fascist party. At the same time, the necessary differentiation between the genuine revolutionary wing and the centrist and reformist currents of the PSI led to the January 1921 split at the Livorno congress, where about one third of the party went on to found the PCd’I, the Communist Party of Italy.

However, whereas in Germany the ultra-lefts split away from the main party, in Italy the party as a whole was led by the ultra-left Bordiga. He had an abstract, purist position on practically every important question, from parliamentary tactics, to the trade union question, and most importantly on the question of the United Front tactic, which he refused to apply in Italy even though it was the official position of the Comintern.

The Communist International spreads across the globe

The events in Germany and Italy were part of a bigger picture. The years that followed the First World War saw revolution sweep the world, with intense class struggle in one country after another. The old organisations of the working class were put to the test as the workers moved in wave after wave of strike action, factory occupations and general strikes. This led to a crisis within the labour movement and as the old leaders attempted to hold the working class within the confines of what was compatible with the continued existence of capitalism, an opposition began to emerge from below.

As we saw in the cases of Germany and Italy, this led to a split in the old parties of the Second International and the formation of communist parties in one country after another. In November 1918 the Hungarian Communist Party was formed and in March of the following year the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed. That glorious chapter of the history of the Hungarian working class was brought to an end by the reactionary White Romanian army marching into Budapest. Had that revolution succeeded, revolutionary Russia would have broken out of its isolation and a mighty impetus would have been imparted to the process of international revolution.[1]

In France, the Communist Party came into being at the end of 1920. The SFIO, the French section of the Second International, held its eighteenth congress in Tours in December 1920, where three quarters of the delegates voted to join the Communist International and to transform the party into the Communist Party of France. The right-wing minority refused to adhere and continued with the name of the old SFIO.

However, the French party did not take a stance on Lenin’s conditions and this was to become a source of conflict as a layer of opportunists remained within its ranks and further clarification was required. A by-product of the birth of the French Communist Party was later to be the creation of the Vietnamese Communist Party. A young Ho Chi Minh was present at the 1920 Tours congress, making a speech against imperialism and supporting adherence to the Comintern.

In Poland, the Communist Party was created in December 1918 out of a fusion between the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) and the Polish Socialist Party-Lewica (Left). In India, the Communist Party was formed in October 1920. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 and would become a significant force by the time of the 1926 revolution.

In many countries, the Communist Parties emerged from the old left wing of the Socialist Parties, but that was not always the case. In China, the Communist Party was the first real political organisation of the working class. In Britain, the Communist Party was formed through a merger of several smaller groups, but the Labour Party continued to dominate the labour movement.

Ultra-left tendencies existed within many of the fledgling Communist Parties. The young party in Britain suffered from the same sickness. Among the questions that were hotly debated were what the party’s stance should be on ‘parliamentarism’, i.e. whether it should adopt an abstentionist position or participate in parliamentary elections, and what attitude it should have towards the Labour Party. The ultra-left position had substantial support in the party, with leaders such as Sylvia Pankhurst and Willy Gallacher coming out against Lenin’s advice.

These questions were debated in the congresses of the Comintern and were also dealt with by Lenin in his masterpiece, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. Through debate and patient explanation, Lenin and the leadership of the Comintern won the party to the idea that it should try to work within the Labour Party.

The Comintern was attempting to build far beyond the borders of Europe, not just in Asia but also in the Americas. Brazil saw a wave of class struggle, beginning in June 1917 in the São Paulo strikes, developing into a movement of revolutionary dimensions by 1919. The slogan of full support for the Soviet Republic could be heard in all the major cities. In this context, the Brazilian Communist Party, PCB, was formed at the end of 1922.

A Latin American Regional Secretariat of the Comintern was later formed, out of which eventually parties would be created in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and other countries. Further north, the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), was established in 1919 after a split that took place in the Socialist Party of America in the wake of the Russian Revolution.

Revolutionary optimism combined with a sober approach

The spirit of the 1919 Manifesto permeated the first years of the Comintern. The first two congresses dealt with the wave of revolution that spread across the globe in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. But in the Third Congress, the question of the temporary restabilisation of capitalism and the necessary change in tactics that flowed from it were discussed, and this was to become central to the proceedings of the Fourth Congress.

After the First Congress had been celebrated, Trotsky wrote a text, ‘En Route: Thoughts on the Progress of the Proletarian Revolution’. It was written while he was en route to the Southern front where Denikin, one of the reactionary White generals, had launched his offensive in May-August 1919. The text exudes confidence in the spread of the revolution: In our generation, the revolution began in the East. From Russia it passed over into Hungary, from Hungary to Bavaria and, doubtless, it will march westward through Europe. It seemed that the revolution was spreading into the heart of Germany where the workers were setting up soviet-type structures and Trotsky boldly stated, …the proletarian revolution after starting in the most backward country of Europe, keeps mounting upwards, rung by rung, toward countries more highly developed economically.

This was the perspective of both Lenin and Trotsky. They saw the Russian Revolution not as an end in itself but as the spark to an all-European revolution, in fact, to a world revolution. That was why the Communist International had been created, as an instrument of international revolution. However, in spite of their revolutionary optimism, both Lenin and Trotsky understood that the road to a successful seizure of power by the workers in the more advanced capitalist countries would not proceed in a straight line. In the same text quoted above Trotsky points out that, yes, the working class grows stronger as capitalism develops but at the same time capitalism:

…presupposes a simultaneous growth of the economic and political might of the big bourgeoisie. It not only accumulates colossal riches but also concentrates in its hands the state apparatus of administration, which it subordinates to its aims. With an ever-perfected art it accomplishes its aims through ruthless cruelty alternating with democratic opportunism. Imperialist capitalism is able to utilise more proficiently the forms of democracy in proportion as the economic dependence of petty-bourgeois layers of the population upon big capital becomes more cruel and insurmountable. From this economic dependence the bourgeoisie is able, by means of universal suffrage, to derive – political dependence.

He warns against a mechanical conception of the social revolution, explaining that both the capitalist class and the working class gain in strength simultaneously. And it is this contradiction that explains the need for the Communists not to see the socialist revolution as one triumphant march of the proletariat without understanding the need for the Communist parties to work to win over the majority of the working class with the correct tactics, strategy and programme.

Cleansing the International of false friends

In some countries, the Communist Parties came into being as mass forces splitting away from the old Social Democracy. In the process, the new International found within its ranks opportunist, reformist elements. The new International was in danger of being tainted with the same old treacherous leaders who had betrayed the workers, and it was therefore an urgent task to remove these elements.

The new International had come into being to offer a revolutionary alternative to the decaying corpse of the Second International. To achieve this, it had to be made crystal clear that the Communists would not tolerate class compromise in any form within its ranks. That is why the ‘twenty-one conditions’ were drawn up and adopted by the Second Congress.

In July 1920, Trotsky wrote a short piece, available here in this volume, under the title ‘On the Coming Congress of the Comintern’ in which he states very clearly that:

An international organisation of struggle for the proletarian dictatorship can be created only on one condition, namely, that the ranks of the Communist International are made accessible only to those collective bodies which are permeated with a genuine spirit of proletarian revolt against bourgeois rule; and which therefore are themselves interested in seeing to it that in their own midst as well as among other collaborating political and trade union bodies there is no room left not only for turncoats and traitors, but also for spineless sceptics, eternally vacillating elements, sowers of panic and of ideological confusion. This cannot be attained without a constant and stubborn purging from our ranks of false ideas, false methods of action, and their bearers.

This is exactly the object of those conditions which the Third International has presented and will continue to present to every organisation entering its ranks.

Lenin originally presented ‘nineteen points’ – which would become twenty-one in the course of the debate – to establish the basic outlines of a centralised and disciplined revolutionary communist international organisation. Without going into each point in detail, we can list here the basic outlines.

The publications of the Communist Parties were to be under the control of the elected leaderships. Reformists and centrists were to be removed from all leading positions of the parties in the trade unions, in the parties’ parliamentary representations, in the editorial boards and so on, and replaced with tested communists. There was to be no trust in bourgeois legality, and, where conditions required it, illegal work was to be combined with legal possibilities. There was to be no trust in international courts of arbitration or bodies such as the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations Organisation.

Everywhere the communist parties were called on to break completely with all forms of reformism, with the expulsion of the reformist wing from the sections of the International, with specific mention of some of the more famous figures such as Turati in Italy. To strengthen this idea further, another point was added that emphasised the need to regularly purge the party of petty-bourgeois elements.

The communist parties were called on to form cells inside the trade unions. These cells were to be under strict party control. The same applied to the parties’ public representatives, such as their MPs. Democratic centralism was the method of running the sections of the International, where internal democratic debate was guaranteed, but once such debate had taken place, decisions would be taken by a vote and this would then apply to the whole party. This was something the opportunist elements particularly objected to as it took away their freedom to say one thing inside the party and then act against those decisions outside in the wider labour movement. It was also ratified that the Communist International was not a federation of national parties, but one world party, with a common discipline, a common programme and policy that applied to all its sections, while taking into account the different local conditions faced by each section.

And finally, in order to send a clear message to all those who adhered to the Comintern, it was made clear in point twenty-one that anyone who fundamentally rejected the Conditions and Theses agreed by the Communist International was to be expelled.

The adoption of the twenty-one conditions drew a clear line of demarcation between the revolutionary wing of the international labour movement and all the other tendencies that had fallen under the pressure of capitalist society and had adapted to it. The Communist International was not to be a debating club where resolutions were adopted and then very quickly ignored, as had become the custom with the Second International. And it was not to be a federation of national groups but one world party, following one united policy and one common discipline. It was a fighting organisation created to carry out world socialist revolution, and it was necessary to make this abundantly clear to the workers of the world.

Arguing patiently against ultra-leftism

The birth of the new International, with several sections being mass parties of the working class, was an immense step forward for the genuine forces of revolutionary Marxism, of Bolshevism. However, the coming into being of the new international organisation was only one, albeit important, step towards the final goal of achieving world socialism. The Bolshevik Party had been put to the test by major events over a period of two decades. The party had debated many issues, had drawn important conclusions about tactical and programmatic questions.

The new parties that adhered to the Communist International, however, came without that experience. In many cases, they had only recently broken with the reformists in the Second International, in some cases having witnessed terrible betrayals of the working class at the hands of the Social Democrats. With this came a healthy rejection of the opportunism of the reformists. But there was another side to this, as we have seen, an infantile ultra-leftism and the tendency to simplify the tasks posed by history. As Lenin pointed out, now these new parties had to show that they had the necessary understanding to win the masses and lead them in successful revolution.

We have seen how the question of ultra-leftism affected the young International. The thinking behind this ultra-leftism affected also the approach of many leaders of the Communist Parties towards such matters as what tactics to adopt towards the trade unions, how to win the mass of workers who still looked to the reformists, what position they should adopt on the rights of national minorities and many other questions.

The idea of the onward march to revolution without any need to discuss such matters, as we have seen, was expressed by the ultra-left wing that emerged within the new International. One of the main characteristics of the ultra-lefts is the idea that all that is needed to build a mass revolutionary party is to declare its existence and wait for events to unfold. They do not approach the working class as it actually is, but create an imaginary working class that fits their own preconceived views. The ultra-left does not pose himself or herself the problem of starting from the real level the working class has achieved, from the actual, living working class as it emerges from historical events. A feature of this mode of thinking is to ignore the fact that the working class is composed of different layers, moving at different speeds in the development of consciousness.

The sectarian spends his time talking about the ‘vanguard’, but has no idea of how such a vanguard can win over the masses that are still under the influence of the reformist tendencies within the labour movement. The Communist International had to deal with this phenomenon within its own ranks. For the ultra-lefts, there was no need to debate tactical issues such as the ‘United Front’ policy as advocated by Lenin and Trotsky.

One of the more prominent Left Communists was Herman Gorter, a Dutch Communist, who was of the opinion that Lenin in his Left-wing Communism: Infantile Disorder did not understand the conditions in the Western countries, that things there were different. He rejected the idea that the Communist parties should participate in parliamentary activity, and called for a repudiation of the trade unions as mere tools of class compromise. For Gorter things were very simple: propagandise the ideas of socialist revolution and raise consciousness. If anyone wants to see how Gorter argued his case, see his 1921 ‘Open Letter to Comrade Lenin’. Trotsky replied to Gorter:

What does Comrade Gorter propose? What does he want? Propaganda! This is the gist of his entire method. Revolution, says Comrade Gorter, is contingent neither upon privations nor economic conditions, but upon mass consciousness; while mass consciousness is, in turn, shaped by propaganda. Propaganda is here taken in a purely idealistic manner, very much akin to the concept of the eighteenth-century school of enlightenment and rationalism. If the revolution is not contingent upon the living conditions of the masses, or much less so upon these conditions than upon propaganda, then why haven’t you made the revolution in Holland? What you now want to do amounts essentially to replacing the dynamic development of the International by methods of individual recruitment of workers through propaganda. You want some sort of simon-pure International of the elect and select, but precisely your own Dutch experience should have prompted you to realise that such an approach leads to the eruption of sharpest divergences of opinion within the most select organisation.

In his report to the Second Congress, Lenin firmly but patiently explained that, although a revolutionary crisis existed, it was still possible for capitalism to recover and thus avoid revolution. He was intervening against the ultra-left tendency that saw the collapse of capitalism as almost an automatic and inevitable process. He explained that it depended on the revolutionary party and its ability to put itself at the head of the masses:

…revolutionaries sometimes try to prove that the crisis is absolutely insoluble. This is a mistake. There is no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation. The bourgeoisie are behaving like barefaced plunderers who have lost their heads; they are committing folly after folly, thus aggravating the situation and hastening their doom. All that is true. But nobody can ‘prove’ that it is absolutely impossible for them to pacify a minority of the exploited with some petty concessions, and suppress some movement or uprising of some section of the oppressed and exploited. To try to ‘prove’ in advance that there is ‘absolutely’ no way out of the situation would be sheer pedantry, or playing with concepts and catchwords. Practice alone can serve as real ‘proof’ in this and similar questions. All over the world, the bourgeois system is experiencing a tremendous revolutionary crisis. The revolutionary parties must now ‘prove’ in practice that they have sufficient understanding and organisation, contact with the exploited masses, and determination and skill to utilise this crisis for a successful, a victorious revolution.

And he continued, It is mainly to prepare this ‘proof’ that we have gathered at this Congress of the Communist International. (V. I. Lenin, ‘The Second Congress of The Communist International’, 19 July-7 August, 1920.)

How to win the masses: The United Front tactic

The question of how to win the masses was to be posed very sharply at the Third Congress. It is a question that was debated many times during the congresses of the Communist International, but by 1921, the question assumed even greater importance, as the wave of revolution in Europe was receding. The communist parties had proved too inexperienced, or too weak, to lead the working class in Germany, Hungary and Italy.

The debate was fundamentally between the ultra-lefts and the leadership of the International – with both Lenin and Trotsky taking a leading role – on the question of tactics, in particular on whether the United Front was a correct method of winning the masses to the banner of socialist revolution.

The Bolsheviks had successfully applied the tactic of the United Front in 1917. It is a method whereby the revolutionary party offers united action to the other mass organisations of the labour movement. The communists could not simply ignore the fact that the majority of the working class were still following the lead of the reformists within the movement. The question was posed as to how to break those masses away from the influence of the reformist leaders.

In Russia in 1917 when the masses still had illusions in the reformists – the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries – the Bolsheviks avoided sectarian isolation by posing demands on the other parties of the left in order to connect with the masses following them. On the Provisional Government, for instance, they raised the slogan of ‘Down with the ten capitalist ministers’, which was an appeal to the reformists who were participating in the government to break with the bourgeois parties. The slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’, also was not an ultra-left demand, as the Soviets at that time were dominated by the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. In both cases, they were slogans that invited the reformists to take the power.

Lenin understood that, by posing the question in that manner, the revolutionary party could enter into a dialogue with the masses. By placing demands on their leaders, these would be put in the position of either refusing the offer of unity and exposing themselves in the eyes of the masses as obstacles to working-class unity, or they would have to accept joint action, which meant participating in mass struggles where the revolutionaries would prove their superiority in ideas and methods. It was in this way that the Bolsheviks successfully won the majority of the working class and prepared the conditions for a victorious revolution.

At the Third Congress much of the polemic centred around the question of the famous ‘Open Letter’ of the Central Committee of the United Communist Party of Germany to all workers, trade unions and socialist organisations to unite their forces against reaction and the bosses’ offensive. The reformist leaders rejected joint action with the Communists, even though at rank-and-file level it was clear the workers desired unity.

Lenin supported the tactic elaborated around the Open Letter, but the leaders of several Communist parties considered this method as one of unacceptable compromise. An example of this kind of leadership was that of the Italian Communist Party, who resisted the idea that they should offer a united front to the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) against the Fascists. Their sectarian stance served to further isolate and weaken the Italian Communist Party and divide the Italian working class as the capitalists mobilised the Fascists to crush the workers’ movement. Terracini, a delegate of the Italian Communist Party, called on the congress to renounce such methods, and supported the KAPD delegate Hempel, a Left Communist, who had stated: The Open Letter is opportunist, it cannot be remedied. Lenin responded: The Open Letter is exemplary as the opening act of the practical method to effectively win over the majority of the working class.

The German Communists unfortunately revealed their lack of experience during the March Action in 1921 when they attempted a premature uprising, not having prepared the ground beforehand. In particular, they had not done the necessary preparatory work of winning the social-democratic workers nationally. Having made an ultra-left mistake in 1921, however, they would later make the opposite mistake of not recognising the revolutionary possibilities that emerged in 1923.

In the ‘Guidelines on the Organisational Structure of Communist Parties, on the Methods and Content of their Work’ adopted at the Third Congress, we find a manual for how Communists should work within the labour movement. It is worth noting the following passage:

In the struggle against the social-democratic and other petty-bourgeois leaders of the trade unions and various workers parties, there can be no hope of obtaining anything by persuading them. The struggle against them must be organised with the utmost energy. However, the only sure and successful way to combat them is to split away their supporters by convincing the workers that their social-traitor leaders are lackeys of capitalism. Therefore, where possible these leaders must first be put into situations in which they are forced to unmask themselves; after such preparation they can then be attacked in the sharpest way.

The Guidelines were aimed at educating the still young and inexperienced Communist parties. They still had much to learn, as Lenin commented in ‘A Letter to the German Communists,’ written shortly after the Third Congress on 14 August, 1921:

At the Third Congress it was necessary to start practical, constructive work, to determine concretely, taking account of the practical experience of the communist struggle already begun, exactly what the line of further activity should be in respect of tactics and of organisation. We have taken this third step. We have an army of Communists all over the world. It is still poorly trained and poorly organised. It would be extremely harmful to forget this truth or be afraid of admitting it. Submitting ourselves to a most careful and rigorous test, and studying the experience of our own movement, we must train this army efficiently; we must organise it properly, and test it in all sorts of manoeuvres, all sorts of battles, in attack and in retreat. We cannot win without this long and hard schooling…

In the overwhelming majority of countries, our parties are still very far from being what real communist parties should be; they are far from being real vanguards of the genuinely revolutionary and only revolutionary class, with every single member taking part in the struggle, in the movement, in the everyday life of the masses. But we are aware of this defect, we brought it out most strikingly in the Third Congress resolution on the work of the Party.

It was not a foregone conclusion that the tactic of the United Front would be adopted by the Communist International. Lenin and Trotsky actually started out as being in a minority on this question, and were in fact considered the ‘right wing’ by many of the delegates. The leadership had to argue its case, and it was only through democratic debate, and with the power of their arguments, that in the course of the congress Lenin and Trotsky won over the majority of the delegates. This fact serves to highlight the democratic nature of the Communist International. Different opinions were expressed openly without fear of being ostracised or expelled, as was to become the norm in later years under the Stalinist regime.

It was necessary to draw a balance sheet of the immediate post-war years. By 1922, the revolutionary wave had peaked and had begun to recede. The workers in one country after another had moved in a revolutionary direction, but had failed to take power. The capitalist class had managed to survive the wave of revolution and they prepared a counter-offensive. The clearest example of this was to be Italy in October of that year, when Mussolini came to power and began the process of consolidating his position in preparation for an open dictatorship, where all the organisations of the working class would be destroyed.

A serious reappraisal on the part of the Communist International involved stepping up the struggle against the left-wing Communists in the International who believed that there was no need to discuss tactics such as the United Front. That explains the content of the ‘Theses on Comintern Tactics’ voted on at the Fourth Congress. The Theses, in acknowledging the new situation, stated:

Since nowhere, except in Russia, did the proletariat deal capitalism a decisive blow while it was weakened from the war, the bourgeoisie, with the help of the social democrats, was able to defeat the militant revolutionary workers, re-establish its political and economic power and launch a new offensive against the proletariat. All the efforts of the bourgeoisie to get the international production and distribution of goods running smoothly again after the upheavals of the war have been made solely at the expense of the working class.

The systematically organised international capitalist offensive against all the gains of the working class has swept across the world like a whirlwind. Everywhere reorganised capital is mercilessly lowering the real wages of the workers, lengthening the working day, curtailing the modest rights of the working class on the shop floor and, in countries with a devalued currency, forcing destitute workers to pay for the economic disasters caused by the depreciation of money etc.

Although it was a new phenomenon and still in its early stages of development, Fascism was beginning to emerge in several countries, as the theses noted:

Closely linked to the economic offensive of capital is the political offensive of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Its sharpest expression is international fascism. Since falling living standards are now affecting the middle classes, including the civil service, the ruling class is no longer certain that it can rely on the bureaucracy to act as its tool. Instead, it is resorting everywhere to the creation of special White Guards, which are particularly directed against all the revolutionary efforts of the proletariat and are being increasingly used for the forcible suppression of any attempt by the working class to improve its position.

In the face of this generalised onslaught of the capitalist class, it was necessary to unite the forces of the working class. If the Communist Parties applied the correct tactics, they would be able to increase their influence within the labour movement and win more and more layers of the workers to the banner of revolutionary Communism. As the Theses explained:

There is consequently an obvious need for the united front tactic. The slogan of the Third Congress, ‘To the masses’, is now more relevant than ever. The struggle to establish a proletarian united front in a whole series of countries is only just beginning. And only now have we begun to overcome all the difficulties associated with this tactic. The best example is France, where the course of events has won over even those who not so long ago had opposed this tactic on principle. The Communist International requires that all communist parties and groups adhere strictly to the united front tactic, because in the present period it is the only way of guiding Communists in the right direction, towards winning the majority of workers.

On such a crucial question as the United Front tactic, however, the ultra-lefts did not budge. When they did make some concessions, it was along the lines that a united front ‘from below’ was permissible, but not ‘from above’. By this, they meant that no dialogue with the reformist leaders was admissible. This was infantile to the extreme. The workers ‘below’ still looked to the reformist leaders ‘above’ and therefore to pose demands on these leaders was a way of entering into dialogue with the masses, but the ultra-lefts refused to listen.

The case of Bordiga, the leader of the Italian party, provides an example of this stubbornness. In the face of advancing Fascism, he refused to accept that a United Front tactic was necessary to unite the workers against the fascist squads. His ultra-leftism contributed to the division and weakening of the working class. In reply to this infantilism, the Theses were very clear:

The main aim of the united front tactic is to unify the working masses through agitation and organisation. The real success of the united front tactic depends on a movement ‘from below’, from the rank-and-file of the working masses. Nevertheless, there are circumstances in which Communists must not refuse to have talks with the leaders of the hostile workers’ parties, providing the masses are always kept fully informed of the course of these talks. During negotiations with these leaders the independence of the Communist Party and its agitation must not be circumscribed.

The objective situation internationally demanded the immediate and urgent implementation of a correct tactic on the part of the Communist parties. So important was the carrying out of the United Front for the Communist International, that in the final section of the Theses it states categorically:

Now, more than ever, the strictest international discipline is necessary, both within the Communist International and in each of its separate sections, in order to carry out the united front tactic at the international level and in each individual country.

The Fourth Congress categorically demands that all sections and all members keep strictly to this tactic, which will bring results only if it is unanimously and systematically carried out not only in word but also in deed.

Acceptance of the twenty-one conditions involves carrying out all the tactical decisions taken by World Congresses and by the Executive Committee, the organ of the Communist International between World Congresses. Congress instructs the Executive Committee to be extremely firm in demanding and seeing that every Party puts these tactical decisions into practice. Only the clearly defined revolutionary tactics of the Communist International will ensure the earliest possible victory of the international proletarian revolution.

The ‘Theses On The United Front’ adopted by the EC of the Communist International in December 1922 laid down in detail how the tactic of the united front should be applied in each country, depending on the local conditions. In France, the majority of the advanced layers of the working class had already joined the Communist Party, nonetheless the United Front tactic was still a necessary means of winning over the majority of the working class. This was later to be confirmed by events in the late 1920s, which saw the mass of workers look to the SFIO, in spite of it being a small minority at the Tours congress. Unfortunately, by then the Communist International had adopted the ultra-left theory of the ‘Third Period’, which involved abandoning the United Front tactic and declaring the social-democrats as ‘social fascists’, ignoring all the precious lessons of the first four congresses.[2]

In Britain, where the Communist Party was a much smaller force, the question could not be posed in the same way as in Germany where the Communist Party was a mass party. The advice Lenin gave the British Communists in ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder, is repeated in the Theses:

The British Communists must launch a vigorous campaign for their admittance