Click on the headline to link to a James P.Cannon Internet Archive online article about the lessons of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934 mentioned in the post below.
Markin comment:
Recently, in the wake of the front-line struggle of the Wisconsin public workers unions (now heightened by the latest news that the Ohio Senate has also voted to curb collective bargaining rights in that state), I, along with others, have been agitating for a one day general strike by organized labor, unorganized, but desperately in need of being organized, workers, and other allies, in support of those efforts. I have also placed the propaganda of others, individuals and organizations, who are advocating this same general position in this space, and will continue to do so as I see it come up as I scan the leftist universe. Before I go on, just to make things clear on this issue, I would draw the reader’s attention to the distinction between propagandizing, the general task for communist organizers in this period pushing issues on behalf our communist future, and agitation which requires/requests some immediate action. The events in the public sector labor movement over the past several weeks, as they have rapidly unfolded, call for immediate action whether we can cause any motion on the issue or not.
That said, I would also note that I have framed my call to action in terms of posing the question of a general strike, the objective need for such action. That proposition is the axis of intervention for leftist and trade union militants today. And that is the rub. Of course, right this minute (and as the Ohio situation foretells maybe only this minute), any such one day general strike would, of necessity, have to be centered in Wisconsin, and the tactical choices would have to be made on the ground there ( how to make the strike effective, what unions to call in, what places to shut down, etc.). My original posting did not make a distinction on location(s)though, and I make none now, about whether such a strike would be localized or not. Certainly, given the centrally of the collective bargaining principle to the lifeblood of any union, and the drumbeat of other states like Ohio, it can hardly be precluded that it could not be a wider strike than just in Wisconsin.
And that is the rub, again. I am perfectly aware, after a lifetime of oppositional politics of one sort or another, that it is one thing to call for an action and another to have it heeded by some mass organization that can do something about it, or even have it taken for more than its propaganda value. And it is the somewhat fantastic quality of the proposition to many trade unionists that I have been running up against in my own efforts to present this demand. Now, as I have noted previously, in France this kind of strike is something of an art form, and other European working classes are catching on to the idea. Moreover, in the old days the anarchists, when they had some authority in the working class in places like Spain,thought nothing of calling such strikes. And some Marxists, like the martyred Rosa Luxemburg, saw the political general strike as the central strategic piece in the working class taking state power. However the low level of political consciousness here, or lack of it, or even of solid trade union consciousness, is what the substance of this note is about.
Although the Wisconsin public workers unions have galvanized segments of the American labor movement, particularly the organized sector (those who see what is coming down the road for them-or who have already been the subject of such victimizations in the roller coaster process of the de-industrialization of America) the hard fact is that it has been a very, very long time since this labor movement has seen a general strike. You have to go back to the 1930s and the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934, or to the San Francisco General Strike of that same year to even been able to provide an example to illustrate how it could take place in this country. That, my friends, is over seventy-five years ago, a long time in anybody’s political book and, more importantly, a couple of generations removed from the actual experience. Hell, it has been as far back as the period immediately after World War II since we have seen massive nation-wide industrial strikes. The closest situation that I can think of that would be widely remembered today, and that was also somewhat successful and well supported, was the UPS strike in the 1990s. All of this points to one conclusion, our class struggle skills are now rather rusty, and it shows.
How? Well, first look at the propaganda of various leftist and socialist groups. They, correctly, call for solidarity, for defense rallies and for more marches in support of the Wisconsin struggle. But I have seen relevantly little open advocacy for a one day general strike. That is damning. But here is the real kicker, the one that should give us all pause. The most recent Wisconsin support rally in Boston was attended by many trade union militants, many known (known to me from struggles over the years) leftist activists, and surprisingly, a significant segment of older, not currently active political ex-militants who either came out for old times sake, or understood that this is a do or die struggle and they wanted to help show their support. In short, a perfect audience before which a speaker could expect to get a favorable response on a call for a political general strike. And that call that day, was made not by me, and not by other socialists or communists, but by a militant from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a well-known union with plenty of militants in it. The response: a few claps in a crowd of over two thousand.
Time has been, is, and will be our enemy here as we struggle to win these pubic workers union fights. Why? Our sense of leftist legitimacy, our class struggle sense has so atrophied over the past several decades that people, political people, trade union political people and even leftist political people have lost their capacity to struggle to win. Still, the objective situation in Wisconsin, hell, in Boston and Columbus, requires that we continue to fight around a class struggle axis. And central to that fight- Fight for a one day general strike in support of the Wisconsin public workers unions!
Friday, March 04, 2011
*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 92nd Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919) And The 90th Anniversary Of The Third World Congress (1921)-Trotsky's Report on “The Balance Sheet” of the Third Congress of the Communist International
Honor The 92nd Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The 90th Anniversary Of The Historic Third World Congress Of The CI (1921)
Markin comment:
Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.
No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.
The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
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Leon Trotsky
The First Five Years of the Communist International
Volume 1
Report on “The Balance Sheet” of the
Third Congress of the Communist International
Delivered at the Second Congress [1] of the Communist Youth International, July 14, 1921
THE THIRD CONGRESS of the Comintern, if one were to express its significance in a succinct formula, will in all likelihood be inscribed in the annals of the labor movement as the highest school of revolutionary strategy. The First Congress of our Communist International issued the summons to rally the forces of the world proletarian revolution. The Second Congress elaborated the programmatic basis for mobilizing the forces. The Third International in its sessions already came in contact with these forces, consolidated them and was thus confronted with the most important practical questions of the revolutionary movement. That is why the Third Congress became, as I put it, the highest school of revolutionary strategy. From the outset the Third Congress raised the question of whether the fundamental position of the Comintern at its First and Second Congresses was correct. And after a deep-going and all-sided review of historical facts and tendencies – for facts as such, separate and apart from historical tendencies, are of no great significance – the Congress came to the conclusion that this position was correct, that we do find ourselves in the era of the development of world revolution.
After the war the bourgeoisie laid bare its utter inability to bring the factors of economic development, i.e., the very foundations of its existence, back again into equilibrium. The entire attention of the bourgeoisie was centered on keeping the classes in equilibrium; and with great difficulty it did succeed for the last three years in preserving this unstable class equilibrium and that of its state superstructure. The Third Congress focused the attention of all fighters in the International precisely on the fact that in dealing with the question of tempo of development it is necessary to differentiate between economic factors, which are the deepest-seated foundations of society, and such secondary factors as politics, parliamentarianism, press, school, church, and so on. One must not delude himself that a class which is historically bankrupt in the economic sense loses instantaneously and, as it were, automatically the instruments of its rule. No, on the contrary, historical experience teaches us that whenever a ruling class, which has held power in its hands for centuries, comes face to face with the danger of losing power, its instinct for power becomes sensitive in the extreme; and it is precisely during the epoch of economic decline of the social order, which had been established under the rule of this class, that the ruling class reveals utmost energy and greatest strategical sagacity in maintaining its political position. This is deemed a contradiction by those Marxists who apprehend Marxism mechanically or, as the expression goes, metaphysically; and for them there really is a contradiction here. It is otherwise with those who apprehend history through its inner and dynamic logic, through the interplay of its different factors – through the interaction of the economic base upon the class, of the class upon the state, of the state, in its turn, upon the class and of the latter upon the economic base. For anyone who has not graduated from the school of genuine Marxism it will always remain incomprehensible just how the bourgeoisie on becoming transformed from a leading economic class, true, a class which exploits but which also organizes at the same time, into a completely parasitic class and into a force that is counter-revolutionary in the fullest sense of the word – just how this same bourgeoisie happens at such a time to be armed from head to foot with all the means and the methods of the class struggle, from the most hypocritical, democratic phrase-mongering to the most brutal and bloody suppression of the working class. Many of us imagined the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie much simpler than it actually is, and as reality has now proved to us. Before us is a semi-decayed tree. Nothing would seem simpler than to simply pull it down. But with such an approach one cannot get very far in the swift flux of social events. By concentrating all its efforts during the last period not so much upon restoring the economic foundation as upon restoring class equilibrium, the bourgeoisie has scored very serious successes in the political and strategical sense. This is a fact, and it happens to be a fact that is quite gratifying to the revolution. For had the bourgeoisie succeeded in restoring the very foundation of its rule or had made even a single step forward in this direction, then we would have been compelled to say: Yes, the bourgeoisie has succeeded in restoring the mainstays of its class rule. The outlook for the future development of the revolution would in that case naturally be extremely dismal. But it happens that such is not the case; that, on the contrary, all the efforts of the bourgeoisie, all the energies expended by it in maintaining class equilibrium, manifest themselves invariably at the expense of the economic soil on which the bourgeoisie rests, at the expense of its economic base.
The bourgeoisie and the working class are thus located on a soil which renders our victory inescapable – not in the astronomical sense of course, not inescapable like the setting or rising of the sun, but inescapable in the historical sense, in the sense that unless we gain victory all society and all human culture is doomed. History teaches us this. It was thus that the ancient Roman civilization perished. The class of slave-owners proved incapable of leading toward further development. It became transformed into an absolutely parasitic and decomposing class. There was no other class to supersede it and the ancient civilization perished. We observe analogous occurrences in modern history too, for example, the decline of Poland toward the end of the eighteenth century when the ruling feudal class had outlived its day while the bourgeoisie still remained too weak to seize power. As a result the Polish state fell. As warriors of revolution, we are convinced – and the objective facts corroborate us – that we as the working class, that we as the Communist International, will not only save our civilization, the centuries-old product of hundreds of generations, but will raise it to much higher levels of development. However, from the standpoint of pure theory, the possibility is not excluded that the bourgeoisie, armed with its state apparatus and its entire accumulated experience, may continue to fight the revolutin until it has drained modern civilization of every atom of every atom of its vitality, until it has plunged modern mankind into a state of collapse and decay for a long time to come.
By all the foregoing I simply want to say that the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie which confronts the working class is not a mechanical one. It is a task which requires for its fulfillment: revolutionary energy, political sagacity, experience, broadness of vision, resoluteness, hot blood, but at the same time a sober head. It is a political, revolutionary, strategic task. Precisely in the course of the last year a party has given us a very instructive lesson in this connection. I refer to the Italian Socialist Party, whose official organ is called Avanti (Forward). Without subjecting to analysis the whole complex of tactical questions relating to the struggle and to victory, without any clear picture of the concrete circumstances of this struggle, the Italian party plunged into extensive revolutionary agitation, spurring the Italian workers – Avanti! Forward! The working class of Italy demonstrated that the blood circulating in their veins is hot enough. All the slogans of the party were taken by them seriously, they went forward, they seized factories, mills, mines, and so on. But very soon thereafter they were compelled to execute a terrible retreat and therewith became completely separated from the party for a whole period. The party had betrayed them – not in the sense that there are conscious traitors ensconced in the Italian Socialist Party, no, no one would say this. But ensconced there were reformists who by their entire spiritual makeup are hostile to the genuine interests of the working class. Ensconced there were centrists who did not and do not have any understanding whatever of the internal needs of a genuine revolutionary labor movement. Thanks to all this the entire party became transformed into an instrument of completely abstract and rather superficial revolutionary agitation. But the working class because of its position was compelled to accept this agitation seriously. It drew the extreme revolutionary conclusions from this agitation, and as a result suffered a cruel defeat. This means that revealed here was the complete absence of tactics in the broad meaning of the word, or, expressing the same idea in military terms, the complete absence of strategy. And now one can imagine – all this is, of course, pure theory and not an attempt to suggest such an idea to our splendid young Communist Party of Italy – it is possible, I say, to imagine that this party may proclaim: After such a terrible defeat, after such treachery on the part of the old Socialist Party, we Communists, who are really prepared to draw the most extreme conclusions, must immediately proceed to exact revolutionary revenge; we must this very day draw the working class into an offensive against the strongholds of capitalist society.
The Third Congress weighed this question theoretically and practically and said: If at the present time, immediately after the defeat consequent upon the treachery of the Socialist Party, the Comintern should set the Italian party the task of instantly passing over to an offensive, it would commit a fatal strategical blunder, because the decisive battle requires a corresponding preparation. This preparation, Comrades, does not consist of collecting funds for the party treasury over a period of decades, nor of adding up the number of subscribers to the venerable Social-Democratic press, and so on. No, preparation – especially in an epoch such as ours when the mood of the masses quickly changes and rises – requires not decades, perhaps not even years, but only a few months. To forecast time intervals is, in general, a very wretched occupation; but at all events one thing is clear: when we speak today of preparation, it has an entirely different meaning than it did in the organic epoch of gradual economic development. Preparation for us means the creation of such conditions as would secure us the sympathy of the broadest masses. We cannot under any conditions renounce this factor. The idea of replacing the will of the masses by the resoluteness of the so-called vanguard is absolutely impermissible and non-Marxist. Through the consciousness and the will of the vanguard it is possible to exert influence over the masses, it is possible to gain their confidence, but it is impossible to replace the masses by this vanguard. And for this reason the Third Congress has placed before all the parties, as the most important and unpostponable task, the demand that the majority of the toiling people be attracted to our side.
It was pointed out here that Comrade Lenin had said in one of his speeches at the Congress that a small party, too, could under certain conditions carry with it the majority of the working class and lead them. This is absolutely correct. The revolution is a combination of objective factors which are independent of us and which are the most important, and of subjective factors which are more or less dependent on us. History does not always, or more correctly, history almost never functions in such a way as first to prepare the objective conditions, as, for example, you first set the table and then invite guests to sit down. History does not tarry until the corresponding class, in our case the proletariat, organizes itself, clarifies its consciousness, and steels its will, in order then graciously to invite it to accomplish the revolution on the basis of these socially and economically mature conditions. No, things happen in a different way. The objective necessity of revolution may already be completely at hand. The working class – we speak only about this class because we are now interested only in the proletarian revolution – may, however, not yet be fully prepared, while the Communist Party, may, of course, embrace only an insignificant minority of the working class. Comrades, what will occur then? There will occur a very prolonged and sanguinary revolution, and in the very course of the revolution the party and the working class will have to make up for what they lacked at the outset.
Such is the present situation. And therefore if it is true – and it is true – that under certain conditions even a small party can become the leading organization not only of the labor movement but also of the workers’ revolution, this can happen only on the proviso that this small party discerns in its smallness not an advantage but the greatest misfortune of which it must be rid as speedily as possible.
Attending the Congress are certain comrades who represent the tiniest parties, for example, the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). This party is revolutionary, even very revolutionary, of this we have no doubt whatever. And if the revolution consisted in the KAPD’s manifesting its superb revolutionary will in action, and if such a demonstration sufficed to bring the German bourgeoisie to its knees, the revolution would long have been an accomplished fact in Germany. But the demonstrative action of a single revolutionary sect is not enough. The representatives of the KAPD have said what Comrade Lenin, too, admitted, namely: that a small party can rise to the leading role. And that is really so. But in that event such a party cannot be a small sect, which engages in a struggle with a much bigger revolutionary party, the party of the working class, and which sees in its own small numbers a great historical superiority. Such a party can never become the leading party of the working class. This is the whole gist of the matter.
And so, the Third Congress proclaimed as the task of the hour preparation. Coincident with this it was compelled to whisper to certain groups and certain comrades and sometimes also to shout at them to fall back a little, to carry out a strategic retreat, in order to undertake, by intrenching themselves on a certain political line, preparations for a real offensive. Now, Comrades, was this counsel which has become converted into an order really necessary? Or does it perhaps already mark the beginning of the Third International’s downfall, as some claim? I believe that there was an urgent necessity to give this counsel to certain groups, certain organizations and certain comrades. For, I repeat, among certain groups – and I am referring not only to the KAPD but to much bigger parties and to tendencies within big parties – there was evident a genuine will to revolution, something which had not been discernible in Western Europe for a long while. In this respect we can register a great, a colossal step forward from the First Congress to the Third. We have big parties with a clearly expressed will to revolutionary action, and without such a will it is impossible to make a revolution – in the sense in which a party is able, in general, to make a revolution. But among certain groups, certain journalists, and even certain leaders, there prevailed views concerning the. methods of this revolution that are far too simplified. You are probably aware that there was advanced the so-called theory of the offensive. What is the gist of this theory? Its gist is that we have entered the epoch of the decomposition of capitalist society, in other words, the epoch when the bourgeoisie must be overthrown. How? By tl offensive of the working class. In this purely abstract form, it is unqu ona7correct. rtain individuals have sought to convert this theoretical capital into corresponding currency of smaller denomination and they have declared that this offensive consists of a successive number of smaller offensives. Thus arose the theory, whose clearest exponent is the Vienna journal Communism – the theory of pure offensive owing to the revolutionary character of the epoch.
Comrades, the analogy between the political struggle of the working class and military operations has been much abused. But up to a certain point one can speak here of similarities. In civil war one of the two contending sides must inescapably emerge as victor; for civil war differs from national war in this, that in the latter case a compromise is possible: one may cede to the enemy a part of the territory, one may pay him an indemnity, conclude some deal with him. But in civil war this is impossible. Here one or the other class and therefore our strategy had of necessity to consist in a victorious offensive. We were compelled to liberate our periphery from the counter-revolution. But on recalling today the history of our struggle we find that we suffered defeat rather frequently. In military respects we, too, had our March days, speaking in German; and our September days, speaking in Italian. What happens after a partial defeat? There sets in a certain dislocation of the military apparatus, there arises a certain need for a breathing spell, a need for reorientation and for a more precise estimation of the reciprocal forces, a need to offset the losses and to instill into the masses the consciousness of the necessity of a new offensive and a new struggle. Sometimes all this becomes possible only under the conditions of strategic retreat. The soldiers – especially if they are the soldiers of a class-conscious revolutionary army – are told this point-blank. They are told, we must surrender such and such points, such and such cities and areas and withdraw beyond the Volga, in order there to consolidate our position and in the course of three or four weeks or maybe several months, reorganize our ranks, make up our losses and then pass over to a new offensive. I must confess that during the first period of our Civil War the idea of retreat was always very painful for all of us and produced very depressed moods among the soldiers. A retreat is a movement. Whether one takes ten steps forward or ten steps backward depends entirely on the requirements of the moment. For victory it sometimes is necessary to move forward, sometimes to move backwards.
But to understand this properly, to discern in a move backwards, in a retreat, a component part of a unified strategic plan – for that a certain experience is necessary. But if one reasons purely abstractly, and insists always on moving forward, if one refuses to rack his brain over strategy, on the assumption that everything can be superseded by an added exertion of revolutionary will, what results does one then get? Let us take for example the September events in Italy or the March events in Germany. We are told that the situation in these countries can be remedied only by a new offensive. In the March days – and I say this quite openly – we did not have behind us one-fifth or even one-sixth of the working class and we suffered a defeat, in a purely practical sense, that is: we did not conquer power – incidentally, the party did not even set itself this task – we did not paralyze the counter-revolution, either. This is undeniably a practical defeat. But if we were to say today in accordance with the foregoing theory of offensive: only a new offensive can remedy the situation, what do we stand to gain thereby? We shall then have behind us no longer one-sixth of the working class but only that section of the former one-sixth which has remained fit for combat. Indeed, following a defeat there is always to be observed a certain depression, which doesn’t, of course, last forever but which does last a while. Under these conditions we would suffer an even greater and much more dangerous defeat. No, Comrades, after such a defeat we must retreat. In what sense? In the simplest sense. We must say to the working class: Yes, Comrades, on the basis of facts we have become convinced that in this struggle we had only one-sixth of the workers behind us. But we must number at least four-sixths, or two-thirds, in order to seriously think of victory; and to this end we must develop and safeguard those mental, spiritual, material and organizational forces which are our bonds with the class. From the standpoint of offensive struggle this signifies a strategic retreat for the sake of preparation. It is absolutely unimportant whether one calls this going leftist or going rightist. It all depends on what one means by these words. If by leftism is understood a formal readiness to move forward at any moment and to apply the sharpest forms of struggle, then this, of course, signifies a rightward trend. But if the words “left party” or “left tendencies” are understood in a more profound historical sense, in a dynamic sense, in the sense of a movement which sets itself the greatest task of the epoch and fulfills it through the best means, then this will constitute a step forward in the direction of the left, revolutionary tendency. But let us not waste our time over such philological scholasticism. From those who cavil over words and who say the Congress has made a step to the right, from them we demand that they give us a precise definition of what they mean by right or left.
There is no need for me to dwell on the fact that some extremely clever comrades have advanced a hypothesis, according to which the Russians are chiefly to blame for the present “rightist tendency,” because the Russians have now entered into trade relations with the Western State and are greatly concerned lest these relations be disrupted by the European revolution, and similar unpleasantries. I did not hear this hypothesis myself, so to speak, firsthand but malicious rumor has it that there are also extant theoreticians of historical development who extend their loyalty to the spirit of Marx so far as to seek economic foundations for this rightist Russian tendency as well. It seems to me, Comrades, that they have wandered into a blind alley. For even from a purely factual standpoint we would, of course, have to recognize that the revolution in Germany, in France, in England, would bring us the greatest benefits, because our rather tenuous trade relations with the West will never provide us with such aid as we could receive from a victorious proletarian revolution. The revolution would first of all free us of the necessity of maintaining an army of several million in our country which is so economically ruined; and this circumstance alone would bring us the greatest relief and at the same time the possibility of economic restoration.
And so, this hypothesis is entirely worthless. And in this respect it nowise differs from that other claim to the effect that the Russian Communist Party allegedly insisted on artificially provoking a revolution in Germany in March – so that Soviet Russia could cope with her domestic difficulties. This assertion is just as nonsensical. For a partial revolution, an uprising in any single country, can extend us no aid whatever. We are suffering from the destruction of the productive forces as a result of the imperialist war, the Civil War and the blockade. Aid can come to us only through shipments of large-scale auxiliary technical forces, through the arrival of highly skilled workers, locomotives, machines, and so on. But in no case from partial and unsuccessful uprisings in this or that country. That Soviet Russia will be able to maintain herself and to develop only in the event of the world revolution – this, Comrades, you can read in literally everything that we have ever written. You can convince yourselves that fifteen years ago we wrote that by force of the inner logic of the class struggle in Russia, the Russian revolution would inescapably bring the Russian working class to power; but that this power can be stabilized and consolidated in the form of a victorious socialist dictatorship only if it serves as the starting point and remains an integral part of the world revolution of the international proletariat. This truth retains its full force to this very day. And for this reason Russia, like every other country, can be interested only in the internal logical development of the revolutionary forces of the proletariat; and not at all in artificially speeding up or retarding the revolutionary development.
Some comrades have expressed the fear that by formulating the question in the way we did, we are pouring water on the wheels of centrist and passive elements in the labor movement. These fears, too, seem to me absolutely groundless. In the first place, because the principles on which our activity is based remain those which were adopted by the First Congress, which were elaborated theoretically in detail by the Second Congress and which were confirmed, expanded and filled with a concrete content by the Third Congress. These principles determine the entire activity of the Communist International. If during the epoch of the First and Second Congresses we condemned the reformist and centrist tendencies theoretically, then this no longer suffices today. Today we must elaborate a revolutionary strategy in order to overcome in practice these tendencies condemned by us. This is the whole gist of the question. And in this respect, too, some Communists have an oversimplified, and therefore incorrect approach. They imagine that revolutionary results can be obtained by incessantly repeating that we remain irreconcilable foes of any and all centrist tendencies. Of course, we remain such. Every step toward reconciliation with the passive tendencies of centrism and reformism would signify the complete disintegration of our entire movement. The question lies not in this but rather in what course of action we ought to pursue to demarcate ourselves theoretically and organizationally from all centrist tendencies wherever they might appear. This is ABC. It would be ludicrous to engage in a dispute over this within the Communist International. Differences of opinion could arise only over the question of whether we ought to eject the centrist elements from this or that party right away, or whether it is more expedient to wait a while and give them the opportunity to develop in a revolutionary direction. Such practical differences of opinion are unavoidable in every vigorous party. But the principled recognition of the need to conduct a mortal struggle against centrism is the precondition for the revolutionary development of the forces of the Communist Party and of the working class. This is not in question. To consider this question to be on the same plane with practical questions of revolutionary strategy – this can be done only by those who have not yet fully understood just what constituted the core of the revolutionary questions at the Third Congress.
Our opponents in the centrist camp will, of course, try to turn to their own advantage what we have said. They will say: Look, in such and such places they advanced the slogans for a decisive offensive but now the Third Congress has proclaimed the necessity of a strategic retreat. It is natural and unavoidable for one side to seek to gain some advantage from every step taken by the other side. That is how matters stand in this war, too. When, during the Civil War, Denikin or Kolchak used to retreat we always wrote in our agitational leaflets: Look, instead of crossing the Volga, the enemy has withdrawn to the Urals. We wrote it in order to raise the morale of the warriors. But if on the grounds that our opponents will interpret our move as a retreat, we were to conclude that we ought not to make this or that move, we would then sacrifice what is really essential for the sake of second-rate and formalistic considerations.
I have taken fully into consideration how extremely difficult it is to defend the strategy of temporary retreat at a Youth Congress. For if anyone is conscious of the right and of the inner necessity of waging an offensive, it is, of course, the young generation of the working class. If such were not the case, our affairs would be in a pretty bad shape. I believe, Comrades, that it is precisely you, the young generation, who are destined to accomplish the revolution. The present revolution can continue to unfold for years and decades. Not in the sense that the preparation for decisive battle in Germany will last for decades. No, but the same thing can happen there that happened to us in Russia. By force of historic conditions we gained victory very easily, but then we were compelled for three years uninterruptedly to wage the Civil War. And even now we are not at all certain that war does not threaten us in the Far East with Japan; or, for that matter, in the West. Not because we seek war, but because the imperialist bourgeoisie keeps changing its methods. At first it fought us with military methods, then it entered into trade relations with us, but now it may again resort to implements of war. How the developments will unfold in Germany and France it is rather difficult to say. But that the bourgeoisie will not surrender suddenly is beyond any doubt. Nor is it subject to doubt that the revolution will one day conquer throughout Europe and throughout the world. The perspectives of the revolution are boundless, and the final phase of the struggle may endure for decades. But what does this signify? It signifies that precisely the young generation, you who are assembled here, have been summoned by history to bring our struggle to its conclusion. Some work will perhaps be left over even for your children. Let us not forget that the Great French Revolution and all of its consequences lasdfor several decades.
Thus the tactical education of the Communist youth is a question of first-rate importance. In our time the young generation is bound to mature very early, because the wear and tear of human material is proceeding at an extremely rapid rate. We observe this in Russia; it is also to be observed in Germany; and in the future, this will manifest itself even more strikingly. For this reason it is of utmost importance for the Youth International to take – as is actually the case – an extremely serious attitude toward tactical questions. It is of utmost importance for the youth to review and criticize our tactics, and even, if need be, find them to be not leftist enough. It must not, however, view our tactics as a manifestation of some accidental moods within a single party or group but must analyze them in context with the aggregate tasks of the revolutionary movement as a whole. Concerning our resolution on the organization question someone might say: Mind you, it is stated here that the number of subscribers to Communist newspapers must be increased and that correspondents and collaborators for the Communist press must be recruited in the workers’ districts. It is said here that it is necessary to concentrate on the work of expanding our organizations, and of consolidating Communist nuclei in the trade unions. Aren’t all these piddling activities, activities which smack horribly of the Social-Democratic parties prior to the war? Yes, that is so, provided one tears this question out of its historical context, provided one fails to understand that we are living in an epoch that is revolutionary in its objective content and that we represent the working class which is every day becoming more and more convinced that it can secure the most elementary conditions of its existence only through revolution. But if one forgets all this along with the fact that we are engaged in a mortal combat with the Social-Democratic and centrist parties and groups for the influence over the working class, then, of course, one will get an entirely distorted conception of the tendencies, tactics and organizational principles of the Third Congress.
Today we are mature enough not to bind ourselves in all our actions by our formal opposition to reformists and centrists. The revolutionary task confronts us today as a practical task. And we ask ourselves: How ought we arm ourselves? What front should we occupy? At what line ought we intrench ourselves for defense? At what moment should we pass over to the offensive?
We are expanding our organizations. Whether this expansion take«s place in the field of publishing newspapers, or even in the field of parliamentarianism, has meaning today only insofar as this creates the conditions for the victory of the revolutionary uprising. As a matter of fact, how could we possibly secure, in the stormy epoch of mass proletarian uprisings, the unity of ideas and slogans without an extensive network of correspondents, collaborators and readers of the revolutionary newspapers? And whereas newspaper subscribers and correspondents to its newspapers are important for a Social-Democratic party as a precondition for its parliamentary successes, for us Communists the selfsame type of organization is of importance as a practical premise for the victory of the revolution.
From this criterion, Comrades, the Third Congress is a gigantic step forward as compared to the First and Second Congresses. At that time, especially in the era of the First Congress, one could still hope that the bourgeois state apparatus had been so disorganized by the war as to enable us to overthrow the bourgeois domination through a single spontaneous revolutionary assault. Had this happened, we would, of course, have had occasion to congratulate ourselves. But this did not happen. The bourgeoisie managed to withstand the assault of the spontaneous revolutionary mass movement. The bourgeoisie succeeded in retaining its positions; it has restored its state apparatus, and has kept a firm hand on the army and the police. These are indisputable facts and they confront us with the task of overturning this restored state apparatus by means of a thought-out and organized revolutionary offensivean offensive in the historical sense of the word, an offensive which includes temporary retreats as well as interludes for preparation.
The task of the Communist Party consists of applying all the possible methods of struggle. Were there no need of this, were the proletariat able to overthrow the bourgeoisie by a single tempestuous assault, there would be no need at all for the Communist Party. Both the fact that on a world scale this task is now posed as a practical task and the fact that the Third Congress has, after prolonged and rather heated discussion, arrived at a unanimous formulation of this task – this, Comrades, is the supreme fact of our epoch, the fact that an International Communist Workers Party exists which is able to elaborate practically and adopt unanimously a strategic plan for the annihilation of bourgeois society. And if you are dissatisfied with some things – in my opinion unjustifiably so – you must in any case incorporate your dissatisfaction within the framework of this great fact, this great victory. If you do so, then criticism emanating from the Youth International will serve not as a brake but as a progressive factor.
It is possible that the greatest decisive battles may take place by next year. It is possible that the period of preparation in the key countries may endure until the next Congress. It is impossible to predict the date and duration of political events. The Third Congress was the highest school of strategic preparation. And it may be that the Fourth Congress will issue the signal for the world revolution. We can’t tell as yet. But this we do know: We have taken a big step forward, and we shall all depart from this Congress more mature than when we came to it. This is amply clear, and not to me alone, I hope, but to all of us. And when the hour of great battles strikes, a very great role will be played in them by the youth. We need only recall the Red Army in which the youth played a decisive role not only politically but in a purely military sense. As a matter of fact, what is the Red Army, Comrades? It is nothing but the armed and organized youth of Russia. What did we do when we had to launch an offensive? We appealed to the organizations of the youth, and these organizations would carry out a mobilization. Hundreds and thousands of young workers and peasants came to us and we incorporated them as nuclei into our regiments. That is how the morale of the Red Army was built. And if we get the same type of youth in the Communist International – as we shall – if in the days of decisive battles the youth streams into our ranks in organized regiments, then you will be able to use for the benefit of the labor movement that which now separates you from the “old” International – not so much in spirit as in maturity of mind.
Comrades, during the most perilous days of the Russian Revolution, when Yudenich stood beyond Petrograd, and during the hard days of Kronstadt, when this fortress almost became converted into a fortress of French imperialism against Petrograd, it was the Russian worker-peasant youth that saved the revolution. In the bourgeois newspapers you can read that we brought up Chinese, Kalmuk and other regiments against Yudenich and Kronstadt. This is, of course, a lie. We brought up our youth. The storming of Kronstadt was indeed symbolic. Kronstadt, as I said, was about to pass into the hands of French and English imperialism. Two or three days more and the Baltic Sea would have been ice-free and the war vessels of the foreign imperialists could have entered the ports of Kronstadt and Petrograd. Had we then been compelled to surrender Petrograd, it would have opened the road to Moscow, for there are virtually no defensive points between Petrograd and Moscow. Such was the situation. To whom did we turn? Kronstadt is surrounded by sea on all sides, and the sea was blanketed with ice and snow. Nakedly exposed one had to move on ice and snow against the fortress amply equipped with artillery and machine guns. We turned to our youth, to those workers and peasants who were receiving military education in our military schools. And to our call they staunchly answered, “Present!” And they marched in the open and without any protection against the artillery and machine guns of Kronstadt. And as before, beyond Petrograd, so now on the Baltic ice there were many many corpses to be seen of young Russian workers and peasants. They fought for the revolution, they fought so that the present Congress might convene. And I am sure that the revolutionary youth of Europe and America, who are much more educated and developed than our youth, will in the hour of need display not less but far greater revolutionary energy; and in the name of the Russian Red Army, I say: Long Live the International Revolutionary Youth – the Red Army of the World Revolution!
Note
1. The Communist Youth International held its first Congress illegally in Berlin in November 1919.
Markin comment:
Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.
No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.
The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
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Leon Trotsky
The First Five Years of the Communist International
Volume 1
Report on “The Balance Sheet” of the
Third Congress of the Communist International
Delivered at the Second Congress [1] of the Communist Youth International, July 14, 1921
THE THIRD CONGRESS of the Comintern, if one were to express its significance in a succinct formula, will in all likelihood be inscribed in the annals of the labor movement as the highest school of revolutionary strategy. The First Congress of our Communist International issued the summons to rally the forces of the world proletarian revolution. The Second Congress elaborated the programmatic basis for mobilizing the forces. The Third International in its sessions already came in contact with these forces, consolidated them and was thus confronted with the most important practical questions of the revolutionary movement. That is why the Third Congress became, as I put it, the highest school of revolutionary strategy. From the outset the Third Congress raised the question of whether the fundamental position of the Comintern at its First and Second Congresses was correct. And after a deep-going and all-sided review of historical facts and tendencies – for facts as such, separate and apart from historical tendencies, are of no great significance – the Congress came to the conclusion that this position was correct, that we do find ourselves in the era of the development of world revolution.
After the war the bourgeoisie laid bare its utter inability to bring the factors of economic development, i.e., the very foundations of its existence, back again into equilibrium. The entire attention of the bourgeoisie was centered on keeping the classes in equilibrium; and with great difficulty it did succeed for the last three years in preserving this unstable class equilibrium and that of its state superstructure. The Third Congress focused the attention of all fighters in the International precisely on the fact that in dealing with the question of tempo of development it is necessary to differentiate between economic factors, which are the deepest-seated foundations of society, and such secondary factors as politics, parliamentarianism, press, school, church, and so on. One must not delude himself that a class which is historically bankrupt in the economic sense loses instantaneously and, as it were, automatically the instruments of its rule. No, on the contrary, historical experience teaches us that whenever a ruling class, which has held power in its hands for centuries, comes face to face with the danger of losing power, its instinct for power becomes sensitive in the extreme; and it is precisely during the epoch of economic decline of the social order, which had been established under the rule of this class, that the ruling class reveals utmost energy and greatest strategical sagacity in maintaining its political position. This is deemed a contradiction by those Marxists who apprehend Marxism mechanically or, as the expression goes, metaphysically; and for them there really is a contradiction here. It is otherwise with those who apprehend history through its inner and dynamic logic, through the interplay of its different factors – through the interaction of the economic base upon the class, of the class upon the state, of the state, in its turn, upon the class and of the latter upon the economic base. For anyone who has not graduated from the school of genuine Marxism it will always remain incomprehensible just how the bourgeoisie on becoming transformed from a leading economic class, true, a class which exploits but which also organizes at the same time, into a completely parasitic class and into a force that is counter-revolutionary in the fullest sense of the word – just how this same bourgeoisie happens at such a time to be armed from head to foot with all the means and the methods of the class struggle, from the most hypocritical, democratic phrase-mongering to the most brutal and bloody suppression of the working class. Many of us imagined the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie much simpler than it actually is, and as reality has now proved to us. Before us is a semi-decayed tree. Nothing would seem simpler than to simply pull it down. But with such an approach one cannot get very far in the swift flux of social events. By concentrating all its efforts during the last period not so much upon restoring the economic foundation as upon restoring class equilibrium, the bourgeoisie has scored very serious successes in the political and strategical sense. This is a fact, and it happens to be a fact that is quite gratifying to the revolution. For had the bourgeoisie succeeded in restoring the very foundation of its rule or had made even a single step forward in this direction, then we would have been compelled to say: Yes, the bourgeoisie has succeeded in restoring the mainstays of its class rule. The outlook for the future development of the revolution would in that case naturally be extremely dismal. But it happens that such is not the case; that, on the contrary, all the efforts of the bourgeoisie, all the energies expended by it in maintaining class equilibrium, manifest themselves invariably at the expense of the economic soil on which the bourgeoisie rests, at the expense of its economic base.
The bourgeoisie and the working class are thus located on a soil which renders our victory inescapable – not in the astronomical sense of course, not inescapable like the setting or rising of the sun, but inescapable in the historical sense, in the sense that unless we gain victory all society and all human culture is doomed. History teaches us this. It was thus that the ancient Roman civilization perished. The class of slave-owners proved incapable of leading toward further development. It became transformed into an absolutely parasitic and decomposing class. There was no other class to supersede it and the ancient civilization perished. We observe analogous occurrences in modern history too, for example, the decline of Poland toward the end of the eighteenth century when the ruling feudal class had outlived its day while the bourgeoisie still remained too weak to seize power. As a result the Polish state fell. As warriors of revolution, we are convinced – and the objective facts corroborate us – that we as the working class, that we as the Communist International, will not only save our civilization, the centuries-old product of hundreds of generations, but will raise it to much higher levels of development. However, from the standpoint of pure theory, the possibility is not excluded that the bourgeoisie, armed with its state apparatus and its entire accumulated experience, may continue to fight the revolutin until it has drained modern civilization of every atom of every atom of its vitality, until it has plunged modern mankind into a state of collapse and decay for a long time to come.
By all the foregoing I simply want to say that the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie which confronts the working class is not a mechanical one. It is a task which requires for its fulfillment: revolutionary energy, political sagacity, experience, broadness of vision, resoluteness, hot blood, but at the same time a sober head. It is a political, revolutionary, strategic task. Precisely in the course of the last year a party has given us a very instructive lesson in this connection. I refer to the Italian Socialist Party, whose official organ is called Avanti (Forward). Without subjecting to analysis the whole complex of tactical questions relating to the struggle and to victory, without any clear picture of the concrete circumstances of this struggle, the Italian party plunged into extensive revolutionary agitation, spurring the Italian workers – Avanti! Forward! The working class of Italy demonstrated that the blood circulating in their veins is hot enough. All the slogans of the party were taken by them seriously, they went forward, they seized factories, mills, mines, and so on. But very soon thereafter they were compelled to execute a terrible retreat and therewith became completely separated from the party for a whole period. The party had betrayed them – not in the sense that there are conscious traitors ensconced in the Italian Socialist Party, no, no one would say this. But ensconced there were reformists who by their entire spiritual makeup are hostile to the genuine interests of the working class. Ensconced there were centrists who did not and do not have any understanding whatever of the internal needs of a genuine revolutionary labor movement. Thanks to all this the entire party became transformed into an instrument of completely abstract and rather superficial revolutionary agitation. But the working class because of its position was compelled to accept this agitation seriously. It drew the extreme revolutionary conclusions from this agitation, and as a result suffered a cruel defeat. This means that revealed here was the complete absence of tactics in the broad meaning of the word, or, expressing the same idea in military terms, the complete absence of strategy. And now one can imagine – all this is, of course, pure theory and not an attempt to suggest such an idea to our splendid young Communist Party of Italy – it is possible, I say, to imagine that this party may proclaim: After such a terrible defeat, after such treachery on the part of the old Socialist Party, we Communists, who are really prepared to draw the most extreme conclusions, must immediately proceed to exact revolutionary revenge; we must this very day draw the working class into an offensive against the strongholds of capitalist society.
The Third Congress weighed this question theoretically and practically and said: If at the present time, immediately after the defeat consequent upon the treachery of the Socialist Party, the Comintern should set the Italian party the task of instantly passing over to an offensive, it would commit a fatal strategical blunder, because the decisive battle requires a corresponding preparation. This preparation, Comrades, does not consist of collecting funds for the party treasury over a period of decades, nor of adding up the number of subscribers to the venerable Social-Democratic press, and so on. No, preparation – especially in an epoch such as ours when the mood of the masses quickly changes and rises – requires not decades, perhaps not even years, but only a few months. To forecast time intervals is, in general, a very wretched occupation; but at all events one thing is clear: when we speak today of preparation, it has an entirely different meaning than it did in the organic epoch of gradual economic development. Preparation for us means the creation of such conditions as would secure us the sympathy of the broadest masses. We cannot under any conditions renounce this factor. The idea of replacing the will of the masses by the resoluteness of the so-called vanguard is absolutely impermissible and non-Marxist. Through the consciousness and the will of the vanguard it is possible to exert influence over the masses, it is possible to gain their confidence, but it is impossible to replace the masses by this vanguard. And for this reason the Third Congress has placed before all the parties, as the most important and unpostponable task, the demand that the majority of the toiling people be attracted to our side.
It was pointed out here that Comrade Lenin had said in one of his speeches at the Congress that a small party, too, could under certain conditions carry with it the majority of the working class and lead them. This is absolutely correct. The revolution is a combination of objective factors which are independent of us and which are the most important, and of subjective factors which are more or less dependent on us. History does not always, or more correctly, history almost never functions in such a way as first to prepare the objective conditions, as, for example, you first set the table and then invite guests to sit down. History does not tarry until the corresponding class, in our case the proletariat, organizes itself, clarifies its consciousness, and steels its will, in order then graciously to invite it to accomplish the revolution on the basis of these socially and economically mature conditions. No, things happen in a different way. The objective necessity of revolution may already be completely at hand. The working class – we speak only about this class because we are now interested only in the proletarian revolution – may, however, not yet be fully prepared, while the Communist Party, may, of course, embrace only an insignificant minority of the working class. Comrades, what will occur then? There will occur a very prolonged and sanguinary revolution, and in the very course of the revolution the party and the working class will have to make up for what they lacked at the outset.
Such is the present situation. And therefore if it is true – and it is true – that under certain conditions even a small party can become the leading organization not only of the labor movement but also of the workers’ revolution, this can happen only on the proviso that this small party discerns in its smallness not an advantage but the greatest misfortune of which it must be rid as speedily as possible.
Attending the Congress are certain comrades who represent the tiniest parties, for example, the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). This party is revolutionary, even very revolutionary, of this we have no doubt whatever. And if the revolution consisted in the KAPD’s manifesting its superb revolutionary will in action, and if such a demonstration sufficed to bring the German bourgeoisie to its knees, the revolution would long have been an accomplished fact in Germany. But the demonstrative action of a single revolutionary sect is not enough. The representatives of the KAPD have said what Comrade Lenin, too, admitted, namely: that a small party can rise to the leading role. And that is really so. But in that event such a party cannot be a small sect, which engages in a struggle with a much bigger revolutionary party, the party of the working class, and which sees in its own small numbers a great historical superiority. Such a party can never become the leading party of the working class. This is the whole gist of the matter.
And so, the Third Congress proclaimed as the task of the hour preparation. Coincident with this it was compelled to whisper to certain groups and certain comrades and sometimes also to shout at them to fall back a little, to carry out a strategic retreat, in order to undertake, by intrenching themselves on a certain political line, preparations for a real offensive. Now, Comrades, was this counsel which has become converted into an order really necessary? Or does it perhaps already mark the beginning of the Third International’s downfall, as some claim? I believe that there was an urgent necessity to give this counsel to certain groups, certain organizations and certain comrades. For, I repeat, among certain groups – and I am referring not only to the KAPD but to much bigger parties and to tendencies within big parties – there was evident a genuine will to revolution, something which had not been discernible in Western Europe for a long while. In this respect we can register a great, a colossal step forward from the First Congress to the Third. We have big parties with a clearly expressed will to revolutionary action, and without such a will it is impossible to make a revolution – in the sense in which a party is able, in general, to make a revolution. But among certain groups, certain journalists, and even certain leaders, there prevailed views concerning the. methods of this revolution that are far too simplified. You are probably aware that there was advanced the so-called theory of the offensive. What is the gist of this theory? Its gist is that we have entered the epoch of the decomposition of capitalist society, in other words, the epoch when the bourgeoisie must be overthrown. How? By tl offensive of the working class. In this purely abstract form, it is unqu ona7correct. rtain individuals have sought to convert this theoretical capital into corresponding currency of smaller denomination and they have declared that this offensive consists of a successive number of smaller offensives. Thus arose the theory, whose clearest exponent is the Vienna journal Communism – the theory of pure offensive owing to the revolutionary character of the epoch.
Comrades, the analogy between the political struggle of the working class and military operations has been much abused. But up to a certain point one can speak here of similarities. In civil war one of the two contending sides must inescapably emerge as victor; for civil war differs from national war in this, that in the latter case a compromise is possible: one may cede to the enemy a part of the territory, one may pay him an indemnity, conclude some deal with him. But in civil war this is impossible. Here one or the other class and therefore our strategy had of necessity to consist in a victorious offensive. We were compelled to liberate our periphery from the counter-revolution. But on recalling today the history of our struggle we find that we suffered defeat rather frequently. In military respects we, too, had our March days, speaking in German; and our September days, speaking in Italian. What happens after a partial defeat? There sets in a certain dislocation of the military apparatus, there arises a certain need for a breathing spell, a need for reorientation and for a more precise estimation of the reciprocal forces, a need to offset the losses and to instill into the masses the consciousness of the necessity of a new offensive and a new struggle. Sometimes all this becomes possible only under the conditions of strategic retreat. The soldiers – especially if they are the soldiers of a class-conscious revolutionary army – are told this point-blank. They are told, we must surrender such and such points, such and such cities and areas and withdraw beyond the Volga, in order there to consolidate our position and in the course of three or four weeks or maybe several months, reorganize our ranks, make up our losses and then pass over to a new offensive. I must confess that during the first period of our Civil War the idea of retreat was always very painful for all of us and produced very depressed moods among the soldiers. A retreat is a movement. Whether one takes ten steps forward or ten steps backward depends entirely on the requirements of the moment. For victory it sometimes is necessary to move forward, sometimes to move backwards.
But to understand this properly, to discern in a move backwards, in a retreat, a component part of a unified strategic plan – for that a certain experience is necessary. But if one reasons purely abstractly, and insists always on moving forward, if one refuses to rack his brain over strategy, on the assumption that everything can be superseded by an added exertion of revolutionary will, what results does one then get? Let us take for example the September events in Italy or the March events in Germany. We are told that the situation in these countries can be remedied only by a new offensive. In the March days – and I say this quite openly – we did not have behind us one-fifth or even one-sixth of the working class and we suffered a defeat, in a purely practical sense, that is: we did not conquer power – incidentally, the party did not even set itself this task – we did not paralyze the counter-revolution, either. This is undeniably a practical defeat. But if we were to say today in accordance with the foregoing theory of offensive: only a new offensive can remedy the situation, what do we stand to gain thereby? We shall then have behind us no longer one-sixth of the working class but only that section of the former one-sixth which has remained fit for combat. Indeed, following a defeat there is always to be observed a certain depression, which doesn’t, of course, last forever but which does last a while. Under these conditions we would suffer an even greater and much more dangerous defeat. No, Comrades, after such a defeat we must retreat. In what sense? In the simplest sense. We must say to the working class: Yes, Comrades, on the basis of facts we have become convinced that in this struggle we had only one-sixth of the workers behind us. But we must number at least four-sixths, or two-thirds, in order to seriously think of victory; and to this end we must develop and safeguard those mental, spiritual, material and organizational forces which are our bonds with the class. From the standpoint of offensive struggle this signifies a strategic retreat for the sake of preparation. It is absolutely unimportant whether one calls this going leftist or going rightist. It all depends on what one means by these words. If by leftism is understood a formal readiness to move forward at any moment and to apply the sharpest forms of struggle, then this, of course, signifies a rightward trend. But if the words “left party” or “left tendencies” are understood in a more profound historical sense, in a dynamic sense, in the sense of a movement which sets itself the greatest task of the epoch and fulfills it through the best means, then this will constitute a step forward in the direction of the left, revolutionary tendency. But let us not waste our time over such philological scholasticism. From those who cavil over words and who say the Congress has made a step to the right, from them we demand that they give us a precise definition of what they mean by right or left.
There is no need for me to dwell on the fact that some extremely clever comrades have advanced a hypothesis, according to which the Russians are chiefly to blame for the present “rightist tendency,” because the Russians have now entered into trade relations with the Western State and are greatly concerned lest these relations be disrupted by the European revolution, and similar unpleasantries. I did not hear this hypothesis myself, so to speak, firsthand but malicious rumor has it that there are also extant theoreticians of historical development who extend their loyalty to the spirit of Marx so far as to seek economic foundations for this rightist Russian tendency as well. It seems to me, Comrades, that they have wandered into a blind alley. For even from a purely factual standpoint we would, of course, have to recognize that the revolution in Germany, in France, in England, would bring us the greatest benefits, because our rather tenuous trade relations with the West will never provide us with such aid as we could receive from a victorious proletarian revolution. The revolution would first of all free us of the necessity of maintaining an army of several million in our country which is so economically ruined; and this circumstance alone would bring us the greatest relief and at the same time the possibility of economic restoration.
And so, this hypothesis is entirely worthless. And in this respect it nowise differs from that other claim to the effect that the Russian Communist Party allegedly insisted on artificially provoking a revolution in Germany in March – so that Soviet Russia could cope with her domestic difficulties. This assertion is just as nonsensical. For a partial revolution, an uprising in any single country, can extend us no aid whatever. We are suffering from the destruction of the productive forces as a result of the imperialist war, the Civil War and the blockade. Aid can come to us only through shipments of large-scale auxiliary technical forces, through the arrival of highly skilled workers, locomotives, machines, and so on. But in no case from partial and unsuccessful uprisings in this or that country. That Soviet Russia will be able to maintain herself and to develop only in the event of the world revolution – this, Comrades, you can read in literally everything that we have ever written. You can convince yourselves that fifteen years ago we wrote that by force of the inner logic of the class struggle in Russia, the Russian revolution would inescapably bring the Russian working class to power; but that this power can be stabilized and consolidated in the form of a victorious socialist dictatorship only if it serves as the starting point and remains an integral part of the world revolution of the international proletariat. This truth retains its full force to this very day. And for this reason Russia, like every other country, can be interested only in the internal logical development of the revolutionary forces of the proletariat; and not at all in artificially speeding up or retarding the revolutionary development.
Some comrades have expressed the fear that by formulating the question in the way we did, we are pouring water on the wheels of centrist and passive elements in the labor movement. These fears, too, seem to me absolutely groundless. In the first place, because the principles on which our activity is based remain those which were adopted by the First Congress, which were elaborated theoretically in detail by the Second Congress and which were confirmed, expanded and filled with a concrete content by the Third Congress. These principles determine the entire activity of the Communist International. If during the epoch of the First and Second Congresses we condemned the reformist and centrist tendencies theoretically, then this no longer suffices today. Today we must elaborate a revolutionary strategy in order to overcome in practice these tendencies condemned by us. This is the whole gist of the question. And in this respect, too, some Communists have an oversimplified, and therefore incorrect approach. They imagine that revolutionary results can be obtained by incessantly repeating that we remain irreconcilable foes of any and all centrist tendencies. Of course, we remain such. Every step toward reconciliation with the passive tendencies of centrism and reformism would signify the complete disintegration of our entire movement. The question lies not in this but rather in what course of action we ought to pursue to demarcate ourselves theoretically and organizationally from all centrist tendencies wherever they might appear. This is ABC. It would be ludicrous to engage in a dispute over this within the Communist International. Differences of opinion could arise only over the question of whether we ought to eject the centrist elements from this or that party right away, or whether it is more expedient to wait a while and give them the opportunity to develop in a revolutionary direction. Such practical differences of opinion are unavoidable in every vigorous party. But the principled recognition of the need to conduct a mortal struggle against centrism is the precondition for the revolutionary development of the forces of the Communist Party and of the working class. This is not in question. To consider this question to be on the same plane with practical questions of revolutionary strategy – this can be done only by those who have not yet fully understood just what constituted the core of the revolutionary questions at the Third Congress.
Our opponents in the centrist camp will, of course, try to turn to their own advantage what we have said. They will say: Look, in such and such places they advanced the slogans for a decisive offensive but now the Third Congress has proclaimed the necessity of a strategic retreat. It is natural and unavoidable for one side to seek to gain some advantage from every step taken by the other side. That is how matters stand in this war, too. When, during the Civil War, Denikin or Kolchak used to retreat we always wrote in our agitational leaflets: Look, instead of crossing the Volga, the enemy has withdrawn to the Urals. We wrote it in order to raise the morale of the warriors. But if on the grounds that our opponents will interpret our move as a retreat, we were to conclude that we ought not to make this or that move, we would then sacrifice what is really essential for the sake of second-rate and formalistic considerations.
I have taken fully into consideration how extremely difficult it is to defend the strategy of temporary retreat at a Youth Congress. For if anyone is conscious of the right and of the inner necessity of waging an offensive, it is, of course, the young generation of the working class. If such were not the case, our affairs would be in a pretty bad shape. I believe, Comrades, that it is precisely you, the young generation, who are destined to accomplish the revolution. The present revolution can continue to unfold for years and decades. Not in the sense that the preparation for decisive battle in Germany will last for decades. No, but the same thing can happen there that happened to us in Russia. By force of historic conditions we gained victory very easily, but then we were compelled for three years uninterruptedly to wage the Civil War. And even now we are not at all certain that war does not threaten us in the Far East with Japan; or, for that matter, in the West. Not because we seek war, but because the imperialist bourgeoisie keeps changing its methods. At first it fought us with military methods, then it entered into trade relations with us, but now it may again resort to implements of war. How the developments will unfold in Germany and France it is rather difficult to say. But that the bourgeoisie will not surrender suddenly is beyond any doubt. Nor is it subject to doubt that the revolution will one day conquer throughout Europe and throughout the world. The perspectives of the revolution are boundless, and the final phase of the struggle may endure for decades. But what does this signify? It signifies that precisely the young generation, you who are assembled here, have been summoned by history to bring our struggle to its conclusion. Some work will perhaps be left over even for your children. Let us not forget that the Great French Revolution and all of its consequences lasdfor several decades.
Thus the tactical education of the Communist youth is a question of first-rate importance. In our time the young generation is bound to mature very early, because the wear and tear of human material is proceeding at an extremely rapid rate. We observe this in Russia; it is also to be observed in Germany; and in the future, this will manifest itself even more strikingly. For this reason it is of utmost importance for the Youth International to take – as is actually the case – an extremely serious attitude toward tactical questions. It is of utmost importance for the youth to review and criticize our tactics, and even, if need be, find them to be not leftist enough. It must not, however, view our tactics as a manifestation of some accidental moods within a single party or group but must analyze them in context with the aggregate tasks of the revolutionary movement as a whole. Concerning our resolution on the organization question someone might say: Mind you, it is stated here that the number of subscribers to Communist newspapers must be increased and that correspondents and collaborators for the Communist press must be recruited in the workers’ districts. It is said here that it is necessary to concentrate on the work of expanding our organizations, and of consolidating Communist nuclei in the trade unions. Aren’t all these piddling activities, activities which smack horribly of the Social-Democratic parties prior to the war? Yes, that is so, provided one tears this question out of its historical context, provided one fails to understand that we are living in an epoch that is revolutionary in its objective content and that we represent the working class which is every day becoming more and more convinced that it can secure the most elementary conditions of its existence only through revolution. But if one forgets all this along with the fact that we are engaged in a mortal combat with the Social-Democratic and centrist parties and groups for the influence over the working class, then, of course, one will get an entirely distorted conception of the tendencies, tactics and organizational principles of the Third Congress.
Today we are mature enough not to bind ourselves in all our actions by our formal opposition to reformists and centrists. The revolutionary task confronts us today as a practical task. And we ask ourselves: How ought we arm ourselves? What front should we occupy? At what line ought we intrench ourselves for defense? At what moment should we pass over to the offensive?
We are expanding our organizations. Whether this expansion take«s place in the field of publishing newspapers, or even in the field of parliamentarianism, has meaning today only insofar as this creates the conditions for the victory of the revolutionary uprising. As a matter of fact, how could we possibly secure, in the stormy epoch of mass proletarian uprisings, the unity of ideas and slogans without an extensive network of correspondents, collaborators and readers of the revolutionary newspapers? And whereas newspaper subscribers and correspondents to its newspapers are important for a Social-Democratic party as a precondition for its parliamentary successes, for us Communists the selfsame type of organization is of importance as a practical premise for the victory of the revolution.
From this criterion, Comrades, the Third Congress is a gigantic step forward as compared to the First and Second Congresses. At that time, especially in the era of the First Congress, one could still hope that the bourgeois state apparatus had been so disorganized by the war as to enable us to overthrow the bourgeois domination through a single spontaneous revolutionary assault. Had this happened, we would, of course, have had occasion to congratulate ourselves. But this did not happen. The bourgeoisie managed to withstand the assault of the spontaneous revolutionary mass movement. The bourgeoisie succeeded in retaining its positions; it has restored its state apparatus, and has kept a firm hand on the army and the police. These are indisputable facts and they confront us with the task of overturning this restored state apparatus by means of a thought-out and organized revolutionary offensivean offensive in the historical sense of the word, an offensive which includes temporary retreats as well as interludes for preparation.
The task of the Communist Party consists of applying all the possible methods of struggle. Were there no need of this, were the proletariat able to overthrow the bourgeoisie by a single tempestuous assault, there would be no need at all for the Communist Party. Both the fact that on a world scale this task is now posed as a practical task and the fact that the Third Congress has, after prolonged and rather heated discussion, arrived at a unanimous formulation of this task – this, Comrades, is the supreme fact of our epoch, the fact that an International Communist Workers Party exists which is able to elaborate practically and adopt unanimously a strategic plan for the annihilation of bourgeois society. And if you are dissatisfied with some things – in my opinion unjustifiably so – you must in any case incorporate your dissatisfaction within the framework of this great fact, this great victory. If you do so, then criticism emanating from the Youth International will serve not as a brake but as a progressive factor.
It is possible that the greatest decisive battles may take place by next year. It is possible that the period of preparation in the key countries may endure until the next Congress. It is impossible to predict the date and duration of political events. The Third Congress was the highest school of strategic preparation. And it may be that the Fourth Congress will issue the signal for the world revolution. We can’t tell as yet. But this we do know: We have taken a big step forward, and we shall all depart from this Congress more mature than when we came to it. This is amply clear, and not to me alone, I hope, but to all of us. And when the hour of great battles strikes, a very great role will be played in them by the youth. We need only recall the Red Army in which the youth played a decisive role not only politically but in a purely military sense. As a matter of fact, what is the Red Army, Comrades? It is nothing but the armed and organized youth of Russia. What did we do when we had to launch an offensive? We appealed to the organizations of the youth, and these organizations would carry out a mobilization. Hundreds and thousands of young workers and peasants came to us and we incorporated them as nuclei into our regiments. That is how the morale of the Red Army was built. And if we get the same type of youth in the Communist International – as we shall – if in the days of decisive battles the youth streams into our ranks in organized regiments, then you will be able to use for the benefit of the labor movement that which now separates you from the “old” International – not so much in spirit as in maturity of mind.
Comrades, during the most perilous days of the Russian Revolution, when Yudenich stood beyond Petrograd, and during the hard days of Kronstadt, when this fortress almost became converted into a fortress of French imperialism against Petrograd, it was the Russian worker-peasant youth that saved the revolution. In the bourgeois newspapers you can read that we brought up Chinese, Kalmuk and other regiments against Yudenich and Kronstadt. This is, of course, a lie. We brought up our youth. The storming of Kronstadt was indeed symbolic. Kronstadt, as I said, was about to pass into the hands of French and English imperialism. Two or three days more and the Baltic Sea would have been ice-free and the war vessels of the foreign imperialists could have entered the ports of Kronstadt and Petrograd. Had we then been compelled to surrender Petrograd, it would have opened the road to Moscow, for there are virtually no defensive points between Petrograd and Moscow. Such was the situation. To whom did we turn? Kronstadt is surrounded by sea on all sides, and the sea was blanketed with ice and snow. Nakedly exposed one had to move on ice and snow against the fortress amply equipped with artillery and machine guns. We turned to our youth, to those workers and peasants who were receiving military education in our military schools. And to our call they staunchly answered, “Present!” And they marched in the open and without any protection against the artillery and machine guns of Kronstadt. And as before, beyond Petrograd, so now on the Baltic ice there were many many corpses to be seen of young Russian workers and peasants. They fought for the revolution, they fought so that the present Congress might convene. And I am sure that the revolutionary youth of Europe and America, who are much more educated and developed than our youth, will in the hour of need display not less but far greater revolutionary energy; and in the name of the Russian Red Army, I say: Long Live the International Revolutionary Youth – the Red Army of the World Revolution!
Note
1. The Communist Youth International held its first Congress illegally in Berlin in November 1919.
*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 92nd Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919) And The 91st Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (1920)-Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution
Honor The 92nd Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The 91st Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (The 21 Conditions Congress) Of The CI (July-August 1920)
Markin comment:
Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.
No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.
The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
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Markin comment on this post:
As noted in my commentary on the Manifesto of the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920), reposted below since it also applies to these theses, such documents give the political movement it is addressed to its marching order. In a general sense, at least. These theses codify those general propositions outlined in the manifesto. Note here that this Second Congress took place as the international working class movement was going through a regroupment process right after World War I between the reformist socialists, the emerging communist vanguard, and the bewildered anarchists. Note also the difference in approaches to the more hardened reformist-led socialist parties, and to the ill-formed but more revolutionary-spirited anarchist formations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) here in America in their good days.
A manifesto, particularly a political manifesto, and especially a revolutionary communist manifesto like the one that issued out of the historic Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 should give a cogent analysis of the world political situation. It should also describe the nature of the period (revolutionary, non-revolutionary, heading toward or away from either, an estimation of the enemy’s capacities, and the obstacles in the way both inside and outside the workers movement (out side the treachery of the liberals and inside the perfidy of the labor bureaucracy resting on the labor bureaucracy). In short, give the international proletariat its marching orders. The Manifesto of the Second World Congress does just those things at a time when the fledgling Communist International was trying to consolidate its vanguard position in the world working class movement. The Communist International then, and for some time after, did yeoman’s work in that regard, not always perfectly but from a revolutionary perspective. Even as it degenerated politically toward the middle and late 1920s there were, as the Leon Trotsky-led International Left Opposition held, reasons, good reasons to adhere to its tenets. Only with the debacle around Hitler’s coming to power in Germany did Trotsky throw in the towel. That seemed right then, and now. I would argue that the Seventh (and last) World Congress in 1935 unquestionably put paid to that notion. We did not need a vanguard national party, or a vanguard revolutionary international party for that matter, to give the lead in the political struggle to the liberal bourgeoisie as the popular frontist politics of the CI proclaimed from that time onward (with a few “left” turns). There was an international for that “strategy”, or rather a mail-drop address, it was (is) called the Second International.
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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International
After break. Third Session.
July 24
Zinoviev: I declare the session open. We will now discuss the issue of the role of the Communist Party. Whether we need a discussion, or whether we can simply put it to the vote, is open to question. I feel that we can simply put it to the vote, but the Congress should decide. The Theses read as follows:
Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution
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The international proletariat faces decisive struggles. The epoch in which we now live is the epoch of open civil war. The decisive hour is approaching. In almost every country in which there is a workers’ movement of any importance, the working class faces a series of bitter struggles, arms in hand.
More than ever before the working class requires strict organisation. It must prepare itself untiringly for this struggle now, without wasting a single hour of valuable time.
If the working class had possessed a disciplined Communist Party, even a small one, at the time of the Paris Commune of 1871, the first heroic uprising of the French proletariat would have been much more powerful and many mistakes and weaknesses could have been avoided.
The struggles that the proletariat now face in a different historical situation will be far more fateful than those of 1871. The Second Congress of the Communist International therefore draws the attention of the revolutionary working class throughout the world to the following:
1. The Communist Party is a part of the working class, and moreover its most advanced, most class-conscious and therefore its most revolutionary part. The Communist Party is created by the method of the natural selection of the best, the most class-conscious, the most self-sacrificing, and the most far-sighted workers. The Communist Party has no interests that differ from the interests of the whole working class. The Communist Party differs from the whole working class because it has an overall view of the whole historical road of the working class in its totality and because at every turn in this road it strives to defend not just the interests of a single group or a single trade, but the interests of the working class in its totality. The Communist Party is the organisational and political lever with whose help the advanced part of the working class can steer the whole mass of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat on to the correct road.
2. Until the time when state power has been conquered by the proletariat, and the proletariat has established its rule once and for all and secured it from bourgeois restoration, until that time the Communist Party will only have the minority of the working class organised in its ranks. Until the seizure of power and during the period of transition the Communist Party is able, under favourable conditions, to exercise undivided mental and political influence over all the proletarian and half-proletarian layers of the population, but is not able to unite them organisationally in its ranks. Only after the proletarian dictatorship has wrested out of the hands of the bourgeoisie such powerful media of influence as the press, education, parliament, the church, the administrative machine and so on, only after the defeat of the bourgeois order has become clear for all to see, only then will all or almost all workers start to enter the ranks of the Communist Party.
3. The concept of the party and that of the class must be kept strictly separate. The members of the ‘Christian’ and liberal trades unions of Germany, England and other countries are undoubtedly part of the working class. The more or less significant sections of workers who still stand behind Scheidemann, Gompers and company are undoubtedly part of the working class. It is very possible that, under certain historical circumstances, the working class can become interspersed with numerous reactionary layers. The task of communism does not lie in accommodating to these backward parts of the working class, but in raising the whole of the working class to the level of the communist vanguard. The confusion of these two concepts party and class can lead to the greatest mistakes and confusion. Thus it is clear, for example, that during the imperialist war, despite the moods and prejudices of a certain section of the working class, the workers’ party had to oppose these moods and prejudices at any cost and represent the historical interests of the working class, which demanded that the proletarian party declared war on war.
Thus, at the beginning of the imperialist war in 1914, the parties of the social traitors in every country, in supporting their ‘own’ bourgeoisie, could point to corresponding expressions of the will of the working class. But in the process they forgot that, even if that was the case, the duty of the proletarian party in such a state of affairs would have to be to oppose the mood of the majority and to represent, despite everything, the historical interests of the proletariat. In the same way at the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian Mensheviks of the day (the so-called Economists) rejected the open political struggle against Tsarism with the argument that the working class as a whole had not yet ripened to an understanding of the political struggle.
[At the 1903 Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, a split took place on Rule 1 of the constitution. Lenin’s group won a majority over that of Martov, advocating a looser type of organisation. The two factions were thereafter known as ‘Bolshevik’ and ‘Menshevik’, from the Russian words for majority and minority. In the course of the 1905 Revolution, the breach widened, and in 1912 two separate parties were formed. In 1917, some of the left-wing Mensheviks joined the Bolshevik Party, and the right wing became open enemies of the Soviet state. In exile, they organised, first in the centrist Two-and-a-Half International, and then in the Second.]
And in the same way the right-wing Independents in Germany in all their half-measures point to the fact that ‘the masses wish it’, without understanding that the party is there for the purpose of going in advance of the masses and showing them the way.
4. The Communist International remains firmly convinced that the collapse of the old ‘social democratic’ parties of the Second International can under no circumstances be portrayed as the collapse of the proletarian party type of organisation in general. The epoch of the direct struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat brings a new party of the proletariat into the world: the Communist Party.
5. The Communist International rejects most decisively the view that the proletariat can carry out its revolution without having an independent political party. Every class struggle is a political struggle. The aim of this struggle, which inevitably turns into civil war, is the conquest of political power. Political power can only be seized, organised and led by a political party, and in no other way. Only when the proletariat has as a leader an organised and tested party with well marked aims and with a tangible, worked-out programme for the next measures to be taken not only at home but also in foreign policy, will the conquest of political power not appear as an accidental episode but serve as the starting point for the permanent communist construction of society by the proletariat.
The same class struggle demands in the same way the centralisation and common leadership of the different forms of the proletarian movement (trades unions, co-operatives, works committees, cultural work, elections and so forth). Only a political party can be such a unifying and leading centre. To renounce the creation and strengthening of such a party, to renounce subordinating oneself to it, is to renounce unity in the leadership of the individual battle units of the proletariat who are advancing on the different battlefields. The class struggle of the proletariat demands a concerted agitation that illuminates the different stages of the struggle from a uniform point of view and at every given moment directs the attention of the proletariat towards specific tasks common to the whole class. That cannot be done without a centralised political apparatus, that is to say outside of a political party. The propaganda carried out by the revolutionary syndicalists and the Industrial Workers of the World against the necessity of such a party therefore contributes and has contributed objectively only to the support of the bourgeoisie and the counter-revolutionary ‘social democrats’. In their propaganda against a Communist Party, which they wish to replace exclusively by trades unions or some formless ‘general’ workers’ unions, the syndicalists and industrialists rub shoulders with open opportunists. For several years after the defeat of the 1905 revolution the Russian Mensheviks preached the idea of the so-called Workers’ Congress, which was supposed to replace the revolutionary party of the working class. The ‘yellow Labourites’ of every kind in Britain and America preach to the workers the creation of formless workers’ organisations or vague, merely parliamentary associations instead of the political party and at the same time put completely bourgeois policies into deeds. The revolutionary syndicalists and industrialists want to fight against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but do not know how. They do not see that without an independent political party the working class is a rump without a head.
Revolutionary syndicalism and industrialism mean a step forward only in comparison with the old, musty, counter-revolutionary ideology of the Second International. In comparison however with revolutionary Marxism, that is to say with communism, syndicalism and industrialism mean a step backwards. The declaration by the ‘left’ Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (KAPD) at its founding conference in April that it is founding a party, but ‘not a party in the traditional sense’ means an ideological capitulation to those views of syndicalism and industrialism that are reactionary.
With the general strike alone , with the tactic of folded arms, the working class cannot achieve victory over the bourgeoisie. The proletariat must take on the armed uprising. Whoever understands that will also have to grasp that an organised political party is necessary and that formless workers’ unions are not sufficient.
The revolutionary syndicalists often talk about the great role of the determined revolutionary minority. Well, a truly determined minority of the working class, a minority that is Communist, that wishes to act, that has a programme and wishes to organise the struggle of the masses, is precisely the Communist Party.
6. The most important task of a truly Communist Party consists in always remaining in the closest contact with the broadest layers of the proletariat.
In order to achieve this, the Communists can and should work in those associations that are non-party but nonetheless embrace big layers of the proletariat, such as for example the organisations of war invalids in the various countries, the ‘Hands off Russia’ Committees in Britain, proletarian tenants’ associations, etc. The Russian example of conferences of so-called ‘non-party’ workers and peasants is particularly important. Such conferences are organised in almost every town, in every workers’ district and also in the countryside. The broadest masses even of the backward workers take part in the elections to these conferences. The most important current questions are placed on the agenda: the food question, the housing question, military questions, education, the political tasks of the day, etc. The Communists influence these ‘non-party’ conferences most zealously – and with great success for the party.
The Communists think that one of their most important tasks is the work of organisation and education within these broad workers’ organisations. But precisely in order to organise this work successfully, to prevent the enemies of the revolutionary proletariat from taking over these broad workers’ movements, the advanced Communist workers must form their own, independent, closed Communist Party, which always proceeds in an organised fashion and is able to perceive the general interests of communism at every turn of events and in all forms of the movement.
7. Communists by no means avoid non-party mass organisations of workers. Under certain conditions they do not hold back from participating in them and using them even if they are of an emphatically reactionary character (yellow unions, Christian unions, etc.) The Communist Party constantly carries out its propaganda within these organisations and tirelessly convinces the workers that the idea of not joining a party on principle is consciously encouraged among the workers by the bourgeoisie and their assistants to divert the proletarians from the organised struggle for socialism.
8. The old ‘classical’ division of the workers’ movement into three forms – the party, the trades unions and the co-operatives – has obviously been overtaken. The proletarian revolution in Russia has created the basic form of the proletarian dictatorship – the soviets. The new division that we are everywhere encountering is (1) the party, (2) the soviet, (3) the productive association (the trade union). But the workers’ councils too, as well as the revolutionary production associations, must constantly and systematically be led by the party of the proletariat, that is to say by the Communist Party. The organised vanguard of the working class, the Communist Party, which must lead the struggle of the whole working class to the same extent in the economic and political and also in the cultural field, must be the guiding spirit not only of the producers’ associations and of the workers’ councils, but also in all the other forms of proletarian organisation.
The rise of the soviets as the basic historical form of the dictatorship by no means decreases the leading role of the Communist Party in the proletarian revolution. If the ‘left’ Communists of Germany (cf. their appeal to the German proletariat of April 14, 1920 signed ‘Communist Workers’ Party of Germany') declare: ‘That the Party too adapts more and more to the idea of Soviets, and takes on a proletarian character’ (Kommunistische Arbeiterzeitung, no. 54), then this is a confused expression of the idea that the Communist Party must dissolve itself into the soviets, that the soviets can replace the Communist Party.
This idea is fundamentally false and reactionary.
In the history of the Russian revolution we experienced a whole period in which the soviets marched against the proletarian party and supported the policies of the agents of the bourgeoisie. The same thing could be observed in Germany. The same thing is also possible in other countries.
On the contrary, the existence of a powerful Communist Party is necessary in order to enable the soviets to do justice to their historic tasks, a party that does not simply ‘adapt itself’ to the soviets, but is in a position to make them renounce ‘adaptations’ of their own to the bourgeoisie and White Guard social democracy, a party which, by means of the Communist factions in the soviets, is in a position to take the soviets under the leadership of the Communist Party.
Whoever suggests to the Communist Party that it should ‘adapt’ to the soviets, whoever sees a strengthening of the Party’s ‘proletarian character’ in such an adaptation, is doing the Party and the soviets a highly questionable favour, and understands the significance neither of the soviets nor of the Party. The ‘soviet idea’ will be all the sooner victorious, the stronger are the parties that we create in every country. Many ‘Independents’ and even right-wing socialists announce their support for the ‘soviet idea’ in words now. We will only be able to prevent these elements from distorting the soviet idea if we have a strong Communist Party that is in a position to influence decisively the policies of the soviets.
9. The working class does not only need the Communist Party before and during the conquest of power, but also after the transfer of power into the hands of the working class. The history of the Communist Party of Russia, which has been in power for almost three years, shows that the importance of the Communist Party does not diminish after the conquest of power by the working class, but on the contrary grows extraordinarily.
10. On the day the working class conquers power its party nevertheless remains as before only a part of the working class. It is precisely that part of the working class that organised the victory. For two decades in Russia and for a number of years in Germany the Communist Party has carried out its fight not only against the bourgeoisie but also against those ‘socialists’ who are the bearers of the bourgeois influence in the working class. It took into its ranks the most steadfast, far-sighted and advanced fighters in the working class. Only the existence of such a close organisation of the elite of the working class makes it possible to overcome all the difficulties that place themselves in the path of the workers’ dictatorship on the day following the victory. In the organisation of a new proletarian Red Army, in the actual liquidation of the bourgeois state apparatus and its replacement by the nucleus of a new proletarian state apparatus, in the fight against the craft tendencies of individual groups of workers, in the fight against local and regional ‘patriotism’ and in opening up paths to the creation of a new work discipline – in all of these areas the decisive word of the Communist Party belongs. Its members must fire and lead the majority of the working class by their own example.
11. The need for a political party of the proletariat will only disappear with the complete dissolution of the classes. On the way to the final victory of communism it is possible that the historical significance of the three fundamental forms of proletarian organisation of the present (party, soviets, production associations) will change, and that the uniform type of the workers’ organisation will gradually crystallise out. The Communist Party will not however completely dissolve into the working class until communism has ceased to be an object of struggle and the whole of the working class has become communist.
12. The Second Congress of the Communist International not only confirms the historical tasks of the Communist Party in general, but tells the international proletariat, if only in general outline, what kind of Communist Party we require.
13. The Communist International is of the opinion that, particularly in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communist Party must be built on the basis of an iron proletarian centralism. To lead the working class successfully in the long and hard civil wars that have broken out, the Communist Party must create an iron military order in its own ranks. The experiences of the Communist Party that led the working class during three years of the Russian civil war have shown that, without the strictest discipline, complete centralism and full comradely confidence of all the party organisations in the leading party centre, the victory of the workers is impossible.
14. The Communist Party must be built up on the basis of democratic centralism. The chief principle of democratic centralism is the election of the higher party cells by the lower, the unconditional and indispensable binding authority of all of the instructions of the higher bodies for the lower and the existence of a strong party centre whose authority is generally recognised for all leading party comrades in the period from one party conference to another.
15. A series of Communist Parties in Europe and America have been forced as a result of the state of emergency declared against the Communists by the bourgeoisie, to lead an illegal existence. It must be remembered that in such a state of affairs one is from time to time obliged to abandon the strict observance of the principle of election and to permit the leading party institutions the right of co-option, as was the case in Russia on occasion. Under a state of emergency the Communist Party is not able to use a democratic referendum to solve every serious question, but is rather forced to give its leading centre the right whenever necessary to make important decisions for every party member.
16. The spreading of a broad ‘autonomy’ for the individual local party branches at present only weakens the ranks of the Communist Party, undermines its ability to act and favours the petty-bourgeois, anarchist, liquidationist tendencies.
17. In the countries in which the bourgeoisie or counter-revolutionary social democracy is still in power, the Communist Parties must learn to link the illegal work with the legal in a planned manner. In the process the legal work must constantly be under the actual control of the illegal party. The Communist parliamentary factions, not only in the central (national), but also in the local (regional and local council) institutions of the state, must be subordinate to the control of the whole party – regardless of whether the whole party is legal or illegal at any given moment. Those members of parliament who refuse in any shape or form to subordinate themselves to the party must be expelled from the ranks of the Communist Party.
The legal press (newspapers and publishing) must be subordinated totally and unconditionally to the whole party and its Central Committee.
18. The basis of the organisational activity of the Communist Party must everywhere be the creation of a Communist cell, however small the number of proletarians and semi-proletarians involved may be from time to time. In every soviet, in every trade union, in every factory, in every co-operative society, in every residents’ committee (tenants’ association), wherever there are even only three people who fight for communism a Communist cell must be formed immediately. Only the unity of the Communists gives the vanguard of the proletariat the possibility of leading the whole working class. An Communist Party cells that work in non-party organisations are unconditionally subordinated to the whole party organisation, completely irrespective of whether the Party is working legally or illegally at that given moment. The Communist cells of every kind must be subordinated the one to the other on the basis of the strictest order of precedence according to the most precise system possible.
19. The Communist Party arises almost everywhere as an urban party, as a party of industrial workers who for the main part live in towns. For the easiest and quickest possible victory of the working class it is necessary for the Communist Party to become not only the party of the towns but also the party of the villages. The Communist Party must develop its propaganda and its organisational activity among rural workers and the small and middle peasants. The Communist Party must work with especial care on the organisation of Communist cells in the countryside.
The international organisation of the proletariat can only be strong if the views on the role of the Communist Party formulated above take root in every country in which Communists live and fight. The Communist International has invited to its Congress every trade union that recognises the principles of the Communist International and is prepared to break with the yellow international. The Communist International will organise an international section of red trades unions standing on the foundation of communism. The Communist International will not refuse to work with any non-party workers’ organisation that wishes to carry out a serious revolutionary fight against the bourgeoisie. In the process, however, the Communist International will make the following points to the proletarians, of the whole world:
1. The Communist Party is the main and fundamental weapon for the liberation of the working class. In every country we must have not just groups or currents, but a Communist Party.
2. In every country there should exist only one single unified Communist Party.
3. The Communist Party should be built up on the principle of the strictest centralisation, and in the epoch of the civil war it should have military discipline reigning in its ranks.
4. Wherever there are only a dozen proletarians or semi-proletarians the Communist Party must have an organised cell.
5. There must be – in every non-party institution a Communist Party cell subordinate to the whole party.
6. Firmly and persistently defending the programme and revolutionary tactics of communism, the Communist Party must constantly be linked as closely as possible with the broad workers’ organisations and avoid sectarianism as much as opportunism.
Serrati: What proposals are there? Does anyone propose a discussion? That does not seem to be the case. We will therefore vote immediately. All those in favour of the Theses with the amendments that have been reported here are asked to raise their hands. All those against please raise their hands. Are there any abstentions, perhaps? The Theses are adopted unanimously. We propose a break of half an hour or so so that the delegations can immediately nominate their candidates for the Commissions. The Bureau will then check the lists and place a final list before the Congress.
Balabanova: We will now vote on the Bureau’s proposal. All those in favour raise their hands. Who is against? The proposal is accepted unanimously. [A half-hour break. ]
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Serrati reads the Commission lists.
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Shatskin: I have an amendment to propose on the Organisation Commission. I would like to propose that representatives of the Youth International should be sent into the Commission, which is also discussing the question of the international youth movement. The youth have put forward Theses that will be discussed on this Commission; they must therefore have the right to defend them. It is strange that the authors of these Theses have not been taken on to the Commission despite their proposal.
Zinoviev: The Presidium has provided for the election of two sub-committees for the women’s question and the youth question. Not one or two but several youth, and not one but several representatives of the women’s movement are to participate in these subcommittees. This is how we see it: the organisational question, the Statutes of the Communist International, is very important. Then there are still other questions. Therefore the Presidium has decided to form two sub-committees of the Organisation Commission: for the women’s movement and the youth question. I believe it is most appropriate that way. The Congress should agree.
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The vote is taken. The Bureau’s proposal is adopted unanimously without amendment.
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Zinoviev: We have elected a Commission to work out the conditions of acceptance into the Communist International. It is proposed on behalf of the Congress to invite the representatives of the Independent Socialist Party of Germany (USPD) and of the French Socialist Party into this Commission also. It is a question of their parties, and their presence during the discussion of these questions would be very desirable.
Wijnkoop: If I understand the proposal correctly, comrades, the USPD and the French Socialist Party are to be invited to our Commission on affiliation to the Communist International. I must say that I cannot understand it, and that on behalf of my party I declare myself against.
We have already proposed on the Executive that these two parties should not be allowed into the Congress at all, because they are not Communist Parties. My party is of the opinion that we should not negotiate at all with the USPD, with a party that is now sitting in the Presidium of the Reichstag, that is to say, with a governing party. In our opinion one cannot at all negotiate with such a party.
Things are somewhat different with the French party, not much, but a little better.
I do not need to tell you how we stand in relation to accepting these parties into the Communist International. I shall speak on that later. I can understand that the question of accepting such a party into the Communist International can be raised, but that it can only be dealt with if the party has made an official application to be let into the Communist International. At the moment I know nothing of any such application, and we will speak about it if it comes. In the same way such parties and their delegates should not be given the right to take part in the Congress unless they have sought affiliation to the Communist International.
At the moment we do not know whether applications from one or the other of these parties to join the Communist International have been sent to us. Should one come, however, from the USPD, it would have to be rejected out of hand. One cannot negotiate with a government party.
As far as the French Party is concerned, the application will first of all have to be to hand. If it is not to hand, we cannot permit these parties which do not belong to us, which are not revolutionary and not communist, into the Commission in which we are to consider the proposals for the future conditions of entry. I do not want to say any more. I have made other proposals to the Executive and they were rejected. Now I propose we should not let these parties into our Commission.
Radek: Comrades, the Dutch delegate’s motion first of all contradicts the entire healthy line of thought of the Congress. The delegates of the USPD were admitted in an advisory capacity by the Credentials Commission. If someone has the right to consult, he also has the right to learn under what conditions he can join an international association. But irrespective of the formal side the motion is against healthy logic. Every one of us knows that we are involved in negotiations with the USPD over the question of their entry into the Communist International. Everybody knows that millions of German workers who support this party have fought in the most energetic manner for its entry into the Communist International. If these great masses of workers send their delegates to us here so that they can discuss the conditions of entry into the Communist International with us, to adopt Comrade Wijnkoop’s motion would not only be an act of discourtesy towards those delegates, but it would be an act – I shall not describe it in greater detail – towards the German workers. It goes without saying that the USPD must have the opportunity not only to find out what they want but also to find out what we want. Entry into the Communist International does not take place in the way Comrade Wijnkoop imagines: ‘Prisoner at the bar, what do you have to say in your defence?’ It is an act of negotiation between parties who wish to amalgamate. For this reason I propose Comrade Wijnkoop’s motion be rejected without any further ado.
Van Leuven: Comrades, my fellow delegate Comrade Wijnkoop said that, on behalf of the Dutch Party, he was against the proposal to let the USPD and also the French party into the Commission. Perhaps, or rather probably, he is right. But it must be established that the question has not been discussed in our party. We could not know that we were going to encounter this situation. So perhaps he is right. Personally, I have a slightly different opinion on the matter. I think that for example the delegates of the USPD have come here under pressure from the left wing of the party, the worker masses. But when Comrade Wijnkoop speaks against letting them in here I agree with him. We have had the opportunity in the Executive of putting questions to these German delegates. Radek put nine questions and the others also put a number. I too put some questions there, that is to say those that are raised on page 107 of Comrade Lenin’s Theses. The conditions for full unification are quoted there. As I have mentioned, other comrades such as for example Comrade Levi put questions as I did. Now it seems extraordinary to me that you want to let these men in here without receiving the answer to these questions, that is to say without testing the correctness of their journey here. It seems extraordinary and strange to me. If Comrade Radek says that Comrade Wijnkoop’s remarks contradict healthy logic, then I ask him if it is logical to let these people in here without having had an answer to the questions that have been put.
Guilbeaux: I am of the opinion that the representatives of the USPD and the French party should not be let in because they have made no formal application to join the Communist International. The representatives of the French party have been in Moscow for some time and have had the opportunity to answer the questions that have been put. Meanwhile the French party has sent letters and telegrams to Moscow that were calculated to increase the confusion and make our job more difficult. I therefore move that we should not permit particularly the representatives of the French party to participate in any common work.
Radek: Comrades, when you admit a delegation of a big party in an advisory capacity, you should know what this advisory capacity means and not carry out a discussion about it. But since the two Dutch comrades and Comrade Guilbeaux have given serious reasons why the ‘advisory capacity’ should consist of a muzzle, I permit myself to go into the question once more.
Comrade Van Leuven said the Executive had put a whole series of questions to the representatives of the USPD, and that they had not yet answered these questions. As Secretary of the Executive I must state that they have not yet answered the questions because as yet the subsequent session has not taken place, and because we asked the comrades to wait before giving their answers in order to orientate themselves on the questions in front of the Congress. But if you put a question you should wait for an answer.
Comrade Van Leuven’s best hope of gazing into the soul of the USPD is precisely to let them participate in the Commission that is to discuss affiliation to the Communist International.
We have raised a great number of accusations against the USPD and I think I have done as much in combating the USPD in the Communist International as Van Leuven and Wijnkoop together. But if the USPD representatives think that a part of these accusations are factually incorrect, they must be given the opportunity to defend and prove their point of view. As far as the French party is concerned, it has also been said here that neither party had made an application for affiliation. If that is true, why have we given them the right to speak in an advisory capacity? Why are we negotiating with them? I do not think that this is a discussion that can contribute to clarification, but the expression of a radicalism in words that is not backed up by the will to deeds.
Däumig: I do not intend to go into the material content of the questions now occupying the Congress. Let the Congress decide as it sees fit on the question of letting us in. I have also no occasion to go into Comrade Wijnkoop’s remarks, unencumbered as they are by any knowledge of the facts. You should accept the word of an old politician that he knows that the USPD is not a government party, that is not a ruling party, but that it is in opposition to the government. I protest most decisively against the characterisation of my party as not being a revolutionary party. My party numbers thousands of casualties who have given their blood, thousands of dead and wounded, thousands in prison and in front of the courts. I oppose the characterisation of our party as a non-revolutionary party. We will talk on all the other issues when the Commission meets.
Wijnkoop: I think it is shameful that even at the Congress Däumig tries his demagogy. As far as I know I must state that this Däumig was the man, even during the Kapp putsch, who told the workers that they should not arm themselves. And this man turns up here in Russia, where everybody knows that the victory can only come through the civil war. But Comrade Radek said here that we were carrying on a radicalism of words. [Interjection from Radek: ‘Stupid man.’] He thinks I am a stupid man ... he takes it back. I say that because you can see how Radek is always dragging down the level of the discussion. But the comrades here do not seem to know what it means in Western European countries when men like Däumig, politicians like Cachin are put on the same footing here at the Communist International as Communist and revolutionary parties that have already been involved in the work for a long time. I warn you against it. I hope that the comrades will give these people here nothing more than they deserve, and that is, in the case of the USPD, nothing, and in the case of the French socialists, if they apply to be let in, whatever confidence they have a right to.
Zinoviev: Comrades, I do not even have to say that we fight against the vacillations and indecision of the right wing of the USPD and will continue to fight. But what Comrade Wijnkoop has said here is simply laughable, and does not compromise our Congress but Wijnkoop and the party that sent him here. It is clear that we have and should have the greatest respect for the 10,000 or 11,000 members who are now in gaol. They are fighters and proletarians who fight for the cause of socialism. I do not know how many members of Wijnkoop’s party are in gaol now, and how many times Wijnkoop has personally faced a bourgeois court, and how many times he has been in prison for the cause of the proletariat. We will argue with the comrades of the USPD and cross swords with them twenty times over. But we must not forget this, that thousands of independent workers have been shot by the bourgeoisie and the capitalist scum, and we will not forget that in all these struggles the members of the USPD were at the centre of the fight. I say clearly that – for the Communist International the objective revolutionary role of 800,000 workers, badly led as they are, with vacillation and indecision, will weigh more heavily in favour of the proletarian revolution on the scales of history than a couple of thousand Dutch Tribunites together with the Christian Socialists.
[The journal De Tribune had been founded in Holland in 1907 by Wijnkoop, Corter and Van Ravestyn. This group had been the basis for the formation of the Dutch Social Democratic Workers Party, which split from the Social Democratic Party in 1909, and then the Communist Party in 1918. It was then a centre for ‘Leftism’.]
We have said and will repeat that we will negotiate with every mass party, even though it makes mistakes, that wants to fight with us for the cause of the proletariat, and we will seek to come to terms with it. We will deal with the revolutionary workers in the USPD just as we deal with the workers from the shop stewards’ movement, although they are not communists. If we were to make concessions to the rotten ideology of Kautsky you would be right, but we have not done so. It would be laughable, and Comrade Wijnkoop is laughable, speaking on behalf of a party that has only 1,500 members after fifteen years of activity, to reject the representatives of a party in whose ranks are organised hundreds of thousands of ordinary workers who always fight shoulder to shoulder with the Communists, honest and revolutionary, as workers always are. Therefore I insist on my motion that we invite these comrades in, talk with them openly and tell them our conditions, and we are convinced that two months later the great majority of the workers from the USPD will be organised not only morally but also formally in the Communist International.
Levi: Comrades, until this evening I believed that, ignorant as he was, Comrade Wijnkoop was one of those people who could at least be taught. Two days ago I was at great pains to explain to him that the Presidium of the German Reichstag is made up purely mechanically according to the numbers of votes of the parties, that the Presidium has no connection with government appointments and that you cannot argue any participation in the government from it, since the Presidium of the Reichstag has got nothing to do with the government. Two days ago it looked as if Comrade Wijnkoop had taken in at least something from this instruction. If therefore this evening he throws everything to the four winds and comes back with the phrase about the government party, he only proves that all he is interested in is phrases and nothing else. And he proves that by coming here and talking about German conditions like someone who has never even read a German newspaper. I tell you, you would not laugh so stupidly if you had experienced one tenth of the revolutionary struggles that we have experienced side by side with the Independents.
Yes, we have fought the USPD, we still fight them step by step, drive them before us and tell them to their faces where they go wrong. But when people come from Holland, people who have not yet stirred a finger for the German revolution and the world revolution, when they come and raise criticisms, then we must stand testimony for Hector and say that there are tens and hundreds of thousands of German workers who forced these comrades to come here. The whole intellectual and organisational apparatus of the party opposed the hundreds of thousands, and the hundreds of thousands forced the issue: they had to come to Moscow. And in Moscow there appears the man who was so ready to do great revolutionary deeds when it was a question of winning the Dutch mandate with the promise not to fight against the Entente, at the moment when Soviet Russia was in deadly danger. That is what I have to say to you, Comrade Wijnkoop. Yes indeed, you still have to justify yourself against this criticism. And I tell you if we have occasion to speak to these comrades from the USPD about their errors and tell them what we demand of them, then you, Comrade Wijnkoop, are the last person to appear in that role.
I want to remind you of something else. I want to remind you of the summer of last year, of the most difficult time of our period of illegality, when almost all our comrades were in prison. We turned then to your party for support, we asked your party comrades to come to us. We asked the party comrades on whose behalf you are becoming so indignant here to send us Gorter and Pannekoek. [Interjection from Wijnkoop and Van Leuven: ‘That is a big lie.’] I tell you, in that most difficult moment, when it was not even possible for us to staff our newspaper’s editorial board, when we demanded that the Dutch comrades should just send us some editors, not a single one came! [Interjection from Van Leuven: ‘Dittmann and Crispien are not in their graves yet.’] If the comrade who is so outraged says that Dittmann and Crispien are not yet in their graves, I would like to reply that I am not in my grave yet either, and you are in no danger of being there at all, comrade. You too had the opportunity to die in Germany, and hundreds and thousands of workers from the USPD did die, and you stayed behind on your coffee bags in Holland, and today you are a revolutionary. [Interjection from Radek: ‘Stockbroker.’]
Bukharin: I am not in favour of making a great din about the representatives of a party that is so greatly revolutionary that they supplied a member of a Christian priests’ organisation with a further mandate. I therefore suggest that we immediately break off any further discussion and proceed with the agenda.
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The Bureau proposes to put Bukharin’s motion to the vote. The motion is carried by an overwhelming majority. Comrade Zinoviev takes the vote on whether the representatives of the USPD and the French Socialists should be invited to take part in the discussions. The motion is accepted by a large majority.
The sub-committees are elected.
The Bureau announces Comrade McLaine’s proposal that a special Commission should be appointed to study the question of the Labour Party in England. The vote is taken and the proposal accepted.
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Zinoviev: I would like to suggest that we fix the times at which the Commissions are to meet. The Presidium proposes that the following Commissions should work tomorrow: (1) the National and Colonial Question at 12; (2) the Trades Unions, also at 12; (3) Parliamentarism also at 12, and (4) the Commission to discuss terms of entry into the Communist International at 5 pm. All four Commissions work here; two in the main hall and the two others, in the side rooms.
And then on Monday the other three Commissions. The Organisation Commission at 1I am; the Agrarian Commission at 1I am; the Commission that is concerned with the main tasks of the Congress at 1 pm. Should the Commissions not finish their work tomorrow they will also work on Monday. Then at 8 pm on Monday evening a full session, for which we hope that at least one or two of the Commissions will have completed their work.
Serrati: The session of the Congress is adjourned.
Markin comment:
Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.
No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.
The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
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Markin comment on this post:
As noted in my commentary on the Manifesto of the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920), reposted below since it also applies to these theses, such documents give the political movement it is addressed to its marching order. In a general sense, at least. These theses codify those general propositions outlined in the manifesto. Note here that this Second Congress took place as the international working class movement was going through a regroupment process right after World War I between the reformist socialists, the emerging communist vanguard, and the bewildered anarchists. Note also the difference in approaches to the more hardened reformist-led socialist parties, and to the ill-formed but more revolutionary-spirited anarchist formations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) here in America in their good days.
A manifesto, particularly a political manifesto, and especially a revolutionary communist manifesto like the one that issued out of the historic Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 should give a cogent analysis of the world political situation. It should also describe the nature of the period (revolutionary, non-revolutionary, heading toward or away from either, an estimation of the enemy’s capacities, and the obstacles in the way both inside and outside the workers movement (out side the treachery of the liberals and inside the perfidy of the labor bureaucracy resting on the labor bureaucracy). In short, give the international proletariat its marching orders. The Manifesto of the Second World Congress does just those things at a time when the fledgling Communist International was trying to consolidate its vanguard position in the world working class movement. The Communist International then, and for some time after, did yeoman’s work in that regard, not always perfectly but from a revolutionary perspective. Even as it degenerated politically toward the middle and late 1920s there were, as the Leon Trotsky-led International Left Opposition held, reasons, good reasons to adhere to its tenets. Only with the debacle around Hitler’s coming to power in Germany did Trotsky throw in the towel. That seemed right then, and now. I would argue that the Seventh (and last) World Congress in 1935 unquestionably put paid to that notion. We did not need a vanguard national party, or a vanguard revolutionary international party for that matter, to give the lead in the political struggle to the liberal bourgeoisie as the popular frontist politics of the CI proclaimed from that time onward (with a few “left” turns). There was an international for that “strategy”, or rather a mail-drop address, it was (is) called the Second International.
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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International
After break. Third Session.
July 24
Zinoviev: I declare the session open. We will now discuss the issue of the role of the Communist Party. Whether we need a discussion, or whether we can simply put it to the vote, is open to question. I feel that we can simply put it to the vote, but the Congress should decide. The Theses read as follows:
Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution
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The international proletariat faces decisive struggles. The epoch in which we now live is the epoch of open civil war. The decisive hour is approaching. In almost every country in which there is a workers’ movement of any importance, the working class faces a series of bitter struggles, arms in hand.
More than ever before the working class requires strict organisation. It must prepare itself untiringly for this struggle now, without wasting a single hour of valuable time.
If the working class had possessed a disciplined Communist Party, even a small one, at the time of the Paris Commune of 1871, the first heroic uprising of the French proletariat would have been much more powerful and many mistakes and weaknesses could have been avoided.
The struggles that the proletariat now face in a different historical situation will be far more fateful than those of 1871. The Second Congress of the Communist International therefore draws the attention of the revolutionary working class throughout the world to the following:
1. The Communist Party is a part of the working class, and moreover its most advanced, most class-conscious and therefore its most revolutionary part. The Communist Party is created by the method of the natural selection of the best, the most class-conscious, the most self-sacrificing, and the most far-sighted workers. The Communist Party has no interests that differ from the interests of the whole working class. The Communist Party differs from the whole working class because it has an overall view of the whole historical road of the working class in its totality and because at every turn in this road it strives to defend not just the interests of a single group or a single trade, but the interests of the working class in its totality. The Communist Party is the organisational and political lever with whose help the advanced part of the working class can steer the whole mass of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat on to the correct road.
2. Until the time when state power has been conquered by the proletariat, and the proletariat has established its rule once and for all and secured it from bourgeois restoration, until that time the Communist Party will only have the minority of the working class organised in its ranks. Until the seizure of power and during the period of transition the Communist Party is able, under favourable conditions, to exercise undivided mental and political influence over all the proletarian and half-proletarian layers of the population, but is not able to unite them organisationally in its ranks. Only after the proletarian dictatorship has wrested out of the hands of the bourgeoisie such powerful media of influence as the press, education, parliament, the church, the administrative machine and so on, only after the defeat of the bourgeois order has become clear for all to see, only then will all or almost all workers start to enter the ranks of the Communist Party.
3. The concept of the party and that of the class must be kept strictly separate. The members of the ‘Christian’ and liberal trades unions of Germany, England and other countries are undoubtedly part of the working class. The more or less significant sections of workers who still stand behind Scheidemann, Gompers and company are undoubtedly part of the working class. It is very possible that, under certain historical circumstances, the working class can become interspersed with numerous reactionary layers. The task of communism does not lie in accommodating to these backward parts of the working class, but in raising the whole of the working class to the level of the communist vanguard. The confusion of these two concepts party and class can lead to the greatest mistakes and confusion. Thus it is clear, for example, that during the imperialist war, despite the moods and prejudices of a certain section of the working class, the workers’ party had to oppose these moods and prejudices at any cost and represent the historical interests of the working class, which demanded that the proletarian party declared war on war.
Thus, at the beginning of the imperialist war in 1914, the parties of the social traitors in every country, in supporting their ‘own’ bourgeoisie, could point to corresponding expressions of the will of the working class. But in the process they forgot that, even if that was the case, the duty of the proletarian party in such a state of affairs would have to be to oppose the mood of the majority and to represent, despite everything, the historical interests of the proletariat. In the same way at the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian Mensheviks of the day (the so-called Economists) rejected the open political struggle against Tsarism with the argument that the working class as a whole had not yet ripened to an understanding of the political struggle.
[At the 1903 Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, a split took place on Rule 1 of the constitution. Lenin’s group won a majority over that of Martov, advocating a looser type of organisation. The two factions were thereafter known as ‘Bolshevik’ and ‘Menshevik’, from the Russian words for majority and minority. In the course of the 1905 Revolution, the breach widened, and in 1912 two separate parties were formed. In 1917, some of the left-wing Mensheviks joined the Bolshevik Party, and the right wing became open enemies of the Soviet state. In exile, they organised, first in the centrist Two-and-a-Half International, and then in the Second.]
And in the same way the right-wing Independents in Germany in all their half-measures point to the fact that ‘the masses wish it’, without understanding that the party is there for the purpose of going in advance of the masses and showing them the way.
4. The Communist International remains firmly convinced that the collapse of the old ‘social democratic’ parties of the Second International can under no circumstances be portrayed as the collapse of the proletarian party type of organisation in general. The epoch of the direct struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat brings a new party of the proletariat into the world: the Communist Party.
5. The Communist International rejects most decisively the view that the proletariat can carry out its revolution without having an independent political party. Every class struggle is a political struggle. The aim of this struggle, which inevitably turns into civil war, is the conquest of political power. Political power can only be seized, organised and led by a political party, and in no other way. Only when the proletariat has as a leader an organised and tested party with well marked aims and with a tangible, worked-out programme for the next measures to be taken not only at home but also in foreign policy, will the conquest of political power not appear as an accidental episode but serve as the starting point for the permanent communist construction of society by the proletariat.
The same class struggle demands in the same way the centralisation and common leadership of the different forms of the proletarian movement (trades unions, co-operatives, works committees, cultural work, elections and so forth). Only a political party can be such a unifying and leading centre. To renounce the creation and strengthening of such a party, to renounce subordinating oneself to it, is to renounce unity in the leadership of the individual battle units of the proletariat who are advancing on the different battlefields. The class struggle of the proletariat demands a concerted agitation that illuminates the different stages of the struggle from a uniform point of view and at every given moment directs the attention of the proletariat towards specific tasks common to the whole class. That cannot be done without a centralised political apparatus, that is to say outside of a political party. The propaganda carried out by the revolutionary syndicalists and the Industrial Workers of the World against the necessity of such a party therefore contributes and has contributed objectively only to the support of the bourgeoisie and the counter-revolutionary ‘social democrats’. In their propaganda against a Communist Party, which they wish to replace exclusively by trades unions or some formless ‘general’ workers’ unions, the syndicalists and industrialists rub shoulders with open opportunists. For several years after the defeat of the 1905 revolution the Russian Mensheviks preached the idea of the so-called Workers’ Congress, which was supposed to replace the revolutionary party of the working class. The ‘yellow Labourites’ of every kind in Britain and America preach to the workers the creation of formless workers’ organisations or vague, merely parliamentary associations instead of the political party and at the same time put completely bourgeois policies into deeds. The revolutionary syndicalists and industrialists want to fight against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but do not know how. They do not see that without an independent political party the working class is a rump without a head.
Revolutionary syndicalism and industrialism mean a step forward only in comparison with the old, musty, counter-revolutionary ideology of the Second International. In comparison however with revolutionary Marxism, that is to say with communism, syndicalism and industrialism mean a step backwards. The declaration by the ‘left’ Communist Workers’ Party of Germany (KAPD) at its founding conference in April that it is founding a party, but ‘not a party in the traditional sense’ means an ideological capitulation to those views of syndicalism and industrialism that are reactionary.
With the general strike alone , with the tactic of folded arms, the working class cannot achieve victory over the bourgeoisie. The proletariat must take on the armed uprising. Whoever understands that will also have to grasp that an organised political party is necessary and that formless workers’ unions are not sufficient.
The revolutionary syndicalists often talk about the great role of the determined revolutionary minority. Well, a truly determined minority of the working class, a minority that is Communist, that wishes to act, that has a programme and wishes to organise the struggle of the masses, is precisely the Communist Party.
6. The most important task of a truly Communist Party consists in always remaining in the closest contact with the broadest layers of the proletariat.
In order to achieve this, the Communists can and should work in those associations that are non-party but nonetheless embrace big layers of the proletariat, such as for example the organisations of war invalids in the various countries, the ‘Hands off Russia’ Committees in Britain, proletarian tenants’ associations, etc. The Russian example of conferences of so-called ‘non-party’ workers and peasants is particularly important. Such conferences are organised in almost every town, in every workers’ district and also in the countryside. The broadest masses even of the backward workers take part in the elections to these conferences. The most important current questions are placed on the agenda: the food question, the housing question, military questions, education, the political tasks of the day, etc. The Communists influence these ‘non-party’ conferences most zealously – and with great success for the party.
The Communists think that one of their most important tasks is the work of organisation and education within these broad workers’ organisations. But precisely in order to organise this work successfully, to prevent the enemies of the revolutionary proletariat from taking over these broad workers’ movements, the advanced Communist workers must form their own, independent, closed Communist Party, which always proceeds in an organised fashion and is able to perceive the general interests of communism at every turn of events and in all forms of the movement.
7. Communists by no means avoid non-party mass organisations of workers. Under certain conditions they do not hold back from participating in them and using them even if they are of an emphatically reactionary character (yellow unions, Christian unions, etc.) The Communist Party constantly carries out its propaganda within these organisations and tirelessly convinces the workers that the idea of not joining a party on principle is consciously encouraged among the workers by the bourgeoisie and their assistants to divert the proletarians from the organised struggle for socialism.
8. The old ‘classical’ division of the workers’ movement into three forms – the party, the trades unions and the co-operatives – has obviously been overtaken. The proletarian revolution in Russia has created the basic form of the proletarian dictatorship – the soviets. The new division that we are everywhere encountering is (1) the party, (2) the soviet, (3) the productive association (the trade union). But the workers’ councils too, as well as the revolutionary production associations, must constantly and systematically be led by the party of the proletariat, that is to say by the Communist Party. The organised vanguard of the working class, the Communist Party, which must lead the struggle of the whole working class to the same extent in the economic and political and also in the cultural field, must be the guiding spirit not only of the producers’ associations and of the workers’ councils, but also in all the other forms of proletarian organisation.
The rise of the soviets as the basic historical form of the dictatorship by no means decreases the leading role of the Communist Party in the proletarian revolution. If the ‘left’ Communists of Germany (cf. their appeal to the German proletariat of April 14, 1920 signed ‘Communist Workers’ Party of Germany') declare: ‘That the Party too adapts more and more to the idea of Soviets, and takes on a proletarian character’ (Kommunistische Arbeiterzeitung, no. 54), then this is a confused expression of the idea that the Communist Party must dissolve itself into the soviets, that the soviets can replace the Communist Party.
This idea is fundamentally false and reactionary.
In the history of the Russian revolution we experienced a whole period in which the soviets marched against the proletarian party and supported the policies of the agents of the bourgeoisie. The same thing could be observed in Germany. The same thing is also possible in other countries.
On the contrary, the existence of a powerful Communist Party is necessary in order to enable the soviets to do justice to their historic tasks, a party that does not simply ‘adapt itself’ to the soviets, but is in a position to make them renounce ‘adaptations’ of their own to the bourgeoisie and White Guard social democracy, a party which, by means of the Communist factions in the soviets, is in a position to take the soviets under the leadership of the Communist Party.
Whoever suggests to the Communist Party that it should ‘adapt’ to the soviets, whoever sees a strengthening of the Party’s ‘proletarian character’ in such an adaptation, is doing the Party and the soviets a highly questionable favour, and understands the significance neither of the soviets nor of the Party. The ‘soviet idea’ will be all the sooner victorious, the stronger are the parties that we create in every country. Many ‘Independents’ and even right-wing socialists announce their support for the ‘soviet idea’ in words now. We will only be able to prevent these elements from distorting the soviet idea if we have a strong Communist Party that is in a position to influence decisively the policies of the soviets.
9. The working class does not only need the Communist Party before and during the conquest of power, but also after the transfer of power into the hands of the working class. The history of the Communist Party of Russia, which has been in power for almost three years, shows that the importance of the Communist Party does not diminish after the conquest of power by the working class, but on the contrary grows extraordinarily.
10. On the day the working class conquers power its party nevertheless remains as before only a part of the working class. It is precisely that part of the working class that organised the victory. For two decades in Russia and for a number of years in Germany the Communist Party has carried out its fight not only against the bourgeoisie but also against those ‘socialists’ who are the bearers of the bourgeois influence in the working class. It took into its ranks the most steadfast, far-sighted and advanced fighters in the working class. Only the existence of such a close organisation of the elite of the working class makes it possible to overcome all the difficulties that place themselves in the path of the workers’ dictatorship on the day following the victory. In the organisation of a new proletarian Red Army, in the actual liquidation of the bourgeois state apparatus and its replacement by the nucleus of a new proletarian state apparatus, in the fight against the craft tendencies of individual groups of workers, in the fight against local and regional ‘patriotism’ and in opening up paths to the creation of a new work discipline – in all of these areas the decisive word of the Communist Party belongs. Its members must fire and lead the majority of the working class by their own example.
11. The need for a political party of the proletariat will only disappear with the complete dissolution of the classes. On the way to the final victory of communism it is possible that the historical significance of the three fundamental forms of proletarian organisation of the present (party, soviets, production associations) will change, and that the uniform type of the workers’ organisation will gradually crystallise out. The Communist Party will not however completely dissolve into the working class until communism has ceased to be an object of struggle and the whole of the working class has become communist.
12. The Second Congress of the Communist International not only confirms the historical tasks of the Communist Party in general, but tells the international proletariat, if only in general outline, what kind of Communist Party we require.
13. The Communist International is of the opinion that, particularly in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communist Party must be built on the basis of an iron proletarian centralism. To lead the working class successfully in the long and hard civil wars that have broken out, the Communist Party must create an iron military order in its own ranks. The experiences of the Communist Party that led the working class during three years of the Russian civil war have shown that, without the strictest discipline, complete centralism and full comradely confidence of all the party organisations in the leading party centre, the victory of the workers is impossible.
14. The Communist Party must be built up on the basis of democratic centralism. The chief principle of democratic centralism is the election of the higher party cells by the lower, the unconditional and indispensable binding authority of all of the instructions of the higher bodies for the lower and the existence of a strong party centre whose authority is generally recognised for all leading party comrades in the period from one party conference to another.
15. A series of Communist Parties in Europe and America have been forced as a result of the state of emergency declared against the Communists by the bourgeoisie, to lead an illegal existence. It must be remembered that in such a state of affairs one is from time to time obliged to abandon the strict observance of the principle of election and to permit the leading party institutions the right of co-option, as was the case in Russia on occasion. Under a state of emergency the Communist Party is not able to use a democratic referendum to solve every serious question, but is rather forced to give its leading centre the right whenever necessary to make important decisions for every party member.
16. The spreading of a broad ‘autonomy’ for the individual local party branches at present only weakens the ranks of the Communist Party, undermines its ability to act and favours the petty-bourgeois, anarchist, liquidationist tendencies.
17. In the countries in which the bourgeoisie or counter-revolutionary social democracy is still in power, the Communist Parties must learn to link the illegal work with the legal in a planned manner. In the process the legal work must constantly be under the actual control of the illegal party. The Communist parliamentary factions, not only in the central (national), but also in the local (regional and local council) institutions of the state, must be subordinate to the control of the whole party – regardless of whether the whole party is legal or illegal at any given moment. Those members of parliament who refuse in any shape or form to subordinate themselves to the party must be expelled from the ranks of the Communist Party.
The legal press (newspapers and publishing) must be subordinated totally and unconditionally to the whole party and its Central Committee.
18. The basis of the organisational activity of the Communist Party must everywhere be the creation of a Communist cell, however small the number of proletarians and semi-proletarians involved may be from time to time. In every soviet, in every trade union, in every factory, in every co-operative society, in every residents’ committee (tenants’ association), wherever there are even only three people who fight for communism a Communist cell must be formed immediately. Only the unity of the Communists gives the vanguard of the proletariat the possibility of leading the whole working class. An Communist Party cells that work in non-party organisations are unconditionally subordinated to the whole party organisation, completely irrespective of whether the Party is working legally or illegally at that given moment. The Communist cells of every kind must be subordinated the one to the other on the basis of the strictest order of precedence according to the most precise system possible.
19. The Communist Party arises almost everywhere as an urban party, as a party of industrial workers who for the main part live in towns. For the easiest and quickest possible victory of the working class it is necessary for the Communist Party to become not only the party of the towns but also the party of the villages. The Communist Party must develop its propaganda and its organisational activity among rural workers and the small and middle peasants. The Communist Party must work with especial care on the organisation of Communist cells in the countryside.
The international organisation of the proletariat can only be strong if the views on the role of the Communist Party formulated above take root in every country in which Communists live and fight. The Communist International has invited to its Congress every trade union that recognises the principles of the Communist International and is prepared to break with the yellow international. The Communist International will organise an international section of red trades unions standing on the foundation of communism. The Communist International will not refuse to work with any non-party workers’ organisation that wishes to carry out a serious revolutionary fight against the bourgeoisie. In the process, however, the Communist International will make the following points to the proletarians, of the whole world:
1. The Communist Party is the main and fundamental weapon for the liberation of the working class. In every country we must have not just groups or currents, but a Communist Party.
2. In every country there should exist only one single unified Communist Party.
3. The Communist Party should be built up on the principle of the strictest centralisation, and in the epoch of the civil war it should have military discipline reigning in its ranks.
4. Wherever there are only a dozen proletarians or semi-proletarians the Communist Party must have an organised cell.
5. There must be – in every non-party institution a Communist Party cell subordinate to the whole party.
6. Firmly and persistently defending the programme and revolutionary tactics of communism, the Communist Party must constantly be linked as closely as possible with the broad workers’ organisations and avoid sectarianism as much as opportunism.
Serrati: What proposals are there? Does anyone propose a discussion? That does not seem to be the case. We will therefore vote immediately. All those in favour of the Theses with the amendments that have been reported here are asked to raise their hands. All those against please raise their hands. Are there any abstentions, perhaps? The Theses are adopted unanimously. We propose a break of half an hour or so so that the delegations can immediately nominate their candidates for the Commissions. The Bureau will then check the lists and place a final list before the Congress.
Balabanova: We will now vote on the Bureau’s proposal. All those in favour raise their hands. Who is against? The proposal is accepted unanimously. [A half-hour break. ]
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Serrati reads the Commission lists.
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Shatskin: I have an amendment to propose on the Organisation Commission. I would like to propose that representatives of the Youth International should be sent into the Commission, which is also discussing the question of the international youth movement. The youth have put forward Theses that will be discussed on this Commission; they must therefore have the right to defend them. It is strange that the authors of these Theses have not been taken on to the Commission despite their proposal.
Zinoviev: The Presidium has provided for the election of two sub-committees for the women’s question and the youth question. Not one or two but several youth, and not one but several representatives of the women’s movement are to participate in these subcommittees. This is how we see it: the organisational question, the Statutes of the Communist International, is very important. Then there are still other questions. Therefore the Presidium has decided to form two sub-committees of the Organisation Commission: for the women’s movement and the youth question. I believe it is most appropriate that way. The Congress should agree.
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The vote is taken. The Bureau’s proposal is adopted unanimously without amendment.
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Zinoviev: We have elected a Commission to work out the conditions of acceptance into the Communist International. It is proposed on behalf of the Congress to invite the representatives of the Independent Socialist Party of Germany (USPD) and of the French Socialist Party into this Commission also. It is a question of their parties, and their presence during the discussion of these questions would be very desirable.
Wijnkoop: If I understand the proposal correctly, comrades, the USPD and the French Socialist Party are to be invited to our Commission on affiliation to the Communist International. I must say that I cannot understand it, and that on behalf of my party I declare myself against.
We have already proposed on the Executive that these two parties should not be allowed into the Congress at all, because they are not Communist Parties. My party is of the opinion that we should not negotiate at all with the USPD, with a party that is now sitting in the Presidium of the Reichstag, that is to say, with a governing party. In our opinion one cannot at all negotiate with such a party.
Things are somewhat different with the French party, not much, but a little better.
I do not need to tell you how we stand in relation to accepting these parties into the Communist International. I shall speak on that later. I can understand that the question of accepting such a party into the Communist International can be raised, but that it can only be dealt with if the party has made an official application to be let into the Communist International. At the moment I know nothing of any such application, and we will speak about it if it comes. In the same way such parties and their delegates should not be given the right to take part in the Congress unless they have sought affiliation to the Communist International.
At the moment we do not know whether applications from one or the other of these parties to join the Communist International have been sent to us. Should one come, however, from the USPD, it would have to be rejected out of hand. One cannot negotiate with a government party.
As far as the French Party is concerned, the application will first of all have to be to hand. If it is not to hand, we cannot permit these parties which do not belong to us, which are not revolutionary and not communist, into the Commission in which we are to consider the proposals for the future conditions of entry. I do not want to say any more. I have made other proposals to the Executive and they were rejected. Now I propose we should not let these parties into our Commission.
Radek: Comrades, the Dutch delegate’s motion first of all contradicts the entire healthy line of thought of the Congress. The delegates of the USPD were admitted in an advisory capacity by the Credentials Commission. If someone has the right to consult, he also has the right to learn under what conditions he can join an international association. But irrespective of the formal side the motion is against healthy logic. Every one of us knows that we are involved in negotiations with the USPD over the question of their entry into the Communist International. Everybody knows that millions of German workers who support this party have fought in the most energetic manner for its entry into the Communist International. If these great masses of workers send their delegates to us here so that they can discuss the conditions of entry into the Communist International with us, to adopt Comrade Wijnkoop’s motion would not only be an act of discourtesy towards those delegates, but it would be an act – I shall not describe it in greater detail – towards the German workers. It goes without saying that the USPD must have the opportunity not only to find out what they want but also to find out what we want. Entry into the Communist International does not take place in the way Comrade Wijnkoop imagines: ‘Prisoner at the bar, what do you have to say in your defence?’ It is an act of negotiation between parties who wish to amalgamate. For this reason I propose Comrade Wijnkoop’s motion be rejected without any further ado.
Van Leuven: Comrades, my fellow delegate Comrade Wijnkoop said that, on behalf of the Dutch Party, he was against the proposal to let the USPD and also the French party into the Commission. Perhaps, or rather probably, he is right. But it must be established that the question has not been discussed in our party. We could not know that we were going to encounter this situation. So perhaps he is right. Personally, I have a slightly different opinion on the matter. I think that for example the delegates of the USPD have come here under pressure from the left wing of the party, the worker masses. But when Comrade Wijnkoop speaks against letting them in here I agree with him. We have had the opportunity in the Executive of putting questions to these German delegates. Radek put nine questions and the others also put a number. I too put some questions there, that is to say those that are raised on page 107 of Comrade Lenin’s Theses. The conditions for full unification are quoted there. As I have mentioned, other comrades such as for example Comrade Levi put questions as I did. Now it seems extraordinary to me that you want to let these men in here without receiving the answer to these questions, that is to say without testing the correctness of their journey here. It seems extraordinary and strange to me. If Comrade Radek says that Comrade Wijnkoop’s remarks contradict healthy logic, then I ask him if it is logical to let these people in here without having had an answer to the questions that have been put.
Guilbeaux: I am of the opinion that the representatives of the USPD and the French party should not be let in because they have made no formal application to join the Communist International. The representatives of the French party have been in Moscow for some time and have had the opportunity to answer the questions that have been put. Meanwhile the French party has sent letters and telegrams to Moscow that were calculated to increase the confusion and make our job more difficult. I therefore move that we should not permit particularly the representatives of the French party to participate in any common work.
Radek: Comrades, when you admit a delegation of a big party in an advisory capacity, you should know what this advisory capacity means and not carry out a discussion about it. But since the two Dutch comrades and Comrade Guilbeaux have given serious reasons why the ‘advisory capacity’ should consist of a muzzle, I permit myself to go into the question once more.
Comrade Van Leuven said the Executive had put a whole series of questions to the representatives of the USPD, and that they had not yet answered these questions. As Secretary of the Executive I must state that they have not yet answered the questions because as yet the subsequent session has not taken place, and because we asked the comrades to wait before giving their answers in order to orientate themselves on the questions in front of the Congress. But if you put a question you should wait for an answer.
Comrade Van Leuven’s best hope of gazing into the soul of the USPD is precisely to let them participate in the Commission that is to discuss affiliation to the Communist International.
We have raised a great number of accusations against the USPD and I think I have done as much in combating the USPD in the Communist International as Van Leuven and Wijnkoop together. But if the USPD representatives think that a part of these accusations are factually incorrect, they must be given the opportunity to defend and prove their point of view. As far as the French party is concerned, it has also been said here that neither party had made an application for affiliation. If that is true, why have we given them the right to speak in an advisory capacity? Why are we negotiating with them? I do not think that this is a discussion that can contribute to clarification, but the expression of a radicalism in words that is not backed up by the will to deeds.
Däumig: I do not intend to go into the material content of the questions now occupying the Congress. Let the Congress decide as it sees fit on the question of letting us in. I have also no occasion to go into Comrade Wijnkoop’s remarks, unencumbered as they are by any knowledge of the facts. You should accept the word of an old politician that he knows that the USPD is not a government party, that is not a ruling party, but that it is in opposition to the government. I protest most decisively against the characterisation of my party as not being a revolutionary party. My party numbers thousands of casualties who have given their blood, thousands of dead and wounded, thousands in prison and in front of the courts. I oppose the characterisation of our party as a non-revolutionary party. We will talk on all the other issues when the Commission meets.
Wijnkoop: I think it is shameful that even at the Congress Däumig tries his demagogy. As far as I know I must state that this Däumig was the man, even during the Kapp putsch, who told the workers that they should not arm themselves. And this man turns up here in Russia, where everybody knows that the victory can only come through the civil war. But Comrade Radek said here that we were carrying on a radicalism of words. [Interjection from Radek: ‘Stupid man.’] He thinks I am a stupid man ... he takes it back. I say that because you can see how Radek is always dragging down the level of the discussion. But the comrades here do not seem to know what it means in Western European countries when men like Däumig, politicians like Cachin are put on the same footing here at the Communist International as Communist and revolutionary parties that have already been involved in the work for a long time. I warn you against it. I hope that the comrades will give these people here nothing more than they deserve, and that is, in the case of the USPD, nothing, and in the case of the French socialists, if they apply to be let in, whatever confidence they have a right to.
Zinoviev: Comrades, I do not even have to say that we fight against the vacillations and indecision of the right wing of the USPD and will continue to fight. But what Comrade Wijnkoop has said here is simply laughable, and does not compromise our Congress but Wijnkoop and the party that sent him here. It is clear that we have and should have the greatest respect for the 10,000 or 11,000 members who are now in gaol. They are fighters and proletarians who fight for the cause of socialism. I do not know how many members of Wijnkoop’s party are in gaol now, and how many times Wijnkoop has personally faced a bourgeois court, and how many times he has been in prison for the cause of the proletariat. We will argue with the comrades of the USPD and cross swords with them twenty times over. But we must not forget this, that thousands of independent workers have been shot by the bourgeoisie and the capitalist scum, and we will not forget that in all these struggles the members of the USPD were at the centre of the fight. I say clearly that – for the Communist International the objective revolutionary role of 800,000 workers, badly led as they are, with vacillation and indecision, will weigh more heavily in favour of the proletarian revolution on the scales of history than a couple of thousand Dutch Tribunites together with the Christian Socialists.
[The journal De Tribune had been founded in Holland in 1907 by Wijnkoop, Corter and Van Ravestyn. This group had been the basis for the formation of the Dutch Social Democratic Workers Party, which split from the Social Democratic Party in 1909, and then the Communist Party in 1918. It was then a centre for ‘Leftism’.]
We have said and will repeat that we will negotiate with every mass party, even though it makes mistakes, that wants to fight with us for the cause of the proletariat, and we will seek to come to terms with it. We will deal with the revolutionary workers in the USPD just as we deal with the workers from the shop stewards’ movement, although they are not communists. If we were to make concessions to the rotten ideology of Kautsky you would be right, but we have not done so. It would be laughable, and Comrade Wijnkoop is laughable, speaking on behalf of a party that has only 1,500 members after fifteen years of activity, to reject the representatives of a party in whose ranks are organised hundreds of thousands of ordinary workers who always fight shoulder to shoulder with the Communists, honest and revolutionary, as workers always are. Therefore I insist on my motion that we invite these comrades in, talk with them openly and tell them our conditions, and we are convinced that two months later the great majority of the workers from the USPD will be organised not only morally but also formally in the Communist International.
Levi: Comrades, until this evening I believed that, ignorant as he was, Comrade Wijnkoop was one of those people who could at least be taught. Two days ago I was at great pains to explain to him that the Presidium of the German Reichstag is made up purely mechanically according to the numbers of votes of the parties, that the Presidium has no connection with government appointments and that you cannot argue any participation in the government from it, since the Presidium of the Reichstag has got nothing to do with the government. Two days ago it looked as if Comrade Wijnkoop had taken in at least something from this instruction. If therefore this evening he throws everything to the four winds and comes back with the phrase about the government party, he only proves that all he is interested in is phrases and nothing else. And he proves that by coming here and talking about German conditions like someone who has never even read a German newspaper. I tell you, you would not laugh so stupidly if you had experienced one tenth of the revolutionary struggles that we have experienced side by side with the Independents.
Yes, we have fought the USPD, we still fight them step by step, drive them before us and tell them to their faces where they go wrong. But when people come from Holland, people who have not yet stirred a finger for the German revolution and the world revolution, when they come and raise criticisms, then we must stand testimony for Hector and say that there are tens and hundreds of thousands of German workers who forced these comrades to come here. The whole intellectual and organisational apparatus of the party opposed the hundreds of thousands, and the hundreds of thousands forced the issue: they had to come to Moscow. And in Moscow there appears the man who was so ready to do great revolutionary deeds when it was a question of winning the Dutch mandate with the promise not to fight against the Entente, at the moment when Soviet Russia was in deadly danger. That is what I have to say to you, Comrade Wijnkoop. Yes indeed, you still have to justify yourself against this criticism. And I tell you if we have occasion to speak to these comrades from the USPD about their errors and tell them what we demand of them, then you, Comrade Wijnkoop, are the last person to appear in that role.
I want to remind you of something else. I want to remind you of the summer of last year, of the most difficult time of our period of illegality, when almost all our comrades were in prison. We turned then to your party for support, we asked your party comrades to come to us. We asked the party comrades on whose behalf you are becoming so indignant here to send us Gorter and Pannekoek. [Interjection from Wijnkoop and Van Leuven: ‘That is a big lie.’] I tell you, in that most difficult moment, when it was not even possible for us to staff our newspaper’s editorial board, when we demanded that the Dutch comrades should just send us some editors, not a single one came! [Interjection from Van Leuven: ‘Dittmann and Crispien are not in their graves yet.’] If the comrade who is so outraged says that Dittmann and Crispien are not yet in their graves, I would like to reply that I am not in my grave yet either, and you are in no danger of being there at all, comrade. You too had the opportunity to die in Germany, and hundreds and thousands of workers from the USPD did die, and you stayed behind on your coffee bags in Holland, and today you are a revolutionary. [Interjection from Radek: ‘Stockbroker.’]
Bukharin: I am not in favour of making a great din about the representatives of a party that is so greatly revolutionary that they supplied a member of a Christian priests’ organisation with a further mandate. I therefore suggest that we immediately break off any further discussion and proceed with the agenda.
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The Bureau proposes to put Bukharin’s motion to the vote. The motion is carried by an overwhelming majority. Comrade Zinoviev takes the vote on whether the representatives of the USPD and the French Socialists should be invited to take part in the discussions. The motion is accepted by a large majority.
The sub-committees are elected.
The Bureau announces Comrade McLaine’s proposal that a special Commission should be appointed to study the question of the Labour Party in England. The vote is taken and the proposal accepted.
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Zinoviev: I would like to suggest that we fix the times at which the Commissions are to meet. The Presidium proposes that the following Commissions should work tomorrow: (1) the National and Colonial Question at 12; (2) the Trades Unions, also at 12; (3) Parliamentarism also at 12, and (4) the Commission to discuss terms of entry into the Communist International at 5 pm. All four Commissions work here; two in the main hall and the two others, in the side rooms.
And then on Monday the other three Commissions. The Organisation Commission at 1I am; the Agrarian Commission at 1I am; the Commission that is concerned with the main tasks of the Congress at 1 pm. Should the Commissions not finish their work tomorrow they will also work on Monday. Then at 8 pm on Monday evening a full session, for which we hope that at least one or two of the Commissions will have completed their work.
Serrati: The session of the Congress is adjourned.
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