AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Thursday, March 01, 2012

From #Ur-Occupied Boston (#Ur-Tomemonos Boston)-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions! - Defend The Boston Commune! Take The Offensive!- Why You, Your Union , Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!

Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.

Markin comment:

We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists on December 12, 2011and the defend of the longshormen’s union at Longview. As I have pointed out in remarks previously made elsewhere as part of the Boston solidarity rally with the West Coast Port Shutdown on that date this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a very different, more equitable society. Not everything went as well, or as well-attended, as expected including at our rally in solidarity in Boston on the afternoon of December 12th but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the post-Occupy encampment era. Some of that will get sorted out in the future as well get a better grip of the important of the labor movement to winning victories in our struggles.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Why You, Your Union , Or Your Community Organization Needs To Join The May Day 2012 General Strike In Boston-Stand Up!-Fight Back!

Wage cuts, long work hours, steep consumer price rises, unemployment, small or no pensions, little or no paid vacation time, plenty of poor and inadequate housing, homelessness, and wide-spread sicknesses as a result of a poor medical system or no health insurance. Sound familiar? Words, perhaps, taken from today’s global headlines? Well, yes. But these were also the similar conditions that faced our forebears in America back in the 1880s when the 1% were called, and rightly so, “the robber barons,” and threatened, as one of their kind stated in a fit of candor, “to hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,” so that they could maintain their luxury in peace. That too has not changed.

What did change then is that our forebears fought back, fought back long and hard, starting with the fight for the eight-hour day symbolized each year by a May Day celebration of working class power. We need to reassert that claim. This May Day let us revive that tradition as we individually act around our separate grievances and strike, strike like the furies, collectively against the 1%.

No question over the past several years (really decades but it is just more public and in our face now) American working people has taken it on the chin, taken it on the chin in every possible way. Starting with massive job losses, heavy job losses in the service and manufacturing sectors (and jobs that are not coming back), paying for the seemingly never-ending bail–out of banks, other financial institutions and corporations “to big to fail,” home foreclosures and those “under water,” effective tax increases (since the rich refuse to pay, we pay), mountains of consumer debt for everything from modern necessities to just daily get-bys, and college student loan debt as a lifetime deadweight around the neck of the kids there is little to glow about in the harsh light of the “American Dream.”

Add to that the double (and triple) troubles facing immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and women and the grievances voiced in the Declaration of Independence seem like just so much whining. In short, it is not secret that working people have faced, are facing and, apparently, will continue to face an erosion of their material well-being for the foreseeable future something not seen by most people since the 1930s Great Depression, the time of our grandparents (or great-grandparents).

That is this condition will continue unless we take some lessons from those same 1930s and struggle, struggle like demons, against the 1% that seem to have all the card decks stacked against us. Struggle like they did in places like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Toledo, Flint, and Detroit. Those labor-centered struggles demonstrated the social power of working people to hit the “economic royalists” (the name coined for the 1% of that day) to shut the bosses down where it hurts- in their pocketbooks and property. The bosses will let us rant all day, will gladly take (and throw away) all our petitions, will let us use their “free-speech” parks (up to a point as we have found out), and curse them to eternity as long as we don’t touch their production, “perks,” and profits. Moreover an inspired fight like the actions proposed for this May Day 2012 can help new generations of working people, organized, unorganized, unemployed, homeless, houseless, and just plain desperate, help themselves to get out from under.

Show Power

We demand:

*Hands Off Our Public Worker Unions! Hands Off All Our Unions!

* Give the unemployed work! Billions for public works projects to fix America’s broken infrastructure (bridges, roads, sewer and water systems, etc.)!

Guest Commentary

From The Transitional Program Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours

Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.

The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.

Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.

Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.

Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.

*End the endless wars!

* Full citizenship rights for all those who made it here no matter how they got here!

* A drastic increase in the minimum wage and big wage increases for all workers!

* A moratorium on home foreclosures! No evictions!

* A moratorium on student loan debt! Free, quality higher education for all! Create 100, 200, many publicly-supported Harvards!

*No increases in public transportation fares! No transportation worker lay-offs! Free public transportation!

To order to flex our collective bottom up power on May 1, 2012 we will be organizing
a wide-ranging series of mass collective participatory actions:

*We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where
there is no union - a one-day general strike.

*We will be organizing where a strike is not possible to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out.”

*We will be organizing students to walk-out of their schools (or not show up in the first place), set up campus picket lines, or to rally at a central location, probably Boston Common.

*We will be calling in our communities for a mass consumer boycott, and with local business support where possible, refuse to make purchases on that day.

Watch this website and other social media sites for further specific details of events and actions.

Guest Commentary from the IWW (Industrial Workers Of The World, Wobblies) website http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml

Preamble to the IWW Constitution (1905)

Posted Sun, 05/01/2005 - 8:34am by IWW.org Editor

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

All out on May Day 2012.

From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 90th Anniversary Of The Fourth Congress (1922)-Theses on Communist Work in the Trade Unions

From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 90th Anniversary Of The Fourth Congress (1922)-Communist Party Activity in the Sphere of Education

From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 90th Anniversary Of The Fourth Congress (1922)- Theses on the Eastern Question

Click on the headline to link to the Communist International Internet Archives.

Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.
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Fourth Congress of the Communist International

Theses on the Eastern Question
5 December 1922

I. The Growth of the Revolutionary Movement in the East
The Second Congress of the Communist International, on the basis of Soviet experience in the East and the growth of national revolutionary movements in the colonies, drew up a general statement of principles on the national and colonial question in the epoch of prolonged struggle between imperialism and proletarian dictatorship.

Since then the post-war political and economic crisis of imperialism has intensified and the struggle against imperialist oppression in the colonial and semi-colonial countries has grown considerably stronger.

Evidence of this can be seen in: i) the collapse of the Sevres treaty on the partition of Turkey and the possibility of the complete restoration of Turkey’s national and political independence; ii) the whirlwind growth of the national revolutionary movement in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Morocco, China and Korea; iii) the hopeless internal crisis of Japanese imperialism, which is giving rise to the present rapid development both of certain elements of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and of independent class struggle on the part of the Japanese proletariat; iv) the awakening of the workers’ movement in all the Eastern countries and the establishment, in most of them, of Communist Parties.

These four facts indicate a change in the social basis of the colonial revolutionary movement; this change tends to intensify the anti-imperialist struggle and at the same time to challenge the exclusive control of this struggle by feudal elements and by the national bourgeoisie, who are prepared to compromise with imperialism.

The imperialist war of 1914-1918 and the subsequent protracted crisis of capitalism, and especially of European capitalism, has weakened the economic hold of the Great Powers over the colonies.

On the other hand, the same factors which have narrowed the economic basis and the political sphere of influence of world capitalism have also aggravated imperialist competition over the colonies and so disturbed the balance of the entire world imperialist system (the struggle for oil, Anglo-French conflict in Asia Minor, Japanese-American rivalry for domination of the Pacific, etc.).

It is precisely this weakening of imperialist influence in the colonies, together with the steadily growing rivalry between different imperialist groups, that has facilitated the growth of indigenous capitalism in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, a growth that is continuing to move beyond the narrow, restricting confines of the imperialist rule of the Great Powers. Up to now Great-Power capital has been trying to isolate the backward countries from world economic trade by insisting on monopoly rights to the super-profits from its commercial, industrial and fiscal exploitation of these countries. The demand for national and economic independence put forward by the nationalist movement in the colonies is in fact a reflection of the needs of bourgeois development in these countries. The progress of indigenous productive forces in the colonies thus comes into sharp contradiction with the interests of world imperialism, since the essence of imperialism is its exploitation of the different levels of development of the productive forces in the different sectors of the world economy in order to extort monopoly super-profits.

II. The Conditions of Struggle
The great diversity of national revolutionary movements against imperialism reflects the backwardness of the colonies and the different stages reached in the transition from feudal and feudal-patriarchal relations to capitalism. This diversity puts a special stamp on the ideology of these movements. Capitalism in the colonial countries usually originates and develops from its feudal base in mixed, incomplete and transitional forms, with commercial capital predominating; this means that the differentiation of bourgeois democracy from feudal-bureaucratic and feudal-agrarian elements frequently proceeds in a lengthy and roundabout manner. This is the main obstacle to a successful mass struggle against imperialist oppression, for in all the backward countries foreign capitalism turns the feudal (and in part also semi-feudal, semi-bourgeois) elites of these societies into agents of its rule (the warlords, the Tushuns, in China, the native aristocracy and the land tax-farmers – zamindars and talukdars – in India, the feudal bureaucracy and aristocracy in Persia, the capitalist plantation owners in Egypt, etc.).

For this reason, the ruling classes of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples become increasingly unable and unwilling to lead the struggle against imperialism as it develops into a revolutionary mass movement. Only among peoples like the nomads and semi-nomads, where the feudal-patriarchal system has not yet disintegrated to the point where the native aristocracy is completely split off from the masses, can representatives of the elite come forward as active leaders in the struggle against imperialist oppression (Mesopotamia, Morocco, Mongolia).

In the Moslem countries, the national movement is guided in its early stages by the religious-political slogans of the pan-Islamic movement, and this gives the Great-Power diplomats and officials the opportunity to exploit the prejudices and ignorance of the broad masses and turn them against the national movement (British imperialism dabbles in pan-Islamism and pan-Arabism and plans to transfer the Caliphate to India; French imperialism pretends to “Moslem sympathies”). However, as the national liberation movements grow and mature, the religious-political slogans of pan-Islamism will be replaced by political demands. This is borne out by the recent struggle in Turkey to remove temporal power from the Caliphate.

The basic aim shared by all the national revolutionary movements is to bring about national unity and achieve state independence. The actual realisation of this aim depends on the extent to which the national movement in any particular country can break all links with reactionary feudal elements, embody in its programme popular social demands and so win the support of the broad working masses.

The Communist International, though well aware that in different historical circumstances fighters for national political independence can be very different kinds of people, gives its support to any national revolutionary movement against imperialism. However, it still remains convinced that the oppressed masses can only be led to victory by a consistent revolutionary line that is designed to draw the broadest masses into active struggle and that constitutes a complete break with all who support conciliation with imperialism in the interests of their own class rule. The bonds that link the indigenous bourgeoisie with the feudal-reactionary elements allow the imperialists to disorganise the mass movement by exploiting to the full feudal anarchy, the rivalry of different leaders, races and tribes, the antagonism between town and country, and the struggle between castes and national-religious sects (China, Persia, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia).

III. The Agrarian Question
In the majority of Eastern countries (India, Persia, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia), the agrarian question is of paramount importance in the struggle for liberation from the bonds of Great-Power despotism. By exploiting and ruining the peasant majority of the backward nations, imperialism deprives them of the basic means of existence, but the resulting surplus rural population cannot migrate and cannot be absorbed by industry, which is poorly developed and exists in only a few centres scattered around the country. The pauperised peasants remaining on the land become serfs.

While in the advanced countries before the war industrial crises acted as the regulator of social production, in the colonies this regulator is famine. As imperialism’s main concern is to obtain maximum profits for minimum capital outlay, it will support to the bitter end the feudal and usurious forms of exploiting labour power in the backward countries. In some countries, such as India, imperialism takes over the existing feudal state’s monopoly right to the land and turns the land tax into tribute to Great-Power capital and its bailiffs, the zamindars and talukdars; in others, it extracts its land-rent by acting through the existing organisation of great landowners, as in Persia, Morocco, Egypt, etc. The struggle to free the land from feudal dues and requisitions thus assumes the character of a national liberation struggle against imperialism and the great feudal landowners (examples are the Moplah rising against the landowners and the British in India in the autumn of 1921 and the Sikh rising in 1922). Only an agrarian revolution committed to the expropriation of the great landowners can arouse the vast peasant masses, who will be a key factor in the struggle against imperialism. The bourgeois nationalists’ fear of agrarian demands and their efforts to water them down in every possible way (as in India, Persia, Egypt) are an indication of the close connection between the native bourgeoisie and the great feudal and feudal-bourgeois landowners, and the former’s intellectual and political dependence on the latter. The revolutionary forces must use these hesitations and uncertainties to make a thoroughgoing criticism and exposure of the compromises made by the bourgeois leaders of the nationalist movements. It is precisely these compromises that hinder the organisation and rallying of the working masses, as is shown by the bankruptcy of the tactic of passive resistance (“non-co-operation” [the tactic pursued by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress]) in India.

The revolutionary movement in the backward countries of the East will not succeed unless it bases itself on the activity of the broad peasant masses. This is why the revolutionary parties in all the Eastern countries must formulate a clear agrarian programme that includes the demand for the complete overthrow of feudalism and its institutions. To draw the peasant masses into an active struggle for national liberation, revolutionaries must advocate a radical change in the basis of land ownership, and as far as possible must force the bourgeois-national parties to adopt this revolutionary agrarian programme.

IV The Workers’ Movement in the East
The new workers’ movement in the East is a product of the recent development of indigenous capitalism. Until now even the hard core of the working class in these countries has been in a state of transition, from the small craft workshop to the large capitalist factory. Where it is the bourgeois-nationalist intelligentsia that involves the revolutionary movement of the working class in the struggle against imperialism, its representatives will initially take the lead in the organisation and activity of the newly-formed trade-union organisations. At first the proletariat does not take its actions beyond the limits of the ‘common national’ interests of bourgeois democracy (the strikes against the imperialist bureaucracy and administration in China and India). Often, as the Second Congress of the Communist International pointed out, the representatives of bourgeois nationalism, exploiting the political and moral authority of Soviet Russia and adapting to the class instinct of the workers give their bourgeois-democratic aspirations a ‘socialist’ or a ‘Communist’ guise, in order – though they may not themselves be aware of it – to divert the first embryonic proletarian groups from the real tasks of a class organisation (the Eshil-Ordu party in Turkey giving a Communist coloration to its pan-Turkism; some representatives of the Kuomintang in China preaching ‘State Socialism’).

Nevertheless, the trade-union and political movement of the working class in the backward countries has made great progress in the last few years. The formation of an independent proletarian class party in almost every Eastern country is a significant step forward, even though the overwhelming majority of these parties have still a great deal of internal work to do in order to rid themselves of dilettantism, sectarianism and many other shortcomings. The fact that from the very beginning the Communist International realised the potential importance of the workers’ movement in the East is of tremendous importance, for it clearly reflects the genuine international unity of proletarians throughout the world under the banner of Communism. The Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals have so far failed to find a single supporter in any one of the backward countries, precisely because they are acting merely as ‘servants’ of European and American imperialism.

V. The General Tasks of Communist Parties in the East
While the bourgeois nationalists look at the workers’ movement from the viewpoint of its importance for their success, the international proletariat considers the new workers’ movement of the East from the viewpoint of its revolutionary future. Under capitalism the backward countries cannot share in the achievements of modern technical knowledge and culture without paying an enormous price in the form of savage exploitation and oppression by Great-Power capital. The workers in the East have to ally with the proletariat of the advanced countries, not only in the interests of their common struggle against imperialism, but because only the victorious proletariat of the advanced countries will give them disinterested aid in the development of their backward productive forces. Alliance with the proletariat in the West will pave the way to an international federation of soviet republics. For backward peoples the soviet system represents the smoothest form of transition from primitive conditions of existence to the higher Communist society which is destined to replace the entire capitalist world economy of production and distribution. This is borne out by the experience of the soviet system in the liberated colonies of the former Russian empire. Only the soviet form of government is able to ensure that the peasant agrarian revolution is consistently carried through. The specific conditions of agriculture in certain parts of the East (artificial irrigation), maintained in the past by a unique system of collective labour organised on a feudal-patriarchal basis but now undermined by capitalist greed, also require the kind of state organisation that can meet social needs in a planned and organised manner. In view of the special climatic and historical conditions, co-operatives of small producers will definitely play an important role in the transitional period throughout the East generally.

The objective tasks of the colonial revolution go beyond the bounds of bourgeois democracy because a decisive victory for this revolution is incompatible with the rule of world imperialism. The colonial revolutionary movement is at first championed by the indigenous bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intelligentsia, but as the proletarian and semi-proletarian peasant masses become more involved and the social interests of the ordinary people come to the fore, the movement starts to break away from the big-bourgeois and bourgeois-landowner elements. A long struggle still lies ahead for the newly-formed proletariat in the colonies, a struggle that will cover an entire historical epoch and will confront both imperialist exploitation and the native ruling classes, who are anxious to monopolize for themselves all the gains of industrial and cultural development and to keep the broad working masses in their former ‘pre-historic’ condition.

The struggle for influence over the peasant masses will prepare the indigenous proletariat for political leadership. Only when the proletariat has done this preliminary work in its own ranks and in those of the social layers closest to it can it challenge bourgeois democracy, which in the conditions of the backward East is even more inadequate than in the West.

The refusal of Communists in the colonies to take part in the fight against imperialist tyranny, on the pretext of their supposed ‘defence’ of independent class interests, is the worst kind of opportunism and can only discredit the proletarian revolution in the East. No less harmful, it must also be recognised, is the attempt to remain aloof from the struggle for the immediate everyday demands of the working class in the interests of ‘national unity’ or ‘civil peace’ with the bourgeois democrats. A dual task faces the Communist and workers’ parties of the colonial and semi-colonial countries: on the one hand, they are fighting for a more radical answer to the demands of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, directed towards the winning of national political independence; on the other hand, they are organising the masses of workers and peasants to fight for their own class interests, making good use of all the contradictions in the nationalist bourgeois-democratic camp. By putting forward social demands, Communists will stimulate and release revolutionary energy which can find no outlet in liberal bourgeois demands. The working class of the colonies and semi-colonies must be firmly convinced that it is only the overall intensification of the struggle against Great-Power imperialist oppression that can promote it to revolutionary leadership. On the other hand, it is only the political and economic organisation and the political education of the working class and the semi-proletarian layers that can increase the revolutionary scope of the anti-imperialist struggle.

The Communist Parties of the colonial and semi-colonial Eastern countries are still in a more or less embryonic stage and must take part in every movement that gives them access to the masses. At the same time they must campaign hard against patriarchal-craft prejudices and bourgeois influence in the workers’ unions in order to safeguard these rudimentary trade unions from reformist tendencies and turn them into militant mass organisations. They must make every effort to organise the numerous agricultural labourers and farm-girls and the craft apprentices of both sexes around the defence of their everyday interests.

VI. The Anti-Imperialist United Front
The workers’ united front is the slogan advanced in the West during the transition period, characterised by the organised gathering of forces. Similarly in the colonial East at the present time the key slogan to advance is the anti-imperialist united front. Its expediency follows from the perspective of a long-drawn-out struggle with world imperialism that will demand the mobilisation of all revolutionary elements. This mobilisation is made all the more necessary by the tendency of the indigenous ruling classes to make compromises with foreign capital directed against the fundamental interests of the mass of the people. Just as in the West the slogan of the workers’ united front has helped and is still helping to expose the social democrats’ sell-out of proletarian interests, so the slogan of an anti-imperialist united front will help to expose the vacillations of the various bourgeois-nationalist groups. This slogan will also help the working masses to develop their revolutionary will and to increase their class consciousness; it will place them in the front ranks of those fighting not only imperialism, but the remnants of feudalism.

The workers’ movement in the colonial and semi-colonial countries must first of all establish itself as an independent revolutionary factor in the common anti-imperialist front. Only when its importance as an independent factor is recognised and its complete political autonomy secured can temporary agreements with bourgeois democracy be considered permissible or necessary. Similarly, the proletariat supports and advances such partial demands as an independent democratic republic, the abolition of all feudal rights and privileges, the introduction of women’s rights, etc., in so far as it cannot, with the relation of forces as it exists at present, make the implementation of its soviet programme the immediate task of the day. At the same time the proletariat seeks to put forward slogans which further political links between the peasant and semi-proletarian masses and the workers’ movement. Explaining to the broad working masses the need for unity with the international proletariat and the Soviet republics is one of the most important functions of the anti-imperialist united front. The colonial revolution can triumph and defend its gains only if accompanied by a proletarian revolution in the advanced countries.

The danger of a deal between bourgeois nationalism and one or more of the rival imperialist powers is much greater in the semi-colonial countries (China, Persia), or in the countries gaining state independence thanks to inter-imperialist competition (Turkey), than it is in the colonies. Every such agreement means a wholly unequal division of power between the indigenous ruling classes and imperialism; though it may be disguised as formal independence, it leaves the country exactly as before – a semi-colonial buffer state, the puppet of world imperialism.

While the working class may and sometimes must make partial and temporary compromises to gain a breathing-space in the revolutionary struggle for liberation from imperialism, it must be absolutely opposed to any attempt by the indigenous ruling classes to maintain their class privileges by agreeing to open or tacit power-sharing with imperialism. The demand for a close alliance with the proletarian Soviet republic is the key-note of the anti-imperialist united front. This slogan must be accompanied by a determined struggle for maximum democratisation of the political system, which will deprive the most politically and socially reactionary elements of their popular support and will give the workers’ organisations the freedom to fight for their class interests (the demands for a democratic republic, agrarian reform, a reform of the tax system, the organisation of the administrative apparatus on the basis of popular self-government, labour legislation, the restriction of child labour, maternal and child welfare, etc.). Even in independent Turkey the working class does not enjoy freedom of association, which is a good indication of the bourgeois nationalists’ attitude to the proletariat.

VII. The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Pacific
The continuous, steady growth of imperialist rivalry is another pressing reason for organising an anti-imperialist front. This rivalry has now become so intense that a new world war, this time in the Pacific, is inevitable unless international revolution forestalls it.

The Washington conference was an attempt to avert this threat, but in fact it only deepened and sharpened the contradictions of imperialism. The recent struggle between Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tso-lin in China was a direct result of the failure of the attempt by Japanese and Anglo-American capitalism to reconcile their interests at Washington. The new war threatening the world will involve not only Japan, America and Britain, but also the other capitalist powers (France, Holland, etc.), and threatens to be even more destructive than the 1914-1918 war.

The task facing the Communist Parties of the colonial and semicolonial countries bordering on the Pacific is to organise an intense propaganda campaign that will make the approaching danger clear to the masses, will call them to an active struggle for national liberation and will insist on an orientation to Soviet Russia as the bastion of all the oppressed and exploited masses.

In view of the coming danger, the Communist Parties of the imperialist countries – America, Japan, Britain, Australia and Canada – must not merely issue propaganda against the war, but must do everything possible to eliminate the factors that disorganise the workers’ movement in their countries and make it easier for the capitalists to exploit national and racial antagonisms.

These factors are the immigration question and the question of cheap coloured labour.

Most of the coloured workers brought from China and India to work on the sugar plantations in the southern part of the Pacific are still recruited under the system of indentured labour. This fact has led to workers in the imperialist countries demanding the introduction of laws against immigration and coloured labour, both in America and Australia. These restrictive laws deepen the antagonism between coloured and white workers, which divides and weakens the unity of the workers’ movement.

The Communist Parties of America, Canada and Australia must conduct a vigorous campaign against restrictive immigration laws and must explain to the proletarian masses in these countries that such laws, by inflaming racial hatred, will rebound on them in the long run.

The capitalists are against restrictive laws in the interests of the free importation of cheap coloured labour and with it the lowering of the wages of white workers. The capitalists’ intention to take the offensive can be properly dealt with in only one way – the immigrant workers must join the ranks of the existing trade unions of white workers. Simultaneously, the demand must be raised that the coloured workers’ pay should be brought up to the same level as the white workers’ pay. Such a move on the part of the Communist Parties will expose the intentions of the capitalists and at the same time graphically demonstrate to the coloured workers that the international proletariat has no racial prejudice.

To put this into practice, representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of the Pacific countries must meet together at a Pacific conference in order to work out the correct tactics and the best organisational methods for securing the real unification of the proletariat of all races in the Pacific.

VIII. The Tasks of the Metropolitan Parties Regarding The Colonies
The immense importance of the colonial revolutionary movement for the cause of international proletarian revolution means that work in the colonies, especially by the Communist Parties of the imperialist powers, must be stepped up.

French imperialism bases all its calculations on the suppression of proletarian revolutionary struggle in France and Europe by using its colonial workers as a reserve army of counter-revolution.

British and American imperialism still continue to divide the workers’ movement by winning the labour aristocracy over to their side with the promise of a certain share in the super-profits drawn from colonial exploitation.

Every Communist Party in a country that possesses colonies must undertake to organise a campaign for ideological and financial solidarity with the proletarian and revolutionary movement in the colonies. The pseudo-socialist colonialist tendencies of some categories of well-paid European workers in the colonies must be firmly and stubbornly opposed. European worker-Communists in the colonies must strive to organise the indigenous proletariat and to win its confidence by raising concrete economic demands (raising the level of native workers’ pay to that of the European workers, labour protection, social insurance, etc.). The formation of separate Communist organisations of Europeans in some colonies (Egypt, Algeria) is a hidden form of colonialism and furthers imperialist interests. Any attempt to build Communist organisations on ethnic lines contradicts the principle of proletarian internationalism. All the parties of the Communist International must continue to explain to the broad working masses the vital importance of the struggle against imperialist domination in the backward countries. The Communist Parties working in the Great-Power countries must set up permanent colonial commissions, consisting of Central Committee members, to work on these lines. The Communist International must assist the Communist Parties of the East, starting with help in setting up a press and bringing out periodicals and papers in the local languages. Special attention must be given to work among the European workers’ organisations and among the occupying troops in the colonies. The Communist Parties in the Great-Power countries must not miss a single opportunity to expose the predatory nature of the colonial policies adopted by their respective governments and by the opportunist bourgeois parties.

5 December 1922
I. The Growth of the Revolutionary Movement in the East
The Second Congress of the Communist International, on the basis of Soviet experience in the East and the growth of national revolutionary movements in the colonies, drew up a general statement of principles on the national and colonial question in the epoch of prolonged struggle between imperialism and proletarian dictatorship.

Since then the post-war political and economic crisis of imperialism has intensified and the struggle against imperialist oppression in the colonial and semi-colonial countries has grown considerably stronger.

Evidence of this can be seen in: i) the collapse of the Sevres treaty on the partition of Turkey and the possibility of the complete restoration of Turkey’s national and political independence; ii) the whirlwind growth of the national revolutionary movement in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Morocco, China and Korea; iii) the hopeless internal crisis of Japanese imperialism, which is giving rise to the present rapid development both of certain elements of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and of independent class struggle on the part of the Japanese proletariat; iv) the awakening of the workers’ movement in all the Eastern countries and the establishment, in most of them, of Communist Parties.

These four facts indicate a change in the social basis of the colonial revolutionary movement; this change tends to intensify the anti-imperialist struggle and at the same time to challenge the exclusive control of this struggle by feudal elements and by the national bourgeoisie, who are prepared to compromise with imperialism.

The imperialist war of 1914-1918 and the subsequent protracted crisis of capitalism, and especially of European capitalism, has weakened the economic hold of the Great Powers over the colonies.

On the other hand, the same factors which have narrowed the economic basis and the political sphere of influence of world capitalism have also aggravated imperialist competition over the colonies and so disturbed the balance of the entire world imperialist system (the struggle for oil, Anglo-French conflict in Asia Minor, Japanese-American rivalry for domination of the Pacific, etc.).

It is precisely this weakening of imperialist influence in the colonies, together with the steadily growing rivalry between different imperialist groups, that has facilitated the growth of indigenous capitalism in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, a growth that is continuing to move beyond the narrow, restricting confines of the imperialist rule of the Great Powers. Up to now Great-Power capital has been trying to isolate the backward countries from world economic trade by insisting on monopoly rights to the super-profits from its commercial, industrial and fiscal exploitation of these countries. The demand for national and economic independence put forward by the nationalist movement in the colonies is in fact a reflection of the needs of bourgeois development in these countries. The progress of indigenous productive forces in the colonies thus comes into sharp contradiction with the interests of world imperialism, since the essence of imperialism is its exploitation of the different levels of development of the productive forces in the different sectors of the world economy in order to extort monopoly super-profits.

II. The Conditions of Struggle
The great diversity of national revolutionary movements against imperialism reflects the backwardness of the colonies and the different stages reached in the transition from feudal and feudal-patriarchal relations to capitalism. This diversity puts a special stamp on the ideology of these movements. Capitalism in the colonial countries usually originates and develops from its feudal base in mixed, incomplete and transitional forms, with commercial capital predominating; this means that the differentiation of bourgeois democracy from feudal-bureaucratic and feudal-agrarian elements frequently proceeds in a lengthy and roundabout manner. This is the main obstacle to a successful mass struggle against imperialist oppression, for in all the backward countries foreign capitalism turns the feudal (and in part also semi-feudal, semi-bourgeois) elites of these societies into agents of its rule (the warlords, the Tushuns, in China, the native aristocracy and the land tax-farmers – zamindars and talukdars – in India, the feudal bureaucracy and aristocracy in Persia, the capitalist plantation owners in Egypt, etc.).

For this reason, the ruling classes of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples become increasingly unable and unwilling to lead the struggle against imperialism as it develops into a revolutionary mass movement. Only among peoples like the nomads and semi-nomads, where the feudal-patriarchal system has not yet disintegrated to the point where the native aristocracy is completely split off from the masses, can representatives of the elite come forward as active leaders in the struggle against imperialist oppression (Mesopotamia, Morocco, Mongolia).

In the Moslem countries, the national movement is guided in its early stages by the religious-political slogans of the pan-Islamic movement, and this gives the Great-Power diplomats and officials the opportunity to exploit the prejudices and ignorance of the broad masses and turn them against the national movement (British imperialism dabbles in pan-Islamism and pan-Arabism and plans to transfer the Caliphate to India; French imperialism pretends to “Moslem sympathies”). However, as the national liberation movements grow and mature, the religious-political slogans of pan-Islamism will be replaced by political demands. This is borne out by the recent struggle in Turkey to remove temporal power from the Caliphate.

The basic aim shared by all the national revolutionary movements is to bring about national unity and achieve state independence. The actual realisation of this aim depends on the extent to which the national movement in any particular country can break all links with reactionary feudal elements, embody in its programme popular social demands and so win the support of the broad working masses.

The Communist International, though well aware that in different historical circumstances fighters for national political independence can be very different kinds of people, gives its support to any national revolutionary movement against imperialism. However, it still remains convinced that the oppressed masses can only be led to victory by a consistent revolutionary line that is designed to draw the broadest masses into active struggle and that constitutes a complete break with all who support conciliation with imperialism in the interests of their own class rule. The bonds that link the indigenous bourgeoisie with the feudal-reactionary elements allow the imperialists to disorganise the mass movement by exploiting to the full feudal anarchy, the rivalry of different leaders, races and tribes, the antagonism between town and country, and the struggle between castes and national-religious sects (China, Persia, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia).

III. The Agrarian Question
In the majority of Eastern countries (India, Persia, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia), the agrarian question is of paramount importance in the struggle for liberation from the bonds of Great-Power despotism. By exploiting and ruining the peasant majority of the backward nations, imperialism deprives them of the basic means of existence, but the resulting surplus rural population cannot migrate and cannot be absorbed by industry, which is poorly developed and exists in only a few centres scattered around the country. The pauperised peasants remaining on the land become serfs.

While in the advanced countries before the war industrial crises acted as the regulator of social production, in the colonies this regulator is famine. As imperialism’s main concern is to obtain maximum profits for minimum capital outlay, it will support to the bitter end the feudal and usurious forms of exploiting labour power in the backward countries. In some countries, such as India, imperialism takes over the existing feudal state’s monopoly right to the land and turns the land tax into tribute to Great-Power capital and its bailiffs, the zamindars and talukdars; in others, it extracts its land-rent by acting through the existing organisation of great landowners, as in Persia, Morocco, Egypt, etc. The struggle to free the land from feudal dues and requisitions thus assumes the character of a national liberation struggle against imperialism and the great feudal landowners (examples are the Moplah rising against the landowners and the British in India in the autumn of 1921 and the Sikh rising in 1922). Only an agrarian revolution committed to the expropriation of the great landowners can arouse the vast peasant masses, who will be a key factor in the struggle against imperialism. The bourgeois nationalists’ fear of agrarian demands and their efforts to water them down in every possible way (as in India, Persia, Egypt) are an indication of the close connection between the native bourgeoisie and the great feudal and feudal-bourgeois landowners, and the former’s intellectual and political dependence on the latter. The revolutionary forces must use these hesitations and uncertainties to make a thoroughgoing criticism and exposure of the compromises made by the bourgeois leaders of the nationalist movements. It is precisely these compromises that hinder the organisation and rallying of the working masses, as is shown by the bankruptcy of the tactic of passive resistance (“non-co-operation” [the tactic pursued by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress]) in India.

The revolutionary movement in the backward countries of the East will not succeed unless it bases itself on the activity of the broad peasant masses. This is why the revolutionary parties in all the Eastern countries must formulate a clear agrarian programme that includes the demand for the complete overthrow of feudalism and its institutions. To draw the peasant masses into an active struggle for national liberation, revolutionaries must advocate a radical change in the basis of land ownership, and as far as possible must force the bourgeois-national parties to adopt this revolutionary agrarian programme.

IV The Workers’ Movement in the East
The new workers’ movement in the East is a product of the recent development of indigenous capitalism. Until now even the hard core of the working class in these countries has been in a state of transition, from the small craft workshop to the large capitalist factory. Where it is the bourgeois-nationalist intelligentsia that involves the revolutionary movement of the working class in the struggle against imperialism, its representatives will initially take the lead in the organisation and activity of the newly-formed trade-union organisations. At first the proletariat does not take its actions beyond the limits of the ‘common national’ interests of bourgeois democracy (the strikes against the imperialist bureaucracy and administration in China and India). Often, as the Second Congress of the Communist International pointed out, the representatives of bourgeois nationalism, exploiting the political and moral authority of Soviet Russia and adapting to the class instinct of the workers give their bourgeois-democratic aspirations a ‘socialist’ or a ‘Communist’ guise, in order – though they may not themselves be aware of it – to divert the first embryonic proletarian groups from the real tasks of a class organisation (the Eshil-Ordu party in Turkey giving a Communist coloration to its pan-Turkism; some representatives of the Kuomintang in China preaching ‘State Socialism’).

Nevertheless, the trade-union and political movement of the working class in the backward countries has made great progress in the last few years. The formation of an independent proletarian class party in almost every Eastern country is a significant step forward, even though the overwhelming majority of these parties have still a great deal of internal work to do in order to rid themselves of dilettantism, sectarianism and many other shortcomings. The fact that from the very beginning the Communist International realised the potential importance of the workers’ movement in the East is of tremendous importance, for it clearly reflects the genuine international unity of proletarians throughout the world under the banner of Communism. The Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals have so far failed to find a single supporter in any one of the backward countries, precisely because they are acting merely as ‘servants’ of European and American imperialism.

V. The General Tasks of Communist Parties in the East
While the bourgeois nationalists look at the workers’ movement from the viewpoint of its importance for their success, the international proletariat considers the new workers’ movement of the East from the viewpoint of its revolutionary future. Under capitalism the backward countries cannot share in the achievements of modern technical knowledge and culture without paying an enormous price in the form of savage exploitation and oppression by Great-Power capital. The workers in the East have to ally with the proletariat of the advanced countries, not only in the interests of their common struggle against imperialism, but because only the victorious proletariat of the advanced countries will give them disinterested aid in the development of their backward productive forces. Alliance with the proletariat in the West will pave the way to an international federation of soviet republics. For backward peoples the soviet system represents the smoothest form of transition from primitive conditions of existence to the higher Communist society which is destined to replace the entire capitalist world economy of production and distribution. This is borne out by the experience of the soviet system in the liberated colonies of the former Russian empire. Only the soviet form of government is able to ensure that the peasant agrarian revolution is consistently carried through. The specific conditions of agriculture in certain parts of the East (artificial irrigation), maintained in the past by a unique system of collective labour organised on a feudal-patriarchal basis but now undermined by capitalist greed, also require the kind of state organisation that can meet social needs in a planned and organised manner. In view of the special climatic and historical conditions, co-operatives of small producers will definitely play an important role in the transitional period throughout the East generally.

The objective tasks of the colonial revolution go beyond the bounds of bourgeois democracy because a decisive victory for this revolution is incompatible with the rule of world imperialism. The colonial revolutionary movement is at first championed by the indigenous bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intelligentsia, but as the proletarian and semi-proletarian peasant masses become more involved and the social interests of the ordinary people come to the fore, the movement starts to break away from the big-bourgeois and bourgeois-landowner elements. A long struggle still lies ahead for the newly-formed proletariat in the colonies, a struggle that will cover an entire historical epoch and will confront both imperialist exploitation and the native ruling classes, who are anxious to monopolize for themselves all the gains of industrial and cultural development and to keep the broad working masses in their former ‘pre-historic’ condition.

The struggle for influence over the peasant masses will prepare the indigenous proletariat for political leadership. Only when the proletariat has done this preliminary work in its own ranks and in those of the social layers closest to it can it challenge bourgeois democracy, which in the conditions of the backward East is even more inadequate than in the West.

The refusal of Communists in the colonies to take part in the fight against imperialist tyranny, on the pretext of their supposed ‘defence’ of independent class interests, is the worst kind of opportunism and can only discredit the proletarian revolution in the East. No less harmful, it must also be recognised, is the attempt to remain aloof from the struggle for the immediate everyday demands of the working class in the interests of ‘national unity’ or ‘civil peace’ with the bourgeois democrats. A dual task faces the Communist and workers’ parties of the colonial and semi-colonial countries: on the one hand, they are fighting for a more radical answer to the demands of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, directed towards the winning of national political independence; on the other hand, they are organising the masses of workers and peasants to fight for their own class interests, making good use of all the contradictions in the nationalist bourgeois-democratic camp. By putting forward social demands, Communists will stimulate and release revolutionary energy which can find no outlet in liberal bourgeois demands. The working class of the colonies and semi-colonies must be firmly convinced that it is only the overall intensification of the struggle against Great-Power imperialist oppression that can promote it to revolutionary leadership. On the other hand, it is only the political and economic organisation and the political education of the working class and the semi-proletarian layers that can increase the revolutionary scope of the anti-imperialist struggle.

The Communist Parties of the colonial and semi-colonial Eastern countries are still in a more or less embryonic stage and must take part in every movement that gives them access to the masses. At the same time they must campaign hard against patriarchal-craft prejudices and bourgeois influence in the workers’ unions in order to safeguard these rudimentary trade unions from reformist tendencies and turn them into militant mass organisations. They must make every effort to organise the numerous agricultural labourers and farm-girls and the craft apprentices of both sexes around the defence of their everyday interests.

VI. The Anti-Imperialist United Front
The workers’ united front is the slogan advanced in the West during the transition period, characterised by the organised gathering of forces. Similarly in the colonial East at the present time the key slogan to advance is the anti-imperialist united front. Its expediency follows from the perspective of a long-drawn-out struggle with world imperialism that will demand the mobilisation of all revolutionary elements. This mobilisation is made all the more necessary by the tendency of the indigenous ruling classes to make compromises with foreign capital directed against the fundamental interests of the mass of the people. Just as in the West the slogan of the workers’ united front has helped and is still helping to expose the social democrats’ sell-out of proletarian interests, so the slogan of an anti-imperialist united front will help to expose the vacillations of the various bourgeois-nationalist groups. This slogan will also help the working masses to develop their revolutionary will and to increase their class consciousness; it will place them in the front ranks of those fighting not only imperialism, but the remnants of feudalism.

The workers’ movement in the colonial and semi-colonial countries must first of all establish itself as an independent revolutionary factor in the common anti-imperialist front. Only when its importance as an independent factor is recognised and its complete political autonomy secured can temporary agreements with bourgeois democracy be considered permissible or necessary. Similarly, the proletariat supports and advances such partial demands as an independent democratic republic, the abolition of all feudal rights and privileges, the introduction of women’s rights, etc., in so far as it cannot, with the relation of forces as it exists at present, make the implementation of its soviet programme the immediate task of the day. At the same time the proletariat seeks to put forward slogans which further political links between the peasant and semi-proletarian masses and the workers’ movement. Explaining to the broad working masses the need for unity with the international proletariat and the Soviet republics is one of the most important functions of the anti-imperialist united front. The colonial revolution can triumph and defend its gains only if accompanied by a proletarian revolution in the advanced countries.

The danger of a deal between bourgeois nationalism and one or more of the rival imperialist powers is much greater in the semi-colonial countries (China, Persia), or in the countries gaining state independence thanks to inter-imperialist competition (Turkey), than it is in the colonies. Every such agreement means a wholly unequal division of power between the indigenous ruling classes and imperialism; though it may be disguised as formal independence, it leaves the country exactly as before – a semi-colonial buffer state, the puppet of world imperialism.

While the working class may and sometimes must make partial and temporary compromises to gain a breathing-space in the revolutionary struggle for liberation from imperialism, it must be absolutely opposed to any attempt by the indigenous ruling classes to maintain their class privileges by agreeing to open or tacit power-sharing with imperialism. The demand for a close alliance with the proletarian Soviet republic is the key-note of the anti-imperialist united front. This slogan must be accompanied by a determined struggle for maximum democratisation of the political system, which will deprive the most politically and socially reactionary elements of their popular support and will give the workers’ organisations the freedom to fight for their class interests (the demands for a democratic republic, agrarian reform, a reform of the tax system, the organisation of the administrative apparatus on the basis of popular self-government, labour legislation, the restriction of child labour, maternal and child welfare, etc.). Even in independent Turkey the working class does not enjoy freedom of association, which is a good indication of the bourgeois nationalists’ attitude to the proletariat.

VII. The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Pacific
The continuous, steady growth of imperialist rivalry is another pressing reason for organising an anti-imperialist front. This rivalry has now become so intense that a new world war, this time in the Pacific, is inevitable unless international revolution forestalls it.

The Washington conference was an attempt to avert this threat, but in fact it only deepened and sharpened the contradictions of imperialism. The recent struggle between Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tso-lin in China was a direct result of the failure of the attempt by Japanese and Anglo-American capitalism to reconcile their interests at Washington. The new war threatening the world will involve not only Japan, America and Britain, but also the other capitalist powers (France, Holland, etc.), and threatens to be even more destructive than the 1914-1918 war.

The task facing the Communist Parties of the colonial and semicolonial countries bordering on the Pacific is to organise an intense propaganda campaign that will make the approaching danger clear to the masses, will call them to an active struggle for national liberation and will insist on an orientation to Soviet Russia as the bastion of all the oppressed and exploited masses.

In view of the coming danger, the Communist Parties of the imperialist countries – America, Japan, Britain, Australia and Canada – must not merely issue propaganda against the war, but must do everything possible to eliminate the factors that disorganise the workers’ movement in their countries and make it easier for the capitalists to exploit national and racial antagonisms.

These factors are the immigration question and the question of cheap coloured labour.

Most of the coloured workers brought from China and India to work on the sugar plantations in the southern part of the Pacific are still recruited under the system of indentured labour. This fact has led to workers in the imperialist countries demanding the introduction of laws against immigration and coloured labour, both in America and Australia. These restrictive laws deepen the antagonism between coloured and white workers, which divides and weakens the unity of the workers’ movement.

The Communist Parties of America, Canada and Australia must conduct a vigorous campaign against restrictive immigration laws and must explain to the proletarian masses in these countries that such laws, by inflaming racial hatred, will rebound on them in the long run.

The capitalists are against restrictive laws in the interests of the free importation of cheap coloured labour and with it the lowering of the wages of white workers. The capitalists’ intention to take the offensive can be properly dealt with in only one way – the immigrant workers must join the ranks of the existing trade unions of white workers. Simultaneously, the demand must be raised that the coloured workers’ pay should be brought up to the same level as the white workers’ pay. Such a move on the part of the Communist Parties will expose the intentions of the capitalists and at the same time graphically demonstrate to the coloured workers that the international proletariat has no racial prejudice.

To put this into practice, representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of the Pacific countries must meet together at a Pacific conference in order to work out the correct tactics and the best organisational methods for securing the real unification of the proletariat of all races in the Pacific.

VIII. The Tasks of the Metropolitan Parties Regarding The Colonies
The immense importance of the colonial revolutionary movement for the cause of international proletarian revolution means that work in the colonies, especially by the Communist Parties of the imperialist powers, must be stepped up.

French imperialism bases all its calculations on the suppression of proletarian revolutionary struggle in France and Europe by using its colonial workers as a reserve army of counter-revolution.

British and American imperialism still continue to divide the workers’ movement by winning the labour aristocracy over to their side with the promise of a certain share in the super-profits drawn from colonial exploitation.

Every Communist Party in a country that possesses colonies must undertake to organise a campaign for ideological and financial solidarity with the proletarian and revolutionary movement in the colonies. The pseudo-socialist colonialist tendencies of some categories of well-paid European workers in the colonies must be firmly and stubbornly opposed. European worker-Communists in the colonies must strive to organise the indigenous proletariat and to win its confidence by raising concrete economic demands (raising the level of native workers’ pay to that of the European workers, labour protection, social insurance, etc.). The formation of separate Communist organisations of Europeans in some colonies (Egypt, Algeria) is a hidden form of colonialism and furthers imperialist interests. Any attempt to build Communist organisations on ethnic lines contradicts the principle of proletarian internationalism. All the parties of the Communist International must continue to explain to the broad working masses the vital importance of the struggle against imperialist domination in the backward countries. The Communist Parties working in the Great-Power countries must set up permanent colonial commissions, consisting of Central Committee members, to work on these lines. The Communist International must assist the Communist Parties of the East, starting with help in setting up a press and bringing out periodicals and papers in the local languages. Special attention must be given to work among the European workers’ organisations and among the occupying troops in the colonies. The Communist Parties in the Great-Power countries must not miss a single opportunity to expose the predatory nature of the colonial policies adopted by their respective governments and by the opportunist bourgeois parties.