Honor The 91st Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The 90th 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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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International: Theses
Theses on the Conditions under which Workers' Soviets may be Formed
1. The Soviets of Workers’ Deputies appeared for the first time in Russia in 1905, at a time when the revolutionary movement of Russian workers was at its height. Already in 1905, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ Deputies was taking the first instinctive steps towards the seizure of power. And at that time the Petrograd Soviet was strong only in so far as it had a chance of acquiring political power. As soon as the imperial counter-revolution rallied its forces and the labour movement slackened, the Soviet, after a short period of stagnation, ceased to exist.
2. When in 1,916, at the beginning of a new strong revolutionary wave, the idea began to awaken in Russia of the immediate organisation of Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, the Bolshevik Party warned the workers against the immediate formation of Soviets, and pointed out that such a formation would be well-timed only at the moment when the revolution was already beginning, and when the time had come for a direct struggle for power.
3 At the beginning of the February revolution of 1917, when the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies were transformed into Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, they drew into the sphere of their influence the widest circles of the masses, and at once acquired a tremendous authority, because the real force was on their side, in their hands. But when the liberal bourgeoisie recovered from the suddenness of the first revolutionary blows, and when the social traitors, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, helped the Russian bourgeoisie to take the power into its hands, the importance of the Soviets began to dwindle. Only after the July days and after the failure of Kornilov’s counter-revolutionary campaign, when the masses began to move, and when the collapse of the counter-revolutionary bourgeois coalition government became acute, did the Soviets begin to flourish again, and soon acquired a decisive importance in the country.
4. The history of the German and the Austrian revolutions shows the same. When the popular masses revolted, when the revolutionary wave rose so high that it washed away the strongholds of the monarchies of the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, in Germany and in Austria the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies were formed with all the power of a force of nature. At first the real force was on their side, and the Soviets were well on the way to become the de facto power. But as soon as, owing to a whole series of historical conditions, the power began to pass to the bourgeoisie and the counter-revolutionary Social-Democrats, the Soviets began to decline and dwindled away to nothing. During the days of the unsuccessful counter-revolutionary revolt of Kapp-Luttwitz in Germany, the Soviets again resumed their activity, but when the struggle ended in the victory of the bourgeoisie and the social-traitors, the Soviets, which had just begun to revive, once more died away.
5. The above facts prove that for the formation of Soviets certain definite premises are required. To organise Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, and transform them into Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the following conditions are necessary.
(a) A great revolutionary impulse among the widest circles of workmen and workwomen, the soldiers and workers in general;
(b) An acute political and economic crisis, attaining such a degree that the power begins to slip out of the hands of the government;
(c) When, in the ranks of considerable masses of workers, and first of all in the ranks of the Communist Party, a serious decision to begin a systematic and regular struggle for the power has become ripe.
6. In the absence of these conditions, the Communists may and should systematically and insistently propagate the idea of Soviets, popularise it among the masses, demonstrate to the widest circles of the population that the Soviets are the only efficient form of Government during the transition to complete Communism. But to proceed to the direct organisation of Soviets in the absence of the above three conditions is impossible.
7. The attempt of the social traitors in Germany to introduce the Soviets into the general bourgeois-democratic constitutional system, is treason to the workers’ cause and deception of the workers. Real Soviets are possible only as a form of state organisation, replacing bourgeois democracy, breaking it up and replacing it by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
8. The propaganda of the Right leaders of the Independents (Hilferding, Kautsky and others), intended to prove the compatibility of the ‘Soviet system’ with the bourgeois Constituent Assembly, is either a complete misunderstanding of the laws of development of a proletarian revolution, or a conscious deception of the working class. The Soviets are the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Constituent Assembly is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. To unite and reconcile the dictatorship of the working class with that of the bourgeoisie is impossible.
9. The propaganda of some representatives of the Left Independents in Germany presenting the workers with a ready-made formal plan of a ‘Soviet system’, having no relation whatever to the concrete process of civil war. is a doctrinaire pastime which diverts the workers from their essential tasks in the real struggle for power.
10. The attempts of separate Communist groups in France, Italy, America and England to form Soviets not embracing the larger working masses, and unable, therefore, to enter into a direct struggle for power, are only prejudicial to the actual preparation of a Soviet revolution. Such artificial hot-house ‘Soviets’ soon become transformed, at best, into small associations for propaganda of the Soviet idea, and in the worst case such miserable ‘Soviets’ are capable only of compromising the Soviet idea in the eyes of the popular masses.
11. At the present time there exists a special situation in Austria, where the working class has succeeded in preserving its Soviets, which unite large masses of workers. Here the situation resembles the period between February and October, 1917, in Russia. The Soviets in Austria represent a considerable political force, and appear to be the embryo of a new power.
It must be understood that in such a situation the Communists ought to participate in these Soviets, help them penetrate into all phases of the social, economic and political life of the country; they should create Communist factions within these Soviets, and by all means aid their development.
12. Soviets without a revolution are impossible. Soviets without a proletarian revolution inevitably become a parody of Soviets. The authentic Soviets of the masses are the historically-elaborated forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat. All sincere and serious partisans of Soviet power should deal cautiously with the idea of Soviets, and while indefatigably propagating it among the masses, should proceed to the direct realisation of such Soviets only under the conditions mentioned above.
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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International: Theses
Theses on the Trade Union Movement, Factory Committees and the Third International
1. The trades unions, created by the working class during the period of the peaceful development of capitalism, were organisations of the workers to increase the price of labour in the labour market, and for the improvement of labour conditions. The revolutionary Marxists endeavoured by their influence to unite them with the political party of the proletariat, the – Social Democracy, for a joint struggle for socialism. For the same reasons that international Social Democracy, with a few exceptions, proved to be not an instrument of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat for the overthrow of capitalism, but an organisation which held back the proletariat from revolution, in the interests of the bourgeoisie, the trades unions proved to be in most cases, during the war, a part of the military apparatus of the bourgeoisie, helping the latter to exploit the working class as much as possible in a more energetic struggle for profits. Containing chiefly the skilled workmen, better paid, limited by their craft narrowmindedness, fettered by a bureaucratic apparatus disconnected from the masses, demoralised by their opportunist leaders, the unions betrayed not only the cause of the social revolution, but even also the struggle for the improvement of the conditions of life of the workmen organised by them. They started from the point of view of the trade union struggle against the employers, and replaced it by the programme of an amicable arrangement with the capitalists at any cost. This policy was carried on not only by the Liberal unions of England and America, not only by the would-be ‘socialist’ trades unions in Germany and Austria, but by the syndicalist unions in France as well.
2. The economic consequences of the war, the complete disorganisation of world economy, the insane prices, the unlimited use of the labour of women and children, the worsening of the housing conditions, all these are forcing the large masses of the proletariat into the struggle against capitalism. This struggle is revolutionary warfare, by its proportions and the character that it is assuming more and more every day; a warfare destroying in fact the bases of the capitalist order. The increase of wages, obtained one day by the economic struggle of one or another category of workers, is the next day nullified by the high prices. The prices must continue to rise, because the capitalist class of the victorious countries, ruining Central and Eastern Europe by its policy of exploitation, is not only not in a position to organise the world economy, but is incessantly disorganising it. For the success of their economic struggle, the wider masses of workers, who until now have stood apart from the labour unions, are now flowing into their ranks in a powerful stream. In all capitalist countries a tremendous increase of the trades unions is to be noticed, which now become organisations of the chief masses of the proletariat, not only of its advanced elements. Flowing into the unions, these masses strive to make them their weapons of battle. The sharpening of class antagonism compels the trades unions to lead strikes, which flow in a broad wave over the entire capitalist world, constantly interrupting the process of capitalist production and exchange. Increasing their demands in proportion to the rising prices and their own exhaustion, the working classes undermine the bases of all capitalist calculations and the elementary premise of every well-organised economic management. The unions, which during the war had been organs of compulsion over the working masses, become in this way organs for the annihilation of capitalism.
3. The old trade union bureaucracy and the old forms of organisation of the trades unions are in every way opposing such a change in the nature of the trades unions. The old trade union bureaucracy is endeavouring in many places to maintain the trades unions as organisations of the workers’ aristocracy; it preserves the rules which make it impossible for the badly paid working classes to enter into the trade union organisations. The old trade union aristocracy is even now intensifying its efforts to replace the strike methods, which are ever more and more acquiring the character of revolutionary warfare between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, by the policy of arrangements with the capitalists, the policy of long term contracts, which have lost all sense simply in view of the constant insane rise in prices. It tries to force upon the workers the policy of ‘Joint Industrial Councils’, and to impede by law the leading of strikes, with the assistance of the capitalist state. At the most tense moments of the struggle this bureaucracy sows trouble and confusion among the struggling masses of the workers, impeding the fusion of the struggle of various categories of workmen into one general class struggle. In these attempts it is helped by the old organisations of the trades unions according to crafts, which breaks up the workmen of one branch of production into separate professional groups, notwithstanding their being bound together by the process of capitalist exploitation. It rests on the force of the tradition of the old labour aristocracy, which is now constantly being weakened by the process of suppression of the privilege of separate groups of the proletariat through the general decay of capitalism, the equalisation of the level of the working class and the growth of the poverty and precariousness of its livelihood. In this way the trade union bureaucracy breaks up the powerful stream of the labour movement into weak streamlets, substitutes partial reformist demands for the general revolutionary aims of the movement, and on the whole retards the transformation of the struggle of the proletariat into a revolutionary struggle for the annihilation of capitalism.
4. Bearing in mind the rush of the enormous working masses into the trades unions, and also the objective revolutionary character of the economic struggle which those masses are carrying on in spite of the trade union bureaucracy, the Communists must join such unions in all countries, in order to make of them efficient organs of the struggle for the suppression of capitalism and for Communism. They must initiate the forming of trades unions where these do not exist. All voluntary withdrawals from the industrial movement, every artificial attempt to organise special unions, without being compelled thereto by exceptional acts of violence on the part of the trade union bureaucracy such as the expulsion of separate revolutionary local branches of the unions by the opportunist officials, or by their narrow-minded aristocratic policy, which prohibits the unskilled workers from entering into the organisation – represents a great danger to the Communist movement. It threatens to hand over the most advanced, the most conscious workers to the opportunist leaders, playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. The luke-warmness of the working masses, their theoretical indecision, their tendency to yield to the arguments of opportunist leaders, can be overcome only during the process of the ever-growing struggle, by degrees, as the wider masses of the proletariat learn to understand, by experience, by their victories and defeats, that in fact it is already impossible to obtain human conditions of life on the basis of capitalist methods of management; and by degrees as the advanced Communist workmen learn through their economic struggle to be not only preachers of the ideas of communism, but also the most determined leaders of the economic struggle of the labour unions. Only in this way will it be possible to remove from the unions their opportunist leaders, only in this way will the communists be able to take the lead in the trade union movement and make of it an organ of the revolutionary struggle for communism. Only in this way can they prevent the break-up of the trades unions, and replace them by industrial unions – remove the old bureaucracy separated from the masses and replace it by the apparatus of factory-representatives, leaving only the most necessary functions to the centre.
5. Placing the object and the essence of labour organisations before them, the Communists ought not to hesitate before a split in such organisations, if a refusal to split would mean abandoning revolutionary work in the trades unions, and giving up the attempt to make of them an instrument of revolutionary struggle, the attempt to organise the most exploited section of the proletariat. But even if such a split should be necessary, it must be carried into effect only at a time when the Communists have succeeded by incessant warfare against the opportunist leaders and their tactics, in persuading the wider masses of workmen that the split is occurring not because of the remote and as yet incomprehensible aims of the revolution, but on account of the concrete, immediate interests of the working class in the development of its economic struggle. The Communists, in case a necessity for a split arises, must continuously and attentively discuss the question as to whether such a split might not lead to their isolation from the working masses.
6. Where a split between the opportunists and the revolutionary trade union movement has already taken place before, where, as in America, alongside of the opportunist trades unions, there are unions with revolutionary tendencies – although not communist ones – there the Communists are bound to support such revolutionary unions, to persuade them to abandon syndicalist prejudices and to place themselves on the platform Of communism, which alone is the platform for the economic struggle. Where within the trades unions or outside of them organisations are formed in the factories, such as shop stewards, factory committees, etc., for the purpose of fighting against the counter-revolutionary tendencies of the trade union bureaucracy, to support the spontaneous direct action of the proletariat, there, of course, the Communists must with all their energy give assistance to these organisations. But they must not fail to support the revolutionary trades unions, which are in a state of ferment and passing over to the class struggle. On the contrary, by approaching this evolution of the unions on their way to a revolutionary struggle, the Communists will be able to play the part of an element uniting the politically and industrially organised workmen in their struggle for the suppression of capitalism.
The economic struggle of the proletariat becomes a political struggle during an epoch of the decline of capitalism much quicker than during an epoch of its peaceful development. Every serious economic clash may immediately place the workers face to face with the question of revolution. Therefore it is the duty of the Communists in all the phases of the economic struggle to point out to the workers that the success of the struggle is only possible if the working class conquers the capitalists in open fight, and by means of dictatorship proceeds to the organisation of a socialist order. Consequently, the Communist must strive to create as far as possible complete unity between the trades unions and the Communist Party, and to subordinate the unions to the practical leadership of the party, as the advanced guard of the workers’ revolution. For this purpose the Communists should have communist groups in all the trades unions and factory committees and acquire by their means an influence over the labour movement and direct it.
II
1. The economic struggle of the proletariat for the increase of wages and the improvement of the conditions of life of the masses, is getting more and more into a blind alley. The economic crisis, embracing one country after another in ever-increasing proportions, is showing to even unenlightened workmen that it is not enough to demand an increase of wages and a shortening of the working hours, but that the capitalist class is less capable every day of establishing the normal conditions of public economy and of guaranteeing to the workers at least those conditions of life which it gave them before the world war. Out of this growing conviction of the working masses are born their efforts to create organisations which will be able to commence a struggle for the alleviation of the situation by means of workers’ control over production, through the medium of the factory committees. This aspiration to create factory committees, which is more and more taking possession of the workmen of different countries, takes its origin from the most varied causes (struggle against the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy, discouragement after union defeats, striving to create an organisation embracing all workers), but at the end it results in the fight for control over industry, the special historic task of the factory committees. Therefore, it is a mistake to form the shop committees only out of workmen who are already struggling for the dictatorship of the proletariat; on the contrary, the duty of the Communist Party is to organise all the workers on the ground of the economic crisis, and to lead them towards the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat by developing the struggle for workers’ control over production, which they all understand.
2. The Communist Party will be able to accomplish this task if, taking part in the struggle in the factory committees, it will instil into the minds of the masses the consciousness that a systematic reconstruction of public economy on the basis of capitalism, which would mean its new enslavement by the government in favour of the industrial class, is now totally impossible. The organisation of economic management in the interests of the working masses, is possible only when the government is in the hands of the working class, when the strong hand of labour dictatorship will proceed to the suppression of capitalism and to the new socialist organisation.
3. The struggle of the factory committees against capitalism has for its immediate object workers’ control over production. The workers of every enterprise, every branch of industry, no matter what their trade, suffer from the ‘sabotage’ of production on the part of capitalists, who frequently consider it more profitable to stop production in order that it may be easier to compel the workers to agree to unsatisfactory labour conditions, or not to invest new capital in industry at a moment of a general rise in prices. The need to protect themselves against such a sabotage of production by the capitalists unites the workmen independently of their political opinions, and therefore the factory committees elected by the workers of a given enterprise are the broadest mass organisations of the proletariat. But the disorganisation of capitalist management is the result of not only the conscious will of the capitalists, but in a still greater degree an inevitable decline of capitalism. Therefore, in their struggle against the consequences of such a decline, the factory committees must go beyond the limits of control in separate factories. The factory committees of separate factories will soon be faced with the question of workers’ control over whole branches of industry and their combinations. And as any attempt on the part of workmen to exercise a control over the supplying of the factories with raw material, or to control the financial operations of the factory owners, will be met by the most energetic measures against the working class on the part of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist government, the struggle for workers’ control over production must lead to the struggle for a seizure of power by the working class.
4. The campaign in favour of factory committees must be conducted in such a way that into the minds of the popular masses, even those not directly belonging to the factory proletariat, there should he instilled the conviction that the bourgeoisie is responsible for the economic crisis, while the proletariat with the watchword of workers’ control of industry, is struggling for the organisation of production, for the suppression of speculation, disorganisation and high prices. The duty of the Communist Parties is to struggle for control over production on the ground of the most insistent questions of the day: the lack of fuel and the transport crisis, to unite the different groups of the proletariat and to attract wide circles of the petty bourgeoisie, which is becoming more and more proletarianised day by day, and is suffering extremely from the economic crisis.
5. The factory committees cannot be substituted for the trades unions. During the process of struggle they may form unions outside the limits of single factories and trades, according to the branches of production, and create a general apparatus for the direction of the struggle. The trades unions are already now centralised fighting organs, although they do not embrace such wide masses of workers as the factory committees can, these latter being loose organisations which are accessible to all the workers of a given enterprise. The division of tasks between the shop committees and the industrial unions is the result of the historical development of the social revolution. The industrial unions organise the working masses for the struggle for the increase of wages and shortening of hours on a national scale. The factory committees are organised for workers’ control over production, for the struggle against the crisis, and embrace all the workers of the enterprise, but their struggle can only gradually assume the character of a national, one. The Communists must endeavour to render the factory committees the nuclei of the trades unions and to support them in proportion as the unions overcome the counter-revolutionary tendencies of their bureaucracy, as they consciously become organs of the revolution.
6. The duty of the Communists consists in inspiring the trades unions and factory committees with a spirit of determined struggle, and the consciousness and knowledge of the best methods of such a struggle – the spirit of communism. In carrying out this duty the Communists must in practice subordinate the factory committees and the unions to the Communist Party, and thus create a proletarian mass organ, a basis for a powerful centralised party of the proletariat, embracing all the organisations of the workers’ struggle, leading them all to one aim, to the victory of the working class, through the dictatorship of the proletariat to communism. The Communists, by converting the trades unions and factory committees into powerful weapons of the revolution, prepare these mass organisations for the great task which they will have after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat – the task of being the instrument of the reorganisation of economic life on a socialist basis. The trades unions, developed as industrial unions and supported by the factory committees as their factory organisations will then make the working masses acquainted with their tasks of production. They will educate the most experienced workers to become leaders of the factories, to control the technical specialists, and, together with the representatives of the workers’ state, lay down the plan of the socialist economic policy, and carry it out.
III
The trades unions tried to form international unions even in peacetime, because during strikes the capitalists used to invite workers from other countries as strike-breakers. But the Trade Union International had only a secondary importance before the war. It made one union support another when needful, it organised social statistics, but it did nothing for the organisation of a joint struggle, because the trades unions, under the leadership of opportunists, strove to avoid all revolutionary collisions on an international scale.
The opportunist leaders of the trades unions, who each in his own country during the war was a flunkey of his bourgeoisie, are now striving to revive the Trade Union International, attempting to make it a weapon for the direct struggle of the international world capital against the proletariat. Under the direction of Legien, Jouhaux and Gompers they are creating a Labour Bureau of the League of Nations, that organisation of international capitalist robbery. In all countries they are attempting to crush the strike movement by means of laws, and so compel the workers to submit to the arbitration of representatives of the capitalist state.
They are endeavouring to obtain concessions for the skilled workers by means of agreements with the capitalists, in order to break in this way the growing unity of the working class. The Amsterdam Trade Union International is thus a substitute for the bankrupt Second International of Brussels.
The Communist workers who are members of the trades unions in all countries must on the contrary strive to create an international battle-front of trades unions. The question now is not financial relief in case of strikes; but when danger is threatening the working class of one country, the trades unions of the others, being organisations of the larger masses, should all come to its defence; they should make it impossible for the bourgeoisie of their respective countries to render assistance to the bourgeoisie of the country engaged in the struggle against the working class. The economic struggle of the proletariat in all countries is daily becoming more and more a revolutionary struggle. Therefore, the trades unions must consciously use their forces for the support of all revolutionary struggles in their own and in other countries. For this purpose they must not only, in their own countries, strive to attain as great as possible centralisation of their struggle but they must do so on an international scale by joining the Communist International, and uniting in one army, the different parts of which shall carry on the struggle jointly, supporting one another.
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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International: Theses
Theses on the Agrarian Question
1. Only the urban industrial proletariat, led by the Communist Party, can save the toiling masses in the countryside from the yoke of capital and landlordism, from dissolution and from imperialist wars, inevitable as long as the capitalist regime endures. There is no salvation for the peasants except to join the Communist proletariat, to support with heart and soul its revolutionary struggle to throw off the yoke of the landlords and the bourgeoisie.
On the other hand the industrial workers will be unable to carry out their universal historic mission, and liberate humanity from the bondage of capital and war, if they shut themselves within their separate crafts, their narrow trade interests, and restrict themselves complacently to a desire for the improvement of their sometimes tolerable bourgeois conditions of life. That is what happens in most advanced countries possessing a ‘labour aristocracy’, which forms the basis of the would-be parties of the Second International, who are in fact the worst enemies of Socialism, traitors to it, bourgeois jingoes, agents of the bourgeoisie in the labour movement. The proletariat becomes a truly revolutionary class, truly socialist in its actions, only by acting as the vanguard of all those who work and are being exploited, only as their leader in the struggle for the overthrow of the oppressors; and this cannot be achieved without carrying the class struggle into the agricultural districts, without rallying the toiling masses of the country around the Communist Party of the urban proletariat, without the peasants being educated by the urban proletariat.
2. The toiling and exploited masses in the countryside, which the urban proletariat must lead on to the fight, or at least win over to its side, are represented in all capitalist countries by the following groups:
In the first place, the agricultural proletariat, the hired labourers (seasonal, migrant and casual) making their living by wage labour in capitalist agricultural or industrial establishments. The independent organisation of this class, separated from the other groups of the country population (in a political, military, trade, co-operative, educational sense), and energetic propaganda among it, in order to win it over to the side of the Soviet Power and of the dictatorship of the proletariat – such is the fundamental task of the Communist Parties in all countries.
In the second place the semi-proletarians or smallholders, those who make their living partly by working for wages in agricultural and industrial capitalist establishments, partly by toiling on their own or on a rented piece of land, yielding but a part of the food needed for their families. This class of the toiling rural population is fairly numerous in all capitalist countries, but its existence and its peculiar position is hushed up by the representatives of the bourgeoisie and the yellow ‘socialists’ affiliated to the Second International. Some of these people intentionally cheat the workers, but others follow blindly the average petty-bourgeois view and mix up this special class with the whole mass of the ‘peasantry’. Such a method of bourgeois deception of the workers is to be observed more particularly in Germany and France, and to a lesser extent in America and other countries. Provided that the work of the Communist Party is well-organised, this group is sure to side with the Communists, the conditions of life of these half-proletarians being very hard; the advantage the Soviet Power and the dictatorship of the proletariat would bring them being enormous and immediate. In some countries there is no clear-cut distinction between these two groups; it is therefore permissible under certain circumstances not to form them into separate organisations.
In the third place the small peasants, the farmers who possess by right of ownership, or rent, small portions of land which satisfy the needs of their family and of their farming without requiring any additional wage labour. This part of the population gains everything by the victory of the proletariat, which brings with it: a) liberation from the payment of rent, or a part of it, with crops to the owners of large estates (for instance, the métayers in France, the same arrangements in Italy, etc.); b) abolition of all mortgages; c) abolition of many forms of dependence on the owners of large estates (the use of forests and pastures, etc.); d) immediate help from the proletarian state for farm work (permitting use by peasants of the agricultural implements and part of the land on the big capitalist estates expropriated by the proletariat, immediate transformation by the proletarian state power of all consumer and agricultural co-operatives, which under capitalist rule were chiefly supporting the wealthy and powerful peasant, into institutions primarily for support of the poor peasant; that is to say, the proletarians, semi-proletarians, small peasants etc.).
At the same time the Communist Party should be thoroughly aware that during the transitional period leading from capitalism to communism, i.e., during the dictatorship of the proletariat, at least some partial hesitations are inevitable in this class, in favour of unrestricted free trade and free use of the rights of private property. For this class, being a seller of commodities (although on a small scale), is necessarily demoralised by profit-hunting and habits of proprietorship. And yet, provided there is a consistent proletarian policy. and the victorious proletariat deals relentlessly with the owners of the large estates and the big peasants , the hesitations of the class in question will not be .considerable, and cannot change the fact that on the whole this class will side with the proletarian revolution.
3. All these three groups taken together constitute the majority of the agrarian population in all capitalist countries. This guarantees in full the success of the proletarian revolution, not only in the towns, but in the country as well. The opposite view is very widely spread, but it persists only because of a systematic deceit on the part of bourgeois scientists and statisticians. They hush up by every means any mention of the deep chasm which divides the rural classes we have indicated, between exploiting landowners and capitalists on the one hand and half-proletarians and small peasants on the other. This arises from the incapacity and the failure of the heroes of the yellow .Second International and the ‘labour aristocracy’, demoralised by imperialist privileges, to do genuine propaganda work on behalf of the proletarian revolution, or to conduct organising work among the poor in the country. All the attention of the opportunists was given and is being given now to the arrangement of theoretical and practical agreements with the bourgeoisie, including the landed and middle peasantry, and not to the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois government and the bourgeois class by the proletariat.
Finally, this view persists because of the force of inveterate prejudice connected with all bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices, and the incapacity to grasp a simple truth fully proven by the Marxian theory and confirmed by the practice of the proletarian revolution in Russia. This truth consists in the fact that the peasant population of the three classes we have mentioned above, being extremely oppressed, scattered and doomed to live in half-civilised conditions in all countries, even in the most advanced, is economically, socially and morally interested in the victory of Socialism; but that, with the exception of the agricultural workers, who already support the revolution, it will finally support the revolutionary proletariat only after the proletariat has taken the political power, after it has done away with the owners of the large estates and the capitalists, after the oppressed masses are able to see in practice that they have an organised leader and helper sufficiently powerful and firm to support, to guide and to show the right way.
The ‘middle peasantry’, in the economic sense, consists of small landowners who possess, according to the right of ownership or rent, portions of land, which, although small, nevertheless may usually yield under capitalist rule, not only a provision for the family and the needs of the farming, but also the possibility to accumulate a certain surplus, which, at least in the best years, could be transformed into capital; these farmers are often also in a position to hire outside labour. A group with farms of from 5 to 10 hectares of land in the German statistics of 1907 can serve as an example of the middle peasantry in an advanced capitalist country, where the number of agricultural wage labourers employed came to about a third of the number of farms in the group. In France, the country of a greater development of intensive culture, for instance of the vineyards, requiring special treatment and care, the corresponding group employs outside wage labour probably in a somewhat larger proportion.
4. The revolutionary proletariat cannot make it its aim, at least for the near future, and during the beginning of the period of proletarian dictatorship, to win this class over to its side. The proletariat will have to content itself with neutralising this class, i.e., preventing it from giving active aid to the bourgeoisie in the struggle between it and the proletariat. The vacillation of this class is unavoidable, and in the beginning of the new epoch its predominating tendency in the advanced capitalist countries will be in favour of the bourgeoisie, for the ideas and sentiments of private property are characteristic of the owners. The victorious proletariat will immediately improve the lot of this class by abolishing the system of rent and mortgage, and by the introduction of machinery and electrical appliances into agriculture. The proletarian state power cannot at once abolish private property in most of the capitalist countries, but must do away with all duties and levies imposed on this class of people by the landlords. In any case, the proletarian regime will guarantee the small and middle peasants not only the retention of their land, but also its increase by all the land they hitherto rented (by the abolition of rent).
The combination of such measures with a relentless struggle against the bourgeoisie guarantees the full success of the neutralisation policy. The. transition to collective agriculture must be managed with much circumspection and step by step, and the proletarian state power must proceed by the force of example, by the provision of machinery, the introduction of technical improvements and electrification, without any violence towards the middle peasantry.
5. The large peasants are capitalists in agriculture, managing their lands usually with several hired labourers. They are connected with the ‘peasantry’ only by their standard of culture, their way of living, and their personal manual labour on the land. This is the most numerous element of the bourgeois class, and the decided enemy of the revolutionary proletariat. The chief attention of the Communist Party in the rural districts must be given to the struggle against this element, to the liberation of the labouring and exploited majority of the rural population from the moral and political influence of these exploiters.
After the victory of the proletariat in the towns this class will inevitably oppose it by all means, from sabotage to open armed counter-revolutionary resistance. The revolutionary proletariat must therefore immediately begin, theoretically and organisationally, to prepare the necessary force for the disarmament of this class, and together with the overthrow of the capitalists in industry, the proletariat must deal a relentless, crushing blow to this class. To that end it must arm the rural proletariat and organise soviets in the country, with no room for exploiters and a preponderant place reserved to the proletarians and semi-proletarians.
But the expropriation even of the large peasants can by no means be an immediate object of the victorious proletariat, considering the lack of material, particularly of technical-material and further, of the social conditions necessary for the socialisation of such lands. In some, probably exceptional cases, parts of their estates will be confiscated if they are leased in small parcels, or if they are specifically needed by the small-peasant population. A free use must be also secured to this population, on definite terms, of a part of the agricultural machinery of the large peasants, etc. As a general rule, however, the state power can leave the large peasants in possession of their land, confiscating it only in case of resistance to the government of the labouring and exploited peasants. The experience of the Russian proletarian revolution, whose struggle against the landed peasants became very complicated and, prolonged owing to a number of particular circumstances, nevertheless shows that this class, if it is taught a lesson for even the slightest resistance, will be quite willing to serve loyally the aims of the proletarian state. It begins even to be permeated, although very slowly, by a respect for the government which protects every worker and deals relentlessly with the idle rich.
The specific conditions which made the struggle of the Russian proletariat against the large peasantry peculiarly difficult after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, consist mainly in the fact that after the coup d'état of October 25 (November 7) 1917, the Russian revolution traversed a stage of ‘general democratic’ (in fact, bourgeois-democratic) struggle of the peasantry as a whole against the landowners. The urban proletariat was culturally and numerically weak and, with the extremely bad communications, the long distances created great difficulties. The revolutionary proletariat in Europe and America must energetically prepare and carry out a much more rapid and complete victory over the resistance of the large peasantry, depriving them of all possibility of resistance. This is of the utmost importance, considering that until a complete, absolute victory is won, the proletarian state power cannot be regarded as secure and capable of resisting its enemies.
6. The revolutionary proletariat must proceed to an immediate and unconditional confiscation of the estates of the landowners and big landlords, that is of all those who systematically employ wage labour, directly or through their tenants, exploit all the small (and not infrequently also the middle) peasantry in their neighbourhood, and do not do any actual manual work. To this element belong the majority of the descendants of the feudal lords (the nobility of Russia, Germany and Hungary, the restored seigneurs of France, the Lords in England, the former slave owners m America) or financial magnates who have become particularly rich, or a mixture of those classes of exploiters and idlers.
No propaganda can be admitted in the ranks of the Communist Parties in favour of compensation to be paid to the owners of large estates for their expropriation. In the present conditions prevailing in Europe and America this would mean treason to socialism and the imposition of a new tax on the labouring and exploited masses, who have already suffered from the war – the war which increased the number of millionaires and multiplied their wealth.
In the advanced capitalist countries the Communist International considers that it is correct to preserve the large agricultural establishments and manage them on the lines of the ‘Soviet farms’ in Russia. It is also advisable to encourage collective establishments, co-operative estates, communes.
As a result of the economic backwardness of the country it was necessary in Russia to proceed to distribute the land among the peasants for their use. Only in comparatively few cases was it possible to use the land for the establishment of a so-called Soviet Farm, managed by the proletarian state on its own account. The previous wage-labourers are then transformed into both employees of the state and members of the soviets that administrate the state.
The preservation of large landholdings serves best the interests of the revolutionary elements of the rural population, namely, the land less agricultural workers and semi-proletarian small land-holders, who get their livelihood mainly by working on the large estates. Besides, the nationalisation of large land-holdings makes the urban population, at least in part, less dependent on the peasantry for their food.
In those places, however, where relics of the feudal system still prevail, the landlord’s privileges give rise to special forms of exploitation, such as serfdom and share-cropping, it may under certain conditions be necessary to hand over part of the land of the big estates to the peasants.
In countries and areas where large landholdings are insignificant in number, while a great number of small tenants are in search of land, there the distribution of the large holdings can prove a sure means of winning the peasantry for the revolution, while the preservation of the large estates can be of no value for the provisioning of the towns. The first and most important tasks of the proletarian state is to secure a lasting victory. The proletariat must not flinch from a temporary decline of production so long as it makes for the success of the revolution. Only by persuading the middle peasantry to maintain a neutral attitude, and by gaining the support of a large part, if not the whole, of the small peasantry, can the lasting maintenance of the proletarian power be secured.
At any rate, where the land of the large owners is being distributed, the interests of the agricultural proletariat must be a primary consideration.
The implements of large estates must be converted into state property, absolutely intact, but on the unfailing condition that these implements be put at the disposal of the small peasants free of charge, subject to conditions worked out by the proletarian state.
If, just after the proletarian coup d'état, the immediate confiscation of the big estates becomes absolutely necessary, and moreover also the banishment or internment of all landowners as leaders of the counter-revolution and relentless oppressors of the whole rural population, the proletarian state, in proportion to its consolidation not only in the towns, but in the country as well, must systematically strive to take advantage of men of the bourgeoisie who possess valuable experience, learning, organising ability, and must use them under special supervision of reliable communist workers and the control of the estate Soviets, to organise large-scale agriculture on socialist principles.
7. Socialism will not finally have vanquished capitalism and securely established itself for ever until the proletarian state power, after having finally subdued all resistance of the exploiters and secured for itself a complete and absolute submission, will reorganise the whole of industry on the basis of scientific large-scale production and the most modem achievements of technique (electrification of the whole economy). This alone will afford a possibility of such radical help in the technical and the social sense, accorded by the town to the backward and dispersed country, that this help will create the material base for an enormous increase of the productivity of agriculture and general farming work, and will incite the small farmers by force of example and for their own benefit, to change to large collective machine agriculture.
Most particularly in the rural districts a real possibility of successful struggle for socialism requires that all Communist Parties inculcate in the industrial proletariat the consciousness of the necessity of sacrifice on its part for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of proletarian power; for the dictatorship of the proletariat is based not only on its ability to organise and to lead the working and exploited masses, but also on the vanguard being ready for the greatest efforts and most heroic sacrifice for this goal. The possibility of success requires that the labouring and most exploited masses in the country experience an immediate and great improvement of their position caused by the victory of the proletariat, and at the expense of the exploiters. Unless this is done, the industrial proletariat cannot depend on the support of the rural districts, and cannot secure the provisionment of the towns with foodstuffs.
8. The enormous difficulty of the organisation and education for the revolutionary struggle of the agrarian labouring masses placed by capitalism in conditions of particular oppression, dispersion, and often a medieval dependence, require from the Communist Parties a special care for the strike movement in the rural districts. It requires powerful support and wide development of mass strikes of the agrarian proletarians and half-proletarians. The experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, confirmed and enlarged now by the experience of Germany, Poland, Italy, Britain and other advanced countries, shows that only the development of mass strike struggle (under certain conditions the small peasants are also to be drawn into these strikes) will be able to arouse the slumbering village and awaken the consciousness of the necessity of the class organisation in the exploited masses in the country, and show the obvious practical use of a union with the town workers. From this standpoint the promotion of the unionization of agricultural workers and the co-operation of communists in the land and forest workers’ unions are of great importance. The communists must likewise support the co-operative organisations formed by the exploited agricultural population closely connected with the revolutionary labour movement. A vigorous agitation is likewise to be carried on among the small peasants.
The Congress of the Communist International denounces as traitors those socialists – unfortunately there are such not only in the yellow Second International but also among the three most important European parties which have left the Second International – who manage not only to be indifferent towards the strike struggle in the rural districts, but who oppose it (like the trades union bureaucracy, the Scheidemanns and the Kautskys) on the ground that it might cause a falling-off of the production of foodstuffs. No programmes and no solemn declarations have any value if the fact is not in evidence, testified by actual deeds, that the Communists and the workers’ leaders know how to put above all the development of the proletarian revolution and its victory, and are ready to make the utmost sacrifices for the sake of this victory. Unless this is a fact there is no issue, no escape from starvation, dissolution and new imperialist wars.
The Communist Parties must make all efforts possible to start as soon as possible setting up Soviets in the country, and these soviets must be chiefly composed of hired labourers and half-proletarians. The formation of Soviets of small peasants must also be propagated. Only in connection with the mass strike struggle of the most oppressed class will the soviets be able to serve fully their ends, and become sufficiently firm to dominate the small peasants and later bring them into their ranks in alliance with the soviets of agricultural workers. But if the strike struggle is not yet developed, and the ability to organise the agrarian proletariat is weak because of the strong oppression of the landowners and the landed peasants, and also because of the want of support from the industrial workers and their unions, the organisation of the soviets in the rural districts will require a long preparation by means of creating Communist cells, however small; of intensive propaganda expounding in a most popular form the demands of the Communists and illustrating the reasons for these demands by specially convincing cases of exploitation; by systematic agitational excursions of industrial workers into the country, etc.
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