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

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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.

From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 90th Anniversary Of The Fourth Congress (1922)-Theses On The United Front

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
Appendix to the Theses on Comintern Tactics;

Theses On The United Front
Adopted by the EC, December 1921
1
The international workers’ movement is currently going through a particular transitional stage, which presents both the Communist International as a whole and its separate sections with new and important tactical problems.

Basically, this stage can be characterised as follows: the world economic crisis is worsening; unemployment is growing; in almost every country international capital has gone over to a systematic offensive against the workers, the main evidence of which is the capitalists’ cynical and open attempts to reduce wages and lower the workers’ general standard of living; and the bankruptcy of the Versailles peace is steadily becoming more apparent to the vast majority of workers. It is obvious that unless the international proletariat overthrows the bourgeois system a new imperialist war, or even several such wars, is inevitable. Th e Washington conference is eloquent confirmation of this.

2 A certain revival of reformist illusions which, due to a whole series of circumstances, had begun among fairly wide sections of workers is now, under the pressure of reality, beginning to give way to a different mood. The democratic and reformist illusions that re-emerged, after the imperialist carnage had ended, among some workers (on the one hand the more privileged workers and on the other the more backward, less politically experienced workers) are fading, having failed to flower. The future course and outcome of the ‘work’ of the Washington conference will upset these illusions even more. If six months ago it was possible to speak with some justification of a general move to the right among the working masses of Europe and America, then today it is possible to state with certainty that an opposite move to the left has begun.

3 On the other hand, under the influence of the mounting capitalist attack, there is anew mood among the workers – a spontaneous striving towards unity, which literally cannot be restrained, and which is a development paralleled by the gradual growth in the confidence felt by the broad mass of workers in the Communists.

A steadily growing number of workers are only now beginning to appreciate the courage shown by the Communist vanguard in throwing itself into the fight for the interests of the working class, even when the vast majority of workers were still indifferent or even hostile to Communism. A steadily growing number of workers are now becoming convinced that it was only the Communists who defended their economic and political interests, and that they did so in the most difficult circumstances, at times making the greatest sacrifices. This is why there is once more growing respect for and confidence in the uncompromising Communist vanguard of the working class, now that even the more backward layers of the workers have seen through the empty reformist hopes and have understood that without struggle there will be no escape from the onslaught of the capitalist gangsters.

4 The Communist Parties can and should now gather the fruits of the struggle they waged earlier on, in the wholly unfavourable circumstances of mass apathy. But as confidence steadily grows in those who are most uncompromising and militant, in the Communist elements of the working class, the working masses as a whole are experiencing an unprecedented longing for unity. The new layers of politically inexperienced workers just coming into activity long to achieve the unification of all the workers’ parties and even of all the workers’ organisations in general, hoping in this way to strengthen opposition to the capitalist offensive. These new layers of workers, who have often not previously taken an active part in political struggle, are now finding a new way to test the practical plans of reformism in the light of their own experience. Like these new layers, considerable sections of workers belonging to the old social-democratic parties are even now unwilling to accept the attacks of the social democrats and the centrists on the Communist vanguard. They are even beginning to demand an agreement with the Communists, but at the same time they have not outgrown their belief in the reformists and large numbers of them still support the parties of the Second and the Amsterdam Internationals. They do not formulate their plans and aspirations all that clearly, but in general the new mood of these masses comes down to a wish to set up a united front and make the parties and unions of the Second and the Amsterdam Internationals fight alongside the Communists against the capitalist attack. To that extent, this mood is progressive. The most important point is that their faith in reformism has been broken. Given the general situation of the workers’ movement today, any serious mass action, even if it starts with only partial slogans, will inevitably bring to the forefront the more general and fundamental questions of revolution. The Communist vanguard can only gain if new layers of workers are convinced by their own experience that reformism is an illusion and that compromise is fatal.

5 When the birth of a conscious and organised protest against the treachery of the leaders of the Second International was still in its early stages, these leaders kept control of the entire apparatus of the workers’ organisations. They ruthlessly manipulated the principle of unity and proletarian discipline in order to stifle revolutionary proletarian protest and, without opposition, to place the entire power of the workers’ organisations at the service of national imperialism. Faced with these circumstances, the revolutionary wing had at any cost to win freedom of agitation and propaganda, i.e., the freedom to explain to the working masses that this is an unprecedented historical betrayal, and that it has been committed – is still being committed – by the parties and unions they themselves created.

6 The Communist Parties of the world, having secured complete organisational freedom to extend their ideological influence among the working masses, are now trying at every opportunity to achieve the broadest and fullest possible unity of these masses in practical activity. The heroes of the Second and the Amsterdam Internationals preach unity in words, but deny it in action. Now that the reformist compromisers of Amsterdam have failed in their organisational attempt to suppress the voice of protest, criticism, and revolutionary aspirations, they are looking for a way out of their own impasse and are bringing splits, confusion and organised sabotage to the struggle of the working masses. One of the most important tasks facing Communists is to expose publicly these new forms of the old treachery.

7 However, the diplomats and leaders of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals have lately been forced in their turn, by profound internal processes that stem from the general economic position of the working class in Europe and America, to push the question of unity into the foreground. Though, for the inexperienced sections of workers just becoming politically aware, the slogan of the united front is a genuine expression of their very real desire to rally the forces of the oppressed class against the capitalist attack, for the leaders and diplomats of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals the adoption of the slogan of unity represents a new attempt to deceive the workers and a new way of drawing them onto the old path of class collaboration. The approaching danger of a new imperialist war (Washington), the growth of armaments, the new imperialist treaties agreed on behind the scenes – all this not only fails to make the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals sound the alarm and uphold in deeds rather than words the international unification of the working class, but, on the contrary, is bound to provoke inside the Second and Amsterdam Internationals the same kind of friction and division that can be observed in the camp of the international bourgeoisie itself. This process is inevitable in as much as the cornerstone of reformism is the solidarity of the ‘reformist-socialists’ with the bourgeoisies of their ‘own’ countries.

These are the general conditions which the Communist International as a whole and its separate sections must consider in formulating their attitude to the slogan of the united socialist front.

8 Weighing up the situation, the Executive Committee of the Communist International finds that the slogan of the Third World Congress of the Communist International, -"To the masses!”, and the overall interests of the Communist movement require that the Communist Parties and the Communist International as a whole support the slogan of a united workers’ front and take the initiative on this question into their own hands. In this, the tactics of each Communist Party must of course be concretised with regard to the conditions and circumstances of each particular country.

9 In Germany the Communist Party at its last national conference supported the slogan of a united workers’ front and recognised the possibility of supporting a “united workers’ government”, provided it was willing to mount a serious challenge to capitalist power. The Executive Committee of the Communist International considers this decision entirely correct and is sure that the German Communist Party will be able, while fully maintaining its independent political position, to reach all sections of workers and strengthen Communist influence among the masses. In Germany, more than anywhere else, the broad masses will daily grow more convinced that the Communist vanguard was absolutely right in not wanting to lay down its arms at the most difficult time and in persistently exposing the hollowness of the reformist stratagems put forward to overcome a crisis that can be resolved only by proletarian revolution. By following this tactic, the Party can group around itself all the anarchist and syndicalist elements standing aside from the mass struggle.

10 In France the majority of politically organised workers support the Communist Party. This means that the question of the united front is posed rather differently in France than in other countries. However, it is essential that here, too, the entire responsibility for any split in the united workers’ camp should lie with our opponents. The revolutionary section of the French syndicalists is entirely correct to wage its fight against a split in the trade unions, i.e., for the unity of the working class in its economic struggle against the bourgeoisie. But the workers’ struggle does not end in the industrial sphere. Unity is also essential in view of the growing wave of reaction, of imperialist policies, etc. The policies of the reformists and centrists have led to a split in the Party and now threaten even the unity of the trade-union movement, which is objective proof that both Jouhaux and Longuet are playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. The slogan of proletarian unity in the economic and political struggle against the bourgeoisie is the best means of defeating these plans for a split.

Even though the reformist Confederation of Labour led by Jouhaux, Merrheim and Co. will not fail to sell out the interest of the French working class, the French Communists and the revolutionary elements of the French working class must still approach the reformists before the start of every mass strike, revolutionary demonstration or any other spontaneous mass action, asking them to support the workers'

initiative, and must systematically expose the reformists when they refuse to support the revolutionary struggle of the workers. This will prove the easiest way to win the masses of workers who are outside the Party. Of course, it must in no circumstances induce the French Communist Party to give up any of its independence, by, for example, giving even a modicum of support to a “left-bloc” during election campaigns, or taking a lenient attitude to those shaky ‘Communists’ who still regret the split with the social-patriots.

11 In Britain the reformist Labour Party has refused to allow the Communist Party to affiliate on the same basis as other workers’ organisations. Influenced by the growing mood among the workers in favour of unity, the London workers’ organisations recently passed a resolution supporting the affiliation of the British Communist Party to the Labour Party.

Britain, of course, is an exception in this respect, since unusual conditions have made the Labour Party in Britain a kind of general workers’ association for the whole country. The British Communists must launch a vigorous campaign for their admittance to the Labour Party. The recent sell-outs by the trade-union leaders during the miners’ strike etc., the steady capitalist pressure on the workers’ wages etc., all this has roused a deep discontent among the masses of the British proletariat, which is becoming more revolutionary. The British Communists must do their utmost, whatever the cost, to extend their influence to the rank-and-file of the working masses, using the slogan of a united revolutionary front against the capitalists.

12 In Italy the young Communist Party is bitterly opposed to the reformist Italian Socialist Party and the social-traitors of the Confederation of Labour who have just sold the cause of proletarian revolution down the river; nevertheless it is beginning to conduct its agitational work around the slogan of a militant united proletarian front against the capitalist offensive. The Executive Committee of the Communist International considers that this agitational work is entirely correct and insists only that it be intensified in the same direction. The Executive Committee of the Communist International is sure that the Italian Communist Party, with sufficient far-sightedness, will be able to give the whole International an example of combative Marxism, by ruthlessly exposing at every step the half-hearted treachery of the reformists and the centrists (who have adopted the guise of Communists) and simultaneously by conducting a tireless campaign for the unity of the workers’ front against the bourgeoisie – a campaign that must steadily grow and involve larger and larger sections of the masses.

In this context the Party must naturally do its utmost to ensure the participation of revolutionary syndicalist elements in the common struggle.

13 In Czechoslovakia, where the Communist Party has the support of a significant section of the politically organised workers, the tasks of the Communists are in some respects analogous to those of the Communists in France. While strengthening its independence and weeding out the last traces of centrism, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia must also be able to popularise within the country the slogan of the united workers’ front against the bourgeoisie and must use it once and for all to expose the leaders of social democracy and the centrists as agents of capital in the eyes of the most backward workers. At the same time the Czechoslovak Communists must strengthen their efforts to win the trade unions, which are still to a significant extent in the hands of the scab leaders.

14 In Sweden the recent parliamentary elections have created a situation which will allow the small Communist fraction of deputies to play a major role. Mr. Branting, one of the most prominent leaders of the Second International and simultaneously prime minister for the Swedish bourgeoisie, is at present in such a position that, if he wishes to secure a parliamentary majority, he cannot remain indifferent to the actions of the Communist fraction in the Swedish parliament. The Executive Committee of the Communist International believes that the Communist fraction in the Swedish parliament may, in certain circumstances, agree to support the Menshevik ministry of Branting, as was correctly done by the German Communists in some of the provincial governments of Germany (for example, Thuringia). However, this certainly does not imply that the Swedish Communists should limit their independence in the slightest, or avoid exposing the character of the Menshevik government. On the contrary, the more power the Mensheviks have, the more they will betray the working class and all the greater must be the Communists’ efforts to expose these Mensheviks in the eyes of the broadest sections of workers. The Communist Party must also set about involving syndicalist workers in the common struggle.

15 In America the unification of all the Left elements in the trade-union and political movement is underway, and if the Communists occupy a central place in this Left unification, it will give them the opportunity to implant themselves in the broad masses of the American proletariat. The American Communists must form Communist groups wherever there are even a few Communists, must be able to stand at the head of this movement for the unification of all revolutionary forces and should particularly now raise the slogan of a united workers’ front, for example to defend the unemployed etc. The chief accusation levelled against the Gompers trade unions should be their unwillingness to participate in the setting up of a united workers’ front against the capitalists and in defence of the unemployed, etc. However, attracting the best elements from the IWW still remains the main task of the Communist Party.

16 In Switzerland our Party has been able to score a few successes by following the path we indicated. As a result of the Communists’ agitation for a united revolutionary front, the trade-union bureaucracy has been forced to call a special trade-union congress. At the congress, which is due to take place soon, our friends will be able to expose to all the Swiss workers the lie of reformism and so help boost the revolutionary solidarity of the proletariat.

17 In a number of other countries the question presents itself differently, in accordance with a whole series of different local conditions. Having made the general line clear, the Executive Committee of the Communist International is confident that individual Communist Parties will know how to apply it in accordance with the conditions prevailing in each country.

18 The Executive Committee of the Communist International considers that the chief and categorical condition, the same for all Communist Parties, is: the absolute autonomy and complete independence of every Communist Party entering into any agreement with the parties of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals, and its freedom to present its own views and its criticisms of those who oppose the Communists. While accepting the need for discipline in action, Communists must at the same time retain both the right and the opportunity to voice, not only before and after but if necessary during actions, their opinion on the politics of all the organisations of the working class without exception. The waiving of this condition is not permissible in any circumstances. Whilst supporting the slogan of maximum unity of all workers’ organisations in every practical action against the capitalist front, Communists cannot in any circumstances refrain from putting forward their views, which are the only consistent expression of the interests of the working class as a whole.

19 The Executive Committee of the Communist International considers it useful to remind all fraternal parties of the experience of the Russian Bolsheviks – the only party so far to succeed in defeating the bourgeoisie and taking power into its own hands. During the fifteen years that elapsed from the birth of Bolshevism to its victory over the bourgeoisie (1903-1917), Bolshevism never ceased to wage a tireless fight against reformism or, to use another name, Menshevism. Nevertheless, during these fifteen years the Russian Bolsheviks often made agreements with the Mensheviks. The formal split with the Mensheviks took place in the spring of 1905, but at the end of that year, influenced by the stormy development of the workers’ movement, the Bolsheviks temporarily formed a common front with the Mensheviks. The second formal split with the Mensheviks finally took place in January 1912, but between 1905 and 1912 separation gave way to unifications and semi-unifications in 1906-7 and also in 1910. These unifications and semi-unifications were caused not just by fluctuations in the factional struggle, but by the direct pressure of broad sections of workers who were beginning to be politically active and were in fact demanding the opportunity to test by their own experience whether the Menshevik path really did fundamentally diverge from the path of revolution. Before the new revolutionary upsurge that followed the Lena strikes, [the Lena is a Siberian river. The strikes which occurred in the Lena area in early 1912 gave rise to a vast movement of solidarity on 1 May of that year, which marked the beginning of the revival of the revolutionary movement.] not long before the start of the imperialist war, the working masses of Russia were particularly eager for unity and the diplomat – leaders of Russian Menshevism tried at the time to use this for their own ends, in much the same way as the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals are trying at present. The Russian Bolsheviks did not respond to the workers’ eagerness for unity by rejecting any and every united front. On the contrary, to counter the diplomatic game of the Menshevik leaders, the Russian Bolsheviks put forward the slogan “unity from below – , i.e., unity of the working masses themselves in the practical struggle for the revolutionary demands of the workers against the capitalists. Events showed that this was the only correct response. As a result of this tactic, which was modified to suit the circumstances of time and place, a large number of the best Menshevik workers were gradually won over to the side of Communism.

20 Since the Communist International is putting forward the slogan of the united workers’ front and permitting agreements between individual sections of the Communist International and the parties and unions of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals, it obviously cannot reject similar agreements at an international level. The Executive Committee of the Communist International made a proposal to the Amsterdam International in connection with famine relief to Russia. It repeated this proposal in connection with the White Terror and persecution of workers in Spain and Yugoslavia. The Executive Committee of the Communist International is currently making new proposals to the Amsterdam and Second Internationals, and also the Two-and-a-Half International, in connection with the initial work of the Washington conference, which has shown that a new imperialist slaughter threatens the international working class. The leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals have shown by their behaviour so far that when it comes to practical activity they in practice ignore their slogan of unity. In all such situations the task of the Communist International as a whole and of each of its sections separately will be to explain to the broadest circles of workers the hypocrisy of the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals, who put unity with the bourgeoisie before unity with the revolutionary workers, by staying, for example, in the International Labour Organisation of the League of Nations and by being party to the Washington imperialist conference instead of organising the struggle against imperialist Washington etc. However, the rejection by the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals of this or that practical proposal from the Communist international will not make us give up this tactic, which has deep roots in the masses and which we systematically and steadily must develop. Whenever our opponents reject proposals for joint struggle, the masses must be informed so that they can learn who the real destroyers of the united workers’ front are. Whenever our opponents accept a proposal, we must aim gradually to intensify the struggle and raise it to a higher level. In either case it is essential to draw the attention of the broad masses to the talks between the Communists and the other organisations and to interest them in all the fluctuations of the struggle for the united revolutionary workers’ front.

21 In putting forward this plan, the Executive Committee of the Communist International directs the attention of all fraternal parties to the dangers that in certain circumstances could be involved. Not all Communist Parties are sufficiently developed and consolidated; not all have finally broken with centrist and semi-centrist ideology. There may be cases of bending the stick too far the other way; there may be tendencies which amount to the dissolution of the Communist Parties and groups into a formless united bloc. If the use of this tactic is to advance the cause of Communism, the actual Communist Parties carrying it out must be strong, united and under an ideologically clear leadership.

22 The groupings within the Communist International itself which, with greater or lesser justification, are considered Right or even semi-centrist, are clearly made up of two different tendencies. Some elements have not really broken with the ideology and methods of the Second International, have not freed themselves from reverence for its former organisational strength and, half-consciously or unconsciously, are still seeking ideological agreement with the Second International and, accordingly, with bourgeois society. Other elements, opposed to formal radicalism and the mistakes of so-called Leftism, etc., are anxious that the newly-formed Communist Parties should be more subtle and flexible in their tactics, so that they can more rapidly strengthen their influence among the rank-and-file of the working masses. The rapid pace of development of the Communist Parties has always appeared to push both these tendencies into the same camp, even into the same grouping. The use of the methods suggested by us, which are designed to give Communist agitation a base in the unified mass activity of the proletariat, is the most effective way of uncovering the truly reformist tendencies within the Communist Parties and, if applied correctly, these methods will greatly help the internal revolutionary consolidation of the Communist Parties, both by re-educating through experience impatient or sectarian Left elements and by ridding the Parties of reformist ballast.

23 The united workers’ front must mean the unity of all workers willing to fight against capitalism – including those workers who still follow the anarchists, syndicalists, etc. In the Latin countries there are still many such workers, and in other countries, too, they can contribute to the revolutionary struggle. From the start of its existence the Communist International has adopted a friendly line in its relations with those elements among the workers who have gradually overcome their prejudices and are moving towards Communism. Communists must be all the more attentive towards them now that the united workers’ front against the capitalists is becoming a reality.

24 In order finally to concretize this work along the lines indicated, the Executive Committee of the Communist International resolves to call in the near future an extended session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International with twice the usual number of delegates representing each Party.

25 The Executive Committee of the Communist International will closely follow every practical step taken in this sector of work and asks all the Parties to inform it of every attempt made and every gain won in this direction, giving full factual details.

From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 90th Anniversary Of The Fourth Congress (1922)- Theses on Comintern Tactics

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 Comintern Tactics
5 December 1922

1. Endorsement of the Resolutions of the Third Congress
The Fourth World Congress first of all affirms that the resolutions of the Third World Congress

1) on the world economic crisis and the tasks of the Communist International and

2) on the tactics of the Communist International have been completely borne out by the course of events and by the development of the workers’ movement in the period between the Third and Fourth Congresses.

2. The Period of Capitalist Decline
On the basis of its assessment of the world economic situation the Third Congress was able to declare with complete certainty that capitalism had fulfilled its mission of developing the productive forces and had reached a stage of irreconcilable contradiction with the requirements not only of modern historical development, but also of the most elementary conditions of human existence. This fundamental contradiction was reflected in the recent imperialist war, and further sharpened by the great damage the war inflicted on the conditions of production and distribution. Obsolete capitalism has reached the stage where the destruction that results from its unbridled power is crippling and ruining the economic achievements that have been built up by the proletariat, despite the fetters of capitalist slavery.

The overall picture of capitalist economic decline is not belied by the inevitable conjunctural fluctuations, typical of the capitalist system during periods of downturn as well as upturn. The attempts of bourgeois and social-democratic political economists to interpret the improvement which began in the second half of 1921 (in the United States, to a significantly lesser extent in Japan and Britain, and partly also in France and other countries) as a sign that the capitalist equilibrium has been restored stem partly from a desire to falsify the facts and partly from the lack of insight of these servants of capital. The Third Congress, which took place before the present industrial revival, foresaw that it must come sooner or later and even then characterised it as only a slight deviation from the basic trend of progressive decline of the capitalist economy. Already it can be safely predicted that if the current industrial revival proves in any way incapable of restoring the capitalist equilibrium or of repairing the extensive war damage, then the next cyclical crisis, which should correspond to the underlying trend of capitalist decline, will reinforce its effects and so greatly increase the revolutionary potential of the situation.

Capitalism to its very end will be at the mercy of cyclical fluctuations. Only the seizure of power by the proletariat and a world socialist revolution can save humanity from permanent catastrophe, caused by the existence of the modern capitalist system.

What capitalism is passing through today is nothing other than its death throes. The collapse of capitalism is inevitable.

3. The International Political Situation
The continuing decline of capitalism is also reflected in the international political situation.

The question of reparations is still undecided. While the Entente powers hold conference after conference, the economic collapse of Germany continues, threatening the existence of capitalism throughout Central Europe.

The catastrophic deterioration in Germany’s economic situation will either force the Entente to renounce reparations,’ which will hasten the political and economic crisis in France, or else lead to the establishment of a Franco-German industrial bloc on the continent: this will worsen Britain’s economic situation and its position on the world market and place Britain and the continent in political opposition to one another.

In the Near East, Entente policies have proved completely bankrupt. The Sèvres treaty has been torn up by Turkish bayonets. The war between Greece and Turkey, and the events connected with it, have clearly revealed how unstable the present political balance is. The spectre of a new imperialist world war is rising up. Imperialist France, having helped to ruin the joint work of the Entente in the Near East through its rivalry with Britain, is now once more being pushed by capitalist interests into a common capitalist front against the Eastern peoples. However, by doing this, capitalist France will yet again show the peoples of the Near East that the only way they can defend themselves against oppression is by joining with Soviet Russia and gaining the support of the revolutionary proletariat of the whole world.

Regarding the Far East, the victorious Entente powers tried at Washington to revise the Versailles treaty. However, they managed to gain only a respite by agreeing to restrict over the next few years the production of only one type of armaments, namely warships. They did not find any solution to their problem. The struggle between America and Japan continues and is inflaming the civil war in China. The Pacific seaboard is still a breeding-ground of major conflicts.

The example of the national liberation movements in India, Egypt, Ireland and Turkey shows that the colonial and semi-colonial countries are hotbeds of growing revolutionary upsurge against imperialist power. They represent inexhaustible sources of revolutionary energy, and in the given situation this works objectively against the existence of bourgeois control of the world.

Events are liquidating the Versailles treaty. However, its demise is not giving way to a general agreement among the capitalist states and to the abandonment of imperialism, but instead is leading to new contradictions, new imperialist alignments and a new arms race.

In the present situation the reconstruction of Europe is impossible. Capitalist America is unwilling to make sacrifices to reconstruct the European capitalist economy. Vulture-like, capitalist America watches the decay of capitalist Europe, intending to claim its inheritance. America will enslave capitalist Europe unless the European working class seizes political power, clears the world of the ruins of the war and starts to build a federal Soviet republic of Europe.

The recent events even in as small a country as contemporary Austria [When Austria had had to be rescued from sheer collapse, first by American famine relief and then by reconstruction loans floated under the auspices of the League of Nations] are important in that they are symptomatic of the political situation in Europe. By edict of Entente imperialism, this famous ‘democracy’, jointly defended by Christian Socialists and the leaders of the Two-and-a-Half International, has been eliminated by a single stroke of the pen in Geneva and replaced by the undisguised dictatorship of an Entente agent. Even the bourgeois parliament has in practice been abolished; its place has been taken by the Entente bankers’ own bailiff.

These events in little Austria, along with the recent fascist coup in Italy, [with his troops ready to march on Rome, Mussolini was asked to form a government on 29 October 1922] highlight the instability of the whole situation and demonstrate, better than anything, that ‘democracy’ is just an illusion, meaning in reality the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

At the same time the international political position of Soviet Russia, the only country where the proletariat has defeated the bourgeoisie and for five years retained power despite enemy attacks, has become considerably stronger. At Genoa and at the Hague the Entente capitalists tried to force the Russian Soviet republic to abandon the nationalisation of industry and undertake a burden of debt so great that Soviet Russia would have become a virtual colony of the Entente. The proletarian government of Soviet Russia proved strong enough to resist these arrogant demands. Amidst the chaos of the collapsing capitalist system of power, Soviet Russia stands firm, from Berezina to Vladivostok, from Murmansk to the mountains of Armenia, and is becoming a major power within Europe, and in the Near and Far East. Despite the capitalist world’s attempt to strangle Soviet Russia by a financial blockade, the country will move towards economic recovery, using its own economic resources. At the same time competition between the capitalist powers will force them to start separate talks with Soviet Russia. One-sixth of the world is under Soviet power. Even now the mere existence of the Soviet republic in Russia is a permanent source of weakness for bourgeois society and an extremely important factor of world revolution. The more Soviet Russia’s economy is restored and strengthened, the greater will be the influence of this pre-eminent revolutionary factor in international politics.

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

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

The capitalist offensive, which has recently grown to huge proportions, is everywhere forcing the working class to defend itself. Thousands and thousands of workers in the major sectors of industry are taking up this fight. All the time the struggle is attracting new groups of workers who play a vital role in economic life (railwaymen, miners, metal-workers, public and municipal employees). So far the majority of strikes have not brought immediate results, but the struggle itself is creating among multitudes of previously backward workers an implacable hatred of capitalists and the state power that protects them. This fight, forced on the proletariat, is making it impossible for the social-reformists and trade-union bureaucrats to continue their policy of collaboration with the employers. It graphically demonstrates to even the most backward layers of the proletariat the inseparable link between economics and politics. Today every big strike is a major political event. Such strikes have shown that the parties of the Second International and the leaders of the Amsterdam trade unions, far from giving help to the working masses in their hard defensive fight, have openly abandoned them to the mercy of fate, and betrayed them to the employers and the bourgeois governments.

One of the aims of the Communist Parties is to expose this continual, unprecedented treachery and illustrate it by using examples from the day to day struggle of the working masses. It is the duty of every Communist Party to extend and deepen the countless economic strikes, wherever possible turning them into political strikes and actions. Obviously the Communist Parties must also, in the course of defensive struggles, aim to strengthen the revolutionary consciousness and militancy of the proletarian masses to such an extent that, given favourable circumstances, the struggle will turn from defence to attack.

As the struggle spreads, it is inevitable that the contradictions between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will steadily intensify. The situation is still objectively revolutionary; even the smallest strike could become the starting-point of great revolutionary battles.

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

The characteristic feature of ‘classical’ Italian fascism, which at present has the whole country in its grip, is that the fascists not only form counter-revolutionary fighting organisations, armed to the teeth, but also attempt to use social demagogy to gain a base among the masses: in the peasantry, in the petty bourgeoisie and even in a certain section of the proletariat. There is currently a fascist threat in many countries: in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, almost all the Balkan countries, Poland, Germany, Austria, America and even in countries like Norway. The possibility of fascism appearing in one or another form cannot be ruled out even in such countries as France and Britain.

One of the most important tasks of the Communist Parties is to organise resistance to international fascism. They must be at the head of the working class in the fight against the fascist gangs, must be extremely active in setting up united fronts on the question and must make use of illegal methods of organisation.

But the reckless promotion of fascist organisation is the last card in the bourgeoisie’s hand. Open rule by the White Guards also works against the very foundations of bourgeois democracy. The broadest masses of working people become convinced that bourgeois rule is possible only in the form of an undisguised dictatorship over the proletariat.

6. The Possibility of New Pacifist Illusions
The current international political situation is characterised by fascism, the state of siege and the rising wave of White Terror against the working class. However, this does not rule out the possibility that in the near future open bourgeois reaction may, in some very important countries, give way to an era of ‘democratic pacifism’. In Britain (where the Labour Party made gains at the last elections) and in France (where a period of rule by the so-called “Left Bloc” is unavoidable) this kind of ‘democratic pacifist’ transitional period is very likely and may in its turn give rise to a revival of pacifist hopes in bourgeois and social-democratic Germany. In the period between the present domination of open bourgeois reaction and the complete victory of the revolutionary proletariat over the bourgeoisie, there will be various stages and the possibility of various short-lived episodes. The Communist International and its sections must be aware of all these possibilities. They must know how to defend their revolutionary positions in any situation.

7. The Situation Within The Labour Movement
At the same time as capitalist attacks are forcing the working class onto the defensive, the parties of the centre (the Independents) are drawing closer to and even fusing with the open social-traitors (the social democrats). During the revolutionary upsurge even the centrists, bowing to the pressure of the masses, declared themselves for the dictatorship of the proletariat and moved towards the Third International. But as soon as the wave of revolutionary feeling subsided even temporarily, these centrists ran back to the social-democratic camp, which in reality they had never left. Those people who during the mass revolutionary struggles held a vacillating position are now renouncing the defensive fight and returning to the camp of the Second International, which was always consciously counter-revolutionary. The centrist parties and the entire centrist Two-and-a-Half International are in a state of disintegration. The best of the revolutionary workers who were briefly in the centrist camp will in time come over to the Communist International. In some countries (Italy) this has already started to happen. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of the centrist leaders, who are at present allying themselves with Noske, Mussolini, etc., will turn into hardened counter-revolutionaries.

From an objective viewpoint, the fusion of the parties of the Second and the Two-and-a-Half Internationals can only benefit the revolutionary workers’ movement. The idea of a second revolutionary party outside the Communist camp is losing credibility. Now only two groups will contend for leadership of the majority of the working class: the Second International, which represents the influence of the bourgeoisie within the working class, and the Third International, which has raised the banner of socialist revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat.

8. The Trade-Union Split and the Preparations for White Terror Against the Communists
The fusion of the parties of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals was undoubtedly caused by the need to prepare a ‘favourable atmosphere’ for a systematic campaign against the Communists. Part of this campaign is the deliberate agitation by the leaders of the Amsterdam International in favour of a split. The Amsterdam leaders are avoiding any fightback against the capitalist offensive whilst continuing their policy of collaboration with the employers. They are systematically trying to eliminate Communist influence in the trade unions in order to make sure the Communists put no obstacles in the way of collaboration. Since, however, in many countries the Communists have already won a majority in the trade unions, or are about to do so, the Amsterdam leaders are prepared to use the tactic of forcing expulsions and formally splitting the union movement. Nothing is more effective in undermining the strength of proletarian resistance to the capitalist offensive than a split in the trade unions. The reformist trade-union leaders are well aware of this. But since they realise that the ground is slipping from under their feet and that they cannot avoid their imminent bankruptcy, they are anxious to split the unions, the strongest weapon of proletarian class struggle, so that the Communists will be left with only the fragments and splinters of the old trade-union organisations. The working class has not seen such a malicious betrayal since August 1914. [the parties of the Second International had then abandoned their previously militant opposition to war and joined the patriotic chorus]

9. The Task of Winning the Majority
In these circumstances the main directive of the Third World Congress is still completely valid: to achieve an increase of Communist influence among the majority of the working class and to involve its most decisive sections in struggle.

It is now even more important than it was at the time of the Third Congress to realise that with the present precarious equilibrium of bourgeois society a severe crisis may quite suddenly break out as the result of a major strike, a colonial rising, a new war or even a parliamentary crisis. This is precisely why tremendous importance accrues to the “subjective factor”, i.e., the level of consciousness, militancy and organisation of the working class and its vanguard.

To win the majority of the American and European working class – this was and is the key task facing the Communist International.

In the colonial and semi-colonial countries the Communist International has the following two tasks:

1) to establish the nucleus of a Communist Party, representing the interests of the proletariat as a whole;

2) to give full support to the national-revolutionary movement against imperialism, to become its vanguard and within this national movement to initiate and develop a social movement.

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

At present the reformists need a split, while the Communists are interested in uniting all the forces of the working class against capital.

Using the united front tactic means that the Communist vanguard is at the forefront of the day to day struggle of the broad masses for their most vital interests. For the sake of this struggle Communists are even prepared to negotiate with the scab leaders of the social democrats and the Amsterdam International. Any attempt by the Second International to interpret the united front as an organisational fusion of all the ‘workers’ parties’ must of course be categorically repudiated. The attempts of the Second International to absorb workers’ organisations further to the left and call this a united front (the ‘fusion’ of the social democrats and Independents in Germany [in 1922]) in fact simply provide yet another opportunity for the social-democratic leaders to betray new masses of workers to the bourgeoisie.

The existence of independent Communist Parties and their complete freedom of action in relation to the bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionary social democracy is the most important historical achievement of the proletariat, and one which the Communists will in no circumstances renounce. Only the Communist Parties stand for the overall interests of the whole proletariat.

In the same way the united front tactic has nothing to do with the so-called ‘electoral combinations’ of leaders in pursuit of one or another parliamentary aim.

The united front tactic is simply an initiative whereby the Communists propose to join with all workers belonging to other parties and groups and all unaligned workers in a common struggle to defend the immediate, basic interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie. Every action, for even the most trivial everyday demand, can lead to revolutionary awareness and revolutionary education; it is the experience of struggle that will convince workers of the inevitability of revolution and the historic importance of Communism.

It is particularly important when using the united front tactic to achieve not just agitational but also organisational results. Every opportunity must be used to establish organisational footholds among the working masses themselves (factory committees, supervisory commissions made up of workers from all the different parties and unaligned workers, action committees, etc.).

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

Obviously, the united front tactic has to be applied differently in different countries, according to the concrete conditions. Still, where the objective conditions in the most important countries are ripe for a socialist transformation, and where the social-democratic parties with their counter-revolutionary leaders are deliberately seeking to split the working class, the united front tactic will be of decisive importance for the whole epoch.

11. The Workers’ Government
The slogan of a workers’ government (or a workers’ and peasants’ government) can be used practically everywhere as a general agitational slogan. However, as a central political slogan, the workers’ government is most important in countries where the position of bourgeois society is particularly unstable and where the balance of forces between the workers’ parties and the bourgeoisie places the question of government on the order of the day as a practical problem requiring immediate solution. In these countries the workers’ government slogan follows inevitably from the entire united front tactic.

The parties of the Second International are trying to rescue the situation in these countries by advocating and forming a coalition of the bourgeoisie and the social democrats. The recent attempts by certain parties of the Second International (e.g. in Germany) to take part in this kind of coalition government secretly, whilst refusing to be openly involved, are nothing but a manoeuvre to pacify the indignant masses, just a more subtle deception of the working masses. In place of a bourgeois/social-democratic coalition, whether open or disguised, Communists propose a united front involving all workers, and a coalition of all workers’ parties around economic and political issues, which will fight and finally overthrow bourgeois power. Following a united struggle of all workers against the bourgeoisie, the entire state apparatus must pass into the hands of a workers’ government, so strengthening the position of power held by the working class.

The most elementary tasks of a workers’ government must be to arm the proletariat, disarm the bourgeois counter-revolutionary organisations, bringing control over production, shift the main burden of taxation onto the propertied classes and break the resistance of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.

Such a workers’ government is possible only if it is born out of the struggle of the masses and is supported by combative workers’ organisations formed by the most oppressed sections of workers at grassroots level. However, even a workers’ government that comes about through an alignment of parliamentary forces, i.e., a government of purely parliamentary origin, can give rise to an upsurge of the revolutionary workers’ movement. It is obvious that the formation of a genuine workers’ government, and the continued existence of any such government committed to revolutionary politics, must lead to a bitter struggle with the bourgeoisie or even to civil war. The mere attempt by the proletariat to form such a workers’ government will from its very first days come up against extremely strong resistance from the bourgeoisie. The slogan of a workers’ government therefore has the potential to rally the proletarians and unleash revolutionary struggle.

In certain circumstances, Communists must declare themselves ready to form a workers’ government with non-Communist workers’ parties and workers’ organisations. However, they should do so only if there are guarantees that the workers’ government will conduct a real struggle against the bourgeoisie of the kind already outlined. The obvious conditions on which Communists will participate in such a government are:

1 Communists participating in such a government remain under the strictest control of their Party;

2 Communists participating in such a workers’ government should be in extremely close contact with the revolutionary organisations of the masses;

3 The Communist Party has the unconditional right to maintain its own identity and complete independence of agitation.

For all its great advantages, the slogan of a workers’ government also has its dangers, as does the whole tactic of the united front. To avoid these dangers and to confront now the illusion that the stage of ‘democratic coalition’ is inevitable, the Communist Parties must be aware of the following:

Every bourgeois government is simultaneously a capitalist government, but not every workers’ government is a truly proletarian, socialist government.

The Communist International must consider the following possibilities:

1 A liberal workers’ government, such as existed in Australia and is possible in Britain in the near future.

2 A social-democratic ‘workers’ government’ (Germany).

3 A workers’ and peasants’ government. Such a possibility exists in the Balkans, Czechoslovakia, etc.

4 A social-democratic/Communist coalition government.

5 A genuine proletarian workers’ government, which can be created in its pure form only by a Communist Party.

Communists are also prepared to work alongside those workers who have not yet recognised the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Accordingly Communists are also ready, in certain conditions and with certain guarantees, to support a non-Communist workers’ government. However, the Communists will still openly declare to the masses that the workers’ government can be neither won nor maintained without a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie.

The first two types of workers’ governments (the workers’ and peasants’ and the social-democratic/Communist governments) fall short of representing the dictatorship of the proletariat, but are still an important starting-point for the winning of this dictatorship. The complete dictatorship of the proletariat can only be a genuine workers’ government (type 5) consisting of Communists.

12. The Factory Committee Movement
No Communist Party can consider itself a serious and well-organised mass Communist Party unless it has strong Communist cells in the factories, mills, mines, railways, etc. In present-day conditions a workers’ movement cannot consider itself a systematically organised mass proletarian movement unless the working class and its organisations can set up factory committees to form the backbone of the movement. In particular, the fight against the capitalist offensive and for control of production is hopeless unless the Communists command a firm foothold in all the factories and the workers have set up in the workplaces their own fighting proletarian organisations (factory committees, workers’ councils).

Congress therefore considers that one of the major tasks facing every Communist Party is to strengthen its influence in the factories and to support the factory committee movement or take the initiative in starting such a movement.

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

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

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

Congress decides to attach as an appendix to this resolution the text of the December theses (192 1) of the Executive Committee, which are a correct and detailed explanation of the united front tactic.