# The Capitalist World and The Communist International

Manifesto agreed to at the 2nd Congress of the Communist International
Workers of the World Unite!
The Capitalist World and The Communist International
Manifesto of the Second Congress of the Third Communist International
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Publishing Office of the Third Communist International
Moscow 1920
AMERICAN EDITION
Published by the
UNITED COMMUNIST PARTY OF AMERICA
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The Second Congress of the Communist International, representing thirty-five countries, met at Petrograd on July 17th, 1920, and continued its sessions in Moscow from July 27th to Aug. 7th. Its purpose was to form a clear idea regarding the international situation, to cast a retrospective glance over the road already traveled, and to establish the milestone of further struggle.
The World Congress of the Communist International unanimously addresses this manifesto to the workingmen and women of the whole world with the profound conviction that its aims are just and its methods correct.
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1. International Relations After Versailles.
The bourgeoisie of the whole world is looking back wistfully upon the days just past. All the foundations of international and internal relations have been overthrown or shaken. Threatening clouds darken the future of the capitalist world. The old system of alliances and mutual insurance which formed the foundations of international equilibrium and of armed peace has been utterly destroyed by the Imperialist War. The Versailles Treaty has failed to establish any other adjustment in its stead.
Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany in succession have fallen out of the world race. Some of the powerful empires which had themselves previously played a prominent part in the world's plunder have now become the objects of plunder and dismemberment. A new and vast field for colonial exploitation, beginning from this side of the Rhine, embracing the whole of Central and Eastern Europe and stretching as far as the Pacific Ocean, opens itself before the victorious Imperialists of the Entente. How can the Congo, Syria, Egypt or Mexico be compared with the steppes, forests and mountain lands of Russia taken together with the skilled labor power of Germany? The new colonial policy of the victors has worked itself out: the overthrow of the Labor Republic in Russia, the plunder of Russian raw material, the compulsory application of German labor power to work this raw material with the aid of German coal, using the German employer as an armed overseer—and the assembling of the manufactured products and the profits that go with them. The victorious Allies have inherited the program of "organizing Europe", which had been advanced by German Imperialism in the heyday of its military success. Thus when the vanquished bandits of the German Empire are to be put on trial by the Entente rulers, they will certainly be tried by a jury of their peers.
But there are defeated parties even in the camp of the conquerors.
Stupefied by the fumes of a chauvinistic victory which it had won for the benefit of others the French bourgeoisie fancies that it has become the ruler of Europe. But in reality France has never been in such slavish dependence upon the more powerful governments of England and America than she is today. France is dictating Belgium's industrial and military policy, thus converting her weaker ally into a subject province. While she herself is nothing but a larger Belgium in relation to England. For the time ​being the English Imperialists allowed the French usurers to have their way within the limits of the continent assigned to them, thus shrewdly diverting from themselves the keen indignation of European and English workers, and turning it upon France. The power of moribund and devastated France is ephemeral and almost farcical. Sooner or later this fact will penetrate into the minds of even the French social-patriots.
Italy has fallen still lower in the svale of international relations. Deprived of coal and bread, deprived of raw material, having its internal equilibrium lost as a result of the war, the Italian bourgeoisie is incapable, though entirely willing, to realize in full measure the rights to plunder and violate even those colonial allotments assigned to it by England.
Japan, torn within her feudal shell by capitalist contradictions, stands on the verge of a great revolutionary crisis which is already paralyzing her imperialist aspirations, in spite of the favorable international situation.
Thus only two great powers remain: Great Britain and the United States.
The English Imperialism has rid itself of the Asiatic rivalry of Czarism and of the menace of German competition, The military power of Britain has reached its apex. England has surrounded the Continent with a chain of subject nations. She has subjected to her control Finland, Esthonia and Latvia, thus depriving Sweden and Norway of the last vestige of independence and converting the Baltic Sea into a British bay. She has no rival in the North Sea. Her supremacy in South Africa, Egypt, India, Persia and Afganistan has converted the Indian Ocean into a British lake. Her domination on the sea makes her likewise mistress of the continent. Her power over the world ends only with the American Dollar Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic.
The United States was absolutely thrown off the path of continental provincialism by the world war. The Monroe doctrine—"America for the Americans"—which was the program of the newly fledged national capitalism, has given place to the imperialist watchword,—"Make the Whole World America". Having started with exploiting the war and profiting from the European bloodshed by commercial and industrial deals and exchange speculation, America went on to direct participation in the world war, playing a predominant part in the destruction of Germany and now has its hand in all questions of European and world politics.
Under the banner of the League of Nations the United States tried to extend to this side of the ocean its policy of uniting various nationalities on a federative basis and hitch to its golden chariot the nationalities of Europe and other parts ​of the world and govern them from Washington. The League of Nations was to be essentially nothing more than a world monopoly of "Yankee and Co."
The President of the United States, the great Prophet of Platitudes, had descended from Mt. Sinai to conquer the world with his Fourteen Commandments. Stockbrokers, ministers and men of business entertained no illusion whatever regarding the meaning of this new revelation. The European "Socialists" on the other hand, baked on the Kautskian oven, got into a religious transport, and danced like King David following in the wake of the Wilsonian ark.
But in coming down to practical questions the American apostle learned that in spite of the excellent exchange rate of the dollar, England still occupies, as heretofore, the first place on all sea routes which connect and divide nations, for she has the strongest navy, the longer cables and the greater experience in world plunder. Another obstacle in Wilson's path was the Soviet Republic and Communism. Thus the American Messiah resentfully deserted the League of Nations, which has become one of England's diplomatic offices, and turned his back upon Europe.
It would be childish, however, to suppose that American Imperialism, its first advance thwarted by England, is going to lock itself up within the shell of the Monroe doctrine. By no means. The United States is planning to create its own international system with its center in North America; both the Republican and Democratic parties stand by the policy of continuing to subject the entire American continent, convert all the countries of Central and South America into colonial dependencies, and thus create a counterpart to the English League of Nations. This end is to be achieved by means of a naval program, which in 3 to 5 years will create a navy surpassing that of Great Britain. This being a matter of life and death for English Imperialism, it results in a frenzied shipbuilding rivalry between the two giants, accompanied by a no less frenzied scramble for petroleum.
France, which had expected to play the part of arbiter between England and the United States, but which has herself like one of the lesser planets been drawn into the orbit of Great Britain, now finds herself unbearably burdened by the League of Nations and is trying to rid herself of it by fanning antagonism between England and the United States.
Thus the greatest Powers are preparing the ground for a new world encounter.
Instead of liberating the small nationalities the War has brought ruination and enslavement upon the Balkan nations, both victors and vanquished, and has Balkanized a considerable part of Europe. Actuated by their Imperialist interests the conquerors ​adopted the policy of dividing up the devastated great powers into small separate national states. This policy bears not even a trace of the so-called national principle: Imperialism is essentially inimical to national boundaries, even though they be those of great powers. The new petty bourgeois states are nothing more than the by-products of Imperialism; it has created as temporary props for itself, a whole series of small nations, such as Austria, Hungary, Poland, Jugo-Slavia, Bohemia, Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia and others, some of which are openly oppressed while others are officially patronized, but all are treated as vassals. By means of its banks, railways and coal monopoies, Imperialism dominates these nations, dooming them to intolerable economic and national hardships, to endless conflicts and sanguinary strife.
What an overwhelming irony of fate that the reconstruction of Poland, which formed a part of the program of the revolutionary democracy during the first revolutionary outbursts of the international proletariat, should now be brought about by Imperialism for counter revolutionary ends, and that the "Democracy" of Poland, whose predecessors had died on the barricades of Europe, should be used as a foul and bloody weapon in the murderous hands of the Anglo-French bandits against the first Proletarian Republic in the world!
"Democratic" Czecho-Slovakia has likewise sold itself to French capital, and has furnished White Guard contingents against Soviet Russia and Hungary.
The heroic attempt of the Hungarian proletariat to free itself from the national and economic chaos prevailing in central Europe, and emerge upon the road of a Soviet Federation, which is the only means to salvation, was stifled by the combined forces of capitalist reaction at a time when the proletariat of the more advanced countries of Europe, misled by its parties, proved incapable of doing its duty both toward Socialist Hungary and its own self.
The Soviet Government of Budapest was overthrown with the assistance of the social traitors who after having stayed in power for three and a half days, were themselves overthrown by the unbridled counter-revolutionary canaille, surpassing in its bloody deeds the crimes of Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel and other Allied agents… But even though temporarily crushed Soviet Hungary is like a beacon light to the toilers of Central Europe.
The Turks are unwilling to submit to the base peace terms dictated by the London tyrants. In order to get these terms fulfiled England has armed Greece and set her against Turkey. Thus both the Turks and the Greeks are given over to mutual destruc​tion, and the Balkan peninsula and anterior Asia Minor are doomed to devastation.
Armenia's part in the Allies' fight against Turkey is analogous to that which Belgium played in the war with Germany, and Serbia in the war with Austria-Hungary. When the Armenian state was formed—without boundary lines and without means of existence—Wilson declined the Armenian mandate offered him by the "League of Nations", for Armenia's soil contained neither petroleum nor platinum. "Liberated" Armenia is now less secure than ever before.
Almost all the newly formed "national" states have their own irritants, their internal national ulcers.
At the same time the national strife within the bounds of the victorious countries has reached its climax. The English bourgeoisie which pretends to be the guardian of the nations of the world is incapable of solving the Irish question at home.
Still more threatening is the national question in the colonies. Egypt, India, Persia are shaken by internal upheavals. The toilers of the colonies are adopting the slogan of the Soviet Federation from the advanced workers of Europe and America.
Official, national, civilized bourgeois Europe—after it emerged from the war and the Versailles peace—is like a lunatic asylum. The petty states artificially dismembered, economically stifled within their boundaries, wrangle and fight with one another over seaports, provinces and small towns. They seek the protection of the bigger states whose mutual antagonism is increasing from day to day. Italy stands in a hostile position against France and is ready to side with Germany against her as soon as the latter is capable of raising her head. France is rancorous with envy towards England, and would not hesitate to set the whole of Europe on fire if that would only enable her to get back her interests. Assisted by France, England maintains a state of chaotic impotence in Europe, in order that no one shall be able to interfere with her imperialistic plans against America. The United States allows Japan to involve herself in Eastern Siberia so that she may meanwhile get her navy into a condition to get her the upper hand of Great Britain—provided England should not in her turn attempt to have a trial of strength with America before 1925.
It is in keeping with this state of international relations that the oracle of the French bourgeoisie, Marshal Foch, predicts that the coming war is going to begin where the preceding war left off: aeroplanes, machine guns, mitrailleuses instead of rifles, and grenades instead of the bayonet.
Workers and peasants of Europe, America, Asia, Africa, Australia! This is what you have achieved at the cost of ten millions of killed, twenty millions of wounded and maimed!
II. The Economic Position.
Meanwhile the ruination of mankind is going on.
The war has mechanically destroyed those universal economical ties, the development of which was one of the most important conquests of capitalism. In 1914 England, France and Italy were separated from Central Europe and from the near East, in 1917—from Russia.
During the few years of the war which has destroyed all that has been created by many generations, human labor which had been reduced to a minimum, was applied principally in those spheres where it was necessary to transform the reserves of raw material into goods, chiefly into arms and weapons of destruction.
In those basic branches of economy where man must enter into a direct struggle against the hardness and inertness of Nature, namely fuel and raw materials which have to be excavated and brought out from the bowels of the earth—production progressively died down. The victory of the Entente and the Versailles Treaty have not stemmed the economic process of economic disorganization and decay, but have only changed its ways and forms. The blockade of Soviet Russia and the artificial kindling of civil war against her fertile bordering states have been and are causing incalculable damage to the welfare of humanity at large. If Russia had the minimum technical support this country could, under the conditions established by the Soviet form of production, provide two and three times the quantity of provision and raw material to Europe than that which was provided by Czarist Russia;—the International states this in the face of the entire world. Instead of this Anglo-French Imperialism is compelling the Labor Republic to direct all its forces towards defense. In order to deprive the Russian workers of fuel England held firm in its claws that source of fuel,—Baku, from which only an insignificant part of this wealth could be exported. The richest coal basin of the Donetz was periodically devastated by the white guard bands of the Entente. French instructors and sappers have worked hard over the destruction of Russian bridges and railroads. Up to the present moment Japan is robbing and ruining Eastern Siberia.
German technique and the high productivity of German labor—these most important factors in the renaissance of the system of production are now after the Versailles peace, being paralyzed much more than was the case during the war. The Entente is faced with contradictions. In order to extract payment it is indispensable that work be supplied. In order to supply work ​it is indispensable that life be made possible. To let devastated, dismembered, exhausted Germany, live, means to give her the opportunity to become capable of resistance. The policy of Foch of keeping Germany in an ever tightening military vise, which is to prevent Germany's revival—is being dictated by fear of Germany’s revenge.
There is a general shortage and a general need. The trade balance not only of Germany alone, but also of France and England is of a decidedly passive character. The French State debt has reached the sum of 300 billion francs. It must be mentioned that the reactionary French Senator Gaudin de Villaine asserts that two-thirds of this sum has been lost by embezzlement, thieving and general chaos.
The work of re-establishment of the French districts ruined by the war is a mere drop in this sea of devastation. The shortage of fuel and raw material as well as of labor power is the cause of insurmountable obstacles.
France wants gold, France wants coal. The French bourgeoisie points to the innumerable graves of the war cemeteries and demands its dividends. Germany must pay! It must be remembered that General Foch has sufficient negroes for the occupation of German cities. Russia must pay! In order to innoculate the Russian people with this idea the French Government spends billions upon the devastation of Russia; money which was originally collected and intended for the revival of France.
The international financial compact which was to ease the tax burden of France by a more or less complete annulment of war debts did not take place;—the United States gave no evidence whatever of a desire to make Europe a present of 10 billions of dollars.
The issue of paper currency is continuing to an ever growing extent. While in Soviet Russia the extensive introduction of paper currency and its devaluation is, coincident with the development of a systematic communal distribution of products and an extensive introduction of payment in kind, only the result of the gradual death of the commodity-money system of production, in capitalist countries on the other hand, the spread of paper currency signifies the growth of economic chaos and the approach of inevitable collapse.
The Entente Conference travels from place to place seeking inspiration at all the European resorts. Dividends are demanded all round in accordance with the number of men killed in the war. This traveling stock exchange of dead men, an exchange which fortnightly decides the question of whether France should receive 50% or 55% of the contribution which Germany is unable to pay, ​is a splendid example of the much-advertised "organization" of Europe.
In the process of the war capitalism has become a new thing. The systematic extraction of surplus value in the process of production, which is the basis of economic profits, seems too elementary to the bourgeoisie who have become accustomed to increase their capital twofold and tenfold within a few days, by means of speculation on the basis of international robbery.
The bourgeoisie has lost certain prejudices which stood in its way and has acquired certain habits which it did not possess formerly. The war has accustomed it to the application of the hunger blockade to whole countries, to air raids, to burning cities and villages, to the deliberate distribution of cholera bacilli, to the transportation of dynamite in diplomatic valises, to counterfeiting the paper currency and credit notes of the enemy, to bribery, espionage and contraband to an extent unheard of before. The methods of war have become upon the conclusion of peace trading methods. The principal trading operations are now merged in the activity of the state, which acts like a band of robbers armed with every means of violence. The narrower the universal base of production grows the more furious, cruel and extravagant the methods of acquisition.
To rob and to loot! This is the last word of the policy of capitalism, which has taken the place of free trade and protection. The raid of the Roumanian bandits upon Hungary from which country they exported locomotives and golden rings is a good symbol of the economic philosophy of Lloyd George and of Millerand.
The internal economic policy of the bourgeoisie is remarkable for its fluctuation between the program of further nationalization, regrouping and control.on the one hand and protests against State intervention—which has developed during the war,—on the other hand. The French parliament is occupied with the sensible business of squaring the circle: viz. the formation of a "united command" on the railway net of the Republic without damage to the interests of the capitalist private railway companies. At the same time the capitalist press is conducting a vicious campaign against "statism", against State intervention which tends to limit private property.
The condition of the American railways, which were disorganized by the state during the war became still worse with the abolition of state control. At the same time the Republican party, in its platform promises to safeguard the economic life from arbitrary state intervention. That old watch dog, Samuel Gompers, the head of American Trade Unions, is conducting a campaign against the nationalization of railways, which is being advocated ​as a panacea by the fools and charlatans of reformism. As a matter of fact the disjointed violent intrusion of the State vies with speculation in increasing the chaos in the system of capitalist production during the period of capitalist decay. To transfer the principal branches of production and transport from the hands of individual trusts into the hands of the "nation", i. e., into the hands of the bourgeois State, the most powerful and greedy capitalist trust, signifies not the abolition of the evil but its unification.
The fall of prices and the rise of the rate of exchange is but a superficial and temporary state of things caused by the continuing disorganization. The fluctuation of prices does not affect the principal facts, namely the shortage of raw material and the fall of productivity. Having passed through a period of extreme tension due to the war, the working masses are incapable of working at the former rate and under pre-war conditions. The destruction within a few hours of values which it had taken years to create, the rabid, stupendous gambling of the financial clique, ever rising on the heaped bones and ruins caused by the war,—these object lessons of History are hardly helpful in maintaining an automatic discipline in the wage slavery of the working classes.
Bourgeois economic writers and publicists speak of a "wave of idleness" which is sweeping over Europe, undermining its economic future. The employers are endeavoring to mend matters by granting privileges to the upper strata of the working classes. But that is in vain! In order to revive and to increase the productivity of labor it is indispensable that the worker be fully guaranteed that every blow of the hammer will tend to increase his own welfare and enlightenment, without subjecting him to the danger of extermination. Only a Social Revolution is able to inspire him with this confidence.
The increase of the cost of living is a powerful factor of revolutionary agitation in all countries. The bourgeoisie of France, Italy and Germany and other States is endeavoring to ameliorate by charity the destitution caused by the high prices and to retard the growth of the strike movement. To recompense the agricultural class for a part of its expenditure of labor power the State, steeped in debt, indulges in dishonest speculation and the embezzlement of its own funds, making every effort to delay the hour of settlement. Even if there is a certain category of workers whose standard of life is somewhat higher than it was prior to the war this fact has no real relation to the actual economic position of the capitalist countries. True enough some ephemeral results are often obtained today by cheating out the morrow, but there is little doubt that this will lead to catastrophic destitution and poverty.
And the United States? "America is the hope of humanity"​—this phrase of Turgot is being repeated in the person of Millerand by the French bourgeoisie in the hope that its debts will be annulled, in spite of the fact that it itself never acts in this way. But the Government of the United States is not capable of leading Europe out of the economic impasse. During the last six years America has exhausted its reserves of raw material. The adoption of her capital to the requirements of the world war has resulted in a narrowing of her industrial foundations. European immigration has stopped. The counter current of emigration has deprived American industry of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Germans, Italians, Poles, Serbians, Bohemians, who were withdrawn by war mobilization or were attracted by the vision of a newly acquired fatherland. The shortage of raw material and of labor power hangs over the Republic; owing to this the American proletariat is now entering upon a new revolutionary phase of struggle. America is rapidly Europeanizing.
Nor have the neutral countries escaped the consequences of war and blockade; like liquid in connected retorts,—the economic system of production of interconnected states, whether large or small, fighting or neutral, victorious or defeated, established a uniform level,—that of poverty, starvation and degeneration.
Switzerland lives from hand to mouth and every unforeseen event menaces its equilibrium.
In Scandinavia the abundant flow of gold does not solve the food problem. Coal has to be begged for in parcels, hat in hand, from England. In spite of starvation in Europe the fishing industry is passing through an unprecedented crisis in Norway.
Spain remains in an extremely critical position as regards the food question owing to her having been drained of men and horses by France. This state of things leads to stormy manifestations and strikes of the starving masses.
The bourgeoisie firmly relies on the agricultural districts. The bourgeois economists assert that the welfare of the peasantry has improved very much. But this is an illusion. It is true that the trading peasantry of all countries had to some extent enriched themselves during the war. Products have been sold by them at high prices, whilst their debts which were made at the period when money was dear, must now be paid with cheap currency. That is its advantage. But it should be mentioned that the whole agrarian economy was dilapidated and disorganized during the war. It is in need of manufactured goods, while prices for these have increased in proportion to the reduced value of money. The demands of state taxes have become great in the extreme and threaten to devour the peasant with all his land and products. Thus after a period of temporary improvement of the welfare of the small peasantry their condition becomes more and ​more difficult. Their dissatisfaction with the results of the war will continually increase and because they constitute the permanent army,—the small peasantry has many unpleasant surprises for the bourgeoisie.
The economic restoration of Europe made so much of by her ministers, is a lie. Europe is being ruined and the whole world along with her.
There is no salvation in the capitalist system. The policy of Imperialism does not lead to the aboition of destitution, but to its intensification owing to the plundering of reserves.
Raw material and fuel are International questions. They can be solved only on the basis of systematic, socialized production.
The state debts must necessarily be annulled. Labor and its products must be freed from the inordinate tribute to the world plutocracy. This plutocracy must be overthrown. All state barriers which tend to subdivide the entire system of production, must be removed. The Supreme Economic Council of the Imperialists of the Entente must be replaced by the Supreme Economic Council of the world proletariat, to effect a centralized exploitation of all the economic resources of mankind.
It is essential to destroy Imperialism in order to give mankind an opportunity to live.
III. Bourgeois Regime After the War.
The entire power of the privileged classes has been concentrated upon two questions: to maintain their place in the international struggle, and to prevent the proletariat from becoming the owner of the country. This has led to the fact that the former political groupings of the bourgeoisie have lost their power. Not only in Russia where the banner of the Constitutional Democratic Party, at the decisive moment of the struggle became the banner of all propertied classes against the Workers' and Peasants' Revolution, but even in countries with an older and deeper rooted political culture, the former programs which divided the different strata of the bourgeoisie had lost their sharp distinction before the proletarian revolution broke out.
Lloyd George is the spokesman for the amalgamation of the Conservatives, the Unionists and Liberals for a mutual struggle against the approaching domination of the working class. This old demagogue strives to establish the church as a central electric station which is to feed all the parties of the propertied classes.
In France the recent and notorious epoch of anti-clericalism has now become a mere phantom; the radicals, royalists and catholics have formed a bloc of a national character against the proletariat which is lifting its head. The French Government, being ready to assist every reactionary force, supports the reactionary blackhundred Wrangel and re-establishes diplomatic relations with the Vatican.
Giolitti, neutralist and pro-German, has taken the helm of the Italian Government as the general leader of the interventionists, the neutralists, the clericalist, Mazzinists, ready to manouvre with regard to the different questions of foreign and home policy, in order to offer a stiff resistance to the attack of the revolutionary proletarians of town, and country. The Government of Giolitti justly considers itself the last stake of the Italian bourgeoisie.
The policy of every German Government and all the government parties since the overthrow of the Hohenzollerns has been an attempt to establish in conjunction with the Entente ruling classes a general basis of hatred of Bolshevism, i. e., a united force against the Proletarian Revolution.
While the Anglo-French Shylock is making endeavors to garrote the German nation,—the German bourgeoisie, without distinction of parties, entreats its enemy to loosen the noose just enough to enable it to strangle the vanguard of the German pro​letariat with its own hands. This is what the periodical conferences and agreements with regard to disarmament and the transfer of war material amounts to.
In the United States the line of division between the Republicans and the Democrats has been wiped out. These powerful political organizations of the exploiters, adapted to the narrow circle of American interrelations, showed their complete lack of policy the instant the American bourgeoisie appeared upon the arena of world plunder. At no other time have the intrigues of individual leaders and cliques—both in the opposition and in the Cabinet,—been marked by such open cynicism as now. But at the same time all leaders, all cliques, the bourgeois parties of all countries, form a general front against the revolutionary proletariat.
At the time when the Social Democratic dullards persist in opposing dictatorship of democracy, the last vestiges of this democracy are being trodden upon and demolished in every part of the world.
Since the war, during which national representation played the part of an ineffective though ostentatious screen for the ruling imperialist clique, the parliaments fell into a state of complete prostration. All questions of importance are now decided without the parliament. Little is changed in this respect by the apparent widening of the parliamentary prerogatives as solemnly proclaimed by the Imperialist jugglers in Italy and in other countries. The actual masters of the fates of states are Lord Rothschild and Lord Weir, Morgan and Rockefeller, Schneider and Lusher, Hugo Stinnes and Felix Deutch, Rizello and Agnelli, the gold, coal, petroleum and metal kings—these are the men who pull the strings and who send their men to parliament to direct their work.
Amusing itself with the procedure of reading thrice insignificant acts the French parliament—most discredited for its rhetoric of lies and the cynicism of its prostitution—unexpectedly learns that the four billion which it had-appropriated for the restoration of the devastated provinces in France, had been used by Clemenceau for entirely different purposes, in particular for the further devastation of Russian provinces.
The majority of members of the supposedly all-powerful British Parliament are no more aware of the actual intentions of Lloyd George and Curzon with regard to Soviet Russia, or even with regard to France than are Hindoo hags in Bengal villages.
In the United States, Congress is a docile or grumbling chorus for the President, who is himself the figurehead of the electoral machine, which is in its turn the political apparatus of the trusts. ​This is so, by the way, to a far greater extent since the war than previously.
Belated German parliamentarism—an abortion of the bourgeois revolution, in itself an abortion of history,—this parliamentarism suffers in its infancy from every illness peculiar to senile decay. "The most democratic" Reichstag of the Republic of Ebert is powerless, not only before the iron Marshal Foch, but even before the Stock Exchange machinations of their own Stinneses, as well as before the military conspiracies of their war clique. German parliamentary democracy is a void space between two dictatorships.
The composition of the bourgeoisie itself underwent a great change during the war. In the general atmosphere of the impoverishment of the entire world, the concentration of capital suddenly made a great step forward. Firms which were formerly in the background now become prominent. Solidity, stability, a tendency to "reasonable" compromise, the maintainance of a certain decorum, both in exploitation and in the utilization of this exploitation—all this was washed away me the waves of the Imperialist flood.
A new class of rich men has come to the foreground. It consists of military contractors, mean profiteers, parvenues, international adventurers, contrabandists, well-clad crooks—all the unbridled canaille hunting for luxury and ready to commit all kinds of atrocities against the Proletarian Revolution, from which they can expect nothing but the gallows.
The existing order, the rule of the rich, stands now fully exposed before the masses. The post bellum period in America, France and England has been marked by an indulgence in luxury which has assumed the nature of a mania. Paris, filled with international patriotic parasites, as admitted by the "Temps", resembles Babylon on the eve of its destruction.
This new bourgeoisie puts its stamp upon politics, courts, the press, art and the Church. All restraint has been thrown to the winds. Wilson, Clemenceau, Millerand, Lloyd George and Churchill do not shrink from the most brazen deceit, the most transparent falsehood, and when exposed they calmly go on to new criminal deeds. In comparison with the policies of the modern bourgeois statesmen, the classic rules of political cunning expounded by old Machiavelli become mere aphorisms of a provincial simpleton. The law courts, which formerly concealed their bourgeois essence under democratic finery, have now openly become the agency of class brutality and counter-revolutionary provocation. The judges of the Third Republic have passed a verdict of not guilty upon the murderer of Jaures without a quiver. The law courts of Germany, which has been proclaimed a Socialist Republic, are en​couraging the assassins of Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and other proletarian martyrs. The courts of Justice of the bourgeois democracies solemnly legalize all the crimes of the White Terror.
The bourgeois press bears the impress of the golden calf like a trade mark. The leading newspapers of the international bourgeoisie represent a monstrous fabrication of lies, slander and moral adultery.
The state of mind of the bourgeoisie is just as feverish and unsettled as are the prices on its markets. During the first few months following the termination of the war, the international bourgeoisie, especially the French, trembled with fear before the oncoming Communism, measuring the degree of its immediate peril by the enormity of the bloody crimes it had committed. It has, however, sustained the first onslaught. The Socialist Parties and Trade Unions of the Second International, bound by ties of common responsibility to the bourgeoisie, shielded the bourgeoisie and made themselves the object of the first wrathful onslaught of the toilers. The bourgeoisie bought a temporary respite at the price of the uttter collapse of the Second International. The counter-revolutionary elections to the French parliament pushed through by Clemenceau, a few months of unstable equilibrium, the failure of the May strike—all this was sufficient to make the bourgeoisie feel confident of the security of its regime. Its class arrogance is as great today as was its fear yesterday.
The only method of persuasion used by the bourgeoisie to-day is that of intimidation. It believes no more in words, it demands action—arrests, confiscations, raids, executions. Wishing to play up to the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois ministers and parliamentarians pose as men of steel. Lloyd George drily recommends to the German ministers to shoot down their Communists, as France did in 1871. It is sufficient for any third rate official to accompany his inane report by defiant threats against the working class, to receive the loud approval of the Chamber.
The official government apparatus has become transformed into a bloody weapon to crush the labor movement. Alongside with it and under its auspices various private counter-revolutionary organizations have been organized and have started to work. They resort to violence in order to break strikes, to provoke disturbances, to trump up charges, to raid revolutionary organizations and wreck Communist institutions, to organize massacres and incendiarism, to murder the revolutionary leaders and perform similar deeds for the purpose of safeguarding private property and democracy.
Scions of the landlords and of the big bourgeoisie, petty bourgeois who have lost their bearings and the declassed elements, ​among which the emigrants of the Russian nobility occupy the most prominent place, form an inexhaustible reservoir for the formation of counter-revolutionary bands. The command of these bands, is in the hands of officers who have gone through the school of the imperialist slaughter.
Following the rebellion of Kapp-Lutwitz, several thousand professional officers of the Hohenzollern army formed themselves into a strong counter-revolutionary detachment, which cannot be overcome by the German democracy, and which could be crushed only by the sledge-hammer of the proletarian dictatorship. The centralized organization of the old regime terrorists obtains its reserves from the white partisan bands formed on the Junker estates.
In the United States the "National Security League", the "Loyal American League", and similar organizations constitute the picked armies of capital, at the extreme wings of which operate ordinary bands of brigands in the person of private detective agencies.
In France the "Ligue Civique" represents a fashionable organization of strikebreakers, while the reformist "Confederation du Travail" has been outlawed.
The officers Mafia of white Hungary and the counter-revolutionary executioners patronized by England, have shown to the proletariat of the world a sample of that civilization and humaneness advocated by Wilson and Lloyd George in opposition to the Soviet government and revolutionary violence.
The "Democratic" governments of Finland and Georgia, Latvia and Esthonia are trying by all means to live up to this Hungarian model.
In Barcelona there is a band of assassins working under the control of the police. And so it is everywhere.
Even in defeated and devastated Bulgaria the officers, without employment, are uniting into secret societies, ready at the first opportunity to demonstrate their patriotism upon the heads of the Bulgarian workingmen.
The program of the smoothing over of contradictions, of the cooperation of classes, of parliamentary reforms, of gradual socialization, of national unity, represents a grim jest in face of the bourgeois regime such as it has emerged from the world war.
The bourgeoisie has entirely abandoned the idea of reconciling the proletariat by means of reform. It contents itself with demoralizing the few labor aristocrats by means of bribery and holding the great masses in subjection by blood and iron.
There is not a single serious problem today which is decided by voting. Democracy has left but a memory of itself in the minds of the reformists. The entire state organization has been reduced ​to its primitive form, i. e., armed force. Instead of counting the votes, the bourgeoisie counts the bayonets, machine guns and cannons, which will be at its disposal at the moment when the question of power will be finally decided.
There can be no room either for cooperation or for mediation. The only salvation is in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. This can be achieved only by the rising of the proletariat.
IV. Soviet Russia.
Amidst the unbridled passions of chauvinism, avarice and destruction, it has been the principle of Communism alone that has manifested a high degree of vitality and constructive force. In the course of historical development the Soviet government has for the first time been established in the most backward and exhausted country of Europe, surrounded by a host of mighty foes. But in spite of all that, it has not only maintained itself in the struggle against such great odds, but it has also demonstrated in reality the great possibilities Inherent in Communism. The development and consolidation of the Soviet power in Russia is the most momentous historical event of the period succeeding the foundation of the Communist International.
In the eyes of class society the creation of an army has usually been regarded as the supreme test of industrial and State construction. The weakness or the strength of the army has been regarded as evidence of the weakness or strength of industry and the State.
In the midst of the strife the Soviet power has created a mighty armed force. The Red Army has demonstrated its superiority not alone in the struggle with old bourgeois monarchist Russia, which was endeavoring to reestabish Imperialism by the aid of the White armies of Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenitch, Wrangel, etc., but also in the struggle with the national armies of the "democracies" which world imperialism is planting for its own interests (Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Poland).
That the Soviet Government has succeeded in maintaining itself during the first three trying years is a miraculous achievement in the field of economy. The reason why it has withstood all pressure and continues to develop is that it has taken the means of production out of the hands of the bourgeoisie, and has transformed them into instruments for the organization of industry. Amid the noise of battle along the endless battlefronts, Soviet Russia has not failed to take advantage of every opportunity of industrial construction. In the interval between the crushing defeat of Denikin and the murderous attack of Poland, the Soviet government began upon a plan of an extensive organization of labor conscription. It inaugurated a precise registration of economic forces and means with a view to their proper application; it attracted military detachments to the accomplishment of industrial tasks, and above all it began to reestablish its transport system.
​The monopoly by the Socialist State of the necessities of life, and an indefatigable struggle against speculation have saved the Russian cities from starvation, and made it possible to supply food to the Red Army. The centralization of scattered mills, factories, private railroads and ships has assured the possibility of production and transport.
The concentration of industry and of the means of transportation in the hands of the government leads to the standardizing of the industrial arts and makes them the common property of society. Only under a socialist regime is it possible to fix the minimum number of types of locomotive cars and steamers to be manufactured and repaired, and to carry on standard manufacture en masse of parts of machinery designed by periodic regulations, thus securing enormous advantages in the matter of productivity. Beside the imperialist assaults from abroad nothing stands in the way of Soviet Russia’s further economic achievements, and nothing is going to prevent her scientific organization of industry and the introduction of the Taylor system, divested of course, of its capitalistic features of exploitation and sweating.
While in the rest of the world national interests clashing with imperialist encroachments serve as the source of incessant conflicts, uprisings and wars, socialist Russia has shown how easily a Workers' Government can reconcile national requirements with industry interests by purging the former of chauvinism and the latter of imperialism. Socialism strives to bring about a union of all regions, districts, and nationalities by means of a unified social economy. For an economic centralism freed from the exploitation of one class by another and of one nation by another and, hence, beneficial to all alike can be brought about without any infringement upon the real freedom of national development.
All the oppressed nations and tribes, the peoples of the British dominions, the Egyptians and the Turks, the Hindoos and the Persians, the Irish and the Bulgarians, the nations of central Europe, and of the Balkan states, have all convinced themselves by the example of Soviet Russia that the establishment of a Federation of Soviet Republics will make it possible for all the national units of humanity to live together in friendly cooperation.
As a result of the Revolution Russia has become the first proletarian empire. During the three years of her existence her boundaries have undergone continual changes; they have shrunk under the external military pressure of international imperialism and extended again when that pressure relaxed. The struggle for Soviet Russia has become blended with the struggle against world imperialism.
The attitude towards Soviet Russia forms the touchstone by which all labor organizations are tested. When the German So​cial Democracy got in control of the government it sought the protection of western imperialism instead of throwing in its lot with the revolution in the East, thus adding another most dastardly treacherous act to those committed by it since August 4, 1914. A Soviet Germany united with a Soviet Russia would have represented a combined force exceeding from the very start all the capitalist states taken together.
The cause of Soviet Russia has become the cause of the Communist International. The International proletariat will not sheathe the sword until a Federation of Soviet Republics of the world, linked together with Soviet Russia will be an accomplished fact.
V. Proletarian Revolution and the Communist International
All over the world Civil War is on the order of the day. Its watchword is—All Power to the Soviets!
The great masses of humanity have been converted into proletarians by capitalism. Imperialism has thrown these masses out of balance and started them on the revolutionary road. The very meaning of the term, "masses", has undergone a change. Those elements which were regarded as masses in the epoch of parliamentarism and Trade Unionism have now become the aristocracy. Millions and tens of millions of those who formerly lived outside of political life have now become the revolutionary masses. The War has aroused everybody, it has awakened the political interest of the backward strata and aroused in them illusions and hopes which were not fulfilled. The social foundations of the old forms of the labor movement—the craft division of labor, the comparative stability of the standard of living of the upper proletarian strata and the dull, apathetic hopelessness among the lower ranks—all this has irretrievably passed away. New millions have joined the struggle. The women who have lost their husbands and fathers and have been compelled to take their places in the ranks of labor are streaming into the movement. The working youth which has grown up under the storm and stress of the World War meets the Revolution as its native element.
In various countries the struggle is passing through different stages. But it is the final conflict. Not infrequently the waves of the movement rush into the obsolete channels of organization, lending them temporary vitality. On the surface of the stream there are still found, drifted here and there, old time slogans and obliterated mottos. There is still much confusion of mind, vacillation, prejudices and illusions. But the movement as a whole is of a profoundly revolutionary character. It is all-embracing and irresistible. It spreads, strengthening and purifying itself, and eliminating all the old rubbish. It will not halt before it brings about the rule of the world proletariat.
The fundamental form of this movement is the strike. Its prime and potent cause lies in the increase of prices of the necessaries of life. Not infrequently it arises out of single local conflicts. It also comes as an expression of the masses' impatience with the parliamentary Socialist squabbles. It originates in the feeling of solidarity with the oppressed of all countries. Its slogans are both economic and political. It frequently combines fragments of reformism with revolutionary Socialist mottos. At ​times this movement quiets down, ceases, then breaks out again, shaking the foundations of production and keeping the government apparatus under constant strain, and causing the bourgeoisie great anxiety by sending its expressions of greeting to Soviet Russia. The anxiety of the exploiters is well founded, for the spontaneous strike movement is in reality the Social Revolution; it is the roll call and the marshalling of the International Proletariat. The close interdependence between one country and another, which has been so catastrophically demonstrated during the War, lends particular significance to the branches of industry of each country, and puts the railwaymen and transport workers in general in a most prominent position. The transport workers have had occasion to display some of their power in the boycott of White Hungary and White Poland. The strike and the boycott which the workers resorted to at the dawn of the Trade Union movement, that is before it had launched out on pariliamentary activity, now assume a new unwonted nature and a menacing significance, similar to an artillery preparation preceding the final attack.
The ever increasing helplessness of the single individual before the blindly acting forces of history have driven into the labor unions not only new elements of working men and women but also salaried employees, official and middle class intellectuals. The course of the Proletarian Revolution will of necessity bring forth the Soviets, which will immediately assume supremacy over the old labor organizations. But in anticipation of that time, the toilers fill the ranks of the labor unions, tolerating for the time being their old forms, their official programs, and their dominating aristocracy, but introducing into the organization an ever increasing revolutionary force of millions of members who have stood heretofore outside.
The lowliest of the lowly—the agricultural proletariat—is raising its head. In Spain, Germany, and other countries we witness a magnificent development of the revolutionary movement among the agricultural laborers fraternally uniting with the city proletariat.
The poorest elements of the peasants are changing their attitude towards Socialism. The parliamentary reformists have tried in vain to play upon the property-interests of the peasants. But the bona fide revolutionary movement of the proletariat and its implacable struggle against the oppressors give birth to feelings of hope in the hearts of the most backward and most lowly and plundered farmers. The ocean of human privation and squalor is bottomless… Every social wave rising to the surface leaves beneath it another wave just about to rise. But the vanguard must take the field without waiting for the rear to come ​up. Only after the working class has got to power will it accomplish the work of awakening, uplifting, and enlightening its most backward brethren.
The toilers of the colonial and semi-colonial countries have arisen. The gigantic tentacles of the octopus of English Imperialism hold in their embrace the vast areas of India, Egypt, Persia; but this tremendous human ocean is agitated by incessant internal disturbances, causing the City to experience frequent drops of shares as well as hearts.
The national sentiments frequently blend with the social sentiments in the movement of the colonial countries. Both these however, are directed against Imperialism. Under the pressure of modern Imperialism and the leadership of the revolutionary proletariat the colonial and subject countries in general make a rapid march from primitive and weak methods of struggle to more mature ones.
The fraternizing of the Mohamedan and non Mohamedan peoples, all alike suffering under English and foreign domination in general, is fraught with great possibilities. By purifying the movement internally, by doing away with the influence of the clergy and of chauvinist reaction; by simultaneously fighting the foreign exploiter together with his native confederate—the feudal lord, the priest and the usurer—this growing army of colonial rebels is becoming a grand historic force and a mighty reserve for the world proletariat.
The pariahs have arisen! Their aroused sentiments extend eagerly towards Soviet Russia, to the barricade battles in the streets of German cities, to the growing strike wave in Great Britain, to the Communist International.
The Sociaist who aids directly or indirectly in maintaining the privileges of one nation at the expense of another, he who acquiesces in colonial slavery, he who draws a line of distinction between races and colors in the matter of human rights; he who helps the bourgeoisie of the metropolis to perpetuate its domination in the colonies instead of promoting the armed uprising, the British Socialist who fails to support by all possible means the uprisings in Ireland, Egypt and India against the London plutocracy,—such a Socialist should not only not get a mandate of confidence from the workers but should be shot or at any rate branded with shame.
At the same time the International revolutionary proletariat in its efforts to liberate itself, is being thwarted more by Party and Trade Union leaders who have climbed upon its back during the recent period, and by their egotism, conservatism, imbecility and treachery, than by the remnants of the barbed wire entanglements set up between countries during the war.
​The leaders of the old Trade Unions counteract in all manner of ways the revolutionary struggle of the masses and paralyze it. If they cannot do otherwise they frequently father a strike in order to nullify its results by underhand machinations.
The historic treachery to the cause of the International proletariat committed by the Social Democracy is unprecedented in the annals of history. The most glaring example of this treachery has been manifested in Germany. The defeat of German Imperialism was at the same time the destruction of capitalist economy in the country. There was no class that could pretend to State power other than the proletariat. The development of technical facilities, the high cultural level and numerical strength of the working class sufficiently guaranteed the ultimate triumph of the Social Revolution. But the German Social Democracy blocked the way. By means of intricate combinations, of cunning and folly, it diverted the energy of the proletariat from its natural and essential task—the conquest of power.
For a number of decades Social Democracy had enjoyed the confidence of the laboring masses, and when the critical moment came it made use of all its accumulated authority in an effort to save bourgeois society whose existence was at stake.
Compared to the monstrous treachery of the Socialist Parties, the failure of liberalism and the collapse of bourgeois democracy are but mere episodes. Even the part played by the Church, the central power-house of conservatism, as Lloyd George has defined it, can not be compared with the anti-Socialist role of the Second International.
Social Democracy tried to justify its treachery to the revolution during the war by the slogan of national defense, while its counter-revolutionary policy following the conclusion of peace it seeks to hide under the watchword of democracy. NATIONAL DEFENSE and DEMOCRACY—these are the solemn formulas setting forth the capitulation of the proletariat to the will of the bourgeoisie.
But this does not fathom the whole depth to which the Social Democracy has sunk. Following up its policy of protecting the capitalist state it is being forced, like the bourgeoisie, to trample under foot both "national defense" and "democracy". Scheidemann and Ebert are licking the boots of French Imperialism, seeking its protection against the Socialist Revolution. Noske has become the personification of the White Terror of the bourgeois counter revolution.
Albert Thomas is the hired servant of the League of Nations, that contemptible agency of Imperialism. Vandervelde, the eloquent personification of the superficiality of the Second International, at the head of which he stood, has become the Royal ​Minister, the confederate of Delacroix,—member of the clerical party,—the advocate of the Belgian catholic priests, and the defender of capitalist atrocities against the negroes in the Congo.
Henderson, who is aping the great men of the bourgeoisie, who appears on the scene now as Royal Minister and then again as a Labor opposition to his Royal Highness; Tom Shaw, who demands that the Soviet Government furnish documentary evidence of the fact that there are robbers, murderers and liars in the London Government,—who are all these gentlemen if not the sworn enemies of the working class!
Renner and Zeitz, Niemetz and Tuzar, Troelstra and Branting, Dasczinsky and Tchkheidze,—every one of them interprets the disgraceful collapse of the Second International in terms of their petty government trickery.
Finally Karl Kautsky, former theoretician of the Second International and ex-Marxist, has become the privy counsellor of inanities for the yellow press of all countries.
The more pliant elements of the old Socialism have changed their appearance and coloring under the pressure of the masses, without changing in essence. They break away, or are preparing to break away from the Second International, at the same time invariably shrinking from every revolutionary activity of the masses and from every serious preparation for action. The fact that the Polish Socialist Party, led by Dasczinsky and patronized by Pilsudsky, that party of petty bourgeois cynicism and chauvinistic treachery, has proclaimed its break with the Second International, is sufficient to characterize and brand this masquerade.
The leading parliamentary fraction of the French Socialist Party, voting now against the budget and against the Versailles Treaty, essentially remains one of the mainstays of the bourgeois republic. Its pose of opposition goes only so far as is necessary to regain the partial confidence of the more conservative elements of the proletariat.
Regarding the fundamental problems of the class struggle, French parliamentary Socialism continues as heretofore to demoralize the will of the working class, suggesting to it that the present moment is not favorable for the conquest of power, because France is too exhausted. Yesterday the reason was the war, while prior to the war it was the industrial revival that interfered, and still earlier it was the industrial crisis. Alongside with parliamentary Socialism and on the same level with it comes the garrulous and mendacious Syndicalism of Jouhaux and Co.
The creation of a strong, firmly welded and disciplined Communist Party in France is of vital importance to the French proletariat.
​A new generation of workers is being educated and tempered in the strikes and uprisings in Germany. The number of victims this struggle requires is great, inasmuch as the conservative Social Democrats still retain their influence in the Independent Social Democracy, constantly reverting to the Social Democracy of the times of Bebel, failing to understand the nature of the present revolutionary epoch, flinching from civil war and revolutionary terrorism, and lingering in the train of events in the expectation of a miracle which is to come to the assistance of their inefficiency. But the party of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht teaches the German workers in the front line of battle to find the proper road.
The stolidity in the upper ranks of the Labor movement in England is so great that they have not yet even realized the necessity of changing their weapon: the leaders of the British Labor Party stubbornly strive to maintain their position within the Second International. At the time when the march of events during recent years has undermined the stability of economic life in conservative England and has made the toiling masses most susceptible to a revolutionary program,—at this time the official bourgeois State machinery, the Royal power, the Houses of Lords and Commons, the Church, the Trade Unions, the Labor Party, George the Fifth, the Archbishop of Cantenbury, and Henderson—remains intact as a powerful automatic brake on the wheel of progress. Only a Communist Party, closely united with the mass organizations and free from routine and schism is able to line up the lowly proletarians against this official aristocracy.
In Italy where the bourgeoisie itself openly admits that the future destiny of the country is in the hands of the Socialist Party, the right wing headed by Turati is striving to force the Proletarian Revolution, which is powerfully developing, into the channel of parliamentary reforms. This internal sabotage represents the greatest menace of the present day.
Workers of Italy, remember the fate of Hungary, which has come down in history as a solemn warning to the proletariat that whilst struggling for power and after the conquest of power it must stand firm, sweeping away all elements of uncertainty and hesitation, and mercilessly crushing all attempts at treachery.
The upheaval caused by the War, which has led to a profound economic crisis, has opened a new chapter in the Labor movement in the United States as well as in the other countries of the American continent. The failure of the Wilsonian bombast and falsehood will destroy at the same time American socialism, which was made up of a mixture of pacifist illusions and businesslike pursuits, which served as a peaceful adjunct to the left wing of the Trade Unions of Gompers. The closest solidification of the re​volutionary proletarian parties and organizations of the American continent—from the Alaska peninsula to Cape Horn—into a firmly welded American Section of the International which shall stand up against the mighty enemy—American imperialism, this is the task which must be accomplished, and which will be accomplished in the struggle against all the forces which the Dollar will mobilize in its defense.
The official and semi-official Socialists of various countries accuse the Communists on many occasions, that by their implacable tactics they provoke counter-revolution and assist it to mobilize its forces. These political accusations are nothing more than belated versions of Liberal complaints. The latter always asserted that the independent struggle of the proletariat is driving the propertied classes into the camp of reaction. This is, of course, beyond dispute. Should the working class not encroach upon the foundations of bourgeois domination, the bourgeoisie would have no need to resort to repressive measures. The very idea of counter revolution would have no existence if revolutions were unknown to history. If the uprisings of the proletariat have as their inevitable result the organization of the bourgeoisie for self-defense and counter attack, this only means that Revolution is a struggle of two irreconcilable classes which can end only with the final victory of one of them. Communism rejects with contempt the policy of keeping the masses inert by intimidating them with the club of counter revolution.
In opposition to the disintegration and anarchy of the capitalist world, which is threatening to demolish in its last exertions all human culture the Communist International sets up the united struggle of the international proletariat for the abolition of private property in the means of production, and for the reconstruction of national and world economy on a uniform economic plan instituted and maintained by a society of producers united by common interests and responsibilities. Marshalling millions of toilers in all parts of the world under the banner of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Soviet form of government, the Communist International builds up, organizes, and purifies its own ranks, in the fire of the struggle.
The Communist International is the revolutionary party of the International proletariat. It sweeps aside all those organizations and groups which beguile the proletariat, openly or in disguise, inducing it to kneel before the fetishes screening the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, such as legality, democracy, national defense, etc.
Neither can the Communist International admit into its ranks those organizations which have inscribed in their program the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but which at the same time ​continue to rely in their tactics upon a peaceful solution of the historical crisis. The mere recognition of the soviet system of government does not settle the question. The soviet organization does not possess any miraculous powers. The revolutionary forces are in the possession of the proletariat itself. The Soviet organiaztion manifests its qualities as an indispensable weapon in the hands of the proletariat only at the time when it rises to conquer the power of government.
The Communist International demands the expulsion from the labor movement of those leaders who are directly or indirectly implicated in political collaboration with the bourgeoisie. We want leaders who have no other attitude towards bourgeois society but one of mortal hatred; who organize the proletariat for an implacable struggle, who are ready to lead the insurgent army to the battle front, who are not going to stop half way, whatever happens, and who will not shrink from resorting to severe measures against all those who may attempt to arrest their progress by force.
The Communist International is the international party of proletarian insurrection and proletarian dictatorship. It has no aims and problems other than those of the working class. The pretentions of petty sects, each of which claims to have its own way leading to the salvation of the working class are foreign and hostile to the spirit of the Communist International. Creating no panacea, the Communist International bases its policy upon the past and present international experiences of the working class; it purges that experience of all fallacies and deviations from the proper course, it generalizes the conquests made and recognizes and adopts only such revolutionary formulas as partake of the nature of mass action.
The labor union, the economic and political strike, the boycott, parliamentary and municipal elections, the parliamentary platform, legal and illegal agitation, auxiliary bases in the army, the cooperative, the barricade—none of these forms of organization and methods of struggle is repudiated by the Communist International, nor is any singled out as a panacea.
The Soviet system of government is not an abstract principle opposed by the Communist to the principle of parliamentarism. The Soviet system is a weapon of the working class which must do away with the parliament, and take its place during the struggle and as a result of the struggle. Carrying on an irreconcilable fight against reformism in the Trade Unions and against parliamentary cretinism and careerism, the Communist International at the same time condemns the attitude of leaving the ranks of the numerous labor organizations or of keeping away from parliamentary and municipal institutions. The Communists must not aban​don the masses, which are being deceived and betrayed by the reformist and patriots, but in carrying on an implacable struggle against the latter they must make use of the mass organizations and institutions established by bourgeois society, with a view of overthrowing them the more surely and the more speedily. Under the guise of the Second International, the methods of class organization and of class struggle, which have been almost exclusively of a legal character were, in the final analysis, controlled and directed by the bourgeoisie, which has made its reformist agencies act as a bridle on the revolutionary proletariat. The Communist International, on the other hand, tears this bridle out of the hands of the bourgeoisie, takes hold of the methods and organizations of the working class, gets them all under revolutionary leadership, and puts before the proletariat one single goal: the conquest of power for the abolition of the bourgeois state and for the institution of a Communist society.
In all his activity, whether it be as a leader of a revolutionary strike, as an organizer of illegal groups, as secretary of a Trade Union, as agitator at mass meetings, as deputy, as cooperator, or as barricade fighter the Communist must always remain true to himself as a disciplined member of the Communist party, a devoted fighter, a mortal enemy of the capitalist order together with its economic bases, its forms. of government, its democratic falsehood, its religion, and its morality. He must be a self-sacrificing soldier of the Proletarian Revolution, and an indefatigable herald of the new society.
Working men and working women!
There is only one banner on earth under which it is well worth while to struggle and to die. It is the banner of the Communist International.
Signed:
| 1) | Russia: Lenin, Zinoviev, Boukharine, Trotzky. |
| 2) | Germany: Levi, Meyer, Valher, Volfstein. |
| 3) | Austria: Steinhardt, Thoman, Stremer. |
| 4) | France: Rosmer, Sadoul, Guilbeaux. |
| 5) | England: Quelch, Gallagher, Pankhurst, MacLaine. |
| 6) | America: Flynn, Fraina, Bilan, Reed. |
| 7) | Italy: Serrati, Bombacci, Graciadei, Bordiga. |
| 8) | Norway: Fries, Schefflo, Madsen. |
| 9) | Switzerland: Herzog, Humbert-Droz. |
| 10) | Denmark: Jorgensen, Nilsen. |
| 11) | Holland: Wijnkoop, Jansen, Van Leuven. |
| 12) | Belgium: Van Oeverstraetten. |
| 13) | Spain: Pestana. |
| 14) | Sweden: Dahlstrem, Samuelson, Winberg. |
| 15) | Hungary: Rakoszy, Rudniansky, Varga. |
| 16) | Galicia: Levitzky. |
| 17) | Poland: Marcholovsky. |
| 18) | Latvia: Stutehka, Krastin. |
| 20) | Czecho-Slovakia: Vanek, Hula, Sapotozky. |
| 21) | Esthonia: Vakman, Pegelman. |
| 22) | Finland: Rachia, Lotonitzky, Manner. |
| 23) | Bulgaria: Kabaktchiev, Maksimow, Chablin. |
| 24) | Jugo-Slavia: Milkitz. |
| 25) | Georgia: Litha-Zhakaia. |
| 26) | Armenia: Nasaritjan. |
| 27) | Turkey: Nichad. |
| 28) | Persia: Sultan-Sade. |
| 29) | India: Acharia, Sheffik, M. N. Roy. |
| 30) | Dutch India: Maring. |
| 31) | China: Laou-Siu-Than. |
| 32) | Corea: Pak-Din-Chun, Kin-Tulin. |
| 33) | Mexico: R. Allen, F. Seaman. |
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