Notes on the Third International

Communist International

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm

**Memoirs of a Revolutionary. Victor Serge**

=== from Chapter 3.

On Second Congress of Comintern ===
Lenin was bending every effort to convince the ‘Left
Communists’ — Dutch, German, or (like Bordiga) Italian — of the necessity for compromise and
participation in electoral and Parliamentary politics; he warned of the
danger of their becoming revolutionary sects. In his discussion of the
‘national and colonial question’, Lenin emphasized the possibility, and even necessity, of inspiring
Soviet-type revolutions in the Asiatic colonial countries. The
experience of Russian Turkestan, seemed to lend support to his arguments. He
was aiming primarily at India
and China; he thought that the blow must be directed to these countries
in order to weaken British imperialism, which then appeared as the inveterate
foe of the Soviet Republic. The
Russians had no further hopes for the traditional Socialist parties of Europe.
They judged that the only possible course was to work for splits that would
break with the old reformist and Parliamentary leaderships, thereby
creating new parties, disciplined and controlled by the Executive in Moscow,
which would proceed efficiently to the conquest of power.

the growth of intolerance and servility among many officials
and their drive towards privilege

they began to be enclosed within all the tricks and
tomfooleries of servility

the spectre of future war would raise a question-mark over
the existence of civilization itself, unless the social system of Europe was
speedily transformed

## Victor Serge

= A
New International =

### (1944)

It is true that the Second International lacked socialist
spirit, revolutionary foresight and energy. It is true that the Third has, on
the other hand, fallen into the grossest opportunism, authoritarian
centralisation, extreme doctrinal vulgarisation, and has also completely become
the vassal of the Soviet state.

the usually bourgeois psychology of the working-class
aristocracies of Western Europe

**Arthur Ransome**
Russia in 1919

## V. I. Lenin

= First
Congress of the Communist International =
History teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or
could, achieve power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the
conquest of political power and forceable suppression of the resistance always
offered by the exploiters—the resistance that is most desperate, most furious,
and that stops at nothing.

We responded
to the bourgeois war with the proletarian war—there can be no other way. How should we
reply to the bandit war, e.g. in Donbass? «Брат»?

The founding of an international Soviet republic is on the
way. The
International is a step towards an international Soviet, anti-capitalist
republic.

## The First Five Years of the Communist International

#### Volume 1

= Manifesto of the Communist International

to the Workers of the World =
If the war of 1870 dealt a blow to the First International,
disclosing that there was as yet no fused mass force behind its
social-revolutionary program, then the war of 1914 killed the Second
International, disclosing that the mightiest organizations of the working
masses were dominated by parties which had become transformed into auxiliary
organs of the bourgeois state!

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm

= The
Second Congress Of The Communist International =
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/04.htm

the idea, common among the old parties and the old leaders of
the Second International, that the majority of the exploited toilers can
achieve complete clarity of socialist consciousness and firm socialist
convictions and character under capitalist slavery, under the yoke of the
bourgeoisie (which assumes an inIinite variety of forms that become more subtle
and at the same time more brutal and ruthless the higher the cultural level in
a given capitalist country) is also idealisation of capitalism and of bourgeois
democracy, as well as deception of the workers. In fact, it is only after the
vanguard of the proletariat, supported by the whole or the majority of this,
the only revolutionary class, overthrows the exploiters, suppresses them,
emancipates the exploited from their state of slavery and-immediately improves
their conditions of life at the expense of the expropriated capitalists—it is only after this, and only
in the actual process of an acute class strugg]e, that the masses of the
toilers and exploited can be educated, trained and organised around the
proletariat under whose influence and guidance, they can get rid of the
selfishness, disunity, vices and weaknesses engendered by private property;
only then will they be converted into a free union of free workers” <– how then
is revolution possible, if by “revolution” we mean an action of the majority of
population against a minority?

Victory over capitalism calls for proper relations between the
leading (Communist) party, the revolutionary class (the proletariat) and the
masses, i.e., the entire body of the toilers and the exploited.

Finally, it is only after they have been really emancipated
from the yoke of the bourgeoisie and of the bourgeois machinery of state, only
after they have found an opportunity of organising in their Soviets in a really
free way (free from the exploiters), that the masses, i.e., the toilers and
exploited as a body, can display, for the first time in history, all the
initiative and energy of tens of millions of people who have been crushed by
capitalism. Only when the Soviets have become the sole state apparatus is it
really possible to ensure the participation, in the work of administration, of
the entire mass of the exploited, who, even under the most enlightened and
freest bourgeois democracy, have always actually been excluded 99 per cent from
participation in the work of administration. It is only in the Soviets that the
exploited masses really begin to learn—not in books, but from their own
practical experience—the work of socialist construction, of creating a new
social discipline and a free union of free workers.” Here Lenin is
wrong. It is not a matter of simply “Soviets”, as a form, but of a certain,
rather high level of development of productive forces, and hence consciousness
of the producers, their multiple skills, that they can become engaged in
administration of public affairs.

Manifesto of the Communist International, 1920

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/2nd-congress/2-Manifesto-2nd-Congress-CI-1920.pdf

Characterizes the state of international relations after WWI:
France, England, USA, etc.

Special attention to the 2 dominant imperialist powers:
England and the USA.

Soviet Russia in opposition to them.

Attitude to Soviet Russia is the touchstone by which all
labor and communist organizations are tested. Today, this means the attitude to
the war in Donbass.

## V. I. Lenin

= Terms
of Admission into Communist International =
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/x01.htm

3. In countries where a state of siege or emergency
legislation makes it impossible for Communists to conduct their activities
legally, it is absolutely
essential that legal and illegal work should be combined. In almost all
the countries of Europe and America, the class struggle is entering the phase
of civil war. In these conditions, Communists can place no trust in bourgeois
legality. They must everywhere build up a parallel illegal organisation, which,
at the decisive moment, will be in a position to help the Party fulfil its duty
to the revolution.” This applies directly to us. I feel I cannot say everything
that I want to say because of the civil war now going on in the country, and I
am “legal” and can easily be located and hit. Moreover, my wife – Ira – is one
of the bureaucracy.

I absolutely don’t understand the situation in the world, and
what must be done.

13. Parties belonging to the Communist International must be
organised on the principle of democratic centralism. In this period of acute
civil war, the Communist parties can perform their duty only if they are
organised in a most centralised manner, are marked by an iron discipline
bordering on military discipline, and have strong and authoritative party
centres invested with wide powers and enjoying the unanimous confidence of the
membership.

= The Organisational
Structure of the Communist Parties, the Methods and Content of Their Work:
Theses =
https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/3rd-congress/party-theses.htm

1921

In the coming period the centrally important task for all Parties
is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the seizure of power.

Accordingly, *all the organisational work*of the
Communist Parties in the capitalist countries must be directed towards
establishing organisations which can guarantee the victory of the proletarian
revolution over the ruling classes.

the division between the ‘bureaucracy’ and the ‘people’. Under the paralysing influence
of the bourgeois environment a separation of functions occurred; formal
democracy replaced the active participation of working people, and the
organisation was divided into the active functionaries and the passive masses.
Even the revolutionary workers’ movement has not entirely escaped the influence
of the bourgeois environment and the evils of this formalism and division” not the
bourgeois environment, but material culture at the level of industrialization

Both the legal and illegal Communist Parties often understand
illegal Communist organisational work to be the creation and maintenance of a
closely knit and exclusively military organisation, isolated from other aspects
of Party work and organisation. This is undoubtedly a mistaken view. In the
pre-revolutionary period our military organisations must be built primarily by
general Communist Party work. The Party *as a whole*must become a *military
organisation*fighting
for revolution.

very precaution must be taken to prevent suspicious or
unreliable persons joining the Party. The methods to be used will depend to a
considerable degree on whether the Party is legal or illegal, whether it is in
a period of growth or of stagnation. One method which has had favourable
results in some places and in certain circumstances is the system of
candidature, according to which persons wanting to join the Party are first
accepted as candidates on the recommendation of one or two Party comrades, and
are only adopted as full members if they carry out successfully the Party work
assigned to them.” This worked in Algiers.

**Third Congress of the Communist International**

# On Tactics

### V. Single-Issue Struggles and Single-Issue Demands

revolutionary action should be organised around
all the demands raised by the masses, and these separate actions will gradually
merge into a powerful movement for social revolution

Essentially, these are documents on the international
situation, the relation of Soviet Russia and the Communist Party towards these
events.

Hence, preparing for world revolution, according to
Comintern, is:

1) analyzing the world situation, international relations.

Special
attention to transitional states, such as Russia, China, and main imperialism,
the      USA

2) understanding the attitude of various left parties,
organizations towards these problems, the attitude to transitional states being
“a cornerstone”.

Hence, getting to know the affairs in the various
international parties, their past and present. Engaging in the polemic with
those of them who are close. This is a part of organizing. Larger scale of
organizing includes: own publication­­­­, working for a joint congresses,
working for a common worldview. Party of world revolution essentially should be
a military organization, with a military discipline, but with a wider scope
than an army, for it is essentially a political organization.

3) On more theoretical level, as did Lenin in “State and
Revolution”, analyzing previous revolutions, and what revolutionary authorities
think of these.

4) Special attention should be placed on understanding modern
productive forces, first of all knowledge, as the principal productive force.
This is the essential area where modernity has gone behind Marxism of XIX
century. Those elements should be contacted and organizational efforts made who
understand this truth.

= The Main Lesson of the Third
Congress =
the false
theory of an initiating minority which by its heroism shatters “the wall of
universal passivity” of the proletariat. The false theory of uninterrupted
offensives conducted by the proletarian vanguard, as a “new method” of
struggle; the false theory of partial battles which are waged by applying the
methods of armed insurrection. And so forth and so on. The clearest exponent of
this tendency is the Vienna journal **Communism**.
It is absolutely self-evident that tactical theories of this sort have nothing
in common with Marxism.

Undeniably these adventurist methods and theories arise as a
reaction to the reformist and centrist tendencies within the labor movement,
whose direct supplement they are.

(Fourth Congress) https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm

## Leon Trotsky

= Report on the Communist
International =

### (December 1922)

Marxism teaches us that in order for the proletarian
revolution to become possible there must be given, schematically speaking,
three premises or conditions. In the first place the conditions of production.
The technology of production must have attained such heights as to provide
economic gains from the replacement of capitalism by socialism. Secondly, there
must be a class interested in effecting this change and sufficiently strong to
achieve it, that is, a class numerically large enough and playing a
sufficiently important role in economy to introduce this change. The reference
here, is of course, to the working class. And thirdly, this class must be
prepared to carry through the revolution. It must have the will to carry it
out, and must be sufficiently organized and conscious to be capable of carrying
it out.

The second pre-requisite: the working class. It must be, come
sufficiently powerful in the economic sense in order to gain power and rebuild
society.” Not only “power in the economic sense”. It must be the most important in
the production process. Hence, it must come to manage the economy, first of
all, without being in charge of it, in charge of the society – a position
attained by the capitalist elements today in the former USSR.

Revolutionary class must show a tendency towards self-organization,
and hence organization of others.

Not to take the role of the party into account is to fall
into pseudo-Marxist objectivism which presupposes some sort of purely objective
and automatic preparation of the revolution, and thereby postpones the latter
to an indefinite future. This automatism is alien to us.