History of the Three Internationals

The World Socialist and Communist

Movements from 1848 to the Present

by William Z. Foster
 TO ESTHER

Originally published in 1955

Re-published in 2014

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 CONTENTS
PART I: THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL, 1864-1876

1. GENERAL ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL 15

BACKGROUND
The Industrial Revolution, 15... The Political
Consolidation of Capitalism, 16... The Industrial
Revolution and the Workers, 17... Early Trade
Unionism, 19... Anti-Capitalist Tendencies, 21

2. SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM 25
The Communist League and the Communist Manifesto,
25... The Major Principles of Marxist Socialism, 27

3. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 36

The Revolution in France, 36... The German
Revolution, 38... Betrayal by the Capitalist Class, 40...
Years of Political Reaction, 41

4. THE FOUNDING OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL 44

(1864)
Precursors of the First International, 44... Establishment
of the International Workingmen’s Association, 48... The
I.W.A. Program and Constitution, 50

5. TRADE UNIONISM, PROUDHON, LASSALLE, AND 53

BAKUNIN
Pure and Simple Trade Unionism, 54... Blanquism, 56...
Proudhonism, 57... Lassalleism, 59... Bakuninism, 61

6. CONSOLIDATION: THE GENEVA CONGRESS (1866) 65

Political Activities of the I.W.A., 66... The Work of the
Congress, 68
 7. GROWTH: LAUSANNE AND BRUSSELS (1867-1868) 73
I.WA. Trade Unions and Strikes, 73... The International
in the Political Struggle, 74... The Congress of
Lausanne, 76... The Congress of Brussels, 77...
Increasing Capitalist Attack, 78... Growth of the
International, 79

8. BAKUNINISM: THE BASLE CONGRESS (1869) 82

The Eisenachers, 83... Bakunin Enters the I.W.A., 84...
Marxists and Bakuninists at Basle, 85... The Irish
Question, 87... Outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, 88

9. THE PARIS COMMUNE (1871) 90

The French Republic Established, 90... Birth of the
Commune, 92... The International and the Commune,
94... The Work of the Commune, 95... The Commune
Overthrown, 97... Historical Role of the Commune, 98

10. THE SPLIT AT THE HAGUE CONGRESS (1872) 101

The Internal Crisis, 101... The London Conference,
102... The Congress at The Hague, 103... The Powers of
the General Council, 104... The Question of Political
Action, 105... The International Removes to New York,
106... The Expulsion of the Bakuninists, 107... The
Aftermath of the Split, 108

11. THE ANARCHIST INTERNATIONAL (1872-1877) 110

The Saint-Imier Congress, 110... Downward Course of
the Anarchists, 112... Kropotkin Succeeds Bakunin,
113... Why the Anarchist Movement Shrank, 114... The
Disintegration of Anarchism, 117
12. THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL IN THE U.S.A. 119
(1872-1876)
The American Situation, 119... The I.W.A. in the
American Class Struggle, 120... The Struggle Against
the Sects, 121... The Marxists and the Lassalleans, 123...
Internal Crisis and Political Progress, 124... The
Dissolution of the First International, 126

13. THE ROLE OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL 128

(1864-1876)
Ideological Destruction of the Sects, 129... The Causes
for the Dissolution of the I.W.A., 130... New Times and
New Tasks, 131

PART II: THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL, 1889-1914

14. THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE INTERNATIONALS 133

(1876-1889)
The Development of the Labor Movement, 134... The
Gotha Compromise, 135... Continuing International
Tendencies, 137... The Death of Karl Marx, 138

15. THE FOUNDING OF THE SECOND 141

INTERNATIONAL (1899)
The Work of the Congress, 142... The Marxist
Orientation of the Congress, 143... The Right Danger,
144... Origins of Right Opportunism, 146

16. BRUSSELS, ZURICH, AND LONDON (1891-1896) 149

Crowing Right Opportunism, 149... The Struggle
Against the War Danger, 151... Reformism versus
Revolutionary Ideology, 153... The Fight of the Left,
155... The Death of Frederick Engels, 156

17. INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNIONISM 158

Pure and Simple Trade Unionism, 158... Marxist
Trade Unionism, 161... Anarcho-Syndicalism, 162...
Toward a Trade Union International, 164
18. IMPERIALISM AND MILLERAND: PARIS (1900) 167
The Millerand Case, 170... The Left Defeated in the
Paris Congress, 171... The Struggle Against Militarism
and War, 172... The International Socialist Bureau, 173

19. BERNSTEIN REVISIONISM: AMSTERDAM (1904) 175

The Fight in the Germany Party, 177... The
International Struggle Against Revisionism, 178...
White Chauvinism in the American Socialist Party,
179... The Left Carries the Amsterdam Congress, 180...
The Dresden-Amsterdam Resolution, 181

20. LENIN: THE PARTY OF A NEW TYPE 183

Lenin and His Work, 184... The Building of a
Revolutionary Program. 185... Early Development of
the Party in Russia, 186... The Birth of Bolshevism:
London, 1903, 189... The International Intervenes, 190

21. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905 192

The Rising Revolutionary Wave, 192... Two Tactics:
Menshevik and Bolshevik, 194... The High Tide of the
Revolution and Reaction, 199... The International and
the Revolution, 197... The Question of the Political
Mass Strike, 199

22. COLONIALISM AND WAR: STUTTGART (1907) 202

The Colonial Question, 202... Anti-Militarism and
Anti-War, 205... The Stuttgart Resolution, 207...
American National Chauvinism, 209

23. THE COPENHAGEN CONGRESS (1910) 212

The Anti-War Resolution, 212... Nationalist Trade
Unionism, 214... Opportunist Conceptions of the
Cooperatives, 215... Kautsky and Legien, 216
24. THICKENING WAR CLOUDS: BASLE (1912) 219
The Basle Manifesto, 219... Words versus Deeds, 221...
The Forces of the Second International, 223... Right
and Left Wings Prior to World War, 225

25. THE GREAT BETRAYAL: WORLD WAR I 229

The Great Betrayal, 230... How the Betrayal Occurred,
232... The Defense of the Fatherland, 234... The War
as an Imperialist War, 236... The Vicious Circle of the
Second International, 237

26. ROLE OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL 240

(1899-1914)
Early Constructive Work of the International, 241...
The Price of Opportunism, 243

PART III: THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL, 1919-1943

27. THE ZIMMERWALD MOVEMENT (1915-1917) 245

The Beginnings of the Third International, 245...
Socialist Anti-War Conferences, 247... The First
Zimmerwald Conference, 248... The Kienthal
Conference, 249... The Irish Rebellion of 1916, 251...
Lenin’s Great Theoretical Struggle, 252

28. THE RUSSIAN BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION 255

(MARCH 1917)
Why the Revolution Took Place, 256... The
Reactionary Provisional Government, 257... The
Revolutionary Program of the Party, 258... A Peaceful
Road to the Revolution, 260... The Stockholm
(Zimmerwald) Conference, 261

29. THE RUSSIAN PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION 264

(NOVEMBER 1917)
The Conquest of Power, 265... The Soviet Government
in Action, 267... The Defense of the Revolution, 270
30. THE SOVIET SYSTEM 272
The Political Structure, 274... The Economic
Foundation, 276... The Trade Unions in the Soviet
Regime, 278

31. THE GERMAN AND HUNGARIAN REVOLUTIONS 280

(1918-1919)
Soviets in Germany, 281... The Revolution Betrayed,
282... The Bourgeoisie Resumes Full Charge, 285...
The Hungarian Revolution, 287

32. FORMATION OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL 289

(1919)
The Resurrection of the Second International, 290...
The Call for the Third International, 291... The
Moscow Congress, 292... The Program of the
Congress, 294... The Formation of the Third
International, 296

33. REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE: 298

SECOND CONGRESS (1920)
Formation of the Young Communist International,
299... The Program of the Second Congress, 300...
“Left-Wing” Communism, 301... The "Twenty-One
Points,” 303

34. THE COMINTERN AND THE COLONIAL WORLD 306

Karl Marx and the Oppressed Peoples, 307... Social-
Democratic Imperialism, 309... Communist Anti-
Imperialism, 311

35. REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLES: 315

THIRD CONGRESS (1920)
The Birth of Italian Fascism, 315... Formation of the
Two-and-a-Half International, 317... Program of the
Third C.I. World Congress, 318... Some Organizational
Questions, 320... Work Among Women, 321
36. THE RED INTERNATIONAL OF LABOR UNIONS 324
(1920)
The I.F.T.U. in War and Peace, 324... Foundation of
the R.I.L.U., 326... The Program of the R.I.L.U., 328...
Shaping the R.I.L.U. Program, 329... The New
Revolutionary Unionism, 330

37. THE UNITED FRONT: FOURTH CONGRESS (1922) 333

Lenin and Labor Unity, 333... The Berlin Conference
of the Three Internationals, 335... The Fourth World
Comintern Congress, 337... The Policy of the United
Front, 338

38. PARTIAL STABILIZATION: 342

FIFTH CONGRESS (1924)
The Amalgamation of the two Social-Democratic
Internationals, 343... The October Defeat in Germany,
343... The Congress and Partial Capitalist Stabilization,
345... The Question of the United Front, 346... The
"Bolshevization” of the Communist Parties, 348

39. CLASS COLLABORATION AND CLASS STRUGGLE 350

(1924-1928)
The Rationalization of Industry, 351... The British
General Strike, 352... Revolutionary Struggles in
China, 354... The Fight Against the Trotsky-Zinoviev-
Bukharin Opposition, 356

40. C. I. PROGRAM: SIXTH CONGRESS (1928) 360

The Comintern Program, 360... The Comintern’s
Political Perspective, 364... Imperialist War and
Colonial Revolution, 366... Some Organizational
Matters, 368

41. THE GREAT ECONOMIC CRISIS (1929-1933) 370

The Crisis-Stricken United States, 371... The First
Soviet Five-Year Plan, 373... Class Struggle, Fascism,
War Preparations, 375
42. HITLER’S FASCISM AND ROOSEVELT’S NEW DEAL 378
The Advance of German Fascism, 379... Hitler Seizes
Power, 380... German Fascism, 383... The Roosevelt
New Deal, 385

43. GROWING STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM AND 389

WAR (1933-1935)
The Revolutionary Chinese Struggle, 391... The Fascist
Defeat in France, 392... Armed Struggle in Austria,
395... Armed Uprising in Spain, 396... Dimitrov at
Leipzig, 397

44. THE PEOPLE’S FRONT: SEVENTH CONGRESS 399

(1935)
What Fascism Is, 399... The International Peace
Front, 400... The People’s Anti-Fascist United Front,
401... The Unification of Labor’s Forces, 403... The
New Tactical Orientation, 405

45. THE PEOPLE’S FRONT IN ACTION (1935-1939) 408

The National Anti-Imperialist Front in China, 408...
The French People's Front Government, 410... The
People’s Front in the Americas, 412... People’s Front
and Civil War in Spain, 414

46. MUNICH: THE ROAD TO WAR (1935-1939) 418

The Appeasement Crime, 418... The Growth of Soviet
Power, 420... The Betrayal at Munich, 422... The Drive
to War, 424

47. WORLD WAR II: THE COURSE OF THE WAR 427

The Imperialist Stage of the War, 427... The Soviet-
Finnish War, 429... Hitler Smashes the Western
Powers, 430... The Changed Character of the War,
431... Unfaithful Capitalist Allies, 432... The Russians
Smash Nazi Germany, 434
48. WORLD WAR II: THE GUERILLA FORCES 437
The Russian Partisans, 439... The Chinese Guerillas,
441... The Partisans in Eastern and Middle Europe,
444... The Resistance Movements in Western Europe,
445

49. THE ROLE OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL 448

(1919-1943)
Why the Comintern Was Dissolved, 449... The
Historical Role of the Comintern, 452

PART IV: THE HISTORICAL ADVANCE OF SOCIALISM

50. THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II 455

The Growth of Democratic and Socialist Forces, 456...
The Drive of American Imperialism for World
Domination, 457... The Basis of the Cold War, 460...
The Second International and the Cold War, 462

51. BIRTH OF THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACIES 465

(1945-1947)
The Rise of the People’s Democracies, 466... The New
Type of Proletarian Dictatorship, 468... The Coalition
Government in Italy, 469... The Fight for Democracy
in France, 471... The British Labor Government, 473...
Military Repression in Germany and Japan, 475

52. EXPANSION OF TRADE UNIONS AND OTHER 478

MASS ORGANIZATIONS
Formation of the World Federation of Trade Unions,
479... The Struggle for World Labor Unity, 481... The
World Youth Organization, 482... The Women’s
International Democratic Federation, 484... The
European Mass Communist Parties, 485
53. THE REVOLUTION IN THE COLONIAL WORLD 487
(1945-1949)
The Chinese and Indian Revolutions, 489... The
Revolution in Other Asian Countries, 491... National
Liberation Movements in Africa and Latin America,
493

54. EARLY PHASES OF THE COLD WAR (1947-1950) 497

Atomic Diplomacy, 497... The Truman Doctrine,
499... The Marshall Plan, 501... The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.), 503... Social
Democracy and American Imperialism, 505

55. THE COMMUNIST INFORMATION BUREAU (1947) 507

The Tito Betrayal, 508... The Right Social-Democrats
Split the World Trade Union Movement, 510... The
Ideological Decay of World Social-Democracy, 514

56. VICTORY OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION (1950) 517

Chiang Launches the Civil War, 517... The Victory of
the People, 519... The Chinese People’s Democracy,
521... The Role of Mao Tse-tung, 525

57. WALL ST. WANTS WAR: 528

THE WORLD WANTS PEACE
The Korean War, 528... The War in Indochina, 531...
The Hydrogen Bomb, 532... The Collapse of the
E.D.C., 533... The Fight for World Peace, 534... The
Third World War Is Not Inevitable, 537... The Death
of Stalin, 539

58. THE GENERAL CRISIS OF CAPITALISM 541

Capitalism Cannot Automatically Recover, 542... The
Futility of Keynesism, 543... American Hegemony No
Solution, 546... The Insanity of Imperialist War, 548
59. THE INEVITABILITY OF WORLD SOCIALISM 551
A Record of Unprecedented Economic Progress, 553...
Socialism Solves the People’s Problems, 555... The
Road to Socialism, 559

6o. THE HISTORICAL ADVANCE OF SOCIALISM 563

(1848-1954)
The Rise and Decline of Capitalism, 563... The
Advance of the Working Class, 565... The Historical
Justification of Marxism, 568

APPENDIX 573

REFERENCES 574
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank very much the many comrades who helped in

the preparation of this book. There were many who cooperated
valuably with their advice, with their loans of important reference
materials, and with their careful reading and criticisms of the
book proofs – for all of which I am very grateful. I wish especially
to express my thanks to Arthur Zipser for his extensive and indis-
pensable research work.

WILLIAM Z. FOSTER
 PART I: THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL, 1864-1876

1. General Economic and

Political Background
The founding in London in 1864 of the International Work-
ingmen’s Association – the First International – took place in a
situation of a rapidly rising tide of capitalist development. The
great discovery voyages of the 15th and 16th centuries had given a
big stimulus to capitalism by widely extending commerce and the
cultivation of many local guild handicrafts. This general impulse
was further greatly intensified, particularly in England, by the
Industrial Revolution. This began in the middle of the 18th centu-
ry and, according to Frederick Engels, concluded about 1830. The
rapid expansion of capitalism, however, went right on. The whole
development marked the beginning of the transformation of soci-
ety from the agricultural-mercantile basis of feudalism to the in-
dustrial basis of capitalism.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The Industrial Revolution, which had its center in England,
was marked by a very rapid growth and expansion of the coal,
iron, and textile industries, as well as of the railroads. These de-
velopments were based upon a whole series of revolutionary in-
ventions. Among the more outstanding were those of Henry Cort
in iron-making; of John Kay, James Hargreaves, Richard Ark-
wright, and Samuel Crompton in devising textile machinery; and
of Thomas Newcomen, Richard Watt, and George Stephenson in
the invention and application of the steam engine to industry and
transportation. A key invention in this great series was the cotton
gin, by an American, Eli Whitney, in 1793, which provided cheap
and abundant cotton for the hungry new English textile industry.
Among the more elementary economic effects of the Industri-
al Revolution were that it shifted production from a hand to a ma-
chine basis, substituted huge factories for small workshops, trans-
ferred motive power from a wind and water basis to one of steam,
revolutionized the transportation system by covering the land
with a network of railroads, canals, and roads, and the seas with
great fleets of ships – at first wind-driven but eventually operated

15
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
by steam – and it developed commerce from primarily a local
scale to a world basis.
Principally because of its huge supplies of cheap coal and its
strategic commercial location, England became the main center of
the new industrialization. Between 1720 and 1839, its production
of pig-iron increased from 25,000 tons to 1,347,000 tons, and
whereas in 1764 England imported 4,000,000 pounds of cotton
for manufacture, in 1833 it imported 300,000,000 pounds.1 By
the middle of the 19th century, England, producing the bulk of all
manufactured goods, had become “the workshop of the world.”
The Industrial Revolution soon spread from England to the
Continent. In its early stages France, with many notable inventions
to its credit, nearly kept abreast of England; but by the middle of
the 19th century, due largely to lack of available coal, France had
fallen far behind. The Low Countries early became important in-
dustrial centers, and by 1850 Germany also was well on the way to
industrialization. The latter country was handicapped, however, by
its unfavorable commercial location, by many feudal hangovers,
and also by being periodically overrun by wars. The United States,
due eventually to far outstrip England, quickly felt the impulse of
the Industrial Revolution. In 1790 the textile industry got under
way in New England; by 1805 it had about 4,500, and by 1860
some 5,235,000 spindles in operation.2 In the meantime, a consid-
erable body of industry – iron, shoe, lumber, shipbuilding, etc. –
was growing up in the North Atlantic states; but it was not until
about 1850 that large-scale industrialization in the United States
got going full blast. As for Eastern Europe, it had very little industry
at the time the First International was founded, and Asia, Africa,
Australia, and Latin America had hardly any at all.
THE POLITICAL CONSOLIDATION OF CAPITALISM
With its rapid development of industry and trade, the Indus-
trial Revolution produced a class of rich capitalists, the bourgeoi-
sie, who gradually differentiated themselves from the petty bour-
geoisie. This new and powerful class intensified the bitter struggle
that nascent capitalism had already been developing against the
predominant feudal system. Philosophically, economically, politi-
cally, and militarily, the capitalists warred against the great feudal
landowners – kings, popes, bishops, and nobles. This struggle
climaxed in many bourgeois revolutions, fought through by ex-

16
 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND
tremely violent civil wars.
The long series of bourgeois revolutions eventually extended
to all parts of the world, and it has continued on down to our own
days. But at the time of the establishment of the First Interna-
tional, the most important of such revolutions that had taken
place were those in England (1649), United States (1776), France
(1789), Haiti (1790), the Spanish colonies in America (1810), Bra-
zil (1822), France (1830), and France, Germany, Austria, Italy,
and Hungary (1848), Italy (1859), mid United States (1861). The
general effect of these revolutions, which were eventually to make
capitalism world dominant, had been at this time to put the capi-
talists more or less in control of England, Western Europe, and
North America.
Parallel and interlocked with these bourgeois revolutions, there
also went ahead a capitalist-directed process of establishing the
modern bourgeois states – in Great Britain, the United States,
France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and other countries. In order to
hold the working class in subjugation and exploitation, to secure
for themselves domination over the respective national markets,
and to mobilize the military strength of the nations for war, the
capitalists had imperative need for much more definite and well-
organized national states, either as republics or constitutional
monarchies, than the loose and shifting and (in Germany and Italy)
atomized political regimes characteristic of feudalism. The estab-
lishment of the new bourgeois states led to the violent suppression
of many smaller peoples (as the Scotch, Welsh, and Irish in Great
Britain), and also to the waging of many intense national wars.
These wars included, among others, the French and English wars
of the 18th century, the American-English wars of 1776 and 1812,
the Napoleonic wars of 1799-1815, the several Latin American wars
after 1826, the United States-Mexican war of 1846, the Crimean
war of 1853, the Franco-Austrian war of 1859, the American Civil
War of 1861, and, in the immediate years of the setting up of 1 hr
First International, the Prussian wars – against Denmark in 1864,
Austria in 1866, and France in 1870. The capitalist system grew
everywhere in the blood and mire of war and revolution.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE WORKERS
The rapid growth of capitalism quickly produced profound ef-
fects upon the toiling masses, first of all in England. Great num-
17
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
bers of peasants, erstwhile independent producers, who had been
driven from their lands to make room for sheep-growing, were
herded into the new factories, where they became wage workers,
and large numbers of handicraftsmen, who had worked either for
themselves or in small workshops, were gradually assembled into
larger and larger manufacturing plants. The modern working
class was being born. This creation of the proletariat through the
evolution of industry was taking place in all the countries where
capitalism was developing.
The capitalists, with the boundless greed characteristic of
their social system, worked men, women, and children to the
point of destruction. Their working and living conditions were but
little better than those of chattel slaves. Working hours ranged
from 12 to 16 per day, wages were at starvation levels, children
from six years on worked in the mills, and the employers ruled
dictatorially over the unorganized wage workers in the factories.
A Parliamentary report in 1833 said that “the destitution of the
English workers almost eclipses the horrors of slavery in America,
of English landlordism in Ireland, and of British rule in India.”3 In
his great work, Condition of the Working Class in England in
1844, Engels imperishably portrayed the horrifying position of
the workers during this general period. On the Continent, wher-
ever capitalism had secured a grip, conditions were, if possible,
even worse than in England. The new factories in France and
western Germany were wretched slave pens, and Marx called Bel-
gium “the paradise of the capitalists.” In the United States, “the
land of the free,” similar bad conditions prevailed for industrial
workers, and it was a moot question as to who were physically the
worse off, slaves or wage-earners. Foner, Commons, and other
labor historians have vividly described the wretched wages, the
interminably long hours, the boss tyranny in the shops, and the
murderous exploitation of men, women, and children characteris-
tic of the young American industries, especially textiles, during
the decades following the turn of the century. During the recur-
ring economic crises in the respective countries, the poverty and
destitution of the jobless masses beggared description.
In various ways, the workers in the capitalist countries fought
back against the economic and political slavery in which they
were enmeshed. They did the fighting in the various bourgeois
revolutions in Europe and America, hoping to wring from these

18
 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND
struggles some of the glittering promises of the bourgeois plat-
forms – of which the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitu-
tion was a shining example. But experience quickly demonstrated
that such paper rights could be made real for the workers only
when they themselves fought resolutely to enforce them.
To combat the intolerable working and living conditions to
which they were barbarously subjected, the workers were com-
pelled to rely upon their own class strength, which they expressed
in various ways. In England, the Luddites smashed machines and
wrecked factories, and in various countries the workers carried
through insurrections – as in Manchester, in 1819; in Lyons,
France, in 1831-34; and in Silesia and Bohemia in 1844. In the
wake of the liberal sections of the bourgeoisie, as in the English
electoral struggle of 1832, they also strove for political reforms.
They built mutual benefit and cooperative societies; but most of all,
the workers turned to trade unionism. Wherever capitalism estab-
lished itself, the workers quickly learned that they possessed a
weapon of profound importance, the strike, to bring industry to a
halt, thereby temporarily cutting off the profits of their exploiters.
EARLY TRADE UNIONISM
In England, the mother country of capitalism, trade unions
began to take form as early as 1752.4 These pioneer unions were
chiefly groupings of skilled workers, and they had to struggle,
mostly in an illegal status, against ferocious anti-combination
laws. The partial repeal of such laws in England in 1824 brought
out into the open many trade unions, hitherto disguised as
“friendly societies.” The movement shot ahead, and in 1830 it
crystallized nationally in the National Association for the Protec-
tion of Labor. This body was the forerunner of the Grand National
Consolidated Trade Union of 1833-34. The latter had an estimat-
ed membership of some 500,000.
In 1837, the great Chartist movement was launched upon the
initiative of the London Workingmen’s Association, which had
been formed a year earlier. Chartism was a broad working class
political movement, with wide, but not all-inclusive, trade union
support and also drawing in large sections of the petty
bourgeoisie. Its most outstanding leaders were James Bronterre
O’Brien, Feargus O’Connor, C. J. Harney, Ernest Jones, and
William Lovett, and its main journal was The Northern Star. The
19
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
movement finally crystallized in 1841 as the National Charter
Association.
The Chartist program, the famous “Six Points” or “People’s
Charter,” was introduced into Parliament early in 1837. It aimed
chiefly to secure the franchise for the workers – at that time, of
the 6,000,000 men in England, only 850,000 had the right to
vote. The “Six Points” demanded universal suffrage for men,
equal electoral districts, annual Parliaments, payment of Parlia-
mentary members, secret ballot, and no property qualifications
for Members of Parliament.
In support of this elementary program, the Chartists carried
on an immense agitation all over the country. Some of their meet-
ings attracted as many as 350,000 people. They also sent several
mass petitions to Parliament, one bearing some 5,000,000 signa-
tures, gathered among a general population of 19,000,000. And
when the reactionary Parliament cynically rejected the Chartists’
mass petitions, the movement undertook to use methods of gen-
eral strike and insurrection to enforce its demands.
The first major collision came in 1842, after Parliament had
spurned a great petition for the “Six Points,” bearing 3,317,700
names. The workers began to strike in many places and to go into
insurrection. The movement was put down, however, and some
1,500 leaders and active workers were arrested. In 1848, under
the influence of the revolutionary situation in western Europe, the
Chartist movement revived, but it had spent its force. When Par-
liament again rejected its mass petition, an attempt was made at
insurrection; but this failed, largely because of the hesitations of
petty bourgeois elements in the movement, and because the Duke
of Wellington had mobilized 250,000 soldiers and police to crush
it. The movement died out by 1850. Within a generation, howev-
er, the workers succeeded in writing into law virtually all of the
famous “Six Points.” The Chartist movement, the first attempt to
build a broad national labor party of the working class, in which
the workers got a taste of their great political power, was one of
the most significant and glorious movements in the history of
world labor.
During this stirring period, early in 1844, an important labor
event, but little noticed at the time, was the formation of a con-
sumers’ cooperative by a handful of weavers in Toad Lane, Roch-
dale, England. This tiny organization, based on the principle of

20
 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND
“dividends on purchases,” is generally considered to be the begin-
ning of the huge modern cooperative movement.
In France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, and other
European countries, where harsh anti-union laws prevailed, there
were but a few local trade unions in existence at the time the First
International was born. In countries ruled by reactionary regimes
there were numerous underground revolutionary political circles,
and about the only types of labor organization more or less toler-
ated were mutual benefit ("friendly”) societies and cooperatives.
In the United States, where the Negro people languished in
barbaric chattel slavery, there were more democratic freedoms,
for white workers, and also a considerable growth of labor union-
ism, following the familiar pattern of craft unions of skilled work-
ers. Already in 1786 the printers of Philadelphia carried through
an organized strike. Toward the end of the 1820’s, in the mass
democratic struggles of the Jacksonian period, the trade unions
grew and many strikes took place. In 1827, 15 unions in Philadel-
phia formed the Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations; in 1831,
the New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and Other
Workingmen was organized, and within the next several years
local central bodies were set up in many eastern cities.5 This
whole movement was accompanied by the establishment of labor
parties in various localities, the first such organizations in the
world. The workers fought especially for higher wages, the 10-
hour workday, against debtor prisons, for free public education,
for free land, and for a more democratic suffrage. The general
movement subsided for a while, but the growth of individual un-
ions continued. From 1834 to 1837, the National Trades Union
served as the center of the young labor movement, and from 1845
to 1856, this need was met by the Industrial Congress, which had
branches in all important industrial centers. The growth of the
labor movement proceeded apace with the evolution of industry
into the factory system. At the beginning of the Civil War several
national craft unions were in existence.
ANTI-CAPITALIST TENDENCIES
The British workers not only strove to ease specific evils of the
terrible exploitation they suffered, they also began to attack the
capitalist system itself. With real genius, long before Karl Marx
wrote, the celebrated Chartist leader, James Bronterre O’Brien
21
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
developed a pretty clear understanding of the class struggle and of
the nature of the capitalist state. In 1832, he said: “The Govern-
ment is made up by the profit-men to protect them in their exor-
bitant profits, rents, and impositions on the people who labor. Is
it the Government who makes the laws, or is it not, on the contra-
ry, the great profit-men who make them to enrich themselves and
then have the Government to execute them? It is the profit-men
who are the oppressors everywhere. The Government is their
watchman and the people who labor are the oppressed.” O’Brien
fought the machine-breakers, and proposed instead that the ma-
chinery be owned by the people and used for their benefit.6
Rothstein points out that there was much confusion and uto-
pianism in O’Brien’s writings, but he marvels that the latter “came
remarkably close to modern Marxism.” Referring to O’Brien,
Rothstein says that, “fifteen years before the drawing up of the
Communist Manifesto, the theory of class antagonisms and class
struggle in capitalist society had been presented in all its bear-
ings, not in a fragmentary form, but in such a systematic and
complete manner as to arouse even today our wonder and admi-
ration.”7
German immigrant workers in London formed the Exiles’
League (1834-1836) and the Federation of the Just (1836-1839). A
leader of the latter organization, Wilhelm Weitling, a journeyman
tailor, fundamentally attacked capitalism and elaborated in two
books (1838 and 1842) a system of communism. Of the latter of
these, Marx said in 1844: “When could the German bourgeoisie,
including its philosophers and divines, point to a work champion-
ing bourgeois political emancipation which could in any way
compare with Weitling’s Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit
(Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom)?”8
In the United States, too, the workers began to assail the capi-
talist system and to try to escape its toils. In 1829, the brilliant
machinist, Thomas Skidmore of New York, called upon the work-
ers to challenge “the nature of the tenure by which all men hold
title to their property.” He proposed the equal division of all exist-
ing property – lands, houses, factories, vessels, etc.9 Skidmore,
like George Henry Evans and many other workers’ leaders of the
times, and in the spirit of Jeffersonianism, prescribed the charac-
teristic American petty-bourgeois panacea of the times: that the
workers could escape capitalist exploitation by getting themselves

22
 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND
farms out of the vast body of land held by the Government. This
was a sort of de-nationalization of the land, a process which, how-
ever, the English Chartist collectivists Schepper and Harney mis-
takenly opposed as reactionary.10
Brutal capitalist exploitation, especially intensified by the In-
dustrial Revolution, also called forth objections from the ranks of
the capitalist and middle classes themselves. These protests were
manifested in various types of utopian socialism; that is, efforts to
replace barbarous capitalism with more humane and intelligent
regimes. The most important of the utopian socialists were Rob-
ert Owen (1771-1858) in Great Britain, and Claude H. Saint-
Simon (1760-1825), Charles F. M. Fourier (1772-1837), and
Etienne Cabet (1788-1856) in France. The general characteristic
of the Utopians was that, instead of basing themselves upon the
actual laws of social development, they worked out idealistic
plans of society of their own imagining. The utopians hoped that
the people, including the capitalists, would adopt their plans as
obviously superior to the existing regimes. Frederick Engels deals
fundamentally with this whole movement in his great book, So-
cialism: Utopian and Scientific.
Owen, a successful Scottish textile mill owner, set up a model
workshop in New Lanark, Scotland, in 1800, with greatly im-
proved conditions for the workers, and it was also highly profita-
ble. Later he developed a system of worker ownership of industry.
This general plan he hoped to have not only workers, but capital-
ists accept. But the capitalists would have nothing to do with Ow-
en’s scheme, except to denounce it. Owen, however, won a broad
following among the working class. He became president of the
Grand National Consolidated Trade Union, referred to above.
Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Cabet also evolved systems of ideal so-
cieties. Disappointed and alarmed at the failure of the masses to
realize the glittering democratic promises of the great French
Revolution, these keen and generous spirits, at the turn of the
new century, sharply criticized capitalism and undertook to build
new systems of society based on justice and reason. They sought
“to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to
impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and,
wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments.”11
While the writings of the great Utopians attracted much attention
in France, they produced but few concrete results there.
23
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
The European Utopians paid much attention to the United
States, where land for experiments was cheap, where greater
democratic liberties prevailed, and where the masses were largely
in a progressive mood. Owen himself came to the United States in
1824 and organized cooperative colonies in New Harmony, Indi-
ana, and several other places. The followers of Fourier, including
such outstanding personalities as Horace Greeley, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, and many other notables, set
up during the 1840’s cooperative “phalanxes” or colonies in some
40 places, the best known of which was Brook Farm in Massachu-
setts. During the same decade, the Cabet, or Icarian, movement
also organized a number of colonies in Texas, Iowa, and Mis-
souri.12 But these tiny idealistic ventures were only drops in the
ocean of capitalism and they were all soon absorbed by it. When
the First International came upon the scene of history, the utopi-
an movements were already things of the past.
During the pre-First International decades, several other so-
cial trends of major importance also developed, including pure
and simple trade unionism, Blanquism, Proudhonism,
Lassalleism, and Bakuninism. These played important roles in the
life of the International, therefore, we shall discuss them as we go
on. Incomparably the greatest revolutionary advance and
achievement of the working class, however, in these formative
decades, was the development of scientific socialism by Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels.

24
2. Scientific Socialism
Karl Marx was born in Treves, Rhenish Prussia, May 5, 1818.
His father Heinrich was born a Jew but embraced Christianity.
The son, Karl, was educated at the Bonn, Berlin, and Jena univer-
sities. His father wanted him to become a lawyer like himself, but
he turned his main attention to philosophy, history, and science.
In 1841 he got his Ph.D. In his student days he studied deeply the
works of the great German philosopher, Hegel, and he was also
much influenced by the materialist writer, Ludwig Feuerbach.
Upon his graduation, Marx plunged into the current turbulent
political life, in the period of the gathering German bourgeois
revolution of 1848. In 1842, while only 24 years old, he became
editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, a radical democratic journal. In
the meantime, he married Jenny von Westphalen, daughter of a
Prussian nobleman. It was at this time that Marx met Frederick
Engels, who was to become his life-long friend and collaborator.
Engels was born in Barmen, Prussia, September 28, 1820. He
was the son of a wealthy cotton mill owner, who planned a business
career for him. But like Marx, Engels became immersed in the de-
veloping revolutionary movement. He went to England in 1843,
where his father owned a mill near Manchester. There he contacted
the Chartist and Owenite movements and became a revolutionary.
On a visit to Paris, in 1844, he resumed his acquaintance with
Marx. The latter, an exile from Prussia after his paper had been
closed down by the government, was then editing the Deutsch-
Franzosische Jahrbücher (German-French Yearbooks).
The two revolutionary youths had by this time definitely be-
come Communists. Marx, for the first time, began to write as a so-
cialist and materialist, and subjected Hegel’s views on the state and
on law to criticism from the socialist standpoint.1 Engels was in
general agreement with Marx. Thus began the fruitful partnership
of these two magnificent fighters for and with the working class.
THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE AND
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
Marx was expelled from France in January 1845 and went to
Brussels, where he was very active politically in revolutionary or-
ganizations, the Democratic League and the General Workers So-
ciety. In February 1846, jointly with Engels in England, the two
25
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
began to form Communist Committees of Correspondence, a
name reminiscent of American revolutionary experience. These
committees carried on Communist propaganda in the adjoining
countries. Meanwhile, relations were established with the rem-
nants of the Federation of the Just, which had been shattered as a
result of the abortive 1839 rising of the Blanquists in Paris. After
some negotiations, the various groups came together in London
during the summer of 1847, with Engels in attendance. There they
formed the Communist League. This was the first international
Communist organization and it was a forerunner of the Interna-
tional Workingmen’s Association of a decade and a half later.
The Communist League was made up chiefly of exiled workers
and intellectuals – French, German, Swiss, Italian, Russian, etc. –
in London, Paris, and Brussels. The League held a second con-
gress in 1847, from November 29 to December 8, in London, with
both Marx and Engels present. At this congress the League defi-
nitely organized itself, adopting a constitution and providing for a
program. The task of preparing the program was delegated to
Marx, who was already widely known as a well-developed and
steadfast Communist. Throughout December 1847 and January
1848, Marx and Engels worked on the draft, and by the end of the
latter month it was completed and forwarded to London, where it
was published in February. The Manifesto of the Communist Par-
ty, popularly referred to as The Communist Manifesto, the most
important single document in the history of mankind, had come
into being.
The Communist Manifesto was the first revolutionary pro-
gram of the world’s workers. It laid down the solid foundations of
proletarian thought and action for the workers thenceforth on
their road to socialism. It showed them how to protect themselves
under capitalism, how to abolish the capitalist system, and how to
build the structure of the new socialist society. Marx, Engels, V. I.
Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and others were to write many books on
Marxism during the ensuing decades, and their writings served to
elaborate and to buttress the basic propositions of the Manifesto.
Today, 107 years after the great document was written, The
Communist Manifesto stands as firm as a rock, a clear guide for
the international working class, justified by generations of revolu-
tionary experience, and altogether impervious in the attacks of
capitalist enemies.

26
 SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
THE MAJOR PRINCIPLES OF MARXIST SOCIALISM
Prior to 1848, the movement for socialism was a welter of
confusion regarding the analysis of capitalism, organizational
forms, methods of struggle, and the conception of the ultimate
goal. It was a mixture of primitivism, utopianism, adventurism,
and opportunism. But Marx, actively aided by Engels, with one
masterly stroke, in The Communist Manifesto, swept aside all this
idealism, ignorance, and eclecticism, and put the socialist move-
ment, for the first time, upon a scientific basis. As Engels said 35
years later in his famous address at the grave of Marx, “Just as
Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx
discovered the law of evolution in human history.”2 Marxism,
during its century of life, has irresistibly triumphed over the host
of confusions and illusions, bred of capitalism, that have plagued
the working class on its advance to emancipation. “Every other
theory and world outlook lies in ruins,” says Dutt, "shattered and
impotent before the march of events.”3 Marxism, first formulated
basically in The Communist Manifesto, becomes ever more ex-
panded and powerful with the passage of the decades.
Stalin thus defines Marxism: “Marxism is the science of the
laws governing the development of nature and society, the science
of the revolution of the oppressed and exploited masses, the sci-
ence of the victory of socialism in all countries, the science of
building a communist society.”4 And Lenin thus describes the
basic composition of Marxism: “Marx was the genius who contin-
ued and completed the three chief ideological currents of the 19th
century, represented respectively by the three most advanced
countries of humanity: classical German philosophy, classical
English political economy, and French socialism combined with
French revolutionary doctrines.”5 Major among the basic ele-
ments of Marxism are the following:
1. Philosophical materialism: Marx based himself upon the re-
ality of the world, as against the metaphysical imaginings of the
idealistic philosophers George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel
Kant, Georg W. F. Hegel, and the many others whose systems, by
one route or another, all led to the acceptance of religion and to the
conception of an artificial external creation and operation of the
world. Marx counterposes a world ruled by natural law, against the
bourgeois metaphysical conception of a world under the arbitrary

27
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
guidance of some remote divinity. To him materiality is fundamen-
tal, and all thought and understanding flow from it.
Engels says: “The great basic question of all philosophy, espe-
cially of modern philosophy, is that concerning the relation of
thinking and being... spirit to nature... which is primary, spirit or
nature.... The answers which the philosophers gave to this ques-
tion split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the pri-
macy of spirit to nature, and therefore, in the last analysis, as-
sumed world creation in some form or another... comprised the
camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary,
belong to the various schools of materialism.”6
Marx was the supreme philosopher in the second camp, carry-
ing the materialist conception into all branches of thought and
action. The practical effect of philosophical materialism is to free
Marxists, and eventually the working class, from the crippling
influence of the innumerable hoary and reactionary conceptions
relating to philosophy, science, government, religion, economics,
morality, art, etc., which constitute the fundamental ideological
buttresses of the capitalist system. Philosophical materialism is
the sharpest intellectual weapon of the proletariat in its fight
against capitalism and for socialism.
2. Dialectics: Marx and Engels adopted the dialectics of Hegel
(1770-1831), which, as Lenin puts it, is “the theory of evolution
which is most comprehensive, rich in content, and profound.” Di-
alectics, Marx says, “is the science of the general laws of motion –
both of the external world and of human thought.”7 But in accept-
ing Hegel’s dialectic system, Marx and Engels stripped it of its
idealism and developed it on a materialist basis. For dialectical
philosophy, says Engels, “nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It re-
veals the transitory character of everything and in everything;
nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of
becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendency from the
lower to the higher.”8
Dialectical evolution, says Lenin, is “a development that re-
peats, as it were, the stages already passed, but repeats them in a
different way, on a higher plane (‘negation of negation’); a devel-
opment, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line; a spasmodic,
catastrophic, revolutionary development; ‘breaks of gradualness,’
transformation of quantity into quality; inner impulses for devel-
opment, imparted by the contradiction, the conflict of different

28
 SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
forces and tendencies reacting on a given body, or inside a given
phenomenon or within a given society; interdependence, and the
closest, indissoluble connection between all sides of every phe-
nomenon....”9
3. The Materialist Conception of History: Marx and Engels
were the first to put the writing of history upon a scientific basis,
stripping it of the mass of metaphysics, subjectivism, hero-worship,
class bias, and superficialities characterizing bourgeois-written
“history.” The heart of the Marxist materialist conception of history
lies in the economic factor, the way people make their living. Marx
outlines it as follows: “In the social production which men carry on
they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and inde-
pendent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a
definite stage of development of their material powers of produc-
tion. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the
economic structure of society – the real foundation, on which rise
legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite
forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material
life determines the general character of the social, political, and
spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social exist-
ence determines their consciousness.”10
Marxists have frequently been accused of laying sole stress
upon the economic factor and of ignoring all others, such as na-
tional traditions, history, culture, etc. But this is nonsense. In this
respect, Engels combats vulgar economic determinism: “Accord-
ing to the materialist conception of history, the determining ele-
ment in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in
real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. If
therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the eco-
nomic element is the only determining one, he transforms it into
a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase.”11
The bourgeoisie, with its idealistic, eclectic system of history
writing, which denies causation and reason and puts the stress
upon all sorts of secondary and superficial elements, has no clear
picture of past history nor of what is happening at the present
time. Historical materialism, the method of Marx, with its stress
on the economic factor, gives to Marxists a decisive advantage in
drawing the elementary lessons from past history, and for under-
standing the fundamental meaning of the complex economic and
29
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
political processes of today. It is this that enables Marxists to
foresee the inevitability of social revolution and socialism, an
eventuality which the bourgeois economists and historians nei-
ther can nor dare envisage.
4. The Class Struggle: The Communist Manifesto thus states
the fundamental Marxist position on the class struggle: “The his-
tory of all hitherto existing society* is the history of class strug-
gles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,
guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and op-
pressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on
an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each
time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at
large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the ear-
lier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated
arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation
of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, ple-
beians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-
masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all these clas-
ses, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society
that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done
away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes...
new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.”12
Modern capitalist society is a maze of sharply contending in-
ternal groups. “Marxism,” says Lenin, “provides a clue which ena-
bles us to discover the reign of law in this seeming labyrinth and
chaos: the theory of the class struggle.”13 The bourgeoisie, particu-
larly in these later years, is anxious to obscure the class character
of the internal struggles that are taking place, and thus to confuse
the masses as to their true class interests. But the class analysis of
Marxism lays bare the whole process, and it is the first considera-
tion, not only in understanding past history, but in the working
out of proletarian policy in any given situation.
Before Marx’s time many bourgeois historians and political
economists (including James Madison in the United States) had
gained some inkling of the class struggle, but it was Marx and En-
gels who made the whole vital matter crystal clear. In a letter to
Joseph Weydemeyer (March 5, 1852), Marx said on this question:

* Engels adds here, "except in the pre-history of society.”

30
 SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
“And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the
existence of classes in modern society nor yet the struggle be-
tween them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described
the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois
economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that
was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only
bound up with particular, historic phases in the development of
production; (a) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship itself only
constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a
classless society”14 – which is a very modest summary indeed of
Marx’s contributions on this central question.
5. The Revolutionary Role of the Working Class: In his analy-
sis of the class struggle, Marx, as one of his greatest achieve-
ments, developed the revolutionary role of the proletariat. In The
Communist Manifesto, he said: “Of all the classes that stand face
to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really
revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear
in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and
essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufactur-
er, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against
the bourgeoisie, to save themselves from extinction as fractions of
the middle class. They are, therefore, not revolutionary, but con-
servative. Nay, more, they are reactionary.”15 Marx was here deal-
ing with the period of competitive capitalism. In the period of im-
perialism, however, the era of the general crisis of capitalism, the
proletariat is able to mobilize the poorer peasantry and other pet-
ty bourgeois elements behind its leadership. To theorize the
worker-peasant alliance was one of the greatest achievements of
Lenin.
Lenin says, “The main thing in the teaching of Marx is the
elucidation of the world-wide historical role of the proletariat as
the builder of a socialist society.”16 This firm Marxian insistence
upon the leadership of the proletariat is fundamental in revolu-
tionary working class policy. Marx’s clarity on this has successful-
ly countered persistent attempts of various schools of opportun-
ists to see in the bourgeoisie, the peasantry, or the city petty
bourgeoisie the constructive class that the masses of workers
should follow. The leading role of the working class was the key to
the winning of the future great revolutions in Russia, China, and
31
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Eastern Europe.
Already in The Communist Manifesto Marx also began to out-
line the special type of thinking-fighting-disciplined party neces-
sary for the working class to win finally over the capitalist class.
“The Communists... are on the one hand, practically, the most
advanced and resolute section of the working class parties in eve-
ry country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the
other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the
proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of
march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the pro-
letarian movement.”17
6. Surplus Value: In the early, progressive stage of capitalism,
the bourgeois economists – Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John
Stuart Mill, and many others – made much sound analysis of that
system. But they could not face up to the revolutionary realities of
where capitalism was heading, and in later generations bourgeois
economics degenerated eventually into little better than superfi-
cial apologetics for capitalism. It remained for Marx, the giant of
all economists, to drive home the economic analysis to its revolu-
tionary conclusions.
Especially in his great three-volume work, Capital, Marx
made a profound analysis of the capitalist system. Among his in-
numerable basic contributions, he explained the hitherto un-
solved questions of the primitive accumulation of capital, the
causes of cyclical crises, the concentration of capital, and many
aspects of capitalism hitherto unprobed or obscured by bourgeois
economists. But his supreme contribution in the economic sphere
was to describe the production of surplus value by the workers
and its appropriation by the capitalists. This laid bare the whole
process of capitalist exploitation and exposed the economic caus-
es leading to proletarian revolution. Since then countless bour-
geois economists have tried in vain to refute his historic discov-
ery. Mehring thus sums up this central phase of Marxist theory!
“The real source of capitalist wealth was revealed for the first
time in the first volume of Capital.... Marx showed for the first
time how profit originated and how it flowed into the pockets of
the capitalists. He did so on the basis of two decisive economic
facts: first, that the mass of the workers consists of proletarians
who are compelled to sell their labor-power as a commodity in
order to exist, and secondly that this commodity, labor-power,

32
 SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
possesses such a high degree of productivity in our own day that it
is able to produce in a certain time a much greater product than is
necessary for its own maintenance in that time. These two purely
economic facts, representing the result of objective historical de-
velopment, cause the fruit of the labor-power of the proletarian to
fall automatically into the lap of the capitalist and to accumulate,
with the continuance of the wage system, into ever-growing mass-
es of capital.”18
7. The Role of the State: One of the most basic elements of
Marxism is Marx’s analysis of the state as the instrument of force
by which the bourgeoisie enforces the submission of the workers
to its domination. The Communist Manifesto says, “The Executive
of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common
affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”19 Marx slashed into those mud-
dle-heads and opportunists who held that the capitalist state was
an institution standing apart from and above all economic classes,
concerning itself with the welfare of all the people. Marx and En-
gels traced the history of the state, showing that, with the rise of
economic classes, the state ever served the interest of the ruling
classes. Engels, especially in his The Origin of the Family, Private
Property, and the State, and in his Anti-Dühring, demonstrated
that the victorious proletariat will ultimately do away with the
state and relegate it “into the museum of antiquities.”
8. Class Struggle Strategy and Tactics of the Working Class:
Marx and Engels not only worked out the general principles, but
also the fighting methods of the proletariat. In their various
books, and especially in their voluminous correspondence, are to
be found the basic answers to most of the scores of complex ques-
tions of strategy and tactics which, for the past century, have been
serious problems for the developing labor movement. Most of la-
bor’s later weaknesses on these questions have been due to failure
or refusal to learn the lessons of Marx’s writings. Inasmuch as we
shall see in passing how the three successive international organi-
zations of the working class have dealt with various of these ques-
tions, here we can do hardly more than to list a few of them.
Marx and Engels realized very clearly that the working class,
fighting against ruling classes that would use every form of vio-
lence to retain their class power, would have to be prepared them-
selves to meet force with force. Marx said, “Force is the midwife of
every society pregnant with a new one.” Only in Great Britain and
33
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the United States, did he, under the circumstances of that time
(which, as Lenin later showed, was before the rise of imperial-
ism), consider bourgeois democracy advanced enough to raise the
possibility of a peaceful transition by the workers to socialism.20
Marx and Engels, while realizing the necessity of the working
class in make temporary alliances with other classes with whom
its interests coincided at the time (even with the bourgeoisie in
the struggle against feudalism), laid the greatest stress upon the
fundamental necessity of the workers having their own distinct
class organizations and policies – a basic lesson which the labor
movements in many countries, notably the United States, have by
no means fully learned even yet.
Another problem that has plagued the labor movement for a
century is how to establish the correct relationship between the
struggle for the workers’ immediate demands and the struggle for
the establishment of socialism. But Marx, in The Communist
Manifesto, gave a clear line for this in his basic statement that,
“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims,
for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working
class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and
take care of the future of that movement.”21
Marx understood very well (although in his writings he did
not develop it at great length) the vital question of the role of the
peasantry as potential allies of the revolutionary working class.
Illustrating his understanding in this matter, Marx, referring to
the revolution of 1848, said, “The whole thing in Germany will
depend on the possibility of covering the rear of the proletarian
revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War.”22 One of
the basic causes for the eventual failure of the Second Interna-
tional was precisely its inability to grasp this elementary proposi-
tion, the basis of which was worked out by Marx.
Marx and Engels also worked out many other basic questions
of strategy and tactics. They evaluated the roles in the class strug-
gle of the trade unions and of the cooperative movement. They
established a proletarian policy towards war and established the
role of the general strike in the fight against militarism. They
worked out the elements of proletarian policy in the national
question, as it then presented itself to the European labor move-
ment. They demonstrated the international character of the
workers’ struggle for emancipation, the greatest of all labor

34
 SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
watchwords being that of “Workingmen of all Countries, Unite!”
the closing words of The Communist Manifesto.
The two great Communist pioneers, Marx and Engels, also
swept aside all the existing uncertainty and utopian speculation
about socialism and placed the question upon a scientific basis.
They uncovered the economic workings of the capitalist system
that was exploiting the toiling masses, that was organizing the
working class, and that was making the advent of socialism inevi-
table. They demonstrated that the workers were the historical
“grave-diggers of capitalism,” that only the proletariat could lead
the respective peoples to socialism. Without attempting, as the
Utopians did, to trace out every detail of the future society, Marx
and Engels showed that it would be the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat and that socialism, with its motto of “From each according
to his ability, to each according to his work,” would be the intro-
ductory phase of a still higher social structure, communism, with
the principle, “From each according to his ability, to each accord-
ing to his needs.” This basic Marxist analysis has been completely
sustained by the one-third of the human race now definitely on
the march to socialism and communism.
Together Marx and Engels laid the theoretical and practical
foundations of the modern movement for socialism. Marx was the
more towering genius of the two, but Engels was also a theoreti-
cian of extraordinary stature. Their collaboration was so close
that it is impossible to distinguish the precise authorship of re-
spective features of Marxism. Engels was very generous in con-
ceding credit to Marx. Among many such expressions, he said
that “the basic ideas of the Manifesto... belong entirely and solely
to Marx.”23 And again, he said: “These two great discoveries, the
materialist conception of history, and the revelation of the secret
of capitalist production through surplus value, we owe to Marx.
With these discoveries socialism became a science.”24
Engels, besides his collaboration with Marx, personally pro-
duced several very valuable books, classics of socialism. He also
performed the gigantic task, after Marx’s death, of working up
Marx’s mountain of notes into the second and third volumes of
Capital. Lenin thus evaluates Engels: “After his friend Karl Marx
(who died in 1883), Engels was the most remarkable scientist and
teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilized world.”25

35
3. The Revolution of 1848
The revolution of 1848 was one of the series of upheavals by
which the capitalist class progressively established its rule in
Western Europe and eventually throughout the world. The
movement, which Marx called “the Continental revolution,” start-
ed in France and quickly enveloped Germany, Austria, Italy,
Hungary, Belgium, Portugal, and other European countries. Eng-
land and Ireland also distinctly felt it, and its influence was sharp
as far east as Poland and Russia. Repercussions of it took place
even in the United States and in Latin America. It was one of the
biggest blows ever delivered by rising capitalism against the deca-
dent feudal system.
The basic cause of the broad bourgeois revolution was the
pressure of rapidly growing capitalist industrialization, with the
equally swiftly expanding working class, against the cramping
economic and political fetters of obsolete feudalism. The immedi-
ate reason for the revolution was the deep and general economic
crisis of 1847, which produced a widespread industrial shutdown,
great unemployment, and wholesale mass destitution. Among its
other effects, the revolution constituted a major challenge to the
newly-organized Communist League, with its famous program,
The Communist Manifesto, which had forecast the upheaval. The
1848 revolution was a decisive force in shaping the general Euro-
pean situation, into which, a few years later, the First Interna-
tional was born.
THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE
The revolution began in France on February 24, 1848. It
started in this classical land of revolutions because there industry
was more developed than anywhere else on the Continent, the
French bourgeoisie was the strongest and most revolutionary, the
working class was the most mature politically and accustomed to
insurrectional methods, and the French feudal system, because of
successive revolutionary blows since 1789, was the weakest in Eu-
rope. In his work, The Class Struggles in France (1848-50), Marx
has provided the scientific history of the French phase of the revo-
lution.
The Paris workers, rising and fighting under the red flag,
overthrew King Louis Philippe, a product of the defeated 1830
36
 THE REVOLUTION OF 1848
revolution. The workers had as “allies” the petty bourgeoisie and
lesser big bourgeoisie in the struggle against the bankers and big
financiers who were allied with the monarchists. The new provi-
sional government which was created hesitated about proclaiming
the Republic; whereupon Raspail, a worker leader, warned that
they must do this within two hours or by then he would have an
army of 200,000 workers battering at the doors of the Hotel de
Ville. Before the deadline, therefore, the frightened government
hastily plastered the city walls with placards reading, “Republique
Française; Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!” The workers also com-
pelled the reluctant government to establish universal male suf-
frage, to admit workers into the National Guard (hitherto the
privilege only of the middle class), to set up vast national work-
shops (employing 100,000 workers) – shops which were sup-
posed to wipe out poverty – and to organize a commission to
study the general question of social reform.
Alarmed at the revolutionary spirit of the workers, the bour-
geoisie systematically organized their forces to crush their erstwhile
worker allies. The new National Assembly, elected largely with
peasant votes, was conservative. The reactionaries mobilized
24,000 men -mostly thieves and other lumpen (slum) proletarian
elements – into the Mobile Guards; they attacked the national
workshops, imposing systems of piece-work and otherwise disrupt-
ing them. On May 15, a small insurrection, led by Raspail, Blanqui,
and Barbes, tried in vain to overthrow the now reactionary gov-
ernment. Finally on June 21, the big workshops were closed alto-
gether. The Government’s provocations were all a deliberate
scheme to push the workers into a futile general insurrection.
Under these attacks, the workers of Paris rose on June 22 in a
fierce insurrection, which Marx describes as “the first great bat-
tle... between the two classes that split modern society.” On the
walls ran these slogans, “Overthrow of the Bourgeoisie,” “Dicta-
torship of the Working Class.” “The workers, with unexampled
bravery and talent, without chiefs, without a common plan, with-
out means and, for the most part, lacking weapons, held in check
for five days the army, the Mobile Guard, the Parisian National
Guard, and the National Guard that streamed in from the prov-
inces.”1 But it was a lost cause; the workers were finally beaten
and 3,000 of them massacred by the butcher Cavaignac. Thou-
sands more were thrown into prison.
37
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
The defeat of the French workers in June 1848 had a pro-
foundly reactionary effect upon the revolutionary situation all
over Europe. Generally, the erstwhile revolutionary bourgeoisie
fled into the arms of reaction, the feudalists and monarchists, and
made common cause with them against the radical working class.
The main political effect of all this was to slow down, but not to
stop altogether, the march of the bourgeoisie to political power in
the several continental countries.
The conservative French National Assembly, on December 10,
1848, elected Louis Bonaparte as President. He seized dictatorial
power on December 2, 1851, and a year later had himself pro-
claimed Emperor, as Napoleon III.2 This political adventurer was
the man who was eventually to lead the French people into the
great debacle of the Franco-German war of 1870-71.
THE GERMAN REVOLUTION
The revolution of February 24, 1848, begun in Paris, spread
swiftly to Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, and other lands. The-
se countries, like France and for the same general reasons, were
ripe for bourgeois democratic revolution. On March 4, only a
week after the revolution began in Paris, the workers and their
allies rose in Cologne, Germany, and took charge of the city. On
March 13 the people of Vienna chased out Prince Metternich and
his government and mastered that important city. And “on March
18 the people of Berlin rose in arms, and after an obstinate strug-
gle of 18 hours, had the satisfaction of seeing the King surrender
himself into their hands.”3 Similar uprisings took place in many
other cities. A National Assembly was elected and a “liberal” gov-
ernment established. The bourgeoisie was in a position, by reso-
lute action, to make itself master of all Germany and Austria.
Marx and Engels, like all great Communist leaders, were men
of action as well as of theory. They not only analyzed the world,
but they fought actively to change it. With both France and Ger-
many in revolution, they chose the latter country, where they had
the most roots, as their field of operation. Consequently, they has-
tened from Belgium to Prussia, locating themselves in revolution-
ary Cologne, in the Rhine area. Among their most active co-
workers were Stephan Born, Josef Moll, Karl Schapper, Johann
Becker, and Wilhelm Wolff. Marx explained later that they went
to Cologne rather than to Berlin because, as it was more industri-

38
 THE REVOLUTION OF 1848
alized and had a more democratic regime, they would have great-
er freedom of action.4 The Communist League possessed only a
handful of members in Germany, so Marx and Engels had to work
through the broad democratic organizations at hand. During the
struggle the Communist Party of Germany was organized. Marx
became editor of Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which was at first an
organ of the liberal bourgeoisie, but which he turned into a jour-
nal supporting the workers.
On the eve of the revolution, the democratic parties had met
in Offenburg and worked out the program of the liberal bourgeoi-
sie. This included freedom of thought and association, universal
and equal male suffrage, a militia to replace the standing army, a
progressive income tax, trial by jury, popular education, labor re-
forms, and parliamentary government – all within a united Ger-
man republic.
The heart of this program for the bourgeoisie was to unite
fragmentized Germany into one state. In 1834, with the customs
union (Zollverein), a long step had been taken in this direction,
but the capitalists had further urgent need to get the whole chaos
of the many states under one central government. When Germany
finally became united in 1871 (without Austria), the new unity was
built out of a total of 25 states, four kingdoms, five grand duchies,
13 duchies and principalities, and three free cities, all previously
independent states.5
There being a common interest between the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie to overthrow the feudal monarchy and to estab-
lish a united democratic Germany, Marx and Engels and their fol-
lowers actively supported this general program. But they did so
with the understanding that the bourgeois revolution would be
but the introductory stage of a more far-reaching proletarian rev-
olution. Engels, later on, thus explained their policy: “For us Feb-
ruary and March [the first phase of the revolution] could have the
significance of a real revolution only if these months had not been
the termination but, on the contrary, the starting point of a pro-
longed revolutionary movement which... the people would have
developed further by their own struggle... and in which the prole-
tariat would gradually have won one position after another in a
series of battles.”6 Accordingly, Marx and Engels militantly fought
for a democratic republic, for a united Germany (including the
German section of Austria), for the specific class demands of the
39
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
workers, and for all-out support of the revolution in France, Hun-
gary and elsewhere.
This general line of policy was that of “permanent revolution,”
a policy which, under Trotsky distortions, was to play such an im-
portant role, two generations later, in the great Stalin-Trotsky
controversy in the Russian revolution. It was in harmony with the
conception in The Communist Manifesto, which declared that
“the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to
an immediately following proletarian revolution.” Engels later
admitted that he and Marx had miscalculated in their too early
expectancy of the socialist revolution.7 But they were basically
correct nevertheless in developing a socialist perspective in the
German revolution of 1848. In view of the revolutionary spirit of
the German working class and especially of the workers’ February
rising in Paris and their head-on armed collision with the bour-
geoisie in the June counter-revolution, the question of socialism
had been placed on the agenda of history in Europe. In fact, it was
to be but a relatively short time until the French working class, in
the heroic Paris Commune of 1871, would demonstrate this great
fact beyond all question.
BETRAYAL BY THE CAPITALIST CLASS
The German bourgeoisie in 1848, instead of following up its in-
itial revolutionary advantage by crushing the feudal states, wavered
and temporized. “The pretended new central authority of Germa-
ny,” says Engels, “left everything as they found it.”8 They were more
fearful of the revolutionary workers than they were of feudal reac-
tion. They were afraid that their bourgeois revolution would indeed
“grow over” into a socialist revolution. Therefore, essentially as the
French bourgeoisie did after the February uprising, the German
bourgeoisie allied itself with reaction against the working class. The
National Assembly, installed by the liberal bourgeoisie, was afraid
to break with the monarchy and kept on the road of compromise
until it was dissolved by aggressive reaction.
The bourgeoisie practically abandoned even its basic demand
for a united Germany, not to mention a republic. Marx denounced
the capitalist class as “without initiative... without a universal his-
torical calling, a doomed senile creature.”9 Without breaking with
those middle class elements still willing to fight, Marx and Engels
threw their stress upon action by the workers. But as the sequel

40
 THE REVOLUTION OF 1848
showed, the proletariat was much too weak and immature politi-
cally to take the lead and to carry through successfully the bour-
geois-democratic revolution which the bourgeoisie itself was so
flagrantly betraying, and a socialist revolution was not potential
in the situation.
The crushing defeat suffered by the workers in Paris in June
1848 revived reaction all through Germany and Eastern Europe.
In November of that year the militant counter-revolution re-
conquered Vienna and in the same month dissolved the National
Assembly of Prussia in Berlin. The people of Dresden took up
arms (with Bakunin participating), and so did those of other lo-
calities. The masses awaited a general call to action from the Na-
tional Assembly at Frankfurt, but this call never came. The bour-
geoisie, which had a majority in that Assembly, was busy selling
out the nation to the counter-revolution in its own narrow class
interests. By July 1849 the German revolution, begun so auspi-
ciously 16 months earlier, was entirely subdued and the counter-
revolution was again in the saddle.
The bourgeoisie did not win the decisive victory in the revolu-
tion, as they could have done, but they managed nevertheless to
open the doors sufficiently for the future rapid industrialization of
Germany. This was what they wanted basically, and having se-
cured it, they promptly betrayed their worker, peasant, and mid-
dle-class allies. This treachery was in the nature of the capitalist
beast. It was a basic lesson that was to be learned afresh by the
working class and the Negro people in the second American revo-
lution (1861-65), and by the workers and other democratic forces
in the many other bourgeois revolutions of the future. Another
basic lesson stressed by the 1848 revolution was the imperative
need for the workers to have an independent party of their own.
With counter-revolution victorious in Germany, great num-
bers of revolutionists had to leave the country. Masses of them
emigrated to the United States, there to play a very important role
in the fight against chattel slavery and in building the young labor
movement. Marx, Engels, and various other fighters returned to
London.
YEARS OF POLITICAL REACTION
The decade between the defeat of the 1848 revolution and the
establishment of the First International was generally a period of
41
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
political reaction, of rapid industrialization, of extensive growth
of the working class, and of lessened revolutionary struggle. In
France, Germany, and elsewhere revolutionaries were persecuted,
an outstanding example of this being the celebrated Cologne trial
of 1852, where nine Communist leaders were accused of high
treason. The trial, based on stool-pigeon and provocateur testi-
mony, resulted in the conviction and jailing of seven of these
leaders for long prison terms.
The rapid expansion of European industry was especially
marked in Great Britain, the leading capitalist country. In these
years there was some improvement in the conditions of the Eng-
lish workers. Beer says that “in the period from 1846 to 1866
money wages as well as real wages rose, as a result of the expan-
sion of trade and the repeal of the corn-laws.”10 This damped
down considerably the workers’ revolutionary spirit. Webb re-
marks that in this period, “under the influences of the rapid im-
provement and comparative prosperity... the Chartist agitation
dwindled away.”11 Nevertheless a substantial growth of British
trade unionism took place, with trade union councils being j es-
tablished in many cities during the latter 1850’s. In Germany, un-
der much more severe political conditions, the trade unions bare-
ly began to sprout.
Upon their return to London from Germany after the revolu-
tion, Marx and Engels re-organized the Communist League. But
the organization became the victim of factionalism. Marx and En-
gels made a stand against the adventurist policies of the Willich-
Schapper faction, which wanted to organize a hopeless putsch in
Germany. Marx warned of the danger of “playing at insurrection.”
He also collided with the utopian vagaries of Wilhelm Weitling. In
1852 the League split in two and broke up.
During this general period leading up to the formation of the
International Workingmen’s Association, Marx lived in deep pov-
erty in a small house in Soho, London. Engels was located in
Manchester under more favorable conditions. He frequently aid-
ed Marx financially, to enable him to carry on his studies and
writing. The two were the closest friends and collaborators, not
only politically but personally.
The following letter written by Marx a few weeks before the
Cologne trial, illustrates the dire conditions under which this
great scientist and revolutionist worked and lived: “My wife is

42
 THE REVOLUTION OF 1848
sick, Jenny [Marx’s oldest daughter] is sick. Lena [housekeeper
for the Marx family] is also ill with some kind of nervous fever. I
cannot call a doctor as I have no money for medicine. During
eight to ten days my family has existed only on bread and pota-
toes and it is not at all certain that I can get even these tomorrow.
It would be very good – and perhaps I ought to wish it – that the
landlady would throw me out of the apartment. I would then be
freed at least from a debt of 22 pounds. Then there are the bills of
the baker, the milkman, for meat, etc., which are also pressing
me.”12
This was an extremely productive period for Marx, despite his
great handicaps. In 1852, he published in Die Revolution, Joseph
Weydemeyer’s paper in the United States, The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, a masterly analysis of the revolu-
tion and counter-revolution in France in 1848-52. From 1852 to
1862, Marx, who had become a regular correspondent for Horace
Greeley’s paper, the New York Tribune, wrote brilliant articles for
that paper on Europe and Asia, and also fundamental analyses of
the American anti-slavery fight and the early stages of the Ameri-
can Civil War. In 1859, he published his Critique of Political
Economy, one of his basic writings on economics. But his major
activity was in writing his monumental work, Capital, the first
volume of which appeared in 1867.

43
4. The Founding of the First International
(1864)
Like the capitalist system, the labor movement is fundamental-
ly international. As industries and transportation and communica-
tion systems surmount all national borders, so does proletarian
class consciousness. The spread of capitalism to the various coun-
tries and the development of the world market inevitably generates
sentiments of internationalism among the workers. This is espe-
cially the case as they begin to break with bourgeois conceptions
and turn their attention to socialist policies and perspectives. The
political maturity of a given labor movement can be measured pret-
ty much by the degree of internationalism animating it.
In the early 19th century the young proletariat already sensed
a strong need for solidarity on an international scale. The workers
had need to know and support each other in their growing eco-
nomic and political struggles against the voracious capitalists,
who, although sharply antagonistic to each other along national
lines, nevertheless displayed a strong international unity against
the specific demands of the working class. More concretely, the
workers had to fight against international strike-breaking, and
they also sensed a growing need to struggle against war. The more
socialist they became, the more internationalist they grew.
The innate internationalism of the workers was also stimulat-
ed by strong international trends among the radical sections of
the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. In the revolutionary estab-
lishment of capitalist domination these classes definitely cooper-
ated across national lines, particularly in the various revolutions
of this general period. This was exemplified by the international
bourgeois support given the American Revolution in 1776, the
French Revolution of 1789, the French Revolution in 1848, and
the German, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, and other bourgeois revo-
lutions. Largely intellectuals, these radical bourgeois elements
also penetrated most of the workers’ international movements of
the times and tried to use them in their own class interests.
PRECURSORS OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL
England, the heartland of early capitalism, which had the
largest and best developed working class and which gave birth to

44
 FOUNDING OF FIRST INTERNATIONAL
trade unionism, naturally became the scene of most of the prelim-
inary efforts of the proletariat at international solidarity and or-
ganization. Ever since the strong rise of the labor movement in
the 1830’s, there were many expressions of the growing worker
spirit of internationalism. The Chartist movement displayed pow-
erful internationalist trends. Lorwin calls William Lovett, one of
its founders, “the first workingman of modern times with an in-
ternational outlook.”1 The Exiles’ League (1834-36), the Federa-
tion of the Just (1836-39) and the Communist League (1847-52),
which we have dealt with in Chapter 2, were definitely interna-
tionalist and predominantly proletarian in outlook and member-
ship. Their chief activities and centers were in England.
A very important international organization of this period was
the Fraternal Democrats, organized in London in September
1844, by groups of English fighters and European exiles. It de-
clared that "the earth with all its natural productions is the com-
mon property of all.”2 Stekloff says of it that, “as far as its animat-
ing ideas were concerned, it was the first international organiza-
tion of the working class, and in this sense may be regarded as a
harbinger of the International.”3 Harney, Jones, O’Brien, and
other outstanding Chartist leaders, were active figures in this sig-
nificant organization. Marx and Engels cooperated with the
movement. The Fraternal Democrats was internationalist and
concerned itself actively with the fights of the workers and other
revolutionary developments on the Continent. It definitely pre-
pared the way for the First International. An important feature of
this organization was that it initiated an organizational form
which was later adopted by the First International, i.e., the estab-
lishment of secretaries for the respective countries. Thus, there
were secretaries for England, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and
Spain. The organization perished in the reaction following the
1848 revolution in Europe.
The next significant international movement, also radiating out
from England, was the Welcome and Protest Committee, later
known as the International Committee (and the International As-
sociation), organized in London late in 1855. This body, too, set up
secretaries for the several countries in which it had contacts. Again
Ernest Jones and other Chartists were prominent figures in the
movement. The Committee held several big mass meetings in cele-
bration of the various European revolutions of the past, and it pro-
45
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
tested against the outrages of the current reaction in Europe. But
by the end of 1859 the International Committee had disappeared.
In France, too, powerful internationalist tendencies
manifested themselves among the workers. They had strong
international traditions, running back to Babeuf, the noted
Communist in the great French Revolution, as well as to fighters
in the 1830 and 1848 revolutions, and also in the many other
French people’s upheavals. In 1843 Flora Tristan, in Paris, wrote
a booklet calling for the establishment of a broad international
organization. “The Workers Union,” she said, “should establish in
the principal cities of England, Germany, Italy, in a word, in all
the capitals of Europe, committees of correspondence.”4 In April
1856 a deputation of French workers went to London, and
proposed that there be set up a “Universal League of Workers” to
conduct the struggle internationally.
Among the most important activities of all these international
groupings was their active support of the movement to abolish
Negro chattel slavery in the British Empire, the United States,
and throughout the world. There was for decades a strong aboli-
tionist movement in which Chartist trade unionists and Owenites
played a very important part. The British and American abolition
movements worked in close cooperation. Between 1833 and 1860,
William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and many other
prominent American Abolitionists visited England, where they
were given a tremendous mass welcome. George Thompson, Eng-
lish labor-Abolitionist, also came over to the United States and
was active in the local struggle. Prior to and during the Civil War,
English trade unionists repeatedly held big demonstrations
against slavery. In France, too, the working class displayed simi-
lar anti-slavery internationalist solidarity against the determined
attempts of Napoleon III to bring Great Britain and France into
the war on the side of the Confederacy.
These pro-abolition, pro-peace activities, especially of the
British workers, led to a letter of thanks from President Lincoln to
the Manchester textile workers, who were at the point of starva-
tion because of the cotton blockade. He said that the support con-
stituted “an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not
been surpassed in any age in any country.”5 On March 2, 1863,
the United States Senate expressed gratitude to the British work-
ers for their support. And Marx, earlier in the New York Tribune,

46
 FOUNDING OF FIRST INTERNATIONAL
stated that, “It ought never to be forgotten in the United States
that at least the working classes of England, from the com-
mencement to the termination of 1 he difficulty, have not forsaken
them.”6
The foundation of the First International itself took place in a
rising wave of proletarian and bourgeois national revolutionary
struggle, after the long period of reaction that had followed the
European revolution of 1848. Capitalism was growing rapidly all
over Western Europe, and so was the working class, both in or-
ganization and in lighting spirit. The labor movement, particular-
ly in England, was strengthening itself, the London Trades Coun-
cil was formed in 1860, .and similar bodies were taking shape in
other centers. In Germany, the first trade unions were just com-
ing into existence; Ferdinand Lassalle organized the General Un-
ion of German Workers, a political organization, in 1862, and Au-
gust Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht were carrying on an active
communist agitation, which was to bring about the organization
in 1869 of the Social-Democratic Workers Party of Germany. In
the United States, also, in the period from 1863 on, the trade un-
ions were growing swiftly. The great economic crisis of 1857, the
first of a world-wide character, affected the workers deeply and
gave birth to a strong strike movement in 1860-62, both in Eng-
land and in other countries, including the United States.
Among the many developments in the powerful upsurge of
bourgeois democratic national movements in the pre-First Interna-
tional period, there were several which especially aroused the
workers of all countries and strengthened their urge for interna-
tional solidarity. An important one was the sharp rise in the Irish
liberation struggle, directed against the English oppressors. Anoth-
er was a regrowth of strong mass sentiment for the unification and
democratization of Germany. Still another was the Italian national
revolutionary war of 1859 against Austria. Led by Garibaldi, this
war culminated in the liberation and unification of Italy and the
introduction of a number of democratic reforms. It caused enthusi-
asm far and wide among the workers in the capitalist world. Then
there was the heroic insurrection in Poland in 1863. This revolt,
drowned in blood by the Russian tyrant, evoked widespread ex-
pressions of proletarian sympathy and support. Finally, there was
the revolutionary Civil War in the United States, which was going
on when the First International was formed. The organized work-
47
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ers in England, Germany, France, and elsewhere, from the outset of
this great war, understood clearly that their class interests were
decidedly with the North against the slaveholding South, and, as we
have already remarked, on many occasions they gave voice power-
fully to their strong abolitionist sentiments.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL
WORKINGMEN’S ASSOCIATION*
The First International was launched on September 28, 1864,
in St. Martin’s Hall, London. Prior to this meeting, over 300
workers from France and 12 from Germany had visited the Inter-
national Exhibition in London in 1862,7 and while there discussed
with English trade unionists the project of a workers’ internation-
al. Also, on July 22, 1863, English and French workers in collabo-
ration had organized a mass meeting in London to protest the
suppression of the Cracow insurrection and to demand Polish in-
dependence. This led to further talks about an international, and
some four months later, George Odger, prominent English union
leader, wrote an “Address” to the French workers on the need of
international labor action. The French did not reply for a year, but
when they did, they sent their answer to London by the same
workers who had attended the joint meeting there in 1863. It was
to receive their report that the famous meeting of September 28
was called in St. Martin’s Hall.
The meeting was a large one, heavily attended by workingmen
and foreign-born exiles. Professor E. S. Beesly was in the chair,
Marx was in attendance. Odger read the address, sent a year pre-
viously to the French workers. The address proposed: “Let there
be a gathering together of representatives from France, Italy,
Germany, Poland, England, and all countries, where there exists a
will to cooperate for the good of mankind. Let us have our con-
gresses; let us discuss the great questions on which the peace of
nations depends...”8 M. Tolain, one of the French delegates, who
was greeted with great applause, read the French answer. After
reviewing the hardships faced by the workers, it called upon the

* After the formation of the Second International in 1889, the I.W.A.

became known as “The First International.” Prior to that, it was
generally called simply “The International.”
48
 FOUNDING OF FIRST INTERNATIONAL
workers of all countries to unite.9 The French then proposed that
the new International have its headquarters in London, that the
Bee-hive, an English labor paper, should be its official organ, that
temporarily a voluntary dues system be established, and that the
new body should be provisionally headed by a Central Committee,
with sub-commissions in all the capitals of Europe. The proposal
was passed by acclamation, and a general committee of 21 was
elected to carry out the purposes of the resolution. This commit-
tee was authorized to co-opt additional members, as it saw fit.
Early in October, the General Committee held several meet-
ings, at which the title of “International Workingmen’s Associa-
tion” was adopted and general officers were elected. George
Odger was chosen President and William R. Cremer, Honorary
General Secretary. There were corresponding secretaries chosen
for Germany (Marx), America (P. Fox)*, Italy, Poland, Switzer-
land, and France. The members of the nationalities of the Central
Provisional Council, as further constituted, were: ENGLISH –
Longmaid, Worley, Leno, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell,
Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Shearman, Nieass, Shaw, Lake,
Buckley, Odger, Howell, Osborne, Carter, Gray, Wheeler,
Stainsby, Morgan, Grossmith, Cremer, Dick; FRENCH – Denoual,
Le Lubez, Jourdain, Marrisot, Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet,
Talandier, Dupont; ITALIAN – Wolf, Fontana, Setacci, Aldrovandi,
Lama, Solustri; SWISS – Nuperly, Jung; GERMAN – Eccarius, Wolf,
Otto, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Marx, Kant, Bolleter; POLISH –
Holtorp, Rybczinski. The first Congress of the I.W.A. was sched-
uled for 1865 in Brussels.
The General Council at once set about formulating a political
program and rules for the I.W.A. L. Wolf, an emissary of Mazzini
in Italy, read his program, which would have made the organiza-
tion into a secret body; but it was rejected, with the opposition of
Marx. Weston, a veteran Owenite, also suggested a program, full
of confusion, and it, too, was voted down. Finally, a document by
Le Lubez, heavily tinctured with Mazzinism, was adopted. Marx
was on the subcommittee to edit this confused document, and as

* Peter A. Fox, Correspondent for America, 1866-67, was an English

journalist, who joined the International at the St. Martin’s Hall
meeting.
49
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
he says, he “altered the whole preamble, threw out the declaration
of principles, and finally replaced the forty rules by ten.”10 The
document, when finally adopted unanimously, was almost com-
pletely the work of Marx, except for some petty-bourgeois phra-
seology about “truth,” “justice” and “morality” that the General
Council insisted upon inserting, as Marx complained later. That
Marx was finally called upon to write the momentous document
testifies to the broad influence of its celebrated predecessor, The
Communist Manifesto. “From the first day of its existence, Karl
Marx was the intellectual head, the brilliant theoretician and
practical leader of the first workers’ international.”11
THE I.W.A. PROGRAM AND CONSTITUTION
The Inaugural Address12 of the I.W.A., its first statement of
program, is one of the greatest documents in the history of the
world’s working class. It is a splendid example of the application
of the principles of communism to the everyday struggles and
general perspectives of the working class. The Address declared,
“It is a great fact that the misery of the working masses has not
diminished from 1848 to 1864, and yet this period is unrivalled
for the development of its industry and the growth of its com-
merce.” Those who, years before had prophesied that with the
expansion of British industry poverty would be automatically
wiped out, had been completely refuted by reality. Government
reports showed that for the worker, life was “in nine cases out of
ten but a struggle of existence.” Actually, official figures showed
“that the worst of the convicted criminals, the penal serfs of Eng-
land and Scotland, toiled much less and fared far better than the
agricultural laborers of England and Scotland.” And many groups
of industrial workers were living below subsistence levels. Mean-
while, the wealth of the landowners and capitalists increased by
leaps and bounds.
The Address analyzed the period of reaction that had set in all
over Europe after the defeat of the revolution of 1848. It hailed
the great victory in 1847 of the Ten Hours’ Bill, which the workers
had won after 30 years of struggle. “The Ten Hours’ Bill,” it de-
clared, “was not only a great practical success; it was the victory of
a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political
economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy
of the working class.” All over Western Europe the governments

50
 FOUNDING OF FIRST INTERNATIONAL
were being compelled to adopt similar legislation.
The Address heartily endorsed the cooperative movement
that was then making progress, but this alone, it said, “will never
be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monop-
oly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden
of their miseries.” The Address laid central stress upon political
action. “To conquer political power,” it declared, “has therefore
become the great duty of the working class.” The workers have
one element of success – numbers, “but numbers weigh only in
the balance, if united by combination and led by knowledge.” The
workers of Europe had paid dearly for their lack of organization.
The Address also stressed the need of the workers having a
foreign policy. “If the emancipation of the working classes re-
quires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfill that
great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs,
playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical
wars the people’s blood and treasure?” It congratulated the work-
ing class of England for saving Western Europe from becoming
involved in the American Civil War. The Address sharply declared
for a democratic and peaceful foreign policy. “The fight for such a
foreign policy,” it stated, “forms part of the general struggle for
the emancipation of the working classes.” The document ended
with the great historic slogan of The Communist Manifesto, “Pro-
letarians of All Countries, Unite!”
The Provisional Rules, or constitution of the Association, pro-
vided for the organizational measures described above. It begins
with a preamble calling for organization, as follows:
“That the emancipation of the working classes must be con-
quered by the working classes themselves; that the struggle for
the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for
class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties,
and the abolition of all class rule;
“That the economical subjection of the man of labor to the
monopolizer of the means of labor, that is, the source of life, lies
at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery,
mental degradation, and political dependence;
“That the economical emancipation of the working classes is
therefore the great end to which every political movement ought
to be subordinate as a means;
“That all efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed
51
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
from the want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of la-
bor in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of
union between the working classes of different countries;
“That the emancipation of labor is neither a local nor a
national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which
modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the
concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced
countries;
“That the present revival of the working classes in the most
industrious countries of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives
solemn warning against a relapse into the old errors and calls for
the immediate combination of the still disconnected movements.”

52
5. Trade Unionism, Proudhon, Lassalle,
and Bakunin
The struggle of the working class, involving the protection of
the workers’ interests under capitalism, the abolition of the capi-
talist system, and the establishment of socialism, is a highly com-
plex matter. The revolutionary science of this struggle is Marxism,
or, in our days, Marxism-Leninism; which represents the sum
total of the lessons learned by the proletariat and its allies in their
world-wide, century-long battle against the exploiting classes. The
historical progress of a given labor movement is to be measured
directly by the extent to which it has mastered and absorbed the
principles of Marxism.
During the course of the class struggle the working class, on
its way finally to acquiring a Marxist consciousness, either spon-
taneously generates or absorbs from hostile classes, many errone-
ous conceptions about its position in society and the way for it to
emancipate itself. Thus originate many movements in labor’s
ranks, referred to by Marx as “sects,” but now generally known in
Marxist terminology as "right” and “left” “deviations.” Originally
some of these sects, for example, the utopian Socialists, played a
constructive role, but as the labor movement matured and ex-
panded they became reactionary. Usually these “sects” or “devia-
tions” have had a grain of truth in them. That is, they are based
upon necessary working class ideas, organizational forms, or tac-
tics, which by distortion, exaggeration, and misapplication, are
twisted entirely out of their real significance. Frequently, the sects
also build their own specific conceptions of how to do away with
capitalism and to construct socialism. These sects, always helpful
to the capitalists and injurious to the solidarity and struggle of the
labor movement, in times of revolution can become counter-
revolutionary, as the workers were to learn by bitter experience in
the decades after Marx’s death.
At this point it is well for us to interrupt our chronological
history of the First International and to analyze some of the major
ideological currents within that organization. It contained several
sects and they played decisive roles in the movement.
To eliminate such harmful sects and to inculcate true princi-
ples of working class revolutionary science has always been the

53
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
basic concern of Marxists, as it also was that of Marx and Engels
in the days of the First International. In a letter in November 1871
to Friedrich Bolte, a prominent American member of the I.W.A.,
Marx said: “The International was founded in order to replace the
socialist or semi-socialist sects by a real organization of the work-
ing class for struggle. The original Statutes and the Inaugural Ad-
dress show this at a glance.... The development of socialist sectar-
ianism and that of the real labor movement always stand in in-
verse ratio to each other.... The history of the International was a
continual struggle of the General Council against the sects and
against amateur experiments, which sought to assert themselves
within the International against the real movement of the work-
ing class.”1
At the time of the foundation of the First International there
was relatively only a small handful of Marxists, of those who fully
grasped the significance of the revolutionary writings of Marx and
Engels. The sectarians of various kinds dominated the young and
weak movements in the respective countries, and they were also
in large majority at the congresses. The reason the Geneva and
other early congresses were able nevertheless to turn out so much
good policy was because the great bulk of it was written by Marx
himself. At that time the earliest sectarians of all, the utopian so-
cialists, had just about faded out, as the labor movement, despite
many errors, was at last beginning to grapple with real economic
and political policies. There were, however, several brands of
sects in existence, and future labor history was due to produce
many more types.
PURE AND SIMPLE TRADE UNIONISM
Throughout the life of the First International its strongest
mass organizations were the affiliated English trade unions. The
extent of this support was indicated by the fact, among other
things, that George Odger and W. R. Cremer, members of the fa-
mous trade union “Junta,” the unofficial leading committee of the
labor movement, were chosen President and Honorary General
Secretary of the I.W.A., while many other prominent trade union
leaders were also members of the General Council. At one time or
another, the bulk of the unions in England were affiliated in some
measure with the I.W.A. For a decade the International played an

54
 TRADE UNIONISM
important role in English labor affairs.*
During the period of the I.W.A. the British labor movement
was in quite a different mood than it had been during the fiery
years of Chartism in the 1840’s. It was a time of rapid capitalist
development and of the initial stages of British imperialism. Some
improvement took place in the position of the working class, par-
ticularly of the skilled workers, and the labor movement lost most
of its former revolutionary spirit. Lenin later gathered many quo-
tations from Marx and Engels to the effect that the British labor
movement at that time “lacked the mettle of the Chartists,” that
the British worker leaders were developing into something be-
tween a radical bourgeois and a worker, and that the capitalists
were attempting “to bourgeoisify the workers.”2
By 1866 the British unions were well into the time of what
Engels called “the forty years winter sleep” of the proletariat. This
was the general period of the rise of British imperialism.
Rothstein remarks of this era: “There were new leaders, new
methods, new interests, new aims, and the traces of the old
[Chartism] vanished so quickly that its very memory was all but
obliterated in the next generation, and the few survivors, like
O’Brien, Harney, and Ernest Jones seemed living anachronisms,
almost curiosities.”3
It was the period of the most pronounced “pure and simple
trade unionism,” when the unions, mostly of the narrow craft va-
riety and showing little solidarity with each other, did not look
beyond the framework of capitalist society and confined their
aims to limited economic objectives. They went easy on strikes
and built up extensive systems of mutual benefits in the unions.
The unions as such took but little interest generally in policies,
and when they did (for the voting franchise, against certain re-
pressive laws, etc.), it was under the leadership of the Liberal Par-
ty and usually for the limited purpose of freeing the unions from
legal restrictions.
Odger, Cremer, and other trade union leaders in the I.W.A.,
expressed these opportunistic moods. Their line represented
bourgeois influence in the labor movement. They did not see in

*Curiously, however, in their book, History of Trade Unionism, the

Webbs devote only a single footnote, p. 235, to the International.
55
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the International an instrument for the emancipation of the
workers so much as a means to help the British trade unions, es-
pecially against the importation of strike-breakers from the Con-
tinent. Unlike the Proudhonists and the Bakuninists, however,
they never made a militant fight to dominate the I.W.A. But their
opportunist ideology was a constant drag on the development of
the International, and finally, as we shall see, it resulted in a defi-
nite rupture with the organization. Marx and Engels kept up a
running battle against this pure and simple trade unionism, or
economism, within the International, a deviation which was also
later to play (and still does) a very important role in the American
labor movement.
BLANQUISM
Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) was an important leader
among the French workers, especially from the middle 1830’s to
the Commune of 1871. He had studied law and medicine, but ear-
ly became interested in politics. After the revolution of 1830, in
which he helped put Louis Philippe on the throne, Blanqui cast in
his fate with the working class movement. Vaguely he was a
communist and an advocate of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
He based his policies upon armed insurrection and conspiratorial
groups, and he took an important part in the many French revolu-
tions of his period. In 1839, he led an abortive attempt in Paris to
overthrow the reactionary government. He was very active, too, in
the revolution of 1848. As we shall see, he was also a central fig-
ure in the Paris Commune. Jailed several times, and once sen-
tenced to death, he finally died from natural causes.
Blanqui spoke in the name of Babeuf, the early French Com-
munist. He eschewed all economic and political reforms.
Blanquism, with its sole stress upon armed insurrection, was a
characteristic product of the early French labor movement, which
lived under harsh repressive conditions, had a background of mil-
itant revolutionary traditions, and worked largely under the influ-
ence of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie. Blanqui knew nothing
of building up strong political parties, mass trade unions, and
broad cooperatives, and of participating actively in the everyday
struggles of the working class for immediate demands. Confined
mostly to France, Blanquism hardly threatened to control the In-
ternational. It was definitely a “leftist” influence, however, in that

56
 TRADE UNIONISM
organization, although many of its best fighters eventually be-
came Marxists. Marx had a high opinion of Blanqui’s revolution-
ary spirit, but he was no admirer of his conspiratorial policies.4 As
an active political force Blanquism died with the Paris Commune,
but remnants of it lingered on, and finally the Blanquist Party, in
1904-05, amalgamated with the French Unified Socialist Party.
PROUDHONISM
Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) was a printer, self-
educated, .and highly intelligent. He was the father of modern
anarchism. His influence during the 1860’s was very extensive
among the French workers, particularly the skilled handicrafts-
men in the Paris luxury trades. He also had a big following in Bel-
gium. During the first years of the International his group was
very influential in that body. His most important book, The Phi-
losophy of Poverty, was published in 1846, and, says Marx, “it
produced a great sensation.” The Proudhonists tried persistently
to capture the International, for their own purposes.
Proudhon’s program proposed the setting up of a vast system
of producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives – “mutualist socie-
ties,” he called them – which, by constant expansion, would come
eventually to supplant the capitalist system. A prominent feature
was to be free credit for the cooperatives through people’s banks.
In 1846, in a letter to Marx, Engels thus sums up the economic
side of this plan: "These people have got nothing more or less in
mind than to buy up, for the time being, the whole of France, and
later on perhaps the rest of the world as well, with the savings of
the proletariat and by renouncing profit and the interest on their
capital.”5 With his famous dictum, that “Property is robbery,”
Proudhon referred to the property of the bourgeoisie, not that of
the petty bourgeoisie. Proudhon argued that not only would the
economic base of capitalism be liquidated by his cooperatives, but
the state as well. The future society would be operated by his “free
mutualist associations.” This system he named “anarchy.”
This was a petty-bourgeois conception, as Marx and Engels
made clear. Moreover, it represented conservative sections of the
petty bourgeoisie, which, being crushed by the rising capitalists,
wanted thus to evade the struggle, whereas the radical sections of
the bourgeoisie mounted the barricades time and again against its
big capitalist and feudal enemies. Proudhon’s general idea was
57
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
that the workers and peasants could not emancipate themselves
by struggle against the capitalists and the feudal remnants, but by
gradually, through his cooperatives, becoming the owners of the
land and the tools with which they worked. As for woman, her
place was not in the shops or in politics, but in the home. Prou-
dhon imbibed much of his general conception from Fourier and
other great French Utopians who preceded him. The repressive
political conditions then existing in France caused many workers
and peasants to turn to Proudhon’s seemingly easy escape to
freedom from the barbarous situation under which they lived.
Proudhon rejected the class struggle in both theory and prac-
tice. He was opposed to labor unions, to strikes, to wage increas-
es, and to labor legislation. Only in the last years of his life did he
somewhat modify this drastic anti-labor stand. He was also op-
posed to a political party, declaring that, “The Party is born of tyr-
anny.” He maintained that the era of revolutions had passed –
unfortunately saying this only two weeks before the revolution of
1848, which Marx and Engels had been predicting. Proudhon
held that the state, which was oppressing the toilers and aiding
the capitalists, could neither be democratized nor destroyed by a
head-on attack; it had to be gradually supplanted by his
“mutualist” system.
Marx and Engels kept up a running battle against
Proudhonism for 20 years, and, in tune with the developing labor
movement, finally smashed it. When Proudhon issued his famous
book in 1846, The Philosophy of Poverty, Marx replied the follow-
ing year, with his celebrated work, The Poverty of Philosophy, in
which he tore Proudhon’s petty-bourgeois utopia to shreds. This
sharp attack ended forever the personal friendship which had
hitherto existed between the two men. In The Communist Mani-
festo Proudhonism was characterized as “bourgeois socialism”
which wants “a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.”
Tolain, Fribourg, and for a time, Varlin, were the principal
leaders of the strong Proudhonist groups in France and in the ear-
lier congresses of the International. Marx and Engels found them-
selves in constant collision with this group’s recurring propositions,
which were generally designed to cut down all class struggle theory
and practice in the International and to turn the world’s organized
workers away from a perspective of the socialist revolution to an
acceptance of the petty-bourgeois capitalism of Proudhon.

58
 TRADE UNIONISM
LASSALLEISM
Several of the traditional deviations which have afflicted the
labor movement in its march forward have related to the role of
the cooperative movement. The cooperatives, as Marx pointed out
in the Inaugural Address of the I.W.A., are a useful form of prole-
tarian struggle and organization, but they, by themselves, cannot
bring about the emancipation of the working class. The idea that
they can free the workers springs up spontaneously, however, and
this notion has long afflicted the cooperative movement. We have
just seen how this illusion manifested itself among the
Proudhonists of France. The English cooperatives generated simi-
lar pseudo-revolutionary ideas, but not to such a marked degree.
Lassalleism, which was a special form of the cooperative move-
ment, was also afflicted with this type of illusion.
Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) was born of Jewish parentage
in Breslau and he was educated in Berlin University. Becoming a
Hegelian and a friend of Marx, he early interested himself in the
fight for German national independence and democracy. He be-
came a Socialist and turned his attention to the emancipation of
the working class. The way he envisaged this being accomplished
was through the building up of a network of government-
subsidized cooperatives, which would gradually replace the capi-
talist system. To insure the government subsidies being realized,
Lassalle called for the general franchise for the workers, errone-
ously assuming that universal men’s suffrage would give the
workers 90 percent of the seats in parliament. Lassalle outlined
his ideas mainly in The Workingman’s Programme (1862), and
The Open Letter (1863), and to further his program, he founded
the General Union of German Workers in 1863, a political organi-
zation. Lassalle thus became a pioneer political organizer of the
German working class, although, unlike Liebknecht and Bebel, he
never really became a Marxist.* Marx praised Lassalle for his ac-
tivities and said he had re-awakened the workers’ movement in
Germany after its fifteen years of slumber.6
Lassalle’s opportunist line conflicted directly with the build-
ing of a broad trade union and political movement of the workers

* Lassalle’s career was suddenly cut short in 1864, when he was killed
in a duel.
59
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
freely using all the weapons available to it, and Marx combated it
vigorously as a petty-bourgeois tendency. He declared that Las-
salle’s movement was nothing but a sectarian organization, and as
such hostile to the organization of the genuine workers’ move-
ment striven for by the International. Lassalle had been one of
Marx’s earliest disciples, and he together with Marx and Engels,
had fought for a united, democratic German Republic. In maneu-
vering for his pet project of state subsidies for cooperatives, Las-
salle entered into dubious relations with the wily Prussian chan-
cellor, Bismarck, who was always eager to try to demoralize the
labor movement. For these dealings, which were later fully con-
firmed, Marx condemned Lassalle as having betrayed the work-
ers’ cause.7
Like Proudhon, Lassalle was opposed to trade unions and
strikes as being futile and a waste of the workers’ energies and
resources. In his time German labor unions had hardly been born.
Lassalle undertook to justify his anti-union position on the basis
of his so-called “iron law of wages,” according to which the work-
ers were unbreakably bound to the barest subsistence levels and
any wage raises won by trade unions were supposed to be auto-
matically cancelled out by increases in living costs. Marx made a
head-on collision with this petty-bourgeois theory of Lassalle’s.
His analysis on this general question is contained in his famous
booklet, Value, Price and Profit, which is the text of his report to
the General Council of the I.W.A. in September 1865.
The substance of Marx’s position was to the effect that the
workers, by organized economic and political struggle, could im-
prove their living standards – a proposition which in our days,
with scores of millions of workers in trade unions, has become
obvious, but which in those days was a very important pioneer
analysis. Marx showed that “trade union action was capable of
raising labor above subsistence level, just as concerted or monop-
olistic action on the employers’ part could depress wages below
that level.”8 Marx thus laid the theoretical basis of the trade union
movement. On the specific question of the effects of wage increas-
es, Marx said in his report: “A general rise in the rate of wages
would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly
speaking, would not affect the prices of commodities.”9 Marx
warned, however, that “the general tendency of capitalist produc-
tion is not to raise but to sink the average standard of wages.”

60
 TRADE UNIONISM
Wage increases are not the way to emancipation. As for the trade
unions, Marx criticized them for dealing simply with effects and
not with causes. “Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s
wages for a fair day’s work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner
the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’ ”10
The Lassalleans, of whom, following their leader’s death, J. B.
Schweitzer was the most prominent, played no great part in the
congresses of the International, from which they generally held
aloof to shield themselves from police persecution. They were,
however, a decisive force in the German labor movement, as we
shall see in passing. The followers of Lassalle were important also
among the workers of Bohemia and Austria, and they exercised a
great deal of influence among the large numbers of German
worker immigrants in the United States.
BAKUNINISM
Michael Bakunin (1814-1876) was born in Tver, Russia, of a
rich, noble family. He served in Poland as an imperial officer, but
quit in protest against the tsar’s tyranny there. An exile, Bakunin
became a revolutionary, taking a leading part in the defense of
Dresden in 1849. For this he was sentenced to death, but was later
handed over to the tsar’s government, which sent him to Siberia
in 1855. He escaped and returned to Europe in 1861, becoming
highly active in Anarchist circles. He died in Berne, Switzerland,
in 1876.
Bakunin was a disciple of Proudhon, whom he knew personal-
ly. He accepted Proudhon’s general conception of the state and of
a future society based upon free associations of producers. But he
substituted several new concepts in place of Proudhon’s. He
abandoned the idea of gradually liquidating the state by the
growth of mutualist cooperatives, and proposed instead that the
state be destroyed by insurrectional attack. He also took a more
tolerant attitude towards trade unionism. He came to insist that,
short of insurrection, trade union struggles were the only practi-
cal fights. The unions, however, should look towards eventual in-
surrection, and in the future regime they would serve as the basic
producing organizations. Bakunin thus became, in fact, one of the
fathers of the future strong Anarcho-syndicalist tendency.
Bakunin called his program, “the anarchist system of Prou-
dhon, extended by us, developed and freed by us of all metaphysi-
61
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
cal, idealistic and doctrinaire frills.”11 Bakunin’s principal ideas
appear in his book, God and the State, which was published in
1882. In this book he ties the state and religion together as the
basic sources of authoritarian suppression, both of which must be
violently destroyed. The main principles in his general program
were: (a) the propagation of atheism; (b) the destruction of the
state; (c) the rejection of all political action, as the state can be
destroyed only by insurrection. He made a major point of the abo-
lition of the right of property inheritance.
Bakunin represented fundamentally the declassed petty bour-
geoisie and peasantry and the workers of the more industrially
backward countries of Europe. Anarchism, the Bakunin variety
and others, also existed mainly in the semi-feudal Catholic coun-
tries, where the Protestant (bourgeois revolutionary) Reformation
was not completed and where the ultra-authoritarian Catholic
Church saturated every phase of economic, political, and social
life. This especially explains the aggressive anticlericalism of an-
archism. Bakunin did not stress social classes as such, nor did he
understand the class struggle. He wrote of the “poor people,” and
the “poverty-stricken sections of the population,” and he con-
trasted the “revolutionary spirit” of the lumpen proletariat with
the “reactionary spirit” of the labor aristocracy, among whom he
included the bulk of the working class.12 He erroneously consid-
ered the pauperized as always being in a mood for insurrection.
Of great vigor and militancy, Bakunin built for himself a large
following – in Italy, Spain, Southern France, French Switzerland,
Russia, and eventually among the foreign-born workers in the
United States. He joined the First International in 1868, and
thenceforth led an increasingly bitter struggle for control of the
organization. Inevitably he came into direct collision with Marx
and the Communists. Thenceforth, the severe struggle between
these irreconcilable groups colored the whole life of the Interna-
tional, and finally caused its disruption.
The Marxists agreed in broad principle with the Anarchists
that the capitalist state had to be abolished, but they differed rad-
ically as to the methods by which capitalism as a system was to be
done away with and also as to what kind of a social regime would
take its place. Marx collided with Bakunin on three major ques-
tions: (a) the political struggle of the working class; (b) the prole-
tarian dictatorship; (c) the proletarian party. Marx especially

62
 TRADE UNIONISM
combated Bakunin’s conspiratorial and terrorist line. As Bern-
stein says, for Bakunin “Will, and not economic conditions, was
decisive in changing things permanently. This type of thinking led
straight to putschism.”13 All these proved to be life and death
questions in the International and, later on, also in the general
labor movement.
Bakunin looked with scorn upon all fights for political re-
forms. He particularly condemned political action aimed at the
democratization of the bourgeois state, and he endorsed strikes
only in the sense that they were small insurrections with partial
objectives, pending the coming of the general insurrection that
would end capitalism altogether. On the other hand, Marx had a
practical appreciation of the value of both economic and political
reforms (wage increases, shortening of hours, regulation of child
labor, factory legislation, extension of the franchise, etc.) This was
shown by the vast attention paid, with Marx’s approval, by the
General Council and the I.W.A. congresses to strikes, the building
of unions, and the development of various political struggles for
partial demands, along with their consideration of major political
problems. Yet no one understood better than Marx that working
class emancipation could never be achieved by such partial de-
mands. To free the workers is the task of the proletarian revolu-
tion, but this must be accomplished, not by a few conspirators, as
Bakunin supposed, but by the main body of the workers in action.
As Marx repeatedly expressed it, the most basic advantage to the
workers of their daily struggles is the class consciousness and or-
ganization that they gain from them. The Marxists, as exemplified
in The Communist Manifesto itself, had both a minimum and a
maximum program; the Bakuninists had only a maximum pro-
gram. This was the difference between a broad revolutionary
mass movement and a narrow pseudo-revolutionary sect.
Bakunin took the position that when the masses dealt the kill-
ing blow to the capitalist system, this would be the end of the
state automatically, and that it would be immediately replaced by
his “free federation of persons, communes, districts, nations.”
Marx and the Communists also looked forward ultimately to a
social regime in which there would be no repressive state gov-
ernment, but they ridiculed Bakunin’s conception that this would
come virtually overnight with the downfall of capitalism. Already
in 1848, in The Communist Manifesto, Marx had made it clear
63
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
that there would be an intermediate period, the dictatorship of
the proletariat. This would be the class rule of the workers; for
only on this basis could the counterrevolution be repressed, the
capitalist state destroyed, and the classless socialist society, with-
out a state, eventually be established. The immediate aim is the
dictatorship of the proletariat; the ultimate aim is a stateless soci-
ety. The Bakuninists vigorously opposed the whole concept of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. They fought simply for the destruc-
tion of the state; the Marxists fought for the seizure of power by
the working class. It boiled down to the immediate and final pro-
gram of the Marxists versus the simple maximum program of the
Bakuninists.
Bakunin also carried his extreme anti-authoritarian ideas into
the realm of political organization. His general conception was
that of a highly decentralized movement, playing upon spontanei-
ty, with the national sections completely autonomous and the In-
ternational hardly more than a correspondence center. Marx, on
the other hand, conceived the International to be the beginning of
a solidly organized world political organization of the workers,
and the General Council as the germ of an effective world leader-
ship. Endless bitter quarrels developed between Marxists and
Bakuninists over this practical organizational question, as well as
over matters of political tactics and ultimate objectives.
Bakuninism made the basic errors of foreshortening and over-
simplifying the revolution, of failing to understand the need for
the dictatorship of the proletariat, of not understanding the revo-
lutionary role of the working class, of grossly underestimating the
importance of the workers’ imperative drive for immediate re-
forms, of trying to make atheism a condition of working class uni-
ty in the struggle, and of ignoring the fundamental necessity for a
strong political party. Therefore, it had to go down to defeat be-
fore Marxism, which was incomparably more realistic in all these
respects.

64
6. Consolidation: The Geneva Congress
(1866)
The I.W.A. meeting in Geneva was the first world labor con-
gress ever held. Therefore, it confronted a host of problems which
were unique and difficult to an extent hardly understandable in
our era of multiple labor congresses. Originally it was planned to
hold the congress in Brussels in 1865; but the date was too soon
and because of the reactionary nature of the Belgian government,
the city was also unavailable. Instead, in 1865 a preparatory con-
ference was held in London, which finally decided that the Con-
gress should take place September 3, 1866, in Geneva; that is, two
years after the St. Martin’s Hall meeting.
The basic ideological difficulty confronted by the new Interna-
tional Workingmen’s Association, was the multiplicity of “sects”
composing it, and the greatest organizational difficulty was the
lack of working class movements in the respective countries. In
most places, the labor movement was barely coming into being.
The Rules of the organization provided for the affiliation of
“workingmen’s societies,” a characterization which was interpret-
ed to embrace labor organizations of all sorts. The first congress
was, therefore, made up of representatives of trade unions, politi-
cal organizations (which were mostly small secret groups on the
Continent), mutual benefit societies, consumers’ cooperatives,
educational groups, etc. Save the Lassalle organization in Germa-
ny, there were no national labor or socialist parties yet in the var-
ious countries. The I.W.A. continued throughout its existence up-
on this broad, all-inclusive basis.
The congress call was greeted enthusiastically by the advanced
workers, and wherever the organizers (voluntary) of the congress
went they got a good reception. The most substantial response was
among the union workers in England. The Sheffield trade union
congress of 1866 endorsed the I.W.A. and recommended that local
unions affiliate with it. The London Trades Council took a similar
cooperative position, but it refrained from affiliating itself. When
the Geneva Congress assembled there were 15 English trade unions
represented, with a stated membership of 25.173.1
The Proudhonist mutualist groups of France and Belgium also
rallied strongly to the congress. And active workers eagerly set to

65
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
work to enlist the scattered labor groupings of all sorts, such as
then existed in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.
“Each of the sections of this movement which came into the ranks
of the International brought with it whole mountains of petty-
bourgeois rubbish, childish illusions, doctrinaire fancies, sectari-
an impotence and national prejudices”2 – all of which Marx, En-
gels, and the handful of developed Communists had to combat.
There was also a response in the United States, Stekloff reporting
a workers’ congress in Chicago, on August 20, 1866, as endorsing
the new International.3 The National Labor Union held its found-
ing convention, representing some 60,000 workers, in Baltimore
just two weeks before the opening of the Geneva Congress of the
I.W.A. Marxists were very active in the formation of the N.L.U.*
There was strong sentiment of support for the I.W.A., but the
congress declared that the time was too short to permit it to send
delegates to Geneva. Marx was struck by the close similarity of the
labor demands raised by the N.L.U. congress with those proposed
by himself for the Geneva congress.4 The American Marxists had
much to do with this likeness between the two congresses.
In its opening congress, the I.W.A. also strongly attracted
revolutionary petty-bourgeois republican elements, who were
playing a key role in the recurring bourgeois revolutions. Stekloff
reports these elements, mostly intellectuals, joining the organiza-
tion in considerable numbers in various countries. He says that in
France, “Doctors, journalists, manufacturers, and army officers,
gave their support.... Not a few persons of note in the political
world formally appended their names to the rules and constitu-
tion of the International.”5 These elements obviously did not take
into account the proletarian character of the new organization
and its revolutionary purposes. Neither did the bourgeois press
and governments of the time, which paid no great attention to the
Geneva congress.
POLITICAL ACTIVITIES OF THE I.W.A.
As the coming years were to demonstrate, the I.W.A., sup-
ported all working-class struggles and cultivated all kinds of pro-

*Joseph Weydemeyer, leading American Marxist, died of cholera the

day the N.L.U. congress opened.
66
 THE GENEVA CONGRESS
letarian organization – economic, political, and educational. Its
fundamentally political character was already made quite clear in
the two years between the establishment of the I.W.A. in Septem-
ber 1864 and the holding of its first congress in September 1866.
For the first time, under I.W.A. leadership, the proletariat began
to have an important say in the conduct of international affairs,
hitherto the sacred preserve of the ruling classes. This marked a
new milestone in social progress.
During this interim period, the General Council of the Inter-
national paid considerable attention to the national liberation
struggle going on in Poland at the time. Mass meetings and con-
ferences were held in various cities to develop working-class and
general support for the hard-pressed Polish fighters for freedom.
Another major struggle to which the Council gave direct aid was
the fight of the British working class for the ballot. For a genera-
tion the workers had been struggling for the right to vote, but it
was not until 1867 that they finally succeeded in winning it. What
the capitalists had been able to refuse to the Chartist movement
in 1842 and 1848, they had to concede to the working class two
decades later. A lesser reason for this concession was that the
British employers, watching how the emperor Bonaparte was ma-
nipulating to his advantage the broad suffrage existing in France,
no longer had such a deadly fear of the vote as in the Chartist
years.
In the period prior to Geneva the General Council also took a
constant interest in the great Civil War then going on in the Unit-
ed States. It participated actively in mobilizing anti-slavery sen-
timent and in balking the various pro-South maneuvers of the
British and French governments. When Lincoln was elected for
his second term the Council, on November 29, 1864, sent him a
letter, or “Address,” of congratulations and appreciation, written
by Marx. Through the Ambassador, Charles Francis Adams in
London,6 Lincoln replied with a friendly note. The I.W.A. letter
praised Lincoln as a “single-minded son of the working class,”
and stated that from the onset of the Civil War, “the workingmen
of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried
the destiny of their class.”7 On May 13, 1865, the General Council
also sent an “Address” to President Johnson, which was likewise
written by Marx, expressing profound sorrow and indignation at
the assassination of President Lincoln. The letter paid a glowing
67
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
tribute to Lincoln and also called Johnson’s attention to the tre-
mendous work of “political reconstruction and social regenera-
tion” confronting his government.8
On the composition of the General Council, which conducted
these militant activities, Marx said in a letter to Joseph
Weydemeyer (1818-1866) in the United States: “Its English mem-
bers consist mostly of the chiefs of the local trade unions, that is,
the actual labor kings of London, the same fellows who prepared
the gigantic reception to Garibaldi and prevented Palmerston
from declaring war upon the United States, as he was on the point
of doing, through the monster meeting in St. James’s Hall (under
Bright’s chairmanship).”9
In the determined struggle against the pro-slavery activities of
the British Government, begun by the trade unions and Abolition-
ists, and then carried on by the First International, a fight which
was led personally by Marx and Engels, the workers laid the basis
for one of the major continuing struggles of the world’s workers
and one which now has more urgency than ever – the fight
against war. And, vitally significant, their fight was a successful
one. Undoubtedly, the resistance put up by the British working
class was a decisive factor in preventing the British government
from entering the Civil War on the side of the South, an eventuali-
ty that might well have been fatal to the cause of the North.
The 1864 Inaugural Address of the I.W.A., voicing the same
opinion as Marx had in his letter to Weydemeyer, stated that, “It
was not the wisdom of the ruling classes but the heroic resistance
to their criminal folly by the working classes of England that
saved the West of Europe from plunging headlong into an infa-
mous crusade for the perpetuation and propagation of slavery on
the other side of the Atlantic.” In a congressional debate in 1879
Senator Hoar of Massachusetts attested to the correctness of this
historic statement by arguing that “it was the angry growl of the
workingmen of Lancashire” that had kept the British government
from going to war against the United States during the Civil
War.10
THE WORK OF THE CONGRESS
The congress in Geneva, September 3-8, 1866, was made up
of 60 delegates, representing 22 sections of the I.W.A. From Swit-
zerland there were 20 delegates representing 13 sections, plus 14

68
 THE GENEVA CONGRESS
others from trade unions and various bodies; from France, 17 del-
egates representing 4 sections, and from Germany 3 delegates
(who were living in London) representing 4 sections. Odger,
Carter, Jung, Eccarius, Cremer, and Dupont of the General Coun-
cil were present, but not Marx. The delegates were of various po-
litical tendencies, which we have discussed in the previous chap-
ter. This diversity ideologically made the work of the congress dif-
ficult, a fact which was accentuated because the delegates were
striking out into virtually new territory in handling the business
before them. They were laying the first foundations of working
class international mass organization and tactics.
Despite these handicaps, however, the congress was highly
constructive. Practically everything it did has since stood the test
of later labor experience throughout the world. All the resolutions
passed by this congress, which formulated the basic demands of
the proletariat, and which were written almost exclusively by
Marx, entered into the practical minimum programs of all work-
ing class parties.
The main points on the agenda were: “ (1) To consolidate with
the help of the Association, the efforts that are being made in the
different countries for the struggle between Labor and Capital; (2)
the trade unions, their past, present and future; (3) cooperative
labor; (4) direct and indirect taxes; (5) shorter working hours; (6)
female and child labor; (7) the Moscow invasion of Europe, and
the restoration of an independent integral Poland; (8) the perma-
nent armies, their influence on the interests of the working
class.”11
Marx and Engels understood the I.W.A. to be the start of an
international political party of the working class and it was upon
this basis that it was built. The congress laid the foundations of its
general political program by formally adopting, with but small
changes, the Inaugural Address issued by the General Council two
years earlier. This gave the I.W.A. an international outlook, a gen-
eral revolutionary perspective, and an approach to active partici-
pation in all the daily struggles of the working class.
The congress also accepted the Rules, as previously written by
Marx. The International was based on local branches, which were
united in Federal Councils in the respective countries. Affiliations
of trade unions, educational societies, etc., were also accepted.
Each organization, large or small, was to send one delegate to the
69
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
congress. The General Council was elected by the congress and was
responsible to it. The Council was to carry out the congress deci-
sions and to give political guidance to the whole movement. Dues
were set at 30 centimes (three pence) annually – from the outset
the financial problem was severe, the International, during the
years 1865-66, had received in income only about $285. At the
congress an effort was made by the French delegation to restrict
the I.W.A. membership solely to proletarians (which would have
excluded Marx and other experienced political leaders), but this
was voted down, mainly at the instigation of the British delegates.
One of the major achievements of the congress was to work
out a clear line on the question of trade unionism. In the various
countries, there was much confusion in this general matter, rang-
ing from those conservative unionists in England, who saw in the
unions merely instruments for winning minor economic conces-
sions, to the Proudhonists in France who looked upon trade un-
ions in general as a needless burden and a danger to the working
class. The congress recognized the great value of trade unions in
the daily struggle, it saw them also as a powerful educational force
for the working class, and it considered them of fundamental im-
portance in the fight for proletarian emancipation. Marx had long
considered trade unions as “the basic nuclei of the working class.”
The trade union resolution, written by him, stated: “If trade un-
ions have become indispensable for the guerrilla fight between
Capital and Labor, they are even more important as organized
bodies to promote the abolition of the very system of wage la-
bor.”12 The resolution urged the unions to pay more attention to
political action than they were doing, and also to draw the masses
of unskilled and agricultural workers into their ranks. The con-
ception of trade unionism worked out at the pioneer Geneva con-
gress still remains, by and large, that of Marxists the capitalist
world over.
In connection with the trade union question, much attention
was paid to the matter of international strike-breaking. This espe-
cially affected the English unions, and also those in the United
States. Repeatedly during their walkouts, English strikers had to
face scabs brought over from Belgium, Holland, and France. The
congress alerted the workers to this danger and sought to develop
a strong international solidarity to check it.
Another vital piece of pioneer work done by the congress was

70
 THE GENEVA CONGRESS
to clarify working class policy basically regarding cooperatives.
This type of organization was relatively new at the time and much
confusion existed as to its potentialities, especially among the
followers of Proudhon and Lassalle, who considered their brand
of cooperation as the sole path to proletarian emancipation. The
resolution, following in general the policy laid down previously in
the Inaugural Address, while stressing the importance of
cooperatives, especially producers’ organizations, declared that by
themselves they could not bring about the workers’ emancipation.
The Proudhonists, who advocated their panacea upon all
occasions, managed, however, to induce the congress to vote for
the establishment by the International of a mutual credit bank, a
project of which little or nothing more was heard after the
congress adjourned.
An important action of the congress was its endorsement of
the legal 8-hour workday as an immediate political objective to be
fought for. The workers in the capitalist countries were at the time
fighting mainly for the 10-hour day, and the congress action gave
them a higher goal also to strive for. In the United States, as early
as 1836, demands had been put forth in the labor press for the 8-
hour day13 and in 1842, the ship carpenters of Boston established
it in their work. The founding convention of the National Labor
Union in 1866 made this one of its major issues. The slogan also
had a history in England. The action of the Geneva congress
raised the question of the 8-hour day to the status of a basic in-
ternational demand from then on, and in oncoming decades it
was to assume the greatest importance.
The congress demanded the abolition of night work for wom-
en and the regulation of the work of women and children in in-
dustry. The French Proudhonists, declaring that woman’s place
was in the home, condemned outright the employment of women
in industry.14 The congress did not demand the complete aboli-
tion of child labor, but its regulation. Youthful workers were di-
vided into three age groups – 9 to 12, 12 to 15, and 15 to 18 – with
different working periods for each group.15 The basic idea was to
combine industrial training and general education. In the ques-
tion of taxation, which was on the agenda, the congress supported
the system of direct, rather than indirect, taxes.
Refuting the position of those opposed to legislative action
(who were to have generations of sectarian political descendants),
71
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the congress, regarding labor protective legislation in general,
declared that, “by compelling the adoption of such laws, the work-
ing class will not consolidate the ruling powers, but, on the con-
trary, it will be turning that power which is at present used
against it, into its own instrument.”16
The matter of the workers’ attitude towards religion also came
before the congress, at the instance of the French delegation. The
matter, however, was brushed aside by the delegates and no defi-
nite action on it was taken. Here again, the congress gave a cor-
rect lead on elementary labor policy to oncoming generations of
worker fighters. The question of religion as such is, of course, of
real concern to a Marxist Communist Party and the working class,
but it could only have been a divisive issue in a broad mass organ-
ization, such as the I.W.A. Therefore, trade unions and other gen-
eral mass economic and political bodies, while fighting against
reactionary policies of the churches, have traditionally wisely re-
frained, as the Geneva congress did, from involving themselves in
the philosophical or doctrinal aspects of religion. The churches
would be only too eager to split the working class on the basis of
religious belief.
Dealing with the armed forces of the respective nations, the
congress went on record for the abolition of standing armies and
for the establishment of people’s militias – therewith giving an-
other basic lead in policy to the developing world labor move-
ment. The congress also sharply condemned the menace of Rus-
sian tsarism in Europe and called for “the reconstitution of Po-
land upon democratic and social foundations,” “through enforc-
ing the right of self-determination.”

72
7. Growth: Lausanne and Brussels
(1867-1868)
The period following the Geneva congress of 1866 was one of
growth and political progress for the First International. It was a
time of rising working-class struggle, particularly on the econom-
ic field. The sharp economic crisis of 1866 and its consequences
provoked a wave of strikes during the next years in England,
France, Belgium, Switzerland, and other countries. In these
strikes the adherents of the International were very active, as a
glance at the current minutes of the General Council reveals.
I.W.A. TRADE UNIONS AND STRIKES
The best known of the numerous strikes at this time was that
of the Parisian bronze workers in February 1867. These workers
had formed a union of some 1,500 members, whereupon the em-
ployers locked them out. The International came promptly to
their aid. Under the lead of the General Council, the English un-
ions sent more than £1000 to help the strikers. “As soon as the
bosses saw this,” said Marx, “they gave in.”1 This was a real victo-
ry for the bronze workers, and their union leaped to 4,000 mem-
bers. “The effect of this was immense,” remarks Postgate. “Trade
unions sprang up all over France, and the economic struggle grew
acute.” The prestige of the International soared everywhere in
Western Europe. This was well expressed by Assy, leader of the
Creusot strikers in France, who, when brought to trial and asked
if he were a member of the International, replied: “No, but I hope
to be allowed to be.”2
Other important European strikes were those of the London
tailors, Geneva building trades workers, French silk workers, and
the Charleroi coal miners. All these were occasions for strong ral-
lies of support from the forces of the International. Most of the
strikes resulted in victories for the workers. Especially was the
solidarity effective in the case of English strikers. Postgate says
that, “the supply of blacklegs [scabs] dried up at its source, and
those already brought over were induced to desert.”3 The strike of
the Geneva building trades, resulting in a partial victory for the
workers, attracted widespread international attention. And in far
off America, the National Labor Union, in the rising trade union

73
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
movement following the Civil War, led numerous important
strikes.
THE INTERNATIONAL IN THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE
The I.W.A. not only gave active strike leadership, but also
paid close attention to the political movement in the various
countries. This struggle, too, was on an ascending scale, particu-
larly in the fight for immediate legislative reforms. In North Ger-
many, where the workers had secured the vote after the Austro-
Prussian war of 1866, the forces led by Liebknecht and Bebel par-
ticipated for the first time, on February 12, 1867, in the national
elections to Parliament. The suffrage was in general a new weap-
on in the hands of European workers and its potentialities were as
yet only beginning to be understood. In France, where in 1868,
Emperor Napoleon III caused laws to be passed conceding the
general male franchise and freedom of the press, the workers
were making widespread use of their new liberties. Particularly in
the broad political demonstrations of November 1867, the Paris
workers displayed their rising militancy. In countries of more
democracy, some achievements were to be registered, notably the
passage in England of the Reform Act of 1867, which (later ex-
tended to Scotland and Ireland), gave urban English men workers
the vote – however, leaving the rural proletariat and the women
voteless. And in the United States there was a victory in the issu-
ance of an Executive Order by President Grant in 1869 virtually
establishing the 8-hour day in government institutions, which
was made a law by Congress on May 18, 1872.4
The major general political campaign of the I.W.A., however,
in the period 1866-69 was its fight against the looming danger of
war. In 1866, the six weeks’ war between Prussia and Austria
broke out, resulting in the complete defeat of the latter. The Gen-
eral Council denounced this as a reactionary war, neither side of
which was entitled to worker support. At this time war tension
was developing fast between France and Germany. War clouds
were also looming between the United States and Great Britain,
as an aftermath of the Civil War. The General Council called upon
American workers to protest against this threatening war.
From its beginnings, the International had sharply expressed
itself against capitalist war. As we have seen, the General Council
militantly fought against English participation in the American

74
 LAUSANNE AND BRUSSELS
Civil War and condemned the Austro-Prussian war. The Geneva
congress also dealt with war under its order o£ business respect-
ing standing armies, and later both the Lausanne and Brussels
congresses adopted anti-war resolutions.
The Brussels resolution was the more specific. After denounc-
ing war as a great menace to the workers, it says: “The Congress
of the International Workingmen’s Association, assembled at
Brussels, records its most emphatic protest against war; it invites
ail the sections of the Association, in their respective countries,
and also all working class societies, and ail workers’ groups of
whatever kind, to take the most vigorous action to prevent a war
between the peoples, which today could not be considered any-
thing else than a civil war, seeing that, since it would be waged
between the producers, it would only be a struggle between
brothers and citizens; the congress urges the workers to cease
work should war break out in their respective countries.”5
This resolution marked the beginning of the eventful long
controversy in the international labor movement over the ques-
tion of whether or not the general strike could be used effectively
to halt war. The issue was to be raised again and again in interna-
tional congresses. Marx, who opposed the concept, characterized
as “nonsense” the formulation in the Brussels resolution.6
The anti-war discussion raised the question of the relation-
ship of the I.W.A. to the League of Peace and Freedom, a petty-
bourgeois pacifist organization. The League scheduled a peace
congress for Geneva on September 9, 1867, right after the ad-
journment of the I.W.A. congress in Lausanne. In a letter to En-
gels on September 4, 1867, Marx sharply condemned “the wind-
bags” of the League. Nevertheless, the Lausanne Congress
(I.W.A.) accepted the League’s invitation and sent three delegates
– Guillaume, De Paepe, and Tolain – to attend its congress, there
to read the Lausanne anti-war resolution. The following year, at
Brussels, the I.W.A., again receiving a similar invitation from the
League, rejected it and asked its members to join the Internation-
al. This the League refused to do, however, lingering along to an
unsung end.
In these economic and political struggles the International
was laying the very foundations of the modem labor movement.
At this time, in 1867, a great stride forward ideologically was also
taken by the world’s workers. This was in the publication, by
75
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Marx, of the historic Volume One of Capital. In this profound
analysis of the capitalist system especially there is fully developed
Marx’s revolutionary theory of surplus value. A year later, the
I.W.A. officially praised and endorsed Marx’s great work and
urged ail members to study it.
THE CONGRESS OF LAUSANNE
The Lausanne congress of September 2-8, 1867, the second of
the I.W.A., consisted of 71 delegates – among them 38 Swiss, 18
French, 6 German, 2 British, 2 Italian, 1 Belgian, and 4 members
of the General Council (Carter, Dupont, Eccarius, and Lessner).
Many sections, lacking funds, did not send delegates. The British
“pure and simple” trade unionists mostly stayed away. Each sec-
tion of the I.W.A. was entitled to one vote. Although keeping in
close touch with what was going on, Marx did not attend the con-
gress. For him, these were years of overwork, illness, poverty, and
undernourishment.
The French and Swiss “mutualists,” or Proudhonists (see
Chapter 5), were very active at the congress. As Mehring remarks,
“they came well-prepared” and they made their opportunist and
confusionist views felt throughout the gathering. Specifically, they
managed to get resolutions passed deprecating strikes and en-
dorsing their petty- bourgeois panaceas of people’s banks and free
worker credits.
An important and constructive action by the congress was the
adoption of a resolution to the effect that all the means of
transport and exchange should be owned by the State. This
action, says Stekloff, “was the first concrete formulation of the
idea of collective ownership of the means of production and
exchange, and it foreshadowed the fierce struggle which was
subsequently to rage around this question in the International.”7
A motion to nationalize the land, lacking support, was referred to
the next congress.
Another important resolution, one which also foreshadowed
later bitter struggles in the International, related to the fight for
political reforms within the framework of the capitalist system.
The point on the agenda read: “Is not the deprivation of political
freedom a hindrance to the social emancipation of the workers,
and one of the main causes of social disorder? How is it possible
to hasten the re-establishment of political freedom?” The con-

76
 LAUSANNE AND BRUSSELS
gress finally resolved by unanimous vote that, “considering that
deprivation of political freedom is a hindrance to the social pro-
gress of the people and to the emancipation of the proletariat, [it]
declares: 1. that the social emancipation of the workers cannot be
effected without their political emancipation; 2. that the estab-
lishment of political liberty is absolutely essential as a preliminary
step.” This section of the resolution, which was somewhat con-
fused in other respects, agreed with the general position that had
been developed previously by Marx.
A major question discussed, too, by the congress, as we have
seen, related to the current danger of war. After Lausanne, this
basic issue was destined to be a permanent point on the agenda of
the world’s workers in all their congresses.
THE CONGRESS OF BRUSSELS
The third congress of the International was held in Brussels,
September 6-15, 1868. The holding of the congress in this city was
in itself a political event of real importance, showing the growing
strength of the International, for Belgium was one of the most
reactionary countries in Western Europe. The congress, the larg-
est ever held by the International, was made up of 99 delegates,
including 55 Belgians, 18 French, 7 Swiss, 5 British, 5 Germans, 2
Italians, 1 Spanish, and 6 from the General Council (Eccarius,
Jung, Lessner, Lucroft, Shaw, and Stepney). Marx was not in at-
tendance. The British still made up a majority of the General
Council, but they displayed little interest in bringing a sizable del-
egation to the respective congresses.
The political center of the Brussels congress was the anti-war
resolution previously referred to. Among other important matters
dealt with, the question of strikes was reviewed and, after much
discussion, the strike was recognized as a legitimate and inevita-
ble weapon of the workers. Cooperatives were also re-endorsed,
but with sharp criticism of the petty-bourgeois business spirit of-
ten shown in their operation.
On the question of machinery in industry, the congress, while
stating that the workers must have a say regarding its introduc-
tion into factories, also registered a concession to the mutualists
by declaring that, “only by means of cooperative societies and
through the organization of mutual credit will the producer be
able to gain possession of machinery.” The Proudhonists also
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
scored in the matter of mutual credit for workers. Despite strong
opposition, they put the International again on record for the es-
tablishment of workers’ exchange banks, which were “to free la-
bor from the dominance of capital.” “On this matter,” says
Stekloff, “the Proudhonists secured their last victory in the Inter-
national.”8
The Proudhonists suffered a major defeat, however, at the
congress over the general attitude of the I.W.A. towards property,
specifically property in land. Representing primarily the interests
of the small shop-keepers and peasants, the mutualists strongly
opposed the nationalization of the land, a question which had
been referred from the Lausanne congress. However, at Brussels,
by a vote of 130 to 4, with 15 abstentions, the congress adopted a
resolution calling for not only the nationalization of the railways,
but also of arable land, forests, canals, roads, telegraphs, etc. This
was a decisive defeat for the mutualists. Despite the various devi-
ations towards Proudhonism made at its three early congresses,
the I.W.A., as Stekloff remarks, was always fundamentally a col-
lectivist organization. This was largely because of the clear leader-
ship given by Marx in its Inaugural Address and in many of its
resolutions and practical policies. The communist, or collectivist,
sentiment had been on the increase since the first congress in Ge-
neva, and in Brussels it registered itself decisively. Thenceforth,
the Proudhonists were to play a very minor role in the I.W.A. The
first strong international opposition to Marxism in the labor
movement had gone bankrupt.
INCREASING CAPITALIST ATTACK
Upon the founding of the International in September 1864 the
capitalists of Europe displayed only a mild interest in the organi-
zation. The bourgeois press barely noted its establishment. The
idea of an international organization of the workers was such a
novel proposition that it was easy to underestimate its potentiali-
ties. Some of the more sober bourgeois elements, as the Liberals
in England, the followers of Mazzini in Italy, as well as the reac-
tionary Bonapartists in France, even believed they could make
political use of the I.W.A.
But the bourgeois elements were soon undeceived, once the
International got into action. Especially so on the industrial field.
The early years of the I.W.A., as remarked, were a time of many

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strikes, and the International undoubtedly gave strong leadership
and encouragement to them. This startled the employers, who for
the first time confronted a real international solidarity among the
workers of various countries. They were particularly disturbed
when they saw an end being put to their international use of
strike-breakers in Europe – a practice which they were never
again able to revive on a significant scale.
The reactionary press was not slow to blame all the strikes
and the political struggles of the period upon the International.
They built it into a sort of political hobgoblin. Jaeckh says that,
“The years from Geneva to Basle made the International a fright-
ful secret power in the eyes of the bourgeoisie and the bearer of an
approaching revolution in the eyes of the awakening proletariat.”9
Thenceforth, the press widely practiced a campaign of slander
and distortion against the I.W.A., misrepresenting its every act.
In France the police of Napoleon III proceeded against the
members of the International, who were mostly Proudhonists.
The government claimed that the International, by engaging in
political activities in France, had laid its members open to prose-
cution. Consequently, from March 1868, to June 1870, three mass
convictions of I.W.A. members took place in Paris. These involved
such well-known leaders as Tolain, Varlin, Frankel, Chemalé,
Malon, Landrin, and many others. They got varying sentences, up
to one year in prison.10 The International was outlawed in France.
This was the beginning of the reactionary attack which, a few
years later, finally illegalized the I.W.A. all over Europe.
GROWTH OF THE INTERNATIONAL
As a result of its economic and political activities, the Interna-
tional grew apace in the several countries. Nor could the increas-
ing police persecution halt its progress. In this growth I.W.A.
strike leadership was very important. In England the 1869 Trades
Union Congress urged ail unions to affiliate with the I.W.A., and
many trade unions, appreciative of the work of the International,
did so. In France, in 1869, there were an estimated 200,000
members of the International.11 Lozovsky says that, “In all corners
of France local unions, resistance societies, mutual aid societies,
political groups, men and women workers on strike affiliated to
the International Workingmen’s Association.”12 In Belgium, fol-
lowing the coal and iron strikes there, “more than twenty” I.W.A.
79
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
branches were formed in industrial centers “and some of them
had several hundred members.” And Stekloff states that a big in-
crease in I.W.A. strength followed the successful strikes in Swit-
zerland. “In Geneva alone, the number of members of the Inter-
national grew by thousands. In addition several fresh trade un-
ions affiliated.”13 However, no reliable total figures of member-
ship at this time are available.
In the United States, the International also had a strong fol-
lowing in the young trade union movement. The National Labor
Union, from its foundation in 1866, was sympathetic to the I.W.A.
Sylvis (1828-1869), Trevellick, Jessup, Cameron, and others of its
leaders were especially alarmed at the danger of the importation
of strikebreakers from Europe and they wanted I.W.A. assistance.
The scab menace had been accentuated by an Act of Congress of
1864, which permitted “employers to import laborers under con-
tract and to check off transportation costs from wages.”14 In 1867
the N.L.U. convention voted to have Richard F. Trevellick go as a
delegate to the Lausanne congress of the I.W.A., but because of
the lack of funds he was unable to attend. In 1868 J. G. Eccarius,
I.W.A. General Secretary, invited the N.L.U. to send a delegate to
the Brussels congress,15 but the N.L.U. replied that it was finan-
cially unable to do so. In 1869, however, the N.L.U. did finally get
to send a delegate to the I.W.A. The finances of the International
itself also were on a very low level. Usually the General Secretary’s
meager salary and often the headquarters’ rent were unpaid. The
workers of the world were yet to learn the important labor disci-
pline of solidly financing their movements through well-kept dues
systems.
In this period not only was I.W.A. trade union membership
growing, but also its political organization. The workers generally
were taking the first tentative steps into independent political
activity, breaking the tutelage of the left sections of the
bourgeoisie. Sections of the International, made up of individual
members, in contrast to the bloc membership of the trade unions,
multiplied in many West European countries. A start was also
made in the United States. In October 1867, the Communist Club
of New York, founded in 1857 by F. A. Sorge and others, became a
section of the International, and in 1869, the German General
Workingmen’s Union (Lassallean tendency) also affiliated to the
International.16

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Meanwhile, distinct tendencies were beginning to develop for
the formation of national workers’ parties, which in later years
were to become the basis of ail labor political internationalism.
The most important development in this respect was the political
movement being cultivated at the time in Germany under the
leadership of Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, which was to
culminate in 1869 as the first mass Social-Democratic party. In
the United States strong tendencies were also being evidenced
towards independent working class political action. At its 1866
and 1867 conventions the National Labor Union went on record
for the formation of a national labor party, and in 1868 steps were
taken to put the short-lived National Labor Reform Party into the
field. In England, however, the workers, although very active in
trade union struggles, were showing very little sign as yet towards
the formation of a Social-Democratic or Labor party. They still
continued their alliance with the Liberal Party, a misconnection
based on the current swift upward development of British
capitalism.

81
8. Bakuninism: The Basle Congress (1869)
The fourth congress of the First International took place Sep-
tember 6-12, 1869, in Basle. The movement was definitely on an
ascending scale. The wave of strikes was continuing, involving
Welsh coal miners, Normandy textile workers, Lyons silk workers,
Geneva building trades, and many other groups in England, Bel-
gium, France, Holland, Switzerland, and the United States. In all
these struggles adherents of the International stood in leading
posts. Consequently, the I.W.A. continued its rapid growth. In
1870, the French police estimated the International’s membership
as: France 433,785; Switzerland 45,000; Germany 150,000; Aus-
tria-Hungary 100,000; Great Britain (250 branches) 80,000;
Spain 2,728.1 Fantastic newspaper estimates ran as high as
7,000,000 members. The real membership was far less than such
figures, but no official statistics are at hand. In many localities a
workers’ press was rapidly developing. On the European continent
there were in 1870 some 29 journals supporting the International.2
The Congress was made up of 76 delegates, as follows: France
26, Switzerland 22, Germany 10, Belgium 5, Austria 2, Spain 2,
Italy 1, United States 1, and 7 members of the General Council.
Again Marx was not present. The American delegate was W. C.
Cameron, representing the National Labor Union. With very con-
siderable exaggeration claiming to represent 800,000 members,
Cameron told the congress, “Your friends in the new world recog-
nize a common interest between the sons of labor the world over,
and they trust the time is drawing nigh when their ranks shall
present a united front.”3 Cameron was especially interested in
I.W.A. action to prevent the importation of scabs into the United
States, and he succeeded in having an immigration bureau estab-
lished by the International, but it played no great role.
All this indicated the strong support in the N.L.U. for affiliation
to the International. After listening to Cameron, the N.L.U. conven-
tion of 1870 “declared its adhesion to the principles of the Interna-
tional Workingmen’s Association and expect at no distant date to
affiliate with it.”4 But nothing came of this. Sylvis, a strong interna-
tionalist, had died in July 1869, and this was a heavy blow to N.L.U.
affiliation. The General Council of the I.W.A., on August 18, 1869,
sent a letter of condolence to the N.L.U., signed among others by
Marx, highly praising Sylvis as a fighter for labor and mourning his
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loss.5 In December 1869, the newly-formed Colored National Labor
Union also voted to send a delegate to the 1870 congress of the
I.W.A., but, as we shall see, this congress never took place.6
THE EISENACHERS
An important development at the Basle congress of the Inter-
national was the appearance there of a strong German delegation
of ten members, among them Liebknecht, Rittinghausen, Becker,
and Hess. They represented the Social-Democratic Workers Par-
ty, the first genuine Socialist party to affiliate with the Interna-
tional. This organization, led chiefly by Liebknecht and Bebel, had
been formed at Eisenach, Germany, a month earlier, in August
1869, after several years of preparatory work. The new party was
generally called the “Eisenachers.”
Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826-1900), was born in Giessen, Ger-
many, and was a teacher. He early became a republican and took
an active part in the German Revolution of 1848. Jailed and ex-
iled from Germany several times, he worked for 13 years in Lon-
don with Marx, becoming a developed Communist. Liebknecht
returned to Germany in 1861, and at once became active in the
young labor movement. He became the outstanding leader of the
German working class. A co-worker with Lassalle, Liebknecht,
father of Karl Liebknecht, wrote many pamphlets and books, and
was long a member of the Reichstag.
August Bebel (1840-1913) was born near Cologne, Germany,
the son of a non-commissioned officer in the Prussian army. He
became a wood turner, and affiliated himself to the Lassalle or-
ganization. In close association with Liebknecht, Bebel became a
Marxist. Both of them actively opposed the Austro-Prussian war
of 1866. A brilliant orator, Bebel won a wide following. His most
noted book is Women and Socialism. Together with Liebknecht,
he was instrumental in bringing about the amalgamation of work-
ers’ organizations at Eisenach, which was the beginning of the
German Social-Democracy. For over forty years Bebel stood at the
head of the German Social-Democratic Party.
The revolutionary spirit of the young Socialist party was illus-
trated by a public speech made by Liebknecht in 1869, for which
he was sent to jail. He said: “Socialism is no longer a question of
theory, but simply a question of power. It cannot be settled in
Parliament, but only on the streets, on the battlefield, like every
83
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
other question of power.”7
The launching of the Social-Democratic Workers Party at Ei-
senach did not, however, unite the German working class. Las-
salle’s organization, the General Union of German Workers, with
its panacea of state-subsidized cooperatives, still persisted, under
the leadership of Schweitzer, who had become head of the organi-
zation upon the death of Lassalle. Between the two groupings
were bitter quarrels, with Marx frequently intervening against
Schweitzer as a “sectarian.” The Lassalleans, who had a consider-
able following in Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and the United
States, held aloof from participating in the International.8
BAKUNIN ENTERS THE I.W.A.
Another most important event at the Basle congress was the
coming of Bakunin as a delegate (see Chapter 5 for his general
background and program). Bakunin first met Marx in 1864, and
promised his support to the International. Instead of giving this
backing, however, he set about building a separate organization in
Italy. He later went to Switzerland, there joined the bourgeois
League for Peace and Freedom, and was elected a member of its
central executive committee. In 1868 he split off from the League,
but in place of joining the International, he and his friends estab-
lished the International Social-Democratic Alliance, commonly
known as the “Alliance.”9
In the Alliance, Bakunin developed his ultra-revolutionary
program. It declared an immediate, all-out war against God and
the State; demanded the abolition of ail religious cults and the
establishment of a rule of science; “the political, economic, and
social equality of the classes” [not their abolition]; the abolition of
the right of inheritance; the rejection of “every kind of political
action except such as aims immediately and directly at the tri-
umph of the cause of the workers in their struggle with capital,”
and the “voluntary universal association of ail the local associa-
tions.”10 To achieve this program, Bakunin put the main stress
upon the intelligentsia, the student group, and the lumpen, or de-
generated, proletariat. He condemned almost the whole working
class as being a conservative labor aristocracy.
Sparing no words, Marx strongly attacked the Bakunin pro-
gram. He called it “an olla podrida of worn out platitudes, an
empty rigmarole, a rosary of pretentious notions to make the flesh

84
 BAKUNINISM: THE BASLE CONGRESS
creep, a banal improvisation aiming at nothing more than a tem-
porary effect.”11 And with even more vigor, “His program was a
hash superficially scraped together from the Right and the Left –
EQUALITY OF CLASSES (!), abolition of the right of inheritance as the
starting point of the social movement (St. Simonist nonsense),
atheism as a dogma dictated to the members, etc.”12
In general, the Alliance developed strength in the less
industrialized countries – Italy, Spain, France, French
Switzerland, etc., where its predecessor, the Proudhonist
movement, had been strong and it also branched out into Russia
and the United States. The times were propitious for such a
movement as Bakunin’s. The general political situation in Europe
was highly unsettled, the capitalist class gradually pushing aside
the political rubbish of feudalism in its march to power, with the
rapidly growing working class tentatively fighting its way to a
class program and organization. With the workers generally still
very undeveloped ideologically and inexperienced in class
struggle tactics, it was easy for many of them to believe in
Bakunin’s short-cut methods to emancipation.
Bakunin and his co-workers, noting the rapid growth of the
International among the masses and sensing that it would be a
fruitful field for their agitation, applied in December 1868, for the
admission to the International of their Alliance as a whole. To
this, however, the General Council refused to agree. Proposing
that his Alliance members should come into the I.W.A. as sec-
tions, Bakunin also agreed to liquidate the Alliance. In reality,
however, it continued to exist and function in various countries. It
was a semi-secret body, with an inner controlling organization of
especially trusted militants.
MARXISTS AND BAKUNINISTS AT BASLE
Bakunin came to the congress as a member of the French dele-
gation, specifically representing the silk workers of Lyons. A mili-
tant and very capable fighter, he lost no time in making his pres-
ence felt. Bakunin, however, found himself voting with the Marx-
ists on the question of the right of society to make the land collec-
tive property. The remnants of the Proudhonists had again raised
this elementary question, so important to them, only to be voted
down overwhelmingly. Another important question upon which
there was no marked factional division in the congress dealt with
85
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
trade unionism. The congress unanimously adopted a resolution
which strongly stressed the need of the trade unions and of interna-
tional ties between them. The resolution charged the General
Council, to work for “an international organization of the trade un-
ions” – a goal which was not to be achieved for a full half century.13
In presenting the committee’s report, the French delegate, Pindy,
outlined a picture of the trade unions eventually constituting the
structure of the new society after capitalism. With this report, an-
other sect, or ideological deviation, that was to become very trou-
blesome – anarcho-syndicalism – was born into the International.
The major clashes between the Marxists and Bakuninists in
the congress took place over two points. The first occurred when
the Swiss delegates, with the support of Liebknecht and other
Germans, proposed that the congress go on record in favor of di-
rect legislation by the people (initiative and referendum). This
contravened one of the principles of the Bakuninists – that of no
partial political reforms – and they attacked it violently. The mat-
ter was eventually laid over for further discussion, but in the press
of business it never came up again. The incident created much
factional tension in the congress.
The second big clash came over the question of the right of
inheritance. This was one of Bakunin’s favorite tenets, and he
submitted it in resolution form to the congress, demanding that
the delegates go on record for the immediate and complete aboli-
tion of the right of inheritance. The liquidation of this right was in
fact presented virtually as the revolution itself. In The Communist
Manifesto, written over 20 years earlier, Marx had placed the
question in the sense that the proletariat after gaining power,
“will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital
from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production
in the hands of the STATE, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the
ruling class...” As means to the accomplishment of this expropria-
tion and social reorganization, the Manifesto then proposed ten
transitional measures, of which the third on the list was the “Abo-
lition of all right of inheritance.” The General Council presented
its report to the congress along this general line. It pointed out
that the right of inheritance, being an outcome and not the cause
of the capitalist system, could not be made the starting point for
the abolition of capitalism and that any attempt to do so would be
both wrong in theory and reactionary in practice. After a long and

86
 BAKUNINISM: THE BASLE CONGRESS
bitter debate, the vote was: General Council resolution: for 19,
against 37, abstentions 6, absent 13; Bakunin resolution: for 32,
against 23, abstentions 13, absent 7.14 This victory for Bakunin
made his Alliance thenceforth the rallying center for all opposi-
tional elements in the International.
THE IRISH QUESTION
Although the matter did not come officially before the Basle
congress at this time, the Irish question was playing an important
role in the life of the International. It became the occasion for the
development of policy concerning the relations between colonial
countries and oppressing powers, which, down to the present day,
has the greatest importance for the world labor movement.
For seven hundred years the Irish people had been waging a
defensive struggle against the determination of the English ruling
classes completely to subjugate Ireland. During the centuries this
had led to many uprisings, some of the more important of which
in later times were those of 1641, 1798, 1848, and 1867. And Ire-
land was fated to experience several more, including those of 1916
and 1921, before it was finally able to achieve, in 1923, its present
partial and disrupted independence.15 The Irish question was es-
pecially catapulted into political attention during the period we
are dealing with in the aftermath of the killing of a policeman in
Manchester during an attempt by the Fenian organization to res-
cue Irish political prisoners. For this, three Fenian leaders – Al-
len, Larkin and O’Brien – were executed on November 23, 1867.
Since the days of the Chartists, Marx had associated himself
with the demand for Irish independence. In 1866 he had the Gen-
eral Council send a delegation to Sir George Grey, Secretary for
State, to protest against the outrages being practiced upon the
Irish people, but the delegation was not received.16 And in 1869
he was instrumental in having the General Council actively sup-
port the current movement for the amnesty of Irish political pris-
oners.17 Odger, Applegarth, and other conservative English trade
union leaders very equivocally supported Marx’s general line re-
garding Ireland. Marx said that, following the discussions late in
1869, “the task of the International is everywhere to put the con-
flict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and every-
where to side openly with Ireland.”18
In his long handling of the Irish question, Marx became con-
87
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
vinced that “Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristoc-
racy,” and that “Ireland is therefore the great means by which the
English aristocracy maintains its domination in England itself.”
He pointed out the deadly weakness of labor caused by the split
between Irish and English workers over the Irish question, stating
that the English worker “cherishes religious, social, and national
prejudices against the Irish worker,” and that “the Irish worker
pays him back with interest in his own coin.” Marx concluded,
and the General Council so decided, that “The special task of the
Central Council in London is to awaken the English workers to a
realization of the fact that for them the national emancipation of
Ireland is no question of abstract justice or humanitarian senti-
ment but the first condition of their own emancipation.”19
The basic policy that Marx worked out on the Irish question
obviously is essentially valid in our own times in the struggle of
the colonial peoples, backed by the workers in the capitalist coun-
tries, against imperialism. (See Chapter 34.) Half a century later,
Lenin praised this policy highly. In an article on the self-
determination of nations, Lenin showed that the policy of Marx
and Engels on the Irish question furnished a powerful example,
which has retained its highly practical significance up to the pre-
sent day, of the attitude which the proletariat of oppressing na-
tions must adopt towards nationalist movements.20
OUTBREAK OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
The ten months between the Basle congress and the begin-
ning of the Franco-Prussian war were a period of high hopes and
steady growth for the International. In its various documents and
congress resolutions the organization had succeeded in develop-
ing the basis of a general program; it had entrenched itself in
practically every country of Western and Middle Europe; and the
labor movements in the various countries were surging ahead,
having definitely reached the stage of national organization in at
least three lands – Great Britain, Germany, and the United States.
The fight between the Bakuninists and Marxists, after the clash at
the Basle congress, was flaring up in Switzerland, but this was not
yet serious enough to cripple the I.W.A.
It was a period of strong revolutionary hope and expectancy
in the ranks of the International. There was a bourgeois revolu-
tionary ferment in Italy, Spain, France, and other European coun-

88
 BAKUNINISM: THE BASLE CONGRESS
tries, and the workers were in a mood of rising militancy. The
Bakuninists believed that the social revolution was knocking on
the door, and they had the deepest scorn for everything in the na-
ture of reform. At this time, especially in the late 1860’s, Marx
also anticipated early major proletarian revolutionary develop-
ments, but, a keen realist, this did not prevent him from encour-
aging every struggle of the workers for immediate demands on
both the economic and political fields. The substantial growth of
the International greatly stimulated the current widespread hopes
for a revolution led by the workers.
After Basle the war clouds between France and Prussia began
to thicken. Both Bonaparte and Bismarck wanted war, and they
each maneuvered to get it. The adventurer Bonaparte, realizing
the shaky position of the Second Empire, no doubt calculated that
the way to infuse it with a new lease on life would be through a
successful war of aggression against his German neighbors to the
East; that this would give him control of the west bank of the
Rhine. The wily Prussian chancellor, Bismarck, also planned and
prepared for the war. In line with his policy of “blood and iron,”
he schemed to help himself to the territory of France, knowing
full well that through a war against that country he could unite
the scattered German statelets into one all-inclusive German
state. The latter was historically a progressive bourgeois task,
which in the Revolution of 1848 the German capitalists could
have accomplished but left undone.
Bismarck’s strategy was to throw upon Bonaparte the respon-
sibility for initiating the war, which the German chancellor suc-
ceeded in doing. By falsifying a conciliatory telegram from Wil-
helm I to Bonaparte, Bismarck provoked France into declaring
war. On July 19, 1870, the two governments got their wish, and
the war began. The struggle was destined to have profound politi-
cal consequences. By unifying Germany, it transformed that coun-
try into the leading power in Europe, destined before long to out-
strip England in industrial production; and by bringing about
therewith a powerful growth of the German proletariat, the war
also eventually put the organized German workers, for half a cen-
tury, in the leadership of the world labor movement. An immedi-
ate effect of the war was to speed up the operation of a chain of
events, in connection with the Paris Commune, which were finally
to lead to the break-up of the First International.
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9. The Paris Commune (1871)

The General Council of the I.W.A. had long been warning the
workers against the danger of a Franco-German war and when
the gathering conflict suddenly burst forth, the Council four days
later, July 29, 1870, put out a manifesto calling for international
solidarity of the workers. Written by Marx, the manifesto laid the
blame for the war upon the rulers of both France and Germany.
While it said that Germany had been placed on the defensive in
the war, with reactionary Russia looming on its eastern frontiers,
it warned the German workers against the danger of the war be-
coming one of conquest. Marx also stated that whatever the out-
come of the war, it would mark the end of the Second Empire in
France, as it did.
In the various countries the workers displayed high qualities of
internationalism. In Germany, Liebknecht and Bebel voted in par-
liament against the war credits, and went to jail for it (the
Lassalleans, however, voted for the credits), and big meetings of
German workers were "happy to grasp the fraternal hand stretched
out to us by the workmen of France.”1 In France a similar interna-
tional spirit prevailed, the workers pledging their “indissoluble sol-
idarity” with the workers of Germany.2 Among the immigrant
workers in the United States also, the General Council’s anti-war
manifesto was circulated far and wide, and joint meetings of
French and German workers were held to protest the war.3
Meanwhile, the war had disrupted the organizational proce-
dure of the International. The next congress had been set for Par-
is, on September 5, 1870; but in view of the prevailing political
persecutions in France, the congress place was later shifted to
Mainz, Germany. The outbreak of the war, however, forced the
cancellation of this arrangement.
The war was brought to a swift climax by the better-prepared
German forces. The French armies suffered one catastrophic de-
feat after another. In six weeks the field phase of the war was
over. On September 2, 1870, at Sedan, Bonaparte unconditionally
surrendered himself and his army.
THE FRENCH REPUBLIC ESTABLISHED
When news of the Sedan debacle reached Paris the people
rose and, on September 4, 1870, they overthrew the Bonaparte
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 THE PARIS COMMUNE
regime and set up a republic. The new Assembly, elected February
8, 1871, was made up, however, of about two-thirds Royalists and
one-third bourgeois Republicans, with a few petty-bourgeois radi-
cals thrown in to make things more palatable to the working class.
This whole development spurred the Bakuninists into action, and
during the next several weeks they tried vainly to carry through
successful uprisings in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Brest, and other
cities against the new government. The Blanquists also pushed for
an insurrection. For a few hours, on October 31, 1870, Blanqui
was in control of Paris, but he had to give it up.
On September 9, 1870, the General Council of the I.W.A. is-
sued another manifesto, also written by Marx.* In this document
Marx pointed out that the so-called war of defense on the part of
Germany had become definitely a war of conquest, the determina-
tion of Bismarck to seize the French provinces of Alsace and Lor-
raine having become clear. Marx warned that if this were done, it
would surely lead eventually to another “defensive war” as it, in
fact, did with terrific force in 1914. The manifesto urged the Ger-
man workers to oppose the proposed annexation and to demand
an honorable peace with France. It warned the French workers to
be on guard against the treacherous French bourgeoisie and to
use every opportunity to strengthen their own class forces. In
general, Marx and Engels felt that the time was unripe for a revo-
lutionary overthrow of the reactionary republican government,
such as both Bakunin and Blanqui were striving for.4
The German army was at the walls of Paris, investing the city.
Bismarck hesitated to attack Paris, however, because reportedly
there were some 200,000 well-armed troops (an exaggeration)
within it, and he well knew the revolutionary fighting spirit of the
Parisian proletariat. The Paris troops, mostly the National Guard,
made up chiefly of workers, had elected a Central Committee of
25 members, on February 15,5 and it largely controlled besieged
Paris. The National Guard was especially on the alert against a
coup d’état by the Thiers government, which, fearing the revolu-
tionary proletariat, was eager to turn the city over to the Ger-

* In 1869 Engels quit his business in Manchester, England, where he

had been since 1864, and thenceforth he worked closely with Marx,
largely financing the latter.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
mans. The government signed an armistice (surrender) on Febru-
ary 26, in which it agreed to give up Paris.
BIRTH OF THE COMMUNE
With the aim of forcing rebellious Paris to surrender, Thiers,
at three o’clock in the morning of March 18, had his troops under
General Vinoy attempt to seize the 250 cannon of the National
Guard. The plan was succeeding until besieged, famine-stricken
Paris woke up and went into action. With women taking the lead,
the people, by fraternization and direct attacks, halted the seizure.
By eleven o’clock Thiers’ troops were completely defeated and the
city was in the hands of the people. Two government generals
were killed in the fighting. The red flag floated on the Hotel de
Ville, and the Central Committee of the National Guard was act-
ing as the provisional government.6 “The proletarians of Paris,”
declared the Central Committee, “amidst the failures and treasons
of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for
them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the di-
rection of public affairs.”7
The basic organized forces which led in the insurrection were
the Blanquists. They were said to number 4,000 organized armed
men, with a large body of sympathizers.8 Blanqui himself was ar-
rested by the government the night before the uprising, on March
17, and was held in jail all through the life of the Commune. The
Marxist Internationalists, who were still few in numbers in Paris,
had not planned for an uprising, but when it began they took a
very active part in it.
Based on universal male suffrage, the Commune was a legisla-
tive and executive body. All its members were subject to recall.
The general model was Paris, and the revolutionary plan was to
have such communes throughout all the cities, towns, and ham-
lets of France. All were to send representatives to the National
Delegation in Paris. Marx says, the system “brought the rural
producers under the intellectual lead of the central towns in their
districts, and secured to them, in the working men, the natural
trustees of their interests”9 – a clear recognition of the leading
revolutionary role of the proletariat.
The fundamental weakness of the Commune was that the
workers had no party and no program; the revolution and the
government coming out of the struggle were all improvised. What

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 THE PARIS COMMUNE
should have been done, already on the 18th, was for the Central
Committee acting in the name of the people, to arrest the Thiers
government leaders, who were in Paris that day, and then march
upon Versailles, the seat of the reactionary government. That
government’s forces were greatly demoralized by the insurrection,
and Thiers later admitted that if an attack had been made
promptly they could not have withstood it. Unfortunately, howev-
er, they were allowed precious time to reorganize their forces, a
fact which became disastrous later on for the Commune. The Cen-
tral Committee temporized and had conscientious objection to
launching a civil war,10 while in fact the Thiers reactionaries, by
their attack on Paris, had already opened the civil war. The Cen-
tral Committee, uncertain of its own authority, prepared for the
holding of local elections. Meanwhile, short-lived insurrections
were taking place in other French cities – Lyons, Saint Etienne,
Creusot, Marseilles, Toulouse, and Narbonne. Bakunin entered
into the revolt in Lyons and wrecked it.11
The elections of March 26, supplemented by further voting on
April 15, elected 92 Councillors, who constituted the Commune of
Paris. An Executive Committee of nine was chosen, made up of
the heads of the various departments: War, Finance, Subsistence,
Exterior, Labor, Justice, Public Services, Information, and Gen-
eral Security. The Blanquists and Neo-Jacobins held a majority in
the Commune; there was also a considerable group of
Proudhonists, some eighteen Marxist Internationalists, and a few
of miscellaneous opinion. The Commune was based on a revolu-
tionary alliance between the proletariat and the city petty bour-
geoisie, with the workers in the lead. By this time, most of the big
bourgeoisie had fled the city, leaving the factories standing idle,
with 300,000 workers unemployed.
On April 19 the Commune published its first statement of
program. This stayed within the framework of a bourgeois demo-
cratic revolution. The program demanded, “The recognition and
the consolidation of the Republic, and the absolute autonomy of
the Commune extended at all places in France, thus assuring to
each the integrity of its rights, and to each Frenchman the full ex-
ercise of his faculties and aptitudes as a man, a citizen, and a pro-
ducer.” It then went on to specify needed civil rights. It said fur-
ther that, “The political unity, as desired by Paris, is a voluntary
association of all local initiative, the free and spontaneous coop-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
eration of all individual energies with the common object of the
well-being, liberty, and security of the people.”12 The stress upon
local autonomy was partly a reaction against the crass dictator-
ship under the Second Empire and partly a reflection of the anar-
chist (Proudhon, Bakunin) ideas then widely current among the
French working class.
THE INTERNATIONAL AND THE COMMUNE
In its manifesto of September 9, 1870, written by Marx, the
General Council of the I.W.A. had warned the French workers of
the “desperate folly” of an attempt at that time to overthrow the
new bourgeois republic. But when the insurrection took place,
Marx, as a real revolutionist, gave it every possible support. Writ-
ing to Kugelmann three weeks after the revolution began, Marx
declared that "the present rising in Paris – even if it be crushed by
the wolves, swine, and vile curs of the old society – is the most
glorious deed of our Party since the June insurrection in Paris.”13
He declared that the Parisians were “storming heaven.”
Long afterward, Lenin compared favorably Marx’s attitude to
Plekhanov’s in a similar situation. Plekhanov, who opposed the
1905 revolution in Russia, shamefully declared after the heroic
struggle that, “They should not have resorted to arms.14 But Marx,
although he had opposed the revolt beforehand, gave it militant
support once it began. On May 30, 1871, two days after the fall of
the Commune, he put out an address in the name of the General
Council, in defense of the Commune, one of the greatest of all
Marxist works, The Civil War in France. This historic document
was endorsed by all the Council members, except Odger and
Lucroft, English labor leaders, who resigned rather than sign it.
Marx signed it as the Corresponding Secretary of Germany and
Holland, and Engels for Belgium and Spain.
Under the direct inspiration and leadership of Marx and En-
gels, the various sections of the International gave all possible aid
to the embattled Commune. In Paris the Internationalists were
very active. Stekloff lists among them, all elected members of the
Commune: Varlin, Malon, Jourdes, Avrail, Pindy, Assy, Duval,
Theiss, Lefrancais, Frankel, Longuet, Serail, and Johannard.15
They were active not only in the Commune committees but also in
the growing civil war. They were responsible for much of the con-
structive legislation and action developed by the Commune. The

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 THE PARIS COMMUNE
many revolutionary European exiles in Paris also actively partici-
pated and were given high posts in the Commune, Dombrowski, a
Pole, becoming military commander of Paris.16
In England the rank-and-file workers hailed the Commune,
even though their opportunist trade union leaders in the General
Council, save Applegarth, turned tail on the great revolutionary
struggle. In Germany both the Eisenachers and the Lassalleans
supported the Commune, in the face of a strong reactionary capi-
talist opposition. And in the United States the Commune evoked
support far and wide among the working masses, notwithstanding
the utter misrepresentation of it made by the bourgeois press, and
the constant attempts of the American Ambassador to France,
Washburn, to destroy it.17 The Workingmen’s Advocate and other
labor papers printed the statements of the General Council.
Among the prominent American figures who justified the Com-
mune was General Ben Butler, and on August 15, 1871, Marx told
the General Council that Wendell Phillips, the Abolitionist and
friend of labor, had become a member of the International. For
many years afterward the memory of the heroic Paris Commune
was a vivid tradition in American working class circles.18
THE WORK OF THE COMMUNE
The Paris Commune suffered from many weaknesses and
handicaps, including internal dissensions among the various fac-
tional groupings and isolation from the rest of France. The lack of
a clear-cut program and a solidly organized political party also
hung like a millstone around the neck of the Commune from the
first to the last. Moreover, the Commune, which existed only 72
days, had to operate in the face of a developing civil war. Although
fighting for its life desperately, the Commune nevertheless had
many constructive achievements to its credit, enough to write its
name imperishably in the revolutionary history of the world’s
working class and for it to stand out as a veritable light-house to
guide the workers along the way to socialism.
Among its major political decisions, the Commune pro-
claimed the separation of Church and State, abolished subsidies
to the Church, did away with the standing army in favor of a peo-
ple’s militia, stripped the police of political attributes, made all
functionaries strictly responsible to the electorate, setting 6,000
francs per year as the top limit for salaries, elected and controlled
95
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
all judges and magistrates, established free and general educa-
tion, burned the guillotine, and tore down the Vendome column
as a symbol of militarism. There were also many economic-social
measures adopted – the abolition of night work in bakeries, the
cancellation of employer fines in workshops, the closing of pawn-
shops, the seizure of closed workshops, which were to be operated
by workers’ cooperatives, the organization of relief for the enor-
mous mass of unemployed, the establishment of a bureau of labor
statistics; it also rationed dwellings and gave assistance to debt-
ors. All this work was infused with an intense spirit of interna-
tionalism, and the Committee had as its flag the red banner of the
world revolutionary movement.
Besides its achievements, the Commune suffered from many
mistakes and shortcomings. One of these of major importance,
already mentioned, was the failure at the outset to push the war
vigorously against the reactionary Versailles government. Another
was a too tolerant attitude towards the internal enemy, which
hindered the hunt for bourgeois spies and traitors, with which
Paris reeked, and also left the door open for serious treachery and
disruptive action among the officer corps. Also the Commune did
not try energetically enough to reach out to the other parts of
France and especially to win the peasantry to its cause – a most
serious weakness. Another error was the failure to publish the
secret state archives dating back to 1789, which fell into the hands
of the Commune and were full of the corruption and rottenness of
the secret police, the diplomats, the capitalists, and their politi-
cians. Its publication would have been a heavy blow against reac-
tion and an invaluable document.19
But the most curious mistake was the failure of the Commune
to confiscate the three billion francs held by the Bank of France.
Instead, the Blanquist and Proudhonist leaders, forgetting their
erstwhile pledges and voting down those who wanted to seize the
bank, dealt diplomatically with the bank functionaries for loans.
All told, the Commune heads got only some 16,700,000 francs;
9,400,000 of which belonged to Paris anyhow, the rest being a
loan of 7,290,000 francs – a loan which the bank director first
had Thiers endorse before he would make it.20 The seizure of the
bank would have dealt a heavy blow to the shaky Versailles
regime.

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 THE PARIS COMMUNE
THE COMMUNE OVERTHROWN
By the beginning of April the civil war was raging. The Com-
munards, or Federalists, fought a brave but losing battle. The
Thiers forces, on the basis of monstrous lies and distortions, had
lined up most of peasant France against the Commune. Bismarck
also released 100,000 French peasant prisoners-of-war to help
the Versailles government.21 On May 21 the Versailles troops en-
tered Paris and for eight days a bloody struggle took place, with
the Communards backing up street by street in the face of heavy
odds. On May 28 their last resistance was wiped out in Pere la
Chaise cemetery and in Belleville and various other working class
districts. The Commune was crushed.
The next few days were days of ruthless butchery. General de
Gallifet and his fellow murderers cold-bloodedly shot down at
least 30,000 working class men, women, and children. About
45,000 more were arrested. Of these some 15,000 were executed
or sent to prison, and hundreds more were exiled to New
Caledonia.
The slaughter was far worse even than after the defeat of the
June insurrection in Paris in 1848. Tens of thousands of Commu-
nards also had to flee the country to Switzerland, to England, and
most of all, to the United States. To provide assistance for these
exiles was a big job for the I.W.A. in Europe. It was one of the
Communard exiles, Eugene Pottier, who in June 1871 penned the
immortal words of the great battle song of the world’s workers,
The International.
Behind the barricades, in the bloody struggle and in the spec-
tacular political trials which followed it, the women Communards
especially covered themselves with glory. Louise Michel and Elis-
abeth Dmitrieff were but two noted fighters among thousands of
heroines. Before the court, Michel proudly declared, “I belong
entirely to the revolution and I wish to accept the responsibility
for all my deeds.”22 Convicted, she spent ten years in prison exile.
The reactionary rulers of Europe exulted over the wholesale
massacres in Paris. They poured in messages of congratulation to
the monster Thiers, and they put in motion repressive measures
designed to wipe out socialism in their own countries. In France,
particularly, says Lenin, “The bourgeoisie were satisfied. ‘Now we
have finished with socialism for a long time,’ said their leader, the

97
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
blood-thirsty dwarf, Thiers, after the bloodbath which he and his
generals had given the proletariat of Paris. But these bourgeois
crows cawed in vain. Six years after the suppression of the Com-
mune, when many of its fighters were still pining in prison, or in
exile, a new workers’ movement rose in France.”23
HISTORICAL ROLE OF THE COMMUNE
The Paris Commune taught many great lessons to the world’s
workers, which are still valid today. Above all others, Lenin un-
derstood and drew these lessons most completely. Outstanding
among them is the indispensable need of the workers in all coun-
tries for a strong, clear-seeing, and disciplined Communist Party,
as Marx so strongly insisted, to lead them along the long and dif-
ficult road to socialism. Even in a situation where the capitalist
government was so rotten that the power fell into the hands of the
workers practically without a struggle, as in Paris on March 18,
1871, still the workers could not go on, even from there, without a
strong political organization. This was one of the decisive lessons
of the Commune, and it completely repudiated the Bakunin con-
tention that a political party was not necessary and that mass
spontaneity would suffice.
Another elementary lesson of the Commune was that it pro-
vided the basic form of the new society that is to replace capital-
ism, as Marx pointed out. The close relationship of the organiza-
tional form of the Commune and that of the future Russian Sovi-
ets is unmistakable. Yet for almost half a century the real signifi-
cance of the Commune was virtually lost sight of, even by Marx-
ists, until finally Lenin retaught them its meaning.
Of fundamental importance, too, was the clear demonstration
given by the experience of the Paris Commune that, after the
workers had defeated the capitalists and won political power, they
would have to set up a state of their own, although a new type of
state, in order, by armed force, to hold in repression the counter-
revolutionary forces of capitalism and also to organize to lay the
basis of the new society. The Commune also taught, that the
“withering away of the state” would be a much more protracted
process than was generally contemplated by Marxists, though this
lesson, too, was practically ignored for decades. Especially was all
this in sharp contradiction to the Bakunin anarchist nonsense
that mere spontaneity would provide sufficient organization once

98
 THE PARIS COMMUNE
capitalism had been overthrown.
The Commune also made clear that the way to power for the
workers of Europe in the existing circumstances was by the force-
ful overthrow of the prevailing ultra-reactionary political regimes,
which denied the workers every semblance of democracy. But
Marx did not make a dogma of this important fact. He also recog-
nized, as indicated in Chapter 2, that in Great Britain and the
United States, where there were more advanced types o£ bour-
geois democracy, the possibility existed at that time (in the pre-
imperialist period) for the workers to make a peaceful advance to
socialism.
The Commune taught, too, that the bourgeoisie would not
hesitate to betray the nation in its own class interests. As the feu-
dal reactionaries in the great French Revolution of 1789 had
joined with enemies abroad to fight revolutionary France, so did
the reactionaries of 1871 join hands with Bismarck against the
Commune.
Another lesson of the Commune, greatly stressed by Marx and
also later by Lenin, was the fact that the workers, once in power,
could not adapt the bourgeois state to their revolutionary needs.
In his letter to Kugelmann, April 17, 1871, Marx said, “If you look
at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will find that I
say that the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no
longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine
from one hand to the other, but to smash it; and this is essential
for every real people’s revolution on the Continent.”24 This was
precisely what the Commune was doing in building its new type of
workers’ state. The general conclusion was later on to be of great
importance in the fight against the opportunists, who believed
that the workers could transform the capitalist regime bit-by-bit
into socialism.
A most vital lesson taught by the Paris Commune, was the
practical living demonstration it gave of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. In this respect, the Commune was a brilliant demon-
stration of the soundness of the position of Marx, who already in
The Communist Manifesto, 24 years earlier, had definitely out-
lined the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. By the
same token, the Commune repudiated the contentions of the an-
archists, who were inveterate enemies of rule by the working
class, which is the dictatorship of the proletariat.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
The Commune was not made up exclusively of workingmen.
In fact, as Lissagaray and Jaeckh point out and as Lenin agrees,
"the majority of the government consisted of representatives of
petty-bourgeois democracy.”25 Many of these were revolutionary
intellectuals. Of the 92 members of the Commune, only some 25
were workers, and not all of these were members of the Interna-
tional. Nevertheless, with the Parisian working class in full action,
the influence of the proletariat predominated. Marx thus puts the
situation: “The majority of its members were naturally working-
men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class.”26
The Commune also did not have, as we have remarked above,
a definitely socialist program. Nevertheless, its socialist trend was
implicit. Marx says, “Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to
abolish that class property which makes the labor of the many the
wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropria-
tors.”27 He also states that its decisions “bore distinctly a proletar-
ian character.” Lenin characterized the Commune “as a popular
workers’ government,” and he declared, that “The Commune tried
to carry out what we now call ‘the minimum program of social-
ism.’ ”28
The Commune was, indeed, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Marx said, “It was essentially a working class government, the
product of the struggle of the producing against the expropriating
class, the political form at last discovered under which to work
out the economic emancipation of labor,” and he also said that
“The glorious workingmen’s revolution of the 18th of March took
undisputed sway in Paris.”29 Later on, Engels, addressing German
“Social-Democratic philistines,” declared, “Well and good, gen-
tlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like?
Look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the pro-
letariat.”30
The Paris Commune, despite its ultimate overthrow, was the
first real revolutionary success of the world’s working class. It
made the initial dent in the capitalist system, which the great
Russian revolution, half a century later, was to follow up by
smashing a vast, irreparable breach through the walls of world
capitalism. Lenin said that, with all its errors, the Commune was
“the greatest example of the greatest proletarian movement of the
nineteenth century.”31

100
10. The Split at the Hague Congress (1872)
Following the downfall of the Paris Commune, the Interna-
tional found itself under increasing persecution in various Euro-
pean countries. The Commune had given the ruling classes a real
fright and they were resolved, if possible, to prevent a similar re-
currence. The bourgeois press everywhere launched a wild attack
against the International. At the Hague congress of the I.W.A.
Marx said that, “all the floodgates of calumny which the merce-
nary bourgeois press had at its disposal were suddenly thrown
open and let loose a cataclysm of defamation designed to engulf
the hated foe. This campaign of calumny does not possess its
match in history.... After the great fire in Chicago, the news was
sent around the world by telegram that this fire was the hellish act
of the International.”1
In 1871 France passed a law making it a crime to belong to the
International and it demanded that all countries should turn over
to it the Communard exiles as common criminals. In the same
year Holland made an appropriation of 3,000,000 gulden to
check the spread of communism. In Germany, Bebel and Lieb-
knecht, who had protested against the annexation of Alsace-
Lorraine and declared their solidarity with the Commune, were
arrested and sentenced to two years in a fortress. In Spain, Italy,
Belgium, and elsewhere hysterical police persecutions were
heaped upon the Internationalists. Early in 1872 the Spanish gov-
ernment appealed to other governments to cooperate in suppress-
ing the International.2 The Pope added his voice to the cry for re-
venge, and in 1873 Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary signed
a mutual agreement to fight the International. They tried also to
involve England, but failed.3
THE INTERNAL CRISIS
More dangerous to the International, however, than this po-
lice persecution was the internal crisis that ever more deeply in-
volved the organization after the end of the Commune. The sub-
stance of this was the growing battle between the Marxists and
Bakuninists; between the Alliance, led by Bakunin, and the forces
behind the General Council, led by Marx. As we have seen in the
previous chapter, the Marxists could well claim that the Com-
mune had endorsed their general political line, but the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Bakuninists argued violently to the contrary. They insisted that
the spontaneous uprising of the workers of Paris and other
French cities repudiated Marx’s conceptions and generally sup-
ported the philosophy of spontaneity propagated by Bakunin. The
Bakuninists were encouraged to re-double their factional activi-
ties, and they did succeed in building up their strength in a num-
ber of countries. They were especially strong in the Latin coun-
tries – Spain, Italy, Portugal, French Belgium, and French and
Italian Switzerland. Their main city center was Geneva, and Ba-
kunin maneuvered to have the headquarters of the International
transferred to that place. The Commune experience practically
obliterated politically the Proudhonists and the Blanquists of
France, but it gave the Bakuninists everywhere a new lease on life.
In the larger countries, strongholds of the International, the
internal crisis sharpened. In France the whole labor movement
was prostrate after the downfall of the Commune. In Germany
quarrels between the Marxists and Lassalleans, together with
government persecutions, threw the labor movement into disar-
ray. In the United States the friendly National Labor Union was in
rapid decline. And in England, which had been Marx’s chief sup-
port in the International, there was also internal trouble. All the
trade union leaders except one, in protest against Marx’s support
of the Commune, resigned from the General Council, while other
opportunist union leaders, adopting the characteristic opposition-
ist method of fighting the General Council, set up a British Feder-
ation of the I.W.A. in order to break the direct contacts of the
General Council with their unions. This bad situation was aggra-
vated when Eccarius and Hales, successive General Secretaries of
the I.W.A., split with Marx.
THE LONDON CONFERENCE
Under these difficult and threatening conditions, the Interna-
tional held a special general conference in London, September 17-
23, 1871, to substitute for the congress that had been scheduled
for Mainz, Germany, in the previous year. To protect the French
delegates, the conference was held privately. In attendance were
23 persons, 17 of them members of the General Council. Marx was
the representative for Germany, Engels for Italy, N. Utin for Rus-
sia, and Eccarius for the United States.4 According to Postgate,
the International, counting all factions, then had a press of 58 pa-

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 SPLIT AT HAGUE CONGRESS
pers, including three in the United States.
The main business before the London conference was the
imminent split in the International. Things had already arrived at
the point where with the Jura Federation of Switzerland (Baku-
nin’s headquarters) there were two rival organizations in the field.
And Jaeckh says the following about the factional situation in
Spain: “In most cities there were, beside the sections of the Alli-
ance, also sections of the International, without any contact be-
tween them.” And he thus describes the Bakunin organization in
Italy, which was saturated with Mazzini republicans: “All pre-
tended sections of the International were led by lawyers without
clients, by doctors without patients and without knowledge, by
students of billiards, by travelling salesmen and other office peo-
ple, and especially by journalists of the small press and of more or
less doubtful callings.”5 The London conference could do little
about the bad situation beyond supporting the line of the General
Council.
Drawing one of the main lessons of the Commune, the confer-
ence stressed the great need of the workers in the various coun-
tries to organize political parties and to engage in political action.
It also congratulated the Social-Democratic Workers Party in
Germany for its recent electoral successes. All this, of course, was
deadly poison to the Bakuninists. The conference set the date of
the next congress of the I.W.A. for the coming year.
The Bakuninists refused, however, to abide by the decisions of
the London conference. On November 12, 1871, they held a formal
congress at Sonvillier, Switzerland. One of the delegates was Jules
Guesde, later to play a central role in the development of the
French Socialist Party. The congress, made up of Alliance ele-
ments, was a direct challenge to the authority of the General
Council. It issued a statement, addressed to all sections of the In-
ternational, denouncing the Council as corrupt and dictatorial,
condemning its program of political action, and demanding that
an immediate congress be held.6 The ideological controversy had
developed into an organizational split.
THE CONGRESS AT THE HAGUE
The fifth congress of the I.W.A. was held in The Hague, be-
ginning on September 2, 1872. Marx and Engels, for the first time,
both attended in person, Marx having previously written to Sorge
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
and Kugelmann that he considered the congress to be “a life and
death matter for the International,” and so it turned out. Bakunin
himself was not present, but his people, led by James Guillaume,
were there in force, and all prepared for a showdown.
The split situation manifested itself immediately at the con-
gress, and three days were spent on the difficult problem of the
verification of credentials. Of the 65 delegates finally seated,
roughly 40 supported the main line of the General Council, and
about 25 the opposition. The Marxists’ supporters were: Members
of the General Council 16, Germany 10, France 6, Switzerland 3,
United States 2 (Sorge, a Marxist, and Deurure, a Blanquist), and
Spain, Bohemia, Denmark, and Sweden 1 each. The supporters of
Bakunin were: Belgium 7, England 5, Holland 4, Spain 4, Switzer-
land 2, and France 1. The Italians, Bakuninists, boycotted the
congress.
The factional situation was not fully a clear ideological line-
up, some of the supporters of both sides being swayed by other
considerations than the main issues confronting the congress.
Important in this respect were the English delegates, including
Eccarius and three other members of the General Council. Pure
and simple trade unionists, mainly, they did not share the anar-
chist views of Bakunin, but they nevertheless voted against the
Marxists.
In its series of resolutions, the congress dealt primarily with
four questions: the role and powers of the General Council, the
headquarters location of the I.W.A., the political line of the Inter-
national, and the status of Bakunin’s Alliance. Let us deal with
these separately.
THE POWERS OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL
The Bakuninists made a central issue of this question. Wor-
shippers of spontaneity and extreme local autonomy, their pro-
posal was that the General Council should be nothing more than a
correspondence bureau and a collector of statistical data. They
violently opposed the idea of the Council applying the decisions of
the congresses and acting as the general political guide of the In-
ternational. Some wanted to abolish the General Council alto-
gether.7 The Marxists, on the other hand, insisted upon the need
for a considerable international centralization policy and disci-
pline. In view of the severe internal crisis, the congress sustained

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 SPLIT AT HAGUE CONGRESS
the latter view, voting by 40 to 4, with 11 abstentions, to grant
wider powers to the Council in order to enable it to apply more
effectively the decisions of the congresses and to establish disci-
pline. These enabled the Council “temporarily to expel, until the
next congress, a division, section, Federal Council, committees
and federations of the International,”8 which might refuse to
abide by I.W.A. decisions.
The charges by the Bakuninists that the General Council prac-
ticed a dictatorship were unfounded. In fact, ever since the incep-
tion of the International the Council had served more as a theo-
retical than a direct political and organizational center. In a letter
to Kugelmann, Marx thus explains its theoretical tasks: “It was
not its function to sit in judgment on the theoretic value of the
programs of the various sections. It had only to see that those
programs contained nothing directly contradictory to the letter
and spirit of the Statutes.”9 The great achievements of the Council
(i.e. of Marx) were in the field of theory and political policy. The
Council also did not initiate strikes or specific political move-
ments in the various countries, but rather supported them once
the national sections had gotten them under way. But even this
restricted central leadership was far too much for the anarchist
Bakuninists, with their exaggerated conceptions of spontaneity. It
was only when the life of the I.W.A. was finally at stake that it
adopted strong centralization.
THE QUESTION OF POLITICAL ACTION
In the aftermath of the Paris Commune there was a strong
trend towards political action in various countries. The workers
sought thus to translate into reality one of the most elementary
lessons of the historic struggle. In line with this sound trend, the
Marxists had re-introduced into the Hague Congress for en-
dorsement what was substantially the resolution of the London
conference of 1871 on the matter. T he resolution declared: “In its
fight against the collective forces of the possessing classes, the
proletariat can only act as a class by organizing its forces into an
independent political party, working in opposition to all the old
parties formed by the possessing classes. Such an organization of
the proletariat as a political party is indispensable in order to
achieve the triumph of the social revolution, and above all, to at-
tain its ultimate goal, the abolition of classes.”10
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
This resolution provoked an intense debate. The Blanquists,
through their chief spokesman, Vaillant of France, maintained
that “If the strike is one weapon in our revolutionary fight, the
barricade is another, and is the most powerful weapon of all.”
They wanted to amend the resolution to this effect. The
Bakuninists, with Guillaume as their leader, attacked the resolu-
tion head on and with it The Communist Manifesto, as expressing
bourgeois politics. “The difference between the positive policies of
the majority faction and the negative policies of the minority fac-
tion was set forth in the following two axioms: the majority aims
at the conquest of political power; the minority aims at the de-
struction of political power.” 1 1 The congress voted 29 to 5, with 9
abstentions, in favor of the Marxists’ resolution.
THE INTERNATIONAL REMOVES TO NEW YORK
The sensation of the Congress was a proposal, presented by
Engels, to remove the headquarters of the International to the
United States, to New York. The resolution, written in French,
reads: “We propose that for the years 1872-73 the seat of the Gen-
eral Council shall be transferred to New York, that it shall be
composed of the following members: the Federal Council of North
America: Cavanagh, St. Clair, Getti, Carl, Laurel, F. L. Bertrand,
F. Bolte, and C. Carl. They will have the right to co-opt but the
total numbers shall not exceed 15.” – Signed by Marx, Engels,
Sexton, Longuet, Dupont, Serralier, Wroblewski, Barry, McDon-
nell, Lissner, Le Moussu, at The Hague, September 6, 187 2.12
This resolution caused a very sharp fight in the congress. The
Bakuninists made a battle against it, and so did the Blanquists
who in general had been supporting the Marxists in the congress.
Sorge, the chief I.W.A. leader in the United States, also opposed
the proposition, but was eventually won over to it. After a
complicated struggle, with other proposals to locate in Barcelona
and Brussels, Engels’ motion was finally carried by a vote of 30 to
14, with 13 abstentions. Declaring the International lost, the
Blanquists dramatically quit and took no further part in the
congress. The new General Council was elected on the basis that
its members must reside in the United States. It consisted of
Cavanagh, St. Clair, Laurel, Fornacieri, Leviele, Deurure, Carl,
Bolte, Berliand, Speyer and Ward. Sorge was elected General
Secretary.

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 SPLIT AT HAGUE CONGRESS
As Engels made clear in his speech introducing the resolution,
the removal of the International to New York was dictated by
hard necessity. The situation, both within and without the organi-
zation, had become such that it was impossible for it to function
effectively in Europe. The biggest danger was that it would be cap-
tured by the Bakunin anarchists and used to further their sectari-
an cause, which would have been a disaster to the young world
labor movement. There was also the possibility that the General
Council would be taken over by the Blanquists, many of whom,
refugees from the Commune, had located in London. Under these
difficult circumstances, there was nothing practical left to do oth-
er than to move the general headquarters to America, where, in
the young American labor movement, the International might
find a strong base.
THE EXPULSION OF THE BAKUNINISTS
Even as the Hague congress assembled, the split in the Inter-
national was a reality. This was demonstrated by the holding of
the anarchist congress of Sonvilliers, by the dual movements that
this opposition had set up in several of the Latin countries, by the
reckless bitterness with which the factional fight was being con-
ducted, and by the obvious intention of Bakunin to dominate the
movement at any cost. The formal expulsion of the Bakunin lead-
ership at The Hague merely recognized officially the division that
was already virtually an accomplished fact in the International.
In preparation for dealing with this matter the congress, at
the outset, appointed a committee of five, which included Marx,
Engels, and other leaders of both factions, to consider the situa-
tion regarding the Alliance, which was working within the Inter-
national, and also to weigh the charges that had been made
against the General Council by various Bakuninist federations. It
was according to the majority report of four of the five members
of this committee that, towards the conclusion of the congress,
the expulsions were carried through.
At the meeting of the General Council on March 5, 1872, Marx
had submitted a long report reviewing the whole course of the
fight against the Bakunin group, later published in pamphlet form
as The Pretended Secessions in the International.13 The commit-
tee, on the basis of this report and of extended hearings and in-
vestigations, declared that the Alliance, with rules and purposes
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
contrary to those of the International, existed as a broad factional
grouping within that organization. It was developed that the
Bakuninist federations were dominated by secret cliques of “na-
tional brothers” and that the Alliance generally was in the hands
of about 100 “international brothers.” The committee held that
Bakunin and others, by their whole course of conduct, had made
themselves ineligible for further membership in the organization.
The majority of the committee therefore recommended that
Bakunin, Guillaume, Schwitzguebel, Malon, Bousquet, and
Marchand be expelled. Charges against other Bakuninist leaders
were dropped, upon their assurance that they had quit the Alli-
ance. The minority report re-stated the Bakunin line, insisting
upon the right of the national federations to full autonomy and
challenging the right of the General Council to interfere in any
way with them. The congress, which by this time had dwindled to
only 43 delegates, voted to expel Bakunin and Guillaume.
Schwitzguebel was not expelled, whereupon he resigned.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE SPLIT
Following the congress a mass meeting was held in Amster-
dam, addressed by Marx, Sorge, and others. Marx reviewed opti-
mistically the work of the congress.14 He especially stressed the
fact that the congress, rejecting the a-political line of the anar-
chists, had “proclaimed the necessity that the working class shall
attack the old and crumbling society on both the political and the
social fields.” He warned, however, that in so doing, “special re-
gard must be paid to the institutions, customs, and traditions of
various lands; and we do not deny that there are certain coun-
tries, such as the United States and England, in which the workers
may secure their ends by peaceful means. If I mistake not, Hol-
land belongs to the same category. Even so, we have to recognize
that in most Continental countries force will have to be the lever
of the revolution.” Marx hailed the great example of the Paris
Commune, and declared that, “It fell because there did not simul-
taneously occur in all the capitals, in Berlin, in Madrid, and the
rest, a great revolutionary movement linked with the mighty up-
heaval of the Parisian proletariat.”
On the crucial question of the removal of the headquarters to
New York, Marx stated: “The Hague Congress has removed the
seat of the General Council from London to New York. Many,

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 SPLIT AT HAGUE CONGRESS
even of our friends, are not best pleased at this decision. They for-
get that the United States is pre-eminently becoming the land of
the workers; that year by year, half a million workers emigrate to
this new world, and that the International must perforce strike
deep roots in this soil upon which the workers are supreme.”
In a letter to Sorge a year later, Marx said: “According to my
view of conditions in Europe, it will be thoroughly useful to let the
formal organization of the International withdraw into the back-
ground for a time, only, if possible, keeping some control over the
center in New York in order to prevent idiots like Perret or adven-
turers like Cluseret getting hold of the leadership and compromis-
ing the cause. Events themselves and the inevitable development
in complexity of things will ensure the resurrection of the Interna-
tional in an improved form.”15
Certainly Marx and Engels had few illusions as to the
significance of the removal to America. But Riazanov remarks, “It
was presumed that the transfer of the International would be but
a temporary one.”16 However, it did not turn out that way. The
I.W.A. headquarters never returned to Europe, and The Hague
gathering was its last real international congress. An attempt was
made to hold an I.W.A. congress, the sixth, in Geneva, in 1877,
but it was a failure. Only a few delegates appeared and they
represented what was a disintegrating movement. The removal to
New York was generally understood to amount to the liquidation
of the International as a world organization, and it was just that.
During its four years of life in the United States, the I.W.A.
functioned more as a national than an international organization.
Meanwhile, the European Anarchist forces continued their work,
trying in vain to carry on the International in their own image and
likeness.

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11. The Anarchist International
(1872-1877)
The Bakuninists refused to recognize the Hague congress de-
cisions, which expelled Bakunin and other Anarchist leaders for
carrying on disruptive activities within the International. Instead,
declaring that the I.W.A., by these decisions and by moving to
New York, had virtually liquidated itself, they went right ahead
with their own organization, claiming that it was, in fact, the In-
ternational Workingmen’s Association. Consequently, for the next
several years there were two Internationals in existence, both with
the same name and both presumably representing the workers of
the world.
The two organizations carried on a bitter warfare against each
other. The Marxist position was stated in the pamphlet, The Alli-
ance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working-
men’s Association, written by Engels and Paul Lafargue, and the
Anarchist position was outlined in the booklet, A Complot against
the International Workingmen’s Association, prepared under
Bakunin’s direction.
THE SAINT-IMIER CONGRESS
A few days after the close of the fifth congress of the I.W.A. at
The Hague in September 1872, the opposing Anarchist forces held
a congress in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. It was, in fact, a continua-
tion and extension of the conference of the Jura Federation at
that place. The international congress of the Anarchists lasted
through September 15-17. Stekloff lists the participating delega-
tions as follows: Spain 4: Italy 6; Switzerland 2: France 2, and the
United States 1, the delegate Lefrancais representing the Ameri-
can sections 3 and 22, which had broken away from the leader-
ship of the Marxists.1 This group assembled in congress, claimed
to be and acted in the name of the International. It was the old
Alliance in a new garb.
The Anarchists in the Saint-Imier congress, no longer ham-
pered by the presence of Marxists, formally rejected the decisions
of the Hague congress and began to shape their new international
in the image and likeness of Bakunin. The congress “categorically
denied the legislative right of all congresses, whether general or

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 THE ANARCHIST INTERNATIONAL
regional, and recognized that such congresses had no other mis-
sion than to show forth the aspirations, the needs, and the ideas
of the proletariat in the various localities or countries, so that
such ideas may be harmonized and unified.... In no case can the
majority of a congress... impose its will upon the minority.” This
was the “center of correspondence and statistics” theory so fer-
vently advocated by Anarchist delegates in congresses of the In-
ternational, now written into reality. At a later congress the Anar-
chists, for a while, abolished the General Council altogether.
The Saint-Imier congress declared that “the autonomy and
independence of the working class sections and federations con-
stitutes the essential condition of the emancipation of the work-
ers.” It declared also, “That the destruction of every kind of politi-
cal power is the first task of the proletariat.” It rejected all forms
of political organization and action, declaring “That the proletari-
ans of all lands, spurning all compromises in the achievement of
the social revolution, must establish, independently of bourgeois
politics, the solidarity of revolutionary action.”2
The workers now had to make a choice between the rival In-
ternationals. The Belgian federation soon afterward went with the
Anarchists, and so did the Dutch. A section of the British took a
similar stand, although being at bottom opportunist trade union-
ists, they were more interested in carrying on a factional struggle
against Marx than they were fascinated by Anarchist doctrines of
decentralization, autonomy, and spontaneity. The federations
which in the main declared for the Marxist International were the
French, German, Austrian, Polish, Danish, Hungarian, and Amer-
ican – a situation which led Jaeckh to conclude, “Thus, the major-
ity of the federations remained with the old International.”3
But these retained affiliations were more formal than real.
The removal of the International to New York convinced the
Marxists of Europe that its days were over. Consequently, the
Germans and other Marxists, quickly losing further interest in the
International, began to turn their attention to the new strong
trends toward building up the labor movements and political par-
ties in their respective countries. This is why the Marxist attempt
at an International congress in Germany in September 1873
proved such a failure.

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
DOWNWARD COURSE OF THE ANARCHISTS
The real life of the Bakuninist international was between the
years 1872 and 1877. Such moves as the Anarchists made upon an
international scale after the latter date were hardly more than dy-
ing convulsions. During these five years the Bakuninists held sev-
eral international congresses of their so-called I.W.A. Among
them were gatherings in Geneva in 1873, Brussels in 1874, Berne
in 1876, and Venders (Belgium) in 1877. The final issue of their
official organ, Bulletin de la Federation Jurassienne, appeared on
March 15, 1878.
In July 1881 the Anarchists, at a congress in London, launched
a strong effort to revitalize their cause internationally. This resulted
in the so-called “Black International.” But it was all a shot in the
water, the movement failing to take hold again in Europe. It did,
however, have considerable repercussions in the United States. In
its early stages the Anarchist I.W.A. attracted few American sup-
porters, although Foner reports that, “As far back as 1875, a small
group of German Socialists in Chicago had formed an armed club
which came to be known as Lehr und Wehr Verein.”4
Serious consequences developed in the United States, howev-
er, in connection with the London 1881 movement, the Interna-
tional Association of Working People. This Black International
movement attracted considerable support among the foreign-
born workers, especially in the Chicago area. These workers, who
were mostly non-citizens, employed at the lowest paid jobs, sub-
jected to terrorism in the shops, and the worst victims of recur-
ring economic crises, were influenced by the Anarchist propagan-
da.5 A contributing factor was the opportunist policy then being
followed by the leadership of the Socialist Labor Party, which re-
fused to organize the workers for economic struggle. The culmi-
nation of the movement was the Chicago Haymarket tragedy dur-
ing the great 8-hour movement of 1886, in which, as a result of a
mysterious bomb explosion at a mass meeting on May 4, four
workers’ leaders – Albert R. Parsons, August Spies, Adolf Fischer,
and George Engel – were barbarously framed-up and executed,
another, Louis Lingg, “committed suicide,” the police said, and
several more were given long prison sentences.
There were also skeleton international Anarchist congresses
in 1891, 1893, and 1896, but they were merely small sectarian

112
 THE ANARCHIST INTERNATIONAL
gatherings.
The Anarchist international, during its several years of life on a
descending plane, conducted very few mass struggles. The most
important of these were revolutionary attempts in Spain and Italy
in 1873 and 1874. In Spain the Anarchist international had a strong
following. In Barcelona, their chief stronghold, they claimed some
50,000 members.6 The country was in a revolutionary ferment,
which finally resulted in the establishment of the Spanish Republic
in 1873. Due to their apolitical prejudices, the Anarchists took no
organized part in this popular movement. In the mass ferment they
did, however, develop a general strike in a few cities, which turned
out to be a failure.7 In Italy, which was also a Bakuninist stronghold
during the unsettled political situation of the early 1870’s, the An-
archists organized no less than 60 local putsches in two years.
Their most serious undertaking was an attempted uprising in Bolo-
gna in July, 1874; but this failed completely.
KROPOTKIN SUCCEEDS BAKUNIN
Overtaken by bad health and depressed by the defeats he had
suffered in his grandiose plans of revolution, Bakunin withdrew
from activity in the middle 1870’s. To the end he remained bitter-
ly hostile to Marxism. In his letter of farewell to the workers of
Jura, he declared that the socialism of Marx, no less than the di-
plomacy of Bismarck, represented the center of reaction against
which the workers had to carry on a tireless struggle. Marx, on the
other hand, challenged Bakunin’s sincerity, and characterized
him as an enemy of the working class. In 1919 papers were found
in the Russian tsarist police archives which cast a bad light on
Bakunin. They showed that while in prison in 1851 he had written
to the tsar from the standpoint of, as he called himself, “a penitent
sinner,” with the aim of securing a mitigation of his imprison-
ment.8 Bakunin died on July 1, 1876, in Berne, at the age of 62.
In the Anarchist movement at the time there were a number
of outstanding figures, including Admenar Schwitzguebel of Swit-
zerland, Enrico Malatesta of Italy, Domela Nieuwenhuis of Hol-
land, James Guillaume and Elisee Reclus of France, Cesar de
Paepe of Belgium, Johann Most of Germany, and various others;
but the Anarchist leadership mantle of Bakunin fell upon the
shoulders of a comparative newcomer in the field of international
struggle, Kropotkin of Russia.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) was a prince, a member of one of
the well-known noble families in tsarist Russia. Among his many
activities in Russia, he was a noted geographer. He became inter-
ested in the revolutionary movement, and in 1872 joined the In-
ternational in Switzerland, affiliating himself with the Bakunin
wing. As a result of his activities, Kropotkin served several years
in prison, mainly in Russia and France. He died in the Soviet Un-
ion, an honored citizen, but a confirmed opponent of the Bolshe-
vik regime. Of his many books, the most valuable is, Mutual Aid:
A Factor of Evolution.
Kropotkin called himself a Communist-anarchist. He carried
forward the Bakunin conception of a spontaneous insurrectional
revolution and the automatic establishment of a society based al-
together on autonomy. He was an enemy of proletarian political
parties, of political action, and of the dictatorship of the proletari-
at. To him the main enemy was the state, not the capitalist class.
According to Kropotkin, in their revolutionary period the capital-
ists also had fought, not the feudal system but the state. Said he,
“Think of the struggles the bourgeoisie itself had to carry on
against the state in order to conquer the right of constituting
themselves into commercial societies.”9 Bakunin was a man of
action and participated in uprisings, but Kropotkin, who was ac-
tive during a more stable period of capitalism, perforce devoted
himself almost exclusively to research, theory, and propaganda.
WHY THE ANARCHIST MOVEMENT SHRANK
The basic reason for the failure of the Anarchist International
and for its demise, in a period when the working class was making
great progress in many countries, was its theoretical unsound-
ness: its incurable foreshortening of the perspective of the revolu-
tion; its misconception of the class struggle; its false interpreta-
tion of the role of the state; its ignorance of the reality of the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat; its understress upon organization and
overstress upon mass spontaneity; and its lack of understanding
of the need for practical everyday class struggle under the capital-
ist system. Under the burden of this load of confusion and illusion
the Anarchist movement could not possibly succeed.
With the Anarchist International placing all its hopes upon
insurrection and practically ignoring the everyday struggles of the
workers, the Anarchist movement tended to shrink into a narrow

114
 THE ANARCHIST INTERNATIONAL
sect on the sidelines of the class struggle. The workers in various
countries, growing in numbers and class consciousness, were be-
ginning to build broad trade unions, political parties, and cooper-
atives, and to conduct struggles for partial demands of various
sorts – the franchise, wage and hour improvements, factory legis-
lation, etc. But the Anarchists, with their eyes fastened fundamen-
tally on their panacea, the insurrection, and despising all partial
demands as deceptions for the workers, remained for the most
part outside of and even opposed to the broad stream of working-
class life, struggle, and development. They took but little part in
strikes and they sabotaged the growing electoral struggles of the
workers. This whole course brought out clearly the fundamentally
sectarian character of the Anarchist movement.
The elemental move of the European masses of these years
towards political action, as the proletariat grew swiftly in num-
bers and progressively won the franchise, was particularly disas-
trous for the Anarchists. It undermined the foundations of Baku-
nin’s anti-political-ism, which were based on the facts that, in the
main, the workers in the Latin countries did not have the ballot;
and also that, in any event, in these countries the proletariat was
relatively small and could not look forward towards constituting
an electoral majority of the voters. This applied also to Russia,
where from the 1870’s on, the terroristic People’s Will group, con-
siderably influenced by Anarchist ideas, was active for a decade.
The sectarian isolation of the Anarchists was accentuated by
the fact that the capitalist system in Europe and the United
States, after the late 1860’s, largely stabilized itself, and for the
next few years thereafter, during its period of rapid development,
was much less vulnerable to working-class insurrection. This gen-
eral course of capitalist development was a body blow to the An-
archist movement, which based everything upon the perspective
of early insurrection. It profoundly increased the disastrous, iso-
lating consequences of Anarchist sectarianism. The decline of the
Anarchist international was inevitable.
Anarchism, as Stalin points out,10 puts its stress upon the in-
dividual “whose emancipation, according to its tenets, is the prin-
cipal condition for the emancipation of the masses.” This concep-
tion put the Anarchists crosswise of the class struggle. On the
other hand, "The cornerstone of Marxism, however,” says Stalin,
“is the masses, whose emancipation, according to its tenets, is
115
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the principal condition for the emancipation of the individual.”
This conception put the Marxists fully into the stream of the class
struggle. “By its advocacy of individual terror, it [Anarchism] dis-
tracts the proletariat from the methods of mass organization and
struggle. By repudiating the dictatorship of the proletariat in the
name of ‘abstract’ liberty, Anarchism deprives the proletariat of
its most important and sharpest weapon against the bourgeoisie,
its armies, and all its organs of repression.”11
The pressure of the masses to organize and to fight for their
immediate demands, not only exerted itself externally upon the
Anarchist movement, but also from within. Consequently, the
Anarchist congresses were constantly torn by disputes over prac-
tical and theoretical questions – one of the most notable of such
discussions being that over de Paepe’s proposal in the 1874 con-
gress in Brussels to endorse what amounted to a people’s state.
All this confused and paralyzed the organization and intensified
its theoretical bankruptcy. There was also a constant desertion of
leading figures – Jules Guesde (France), Carlo Cafiero (Italy),
Caesar de Paepe (Belgium), G. Plekhanov and Paul Axelrod (Rus-
sia), and many others, to the camp of Marxism.
The downfall of the Anarchist international was caused, con-
cretely, by its incorrigible belief in the immediacy of the proletari-
an revolution. Marxists, too, as was freely admitted later by both
Marx and Engels, erred considerably in this general direction.
This was a natural mistake to make in a revolutionary period
which, between the years 1859 and 1871, produced the Austro-
French, Austro-Prussian, and Franco-German wars, the American
Civil War, and several minor wars; when Austrian absolutism was
overthrown, united Italy came into being, there was a long revolu-
tion in Spain, the Paris Commune was established, serfdom was
abolished in Russia, and throughout Europe a broad workers’
movement was rapidly developing.12 The difference between the
Marxists and Anarchists, however, was that the Marxists, thanks
to their scientific theory, were able quickly to correct their error in
this respect; whereas the Anarchists, loaded down with bourgeois
idealism, were not able to readjust to the new situation. Conse-
quently the Anarchist movement shrivelled into an isolated sect,
while Marxism went ahead to become the dominant ideology of
the world’s working class.

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 THE ANARCHIST INTERNATIONAL
THE DISINTEGRATION OF ANARCHISM
The Anarchist movement, during the 1870’s and 1880’s, not
only declined organizationally and in general influence among the
working masses, but it also, as a result of its practical failure, dis-
integrated theoretically. The movement, being in a sort of political
cul de sac, started to degenerate into several more or less mutu-
ally conflicting theoretical tendencies and groupings. One of these
inner-sect sects was the so-called “philosophical” or “individual-
ist” Anarchists. They traced their political lineage back to Zeno in
ancient Greece (400 b.c.), and their bible was Max Stirner’s
(Kaspar Schmid, 1806-56) The Ego and His Own. They tended to
become petty-bourgeois “cafe revolutionists,” radical Bohemian
chatterers and phrase-mongers about the revolution which they
were only hindering. This trend still lingers on.
There also developed for a time strong terroristic tendencies
among the Anarchists. The terrorists were desperate elements
who, seeing the hopes of mass insurrection fading, sought by the
assassination of leaders of states to apply their doctrine of “prop-
aganda by the deed,” and thus to spur the sluggish masses into
motion by the daring acts of heroic individuals. Consequently, the
Anarchists were blamed, rightly or wrongly, for the various bomb-
throwings and assassinations of public figures that took place
during the decades up to 1900 and beyond. Among these were the
armed attacks upon the German Kaiser in 1878, the Haymarket
bombing of 1886 (almost certainly a police frameup), the at-
tempted killing of Frick during the Homestead steel strike of
1892, the bombing of the French Chamber of Deputies in 1893,
the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia (1881), of Presi-
dent Carnot of France (1894), of Empress Elizabeth of Austria
(1898), of King Humbert of Italy (1900), and of President McKin-
ley of the United States (1901). The Anarchist terroristic tendency
was smothered out by the folly of its own acts.
A third Anarchist tendency developed, and this is by far the
most important in the general philosophy of Anarchism. That is,
the Anarchist-minded workers, more practical by far than the pet-
ty-bourgeois Anarchist intellectuals, adapted Anarchism to the
trade union movement. This adaptation, however, involved a con-
siderable watering down of Anarchist principles; for trade union
discipline, even in autonomous Anarcho-syndicalist unions, col-

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
lides with Anarchist ideas of individualism; and the Anarcho-
syndicalists’ conception of the future society, which would in fact
amount to a trade union state, directly contravenes Anarchist anti-
statist conceptions. The workers thus produced the important
Anarcho-syndicalist tendency, which was later to play a significant
role in many countries, and with which we shall deal more fully
later. The beginnings of this Syndicalist trend, which is Anarchist
trade unionism, were to be seen far back in the earliest congresses
of the First International, and the tendency became more pro-
nounced with the growth of the international labor movement. It
became the main current of disintegrating Anarchism.

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12. The First International in the U.S.A.
(1872-1876)
In accordance with the decision of The Hague congress in
September 1872, the headquarters of the General Council of the
I.W.A. were shifted from London to New York, in October of that
year. F. A. Sorge was the general secretary, and Frederick Bolte
was secretary of the Federal Council, Central Committee of the
North American Section, organized in 1870. As its official organ,
the General Council published the Arbeiter Zeitung, the first
number of which appeared February 8, 1873.
THE AMERICAN SITUATION
Late in 1872 the United States was in the concluding phase of
the industrial boom which followed the end of the Civil War. The
victorious capitalists, now busily stealing the natural resources of
the country, were enlarging their factories, creating industrial
monopolies, and subjecting the workers to unprecedented exploi-
tation. Having broken the power of the Southern slaveholders, the
Northern industrialists consolidated themselves completely in
control of the government.
Pressed by the aggressive capitalists, the workers were in a
fighting mood, which was greatly intensified by the outbreak of
the deep-going economic crisis of 1873. The National Labor Un-
ion, for reasons indicated above, had just about passed out of the
national picture; the Knights of Labor, although in existence since
1869, was still small and weak, and the formation of the A.F. of L.
in 1881, was nine years off in the future. But the organization of
local and national trade unions was proceeding, various labor and
farmer parties had been formed, and the country was building up
to the great railroad strike of 1877, one of the bitterest class strug-
gles in the history of the United States.
By 1872, Foner reports, “there were about 30 sections and
5,000 members of the First International in the United States,”1
with local organizations in New York, Chicago, San Francisco,
Newark, Springfield, New Orleans, and Washington, D. C. As we
have seen, the United States had played no small role in the life of
the First International. American delegates attended the respective
congresses, and the American question frequently figured in the

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
work of the I.W.A. Examples of this were the various letters be-
tween the General Council and Presidents Lincoln and Johnson,
the fight of European workers, under Marxist leadership, to keep
their countries from joining with the Confederacy in the Civil War,
the close relations between the International and the National La-
bor Union. The American section was, in fact, far from being the
least important of the organizations of the First International.
THE I.W.A. IN THE AMERICAN CLASS STRUGGLE
Although the transfer of the General Council to New York had
been looked upon askance by the American Marxist leaders, it
nevertheless, for a time, stimulated the American movement. The
numbers of sections and members grew. The I.W.A. leader in the
United States, F. A. Sorge (1827-1906), was a music teacher, a
native of Saxony, a participant in the 1848 revolution in Germany,
a co-worker with Marx, and a clear-headed and tireless fighter.
True to the line of the I.W.A., the American Marxists took an
active part in the daily struggles of the workers, in the building of
unions and the carrying on of strikes. These activities were en-
hanced with the arrival of the General Council in the United
States. The Marxists had led the great October 1, 1871, New York
demonstration for the eight-hour day, with banners reading,
Gompers tells us: “Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.” And
Commons thus cites a local labor paper: “Especially cordial was
the reception of the Internationals led by the trade unionists at
the final counter-march of the procession, and deafening cheers
greeted the appearance of their banner (the red flag) on the stage
at the mass meeting.... Equally significant was the participation of
the colored (Negro) organization for the first time in a demonstra-
tion gotten up by English-speaking unions (the German unions
have treated them as equals already years ago).”2
The Marxists were also active leaders in the huge demonstra-
tion of the unemployed in Tompkins Square, New York, on Janu-
ary 13, 1874. This meeting, a protest against starvation conditions
among the jobless, was the largest labor gathering yet held in the
United States. The police broke up the meeting violently, injuring
many workers. Similar demonstrations were held in Chicago and
other big cities.
During these years many prominent labor men were members
of or supported the I.W.A. Among them were J. P. McDonnell,

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 FIRST INTERNATIONAL IN U.S.A.
editor of the Workingmen’s Advocate, and Adolph Strasser and P.
J. McGuire, who later became famous as founders of the Ameri-
can Federation of Labor. Samuel Gompers, who for years was
president of the A.F. of L., was also closely associated with the
International, if not actually a member. In his autobiography he
recalls many trade union leaders of the times who were members
of the I.W.A., and says that, “Unquestionably, in those days of the
‘seventies,’ the International dominated the labor movement of
New York City.” Significantly, he adds that “New York City was
the cradle of the American labor movement.”3 Gompers used to
claim that he learned German in order to be able to read The
Communist Manifesto and other works of Marx.
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE “SECTS"
As in Europe, the International in the United States had to
fight constantly against internal tendencies to prevent the devel-
opment of a broad working class movement. This fight became
especially sharp after the arrival of the General Council in New
York. These distorting and crippling influences, of course, had
their own specific American features. The most stubborn, endur-
ing, and injurious of them was the tendency of the foreign-born
workers, principally Germans, to stand aside in a sectarian man-
ner, from the life and struggles of the broad masses of the native
American workers. This was manifested by reluctance to learn the
English language, to acquire American citizenship, and to become
members and leaders in native organizations and fights of the
workers. This harmful tendency, which the General Council did
not much improve, was to endure, in a declining degree, for two
generations, down to the early days of the modern Communist
Party. Engels especially carried on a guerrilla warfare against this
narrow practice.
One of the worst of the many bad effects caused by this sectar-
ianism was a gross neglect of the Negro question. Located mostly
in the big northern cities, the Marxists were generally known as
being friendly to Negro workers, defending their right to work
and to belong to trade unions. But the I.W.A. paid little or no at-
tention to the bitter struggle of the Reconstruction Period then
being conducted by the Negro people and their white allies in the
post-war South against militant counter-revolution.
The I.W.A. Marxists also took a sectarian attitude towards the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
strong woman’s suffrage movement of the period. This weakness,
in fact, ran generally throughout the work of the whole First In-
ternational. The American Marxists, while fighting generally for
the rights of women in industry, in law, and elsewhere, did not
stress their right to vote. The current idea, expressed in the plat-
form of the Workingmen’s Party of the United States (1876), was
that “the so-called woman question will be solved with the worker
question” – a sectarian formulation which largely isolated the
Marxists from the current vigorous woman’s movement. Similar
narrow sectarianism also isolated the I.W.A. from the farmer
movements which were beginning at this time to develop in the
Middle West.
The I.W.A. in the United States also had to fight against bour-
geois liberals, who tried to capture the organization and to re-
write its program. These alien elements were led by the two well-
known sisters, Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin. Original-
ly they had an organization, “New Democracy,” advocating a pro-
gram of woman’s suffrage, sex freedom, spiritualism, and a uni-
versal language. They also proposed “voluntary socialism,” to be
established by a general referendum. In 1870 they disbanded
their organization and joined the International. Highly militant
and a brilliant speaker, Mrs. Woodhull soon organized Sections 9
and 12 in New York, mostly composed of native Americans, of
which she became the leader. The sisters also published their own
journal, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly.4
The Marxist workers promptly collided with these petty bour-
geois intellectuals. The matter was referred to the General Council
in London, and receiving an adverse decision on their demand
that Section 12, instead of Section 1, should be the leading section
in America, the Woodhull forces brought about a split in Novem-
ber 1871. Thereafter two Federal Councils were in existence.
The London General Council, in March 1872, ordered the ex-
pulsion of Section 12 and the holding of a new national conven-
tion. But the Woodhull group rejected the decision, met in Phila-
delphia on July 9, 1872 with 13 sections present, mostly Ameri-
can-born, and organized the American Confederation of the In-
ternational, generally known as the “Spring Street Council.” The
regular I.W.A. met a few days later, also in Philadelphia, with 25
delegates from 22 sections and 900 members. At The Hague con-
gress, the Woodhull group was again defeated and it refused also

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 FIRST INTERNATIONAL IN U.S.A.
to accept the I.W.A. decision.5 The movement was petering out at
the time the General Council arrived in the United States.
Victoria Woodhull was an outstanding personality in the mili-
tant woman’s rights movement of the time, but obviously she had
no place in the workers’ International. She was a fighter and de-
clared characteristically: “If the very next congress refuses women
all the legitimate results of citizenship we shall proceed to call an-
other convention expressly to form a new constitution and to
erect a new government. We are plotting revolution; we will over-
throw this bogus republic.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton, praising Mrs.
Woodhull’s speeches and writings, called her “the leader of the
woman’s suffrage movement in this country.”6 She ran for Presi-
dent in 1872 on the ticket of the Equal Rights Party. She eventual-
ly failed in an attempt to capture the National Woman’s Suffrage
Association, much as she had failed to take over the I.W.A.
THE MARXISTS AND THE LASSALLEANS
One of the major fights of the Marxists against sectarianism in
the I.W.A. was against Lassalleism. Utopian socialism (save in the
Bellamy movement in the 1890’s) had about died out when the
I.W.A. came on the scene. Proudhonism and Blanquism had little
following among the workers in the United States, because there
had as yet been little Latin and Slavic immigration. Bakuninism,
except as noted later in the 1880’s, was also a negligible factor.
But many of the vast numbers of the German immigrant workers
believed in Lassalleism, which they brought along with them from
Germany.
For several years the Lassallean deviation was a major issue
and a matter of serious conflict in the American Section of the
International. Section One of the I.W.A., the General German
Workers Association of New York, had been originally organized
by Lassalleans. Generally this group deprecated trade unions as
useless, in view of Lassalle’s “iron law of wages.” They stressed
political action, however, with the general objective of the workers
finding their way to emancipation through producers’ coopera-
tives subsidized by the government. The fight between Marxists
and Lassalleans in the United States reflected the bitter struggle
then going on between corresponding elements in Germany.
The fight between the two groups in the United States turned
primarily around the question of trade unionism and electoral
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
political action. Incidentally, Gompers supported the emphasis
placed upon trade unions by the Marxists, as against Lassallean
neglect of the unions. At its national convention in 1874 the
I.W.A., while strongly supporting working class political action,
adopted a statement of principles “rejecting all cooperation and
connection with political parties formed by the possessing clas-
ses,” and declaring that, “The Federation will not enter into a tru-
ly political campaign or election movement before being strong
enough to exercise a perceptible influence.”7 This resolution was
aimed at the opportunistic political conceptions and activities of
the Lassalleans. After 1872 the General Council was in the thick of
this fight, which constantly became more severe and paralyzing to
the organization as a whole.
INTERNAL CRISIS AND POLITICAL PROGRESS
By 1874 the I.W.A., rent with quarrels, was in deep crisis. The
General Council had virtually lost contact with the remnants of the
European sections, only the United States, Germany, and Austria
paying any dues at all. The American organization, with a declining
membership, had split in New York and Chicago. These splits gave
birth to two new organizations – in Chicago, in January 1874, the
Labor Party of Illinois, and in New York, in May 1874, the Social
Democratic Working Men’s Party of North America. These were
mainly under Lassallean influence and they had little success.
The second national convention of the American Section of
the I.W.A., held in Philadelphia, beginning on April 11, 1874, tried
in vain to cure the internal crisis. It transferred the functions of
the Federal Council to the General Council, and it elected a new
General Council, thus making that body virtually an American
committee. It adopted the general statement of policy, referred to
above, to correct the errors of program being made by the
Lassalleans. Members of the new General Council were Sorge,
Speyer, Henninger, Huss, Novack, Voss, and Prestacheiz. Sorge
was general secretary.8
The internal quarrels sharpened, however, following the Phil-
adelphia convention. A bitter fight broke out over the Arbeiter
Zeitung, which resulted in a lawsuit and the suspension of the
paper in March 1875. Shortly after the Philadelphia convention,
the General Council suspended Section One of New York, the
strongest in the organization. In the struggle Sections 5, 6, and 8

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 FIRST INTERNATIONAL IN U.S.A.
in New York quit, and Bolte and Carl were expelled by the General
Council. On August 12, 1874, Sorge made a motion that the Gen-
eral Council should adjourn for a year. Consequently, it did not
meet again until June 1, 1875. The internal struggle resumed then,
however, and on September 25, Sorge, weary of the eternal fac-
tionalism, resigned his post as general secretary of the Interna-
tional and Carl Speyer was elected in his stead.* During 1875,
there was something of a pickup of the I.W.A., with an increase in
membership and in the number of sections, especially with the
affiliation of the United Workers of America (Irish), led by J. P.
McDonnell. But this spirit did not check the general downward
trend of the organization. In February 1876 the General Council,
therefore, decided to hold a congress of the International in Phil-
adelphia during the coming July, with its liquidation in mind.
Things were not as bad, however, as the disintegrating
tendencies in the International would seem to indicate. What was
taking place basically was that the American Section of the I.W.A.,
like the sections in Europe, was giving birth to a national Marxist
party. This was in line with the whole evolution of the Interna-
tional at this time. The movement was not decaying, but painfully
passing to a higher stage. As for the I.W.A. generally, it had prac-
tically ceased to exist as an international organization.
As the International declined organizationally in the United
States, new tendencies toward unity developed among the ranks
of the Socialists and potential Socialists. The Marxists had largely
reestablished their political leadership in the two erstwhile split-
off parties – the Illinois Labor Party and the Social Democratic
Party of North America – and they also played an important part
in the general labor congress held in Pittsburgh, April 17-18, 1876.
Unity sentiment became general in Socialist ranks. This was
greatly accentuated by the amalgamation of the Marxist and
Lassallean parties at the Gotha congress in Germany in May 1875,
an event which exerted a profound effect generally among Ger-
man workers in the United States. Commons sums up the Ameri-

* The general secretaries of the First International were: W. R.

Cremer (1864- 66), R. Shaw (1866-67), Peter Fox (1866), J. G.
Eccarius (1867-70), John Hales (1870- 72), F. A. Sorge (1872-74),
and Carl Speyer (1875-76).
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
can socialist situation thus: “By the middle of 1875, the secession-
ist movement, both in Chicago and the East, had travelled a con-
siderable distance back to the original ideas of the International.
The time was ripening for a reunion of the factions of the Socialist
movement.”9
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL
Although the General Council, as best it could, had notified
the European sections about the Philadelphia congress and invit-
ed them to send delegates, only one foreign delegate, from the
Social-Democratic Party of Germany, showed up when the sev-
enth and last I.W.A. congress assembled in Germania Hall, Phila-
delphia, on July 15, 1876. The other ten delegates there, among
them Sorge and Otto Weydemeyer, were Americans. Without
much discussion, the meeting proceeded to liquidate the Interna-
tional. The three-point resolution adopted, declared that “The
General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association is
dissolved,” that the Federal Council of the North American Sec-
tion stands commissioned to maintain and develop present inter-
national connections, and that the Federal Council is commis-
sioned to call an international congress when conditions so war-
rant.10 Sorge and Speyer were appointed as a committee to pre-
serve the documents of the International and to issue a statement
on the dissolution of the I.W.A., appended below.
On July 16-19, following the I.W.A. Congress, the North
American Federation of the I.W.A. also met in convention.* There
were present 13 delegates, representing 17 sections, and 635 dues-
paying members. After electing delegates to the coming Socialist
unity congress, due to convene in a few days, the North American
Federation also dissolved itself.
Immediately after this, during July 19-22, also in the same
Philadelphia hall, as previously planned, the various Socialist
groupings assembled and formed the new Marxist organization,
the Workingmen’s Party of America. It was based primarily upon
organizational unity between the forces of the dissolved I.W.A.,

*Altogether, the North American Section held three national

conventions: July 6, 1872, New York; and April 11, 1874, and July 16,
1876, in Philadelphia.
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 FIRST INTERNATIONAL IN U.S.A.
headed by Sorge and Otto Weydemeyer, and of the Lassalleans,
led by Adolph Strasser and P. J. McGuire. Phillip Van Patten was
elected general secretary, and J. P. McDonnell became editor of
the party’s English organ, The Labor Standard. These steps defi-
nitely organized the American Marxist party, which, through the
Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Party, has existed continu-
ously ever since, down to the Communist Party of today.
Thus, in this series of three connected conventions, there was
culminated within one week’s time the historic evolution that was
taking place among socialist ranks generally throughout the world:
namely, the dissolution of the First International and the estab-
lishment of Marxist political organizations on a national basis.
The historic statement regarding the dissolution of the First
International, as prepared by Sorge and Speyer, reads as follows:
“FELLOW WORKING MEN:
“The International Convention at Philadelphia has abolished
the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Associa-
tion, and the external bond of the organization exists no more.
“ ‘The International is dead!’ the bourgeoisie of all countries
will exclaim, and with ridicule and joy it will point to the proceed-
ings of this convention as documentary proof of the defeat of the
labor movement of the world. Let us not be influenced by the cry
of our enemies! We have abandoned the organization of the In-
ternational for reasons arising from the present political situation
in Europe, but as a compensation for it we see the principle of the
organization recognized and defended by the progressive work-
ingmen of the entire civilized world. Let us give our fellow work-
ers in Europe a little time to strengthen their national affairs, and
they will surely be in a position to remove the barriers between
themselves and the workingmen of other parts of the world.
“Comrades, you have embraced the principle of the Interna-
tional with heart and love; you will find means to extend the circle
of its adherents even without an organization. You will find new
champions who will work for the realization of the aims of our
association. The comrades in America promise you that they will
faithfully guard and cherish the acquisitions of the International
in this country until more favorable conditions will again bring
together the workingmen of all countries to common struggles,
and the cry will resound again louder than ever:
“ ‘Proletarians of all countries, unite!’ ”11
127
13. The Role of the First International
(1864-1876)
Under the leadership of Karl Marx* and following the general
path of its predecessor, the Communist League, the First Interna-
tional laid the basis of the modern labor movement, both theoret-
ically and organizationally (see Chapter 2). Its fundamental
achievement in this broad respect was the popularization and
practical application of the proletarian philosophy and world out-
look, scientific socialism, as worked out by Marx and Engels. Con-
cretely, it produced working class policy towards the capitalist
state and the state in general, it evaluated the roles of the trade
union movement, of the cooperatives, of the democratic franchise,
and it analyzed profoundly the status of women. It developed the
basic functions of the workers’ political party, and it established
the attitudes of the proletariat toward the peasantry, towards war,
and towards the national question. It evaluated the technique of
armed insurrection, the relationship between immediate de-
mands and the proletarian revolution, the perspective of the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, and it began the cultivation of corps of
trained Marxist leaders in the various countries.
In working out all these policies and programs, the First In-
ternational produced a series of imperishable labor documents,
written mostly by Marx, including the I.W.A. Inaugural Address,
and the Rules of the Association, as well as that great evaluation
of the Commune, The Civil War in France. During this period
Marx also produced Volume I of Capital and other important
works.
Together with this theoretical work, the First International
gave practical form and reality to the international strivings and
impulses of the world’s workers. For the first time, and most ef-
fectively, it taught the workers the basic lessons of international
solidarity. It gathered together the scattered, primitive, and frag-
mentary labor movements of the period and joined them into an
organized world force that struck terror and foreboding into the
hearts of exploiters in all countries. It was the pioneer of labor

* Engels was not directly active in the First International until its
concluding stages in Europe.
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 ROLE OF FIRST INTERNATIONAL
internationalism. At the founding congress of the Second Interna-
tional in 1889 Liebknecht declared that “the I.W.A. is not dead –
it is continued in the powerful labor movements of the various
countries and lives on in them. It also lives on in us. This congress
is the work of the International Workingmen’s Association.”1
The I.W.A., in the several countries, led the many important
strikes and political struggles of its era; it actively built trade un-
ions, and it did the pioneering work in founding what afterwards
became broad socialist parties in many countries. But above all, in
this mass work, the I.W.A. was the inspiring force behind the Par-
is Commune. Engels was historically correct in calling this great
event, “the child of the First International.” And not the least, in
its support of the Irish, the Polish, and other oppressed peoples,
the International laid the basis for future great national liberation
struggles.
IDEOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION OF THE SECTS
The Marxist leadership of the First International fought tire-
lessly and effectively against the many current sectarian tenden-
cies that aimed to misdirect the workers’ efforts into channels al-
ien to their class interests. Marx especially shattered the illusions
around utopian socialism of various types, the radical bourgeois
republicanism of Mazzini, the petty-bourgeois socialism of Prou-
dhon, the leftist phrase-mongering and conspiratorial tactics of
Bakunin, and the pure-and- simple trade unionism of the Odgers
and Applegarths. By the time the First International passed from
the scene, most of these “sects” had been theoretically defeated,
but new and far more dangerous ones, which in our day still have
to be fought – opportunist trade unionism, political revisionism,
and syndicalism – were beginning to take shape. The First Inter-
national laid the firm basis for the hegemony of Marxism, of sci-
entific socialism, in the thinking, the organizations, and the poli-
cies of the world labor movement.
In meeting the monumental difficulties of pioneering theoret-
ical and practical policies for the working class, naturally, many
mistakes were made by Marx and Engels. Not only have the
workers’ enemies seized upon these errors, but it eventually be-
came the fashion for many writers in the Second International –
Kautsky, Mehring, and others – to dwell upon them ad nauseum.
Regarding such attacks, Lenin says: “Yes, Marx and Engels erred
129
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
much and erred often in determining the closeness of the revolu-
tion,” particularly with regard to the 1848 revolution in Germany
and France. But, concludes Lenin, and this is the main thing to
keep in mind, “such errors of titans of revolutionary thought, who
tried to raise and did raise the proletariat of the whole world
above the level of petty, commonplace, and trifling tasks, are a
thousand times nobler, more sublime, and historically truer and
more valuable than the trivial wisdom of official liberalism, which
sings, shouts, appeals and jabbers about the vanity of revolution-
ary vanities, the futility of revolutionary struggle, and the charm
of counter-revolutionary ‘constitutional’ rot....”2
THE CAUSES FOR THE DISSOLUTION OF THE I.W.A.
The basic reason why the First International disappeared
from the world political arena was that capitalism at that time
was entering into a new phase of development, raising up new
tasks for the working class, tasks which the First International,
under the given circumstances, was in no position to fulfill. The
main period of the I.W.A. (1864-1872) “lay at the dividing line
between two epochs. The International arose at the very end of
the first of them, which had begun with the great bourgeois revo-
lution in France in 1789, and which ended with the Franco-
Prussian War in 1870. This, said Lenin, was the ‘epoch of prosper-
ity of the bourgeoisie, of their complete victory. This was the ris-
ing curve of the bourgeoisie, the epoch of the bourgeois democrat-
ic movements in general, of bourgeois national movements in
particular, the epoch in which the absolutist feudal institutions
which had outlived their time were rapidly destroyed’.”3 It was a
period of the consolidation of growing capitalism upon the ruins
of absolute feudalism.
The new epoch which was opening up was a period of expand-
ing capitalism, developing into imperialism. It began with “the
heroic rising of the Paris Communards and ended with the great
October victory of the Socialist Soviet Revolution in Russia in
1917. This was, on the one hand, the epoch of the rule and decline
of the bourgeoisie, of the transition from the progressive bour-
geoisie to reactionary and ultra-reactionary finance capital, the
growth of capitalism into imperialism and the domination of the
latter... it was the epoch in which the proletariat began slowly to
gather its forces and later to begin victoriously the world proletar-

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 ROLE OF FIRST INTERNATIONAL
ian revolution.”4 The main tasks of the working class in the indus-
trialized countries during the earlier decades of this period were,
rather than the carrying through of revolution, to build the mass
trade unions, to organize national workers’ socialist parties, and
to carry on a broad Marxist educational work.
Lenin says: “The First International finished its historical role
and yielded place to an epoch of infinitely greater growth of the
labor movement in all the countries of the world, namely an
epoch of its expansion, of the creation of socialist proletarian
mass parties on the basis of the individual national states.”
NEW TIMES AND NEW TASKS
As it was constituted, the First International could not carry
out these specific tasks of the new era. This had to be primarily
the job of the young and growing movements in the respective
countries. The experience of the I.W.A. had gone to show that its
component parts were not yet developed enough to set up a
strong Marxist international leadership. Although a mortal blow
had been struck at several of the “sects,” they were still strong
enough to do much harm. The I.W.A. was built directly upon the
mass labor movements, not upon socialist parties as such, and
these mass movements in the several countries were still very far
from being predominantly Marxist. In England the movement
was dominated by opportunist trade unionists; in the United
States it was traveling the same path; in Germany and Austria it
was still steeped with Lassalleism; and in the Latin and Slavic
countries the Bakunin, Blanquist, and Proudhonist tendencies
were still vital. Indeed, as we have seen, it was precisely these var-
ious sectarian tendencies that had forced the dissolution of the
First International.
Trained Marxists were still very few in the several countries.
Of the current German socialist movement, which was the most
advanced of all, Riazanov says: “The writings of the German so-
cialists during the first half of the ’70s, even the brochures written
by Wilhelm Liebknecht, who was a student of Marx, show the de-
plorable state in which the study of Marxist theory was at that
time.”5 If in spite of these adverse conditions, the First Interna-
tional for so many years was able nevertheless to give such out-
standing leadership, this was due fundamentally to the towering
genius of Marx, who wrote all the decisive policy documents of
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the organization.
The new period confronting the young world socialist move-
ment, therefore, demanded new methods and organizations. The
movements in the various countries went ahead clarifying and
building themselves with the skillful advice of Marx and Engels.
But the latter, instead of being the official heads of the world la-
bor movement, as in the days of the First International, were now
its unofficial mentors and guides. Their leadership, however, was
hardly less powerful. Through the years they remained in the
closest touch with the developing movements in Germany, Eng-
land, France, the United States, and various other countries, as
their great volume of international correspondence eloquently
indicates. All this was laying the basis for a new organized inter-
national movement, which was not long in forthcoming.
Enemies of socialism, whether sailing openly under the pirate
flag of capitalism, or sneakingly under the besmeared banner of
opportunist Social-Democracy, never tire of telling the working
class that the First International was a failure and that it collapsed
because of the wrong ideology of Marx. But this is a monstrous lie.
The First International was a tremendously constructive force. It
laid the very foundation of the world labor movement. The irrefu-
table proof of the soundness of its general program is the fact that
when the working classes of Russia – and later of China, Czecho-
slovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania, and Albania – real-
ly set out to establish socialism in their countries, they turned back
to the lessons of Marx and the First International, which had long
since been discarded by the reactionary heads of the Second Inter-
national. One-third of the world marching directly on the road to
socialism and communism is the complete answer to the slanderers
of Marx and the First International.

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 PART II: THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL, 1889-1914

14. The Period between the Internationals

(1876-1889)
The thirteen years between the dissolution of the First Inter-
national in 1876 and the foundation of the Second International
in 1889 were in general a period of rapid growth and expansion of
world capitalism. The capitalist system was developing from its
competitive stage into the early phases of imperialism. Despite
periodic crises, every decade or so, which temporarily paralyzed
the system and threw millions of workers into unemployment and
destitution, industrialization went ahead with seven-league boots
in Western Europe and North America, and it made a beginning
in Asia. This growth of industry did not proceed at an even pace,
but at widely varying tempos in the several countries. The indus-
trial development involved not only the traditional countries of
capitalism – England, France, Germany, the United States, and
others – but also many new lands. Japan was beginning its spec-
tacular industrial development, and in Russia the number of
workers employed in the large mills and factories and on the rail-
roads increased from 706,000 in 1865 to 1,433,000 in 1890, indi-
cating a substantial growth of Russian industry.1 This was a time
of the birth and growth of industrial and financial trusts in all the
capitalist countries, the beginnings of monopoly capitalism and
imperialism. Of all this, however, more in Chapter 18.
Generally, the period was one of relative stability in foreign
relations, the longest and most complete ever known to world
capitalism. The major capitalist powers had concluded, with the
Franco-German war of 1870-71, the long series of national wars
that wracked capitalism during the previous decades, and they
were not yet embarked upon the big imperialist wars that were to
come. By force and violence, they had established their national
boundaries, frontiers which with few major changes in Europe,
were to last for about 35 years, or until the outbreak of the impe-
rialist Russo-Japanese War of 1905, followed by the Balkan War
of 1912 and World War I in 1914. By the same token, during these
years prior to 1905 the respective capitalist powers enjoyed a rela-
tive internal stability, there being an almost complete absence of

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the great revolutionary insurrectional movements which had
marked the foundation period of European and American capital-
ism from 1789 to 1871, outstanding examples of which were the
revolution of 1830 in France, the revolution of 1848 in France,
Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary and elsewhere, the American
Civil War of 1861, and the Paris Commune of 1871.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT
In the leading capitalist countries this was a time of enormous
increases in the number of wage workers. It was also one of minor
advances in the living standards of the working class, particularly
with respect to the skilled workers. The big capitalists of the ma-
jor nations, notably England, were already embarked upon the
policy of corrupting the labor aristocracy with minor concessions,
and in this way they were splitting and paralyzing the fighting sol-
idarity of the workers.
Although this was not a period of working class insurrections
and bourgeois revolutions it was nevertheless one of many strikes,
unexampled in size, discipline, organization, and duration. This
was true of France, Germany, and Belgium, but especially so of
the United States, with its violent general railroad strike of 1877,
and its historic national eight-hour day strike in 1886. Among
many other strikes, England had its epoch-making dock strike of
1889. In Russia, too, the workers were beginning to organize and
strike. In the space of five years (1881-86) there were in that
country as many as 48 strikes, involving 80,000 workers – all of
which were violently repressed. The revolutionary Russian prole-
tariat was entering upon the international labor scene.
During the interim years between the First and Second Inter-
nationals, there was, correspondingly, also a big expansion of the
trade union movement throughout capitalism. By 1889 the Eng-
lish trade unions had reached the unprecedented total of some
1,500,000 members; in the United States the Knights of Labor,
which had topped 600,000 members, had just about run its
course and the American Federation of Labor had been estab-
lished eight years previously, and in all the industrial countries
trade unionism was taking root. The epoch of the broad expan-
sion of labor unionism was well under way.
The interim period between the Internationals was also
marked by the foundation of socialist parties in the respective

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countries. The first was in Germany, which had been established
in 1869. This was followed in rapid succession by the organization
of socialist parties in Holland 1870, Denmark 1871, Bohemia
1872, United States 1876, France 1879, Spain 1879, England
(group) 1880, Russia (group) 1883, Norway 1887, Austria, Swit-
zerland, and Sweden 1889. Dates of parties organized later were,
Australia and Finland 1890; Poland and Italy 1892; Bulgaria,
Hungary and Chile 1894; Argentina 1896, Japan 1901, Serbia
1903, Canada 1904, China 1911, and Brazil 1916. The pioneer so-
cialist parties for the most part grew out of the old federations
and groups of the First International. Far more countries were
thus embraced by this new international movement than during
the period of the I.W.A.
Many of the new parties, like the trade unions, had to face
various forms of persecution by the governments. Outstanding in
this respect was the experience of the German Social-Democratic
Party. Taking advantage of two assassination attacks made upon
the German Kaiser (with which the Socialists had nothing to do),
Chancellor Bismarck tried to destroy the party by outlawing it
under the notorious antisocialist laws. The period of illegality
lasted from October 1878 until the end of 1890, during which
time socialist organizations and meetings were prohibited, many
leaders were banished and jailed, and the party press was banned.
As the other side of his program, Bismarck conceded a skeleton
system of social insurance as sops to the workers. The party held
its congresses abroad and there also it printed its underground
papers. Despite the persecution and trickery of Bismarck, howev-
er, the party grew, increasing its national vote from 493,000 in
1878 to 1,427,000 in 1890. The trade unions also grew from about
50,000 to 280,000. These successes not only forced Bismarck to
resign, but caused the German government to lift the ban against
the Socialists. This big victory inspired the whole international
movement. Referring to Bismarck and his reactionary law, Engels
said, “If we were paying the old boy, he couldn’t do better work
for us.”2
THE GOTHA COMPROMISE
An event of great ideological importance at the outset of this
general interim period between the two Internationals was the
amalgamation of the Marxist and Lassallean parties in a congress
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
at Gotha, Germany, May 25, 1875. For several years prior to this
date these two groups had been at daggers’ points, with the result
that German labor could make but little progress. At the unity
congress the Lassalleans were in a majority, having 71 delegates,
representing 16,538 members, as against 56 delegates and 9,121
members for the Marxists.3 Despite the weak stand taken by the
Marxists in the negotiations, this unification was the beginning of
the end for the Lassallean trend in the international labor move-
ment.
After the dissolution of the First International Marx and En-
gels had continued their direct political leadership of the develop-
ing labor movement. With their great wealth of experience, un-
derstanding and training, and their extraordinary knowledge of
all the major European languages (they even mastered Russian in
their later years), they were brilliantly equipped for such leader-
ship. The ensuing years were marked by a stream of letters from
the two great leaders to the respective young and growing parties,
and by the visits of many Socialist leaders from the various coun-
tries, seeking the advice and counsel of Marx and Engels. Natural-
ly, the latter did not neglect such a vital development as the amal-
gamation of the Marxists and Lassalleans in Germany. Quite the
contrary. Although the Gotha program, as adopted, comprised
only a few pages, in analyzing it Marx wrote an extensive booklet.
This turned out to be one of the greatest of Marx’s analytical and
programmatic works.
Marx scathingly criticized the Gotha agreement, which was an
early example of the tendency of German Social-Democrats, in
the name of party unity, to blur over questions of principle. Marx
crucified virtually every phrase in it. In what became his famous
booklet, Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx condemned its
faulty economics, its wrong attitude regarding the state, its sur-
render to Lassalle’s (Malthusian) conception of “the iron law of
wages,” its adoption of the futile panacea of state aid for coopera-
tives, its failure to make a definite demand for the eight-hour day,
its underplay of internationalism, etc. Engels said that “almost
every word in this program... could be criticized.”4
Another brilliant example of international leadership given at
this time was Engels’ classical reply a few months later to the
blind Professor Eugene Dühring of Berlin University. The latter
had recently joined the Social-Democratic Party and was setting

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 BETWEEN THE INTERNATIONALS
out to re-write the party’s program from top to bottom in a bour-
geois direction. Engels’ reply was a fundamental presentation of
the Marxist position on philosophy and science. It became a great
Marxist classic.5
That there were already at this time strong opportunist trends
in the German party was manifest from its leadership’s reaction
to these two historic corrections and teachings by Marx and En-
gels. Marx sent his Critique of the Gotha Program to Liebknecht,
Mehring says, but “the only result of this powerful letter was to
cause the addressees to make a few minor and comparatively un-
important improvements in their draft.”6 Actually, Bebel, who
was in jail at the time, did not get to hear of the document until
many years afterward. It was suppressed for 16 years and was not
published until 1891.7 And Engels’ profound criticisms of
Dühring, which were first printed in 1877 in the party’s central
organ Vorwarts, aroused such a storm of criticism from official
circles that Engels narrowly escaped formal censure.
CONTINUING INTERNATIONAL TENDENCIES
During the period between the two Internationals there was a
continuous and growing pressure for cooperation and organiza-
tion internationally among the various workers’ parties and trade
unions. The first general expression of this sentiment was the
Universal Socialist Congress of Ghent, Belgium, in September
1877. There were 42 delegates, including Liebknecht and Kropot-
kin. De Paepe represented the utopian Oneida Community of New
York. Disputes occurred between the Marxist and Bakuninist fac-
tions over questions of the state, collectivism, political action, in-
surrection, and various other matters. An important proposal was
for the founding of a broad international trade union congress.
The Anarchists were but a small minority and generally the Marx-
ist point of view prevailed. Hopes entertained by some for an
amalgamation of the two tendencies proved futile. During the
congress the Marxist delegates caucussed by themselves and de-
cided to set up an international bureau in Belgium, but the plan
never materialized.
Another Socialist congress was held in October 1881, in the
little town of Chur, near Zurich. The Anarchists did not attend.
Liebknecht was present, and the American delegate for the Social-
ist Labor Party was P. J. McGuire, president of the United Broth-
137
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
erhood of Carpenters and Joiners. The question of forming a new
international occupied much attention of the delegates, but with-
out positive results. Stekloff says, “the Chur congress itself came
to the conclusion that a federation of socialist forces was not yet
practicable.”8 Nor could an international journal be established.
The young Socialist parties were still too weak for real interna-
tional organization.
Repeated proposals were made also during the late seventies
and early eighties to re-establish the International, but both Marx
and Engels felt such a move to be premature. During 1883 and
1886 international labor conferences were held in Paris, and one
took place in London in 1888. The reports to those gatherings
showed a rapid growth of Socialist parties and trade unions
throughout western Europe, and the labor movement in the Unit-
ed States was blazing along in the forefront of the world’s fighting
workers. The need of the workers for international solidarity was
imperative. The time had finally ripened for the reconstitution of
the International on a new basis, and the movement was to come
to fruition in the historic congress in Paris in 1889.
THE DEATH OF KARL MARX
On March 14, 1883, the world proletariat lost its greatest
leader. Karl Marx died at the age of 65. He passed away peacefully
in the afternoon, dozing in his arm chair, at 41 Maitland Park
Road, Haverstock Hill, London, where he had been living for
some years past. The immediate cause of death was an internal
hemorrhage, apparently originating in a tumor in one of his
lungs. For years he had been in steadily worsening health, largely
caused by overwork and poverty. His dwindling vitality had been
further weakened by the shock of the death of his devoted wife
Jenny in December 1881, and of his daughter, also named Jenny,
in January 1883.9 Thus passed the greatest of all political think-
ers, the man who wrote the handwriting on the wall for the world
capitalist system.
Known to his intimates as “the Moor” because of his dark
complexion, Marx lived simply, and he was also interred with
simplicity. Only a few of his close relatives and friends were pre-
sent – besides Engels, Friedrich Lessner and Lochner, comrades
from the days of the Communist League; his two sons-in-law,
Paul Lafargue and Charles Longuet, Liebknecht from Germany,

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 BETWEEN THE INTERNATIONALS
and the two eminent scientists, Carl Schorlemmer, the noted
chemist, and Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, outstanding biologist. He
was buried on March 17, in Highgate Cemetery, London, where a
small stone now stands in his memory. Marx’s old-time friend
and comrade-in-arms, Frederick Engels, spoke the following
words of appreciation over the grave of the immortal battler for
human freedom:
“Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic na-
ture, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history;
he discovered the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an over-
growth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat and drink,
have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science,
religion, art, etc.; and that therefore the production of the imme-
diate material means of life and consequently the degree of eco-
nomic development attained by a given people or during a given
epoch, form the foundation upon which the forms of government,
the legal conceptions, the art and even the religious ideas of the
people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which
these things must therefore be explained, instead of vice versa as
had hitherto been the case.
“But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of
motion governing the present-day capitalist method of produc-
tion and the bourgeois society that this method of production has
created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on
the problem in trying to solve which all previous investigators,
both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping
in the dark.
“Two such discoveries would be enough for one life-time.
Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such dis-
covery. But in every single field which Marx investigated – and he
investigated very many fields, none of them superficially – in eve-
ry field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent dis-
coveries.
“This was the man of science. But this was not even half the
man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary
force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new dis-
covery in some theoretical science whose practical application
perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced
a quite other kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate
revolutionary changes in industry and in the general course of
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
history. For example, he followed closely the discoveries made in
the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.
“For Marx was before all else a revolutionary. His real mission
in life was to contribute in one way or another to the overthrow of
capitalist society and of the forms of government which it had
brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the present-
day proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its
own position and its needs, of the conditions under which it could
win its freedom. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a
passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work
on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorwaerts
(1844), the Brussels Deutsche Zeitung (1847), the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung (1848-9), the New York Tribune (1852-61),
and in addition to these a host of militant pamphlets, work in rev-
olutionary clubs in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally,
crowning all, the formation of the International Workingmen’s
Association – this was indeed an achievement of which Marx
might well have been proud, even if he had done nothing else.
“And consequently Marx was the best hated and most calum-
niated man of his times. Governments, both absolutist and repub-
lican, deported him from their territories. The bourgeoisie,
whether conservative or extreme democrat, vied with one another
in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though
it were cobweb, ignoring them, answering only when necessity
compelled him. And now he has died – beloved, revered and
mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow-workers – from the
mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America
– and I make bold to say that though he may have many oppo-
nents he has hardly one personal enemy.
“His name and his work will endure through the ages!”10

140
15. The Founding of the Second
International (1889)
The congress which established the Second International
opened in Paris on July 14, 1889, on the 100th anniversary of the
fall of the Bastille in the great French Revolution. Called by the
German and organized by the French Marxists, it brought togeth-
er 391 delegates from 20 countries, four of the delegates being
Americans. It was by far the largest international gathering in
world labor history. The congress was held amid a great blaze of
enthusiasm. Across the hall stretched banners reading, “In the
name of the Paris of 1848 and of March, April and May of 1871, in
the name of the France of Babeuf, Blanqui, and Varlin, greetings
to the socialist workers of both worlds.”1
But there was a second “international” labor congress held in
Paris at the same time. This was the meeting of the “possibilists,”
or opportunists (who aimed to achieve socialism within the
framework of bourgeois legalism), organized by British trade un-
ion leaders and the Paul Brousse group in France. Strong efforts
were made in both congresses to bring about an amalgamation,
but these failed both before and during the congress. Henry M.
Hyndman and others made especially energetic efforts to coalesce
the two forces, with Engels opposed. Two years later, at the 1891
congress in Brussels, the groups became united.
The Marxist congress brought together many of the most no-
table men and women in the world Socialist movement – those
who were destined to lead world labor for the next generation and
to become both famous and infamous as the Second International
unfolded its historic course. Among them were Keir Hardie of
England; Liebknecht, Bebel, Eduard Bernstein, Georg von
Vollmar and Clara Zetkin of Germany; Jules Guesde, Lafargue,
Vaillant and Longuet of France; Anseele and Vandervelde of Bel-
gium; Andreas Costa and Cipriano of Italy; Victor Adler of Aus-
tria; Domela Nieuwenhuis of Holland; Pablo Iglesias of Spain;
George Plekhanov of Russia.2 Gompers of the United States, who
had been invited to attend, sent greetings to the two congresses,
urging that they join forces. Abe Cahan and Max Pine were dele-
gates from the New York United Hebrew Trades. Small numbers
of Anarchists were at both meetings.

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
The Marxists’ congress in Paris attracted world attention and
created enthusiasm among the workers of all countries. The toil-
ers were at last to possess an organization capable of waging suc-
cessful struggle against capitalism and of one day finally abolish-
ing it altogether. It was to be the re-creation of the First Interna-
tional, but upon a far broader and stronger basis. In the congress
itself the new world movement was hailed as the continuation of
the old International Workingmen’s Association of glorious
memory. Presidents of the congress at its opening were Vaillant, a
Communard, and Liebknecht, a veteran Socialist.
THE WORK OF THE CONGRESS
A great deal of the time of the congress was taken up listening
to reports from the various countries represented. The general
picture unfolded was that of a young, vigorous, expanding, opti-
mistic world labor movement. The trade unions were growing in
Europe and America, nearly every important country now had a
Socialist Party, and Socialists were beginning to be elected to par-
liaments in Germany, Denmark, and elsewhere. It was altogether
a very promising situation.
Due to the many reports of the respective parties, not much
time was spent in discussing the several resolutions that were
adopted. These included one on the abolition of standing armies
and the arming of the peoples. Another was a specific endorse-
ment of the eight-hour day, which had first been brought to the
attention of the world’s workers at the 1866 congress of the First
International. Another resolution dealt with the question of polit-
ical action, “by means of the ballot box” and on the basis of no
compromises or alliances with other parties. This brought forth
opposition from the small group of Anarchists, who opposed po-
litical action in general and who were, therefore, excluded from
the congress. A resolution was adopted, supporting the general
proposition of the Swiss government for the establishment of in-
ternational labor legislation. A proposal of the French delegation
to endorse the general strike as “the beginning of the socialist
revolution,” meeting strong German opposition, was voted down
by the delegates.
The most notable decision made by the congress, however,
was the establishment of May First as a day for international la-
bor demonstration. This proposal, made by the French delegate,

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 FOUNDING OF SECOND INTERNATIONAL
Lavigne, was in support of the A.F. of L. proposed general strike
for the eight-hour day set for May 1, 1890. The congress resolu-
tion reads: “The congress decides to organize a great international
demonstration, so that in all countries and in all cities on one ap-
pointed day the toiling masses shall demand of the state authori-
ties the legal reduction of the working day to eight hours, as well
as the carrying out of other decisions of the Paris congress. Since
a similar demonstration has already been decided upon for May 1,
1890, by the American Federation of Labor at its convention in St.
Louis, December 1888, this day is accepted for the international
demonstration. The workers of the various countries must organ-
ize their demonstrations according to conditions prevailing in
each country.” At later congresses this decision was repeated, and
May Day was established as a regular institution. Thus was born
the great fighting holiday of the world’s workers.3
THE MARXIST ORIENTATION OF THE CONGRESS
The Paris congress demonstrated that Marxism had become
dominant in the world labor movement, particularly in its politi-
cal wing. During the thirteen years since the dissolution of the
First International, in the host of new working-class organizations
that had developed, the followers of Marx were generally looked
to for leadership. Under the guidance of Marx and Engels the
number of Marxists had greatly increased and their press had
multiplied. This situation was a fundamental advance over the
period of the First International, when the Marxists, relatively
only a handful in numbers, constantly had to fight for their politi-
cal life against various militant sects and deviations. This Marxist
hegemony did not mean, however, that the several sects that had
plagued the life of the First International had been completely
extinguished – but at least most of them had been reduced to
manageable proportions. The Proudhonists were now largely a
memory; the Blanquists were but a minor faction in France; the
Lassalleans were on their last legs in Germany and Austria; and
the Bakuninist Anarchists – those of them who had not become
syndicalists – were pretty much an isolated sect.
The largest numbers of Marxists were in Germany, and al-
ready the Social-Democratic Party of that country had established
its political leadership in the Second International, a leadership
which was to endure virtually unchallenged until the formation of
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the Communist International in 1919. As Lenin remarked later,
the German working class was for almost half a century “the
model of socialist organization for the whole world.”4 German
capitalism was expanding rapidly, and the party and the trade
unions were growing swiftly. Since the time of the First Interna-
tional many new Marxist writers had developed in the various
countries (usually not without serious theoretical shortcomings).
Chief among these writers was Karl Kautsky of Germany. Kautsky
(1854-1938), whose father was a Czech and his mother a German,
was born in Austria. After the passing of Engels, he became the
outstanding theoretical leader of the Second International. Short-
ly following the Paris congress of 1889, Kautsky wrote the well-
known Erfurt program of the German Social-Democratic Party,
which served for many years as a model for other Socialist parties.
This program, while ignoring the basic demand for a German
democratic republic and passing over the vital question of the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat and also the manner of the abolition of
the capitalist system, otherwise followed the general line worked
out in the great writings of Marx and Engels.
Existing in a more revolutionary period, the First Interna-
tional at its congress always had to deal with the question of the
revolution, either because of actual political developments or un-
der pressure of the strong ultra-leftist sects of the times. But the
Second International in 1889, working in a period of relatively
calmer capitalist development, did not feel the proletarian revolu-
tion to be so urgently knocking at its door, although many Marx-
ists (like the then sectarian Hyndman of England) expected the
European revolution to be an accomplished fact before the end of
the 19th century. The congress, while identifying itself with the
ultimate revolutionary perspectives of the First International, de-
voted itself basically to such urgent immediate tasks of the cur-
rent class struggle as the fight against militarism, for the eight-
hour day, the extension of the workers’ franchise, the enactment
of factory legislation, and, of course, the building of the trade un-
ions, cooperatives, and workers’ socialist parties.
THE RIGHT DANGER
The bane of the First International had been the strong and
impatient, pseudo-revolutionary sects, the ultra-leftists who
sought to push the workers into untimely life and death struggles

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 FOUNDING OF SECOND INTERNATIONAL
with the capitalist class. The curse of the Second International, as
it turned out, came from the opposite political direction – from
the right opportunists who, paralyzing the fighting initiative of
the workers, wanted to reduce the labor movement to the status
of a petty-bourgeois auxiliary of the capitalist system. The ultra-
lefts were a very minor factor. The right tendency, which eventu-
ally was to dominate and ruin the new International, was in evi-
dence, in at least two sharp respects already at the foundation
congress.
The first of these right manifestations was the fact that the
“possibilists” were strong enough to dare to hold their separate
congress and thus to challenge the leadership of the revolutionary
Marxists in the world labor movement. During the time of the
First International there was an incipient right wing (as well as
strong leftist groups), represented by the opportunist English
trade union leaders – Odger, Cremer, Applegarth, and others –
and by the unaffiliated Lassallean movement in Germany. It did
no little damage to the International, as we have seen in passing.
The bold arrogance of the Paris congress of the “possibilists” in
1889 showed how much this dangerous right tendency had grown
in the intervening years. The “possibilists” congress failed of its
immediate objectives, but its very existence was a sinister portent
of grave dangers ahead.
The second manifestation of the right tendency occurred
within the Marxist congress itself. This went practically unno-
ticed, but it was none the less dangerous for that. This was the
failure of the delegates to set up an international center to carry
on the work between congresses. As the course of events was to
show, the new International for a dozen years had no internation-
al leading committee, no world headquarters, no international
journal, no regular constitution, no definite political program, no
disciplined carrying out of decisions, and not even a formal name.
In all these respects the Second International fell far behind
the First International, which, as shown in previous chapters, had
a well-developed international organization – a General Council,
a constitution, a paper, a program, and a name. In fact, the Se-
cond International lagged behind even the Anarchist conception
of an international organization. The insistent demand of the
Proudhonists and Bakuninists had been that the International
center should be a correspondence and statistical bureau, but the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Second International, at its foundation and for a decade after-
ward, did not even reach this minimum of world organization.
It would, of course, have been out of place for the Second In-
ternational to set up such a strong world center as the First Inter-
national did at The Hague congress of 1872, in its life and death
struggle with the Bakuninists; but not to establish any center at
all was to understress greatly internationalism and to overstress
heavily national organization and action. This was all the more
dangerous, as it turned out in the eventual great clash of 1914,
because the possibility of a war collision among the world powers
was already beginning to generate, and the supreme danger for
the workers in the coming period was that of the labor movement
in the various countries yielding to the rising national pressures
of the bourgeoisie.
ORIGINS OF RIGHT OPPORTUNISM
The right opportunist tendency in the Second International,
which was later to cause such havoc to the world’s workers, had
two main sources. First and most dangerous of all, it was devel-
oped among the skilled workers and labor bureaucracy in the
trade unions, whom, through wage concessions, the employers
undertook to use against the great mass of the working class, by
crippling its strikes, by keeping its unions small and divided, and
by fighting against class consciousness and independent working-
class political action. The second source of right opportunism was
in the large number of petty-bourgeois intellectuals who sought to
make careers by leading the political organizations of the workers,
by filling the various city, state, and national government posts as
representatives of the workers. They constantly strove to reshape
labor policy into mild reform programs of importance to the pet-
ty-bourgeoisie and the capitalists. Generally, during the life of the
Second International these two currents of opportunism worked
freely together; the working-class opportunists functioning main-
ly, but not exclusively, in the trade unions, and the petty-
bourgeois intellectuals operating mostly in the political field. Both
groups based themselves on the labor aristocracy and both tended
to subordinate the interests of the working class as a whole to
those of the capitalist class.
At the time of the founding of the Second International right
opportunism was furthest developed in the British labor move-

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 FOUNDING OF SECOND INTERNATIONAL
ment. This was primarily because, during this period, Great Brit-
ain was the leading imperialist power and there the employers
were most widely applying the internal imperialist policy of cor-
rupting the labor aristocracy and their leaders, primarily on the
basis of super-profits wrung from the colonial peoples. The crip-
pling effects of this material and ideological corruption were very
pronounced, as Marx, Engels, and others had long before pointed
out. Rothstein says “The 80’s and 90’s of the last century repre-
sent the lowest point in the class consciousness of the English
workers; action, even in the shape of innocent Labor candidatures
as in the middle 70’s, was definitely abandoned; individual work-
ers voted either for Liberal or Tory, the very word ‘revolution’
elicited a scornful shrug of the shoulders, if not direct abuse.”5
Already in 1879 Engels wrote to Bernstein: “It must be acknowl-
edged that at this moment there does not exist in Britain a real
working class movement in the Continental sense.”6 And this in
the land which a generation before had produced the great Chart-
ist movement.
The political line of the employers and of their agents, the
conservative labor bureaucrats, was to keep the working class un-
der the tutelage of the Liberal Party; but when in 1880 the Marx-
ists, led by Henry M. Hyndman, formed a group which in 1889
became the Social Democratic Federation, the bourgeoisie had to
shift its political policy a bit. This was made manifest by the for-
mation in 1884 of the Fabian League, headed by Sidney Webb,
George Bernard Shaw, and other petty-bourgeois radical intellec-
tuals. The main purpose of this organization was to castrate
Marxism and to render innocuous independent political action of
the working class, all of which was of great service to the capital-
ists. Preaching a vague, evolutionary socialism, the Fabians at-
tacked every principle of revolutionary Marxism. In view of the
non-Marxist ideology of the workers in Great Britain, the Fabians
were openly anti-Marxist. Pearse, the Fabian historian, says that
the first achievement of the Society was to break the spell of
Marxism in England.7
Sidney Webb and his co-workers set out to make it “as easy
and matter of course for the ordinary and respectable Englishman
to be a socialist as to be a liberal or a conservative.”8 Webb re-
marks, “It was indispensable for socialism in England that it
should be consistent with the four rules of arithmetic, with the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Ten Commandments, and with the Union Jack. There should be
no confiscation.”9 Webb also said: “The founder of British social-
ism was not Karl Marx, but Robert Owen, and Robert Owen
preached, not ‘class war,’ but the doctrine of human brother-
hood.”10 Fabianism, with its vague socialist objectives, was a pet-
ty-bourgeois reform movement, harmless to the capitalist system.
It spread its influence rapidly among the conservative trade union
leaders of the 1880’s, and in fact it still dominates the ideology of
the British Labor Party.
In the United States opportunism was also sinking its roots in
the labor movement. Characteristic examples of reactionary labor
bureaucrats at this time were Terence V. Powderly and P. M. Ar-
thur, head of the Railroad Engineers; and the Gompers A.F. of L.
leaders, already avowed anti-Socialists, were laying the basis of
their ultra-corrupt bureaucracy of the next decades. In France,
too, the existence of the Broussist “possibilist” movement testified
to the beginnings of right opportunism in that country. It was on-
ly to be a few years until the brazen attempts of the French bour-
geoisie to corrupt the Socialist leaders in France would rock the
Second International from one end to the other.
In Germany, of the big capitalist states, opportunism was
least developed at this time. There the Marxists were most firmly
in control of the workers’ movement, both in its trade union and
political aspects, and the Party was the most proletarian of any in
its composition.11 The right wing was still relatively small and un-
influential. This was primarily because Germany, with its auto-
cratic, semi-feudal government, was only then becoming a strong
capitalist power, and its ruling class had not yet fully developed
the characteristic policy of corrupting the labor aristocracy and
trade union and political bureaucracy.
The German Social-Democratic Party was still illegal under
the anti-Socialist laws – a situation which cultivated the Party’s
militancy and scared away numerous petty-bourgeois opportunist
careerists – and the trade unions were also operating under vari-
ous severe legal handicaps. In later decades the German labor
movement, with the rise of German imperialism, became heavily
corrupted and was the chief poison source of right opportunism
in the Second International; but in 1889 it was still the strongest
Marxist center in the world, and the whole International looked to
it for leadership.

148
16. Brussels, Zurich, and London
(1891-1896)
The Second International held its second, third, and fourth
congresses, respectively, in Brussels (August 1891), Zurich (Au-
gust 1893), and London (July 1896). These years were in general
a period of rapid capitalist development in Europe and the United
States. Industrialization was growing fast, monopoly capitalism
and imperialism were already rapidly becoming dominant, the big
powers were dividing up Africa among themselves. England was
heavily exporting capital. It was a time of sharpening internation-
al tensions among the great states and of increasing class struggle
in the respective capitalist countries.
It was correspondingly a period of rapid growth of the Second
International and of the workers’ trade unions, cooperatives, and
political parties that it comprised. The whole structure of interna-
tional labor had received a strong impetus from the lifting of the
anti-Socialist laws in Germany on January 25, 1890, by a Reichs-
tag vote of 169 to 98.1 Among the many outstanding strikes of this
period was that of 200,000 British coal miners in 1893. In the
United States the class struggle was especially fierce, the period
being marked by such bitter strikes as those of the steel workers
(Homestead) in 1892, the New Orleans general strike of 1892, the
big coal strike of 1893, the national railroad strike (A.R.U.) in
1894, and the several strikes of the western metal miners of the
early 1890’s. All these big American strikes reached the acuteness
of virtual local civil wars.
GROWING RIGHT OPPORTUNISM
In this period the Second International generally held to a
Marxist position, but a most significant and sinister characteristic
of the three congresses with which we are now dealing, was the
continuously growing right tendencies that they exhibited. This
trend, which eventually, two decades later, was to have disastrous
consequences to the International and to the world in general, ran
through all the proceedings of the three congresses at an increas-
ing tempo. So much so, that by the end of the London congress
there was a definitely developing right wing in the International,
although it had not yet matured its program and organization. No

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
important issue came before these congresses in which the grow-
ing right trend was not markedly felt.
On the question of International May Day, an issue of prime
importance to the world’s workers, the right influence was much
in evidence. The German and English opportunists opposed at
both the Brussels and Zurich congresses the basic idea of May
First, which was to stage a big tools-down demonstration of
labor’s growing power and to insist upon the eight-hour day and
other current demands. Their line was to shift the May First
demonstration to the first Sunday in May, which would soften
altogether its fighting character. Lenz says, “In proportion to the
forces at their disposal, the Germans had done less to carry out
the May Day decision of the Paris Congress than any other
party.”2 Finally, at the Zurich Congress in 1893, the Germans had
the manner of May Day celebration left up to the respective
parties, which meant that they could freely put their own
opportunist line into practice. The French and other delegations
fought vigorously against this castration of May First. In this and
other debates the German leaders also let it be known that in
policy matters they would not allow themselves to be “dictated to”
by the International.
Another example of right opportunist strength at these three
congresses was shown in some implications of the fight against
the Anarchists. The Anarchists were a bone of contention at the
Brussels and Zurich congresses, but in London (1896) the Marx-
ists finally excluded them by adopting a resolution which de-
manded, as a condition of membership in the International, the
endorsement of political action. This the Anarchists would not
accept, and they withdrew permanently. The strong terms of the
resolution drawn up by Bebel also could have kept out the
Anarcho-syndicalist unions, but the congress voted 57 to 56 not to
exclude them.3 But the Second International, while thus correctly
raising the bars against the petty-bourgeois ultra-left, characteris-
tically kept the membership doors wide open to the right. A most
important result of this line was to admit to membership in
France, in 1894, the Jaurès-Millerand-Viviani group of 30 bour-
geois radical parliamentary deputies (against Engels’ advice). This
reactionary step was, in the next few years, to have far-reaching
consequences throughout the International.

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 BRUSSELS, ZURICH, AND LONDON
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE WAR DANGER
Already, in nearly all the congresses of the First International,
the question of war was one with which the world labor move-
ment had to concern itself. But in those early years the danger lay
chiefly in national wars, such as the involvement of England in
the American Civil War of 1861, the war between Prussia and Aus-
tria in 1866, and the war between France and Germany in 1870.
From the outset, however, the congresses of the Second Interna-
tional had to face up to the danger of a far more serious war men-
ace, the possibility of a general European imperialist war. The big
European powers, increasingly imperialist in their composition
and relentless in their greed, were already shaping up the war al-
liances that were finally to clash in World War I, in 1914 – a colli-
sion which Engels long before had foreseen.4 Germany, Austria,
and Italy, in 1882, established their Triple Alliance, and from
1894 on, France, Russia, and England were building their Triple
Entente, which finally came to fruition in 1907. The Socialist in-
ternational congresses of Brussels, Zurich, and London, therefore,
dealt extensively with this developing war danger, and here again,
and especially in this crucial matter, the growing right opportun-
ism in the Second International manifested itself sharply.
To meet the rising danger of a European war, the resolutions
of the Brussels (1891) congress, with much revolutionary phrase-
ology, proposed that the workers should protest vigorously
against the war threat and should strengthen their international
organization. The Zurich (1893) congress added the provisions
that the workers should fight for general disarmament and that
their parliamentary representatives should vote against war cred-
its. The London (1896) congress demanded the abolition of stand-
ing armies, the arming of the people, the establishment of courts
of arbitration, war referendum by the peoples, etc.
As against these prevention measures, the Anarchists and
Anarcho-syndicalists at all three congresses brought in resolu-
tions proposing a general strike in case of war. The chief spokes-
man for this project was Domela Nieuwenhuis of Holland.
Nieuwenhuis (1846-1919) was a Social-Democratic member of
parliament until 1894, after which he joined the Anarchists. The
general strike proposals ran generally along the lines of the reso-
lution adopted by the Brussels (1868) congress of the First Inter-

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
national (criticized by Marx as utopian under the circumstances)
which called upon the workers to cease work should war break
out in their respective countries.
The general strike as a weapon against war was heavily voted
down at the three congresses of 1891, 1893, and 1896, with espe-
cially strong opposition from the Germans. The Socialist leaders
generally took the occasion to condemn the use of the general
strike altogether in unmeasured terms. At the Zurich congress,
Plekhanov thus stated the position of the committee, “A general
strike is impossible within present-day society, for the proletariat
does not possess the means to carry it out. On the other hand,
were we in a position to carry out a general strike, the proletariat
would already be in control of economic power and a general
strike would be a sheer absurdity.”5
Obviously, as Marx maintained and as Lenin was to make
very clear in later years, the Anarchists and Syndicalists were la-
boring under an illusion in thinking that they could halt the ap-
proaching war simply by a general strike; nevertheless, the rejec-
tion by the Second International of the general strike in principle,
which became the line of the right Social-Democrats, was crass
opportunism. The working class, obviously, was not ready to give
up this powerful weapon – as the English had shown in their fight
for the Charter in 1842, the American workers in their eight-hour
day strike in 1886, the Belgian workers in their strike for the right
to vote in 1892,6 and as the workers were to do in many parts of
the world in later years.
Already in these anti-war debates the conception of the “de-
fense of the fatherland,” which was to serve as the ideological ba-
sis of the great betrayal in 1914, was beginning to take shape. The
idea was that Germany would have to defend itself against an at-
tack from ultra-reactionary Russia, probably allied with France.
In 1893 Engels favored a national defense of Germany against
Russian tsarism.7 And it was no doubt such a war that Bebel had
in mind when he said that he would himself “buckle on the
sword,” and also Plekhanov when he stated that the Russian peo-
ple would welcome the German armies as liberators. But, as Sta-
lin later pointed out, Engels’ viewpoint was illusory;8 the war that
was shaping up in the nineties was to be a great imperialist war,
and the way the German right-wing Social-Democrats were al-
ready getting ready to participate in it was not as a revolutionary

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 BRUSSELS, ZURICH, AND LONDON
war to liberate Russia, but as a chauvinist defense of bourgeois
Germany.
REFORMISM VERSUS REVOLUTIONARY IDEOLOGY
During the 1890’s, with capitalism rapidly expanding and all
the organizations of the workers steadily increasing in strength,
and with no signs of early proletarian revolution on the political
horizon, the main tasks were necessarily the immediate demands
of the daily struggle. The Second International, however, definite-
ly developed a right orientation to overstress these partial de-
mands and to understress the development of a rounded-out
Marxist ideology. In crass cases this meant to deny outright the
revolutionary objectives of socialism. The issue, as stated at the
time by the left, was “Reform versus Revolution,” and the Interna-
tional leaders more and more supported immediate demands ex-
clusively at the expense of revolutionary ideology.
In the International congresses of this period discussion of
the general political program especially came up under the head
of “tactics,” with the German delegation generally objecting to a
full discussion on the grounds that such “tactical” matters fell
within the province of the respective national parties. Where the
International was heading in this vital respect was well illustrated
by the resolution on “tactical” questions at the Zurich (1893) con-
gress. Putting all the weight on the fight for immediate demands,
the resolution characteristically almost completely ignored the
revolutionary aims of socialism. Lenz thus correctly sums it up:
“This resolution, which uttered a warning against unprincipled
compromise and recommended the workers never to lose sight of
their revolutionary goal, nevertheless indicated a thoroughly re-
formist conception of the state; not the destruction of the bour-
geois state and the creation of the proletarian state, but the trans-
formation of the organs of capitalist rule, that is, of the bourgeois
state with its bureaucracy and armed force, into the means
whereby to liberate the proletariat.”9
In the German Social-Democratic Party, the leading party of
the Second International, the trend towards right opportunism
and reformism was more clearly in evidence than in the Interna-
tional congresses. More and more such documents as The Com-
munist Manifesto were pushed into the background, considered
as museum pieces. This was to be seen by many developments.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
First, in the matter of the Erfurt program of 1891, which was writ-
ten by Kautsky and became the model for Socialist parties the
world over. This program, while loaded with revolutionary analy-
sis, slurred over or ignored the basic question of the revolution
and the dictatorship of the proletariat.10 It also failed to demand a
republic in Germany. A blazing danger signal especially was the
opportunist program put forward by Georg von Vollmar at this
time. Much in the spirit of the English Fabians, the leading re-
formists in the International, von Vollmar advocated the progres-
sive achievement of partial demands as the road to socialism,
proposed an alliance between the party and the rich peasantry,
hailed the Triple Alliance as a guarantee of peace, and supported
a policy of collaboration with bourgeois parties. The German par-
ty tolerated the membership of this petty-bourgeois reformist.
An especially significant expression of the growing reformist
trend in the German movement was indicated by what the official
heads of the party did to the Preface to Marx’s, The Class Strug-
gles in France, written by Engels in March 1895. In this piece En-
gels stressed the greater difficulties which the development of
modern military techniques had placed in the way of barricade
fighting in the cities, the traditional manner of winning revolu-
tions. In printing this material, the Vorwaerts, with Liebknecht as
editor, cut out some key passages, thereby leaving the direct im-
plication that Engels (in agreement with the right wing) had dis-
carded the perspective of armed struggle in the revolution. It will
be remembered that the German party leadership suppressed
Marx’s criticism of the Gotha program of 1875 and also that En-
gels’ criticism of the Erfurt program of 1891 was not published for
10 years.11
The key section deleted from Engels’ preface reads: “Does that
mean that in the future the street fight will play no further role?
Certainly not. It only means that the conditions since 1848 have
become far more unfavorable for civil fights, far more favorable
for the military. A future street fight can therefore only be victori-
ous when this unfavorable situation is compensated by other fac-
tors. Accordingly it will occur more seldom in the beginning of a
great revolution than in its further progress, and will have to be
undertaken with greater forces. These, however, may then well
prefer, as in the whole Great French Revolution on September 4
and October 31, 1870, in Paris, the open attack to the passive bar-

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 BRUSSELS, ZURICH, AND LONDON
ricade tactics.”12
For many years afterward the gross distortion of Engels’ pref-
ace was used effectively by the reformists against the left wing.
But in the many revolutions yet to come it was to be demonstrat-
ed that, contrary to the Social-Democratic opportunists, the ad-
vanced military techniques of the bourgeoisie would prove to be
no final defense against aroused, revolutionary peoples, who
could nearly always take large sections of the armed forces with
them.
THE FIGHT OF THE LEFT
As against the growing militancy, program, and organization
of the right wing in the International, the fight of the left was only
partially effective. At the time the left, which in many cases was
tending to slur over or to forget vital lessons of Marx and the First
International, had no definite program of its own. It also had not
clearly differentiated itself from the centrist tendencies which
were already beginning to develop. This differentiation of the rev-
olutionary left from the vacillating center – a development which
required the highest level of political understanding – could not
and did not take place fully until the class struggle had reached a
much higher stage of development than it was in then, until the
time of World War I and the Russian Revolution.
At this period the Bebels, Kautskys, Plekhanovs, and others,
who were eventually to become the center, were already display-
ing some right tendencies. But they were still hanging on to major
elements of Marxism. Indeed, they prided themselves on being
the “orthodox” Marxists. They had not yet faced the severe revolu-
tionary tasks and struggles that would crystallize their centrism
and ultimately force this tendency into alliance with the right
wing. Undoubtedly, however, even at this early date the increas-
ing vacillations of the “orthodox” Marxists – leaders of the
Kautsky trend – provided a certain amount of cover and protec-
tion for the right wing.
The international “left” wing of the period, therefore, was a
broad amorphous grouping, containing many semi-opportunists
and potential reformists, as well as such resolute fighters as Rosa
Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, and Franz Mehring. But Kautsky,
Guesde, and Plekhanov, the outstanding “orthodox” leaders of the
Second International of that time, never were to become Com-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
munists. The trend of this broad grouping was to fire into the
main danger, which was the growing extreme right wing, exempli-
fied by such forces as the Fabians in England and the supporters
of Von Vollmar in Germany; but within its own broad confines
many right errors and deviations were expressed and tolerated.
Engels, who was then far along in years, led this general fight of
the left. But the help he got from the “orthodox” Marxist leaders,
notably in Germany, was often dubious. Kautsky, with his ques-
tionable formulations in the Erfurt program, and Bebel and Lieb-
knecht, with their militant, uncritical defense of the political line of
the German party, often undercut the fight against the growing
right wing in Germany and in the International as a whole.
In a letter to Sorge in October 1877, Marx had criticized
sprouting opportunism in the German Social-Democracy. He
said: “A rotten spirit is making itself felt in our party in Germany,
not so much among the masses as among the leaders (upper class
and ‘workers’).”13 And he proceeded to outline a whole series of
dangerous tendencies in the party. In a letter to Bernstein in
March 1883, Engels stated, “From the outset we have always
fought to the very utmost against the petty-bourgeois and philis-
tine disposition within the party.”14 Marx’s sweeping criticisms of
the Gotha program and Engels’ later sharp criticisms of the Erfurt
program, were only two incidents of the long two-front fight car-
ried on by these two great leaders – against the right and against
the ultra left – against the English opportunist and German petty-
bourgeois Socialists, as well as against the Bakuninists. Despite all
his long fight against the growing right wing, however, Engels did
not fully realize the fatal grip that opportunism was securing upon
the German party. In June 1885 he wrote to Becker, “In a petty-
bourgeois country like Germany the party is bound also to have a
petty-bourgeois 'educated’ right wing, which it shakes off at the
decisive moment.”15 Unfortunately, however, although later on in
many internal struggles the party did check or defeat the right
wing, at the final time of supreme crisis and imperative need for
resolute revolutionary action in 1914, it could not “shake off” the
corrupt right wing.
THE DEATH OF FREDERICK ENGELS
On August 5, 1895, the workers’ world was shocked by the
death of Frederick Engels in England. He was 75 years old when

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 BRUSSELS, ZURICH, AND LONDON
he passed away, from cancer of the throat. His body was cremated
and, following his wishes, his ashes were strewn over the sea. The
workers of the world lost a brilliant thinker and valiant comrade-
in-arms of Marx with the demise of this great Marxist leader.16
Engels was politically active almost up to the day of his death.
After Marx died in 1883, Engels, laying aside his planned further
scientific writings, spent the next eleven years of his life mainly in
putting into final form the second and third volumes of Capital.
Marx had been able to finish only one section of his great work,
Volume One, and he left the rest largely in the shape of a vast
number of notes which were only partly organized. Engels per-
formed a magnificent task in assembling all this material into fin-
ished form. At the time of his death Engels was preparing to write
a history of the First International, but unfortunately he was cut
off before he could undertake it.
Engels was also very much occupied with practical political
day-to-day guidance in the international labor movement. During
the interim between the two internationals, he and Marx, up to
the latter’s death, had generally carried on the leading role of the
old General Council of the I.W.A. Even after the formation of the
Second International Engels continued very much in the same
way, for, as pointed out above, the new International went along
for over ten years without any formal world organization, journal,
or headquarters. Engels, in fact, was generally looked upon as the
world Socialist leader, and he remained for years in close touch
with the Socialist parties all over the world. He visited the United
States and for many years he was a close friend and advisor of the
American Socialist movement. Among the classic Marxist writings
are his innumerable letters to the parties in France, Germany,
Poland, Spain, Russia, the United States, and many other coun-
tries.
Brilliant, modest, indefatigable, Frederick Engels made many
and great contributions to the thinking and fighting of the world’s
workers. His name will remain forever enshrined in the memory
of the international proletariat, along with that of his great co-
worker, Karl Marx. Engels was one of the master builders of
socialism.

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17. International Trade Unionism
Trade unions are the basic mass organizations of the working
class. This is because they are formed exclusively of workers, they
are organized in the shops directly at the point of production and
exploitation, they embrace the major mass of the workers, and
they concern themselves primarily with questions ordinarily of
the greatest urgency to the working masses – wages, hours, and
working conditions. Trade unions are usually (but not always) the
first type of organization set up by the working class in a given
country, either in the shape of full-fledged labor organizations or
of preliminary “friendly societies.”
When trade unions reach the point of engaging in political ac-
tion they do this by either setting up or supporting specific politi-
cal organizations, in the form of parliamentary committees, labor
parties, or Marxist parties. They are not equipped, as such, suc-
cessfully to prosecute political campaigns. By 1900 the steadily
growing trade unions had generally won for themselves, after
decades of struggle, the formal legal right to organize in Central
Western Europe and the United States; but in practice this right
was still bitterly contested by the employers, especially in the
United States. In Russia and generally in Eastern Europe, the un-
ions at this time, living under terroristic conditions, had no legal
existence, although the workers constantly made heroic efforts to
form such organizations.
England, where capitalism took its first leap forward, was the
birthplace of trade unionism. There trade unions were already to
be found in mid-eighteenth century. The workers in all other
countries, in establishing their labor organizations, learned much
from the British working class; but their unions also were pro-
foundly influenced by their specific national conditions. At the
beginning of the 20th century, therefore, trade unions generally
fell into three broad categories – pure and simple trade unions,
Social-Democratic unions, and Anarcho-syndicalist unions. In
several European countries, there were also a few small Catholic
unions, organized primarily on the basis of Pope Leo XIII’s encyc-
lical of 1891, De Rerum Novarum.
PURE AND SIMPLE TRADE UNIONISM
The pure and simple type of trade unionism, or as Lenin called
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 INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNIONISM
it, “economism,” which, in its classical form, is now virtually ex-
tinct, was characterized by a tacit or open acceptance of capitalism;
it was marked by a low degree of class consciousness and a weak
spirit of internationalism. It worked upon the principle of the pro-
tection of the skilled workers at the expense of the broad mass of
the working class, a course which fitted right in with the employers’
policy of corrupting the labor aristocracy and trade union bureau-
cracy. Pure and simple trade unions, usually made up of skilled
workers, commonly were built on a craft basis, and with a low level
of class solidarity; in strikes they generally followed the principle of
each for himself and the devil take the hindmost. They confined
their activities mostly to elementary economic questions. In politi-
cal matters they tagged along after the liberal sections of the bour-
geoisie, and their leaders’ slogan was, “No politics in the Unions” –
no working class politics, that is.
Pure and simple trade unionism, accepting bourgeois eco-
nomics, worked along from day to day, with contempt for Marxist
theory and without any concrete perspective. As early as 1883,
before a U.S. Senate Commission, this primitive labor line was
thus expressed by Strasser (an erstwhile socialist), a close co-
worker of Samuel Gompers: “We have no ultimate aims. We are
going on from day to day. We are fighting only for immediate ob-
jects, objects that can be realized in a few years.... We want to
dress better, and to live better, and to become better citizens,
generally.”1
The “home” of pure and simple trade unionism was in Great
Britain and her white-ruled dominions – Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa – and also in the United States. This
type of unionism was characteristic of the upward swing period of
competitive capitalism and the early stages of imperialism, when
there were some minor improvements in real wages, especially of
the skilled. In the initial phases of capitalism in Great Britain and
the United States, on the other hand, when the working class was
being formed, the trade unions were radical if not revolutionary,
as illustrated by the militant American trade unions of the 1830’s
and the great British Chartist movement of the 1840’s. In 1900,
the total membership of the British trade unions was 1,972,0002
and of the American unions, some 800,000 of which 580,000
were in the A.F. of L.3
The working class of Great Britain, by 1900, was already
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
strongly emerging from the stage of pure and simple trade union-
ism. This was basically because of the increasing economic diffi-
culties of British imperialism in a world of vigorous capitalist ri-
vals. The advance of the British labor movement was marked by
its growing politicalization – by the formation of the Social Dem-
ocratic Federation (Hyndman) in 1881, and the Socialist League
in 1882 (both Marxist), the launching of the Independent Labor
Party (Keir Hardie) in 1893 (revisionist Social-Democratic), and
the setting up by the trade unions of the Labour Representative
Committee in 1899, which five years later became the Labour Par-
ty, with an essentially Fabian opportunist leadership – MacDon-
ald, Hardie, Burns, Snowden, & Co.4 Generally, pure and simple
trade unionism far pre-dates the Marxist parties, because in cer-
tain countries the workers have confronted less acute problems of
making a political fight for domestic rights.5 When they arrive at
the point of taking up class political action, they set up broad la-
bor parties, instead of endorsing the characteristic Social-
Democratic parties.
In the United States, however, the advance from pure and
simple trade unionism proceeded at a much slower pace. This was
basically because of the stronger position of American imperial-
ism in the world capitalist economy. In no country were the evils
of trade union primitivism so emphasized as in the United States.
In 1900 Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), an avowed enemy of so-
cialism, stood at the head of the American Federation of Labor.
Many trade union leaders, openly affiliated with the Democratic
and Republican parties, were sunk in depths of personal corrup-
tion altogether without parallel in world labor circles. They fla-
grantly stole money from their unions, sold “strike insurance” to
employers, barred Negroes and women from the unions and the
industries, made agreements with corporations to keep the un-
skilled workers unorganized, and ruled their unions at the point
of the gun. Class collaboration was their principle, socialism their
big enemy, and the sacredness of union contracts their holy slo-
gan. They broke innumerable strikes with their craft union
scabbery, and they systematically kept the labor movement politi-
cally impotent. Many of them became wealthy, with their various
forms of graft and corruption.
In 1900-01 American Socialists, breaking with De Leon’s sec-
tarian Socialist Labor Party, established the Socialist Party, head-

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 INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNIONISM
ed by Debs and Hillquit. But the Socialists were not fated to win
the political leadership of the trade unions from the corrupt
Gompers clique. Today, the bulk of American trade unions, which
have at least developed elementary political programs of immedi-
ate political demands and engage in much political activity, can
no longer be classed as pure and simple trade unions. But their
top leaders, rigidly anti-Marxist, still generally remain enemies of
independent working-class political action, and are frank and ar-
dent defenders of American capitalism.
MARXIST TRADE UNIONISM
In the 1900 period Social-Democratic trade unionism was
characteristic of practically all the continental nations, except the
Latin countries, from the English channel up to and including
Russia, with certain national variations. In the latter respect the
Russian unions were the outstanding example, being far more
revolutionary than the Social-Democratic labor organizations in
Western Europe – but of all this, more further along.
The European Social-Democratic trade unions, differing gen-
erally from those in the United States, endorsed the perspective of
socialism and either officially or unofficially accepted the political
leadership of the Social-Democratic parties. Industrial in form
and centralized in controls, they were definitely political in their
outlook. Their greater politicalization was partly because of the
influence of the Marxist parties, but also because in these coun-
tries the remnants of feudalism were much stronger and the
workers had to devote more of their activities than in England or
the United States to the winning of elementary political rights –
to vote, to organize, to strike, etc. Generally these unions were
built under the leadership of the Socialist parties, or largely so.
The German unions were the world models for this type of
trade unionism, and the Austrian unions were close behind them.
The pioneers among the German unions began to take shape,
mostly as craft organizations, about the time of the 1848 revolu-
tion. They were wiped out by the reaction following this lost revo-
lution. By the middle 1860’s they began again to grow, but slowly,
until they were hit by the anti-Socialist law of 1878, which liqui-
dated most of them and virtually wiped out the whole trade union
press.6 Like the Social-Democratic party, however, the trade un-
ions, after the first shock, gradually began to grow. By the time
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the repressive law was lifted, in 1890, they were stronger than
ever, with a total membership of 280,000 organized into 58 na-
tional unions. By 1900 the German unions numbered 680,000
members and they were entering into a period of rapid growth. In
1890, when the General Federation of Trade Unions was formed,
Karl Legien (1861-1920) became the general secretary, and he
remained at the head of the German labor movement until he
died thirty years later.
The top German trade union leadership early grew opportun-
ist, and eventually it became (organizationally if not theoretically)
the strongest center of revisionism in the entire German labor
movement, political and economic. The leaders established strict
centralized controls in the unions, reduced trade union democra-
cy to a minimum, and systematically played down all manifesta-
tions of rank-and-file militancy, their castration of the May First
demonstration being only one of many examples of this policy.
The Social-Democratic trade union leaders, while professing alle-
giance to the party, endorsed the principle of the “neutrality” of
the unions and sought to build them up under their own bureau-
cratic control – a tendency which, as we shall see, wrought havoc
in the German labor movement. The left wing fought this sepa-
ratist tendency and urged joint relations with the party.7
ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM
The Anarcho-syndicalist unions, which likewise constituted a
well-defined labor tendency by 1900, generally had a background
of Proudhonism and Bakuninism. They were the dominant form
of labor unionism in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, although
in all these countries the Marxist trade unions had considerable
strength. In Latin America – Chile, Argentina, Mexico, etc. – the
Syndicalists eventually exerted considerable influence in the trade
union movement, and there were some syndicalist tendencies
(from 1905 on) in the United States, England, Australia, and Can-
ada, principally in the Industrial Workers of the World. The major
forces which produced strong syndicalist trade unions were large-
ly the same as those which developed anarchism in general –
namely, industrial backwardness, small handicraft industries,
franchise limitations, extreme political corruption in government,
Social-Democratic opportunism, and Catholic authoritarianism.
The Anarcho-syndicalist unions of the period were character-

162
 INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNIONISM
ized by a revolutionary perspective, looking forward to a future
society operated by the trade unions. Their revolutionary weapon
was the general strike, growing into insurrection. They were ag-
gressively “direct actionist” and anti-political; they eschewed all
participation in electoral and organized parliamentary activities.
They also practiced sabotage in strikes, and largely in the form of
go-slow movements in the shops. Organizationally, the Syndical-
ist unions were decentralized and highly autonomous. For united
action they depended largely upon mass spontaneity and the or-
ganized activities of the “militant minority.” While accepting
broad Marxist principles of the class struggle, generally their ide-
ology was permeated with Anarchist and semi-Anarchist concep-
tions. Lenin criticized Anarcho-syndicalism, with its rejection of
“petty work” as “waiting for the great days,” with “an inability to
muster the forces which create great events.”8
France was the main stronghold of Anarcho-syndicalism.
There the trade unions were born into traditions of Proudhonism,
Blanquism, and Bakuninism, and they had in their background a
long series of revolutionary struggles. The first substantial trade
unions in France grew up shortly after the Paris Commune of
1871. The law of 1884 granted the workers, with limitations, the
legal right to organize trade unions. But this, says Lefranc “only
legalized the fact”9; for the workers were unionizing without legal
sanction, five national federations existing in Paris before 1884.
The French trade union movement developed along two main or-
ganizational lines, that is, it built up two distinct national sec-
tions: of local trades councils (bourses du travail) and of national
industrial and craft federations. In 1895 the movement was unit-
ed in the General Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.)
The recognized founder of the French Syndicalist, or revolu-
tionary trade union movement, was Fernand Pelloutier, a Com-
munist-Anarchist, who laid down its general principles. Georges
Sorel, a French intellectual, undertook to theorize Anarcho-
syndicalism, his principal contributions being the glorification of
violence as such, and the metaphysical concept of the general
strike as a social myth.10 In later years Sorel’s ideas played an im-
portant part in the ideological set-up of the Italian fascists. The
French Syndicalist movement finally formulated its program at its
congress in Amiens (December 1906), which produced the fa-
mous Charte d’Amiens. This document states that the C.G.T.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
“prepares complete emancipation, with the general strike as the
means of action, and it considers that the trade union (syndicat),
today the group of resistance, will be in the future the group of
production and distribution, the basis of social reorganization.”11
The Syndicalist trends in Italy and Spain largely followed the
French pattern.
TOWARD A TRADE UNION INTERNATIONAL
From their beginnings the trade unions of the various coun-
tries displayed strong international tendencies. It was the trade
unionists of France and England who founded the First Interna-
tional in 1864, and they always played a big part in the congresses
and other activities of that organization. The First International
concerned itself very much with questions of trade union struggle,
and it was this phase of its work that interested the National La-
bor Union of the United States. In later years, as the trade unions
expanded and multiplied and as the First International became
more and more concerned with political questions, sentiment
grew for the establishment of an additional international, com-
posed only of trade unions.
This matter was discussed at I.W.A. conventions, and the
general idea was endorsed at the Universal Socialist Congress in
Ghent, in September 1877 (Chapter 14), but nothing concrete
came of it. Throughout its history the First International accepted
trade union affiliations. The Second International also, continued
to include trade unions, but the matter of a separate trade union
international was discussed already at the Zurich and London
congresses of the Second International in 1893 and 1896. Mean-
while, the urge towards international trade union organization
was expressing itself concretely by the formation of international
trade conferences and secretariats. The cigarmakers in 1871, 12 the
printers in 1889, and the coal miners in 1890 took the lead in this
direction. By 1900 there were 17 of such secretariats,13 covering
major crafts and industries. These movements gave the unions
some measure of the inter-country cooperation that the workers
found to be indispensable.
Pressure for the establishment of an all-inclusive trade union
international continued and grew stronger. “The British and
French trade unionists,” says Lorwin, “resented the domination of
the Socialists in the Second International.”14 The American Fed-

164
 INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNIONISM
eration of Labor, which also did not follow the lead of the Europe-
an Social-Democracy, likewise favored closer international trade
union cooperation. To this end it proposed a world congress of
trade unionists, to take place in Chicago at the same time as the
World’s Fair of 1893. This plan fell through when the 1891 Brus-
sels congress of the Second International refused to endorse it.
The big obstructionists in the way of a trade union interna-
tional were the conservative Social-Democrats standing at the
head of the German labor movement, the growing Legien ma-
chine. Seeing the anti-Social-Democratic orientation of the Brit-
ish, French, and American trade union movements, they were
afraid that an independent international movement would escape
their control. Although pushed along by the growing movement
for international labor cooperation, they, for the time being at
least, succeeded in preventing its crystallization in the desired
separate trade union international.
At a broad trade union conference in Copenhagen, August 21,
1901, called for the purpose of considering the holding of periodic
world trade union congresses, the German leaders led the opposi-
tion to founding a trade union international. “Legien and most of
the others in attendance, felt that the Second International was
the proper forum for the discussion of the larger problems of la-
bor and that international trade union congresses were unneces-
sary.”15 However, after a further conference in Stuttgart in 1902,
and at a succeeding conference in Dublin in 1903, in response to
the growing demand for a trade union international, a compro-
mise proposition was adopted in the shape of the International
Secretariat of National Trade Union Centers. The following year
this body had as affiliates 14 national centers with 2,378,955
members.16
This secretariat, made up of two representatives from each
national center, was scheduled to meet biennially. It served to
block the formation of a broad international organization until
after World War I.* The general secretary of the International

* In Budapest, August 1911, an effort was made by the I.W.W.

(delegate, Wm. Z. Foster) to have itself seated as representing the
labor movement of the United States, but its motion was defeated,
only the two delegates from the C.G.T. of France voting for it.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Secretariat was Karl Legien, the Gompers-like head of the Ger-
man trade union movement. It was also this ubiquitous gentle-
man who became general secretary of the International Federa-
tion of Trade Unions which, under increasing French, British, and
American pressure, was finally launched in skeleton form in 1913,
but which did not become a broad representative international
movement until it was reorganized in 1919. At the outbreak of
World War I the I.F.T.U. had as affiliates a score of national cen-
ters, with some 7,500,000 members, the only important unaffili-
ated labor movements being those of Japan, Argentina, Bulgaria,
and Australia.

166
18. Imperialism and Millerand:
Paris (1900)
The fifth congress of the Second International met in Paris in
September 1900. By now the imperialist epoch of capitalism had
well begun. As Marx had long before indicated, world capitalism,
evolving from its early stage of competition, had become increas-
ingly monopolist and eventually imperialist.* The period 1870-
1900 was a period of transition to imperialism. Lenin says that,
“For Europe the time when the new capitalism definitely super-
seded the old can be established with fair precision; it was the be-
ginning of the twentieth century.”1 In his great book, Imperialism,
the Highest Stage of Capitalism, written in 1916, Lenin calls im-
perialism “the monopoly stage of capitalism,” “the epoch of fi-
nance capital.” He analyzes it as including the following five es-
sential features:
“1. The concentration of production and capital, developed to
such a high stage that it created monopolies which play a decisive
role in economic life. 2. The merging of bank capital with indus-
trial capital and the creation on the basis of this ‘finance capital,’
of a financial oligarchy. 3. The export of capital, which has be-
come extremely important, as distinguished from the export of
commodities. 4. The formation of international capitalist monop-
olies which share the world among themselves. 5. The territorial
division of the whole world by the greatest capitalist powers is
completed.”2
The growth of monopoly capitalism, or imperialism, in the
last quarter of the 19th century, was marked by the development
of many great industrial and financial cartels, syndicates, and
trusts in all the leading capitalist countries. In the United States,
which by 1900 had far outstripped England in industrial devel-
opment, there were already 440 industrial, franchise, and trans-
portation trusts, capitalized at $20 billion,3 and the next years
brought many more. In Germany in 1896 there existed 250 mo-
nopolistic cartels; this number jumped to 385 in 1905, and it con-

* Modern imperialism, based upon monopoly capitalism, is not to be

confused with the ancient imperialism of Rome, Athens, etc., which
was based upon slavery.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
tinued rapidly to increase. In 1870 the three biggest French banks
had 64 branches, with total deposits of 427 million francs; where-
as by 1909 they had 1,229 branches and 4,363 millions in depos-
its. In England, although its tempo of development was falling far
behind that of the United States and Germany, a broad expansion
and consolidation of industry and banking were also taking place.
Characteristically, the big banker-industrialists had become by
1900 not only the real masters of industry, but also of the gov-
ernments of the respective great capitalist powers.
The period of imperialism, based on an intensive growth and
monopolization of industry and the domination of financial oli-
garchies in the chief capitalist countries, also brought with it, by
various means, the organized economic and political penetration
and subjugation of the less developed countries by the large pow-
ers. There took place increasingly the export of capital, which
gives the exporting power a commanding position in the import-
ing country. In this respect Great Britain was the leader, its total
foreign investments climbing from about £200 million in 1850 to
some £2,000 million in 1905,4 and to £4,000 million in 1913. Al-
so, a network of cartel agreements spread over many undeveloped
countries, dividing up their markets and natural resources among
the imperialist monopolies.
Most vital, the imperialist powers proceeded to divide among
themselves the various undeveloped territories of the world
whose peoples were unable to protect themselves. In the last
quarter of the 19th century Africa and Polynesia were taken over
almost completely by the marauding imperialist states. From
1884 to 1900, according to Hobson, England grabbed 3.7 million
square miles of territory with a population of 57 million; France
got 3.6 million square miles with 36.5 million people, Germany
one million square miles with 17 million people, Belgium 900,000
square miles with 30 million people, and Portugal 800,000
square miles with 9 million people.5
One of the most dynamic aspects of this growth and evolution
of the capitalist system was that, as capitalism always does, it pro-
ceeded at widely varying tempos in the several countries. This
disparity was according to the law of the uneven development of
capitalism, promulgated by Lenin in 1915: “Some countries, which
previously held a foremost position, now develop their industry at
a relatively slow rate, while others, which were formerly back-

168
 IMPERIALISM AND MILLERAND
ward, overtake and outstrip them by rapid leaps.”6
“In 1880,” says Eaton, “Britain’s output of pig-iron was 7.7
million tons against Germany’s 2.5 million and U.S.A.’s 3.8 mil-
lion; by 1913 Britain’s output had risen to 10.3 million tons but
Germany’s had risen to 19.3 million and the U.S.A.’s to 31 mil-
lion.”7 “Finance capital and the trusts,” says Lenin, “are increasing
instead of diminishing the differences in the rate of development
of the various parts of the world economy.”8 This unevenness of
capitalist development greatly accentuates the sharp conflicts
among the imperialist powers and it is a basic cause of modern
imperialist war. For, as Lenin points out, “When the relation of
forces is changed, how else, under capitalism, can the solution of
contradictions be found, except by resorting to violence?”9 The
first of the armed conflicts in this broad period, heralding the ad-
vent of ultra-predatory imperialist war in general, were the Span-
ish-American war of 1898, the Anglo-Boer war of 1899, the inter-
vention of the big powers in China in 1900, and the Russo-
Japanese war of 1904.
Of special significance also to the world labor movement dur-
ing the rise of imperialism was the fact that it tended to increase
the disparity in wages between the skilled and unskilled workers
in the principal capitalist countries. The last quarter of the 19th
century, a period of intense industrial expansion and increasing
exploitation of labor, was a time of slowly rising real wages in the
major capitalist lands. In the pattern of the English employers
generally, the capitalists used a portion of the super-profits wrung
from the colonies to favor the skilled workers at home, with the
objective of thus weakening the militancy and solidarity of the
working class as a whole. Everywhere, however, the great mass of
the workers slaved in near destitution. Thus, whereas in Germany
the real wages of the working class (generally at poverty levels)
went up from point 100 in 1887 to 105 in 1909, those of the labor
aristocracy increased to 113 in the same period.10 Similar condi-
tions obtained in other capitalist countries. They had profound
effects upon labor policy, the right opportunist Social-Democrats
basing their revisionist theories and class collaboration policies
upon the relatively more prosperous labor aristocracy, at the cost
of the broad labor movement. This wage trend, however, was to
be reversed in later years.

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
THE MILLERAND CASE
During this period of capitalist upswing and growing imperi-
alism, right opportunism grew in the socialist parties of the chief
capitalist countries throughout the Second International. This evil
development came to a head at the Paris 1900 congress in the cel-
ebrated cases of Alexandre Millerand in France and Eduard Bern-
stein in Germany. The fights around these two opportunists, the
first real international struggles between the right and the left in
the Second International, shook the organization from one end of
it to the other and threatened to split the movement.
At the outset, Marxism in France had a hard time to get estab-
lished, in the face of strong Proudhonist, Blanquist, Bakuninist,
Broussist, syndicalist, and other counter tendencies. As late as
1898 there were no less than five Socialist parties in France, rep-
resenting the various groupings. These parties were led by such
figures as Guesde, Vaillant, Allemane, Brousse, and Jaurès. It was
not until 1905 that the several groups joined together and formed
the United Socialist Party of France.
In the fight around the question of Millerandism the two out-
standing party leaders were Jules Guesde and Jean Jaurès. Gues-
de (1845-1922), who had supported the Commune, became a
Marxist in 1878 and joined the party in the early 1880’s, and was
one of its pioneers. He was doctrinaire and sectarian, one of the
“orthodox” Marxists. Jaurès (1859-1914), who was a professor of
philosophy at Toulouse university, became a Socialist in 1890,
and later was one of the founders of the party organ, L’Humanite.
He stood in the extreme right wing of the party, his socialism be-
ing heavily tinged with petty-bourgeois republicanism.
The background of the Millerand case was the famous Dreyfus
affair. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army, was
framed by military reactionaries for treason, convicted, and final-
ly sent off to Devil’s Island. Saturated with anti-Semitism, the
case caused profound repercussions in France and throughout the
world. In the face of the big uproar nationally and internationally
over the outrageous affair, Dreyfus was eventually released and,
in 1906, definitely cleared of the false charges.
At first, Guesde, true to his left sectarian conceptions, took
the attitude that the Dreyfus affair was none of the concern of the
proletariat and stood aside from it. Jaurès and his right-wing

170
 IMPERIALISM AND MILLERAND
group, the Independent Socialist Party, going to the other ex-
treme, decided that the fate of French democracy was at stake,
and in 1899 had their man, Millerand, without even consulting
the party, accept a post in the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet as Min-
ister of Commerce. In the same cabinet also sat Gallifet, the
butcher of the Communards. Immediately after Millerand’s entry
the government displayed its reactionary character by having its
police shoot down striking workers in Martinique and at Chalons.
THE LEFT DEFEATED IN THE PARIS CONGRESS
The Millerand case occupied the center of attention at the
1900 congress of the Second International. The congress had just
passed a resolution limiting the possibilities of coalition with the
bourgeois parties. In the discussion, specifically around the Mil-
lerand case, three well-defined positions developed. The first, ex-
pressed in the Guesde resolution, condemned Millerand’s action
in principle, stating that the congress “allows the proletariat to
take part in bourgeois governments only in the form of winning
seats on its own strength and on the basis of the class struggle,
and it forbids any participation whatever of Socialists in bour-
geois governments, towards which Socialists must take up an atti-
tude of unbending opposition.” Guesde’s position was strongly
supported by Vaillant and Rosa Luxemburg, the latter stating: “In
bourgeois society Social-Democracy, by its very nature, has to
play the part of an opposition party; it can only come forward as
the governing party on the ruins of the bourgeois state.”11
The second point of view, that of the extreme right, was pre-
sented by Jaurès, with his customary eloquence. Like Guesde,
Jaurès also raised the matter as a question of principle, but from
the opposite direction. He actively defended Socialist Party coali-
tions with bourgeois parties, and he specifically endorsed the in-
dividual action of Millerand in entering the French Cabinet.
Jaurès declared that by this action they had saved the Republic,
and he pictured such a participation in capitalist governments as
the beginning of the socialist revolution.
The third point of view – centrist – was presented by Kautsky.
He wrote a resolution (known as the caoutchouc [rubber] resolu-
tion), which took the position that the question at issue was not
one of principle but of tactics. And, he said: “The congress does
not have to decide upon that.” After thus leaving the door wide
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
open for such opportunistic maneuvers as that of Millerand, the
Kautsky resolution proceeded to criticize any Socialist who “be-
comes a minister independently of his party, or whenever he
ceases to be the delegate of that party.” In such a case he should
resign.
While the left bitterly attacked the Kautsky resolution, the
right wing, including Jaurès, rallied behind it. It was finally
passed by a vote of 29 to 9. Each country was entitled to two
votes; Bulgaria and Ireland voted two each against the resolution,
with France, Poland, Russia, Italy, and the United States* each
casting one vote against it.12
This was a stinging defeat for the left. It cleared the way for
further opportunist betrayers of the Millerand type. As Lenz re-
marks, “This was the first great defeat for the revolutionary wing
of the International.” One of the vital lessons of the historic strug-
gle was the manifestation of the growing danger of centrism, as
well as of rightism. Kautsky, who had been generally taking a po-
sition with the left against right opportunism, was directly re-
sponsible for the left defeat by his surrender in principle to the
right wing, while at the same time making a shallow showing with
radical phrases. This was a forecast of his sinister centrist role to
come in later years. As for Millerand, he refused to resign from
the cabinet, was expelled from the party, and for many years he
served the capitalists as a betrayer of labor into the hands of their
class enemies. He died in 1943, honored by the capitalist class
and leaving a name which to the world’s working class remains a
symbol of treason to the labor movement.
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MILITARISM AND WAR
Like all other congresses of the First and Second Internation-
als, the 1900 congress dealt with the growing danger of militarism
and war. This increasing menace was a specific manifestation of
the dawning period of imperialism. Rosa Luxemburg presented
the main resolution on the question. Her resolution analyzed the
capitalist origins of war and proposed three major steps to com-
bat it. These were, the education and organization of the youth,
Socialist members of parliament to vote against military credits,

* The S.L.P. voted against the Kautsky resolution, the S.P. for it.
172
 IMPERIALISM AND MILLERAND
and united anti-war demonstrations to take place during interna-
tional crises. The resolution was adopted unanimously.
As usual, a minority of delegates, mainly from the Latin coun-
tries, proposed the general strike as the main means to combat
war. This proposal was rejected, with the German opportunist
trade union leader, Karl Legien, making a speech against the gen-
eral strike in principle. Aristide Briand of France, then a loud-
mouthed phrasemonger and soon to be a renegade, led the fight
for the policy of the anti-war general strike.
Except for the defeat suffered earlier on the question of
Millerandism, due to Kautsky’s treachery, left sentiment in the
congress was dominant. This was shown on both the questions of
militarism and colonialism. In the latter matter the congress took
the position that the workers should actively combat the colonial
policies of the imperialist states, and that socialist parties should
be established in the colonial countries. Up to this time, the Se-
cond International had grossly neglected the situation of the co-
lonial peoples; nor was the organization, in fact, ever to develop
an effective program of struggle for and with the exploited peo-
ples of the colonies.13
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST BUREAU
An important step taken by the 1900 congress was the estab-
lishment of the International Socialist Bureau (I.S.B.). For a dec-
ade, ever since its foundation in 1889, the Second International
had gone along with no organized world center whatever. This
was a basic weakness, and there was a continuous demand that
this glaring political and organizational defect should be reme-
died. Finally, therefore, the I.S.B. was set up.14
The I.S.B. was located in Brussels, with a paid secretary and
an annual budget of 10,000 francs. The Bureau was made up of
two delegates of each national delegation to the congresses, or in
all some 50 to 70 persons. It was to meet four times a year, and in
the period between meetings the Bureau was to be managed by
the Executive Committee of the Belgian Labor Party. The chair-
man was Vandervelde and the secretary, Camille Huysmans, both
Belgians. With the establishment of the I.S.B., it was also laid
down that only those organizations – parties, trade unions, coop-
eratives, etc. – that recognized the general principles of socialism,
could affiliate to the International. Henceforth, the congresses,
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
variously known in the past, would be called International Social-
ist congresses.
The I.S.B., although constituting a step ahead, still fell far
short of the General Council of the First International. The latter
was a real leading body, cultivating a true international spirit and
action; whereas the new Bureau was still within the category pri-
marily of a correspondence and statistical center. Although
somewhat enlarged in later years, and acting as a sort of referee
between the quarreling national parties, the functions of the I.S.B.
remained very limited. The secretary was charged with the specif-
ic tasks of calling the congresses, publishing resolutions, reports
and proceedings, collecting information, and the like. The Bureau
was not a body to enforce the decisions of the congresses nor to
interpret them. This was left to the voluntary action of the nation-
al parties and other affiliated bodies.
The rock upon which the Second International finally came to
disaster was that of national chauvinism. From the outset, inter-
nationalism was at a low level in its life, with the German and
other decisive parties insisting upon virtual autonomy in working
out their affairs. The failure of the International, for eleven years,
to set up any world center at all, and then when it did establish a
Bureau, its refusal to give this body normal leading powers, were
both the consequence and a cultivation of the latent danger of
bourgeois nationalism in the affiliated parties. The smash-up in
1914 was the ultimate result of this general trend.

174
19. Bernstein Revisionism:
Amsterdam (1904)
The central question before the sixth congress of the Second
International, in Amsterdam in 1904, was that of Bernstein revi-
sionism. This system of opportunism, organically related to that
of Millerand, was directly a product of the rise of imperialism in
general and of German imperialism in particular. It was also the
fruition of right-wing tendencies that had been developing ever
since the foundation of the Second International.
Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932), a former bank clerk and son of
a railroad engineer, was born in Germany. During the anti-
Socialist law period he was an exile in England, a coworker with
Engels and the editor of the journal, Sozialdemokrat. On the basis
of characteristic features of the early imperialist period, Bernstein
arrived at the conclusion that Marxism was all wrong. Among
these features, signalized by Bernstein, were the rapid expansion
and relative stability of the capitalist system, the widespread
growth of great trusts, the minor increases in the real wages of the
workers, particularly the skilled, the great expansion of working-
class economic and political organizations, the winning by the
workers of certain democratic rights, especially regarding the
franchise, and the growth of the “new middle class” (intellectuals,
technicians, etc.). On the basis of these developments, Bernstein,
who formerly was closely under the influence of the British Fabi-
ans in London, developed the general idea that capitalism, in-
stead of becoming obsolete and reactionary, was gradually evolv-
ing into socialism.
Going far beyond the earlier opportunism of Vollmar, while
still pretending to be a Marxist (because of the broad popularity
of Marxism among the German working class), Bernstein under-
took to “revise” (i.e., to destroy) Marxism root and branch, in
both theory and practice. He first made known his ideas officially
in October 1898 in a letter to the convention of the German So-
cial-Democratic Party in Hannover. In 1899 he wrote a book em-
bodying his revisionist system entitled, Die Voraussetzungen des
Sozialismus, translated into English as Evolutionary Socialism.
Bernstein challenged the Marxist theory of surplus value, re-
pudiated the theories of the class struggle and of the materialist

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
conception of history, denied the law of the concentration of capi-
tal, and averred that the middle class, instead of declining, was
growing. He supported bourgeois patriotism, endorsed
Millerandism, and gave his blessing to imperialism and colonial-
ism. He especially attacked the Marxist theory of the relative and
absolute impoverishment of the working class, interpreting the
temporary small improvements in real wages during the boom
period of German imperialism as positive and progressive gains.
Ridiculing the term “dictatorship of the proletariat,” Bernstein
declared that a revolution was both unnecessary and impossible.
He especially made use of the distorted article of Engels (see
Chapter 16), in which the latter, because of his stressing the
greater obstacles in later times against barricade fighting, was
made to appear as if giving up all idea of an eventual revolution.
Bernstein presented a “gradualist” approach to “socialism,”
basically akin to that of the Fabians in Great Britain. He said: “A
greater security for lasting success lies in a steady advance than in
the possibilities offered by a catastrophic crash.”1 He declared
that for him the final aim of socialism meant nothing, the day-to-
day movement everything. (Gompers was saying essentially the
same thing.) The rigid institutions of feudalism had to be de-
stroyed by violence, as they were, but the “flexible institutions” of
capitalism needed “only to be further developed.” Denying the
reality of the class struggle, Bernstein based his program upon
class collaboration, stating that, “The right to vote in a democracy
makes its members virtually partners in the community and this
virtual partnership must in the end lead to real partnership.”2
Rosa Luxemburg, who assailed Bernstein, thus sums up his
system: “According to the present conception of the party, trade
union and parliamentary activity are important for the Socialist
movement because such activity prepares the proletariat, that is
to say, creates the subjective factor of the socialist transformation,
for the task of realizing socialism. But according to Bernstein,
trade-unions and parliamentary activity gradually reduce capital-
ist exploitation itself. They remove from capitalist society its capi-
talist character. They realize objectively the desired social
change.”3
Bernstein thus lays down the anti-Marxist program of right-
wing Social-Democracy. It all sums up to an acceptance of capital-
ism, of trying to make the best of that system. His program re-

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 BERNSTEIN REVISIONISM
mains that of opportunist socialism down to this day. What essen-
tially have since been added to it have been successive injections
of Ebert-Noske counter-revolution, of Hitlerite anti-Soviet hyste-
ria, and of Keynesian conceptions of “progressive capitalism”
through subsidizing industry.
THE FIGHT IN THE GERMAN PARTY
The Bernstein letter, which created a sensation, was placed on
the agenda at the Stuttgart national convention of the German
party in 1898, and after a hot three-days’ debate, it was rejected.
Bernstein’s line was also defeated at the Hannover convention of
1899, but it suffered its biggest set-back at the national party con-
vention in Dresden in 1903, when it was voted down by 288 to 11.
Bebel and Kautsky, and especially Bebel, actively led the struggle
against Bernstein. Although themselves slipping gradually into a
centrist line, they were not prepared to accept the complete sur-
render of socialism implicit in the Bernstein program. Kautsky
condemned Bernstein revisionism as “an abandonment of the
fundamental principles and conceptions of scientific socialism,”
and upon this basis the fight was made.
Especially outstanding in this fight against Bernsteinism was
Rosa Luxemburg (1870-1919), the young leader of the German
left wing. She was born in Poland, and from 1883 was active in
the Socialist Party of that country. After 1897 she turned her main
attention to the German Social-Democratic Party. She declared
that Bernstein’s theory meant to “renounce the social transfor-
mation, the final goal of the Social-Democracy and inversely, to
make of social reforms, the means of the class struggle, its aim....
What Bernstein questions is not the rapidity of the development
of capitalist society, but the march of the development itself, and
consequently, the very possibility of a change to socialism.”4 She
made a brilliant refutation of Bernstein’s whole line, showing the
fundamental incompatibility of opportunism with Marxism.
Bernstein revisionism came to a climax at this Dresden con-
vention of 1903 as a direct result of the important successes of the
German Social-Democracy in the elections of that year. “Com-
pared with 1898, its votes had increased from 2.1 million to 3 mil-
lion, its percentage of the total poll from 18.4 to 24, and the num-
ber of its seats from 32 to 55.”5 On the basis of this increased
strength, the right wing felt that the time had come to insist upon
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
participation in the government, on the Millerand model – in this
case to secure the post of vice-president of the Reichstag. Vollmar
and a large section of the Reichstag fraction supported Bern-
stein’s demand to this effect.
Under the existing circumstances, this step would put the par-
ty into collaboration with the bourgeoisie and its government,
which was precisely what the revisionists wanted. The conven-
tion, therefore, overwhelmingly rejected the Bernstein proposals
and in a strong resolution condemned working-class participation
in capitalist governments. In the discussion Kautsky half-
heartedly agreed that he had made an error in the 1900 congress
of the International by soft-pedalling the Millerand treachery.
Although defeated at the convention, Bernsteinism dovetailed
with the opportunism being developed by the trade union leaders,
and the junction of these two tendencies was to wreak havoc with
the German party and the whole International.
THE INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST REVISIONISM
The fight over Bernstein revisionism quickly spread throughout
the International, practically every important party being involved
in it to a greater or lesser degree. Especially urgent became the spe-
cific question of Socialist participation in capitalist governments.
Undoubtedly, the employers in Europe, seeing the rise of the So-
cialist movement, realized that a potent way to undermine and
weaken it was by drawing its leaders into the respective govern-
mental cabinets, where they could be controlled and corrupted.
Millerand was but the first of a whole flock of traitors in this
general respect. Undoubtedly, the employers were behind Bern-
stein’s attempt to get the German Social-Democracy organically
tied up with the Kaiser’s government. It was in this general peri-
od, 1905-06, that John Burns, prominent labor leader and erst-
while member of the Social-Democratic Federation in England,
was made a member of the Cabinet of Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman, and Aristide Briand and Rend Viviani, French social-
ists, were sucked into the Cabinets of the Serrian and Clemenceau
governments. All three of these renegades, in the governments,
faithfully served the employers in misleading the workers. Briand
and Viviani eventually became premiers of France. Before long,
they were to be followed into capitalist governments by many
other right-wing traitors to the working class.

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 BERNSTEIN REVISIONISM
The struggle against Bernsteinism internationally was made by
the broad left, which included many of a centrist trend. In the vari-
ous countries this fight was typified by the following outstanding
figures: In Germany, Bebel, Kautsky, and Luxemburg against Bern-
stein, Legien, and Vollmar; in France, Guesde against Jaurès; in
Russia, Plekhanov and Lenin against Martov; in England, Hynd-
man against Henderson and MacDonald; in the United States, De
Leon, Hillquit, and Debs against Berger, Untermann, and Gom-
pers. The fight also went on in all other countries that had substan-
tial Socialist and trade union movements.
One of the great weaknesses of the broad left in this key
struggle was to make a fetish of party unity – not to realize that
unity with the Bernsteinites was a source of weakness rather than
of strength for the parties. Above all, Lenin understood this dan-
ger; it was during this general struggle in 1903 that the Russian
Bolsheviks split from the Mensheviks. Rosa Luxemburg also
sensed the danger, and at the Dresden convention of the German
party she proposed to expel all those who voted for Bernstein’s
proposal, but Bebel and Kautsky did not support her. Plekhanov,
who was still a Marxist, also favored the expulsion of Bernstein.6
Generally, the right wing, particularly in the key parties of
Germany and Austria, maneuvered against a split. They even vot-
ed for motions condemning their position, seeking by the most
unprincipled devices to avoid a head-on collision with the power-
ful left. At any price, they wanted to keep within the mass parties.
In the United States, in 1901, the Socialist Party, headed by Debs,
Hillquit, and Berger, had been organized in a breakaway from the
sectarian Socialist Labor Party, led by De Leon, but the left in the
Socialist Party was still much too immature to make a real stand
against the blatant Bernsteinites, whose chief spokesman was Vic-
tor Berger.
WHITE CHAUVINISM IN THE AMERICAN SOCIALIST PARTY
One of the worst forms of opportunism in the Second Interna-
tional was white chauvinism, such as expressed in the American
Socialist Party towards the Negro people. For many decades the
Negro masses, after being freed from chattel slavery by the Civil
War of 1861-65, were subjected to the most barbarous persecu-
tion. They were denied the rights of education, to work in indus-
try, to vote as citizens, to serve in the armed forces, to enjoy the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
common rights of travelers in hotels, railroad cars, etc. And al-
most weekly the world was shocked by barbarous lynchings in
which Negroes were whipped, shot, hanged, or burned to death.
But the Socialist Party calmly ignored this whole dreadful sit-
uation. It did not demand the abolition of lynching and the Jim
Crow system. Kipnis, commenting upon this criminal lethargy,
says: “There is no record that the party ever actively opposed dis-
crimination against Negroes from 1901 to 1912” (the period of his
study).7 Indeed, the party press reeked with white chauvinist
slanders of the Negro people, in which such outstanding
Bernsteinites as Berger and Untermann were the most notorious
offenders. The party itself even theorized its indifference towards
the tragic position of the Negro people by declaring repeatedly
that, being the party of the working class as a whole, it could not
raise special demands for specific groups in the population. The
only relief the party held out to the outraged, exploited, and mur-
derously oppressed Negro people was that some day socialism
would be established and they would then be freed.
In 1903, prior to the Amsterdam congress, the International
Socialist Bureau, stirred by shocking stories of Negro persecution
in the United States, wrote to the American Socialist Party as to
its stand regarding lynching. This letter brought forth the follow-
ing shameless white chauvinist reply: “The Socialist Party points
out the fact that nothing less than the abolition of the capitalist
system and the substitution of the socialist system can provide
conditions under which the hunger maniacs, kleptomaniacs, sex-
ual maniacs, and all other offensive and now lynchable human
degenerates will cease to be begotten or produced.”8 This shame-
less justification of lynching apparently did not shock the I.S.B.,
for nothing further was heard of the matter.
THE LEFT CARRIES THE AMSTERDAM CONGRESS
A very important question before the congress in Amsterdam
was the newly-begun Russo-Japanese war. This was the first
large-scale war of the imperialist period. The two Socialist parties
most concerned – the Russian and the Japanese – took a sound
revolutionary position, strongly opposing the war. The dramatic
high point of the congress came when Plekhanov of Russia shook
hands warmly with Sen Katayama of Japan and they both pledged
the solidarity of their respective parties in a common struggle

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 BERNSTEIN REVISIONISM
against the war.9 As usual, however, the resolution for a general
strike in case of war was voted down by the congress. The recent
general strikes in Belgium 1902, Sweden 1902, and Holland 1903,
were sharply raising this question throughout the International.
The major attention of the Amsterdam congress was directed
towards the burning question of Bernsteinism. The heated discus-
sion took up most of the sessions. The German party led the fight.
As Lenz says, it “appeared at the Amsterdam congress as the guard-
ian of the Marxist line in opposition to revisionism.”10 The fight
against revisionism was led by Bebel, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Lenin,
Luxemburg, Guesde, and De Leon. Jaurès, aided by Vandervelde,
Auer, and others, conducted the fight for the right wing.
The final battle turned around the adoption of what was sub-
stantially the resolution of the Dresden congress of the German
Social-Democracy in 1903 on the question, which was re-
introduced by the Guesdists. This resolution sharply condemned
revisionism and ministerialism, and militantly endorsed a class
struggle policy. The Jaurèsist following would have been satisfied
with a re-endorsement of the Kautsky “rubber resolution” of 1900.
Adler and Vandervelde undertook to come to the rescue of the revi-
sionists with a weasel-worded resolution which, while making a
play of class struggle phraseology, specifically failed to condemn
revisionism as such. De Leon also introduced a resolution, rejecting
outright the Kautsky resolution of four years earlier.
In the congress balloting De Leon’s resolution got only his
own vote. But the Adler-Vandervelde resolution almost carried;
the vote for it was 21 to 21, but it failed of passage because of the
tie vote rule. The Dresden-Amsterdam resolution carried by a
vote of 25 to 5, with 6 parties, holding 12 votes, abstaining. The
countries voting against were Australia 2, England 1, France 1,
Norway 1. The abstainers were Argentina 2, Belgium 2, Denmark
2, Holland 2, Switzerland 2, Sweden 2. The text of the resolution
reads as follows:
THE DRESDEN-AMSTERDAM RESOLUTION
“The congress repudiates to the fullest extent possible the ef-
forts of the revisionists who have for their object the modification
of our tried and victorious policy based on the class war, and the
substitution, for the conquest of political power by an unceasing
attack on the bourgeoisie, of a policy of concession to the estab-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
lished order of society.
“The consequence of such revisionist tactics would be to turn
a party striving for the most speedy transformation possible of
bourgeois society into socialist society – a party therefore revolu-
tionary in the best sense of the word – into a party satisfied with
the reform of bourgeois society.
“For this reason the congress, convinced, in opposition to the
revisionist tendencies, that class antagonisms, far from diminish-
ing, continually increase in bitterness, declares:
“1. That the party rejects all responsibility of any sort under
the political and economic conditions based on capitalist produc-
tion, and therefore can in no wise countenance any measure tend-
ing to maintain in power the dominant class.
“2. The Social-Democracy can strive for no participation in
the government under bourgeois society, this decision being in
accordance with the Kautsky resolution passed at the Interna-
tional Congress of Paris in 1900.
“The congress further repudiates every attempt to blur the ev-
er-growing class antagonisms, in order to bring about an under-
standing with bourgeois parties.
“The congress relies upon the Socialist parliamentary groups
to use their power, increased by the number of their members and
by the great accession of electors who support them, to persevere
in their propaganda toward the final object of socialism, and, in
conformity with our program, to defend most resolutely the inter-
ests of the working class, the extension and consolidation of polit-
ical liberties, in order to obtain equal rights for all; to carry on
more vigorously than ever the fight against militarism, against the
colonial and imperialist policy, against injustice, oppression and
exploitation of every kind; and finally to exert itself energetically
to perfect social legislation and to bring about the realization of
the political and civilizing mission of the working class.”11
The combined left and center won the victory at the congress,
but obviously the right wing was not decisively beaten. The
strength of the revisionists was shown in full in the vote on the
sneaky right-wing Adler-Vandervelde resolution, which so nar-
rowly escaped passage. The large number of abstentions on the
main resolution was a further manifestation of opportunist
strength. The International was yet to hear much from the Bern-
stein revisionists, to its own ultimate disaster.

182
20. Lenin: The Party of a New Type
By the turn of the century the historic trend of the Second In-
ternational was definitely away from Marxism and towards right
opportunism. The major parties comprised in the International
were increasingly falling victim to petty-bourgeois illusions bred
by the “prosperity” of the upswing period of imperialism in their
respective countries. True, the right wing was defeated in the Am-
sterdam congress of 1904 and during the next few years it was
also to suffer many other formal defeats, especially in the German
party, the eventual stronghold of revisionism. Yet the right wing
generally tended to become stronger and, with its revisionist pro-
gram, to get more and more entrenched in the leadership of the
several Socialist parties. Moreover, the developing and vacillating
center group was proving steadily less capable of resisting the ad-
vancing right and was tending constantly to surrender to it. As for
the weak left wing in most of Europe, it was generally confused,
immature, and quite unable to overcome the process of political
degeneration that was gradually engulfing the International.
Powerful opposition from the left nevertheless was developing
against the stifling revisionism of the Second International, and
by 1904 it was already well marked. Its center was in Russia, an
industrially backward country that had hitherto played only a
small role in the International, and its leader was Lenin, who was
generally but little known at that time in world labor circles. The
Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party could and did come
forth as the leading Marxist, anti-revisionist force in the Second
International. This occurred basically because, whereas in the
western capitalist countries the socialist revolution seemed vague
and far off, in Russia, as the follow-up of the impending bourgeois
revolution, it was obviously knocking at the door and imperatively
demanding basic attention. The new revolutionary program, de-
veloped chiefly by Lenin, was Bolshevism, or as it came to be later
known, Marxism-Leninism.
“Leninism,” says Stalin, “is the Marxism of the epoch of impe-
rialism and the proletarian revolution.”1 Marxism-Leninism was
the product of developing world imperialism and the Russian
Revolution. Its natural point of origin was tsarist Russia, where
the contradictions of imperialism were the sharpest, and where
the proletarian revolution was rapidly brewing. The great signifi-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
cance of Lenin is that, with his brilliant intellect and indomitable
revolutionary spirit, he was able to interpret theoretically the
basic economic and political currents of the imperialist period
and to translate them into successful revolutionary action.
LENIN AND HIS WORK
Lenin (1870-1924) was born on April 10, 1870, in Simbirsk,
Russia. His father, by birth a peasant, had become a school teach-
er, and his mother was also of modest origin. His older brother
Alexander, one of the most active organizers of Narodnaya Volya
(People’s Will), a terrorist organization, was hanged by the tsar’s
government in 1887. The same year Lenin entered the Kazan uni-
versity, the universities in St. Petersburg and Moscow being
barred against him as the brother of an executed revolutionary.
He at once became active in the university’s revolutionary student
movement and got expelled one month after his entry. He finally
managed, however, chiefly on the basis of self-study, to get a de-
gree in law from St. Petersburg, but he never practiced the profes-
sion. He participated vigorously in the workers’ revolutionary
movement, for which in 1897 he was banished to Siberia for three
years. Thereafter, except for a short while during the time of the
revolution of 1905, he lived abroad until early in 1917.
Like Marx and Engels, Lenin was a man both of theory and
action. Not only did he resurrect the main theories of Marx, which
the revisionists thought they had safely buried forever, but he also
developed Marxism further to embrace the many problems gen-
erated by the period of imperialism in all countries. All his adult
life Lenin was an active participant in the concrete struggles of the
workers. The synthesis of his immense theoretical and practical
work was his triumphant leadership of the workers and peasants
in the great Russian Revolution of November 1917.
Lenin, who collided with the revisionists on all major points,
especially attacked their fundamentally wrong analysis of imperi-
alism. The revisionists saw in the phenomena of expanding impe-
rialism the softening of class antagonisms, the necessity of class
collaboration, the transformation of the state into an organism
standing apart from classes, the increase of capitalist stability, the
development of “organized capitalism,” and generally the ending
of the period of revolution and the opening up of opportunities
for the workers to make a gradual and peaceful advance to social-

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 PARTY OF A NEW TYPE
ism. They considered the works of Marx and Engels obsolete, as
applying only to the earlier, competitive state of capitalism. Len-
in, on the other hand, saw in imperialism the intensification of
class and national antagonisms, the beginning of the decline of
capitalism, the opening of a new era of great wars and revolu-
tions. He defended the writings of Marx and Engels as having full
validity in this period, and he made them the basis of all his fur-
ther analysis and revolutionary activity.
THE BUILDING OF A REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAM
On this basis Lenin, in practice and in his many great writ-
ings, proceeded to reestablish the whole body of Marxian theory,
which the revisionist heads of the Second International had long
since discarded. As against the revisionist acceptance of bourgeois
democracy and of the bourgeois state, Lenin demonstrated with
crushing force that the capitalist state was an organ of the capital-
ist class for the repression of the working class, and that the
workers, in order to emancipate themselves, would have to de-
stroy it and to construct a new regime. He further demonstrated
in theory, as well as by the practice of the Paris Commune, and
finally by the Russian Revolution itself, that the form of social or-
ganization the victorious workers would set up after the abolition
of capitalism would be none other than the dictatorship of the
proletariat, so brilliantly foreseen by Marx and Engels.
On the solid foundation of Marxist principles, Lenin also
widely developed proletarian revolutionary strategy and tactics
for the period of imperialism, and he directly cultivated the Marx-
ist forces in many countries. Among the basic propositions
worked out by him were: the leading role of the proletariat in all
present-day revolutions, bourgeois or socialist; the alliance be-
tween the workers and the peasantry, and between the workers in
the imperialist countries and the peoples in the colonial lands; the
class differentiation in the villages; the question of self-
determination for oppressed peoples; the relationship between
immediate demands and the fight for socialism; the role of the
trade unions and their relationship to the party; the law and tech-
niques of proletarian insurrection; the general structure upon
which socialism will be built; the possibility of the establishment
of socialism in one country; the growing over of the bourgeois
revolution into the proletarian revolution, and many more. All
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
this was in fundamental contrast to the current right-wing poli-
cies of tailing the working class after the bourgeoisie, casting off
the peasantry as a reactionary mass, having contempt for self-
determination and the struggles of the colonial peoples, concen-
trating solely upon immediate demands, and their general failure
to consider or to fight for socialism.
One of Lenin’s greatest accomplishments was to theorize and
construct the Communist Party itself, without which all talk of
working class emancipation and socialism would be vain chatter.
In opposition to the bourgeois conceptions of the right wing for
an amorphous party, without a real program, including all sorts of
trimmers and opportunists and bereft of discipline, Lenin built a
party on the basis of the principles laid down by Marx and Engels;
that is, as the vanguard of the proletariat. Lenin’s is a party of
revolutionists, based on the working class and its allies, made up
of the best fighters and most devoted workers in the labor move-
ment, the various people’s organizations, cooperatives, etc., self-
critical, and with a highly developed Marxist ideology – a party
which in every respect: on the battlefields, in the workshops, on
the farms, in the colleges, and in the legislative halls, truly stands
at the head of the working class and the whole nation. The Com-
munist Party, as conceived and forged by the great Lenin, is the
most highly developed type of political organization ever pro-
duced by humankind, an indispensability for achieving socialism.
With his great political and organizational program, Lenin
laid down the science of revolutionary struggle for the period of
imperialism, and he therewith provided the theoretical basis for
the later revolutions in Russia, China, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
Hungary, Bulgaria, East Germany, Rumania, Albania, Latvia,
Lithuania, Esthonia, Indo-China, Korea, and many others that are
still to come. By the time of the outbreak of the Russian Revolu-
tion in 1905, Lenin had already worked out most of the main es-
sentials of his revolutionary program, which constituted the basic
challenge to the revisionism that was becoming increasingly dom-
inant in the Second International.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE PARTY IN RUSSIA
The first organized Marxist force in Russia was the Emancipa-
tion of Labor group, formed in 1883 by G. V. Plekhanov, together
with Martov, Paul Axelrod, Vera Zasulich, and Leo Deutsch.2

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 PARTY OF A NEW TYPE
Plekhanov (1856-1918), was formerly a Narodnik, or Populist, but
became a Marxist, and in his early years he was one of the most
brilliant Marxist theorists in the whole Second International. His
eventual general orientation, however, was away from Marxism,
through centrism to revisionism. Lenin, arriving in St. Petersburg
in 1893, became active in the Marxist ranks, organizing there the
League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.
Lenin’s group took a militant part in the growing strike move-
ment and in further clarifying the line of the Russian Marxists,
thus preparing the way for the foundation of a national Marxist
political organization.
As a Marxist party must, the Party in tsarist Russia grew in
struggle, not only against the employers and the reactionary land-
lords, but also against the various alien political tendencies aris-
ing among the working class and its allies. The first ideological
enemy that it had to overcome was Narodism (Populism). The
Narodniks, while vaguely advancing a socialist perspective, “erro-
neously held that the principal revolutionary force was not the
working class, but the peasantry, and that the rule of the tsars and
the landlords could be overthrown by peasant revolts alone.”3 The
Narodniks belittled the future development of capitalism and the
proletariat in Russia.
Plekhanov, and later Lenin, waged a brilliant polemic against
the petty-bourgeois Narodniks. They pointed out the rapid capi-
talist development that was already taking place in Russia and
they demonstrated the factors making for its continued growth.
They proved the proletariat to be the leading revolutionary class
and argued for a program of organized political action on the ba-
sis of the working class. They condemned the Narodniks’ (Peo-
ple’s Will group) advocacy of individual terrorism. The general
result of this historic ideological warfare was to establish the he-
gemony of Marxism in the ranks of the working class. The
Narodniks, however, retained their strength among the peasantry,
and later, as Socialist-Revolutionaries, they were to play a very
important part in the oncoming revolutions.
After the arrest of Lenin and in the midst of the developing
trade union struggle, specifically in 1899, a new deviating group
appeared in the ranks of Russian workers. These were the so-
called Economists. “They declared that the workers should be
called upon to wage only an economic struggle against their em-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ployers; as for the political struggle, that was the affair of the lib-
eral bourgeoisie, to whom the leadership of the political struggle
was left.... They were the first group of compromisers and oppor-
tunists within the ranks of the Marxist organizations in Russia.”4
Lenin identified this opportunist group with the Bernstein revi-
sionists, and after his return in 1900 from Siberia, with sledge-
hammer blows, he routed it. During this historic controversy Len-
in, in his book, What Is To Be Done? composed the most pro-
found analysis of trade unionism ever written.
Still another major deviation within Russian Marxist ranks in
these crucial, formative years, was that of the “legal Marxists,” led
by Peter Struve and others. This group “cut out the very core of
Marxism, namely, the doctrine of the proletarian revolution and
the dictatorship of the proletariat.” They strove “to subordinate
and adapt the working class movement to the interests of bour-
geois society, to the interests of the bourgeoisie.”5 Relentlessly,
Lenin tore into this petty-bourgeois tendency and broke up its
following, such as it was, among the workers. The “legal Marx-
ists,” what was left of them, eventually went over outright to the
Octobrists and Constitutional Democrats, the main parties of the
capitalists in the 1917 Revolution.
During these intense and profound ideological struggles Len-
in quickly came forward as the main spokesman of Russian Marx-
ism, early outstripping the former leader, Plekhanov. It was then,
too, that Lenin wrote several of his famous books and pamphlets,
laying the foundations of communism in Russia, including, De-
velopment of Capitalism in Russia, What the “Friends of the Peo-
ple” Are and How They Fight Against the Social Democrats, What
Is To Be Done? and The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats.
The first attempt to establish the party on a national scale
took place in 1898 while Lenin was in Siberian exile. Nine Marx-
ists met in Minsk in March of that year and set up the Russian
Social-Democratic Labor Party at an underground convention. In
the face of the existing tsarist terrorism, however, the effort did
not prosper. Immediately after the convention the Central Com-
mittee members were all arrested. The new organization, with no
concrete program or constitution and with but few members, did
not succeed in establishing definite bonds among the widely scat-
tered Marxist groups. The party did not actually get established
until five years later.

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 PARTY OF A NEW TYPE
THE BIRTH OF BOLSHEVISM: LONDON, 1903
The London convention which founded the party, met in the
midst of a rising wave of mass struggle in Russia. There was an
industrial crisis which largely crippled the industries between
1901-3, and there were big strikes in many parts of the country.
These strikes, constantly becoming broader and more revolution-
ary in tone, were met with brutal violence from the tsar’s govern-
ment. During 1902 the movement spread to the peasants and they
set fire to the landlords’ mansions and seized their lands. Stu-
dents also became involved, and militant demonstrations took
place in many universities. Russia was building up to the Revolu-
tion of 1905.
Lenin laid solid preparations for the construction of the party
in London. He led in the establishment of the journal, Iskra; he
published his famous book, What Is To Be Done?, and he led a
broad educational campaign among the various Marxist groups.
Already in this preliminary work, Lenin gave a clear picture of the
disciplined, vanguard party that was to be built.
The congress opened on July 30, 1903, in Brussels; but owing
to police persecution it had to be moved to London. There were
43 delegates, representing 26 organizations. The Iskra-ists had
some 24 solid supporters. Lenin, Plekhanov, Martov, Axelrod,
Zasulich, and Trotsky were present. Stalin was not there, being in
Siberian exile. The opposition opposed the introduction into the
program of the dictatorship of the proletariat – which no other
party in the Second International specifically endorsed. They also
opposed including the right of self- determination and the formu-
lation of demands for the peasantry. The program had both min-
imum (immediate) and maximum (ultimate) demands. Lenin,
with the cooperation of Plekhanov, beat back the opposition, and
the revolutionary Iskra program was adopted.
The central fight took place over the party constitution.
Around this organizational question the two opposing political
currents in the convention took shape. Lenin’s plan (supported
then by Plekhanov) provided that one “could be a member of the
party who accepted its program, supported it financially, and be-
longed to one of its basic organizations”6; whereas Martov, sup-
ported among others by Trotsky, wanted a broad, amorphous or-
ganization. To be a member all one needed was to accept the pro-

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
gram and support the party financially – actual membership and
activity not being necessary. The difference was that Lenin want-
ed a fighting revolutionary party, a strong vanguard party; where-
as the opposition strove for a loose, undisciplined organization,
on the opportunist Social-Democratic model of the West.
Lenin could not make his conception fully prevail at the con-
gress, but when it came to the election of a Central Committee
and editors for the Iskra, Lenin’s group prevailed. It was in this
vote in the elections that the two factions acquired their historic
names of Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority). After
the convention the factional fight became intense, and by January
1905 the party was split, each group having its own central body
and press. During this struggle Lenin produced his famous book
on party program and organization, One Step Forward, Two Steps
Back. He led the Bolsheviks; while Martov, with increasing help
from Plekhanov and Trotsky, led the Mensheviks.
THE INTERNATIONAL INTERVENES
In line with the decision of the Second International at Am-
sterdam in 1904, that only one party from each country could be
affiliated, the International Socialist Bureau intervened in the
Russian Party split, with the avowed aim of establishing unity. In
February 1905 a proposition was adopted in the I.S.B. to set up an
arbitration committee headed by Bebel, to consider the Russian
situation. This amounted to letting the German party settle the
Russian factional fight. The Mensheviks accepted the proposal
and nominated Kautsky and Clara Zetkin as their representatives.
Lenin, however, refused to agree, stating that the issue was a mat-
ter of principle and therefore a question for a party congress ra-
ther than for an “arbitration committee” to dispose of.
This whole incident was important chiefly as showing how lit-
tle Lenin’s position was understood or accepted by the “lefts” –
Bebel, Kautsky, and others – in the International at this time. In
Die Neue Zeit, the chief weekly of the German Social-Democracy,
Rosa Luxemburg wrote unsympathetically of Lenin’s group, and
Kautsky, the editor of the paper, refused to publish Lenin’s side of
the controversy. Protesting against such treatment, Lenin de-
clared that Luxemburg’s article “extolled disorganization and
treachery” and condemned Kautsky’s action as “an attempt to
muffle our voice in the German Social-Democratic press by such

190
 PARTY OF A NEW TYPE
an unheard-of, rude and mechanical device as the boycott of the
pamphlet.”7 “Kautsky declared that if he had been present at the
Second congress [London, 1903] he would have voted for Martov,
against Lenin.”8 The development of the revolution in Russia
brought the futile party unity negotiations to an end.
The International had no inkling of the tremendous political
significance of the crystallization of the Bolshevik movement in
Russia. Lenin’s party of the new type meant the shaping of a
strong turn, away from the opportunist-infected parties of the
West which were increasingly forgetting the principles and per-
spectives of Marx, and toward the beginning of a truly revolution-
ary party, based firmly upon the elementary principles laid down
in The Communist Manifesto. This was, in fact, the seed corn of a
new and better International, which the revolutionary course of
events eventually was to bring to fruition. The victory of Lenin’s
group in Russian Marxist circles was, with the years, to have pro-
found effects not only within the Second International, but
throughout the entire world.

191
21. The Russian Revolution of 1905
The Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) was an imperialist clash
between two great rival powers striving to dismember and to oc-
cupy the northern areas of China (Manchuria). Anticipating the
Pearl Harbor pattern, Japan struck first, without declaring war,
inflicting crippling damage upon the Russian fleet at Port Arthur
on February 8, 1904. This was the first of a series of naval and
military disasters for Tsar Nicholas II’s forces. Incompetent, cor-
rupt, arrogant, the Russian high command suffered one blow af-
ter another.
Port Arthur was lost in December 1904; a crushing defeat was
suffered at Mukden in February 1905, where of 300,000 Russian
troops, 120,000 were killed, wounded or missing; in May 1905,
the Russian fleet was wiped out at the battle of Tsushima; and on
August 23, 1905, under the chairmanship of President Theodore
Roosevelt, the peace treaty was signed in Portsmouth, N. H.,
stripping Russia of Port Arthur, Southern Sakhalin, its Korean
sphere of influence, and the whole of Southern Manchuria. It was
a disastrous defeat for Russian imperialism.
THE RISING REVOLUTIONARY WAVE
From the outset, the Russian workers had no taste for this re-
actionary, imperialist war. They were already in a revolutionary
mood, which was greatly accentuated by the brutal slaughter of
the war and by the criminal actions of the tsar’s government and
field officers, who sent half-starved, half-armed troops in to be
butchered ruthlessly. The bitter tragedy of the war added to over-
flowing to the cup of misery of the oppressed people, and they
replied with the great revolution of 1905.1 This began even while
the war was going on. It was the first example of transforming an
imperialist war into a people’s revolution.
The historic movement started with a series of strikes. These
were headed mainly, but not exclusively by the Bolshevik wing of
the party. In December of 1904 a big Bolshevik-led strike of oil
workers developed in Baku. It resulted in a victory and a collec-
tive agreement for the workers, something unheard of previously
in Russia. “The Baku strike,” says Stalin, “was the signal for the
glorious actions in January and February all over Russia.” Many
other strikes developed, chief among them the January strike in
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 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905
the biggest metal works of St. Petersburg, the Putilov shops – a
party stronghold. The strike quickly spread all over the city.
There one of the most tragic events in Russian labor history
took place, the “Bloody Sunday” massacre before the Winter Pal-
ace in St. Petersburg on January 9, 1905. The peaceful demon-
stration of 140,000 persons was led by the priest Gapon, who had
secret police connections. The Bolsheviks warned the workers
that the tsar’s officers would order the troops to fire upon them,
but nevertheless the demonstration went ahead. The masses’ peti-
tion demanded “amnesty, civic liberty, normal wages, the land to
be gradually transferred to the people, convocation of a constitu-
ent assembly on the basis of universal and equal suffrage.”2 As the
party had warned, the tsar turned his guns against the unarmed
masses, with the result that more than 1,000 were killed and
2,000 wounded in a horrible butchery.
The tsar hoped by this frightfulness to crush the general strike
in St. Petersburg and also to terrorize the workers all over Russia.
But it had just the reverse effect. A great cry of outrage went up
from the Russian masses, in fact from labor all over the world.
The revolutionary movement, instead of being extinguished,
blazed up with vastly greater vigor. Strikes broke out in many
parts of the country. During January 440,000 workers struck, or
more than in the previous ten years. The revolution had begun.
During the next several months, as the war against Japan still
went on, the strike movement spread into all the industrial cen-
ters. Lenin says that in this revolutionary year there were some
2,800,000 strikers, or twice the total number of workers. In Lodz,
Poland, the workers built barricades in the streets and fought off
the troops. And in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, an important textile cen-
ter, the workers, in a long, fiercely fought strike, set up a Council
of Representatives, “which was actually one of the first Soviets of
Workers’ Deputies in Russia.”3
The revolutionary movement also spread to the peasantry.
Lenin states that during the Autumn of 1905, “the peasants
burned down no less than 2,000 estates and distributed among
themselves the provisions that the predatory nobility had robbed
from the people.”4 Among various of the oppressed nationalities
revolutionary sentiment also flared up. Students tore up the tsar’s
pictures and the Russian schoolbooks, and they shouted to the
government officials, “Go back to Russia.” Polish pupils demand-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ed a Soviet. Sensational was the revolt of the battleship Prince
Potemkin, in the Black Sea in June. The other warships of the
fleet refused to fire upon the rebellious crew. Finally, however,
running out of coal and provisions, the Potemkin had to steam to
Rumania and surrender there.
Frightened at the growing revolution, the tsar, on August 19,
“conceded” a “Duma of the Empire” to the Russian people. Based
on a crassly unjust system of class voting, this was to be a sort of
“advisory parliament,” and its political purpose was to divert the
rising revolutionary current into harmless parliamentary chan-
nels. It was the time-honored Bismarckian device of ruling clas-
ses, who, finding themselves unable to rule solely by violence, also
made use of pseudo political concessions.
TWO TACTICS: MENSHEVIK AND BOLSHEVIK
The Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party grew rapidly in
the great mass upheaval. “The hundreds of revolutionary Social-
Democrats,” said Lenin, “suddenly grew into thousands.” But the
party was split, not formally but actually, into Menshevik and
Bolshevik sections. In order to secure some degree of united ac-
tion, the Bolsheviks tried to bring the Mensheviks into the party
convention in London in April 1905; but the latter refused, and
instead held their own convention, in Geneva. As a result, two
conflicting political lines were developed; the disputes between
the two groups over “organizational” questions emerged, as Lenin
well understood beforehand, as sharply varying political pro-
grams of action.5
The Mensheviks understood the current struggle in Russia to
be simply a bourgeois revolution of the old style. Therefore, ac-
cording to them, the bourgeoisie had to lead it. The role of the
working class was to support the bourgeoisie in overthrowing
tsarist absolutism, but in so doing it must not engage in revolu-
tionary activities on its own account, as this would frighten the
bourgeoisie into the arms of feudal ultra-reaction. The peasantry
they wrote off as non-revolutionary, a viewpoint shared by Trot-
sky. Plekhanov said that, “apart from the bourgeoisie and the pro-
letariat we perceive no social forces in our country in which oppo-
sitional or revolutionary combinations might find support.”6 The
Menshevik perspective after victory was for a long developmental
period of Russian capitalism, with the prospect of socialism being

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 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905
shoved away off into the dim future – presumably to await some
distant time when the workers would quietly vote themselves into
power.
The Bolsheviks also understood the developing revolution to
be bourgeois in character; but at this point their agreement with
the Mensheviks ceased. The proceedings of the London conven-
tion of the party and also Lenin’s great book, Two Tactics of Social
Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, written shortly after
the convention, attacked the Menshevik position at all decisive
points and developed a basically different analysis and program.
Lenin made it clear that the bourgeoisie could not and would not
firmly lead the revolution; afraid of the working class, it would
tend to compromise with tsarism, as it did. Therefore, the work-
ing class must lead. Lenin also saw in the peasantry a powerful
revolutionary ally, as it was, which would march under the gen-
eral leadership of the proletariat.
Lenin envisioned a fundamentally different revolutionary per-
spective – not the establishment of a classical type bourgeois gov-
ernment and then a decades-long, indefinite period before social-
ism would be introduced, such as was previously the widespread
Social-Democratic belief, but the immediate setting up of a demo-
cratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. This, although
still within the framework of capitalism, would have the objective
of a relatively rapid transition to a socialist regime. Said Lenin:
“From the democratic revolution we shall at once, and according
to the degree of our strength, the strength of the class-conscious
and organized proletariat, begin to pass over to the socialist revo-
lution. We stand for continuous revolution. We shall not stop half
way.”7
Contrary to the Mensheviks, Lenin understood clearly that the
revolution could be victorious only through armed struggle. This
was the sole effective answer that the workers and peasants could
make to brutal tsarist autocrats who had replied with “Bloody
Sunday” to the peaceful demands of the people. The pacifist illu-
sions of the Mensheviks in this respect were high-lighted by Plek-
hanov’s revealing and treacherous remark after the defeat of the
December uprising: “They should not have taken up arms.”
Lenin’s general revolutionary line, based fundamentally upon
principles laid down long before by Marx, represented in the con-
ditions of modern imperialism a new program. It was basically
195
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
opposed to the general theories and policies prevalent throughout
the Second International, of which the Russian Menshevik pro-
gram was typically representative. Lenin’s was the broad revolu-
tionary path along which the Russian workers and peasants, in
November 1917, were to march to victory over the ruins of tsarism
and capitalism, and which was to open new perspectives to the
workers of the whole world.
THE HIGH TIDE OF THE REVOLUTION AND REACTION
During the Fall of 1905 the revolution took on great impetus.
In October a general strike of railroad workers swept the country.
This strike was joined by hosts of workers in other industries, also
by government employees, students, and intellectuals. About
1,500,000 workers struck. In the center of the strikes was the
demand for the eight-hour day. Peasant uprisings multiplied in
large sections of the country, national revolts began to take shape,
and scattered mutinies occurred in the army and navy. The Bol-
shevik slogan of the political mass strike had come into reality.
Crook calls it “the greatest political mass strike that the world had
known.”8 Soviets of workers’ deputies, in many instances includ-
ing peasants, sprang up in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and many
other cities and towns.
On October 17, the tsar issued another manifesto to the peo-
ple, this time promising them political reforms and a “legislative”
Duma. The Bolsheviks had boycotted his first “consultative” Du-
ma proposal. They also boycotted this second one.* The Menshe-
viks, on the other hand, who did not want to overthrow tsarism by
uprising but “to reform and improve it,” fell right into line with
the Duma plans of the tsar. “The Mensheviks sank into the mo-
rass of compromise and became vehicles of the bourgeois influ-
ence on the working class, virtual agents of the bourgeoisie within
the working class.”9
The climax of the Revolution was the December 1905 uprising
in Moscow. Lenin had returned to Russia in November, remain-
ing in hiding from the tsar’s police. The party issued a call for an

* Lenin later called this second boycott a mistake, as the revolution

by then was on the downgrade – the first boycott being justified by
the fact that the revolutionary wave was then rising.
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 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905
armed uprising. The political strike had grown into insurrection.
The call met with wide support among the masses, but with de-
termined opposition from the Mensheviks and other opportun-
ists. Trotsky, Parvus,* and others, leading the St. Petersburg Sovi-
et, the most important of all, kept that body from responding to
the call for armed struggle. On December 20, the insurrection be-
gan in Moscow. Barricades quickly spread over the city, and for
nine days an heroic but losing struggle was conducted in the face
of the tsar’s overwhelming armed forces. There were uprisings
also in Krasnoyarsk, Perm, Novorossisk, Sormovo, Sevastopol,
and Kronstadt, but they were all crushed.
During 1906 and 1907 the strike wave continued, but on a
diminishing scale; the crest of the Revolution had passed. On
June 3, 1907, the tsar dissolved the Duma, and the reaction under
Premier Stolypin formally set in. What was left of the freedom
won in 1905 was ruthlessly abolished. But the Russian working
class soon recovered from its defeat. Despite severe terrorism and
repression, already by 1912 the workers were again on the ad-
vance with broad strikes and political struggles. But this time they
were developing a cumulative strength that was able to carry
them through to ultimate victory.
There were various elementary reasons why the Revolution of
1905 failed.10 Among them were the lack of a stable alliance be-
tween the workers and the peasants, the disinclination of a large
section of the peasants to fight for the overthrow of tsardom, and
the help received by the tsar’s government, politically and finan-
cially (two billion rubles),11 from the western imperialist powers.
But the most important factor in the defeat was the political split
in the party itself, with the Mensheviks sabotaging every phase of
the struggle. Lenin called the 1905 Revolution a “dress rehearsal”
for the great November Revolution of 1917, and a part of that
dress rehearsal was that the right-wing Social-Democrats had
their apprenticeship in counter-revolution.
THE INTERNATIONAL AND THE REVOLUTION
The 1905 Revolution produced far-reaching repercussions
throughout the world of labor. It also had a deep influence upon

* He became a German agent in World War I.

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the oppressed peoples of the Middle and Far East, as the oncom-
ing national liberation revolutions in China, Persia, and Turkey
were soon to make clear. Capitalist circles all over the world also
were deeply shocked by the great upheaval. Never since the days
of the Paris Commune had they seen socialism thus staring them
in the face, but this time it was on a vastly broader and more
threatening scale. The whole capitalist system felt the great earth-
quake shock.
One of the pronounced effects of the Revolution was to speed
up the ideological differentiation within the labor movement. In
the light of the powerful attempt of the Russian toilers to over-
throw tsarist absolutism, theoretical disputes between the various
groupings took on real flesh and blood. From this period on, the
internal tendencies and groupings became definitely more
marked. The right became more conscious and aggressive; the
center began to assume more concrete shape and to veer more to
the right, and the left started to feel its way towards a definite
program and organization.
The Revolution developed a host of urgent lessons for the in-
ternational movement. It made clear many vital questions – the
application of the armed insurrection under modern conditions,
the methods and results of the mass political strike, the relation
between the bourgeois and the socialist revolutions, the role of
soviets as the base of the future society, the indispensability of a
solid, disciplined Marxist party, the treacherous role of the Men-
sheviks, the Anarchists, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. It was
fundamental that these elementary lessons be brought home to
the workers of the world.
The left wing, and to some extent the center, tried to do this.
Lenin wrote voluminously and brilliantly on the Revolution. Rosa
Luxemburg said that the labor movement would be many years in
absorbing the basic lessons that the great struggle had to teach.
The right opportunists, however, understood from the start that,
at all costs, they had to keep from the workers the real message of
the Revolution. So for the most part their discussion of the great
upheaval was confined to pouring out glowing praises in public
speeches for the heroism of the Russian workers. The 1905 Revo-
lution belongs more to the tradition of the First and Third Inter-
nationals than to that of the Second International.
The right opportunists were especially anxious to keep from

198
 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905
the workers in the West the tremendous significance of the Rus-
sian workers taking up arms. They had thought that by the distor-
tion of Engels’ article (see Chapter 16) they had forever done away
with this most inconvenient question. They took refuge in Plek-
hanov’s treacherous comment, “They should not have taken up
arms,” and they undertook, and largely succeeded, in brushing
aside the whole matter on the basis that such a resort to armed
struggle – a sign of the feudal primitiveness of Russia – could not
take place in the western capitalist countries where the workers
generally had the franchise. The revisionists were thus able to
blur over the validity of the traditional revolutionary weapon, the
insurrection, which the workers had learned side-by-side with the
petty bourgeoisie in many revolutions; but they could not, howev-
er, fully obscure the significance of that great modern revolution-
ary weapon, developed by the workers themselves, the general
strike.
THE QUESTION OF THE POLITICAL MASS STRIKE
Throughout the life of the First and Second Internationals
there had been an insistent demand, which was raised at almost
every congress, to endorse the use of the general strike, usually as
a means to fight war or as the road to the revolution, but some-
times also as a means to win the vote for the workers. However,
the proposition was generally voted down, except in the 1868
congress of the First International, when it was adopted as an an-
ti-war measure. In later years, the right-wing opportunists and
revisionists outdid themselves in "proving” how, under any and
all circumstances, the general strike was an impossibility. They
argued that it was wrong in principle. General strikes in various
European countries since 1900, but especially in the Revolution of
1905, knocked this nonsense into a cocked hat. With their huge
mass political strikes, the Russian Bolsheviks had demonstrated
beyond any doubt the great power of this elementary weapon as
one of the highest forms of the workers’ struggle.
Consequently, sentiment for the mass strike spread rapidly in
many countries. Rosa Luxemburg especially championed it in the
Second International.12 In Vienna, in October 1905, when the
news reached there of the great Russian strikes, the Social-
Democratic Party, then in convention, adjourned and prepared
for an immediate mass strike. Mass demonstrations began, and
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
on November 28 the industries all over Austria were paralyzed by
a solid walkout demonstration.13 Barricades were erected in Pra-
gue. The central demand was for universal suffrage. In January
1907, after stalling the issue as long as possible, the vote was
granted by the government under the threat of a still broader gen-
eral strike. In the Spring elections of that year, the Austrian party
got over a million votes and its parliamentary representation in-
creased from 11 to 87.
The issue of the mass strike came to a head in the German So-
cial-Democracy, the basic organization of the Second Internation-
al. The question was to knock out the class system of voting and
to establish the universal, direct, secret, and equal suffrage. Thus,
in Prussia in the 1903 elections the Socialists polled 314,149 votes
and the Conservatives 324,137, but the Conservatives got 143
Representatives and the Socialists got none. The revisionist lead-
ers promptly saw the great danger the proposition of the political
mass strike held for their whole program of class collaboration,
and they resolved to kill it by any means. Already in May 1905,
the Legien leaders of organized labor, at their trade union conven-
tion in Cologne, sharply condemned the general strike. They knew
the question was later to be passed upon by the convention of the
party and they undertook to pre-determine the latter’s action. The
resolution, overwhelmingly adopted, said: “The congress consid-
ers that the general strike, as it is portrayed by the Anarchists and
other people without any expression in the sphere of the econom-
ic struggle, is unworthy of discussion; it warns the working class
against neglecting its day-to-day work by the acceptance and dis-
semination of such ideas.”14
The Social-Democratic Party congress met in Jena in Septem-
ber 1905. Bebel made a report on the mass political strike, pre-
senting it as a defensive weapon. Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin,
and others on the left, made vigorous Marxist speeches for the
political strike. The center wobbled on the question, but the right
wing made an all-out offensive against it. Legien, David, and oth-
er opportunists denounced the general strike as “general non-
sense,” asserted that in any case it was impossible, and declared
that it constituted the revolution itself. The convention, however,
voted overwhelmingly in the sense of Bebel’s report, adopting a
resolution which gave a limited endorsement of the mass political
strike, as follows: “In the event of an attack on the universal,

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 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905
equal, direct, and secret franchise, or on the right of association, it
is the duty of the whole working class to use every means which is
appropriate to ward off the attack. The party congress considers
that one of the most effective means of preventing such a political
crime against the working class or of winning rights which are
essential to their emancipation is the widest possible use of mass
cessation of work.”15
The contrary actions of the national trade union and party
conventions, one condemning the general strike and the other
endorsing it, thus created a crisis in the German labor movement.
It was the climax of the tug-of-war that had been developing for
several years between the authority of the unions and that of the
party, or more concretely, between the clique of reactionary bu-
reaucrats who were controlling the already powerful trade unions
and the group of more radically inclined petty-bourgeois intellec-
tuals who were dominating the party. A way was found out of this
impasse by holding a secret conference at Mannheim in February
1906 between the Central Committee of the party and the General
Commission of the trade unions, at which the party leaders
agreed not only to abandon their project for mass political strikes,
but also to accept the trade union leaders’ ultimatum that the
matter could not even be discussed in the ranks of the labor un-
ions. Bebel organized this surrender.16
The surrender of the Bebel-Kautsky party leadership to the
opportunist trade union bureaucrats marked a tragic milestone in
the history of the German Social-Democracy. It enormously
strengthened the position of the right wing and weakened that of
the center and left groups. The opportunist trade union leaders
became dominant in the party. Illustrative of the type of leader-
ship then in the party, the Reichstag representatives, from 1903 to
1906, consisted of the following: 13 intellectuals and bourgeois, 15
petty bourgeois, 54 of proletarian origin, most of whom were high
trade union officials.17 The 1906 debacle largely laid the basis for
the line-up of revisionist leadership that was to mislead the Ger-
man working class to overwhelming disaster a decade later in the
first great world war.

201
22. Colonialism and War: Stuttgart (1907)
The seventh congress of the Second International was held at
Stuttgart in August 1907, the first of such world congresses of la-
bor ever to take place in Germany. In attendance were some
1,000 delegates, a number which was in striking contrast to the
tiny congresses held by the First International a generation be-
fore. The reports to the congress showed a continuous and rapid
growth of the workers’ organizations in many countries – parties,
trade unions, cooperatives – and an atmosphere of enthusiasm
prevailed. A demonstration of 50,000 workers opened the con-
gress. The whole labor world focussed its attention upon this im-
portant international gathering.
Since the meeting of the Second International in Amsterdam
in 1904 the tremendous political fact of the Russian Revolution
had taken place. But the opportunist leaders of the International,
as Lenz remarks, did not want the congress to pay too much at-
tention to this great event, for it was packed with explosive les-
sons. So, in their speeches they confined themselves mostly to
glowing praise for the heroism of the Russian workers and to easy
general pledges of solidarity with them.
A highly significant feature of the Stuttgart congress was that
Lenin attended it as the head of the Russian delegation. His
standing was not great among the well-known world figures who
led the congress and who generally looked upon him as a leftist
extremist bred of the special Russian situation.
THE COLONIAL QUESTION
One of the basic questions handled by the congress was that
of the colonies. During the previous 30 years all the major powers
had helped themselves to vast stretches of territory, as we have
remarked earlier, and they had set up the most atrocious systems
of oppression and exploitation among the populations. These
powers were now quarrelling ominously over their colonies, and
colonialism had become an urgent political question.
Notoriously, the right Social-Democrats in all countries either
openly or covertly supported or conciliated the colonial policy of
their national imperialist bourgeoisies. The trade union bureau-
crats also were not slow to observe that the capitalists, to win the
acquiescence of organized labor, were not averse to sharing with
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 COLONIALISM AND WAR
the skilled labor aristocracy some crumbs of the rich super-profits
wrung from the colonial peoples. The petty bourgeoisie also
shared in the “prosperity” bred of the looting of the colonies, and
the Social-Democratic intellectuals reflected this fact.
Despite the occasional protests of Marxists, the labor
movement in England was no serious obstacle to the seizure of an
immense empire by Great Britain during the last half of the 19th
century. Most of the top trade union leaders of the period raised
no objection to the overrunning of backward lands by the great
powers, particularly by their own country. Cole and Postgate say
of the Fabians: “Many of the Fabians, especially Bernard Shaw,
were not without a touch of the imperialist spirit. Shaw, for
example, intensely disliked small nations and backward peoples
as obstacles to the onward march of civilization, and was inclined
to regard the British Empire... as a potentially civilizing force.”1
Generally, revisionist Social-Democrats in Germany, France,
Belgium, Holland, and other imperialist lands held views akin to
Shaw’s, although usually they were not so frank in expressing
them. Nor were some left wingers entirely free from such
illusions.
Imperialist tendencies were no less crass in labor’s ranks in
the United States. At first the Gompers trade union oligarchy
made some protest against the American seizure of Cuba, Puerto
Rico, and the Philippines in the Spanish-American imperialist
war of 1898, but they soon subsided and became ready for any
imperialist adventure on the part of the super-arrogant monopo-
lists. Kipnis thus sums up the attitude of American socialist policy
at the time regarding imperialism: “To the Social-Democrats of
both parties [S.P. and S.L.P.], imperialism was no issue at all.
They held it was a bone of contention between large and small
capitalists, but of no concern to the working class.... Since the
workers could buy back only half of what they produced, and
since capitalists could not consume all of the other half, the great
trusts were forced to seek markets abroad.” Commenting on a
statement by Chauncey Depew that the United States had only
five percent of the markets of the Orient and needed 50 percent,
Eugene V. Debs, left-wing leader (in a speech on September 29,
1900), remarked: “The getting of the other 45 percent constitutes
the white man’s burden at the present time.”2 Characteristically,
the American socialist movement almost completely ignored the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
long-continued shocking persecution of the Negro people in the
United States.
The debate on the colonial question was immediately precipi-
tated at the congress by the recent experience of the Social-
Democratic Party of Germany. The Reichstag fraction, in 1904, in
protest against the butchery of the Hereros in Southwest Africa by
German troops, had withheld their vote from the war credits (lat-
er voting against them). As a result of petty-bourgeois defections
in the ensuing national elections of 1906, the party, although it
gained some quarter million votes all told, lost 38 seats.3 The
right-wing leaders, therefore, concluded that the time was ripe for
them to work out a “Socialist” colonial policy which would in the
future prevent such unfortunate clashes with the imperialists over
the colonial question. To this end, the matter was put on the
agenda of the congress at Stuttgart.
Accordingly, the Stuttgart congress commission, under the
leadership of the notorious Dutch revisionist, van Kol, adopted a
resolution in which these passages occurred: “The congress de-
clares that the usefulness or the necessity of the colonies in gen-
eral – and particularly to the working class – is greatly exaggerat-
ed. It does not, however, reject colonial policy in principle and for
all time, for under a socialist regime it may work in the interests
of civilization.” The effect of this conception, of course, would
have been formal recognition of imperialism. As it was, the Se-
cond International parties were doing little or nothing to fight
colonialism, especially not in the colonies themselves, and this
resolution would have made things even worse.
The left and center in the congress, however, militantly reject-
ed the crass opportunism of the commission and struck out the
offending paragraph on “socialist” colonialism. Gankin and Fisher
remark that, “The voting on the paragraph containing this state-
ment revealed the interesting fact that a majority of the delega-
tions from large countries possessing colonies, and all the dele-
gates of the small colonial powers, favored retention of the para-
graph.”4 The congress, nevertheless, by a vote of 127 to 108,*

* In this congress for the first time, the various parties were pro-
rated delegates, from two for the smallest parties to 20 for the
largest.
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 COLONIALISM AND WAR
adopted the amended resolution, endorsing the previous resolu-
tions of 1900 and 1904 and condemning outright “capitalist colo-
nial policy;” but set no definite perspective for the independent
development of the more backward peoples industrially and polit-
ically. This was a defeat for the revisionists, but of course they did
not let it interfere with their opportunist practices.
ANTI-MILITARISM AND ANTI-WAR
The high point of the Stuttgart congress was its action against
the growing war danger. Already the premonitory rumblings of a
great European war were to be heard and the workers everywhere
were deeply concerned. The several big powers were beginning to
pile up armaments and they were increasingly colliding with each
other. In 1899 the Hague Peace Tribunal, forerunner of the
League of Nations, was set up, but it was obviously unable to
compose the sharp differences among the imperialist govern-
ments. The Algeciras conference of 1906 had also failed to achieve
a definite agreement between Germany and France on the Moroc-
can question.
Four resolutions against war, three of them from the French
delegation, came before the congress. The most significant were
by Bebel and Gustav Hervé. Bebel’s resolution, couched in vague
terms, followed the traditional line of the Second International on
the question. It was so general in terms that even the extreme
right wing rallied enthusiastically to its support, to Bebel’s embar-
rassment. The second resolution was presented by Hervé in the
name of a fraction of the French delegation. Hervé, an intellectual
and a dabbler in syndicalism, was a noted opponent of patriotism
in all its forms, although he eventually supported World War I.
His resolution demanded that “In view of the diplomatic notes
which threaten the peace of Europe from all sides, the congress
calls upon all comrades to answer any declaration of war, no mat-
ter from what side it is made, with the military strike and with
insurrection.”
The discussion of the several resolutions exposed the great
amount of confusion and opportunism prevailing in the Interna-
tional on the general question of the struggle against war. Bebel
incorrectly believed that it was possible to determine which coun-
try was the aggressor on the basis of who fired the first shot. “Af-
fairs,” said he, “are no longer in such shape when the threads of
205
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
war catastrophe are hidden to educated and observing students of
politics. Closet diplomacy has ceased to be.” Hervé made no dis-
tinction between just and unjust wars, but condemned all alike.
The Jaures-Vaillant position had in it the elements of the “patriot-
ic” defense of the bourgeois fatherland, as also did that of the no-
torious revisionists of Germany, Austria, and other countries.5
Lenin intervened in the question. Like Marx, Lenin did not
believe that a general strike was sufficient to combat war. He de-
clared that imperialist war could only be successfully countered
by proletarian revolution. Consequently he and Rosa Luxemburg
formulated an amendment to this effect to the Bebel resolution,
which Rosa Luxemburg, in the name of the Russian and Polish
delegations, presented to the sub-commission. Martov also signed
the proposal. Bebel insisted that the wording be toned down
sharply, as otherwise it would result in the dissolution of the
German Social-Democratic organizations by the government.6
But the heart of the proposal remained. The Lenin-Luxemburg
amendment expressed the policies followed by the Bolsheviks
during the Russo-Japanese war and it laid down the line of future
revolutionary struggle against imperialist war. As Lenz remarks, it
“gave Bebel’s ambiguous resolution a clear revolutionary charac-
ter.” The amendment, which in substance proposed to counter the
threatening imperialist war with a fight for socialism, comprised
the last two (italicized) paragraphs of this famous resolution,
which is included below in full.
The resolution, after considerable debate, was adopted by ac-
clamation. This action was another example of unprincipled vot-
ing on the part of the right-wingers. Certainly these opportunists,
as they were soon to demonstrate, had nothing in common with
Lenin’s revolutionary proposal, but they voted for it nevertheless.
Hervé acidly noted this fact, stating that the “Bebel and Vollmar
speeches in the commission were black, whereas the resolution is
white.” He said that in view of this gross contradiction it would be
appropriate for the German delegation to give the congress a
pledge that they really intended to carry out the resolution.
In presenting the resolution to the congress, Rosa Luxemburg
argued that the amendment went beyond the views of Jaurès and
Vaillant in contending that “in case of war the agitation should be
directed not merely toward the termination of war, but also to-
ward utilizing the war to hasten the overthrow of class rule in

206
 COLONIALISM AND WAR
general.” She also pointed out that, “The Russian Revolution
sprang up not merely as the result of the war; it has also served to
put an end to the war.” Lenin, in later commenting on the anti-
war resolution, criticized Hervé’s mechanical approach to “all
wars,” pointing out the necessity to distinguish revolutionary
wars, and he said, “This struggle must consist... in substituting
not merely peace for war, but socialism for capitalism. It is not a
matter of preventing the outbreak of war, but a matter of utilizing
the crisis resulting from the war to hasten the overthrow of the
bourgeoisie.” He sharply criticized the inadequacies of Bebel’s
resolution.7
THE STUTTGART RESOLUTION
“The congress ratifies the resolutions against militarism and
imperialism, adopted by previous International congresses and
declares once more that the struggle against militarism cannot be
separated from the socialist class struggle in general.
“Wars between capitalist states, generally, result from their
competitive struggle for world markets, for each state strives not
only to assure for itself the markets it already possesses, but also to
conquer new ones; in this the subjugation of foreign peoples and
countries comes to play a leading role. Furthermore, these wars are
caused by the incessant competition in armaments that character-
izes militarism, the chief instrument of bourgeois class rule and of
the economic and political subjugation of the working class.
“Wars are promoted by national prejudices which are system-
atically cultivated among civilized peoples in the interests of the
ruling classes for the purpose of diverting the proletarian masses
from their own class problems as well as from their duties of in-
ternational class solidarity.
“Hence wars are part of the very nature of capitalism; they
will cease only when the capitalist economic order is abolished or
when the number of sacrifices in men and money, required by the
advance in military technique, and the indignation provoked by
armaments drive the peoples to abolish this order.
“For this reason, the working class, which provides most of
the soldiers and makes most of the material sacrifices, is the natu-
ral opponent of war, for war contradicts its aim – the creation of
an economic order on a socialist basis for the purpose of bringing
about the solidarity of all peoples.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
“The congress therefore considers it the duty of the working
class, and especially of its representatives in the parliaments, to
combat with all their power naval and military armaments and to
refuse the means for these armaments by pointing out the class
nature of bourgeois society and the motive for maintaining na-
tional antagonisms. It is also their duty to see to it that the prole-
tarian youth is educated in the spirit of the brotherhood of peo-
ples and of socialism and is imbued with class consciousness.
“The congress sees in the democratic organization of the ar-
my, in the substitution of the militia for the standing army, an
essential guarantee that all offensive wars will be rendered impos-
sible and the overcoming of national antagonisms facilitated.
“The International is not able to mold into rigid form the anti-
militarist actions of the working class because these actions inevi-
tably vary with differences of national conditions, time, and place.
But it is its duty to coordinate and strengthen to the utmost the
endeavors of the working class to prevent war.
“Actually, since the International congress of Brussels, the
proletariat, while struggling indefatigably against militarism by
refusing all means for navy and military armament and by en-
deavoring to democratize military organizations, has resorted
with increasing emphasis and success to the most diverse forms
of action so as to prevent the outbreak of wars or to put a stop to
them, as well as to utilize the disturbances of society caused by
war for the emancipation of the working class.
“This was evidenced by the agreement concluded after the
Fashoda incident by the English and French trade unions for the
maintenance of peace and for the restoration of friendly relations
between England and France; by the conduct of the Social-
Democratic parties in the German and French Parliament during
the Moroccan crisis; by the demonstrations conducted by the
French and German Socialists for the same purpose; by the joint
action of the Socialists in Austria and Italy, who met in Trieste for
the purpose of thwarting the conflict between these two countries;
further, by the emphatic intervention of the Socialist workers of
Sweden for the purpose of preventing an attack upon Norway;
and, finally, by the heroic, self-sacrificing struggle of the Socialist
workers and peasants of Russia and Poland waged against the war
unleashed by tsarism and then for its early termination, and also
for the purpose of utilizing the national crisis for the liberation of

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 COLONIALISM AND WAR
the working class.
“All these endeavors are evidence of the proletariat’s growing
power and increasing strength to render secure the maintenance
of peace by means of resolute intervention. This action of the
working class will be all the more successful if its spirit is pre-
pared by similar actions and the workers’ parties of the various
countries are spurred on and consolidated by the International.
“The congress is convinced that, under pressure exerted by
the proletariat and by the serious use of courts of arbitration, in-
stead of the pitiful measures adopted by the governments, the
benefit derived from disarmament can be assured to all nations
and will enable them to employ for cultural purposes the enor-
mous expenditures of money and energy, which are now swal-
lowed up by military armaments and war.
“If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working
class and of its parliamentary representatives in the country in-
volved, supported by the consolidating activity of the Internation-
al [Socialist] Bureau, to exert every effort to prevent the outbreak
of war by means they consider most effective, which naturally
vary according to the accentuation of the class struggle and of the
general political situation.
“Should war break out none the less, it is their duty to inter-
vene in favor of its speedy termination and to do all in their power
to utilize the economic and political crisis caused by the war to
rouse the peoples and thereby to hasten the abolition of capitalist
class rule.”8
AMERICAN NATIONAL CHAUVINISM
Many Social-Democratic parties were infected with national
chauvinism. The Socialist Party of the United States was a crass
example. This showed up in many respects, among others, on the
question of immigration. Both the Amsterdam and Stuttgart con-
gresses dealt with this question, mostly at the instance of the Amer-
ican delegations. For many years, in trade union circles, there was a
strong agitation going on, aimed at cutting off immigration into the
United States. This was in line with the monopolistic tendencies of
the skilled workers to build walls around their particular crafts. It
received its worst expression in the slogan, “The Chinese Must Go,”
on the Pacific Coast, but it was also largely directed against workers
coming into the United States from Europe.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
The Socialist Party, dominated by petty-bourgeois intellectu-
als and trade union bureaucrats, instead of taking a stand against
such reactionary trends, whose stronghold was in the Gompers
A.F. of L. bureaucracy, tended to surrender to them. Consequent-
ly, at Amsterdam in 1904, on the basis of party instructions,
Hillquit and the other American delegates had joined with
Verdorat and van Kol of Holland and Thompson of Australia, and
submitted a resolution broadly implying the exclusion of “back-
ward races (Chinese, Negroes, etc.).” De Leon blasted this, and
upon its obviously meeting no favor among the delegates, it was
tactfully withdrawn.9
Undeterred, the American delegation, again headed by
Hillquit, came back to the Stuttgart congress three years later
with another resolution of the same type, proposing to exclude
immigrants “who are incapable of assimilation with the working-
men of the country of their adoption.” Meanwhile, in the Ameri-
can Socialist Party chauvinist leaders such as Victor Berger and
Ernest Untermann, were openly carrying on an exclusionist cam-
paign. The Stuttgart congress rejected the American proposals
and adopted a sound resolution on the immigration question.
While condemning the importation of contract labor, the resolu-
tion also repudiated all measures aimed at restricting the freedom
of immigration on racial or national grounds. It proposed to pro-
tect national living standards of workers by organizing the immi-
grants and seeing to it that they got equal economic and political
rights.10
The fact in the United States was, of course, that the foreign-
born, making up 30 to 75 percent of the workers in the basic in-
dustries, were always to be found in the front ranks of the workers
fighting to improve wages and working conditions, to build the
trade unions, and to establish a strong Marxist political party. For
over half a century the Marxist movement in the United States
rested upon the shoulders of foreign-born workers.
The action of the Stuttgart congress, in rejecting their pro-
posed exclusion of immigrants, greatly incensed the chauvinist
opportunists among the leaders of the American Socialist Party.
Kipnis thus describes their general reaction: “The right wing and
sections of the center and left were outraged at the Stuttgart reso-
lution. Victor Berger immediately denounced the American dele-
gates to the Congress, Hillquit, Algernon Lee, and A. M. Simons,

210
 COLONIALISM AND WAR
as a group of ‘intellectuals’ who had betrayed the American prole-
tariat by permitting passage of a resolution which would admit
‘Jap’ and ‘Chinaman’ coolies into the United States. If we are ever
to have socialism in America and Canada, said Berger, we must
keep them ‘white men’s’ countries.”11 This was quite in line with
the party’s even more disgraceful tolerance of Jim Crow, lynching,
and other outrages against the Negro people in the United States.
Debs vehemently protested against the exclusionist attitude of the
party.

211
23. The Copenhagen Congress (1910)
Copenhagen was the scene of the eighth congress of the Se-
cond International, beginning on August 28, 1910. The delegates
met in a situation where military armaments were being greatly
increased, and the war danger had obviously grown more acute
during the three years since the previous congress, in Stuttgart.
Hence, once again, the fateful question of what to do in case war
should break out, and also how in the meantime to fight against
the growth of militarism, occupied the attention of the parliament
of the Socialists.
A further characteristic of the current unsettled situation was
an increase in struggle among the peoples of the colonial and
semi-colonial countries. A deep ferment was beginning to work
among the Indian and Chinese peoples, and there had just been
revolutions in Turkey and Persia, the latter aimed against tsarist
Russian imperialism. To support such movements was remote
from the intentions of the right-wing leaders of the Second Inter-
national, so they contented themselves merely with sending per-
functory telegrams of congratulations to the fighters in Turkey
and Persia.
THE ANTI-WAR RESOLUTION
The advocates of the general strike as a panacea against war,
as usual, raised their point, but this time stronger than ever. Keir
Hardie of England joined with Vaillant of France in submitting an
amendment to the proposed resolution, reading as follows: “The
congress considers the general strike of workers – especially in
the industries which provide war supplies (weapons, munitions,
transport, etc.) – and also active agitation among the people when
conducted by extreme methods, to be the most effective of all
means which should be used to prevent wars.”
The movement for the general strike against war had been
strengthened by recent events in Spain. On July 26, 1909, the
workers of Barcelona, to emphasize their economic demands and
to protest against the reactionary Spanish war in Morocco, called
a general strike. This strike, extremely militantly waged, spread
far and wide, until an estimated 300,000 workers were out. The
strike lasted until July 31, but a second, national strike, to take
place on August 2, failed to materialize, in the face of police ter-
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 THE COPENHAGEN CONGRESS
rorism, with the arrest of the leaders of the Socialist Party and of
the Anarcho-syndicalist trade unions.1
Ledebour of Germany made the main fight against the general
strike amendment. Although himself a centrist, he used the stock
argument of the German revisionists against every form of mili-
tancy by the workers – that it would bring down the police on the
Social-Democratic organizations, with fatal results. He was dou-
bly emphatic this time, as Karl Liebknecht had been arrested not
long since for making an anti-militarist speech.2 The general
strike amendment was defeated in the commission by a vote of
119 to 58, and the whole matter was referred for further study to
the International Socialist Bureau.
The anti-war resolution finally adopted followed along the
basic lines of the Stuttgart resolution: “By adhering to the repeat-
edly expressed duty of the Socialist parliamentary representatives
to combat armaments with all their strength and to refuse funds
for them, the congress expects these representatives: (a) continu-
ally to reiterate the demand for compulsory international courts
of arbitration in all conflicts between states; (b) continuously to
renew proposals the ultimate aim of which is a general disarma-
ment and, first and foremost, the convocation of a conference
which would limit naval armaments and abolish the right of sei-
zure at sea; (c) to demand the abolition of secret diplomacy and
the publication of all the existing and future treaties and agree-
ments between the governments; (d) to intervene in favor of the
people’s right of self-determination and their defense against
armed attack and forcible repression.” Then followed the two fa-
mous Lenin-Luxemburg paragraphs of the Stuttgart resolution,
which called for a fight for socialism in the event of a great war
(see Chapter 22).
The resolution was adopted by a unanimous vote. Radek of
Poland, speaking for the left, opposed the resolution’s proposals
for armament reduction and international arbitration as fruitless,
but supported the resolution on the basis of its revolutionary Len-
in-Luxemburg paragraphs. The right wing, as usual, voted for the
resolution tongue-in-cheek, certainly having no intention of doing
what the resolution proposed, namely to counter an imperialist
war with a socialist revolution.

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
NATIONALIST TRADE UNIONISM
The rock upon which the Second International was finally to
split was that of bourgeois nationalism – that is, the revisionist
leaders controlling the various parties and unions, allowed their
nationalist prejudices and policies to prevail over the class inter-
ests of the workers, until they eventually led the movement on to
shipwreck in World War I. This alien bourgeois national element
ran through all the work of the International and its various con-
gresses. The disastrous weakness came sharply to the fore in Co-
penhagen in the discussion on the trade union question, concrete-
ly in the matter of the nationalist split of the trade union move-
ment in Austria.
One of the great achievements of Lenin during these years,
with the close collaboration of Stalin, was the working out of a
sound proletarian policy in the complex national question. Russia
being a multinational state, this was an issue of fundamental im-
portance to the party and the working class in that country. Len-
in’s solution was based upon two elementary propositions. The
first was that all the socialists in Russia, in a true spirit of interna-
tionalism, should belong to one Social-Democratic party, and se-
cond, that the party and the respective peoples should insist upon
the right of self-determination for the oppressed peoples, includ-
ing the right of separation. This is today the highly successful pol-
icy of the Soviet Union, People’s China, and other countries now
on the way to socialism and communism.
The Social-Democratic revisionists at the head of most of the
major parties of the Second International, however, being them-
selves fundamentally nationalist and imperialist, would not ac-
cept this revolutionary internationalist solution of the national
question. Generally, they did nothing to upset the existing capital-
ist imperialistic “settlement” of the national question. But certain
centrists worked out also the opportunist proposition of “national
cultural autonomy” for the oppressed peoples within the frame-
work of the existing empires. The chief theoreticians of this thin-
ly-disguised imperialistic line were the Austrian leaders Victor
Adler, Otto Bauer, and Karl Renner. Austria, a multi-national
state, was the main scene of application of this theory. The gen-
eral effects were to split the labor movement, to allow the cultiva-
tion of the worst nationalist prejudices among the workers, and to

214
 THE COPENHAGEN CONGRESS
throw the party under the ideological influence of the bourgeois
national parties.
Stalin thus describes how the theory worked out in practice:
“Up to 1896 there was a united Social-Democratic Party in Aus-
tria. In that year the Czechs at the International congress in Lon-
don first demanded separate representation, and got it. In 1897,
at the Vienna (Wimberg) party congress, the united party was
formally liquidated and in its place a federal league of six national
‘Social-Democratic groups’ was set up. Subsequently these groups
were converted into independent parties. The parties gradually
severed contact. The parties were followed by the parliamentary
fraction, which also broke up – national ‘clubs’ were formed. Next
came the trade unions, also split along national lines. Even the
cooperatives were affected.”3 In Russia the Jewish Bund, oppor-
tunistically led, tried to apply this same principle of “national cul-
tural autonomy,” claiming jurisdiction over all Jews in Russia, but
the party consistently rejected this disruptive policy.
The Copenhagen congress stressed the need for more solidari-
ty generally on an international scale among the trade unions,
and specifically dealing with the Austrian situation, it declared for
the unity of the trade union movement in that and every other
country. But such declarations were of little avail. The real split-
ting disease lay in the bourgeois nationalism that affected the
leadership of the various parties and the low level of proletarian
internationalism prevailing, and the opportunist leaders were not
at all disposed to do anything effective about that. So the evil con-
tinued and grew.
OPPORTUNIST CONCEPTIONS OF THE COOPERATIVES
Another question occupying major attention at the Copenha-
gen congress, which once again exposed the deep opportunist
currents existing in the Second International, related to coopera-
tives. As we have seen in previous chapters, confusion as to the
role of the cooperatives in the class struggle was the basis for
many deviations and sectarian movements during the history of
the First and Second Internationals. It will be recalled that al-
ready the Inaugural Address of the First International dealt with
errors in the role of cooperatives. The root of these cooperative
deviations was always the idea, expressed in one way or another,
that the cooperatives provided a major if not the main road to
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
working class emancipation. In his famous article on coopera-
tives, one of the very last things he ever wrote, Lenin said: “There
was much fantasy in the dreams of the old cooperators. Often
they were ridiculously fantastic. But why were they fantastic? Be-
cause these old cooperators did not understand the fundamental,
root significance of the political struggle of the working class for
the overthrow of the rule of the exploiters.”4 Notoriously, revi-
sionism was entrenched in the cooperatives, and the same histor-
ic illusions as to the role of the cooperative movement tended to
crop out once more at Copenhagen.
With his wonderful grasp of the labor movement as a whole,
Lenin paid the very closest attention, both in a theoretical and a
practical sense, to every phase of the workers’ organization and
struggle. Consequently, he was a profound authority not only up-
on the party and its theory and program, but also regarding trade
unionism, cooperatives, women’s work, youth political activities,
and every other labor sphere. Characteristically, therefore, the
Russian delegation introduced a resolution into the Copenhagen
congress, proposing the Marxist line on cooperatives. It was not
adopted.
Lenin was especially critical of one phrase in the main resolu-
tion before the congress, which had been inserted by Jaurès. This
was the expression that the cooperatives would assist the workers
“to prepare democratization and socialization of production and
distribution.” Lenin sensed that lurking behind this formulation
was the characteristic Bernstein revisionist conception of “grow-
ing over into socialism.” To guard against this, he and Guesde
proposed to amend the resolution by the words, “Cooperatives
assist to a certain extent to prepare the functioning of production
and of distribution after the expropriation of the capitalist class.”
As usual, this amendment was rejected. Lenin voted against the
resolution in the commission but voted for it in the open session.
He said later that despite its defects, in the main it was “a correct
definition of the tasks of proletarian cooperatives.”5
KAUTSKY AND LEGIEN
During 1909-10, in the period of the Copenhagen congress, a
celebrated debate took place in Germany between Karl Kautsky,
editor of Die Neue Zeit and since Engels’ death the leading theo-
retician of the Second International, and Karl Legien, head of the

216
 THE COPENHAGEN CONGRESS
German trade union movement and secretary of the International
Secretariat of National Trade Union Centers. The immediate
question debated was as to the validity of Marx’s theory of the ab-
solute impoverishment of the workers, with Kautsky taking the
affirmative and Legien the negative. Kautsky expressed his views
in a booklet, Der Weg zur Macht (The Road to Power), and
Legien his, also in a pamphlet, Sisyphusarbeit oder Positive
Erfolge (Sisyphus Labor or Positive Success).
Behind their ideological facade was an attempt of the most
powerful group of revisionists in the German party, the trade un-
ion bureaucracy, to cut down the prestige of the “left” petty-
bourgeois intellectuals and to strengthen themselves as the actual
leading force in the whole Social-Democratic movement. It was
also an expression of the anti-party “neutralism” common to So-
cial-Democratic labor bureaucrats, which, on a world scale,
reached its most extreme development in the violently anti-party
attitude of a Gompers. The German debate was most instructive
for the light it threw upon the degenerative tendencies at work in
the Second International.
Kautsky, who in his general orientation had by this time defi-
nitely become a centrist and thereby a shield for the right-wing op-
portunists, in his pamphlet sang his swan song of Marxism. In the
manner of centrists, to whom, as Lenin remarked, the revolution-
ary word was everything and the revolutionary deed nothing,
Kautsky made a rounded-out statement of Marxist principles,
pointing out the futility of revisionism and foreseeing a period of
intensified class struggle and proletarian revolution. But when he
came to practical measures, his argument leaned definitely to the
right.
The deep disease which was then corroding the German So-
cial- Democracy, and with it the whole Second International, was
the pest of revisionist opportunism, with its consequent playing
down of all militancy by the party. But when Kautsky pointed out
the dangers confronting the party, he said not a single word of
warning against the right wing; what he feared was that the party,
because of impatient leftists, might be thrown into premature and
disastrous conflict with the forces of German reaction. He iterated
and reiterated this theme. Typically, he said, “The interest of the
proletariat today more than ever before demands that everything
should be avoided that would tend to provoke the ruling class to a
217
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
purposeless policy of violence.” He warned the party against any
“insane uprising... any purposeless provocation of the ruling class
that might give their statesmen an opportunity to rouse a mad
rage against the Socialists.”6
This was shooting entirely in the wrong direction. In the-
German party the danger of leftist provocation to “insane upris-
ings” was about zero; the real danger came from the fact that the
trade union and petty-bourgeois revisionists on the right were
killing off the militancy and fighting spirit of the party. Kautsky’s
line played right into the latter’s hands. It tended still further to
damp down and weaken the badly needed political aggressiveness
of a party which, already weakened in its fibre, in the near future
would be called upon to carry out the great and imperative tasks
of fighting against a great imperialist war and of leading a prole-
tarian revolution.
In his pamphlet Legien made a naked presentation of the op-
portunist Bernsteinian theory that the workers were basically im-
proving their conditions under capitalism and would continue
indefinitely to do so. He maintained that the trade unions had
“opened the road upward.”7 In Legien’s conception the ultimate
goal of the breakup of capitalism and the establishment of social-
ism went aglimmering. His perspective was Gompersism, dressed
up with socialist phrases, as he made manifest in his pre-war visit
to the United States, including a speech in congress, which Lenin
sharply criticized.8 This went to emphasize again that left-
wingers, especially in England and the United States, were in-
clined to draw too sharp a line of demarcation between such pro-
fessed Socialist trade union leaders as Legien and Leipart, and
avowed labor supporters of capitalism as Havelock Wilson and
Samuel Gompers. Actually, performing the same role of employ-
ers’ agents among the workers, they were all cut from the same
cloth. They were opportunist Social-Democrats, with their dema-
gogy attuned to the different stages of class-consciousness of the
workers in their respective countries.
Despite all the smoke and fury of the Kautsky-Legien debate,
it was essentially a sham battle. Both men were working in the
one general direction, towards the right. The same was true of
Gompers and the opportunist Socialist leaders in the United
States, who at this time were also waging a violent conflict against
each other.

218
24. Thickening War Clouds: Basle (1912)
The congress of Copenhagen set the next world gathering of
Socialist labor to take place in Vienna, in August 1914. This ninth
congress, on the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Second
International, was to have been a very special affair, but the
threatening international situation caused a change in plans. The
International Socialist Bureau had to call an extraordinary con-
ference in Basle in November 1912, presumably to adopt
measures to protect the interests of the workers and of world
peace.
The situation was one of rapidly growing tension among the
big imperialist powers and their satellites. Europe experienced
one crisis after another. In July 1911 Germany and France nar-
rowly escaped a clash over Morocco, when the Kaiser sent a cruis-
er into Agadir to defend German imperialist interests – known as
the “Agadir Incident” – but the crisis was patched up by a tempo-
rary agreement. Then there was the Italo-Turkish war of 1911 over
Tripoli. But the special crisis that brought the forces of the Second
International together was the outbreak of war among the Balkan
states early in October of 1912. Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria,
and Montenegro were involved. Within six months Turkey was
beaten. But in June 1913, the second Balkan war started, a general
struggle among all the Balkan powers, which lasted until August
of that year.
Originally, these wars began as national struggles of the op-
pressed Balkan Christian peoples, parts of the Turkish empire, to
break loose from their Mohammedan masters, but they immedi-
ately took on the aspect of preliminary struggles among the great
European powers, of which the countries were respectively satel-
lites. The Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, the two great
imperialist combinations, were feeling for each other’s throat.
THE BASLE MANIFESTO
The Basle conference issued a manifesto designed to prevent
the spread of the Balkan war and to avert the outbreak of a gen-
eral European conflict. The manifesto, basing itself on the two
famous Lenin-Luxemburg paragraphs of the Stuttgart resolution,
warned of the grave danger of the Balkan war leading to a general
conflagration. The congress viewed “with satisfaction,” however,
219
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the “complete unanimity among the socialist parties and the trade
unions in all countries on the war against war.” And, over-
optimistically, it declared that, “The fear of the ruling classes that
a world war might be followed by a proletarian revolution has
proved to be an essential guarantee of peace.”1 Efforts were made
at the congress, as usual, to write in the general strike as the main
means against war, but they failed.
The manifesto, which congratulated the Russian workers for
their growing revolutionary struggle, laid down specific tasks for
the parties in the Balkans, based roughly on the principle of the
self-determination of the respective peoples. “But the most im-
portant task in the International’s activities,” declared the mani-
festo, “devolves upon the working class of Germany, France, and
England. At this moment, it is the task of the workers of these
countries to demand that their respective governments withhold
all support to both Austria-Hungary and Russia, that they abstain
from any intervention in the Balkan troubles and maintain abso-
lute neutrality. A war between the three great leading civilized
peoples because of the Serbo-Austrian dispute over a port would
be criminal madness.... The workers of Germany and France can-
not concede that any obligation whatever to intervene in the Bal-
kan conflict exists because of secret treaties.”
Calling upon “the workers of all countries to oppose the power
of the international solidarity of the proletariat to capitalist impe-
rialism,” the manifesto declared: “Let the governments be mind-
ful of the fact that, with European conditions and the attitude of
the working class as they are, they cannot let loose a war without
causing danger to themselves. Let them recall that the Franco-
German war was followed by the revolutionary outbreak of the
Commune, that the Russo-Japanese war set in motion the revolu-
tionary forces of the peoples of the Russian Empire, and that
competitive military and naval armaments have accentuated in an
unprecedented fashion the class antagonisms in England and on
the continent and have unchained vast strikes. It would be sheer
madness for the governments not to realize that the very thought
of the monstrosity of a world war would inevitably call forth the
indignation and the revolt of the working class. The proletarians
consider it a crime to fire at each other for the benefit of the capi-
talists’ profits, the ambition of dynasties, or the greater glory of
secret diplomatic treaties.” The manifesto wound up with a ring-

220
 THICKENING WAR CLOUDS
ing appeal to the workers of the world to oppose militantly all
steps leading towards war.
WORDS VERSUS DEEDS
In its terminology, the Basle resolution called for a revolu-
tionary stand against the threatening imperialist war. Had its
terms been carried beyond words into practice, it would have re-
sulted in a widespread revolutionary response all over Europe to
the launching of the monstrous World War I. Yet the opportunist
right wing voted solidly for it, and with “enthusiasm.” It was car-
ried unanimously in the conference, by acclamation. The revi-
sionists, of whom there were many in the delegations, had not a
thing to say against it, not even in the commission.
The explanation for one phase of this sinister anomaly was to
be found in the tremendous militancy and anti-war spirit then
prevailing among the workers all over the capitalist world. This
militancy was marked, among other manifestations, by the rising
revolutionary wave in Russia,* by the crisis in the ranks of Ger-
man Social-Democracy, by the developing big “Triple Alliance”
movement of miners, general transport, and railroad workers in
England, by the growing fighting spirit of the Italian workers,
which culminated in the general strike of June 1914, by the many
extremely militant strikes then being conducted by the C.G.T. in
France, and by the wave of the big I.W.W. and other strikes in the
United States – Lawrence, Paterson, West Virginia, Calumet, and
on the Harriman railroads.
Moreover, in meeting the repeated war crises of the past dec-
ade, the Socialist parties (mostly the lesser ones) had given a good
account of themselves, and the general feeling of the left and cen-
ter was that this record would be continued and bettered if the
imperialist powers should dare to launch a world war. Thus, in
the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, the Russian and Japanese
parties had shown a splendid example in their stand against the
war; the Spanish party and the syndicalist unions had also taken
an internationalist proletarian position in the Moroccan war of
1909; the Italian and Balkan parties were evidencing a Marxist

* In the Lena goldfields strike of 1912, 500 workers were killed or

wounded by tsarist troops.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
anti-war attitude in the current Balkan wars; and in November
1912, the French Socialist Party called upon the working class “to
prevent war by every means, including parliamentary interven-
tion, open agitation, manifestoes, as well as a general strike and
insurrection.” All this was in the glorious tradition of the French
and German workers during the Franco-German war of 1870.
In view of this strong and rising mass anti-war spirit, the
right-wingers at the Basle congress concluded it was the better
part of wisdom to pull in their horns and to bide a more favorable
opportunity to apply their policies. Lenin, however, was not de-
ceived by this show of unanimity. Upon reading the manifesto, he
said: “They have given us a large promissory note; let us see how
they will meet it.”2
Meanwhile, as the great European war crisis drew nearer,
several developments took place expressing the sinister trend of
events in the foundation party of the Second International, the
German Social-Democracy. The Chemnitz congress of the party in
September 1912, loaded with trade union and party bureaucrats
as delegates, heavily voted down the left wing on the colonial
question, indicating that in the matter of imperialism both the
center and the right were essentially united around an opportun-
ist conception.3 Also in 1913 by a roundabout method, the Reichs-
tag fraction voted for the military credits.4 And in the Reichstag
session in May, 1914, only by a vote of 51 to 47 did the Social-
Democratic fraction decide to remain seated while the cheering
went on for the Kaiser.5 But on the surface all looked well – in the
elections of 1912 the party increased its vote from 3,290,000 to
4,250,000, and its Reichstag seats from 43 to 110.
In 1913 August Bebel died. A worker, for 42 years he stood at
the head of the German Social-Democratic Party. In his earlier,
revolutionary, years Bebel had many great achievements to his
credit, including the formation of the party upon an independent
basis in 1869, his opposition to the Franco-Prussian war and his
imprisonment in 1872, his guidance of the party during the
twelve-year period of the anti-Socialist laws, his lifelong agitation
for socialism, etc. As we have seen in passing, however, during the
last years of his life he slumped over to a centrist position. As the
result of his death, the party passed more firmly into the hands of
the right wing.

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 THICKENING WAR CLOUDS
THE FORCES OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL
On the eve of World War I the Second International had affil-
iated to it 27 Socialist and labor parties of 22 countries, with a
combined electorate of about 12,000,000 voters. Lorwin lists
their strength thus: “The Social-Democratic Party of Germany
had 1,085,000 members and polled 4,250,000 votes in the elec-
tions of 1912; the Austrian Socialist Party had 145,000 members
and polled 1,041,000 votes in the elections of 1907; the Socialist
membership of Czechoslovakia was 144,000, and in Hungary
61,000; the unified Socialist Party of France had 80,300 mem-
bers and polled 1,400,000 votes in the elections of 1914; the Ital-
ian Socialist Party had 50,000 members and polled 960,000
votes in the elections of 1913; the Socialist Party of the United
States had 125,500 members and polled 901,000 votes in the
elections of 1912. Large votes were also cast during these years for
the Socialist parties of Belgium, Sweden, and Argentina, and for
the labor parties of Australia and New Zealand.”6 At this time, the
Labor Party of Great Britain had an affiliated membership of
1,612,ooo.7 And Lenin says that in the seven Russian districts that
elected opportunist Social-Democrats (Mensheviks) to the Duma
in 1913, there were 214,000 workers, but in those that elected the
six Bolsheviks there were 1,008,000 workers.8
In 1914 the parliamentary representatives of the main Social-
Democratic parties were as follows: Germany 110, France 103,
Finland 90, Austria-Hungary 82, Italy 80, Sweden 73, Great Brit-
ain 42, Belgium 39, Denmark 32, Norway 23, Russia 13, and Hol-
land 16.9 At this time the Australian Labor Party was in control of
the Federal Parliament. But for the “class system” of voting pre-
vailing in Germany, Russia, and other countries, these figures
would have been considerably higher. There were thousands of
representatives in lower state bodies.
The Second International also had a large trade union mem-
bership under its general influence and leadership. In 1912 there
were affiliated to the International Trade Union Secretariat –
headquarters Berlin, Karl Legien, general secretary – 19 national
trade union centers with 7,394,461 members. These included
Germany 2,553,162, United States 2,054,526, Great Britain

223
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
874,281,* and France 387,ooo.10
The workers’ cooperative movement of Europe was also large-
ly under Social-Democratic leadership. In 1914 there were a total
of some 30,000 distributive cooperatives in Europe with about
9,000,000 members. In Great Britain there were, in round num-
bers, 3,000,000 members, Germany 2,000,000, Russia
1,500,000, France 881,000, etc. There were 24 wholesale cooper-
atives throughout Europe, five of which did an annual business of
$40,000,000 or more per year. These figures do not include large
numbers of building, loan credit, agricultural, and production co-
operatives.11 The cooperatives were usually a source of heavy fi-
nancial contributions to the respective Social-Democratic parties.
The Social-Democratic parties also carried on specific activi-
ties and organizations among women and the youth. They had a
loosely organized international women’s commission, of which
Clara Zetkin was the head for 20 years. It held its first interna-
tional meeting in Stuttgart in 1907. At the same time and place an
international youth group, a sort of information bureau, was also
established,12 which by 1914 had some 100,000 members in vari-
ous European countries. Both groups also held conferences at the
Copenhagen congress.
Despite the enormous importance of these associated trade
union, cooperative, women, and youth movements, the Social-
Democratic parties had a record of having neglected them, partic-
ularly in the earlier years. Notoriously, the Social-Democratic
leaders were reluctant to grant to the women and young people
the freedom of action necessary to build up strong movements.
Complaints of gross neglect by the political leaders were also rou-
tine in cooperative circles. And Zwing, the mouthpiece of Legien,
deplores at length the early deep undervaluation, even jealousy, of
the German party leaders for the trade unions – partly a heritage
from Lassallean times and partly a fear of trade union domina-
tion. He describes the strong opposition against the establish-
ment of the General Commission of the labor unions, and says
this opposition was even able to prevent the holding of a trade
union congress in 1895.13

* At this time the total number of British trade unionists was

4,145,000.
224
 THICKENING WAR CLOUDS
RIGHT AND LEFT WINGS PRIOR TO WORLD WAR
At the outbreak of the war the right-wing elements definitely
controlled the majority of the most important political parties in
the Second International, including those in Germany, Austria,
England, France, Belgium, and the Scandinavian countries. Most
of the rest, including the party in the United States, were con-
trolled by the centrists, together with the revisionists. The charac-
teristic of the center group at this time was a closer and closer
working with the right wing. Lenin said, “The ‘center’ is a realm of
honeyed petty-bourgeois phrases, of internationalism in words
and cowardly opportunism and fawning on the social chauvinists
in deeds.” He called centrists “routine-worshippers, slaves to rot-
ten legality, corrupted by the atmosphere of parliamentarism,
etc.”14 In the key German Social-Democratic Party the great mass
of the membership supported the Kautsky-Haase-Ledebour cen-
trist tendency.
The essentially right opportunist combination throughout the
International was supported by a very large number of office-
holders and officials of many sorts. Among these were almost
1,000 members of national legislative bodies and several thou-
sand more members of local and provincial legislatures. Then
there were literally tens of thousands of paid functionaries in the
many parties, trade unions, cooperatives, sports bodies, and other
organizations. They had as their class base the skilled aristocracy
of labor. These bureaucratic armies, mostly made up of picked
right-wing elements, constituted a tremendous stand-pat force to
keep things as they were. As it turned out, they were the decisive
power in determining the tragic course of the Social- Democracy
in the ensuing crucial years. They succeeded in frustrating and
defeating the revolutionary will of the working class of central and
western Europe.
On the eve of the great war, the left wing was, on the other
hand, relatively weak and immature. The period that the Second
International had been passing through during the 25 years since
it was formed – one mainly of capitalist “prosperity” – was not
generally favorable for the development of a left wing, strong or-
ganizationally and politically. It was to take war and revolution to
do this.
Generally, the left wing of the period, within and without the

225
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Second International, fell into three categories. First, there were
the syndicalist trade unions and anarchist groupings in the Latin
countries, together with sprinklings of them in the United States,
England, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, and Latin Ameri-
ca. These elements, apolitical and usually also otherwise sectari-
an, “revisionists from the left,” were unable to give the broad po-
litical leadership which was so badly needed by the misled work-
ing class.
The second category of the current left-wing forces was the
scattering of left-inclined workers and leaders who were to be
found in various countries – such as Luxemburg, Liebknecht,
Zetkin, Mehring, Lensch, and Pieck in Germany; Radek and
Marchlewski in Poland; Hyndman in England; Braun in Austria;
Guesde in France; Garter, and Pannekoek in Holland; Hoeglund
in Sweden; and Debs, Haywood, and De Leon in the United
States.* These relatively left elements were by no means a homo-
geneous group, and they had no definite program.
By far the best developed among them was Rosa Luxemburg,
leader of the weak left wing in the Social-Democratic Party of
Germany; but she, as measured against the policies of the great
revolutionary leader Lenin, displayed many theoretical and tacti-
cal shortcomings. Already, in passing, we have noted some of
them. At this period, her most serious errors related to the na-
tional question, the peasant question, the centralized disciplined
party of the new type, mass spontaneity, and the armed uprising.
Also, as the war and the Russian revolution advanced, she devel-
oped other serious errors.15 Nevertheless, Rosa Luxemburg was a
real revolutionary fighter, and Lenin called her “The Eagle.”
The third category of left forces at this time, and this was the
brain and heart of the whole international left wing, were the Bol-
sheviks in Russia. They had both the necessary program and lead-
ership for a broad left wing. In Prague, in January 1912, the Rus-
sian Social-Democratic Labor Party set the political pace for the
Second International by expelling the Mensheviks. Henceforth
the Bolsheviks were an independent party, with the support of
about four-fifths of the active workers in Russia.16 Up to the out-
break of the war, the International Socialist Bureau, with the as-

* De Leon died May 11, 1914.

226
 THICKENING WAR CLOUDS
sistance of Trotsky and other Mensheviks, was unceasing in its
efforts to re-unite the Russian party; but as Lenz remarks, fortu-
nately it did not succeed. Consequently, when the war broke out
at least one party “was capable of putting into practice the princi-
ples of proletarian internationalism.”17
The Bolsheviks, in first line Lenin, sought actively to organize
the scattered, immature left wing of the Second International.
They gave a splendid example of revolutionary program and tac-
tics themselves in their own party’s work in Russia. Besides, dur-
ing this general period, in 1909, Lenin made a monumental con-
tribution to Marxist theory with his book, Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism. The Bolsheviks also tried concretely to estab-
lish effective bonds among the lefts of all countries. At the
Stuttgart congress (1907), Lenin held a conference of left ele-
ments, with this general idea in mind. From then on he was a
member of the I.S.B., where almost uniformly his proposals were
rejected. In Copenhagen (1910) Lenin had a similar left wing
meeting. Among those present were Jules Guesde, Charles Rap-
paport, Rosa Luxemburg, J. Marchlewski, A. Braun, Lenin, Plek-
hanov, Riazanov, de Brouckere, and P. Iglesias. But there was a
confusion of counsel, Lenin was little known, and besides, there
was a tendency to blame him for the split in the Russian party. So
nothing practical developed from these two meetings.18 The
Marxists of the West little understood the policies Lenin was de-
veloping in Russia.19 In the United States, for example, his name
was practically unknown.
In his work in the Second International, Lenin strove to or-
ganize the left and as much as possible the center against the revi-
sionist right wing. Among their many other slanders against Len-
in, the Trotskyites have tried to interpret this wise policy as un-
derestimating the danger of centrism. The fact is, however, no one
knew better than Lenin the menace of opportunism in all its
forms. He not only ruthlessly attacked the right revisionists, but
he also criticized the mistakes and shortcomings of both the left
and center. As the center – the Bebels, Kautskys, Ledebours, and
their like – through the years moved more and more to the right,
Lenin sharpened up his criticism of these elements, always seek-
ing to drive a wedge between their large following and that of the
opportunist right-wing leadership.20 But with all his wonderful
flexibility, skill, and energy in theory, polemic, and tactics, Lenin
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
was not able to create a general broad working left wing within
the Second International during the pre-war years. The best that
could be done, as we have seen in passing, was for the left forces,
by temporary line-ups, to win occasional victories over the forces
of opportunism at the respective congresses.

228
25. The Great Betrayal: World War I
World War I was the explosion of imperialist antagonisms
among the great capitalist powers that had been building up for
over a generation. The war was as natural to capitalism as the
making of profits or any other manifestation of the capitalist sys-
tem. The trigger for the war was pulled by the assassination of the
Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Serbia, on
June 28, 1914, by a fanatical Serbian nationalist; but so intense
was the accumulated general imperialist tension that almost any
political clash might have served as well to precipitate the war. It
was the great war prophesied a generation before by Engels, when
he said that “fifteen or twenty million armed men would slaughter
one another,” and it was the one feared through the ensuing dec-
ades by the Second International.
Of course, all the governments involved took a hypocritical
moralistic position, claiming that they were fighting in national
self-defense; but the crass reality was that the war was nothing
more or less than a sordid imperialist struggle among the powers
for colonies, markets, raw materials, and strategic positions. The
fact that 10,000,000 soldiers had to die in the war, 20,000,000
be crippled, and countless millions more be pauperized (there
were left 5,000,000 widows, 10,000,000 orphans, and property
damages were $380 billion)1 meant only a matter of statistics to
the cold-blooded capitalists who pulled the levers in the great
human slaughter, the most terrible the world had ever known.
It was an imperialist war for the re-division of the world. The
drive of the great states for such a re-division was triply empha-
sized by the fact that the various powers were developing indus-
trially at widely differing speeds, which tended constantly to upset
the economic and political balance among them. This was the op-
eration of the basic law of the uneven development of capitalism,
worked out by Lenin (Chapter 18). Thus, whereas, “In 1860 Eng-
land produced over half of the world’s coal and pig-iron, and
about half of the world’s cotton goods. By 1913 her share in world
production of each of these commodities had fallen to 22 percent,
13 percent, and 23 percent respectively. Vast new industries had
grown up to rival Britain in other countries, particularly Germany
and the U.S.A.”2 Perlo says that, “Between 1899 and 1913 steel
production in the United States and Germany increased threefold,
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
while British steel production increased by little more than 50
percent, and British iron production declined. The former indus-
trial leader of the world fell far behind its rivals. By 1913 the Unit-
ed States was easily the leading industrial power.”3
The murderous war was the capitalist method of changing the
world political relations of the states in accordance with their var-
ying economic relations. All the powers were war-guilty: the two
great war federations – the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-
Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey; and the Triple Entente, eventual-
ly of Great Britain, Russia, France, Italy, the United States, Japan,
etc. – had been consciously preparing the war for years.
“Germany prepared for the imperialist war with the design of
taking away colonies from Great Britain and France, and the
Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic provinces from Russia.... Tsarist
Russia strove for the partition of Turkey and dreamed of seizing
Constantinople and the Straits leading from the Black Sea to the
Mediterranean (the Dardanelles).” It also planned to seize Galicia,
a part of Austria-Hungary. “Great Britain strove by means of war
to smash its dangerous competitor – Germany – whose goods be-
fore the war were steadily driving British goods out of the world
markets.” It also wanted to seize Mesopotamia and Palestine from
Turkey to get a firm foothold in Egypt. “The French capitalists
strove to take away from Germany the Saar Basin and Alsace-
Lorraine, two rich coal and iron regions, the latter of which Ger-
many had seized from France in the war of 1870-71.”4 And in the
background stood the greatest of all imperialist powers, the Unit-
ed States, exploiting the war generally to march ahead to its capi-
talist objective of world mastery.
The war began on July 28, 1914, with an Austrian attack upon
Serbia. Russia mobilized, and Germany declared war upon her on
August 1. France joined the war on August 3, and Great Britain
one day later. The other powers kept on entering the war in the
ensuing months and years. The United States cagily stayed out,
profitably selling munitions to the war-making “Allies,” but finally
fearing that its Entente “friends” were about to be defeated, it
cynically joined the war on April 6, 1917, also under the pretext
that it was fighting in national defense.
THE GREAT BETRAYAL
The outbreak of the war confronted the Second International

230
 THE GREAT BETRAYAL
with the supreme responsibility of taking a stand for peace. The
interests of the workers imperatively demanded this and the In-
ternational had repeatedly declared in its congresses – especially
in Stuttgart, Copenhagen, and Basle – that the Socialist parties
would not only agitate against the war, but would vote against
furnishing men and money for it, and most important of all,
would “utilize the economic and political crisis caused by the war
to rouse the peoples and thereby to hasten the abolition of capi-
talist class rule.” But when it came to the crucial test the bulk of
the Second International parties completely ignored all these sol-
emn pledges and flagrantly betrayed their sacred duty to the
working class by treacherously tailing along after their national
bourgeoisie, shouting the “defense of the fatherland” war slogans
of the imperialists and herding their respective peoples into the
imperialist slaughter. In only two European countries – Russia
and Serbia – where Bolshevik influence was predominant, did
Socialist parties of the original belligerent countries stand firm
against the war. This great failure was the most terrible debacle
ever sustained by the world’s working class in its entire history.
The fundamental cause of this grave disaster was “social
chauvinism;” that is, an adherence to the bourgeois nationalism
of the respective capitalist classes, a treasonous attempted identi-
fication of the interests of the working class with those of the war-
making imperialists. The main social bases for this betrayal in the
various parties were among the better-paid skilled workers, the
extensive bodies of bureaucratic labor officials of all sorts, and the
large numbers of opportunist petty-bourgeois intellectuals who
had come largely to dominate the respective parties.
The failure to fight against the war, in fact, its acceptance, was
the general culmination of the strong opportunist tendencies
which had been developing in the Second International ever since
its inception, and of which we have signalized, in passing, many
manifestations. Lenin says, “The objective conditions at the end
of the 19th century were such that they strengthened opportun-
ism, turning the use of legal bourgeois opportunities into servile
worship of legalism, creating a thin layer of bureaucracy and aris-
tocracy in the working class, attracting to the ranks of the Social-
Democratic parties many petty-bourgeois ‘fellow travellers.’ The
war hastened this development; it turned opportunism into social
chauvinism; it changed the alliance of the opportunists with the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
bourgeoisie from a secret to an open one.”5 In the crisis, the thin
veneer of internationalism in the opportunist-controlled Second
International dissolved into a swamp of bourgeois nationalism.
The Social-Democratic leaders were not surprised and stam-
peded by the sudden outburst of the war, as has been said. On the
contrary, as Farwig makes clear, for years they had discussed in
their conventions the approach of a general war and they had
clearly signalized it as an imperialist war, in which the workers
could have no interest! This was the theory; the practice was that
the opportunist leadership of the party and the unions, with the
latter in the lead, completely discarded their Marxist pretensions
and supported the war in the spirit of bourgeois nationalists.6
HOW THE BETRAYAL OCCURRED
On July 29 the International Socialist Bureau met in session
in Brussels. It decided to advance the tenth congress date, sched-
uled for August 23 in Vienna, to August 9. Obviously, the thing to
have done was to summon at once a congress in a neutral country,
so that a united international policy for the workers could be
worked out. But this was prevented by the weakness of the inter-
national center and by the failure of the major parties to call for
such a congress. Bourgeois nationalism was actively at work.
Some mass protest meetings were held in Brussels and other cit-
ies – Jaurès, who spoke at one, was assassinated in Paris by mili-
tarists on July 31.7 Conferences were also held between French
and German delegates, but nothing came of them. No real at-
tempt was made on a general scale to line up the International’s
forces against the war.
On August 3 the great debacle came when the German Social-
Democratic leaders voted in the caucus of the Reichstag's group
by 78 to 14 to support the war. Significantly, the Legien trade un-
ion leaders, as the real controllers of the party, on August 2 antic-
ipated and predetermined the party’s decision by working out a
social peace, no-strike agreement with the employers.8 The par-
ty’s decision was presented next day to the Reichstag, where the
party’s 110 representatives voted unanimously in favor of the war
credits. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were among the handful who
voted against the credits in the party caucus, and Kautsky had
voted to abstain; but they all agreed to submit to party discipline
and to unit rule in the Reichstag. The party pro-war statement,

232
 THE GREAT BETRAYAL
read by Haase, a centrist, raised the bogey of Russian invasion,
accepted the slogan of the defense of the fatherland, and declared
that “in the hour of danger we shall not desert the fatherland.”9
The Socialist parties in Austria, France, England, Belgium,
and other European belligerent countries, except Russia and Ser-
bia,* took similar action to the German party. But the Bulgarian
“narrow Socialists” voted against the war. The parties of Canada,
Australia, and New Zealand also voted against the war. The trade
unions, including the French syndicalists, who had so militantly
proposed an anti-war general strike, but excepting the Industrial
Workers of the World in the United States, the Russians, the Ital-
ians and a few others, followed the pro-war lead of the Socialists.
Soon Guesde and Vaillant entered the French Cabinet, and
Vandervelde became part of the Belgian government. Kropotkin
joined the social patriots by supporting the tsar’s government in
the war.
In the neutral countries of Scandinavia, Switzerland, Italy, the
United States, etc., the parties generally stood for a position of
neutrality. When, later on, however, Italy and the United States
joined the war, their Socialist parties split, with the decisive sec-
tions voting against the war. The Second International had col-
lapsed, only the parties of the neutral countries still making a
show of keeping it going.
Right-wing Social-Democracy was at basic fault for the great
debacle. But within this general framework, the Social-
Democratic Party of Germany bore the heaviest responsibility. It
was the leading party of the Second International and the labor
world looked to it for guidance. If it had made a real show of re-
sistance to the war, undoubtedly the bulk of the International
would have followed its example. But when it displayed its bour-
geois nationalism and voted for the war credits, it at the same
time hopelessly smashed the international front of the world la-
bor movement. The party that had produced Karl Marx and Fred-
erick Engels, now fallen into the hands of such adventurers as

* Although the Mensheviks in the Duma refused to vote for the war
appropriations, the line of their leaders and party, including that of
Plekhanov, Axelrod, Martov, etc., was for the support of the Allies in
the war.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Kautsky, Ebert, Legien, Noske, Scheidemann, Singer, Auer, Da-
vid, et al., disgraced itself and shamelessly betrayed the trust
placed in it by the world’s most advanced workers.
THE DEFENSE OF THE FATHERLAND
The Social-Democratic parties, in supporting the war, did so
under the bourgeois slogan of the defense of the fatherland. In
order to cover up this treason with a pretense of Marxism, they
tried to lay a theoretical basis for their war policy. They took the
position that it was a national war, that the interests of their peo-
ple were vitally at stake, and that, therefore, they were fully justi-
fied in supporting the war. They undertook to concretize this po-
sition by asserting that their respective countries, with armies
battering against their borders, had no alternative but to defend
themselves. This general line was put forward blatantly by the
right-wing elements in terms hardly to be distinguished from
those of the capitalists themselves; whereas, the centrists, the
Kautsky tendency, cunningly attempted to disguise their war sup-
port by symbols of apparent war opposition.
The long-time revisionist Vollmar declared, “At the present
time the whole German people is prompted by a single uncon-
querable will, namely to protect the Fatherland, its independence,
and its cultural organization against the enemies that surround it,
and not to rest until the latter are conquered.”10 Philip
Scheidemann, speaking in the name of practically the entire body
of German social chauvinists, put the central blame upon tsarist
Russia. He said: “The chief guilt for the present war rests upon
Russia. At the very time when the tsar was exchanging dispatches
with the German Kaiser, apparently working for peace, he allowed
the mobilization to go on secretly, not only against Austria, but
also against Germany.... We in Germany have the duty to protect
ourselves. We have the task of protecting the country of the most
developed Social-Democracy against servitude to Russia.... We
Social-Democrats have not ceased to be Germans because we
have joined the Socialist International.”11 On the other hand, the
French, British, Belgian, American, and other social chauvinists
blamed Germany as the threat to their nations.
The German centrists, true to their role, worked out more
slick arguments, designed to trap into the war the more advanced
and revolutionary workers. Kautsky, while taking the basic social

234
 THE GREAT BETRAYAL
chauvinist position that it was a defensive war to protect the fa-
therland, did so under the guise of a pseudo opposition to the
war. His line was not to vote against the war credits, but to ab-
stain from voting. Curiously, the notorious revisionist, Bernstein,
joined the Kautsky camp. Kautsky typically managed the theoreti-
cal impossibility of proving the war to be both imperialist and na-
tional. He argued on both sides of the question. Thus, in one
breath, after stating that the small countries were fighting for
their existence, he said, “The situation is different with the great
solidly-based national countries. Their independence is certainly
not threatened, but apparently their integrity is not threatened
either.” After thus averring that it was not a defensive war for the
big powers, in the same article, he shifts to the opposite side of
the argument and calls upon the workers to support their respec-
tive governments, saying: “But from this follows also the further
duty of the Social-Democracy of every country to regard the war
exclusively as a defensive war, to set up as its goal only protection
from the enemy, not his ‘punishment’ or diminishment.”12
Kautsky lent his great prestige as an “orthodox” Marxist to the
shabby project of “proving” that the International could have tak-
en no course other than the one it did. The world situation, said
he, was too complex for unified proletarian action against the
war. In the face of the urgent need for national defense, working
class internationalism necessarily had to collapse. He stated: “So
the present war shows the limits of the power of the International.
We deceived ourselves if we expected that it might assure a har-
monious attitude of the whole Socialist proletariat of the world
during the world war. Such a position was possible only in a few
specially simple cases. The world war split the Socialists into vari-
ous camps, and especially into various national camps. The Inter-
national is unable to prevent that. That is to say, it is no effective
tool in war. It is essentially an instrument of peace.”13
The general result was that the right and the center joined in
prosecuting the war in “defense of the fatherland.” On this basis,
the Socialist parties in the several countries, repudiating the
deepest lessons of solidarity taught them by Marx and Engels,
called upon the workers of their respective countries to fire into
each other at the behest of the world imperialists who had orga-
nized the wholesale slaughter.

235
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
THE WAR AS AN IMPERIALIST WAR
In retrospect, it is now perfectly clear to all except political
fools and charlatans that World War I, both as a whole and in its
national segments, was a cold-blooded imperialist war, the basic
purpose of which was a redivision of the world for the benefit of
the great capitalist powers. It is the height of cynicism to maintain
that the workers of the world had any national or class interests in
the war.
At the time, the Bolsheviks, especially Lenin and other left-
wingers, clearly demonstrated the imperialist character of the
war. They proved to the hilt that it was an unjust, aggressive, re-
actionary war. This insistence upon the imperialist nature of the
struggle was the basic line that differentiated the left from the
rightists and centrists, whose fundamental position was that it
was, for their respective countries, a national, and therefore, a
just war. The basically different tactics of the two groups flowed
from these fundamentally contradictory analyses.
Lenin, who for years had been pointing out the imperialist na-
ture of the approaching struggle, made the war issue perfectly
clear in his theses on the war of September 5, 1914. In this docu-
ment he says: “The European and World War bears the sharp
marks of a bourgeois-imperialist and dynastic war. A struggle for
markets, for freedom to loot foreign countries, a tendency to put
an end to the revolutionary movement of the proletariat and de-
mocracy within the separate countries, a tendency to fool, to dis-
unite, to slaughter the proletariat of all countries by inflaming the
wage slaves of one nation against the wage slaves of the other for
the benefit of the bourgeoisie – this is the only real meaning and
significance of the war.... The conduct of the leaders of the Ger-
man Social-Democratic party, the strongest and the most influen-
tial party belonging to the Second International... which voted for
the military appropriations and which repeated the bourgeois
chauvinist phrases of the Prussian Junkers and the bourgeoisie, is
a direct betrayal of socialism.... The same condemnation is de-
served by the conduct of the leaders of the Belgian and French
Social-Democratic parties, who have betrayed socialism by enter-
ing bourgeois cabinets.... The betrayal of socialism by a majority
of the leaders of the Second International... signifies an ideologi-
cal and political collapse of that International.”14 Lenin especially

236
 THE GREAT BETRAYAL
denounced the treachery of the Kautskyians.
The social chauvinists of all stripes and of all countries, trying
to paint the great conflict as a national, just war, undertook to
justify it by reference to the policies of Marx and Engels with re-
gard to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 and other national
wars of the 19th century. To these slanders, Lenin replied:
“All these references are an abominable distortion of Marx’
and Engels’ views, made in favor of the bourgeoisie and the op-
portunists, just as the writings of the Anarchists, Guillaume & Co.,
distort the views of Marx and Engels for the justification of anar-
chism. The war of 1870-1871 was historically progressive on Ger-
many’s side up to the defeat of Napoleon III, because both he and
the tsar had long oppressed Germany, keeping it in a state of feu-
dal decentralization. As soon as the war turned into a plunder of
France (annexation of Alsace and Lorraine), Marx and Engels de-
cisively condemned the Germans. Even at the beginning of the
war of 1870-71 Marx and Engels approved of Bebel’s and Lieb-
knecht’s refusal to vote for military appropriations; they advised
the Social-Democrats not to merge with the bourgeoisie, but to
defend the independent class interests of the proletariat. To apply
the characterization of the Franco-Prussian war, which was of a
bourgeois progressive nature and fought for national liberty, to
the present imperialist war, is to mock history. The same is even
more true about the war of 1854-1855 and all other wars of the
19th century, i.e., a time when there was no modern imperialism,
no ripe objective conditions for socialism, no mass socialist par-
ties in all the belligerent countries, i.e., when there were none of
those conditions from which the Basle Manifesto deduced the tac-
tics of a ‘proletarian revolution’ in the case of a war’s arising
among the great nations. Whoever refers at present to Marx’ atti-
tude towards the wars of a period when the bourgeoisie was pro-
gressive, forgetting Marx’ words that ‘the workers have no father-
land,’ words which refer to a period when the bourgeoisie is reac-
tionary and has outlived itself, to the period of Socialist revolu-
tions, is shamelessly distorting Marx and substituting a bourgeois
for a Socialist standpoint.”15
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL
When the war got under way the parties of the Second Inter-
national found themselves caught in a murderous vicious circle.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
The Germans, Austrians, Turks, and Bulgarians fought, presuma-
bly on the defensive against being overrun and destroyed by the
Russians and the western powers. By the same token, the French,
British, Russians, etc., supposedly fought to preserve their na-
tional independence from the super-aggressive Germans. The
bourgeois logic of the situation, which was the logic followed by
the heads of the Second International, was an all-around fight, as
it was, to the finish.
The treason of the German Social-Democracy got the Socialist
parties and the proletariat into this dreadful dilemma by joining
the war on the basis of a defense against the “menace of Russian
barbarism.” This excuse was a monstrous lie; for if the German
party had been loyal to the anti-war policies of the Stuttgart-
Copenhagen-Basle resolution, the effect of this would have been,
not the subjugation of Germany by Russia, but the earlier precipi-
tation of the Russian Revolution, and probably also, of the Ger-
man Revolution.
Lenin’s line, incorporated in the Basle resolution, by counter-
ing the war with a bold anti-war stand, would have saved the var-
ious parties from getting into the lethal vicious circle that devel-
oped as a result of the social chauvinist policy that was followed.
It also offered the way out of the impasse, once the vicious circle
had been established. If the British and French parties, even then,
had applied the line of the resolutions adopted at successive
world congresses, the general result would not have been the loss
of their independence at the hands of Germany as their social pat-
riotic leaders averred, but the stimulation of revolutions in Ger-
many and Russia, and possibly also in their own countries.
The Russian Bolshevik party itself, under the direct leadership
of Lenin, showed the world proletariat the way out of the vicious
“defense” circle, by smashing tsarist-capitalist rule in their own
country. This, in turn, was a powerful precipitant of the German
revolution, which followed not long afterward. For the workers,
Lenin’s policy, which brought about an almost bloodless revolu-
tion in Russia, was the only possible answer to the terrible human
destruction. It was the greatest of all peace missions.
The ultimate imperialist winner in the great human slaughter
was American imperialism. It fattened and grew strong on the
blood of the mutual massacre, while its European imperialist ri-
vals did each other irreparable war damage. Nevertheless, the his-

238
 THE GREAT BETRAYAL
torical victor in the war was the international proletariat. Not-
withstanding all their great losses, human and otherwise, the
workers of the world, with the Russian working class striking the
central blow in the great Russian Revolution of November 1917,
delivered a shattering attack against world capitalism; one from
which that system has never recovered, nor can ever recover.

239
26. Role of the Second International
(1889-1914)
From that fateful August 4, 1914, when the German Social-
Democracy voted the war budget for the Kaiser’s government, the
Second International has been dead so far as constructive services
to the workers are concerned. That act, an utter betrayal of the
whole tradition, program, and perspective of Marxism, marked the
final passage of the organization, firmly dominated by an oppor-
tunist leadership, into the service of the world imperialists. It was
at the same time the signal for the creation of a new International,
an historical imperative that Lenin was quick to understand.
The Second International began as a Marxist organization,
but its leadership became corrupted by the reactionary influences
generated by the rise of world imperialism. Stalin says, “The Se-
cond International did not want to combat opportunism; it want-
ed to live in peace with opportunism, and allowed it to gain a firm
foothold. Pursuing a conciliatory policy toward opportunism, the
Second International itself became opportunist.”1
Since World War I the Second International has remained a
counter-revolutionary force, a stumbling block in the path of the
world’s workers marching on to socialism. The great betrayal
meant not only that the Second International as such was not go-
ing to fight against imperialist war, but also that it had turned its
back upon socialism. For the terms of the Lenin-inspired resolu-
tion of Stuttgart-Copenhagen-Basle provided precisely that the
fight against the war should be based upon a struggle to abolish
capitalism and to establish socialism. During the next years the
Second International was to make very manifest the counter-
revolutionary character which it had unmasked when it endorsed
World War I.
Lenin says: “The collapse of the Second International is the
collapse of opportunism which was growing on the soil of a specif-
ic (the so-called ‘peaceful’) historic epoch now passed, and which
practically dominated the International in the last years. The op-
portunists had long been preparing this collapse by rejecting the
socialist revolution and substituting for it bourgeois reformism;
by repudiating the class struggle with its inevitable transfor-
mation into civil war at certain moments, and by preaching class

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 THE ZIMMERWALD MOVEMENT
collaboration; by preaching bourgeois chauvinism under the
name of patriotism and defense of the fatherland and ignoring or
repudiating the fundamental truth of socialism early expressed in
The Communist Manifesto, namely, that the workers have no fa-
therland; by confining themselves in their struggle against milita-
rism to a sentimental, philistine point of view instead of recogniz-
ing the necessity of a revolutionary war of the proletariat of all
countries against the bourgeoisie of all countries; by turning the
necessary utilization of bourgeois parliamentarism and bourgeois
legality into a fetish of this legality and into forgetfulness of the
duty to have illegal forms of organization and agitation in times of
crises.”2
EARLY CONSTRUCTIVE WORK OF THE INTERNATIONAL
The Second International grew and flourished during what
was principally the period of the growth and expansion of world
imperialism. The period marked the great extension of capitalism,
but also an accumulation of sharpening capitalist antagonisms in
foreign policy and the beginning of its decline as a world system.
During this period, the role of the bourgeoisie was transformed
from progressive to reactionary. Capitalism, which had been a
spur to social development, had become by 1914 a fetter upon its
further development.
Stalin says, “The period of the domination of the Second In-
ternational was mainly the period of the formation and instruc-
tion of the proletarian armies in an environment of more or less
peaceful development.”3 It was, prior to 1914, a time of relatively
few wars and revolutions, of a comparatively stable capitalist sys-
tem. Consequently, the International devoted itself mainly to or-
ganizational and educational work; to the building of Socialist
parties, trade unions, and cooperatives, in a general atmosphere
(save in Russia, and, to a lesser extent, also in the United States)
of a relatively temperate class struggle. The exclusive concern of
its “practical” right-wing leaders was Kleinarbeit – day-to-day
routine work.
All over the capitalist world the workers labored under miser-
able conditions of poverty and oppression. The tremendous in-
crease in productivity brought about by machinery and improved
capitalist techniques during the previous decades had meant very
little in the betterment of the workers’ living standards. The main
241
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
benefits flowed into the coffers of those who owned the industries
and the national resources. The workers labored under barbaric
conditions in the industries; they had little or no financial protec-
tion against unemployment, sickness, and old age, and they
lacked many elementary political rights, including (for women,
and often for men) the right to vote. The opportunist leaders of
Social-Democracy concentrated upon these immediate evils, but
refused to attack the capitalist system which gave birth to them.
This was the failure that eventually led to the undoing of the Se-
cond International.
The International, however, had many achievements to its
credit in the daily struggle. As we have summarized in Chapter
24, it built a tremendous economic and political organization.
Lenin says, “The Second International did its full share of the
preparatory work in the preliminary organization of the proletari-
an masses during the long ‘peaceful’ epoch, of most cruel capital-
ist slavery and most rapid progress in the last third of the nine-
teenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.”4 The Second
International also secured many concessions from the employers
and the governments with respect to wages, hours of work, social
insurance, factory legislation, and the right of men and women
workers to vote. These achievements were, however, considerably
facilitated in the major imperialist countries by tendencies of the
big employers to make certain concessions to the labor aristocra-
cy in order to weaken the solidarity and revolutionary spirit of the
working class as a whole. The increasing pressures of the growing
labor movement also compelled the ruling classes to add certain
liberal modifications to their policies of violent suppression of
labor unrest. The rulers combined the carrot with the club, in the
sense of Bismarck’s social insurance schemes. Examples of this
trend were, as Lorwin remarks, the “neo-liberalism” of Lloyd
George and Asquith in Great Britain, and the “Progressivism” of
Theodore Roosevelt and the “New Freedom” of Woodrow Wilson
in the United States.
The Second International also definitely broadened out the
scope of the organized world labor movement. The influence of
the First International had hardly extended beyond Western Eu-
rope, but that of the Second International spread all over Europe
and much of America. The great colonial and semi-colonial coun-
tries, however – India, China, the Middle East, Africa, and most

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 THE ZIMMERWALD MOVEMENT
of Latin America – remained pretty much of a closed book to the
Second International. For real leadership these people had to
await the advent of the Third International, which was to be the
first genuine world organization of the proletariat.
THE PRICE OF OPPORTUNISM
The achievements of the Second International, however, were
made at a terrible cost, namely, the abandonment of the princi-
ples of Marxism. In the winning of immediate objectives, the
leadership ignored the ultimate goal of socialism. During the pe-
riod of the First International the scientific analysis and program
of Marxism were built up, but during the period of the Second
International all this was torn down and in its place there was
substituted a petty-bourgeois opportunist revolutionism that had
nothing in common with Marxism. The world’s workers had to
pay a deadly price for this political degeneration by the complete
collapse of the Second International at the very moment of its
greatest test – just when the workers had their most supreme
need of Marxist leadership and organization.
It is a fact, of course, that during the period of the Second In-
ternational Lenin led a profound renaissance of Marxism. Not
only did he resurrect the great principles of Marx and Engels
which the pseudo socialists at the head of the Second Internation-
al thought they had succeeded in burying forever, but he also de-
veloped Marxism to greater heights than ever, to correspond with
the workers’ needs in the new, imperialist stage of the capitalist
system. But Lenin could do this only in the face of powerful oppo-
sition from the dominant opportunist leadership and program in
the International. Lenin was a hated stranger in the official circles
of the Second International.
The basic cause of the collapse of the Second International
was that, dominated by opportunist labor bureaucrats and petty-
bourgeois intellectuals, it succumbed to the corruptions and illu-
sions bred of the period of the rapid growth and expansion of
world imperialism. Its leadership, throwing aside every Marxian
principle, read out of the current “prosperity” and relative “stabil-
ity” of the capitalist system, the counter-revolutionary conclusion
that the existing regime was growing over into socialism, or rather
into their petty-bourgeois conception of socialism. The rottenness
of their whole outlook was exposed when the capitalist system
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
passed into a new period of great wars and revolutions, the be-
ginning of its era of decay and decline.
The First International died nobly in battle against capitalism
and left behind it a glorious tradition. But the Second Interna-
tional was betrayed to disaster by a corrupt leadership which in
the crisis callously threw aside every pledge it had ever made to
the workers, every principle of Marxism that it had ever pro-
fessed. The workers were strongly enough organized at the time to
have made a powerful and successful fight against the war, but
they were cynically betrayed into the hands of the enemy by their
leaders. Therefore, the banner of world socialism had to and did
pass from the unworthy hands of the Second International lead-
ership into those of a new and superior organization, the Third, or
Communist, International.

244
 PART III. THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL, 1919-1943

27. The Zimmerwald Movement

(1915-1917)
The opportunist betrayal on the war split the Second Interna-
tional both organizationally and ideologically. There were several
general groups of parties: those of the two belligerent camps, Cen-
tral Powers and Allies, which were at dagger’s point; and the par-
ties of the neutral countries; and the Russian party, which fitted
into neither of the other categories.
The ideological division between right, left, and center, always
a factor in the Second International, was greatly accentuated by
the war, especially as the struggle dragged on and the opposition
to it began to take more definite shape. The three tendencies
eventually were to crystallize into three definite international or-
ganizations – the resurrected right-wing Second International,
the centrist Two-and-a-Half International, and the Communist
Third International. The line of the right wing was class peace and
all-out support of the imperialist war; the center sought a bour-
geois peace, while the left, acting in the spirit of the Stuttgart-
Copenhagen-Basle resolutions, sought to transform the mass an-
ti-war spirit into a revolutionary fight for socialism.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
The earliest roots of the Third International reach back to the
foundation of the Bolshevik group in Russia. The manifold writ-
ings of Lenin during the pre-war period were the foundations,
along with those of Marx, of its revolutionary ideology. The strug-
gles of the Russian proletariat in the great revolutions of 1905 and
1917 belong properly to its tradition. The sprouting left wing in
the pre-war Second International, so sedulously cultivated by
Lenin, was its primary international manifestation. But this revo-
lutionary tendency did not truly become an international move-
ment until after the first world war and the Russian Revolution,
and particularly after the betrayal of these historic struggles by
the opportunist Social-Democratic leaders.
From the very outset Lenin understood that the great war
treason by the leaders of the Second International meant the

245
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
death of that body as the world organization of the proletariat,
and thus made imperative the establishment of a new interna-
tional. Lenin, who lived in exile in Galicia to be nearer to Russia
when the war broke out, managed to make his way to Switzerland,
where he arrived on September 5. Under his leadership a group of
Bolsheviks gathered and began the publication of a journal, the
Sotsial Demokrat. After preparing a preliminary thesis on Sep-
tember 6, Lenin wrote a manifesto on the war which was issued
by the Central Committee on November 1, 1914.
This manifesto laid down the main line along which the Bol-
sheviks eventually carried through the Russian Revolution and
the establishment of the Communist International. The manifesto
characterized the war as imperialist and declared that “the leaders
of the International committed treachery with regard to socialism
when they voted for military appropriations, when they repeated
the chauvinist (‘patriotic’) slogans of the bourgeoisie of their own
countries, when they justified and defended the war, when they
entered the bourgeois cabinets of the belligerent countries.” It
declared that “the opportunists have set at naught the decisions of
the Stuttgart, Copenhagen, and Basle congresses.” It included in
its condemnation the Anarcho-syndicalist tendency, which it
called “a natural ‘supplement’ of opportunism.”
The manifesto called for a United States of Europe on the ba-
sis of the overthrow of the German, Austrian, and Russian mon-
archies (a slogan later withdrawn as incorrect). The party state-
ment declared that “in all the other advanced countries... the war
has placed on the order of the day the slogan of a socialist revolu-
tion.” The transformation of the contemporary imperialist war
into a civil war, continued the manifesto, is the only correct slo-
gan, pointed out by the experience of the Commune, outlined in
the Basle (1912) resolution, and derived from all the conditions of
an imperialist war between highly developed bourgeois countries.
It declared that the Second International had collapsed and it
called for the formation of a new international.1
In Russia the bold stand of the Bolsheviks against the war
called down immediate persecution. The Bolshevik Duma mem-
bers were jailed, as were several Central Committee members;
Pravda was suppressed and many party groups were broken up.
But the party forces were soon re-organized and the fight against
the war was carried on both inside Russia and from the new Cen-

246
 THE ZIMMERWALD MOVEMENT
tral Committee headquarters in Switzerland.
SOCIALIST ANTI-WAR CONFERENCES
Under the terrific slaughter and general hardships of the war,
mass anti-war sentiment began to grow and to express itself, es-
pecially after the first few months of patriotic fervor had worn off.
Opposition movements sprang up here and there. In Germany, in
December 1914, of the 14 members who had voted against the war
credits in the leading party caucus, only one stood up, Karl Lieb-
knecht, who bravely spoke out in the Reichstag “amidst the howl-
ing of the patriotic pack.”2 His courageous voice was a symbol of
the rising anti-war movement throughout the world.
During this period a number of Socialist international anti-
war conferences took place. In January 1915 there was a meeting
of the Socialists of the neutral countries in Copenhagen, and in
February also a conference of the Socialist parties of the Entente
countries in London. The Socialists of Germany, Austria, and
Hungary also met, in Vienna on June 18 of the same year. In Sep-
tember 1914 the American Socialist Party had proposed a general
Socialist conference, but nothing came of it.
The Bolsheviks paid close attention to these several confer-
ences. They sent delegates to both the London and Copenhagen
gatherings. But these bodies decisively rejected Lenin’s revolu-
tionary line on the war. They would go no further than pacifist
appeals to the respective governments to establish peace – a
hopeless project.
The first significant war-time conference of anti-war forces
was held by the women, in Berne, March 28, 1915. The conference
was led by Clara Zetkin, secretary of the International Socialist
Women’s Bureau of the Second International. It was the first con-
ference to include representatives of all the major belligerent
countries. The Bolsheviks gave the conference strong backing, the
Russian delegation including N. K. Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife),
Inessa Armand, Zinaida Lelina, and Olga Ravich. The congress,
however, rejected the Bolshevik resolution. The resolution adopt-
ed, while condemning capitalism and speaking out for socialism,
confined itself to general anti-war agitation.3
The International Socialist Youth also held a conference in
Berne, April 5, 1915. Here again, the left provided the real backing
for the conference. But the delegates were not ready to adopt Len-
247
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
in’s program, the Russian resolution being rejected. The confer-
ence resolution followed much the line of the preceding women’s
conference. The gathering set up the International Bureau of So-
cialist Youth, which published a paper Freie Jugend, for which
Lenin wrote.
THE FIRST ZIMMERWALD CONFERENCE
Meanwhile the Italian Socialist Party, which had taken a
stand against the war, grew weary of trying to interest the major
parties in a general anti-war conference, and called one on its own
responsibility. After a preliminary conference in Berne, July 11,
the general conference came together at Zimmerwald, a small vil-
lage near Berne, September 5-12, 1915. The Zimmerwald confer-
ence, like the previous gatherings of the women and youth, gave
effective answer to the lying excuses of the right-wing Socialists,
who, to prevent unified action against the war, were arguing that
general Socialist conferences were impossible during wartime.
Present at Zimmerwald were 38 delegates from Russia, Ger-
many, France, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Italy, Holland, Swit-
zerland, Sweden, and Norway. There were three Russian parties
represented – Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and left Socialist-
Revolutionaries. Lenin and Zinoviev led the Bolshevik delegation.
Trotsky represented a splinter group. There were ten German del-
egates, including Ledebour, Hoffman, Meyer, Bertha Thalheimer
and Borchardt. Merrheim and Bouderen represented French
Syndicalist unions. Three delegates of the I.L.P. and the Socialist
Party of Great Britain were unable to get passports. The Socialists
in the United States had similar difficulties. Liebknecht, then in
the army, sent a letter; Zetkin and Luxemburg were in jail.
The conference, which indicated a strong growth of anti-war
spirit, was nevertheless unclear in its analysis and objectives. It
divided into three general groups. The right, the majority, was
made up of most of the Germans, the French, some Italians, the
Poles, and the Russian Mensheviks. The left was a group of eight,
mostly from Russia, the Scandinavian countries and the Balkans,
led by Lenin. Trotsky, as usual, had a middle group, of five or six.4
Lenin’s group introduced a draft for a resolution and manifes-
to calling for an immediate end to the war, refusal to grant war
credits, withdrawal of Socialists from the cabinets of England,
France, and Belgium, and the overthrow of the capitalist govern-

248
 THE ZIMMERWALD MOVEMENT
ments. The resolution was voted down by 19 to 12, and the draft
manifesto was referred to the commission.5 Ultimately a manifes-
to was adopted and signed by all the delegates. This document,
which contained much of the material presented by Lenin’s
group, condemned the war as imperialist, demanded that it be
brought to an immediate end, condemned the failure of the old
leadership to fight against the war, and demanded a peace with-
out annexations. The manifesto endorsed the general line of the
Stuttgart-Copenhagen-Basle resolutions, but was vague as to the
way socialism was to be arrived at. It also said nothing whatever
about founding a new international. The conference set up the
International Socialist Committee, to be made up of one to three
representatives from each country. R. Grimm of the Swiss Social-
Democratic Party was elected secretary, and headquarters were
established in Berne.
The left-wing delegates submitted a statement to the effect
that they were not satisfied with the manifesto. "It contains no
characterization of either open opportunism or opportunism cov-
ered up by radical phrases.... The manifesto contains no clear
characterization of the means of combating the war.” This docu-
ment was signed by Lenin and other left-wing leaders.6 Later on,
in an article Lenin, while recognizing the weaknesses of the
Zimmerwald movement, stated that it constituted a step forward
and upon this basis would be supported. The Zimmerwald confer-
ence was the germ of the Third International.
THE KIENTHAL CONFERENCE
The second conference of the Zimmerwald movement was
held in the Swiss village of Kienthal, April 24-29, 1916. In the sev-
en months since its first conference the movement had grown
considerably, on the basis of increased anti-war activities and a
developing mass resentment against the war. Some 25 parties and
groups were now affiliated, including the Socialist parties of Italy,
Switzerland, Great Britain, Rumania, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria,
Portugal, and both the S.P. and S.L.P. of the United States. The
Italian and Bulgarian trade unions were affiliated, and especially
active were the youth organizations.7
Particularly important at this time was the formation in Ger-
many, in January 1916, of the Spartakusbund, or International
group, by the left wing. This development was significant because
249
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
of the key role of Germany in the war and because of the great size
and prestige of the German Socialist movement. The program of
the Spartakusbund was written by Rosa Luxemburg. This pro-
gram, later submitted to the Kienthal conference, while it called
for ‘‘a new Workers’ International,” was not specific on revolu-
tionary action to end the war.
The Kienthal, or Second Zimmerwald conference, was made
up of 44 delegates. Lenin, Zinoviev, and Inessa Armand were pre-
sent from the Russian Bolsheviks, Martov and Axelrod from the
Mensheviks, and three delegates from the Socialist-Revolutionary
Party. Germany had seven delegates, Italy seven, France four,
Switzerland four, one came from the Socialist Youth Internation-
al, and a sprinkling from various other parties.
The draft resolution of the Bolshevik group proposed that the
call to the workers should be, “Lay down your weapons. You
should turn them only against the common foe – the capitalist
governments.” This was rejected by the centrist and right majority
of the conference. Instead, the resolution proposed by the
Zimmerwald International Socialist Committee was adopted.
While this one was a distinct advance over that of Zimmerwald
and called for a fight for socialism, it went no further, in practical
proposals than to demand a vigorous and united fight for an im-
mediate armistice and for “peace without annexations.” The fight
on the question of a new international occurred over the matter of
relations to be maintained towards the International Socialist Bu-
reau (leading body of the Second International). The I.S.B. was
roundly criticized, but the conference refused to break off nego-
tiations with it altogether.
The Zimmerwald Left, mainly the Bolsheviks, voted with res-
ervations for these limited resolutions. Their general estimate of
the conference was later thus summed up: “Like the Zimmerwald
conference, the Kienthal conference did not accept the basic prin-
ciples of the Bolshevik policy, namely, the conversion of the impe-
rialist war into a civil war, the defeat of one’s own imperialist gov-
ernment in the war and the formation of the Third International.
Nevertheless, the Kienthal conference helped to crystallize the
internationalist elements of whom the Communist Third Interna-
tional was subsequently formed.”8

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 THE ZIMMERWALD MOVEMENT
THE IRISH REBELLION OF 1916
In the great revolutionary struggle that was brewing during
World War I one of the most important elements was the growing
revolutionary stand of various oppressed nations in Europe. The-
se eventually were to play a big part later in tearing to pieces the
Russian, German, Austrian, and Turkish empires. The first clear
signal as to what was going on in this respect was the insurrection
in Ireland during Easter week of 1916. This was the latest in a long
series of insurrections during Ireland’s 700-year struggle against
English domination and exploitation. As we have seen in Chapter
8, Karl Marx attached high importance to the Irish independence
movement, not only for the sake of the oppressed Irish people
themselves, but also as a weapon in the general struggle against
British capitalism.
The Irish leaders, who generally condemned World War I as
an imperialist war, seized upon a key moment to stress the fight
for Irish liberation, when Great Britain was busily engaged in try-
ing to wipe out its dangerous imperialist rival, Germany. The dif-
ficulty, however, was that the Irish people were not prepared for
the suddenly announced rising. The rebellion began on April 24
and ended five days later. The heroic little army of rebels, only
120 strong, could not stand off the armed might of Britain. On
May 12 Padraic Pearse and James Connolly, together with other
leaders, were executed. Connolly was so badly injured that he had
to prop himself up on a structure while he was being shot. In
commenting upon this bold but futile revolt, Lenin, while showing
that it represented a real mass movement and not merely an ad-
venturous putsch, said, “The misfortune of the Irish is that they
rose prematurely, when the European revolt of the proletariat had
not yet matured.”9
The outstanding leader of the rebellion was James Connolly,
formerly an active worker in the I.W.W., S.L.P., and S.P. in the
United States. Connolly was a brilliant Marxist, and one of his
main theoretical achievements was to dovetail the struggle for
socialism in Ireland with the fight for national independence.
Ryan says that Lenin ranked Connolly very high and spoke “in
cordial terms of his Labor in Irish History to Irish trade union
visitors to Russia.”10 The ill-fated Irish attempt of 1916 was fol-
lowed by a far bigger and more effective insurrection in 1921-23.

251
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
LENIN’S GREAT THEORETICAL STRUGGLE
Since the turn of the century, Lenin had been tireless in his
brilliant efforts to establish a revolutionary political program. But
the period between the outbreak of the war in August 1914 and
the advent of the Russian bourgeois revolution in March 1917 was
one of even more intense theoretical work and polemical struggle
on his part. The basic task he was then carrying out was to teach
the socialist movement and the working class in general the ele-
mentary lesson that the overthrow of capitalism and the estab-
lishment of socialism was the only constructive way out of the
war, as he had written a decade before into the famous Stuttgart-
Copenhagen-Basle resolutions. Thus his whole life’s work was
being exposed to the acid test of reality.
The immensity of Lenin’s wartime task was vividly exempli-
fied by his experiences at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal confer-
ences. Here were the most advanced and revolutionary fighters in
the International, but they were by no means ready to accept the
Lenin revolutionary way out of the crisis. In both conferences
Lenin’s followers were in a small minority.
Lenin not only had to wage war generally against the illusions
and treacheries of the right and center groups of the Socialist par-
ties, but also against the shortcomings and immaturities of the
left wing itself. In the Russian party also he had to carry on a con-
stant fight against variations and deviations of various sorts. This
was a continuation of his great theoretical work ever since the
party was founded. For years he also polemicized against Trotsky
over innumerable questions. At this particular time two of the
most intense inner-party struggles he had to wage were against
the Bukharin-Piatakov group and others over the question of the
self-determination of nations and the arming of the people.
One of the most important polemics by Lenin during this pe-
riod was with Rosa Luxemburg, author of the Junius pamphlet,
written while she was in prison. Lenin undertook to eliminate her
errors regarding the necessity of underground party organization
in the war situation, the question of advocating a republic in
Germany, and the possibility of national wars during the period of
imperialism.
In his endless sharp and bitter polemics with the right and
center, Lenin levelled his heaviest attacks against the renegade,

252
 THE ZIMMERWALD MOVEMENT
Karl Kautsky, erstwhile Marxist theoretician. In this period, with
the masses moving rapidly to the left, Lenin singled out
Kautskyism as the greatest danger within labor’s ranks. This was
because this particular brand of opportunism, with its pretenses
at Marxian orthodoxy, its glowing use of revolutionary phrases,
and its conservative practice, was especially stultifying to the pro-
letariat. It tended to kill the militancy of the working class and to
betray the masses into the hands of the right-wing traitors and
the ruling class.
Lenin calls Kautskyism “covered-up, cowardly, sugary, hypo-
critical opportunism.” “Kautsky wishes to reconcile the revolu-
tionary masses with the opportunist chiefs who have ‘nothing in
common’ with them – but on what basis? On the basis of words.
On the basis of ‘left’ words of the ‘left’ minority in the Reichstag!
Let the minority, like Kautsky, condemn revolutionary action call-
ing it adventurist, but let it feed the masses with left words. Then
there will be peace in the party, with the Südekums, Legiens,
Davids, Monitors.”11 The Kautsky centrists were a basic hindrance
to the mass Socialist revolt against the right-wing leadership dur-
ing the war; they were also the most decisive element in the defeat
of the German revolution at the end of the war.
In the Spring of 1916 Lenin produced his great book, Imperi-
alism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which we have summa-
rized in Chapter 18. This book was one of Lenin’s most decisive
contributions enabling Marxism to take into consideration the
specific problems for the world proletariat engendered by the de-
velopment of world imperialism. In all his writings about imperi-
alism Lenin stressed the basic difference of this stage of monopoly
capitalism from the earlier period of competitive capitalism, with
its relatively placid development. The imperialist era, says Lenin,
is “a new epoch, comparatively more impetuous, full of abrupt
changes, catastrophes, conflicts....”12
Lenin especially attacked Kautsky’s theory of “ultra-
imperialism,” of a world with an organized stable capitalism (pre-
sumably moving towards socialism). Lenin summarized Kautsky’s
views as follows: “From the purely economic point of view it is not
impossible that capitalism will yet go through another new phase,
that of the extension of the policy of the cartels to foreign policy,
the phase of ‘ultra-imperialism,’ i.e., of a super-imperialism; a
union of world imperialisms and not struggles among imperial-
253
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
isms; a phase when wars shall cease under capitalism, a phase of
‘the joint exploitation of the world by an internationally combined
finance capital.’ ”13
In his introduction to Bukharin’s book, Imperialism and
World Economy, Lenin gives a crushing answer to this ultra-
imperialism of Kautsky and all other advocates of “organized cap-
italism” (including eventually Bukharin himself), when he says:
“Can one, however, deny that in the abstract a new phase of capi-
talism to follow imperialism, namely, a phase of ultra-
imperialism, is ‘thinkable?’ No. In the abstract one can think of
such a phase. In practice, however, he who rejects the hard tasks
of today in the name of dreams about easy tasks of the future be-
comes an opportunist. Theoretically, it means to fail to base one-
self on the developments now going on in real life, to detach one-
self from them in the name of dreams. There is no doubt that the
development is going in the direction of a single world trust that
will swallow up all enterprises and all states without exception.
But the development in this direction is proceeding under such
stress, with such a tempo, with such contradictions, conflicts and
convulsions – not only economic, but also political, national, etc.,
etc. – that before a single world trust will be reached, before the
respective national finance capitals will have formed a world un-
ion of ‘ultra-imperialism,’ imperialism will inevitably explode,
capitalism will turn into its opposite.”14
The Russian, Chinese, and other revolutions during the peri-
od of imperialism, as well as the cumulative breakdown of the
world capitalist system, testify to the correctness of this basic
analysis by Lenin.

254
28. The Russian Bourgeois Revolution
(March 1917)
In January 1917 the world was startled by the development of
a strong revolutionary strike movement in Russia. There were big
strikes in Baku and Nizhni-Novgorod, and by January 9 one-third
of Moscow’s workers were on strike. On March 3 the workers of
the big Putilov works in Petrograd also went out. The Bolsheviks
organized big street demonstrations and by March 9, 200,000
workers were on strike. The next day the strike became general.
The militant workers carried banners – “Down with the Tsar,”
“Down with the War,” “We Want Bread.” On March 12 the Petro-
grad troops refused to fire on the people, and by evening 60,000
of them had joined with the demonstrators. The workers flung
open the jails to free imprisoned revolutionaries, and they began
to arrest tsarist generals and officials. All over the country similar
events took place. By March 14, the revolution had won.1
The tsar abdicated and a provisional government was set up.
This consisted of a group of reactionaries headed by Rodzyanko,
President of the Duma, a landlord and monarchist. A few days
later, a new government was established, with Prince Lvov as
Premier, Milyukov as Foreign Minister, and Kerensky as Minister
of Justice. What had taken place was a bourgeois-democratic rev-
olution. Political power had passed into the hands of the class of
capitalist landowners and bourgeoisie, which as Lenin said, “for a
long time has been ruling our country economically.”2
But there was also growing a direct challenge to the rule of the
bourgeoisie. Even before the tsar abdicated the workers began to
organize Soviets of Workers and Soldiers, on the model of the
1905 revolution. Soon nearly every town and city had its Soviet.
The result, says the party History, following Lenin’s analysis, was
“a peculiar interlocking of two powers, of two dictatorships: the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, represented by the Provisional
Government, and the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasant-
ry, represented by the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
The result was a dual power.”3
The challenge of the Soviets to the bourgeois government was
as yet, however, only potential; for these bodies, with few excep-
tions, were in the control of the Mensheviks and the Socialist-

255
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Revolutionaries, and the Soviet leaders were quite willing to leave
the power in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The party History ex-
plains this situation largely by the fact that during the period
when the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were busily
“seizing the seats in the Soviets and building up a majority there...
the majority of the leaders of the Bolshevik Party were in prison
or exile (Lenin was in exile abroad and Stalin and Sverdlov in
banishment in Siberia) while the Mensheviks and Socialist-
Revolutionaries were freely promenading in the streets of Petro-
grad.”4
The Revolution was a tremendous justification of the political
line of the Bolsheviks, as mainly hammered out by Lenin. It
proved Lenin’s contention that during periods of revolution con-
script armies, made up of masses of the toilers, would rally to the
side of the revolutionists, and it likewise knocked on the head the
false gospel of the right-wing heads of the Second International
that armed popular revolts were no longer possible against mod-
ern armies. It also justified Lenin’s position that in the bourgeois
revolution the proletariat was the leading force, and that in the
fight against tsarism the great bulk of the peasantry could be re-
lied upon as a revolutionary force. By the same token, it repudiat-
ed the current Menshevik-revisionist tendency to sweep aside the
peasantry as a counter-revolutionary mass. Finally, it justified
Lenin’s great program of countering the war with revolution.
WHY THE REVOLUTION TOOK PLACE
Behind the March revolution was the explosive force of a
growing capitalism and an expanding proletariat. From 1900 to
1913 industrial production in Russia increased by 62 per cent.5
Although most of the basic industries – coal, iron, oil, railroads,
etc. – were owned by foreign capitalists (French, English, Belgian)
there was nevertheless a substantial growth of the Russian bour-
geoisie and petty bourgeoisie. The working class grew even more
rapidly.
Confronted by a savage semi-feudal autocracy, the Russian
working class was especially class conscious and revolutionary,
characteristics which were given direction and accentuated by the
work of the brilliant Bolshevik leader, Lenin. The workers slaved
11 to 13 hours per day for destitution wages; they were tyrannized
over in the shops; they had no right to organize industrially or

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 THE RUSSIAN BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION
politically, and their strikes and other protest movements were
met with bloody repression. The jails were full of working-class
fighters. The peasants faced an equally harsh regime; they were
systematically robbed of their lands, they were taxed to death,
and they were in the grip of iron-fisted usurers. And both workers
and peasants, when the government saw fit, were drafted by the
millions to die on the battlefields in the imperialist service of the
tsar. The many nationalities making up the Russian people were
also subjected to ruthless repression, and periodically, savage
pogroms were directed against the Jews. The Orthodox Church
was completely identified with this whole monstrous system of
robbery and oppression.
After the loss of the 1905 revolution, it was not long, however,
until the militant working class was again on the march. In Janu-
ary 1914 there were 140,000 workers on strike in Petrograd, and
there were hard-fought strikes in Baku and many other centers.
During the first half of 1914, despite barbarous repressive condi-
tions, there were no less than 1,425,000 strikers throughout Rus-
sia. The movement was so vigorous that, the party History says,
“the advance of the revolution was interrupted by the World
War.”6
Tsar Nicholas I welcomed the war as a preventive of revolu-
tion, but it worked out quite otherwise. The terrific slaughter suf-
fered by the Russian armies, due to incompetent political and mil-
itary leadership, the graft and corruption of government officials,
the starvation conditions prevailing among the population, the
complete breakdown of industry and transport, the general pur-
poselessness of the war for the people – plus good leadership
from the Bolsheviks – produced the inevitable result, revolution.
The Revolution of 1905 grew out of the Russo-Japanese war, and
the Revolution of 1917 was precipitated by World War I.
THE REACTIONARY PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
The Provisional Government was reorganized in May as a coa-
lition government, made up of Constitutional Democrats (Cadets,
the main bourgeois party), Mensheviks, and Socialist-
Revolutionaries (“S.R.s”). Its program was to conserve the inter-
ests of the capitalists and landlords and to balk the revolutionary
demands of the workers and peasants. This was quite in harmony
with the general line of the right-wing revisionists of the Second
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
International.
The key to the government’s policy was to keep Russia in the
war. In this it had the active support of the Allied governments,
who crowded Petrograd with delegations, including right-wing
Socialist leaders, urging the Russian government not to make
peace and to keep the Revolution from going politically to the left.
On April 18 the Russian foreign minister declared arrogantly that
“the whole people desire to continue the World War until a deci-
sive victory is achieved” and he pledged the government to this
effect. In order to carry out this reactionary pledge, an offensive
was launched in July, which proved to be a ghastly disaster for the
Russian army.
To all the demands of the workers and peasants, the Kerensky
government dangled the prospect of a Constituent Assembly,
which was repeatedly postponed. Correctly estimating the gov-
ernment, Stalin declared that “the peasants will never see the
land, the workers will never get control of industry, Russia will
not gain peace.”7 Meanwhile, the government castrated and sub-
ordinated the Soviets, thus ending what Lenin had called “the du-
al power” situation. Political repression was begun, and the Bol-
sheviks were forced underground. Encouraged by the reactionary
course of the government, General Kornilov, in August, organized
an armed uprising aimed at restoring tsarism. Only with great
difficulty, and chiefly through the activity of the Bolshevik forces,
was this dangerous revolt suppressed.
THE REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAM OF THE PARTY
In Switzerland, at the time of the March revolution, Lenin at
once understood that this was only the first stage of the struggle.
In his Letters from Afar, he told the revolutionary workers that,
“Sooner or later (perhaps even now, while I am writing these
lines) you will inevitably be called upon again to display wonders
of similar heroism in overthrowing the power of the landowners
and the capitalists who are waging the imperialist war.”8 This was
the theory of “uninterrupted revolution” (see Chapter 21), as
promulgated by Lenin in 1905, and as first stated by Marx in the
revolution of 1848 (see Chapter 3). Trotsky’s assertion that he was
the first to outline the theory of the bourgeois revolution growing
over into the proletarian revolution is a lie.
Lenin and a group of 20 Bolsheviks returned from Switzer-

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 THE RUSSIAN BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION
land to Russia on April 3, 1917, in a sealed railroad car, the Ger-
mans giving them safe passage, presumably in the naive belief
that this would help the German cause. Immediately upon arriv-
ing in Petrograd, Lenin outlined his famous April theses,9 which
blazed the path for the proletarian revolution of November.
“Lenin’s April theses laid down for the party a brilliant plan of
struggle for the transition from the bourgeois democratic to the
socialist revolution, from the first stage of the revolution to the
second, the stage of the socialist revolution. The whole history of
the party had prepared it for this great task.”10 The theses charac-
terized the Provisional Government as a bourgeois government
and its war as an imperialist war, and they called upon the work-
ers to give no support to the government or its war program. They
urged fraternization of the soldiers of both sides at the front.
For the early stages of the period of passing over to the social-
ist revolution, the theses called for nationalization of the land and
confiscation of the landed estates, amalgamation of the banks un-
der the control of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers, and the set-
ting up of worker control over the industries.
In the broadest sense, the theses proposed the advance from a
bourgeois democratic republic to a Soviet republic, based upon
the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry. It de-
manded all power to the Soviets, and proposed the arming of the
people to substitute for the present army. It declared that the
“war cannot be ended in a truly democratic way without the
greatest proletarian revolution in history.” The theses also pro-
posed that the name of the party be changed to the Communist
Party, as the correct expression of the program of the party, on
the same basis that Marx and Engels had also called their organi-
zation, the Communist League. The theses also demanded the
establishment of a Communist International, to replace the dis-
credited and shattered Second International.
The party, many years later, said: “In his celebrated April
Theses, Lenin made a new discovery which enriched Marxist the-
ory – he arrived at the conclusion that the best political form of
the dictatorship of the proletariat was not the parliamentary
democratic republic, as had formerly been the opinion among
Marxists, but a republic of Soviets. That brilliant discovery was of
enormous importance for ensuring the victory of the socialist rev-
olution in October 1917, for the triumph of Soviet rule in our
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
country.”11 The Central Committee, after an internal struggle in
which Lenin submitted (but later withdrew) his resignation, final-
ly endorsed Lenin’s revolutionary April Theses,12 that is, with the
exception of a few, such as Kamenev, Rykov, and Pyatakov. All
through this crucial period, these elements, including also usually
Zinoviev, and frequently Bukharin, were to be found in the oppo-
sition, and generally on the outer edges of the party’s Leninist
policy.
A PEACEFUL ROAD TO THE REVOLUTION
In dealing with countries with autocratic governments, Lenin
was ruthless in pointing out the necessity for an armed revolu-
tion. He said that in the period of imperialism, Marx’s contention
that peaceful revolution was possible in Great Britain and the
United States was no longer valid. But Lenin nevertheless was
also quick to see the possibility opening up, during the early dem-
ocratic stages of the bourgeois Kerensky regime, for a peaceful
advance to socialism in Russia. And he proceeded on that basis.
Kerensky, because of the strength of the revolutionary forces of
the workers and peasants, was unable to use armed force effec-
tively against them.
Lenin’s policy gave the lie to those enemies who maintained
then, and still do, that Communists advocate violence on princi-
ple. The Mensheviks and the S.R.’s had control of the Congress of
Soviets. The Communist Party, while advancing the slogan of “No
support for the Provisional Government,” carried on a policy of
peaceful agitational work. As Lenin said, the task was “to present
a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of
their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical
needs of the masses. As long as we are in the minority we carry on
the work of criticizing and exposing errors and at the same time,
we preach the necessity of transferring the entire power of state to
the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.”
Commenting upon the policy, the party History states: “This
meant that Lenin was not calling for a revolt against the Provi-
sional Government, which at that moment enjoyed the confidence
of the Soviets, that he was not demanding its overthrow, but that
he wanted, by means of explanatory and recruiting work, to win a
majority in the Soviets, to change the policy of the Soviets, and
through the Soviets, to alter the composition and policy of the

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 THE RUSSIAN BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION
government. This was a line envisaging a peaceful development of
the revolution.”13
With this policy, the Communist Party made rapid progress in
winning over the masses in the army, navy, factory committees,
and trade unions. At the Petrograd Factory Committee Confer-
ence on May 20, three-quarters of the delegates supported the
Bolsheviks. In various other cities Bolshevik minorities in the So-
viets were also turning into majorities. At the First All-Russian
Congress of Soviets on June 3, however, the Bolsheviks were still
a relatively small minority. But the decision of the government to
begin the July offensive deeply disillusioned the masses and
greatly speeded up the big stream of recruits into the party and
also hastened the growth of its influence.
Whereupon the government, seeing that it could not defeat
the Communists in free political debate, decided to crush by vio-
lence the party and the great mass movement behind it. Street
demonstrations were broken up, a warrant was issued for Lenin’s
arrest, several members of the Central Committee were jailed,
and the party’s publishing plant was wrecked. Consequently, the
party was forced underground. At the time of the July offensive,
the Kornilov revolt, and the subordination of the Soviets, there
was also a general curtailment of mass civil liberties.
By abolishing the democratic rights of the Communists and
the masses, the government chose the path of civil war. It was
making it clear that the only way socialism could be established in
Russia, that the sole means by which the workers and peasants
could win their demands of Peace, Bread, and Land, was by
fighting for them arms in hand. The Communist Party realized
and accepted this hard ultimatum. As the party History says, it
“began to prepare for an uprising with the object of overthrowing
the power of the bourgeoisie by force of arms and setting up the
power of the Soviets.”14 The government had decided on an all-
out fight. Russia began to head directly towards the November
proletarian revolution.
THE STOCKHOLM (ZIMMERWALD) CONFERENCE
Meanwhile, in the ranks of world labor, the Russian Revolu-
tion of March had made a tremendous stir. It created profound
enthusiasm and enormously stimulated the growing peace senti-
ment among the world’s working masses. In Austria, late in 1916,
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Frederick Adler, son of the party leader, Victor Adler, in order to
arouse peace sentiment, had shot and killed the Premier, Count
Stuergkh. In Germany there were hunger riots, a split took place
in the Social-Democratic Party, and the Independent Social-
Democratic Party, of centrist orientation and with Dittman at its
head, was formed; the whole Socialist group in the Reichstag re-
fused to vote the war credits.15 In France anti-war syndicalists and
left-wing Socialists conducted strikes in the war industries; in
England, too, there were walkouts among war munitions workers;
in Italy there were similar strong anti-war movements among the
workers. And the American bourgeoisie was able to plunge the
United States into the war on April 6, 1917, only in the face of a
strong mass opposition headed by the Socialist Party – and waged
by Debs, Ruthenberg, Wagenknecht, and other left-wingers.
This broad developing anti-war sentiment led to three broad
Socialist peace movements during 1917. The International Social-
ist Bureau, which had been moved from Brussels to Stockholm,
through a Dutch-Scandinavian Committee called a conference to
take place in the latter city. The American Socialist Party actively
participated in this movement. The Petrograd Soviet also called
for a conference in the same city, and the International Socialist
Committee (Zimmerwald) likewise announced a Stockholm con-
ference. Finally, the I.S.B., the Petrograd Soviet, and the Dutch-
Scandinavian Committee agreed on August 15, 1917, as the date
for the conference.
The proposed Stockholm conference attracted wide support
among the various Socialist parties. Among others, the German,
French, British, Italian, Russian, and American parties agreed to
participate. But the Allied governments, whose prospects for vic-
tory were looking up, considered the conference as a peace-move
engineered by hard-pressed Germany, and they were against it.
Their right-wing Social-Democratic tools therefore condemned it.
Gompers in the United States was especially unbridled in his de-
nunciation of the conference, and Havelock Wilson, head of the
British Seamen’s Union, declared that his union’s members would
refuse to carry delegates to Stockholm.
Characteristically, the United States government, which had
joined the war under the hypocritical pretense that it was fighting
“To make the world safe for democracy,” struck the first blow
against the Stockholm conference by refusing passports to the

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 THE RUSSIAN BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION
American Socialist delegates, Hillquit, Lee, and Berger. The
British, French, and Italian governments quickly followed suit,
with the result that the much-advertised conference failed to
materialize.
Meanwhile, the Zimmerwalders in the I.S.C., who were sharp-
ly divided over whether or not to attend the forthcoming general
conference – Lenin arguing that it should be boycotted – held
their own conference in Stockholm, September 5-12. Lenin was
not present. The Zimmerwald conference, because of the confu-
sion over the proposed general conference, was poorly attended.
Its actions were pretty much a re-affirmation of the theses previ-
ously adopted at Zimmerwald and Kienthal. The adopted mani-
festo endorsed the Russian Revolution, called for a militant mass
strike and general struggle for a socialist peace, and declared that
“the international proletarian mass struggle for peace signifies at
the same time the rescue of the Russian revolution.”16
By this time the Zimmerwald left was sharply in opposition to
the right centrist-semi-Kautskyians who were leading the move-
ment. They had caused the removal of the centrist chairman
Grimm, with the leadership falling to Angelica Balabanoff, then
on the left. The left opposed the right-centrist leaders’ failure to
support a revolutionary policy to end the war, their endorsement
of the ill-fated right-wing Stockholm conference, their general
reluctance to break with the Second International and to move
toward the formation of a revolutionary Third International, and
their confusion and conservatism on a whole series of other polit-
ical questions. Lenin had already come to the conclusion that the
new International would have to be built in the face of the re-
sistance of such wavering elements.

263
29. The Russian Proletarian Revolution
(November 1917)
The crucial period between July and November 1917 in Russia
was one of rapid party growth and revolutionary preparation. The
Provisional Government (Alexander Kerensky, Socialist-
Revolutionary, became the Premier on July 20) deeply discredit-
ed itself by its continuation of the war, its obvious intention not to
give the peasants the land, its curtailment of democratic liberties,
and its criminal guilt in the Kornilov revolt. Daily its unfitness to
rule became more obvious.
During this period there was a big growth of the people’s mass
organizations of all kinds, and increasingly they went over to Bol-
shevik leadership, especially after the Kornilov revolt. “On August
31, the day following the victory over Kornilov, the Petrograd Soviet
endorsed the Bolshevik policy,” and five days later the Moscow So-
viet followed suit.1 Bolshevik strength grew from day to day in the
army, and peasant seizures of land were taking place in various
parts of the country. The revolutionary crisis was swiftly ripening.
The party held its sixth congress secretly in Petrograd, July
26-August 3. At this time the party had 240,000 members, as
against 45,000 at the time of the March revolution. By party or-
ders, Lenin was in concealment in Finland, and Stalin made the
main report. He stated that, “The peaceful period of the revolu-
tion has come to an end; the non-peaceful period, the period of
clashes and outbreaks, has set in....”2 The party was preparing
itself for the revolutionary test lying immediately ahead.
At this congress the small Trotsky group, professing full
agreement with the Bolshevik policies, was admitted to the party.
Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) was born in Russia of store-keeper par-
ents, and he became active in the revolutionary movement in
1896. For over a decade, he had kept up a guerrilla warfare
against the Bolsheviks, and although he was given highly respon-
sible work upon his eventual entry into the party, the future was
to show that he was an alien element and unassimilable.
In a desperate attempt to divert and defeat the rising revolu-
tionary spirit of the people, the Kerensky government organized,
in early October, the so-called Pre-Parliament, which was to serve
as an interim body until the Constituent Assembly should come

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 THE RUSSIAN PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION
together later on. But the Bolsheviks boycotted this counter-
revolutionary organization, and eventually it was swept away in
the great storm soon to burst. The masses were not going to allow
themselves to be talked out of the Peace, Bread, Land, and Social-
ism for which they were fighting.
During his enforced stay in Finland Lenin produced another
of his basic Marxist works, State and Revolution. This great book
reaffirms the class character of the state, as laid down by Marx
and later discarded by the right opportunists of the Second Inter-
national. Lenin demolished the revisionist theories of the modern
capitalist state as a people's state. He demonstrated, to the con-
trary, the use of the greatly strengthened imperialist state as a
weapon against the increasingly revolutionary working class. He
pointed out that this autocratic state could not be taken over by
the workers for their own purposes, but had to be destroyed and
the dictatorship of the proletariat substituted for it. He said, “A
Marxist is one who extends the acceptance of the class struggle to
the acceptance of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Lenin elaborated upon Marx in his conception of the state,
giving a detailed analysis of what the structure of the dictatorship
of the proletariat would be. His book, in fact, presented a clear
picture of the type of socialist regime that the Russian working
class, under his leadership, was just about to start building. The
revolutionary crisis interrupting his writing, Lenin never got to
finish completely this elementary work. He explained it this way:
“What ‘interfered’ was the political crisis – the eve of the October
Revolution of 1917.... It is more pleasant and useful to go through
the ‘experience of the revolution’ than to write about it.”3
THE CONQUEST OF POWER
Returning from Finland on October 7, Lenin doubly im-
pressed upon the Central Committee what he had been writing
from exile, that the people were ready for revolution. He declared
that, “The majority of the people are with us.... Now we have a
majority in both Soviets” (Petrograd and Moscow). He stated also
that for a revolutionary situation to be mature it must meet three
conditions, namely, that the uprising must be based upon an ad-
vanced class, that it must coincide with the revolutionary upsurge
of the people, and that the governing classes must be vacillating
and in confusion – all of which conditions were presently fulfilled.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Lenin further proceeded to outline in detail the military steps that
had to be taken to insure the success of the coming insurrection.4
Lenin, however, met with much opposition in the Central
Committee of the party. The Kamenev-Zinoviev group were in gen-
eral against the uprising, and Trotsky wanted so to postpone it as to
have ruined it. Finally, Lenin carried his point, and the Central
Committee, on October 10, decided to move toward the armed up-
rising. After reviewing the favorable situation, the historic resolu-
tion says: “All this places the armed uprising on the order of the
day. Considering therefore that an armed uprising is inevitable,
and that the time for it is fully ripe, the Central Committee in-
structs all party organizations to be guided accordingly....”
Upon Central Committee orders, a Revolutionary Military
Committee was organized in Petrograd, which became the general
headquarters of the revolution. Also a Party Center was set up
within the military committee, with Stalin in charge. Zinoviev and
Kamenev, opposing all this, publicly denounced the uprising in
the non-party press, for which Lenin called them strike-breakers
and, unsuccessfully, demanded their expulsion.5
On November 6 Lenin arrived at the Smolny Institute and as-
sumed direct charge of the insurrection, which was directed
against the armed assault that was already under way from the
Kerensky forces. On November 7 Red Guards and revolutionary
troops occupied the railway stations, post-office, telegraph office,
the Ministries, and the State Bank. The Pre-Parliament was dis-
solved. That night the members of the Provisional Government
were arrested at the Winter Palace,6 and the revolution was an
accomplished fact. After a four days’ fight in Moscow and a few
skirmishes elsewhere, the various cities and towns followed Pet-
rograd’s revolutionary example.7
The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets went into session
November 7, late at night, when the revolutionary uprising had al-
ready succeeded. The Bolsheviks were in an overwhelming majori-
ty. The Mensheviks, Bundists, and right Socialist-Revolutionaries
walked out. The congress gave them a parting blast, and officially
proclaimed that all power had passed to the Soviets. It also set up a
Soviet government, with Lenin as Chairman of the Council of Peo-
ple’s Commissars. This became the governing body for Russia’s
160,000,000 people. At this time, the party had some 300,000
members and, through the Soviets and trade unions, many millions

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 THE RUSSIAN PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION
more of close sympathizers and supporters.
The workers and peasants, in fighting alliance, under the
leadership of the Communist Party, had struck down bloody tsar-
ism and capitalism. They therewith broke international imperial-
ism at its weakest link and dealt the world capitalist system a vital
blow, one from which it has never recovered. “The victory of the
great October Socialist Revolution marked the triumph of the
Leninist theory of proletarian revolution. By overthrowing the
rule of the capitalists and landlords, by overthrowing the rule of
the imperialists and establishing the dictatorship of the proletari-
at, our party carried out the program that was adopted at the Se-
cond Congress of the R.S.-D.L.P.”8
Many elements of sound Leninist policy combined to make
the great victory possible, but at the heart of it all was Lenin’s
achievement of revolutionary unity between the proletariat and
the peasantry. Contrary to the gospel-like belief of the Menshe-
viks and other revisionists and fundamentally in line with Lenin’s
teachings, the overwhelming majority of all categories of the
peasantry had combined with the workers in overthrowing tsar-
ism in the March Revolution. Blazing the way in Marxian theory
and strategy, also in the November Revolution Lenin and the
great Communist Party had succeeded in enlisting the vast mass
of the poor and middle peasantry, along with the workers, to
overthrow the Kerensky capitalist government. Now it remained
for Lenin and the party to achieve an even greater political “mira-
cle,” by leading this great mass of small land-owners, supposedly
immune to socialism, eventually to begin the building of social-
ism, under the general guidance of the working class.
THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
With characteristic energy, speed, and thoroughness, the
Communists, once at the helm of the Russian ship of state,
promptly began to put their long-developing program into effect.
The Bolsheviks, for years denounced as sectarians and utopian
visionaries by the right-wing leaders of the Second International,
were showing themselves to be men and women of most decisive
action. With successive blows they shattered the old government
apparatus and put the new regime into operation. On the day af-
ter the seizure of power, on November 8, the Congress of Soviets
passed the Decree for Peace, calling upon the belligerent powers
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
to establish an immediate armistice. The same night, the Con-
gress also adopted the Decree on Land, “abolishing landlord own-
ership, without compensation,” and turning the lands of the land-
lords, the tsar’s family, and the monasteries, some 400,000,000
acres, over to the peasants. Meanwhile, the workers, through their
shop committees, were busily taking over the industries. In Janu-
ary 1918, the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets nationalized
all factories, mines, transport systems, etc. Within four days of
taking power, the universal eight-hour day was established and a
system of social insurance set up.
Great Britain, France, and the United States refused to agree
to the armistice proposed by the Soviet government, so the latter
started separate peace negotiations with Germany. These began
on December 3, 1917, at Brest-Litovsk. The Germans laid down
hard conditions, with the result that the delegation head, Trotsky,
supported by Zinoviev, Radek, and others, broke off the negotia-
tions. The Germans thereupon resumed their march into Russia,
taking over whole stretches of territory. The Russian armies, shat-
tered in the war, were in no position to make effective resistance.
Lenin insisted that the harsh German peace terms be accepted,
which was done. The revolution had to have a breathing space, he
said, or it would perish. After a bitter struggle against Trotsky and
other “leftists” in the party, Lenin carried his point. His peace
maneuver showed his brilliant strategic genius; it very probably
saved the revolution. The bourgeois war-makers and their Social-
Democrats all over the world let out a howl of rage at the Bolshe-
viks’ “betrayal” of their sacred (imperialist) war cause.
The Soviet decree giving the land to the peasants was also a
Leninist master-stroke. It won the great body of the peasants
firmly to the side of the revolution, without which support the
Soviet regime could not have survived in the desperately hard
years ahead. Party “leftists,” in tune with the right leaders of the
Second International, declared that in strengthening land propri-
etorship among the peasants, the Bolsheviks were building up an
impregnable barrier against socialism. But Lenin was certain that
the great masses of the poorer peasants could eventually be won
for socialism, and so it turned out in fact. He declared that in this
period of building socialism the richer peasants had to be fought,
the middle peasants neutralized, and the broad masses of poor
peasants cultivated as allies – which was a revolutionary Marxian

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innovation in policy towards the peasantry, and one upon which
the success of the revolution depended.
Another stroke of decisive importance was, at the very outset,
to establish political equality and the right of self-determination for
all the peoples making up Russia. This built further solid founda-
tions beneath the new government by winning to it the backing of
the hitherto bitterly oppressed lesser nationalities. Finland,
Esthonia, Latvia and Lithuania, receiving counter-revolutionary aid
of Germany and Britain, however, unwisely decided to exercise the
conceded right of separation and to go it alone. Thus, another Bol-
shevik “heresy,” self-determination, turned out to be a major but-
tress for the weak and struggling socialist regime.
What to do about the Constituent Assembly, slated to be
opened on January 18, 1918, also presented a major problem, es-
pecially as the majority of the delegates was made up of Socialist-
Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Lenin, as usual, proceeded
straight to the heart of the question and provided the fundamen-
tal remedy. He pointed out that the Soviets, not the Constituent
Assembly, were the ruling body, as a result of the revolution. He
said, “We see in the rivalry of the Constituent Assembly and the
Soviets the historical dispute between the two revolutions, the
bourgeois revolution and the socialist revolution. The elections to
the Constituent Assembly [based on electoral lists made before
the November revolution] are an echo of the first bourgeois revo-
lution in February [March], but certainly not of the people’s, the
socialist revolution.”9 Rosenberg agrees with Lenin’s general con-
clusions, stating that, “If Lenin had ordered the holding of new
elections, there can be no doubt that the Soviet government
would have obtained an overwhelming majority at the polls.”10
Hence, when the Constituent Assembly voted down a resolution
calling for the recognition of the Soviet government as the state
power, it was officially dissolved, on January 26, 1918.
The swift development of all these revolutionary policies by
the Communist Party and the Soviet government was not accom-
plished without serious inner-party struggles – against Trotsky,
Zinoviev, Radek, Bukharin, Kamenev, Piatakoff, and many others.
Lenin had to fight for his policies all along, and one of his
staunchest supporters was Stalin. To the outside world of labor
often the Leninist revolutionary policies also seemed new and
strange. Left-wingers living in the bourgeois world could not un-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
derstand many of them. Even such a politically well-developed
left leader as Rosa Luxemburg wrote a pamphlet in which she
sharply criticized the new regime for its “mistakes,” including the
giving of the land to the peasants, the establishment of the right
of national self-determination, the dissolution of the Constituent
Assembly, the restriction of civil rights of counterrevolutionary
parties, etc.11
THE DEFENSE OF THE REVOLUTION
World capitalism, no less than domestic Russian reaction, saw
in the Russian socialist revolution a mortal enemy. Consequently,
from the end of 1917 until the beginning of 1921, the Soviet gov-
ernment had to fight for its life, in a bitter civil war against Rus-
sian counterrevolution and also against armed imperialist inter-
vention. The people, war-weary, hunger-ridden, with their indus-
tries paralyzed, and their armed forces largely destroyed in the
war, by a super-heroic effort pulled themselves together and, un-
der the leadership of the Communist Party, defeated the most
powerful counter-revolutionary armies. They shattered the forces
of Generals Yudenich, Kornilov, Denikin, Krasnov, Seminov, Kol-
chak, Wrangel, and many other “white guards,” and they also beat
back the armies of Great Britain, Japan, France, the United
States, Poland, Rumania and the Czech irregulars. At one time the
great bulk of the country was in the hands of the enemy, the gov-
ernment was cut off from its principal sources of food, fuel, and
raw materials, and in Moscow and Petrograd the workers were
getting a ration of only one-eighth of a pound of bread every other
day.12 Nevertheless, with unparalleled courage, the people built
their Red Army, and by the end of 1920 had driven all their ene-
mies from Soviet soil.
The bitter armed assault by the organized forces of reaction
obviously made the defense of the struggling Soviet regime of the
greatest importance to the world labor movement. The I.S.C.
(Zimmerwald) issued several statements, calling upon the work-
ers to come to the support of the embattled Soviet Union. In Jan-
uary 1918 great strikes, largely inspired by the influence of the
Russian revolution, broke out in Austria and Germany. Less pow-
erful movements also took place in Great Britain. And even in far
off Seattle and Philadelphia longshoremen refused to load cargoes
destined for interventionist forces in Soviet Russia.

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 THE RUSSIAN PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION
The mass sentiment in support of the Russian revolution also
definitely affected Allied troops fighting against the Soviet govern-
ment. At the Versailles treaty negotiations in Paris Lloyd George,
upon being asked why Britain did not make a more energetic fight
in Soviet Russia, declared that if he now proposed to send a thou-
sand British troops to Russia for that purpose the troops would
mutiny, and also that if a military enterprise were started against
the Bolsheviks, that would make England Bolshevist and there
would be a Soviet in London.13 An actual mutiny did take place
among American troops in North Russia, of Company I of the 339
U.S. Infantry, on March 30, 1919.14 As a result, all the American
troops in the area had to be withdrawn shortly thereafter.
The right wing Social-Democratic leaders, however, assumed a
very hostile attitude. They were reformers, patchers-up of capital-
ism, so naturally they took a stand against the first socialist repub-
lic. Like the Russian Mensheviks, they opposed it from the start.
Characteristically, at the Berne conference in February 1919, called
to pull the disrupted Second International together again, they
condemned Soviet Russia. And prior to this, Karl Kautsky wrote a
booklet during 1918, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, in which
he systematically attacked the Soviet regime. He particularly dis-
sented from the whole conception and practice of the dictatorship
of the proletariat. This man, who could readily find excuses for the
imperialist slaughter of millions in World War I, was outraged at
the suppressive measures taken by the new government against the
vicious counterrevolution. His booklet gave the main line of anti-
Soviet attack for the less cunning right revisionists.
In reply, Lenin immediately wrote his book, The Proletarian
Revolution and Renegade Kautsky. He defended the dictatorship
on principle, as well as the general policies of the Bolsheviks
throughout the revolution. He justified the overthrow of the Pro-
visional government, and also the liquidation of the Constituent
Assembly, on the grounds that the Bolsheviks had behind them a
clear majority of the people. He supported the repression of the
former ruling classes because of the urgent political necessity to
stamp out the armed counter-revolution. This book, in a sense,
was a continuation of his State and Revolution, analyzing after
the events the revolution which this famous work had outlined
beforehand.

271
30. The Soviet System
The October Revolution, as distinct from all other revolutions,
said Stalin, overthrew all exploiters and transferred power to the
most revolutionary class of the working people, the proletariat.
Under its leadership the old system of exploitation was destroyed
and a new, socialist system was established in which exploitation
and oppression have no place. The great October Socialist Revolu-
tion “denotes a radical turn in the... history of mankind... from the
old capitalist world to the new socialist world.”1 The new govern-
ment, at first called the Russian Soviet Socialist Federated Repub-
lic, was later named the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Soviet Constitution establishes that, “All power in the
U.S.S.R. belongs to the working people of town and country as
represented by the Soviets of Working People’s Deputies,” and
also that “the land, its mineral wealth, waters, forests, mills, fac-
tories, mines, rail, water and air transport, banks, communica-
tions, large state-organized agricultural enterprises [state-farms,
machine and tractor stations, and the like], as well as municipal
enterprises and the bulk of the dwelling houses in the cities and
industrial localities, are state property, that is, belong to the
whole people.” Exploitation of man by man is specifically prohib-
ited, and “Work in the U.S.S.R. is a duty and a matter of honor for
every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle, ‘He
who does not work, neither shall he eat.’ The working motto in
the Soviet Union is the socialist one of – ‘From each according to
his ability; to each according to his work.’ ”2 Socialism is the first
stage of communism, of which the basic motto is, “From each ac-
cording to his ability; to each according to his need.”3
The Russian Revolution was political, economic, and social. It
profoundly reorganized every major institution in Russia, includ-
ing the Orthodox Church, which was de-politicized. There was no
blueprint to work from, only the broad outlines of the new society
having been worked out before the revolution. Consequently, un-
der the brilliant leadership of Lenin, an immense economic and
political pioneering and experimentation on socialist institution
building had to be carried out – which saved an enormous
amount of work and struggle for later revolutions elsewhere. Here
only the barest outlines can be given of the status of the Soviet
regime at its inception, and also of the general character of its ori-
272
 THE SOVIET SYSTEM
entation in later years.
Since the seizure of power by the workers, Soviet society,
highly flexible and progressive, has passed through three general
stages. The first was the period of “War Communism,” from 1918
to early in 1921, the years of the civil and interventionist wars.4
With industry and agriculture collapsed and disintegrated, and
with the regime fighting for its life against a host of internal and
external enemies, this was a time of the most rigid government
controls, of a universal ration system, and of the gravest hard-
ships for the people. The second period, that of the “New Eco-
nomic Policy” (N.E.P.), beginning in 1921, was one in which, to
help stimulate production under the given conditions, an open
market was established for the peasants and certain small manu-
facturing and private trading was allowed. Foreign trade and the
“commanding heights of industry,” however, remained in the
hands of the government. The third period, culminating in the
complete victory of socialism, with the vast bulk of all production
carried on by state industry and collective farming, got well under
way about 19275 and has continued with growing strength until
the present time. Now the U.S.S.R. is at the verge of beginning to
introduce the higher stage of classless society, communism.6
From the very beginning the capitalists of the world, with the
ardent help of the right Social-Democrats, have carried on an un-
precedented campaign to misrepresent and vilify every angle of
Soviet life. These allied elements – the masters and their agents –
realized at the outset that capitalism, in its fight for life, must try
to keep the workers of the world from learning the truth about
what was actually happening in the first Socialist Republic.
Thenceforth, their tireless efforts to smear and belittle the
U.S.S.R. and to build an ideological barrier against it, have grown
into a huge and well-paying literary industry. And unfortunately
they have been largely successful in their lying endeavors. In
many capitalist countries, notably the United States, the masses
of the people know little or nothing of what is actually transpiring
among the Soviet people.
On the other hand, the advanced proletarian forces of the
world from the outset rallied effectively in defense of the Soviet
Union. They realized that the future of world democracy and
peace were tied up with the fate of the U.S.S.R. The attitude as-
sumed towards the Soviet Union is the supreme measure of prole-
273
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
tarian internationalism.
THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE
“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a socialist state of
workers and peasants.”7 This is the dictatorship of the proletariat,
or rule of the workers. It means that the leading class in the Soviet
government is the working class. In the beginning this proletarian
class leadership was expressly stated in the Constitution, adopted
on July 1, 1918, by allowing the workers one representative in the
National Congress of Soviets for each 25,000 persons, and the
peasants only one for each 125,000; but in the 1936 Constitution
this unequal ratio was eliminated. At the present time, the
U.S.S.R., made up of three friendly “classes” – workers, peasants,
and intelligentsia – with harmonious economic and political in-
terests, is well on the way towards a classless society.
The leader of the people and of the government is the Com-
munist Party. The party is the vanguard of the proletariat. It is
made up of the best developed, most devoted, energetic, and tire-
less elements, primarily of the working class, but also including
peasants and intellectuals. By its clear-headedness and indomita-
ble fighting spirit, the party gives the lead and sets the example
for the whole nation. It has its basic branches in every institution
– government, army, industries, farms, trade unions, schools, and
all others. The party is flesh and blood of the people and it fires
and stimulates the whole mass. The magnificent Soviet Com-
munist Party of today, unparalleled for political effectiveness in
the history of the world, is the fruition of the brilliant work of par-
ty-building begun by Lenin many years before the revolution.8
From the time of Marx’s earliest writings, Communists have
always endorsed the principle of an eventual stateless society, that
is, the “withering away” of the state after the proletarian revolu-
tion. This could not take place after the November Revolution in
Russia, however, nor has it done so even yet, for the sound and
sufficient reason that, because of the hostile capitalist encircle-
ment, the Soviet had an imperative need to maintain a strong
state apparatus, including powerful armed forces, in order to beat
back invading counterrevolutionary forces, from both at home
and abroad. Only when the capitalist encirclement is liquidated
can the “withering away of the state” begin. The Soviet state,
which remains the dictatorship of the proletariat, is fundamental-

274
 THE SOVIET SYSTEM
ly different from the capitalist state. Its edge is outward. Inside
the country there is no use of military power, since there are no
classes to repress, the remnants of the exploiting classes having
long since been liquidated as class forces. The efforts of the Soviet
government are directed towards cultivating the interests and the
welfare of the great mass of the people, instead of those of a com-
parative handful of exploiters. Hence, from the outset, the Soviet
state has largely taken on the nature of a scientific “administra-
tion of things,” something that no capitalist state can possibly do.
Democracy in the Soviet Union is on an altogether higher level
than in any capitalist country, and it has been so since the great
revolution. This fact is demonstrated by the basic democratic reali-
ties of the ownership of all the industries and national resources by
the people, the full political equality existing among the many na-
tionalities making up the Soviet state, the complete equality of
woman with man in every sphere of life, the punishment of anti-
Semitism and other racial and national chauvinism as a crime, the
universalization of higher education, the establishment of such
basic freedoms as the right to work and the right to leisure, the di-
rect participation of the mass organizations of the people – trade
unions, cooperatives, and others – in the government of the coun-
try, and the generally high level of the civil rights of the people, the
Constitution of 1936 being far and away the most democratic in the
world. The foundations of this whole governmental structure are
the thousands of local Soviets, organizations which combine the
executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government in a sin-
gle organization under the direct control of the people.
In analyzing the Soviet governmental and democratic system,
Sidney and Beatrice Webb of England, despite a background of
many years of opportunist Fabianism, said in 1936: “In this pattern
[of work] individual dictatorship has no place. Personal decisions
are distrusted and elaborately guarded against... As for the gov-
ernment, “Our inference is that it has been, in fact, the very oppo-
site of a dictatorship. It has been and it still is, government by a
whole series of committees.... Our own conclusion is that, if by au-
tocracy or dictatorship is meant government without prior discus-
sion or debate, either by public opinion or in private session, the
government of the U.S.S.R. is, in that sense, actually less of an au-
tocracy or a dictatorship than many a parliamentary cabinet.”9
During the November Revolution, the Cadet, Menshevik, and
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
right Socialist-Revolutionary parties, in their defense of the Ke-
rensky government, took an openly counter-revolutionary stand,
and as a consequence they were eventually outlawed. The Soviet
government, at its foundation, was based upon an alliance be-
tween the Communist Party and the Left Socialist-Revolutionary
Party. There were also in existence numerous other political par-
ties and groups of various Anarchist, syndicalist, and other
tendencies. John Reed mentions no less than nineteen different
groupings as participating in the November 30, 1917 Soviet elec-
tions in Petrograd.10 The Bolshevik-Left S.R. coalition, an uneasy
partnership at best, lasted only until mid-1918, when the S.R.’s
got out of the government. Among their other violent dissents,
they were opposed to the Brest-Litovsk peace and wanted the war
against Germany to continue; to this end they went so far as to
kill Mirbach, the German Ambassador to Moscow. They also de-
veloped an assassination policy towards Bolshevik leaders – on
August 30, 1918, Dora Kaplan, S.R., shot and dangerously
wounded Lenin in Moscow.
From then on the tendency was toward the one-party system.
In a fully developed socialist country, inasmuch as all the people’s
interests are fundamentally harmonious, there is a proper place
for only one political party, the Communist Party. In the People’s
Democracies, which are early forms of the proletarian dictator-
ship, there are, however, several parties, with the Communist Par-
ty in the leading role. The existence of many political parties in
capitalist countries, each primarily representing some particular
class or sub-class, merely signifies that the class struggle is raging,
with all the parties and groups struggling for their particular class
advantages at the expense of the others.
THE ECONOMIC FOUNDATION
Following the November Revolution there was for a short
time a strong tendency to manage the broken-down industries
through workers’ shop committees. This was a syndicalist trend
and it was obviously unfit to build and to operate modern indus-
try. The first real advance towards creating a scientific socialist
industrial management, to replace the bourgeois engineers and
technicians who had fled, was the formation of the Supreme Eco-
nomic Council in December 1917. Already in 1918 Lenin initiated
the primary steps toward large-scale industrial planned produc-

276
 THE SOVIET SYSTEM
tion. Real economic planning, however, did not get well under
way until late in 1920, as the civil war was ending. In 1921 Lenin
put out his famous slogan, “Electrification plus Soviet Power
equals Communism.” The Gosplan, or state national planning
agency, was established in April 1921; but for a few years its work
was confined chiefly to planning within individual industries –
metal, textiles, transport, etc. It was not until 1928, in the famous
first Five-Year Plan, that a general production plan for all indus-
tries in all localities went into effect. After this, Soviet production
leaped ahead, establishing records of achievement far surpassing
those ever accomplished by capitalism even in its best periods of
growth. By 1933 the Soviet Union had been converted from an
agrarian into an industrial country, and its great industrial ad-
vance was just beginning.
For the first ten years of the Soviet regime, agricultural pro-
duction was carried on upon the basis of the peasants operating
their own individual tracts of land which, however, belonged basi-
cally to the whole people. There were in existence a few model
collective and state farms; but it was not until 1929-30, during the
first Five-Year Plan, that socialist farm organization really got un-
der way. In the main, this took the form of collective farms (agri-
cultural cooperatives). This development could take place at this
particular time because of the current great upsurge of industrial
growth, which meant that large-scale mechanization of agricul-
ture had begun. “On May 1, 1930, collectivization in the principal
grain-growing regions embraced 40-50 percent of the peasant
households, as against 2-3 percent in the spring of 1928.” By the
end of 1931 over 80 percent of the peasant farms had combined
into 200,000 collective farms and 4,000 state farms. By 1934,
there were 281,000 tractors and 32,000 harvester combines at
work in the Soviet countryside.11 This deep-going agricultural rev-
olution, which amazed the hitherto skeptical capitalist world, was
one of the very greatest of Soviet accomplishments. The agricul-
tural revolution eliminated the rich farmers (kulaks) as a class,
even as the socialization of industry had wiped out the big capital-
ists as an economic and political factor.
The first two Five-Year Plans called for a capital investment of
some 200 billion rubles ($40 billion), all of which had to be raised by
the war-ravaged Soviet people. To get together such an enormous
mass of capital necessitated a considerable tightening of the belts of
277
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the workers and peasants. Nevertheless, drastic improvements took
place in mass living and working standards. Under the first Five-
Year Plan unemployment was completely wiped out, there being no
place in a socialist planned economy for periodic economic crises
and wholesale joblessness, such as curse the capitalist system. This is
basically because Soviet production is not carried on for private prof-
it, like capitalist production, but for social use.
THE TRADE UNIONS IN THE SOVIET REGIME
Trade unions in a socialist country obviously must play a very
different role than they do in a capitalist country. Their function
is determined by the fact that the workers control the government
and there are no capitalist exploiters to fight. This gives the work-
ers, who are the leading class in the dictatorship of the proletariat,
a direct sense of responsibility for the conditions in industry and
for the success of the regime in general, something they cannot
have in profit-ridden capitalist countries.
Like all other Soviet institutions, the trade unions of today are
the result of much experimentation and pioneering work. In the
beginning, with no clear ideas prevailing as to just how the trade
unions were to operate under socialism, there was a division be-
tween the shop committees and the national unions, many believ-
ing the latter institutions to be superfluous. But soon the unions
came to be based upon the shop committees as their foundation
units in industry.
From the earliest stages the unions began to take on pioneer
functions and forms corresponding to the new workers’ society of
which they were a basic part. These new tasks came to include
such vital matters as the establishment of labor discipline in in-
dustry, direct participation in industrial management, the sys-
tematic increase and improvement of production, the education
and technical training of great masses of new workers, the elabo-
ration and enforcement of factory legislation, the direct manage-
ment of the immense system of state social insurance, and, on
occasion, even the taking up of arms to repel the imperialist in-
terventionists. And through all this, of course, the unions have
had the direct supervision over the workers’ economic interests by
the elaboration and enforcement of wage scales, hours of work,
and general working conditions, formulated in collective agree-
ments with the government. The unions, while naturally working

278
 THE SOVIET SYSTEM
in close collaboration with the workers’ government, retain an
independent status.
In capitalist countries, where the workers have to fight the
employers and the government, the strike is a most vital weapon,
but obviously it is unimportant in the Soviet Union, which has no
exploiters and has a workers’ government. In the early days of the
revolution, in the formative period, there were, however, numer-
ous strikes, many of them started by counter-revolutionary ele-
ments who wanted to cripple the Soviet regime. In 1920 there
were 43 recorded strikes. But soon even the less advanced work-
ers came to realize the folly of striking against their own govern-
ment; hence the strike, although still legal, fell into abeyance and
is now a great rarity. The establishment of labor conditions in the
U.S.S.R. is not a matter of bitter class struggle, but of friendly ne-
gotiation and scientific economic planning.
The presence of piece-work systems in the U.S.S.R. strikes
visiting trade unionists as strange, seeing that they have to fight
so resolutely against piece-work in the capitalist countries. But
the matter is simple enough, bearing in mind the elementary fac-
tor that there are no exploiters in the Soviet Union to rob the
workers of their increased production. The All-Union Central
Committee of Trade Unions, in 1932, thus explained the situation:
“The piece-work system makes every worker materially interested
in increasing the productivity of labor and raising his own qualifi-
cations. We must lay all emphasis on the fact that the piece-work
system in our country is radically different from the piece-work
system in the capitalist countries. There the piece-work system is
a means of exploitation. Here, where the state is exercising the
maximum degree of care in the protection of labor, and where we
have a working day lasting seven hours, the piecework system ac-
celerates the tempo of socialist construction, increases the
productivity of labor, and guarantees the improvement of the ma-
terial and general living conditions of the workers.”12
Different rates of wage scales prevail in Soviet industry. This
is in line with the socialist principle, “to each according to his
work.” It is part of the elaborate system of incentives in effect for
Soviet workers. A basic factor of this situation is that with every
kind of education and promotion wide open to the workers, the
advance to the better-paid, more skilled, and more responsible
positions rests freely within the choice of every worker himself.
279
31. The German and Hungarian
Revolutions (1918-1919)
With its enormous human slaughter and property destruc-
tion, World War I resulted in the breaking up of four great em-
pires – the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Turkish
(Ottoman). It was climaxed also by the overthrow of four feudal
autocrats – the Russian Tsar, the German Kaiser, the Austrian
Emperor, and the Turkish Sultan – and of their royal systems
with them. Demolished, too, was the capitalist system in Russia,
and it would also have been destroyed throughout Eastern and
Central Europe had it not been for the profound treachery of the
right-wing Social-Democrats.
This vast revolutionary upheaval followed the general lines
long foreseen and advanced by Lenin. Far more than anyone else,
he was the ideological leader of the tremendous post-war anti-
feudal, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist movement.
The lead for the entire struggle was given by the Russian people
with the Communist Party at their head. Lenin’s influence in this
far-reaching revolution was to be seen clearly under three general
heads.
First, the whole broad struggle was in accordance with Lenin’s
long-advocated policy of transforming the imperialist war into a
revolutionary struggle against the reactionary governments re-
sponsible for the terrible butchery. The time-table of the various
phases of the great revolution was not the same in all countries,
nor was the political content of the revolution everywhere identi-
cal; but the fundamental homogeneity of the entire movement
was unmistakable and it was also undeniably Leninist.
Second, in the break-up of the four great empires a strong na-
tional revolutionary force manifested itself. In the struggle, under
varying conditions, a whole series of new nations were crystallized
into “independent” entities, among them: Finland, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This
development, too, was quite in accord with the program of the
Russian Communist Party and Lenin’s teachings. For many years,
long before President Wilson even dreamed of his “14 points,”
Lenin had ardently advocated the principle of self-determination
of nations, in the face of the strongest opposition of right Social-

280
 GERMAN AND HUNGARIAN REVOLUTIONS
Democrats and even of many left-wingers, but in close harmony
with the wishes of the respective peoples.
Third, in the great revolutionary upheaval in the four empires,
there was also a powerful anti-capitalist socialist element, which,
of course, was unmistakably Leninist. It was the growing over of
the bourgeois revolution into the proletarian revolution. It came
to fullest expression in Russia, the political leader of the entire
movement, and only Social-Democratic treachery prevented so-
cialism from prevailing in most if not the entire area involved.
These three basic facts show that in the revolutionary after-
math of World War I, Lenin and the Communist Party struck the
real note of progress for world society. This development was fully
in line with the historic role of Communism, which furnishes the
constructive world leadership as international capitalism rots and
decays. This great reality was also to be demonstrated again and
again in the tremendous world upheavals that were to take place
between the end of World War I and the present time.
SOVIETS IN GERMANY
As the war dragged along interminably, in a vast welter of
human slaughter and suffering, the workers in Germany, as else-
where in Europe, became increasingly rebellious and developed
more and more of an anti-war spirit. Broad strike movements in
Germany, early in 1918, involved as many as 1,000,000 workers,
a strong shop stewards’ movement grew up in Berlin and else-
where, powerful open protest meetings swept the country against
the harsh terms of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, numerous bread riots
took place, and there were increasing reports of insubordination
among the troops. By the early Fall of 1918 the mass prestige of
the Kaiser’s government, as a result of its generally reactionary
character and its declining military fortunes, began to approach
the zero mark. And the tremendous example of the nearby victo-
rious Russian Revolution was an inspiring force of great magni-
tude in awakening the German working class to action.
During the war years, under the influence of treason by the
right wing, the Social-Democratic Party had split into three seg-
ments – left, center, and right. The revolutionary left, led by Lux-
emburg, Liebknecht, Mehring, Zetkin, Jogisches, Pieck, and oth-
ers, with relatively only a small organization, crystallized during
the war, early in 1916, into the Internationals, or the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Spartakusbund.* The Communist Party was not formed until De-
cember 1918 largely of Spartakus forces. The vacillating center,
led by Kautsky, Haase, Ledebour, Barth, Dittmann, et al., men of
revolutionary words and conservative deeds, crystallized their
large mass following in December 1915, first around the Social-
Democratic Workers’ Community, and, shortly afterward, into a
new organization (with which the Spartakusbund early affiliated),
the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, formed in
April 1917. The rights, outstanding among whom were Ebert,
Noske, Scheidemann, Legien, Weis, and company, blatant revi-
sionists, held most of the party press, organization, and member-
ship under the original party name and apparatus. They also
largely controlled the trade unions, which had been reduced to
some 2,000,000 members, mostly skilled workers, but which, by
1918, were growing furiously, quadrupling this number by 1920.
The spark that touched off the German revolution was the
successful mutiny of the sailors of the grand fleet in Kiel on No-
vember 5, 1918, who refused to “die gloriously” with the fleet so
that the British could not get the ships. Like wildfire, the revolt
spread throughout Germany. The influence of the Russian Revo-
lution immediately made itself manifest, as the rebellious work-
ers, soldiers, and sailors set up Soviets all over the country, in the
main cities and in the chief centers of the armed forces. These
councils, patterned after the early Russian Soviets, had the sup-
port of the great body of the workers and soldiers. On November
7, a Soviet took political power in Bavaria, with Kurt Eisner at its
head. On November 9, the national government, with not a kick
left in it, collapsed and the Kaiser fled to Holland. The revolution
was virtually bloodless.
THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED
At this time, with the imperial regime demoralized, the Ger-
man working class, given united leadership, would and could
readily have driven through with the proletarian socialist revolu-
tion. But this was the last thing that the dominant right Social-
Democratic leadership wanted. These people did not believe in

* From Spartacus, the popular Thracian leader of the great slave

revolt against Rome, 73-71 B.C.
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 GERMAN AND HUNGARIAN REVOLUTIONS
nor want socialism; like their kind everywhere, they were essen-
tially liberals, who only strove to patch up capitalism a bit here
and there. Their whole line was to cooperate with the employers
to smash the revolution. Their attitude was that all means were
justified to prevent the victory of socialism in Germany. Their
chief leader, Ebert, expressed their general position when he said,
“I hate the revolution as I hate sin.”1
How far from the minds of the revisionist Social-Democratic
leaders was the idea of establishing socialism in Germany, was
demonstrated by a big capital-labor conference held at the time.
This unprecedented conference, in which all capital was repre-
sented by the multi-millionaire, Hugo Stinnes, and all labor by
the real boss of the Social-Democratic Party, the trade union
leader, Karl Legien, took place in Berlin during November 8-15,
even as the machine guns were rattling in the streets of the city.
Basing themselves on the counterrevolutionary presumption that
the capitalist system was going to continue as before and that
there would be no extensive socialization of industry, the confer-
ence proceeded to work out an elaborate collective agreement,
recognizing the trade unions, establishing the eight-hour day, set-
ting up workshop committees, etc. While the political leaders of
the party were making demagogic speeches to the workers, telling
them how they were going to lead Germany to socialism, the real
party leaders, behind the scenes, were thus cynically “settling” the
revolution, that is, peddling it away for relatively minor economic
concessions.2 The aim of the whole maneuver was to split away
the trade union movement, mostly of the skilled labor aristocracy,
from the revolutionary masses, and thus to defeat the struggle as
a whole.
The Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council of Berlin on November 10,
declared that “The old Germany is no more.... The Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Councils (Soviets) are now the bearers of political sover-
eignty.”3 This corresponded to the earlier workers’ program in
Russia, “All power to the Soviets.” The Council called for a general
strike. The program further demanded the rapid nationalization
of industry and the general democratization of the country. Alt-
hough the Berlin Soviets were controlled by the revisionists and
opportunists, this, in words at least, was basically the policy of the
Communists. It refuted the argument of the renegade Borkenau
and others that there was no revolutionary spirit among the
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workers.4 Lenin was profoundly correct in analyzing the German
situation as revolutionary, and so the bourgeois ideologists also
understood it.
The right Social-Democrats, fearing like death the revolution-
ary spirit of the workers and the possibility of a dictatorship of the
proletariat in Germany, set as their first counter-revolutionary
goal to devitalize and destroy the new-fledged Soviets. In close
cooperation with the capitalists, “to save Germany from Bolshe-
vism,” they started out by establishing a care-taker government
headed by Frederick Ebert (1871-1925), a former saddler and an
extreme revisionist, who in 1913, upon the death of Bebel, became
the leader of the party. Ebert promptly cancelled the general
strike that had been called by the Berlin Soviet. The next step of
the rights was to set up a provisional government a few days later,
composed of three right wingers – Ebert, Scheidemann, and
Landsberg – and three Independents – Haase, Dittman, and
Barth. Although the revisionists obviously were fully decided to go
no further than establishing a bourgeois democratic republic,
nevertheless the Independents, while pretending to favor all pow-
er to the workers’ councils, joined hands with the right wing in
what could only be a governmental attempt to stamp out the revo-
lution. This was fatal. It was such unprincipled maneuvers as this
that caused Lenin to characterize the centrists as the most dan-
gerous of all the enemies of the revolution.
On December 16 the national Congress of Workers’ and Sol-
diers’ Councils met in Berlin. The rights, largely due to their
strong control of the party organizations, trade unions, and coop-
eratives, had three-fourths of the delegates, and the Independents
most of the rest. The congress, therefore, supported the Provi-
sional government, and voted for holding the National Assembly
and against establishing Soviet power. This situation correspond-
ed with the big Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary majorities
and followers in the Russian Soviets in their early stages.
The counter-revolution, not relying upon its dubious majority
in the workers’ councils, sought an opportunity to drown the
revolution in blood and found it in January 1919. The government
suddenly removed Emil Eichhorn, the military commander of
Berlin, an Independent. This provoked an armed struggle by the
Spartacists and left Independents, who rallied to the support of
Eichhorn; a general strike spread throughout the country. Noske,

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Social-Democratic minister of defense, mobilized the former Kai-
ser’s officers and other reactionary military elements and threw
them against the fighting workers. For two weeks the streets of
Berlin and other cities ran red with blood, but in the end the re-
bellion was crushed. It was a deadly blow to the newly-formed
Communist Party. On April 13, 1919, the workers in Bavaria set
up a Soviet Republic, but after 18 days of existence it fell.
It was in this general struggle that Rosa Luxemburg and Karl
Liebknecht, who had recently been released from jail, were sav-
agely murdered. They had been re-arrested on January 15, in Ber-
lin, and while presumably being taken to prison, were cold-
bloodedly shot down. The assassination was deliberately planned
by the authorities, but the government denied all responsibility
for it. No effort was made to apprehend the murderers, who were
well known. Thus perished two of the noblest fighters ever pro-
duced by the world revolutionary movement.*
THE BOURGEOISIE RESUMES FULL CHARGE
After this blood-bath, which caused the Independents to re-
sign from the government, the rights pushed on to their counter-
revolutionary National Assembly. They held the elections on Jan-
uary 21, right in the depressing aftermath of the defeated revolu-
tionary struggle. Not surprisingly, therefore, the parties of the
right carried the elections by a considerable margin. The revision-
ist Social-Democrats got 39.3 per cent of the total vote cast and
the Independents 7.68 per cent, with the Communists not partici-
pating in the elections.
The bourgeois Weimar republic was set up during the next
weeks. The capitalists, however, realizing the revolutionary mood
of the workers and to mislead and confuse them, put right-wing
Social-Democrats at the head of the new government – Ebert,
Scheidemann, and Noske – whom they knew they could trust fully
to defend the capitalist system against revolutionary working
class attacks. The Assembly leaders also, as soothing syrup for the
workers, drew up a radical program of socialization of industry,
improvement of wages, housing, education, and support of work-
ers’ councils, etc., a program which they had not the slightest in-

* Leo Jogiches, the husband of Rosa Luxemburg, was also killed.

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tention of putting into effect, and they never did. They cynically
gave the Soviets an advisory capacity towards the new govern-
ment.
This, in general, was a perfect outcome for the capitalists.
They had regained control of the government apparatus and had
placed at the head of it right Social-Democratic reactionaries who
would take on the task of shooting down the revolution. These
same Social-Democrats were also at hand to assume the heavy
responsibility of signing the infamous Versailles Treaty, an act
which was to be a millstone around their necks a decade later
when they had to face rising fascism.
Despite the disastrous January events, the German workers
during the next four years made several revolutionary attempts to
end German capitalism, which we shall deal with in passing. But
these all failed, in each case being shot down by the forces of reac-
tion, organized and led by the right-wing Social-Democrats. In its
supreme hour of need, German capitalism found effective protec-
tion from the “socialists” of the right. It was precisely such a
course that the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in Rus-
sia had also had in mind, but the Bolsheviks were strong enough
to smash their counter-revolutionary efforts and to lead the revo-
lution to victory.
The loss of the German revolution prevented most if not all of
Europe from going socialist after the first World War. This would
have been a crushing blow to world capitalism and would have
changed the world situation. Upon the heads of the right Social-
Democrats, therefore, rests the criminal responsibility for the rise
of world fascism, for the slaughter of World War II, and for all the
other social disasters that have followed from the prolongation of
the life of the obsolete world capitalist system. And the end of
these sacrifices and disasters is not yet.
Various other factors contributed to the defeat of the German
revolution. The German bourgeoisie was stronger than that in
Russia and better able to fight. The workers were more afflicted
with bourgeois illusions (especially about Wilson’s 14 points) than
were the Russians; nevertheless, with proper leadership, they
could have carried through the revolution. Together with these
fundamental reasons for the revolution’s failure was the weak-
ness, both ideologically and organizationally, of the
Spartakusbund, later the Communist Party. The party was not

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strong enough to mobilize and lead the German working class in
the face of the many difficulties of the time. The Berlin uprising
was a disastrous error, and so were “leftist” refusals to stay in the
old unions and to participate in political elections. But underlying
all this, and the most decisive reason for the defeat of the revolu-
tion, was its outrageous betrayal by the right Social-Democrats,
with the round-the-corner assistance of the centrists, “the men of
revolutionary phrases and conservative deeds.”
THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION
The Austro-Hungarian empire was blown to pieces in the
great revolutionary upheaval that followed World War I. All that
was finally left of it is the present-day tiny Austrian Republic, with
only a small fraction of the broad territory once encompassed by
the Empire. The general revolution was mainly of a national lib-
eration character, the major oppressed peoples – Poles, Czechs,
Slovenes, Serbians, Montenegrins, Croatians, and Hungarians –
breaking away from the Empire and setting up bourgeois repub-
lics of their own. In Austria itself the numerically strong Socialist
Party, led by Victor Adler, Karl Renner, and Otto Bauer, made a
weak show of militancy, waging broad strikes and trying for a ma-
jority in the bourgeois parliament during the May 1919 elections.
The conservative parties won the most seats from the country as a
whole, with the Social-Democrats securing a two-thirds majority
in Vienna.
In Hungary, however, the upheaval did not halt at the bour-
geois stage, but definitely tended to continue over into the social-
ist revolution. On October 31, 1918, the old regime collapsed un-
der mass pressure and Count Karolyi, a bourgeois democrat, was
made head of the provisional government. He later became Presi-
dent, on November 16, when the Republic was set up. Karolyi’s
government, however, was unable to make any headway, in the
face of the chaotic political and economic situation. On March 21,
1919, it had to yield to a predominantly Communist government,
committed to the establishment of the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat. The leading party in the new government was the Socialist
Party of Hungary, an amalgamation of Social-Democrats and
Communists.
The real head of the new government was its foreign minister,
Bela Kun, a Communist. Other active figures in the government
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
were Eugene Varga, the famous economist, and Matthias Rakosi,
the future head of the People’s Democratic Republic of Hungary
25 years later. The new Soviet government failed because of the
extreme objective difficulties it had to face and also because of
serious political errors made by its leaders. Under direct military
pressure from the Allied powers, the government was forced out
of office, and in August 1919 the republic was overthrown.
During the short life of the Hungarian Soviet regime the lead-
ers of the government made many costly mistakes in policy. The
most important was the failure, despite the great lesson of Soviet
Russia, to give the land to the peasants and thus to draw them
into the revolutionary struggle. Also, ignoring Lenin’s brilliant
strategy at Brest-Litovsk, they failed to exploit the opportunity to
establish peace with the Allies, even at a serious cost. They also
made an ill-based and hasty nationalization of industry and trade,
which the weak government was unable to follow up. And more
basic still, they made the grave error, criticized sharply by Lenin,
of amalgamating into one party with the Social-Democrats, revi-
sionists and all.
Together with these disastrous errors of leadership as nega-
tive forces were also the detrimental effects of the betrayal of the
revolution in Germany by the right Social-Democrats, which in-
jured the struggle all over Central Europe, the specific refusal of
the Austrian Socialists to have their party come to the aid of the
Hungarians, and the general weakness of the Hungarian labor
movement, the inexperience of the Communist leadership, and
the ruthlessness of the Allied powers in stamping out Hungarian
communism by armed force. In view of all these negative condi-
tions, the Hungarian proletarian revolution, at best, was a forlorn
hope.

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32. Formation of the Third International
(1919)
When the Third, Communist, International was formed in
March 1919, in Moscow, the capitalist world was in a state of ex-
haustion and disarray. World War I and the Russian Revolution
had dealt the system terrific blows, from which it was, and still is,
unable to recover. These great events marked the beginning of the
general crisis of capitalism, the period of its decline and decay,
the epoch of imperialist world wars and proletarian revolutions.
The general crisis of capitalism represents the extreme sharp-
ening of all the internal and external contradictions of the capital-
ist system: the struggle between the workers and capitalists over
the workers’ products, the conflict among the various capitalist
groupings, the contradiction in interest between the capitalists
and the city middle class and the peasantry, the wars among the
capitalist states and against the colonial and semi-colonial peo-
ples, and the growing split between the capitalist and socialist
worlds. All these conflicts and antagonisms have their roots back
in the earliest stages of capitalism, but in the period of imperial-
ism they mature and reach the point of great explosions which
systematically undermine the capitalist structure and begin to
destroy the whole capitalist system itself.
When the Communist International (“Comintern” or C.I.) was
born, the capitalists were trying to pull their international system
together again, after the tremendous blows it had suffered in the
World War and the great Revolution in Russia, which were major
expressions of the fatal general capitalist crisis. The capitalist
statesmen were framing the Versailles Treaty, which was signed
in June 1919 by the Allies and Germany. This was a bandit treaty,
based on the capitalist principle, “To the victors belong the
spoils.” The treaty stripped Germany of her colonies abroad and
much of her European territory; it also loaded her down with
enormous war reparations. The treaty thus cultivated the soil for
World War II.
To enforce their violent imperialist redivision of the world,
the victorious powers set up the League of Nations. Great Britain
and France bossed this body from the inside; while the United
States, to retain its freedom of action, never joined the League,

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but began to maneuver from the outside for world domination.
From the outset, the Communists condemned the Versailles Trea-
ty, Lenin blasting it as more brutal and reactionary than the
Brest-Litovsk treaty of the Prussian Junkers.1 The Social-
Democrats, on both sides of the war line, while grumbling some-
what at the harshness of the treaty, generally adopted a policy of
fulfillment of its terms.
THE RESURRECTION OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL
Under the general head of pulling the forces of capitalism to-
gether again after the great blows of the World War and the Rus-
sian Revolution, the corpse of the Second International was disin-
terred and galvanized into life at a general Socialist conference
held in Berne, in February 1919. In its post-war role, the Second
International was to be even more blatantly than ever a pro-
capitalist organization, setting for itself the ultra-reactionary task,
in close cooperation with the employers, of beating back the ad-
vancing proletarian revolution.
Present at Berne were 102 delegates from 26 countries. Nota-
bly absent, for revolutionary reasons, were the left parties from
Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Serbia, Finland,
Latvia, and Poland, and also the Youth International and the In-
ternational Women’s Secretariat. The Belgian Party, ultra-
chauvinist, refused to sit in the conference with “enemy” parties,2
and the A.F. of L. declined an invitation for the same general
bourgeois reason.
Like the capitalist statesmen at the Versailles conference, the
“Socialist statesmen” in Berne quarreled bitterly among them-
selves over the question of war guilt. This was the first and main
matter on the agenda, consuming two days of discussion. Nobody
blamed the traitorous Social-Democratic leaders, as should have
been done; but instead, the defeated Germans were singled out,
just as the bosses did at Paris. They were ultimately “forgiven,”
however, on the grounds that by overthrowing the Kaiser’s re-
gime, “the German Social-Democrats have now proclaimed in
deeds their resolute determination to devote all their strength to
rebuilding the world shattered by the war and to fight in the
League of Nations for socialism.”3 This was a lie, for neither then
nor afterwards had the German leaders any idea of fighting for
socialism. The German Kautskyans were especially active in

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white-washing the right-wingers of their war guilt, and also of the
murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.
Formally, the gathering laid over until a future meeting the
basic evaluation of the Russian Revolution, but, as Dutt says, “the
general feeling of the conference was clearly condemnatory.”4 The
revisionist resolution, by Branting, leading Swedish Social-
Democrat, which was adopted, repudiated in principle the dicta-
torship of the proletariat, and declared in substance for bourgeois
democracy.5 This was the official beginning of a decade long anti-
Soviet propaganda campaign which eventually was to equal or
outdo anything produced by the capitalists themselves.
For the rest, the Berne conference went on record for the
League of Nations, for an international labor charter of the
League, and for the right of self-determination of nations. This
right, however, was not to include the peoples of the colonial are-
as, who were left to "be “protected by the League of Nations” and
their development furthered in such a manner as to fit them to
become members of the League – a thoroughgoing imperialist
proposal. The right wing was in full control of the conference
throughout. It set up a permanent commission of two members
for each party, with an executive of three revisionists – Branting,
Henderson, and Huysmans – to prepare for another conference.
THE CALL FOR THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
On January 24, 1919, as the Paris Peace Conference was meet-
ing, and just prior to the holding of the Berne Socialist Confer-
ence, the representatives of eight Marxist parties, at a meeting in
Moscow, including the parties of Russia, Poland, Hungary, Ger-
many, Austria, Lettland, Finland, the Balkan Revolutionary So-
cialist Federation, plus one unofficial delegate (Reinstein) of the
American Socialist Labor Party, sent out a call in the name of the
Russian Communist Party for a world congress to establish a
Third, or Communist, International. The invitation was sent to 39
left parties, labor unions, and other groups throughout the world.
The congress call, amounting to a basic program of principles
and action, and drawn up “in agreement with the program of the
Spartakus Union in Germany and of the Communist Party (Bol-
shevik) in Russia,” contained fifteen points. These called for the
revolutionary seizure of power, the establishment of the dictator-
ship of the proletariat, the disarming of the bourgeoisie and the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
arming of the proletariat, the suppression of private property in
the means of production and their transfer to the proletarian
state, the Marxist characterization of the role of the right-wing
and centrist groups, and the establishment of a new world organi-
zation to be called the Communist International.6
This historic call was issued at a most crucial time. The work-
ers and peasants in Russia, with the Soviet government in power,
were fighting a desperate struggle for political survival against a
murderous domestic counter-revolution and armed intervention
by the imperialist Allies, victors in the world war. That terrible
war had just come to an end. The revolutionary wave was surging
in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, and the Balkans; in England,
France, and other Continental countries also, vast mass strikes
were developing, and even in the United States, which had suf-
fered least from the war’s hardships, reverberations of the great
post-war revolutionary crisis were to be felt in the unprecedented
strike movement of 1919-22. The world capitalist system, after its
monstrous World War I crime against humanity, was shaking un-
der the pressure of the aroused proletarian masses of the western
world.
The Communist International, about to be born, was the frui-
tion of a long leftward mass development, dating back to Marx
and Engels. It had as its more immediate background the founda-
tion of the Bolshevik group in the Russian party in 1903, the long
pre-war struggle in that country and in the Second International
against the Menshevik revisionists and the Kautskyian centrists,
the bitter fight against the war in the left Zimmerwald movement,
the great victories of the Russian Revolution, and the current rev-
olutionary struggles in Germany and other countries. The out-
standing leader of this entire revolutionary development, both in
theory and practice, was the great Lenin. The revolutionary Inter-
national, for which he had fought so long and vigorously, was
coming into being.
THE MOSCOW CONGRESS
The founding congress of the Communist International took
place March 2-6, 1919. Nineteen parties and groups were repre-
sented, several other delegates being arrested on the way by hos-
tile governments. The published list of the delegations and their
voting strength was as follows: Armenia (C.P.) 1, Austria (C.P.) 3,

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 FORMATION OF THIRD INTERNATIONAL
Esthonia (C.P.) 1, Finland (C.P.) 3, Germany (C.P.) 5, Hungary
(C.P.) 3, Lettland (C.P.) 1, Lithuania (C.P.) 1, Poland (C.P.) 3, Rus-
sia (C.P.) 5, Ukraine (C.P.) 3, Norway (Social-Democratic Labor
Party) 3, Sweden (Left Socialist Party) 3, Balkan Revolutionary
Socialist Federation 3, German Colonies in Russia (C.P.) 1, Orien-
tal Nationalities in Russia 1, Left Zimmerwaldians 5, Switzerland
(Social-Democratic Party, unofficial) 3, and United States (Social-
ist Labor Party, unofficial) 5. There were also individual observers
from Holland, Yugoslavia, Korea, Persia, Switzerland, Turkestan,
Turkey, United States, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Czechoslo-
vakia, France, Georgia, and Great Britain.7
The agenda of the congress was: (1) Presentation of reports;
(2) Program of the Communist International; (3) Bourgeois de-
mocracy and dictatorship of the proletariat; (4) Attitude towards
the Socialist parties and the Berne conference; (5) The interna-
tional situation and the policy of the Allies; (6) Election of com-
mittees and organization.
Lenin opened the meeting with the following brief remarks:
“At the request of the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party, I am opening the First International Com-
munist Congress. First of all I shall ask all those present to honor
the memory of the best representatives of the Third International,
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, by standing [all stand up].
“Comrades! Our meeting has a great world historical im-
portance. It shows the collapse of all the illusions of bourgeois
democracy. For not only in Russia, but even in the more devel-
oped capitalist countries of Europe, as, for example, Germany,
civil war has become a fact.
“The bourgeoisie is experiencing wild fear before the growing
revolutionary movement of the proletariat. It becomes clear, if we
take into account that the course of events since the imperialist
war is inevitably facilitating the revolutionary movement of the
proletariat, that the international world revolution is beginning
and increasing in all countries.
“The people recognize the greatness and importance of the
struggle which is being fought out at the present time. It is only
necessary to find that practical form which will allow the proletar-
iat to realize its rule. This form is the Soviet system with the dicta-
torship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat! – till
now these words were Latin for the masses. Thanks to the spread
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
of the Soviet system throughout the world, this Latin has now
been translated into every modern language. The practical form of
dictatorship has been found by the working masses. It has be-
come comprehensible to wide masses of workers, thanks to the
Soviet power in Russia, thanks to the Spartacists in Germany and
to similar organizations in other countries, as, for example, the
Shop Stewards’ Committees in England. This all shows that the
revolutionary form of the proletarian dictatorship has been found,
that the proletariat is now in a position to make use of its rule in
practice.
“Comrades! I think that after the events in Russia, after the
January struggle in Germany, it is especially important to note
that in other countries the latest form of the movement of the pro-
letariat is coming to life and becoming dominant. Today for ex-
ample, I read in a certain anti-Socialist newspaper a telegraphic
communication to the effect that the British Government has in-
vited the Birmingham Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and expressed
its readiness to recognize the Soviet as an economic organization.
The Soviet system has not only been victorious in backward Rus-
sia but even in the most developed country in Europe – in Ger-
many, and also in the oldest capitalist country – in England. Let
the bourgeoisie continue to rage, let it still murder thousands of
workers – the victory will be ours, the victory of the world Com-
munist Revolution is certain.”8
THE PROGRAM OF THE CONGRESS
The new world organization was definitely a continuation of
the old First International, of treasured memory. In fact, it even
officially carried over the name. Article 2 of the Comintern stat-
utes reads: “The new International Workingmen’s Association
assumes the title of ‘Communist International.’ ”
The Congress produced two major political documents. The
first, which was to serve as the program of the Comintern until its
sixth congress in 1928, was written primarily by Lenin, and the
second was Lenin’s general theses on the question of the dictator-
ship of the proletariat.
The programmatic resolution, based upon the fundamental
premises of Marx and Engels, went generally along the lines of
the writings of Lenin during the past fifteen years – of his anti-
revisionism and his analysis of the imperialist war, his condemna-

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tion of the treachery of the right and centrist Social-Democrats,
and especially his great works, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism, and State and Revolution.9
“The new era has begun!” says the manifesto. “The era of the
downfall of capitalism – its internal disintegration. The epoch of
the proletarian communist revolution; increasing revolutionary
ferment in other lands; uprisings in the colonies; utter incapacity
of the ruling classes to control the fate of peoples any longer –
that is the picture of world conditions today.” The program fore-
saw the way ahead through the conquest of political power by the
proletariat, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat
through Soviets, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the so-
cialization of production, and the advance to “a classless com-
munist commonwealth.” “The revolutionary era compels the pro-
letariat to make use of the means of battle which will concentrate
its entire energies, namely, mass action, with its logical resultant,
direct conflict with the governmental machinery in open combat.
All other methods, such as revolutionary use of bourgeois
parliamentarism, will be of only secondary significance.... Prole-
tarians of all countries! In this war against imperialist barbarity,
against monarchy, against the privileged classes, the bourgeois
state and bourgeois property; against all forms and varieties of
social and national oppression – Unite!’’
Lenin’s theses on the dictatorship of the proletariat are a
thoroughgoing statement of theory and practice. Lenin crucifies
those bourgeois elements and Social-Democrats who assert that
capitalist democracy is real democracy and counters to it the gen-
uine democracy of the Soviets. He also smashes into those hypo-
critical bourgeois forces who, themselves come to political power
through violent revolution and class dictatorship, profess to be
horrified at the proletarian dictatorship. “History,” says Lenin,
“teaches us that not a single oppressed class has ever come to
power, or ever could come to power, without living through a pe-
riod of dictatorship, that is of the conquest of political power.” But
this Soviet dictatorship, different from all others, is being exer-
cised for the benefit of the great masses of the people and not for
the welfare of a small minority of exploiters.
The chief national labor movements in the First International
were those of England and France, and in the Second Interna-
tional that of Germany; but now the Russians were leading the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Third International. Lenin, at the congress, concerned himself
with how and why it was that a backward country like Russia
could lead the world labor movement, as was being emphasized
by the Russian Revolution and by the leading role of the Russian
Communist Party in the new International. This was because of
the great impact of the Russian bourgeois revolution, growing
over into a proletarian revolution. Engels, and also Kautsky (in
his Marxist days), had long ago foreseen this possibility. The ad-
vance-guard role of the Soviet Union was to continue over into
our own times, when the U.S.S.R., now become a great industrial-
ized socialist country, stands as the leader of the world democrat-
ic, peace-loving, socialist camp, along with its new great partner,
People’s China.
THE FORMATION OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
The congress proceeded to establish organizationally the new
International. A preliminary step in this direction was to liquidate
the old left Zimmerwald movement, which was done formally.
The resolution pointed out that, “The Zimmerwald Union or
coalition has outlived its purpose. All that was really
revolutionary in it goes over to the Communist International.” On
the other hand, “those elements of the center, as the Berne
conference shows, now join the social patriots in fighting against
the revolutionary proletariat.”10
There was some discussion as to whether or not to proceed
immediately to the formation of the Communist International.
Eberlein, the delegate of the German Communist Party, voted to
delay the matter. This showed a lingering failure in German left-
wing circles (as well as in others) to understand clearly that the
revisionists, by their support of the World War and by their open
hostility to the Russian Revolution, had profoundly split the
world labor movement. Lenin was insistent that the International
be formed at the present meeting, and this was done.
Only provisional steps were taken for the organizational
structure of the new International, it being decided to leave the
working out of a definite constitution to the next full congress. As
an interim arrangement, however, an Executive Committee of one
member from each party was selected, and this in turn chose a
Bureau of five. The Bureau consisted of Rakovsky, Lenin, Zino-
viev, Trotsky, and Platten. The Executive was made up of repre-

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 FORMATION OF THIRD INTERNATIONAL
sentatives of the parties of Russia, Germany, German-Austria,
and Switzerland, Sweden and the Balkan Federation, the Ameri-
can S.L.P. not being included. Gregory Zinoviev was chosen Pres-
ident and Angelica Balabanoff secretary. Thus was born the
Communist International, which in the oncoming years was to
play such an enormous part in the stormy world.

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33. Revolutionary Perspective: Second
Congress (1920)
The second congress of the Comintern was held in Moscow,
July 17-August 7, 1920. Between this time and the holding of the
first congress, in March 1919, the wave of revolution had risen in
middle and eastern Europe. Despite the Noske-led government
terror, the German workers were again on the march, having
beaten back the dangerous Kapp-Putsch (see Chapter 35). Two
weeks after the first C.I. congress the Hungarian Soviet Republic
was born, and the Red Army of Soviet Russia was rapidly clearing
the Socialist Republic of all its armed foes, which now included
the Polish army. The world bourgeoisie was full of fright at the
revolutionary prospect, and Colonel House told President Wilson:
“Bolshevism is gaining ground everywhere. Hungary has just suc-
cumbed. We are sitting upon an open powder magazine and some
day a spark may ignite it.”1
The establishment of the Communist International in the
midst of this revolutionary situation struck the world labor
movement with a great impact. The rank-and-file of the Marxist
movement everywhere was deeply stirred, and many parties be-
gan to gravitate towards the revolutionary International. More
and more, Lenin was looked to as the great leader of world labor.
Among those parties endorsing or declaring for the Comintern
between March 1919 and March 1920, in the order of their ac-
tions, were the Socialist parties of Italy, Norway, Bulgaria, Greece,
Sweden, Hungary (C.P.), Holland, Switzerland, United States,
Great Britain, Spain, France, and the general labor federations of
Spain and Italy.2 Occasionally splits took place in these parties
and unions as they moved to the left. When the second C.I. con-
gress assembled in the Fall of 1920 there were represented 42 sec-
tions from 35 countries.3
Indeed, there was a sort of stampede into the Comintern. Not
only genuine revolutionary fighters, but many dubious opportun-
istic elements, riding the leftward movement of the masses, also
declared for C.I. affiliation. Lenin said it had “become the fash-
ion” among the centrist opportunists to join the Comintern.

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 REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
FORMATION OF THE YOUNG COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL
An important step in the gathering of the new revolutionary
forces between the two congresses was the organization of the
Young Communist International in November 1919. The congress
of 29 delegates took place in Berlin under illegal conditions, with
14 countries represented. The program worked out followed the
general line of the Communist International, but with the central
stress upon youth demands regarding living and working condi-
tions, militarism, and education. Although the Y.C.I. was formally
an independent body, it maintained close relationships with the
C.I., the two organizations exchanging representatives to their
respective executives.4 The leader of the Youth International was
Willi Munzenberg, one of the many opportunists who wormed
their way into the Communist movement during this period.
The Marxist youth movement, in the shape of sports’ clubs
and fraternal societies, first began to spring up in various West
European countries during the 1890’s. The leaders of the Second
International at first paid little attention, but finally in 1907, at
the Stuttgart congress, the youth managed to set up an interna-
tional secretariat (see Chapter 24), which met regularly from then
on. By 1914 it had 15 organizations and 170,000 members. Karl
Liebknecht was one of the founders of this youth movement.
When World War I began most of the official youth leaders –
De Man, Dannenberg, Frank, etc. – followed the line of the Se-
cond International leadership, by supporting the war.5 Youth
masses, however, very quickly began to react against this course
and to pull their forces together to fight against the war. The
Berne Youth conference in April 1915, (see Chapter 27) was one of
the very earliest organized movements against the war. Interna-
tional Youth Day was held on October 3, 1915. The line of the con-
ference anti-war resolution, however, was pacifist. The Russian
youth, with the Lenin policy, urged the transformation of the im-
perialist war into a civil war, but this policy was rejected. After
Berne the International Secretariat published The International
of Youth, for which Lenin wrote.
Throughout the war and the great revolutionary struggles that
followed it, the youth were to be found working actively on every
front. In the German and Hungarian revolutions they were among
the best fighters and they had many martyrs. But especially in

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Soviet Russia the youth, the Komsomols, played a most vital role.
They fought all through the civil war, and they were also ever at
hand in the tremendous work of reconstructing the nation’s war-
shattered economy. By early 1920 the Soviet Y.C.L. had 400,000
members.6 From the outset, the Communist policy was to build
the youth organization into a broad mass movement, not a skele-
ton framework such as it had been during the pre-war period of
the Second International. In 1921 the Sports International was
formed. Lenin devoted the closest attention to youth work.7
THE PROGRAM OF THE SECOND CONGRESS
Lenin made the main report at the second Comintern con-
gress. In a brilliant analysis of the post-war situation he outlined
the fundamental tasks of the Communist International. He por-
trayed the chaos prevailing among the capitalist powers following
the war, with the imperialist countries, especially the United
States, trying to re-establish and to extend their controls. Esti-
mating the situation as a whole, he said, “The bourgeois system
all over the world is experiencing a great revolutionary crisis. And
the revolutionary parties must now ‘prove’ by their practical
deeds that they are sufficiently intelligent and organized, have
sufficient contacts with the exploited masses, are sufficiently de-
termined and skillful to utilize this crisis for a successful and vic-
torious revolution.”8 Lenin was then addressing himself principal-
ly, of course, to the workers of Europe, but had Germany and a
few other countries in Central Europe overthrown capitalism, this
undoubtedly would have created a revolutionary situation on a
world basis.
In his report Lenin singled out the greatest barrier standing in
the way of a broad proletarian revolution in Europe, the oppor-
tunist Social-Democracy. “Practice,” said he, “has shown that the
active people in the working class movement who adhere to the
opportunist trend are better defenders of the bourgeoisie, than
the bourgeoisie itself. Without their leadership of the workers, the
bourgeoisie could not have remained in power. This is not only
proved by the history of the Kerensky regime in Russia; it is also
proved by the democratic republic in Germany, headed by its So-
cial-Democratic government; it is proved by Albert Thomas’ atti-
tude towards his [French] bourgeois government. It is proved by
the analogous experience in Great Britain and the United States.”9

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 REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
Following the general line of Lenin’s report, the congress
worked out a whole series of practical political and organizational
measures, designed to equip the Comintern and its affiliated par-
ties to cope with the broad revolutionary situation with which
they were confronted. Among the questions handled were: a thor-
ough-going analysis in all major aspects of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, the question of when and how to build Soviets, im-
portant tactical problems regarding the question of
parliamentarism and political action, the relation of the proletari-
at to the peasantry before, during, and after the revolutions, the
attitude of Communists toward the trade unions and factory
committees, theses on the youth and women, the national and
colonial questions, the treacherous role of the Social-Democracy,
conditions of membership for the Communist Party, and the revo-
lutionary role of the party of Lenin.10
Several of the documents of this congress, which was held in
the formative period of the Comintern, rank among the great
writings produced by the world Marxist movement. Especially to
be noted in this respect are, the “Theses on the National and Co-
lonial Question,” “Conditions of Admission to the Communist In-
ternational,” and Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile
Disorder. The second congress was one of the greatest of all those
held by the Comintern.
“LEFT-WING” COMMUNISM
The famous booklet, “Left-Wing” Communism, to consider it
first, was written by Lenin in April 1920, some three months be-
fore the second congress. It was composed to combat the errors of
the ultra-leftists throughout the Comintern. Lenin considered the
right danger far and away the most serious, but in order to pre-
serve the party’s strength and integrity, he also fought against
those phrasemongers of the “left” who made a point of being
more “revolutionary” than the Bolsheviks. For in the long run
both right and “left” opportunism led to paralyzing the struggle of
the proletariat. Lenin’s document played an important role at the
second congress of the C.I., and also ever since throughout the
entire International. It is one of the classics of Marxism-
Leninism.
The “left” sectarian is one who tries to take short-cuts to the
revolution, who seeks to by-pass the elementary problems of mo-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
bilizing and leading the proletariat. Lenin points out many “left-
ist” weaknesses, including a rejection of participation in parlia-
ments and in political elections, a refusal to remain members of
conservative trade unions, a rigid, inflexible attitude towards po-
litical problems and organizations generally, illegalism in princi-
ple and a failure to utilize all legal opportunities for party work,
etc.
Prior to the Russian Revolution, there were many elements of
the “left” deviation in the labor movement, as expressed by the
anti- politicalism of French, Italian, and Spanish Anarcho-
syndicalism, the dual unionism of the American I.W.W., the “no
immediate demands” stand of the Socialist Labor Party in the
United States, and the general non-participation attitude of the
Anarchists towards elementary mass movements of the working
class. During the period of the First International, this “leftism”
was the dominant deviation, in the form of Bakuninism. The de-
velopment of the Russian Revolution and the growth of a revolu-
tionary situation in Europe after the war greatly intensified such
“leftist” moods. All the parties were more or less affected by them,
including the Russian party. In the United States, for example,
during the nearly two years of their underground existence the
two Communist Parties had no immediate demands whatever in
their programs; the British Communist movement was likewise
saturated with “leftism,” and there were serious splits in several
other parties over “leftist” policies – the Bordiga group in Italy,
the Communist Labor Party in Germany, the “lefts” in Holland,
etc., all of whom were represented at the second congress.
Lenin, who was a great master of firmness of principle and
flexibility of tactics, crashed into this whole structure of revolu-
tionary phrasemongery. In his booklet he demonstrated the ne-
cessity for making use of the bourgeois parliaments as a forum to
reach the masses; he showed, among many examples, how the
“no-compromise” leftists – Trotsky, Bukharin, and others – had
almost wrecked the new Soviet Republic by taking an inflexible,
so-called “revolutionary” stand at Brest-Litovsk and refusing to
sign the harsh treaty. In criticizing sharply the British Communist
sectarians, Lenin stated that their political policy in elections
should be one of cooperation with the Labor Party. This was a
definite outline of the broad united front program which was later
to become the main tactical line of the Communist International.

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 REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
Lenin attacked vigorously the conception, whether held with-
in or without the Communist parties, that Bolshevism was solely
Russian in character. He demonstrated its fundamental interna-
tionalism. The road to socialism is essentially the same in all
countries, though it varies in important particulars.
Lenin especially excoriated those “leftists” who refused to
work inside the conservative mass trade unions and insisted on
creating new and “perfect” dual unions, such as the I.W.W. in the
United States had been doing for 15 years past, to the infinite
harm of the labor movement. Lenin said: “There can be no doubt
that people like Gompers, Henderson, Jouhaux, and Legien are
very grateful to ‘left’ revolutionaries who, like the German opposi-
tion-on-principle (heaven preserve us from such ‘principles’), or
like some of the revolutionaries in the American Industrial Work-
ers of the World, advocate leaving the reactionary trade unions
and refusing to work in them.”11 The general effect of such dualist
policies was to leave the mass trade unions undisturbed in the
hands of their reactionary leaders.
As Lenin foresaw, the crassest forms of this general “leftist”
deviation – the policies of “no-compromise,” no immediate de-
mands, no electoral political action, no participation in conserva-
tive trade unions, etc. – were soon liquidated, and chiefly on the
basis of his great booklet. Down to this day, however, subtle forms
of “left” sectarianism – generally a failure to participate vigorous-
ly in every phase of the great mass class struggle – remain a seri-
ous handicap of many, if not all, of the Communist parties in the
capitalist world, and they must constantly be fought.
THE “TWENTY-ONE POINTS”
The 21 “Conditions of Admission to the Communist Interna-
tional,”12 another great document of the second congress, were
written to keep out of the Comintern those centrists who were
flocking to it at this time. Among other such centrist groups were
the Independent Labor Party of Great Britain, the Italian Socialist
Party, the Left Social-Democratic Party of Sweden – all of which
had representatives present. Such elements were, as Lenin point-
ed out, the gravest danger to the revolutionary movement, as the
workers had learned to their bitter cost in Germany and Hungary.
The Conditions of Admission precipitated the long-needed clear
differentiation between the left and the center. It was one thing to
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
cooperate, in given circumstances, with the center; it was some-
thing else to have centrists incorporated into revolutionary par-
ties in leading positions.
The 21 points, written by Lenin, laid down the essentials o£
the Leninist party of the new type. Very briefly summarized, they
proposed: complete party control of the party press and the carry-
ing on of energetic propaganda: the removal of reformists from
key party posts; maintenance of the party apparatus under all
conditions; the carrying on of Communist work among the peas-
antry; renunciation of “social patriotism” and reformism, denun-
ciation of the imperialism of one’s own country, work in conserva-
tive trade unions and in cooperatives; the need to fight against the
Amsterdam trade union International; strict party control over
parliamentary fractions; democratic centralization in organiza-
tion, and periodic re-registration of party members; defense of
the Soviet Union from imperialist attack; the drafting of a Com-
munist Party program, with acceptance and enforcement of all
C.I. resolutions and decisions, with the parties to be re-named
“Communist”; publication by the party press of C.I. material. Fur-
thermore, the parties are to consider and act upon the 21 condi-
tions, leading committees are to be re-organized on the new basis,
and those leaders are to be expelled who refuse to accept the 21
conditions. Centrist opportunists, such as Turati, Mogdigliani,
Kautsky, Hillquit, Longuet, and MacDonald, were specifically ex-
cluded in the text of the “conditions.”
In defending the “21 points,” Lenin was especially insistent in
pointing out, in view of the waverers and opportunists present,
that Bolshevism was not something purely Russian, as they had
been alleging but that, taking into consideration specific national
conditions, it was of universal application. The attempt to outlaw
Bolshevism as being solely Russian and inapplicable elsewhere,
was one of the most stubborn opportunistic objectives that had to
be fought in the early days of the Communist International.
The “21 points,” which were primarily a blow against the cen-
ter and the right, “laid down the working principles of the Com-
munist movement, both on a national and international scale, in
the intense revolutionary situation then existing.... The ‘points’
were guides, not inflexible rules. In the practice of the various
Communist parties they were widely varied.” The two American
Communist parties, for example, never formally endorsed the “21

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 REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
points.”13
Immediately before and after the second world congress,
there was a wide discussion of affiliation to the Comintern, par-
ticularly regarding the 21 points, by the several parties then on
the borders of the International. In June 1920 the Independent
Labor Party of Great Britain voted against affiliation. In October
of the same year the Independent Social-Democratic Party of
Germany, at its convention in Halle, voted 236 to 156 for affilia-
tion. The German right elements refused to abide by this decision
and made a split, with the greater part of the membership, some
300,000 members, amalgamating into the re-organized Com-
munist Party. The French Socialist Party in December, at its
Tours convention, voted by 3,208 to 1,220 for affiliation, but
again the right wing split off and re-formed a new Socialist Party.
Early in 1921 the Czechoslovakian Social-Democratic Party ac-
cepted the 21 points and voted to affiliate to the Comintern. In
Italy the Socialist Party also voted to affiliate to the Comintern,
but Serrati and other centrist leaders refused to expel the reform-
ist officials. After the disastrous betrayal of the workers in the
great Italian strikes of this period, the party split in January 1921
and the Communist Party was born. The American Socialist Party,
in 1920, voted to affiliate to the Comintern, but its application
was rejected. The Socialist Labor Party, which was “much disillu-
sioned by the 21 points decided in 1922 not to affiliate.”14
At this time, the Comintern had its principal forces in Russia,
Germany, Italy, and France. It also had special regional commit-
tees for work in Western Europe, the Near and Far East, and Lat-
in America. The official Comintern journal was The Communist
International, printed in several languages.15

305
34. The Comintern and the Colonial World
The highest political point in the second congress of the
Communist International was Lenin’s resolution on the national
and colonial questions.1 This was a thrust, powerfully delivered,
right into one of the most vital organs of capitalism – the colonial
system. It was the first time that the world’s labor movement,
since its inception, had paid major attention to the fate of the gi-
gantic masses of the colonial peoples.
In his speech2 and resolution, Lenin points out that nations are
of two kinds, oppressing and oppressed, and that “about 70 percent
of the population of the world belongs to the oppressed nations....
One of the main sources from which European capitalism draws its
chief strength is to be found in the colonial possessions and de-
pendencies. Without the control of the vast fields of exploitation in
the colonies, the capitalist powers of Europe cannot maintain their
existence even for a short time.... But for the extensive colonial pos-
sessions acquired for the sale of her surplus products, and as a
source of raw materials for her ever-growing industries, the capital-
istic structure of England would have been crushed under its own
weight long ago. By enslaving the hundreds of millions of inhabit-
ants of Asia and Africa, English imperialism succeeds so far in
keeping the British proletariat under the domination of the bour-
geoisie.... Super-profit gained in the colonies is the mainstay of
modern capitalism....” Lenin especially stressed how part of this
super-profit is used to corrupt the labor aristocracy and to keep it
tied to a policy of support of imperialism.
Lenin explains that the imperialist powers, to weaken and
confuse the resistance of the dependent peoples, often allow these
countries a hollow show of independence. This trickery, initiated
by England, has since come to be the central means by which the
United States has created its far-flung world empire, made up of
countries of only formal political independence. The puppet states
of Latin America are classical examples of this type of pseudo na-
tional independence. It was in this famous resolution that Lenin
characterized the American Negro people as a subject nation,
along with the Irish and other peoples of the colonies.
The working class as a whole in the oppressing countries has a
basic interest in the overthrow of imperialism as a condition for
the abolition of capitalism altogether. “The breaking up of the co-
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 THE COMINTERN AND COLONIAL WORLD
lonial empire, together with the proletarian revolution in the
home country, will overthrow the capitalist system in Europe,”
says the resolution. Hence, the imperative need for coordination
between the working class in the imperialist countries and the
oppressed peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies, which it is
the great task of the Comintern to bring about. The key to the
struggle of the oppressed peoples is the leading role of the work-
ing class.
The Second Congress program points out that there are two
trends in the colonial movements, reformist and national revolu-
tionary. It urges that the Communist parties in the colonies and in
the home countries give active support to the genuine national
democratic-liberation movements of the dependent peoples. The-
se will not be Communist movements in the early stages, and care
must be used not to stamp them as such. The perspective laid out
for them, in this period of revolutionary crisis in Europe, is that
“the masses in the backward countries may reach communism,
not through capitalistic development, but led by the class-
conscious proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries.” Lenin
said, “with the help of the proletariat of the more advanced coun-
tries the backward nations can arrive at and pass over to the Sovi-
et system and through certain stages of development on to com-
munism, skipping over the capitalist stage of development.” This
is now happening in People’s China. Stalin especially devoted
himself to the national and colonial question.
KARL MARX AND THE OPPRESSED PEOPLES
The First International, especially its two great leaders, Marx
and Engels, perceived the political importance of the fight of the
oppressed peoples for national independence. The active phases
of this struggle at that time, in the competitive period of capital-
ism, mostly concerned the subjugated peoples on the European
continent. This is why the First International leaders paid such
close attention to events in Italy, Poland, and Ireland – the chief
centers of national struggle during the period of the First Interna-
tional, 1864-1876. The struggle of the Italian people for liberation
from Austrian oppression in 1859 stirred the whole labor move-
ment, and characteristically it was directly in relation to the pro-
test in 1863 against the suppression of the recent Polish insurrec-
tion that there came the immediate impulse for the organization
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
of the International. Especially, the First International associated
itself with the freedom demands of the oppressed Irish people. In
this struggle Marx laid down the theoretical basis for present-day
national liberation struggles (see Chapter 2). The big thing Marx
did in this historic struggle was to point out how vital the exploi-
tation of the Irish people was in strengthening British capitalism,
and how urgent therefore was the interest of the British working
class to support the fight of the Irish people for freedom. The di-
rect participation of Marx and Engels in the heroic fight of the
American Negro people for emancipation in the Civil War, dealt
with in the early chapters of this book, was also a striking example
of the leadership of the First International on national liberation
struggles.
Marx also concerned himself much with what was going on
among the peoples of the Far East. He pointed out that one of the
sources of strength of European capital after 1848 was its expan-
sion into Asia. Marx saw the real meaning of the Taiping rebel-
lion, in the 1850-60 period, as a beginning of the Chinese revolu-
tion. This great popular movement, which was directed not only
against domestic feudal reaction, but also against the European
capitalist invaders of China, was finally defeated by armies led by
the notorious English bandit general, “Chinese” Gordon.3 Regard-
ing the significance of this elementary Chinese revolutionary
movement, Marx made this remarkable prediction: “The Chinese
revolution will throw the spark into the overloaded mine of the
present industrial system and cause the explosion of the long pre-
pared general crisis which, spreading abroad, will be closely fol-
lowed by political revolutions on the continent. It would be a cu-
rious spectacle that of China sending disorder into the Western
World while the Western Powers, by English, French, and Ameri-
can war-steamers are conveying ‘order’ to Shanghai, Nanking,
and at the mouths of the Grand Canal.”4
Marx was also keenly alert to the revolutionary beginnings
then taking place in India. He wrote very extensively about that
country, making a brilliant analysis of the developing revolution-
ary movement, as Dutt points out at length.5 Among his many
Indian writings, Marx wrote a long series of articles in the New
York Tribune during the 1850’s. He paid special attention to the
Great Indian Mutiny of 1857. His Capital has various references
to the vast importance to world capitalism of its penetration of

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 THE COMINTERN AND COLONIAL WORLD
Asia and other colonial areas. Engels in 1882 also had the per-
spective of revolution in India, Persia, Egypt, and other colonial
countries.
Marx said that Britain had “a double mission in India; one de-
structive, the other regenerating – the annihilation of the old Asi-
atic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western
society in Asia.” Among the revolutionary elements Marx listed
political unity, the “native” army, the free press, the establish-
ment of private property in land, the creation of an educated In-
dian class, and regular and rapid communication with Europe.
Marx made it very clear, however, that the most the English
would do for India would be to create such a material basis for
their revolution; the Indians would have to free themselves.
He explained: “All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to
do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condi-
tion of the mass of the people, depending not only on the devel-
opment of the productive power, but of their appropriation by the
people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the materi-
al premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it
ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people
through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation? The
Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society
scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie till in Great Brit-
ain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the
industrial proletariat, or till the Hindoos themselves have grown
strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether.”6
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC IMPERIALISM
Marx and Engels transmitted to oncoming generations of
workers many great revolutionary principles as the heritage from
the First International, but the opportunist leaders of the Second
International proceeded to bury them and to try to make the
workers forget they ever existed. Among these Marxist principles
were those relating to the development of revolutionary national
liberation movements. The First International opened the gate-
way to this great field of struggle; the Second International closed
it again.
The 38 years between the dissolution of the First Internation-
al and the outbreak of World War I – the period when the Second
International was growing and flourishing – was also the time of
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the growth and expansion of world imperialism. The era of the
First International was one of competitive capitalism; the era of
the Second International was that of monopoly capitalism and
imperialism. The heyday of the Second International was the time
when capitalism was rapidly expanding into all corners of the
earth, when the big monopolies became established in the major
capitalist countries; when the leading powers finished dividing up
the world as their colonial preserves, and when the great national
liberation struggles of the vast subjugated peoples of the Far East
began to get well under way. It was the era of imperialism.
The dominant parties and leaders of the Second International
never took up the struggle against imperialism, neither with re-
gard to the oppressed peoples in Europe nor those in the great
colonial and semi-colonial areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin Ameri-
ca. This was not a matter of mere neglect, but of deep political
significance. It arose from the basic fact that the dominant revi-
sionists in the Second International were themselves imperialists
and they sought to tie their respective labor movements to the
chariots of the capitalist imperialists.
Occasionally, the individual parties, or even the congresses of
the Second International, would adopt resolutions of sympathy,
or even of support, for oppressed peoples, but in the main they
bestirred themselves very little about such matters. The indisput-
able fact is that during the period of the Second International the
leaders of the English, American, French, German, Belgian, and
Dutch Social-Democratic parties and trade unions, with few ex-
ceptions, supported the imperialist policies of their respective
capitalist classes. This was because these leaders realized, or
sensed, that the skilled labor aristocracy, upon whom they based
their organizational and political leadership, definitely benefited
financially from the super-profits wrung from the colonial peo-
ples, as Lenin pointed out upon many occasions.
At the second C.I. congress Lenin said: “The Second Interna-
tional also discussed the colonial question. The Basle Manifesto
also spoke of it quite plainly. The parties of the Second Interna-
tional promised to behave in a revolutionary way, but we see no
real revolutionary work and help for the exploited and oppressed
peoples in their revolts against the oppressors from the parties of
the Second International, nor, I believe, from the majority of the
parties which have left the Second International and wish to join

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 THE COMINTERN AND COLONIAL WORLD
the Third International.”7
For several years prior to World War I, Lenin sought diligent-
ly to win the Second International for a policy of self-
determination with the right of secession for the oppressed peo-
ples of Europe and of the great colonial areas of the world. But
prior to the great war the Second International leaders never sup-
ported such a policy of self-determination even for the Irish,
Polish, Czechs, and other developed peoples, much less for the
“backward” peoples of the colonies. Stalin says: "When they spoke
of the right of self-determination, the moving spirits of the Se-
cond International as a rule never even hinted at the right to po-
litical secession – the right of self-determination was at best in-
terpreted to mean the right to autonomy in general... It was en-
tirely unbecoming for ‘decent socialists’ to speak seriously of the
emancipation of the colonies, which were ‘necessary’ for the
‘preservation’ of ‘civilization’.”8 The Social-Democrats especially
did nothing to help their own colonial peoples. They built only
scattering fragments of Social-Democratic parties here and there
among them, and they gave no leadership to their ever-widening
struggles. Instead, by the devious methods characteristic of right
Social-Democrats, they justified imperialist oppression and ex-
ploitation. They even boldly developed theories of “socialist colo-
nialism.” And they “gave the last full measure of their devotion” to
imperialism by following their respective capitalist classes into
that most cynical of imperialist adventures, the redivision of the
world in the great bloodbath of World War I.
COMMUNIST ANTI-IMPERIALISM
As the Communists, under the leadership of Lenin, resurrect-
ed and redeveloped the general body of revolutionary principles
of Marx and Engels, so, also, specifically, they re-applied, in the
sense of the new imperialist era, the teachings of the great pioneer
theoreticians on the national and colonial questions. Lenin, the
greatest of all anti-imperialists, from the outset of his activities
laid heavy stress upon the question of self-determination for op-
pressed peoples, and Stalin, his “ablest pupil,” followed the same
course.
The Russian Revolution of 1905, which bore the characteris-
tics of an anti-imperialist struggle, greatly influenced the rapidly
awakening peoples of the Middle and Far East. This direct influ-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ence was to be seen, among other events, in the national revolu-
tions of Persia in 1906, Turkey in 1908, China in 1911, and in the
stimulation of nationalism in India.
The November Revolution of 1917 still more profoundly
stirred the national aspirations of oppressed peoples all over the
world. Especially when the new Soviet Republic proceeded to
cancel the extra-territorial rights and political concessions forced
by tsarism from China and other colonial lands, did these op-
pressed peoples realize that they were dealing with a powerful
friend. This new attitude was reflected in the close political rela-
tionship developed between Soviet Russia and various of these
countries, notably Turkey, Afghanistan, India, and China. Espe-
cially Sun Yat Sen, the leader of the Chinese bourgeois revolution,
was a close friend of Lenin and Soviet Russia.
Of tremendous importance, too, in establishing the leadership
of Soviet Russia among oppressed peoples was the enlightened
manner in which that country dealt with the hitherto oppressed
peoples within its own borders, of which there were some fifty,
making up about forty percent of the entire population. Stalin,
who played a key role in developing the national question, says,
“The policy of tsarism, the policy of the landlords and the bour-
geoisie, towards these peoples was to destroy every germ of state-
hood among them, to cripple their culture, restrict the use of their
native tongue, hold them in a state of ignorance, and finally, as far
as possible, to Russify them.”9
In drastic contrast to this policy of brutal suppression – Lenin
called tsarist Russia a prison-house of nations – the young Soviet
Republic at once granted the right of self-determination, includ-
ing the right of secession, to all peoples of Russia. Some, as we
have seen, Finland among them, exercised this right and became
independent states, but the great mass remained within Soviet
Russia, where they were accorded complete equality in every re-
spect. At first the many Soviet states lived in a loose federation,
but in 1922 they were combined more closely in the Union of So-
viet Socialist Republics. Not only do all live in unity and harmony,
but the Soviet government, since the beginning, has systematical-
ly and with great success furthered the culture, industry, and so-
cial progress of these hitherto “backward peoples.” The Soviet na-
tional policies enabled them to skip the capitalist stage of devel-
opment. The general advance made by these peoples, especially

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 THE COMINTERN AND COLONIAL WORLD
the former nomads, is one of the outstanding political events of
this century, and it has evoked the most favorable response
throughout all of imperialist-ridden Asia.
The mass anti-imperialist movement in China began in May
1919, the second phase of the Chinese Revolution, in an atmos-
phere of close cooperation between the Soviets and the Chinese
revolutionary forces. The brewing Indian liberation struggle like-
wise took a spurt forward during 1919-21. The Turkish Revolution
of 1919-22, led by Kemal Ataturk, was also carried through direct-
ly under the influence of the Russian Revolution, and it could not
possibly have succeeded without the active leadership and sup-
port given it by Soviet forces. This is a fact that the reactionary
Turkish government of today would like to have the world forget.
The revolutionary upheavals in Afghanistan, Korea, Egypt, Iraq,
and Mongolia during the years 1919-22 took place largely from
the profound stimulus given by the Russian Revolution. These
and similar movements in these areas were directed mainly
against British imperialism, which then dominated nearly the
whole Middle and Far East.
The colonial resolution, written by Lenin and adopted by the
second congress of the Comintern, was, therefore, quite in line
with the whole history of Lenin’s party and Soviet Russia on the
question. It simply carried to still higher levels the theoretical un-
derstanding and practical program of the general question of the
oppressed nations of the earth. Especially it developed the enor-
mous importance of the colonial peoples in the world struggle
against capitalism and the indispensability of a close working to-
gether between the revolutionary proletariat of the imperialist
countries and the rebellious oppressed peoples of the vast colonial
and semi-colonial areas of the earth. At the second congress there
were delegates from India, Turkey, Persia, China, Korea, Java,
and the Asian Soviet peoples. John Reed, delegate from the Unit-
ed States, spoke in behalf of the American Negroes.
Following this congress of the C.I., a broad political confer-
ence of colonial peoples was held in Baku, Russia, in September
1920. There were some 37 peoples represented. It was called the
Congress of the Peoples of the East. Of the 1,891 delegates, 235
were Turks, 192 Persians, 157 Armenians, 100 Georgians, and
there were also numerous Chinese, Indians, and others. There
were three important resolutions adopted, outlining the general
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Leninist line of anti-imperialist struggle in the colonial countries.
A council of 47 (of 20 nationalities) was set up and a paper issued,
The Peoples of the East.10 The Eastern University in Moscow, es-
tablished in 1921, has trained thousands of political leaders for
the colonial peoples. In January 1922 the first congress of the
Toilers of the Far East was held in Moscow.11
Communist parties also began to grow all through this great
colonial area. Dates of the foundation of most of them are: Turkey
1918; Indonesia 1920; China 192112; India 1922; Japan 1922; Pal-
estine 1923; Burma 1924; Malaya 1925; Indo-China 1930; Philip-
pines 1931. In many of the Middle East countries Communist par-
ties were also organized, but they lived mostly in illegal condi-
tions. In all these situations active work was pushed in founding
and building the trade unions. By the same token, at the other
end of the earth, in Latin America, the Comintern also encour-
aged the building of Communist parties among these semi-
colonial peoples.13 Such concentrated work as this in the colonial
world was altogether unheard of in the days when the Second In-
ternational was the political organization of the world’s workers.
It was a basic indication of the greater depth and breadth of the
Comintern movement to abolish capitalism and to establish so-
cialism throughout the world. It was positive proof that the Third
International was really a world organization, working truly on
the basis of Marx’s great slogan, “Workingmen of all countries,
Unite!”

314
35. Revolutionary Struggles:
Third Congress (1921)
When the Communist delegates from all over the world as-
sembled in the great throne room of the former tsar’s palace in
Moscow, on June 22, 1921, to hold the third congress of the
Communist International, it was in a world situation of a develop-
ing capitalist offensive that was colliding with a militant working
class. The employers, with the help of the treacherous Social-
Democracy, had halted the great revolutionary attacks of the
workers in Germany and Hungary, although not in Russia, and
they were now again beginning to take a reactionary initiative in
many countries.
France had been the scene of a series of great strikes of rail-
road workers, metal workers, and other groups in early 1919,
which had resulted unfavorably for the workers.1 In the United
States, the workers were in the midst of huge defensive strike
movements in many industries during 1919-22, the largest in the
history of the American labor movement – a general struggle
which, because of Gompersian leadership’s treachery and coward-
ice, was to cost the unions a loss of over a million members.2 Just
on the eve of the third congress the workers of Great Britain, be-
cause of similar misleadership on the part of Williams, Hodges,
and Thomas, had suffered a serious failure of their famous Triple
Alliance, from which they had expected much.3 The Triple Alli-
ance, made up of miners, railroaders, and general transport
workers, grew out of the big strike movement of a decade before.
All told, it comprised some 2,000,000 workers. The debacle in
1921 grew out of a strike of the 1,150,000 coal miners. The latter,
unable to secure a settlement, called for support from their allies
in the Triple Alliance. Under the great mass pressure, a general
strike date was set, April 12, by the unwilling leaders. This was
postponed until the 15th, “Black Friday,” when it was called off
altogether on vague promises of a settlement. Result, a very seri-
ous defeat for the British working class.
THE BIRTH OF ITALIAN FASCISM
Like the workers all over eastern and central Europe, the Ital-
ian working class came out of the war in a revolutionary state of

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
mind. They quickly built their General Confederation of Labor to
an unprecedented membership of 2,000,000. In mid-1920 the
metal workers came into collision with the employers over wages,
and in September, to enforce their demands for a 35 percent in-
crease and to defeat the employers’ lockout, they occupied the
metal factories all over Italy – a huge sit-in strike, and with red
flags flying over the plants. To protect themselves, they made
guns in the seized factories.
The employers were in a panic and the Giolitti government
almost in paralysis. Italy was on the brink of revolution, and a
determined Communist leadership could have carried it through
successfully. But at the helm of the Socialist Party, which headed
the whole movement, stood rightists and centrist waverers. Alt-
hough the party had taken a good stand against the war and had
endorsed the 21 points following the second C.I. congress, it had
refused to cleanse itself of opportunist leadership. As a result, it
failed in the supreme crisis; the Serrati,* Turati, and D’Aragona
leaders led it to defeat. Much on the treacherous pattern of the
Legien trade union leaders in Germany in the revolutionary days
of January 1919, despite the demand of the left wing to seize polit-
ical power, they kept the struggle on an “economic level,” peddled
away the great revolutionary movement for a skimpy wage raise
and for a few other trade union concessions, and turned the facto-
ries back to the capitalists.4
The result was a disastrous collapse, and the workers were
demoralized. In the meantime, under the leadership of the former
Socialist, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), the bosses had been
building up gangs of thugs to terrorize the workers. The sell-out of
the strike gave these ruffians their chance to wreck the labor
movement. With the active help of the employers and the conniv-
ance of the government, Mussolini, in October 1922, finally made
his “March on Rome” (in a Pullman car) and took over control of
the government. Despite heroic rearguard struggles, the Italian
labor movement was soon crushed. Fascism was born, a major
disaster for the world labor movement.5
In Germany early in 1921, on the eve of the third world con-

* Serrati broke with the Turati opportunists only in 1922, when the
damage had been done, on the eve of Mussolini’s march on Rome.
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 REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLES
gress, an ill-fated revolutionary struggle also took place, the so-
called “March action.” This came in the aftermath of the Kapp-
putsch of March 13, 1920, when General von Luttwitz, with
Reichswehr troops, suddenly overthrew the Weimar government
and installed in power one Dr. Kapp. The workers replied with the
most effective general strike in the history of Germany. After four
days Kapp had to give up. This was a splendid opportunity for the
workers to take control of Germany and for three weeks Com-
munist-led masses controlled Essen, Chemnitz, and a large part of
the Ruhr basin.6 But once more the Social-Democratic leaders
refused to fight for socialism, dutifully bowing out again to the
capitalists on the basis of a few paper concessions.
The strike victory over Kapp left the workers in a militant
mood. This resulted in an uprising in March 1921 of several hun-
dred thousand workers, led chiefly by the Communists and Left
Independents. It was drowned in blood by the right-wing Socialist
hangmen. At best it was a desperate undertaking, and it was a
mistake of the party to be led into it. Paul Levi, who had become
party leader after the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht,
worsened the situation by denouncing and sabotaging the strug-
gle, for which he was expelled from the party. The influence of the
March action permeated the entire third congress of the Com-
munist International.7
FORMATION OF THE TWO-AND-A-HALF INTERNATIONAL
Another important event upon the eve of the third Comintern
congress was the formation, in Vienna, February 1921, of the In-
ternational Working Union of Socialist Parties, with Frederick
Adler as general secretary. This organization, standing politically
between the Second and Third International, became popularly
known, to its dismay, as the Two-and-a-Half International. Politi-
cally, it was a centrist organization.8
The Vienna International, true to its Kautskyian principle of
words not needs, was repelled on the right by the crudely reac-
tionary work of the leaders of the Second International, and on
the left by the revolutionary action of the Third International. So
it undertook to steer a middle course between. Actually, as is al-
ways the case with centrists, the Vienna International served as a
cover for the right opportunism of the Second International. Its
historic function, like that of its affiliated parties, was to erect a
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
barrier between the radicalized workers who were moving from
the controls of the Second International to the leadership of the
Communist International. It was a major buttress for the capital-
ist system during this revolutionary period.
There were representatives of Socialist parties of 13 countries
at its founding congress. Among the more important were the In-
dependent Labor Party of Great Britain, what was left of the In-
dependent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, the Social-
Democratic Party of Switzerland, and the Russian Mensheviks.
Among the leading delegates were Johnson, Shinwell, Wallhead –
English; Faure, Longuet – French; Crispien, Hilferding,
Ledebour, Rosenfeld – German; Martov – Russian; Graber,
Grimm, Huggler, Reinhardt – Swiss; Adler, Bauer – Austrian.
The Two-and-a-Half International adopted a radical-sounding
program, as was to be expected. It foresaw certain instances where
armed force would have to be used by the workers to achieve politi-
cal power. It also tipped its hat to the dictatorship of the proletariat
and to workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils (Soviets). In its
statement of principles it carefully avoided, however, a clear en-
dorsement of the Russian Revolution, and the Comintern 21 points
were poison to it. In the nature of the situation, this type of radical
program was necessary in order to catch the ear of the revolution-
ary-minded workers of Europe. How little real substance there was
to it, however, was to be demonstrated a couple of years later when
the Two-and-a-Half International amalgamated with (read, sur-
rendered to) the Second International.
PROGRAM OF THE THIRD C.I. WORLD CONGRESS
The third congress of the Comintern, while drawing a revolu-
tionary perspective, recognized that there had been some slacken-
ing in the post-war revolutionary upsurge. There could be no oth-
er general conclusion drawn from the defeats experienced by the
workers since 1919 in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, France,
Czechoslovakia, and England. In general there had been a tre-
mendous revolutionary upheaval, in which the Russian workers
had won one-sixth of the world, “but,” say the theses, “this power-
ful revolutionary wave did not succeed in sweeping away interna-
tional capitalism, nor even the capitalist order of Europe itself....
The first period of the post-war revolutionary movement... is
largely ended.”9 At the congress, Lenin thus summed up the situa-

318
 REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLES
tion: “The development of the revolution which we predicted
makes progress. But the progress is not the straight line we ex-
pected.... What is essential now is a fundamental preparation of
the revolution and a profound study of its concrete development
in the principal capitalist countries.”10
This did not mean, however, that the capitalists had succeed-
ed in stabilizing their system. On the contrary, the war and the
postwar revolutionary struggles had introduced even more chaos
and internal contradictions into that system. One of the chief
things that had happened in the war was a tremendous strength-
ening of the United States, and to a lesser extent Japan, at the ex-
pense of the older capitalist lands. “Capitalist Europe has com-
pletely lost its dominating position in the world economy.”11 The
theses pointed out that already preparations were beginning and
lineups taking shape for an eventual new war among the powers –
a clear-sighted Marxist forecast that was to receive dreadful con-
firmation two decades later in World War II.
The congress stated very clearly that with the aid of the So-
cial-Democrats the capitalists had not only succeeded, for the
time being, in saving their system in most of Europe, but had de-
veloped a counteroffensive against the working class. This analy-
sis, too, was to be only too clearly proven in the oncoming years
with the growth of fascism. Already this monstrous snake had
raised its head in Italy, but the full implications of this develop-
ment were not yet clear, as the fascists so far had been unable to
seize power.
The broad conclusion of the congress from its general analysis
was to tighten the ranks all along the line and to prepare for se-
vere fighting ahead. The main slogan was, To The Masses! With
this in mind, much attention was given to many questions of or-
ganization and mass work – to party structure and practice, to
work in the trade unions, in the cooperatives, and among the
women and youth. Close examination and self-criticism was made
of recent revolutionary struggles, especially the March action in
Germany and the occupation of the factories in Italy.
The congress paid much attention to the necessity of develop-
ing mass struggles around immediate, partial economic and polit-
ical demands. It warned against the error of considering such
demands as in themselves reformist. The congress also laid the
basis for united-front action with other workers’ organizations in
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
such struggles, a concept that was to have profound consequences
in ensuing Communist policy.
The Soviet Republic, which represented the supreme
achievement and fortress of the world’s working class, could re-
port splendid progress in stamping out, by the end of 1920, the
main organized armed forces of the counter-revolution. On the
eve of the congress, however, it had to deal with a desperate, An-
archist-organized revolt at the Baltic naval fort of Kronstadt. The
general line of the Soviet government in establishing the New
Economic Policy was endorsed. At the conclusion of seven years
of imperialist and civil war, Soviet Russia was economically pros-
trate. Its industry and agriculture, weak and backward at best,
were about wrecked from the ravages of war, economic blockade,
and counter-revolutionary disorganization. And just as the coun-
try was about to enter into the period of reconstruction, it was hit
by another great disaster, a terrible famine in the Volga area. The-
se tragedies were, in the period following the congress, to lead to
a great workers’ international campaign to provide relief to the
stricken areas. Nor were the capitalist countries, headed by Mr.
Herbert Hoover with his American Relief Administration, slow to
use food as a means to try to overthrow the embattled Soviet Re-
public.
SOME ORGANIZATIONAL QUESTIONS
The major Communist parties at the third congress, with their
approximate membership figures, were: Russian 700,000, Czech-
oslovak 300,000, German 300,000, and French 100,000. Small-
er parties existed in nearly all other important countries. The
congress aimed at the strengthening of all the parties in the sense
of Lenin’s “party of the new type” (see chapter 20) in preparation
for the next revolutionary offensive by the workers.
The First International established a tradition of an organized
international leadership, with a definite program and a measure
of workable revolutionary discipline. The Second International
broke this down, however, as it did so many other of the revolu-
tionary features of Marxism, and substituted instead the post-
office system of international leadership, with each party develop-
ing pretty much its own line. The Third International re-
established and emphasized the Marxist concept of a disciplined
international movement, based on a common general political

320
 REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLES
program and a definite leadership.
The Comintern proceeded upon the basis of democratic cen-
tralism. Its leadership was democratically constituted, its Execu-
tive Committee (ECCI), which met frequently between congress-
es, being representatively made up. Charges that the C.I. was
packed with Soviet delegates who arbitrarily ran it, are typical
anti-Communist slanders, the Russian party at this time having
but six representatives in an Executive of 31 members. The Rus-
sian party was the leading party in the Comintern; this leadership,
however, was not due to mechanical controls, but to its enormous
prestige as the successful leader of the great Russian Revolution.
The characteristic of Comintern procedure was to have a full
and free discussion on an issue and then seriously to enforce the
decision. This enforcement, however, was fundamentally volun-
tary; understanding and full acceptance of the decision being
based upon the existence of parties fully grounded in the princi-
ples of Marxism-Leninism. In all the parties, including the Rus-
sian, there were occasional minorities which, while often disa-
greeing with certain aspects of the line of the party, nevertheless
were required to carry it out. Characteristically, at the third con-
gress there were various dissident groups present – among them
the sectarian K.A.P.D. Communist group from Germany, the right
opportunist Levi group, also from Germany, and the centrist
Lazari-Maffi elements, supporters of the fatal Serrati line in Italy.
The ideological fight in the congress was on two fronts, against
both the centrist and left sectarian tendencies.
WORK AMONG WOMEN
At the third C.I. congress there took place the Second Interna-
tional Women’s Conference (the first having occurred at the se-
cond C.I. congress the previous year). This gathering was held on
the basis of definite theses. The Second International, as we have
pointed out earlier, carried on a certain amount of work among
women, but there never was any real breadth and drive to it. Both
Marx and Engels were scientific pioneers on the question of
woman’s status, and Bebel, during the 1880’s wrote his famous
book, Woman and Socialism, which ran through fifty editions.12
But a corresponding energy on the question was not shown by the
respective Social-Democratic parties. This was true also to some
degree of the First International. As late as the formulation of the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Gotha Program in Germany in 1875, Bebel’s proposition to in-
clude as a plank the franchise for women was defeated by 62-55,
one of those who voted against it being Wilhelm Liebknecht.13 By
this time, the question of women’s suffrage had been actively ad-
vocated in the United States for 30 years, the great Negro leader,
Frederick Douglass, having been one of its chief advocates at the
famous congress on women’s rights at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848.
The Second International parties did not actively support the
right of women to vote until the adoption of Kautsky’s Erfurt pro-
gram in 1891. Even after that, despite the vigorous efforts of Clara
Zetkin and others, the Second International remained relatively
inert on the woman question. And it is a fact that even in later
years, as the Second International parties got into power in vari-
ous capitalist countries, they in no wise distinguished themselves
by radically improving the industrial, political, or social position
of womankind.
In contrast to this sluggish attitude, the left has always cham-
pioned women’s rights – industrial, political, legal, social – Len-
in’s writings being permeated with the question. Characteristical-
ly, the establishment of the Soviet Republic immediately led to
profound improvement in woman’s position in the industries, in
the professions, and in political life. Every door was flung wide
open to women, on the basis of complete equality in every respect.
Today in the U.S.S.R., of the 1,500,000 members of all local Sovi-
ets, 500,000 are women, and in the Supreme Soviet, with 1,339
members, 280 are women.14 There are 60,000 women scientists.
Women are leaders in every walk of Soviet life. The later revolu-
tions in People’s China and the European People’s Democracies
continued the same deep concern about the freedom and well-
being of women.
Therefore, in the first congress of the C.I., the woman ques-
tion already was given consideration; at the second congress a
women’s conference was held, and at the third congress of the
Comintern, a thesis on the question was presented to the women’s
conference, under the direct attention of Lenin. This document
put the winning of the women as decisive for the victory of the
revolution. While raising special demands for women, it denied
that there was a specific woman question as such and identified
the basic interests of women with those of the proletariat. It de-
veloped a general program for work among women in Soviet

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 REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLES
countries, in capitalist lands, and in the great colonial areas. The
program covered the entire scope of women’s interests in every
field.
The women’s work of the Comintern was led by that veteran
revolutionary fighter, Clara Zetkin.15 She headed the International
Women’s Secretariat, with its center in Moscow. Regional organi-
zations were set up, and the respective parties formed corre-
sponding women’s commissions. Wherever the proletariat was in
struggle, there the women Communists were to be found in the
first line.
The third C.I. congress also paid attention to the cooperative
movement, producing a program for activity in this field. The the-
ses condemned current bourgeois and Social-Democratic illusions
as to the political neutrality of the cooperatives, and also Utopian
notions (with a century of confusion behind them) to the effect
that the extension of the cooperative movement means the gradu-
al development of socialism. The C.I. program called for the inte-
gration of the cooperatives with the political and trade union sec-
tions of the working-class forces. The congress set up a Coopera-
tive Department and gave a lead to the affiliated parties to do
likewise. In substance, the congress re-endorsed the position of
Marx in the Inaugural Address of the First International that
while the cooperatives were a valuable weapon of the working-
class struggle, they could not of themselves bring the workers to
emancipation.

323
36. The Red International of Labor Unions
(1921)
The basic split in the ranks of the working class caused by the
treasonous support of World War I by the right-wing and centrist
leaders of the Second International not only affected the workers’
political parties, but also their trade unions. Every aspect of the
labor movement was disrupted by the great debacle of opportun-
ist Social-Democracy. An ultimate result of this labor split was the
formation of the Red International of Labor Unions (R.I.L.U.),
known as the Profintern, at a congress in Moscow, beginning on
July 3, 1921.
THE I.F.T.U. IN WAR AND PEACE
The International Federation of Trade Unions, which was or-
ganized in skeleton form in 1913 out of the previous International
Secretariat of National Trade Union Centers with Karl Legien as
secretary and with headquarters in Berlin, was shattered by the
action of the Socialist leaders in the war. The wily Legien, howev-
er, arguing that the war was not caused by the workers, managed
for a time to keep up a correspondence with the various interna-
tional centers; but this irked the ultra-chauvinist French leader
Leon Jouhaux (1879-1954), and the arrangement collapsed. Con-
sequently, by May 1915, there were three international trade un-
ion centers – in Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris.1
During the war the unions in many countries grew very rapid-
ly. This was primarily because the tremendous demand for labor
power put the workers in a favorable bargaining position, and al-
so because the employers, striving to keep the trade unions lined
up in support of the war, were not in an advantageous position to
block successfully the growth of labor organization. In the stormy
period following the war, which in several countries reached the
point of revolutionary struggle, the trade unions grew even faster.
Lorwin estimates that the total world trade union membership
expanded from some 15,000,000 in 1913 to 45,000,000 to 1920.2
Thus, the membership of the unions in the various leading coun-
tries during this period went up roughly as follows: Germany
2,250,000 to 8,000,000; Great Britain, 4,500,000 to 6,500,000;
United States, 2,500,000 to 4,000,000; France, 500,000 to

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2,000,000; Italy, 400,000 to 2,000,000; and Soviet Russia, from
1,500 (in early 1917)3 to 4,500,000.
The need of the workers for international trade union organi-
zation was imperative, and once the war was over steps were
promptly taken in that direction by the forces of both right and
left. In July 1919 a trade union conference of right and centrist
forces was held in Amsterdam, with union representatives from
fourteen countries in attendance. The International Federation of
Trade Unions was reconstituted, with a stated membership of
23,662,000. But this time, instead of Karl Legien at the head, the
I.F.T.U. had a secretariat of E. Fimmen and J. Oudegeest (of Bel-
gium and Holland), with W. A. Appleton (England) president, and
Leon Jouhaux (France) and Samuel Gompers, vice-presidents.4
The “enemy” trade unions of Germany and its war allies were al-
lowed to affiliate, but they were completely squeezed out of the
top leadership. The Russian trade unions refused to participate in
the Amsterdam congress.
Meanwhile, the Social-Democratic trade union leaders were
maneuvering, with Gompers in the lead, to make themselves part
of the imperialistic League of Nations, then being born at Ver-
sailles. Gompers, an official member of the U.S. government dele-
gation, was made chairman of the Peace Conference’s Commis-
sion on International Labor Legislation, in January 1919. As a re-
sult, the so-called Labor Convention was adopted, based on the
A.F. of L.’s labor program of reconstruction.5 This program had
called for the establishment of a world “labor parliament;” but
instead, the League Convention provided for the International
Labor Organization (I.L.O.) – a body formed of representatives of
governments, employers, and workers. Based on class collabora-
tion and the permanency of capitalism, the I.L.O. was made an
official part of the League. Thenceforth, through the years, it pro-
ceeded to meddle in the class struggle all over the world, to the
detriment of the workers. It exists to this day, having been ab-
sorbed as part of the machinery of the United Nations, the sole
left-over of the old League. The U.S.S.R. and the Soviet trade un-
ions, although affiliated to the I.L.O. since 1935, only recently be-
came active in that body.
Shortly after the Versailles Peace Treaty was signed, the
I.F.T.U. was re-established at the union congress at Amsterdam
(hence its name, the Amsterdam International). There was bitter
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
criticism among the delegates against the high-handed manner in
which Gompers, who was present at the congress, had peddled
away the interests of the workers at Versailles. The European So-
cial-Democrats were particularly shocked at Gompers’ openly
pro-capitalist language and his lack of the radical demagogy such
as they themselves practiced. The dispute wound up by the con-
gress, in the presence of Gompers, adopting a resolution con-
demning the League’s Labor Convention. Legien even accused
Gompers of being a bosses’ agent. The congress decided, however,
to participate in the I.L.O.6
The I.L.O. first met in Washington in October 1919. Its prin-
cipal action was to endorse legislation for the general eight-hour
day. This was hailed by labor conservatives as a great victory. Ac-
tually, however, the eight-hour day had been largely won in the
major countries during the war and immediately afterward. To
endorse it, therefore, as a specific demand by the I.L.O., was a
small price for the employers to pay as one of their concessions to
damp down the then revolutionary spirit of large sections of the
European proletariat.
FOUNDATION OF THE R.I.L.U.
While the right wing of the labor movement was taking steps
to re-establish the International Federation of Trade Unions, the
left wing was no less active in regrouping its trade union forces.
Lenin, with his penetrating mind, early understood that the great
split caused by the war-treason of the revisionists and their coun-
ter-revolutionary attitude, was bound also to involve the world
trade union movement. Already at the Conference of Russian
trade unions held in June 1917 the need was recognized to form a
new trade union international, and a scheduled world trade union
congress in Petrograd for this purpose would have taken place
had it not been for the imperialist war of intervention that was
launched against Soviet Russia, disrupting all communications.7
At first the Communist International, like the First and Se-
cond Internationals before it, accepted the affiliation of labor un-
ions, but this practice was almost immediately discarded as im-
practical under the circumstances. On July 15, 1920, as a result of
conferences with revolutionary trade unionists of various Europe-
an countries, the International Council of Trade and Industrial
Unions was organized in Moscow. Its stated purpose was to act as

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 RED INTERNATIONAL OF LABOR UNIONS
a “militant international committee for the reorganization of the
trade union movement.” Upon the call of this committee there
was assembled in Moscow on July 3, 1921, the congress of 220
trade union delegates from all over the world which established
the Red International of Labor Unions. The R.I.L.U. congress
took place during the concluding days of the third congress of the
Comintern, and just as the civil war in Soviet Russia had been
brought to a victorious conclusion.
The report of the International Council of its work during the
past ten months listed the affiliations to the new labor body as
follows: Russia, 6,500,000; Germany, 2,500,000; Italy,
3,000,000; France, 500,000; England, 500,000; America,
500,000; Spain, 800,000; Australia, 600,000; Poland, 250,000
– or some 17,000,000 in all. There were three types of affiliates:
directly affiliated unions, sympathizing unions, and minority
movements in unaffiliated unions. Among the well-known trade
unionists present from the capitalist world were Mann (England),
Heckert (Germany), Rosmer (France), Haywood and Foster
(United States), and Zapatocky (Czechoslovakia). A. Losovsky,
outstanding Russian Communist veteran and trade unionist, also
with an extensive experience in the French labor movement, was
elected general secretary.
The above membership figures for the capitalist countries
were only approximate, the R.I.L.U. forces in these lands being
almost exclusively left groupings within the old unions. In Czech-
oslovakia they amounted to perhaps one half of the total trade
union movement, and in France and Germany somewhat less. In
England the National Minority Movement, the R.I.L.U. section in
that country, on various of its issues commanded the support of
half or more of the entire trade union membership. And even in
the United States and Canada, during the stormy period of 1921-
23, the Trade Union Educational League was able to secure en-
dorsement from about fifty percent of the labor movement for its
three major issues of amalgamation of the craft unions into indus-
trial unions, the labor party, and recognition of Soviet Russia.8
The manifesto issued by the R.I.L.U. founding congress stated
that “Two fifths of the organized workers of the world have al-
ready joined the Red International of Labor Unions.”9

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
THE PROGRAM OF THE R.I.L.U.
The program of the Red International of Labor Unions, or
Profintern, as it was often called, as contained in its constitution,
proposed to organize the world’s workers for the overthrow of
capitalism and the establishment of the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat. It supported policies of class struggle and opposed class
collaboration. It took a stand against the International Labor Of-
fice and the International Federation of Trade Unions.10
In its fight to revolutionize the programs, methods, and lead-
ership of the trade union movement, the R.I.L.U. always kept to
the fore the imperative necessity, at the same time, to guard and
strengthen the workers’ unity in their organizations and the class
struggle. To this end, while accepting the affiliation of the unions
and trade union centers, the Profintern was strictly opposed to
splitting labor organizations. It stood resolutely by the Leninist
principle of revolutionary workers remaining within conservative-
ly-led mass trade unions. The congress declared, “The policy of
breaking off from the unions by the revolutionary elements plays
into the hands of the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy and must
be resolutely and categorically rejected.”11
The revisionist leaders of the Amsterdam International re-
plied, however, to the R.I.L.U. unity policy with one of expulsion.
They did not hesitate to split the labor movement, having be-
trayed it in so many other ways. That is, to retain control of the
labor organizations, they proceeded systematically to expel, singly
or en masse, large numbers of militant workers who dared to op-
pose their general class collaborationist line of policy. In the ensu-
ing years this expulsion program took on a mass character and it
spread to practically all countries. The expulsion policy forced
major union splits in several countries, including the needle
trades and other unions in the United States and Canada.
One of the most serious of these trade union splits took place
in France. As remarked earlier, the membership of the C.G.T. dur-
ing the war period had shot up to 2,000,000; but because of ru-
inous reformist policies in the great strikes of 1920, it soon tum-
bled again to about 600,000. As a result of this debacle there was
great discontent in the C.G.T. At the congress in Orleans in Octo-
ber 1920 a motion was made to affiliate the organization to the
R.I.L.U., then in preliminary process of formation. This motion

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 RED INTERNATIONAL OF LABOR UNIONS
was defeated by 1,485 to 685. But the Communists and other lefts
persisted in their propaganda, gradually winning one national
union after another. The Jouhaux administration, as was usual
with reformists in this period, replied to these successes of the left
wing by expelling whole sections of their organizations. This led
inevitably to a general split, which took place in December 1921,
and to the formation, in June 1922, of the C.G.T. Unitaire. The
C.G.T.U. was headed by Monmouseau, Semard, Rosmer, and
Monatte.12 The French labor movement was thus split almost
evenly between the two national organizations.
SHAPING THE R.I.L.U. PROGRAM
At the R.I.L.U. congress, in the development of the program
and tactics of the new international labor center, there were only
two serious disputes. One of these was over the question of left-
wingers working within the old and conservative trade unions.
There were several “leftist” groups at the congress – from the
American I.W.W., the French and Spanish Anarcho-syndicalists,
the German K.A.P.D., etc. – and they firmly supported the sec-
tarian idea of the left-wing elements withdrawing from the old
unions and establishing independent revolutionary organizations,
with policies, structures, and leadership designed to their own
liking. This was one of the major expressions of “left” sectarian-
ism that Lenin had waged war against in the second Comintern
congress.
Dual revolutionary unionism was something of a new ideolog-
ical deviation in Europe, save in Anarcho-syndicalist circles; but it
had a long history in the case of the American I.W.W., S.P., and
S.L.P. For fifteen years these organizations had encouraged the
policy of pulling militant elements out of the mass A.F. of L. un-
ions, to the great detriment of the latter. The “leftists” at the
R.I.L.U. congress made a fight for their line, but the delegates
overwhelmingly supported the Leninist trade union principle of
left-wingers remaining inside the ranks of the organized trade
unions and there fighting for their class struggle program.
The second dispute at the R.I.L.U. congress, more basic in
character, involved pretty much the same Anarcho-syndicalist
elements. It had to do with the question of trade union political
action, concretely, with the organized relations that were being
suggested between the R.I.L.U. and the Comintern. The proposi-
329
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
tion was that the two bodies should exchange representatives in
their respective executive committees. The Anarcho-syndicalists,
who were drastically opposed to political action in general, made
a big fight against establishing any organized connections what-
ever between the R.I.L.U. and the C.I. This stand was a modern
reflection of the historic fight between the Marxists and the politi-
cal ancestors of the present-day Anarcho-syndicalists, the
Bakuninists, in the congresses of the First International.
Much bitterness was lent to the dispute because of the fact
that the Anarchists had led the bloody revolt at the great
Kronstadt naval base in the Baltic a couple of months earlier.
“The mutineers gained possession of a first class fortress, the
fleet, and a vast quantity of arms and ammunition.”13 Their slogan
was, “Soviets without Communists,” and the whole capitalist
world openly wished them success. But the government put down
the dangerous counter-revolutionary revolt. The great fortress
was quickly retaken, and for the only time in history steel battle-
ships were captured by foot soldiers crossing the ice in the harbor.
Even during the R.I.L.U. congress anti-Soviet Anarchists were
conducting armed operations against the Soviet government un-
der the bandit Makhno in the Ukraine. The American Anarchists,
Goldman and Berkman, avowed anti-Soviet elements, were pre-
sent unofficially at the congress, busying themselves trying to line
up delegates for the Anarcho-syndicalist cause.
The congress voted in great majority in support of political ac-
tion and for a close working together of the R.I.L.U. with the
Comintern. A year later this mutual representation between the
two internationals was abandoned. The Anarcho-syndicalists at
the 1921 congress were obviously very disgruntled at the congress
decision, but they did not split at the time. In December 1922,
however, the Anarcho-syndicalist groupings of Spain, France,
Holland, the United States, and a few other centers got together
in Berlin and formed an international of their own. They named it
the International Working Men’s Association. It had very few
members and it played but a negligible part in world labor affairs.
THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY UNIONISM
The development of the Leninist type of unionism, expressed
by the R.I.L.U., raised the whole labor movement to new and
higher levels of efficiency than had been attained in the time of

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 RED INTERNATIONAL OF LABOR UNIONS
the dominance of the Second International. The trade unions
were infused with a better fighting spirit, and they were given a
clearer leadership perspective, as against the paralyzing class col-
laborationism and semi-bourgeois outlook cultivated by the re-
formists. They were also infused with a stronger sense of class
unity and political solidarity, in contrast to the narrow craft un-
ionism and the “neutralist” ideas characteristic of reformist un-
ionism. For the first time, in the R.I.L.U., the unions began seri-
ously to consider questions of strike strategy and tactics, includ-
ing the use of the general strike, from a scientific standpoint.14 In
the same spirit, the R.I.L.U. was instrumental in the formation of
such broad united-front organizations as the International Labor
Defense and the International Workers Aid, to support every as-
pect of trade union struggle and to defend labor militants of all
tendencies in their fight against legal persecution.
The R.I.L.U. laid new foundations for trade unions in the
workshops, with its new-type shop committees and factory coun-
cils. These bodies, which drew in all the workers in a given plant,
both the unorganized and the members of all unions, gave added
strength and unity to the workers. The shop committees, accord-
ing to the maturity of the situation, ranged in the exercise of vary-
ing degrees of control, up to the actual taking over of plants. This
type of organization came to play an enormous role all over Eu-
rope, and it became the foundation of national trade unions. The
second congress of the R.I.L.U. declared, “the creation of factory
committees is the most important policy and most important
weapon of the revolutionary class struggle.”15
An important feature of Communist unionism, too, was the
building of Communist groups or fractions in conservative-led
unions. It was an effective method, but as it provoked needless
opposition, it was eventually generally abandoned. Shop papers
and groups were continued, and so, too, was the system of build-
ing broad united-front opposition groups, which, however, was
more in line with trade union tradition.
The R.I.L.U. was animated by a high spirit of international-
ism. Whereas the I.F.T.U. congresses contented themselves with
passing a few resolutions of a general character, the Profintern
congresses took up in detail the problems confronted by its un-
ions in the respective countries. This helped to break down
tendencies towards provincialism and national narrowness.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
The R.I.L.U. industrial unions were, for the first time, also re-
al mass-class organizations in their composition. Characteristical-
ly, the reformist unions had nearly everywhere concentrated prin-
cipally upon organizing the more skilled workers. This was why,
in most countries, they remained relatively small. The enormous
increase in union membership that took place during and imme-
diately after World War I, and also during the decades since then,
has been due primarily to the world-wide growth of left-wing,
predominantly Communist, influence, with its central stress upon
the organization of the hitherto neglected or ignored mass catego-
ries of the unskilled, women, and young workers.
Characteristic in this respect was the stand of the fourth
Comintern congress regarding the organization of American Ne-
gro workers. It declared, “The Communist International will use
every instrument within its control to compel the trade unions to
admit Negro workers to membership or, where the nominal right
to join exists, to agitate for a special campaign to draw them into
the unions; failing in this, it will organize the Negroes into unions
of their own and specially apply the united-front tactic to compel
admission.”16
The R.I.L.U. also added a new dimension to the labor move-
ment in that from the outset it carried trade unionism into the
colonial and semi-colonial countries, something that had been
practically unheard of in the days of the predominance of the Se-
cond International. The establishment of the national labor
movements in the Asian countries – India (1920), China (1922),
and in various other eastern countries in the same period – was
achieved under the powerful influence of the Russian Revolution,
and usually directly under Communist leadership. Katayama re-
ported that in Japan the general labor federation was formed in
1901 under police influence; but that during the post-World War I
revolutionary upheaval the left-wing workers took charge of the
federation and built it into a real union center.17 By the same to-
ken, it was the R.I.L.U. that organized the first general labor
movement in Latin America in 1928, the Confederacion Syndical
Latino Americano (C.S.L.A.), forerunner of the Latin American
Confederation of Labor (C.T.A.L.) of 1936.18 In the trade union
field the R.I.L.U. was the embodiment of Lenin’s great strategic
principle of united-front cooperation between the workers of the
imperialist countries and the peoples of the colonial lands.

332
37. The United Front: Fourth Congress
(1922)
The fourth congress of the Communist International was
held, like all the congresses of the Comintern, in Moscow. It took
place November 7-December 3, 1922, with some 350 delegates
present from 52 countries, representing a reported membership
of 1,920,549.1 Many of the parties – Brazil, Bulgaria, Esthonia,
Hungary, India, Japan, Poland, and several others – because of
domestic reaction, were in illegality, hence membership figures
for them were uncertain. The central issue of this congress was
the united workers’ front. It was the last congress attended by the
great Lenin, who on May 26, 1922, had a stroke, which was soon
to cause his death.
LENIN AND LABOR UNITY
In the true spirit of Marxist understanding and responsibility,
Lenin at all times had an all-pervading sense of the imperative
need for proletarian solidarity. His entire work was directed to-
wards this great end – the development of a working class ideo-
logically and organizationally united, upon the basis of a socialist
outlook. In all his strategy and tactics and in his program-
building, Lenin always kept this elementary objective to the fore.
The deep split in the labor movement caused by the war be-
trayal of the right and center Socialists and by their open or dis-
guised hostility to the Russian Revolution, posed before the
world’s workers a tremendous problem of finding the way to a
practical labor unity in their shattered ranks. Such unity was in-
dispensable, the only basis upon which the working class could
hope to make further progress or even to hold the ground it had
already won, in the face of the increasingly violent attacks from
the capitalists. To attain labor unity worried the right-wingers but
little, however. They were not out to destroy capitalism; hence
with their slogans, “The enemy is on the left,” they were quite
willing to keep the labor movement split, if thereby they could
defeat the Communists. In the very nature of the situation, there-
fore, the unity of labor could be established only by the left forces
and in the face of right Social-Democratic opposition.
As soon as he realized that the original post-war revolutionary

333
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
offensive of the workers of middle Europe was being checked,
Lenin outlined and proposed the policy of the united labor front.
He understood very well that organic political unity with the revi-
sionist betrayers of labor was unthinkable, but he also knew that
on the basis of the common desires and pressures of the great
masses of the working class, and despite the reactionary leader-
ship, a vital amount of practical cooperation could be built up
among the workers for limited objectives in both the industrial
and political fields. In carrying through such united-front activi-
ties, however, Lenin laid it down as an indispensable condition
that the Communist parties must retain their full right of political
criticism; otherwise the working class could not be protected from
the ingrown treachery of the opportunist Socialist leaders.
Lenin began to stress the united-front policy before, and es-
pecially during, the third Comintern congress of June 1921. At the
Executive Committee meetings of December 1921 and February
1922, the policy was further carefully formulated and put before
the world labor movement for consideration.2 As worked out at
the December meeting, the theses pointed out the intensifying
attack of reaction against the workers and the urgent need of
united action of all of labor’s forces to repel it. The document de-
clared also that “the workers as a whole are being moved by an
unprecedented attraction for unity.” The theses called upon the
Communists in Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, England, Italy,
Sweden, the United States, etc., to take the initiative in approach-
ing the Social-Democrats with concrete proposals for united-front
actions. The theses stated, too, that “In issuing the watchword of
the united working class front and permitting agreements of sep-
arate sections of the Communist International with parties and
groups of the Second, Two-and-a-Half, and Amsterdam Interna-
tionals, the Communist International cannot naturally refuse to
contract similar agreements on the international scale.” Then the
theses listed previous proposals made to these bodies for united
action, on Russian famine relief, against the white terror in Spain
and Yugoslavia, and, currently, in connection with the fresh dan-
ger of imperialist war.3
The various national Communist parties at once took up the
fight for the united front. The key German party forwarded to the
two German Social-Democratic parties an open letter, proposing
united action to meet the workers’ most pressing wage problems,

334
 THE UNITED FRONT
and also making proposals for a common fight for a ‘‘united work-
ing class government.” In France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and else-
where similar approaches were made to the Social-Democrats.
But there was no little clarification work necessary also within the
Communist parties themselves regarding the new policy. There
were “left” sectarians who were against the united front in princi-
ple, some who declared it could work on the industrial field but
not on the political, others who conceived of the policy as actually
amalgamating the Communist party with the Social-Democratic
parties, and still others who thought they saw a contradiction be-
tween the famous 21 points, which drew a line against joint politi-
cal organization with right Social-Democrats, and the new united-
front policy, which proposed cooperation for limited objectives.
The coming forward by the Comintern with this united-front
policy was the only conceivable way at the time of cultivating the
greatest possible degree of united labor action. It was another ex-
ample of the world labor leadership that had been shown by the
Communists since 1914 (in fact since the Stuttgart congress of
1907), a leadership which was to be repeated constantly through-
out the years, down to the present time.
THE BERLIN CONFERENCE OF THE
THREE INTERNATIONALS
Meanwhile, the leaders of the Two-and-a-Half International,
also feeling the workers’ “irresistible impulse towards unity” sig-
nalized by the Communists, proposed a conference of the three
internationals to consider joint action. The Comintern agreed at
once, but the Second International did so reluctantly. The confer-
ence sat in Berlin during April 2-5, 1922, with 47 delegates, repre-
senting the three political executives. The C.I. delegates were
Radek, Zetkin, and Frossard, while the Second and Two-and-a-
Half International delegations were headed respectively by Emile
Vandervelde and Frederick Adler. The sessions were opened by
Adler.
Clara Zetkin presented the Comintern proposals. These, of
course, did not suggest an impossible organic political unity, but
instead, how to strengthen labor’s fight on current issues. The
plans included united action “against the capitalist offensive; the
fight against reaction; preparation for the struggle against a new
imperialist war; assistance to the Soviet Republic, whose econom-
335
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ic development was at that time seriously threatened by a famine
in the Volga area; the question of the Versailles Treaty, and the
reconstruction of the devastated areas.”4
Speaking for the Second International, Vandervelde immedi-
ately took exception to the C.I., proposals for opposition to the
Versailles Treaty and also brought to the fore a whole series of
proposals affecting the inner life of Russia.5 He demanded that
the C.I. and the Soviet government “renounce cell-building tac-
tics,” quit their criticism of the leaders of the Second Internation-
al, appoint a commission to examine into the status of Soviet
Georgia, put the current trial of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in
Moscow (for sabotage, assassination, and insurrection) virtually
under control of the joint international Socialist movement, and
grant free political activities in Russia for the various Socialist
parties. Mr. Vandervelde, in sum, only wanted to tear loose the
rich Republic of Georgia from Soviet Russia and also to liquidate
the dictatorship of the proletariat. The delegates of the Two-and-
a-Half International (the two organizations were then in process
of amalgamation) agreed with Vandervelde.
The Comintern delegates did all possible, and more, in an at-
tempt to bring a workable agreement out of the conference. They
agreed upon the appointment of a commission to investigate the
status of Georgia, that there would be no death penalties in the
S.R. trial, and that the Social-Democratic internationals would be
permitted to organize the S.R. defense. This was definitely in-
fringing upon the sovereign rights of Soviet Russia. Afterward,
Lenin, the initiator of the united-front tactic, in an article entitled,
“We Have Paid Too Much,” while accepting the agreement inas-
much as it had been signed, sharply criticized the Comintern del-
egation for its too great concessions.6
After much acrimonious disputation, the general conference
issued a joint statement of the Executives, to the effect that a
commission of nine would be set up to prepare for a later broad
world congress of workers’ organizations, that the Georgian ques-
tion would be examined, that note was taken of the agreements
regarding the S.R. trial, that a united stand would be made
against the capitalist offensive, that proletarian united fronts
would be established in every country, and that support would be
given to the famine-plagued Russian Revolution. On this basis the
conference adjourned.

336
 THE UNITED FRONT
All this looked pretty fair on paper, but the Social-Democrats
had no idea whatever of pursuing a united-front program. They
had simply gone through the motions of unity, enough to throw
dust in the eyes of the masses of workers who were increasingly
demanding united action. Even the renegade Borkenau, in deal-
ing with their attitude, is constrained to remark: “After the con-
ference of the Three Internationals, the official leadership of the
Socialists remained deaf to all appeals for cooperation.”7 In fact,
their line thenceforth, as before, was one of active opposition to
the united-front policy.
On May 23, in pursuance to the decisions of the general con-
ference, the commission of nine met in Berlin. But the attempts of
the Comintern delegates to get action along the line of the confer-
ence manifesto, met with a blank wall of resistance. Therefore, the
meeting broke up, having accomplished nothing. Shortly after-
ward, the Comintern delegation officially resigned from the al-
ready defunct commission. Thus, the international Social-
Democratic leaders sabotaged the first broad united-front effort,
but far from the policy being permanently scuttled and sunk, as
these misleaders hoped, it was slated to play a very great role in
the future life of the world labor movement.
THE FOURTH WORLD COMINTERN CONGRESS
Six months after the breakdown of the big try for a world
united-front of all branches of the labor movement, the fourth C.I.
congress came into session. The congress signalized a general in-
tensification of the employers’ offensive on all fronts. Among the
manifestations of this, Lozovsky pointed out, due to the cowardly
and conservative policies of the opportunist Social-Democrats,
many labor movements had lost most of the membership increas-
es and other gains that they had won during the war and the im-
mediate post-war years. Thus, the total number of trade unionists
in France had declined from 2,000,000 to 600,000; in Italy from
2,000,000 to 700,000; in England the unions had lost about
1,300,000 members, and in the United States about 1,500,000.
Similar trends were in evidence in Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Nor-
way, Denmark, Holland, etc. The exceptions were in Germany
and Austria, where because of the desperate economic conditions
of the masses and the revolutionary mood of the workers, they
had been able to maintain their membership gains.8
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
In estimating the general international situation, the congress
resolution declared: “Owing to the fact that the proletariat of all
countries, with the exception of Russia, did not take advantage of
the weakened state of capitalism to deal it the final crushing
blows, the bourgeoisie – thanks to the aid of the social-reformists
– managed to suppress the militant revolutionary workers, to re-
inforce its political and economic power and to start a new offen-
sive against the proletariat.”9
The congress signalized fascism as the sharpest form of the
developing capitalist offensive, and the resolution, with real pene-
tration, warned of the international character of this new danger.
Point was lent to all this by Mussolini’s march on Rome a few
weeks before. The resolution stated: “The menace of fascism lurks
today in many countries; in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary, in nearly
all the Balkan countries, in Poland, in Germany (Bavaria), in Aus-
tria and America, and even in countries like Norway. Fascism in
one form or another is not altogether impossible even in countries
like France and England.”10
The resolution gave a clear signal of the grave international
menace of fascism; but Zinoviev, in making the general report,
made certain dangerously erroneous interpretations of fascism.
He tended to make it appear as an inevitable stage in the class
struggle, one that had to be gone through with. He characterized
fascism as only “a stage in the maturing of the revolution in Italy,”
and he also remarked that, “It is perhaps inevitable that we would
pass through an epoch of more or less perfectly developed fascism
throughout central Europe.”11
This approach of Zinoviev’s later on tended to create illusions,
especially in Germany, to the effect that fascism, despite all its
horrors, was some sort of an advance in the revolutionary pro-
cess. The contrary was the case; fascism was the counter-
revolution; its victory constituted a catastrophic, but preventable,
defeat for the working class, and on this basis it had to be relent-
lessly fought. Zinoviev’s “inevitability” concept does not appear,
however, in the resolution, which handles fascism only as a po-
tentiality.
THE POLICY OF THE UNITED FRONT
The fourth congress put the utmost stress upon the united
front as the means by which the workers could develop the neces-

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 THE UNITED FRONT
sary unity in order to counter and defeat the growing offensive of
the employers, which tended to become outright fascism. The
resolution stated that, “The slogan of the Third Congress, ‘To the
Masses!’ is now more important than ever. The struggle of the
United Front is only beginning, and it will no doubt cover a whole
period in the international Labor movement.”12 This was sound
Marxist foresight and it was to be borne out fully by world labor
experience during the next generation, down to our own period.
The congress devoted careful attention to every aspect of the
vital united-front policy. It examined and discussed the right and
“left” mistakes that had been made during the past months in
united-front work in the several countries. It reviewed at length
the big effort to establish an international united front among the
three internationals at the ill-fated Berlin conference of half a year
earlier. It projected practical lines along which the united-front
movement could express itself in the various countries.
The united-front tactic inevitably precipitated the basic ques-
tion of the possibility of an ultimate united-front government.
Both the German and the British Communist parties, as we have
seen, had had to be very concrete in this respect in their earliest
united-front proposals to the Social-Democrats of their respective
countries. In this congress discussion, under the brilliant theoret-
ical leadership of Lenin, various forms of people’s governments
were discussed. The fourth congress resolution handled the ques-
tion of eventual worker governments, as follows:
“The Communist International must anticipate the following
possibilities:
“1. A Liberal Workers’ government, such as existed in Austral-
ia, and likely to be formed in Great Britain in the near future.
“2. A Social-Democratic Workers’ government (Germany).
“3. A Workers’ and Peasants’ government – such possibilities
exist in the Balkans, in Czechoslovakia, etc.
“4. A Workers’ government in which Communists participate.
“5. A real proletarian Workers’ government, which the Com-
munist Party alone can embody in a pure form.”13
The resolution goes on as follows to analyze the relationship
of Communists toward such governments:
“The first two types are not revolutionary workers’ govern-
ments, but disguised coalitions between the bourgeoisie and anti-
revolutionary groups. Such workers’ governments are tolerated,
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
at critical moments, by the weakened bourgeoisie, in order to
dupe the workers as to the true class character of the state, or
with the aid of corrupt leaders, to divert the revolutionary on-
slaught of the proletariat and to gain time. The Communists can-
not take part in such governments. On the contrary, they must
ruthlessly expose their true character to the masses....
“The Communists are willing to make common cause also
with those workers who have not yet recognized the necessity for
proletarian dictatorship, with Social-Democrats, Christian Social-
ists, non-party, and Syndicalist workers. Thus, the Communists
are prepared, under certain circumstances, and with certain guar-
antees, to support a non-Communist workers’ government. At the
same time, the Communists say to the masses quite openly that it
is impossible to establish a real workers’ government without a
revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie.
“The other two types of workers’ government (workers’ and
peasants’ government, and workers’ government – with participa-
tion of Communists) are not proletarian dictatorships, nor are
they historically inevitable transition forms of government to-
wards proletarian dictatorship, but where they are formed may
serve as starting points for the struggle for dictatorship. Only the
workers’ government, consisting of Communists, can be the true
embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
The fourth congress basically attacked the Treaty of Ver-
sailles, which followed World War I. It declared that the whole
official theory behind this robbing settlement had proved un-
workable in view of the continuing instability of the capitalist
economic and political system generally. “The Peace Treaties
which center around the Versailles Peace Treaty,” says the resolu-
tion, “represent an attempt to consolidate the rule of these four
victorious nations (the United States, Great Britain, France, and
Japan) politically and economically, by reducing the rest of the
world to the state of colonial territories for exploitation; socially,
by securing the domination of the bourgeoisie over its own prole-
tariat and against the revolutionary proletariat of Soviet Russia by
a union of the bourgeoisie of all countries.”14
The fundamental difference in character between the
Communist and the Social-Democratic internationals was
illustrated by their contradictory attitudes towards the Versailles
Peace Treaty. The head-on collision policy of the Comintern

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 THE UNITED FRONT
expressed the true proletarian opposition towards this
imperialist, war-breeding settlement; whereas, the “fulfillment”
policy of the Social-Democrats was an unmistakable reflection of
the imperialist interests of the capitalist classes and was one of
the basic reasons for the eventual success of Hitler, who grew on
opposition to Versailles.

341
38. Partial Stabilization: Fifth Congress
(1924)
The fifth world congress of the Communist International was
held in Moscow from June 17 to July 8, 1924. This was the first
Comintern congress without the leadership of Lenin, the world
proletarian leader having died six months before, on January 21,
at the age of 54. Sadly, the delegates from 52 countries marched
to the Red Square behind a Red Army band to pay their respects
to the great Lenin, who lay at rest before the Kremlin wall. Presi-
dent Kalinin and congress delegates spoke.
Lenin delivered mighty blows for exploited humanity against
the obsolete and decadent capitalist system. In the field of theory
he re-established the revolutionary principles of Marx and devel-
oped them to meet the changed conditions of the imperialist era,
and in the realm of practice he led the vital Russian Revolution,
which tore away a whole segment of the most basic foundations of
the capitalist system. Under his direct leadership the workers of
the world were well started on the road to socialism. All the power
of the capitalist exploiters, with their flocks of right Social-
Democratic flunkies, can never undo or offset the revolutionary
work performed by the great proletarian leader, Lenin.
Kalinin summed up Lenin’s work simply and cogently. “The
three main ideas of Lenin are,” said he: “the alliance of the work-
ers with the peasants, the national question, and the dictatorship
of the proletariat.”1 These were the political fundamentals under-
lying the Russian Revolution; they are the dynamic principles that
will eventually write finis to capitalism all over the world.
Stalin, in his book on Lenin, gives a masterful summary of
this supreme teacher and fighter, whose simplicity and modesty
were no less marked than his intellectual brilliance, resolute char-
acter, and revolutionary spirit. “Confidence in the creative power
of the masses – this is the peculiar feature in the activities of Len-
in which enabled him to understand the spontaneous movement
and to direct it into the channels of the proletarian revolution....
Brilliant foresight, the ability to catch and appreciate the inner
sense of impending events – this is the feature of Lenin that ena-
bled him to outline the correct strategy and a clear line of conduct
at the turning points of the revolutionary movement.”2

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 PARTIAL STABILIZATION
Lenin’s death was a tremendous loss to the Russian people
and to the oppressed of the world. Fortunately, in Stalin, Lenin’s
“ablest pupil,” there was developing another leader of major stat-
ure. And his great abilities were to be sorely tested in the enor-
mous task of building socialism in Russia, in the face of a hostile
world and despite the machinations of an insidious Trotskyite
opposition, which, upon the illness of Lenin, began its long, reck-
less, and reactionary bid for power.
THE AMALGAMATION OF THE TWO
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC INTERNATIONALS
An important event between the fourth and fifth congresses of
the Comintern was the consolidation of the Second and the Two-
and-a-Half Internationals. The fusion took place in Hamburg in
May 1923. There were present some 400 delegates of the two in-
ternationals, claiming to represent 6,700,000 members and 43
parties in 30 countries. The reorganized body became known as
the Labor and Socialist International, and set up headquarters in
Zurich. Frederick Adler was chosen as secretary. Oudegeest, sec-
retary of the Amsterdam (trade union) International, was present
and gave his blessing to the fusion.
The amalgamation was carried through essentially on the ba-
sis of the revisionist program of the Second International. This
amounted in substance to acting as a sort of radical-talking wing
of the League of Nations, the “third party of the bourgeoisie.” In
the discussions the various national parties reflected the interests
of the respective imperialist systems. So far as the centrists at the
congress were concerned, a few revolutionary phrases in the pro-
gram and a number of key posts in the organization apparatus
were enough to satisfy them. Thus ended the inglorious, less than
two years’ existence of the Two-and-a-Half International. Never
anything but an adjunct of the Second International, it was orga-
nized in February 1921 as a catch basin to trap radical workers
who were then deserting that body. When it was given up in Jan-
uary 1923, this was also a device to lure the workers, who were
clamoring for labor unity, back under the control of the reaction-
ary Second International.
THE OCTOBER DEFEAT IN GERMANY
On January 23, 1923, in order to wring reparations out of a re-
343
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
sistant Germany, France suddenly sent its troops into the industrial
region of the Ruhr (Germany had not been militarily occupied
completely at the end of the war). The violent French action pro-
voked a near-war crisis, and also greatly inflamed the current fan-
tastic inflation. The coup likewise generated a revolutionary mood
among the workers. The German Communist Party and the
Comintern agreed that a revolutionary situation was at hand. In
May the Communists initiated strikes in the Ruhr, and on August
11 the General Works Council, “under Communist influence,”
called for a general strike. The workers took over the cities of Bo-
chum and Gelsenkirchen. The Second International refused to co-
operate with the Comintern to protect the Ruhr workers. During
the next days the rebellious workers forced out the national bour-
geois Cuno government, and a coalition government, headed by
Stresemann and including the Social-Democrats Hilferding,
Sollman, and Radbruch, took its place. The role of the Social-
Democrats, was as usual, to save the threatened capitalist system.3
The Communists’ plan was that they and the left Social-
Democrats should work together in a united front to mobilize the
workers for the revolutionary struggles ahead. In Saxony and Thu-
ringia the two groups constituted a majority in the state parliament
and the government. Under revolutionary mass pressure, the left
Social-Democrats gave a formal assent to the program, but no more
than that. To make matters worse, the rightist Brandler-
Thalheimer leadership of the German Communist Party, which had
succeeded that of the discredited Levi group, and with which Radek
of the Comintern worked closely, also had no heart for the struggle
and it yielded to the non-resistance line of the left Social-
Democrats. Consequently, when the German government threw its
troops against Saxony and Thuringia, these strongholds, although
readily capable of defense, were given up without a struggle. In
Hamburg the workers rose and fought heroically for several days
after October 23 in an insurrection but, isolated, they were eventu-
ally crushed. Thousands were jailed. Once again, thanks to the
right Social-Democrats, the German revolution was defeated and
reaction given the victory. This treason stimulated fascism, not only
in Germany but all through Central Europe.
Another serious defeat suffered by the workers during the
months prior to the fifth Comintern congress occurred in Bulgar-
ia. Since 1920, that country had been ruled by Stambulinski’s

344
 PARTIAL STABILIZATION
peasant government but in June 1923 it was overthrown by a fas-
cist-like clique of capitalists, foreign imperialists, and other reac-
tionaries. The Communist Party, slow to react to this coup, tried
to retrieve the situation by an insurrection in December of the
same year, but it was drowned in blood. Fascist terrorism took
another stride forward.4
THE CONGRESS AND PARTIAL CAPITALIST STABILIZATION
The fifth C.I. congress made a penetrating analysis of the eco-
nomic and political situation then confronting the workers of the
world. On the one hand, it noted that the workers in Soviet Russia
had the situation well in hand and were beginning to move ahead
to the reconstruction of the war-shattered economy. The dele-
gates, however, showed much concern over and concretely repu-
diated the developing Trotsky opposition which, upon the death
of Lenin, was becoming malignantly active.
The capitalists, on their side, had succeeded in beating back
the new revolutionary wave in Germany and had administered a
number of serious defeats to the workers in other countries. Ob-
viously, the great revolutionary moment in Europe that had fol-
lowed World War I had just about spent itself, and the capitalists,
aided on all fronts by the Social Democracy, for the time being at
least had managed to save their social system. There was also a
certain industrial revival taking place. In Germany, the key to the
European situation, there was an improvement in industry and
the financial situation, due largely to the American Dawes plan,
with its subsidy of some 800 million gold marks. At this time the
United States was going into the Coolidge industrial boom, and
there was also a considerable pickup in Great Britain and France.
This general situation, which the fifth congress noted, resulted, at
the meeting of the E.C.C.I. in March 1925, in the formulation of
the famous estimate of the situation as constituting “a partial, rel-
ative and temporary stabilization of capitalism.”5
The announcement of the Comintern that capitalism had
achieved again a degree of stabilization, however limited, provoked
a shout of glee from Social-Democrats and bourgeois economists in
many countries. “The revolution is dead and the Comintern admits
it,” they cried. But this was absurd, as events proved. In the C.I.
itself the analysis was also considerably misunderstood, being vari-
ously interpreted in right and “left” directions.
345
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
The Comintern, of course, in no sense shared the opinion of
the Social-Democrats, who saw a complete recovery of the capital-
ist system after the war and looked for an indefinite upswing. In
this analysis, the Communists stressed again and again that such
capitalist recovery as had taken place was only partial and could
not last. Europe was in a lull between two revolutionary waves. It
was still in the period of general crisis and proletarian revolution.
In his Congress report on the economic situation, Varga
showed many facets of the general capitalist crisis which was dis-
rupting the system. One of his major contributions was to point
out that the Russian Revolution had irrevocably split the world
capitalist economy, a fact which in our time has grown into gigan-
tic importance. Varga also pointed out that an economic crisis
was in the making in the United States – a forecast devastatingly
confirmed five years later – although at the time this country was
just going into the famous mid-twenties “prosperity” period, to
the admiration of the world capitalists and Social-Democrats.6
The fifth congress also noted that in the weakened state of the
capitalist system, the employers, no longer able to govern as be-
fore, were adopting new tactics in applying their technique of rul-
ing by making minor concessions, or by using terrorism, or both.
Thus, on the one hand, in Germany they had adopted as a settled
policy working with the Social-Democrats in government; in
Great Britain they were tolerating the minority MacDonald Labor
government in power; in France, the Radical bloc, including the
Socialists, was in control; in Sweden and Denmark there were la-
bor governments, etc. This was the so-called “democratic-pacifist
era,” referred to at the time by the Comintern. On the other hand,
there was also a growing recourse by the ruling class to the most
violent methods of repression, as seen in Italy, Bulgaria, and oth-
er countries of mid-Europe. Obviously, this sinister fascist meth-
od of oppressing and exploiting the workers was becoming the
dominant trend.
THE QUESTION OF THE UNITED FRONT
In accordance with the enormous importance of this political
tactic, the fifth congress devoted close attention to the whole mat-
ter of the united front, both in theory and in practice. At the heart
of the discussion was the ill-fated experience in Saxony and Thu-
ringia, eight months before. The debate was carried on in a spirit

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 PARTIAL STABILIZATION
of keen self-criticism. At this congress the term “Marxism-
Leninism” was first used, in recognition of Lenin’s enormous the-
oretical contributions to Marxism.
The congress was unsparing in its condemnation of the policies
carried out by the Radek-Brandler-Thalheimer party leadership in
Germany. They were condemned for having totally distorted the
united-front tactics. They had considered the united front as an
alliance with the “left” Social-Democrats, and they had failed to
guard the independent line of the Communist Party. They had es-
pecially failed to arm the workers and to develop a revolutionary
struggle. The general result was disaster. This debacle led to the
downfall and eventual expulsion of the Brandler-Thalheimer-
Walcher leadership and the coming to power of the leftist Ruth
Fischer-Maslov group in the German Communist Party.
In its consideration of the application of the united-front poli-
cy, the congress resolution stressed the point that this was a mo-
bilization of the workers for revolutionary struggle, and not a low-
ering of Communist aims to the level of Social-Democratic oppor-
tunism; that it was not the establishment of a coalition, Saxony
brand, with the Social-Democrats; that the united front, in those
countries where the Social-Democrats are strong, must be carried
on upon the basis of “Unity from below in the rank and file and at
the same time negotiations with the leaders – and never on the
basis merely of agreements with the latter”; and that Communist
parties in united-front movements “must strictly retain their in-
dependence and Communist identity.”
Much theoretical discussion took place as to the precise sig-
nificance of the slogan of “Workers’ and Peasants’ Government.”
On this, the resolution stated: “In the period just expired, the op-
portunist elements in the Comintern have endeavored to distort
the watchword of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government by in-
terpreting it as a government ‘within the framework of bourgeois
democracy,’ as a political alliance with Social-Democracy. The
Fifth World Congress of the Comintern, categorically rejects such
an interpretation. The watchword of the Workers’ and Peasants’
Government for the Comintern is the translation into the lan-
guage of revolution, into the language of the masses of the watch-
word of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ ”7
In its general fight for labor unity, the Comintern, at its fifth
congress, made an especially important proposal regarding the
347
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
unification of the trade union movement. As for the relative
membership strength of the two organizations at this time,
Lozovsky said: “The Amsterdam International unites between
14,000,000 and 15,000,000 members.... We unite between
12,000,000 and 13,ooo,ooo.”8 As the first unity step, the congress
proposed that “Communists and trade union organizations under
their control must propose to the Amsterdam International to
form joint organs of action against bourgeois capitalist reaction.”
It proposed further, as the culmination of this unification process,
that organic unity of the two internationals “would be re-
established through the convocation of an international unity
congress in which all trade unions adhering to the Amsterdam
International and to the Profintern would take part on a basis of
proportional representation.” At this congress the two interna-
tionals would fuse into a united body.9 This proposal was to have
very important repercussions in the near future.
The fifth congress also paid much attention to the work of the
Young Communist International, and likewise to that of the
Women’s Secretariat. Another organization, with which it was
concerned was the International Peasants’ Council (the “green
international”). This body, pioneer attempt to organize peasants
on a world scale, had been formed in Moscow in the Autumn of
1923, at a congress of 158 delegates from 40 countries. The new
organization carried on much activity among peasants, and it
served to attract the attention of the Communist parties to the
agrarian question, but it never became an important international
political force.10
THE “BOLSHEVIZATION” OF THE COMMUNIST PARTIES
At the fifth congress, and at other congresses and meetings of
the C.I. Executive, special attention was directed to the “Bolshe-
vization” of the affiliated parties. This implied the development of
these parties on the principles of Lenin’s “party of the new type.”
Among other elementary measures, it involved the re-
organization of the party units upon the basis of the shops, the
carrying on of work in all forms in undemocratic countries, the
cultivation of a spirit of self-criticism, the firm correction of all
errors, right and left, the systematic raising of the ideological level
of the party membership, the building of a strong party unity, and
the cultivation of a clear-headed, flexible, and realistic Marxist-

348
 PARTIAL STABILIZATION
Leninist leadership.
The construction of a strong Communist party, able eventual-
ly to lead the people in abolishing the capitalist system and in the
construction of socialism, is, at best, a tremendous task. The capi-
talists, who have been building their power and developing their
techniques of rule for centuries, are both powerful and cunning.
To create a great revolutionary organization of the masses in the
face of their opposition is the most complex and difficult problem
in all political history.
Many are the movements which, weighed and found wanting
by the workers, have fallen by the wayside in this great task. The
Second International, and later its windy branch, the Two-and-a-
Half International, like the Anarchist movement before them,
made pretensions to being the champions of socialism; but the
hard experience of the class struggle showed that they were quite
incapable of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism. The
fulfillment of this historic task is reserved for the Communist Party,
organized around the fundamental principles of Marx and Lenin.
By the same token, many self-styled revolutionary leaders,
some also in the Communist Party, have proved unable to meet
the hard test of the revolutionary struggle. They may go just so far
and then, in the form of various deviations, they express the poi-
sonous ideological and material influences of the capitalist system
under which they were reared. They thus become the spokesmen
of classes which are enemies of the proletariat and of socialism. At
the time of the fifth congress especially the Communist parties,
confronting heavy problems of all sorts, were systematically
cleansing and refining their leadership. This explains the ousting
of such right opportunist and “left” sectarian elements as Levi,
Brandler, Thalheimer, and eventually Ruth Fischer in Germany;
Frossard, Souvarine, Monatte, Rosmer, and Loriot in France;
Lovestone, Gitlow, and Lore in the United States; Buonik in
Czechoslovakia, Koszewa and Borsky in Poland, Roy in India, and
Chen Tu-hsui in China. Even the highly developed Russian Com-
munist Party, just at this time was going into the greatest refining
process of all, starting along the road to eventually ridding itself
of alien elements – Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and
others. The building of a sound Leninist leadership, therefore,
was one of the central, if not the most important of all the tasks of
Bolshevization stressed by the fifth Comintern congress.
349
38. Class Collaboration and Class Struggle
(1924-1928)
The four years between the fifth and sixth congresses of the
Comintern were a period of “partial, relative, temporary” capital-
ist stabilization. Production climbed in many capitalist countries:
Great Britain 13 percent, United States 15 percent, Germany 25
percent, France 30 percent, Belgium 35 percent, Canada 40 per-
cent.1 But antagonisms among the capitalist powers also grew,
and steadily they prepared the way for World War II. Fascism
spread like a poison weed from Italy to Poland, to the Balkans, to
Germany. The United States, although outside the League of Na-
tions, was by far the most powerful capitalist country.
The Second International, rejoicing at the pick-up of capital-
ism, faithfully strove to put the system back on its feet again.
When the workers in Austria rose in armed revolt in 1927, the
Austro-Marxist Social-Democrats, supposed “lefts,” in the tradi-
tion of Noske helped the army to suppress it. The Socialists were
also the most ardent supporters of the League of Nations – each
party supporting the claims of its national bourgeoisie therein –
and they were for the “fulfillment” of the Versailles Treaty. They
also sedulously maintained the world labor split throughout this
period. They joined, too, in the capitalist attempt to strangle the
Soviet Union, taking the lead in anti-Soviet propaganda. Their
intellectual leader, the old political reprobate Kautsky, favored
the anti-Soviet boycott, instigated internal insurrection, and fa-
vored foreign capitalist intervention.2
Reflecting the outcome of World War I among the capitalist
powers, the British Labor Party was the leading party of the Labor
and Socialist International and the Amsterdam International,
with Germany playing second fiddle; and so it remained up to the
outbreak of World War II. The American Federation of Labor,
according to bourgeois-Social-Democratic victory standards was
entitled to a leading position in the I.F.T.U., but finding that or-
ganization “too radical,” it had withdrawn in 1920. Like the Amer-
ican capitalists, the A.F. of L. leadership preferred the free hand
of so-called isolationism.

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 CLASS COLLABORATION AND CLASS STRUGGLE
THE RATIONALIZATION OF INDUSTRY
During this post-war period the capitalists, with the Ameri-
cans in the lead, launched into an intensive drive to speed up in-
dustrial production. This campaign, the “rationalization” of in-
dustry, was based on methods of mass production, and it included
new industrial techniques and machinery, intensified class col-
laboration, and the sowing of fresh capitalist illusions among the
workers. If the workers would join with the capitalists in increas-
ing output, they said, living standards would automatically im-
prove, the work-day shorten, and mass unemployment disappear.
A general spiral of social well-being would result and economic
crises would be no more. The workers would save their surplus
wages and eventually become the owners of the industries. This
was the American “new capitalism” of the boom period of the
1920’s, in which “Ford conquered Marx.”
The capitalist-minded A.F. of L. bureaucrats, as well as the
S.P. leaders, swallowed this bourgeois program completely. The
trade unions hired efficiency engineers to speed production; they
went into business and set up many labor banks; they adopted a
new philosophy, the “Higher Strategy of Labor,” in which strikes
were condemned as obsolete and increased production was hailed
as the answer to all the workers’ problems; and they intensified
their expulsion policy against the Communists and others who
dared to object to the new intensified class collaboration. Mean-
while, as production climbed and capitalist profits soared, the
workers’ wages and working conditions deteriorated, their unions
lost members, and the fighting morale of the American labor
movement sank to the lowest levels in its history.3
The European Social-Democrats, who, like their American
brethren, always take their basic programmatic lead from the cap-
italists, shared the latter’s enthusiasm for the “new” American
capitalism. Henry Ford was the new political god. His system
solved all problems – for the capitalists, for the workers, for the
consumers. Thus, from 1905 to 1923 he had increased the output
of his cars from 18,664 annually to 2,200,682, and raised his
workers’ wages from $2.00 to $6.00 per day, and he ran his capi-
tal up from $100,000 in 1905 to $240,000,000 in 1923, mean-
while cutting the price of cars from $950 to $240.4 This was sheer
industrial magic and no attention was paid by his Social-

351
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Democratic admirers to the special monopoly-boom conditions
under which these results had been produced.
The British, German, French, Belgian and other Social-
Democrats outdid each other and the Americans in hastening to
join with the employers in speeding up the workers. More theo-
retical than the American trade union leaders, the European So-
cial-Democrats covered up their treachery with seeming Marxian
phraseology. Strobel, the editor of the Berlin Vorwaerts, saw “the
social question solved within the confines of capitalism,”5 and
Hilferding, the noted Social-Democratic theoretician, at the Kiel
congress of his party in 1927, declared that “we are in the period
of capitalism which in the main has overcome the era of free
competition and the sway of the blind laws of the market, and we
are coming to a capitalist organization of economy... to organized
economy.”6
In this gross opportunism the Social-Democrats were bring-
ing the revisionism of Bernstein up to date. The substance of it all
was that capitalism was gradually turning into socialism. As Lenz
put it, “the increased control by the state over conditions of labor,
the general tendency toward state capitalism and the transfor-
mation of the trade unions into subsidiary bodies of the capitalist
state, into executive organs of capitalist society, was lauded by the
theoreticians of reformism as economic democracy and an ap-
proach to socialism.”7
The Comintern and the respective Communist parties mili-
tantly fought the rationalization drive as injurious to the workers’
wages, working conditions, and trade unions. Characteristically,
the National Minority Movement in Great Britain stated in 1928,
“We declare that the chief issue before the working class is to fight
rationalization.”8 But the Social-Democrats persisted in their eco-
nomic folly and political intoxication over the rationalization
dupery until the whole mess was swept into the ashcan of history
by the great economic crisis of October 1929.
THE BRITISH GENERAL STRIKE
That the Social-Democrats, with their rationalization ideolog-
ical poison, did not succeed in crippling altogether the militancy
of the workers, was demonstrated by the number of important
strikes which took place in various countries during this general
period between the Comintern fifth and sixth congresses. Chief of

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 CLASS COLLABORATION AND CLASS STRUGGLE
these struggles was the great British general strike of 5,000,000
workers in May 1926. In this the powerful left-progressive Minor-
ity Movement of the period was an important factor.
Recovering quickly from the crass sell-out defeat of the Triple
Alliance in 1921, the British workers began to take the offensive
against intolerably low wages and mass unemployment. The lead-
ers in the movement were the coal miners. Their spirit was indi-
cated by the recent election of the left-winger A. J. Cook as head
of the British Miners Federation, who was to be followed a few
years later by the Communist, Arthur Horner.
A major manifestation of the new militancy of the British
workers was seen in the response of the Trade Union Council to
the proposal made by the Profintern and the fifth congress of the
Comintern for world trade union unity. The I.F.T.U., voting down
this proposal, the British Trade Union Council met in London in
April 1925 with representatives of the Russian unions and signed
with them an agreement of cooperation. The Anglo-Russian
Committee was born, and it began to orient towards a general
unification of the world labor movement. A. A. Purcell headed the
British unions and M. Tomsky, the Russian.9
Meanwhile, the MacDonald Labor government had been suc-
ceeded by a Conservative government in 1924, and the British
miners were moving towards a strike. The miners’ situation came
to a head in April 1926. The General Council of the British Trades
Union Congress, pressed by the rising fighting spirit of the work-
ers, voted to support the miners with a general strike. This strike,
one of the very greatest in labor history, went into effect on May
4, 1926.
The British working class rallied magnificently to the strike,
and pledges of support poured in from all over Europe and Amer-
ica. The Russian unions ordered a levy of a quarter day’s pay on
all workers in the Soviet Union to help the British strikers, and
sent them $5,750,000 or about twice as much as the whole Am-
sterdam organization contributed. The situation in Great Britain,
with its whole economy paralyzed, became very tense. The
Comintern declared, "The general strike has brought the British
proletariat face to face with the problem of power.”10 Obviously,
however, the British Social-Democratic leaders had no taste for
this vital struggle. They were much too faithful servants of capital-
ism for that. Pugh (T.U.C. chairman), Citrine (general secretary),
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
J. F. Thomas (railroad workers) and E. Bevin (transport workers),
headed the struggle only to behead it. Already, the European So-
cial-Democrats had too much experience at crushing revolutions,
in Germany, Hungary, and elsewhere, to balk at the job of smash-
ing the great British general strike.
Denouncing the strike as an attack upon British society, the
Baldwin government proceeded to desperate methods of strike-
breaking, with widespread use of troops and strike-breakers, but
without disrupting the workers’ solidarity. It took the treason of
the workers’ false leaders to do this. They made no real effort to
organize the strike – to establish mass picketing, to see to it that
the working masses were provisioned, etc. They had only one
dominating idea, to get rid of the strike as quickly as possible. So
it was called off suddenly on May 12, on vague promises of Prime
Minister Baldwin that negotiations would be continued over the
questions at issue. “For twenty-four hours after the broadcasted
announcement of the strike’s ending,” says Cook, “the confusion
in trade union ranks was indescribable.”11
This tragic sell-out had disastrous consequences for the work-
ers. It seriously weakened the whole British labor movement. The
employers took advantage of their victory by ramming through
Parliament the Trade Disputes Act in 1927, seriously restricting
trade union rights and functions, and the leaders of the Trades
Union Congress, who were responsible for the debacle, took um-
brage when the Russian unionists criticized them, and they liqui-
dated the Anglo-Russian Committee.
REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLES IN CHINA
In the period between the two congresses, even greater strug-
gles took place in China. As indicated in previous chapters, Marx
and Lenin had held the perspective of vast revolutionary upheav-
als in China, India, and other eastern colonial and semi-colonial
countries. Lenin was the great theoretician of the unity of interest
between the colonial revolutions and those of the workers in the
imperialist countries. And the fifth congress considered that the
route of march of the world revolution might, for the immediate
future, even be shifted from Europe to Asia.
These Marxist perspectives were sustained by the great Chi-
nese struggles of 1924-27, the early stages in the vast Chinese rev-
olution. The Kuomintang (K.M.T.), the nationalist organization

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 CLASS COLLABORATION AND CLASS STRUGGLE
founded by Sun Yat Sen (1867-1925) just prior to the 1911 revolu-
tion, invited the Communists in 1924 to join it as individuals,
which they did. The K.M.T. also applied for membership in the
Comintern, but it was not accepted, not being a Communist or-
ganization. Sun was a warm political friend of Lenin and Soviet
Russia. On his death-bed he wired this message to the Soviet gov-
ernment: “I express the hope that the day is approaching when
the Soviet Union will greet in a free and strong China its friend
and ally, and that the two states will proceed hand-in-hand as al-
lies in the great fight for the emancipation of the whole world.”12
The re-invigorated Kuomintang scored great successes. Early
in 1924 it had controlled, as the Republican government, only
Canton and the nearby areas; but with the active help of the small
but vigorous Communist Party it soon drew in huge masses of
workers and peasants, began to register major victories and to
spread its sphere of control. Particularly during 1925-26, great
insurrectional strikes swept Shanghai, Canton, Hong Kong, Pe-
king, and many cities, directed against the Japanese and other
imperialist oppressors. The Communist Party grew from 984 in
1925 to 57,900 in 1926, the Y.C.L. had 35,000 members, there
were 2,800,000 trade union affiliates, and the organized peasants
numbered 9,500,ooo.13
In the K.M.T. the forces of Sun represented the bourgeoisie
and petty bourgeoisie; the Communist Party represented the
workers and peasants. This alliance was in accordance with Len-
in’s strategical principles. He said, “The Communist International
must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in
colonial and backward countries, but must not merge with it, and
must unconditionally preserve the independence of the proletari-
an movement.”14 The Chinese Communist leaders disregarded
this basic injunction, however. They failed to maintain the party’s
unity and to keep a solid grip upon the trade union and peasant
masses in the K.M.T. They were infected with the characteristic
Menshevik illusion that in the bourgeois Chinese revolution the
capitalists, not the workers, should lead. The head of the party at
this time was Chen Tu-hsiu. Mao Tse-tung was then a rising lead-
er. The representative of the Comintern was the Russian, Michael
Borodin.
Then came the great disaster. The hitherto relatively revolu-
tionary bourgeoisie, alarmed at the militant mass movements of
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
the workers and peasants and feeling strong enough now to dis-
pense with Communist cooperation, turned against the revolu-
tion. Sun Yat Sen had died in March 1925, and the machinery of
the K.M.T. had fallen into the hands of his brother-in-law, Chiang
Kai-shek, the right-wing commander of the army. Chiang struck
against the Communist Party, first, unsuccessfully, in March
1926, and then disastrously, in April 1927. Thousands of Com-
munists were slaughtered, many of them with the most fiendish,
medieval tortures. Such a counter-revolutionary coup was essen-
tially what the bourgeoisie had carried out in Turkey under Kemal
and what they had also tried to do in Russia under Kerensky, but
could not accomplish.
The Communist Party fought back resolutely, but the damage
was done. In September 1927 Chen was removed from the party
secretaryship as an opportunist and replaced by Chu Chiu-pai.15
In October, the first Soviets were set up in Kwantung, but unsuc-
cessfully. In December, the workers in the big city of Canton or-
ganized a Soviet, but after three days it was overthrown amid a
wholesale butchery, Chiang outdoing himself in ferocious tor-
tures. In all this bloody work of reaction the Chinese Revolution
suffered a major setback, Chiang and the Kuomintang turning
against the workers and peasants and arriving at a counter-
revolutionary understanding with the feudal landlords and the
foreign imperialists.
THE FIGHT AGAINST THE TROTSKY-ZINOVIEV-
BUKHARIN-OPPOSITION
Even more vital than the British general strike, the Austrian
uprising, or the revolutionary battles in China – during the period
between the fifth and sixth Comintern congresses, was the strug-
gle that was developing in Russia against the dangerous opposi-
tion movement led by Leon Trotsky.16 In this fight not only was
the fate of the Revolution in Russia at stake, but also that of the
world Communist movement. A victory for the Trotsky forces
would have been a decisive success for world reaction.
Trotsky, whose whole history stamped him as an unstable
petty-bourgeois radical and who did not join up with the Bolshe-
viks until 1917, was a confirmed factionalist and opportunist.
Even after he joined the party he continued his opposition to Len-
in on many points. When Lenin was in his final illness, during the

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 CLASS COLLABORATION AND CLASS STRUGGLE
autumn of 1923, Trotsky made a bid to capture the leadership of
the Communist Party. He gathered together the several small op-
position groups then in the party and issued an oppositional pro-
gram, the “Declaration of the Forty-Six.” The substance of this
was to accuse the party leadership of gross bureaucracy, to insti-
gate the youth against the party, to pronounce the N.E.P. a com-
plete retreat, to demand freedom to build factional groupings, to
condemn the party for the defeat of the German and Hungarian
revolutions, to blame the many economic difficulties upon party
mismanagement, and to pronounce the Russian Revolution itself
in a state of “Thermidorean degeneration.”
It devolved upon Stalin to lead the party fight against this dis-
ruptive opposition, and he was to prove brilliantly capable of the
task. Joseph Stalin (Djugashvili, 1879-1953), was born in Georgia
of poor parents. He studied for a while at a theological seminary,
but he soon quit this to work as a revolutionist. He was long a close
co-worker of Lenin, and became a noted theoretician on the na-
tional question. Arrested many times, he was in Siberian exile from
1913 until 1917, when he was released by the Revolution. In April
1922 he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party.
Stalin, a profound Marxist and a relentless fighter, ideologically
shattered the Trotsky case, and at the 13th conference of the party
in January 1924, the opposition was condemned overwhelmingly
as a “petty bourgeois deviation from Marxism.” During this fight
Stalin produced his great book, The Foundations of Leninism,
which played a big part in the controversy. The defeated Trotsky,
tongue-in-cheek, pledged himself to abide by the party decision, a
pledge which, however, he immediately began to violate.
Shortly afterward, the party, faced with the subsidence of the
revolutionary wave in Europe, was confronted with the basic
problem of defining its perspective. Stalin, in early 1925, met this
tremendous theoretical task magnificently. He declared, and the
Central Committee backed him up, that Soviet Russia possessed
all the requisites for the building of socialism. Lenin had previ-
ously indicated the possibility, if need be, of building socialism in
one country, Russia. Stalin’s formulation was a bold departure
from commonly held Marxist opinion, which was that in order to
make the construction of socialism possible it would be necessary
for the workers simultaneously to gain political power in several
countries.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Stalin’s basic statement immediately drew fire from the adven-
turer Trotsky, who came forth with what he called the theory of
“permanent revolution.” Trotsky categorically denied the possibil-
ity of constructing socialism in Russia alone. He proposed, instead,
an intensification of revolutionary struggle at home and abroad, the
substance of which would have meant civil war at home against the
peasantry (all categories)17 and war abroad against the bourgeois
governments. The fate of the Russian Revolution was at stake in
this historic discussion. Stalin succeeded in making the party un-
derstand that Trotsky’s line would have meant the overthrow of the
Soviet government and the end of the Revolution. As a result, at the
14th party conference, April 1925, Trotsky’s policy was defeated
and Stalin’s overwhelmingly endorsed. Again Trotsky agreed to
abide by the party decision, but did not.
Meanwhile, Zinoviev and Kamenev, who also had a long rec-
ord of political instability in the party, developed what was called
the “New Opposition.” Their program was similar basically to that
of Trotsky. They also were soundly beaten in the party discussion
at the 14th party congress in December 1925. Like Trotsky and his
followers, Zinoviev and Kamenev hypocritically promised to carry
out the party line, but did not do so in practice.
During the summer of 1926 the inevitable happened when the
Trotsky and Zinoviev groups formed a bloc and re-opened the
fight against the Central Committee. Again the program was Trot-
skyite, and again the opposition’s refrain was, “You cannot build
socialism in one country.” Stalin’s proposal to do this was de-
nounced as national chauvinism and a complete abandonment of
the world revolution. Trotsky and Zinoviev accused the party
leadership of gross betrayal of the Chinese revolution and the
British general strike, and they opposed every facet of the eco-
nomic program of the party. The Trotsky-Zinoviev group orga-
nized fractions all over the country, set up an illegal printing
press, and were obviously resolved upon establishing a new party.
In October 1927, after repeated broken pledges by the opposi-
tion to cease its factional work, a party discussion began, two
months before the 15th party congress. This resulted in an over-
whelming defeat for the Trotsky-Zinoviev bloc, by a vote of
724,000 to 4,000. Disregarding this, however, the factionalists
held a street demonstration against the party on November 7.
These disruptive activities resulted in the expulsion from the par-

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 CLASS COLLABORATION AND CLASS STRUGGLE
ty, on November 14, of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek,
Piatakov, Smilga, Safarov, and about 100 others, most of whom,
however, upon promises of discipline, were later reinstated.
Meanwhile, the right-wing Bukharin-Rykov-Tomsky group,
disapproving of the party’s strong drive against the kulaks (rich
farmers) and its aggressive industrialization, also began an active
opposition, along a rightist variation of the general opposition
dogma that socialism could not be built in one country alone. Bu-
kharin, the leader of this group, was also a long time opportunist
in the party. The group advocated a slacking off of the campaign
for the collectivization of agriculture and industrialization, the
liquidation of the foreign trade monopoly, and the weakening of
other basic measures necessary for the building of socialism.
When the sixth congress of the Comintern assembled, this dan-
gerous right-wing opposition was just getting well under way.
Naturally, the serious factional struggles in the Soviet Union,
the stronghold of world socialism, had powerful repercussions in
all the affiliated parties of the Comintern throughout the world.
Wherever there were leftist or right-wing groups in the several
parties, these reflected the line of the corresponding political
groupings in Russia. Almost invariably, however, the parties as
such supported the Bolshevik policy of the Stalin-led Central
Committee. The sixth Comintern congress itself categorically
condemned the Russian opposition groups, and specifically re-
jected an appeal by Trotsky to the congress against his expulsion
by the Russian Communist Party.
This long series of internal struggles in the Russian Communist
Party reflected, so far as the party and the masses were concerned,
the extreme complexities and difficulties of building socialism in
Russia under the given conditions. The opposition leaders, howev-
er, definitely expressed the interests and desperate moods of the
expiring bourgeois classes – capitalists, landlords, and petty bour-
geoisie. As Stalin pointed out, the more impossible the position of
these classes became, the more recklessly they fought.18 Inevitably,
the opposition, with its violently anti-party line, represented the
hopes and aspirations of these defeated and dying, but still fighting,
enemy classes. As the party was to learn concretely later, there were
also involved in this historic fight sinister foreign fascist-imperialist
elements, which transformed this factional struggle into one direct-
ly for the overthrow of the Soviet regime.
359
40. C. I. Program: Sixth Congress (1928)
At the sixth congress of the Communist International, held in
Moscow during July 15-September 1, 1928, the Comintern adopt-
ed its first rounded-out program. The major documents passed at
its previous five congresses were but segments of a general pro-
gram. In fact, the sixth congress program was the first such doc-
ument constructed since the Inaugural Address, written by Marx
and adopted by the First International in 1864. Never in all its
history was the Second International, with its component parties
constantly at loggerheads over conflicting bourgeois national in-
terests, able to agree upon a general program for the world labor
movement.
THE COMINTERN PROGRAM
The Comintern Program, based upon the fundamental writ-
ings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, expressed a century of
world labor experience. In pointing the road to socialism, it out-
lined the dynamic laws of capitalist development, and traced the
history of capitalism from its early competitive stage to the era of
monopoly and finance capital, to imperialism. It analyzed the
growth of the multi-national state, the monstrous expansion of
militarism, and the role of the state as the weapon of the exploit-
ing capitalists against the working class.
“The development of capitalism, and particularly in the impe-
rialist epoch of its development, reproduces the fundamental con-
tradictions on an increasingly magnified scale. Competition
among small capitalists ceases, only to make way for competition
among big capitalists; when competition among big capitalists
subsides, it flares up between gigantic combinations of capitalist
magnates and their governments; local and national crises be-
come transformed into crises affecting a number of countries and,
subsequently, into world crises; local wars give way to wars be-
tween coalitions of states and to world wars; the class struggles
change from isolated actions of single groups of workers into na-
tion-wide conflicts and subsequently, into an international strug-
gle of the world proletariat against the world bourgeoisie. Finally,
two main revolutionary forces are organizing against the orga-
nized might of finance capital – on the one hand, the workers in
the capitalist states, on the other hand, the victims of the oppres-
360
 C. I. PROGRAM
sion of foreign capital, the masses of people in the colonies,
marching under the leadership of the international revolutionary
proletarian movement.”1
The revolutionary process tends to be temporarily slowed
down by the ability of the imperialists to corrupt materially and
ideologically the upper, skilled strata of the working class. The
counter-revolutionary Social-Democracy, which bases itself upon
this labor aristocracy, is thus a hindering force. “The principal
function of Social-Democracy at the present time is to disrupt the
fighting unity of the proletariat in its struggle against imperial-
ism. In splitting and disrupting the united front of the proletarian
struggle against capital, Social-Democracy serves as the mainstay
of imperialism in the working class. International Social-
Democracy of all shades, the Second International and its trade
union branch, the Amsterdam Federation of Trade Unions, have
thus become the last reserve of bourgeois society and its most re-
liable pillar of support.”2
“Imperialism has greatly developed the productive forces of
world capitalism. It has completed the preparation of all the ma-
terial prerequisites for the socialist organization of society. By its
wars it has demonstrated that the productive forces of the world
economy, which have outgrown the restrictive boundaries of im-
perialist states, demand the organization of economy on a world,
or international scale. Imperialism tries to remove this contradic-
tion by hacking a road with fire and sword towards a single world
state-capitalist trust, which is to organize the whole world econ-
omy. This sanguinary utopia is being extolled by the Social-
Democratic ideologists as a peaceful method of newly ‘organized’
capitalism. In reality, this utopia encounters insurmountable ob-
jective obstacles of such magnitude that capitalism must inevita-
bly fall beneath the weight of its own contradictions. The law of
uneven development of capitalism, which becomes intensified in
the era of imperialism, renders firm and durable international
combinations of imperialist powers impossible. On the other
hand, imperialist wars, which are developing into world wars, and
by which the law of the centralization of capitalism strives to
reach its world limit – a single world trust – are accompanied by
so much destruction and place such burdens upon the shoulders
of the working class and the millions of colonial proletarians and
peasants, that capitalism must inevitably perish beneath the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
blows of the proletarian revolution long before this goal is
reached.”3
The accumulated stresses and struggles add up to a general
crisis of the world capitalist system, and this constantly grows in
intensity. This general crisis began to mature with World War I
and the Russian Revolution. It has since been expressed by a tre-
mendous series of great economic breakdowns, enormous strikes,
and revolutionary upheavals all over the capitalist and colonial
world. The reactionary bourgeoisie, in an attempt to stem this
rising revolutionary tide, makes use of new and desperate weap-
ons, chief among which is fascism. “The bourgeoisie resorts either
to the method of fascism or to the method of coalition with Social-
Democracy according to the changes in the political situation;
while Social-Democracy itself often plays a fascist role in periods
when the situation is critical for capitalism.”4
Under the weight of its growing contradictions, capitalism
faces inevitable revolution and downfall. “The system of world
imperialism, and with it the partial stabilization of capitalism, is
being corroded from various causes: First, the antagonisms be-
tween the imperialist states; second, the rising struggle of vast
masses in the colonial countries; third, the action of the revolu-
tionary proletariat in the imperialist home countries; and lastly
the hegemony exercised over the whole world revolutionary
movement by the proletarian dictatorship in the U.S.S.R. The in-
ternational revolution is developing. Against this revolution, im-
perialism is gathering its forces. Expeditions against the colonies,
a new world war, or a campaign against the U.S.S.R., are matters
which now figure prominently in the politics of imperialism. This
must lead to the release of all the forces of international revolu-
tion and to the inevitable doom of capitalism.”5
“The ultimate aim of the Communist International is to re-
place world capitalist economy by a world system of com-
munism.... Communist society will abolish the class divisions of
society.... After abolishing private ownership in the means of pro-
duction and converting them into social property, the world sys-
tem of communism will replace the elemental forces of the world
market, of competition and the blind processes of social produc-
tion, by consciously organized and planned production for the
purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs.... Culture will
become the acquirement of all and the class ideologies of the past

362
 C. I. PROGRAM
will give place to scientific materialist philosophy.”6 The Program
explains in great detail the forging of the foundations of this new
type of social order in the Soviet Union.
Between capitalism and communism lies a period of transition;
this is the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of growing
socialism, under which the remnants of the old society are being
cleared away and the foundations of communism are being laid.
The conquest of political power by the workers can be achieved
“only by the overthrow of the capitalist state,” and by “substituting
in its place new organs of proletarian power, to serve primarily as
instruments for the suppression of the exploiters The most suitable
form of the proletarian state is the Soviet state – a new type of
state, which differs in principle from the bourgeois state, not only
in its class content, but also in its internal structure.... The Soviet
state is the dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of a single class –
the proletariat. Unlike bourgeois democracy, proletarian democra-
cy openly admits its class character and aims avowedly at the sup-
pression of the exploiters in the interests of the majority of the
population.... Bourgeois democracy, with its formal equality of all
citizens before the law, is in reality based on a glaring material and
economic inequality of classes.... The Soviet state, while depriving
the exploiters and the enemies of the people of political rights,
completely abolishes for the first time all inequality of citizenship,
which, under systems of exploitation, is based on distinctions of
sex, religion, and nationality.”7
In the class struggle, the Program based its strategy and tac-
tics, among other considerations, upon the readiness of the mass-
es. In periods of a rising revolutionary tide, the party puts forward
transitional slogans for Soviets, workers’ control of industry, dis-
arming of the bourgeoisie, arming of the workers, etc., and “When
the revolutionary tide is not rising the Communist parties must
advance partial slogans and demands that correspond to the eve-
ryday needs of the toilers, and combine them with the fundamen-
tal tasks of the Communist International.”
Together with the Program, the Congress also adopted the
“Constitution and Rules of the Communist International.” The
C.I. acted as the guide and mentor of the world revolutionary
movement. Eschewing all dogmatic establishment of policy and
authoritarian methods of organizational controls, it achieved its
high degree of unity and fighting action upon the basis of a broad
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
international Marxist-Leninist program, the practice of a pro-
found self-criticism, revolutionary discipline, the realistic devel-
opment of national party policies, and a boundless devotion to the
proletarian revolution.
Due to its ideological and organizational unity, the Comintern
and its affiliated parties were able to conduct organized world
campaigns and struggles that were quite impossible for the Se-
cond International, torn as it was with all sorts of national
divergencies. The C.I. resolutions came to life in broad interna-
tional struggles – against unemployment, for Sacco-Vanzetti and
Tom Mooney, annual celebrations of women and youth interna-
tional days, May First, against fascism, against war, in support of
the U.S.S.R., the Chinese Revolution, etc. The Comintern was
thus definitely a strong world political force.
THE COMINTERN’S POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE
The sixth congress, in shaping its immediate perspectives, di-
vided the post-war years into three general periods. The political
resolution says: “The first period was the period of extremely
acute crisis of the capitalist system, and of direct revolutionary
action on the part of the proletariat. This period reached its apex
of development in 1921 and culminated on the one hand in the
victory of the U.S.S.R. over the forces of foreign intervention and
internal counter-revolution and in the consolidation of the Com-
munist International. On the other hand, it ended with a series of
severe defeats for the Western European proletariat and the be-
ginning of the general capitalist offensive. The final link in the
chain of events was the defeat of the German proletariat in 1923.
“This defeat marked the starting point of the second period, a
period of gradual and partial stabilization of the capitalist system,
of the ‘restoration’ process of capitalist economy, of the develop-
ment and expansion of the capitalist offensive and of the continu-
ation of the defensive battles fought by the proletarian army
weakened by severe defeats. On the other hand, this period was a
period of rapid restoration in the U.S.S.R., of extremely important
successes in the work of building up socialism, and also of the
growth of the political influence of the Communist parties over
the broad masses of the proletariat.
“Finally, came the third period which, in the main, is the peri-
od in which capitalist economy is exceeding the pre-war level and

364
 C. I. PROGRAM
in which the economy of the U.S.S.R. is also almost simultaneous-
ly exceeding the pre-war level (the beginning of the so-called ‘re-
construction period,’ the further growth of the socialist form of
economy on the basis of a new technique). For the capitalist sys-
tem, this is the period of rapid development of technique and ac-
celerated growth of cartels and trusts, and in which tendencies of
development towards state capitalism are observed. At the same
time, it is a period of intense development of the contradictions of
world capitalism, operating in forms determined by the whole of
the preceding process of the crisis of capitalism (contraction of
markets, the U.S.S.R., colonial movements, growth of the inher-
ent contradictions of imperialism).
“This third period, in which the contradiction between the
growth of the productive forces and the contraction of markets be-
comes particularly accentuated, is inevitably giving rise to a fresh
series of imperialist wars; among the imperialist states themselves;
wars of the imperialist states against the U.S.S.R.; wars of national
liberation against imperialism and imperialist intervention, and to
gigantic class battles. The intensification of all international antag-
onisms... will inevitably lead – through the further development of
the contradictions of capitalist stabilization – to capitalist stabiliza-
tion becoming still more precarious and to the severe intensifica-
tion of the general crisis of capitalism.”8
This sharply revolutionary congress put out the slogan, “Class
Against Class.” In its aftermath, marked by intense fights against
the right elements, both within and outside the Communist par-
ties, there were considerable tendencies to develop “leftist” devia-
tions in many countries, by drifting into dual unionism, by failing
to stress the united front, etc. Social-Democrats were more or less
generally characterized as “social fascists” without differentiating
various trends among them and their following.
Bukharin made the main report to the congress, but he was
sharply corrected by the Russian delegation on questions of the
extent of capitalist stabilization, the fight against Social-
Democracy, etc. The brilliant Marxist analysis of the sixth con-
gress was basically the work of Stalin. It foresaw a developing
perspective of economic crises, great class struggles, revolutions,
and imperialist wars, and it evoked loud guffaws from Social-
Democrats all over the world. This was a period of so-called capi-
talist boom, especially in the United States, where the most fan-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
tastic “prosperity” illusions were rampant. Hence the Comintern
analysis, particularly its conception of the “third period,” was rid-
iculed as a glaring example of “leftist” wishful thinking. But the
next few years gave this analysis a devastating confirmation, with
the development of the great economic crisis of 1929, the victory
of Hitler fascism in 1933, and the outbreak of World War II in
1939.
IMPERIALIST WAR AND COLONIAL REVOLUTION
In line with its Program, the sixth congress adopted a strong
resolution on the danger of the approaching imperialist war. The
imperialist powers, only ten years after they had concluded the
monstrous first world war, were obviously preparing for another
mass slaughter. They were getting ready for a new violent redis-
tribution of the world. This time their major objective was to de-
stroy the Russian Revolution, and with it the Chinese Revolution,
and to dismember these countries. To facilitate war preparations,
the imperialists were cultivating fascist reaction in various parts
of Europe and were fomenting a rabid anti-Soviet hatred every-
where. Military expenditures were rapidly mounting. The Social-
Democrats were doing their reactionary bourgeois part by carry-
ing on a ceaseless red-baiting attack against the Soviet Union. The
League of Nations, instead of being a peace organization, was only
a maneuvering ground for the warlike imperialists. In 1928 all the
major governments signed the futile American Kellogg peace
pact, supposedly to outlaw war, but this only served to disarm the
peoples as to the growing seriousness of the world situation.
The sixth congress pointed out that, “War is inseparable from
capitalism. From this it follows that the ‘abolition’ of war is possi-
ble only through the abolition of capitalism.”9 The resolution dif-
ferentiated between just wars of oppressed peoples against their
oppressors and unjust wars among or by imperialist states. As for
the present threatening war, the congress urged the workers, “To
transform the war between imperialist states into proletarian civil
war against the bourgeoisie for the purpose of establishing the
dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism.” This followed the
general pattern with which Lenin had led the fight against World
War I.
The congress also adopted a comprehensive resolution on the
colonial situation.10 This hailed the heroic Chinese Revolution,

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 C. I. PROGRAM
the development of the anti-imperialist movement in India, the
1926 insurrection in Indonesia, the awakening of the peoples in
Egypt and other Near East countries, the rebellion of the Cabil
and Riff tribes in North Africa against French and Spanish impe-
rialism, and the sharpening of the struggle against Yankee impe-
rialism in Latin America.
In this general respect, the congress re-endorsed Lenin’s fa-
mous colonial theses of the second congress. The sixth congress
resolution declared, “In this struggle, the cooperation of the revo-
lutionary proletariat of the whole world and of the toiling masses
of the colonies represents the surest guarantee of victory over im-
perialism,” both in the colonies and in the imperialist countries.
The revolution in the colonies was characterized as a bourgeois
democratic revolution, of which, ‘‘along with the national-
emancipation struggle, the agrarian revolution is the axis.” The
resolution analyzed in detail the role of all the classes in the colo-
nial liberation struggle. It showed the shifting position of the na-
tional bourgeoisie under the contradictory pressures of foreign
imperialism and of the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry.
Solid organization of the working class and a close alliance with
the peasantry were indispensable for the success of the revolu-
tion. The key task in the colonial and semi-colonial countries was
the building of strong Communist parties, capable of understand-
ing the complex struggle and of giving it general political leader-
ship: “Without the hegemony of the proletariat, an organic part of
which is the leading role of the Communist Party, the bourgeois
democratic revolution could not be carried through to an end, not
to speak of the socialist revolution.”
In a brilliant report, Ercoli (Togliatti) signalized the danger of
reformism in the colonial world. At its current congress in Brus-
sels, the Labor and Socialist International had, at long last, begun
to pay some attention to the colonial revolt. Its commission on the
question was headed by the Socialist governor of the British colo-
ny of Jamaica. The line of the congress was a justification of im-
perialism and colonialism, with criticisms of their more barba-
rous features. “The policy to be pursued was to damp down revo-
lutionary struggles and to divert the attention of the masses to
innocuous activities.... As to the Labor Party [Great Britain],” says
Ercoli, “in all the material presented by this party to the congress
of the Second International, it is maintained that the right of self-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
determination is not applicable to any of the British colonies. And
in the same way all the other socialist parties of countries pos-
sessing colonies express themselves.”11 Hopefully, at some vague
and distant date, imperialism, like capitalism itself, would be
abolished.
SOME ORGANIZATIONAL MATTERS
The sixth congress was made up of 515 delegates, of whom
143 had advisory votes, as against 475 (with 133 advisory) dele-
gates at the fifth congress. Represented were 66 parties and or-
ganizations, embracing 4,024,159 members. Of these 1,798,859
belonged to 52 Communist parties, and 2,225,300 to the Young
Communist International. Of the 470 delegates who signed ques-
tionnaires, 451 were men and 19 women, and 50 percent of them
were manual workers. The great majority, 359, were between the
ages of 21 and 40. The votes were apportioned as follows: U.S.S.R.
50; Y.C.L., France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy 25 each; Great
Britain, China, United States 20 each; Poland 15, with the others
ranging down to one vote.12
On January 1, 1928, the Communist membership of all sec-
tions, including the C.P.S.U., was 1,707,769 – a small decline from
1925. The following table,13 with “reservations,” indicates the
course of membership of the main parties:
1924 1925 1926 1927
C.P. Germany 121,394 122,755 134,248 124,729
C.P. Czech 138,996 93,220 92,818 150,000
C.P. France 68,187 83,326 75,000 52,376
C.P. U.S.A. 17,000 14,000 11,990 12,000
C.P. Sweden 7,011 8,650 10,859 15,479
C.P. Great Britain 4,000 5,000 6,000 9,000
C.P.S.U. 446,089 741,117 1,078,185 1,210,954
The congress report on the Communist press of the world was
very incomplete. At this time great stress was being placed on the
establishment of shop papers. Of these there were large numbers,
France alone reporting several hundred of such journals.
Between the fifth and sixth congresses, six Enlarged Executive
meetings were held; there were also 71 meetings of the Political
Secretariat and 35 meetings of the Organizing Branch. The
E.C.C.I. meetings often included up to a couple of hundred dele-

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 C. I. PROGRAM
gates from all over the world.
The sixth congress definitely marked a new and firm consoli-
dation of Communist leadership all over the world, represented
by such figures as Stalin (U.S.S.R.), Thaelmann (Germany),
Thorez (France), Togliatti (Italy), Mao Tse-tung (China),
Gottwald (Czechoslovakia), Pollitt (Great Britain), Buck (Canada),
Roca (Cuba), and Codovilla (Argentina). Zinoviev, who had been
expelled from the Russian Communist Party, was replaced in De-
cember 1926 by Bukharin as President of the Comintern, alt-
hough the latter was soon to develop an opposition movement in
the C.P.S.U. The incoming Executive Committee was made up of
57 members and 42 alternates.

369
41. The Great Economic Crisis (1929-1933)
The economic smashup, beginning in October 1929, was the
most serious crisis in the history of world capitalism. It was
world-wide in scope, affecting both industrial and colonial coun-
tries, with its main storm center in the United States. The previ-
ous several years had been a period of capitalist stabilization and
growth, reaching the stage of a hectic boom in the United States,
where the most extravagant notions prevailed as to the supposed
invulnerability of the “new” American capitalism to periodic eco-
nomic crises. The crisis was a tremendous anti-climax to this
bourgeois ideological and financial spree.
The great crisis was of a cyclical character, deepened by the
workings of the general crisis of the world capitalist system. The
bottom cause of it was the robbery of the workers through capital-
ist exploitation. This expressed itself in a situation of rapidly in-
creasing production on the one hand, and of shrinking markets
on the other. “The first signs of the approaching crisis appeared in
the accumulation of stocks of primary products. World stocks of
primary products, on the basis of 1923-1925 as 100, increased by
the end of 1926 to 134, by 1928 to 161, and by 1929 to 192.”1 Final-
ly, the dam broke under the accumulating pressure.
Despite the many alarming signals, not to mention the re-
peated crisis warnings of the Communists, practically every bour-
geois and Social-Democratic economist in the world was caught
totally unawares by the outbreak of the crisis. The economic col-
lapse came as a shattering shock to the super-optimistic bour-
geois economists and to their faithful pro-capitalist henchmen,
the Social-Democrats. Overnight, the latter’s opportunistic theo-
ries of “organized capitalism” “ultra-imperialism,” and “the high-
er strategy of labor” were knocked into a cocked hat. Ideological
chaos reigned in bourgeois ranks. On the other hand, the tremen-
dous economic crisis completely bore out the Communist anal-
yses made over the years, and particularly the much-maligned
resolution of the sixth world congress of the Comintern in 1928,
which foresaw just such a crisis.
The international effects of the crisis were catastrophic. By
1933, “industrial output in the U.S.A. had sunk to 65 percent, in
Great Britain to 86 percent, in Germany to 66 percent, and in
France to 77 percent of the 1929 output.”2 The crisis also hit heav-
370
 THE GREAT ECONOMIC CRISIS
ily in the raw materials-producing colonial countries of the Far
East, and it was devastating in Latin America. In the latter area,
“Between 1929 and 1932 the dollar value of the exports of the
twenty republics fell by 64.3 percent.”3 World trade collapsed,
falling from a grand total of $33 billion in 1928 to $12 billion in
1932. Many countries went off the gold standard and the interna-
tional financial situation was demoralized.
Mass unemployment mounted to heights altogether unknown
before in capitalist history. There were 17,000,000 jobless in the
United States (not counting the huge masses of part-time work-
ers), 8,000,000 in Germany, 4,000,000 in England, with similar
conditions prevailing in all the capitalist industrial countries. An
estimated 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 throughout the world were
unemployed. The crisis also impoverished tens of millions of
peasants in all countries.
THE CRISIS-STRICKEN UNITED STATES
Hardest hit of all was the United States, land of the “wonder
achievements” of Fordism and mass production. In this country
especially the fatal capitalist process of expanding production and
restricting markets had been at work. Thus, although during the
boom period of 1923-1929 industrial production in general went
up by 20 percent, the total number of wage workers actually de-
clined by 7.6 percent. This crisis-breeding situation was accentu-
ated by the fact that, largely paralyzed by the current class collab-
orationist (speed-up) policies of the later 1920’s, the trade unions
had failed to keep the workers’ wages even abreast of the rapidly
rising cost of living. Thus, the Labor Research Association shows
that, all factors considered (wages, prices, employment, produc-
tion), the relative position of American workers deteriorated from
point 85 in 1923 to point 69 in 1929.4
Signs of overproduction, long prevalent in agriculture, began
to be manifest in industry by 1928. The full crisis hit the United
States with a wild panic on the New York Stock Exchange on Oc-
tober 24, 1929. Within one week the frantic stock-selling reached
the unprecedented total of 12,800,000 shares sold in one day.
Between October 1929 and January 1932, the index of stock val-
ues collapsed from point 216 to point 34. About $160 billion in
paper wealth vanished into thin air within three years. Some 5,761
banks, with $5 billion in deposits, failed during the crisis years.
371
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Industrial production tumbled – coal declined 41.7 percent, iron
79.4 percent, steel 76 percent, and automobiles 80 percent. The
total value of annual industrial production collapsed from about
$70 billion to $31 billion. Agriculture, already in crisis since 1920-
21, took a further tumble. Wheat, selling at $1.00 a bushel before
the war, dropped to 25 cents, corn to 10 cents, and cotton to 5
cents. The total value of agricultural products in 1932 was only
half that of 1929. All over the country frantic bankrupted capital-
ists leaped to death from skyscraper windows.
The employers ruthlessly applied their traditional policy of
thrusting the burdens of the crisis onto the backs of the workers.
The great masses of the jobless were thrown onto the streets, with
no unemployment insurance whatever. And it was only after long
struggles, led by the Communist Party, that even the skimpiest
government relief systems were introduced. Mass starvation
stalked the country. Hundreds of thousands vegetated in the
“Hoovervilles” (shack towns) that were to be found on the dumps
in every town and city, and vast numbers of workers beat their
way aimlessly over the railroads, vainly seeking jobs. The wages of
those fortunate enough to have jobs were deeply slashed, the
wage-cuts averaging 45 percent. According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, total wages in the United States dropped from $17.2
billion in 1929 to $6.8 billion in 1932.5 Millions of workers and
farmers lost their homes and farms by mortgage foreclosure.
As usual, the worst of all sufferers in this economic holocaust
were the Negro workers, who were the first to be discharged, who
got the least relief, and who were in every other way discriminat-
ed against. The great economic depression, like World War I, was
followed by a wave of lynching, race riots, and other anti-Negro
terrorism.
Such was the tragic picture in capitalist America, the boasted
Utopia of the bourgeois world. This was the country supposedly
crisis-proof, whose president, the ill-famed Hoover, had boasted
in 1929 that the United States was on the verge of finally abolish-
ing all poverty. Conditions were no better in Germany, England,
Japan, France, and the other capitalist industrial and colonial
countries of the world.
The international capitalist system was giving still another
terrible demonstration of the historic fact that it was unable to
employ, feed, and clothe the great masses of the peoples of the

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 THE GREAT ECONOMIC CRISIS
world. The terrific economic breakdown was one more basic man-
ifestation of the deepening of the general crisis of the world capi-
talist system as a whole.
THE FIRST SOVIET FIVE-YEAR PLAN
While world capitalism was thus helplessly wallowing and
floundering about, bringing misery and pauperization to countless
millions, the new socialist system in the Soviet Union went roaring
ahead, building its industry and agriculture at an unprecedented
rate. During 1929-33, the U.S.S.R. realized its first five-year plan.
When this comprehensive plan was announced, the bourgeois and
Social-Democratic economists everywhere roared with laughter.
They said the Bolsheviks were entertaining the world with another
gigantic propaganda stunt! But the Russian workers responded to
these insults by finishing their great plan in four years.
The first five-year plan called for a new capital investment of
64.6 billion rubles, of which 19.5 billion were for industry, 10 bil-
lion for transport, and 23.2 billion for agriculture. The conse-
quent drive for industrialization and the improvement of agricul-
ture amazed the incredulous capitalist world, the U.S.S.R. far out-
stripping all records of progress ever made anywhere under capi-
talism. This achievement was all the more dramatic inasmuch as
while it was being made every capitalist country in the world was
economically prostrate. It was all an historic lesson to the world
that the new socialist system was crisis-proof and that it had per-
manently abolished mass unemployment.
Great plants sprang up all over the Soviet Union. Varga says,
“In the years 1930-1932, when the industrial production of the
capitalist world went back 38 percent, that of the Soviet Union
rose by not less than 81 percent.’’6 In a vast surge, too, the bulk of
the farms were fused into collectives. “In 1934, there were already
281,000 tractors and 32,000 harvester combines at work in the
Soviet countryside.”7
In this tremendous expansion of industry the Soviet youth,
the Komsomols, played a very great part. They were pioneers and
shock-workers in the building of great plants all over the country.
Their tireless exploits at the time are still hailed in the Soviet
Union.
Stalin thus summed up the results of the historic first five-
year plan: “(a) The U.S.S.R. had been converted from an agrarian
373
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
country into an industrial country, for the proportion of industrial
output to the total production of the country had risen to 70 per-
cent. (b) The socialist economic system had eliminated the capi-
talist elements in the sphere of industry and had become the sole
economic system in industry. (c) The socialist economic system
had eliminated the kulaks as a class in the sphere of agriculture,
and had become the predominant force in agriculture. (d) The
collective farm system had put an end to poverty and want in the
countryside, and tens of millions of poor peasants had risen to a
level of material security. (e) The socialist system in industry had
abolished unemployment, and while retaining the eight-hour day
in a number of branches, had introduced the seven-hour day in
the vast majority of enterprises and the six-hour day in unhealthy
occupations. (f) The victory of socialism in all branches of the na-
tional economy had abolished the exploitation of man by man.”8
These great achievements, carried out in the midst of the pro-
found economic crisis of capitalism, constituted a tremendous
demonstration of the inherent superiority of socialism over capi-
talism. Varga, who analyzes in detail the specific superiorities of
the socialist economy, thus sums them up: “Socialist planned
economy dispenses with the huge ‘unnecessary costs’ of anarchis-
tic capitalism, leads to all the able-bodied being brought into the
process of production, and makes possible a rapid planned accu-
mulation together with a simultaneous extension of consumption.
Socialist planned economy thus leads to a rapid improvement of
the material and cultural situation of the working people in the
Soviet Union, while capitalist anarchy leads to the growing mate-
rial, cultural and moral decline of the masses of working people.”9
During the great economic crisis of 1929-33 the contrast was
so glaring between broken-down capitalism and flourishing so-
cialism, that in the ensuing years there were a whole number of
capitalist attempts to “copy the Soviet Union,” especially with re-
gard to planned economy. Consequently, capitalist five-year,
three-year, and other term plans sprang up in many countries.
Carr says, “It would be tedious to record the numerous imitations
all over the world, some substantial, some superficial, of the Sovi-
et five-year plans.” In the same respect, he says, “The impact of
the Soviet Union on the western world has been a decisive histori-
cal event.”10 But such bourgeois plans were hollow and ineffectu-
al, the indispensable necessity for planned economy being the

374
 THE GREAT ECONOMIC CRISIS
abolition of the capitalist system.
The greatest handicap that socialism in the Soviet Union has
had to face, from its inception down to the present day, is the fact
that world capitalism, with its inherent tendency towards war, has
compelled the U.S.S.R., in self-defense, to squander the energies of
its people in building up a strong military organization, which is
foreign to the nature of socialism. This trend operated also to bur-
den the fulfillment of the first five-year plan. But a hardly less
harmful obstacle came from the representatives of the remnants of
the former ruling classes, landlords and capitalists. The political
expression of these elements, as well as of world capitalism, was
the Trotsky-Zinoviev-Bukharin opposition. Proof of this was to be
found in the fact that these oppositional figures were the darlings
and heroes of every Soviet-hater, both within and outside Russia.
As we have seen in chapter 39, the Bukharin-Rykov-Tomsky
group, just as the party was fighting against the Trotsky-Zinoviev
opposition, came forward with its right opportunist program of
slowing down the tempo of industrialization and collectivization. In
view of the imperative need for the U.S.S.R. to industrialize itself
with all possible speed – a need which was made clear in World
War II – the program of the rights would have been no less fatal
than that of the “lefts.” Under Stalin’s brilliant leadership, the party
realized this basic fact and in November 1929 the Central Commit-
tee ruled that the propagation of the views of the right opportunists
was incompatible with membership in the party.11 This brought
forth tongue-in-cheek pledges of loyalty from the opposition lead-
ers. As we shall see, this meant only a temporary lull in the activi-
ties of the rights, who surreptitiously were maintaining a bloc with
the remnants of the Trotsky-Zinoviev opposition.
CLASS STRUGGLE, FASCISM, WAR PREPARATIONS
The economic crisis years 1929-33 were a time of acute class
struggle, growing fascism, and threatening war preparations. Un-
derlying all this sharpening up of social tensions and capitalist
contradictions was the deepening general crisis of the world capi-
talist system; but they were all intensified as a result of the tre-
mendous cyclical economic crisis which was then crippling the
capitalist system everywhere.
The Second International and the I.F.T.U., however, made lit-
tle response to the great crisis. Lorwin remarks that “The leaders
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
of the I.F.T.U. were slow in grasping the gravity of the economic
depression which followed the financial panic of October 1929.”12
This was because the crisis came as such a shock to their whole
complacent bourgeois ideology. And when they did wake up and
bestir themselves, they did little for the unemployed, rejecting the
Communists’ united- front proposals and striving to keep the
workers from Communist leadership. In the United States, for
example, as late as November 1931, the A.F. of L. leaders, striving
to disrupt the big Communist-led unemployment movement, de-
clared that the establishment of government unemployment in-
surance was against “the American way of life” and would destroy
the trade union movement.
The Comintern responded quickly to the new situation creat-
ed by the economic crisis, and it intensified its work everywhere.
The twelfth meeting of the Executive Committee of the Comintern
in September 1932, declared that because of the increased
strength of the U.S.S.R., the sharpening of the economic crisis,
the growing revolutionary upsurge, the further deepening of the
antagonisms between the imperialists, and the intensified prepa-
rations for a counter-revolutionary war against the U.S.S.R., “The
end of relative capitalist stabilization has come.”13 It had lasted
only a few years. The meeting also declared that revolutionary
crises were developing in Germany and Poland.
The first task of the Comintern and the Communist parties, and
the R.I.L.U. and left unions in all countries, was the protection of
the living conditions of the working class everywhere under heavy
attack from mass unemployment and wage cuts, whereas the Se-
cond International and the I.F.T.U. were interested primarily in
saving capitalism. The R.I.L.U., which in 1929 numbered some
17,000,000 members in 50 countries,14 gave special attention to
the mobilization of the unemployed for struggle. As early as Janu-
ary 1930 the R.I.L.U. issued a call for a day of international protest
and struggle against unemployment. This took place on March 6,
1930, and was a huge success in many countries.
The Communist parties and left trade unions in Great Britain,
the United States, Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and various
other countries led important struggles of the unemployed. In the
United States the March 6 demonstration turned out no less than
1,250,000 unemployed. In many countries unemployed councils
were established and innumerable hunger marches and other un-

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 THE GREAT ECONOMIC CRISIS
employed struggles were carried through. The American veterans’
bonus march of the period attracted world attention.
Throughout the crisis years there were many strikes in vari-
ous countries – Germany, Poland, Great Britain, the United
States – and if there were not more the major reason was that the
Social-Democrats, who controlled by far the larger part of the la-
bor movement in the capitalist countries, had a rigid anti-strike
policy. Their general line (like that of the employers) was that the
workers should accept the wage cuts “necessary to put the capital-
ist system on its feet again.” Thus, in the United States, when the
over one million railroad workers “voluntarily” accepted a wage-
cut, Matthew Woll, vice-president of the A.F. of L., hailed it as a
major act of labor statesmanship. Had the reformists been able to
control the unemployed, they, too, would not have struggled. A
lesser reason for the relatively few strikes during this period was
the fact that, following the sixth congress of the Comintern, there
were strong “leftist” tendencies in the parties in many countries to
overstress independent unionism and to understress the united
front, thereby weakening their mass contacts.
The struggles of the period of the economic crisis also in-
volved the armed forces of various capitalist countries. Among the
more important of them were: the Spanish Revolution of 1931, the
Inverness strike in the British navy on September 14, 1931, the
spontaneous uprising in the Chilean navy in September 1931, the
mutinies of February 5, 1933, in the Dutch navy, and in the Japa-
nese Army of Occupation in China.15
During the general period of the great economic crisis the
Comintern and its affiliated movements devoted major attention to
combatting the threatening dangers of fascism and war. The par-
ties, trade unions, women, and youth movements were all very ac-
tive in this struggle. In July 1929 in Frankfurt the Y.C.I. held its
first anti-imperialist world conference,16 and in Berlin, in March of
the same year, a general world anti-fascist congress was held.
Strong anti-fascist, anti-war drives were also made in Latin Ameri-
ca. The fascist danger was constantly on the increase, and the mul-
tiplying war preparations finally climaxed in the invasion of North
China by Japanese forces. On September 18, 1931, they occupied
Mukden, and within a few months they had taken possession of
most of Manchuria. The League of Nations never stirred a finger to
stop them. This was the actual beginning of World War II.
377
42. Hitler’s Fascism and Roosevelt’s New
Deal
The bourgeoisie, as Lenin pointed out in 1907, uses two gen-
eral methods of rulership, terrorism and minor concessions to the
workers. It is the time-honored alternative of the club or the car-
rot, with often both combined. Germany and the United States
provided striking examples, in Hitler’s fascism and Roosevelt’s
New Deal, of the use of these two varying systems. They were dif-
ferent attempts of the bourgeoisie of the respective countries to
cut their way out of the terrific economic and political problems
developed by the great economic crisis of 1929-33, on the back-
ground of the deepening general crisis of the world capitalist sys-
tem.
Two elementary factors determined these different lines of
capitalist policy in Germany and the United States. The first was
the degree of capital resources at the disposal of the respective
capitalist classes. In the United States the capitalists still pos-
sessed the means to make certain material concessions to the
workers, which they did; whereas, relatively lacking such re-
sources, the German capitalists had recourse to fascist violence.
The second determining factor in capitalist policy had to do with
the degree of revolutionary spirit shown by the workers. In Ger-
many the capitalists faced an increasingly revolutionary working
class, millions of whom were looking more and more to the
Communist Party for leadership; hence the capitalist resort to
ultra-violence in order to try to smash the growing revolutionary
movement. Whereas, on the other hand, in the United States, alt-
hough the workers were militant, in a fighting mood and respon-
sive to Communist Party slogans on unemployment, there was no
such urgent revolutionary threat as in Germany.
In the United States, nevertheless, there was also a broad
streak of fascist sentiment among the big capitalists. Events
showed that considerable numbers of them nourished the illu-
sion, then common among capitalists all over the world, that the
historical moment had arrived when by fascist violence the trade
unions could be finally smashed, parliamentary democracy oblite-
rated, and the menace of socialism, particularly the U.S.S.R.,
wiped forever from the face of the earth. These ultra-reactionary

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 FASCISM AND THE NEW DEAL
elements believed that a capitalist Utopia was at hand. Despite
the New Deal reforms, therefore, there was also a fascist menace
in the United States.
THE ADVANCE OF GERMAN FASCISM1
The victory of Hitler fascism in 1933 can be understood only
in the sense of the reformist Social-Democracy clearing the way
for it by breaking up the working class opposition. The Social-
Democrats' slogans were that the main enemy was on the left and
that at all costs Germany was to be ‘‘saved from Bolshevism.” As
the most faithful guardians of the capitalist system, they followed
a course of close collaboration with the bourgeoisie which, as the
latter turned more and more to the right, led them and with them
Germany, to the catastrophe of fascism.
The seeds of Nazism were sown in the Social-Democratic be-
trayal in the war and the German revolution in 1918. These events
made it clear that, cost what it might, the Social-Democrats would
fight to the end against the overthrow of capitalism by the work-
ers. The reactionaries tried a big counter-revolutionary stroke
with the Kapp putsch of 1920, but this was premature. Their road
to victory was to be far tougher and more complicated. After the
revolution it took them a full fifteen years, even with the indis-
pensable help of Social- Democracy, to arrive at fascism.
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) joined the Nazi party in 1919, but by
1928, despite much heavy financial backing from the capitalists,
all the votes his party could muster in the election of that year
were 800,000 as against 9,100,000 for the Social-Democrats and
3,200,000 for the Communists. But the ravages of the great eco-
nomic crisis quickly changed this picture. With 8,000,000 work-
ers unemployed, with wages being slashed on all sides, with the
Weimar government (in which the Social-Democrats were a pow-
erful factor) doing nothing to remedy the situation, and with the
extravagant demagogy of Hitler and his group, by April 1932, the
Nazi vote had increased to 13,418,547, against a combined Social-
ist-Communist vote of some 13,000,000.
Almost up to the end, the Socialists and Communists had had
a large potential majority over the forces of Hitler, and in view of
the rising spirit of the working class, a united front between the
two parties could have rallied the great bulk of the working class
in a victorious fighting force. That the workers were in an increas-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ingly revolutionary mood was shown by the fact that between
1930 and 1932 the Communist vote increased by 1,384,000, while
that of the Socialists fell off by 1,338,000.
Upon four crucial occasions the Communists proposed the
united front: in April 1932, against an impending general wage cut;
on July 29, 1932, when the Von Papen dictatorship expelled the
Social-Democrats from the government of Prussia, which they con-
trolled; on January 30, 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor; and
on March 1, 1933, after the Reichstag fire. These were key moments
in the advance of Hitler and a united blow from the working class
at any of these times would have been disastrous to the Nazi cause.
But the Social-Democrats, closely allied with the big bourgeoisie,
who were moving towards fascism, in each case rejected the Com-
munists’ united-front proposals. Menacing fascism loomed to them
as much less a danger than a fight for socialism.
Although the Nazis were butchering workers on the streets, as
Hitler was marching to power, the Social-Democrats, through the
Weimar government, prohibited the Red Front Fighters, dis-
armed the workers, and aided the building up of the Black
Reichswehr, Stahlhelm, and Storm Troops into powerful armed
forces of reaction. They also supported the Bruning (Christian
Center Party) dictatorship, which had dispensed with democratic
controls and was ruling the country by decree. Their final treason
was to reelect von Hindenburg as president of the Reich, upon the
stupid pretext that he was a “lesser evil” than Hitler and that he
was a barrier against Nazi fascism. The decisive election in April
1932, resulted in Hindenburg being elected over Hitler by a vote
of 18,657,497 to 11,339,446, with the Communist candidate
Thaelmann polling 4,983,341 votes.2
HITLER SEIZES POWER
Hindenburg, of course, was no “lesser evil” than Hitler, but
just a convenient means of getting Hitler into power. The Com-
munists explained this fully and warned the workers that, “A vote
for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler,” that a choice between Hin-
denburg and Hitler was merely a choice between two roads to fas-
cism. But the Social-Democrats nevertheless went through to the
end with their tragic alliance with the bourgeoisie.
On this question Manuilsky remarked: “The Social-Democrats
say: ‘Since the Communists prefer bourgeois democracy to fas-

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 FASCISM AND THE NEW DEAL
cism, they, too, are becoming adherents of the “lesser evil” policy.’
Yes, we Communists prefer the ‘lesser evil’ to the greater evil. It is
not this that separates us from Social-Democracy. We expose the
Social-Democratic ‘lesser evil’ policy because that policy meant
the betrayal of bourgeois democracy and directly helping fas-
cism.”3 The only constructive choice was to have set up a united-
front ticket between the Communists, Social-Democrats, and oth-
er democratic forces.
On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg yielded to the Nazis com-
pletely, and made Hitler Chancellor. The Nazis at once redoubled
their terror campaign. The Communist Party was completely out-
lawed, and hundreds of Communists killed or arrested. The most
prominent prisoner was Ernst Thaelmann, general secretary of
the Communist Party. Thaelmann was born in Hamburg in 1886
and worked as a docker. He entered the Social-Democratic Party
in 1902, became a charter member of the Independent Social-
Democratic Party, and joined the Communist Party in 1920. A
militant fighter, Thaelmann represented all that was best in the
German working class; he became head of the Communist Party
in 1923, upon the ousting of the Fischer-Maslov “leftist” and cor-
rupted leadership.4 He was murdered in a Nazi jail in 1944.5
After Hitler came to power, the Social-Democrats fully ex-
pected to be accepted by him as partners, as had been the case in
all other German capitalist governments since 1918. Servilely,
they declared that Hitler had acquired power by legal, democratic
means. Abroad, the Social-Democratic leaders – Vandervelde in
Belgium and Blum in France – took a similar line. The Berlin
Vorwaerts, official party organ, on February 2, even boasted that,
“except for the Social-Democrats,” a man from the people such as
Hitler never could have become chancellor.6 Weis, the leader of
the party, resigned from the Executive of the Second Internation-
al in protest against foreign condemnation of Nazi brutalities. The
Social-Democratic Party agreed to work with Hitler, and the
Leipart-Grossman trade union leadership, hailing the Hitler vic-
tory as a triumphant “continuation of the 1918 revolution,” called
upon the workers to participate in Hitler’s May Day celebration.7
But this Social-Democratic bootlicking was all in vain. The
days of bourgeois reformism were over in Germany; the arrogant
capitalists were now embarked upon a path of terrorism towards
the workers, and they needed a new crew of politicians and “labor
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
leaders” to carry out their policies. On May 2, therefore, Hitler
violently seized control of the trade unions, and later merged
them into the boss-dominated Labor Front. On June 22 the So-
cial-Democratic Party was declared dissolved, and the big cooper-
ative movement soon followed suit. Many Social-Democrats were
arrested, others fled the country, while numbers of Socialist bu-
reaucrats made personal peace with Hitler and became cogs in his
repressive machine.
Hitler acted with far greater swiftness than Mussolini had
been able to do. Although Mussolini seized governmental power
in October 1922, it was not until November 1926 that he felt
strong enough, upon the occasion of an attempt to assassinate
him, formally to dissolve the Communist Party and all other or-
ganizations hostile to the regime, to suppress their journals, to
arrest their leaders en masse, etc. Hitler was able to move faster
because of the utter political cowardice and surrender of the
German right Social-Democrats. The Italian working class, not
completely dominated by reformists, was able, under Communist
Party stimulus, to make a much better fight.
The great German Social-Democracy, which the workers had
been building for 70 years, gave up without a struggle. It had fol-
lowed its alliance with the bourgeoisie and its policy of the “lesser
evil” to their inevitable goal – fascism. Trotsky later contended
that the Communist Party should have made an attempt alone at
revolution, but this could have led only to a futile putsch and a
useless butchery of the unarmed workers at the hands of the
heavily armed state forces, then supported by the Socialists.
Moreover, at the time of the advent of Hitler, the Social-
Democrats controlled a big majority of the working class. Work-
ers’ councils elections in the industries clearly showed that the
bulk of the workers were still following right-wing leadership. “In
1930,” says Dutt, “at enterprises employing 5,900,000 workers,
the reformist trade unions had 135,689 factory committee mem-
bers, or 89.9 percent of all factory committee members.”8 The
tragic fact was that the Communist call for a general strike against
Hitler when he came to power got an ineffective response from
the workers.
Heckert points out that when the Bolsheviks gained power in
October 1917 they had on their side an overwhelming majority of
the workers and peasants; whereas, in Germany, the Communist

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 FASCISM AND THE NEW DEAL
Party did not have even a majority of the proletariat supporting it.
The Comintern, basing itself upon Lenin’s dictum that, “It is im-
possible to win with the vanguard alone,” declared that in Ger-
many “conditions for a victorious rising had not yet managed to
mature at that moment.” Its resolution said: “Having heard the
report of Comrade Heckert on the situation in Germany, the Pre-
sidium of the E.C.C.I. declares that the political line and the or-
ganizational policy pursued by the C.C. of the Communist Party,
led by Comrade Thaelmann, before and at the time of the Hitler
coup, was quite correct.”9
GERMAN FASCISM
Bourgeois and Social-Democratic “theoreticians” asserted at
the time that the Nazi movement was basically anti-capitalist, a
revolt of the middle classes. The Communists, from the outset,
challenged this nonsense, pointing out that while Nazism attract-
ed to itself masses of declassed middle-class elements and back-
ward workers, the real force behind it was monopoly capital – the
Krupps, Thyssens, Von Siemens, Boschs, Voglers, and other great
industrial leaders and bankers. The twelfth meeting of the
E.C.C.I., held in December 1933, thus stated the Comintern analy-
sis of Nazism: “Fascism is the open, terrorist dictatorship of the
most reactionary, most chauvinist, most imperialist elements of
finance-capital.”10 This definition has since come to be pretty
generally accepted, in substance at least.
The German fascist-imperialist bourgeoisie, in their proposed
“New Order,” planned definitely to put world capitalism upon a
more stable basis, with themselves in full command. To this end,
they worked out their super-aggressive domestic and foreign poli-
cies, with all necessary demagogic and ideological justification.
German fascism learned much from its predecessor, Italian fas-
cism, but it was no mere continuation of that movement. It was,
instead, the major representative of the widely prevalent attempt
of big capital generally at that time to cut its way out of the world-
wide crisis of capitalism on the basis of ruthless terrorism at
home and no less ruthless imperialism abroad.
In their domestic policies the Nazi capitalists had one all-
decisive objective, to secure unchallenged economic and political
supremacy for monopoly finance-capital. To this end, by dema-
gogy and terrorism, they systematically wiped out competing
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
lesser capitalist elements, and they drove to demobilize their most
feared enemy, the working class. They broke up every working
class organization, deprived the workers of all liberties, slashed
their wages, and speeded them up in the industries. They tried to
stamp out their conceptions of the class struggle and of class or-
ganization. In view of the Marxist traditions of the German work-
ing class, the Nazis cunningly undertook to give their movement a
pseudo revolutionary coloration. They spouted much “anti-
capitalist” demagogy, named their organization the National So-
cialist German Workers Party, carried the Red Flag (Nazi brand),
and celebrated May Day. They also gave the workers “trade un-
ions” – made up, however, of capitalists, peasants, and trades-
men, as well as of workers. As never before, the monopolists were
in complete control of the domestic economic and political regime
in Germany, with corresponding beneficial results to their profits.
In their foreign policies the German fascist capitalists were no
less aggressive. They gave maximum interpretation to the tradi-
tional German imperialist slogans of Drang Nach Osten and Le-
bensraum, and their anti-Versailles attacks served as a cover for
the most ruthless aggression against neighboring peoples. They
would spread their “New Order” throughout the world. “Nazi for-
eign policy has a single major objective – world domination,” said
Ebenstein.11 Nor did the Nazi would-be world conquerors feel that
it would be too difficult for them to achieve this objective. They
had nothing but contempt for the western capitalist powers as
obsolete, and to overthrow the Soviet Union, they were sure,
would be the job of but a few weeks’ armed assault.
To facilitate this program of trickery and violence in building
their fascist “New Order”, the Nazi ideologists worked out a whole
system of demagoguery. Their theory of the Germans as the mas-
ter Aryan race was a screen for aggressive imperialist expansion.
According to them, biologically the Germans were predestined to
stand at the head of all humanity; their “leader” and “elite” prin-
ciples facilitated the forced acceptance of the capitalists and the
Nazi politicians as the natural leaders, also on biological grounds,
of the German people; their murderous anti-Semitism, anti-
Marxism, and anti-liberalism provided convenient scapegoats
upon which to blame all the evils that the German people were
suffering because of the capitalist system; their Keynesian eco-
nomics and glorification of militarism served to justify munitions

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 FASCISM AND THE NEW DEAL
production, thug controls, and the building of a vast war machine,
and their contempt for science and reason helped to clear the in-
tellectual field for the predominance of the barbarous Goebbels
propaganda and agitation.
THE ROOSEVELT NEW DEAL
While the imperialist bourgeoisie were attacking the working
class in Germany with fire and sword, the bourgeoisie in the Unit-
ed States, although very reluctantly, were following a policy of
making concessions. This they did, however, under the surging
mass pressure of a working class impoverished, aroused, and en-
raged over the savage way it had been mistreated by the Hoover
government during the great economic crisis.
In the sweeping election of the Democrat Franklin D. Roose-
velt (1882-1945) as President in November 1932, the masses ex-
pressed their resentment against the Republican reactionaries.
And in the ensuing years they followed this up with many other
powerful mass actions. They extended the big strike movement
beginning in the early thirties, of which the 1934 general strike in
San Francisco was a dramatic feature; they rapidly built the trade
unions, which eventually resulted in the organization of the work-
ers in the great open-shop industries; they pushed through the
ensuing development of powerful mass movements among the
unemployed, Negroes, farmers, veterans, the youth, and the aged;
and, finally, they caused the unprecedented election of Roosevelt
four times to the Presidency.
The capitalists tried to stifle this developing movement of the
toiling masses, but they could not do so. For this purpose they
lacked a powerful Social-Democracy, able to dominate and re-
press the working class, such as the bourgeoisie had in England,
Germany, Austria, and elsewhere. The A.F. of L. bureaucrats, who
despite their anti-Marxist slogans (which are simply an adapta-
tion to American working class political backwardness) are a vari-
ety of Social-Democrats, tried hard to check the movement, but
they were too weak, and they failed. Indeed, the mass movement
split their own ranks in 1935 (birth of the C.I.O.) and rolled on
past them.
Roosevelt first took office on March 4, 1933, just 35 days after
Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Facing a disrupted eco-
nomic system, a confused and frightened capitalist class, and a
385
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
rebellious working class, Roosevelt launched at once into a vigor-
ous campaign of reform. His many bills, constituting the “New
Deal,” were rushed through congress so fast that, as was truly
said, “the legislators did not have time to read them.” During the
first hundred days of his administration more reform measures
were passed than during the previous seventy years since the Civil
War.
The New Deal program, as finally formulated, aimed: “ (a) to
reconstruct the shattered financial-banking system; (b) to rescue
tottering business with big loans and subsidies; (c) to stimulate
private capital investment; (d) to raise depressed prices by setting
inflationary tendencies into operation; (e) to overcome the agri-
cultural overproduction through acreage reduction and crop de-
struction; (f) to protect farm- and home-owners against mortgage
foreclosure; (g) to create employment and stimulate mass buying
power through establishing public works; (h) to provide a mini-
mum of relief for the starving unemployed.”12
The working class and other exploited elements profited con-
siderably from this reform legislation, such as the eventual un-
employment and old age insurance, protection against farm and
home mortgage foreclosures, guarantee of bank deposits, etc., but
mostly they gained from the recognition of the right to organize,
first expressed in Section 7 (a) of the National Industrial Recovery
Act and later in the Wagner Act. Roosevelt did little specifically
for the doubly oppressed and persecuted Negro people, save to
establish in 1941, as a war measure, the Fair Employment Practic-
es Committee. Lynching and the Jim Crow system raged virtually
unchecked throughout his entire regime, with his Democratic
Party mainly responsible.
In his economics Roosevelt followed the general Keynesian
principles then taking hold. It was in this period that John
Maynard Keynes, noted British economist (with whom Roosevelt
was in direct touch), came forward with his writings to the effect
that mass unemployment under capitalism could be averted or
even cured by stimulated government investment in industry
(pump-priming).13 Both Roosevelt and Hitler applied the Keynes-
ian theories, but differently, Roosevelt using public works as his
chief pump-priming method, and Hitler employing the sinister
job-making expedient, now so well known in all the capitalist
countries, of munitions production and war preparations.

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 FASCISM AND THE NEW DEAL
Roosevelt also carried his New Deal program into the realm of
foreign policy. In Latin America, with his imperialist “Good
Neighbor” policy, he softened some of the crass barbarities of
American imperialist practices in this area. He also looked for-
ward to peaceful co-existence with the U.S.S.R., diplomatically
“recognizing” that country after 16 years of American refusal to do
so. He also favored world peace; when he grasped the significance
of the fascist world offensive he took his place with the other
western capitalist democracies and began to prepare systemati-
cally for war.
Roosevelt was a liberal capitalist, a millionaire, and his poli-
cies worked out in the long run to the great benefit of monopoly
capital. His New Deal reforms, which were all kept strictly within
the framework of the capitalist system, no doubt prevented the
militant working class from pushing through more drastic re-
forms and organizing a broad labor party. This was their basic
purpose. Roosevelt’s Keynesian ideology also sowed a dangerous
reformism among the workers (at the cost of Marxism) which
they have not yet overcome. But it could not cure mass unem-
ployment – at the outbreak of World War II there being still some
seven to ten million unemployed. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor pol-
icy in Latin America also turned out to be highly profitable in an
imperialist sense. Under his regime, too, the monopolists made
more progress in consolidation, and they reaped bigger profits
than ever before. In World War II, Roosevelt also never lost sight
of the basic interests of American imperialism.
At the outset, Roosevelt had the support of the great bulk of
monopoly capital. Undoubtedly, most of the big business men
thought that his regime would lead towards fascism. There were
many signs of this, Roosevelt’s famous National Industrial Recov-
ery Act being patterned on Mussolini’s corporate state and pre-
pared by the United States Chamber of Commerce. But by 1935
most of finance capital had broken with the liberal Roosevelt. The
monopolists especially resented his favoring the organization of
trade unions, an attitude which contributed considerably to the
unionization of the great open shop basic industries. Henceforth,
the Wall Streeters became rabid enemies of Roosevelt, and they
launched a bitter, fascist-minded opposition against him. His re-
election in 1936, 1940, and 1944 was the work primarily of the
great democratic masses of the American people.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
In the beginning, especially while Roosevelt’s policies had
strong fascist overtones and Wall Street backing, the Communist
Party took a definite stand against him and devoted its chief ef-
forts to building up the current trade union organization and
strike movements. In 1936, however, as well as thereafter, the
party gave Roosevelt strong, although critical, support.

388
43. Growing Struggle Against Fascism and
War (1933-1935)
Hitler’s big victory in Germany greatly spurred fascism eve-
rywhere; the violent fascist general offensive acquiring vastly
more momentum. Japan stepped up its invasion of North China;
Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935; and during the same year Hitler
grabbed the Saar, scrapped the Versailles treaty, demanded union
with Austria, and the cession to Germany of part of Czechoslo-
vakia, and he feverishly set about rebuilding the German army.
Germany and Japan quit the League of Nations early in 1934, and
Italy soon followed. In the various countries the fascists initiated
drives for power, which by the time of the outbreak of World War
II, were destined to make them masters, together with Germany,
Japan, and Italy, of Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia,
Hungary, Albania, Ethiopia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Spain, Turkey,
Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Esthonia. The fascist
powers were driving for world mastery.
For this great growth of fascism, the Social-Democracy bore a
heavy responsibility. Without the aid of Social-Democracy the
employers would have been basically crushed and socialism es-
tablished all over middle and eastern Europe. The Social-
Democrats definitely defeated the socialist revolution in Germa-
ny, Italy, Austria, and Hungary in 1918-19. Then with their pro-
gram of cooperation with the bourgeoisie against the Com-
munists, they were responsible, during the next years, while fas-
cism was rapidly growing, for the general strengthening of reac-
tion. They were to blame, with these treacherous policies, for the
deadly split in the ranks of the working class. Their general policy
of the “lesser evil” carried them inevitably to the support of pro-
fascist candidates – in Austria they even backed one group of fas-
cists against another. All over middle and eastern Europe the So-
cial-Democrats openly collaborated with fascist parties and gov-
ernments, notably in Germany, Italy, and Austria, when they
freely accepted the terrorist fascist governments as legal and legit-
imate and proposed to work with them.
In the face of the arrogant and widespread fascist aggression,
the capitalist powers of the West were already demonstrating the
“appeasement” policies that were finally to be so disastrous to

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
themselves and the world. This was because these “democratic”
governments, being themselves permeated with a fascist spirit,
hoped to direct against the Soviet Union the military storm which
Hitler and his allies were so obviously preparing. In this reaction-
ary spirit, the League of Nations refused to take any real steps to
halt Japan’s invasion of China and Italy’s armed attack upon
Ethiopia, and it backed up, step-by-step, before Hitler’s systemat-
ic aggressions in Europe. The failure of the League as a peace or-
ganization was complete.
In this critical situation, with the world confronted with the
grave danger of fascist enslavement, the Second International was
impotent. It was demoralized by its catastrophic defeat in Germa-
ny, not only from the loss of the big German Social-Democracy,
which had been wiped out, but also from the fact that its central
policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie had suffered ship-
wreck. Its affiliated parties were quarreling as to what had caused
the German debacle, while its leaders toyed with the opportunis-
tic de Man Belgian plan of transforming capitalism painlessly into
socialism. The general result was that, as in the revolutionary pe-
riod following the first world war, responsibility for the interna-
tional leadership of the workers devolved squarely upon the
Communists, and they proved competent for the historic task.
In this great crisis for humanity the Soviet Union stepped
forward into the international arena. In May 1934 Maxim Litvi-
nov, Soviet delegate to the Disarmament Conference, proposed
that that body be turned into a Permanent Peace Conference to
enforce world peace.1 He declared that “Peace is indivisible.”
Joining the League of Nations in September 1934 of the same
year, after the fascist powers had quit it, with Litvinov as its
League spokesman, the U.S.S.R. began its great struggle to pre-
vent a world war by organizing the western capitalist democracies
into its proposed international anti-fascist peace front. To this
end it also began to make non-aggression pacts with the respec-
tive powers – starting with France and Czechoslovakia in 1935.
Had the U.S.S.R. been hearkened to, World War II could have
been prevented and fascism easily strangled, for it was still rela-
tively weak. President Roosevelt extended to the Soviet Union full
diplomatic recognition November 17, 1933, but he gave no active
support to its plan for an international anti-fascist peace front.
In full realization of the grave danger to peace and democracy

390
 STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM AND WAR
inherent in the fascist offensive, the Comintern also repeatedly
made united-front proposals to the Second International (L.S.I.)
for joint action against it. The R.I.L.U. made similar offers to the
Amsterdam International. Thus, in October 1934 the C.I. pro-
posed to the L.S.I. a general united front in defense of the embat-
tled workers in Spain,2 and in September 1935 it called for a unit-
ed front to fight against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia.3 The
Y.C.I. followed a similar united-front policy. But under one pre-
text or another, the L.S.I. and the I.F.T.U. rejected all the united-
front proposals of the C.I., Y.C.I. and R.I.L.U., even as, at the
time, the capitalist governments, whose main policies the Social-
Democrats always reflected, were rejecting the proposals of the
Soviet Union in the League of Nations for a great anti-fascist
world peace front. Meanwhile, in many countries, the workers in
the spirit of the Communist fighting policies, were developing
resolute struggles against the aggressive fascists, who were seek-
ing to conquer their countries and to wipe out the labor move-
ment.
THE REVOLUTIONARY CHINESE STRUGGLE
Simultaneously with the Hitler success in Germany, the Japa-
nese militarists speeded up their intervention in China. In March
1933 they captured Jehol in North China, and in March 1934 they
set up their puppet emperor Henry Pu Yi in Manchuria. They then
claimed hegemony over all of China, and they repudiated the
Washington naval treaty of 1922. In June 1935 China surrendered
Peking and Tientsin to Japan.
Characteristically, the Japanese Socialist Party had long since
given its blessing to this brazen imperialist raid upon China. In
1931 Akamatsu, its renegade secretary, said: “Intervention in
Manchuria is not imperialist, because even in a socialist Japan it
would be necessary to wage war for raw materials required by our
industry.”4 In November 1938, a Socialist Party manifesto, cele-
brating the success of the Japanese imperialist invaders in China,
declared: “We humbly offer three banzai for the Emperor and
thank our officers and men for their hardship and toil.”5 On the
other hand, the Japanese Communists, although facing an iron
repression, heroically fought against the war.
Chiang Kai-shek, after his treacherous break with the Chinese
Communist Party in 1927 (see chapter 39), kept up a murderous
391
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
war of extermination against the Communists. Nor did the inva-
sion of China by the Japanese imperialists deter him from this
madness. Like the Social-Democrats, Chiang could see an enemy
only on the left. He did less than nothing to mobilize the Chinese
people to repel the Japanese fascist pirates who were rapidly
overrunning their country.
The Communist Party, however, by precept and example, was
striving to organize the Chinese masses to fight the Japanese in-
vaders. The party stimulated the fierce defense of Shanghai, in
which the splendid fighting qualities of the Chinese soldiers
amazed the world. In 1932 the Communist-led Soviets began war
on Japan, and in 1933 they unavailingly offered Chiang a united
front to fight the common enemy.6 During this general period
Chiang directed no less than six major offensives against the Chi-
nese Red Army, all of which were beaten back. Chu Teh was the
main Red Army commander, and in 1935 his close co-worker,
Mao Tse-tung, became general secretary of the Communist Party.
Late in 1934 the Red Army, in order to improve its adverse
strategical position, decided to move from Kiangsi province to the
northwest areas of China. Thus began the famous “Long March”
of 20,000 li, or some 3,000 miles,7 which lasted from October
1934, to October 1935. For length, hardships, and general military
and political significance, this march far outdid any of the famous
marches of history. At the conclusion of the march, the Red Army
numbered about 30,000 and they had some 700,000 of Kuomin-
tang troops, modern-equipped, to fight.8 On the march the troops
averaged 24 miles a day, and once they covered 85 miles in 24
hours. They crossed 18 mountain ranges and 24 rivers,9 and
throughout they were harried by vastly superior numbers of
Kuomintang troops. The Red Army soldiers averaged 19 years of
age, and many of them were young women. In the Red Army the
Young Communist League was a vital force. The victorious arrival
of the Red Army in Shensi province was soon to mark the begin-
ning of dramatic political and military events of the greatest even-
tual significance to China and the entire world, as we shall see.
THE FASCIST DEFEAT IN FRANCE
On February 6, 1934, fascist reaction in France, deeming the
time ripe to establish a French Hitler, delivered a violent demon-
stration at the Chamber of Deputies against the “Left bloc” gov-

392
 STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM AND WAR
ernment, headed by Daladier. The core of the attempted over-
throw was the Croix de Feu (Fiery Cross), headed by Colonel de la
Roque, who claimed to have 300,000 armed followers. The gov-
ernment made no effort to suppress the attempted fascist insur-
rection, but numerous Mobile Guards, contrary to their officers’
orders, spontaneously fired upon the fascist demonstrators.10
Next day the Daladier government, in obvious connivance with
the reactionaries, resigned from office, despite its substantial ma-
jority in Parliament. It was succeeded by the ultra-conservative
Doumergue government.
The French working class, following the general political lead
of the Communist Party, delivered a smashing counter-offensive
against this fascist attack. Despite the government’s banning of all
demonstrations (a prohibition which caused the Social-
Democrats tamely to cancel their demonstration on the 8th), the
C.P. organized a militant monster anti-fascist outpouring on Feb-
ruary 9, during which ten workers were killed. Over 40,000
troops and police vainly tried to break up this demonstration.
Simultaneously, the Communist Party and the left-led Unity
Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.U.) urged a general strike. Under
this great mass pressure, the Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.)
called the strike, which the C.G.T.U. joined. The result was a gen-
eral 24-hour tie-up by 4,500,000 workers. The reluctant reform-
ist leaders did manage however, partially to sabotage the strike by
such maneuvers as restricting it on the railroads to a “one-
minute” strike.
These great events profoundly stirred the French working
class, and the C.P., Y.C.L., and other left organizations spared no
efforts to arouse the masses. The anti-fascist unity movement
came to a tremendous expression on July 14 (Bastille Day) when
half a million workers demonstrated in Paris (also with big turn-
outs elsewhere) with the leaders of the Communist, Socialist, and
Radical-Socialist parties at the head of the giant march.
These tremendous demonstrations, carried out in the name of
the Communist united-front policy and with Communist revolu-
tionary spirit, gave French fascism a major setback. By the same
token, the Paris demonstration greatly inspired the working class,
not only in France, but all over Europe. The Communist Party, 26
times since 1923, had proposed the united front to the French So-
cialist Party, and each time had been rebuffed. It was not until
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
July 15, 1934, the day after the great demonstration, that the
Blum-Zyromski S.P. leadership, under tremendous mass pres-
sure, finally agreed to such united action.11 In fact the united front
from below had already been largely achieved, and the S.P. lead-
ers had little choice in the matter.
The Communist Party, in October 1934, initiating the famous
slogan of the “People’s Front,” proposed a general pact of all
French working-class and sympathizing organizations, to repel
and defeat the fascists. (At this very time, the Second Internation-
al leaders were refusing the proposal of the Comintern for a unit-
ed front in support of the embattled workers in Spain.) Reluctant-
ly, the French S.P. agreed to joint action. In formulating the pro-
gram of the People’s Front, the Socialists, with pseudo-radicalism,
wanted to base it upon an extensive socialization of industry; but
the Communists made it clear that the People’s Front program, if
it was to attract the broad masses, would have to consist of only
the most elementary demands of the people in their efforts to halt
fascism and war. It was this realistic Leninist approach, devel-
oped especially by the outstanding French Communist leader,
Maurice Thorez, that gave the People’s Front in France its tre-
mendous mass appeal. Characteristically, all through this historic
struggle, the Trotskyites, with their pretenses of super-revolution,
condemned and fought the People’s Front as an abandonment of
Marxist principles.
The Communist Party not only initiated the People’s Front
cooperation of the broad toiling masses, it also moved for the uni-
fication of the organized forces of the working class itself. The
C.P. raised the question of establishing one party of the working
class, but no headway could be made on this.12 Proposals to unify
the trade unions, however, which the C.P. and the C.G.T.U. had
been insisting upon for years, had better success. As usual, the
Jouhaux Social-Democratic leaders were resistant, but the
C.G.T.U. began to fuse its own unions at the bottom, with those of
the C.G.T., so that when the C.G.T. unity congress was finally as-
sembled at Toulouse in March 1936, the unification process was
already well under way. At this congress, the trade union split,
which had begun in December 1921, was healed13.
By these dramatic developments, it was made clear that un-
like the German Social-Democrats, the French labor movement,
following general Communist policy, was not going to submit

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tamely to fascist enslavement. Because of correct leadership, the
Communist Party tripled its membership within one year, the
Young Communist League increased by five-fold, and the party
daily, Humanite, gained 50,000 new readers. The Amsterdam
committee against fascism and war, headed by Romain Rolland of
France, which played a big part in the struggle, also greatly in-
creased its membership and prestige.
ARMED STRUGGLE IN AUSTRIA
The most important of the many struggles of the European
workers against the Fascist offensive in the years immediately
following Hitler’s victory in Germany took place in Austria in Feb-
ruary 1934. In that country, lying between fascist Italy on one side
and fascist Germany on the other, and largely dominated in its
politics by the Vatican, the fascist movement, divided into Italian
and Nazi groups, was strong and arrogant. Hence, on March 7,
1933, Premier Dollfuss, a fascist and head of the Christian Demo-
cratic Party, suddenly dissolved the parliament and declared that
he would rule henceforth by decree. The Social-Democratic Party,
powerfully organized, with 600,000 members in a population of
6,000,000, refused to fight. It had previously declared that it
would take up armed struggle only “if a fascist constitution were
proclaimed without consulting Parliament, if the Vienna munici-
pal administration were superseded, if the party were suppressed,
or if the trade unions were suppressed.”14 This was the famous
“defensive violence” theory of the Austro-Marxists, Bauer,
Deutsches, Renner, and company. But they never applied it, even
when Dollfuss violated all its conditions. These men, former cen-
trist leaders of the Two-and-a-half International, while following
the basic Social-Democratic line of the Second International of
collaboration with the bourgeoisie, were noted for the heavy ve-
neer of revolutionary phrases with which they applied this treach-
erous policy.
Following the 1933 Social-Democratic surrender, things steadi-
ly deteriorated economically and politically in Austria. Encouraged
by the Social-Democratic weakness and timidity, Dollfuss proceed-
ed from one political attack to another. And all the while Bauer and
his colleagues made the most desperate efforts to cooperate with
the developing fascist regime. Finally, they got to such a point of
concessions where they were willing to go along on the basis of the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
party barely being allowed to exist. As Bauer later admitted, "We
left nothing undone. For a Socialist Party we had offered extraordi-
nary concessions. We said that... we would give our consent to a
law that would authorize the government to govern for two years
without parliament, by the use of emergency decrees.”15
This was Germany all over again, with the Social-Democracy,
despite its Marxist phrasemaking, following its policies of the
“lesser evil” and of alliance with the bourgeoisie right into fas-
cism. Dollfuss, like Hitler, no longer had any direct use for the
Social-Democracy, even upon the degrading terms offered him.
By February 12, 1934, he had suspended the Parliament and out-
lawed the Social-Democratic Party, the Workers’ Defense Corps,
and the trade unions.16
Even under this violent assault, Bauer and Co. called upon the
workers not to resist. They still hoped for an agreement with the
fascist dictator, Dollfuss. The workers, however, who had taken
seriously their leaders’ radical phrases, launched into a general
strike and an armed insurrection, neither of which was called offi-
cially by the party. The Social-Democratic union leaders refused
to declare a general strike, and they even kept the powerful rail-
road union at work hauling government troops back and forth
during the struggle. Manuilsky said: “It was not the working class
that rose in armed rebellion, but only a small section of the work-
ers, the Schutzbund (Workers Defense Corps).”17
The fight centered in Vienna, particularly in the big Karl Marx
apartment buildings. After an heroic four days’ battle, in which
the government used their heaviest artillery, the workers were
beaten, with ferocious reprisals. During the uprising, the Com-
munist Party had a militant and courageous policy, but it was not
strong enough to win the decisive leadership of the working class.
Thus fascism came to Austria. Even Bauer himself admitted
later that fascism could have been defeated had the party fought
at the outset, in March 1933. ‘‘At that time,” said he, “we might
have won. But we shrank dismayed from the battle.”18 Austria was
another disastrous defeat for the workers, due to the treachery of
Social- Democracy.
ARMED UPRISING IN SPAIN
In the early thirties, with desperate economic conditions pre-
vailing and an arrogant fascist movement growing, Spain was in a

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 STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM AND WAR
developing revolutionary situation. In 1933 there were twice as
many strikes as in 1931. The Communist Party, attuned to the sit-
uation, proposed a united front to the Socialist Party for the 1933
elections. This was cynically rejected, with the result that the S.P.
lost one-third of its seats in Parliament (from 115 to 70) while the
C.P. gained 300,000 votes.
In October 1934 the situation burst into a general strike, cen-
tering among the Asturian coal miners. It quickly became an
armed uprising, mainly in the Asturias, Catalonia, Madrid, and
the Basque provinces. The C.P. again proposed a united front to
the S.P. and the Anarcho-syndicalists, but again was refused by
the top leaders. The result was confusion in the leadership of the
uprising, to the great detriment of the whole movement.
The Asturian coal miners, among whom Communist and left
Socialist influence was strong, seized political control in their ar-
ea. They set up a Soviet in Oviedo, and by sheer heroism managed
to retain power for 15 days, in the face of assaults from vastly
stronger government troops. The revolt was stamped out in a
general butchery. Some 30,000 workers were arrested, many
were executed, and numerous others given ferocious jail sentenc-
es. In the workers’ brave struggle the Young Communist League,
as usual, specially distinguished itself. It was a serious defeat for
the Spanish working class, but, as the sequel showed, one from
which the workers were to make a swift and militant recovery.19
DIMITROV AT LEIPZIG
A great event during these crucial years of anti-fascist struggle
was the trial of George Dimitrov at Leipzig, September 24-
December 16, 1933. The Nazis, to stir up anti-red hysteria and to
win the national elections, burned the Reichstag on February 27.
On March 9 they arrested Dimitrov, Popov, and Tanev (Bulgari-
ans); Torgler (German); and Van der Lubbe (Dutch), and charged
them with the crime. Hitler planned to make the trial a great tri-
umph for Nazism, but Dimitrov completely wrecked his plans.20
George Dimitrov (1882-1949) was born in Bulgaria of a revo-
lutionary workers’ family. A printer and a rebel from earliest boy-
hood, Dimitrov, with a record of imprisonment for labor activi-
ties, played important parts in the Bulgarian Socialist Party and
trade unions, and he became a devoted worker in the Comintern
and Profintern.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Dimitrov’s trial in Leipzig attracted world-wide attention, es-
pecially when the defendant began his bold defiance of the Nazi
Hitler court and his courageous defense of Communism. Mana-
cled in court and subjected to fascist intimidation in jail, Dimitrov
displayed a fearless revolutionary spirit. This was all the more
outstanding in view of the cowardly attitude of Torgler, erstwhile
German Communist leader, who dissociated himself from
Dimitrov’s Bolshevik conduct.
Hitler put Goering and Goebbels on the witness stand, to try
to overwhelm Dimitrov, but this failed completely. Dimitrov, a
first class Marxist, as well as a lion of a fighter, exposed the pair
as perjurers. He won the support of world democratic opinion,
and smashed the Nazi case completely. As a result the Nazis had
to acquit all the defendants, except Van der Lubbe, who, although
a tool of theirs, and a government witness, was beheaded.
Threatening reprisals against him, the Nazis kept Dimitrov in
jail until February 1934, when as a result of the pressure of world
opinion and of direct Soviet intervention, he was released. He
went to the U.S.S.R., and a few months before the seventh con-
gress, in 1935, was elected general secretary of the Communist
International. Bukharin, who had become general secretary after
the defeat of Zinoviev in December 1926, resigned in 1929, as a
result of his opposition to the line of the Comintern and the Rus-
sian Communist Party. Molotov then formally became the head of
the C.I., but between 1929 and 1935 its actual leadership was car-
ried on by a secretariat of three – D. Z. Manuilsky, Otto Kuusinen,
and O. Piatnitsky. Dimitrov remained general secretary from 1935
until the Comintern was dissolved in 1943.

398
44. The People’s Front: Seventh Congress
The Seventh World Congress of the Communist International
took place in Moscow during July 25-August 20, 1935. There were
510 delegates (371 with votes) from 65 Communist parties. The
congress met in a situation of a rapidly developing fascist-war of-
fensive on both the world and national scales. The entire work of
the congress was concentrated upon the building of national and
international programs with which to check and defeat this tre-
mendous fascist threat to the freedom and well-being of humani-
ty. These general programs took the shape of a development of
the policies of the international peace front and the national unit-
ed front against fascism and war, the outlines of which the
E.C.C.I. had already established in its practical work. The main
congress report was developed by Dimitrov. Stalin took a promi-
nent part in the preparation and work of the congress.1
WHAT FASCISM IS
In view of the widespread confusion as to just what fascism
signified, particularly with regard to the false liberal-Social-
Democratic interpretation that it was a revolt of the middle class,
Dimitrov paid considerable attention to the question of definition.
He reiterated the famous analysis of the thirteenth E.C.C.I. meet-
ing (chapter 42), that “fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of
the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist ele-
ments of finance capital.” This placed the responsibility for this
murderous movement where it belonged, and where the workers
could understand it, in the offices of the monopolist bankers and
capitalists of the world.
“Fascism is not super-class government, nor a government of
the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capi-
tal. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organi-
zation of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the
revolutionary sections of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In for-
eign policy, fascism is jingoism in its crudest form, fomenting bes-
tial hatred of other nations.”2 Fascism is not an evidence of the
growing strength of capitalism, but of its developing weakness. It
is an expression of the decay of the capitalist system. “The fascist
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is a ferocious power, but an unsta-
ble one.”3 Fascism is not inevitable. “The German working class
399
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
could have prevented it. But in order to do so, it should have
achieved a united anti-fascist proletarian front.”4
“The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succes-
sion of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution
of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie – bour-
geois democracy – by another form – open terrorist dictator-
ship.”5 The policy of the Social-Democrats leads to the victory of
fascism, and they bear basic historical responsibility for the estab-
lishment of fascism in Germany and other countries.
Fascism takes on various forms in the different countries, in
accordance with national peculiarities. The most savage type is
that in Germany. Fascism wins mass support by a pretended de-
fense of the people’s immediate interests. “Fascism aims at the
most unbridled exploitation of the masses.... Fascism delivers up
the people to be devoured by the most corrupt and venal ele-
ments.... Fascism acts in the interests of the extreme imperialists,
but it presents itself to the masses in the guise of champion of an
ill-treated nation, and appeals to outraged national sentiments.”6
THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE FRONT
The congress gave active support to the international aspect
of the united-front struggle against fascism and war, that is, to the
efforts of the Soviet Union to build a great world peace front
against the arrogant fascist war alliance. The resolution on the
progress of socialism in the U.S.S.R. (reporter Manuilsky) thus
stated the peace role of the land of socialism: “With the victory of
socialism, the U.S.S.R. has become a great political, economic,
and cultural force which influences world policy. It has become
the center of attraction and the rallying point for all peoples,
countries, and even governments which are interested in the
preservation of international peace. It has become the stronghold
of the toilers of all countries against the menace of war. It has be-
come a mighty weapon for consolidating the toilers of the whole
world against world reaction.”7
The line of the congress envisaged an active anti-war struggle
of all countries, particularly with regard to the building up of a
great alliance of the peace-loving states to hold in check and de-
feat the rapidly growing international war drive. This internation-
al policy, had it been accepted by the western democracies, would
have averted World War II, and brought about the speedy down-

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 THE PEOPLE’S FRONT
fall of Hitler and Mussolini.
The congress worked upon the assumption that the world’s
peoples had the power to prevent the war if they would act to-
gether. Lenin had correctly said that while imperialism lasts war
is inevitable; but this did not mean that this (or any other particu-
lar war) was inevitable and that nothing could be done but take a
passive, fatalistic attitude towards it. On the contrary, the Com-
munist forces of the world fought with all their power to prevent
the war that was brewing.
The resolution on the war danger (reporter Togliatti) stated
that the Comintern, in its fight against the war, was basing itself
upon the famous Lenin-Luxemburg paragraph in the resolution of
the Stuttgart 1907 congress of the Second International, as fol-
lows: “If, nevertheless, war breaks out it is their duty to work for
its speedy termination and to strive with all their might to utilize
the economic and political crisis produced by the war to rouse the
political consciousness of the masses of the people and thereby
hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.”8
The congress, while pointing out that “The main contradiction
in the camp of the imperialists is the Anglo-American antago-
nism,” placed the major responsibility upon the German fascists
for the current war danger. They were “the chief instigators of
war,” and were striving “for the hegemony of German imperialism
in Europe.” They were organizing “a war of revenge against
France, dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, annexation of Aus-
tria, destruction of the independence of the Baltic states, which
they are striving to convert into a base for attack on the Soviet
Union, and the wresting of the Soviet Ukraine from the U.S.S.R.”
They are aiming at “a world war for a new repartition of the
world.”9
THE PEOPLE’S ANTI-FASCIST UNITED FRONT
The congress devoted most of its attention to the development
of people’s front movements in the respective capitalist countries,
as the foundation of the whole struggle of these peoples against
fascism and war. Dimitrov showed that on the basis of a resolute
fight for the immediate needs of the broad masses, particularly
against the threat of fascism, a broad movement, including sec-
tions of the peasantry and the city middle classes, could be built
under the leadership of the working class. This movement, how-
401
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ever, could not be constructed around an immediate fight for the
dictatorship of the proletariat, because these masses were ideo-
logically not yet ready for such a struggle.
The core of the people’s front must be the united front of the
working class – that is, “to establish unity of action of the workers
in every factory, in every district, in every region, in every country
all over the world. Unity of action of the proletariat on a national
and international scale is the mighty weapon which renders the
working class capable not only of successful defense but also of
successful counter-attack against fascism, against the class ene-
my.”10 This policy required the setting up of collaboration agree-
ments with workers and organizations of various types – parties,
trade unions, cooperatives, youth, women, Communists, Social-
ists, Anarcho-syndicalists, Catholics, etc. Even workers in fascist
organizations had to be contacted.
Upon the basis of working class political unity, the anti-fascist
people’s front is to be organized. Says Dimitrov, “The success of
the whole struggle of the proletariat is closely bound up with es-
tablishing a fighting alliance between the proletariat on the one
hand, and the toiling peasantry and basic mass of the urban petty
bourgeoisie, who together form the majority of the population,
even in industrially developed countries, on the other.”11 The two
processes, building the proletarian united front and the people’s
anti-fascist front, should go ahead simultaneously, there being no
arbitrary barrier between them.
The perspective of mobilizing such enormous masses of peo-
ple, the majority in every country, inevitably raised the question
of the possibility of creating people’s front governments. The con-
gress met this issue. Dimitrov referred to the fact that previous
congresses had dealt with this question, the fourth congress, in
1922 (Chapter 38) having foreseen five possible types of united-
front governments.
The people’s front government, based on the various types of
workers’ and other organizations, would come into existence, be-
fore, not after, the abolition of capitalism. It would come into
power only in a period of political crisis, “when the ruling classes
are no longer able to cope with the powerful rise of the mass anti-
fascist movement.” It should be based on “a definite anti-fascist
program.” It must not be merely a parliamentary arrangement
with the Social-Democrats, but a real mass movement. It must

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 THE PEOPLE’S FRONT
have a program of class struggle, not of class collaboration, and it
“should carry out definite and fundamental revolutionary de-
mands. For instance, control of production, control of the banks,
disbanding of the police and its replacement by an armed work-
ers’ militia, etc.” It was necessary to prepare for the Socialist revo-
lution and Soviets. It would be an approach to the proletarian dic-
tatorship, not a “transitional phase between the bourgeois and
proletarian dictatorship.” The people’s front government was a
probable, but not an inevitable development. Whether or not the
Communists would actually participate in such a people’s front
government would depend upon specific circumstances.
Dimitrov stressed the need of the Communist parties to
maintain their political identity and not to lose themselves in such
broad movements by opportunistically tailing after the masses – a
warning which the later experience of the parties proved to be a
very timely one. He sharply criticized the mistakes of the Brandler
leadership in the united-front government of Saxony and
Thuringia in 1923. It was a “right opportunist Workers’
Government in action.” It was correct for the Communists to
enter the government, but they should have used their position to
arm the proletariat, to requisition the houses of the rich to furnish
homes for the workers, and to organize the workers’ mass
movement. But they did nothing of all this. “They behaved in
general like ordinary parliamentary ministers ‘within the
framework of bourgeois democracy.’ "12
THE UNIFICATION OF LABOR’S FORCES
The organic unity of the working class was essential for carry-
ing out the people’s front program with the maximum success;
hence, the seventh congress laid out policies for the eventual con-
solidation of the organizations of the working class – trade un-
ions, parties, and youth. For the achievement of these goals, stress
was laid upon cooperation with new left currents developing in
the Socialist parties.
The seventh congress resolution declared “for one trade union
in each industry; for one federation of trade unions in each coun-
try; for one international federation of trade unions organized
according to industries; for one international of trade unions
based on the class struggle.” Where the R.I.L.U. unions were
small, they should singly join up with the other unions; where
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
they were large they should negotiate for amalgamation upon an
equal basis. The Communists should fight for trade union unity
“on the basis of the class struggle and trade union democracy.”13
Fusion of the parties and the youth organizations was more
complex. The congress set down five general conditions for such
organic unity: including a complete rupture with the bourgeoisie,
a unity of action that should precede organic unity, recognition of
“the necessity of the revolutionary overthrow of the rule of the
bourgeoisie and the establishment of the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat in the form of Soviets... rejection of support of one’s bour-
geoisie in imperialist war, and that the united party be based on
the principles of democratic centralism.”14 The unity program did
not demand affiliation to the Communist International.
Commenting on this unity program, Manuilsky said later:
“We are often asked why we are now laying down five conditions
for unity instead of twenty-one, as we did at the Second Congress
of the Communist International. We are doing that because the
five conditions of the Seventh Congress essentially cover the
twenty-one conditions of the Second Congress; because the
Communist International is not now in danger of being swamped
by Centrism; because the working class has not only passed
through the post-war experience of the policy of right-wing Ger-
man Social-Democracy, but also of (‘Left’) Austrian Social-
Democracy; because there is not yet an ‘influx’ of Social-
Democratic leaders into the Communist International, what we
have as yet is a stream of Social-Democratic workers towards
Communism; because our five conditions wholly correspond to
the thoughts and sentiments of these workers.”15
The seventh congress made a review of the parties’ forces.
Most of the parties, except in the fascist countries, showed a sub-
stantial growth, and all efforts were put forth to increase Com-
munist penetration of the fascist organizations. Manuilsky said,
“There is hardly a single (open) party in the Communist Interna-
tional which has not doubled or trebled its membership during
the past two years.”16 The parties in China, France, Poland, Japan,
Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere all registered substantial gains,
and the same was generally true of the Young Communist
Leagues. Pieck reported that, “only 22 of the 67 sections of the
Communist International in the capitalist countries, and only 11
in Europe, are able to work legally or semi-legally. Forty-five sec-

404
 THE PEOPLE’S FRONT
tions, 15 of them in Europe, are obliged to work under conditions
of strict illegality and under a gruesome terror.”17
Especially, Communist progress was to be noted in the colo-
nial and semi-colonial countries. In China the Communist Party
had become the real leader of the people, and in Indochina, India,
the Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, Malaya, Egypt, Syria, Palestine,
firm Communist parties were established and they were fighting
for leadership in the various national liberation movements. All
these countries were moving towards a new round of revolutions.
The congress honored its numberless martyrs in the colonial
countries and throughout the rest of the far-flung class struggle.
THE NEW TACTICAL ORIENTATION
Dimitrov said, “Ours has been a congress of a new tactical ori-
entation of the Communist International.” Obviously, this was the
case. “The tactics of a political party,” added Manuilsky, “are not
the spectacles of a musty keeper of the archives, who never takes
them off, even when he goes to bed. Tactics, which are the sum
total of the methods and means of struggle of a political party, are
precisely intended to be changed if changed circumstances re-
quire it.”18 The development of the fascist offensive had drastical-
ly altered the world situation; therefore, the Comintern, with true
Leninist flexibility, had changed its tactics accordingly, and in
some respects, also its strategy. This tactical re-orientation, how-
ever, did not imply the repudiation of the former tactical line of
the Comintern, but the logical development of it, particularly of
its established policy of the united front.
The new political line of the Comintern had vast implications.
On the international field it projected nothing short of the organi-
zation of a great peace alliance between the U.S.S.R. and many
capitalist states. As it turned out, in World War II, the U.S.S.R.
actually became the political leader of this anti-fascist alliance in
the vital military struggle. All this, of course, was quite new in
Communist practical policy. The people’s front, in its application
in the individual countries, also meant for the Communists a
broad new policy of developing an unprecedented alliance of the
working class, the peasantry, and large sections of the urban mid-
dle classes. The clear implication in such a wide combination,
comprising the majority of a given people, was that the Com-
munists, henceforth, must speak not only in the name of the
405
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
working class, but of the entire nation.
The people’s front policy also bore many other important im-
plications. It meant that the Communists would work for the
creation of democratic governments within the framework of cap-
italism; governments very probably to be regularly elected under
bourgeois democracy and with Communist participation in them.
Experience was to show that the people’s front policy, clearly
worked out at the seventh congress, was, a decade later, to result
in the development of new forms of the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat (People’s Democracies). Also, with capitalism greatly weak-
ened, and world socialism and the organizations of the working
class vastly strengthened, there was now the possibility, in given
cases, of a relatively peaceful establishment of socialism. This
possibility was based on the ability of the powerful democratic
forces of the people to beat back every effort of the bourgeoisie at
counter-revolution.
The Comintern policy also projected new unity relationships
towards the Social-Democrats, Anarcho-syndicalists, Catholics,
and other non-Communist segments of the working class and the
labor movement. The application of the people’s front policy
made imperative the need for labor unity, industrial and political,
and it also created far more favorable conditions for the achieve-
ment of such unity. The Comintern rose fully to these new needs,
responsibilities, and opportunities.
To equip the Communist parties to apply the people’s front
policy, the seventh congress carried on a two-front fight against
political and ideological deviations. It warned sharply against the
right dangers that sprang up in applying the new broad policy,
citing numerous examples from Communist and Social-
Democratic experience. It also fired sharply into the many “left-
ist” moods, errors and shortcomings that had crept into the work
of most of the Communist parties, especially since the sixth con-
gress of the Comintern.19 Obviously, a very sharp break had to be
made with sectarianism in all its forms if the Comintern and its
affiliated parties were to lead or to play a vital role in the great
mass movements contemplated by the people’s front and interna-
tional peace front policy.
The seventh congress was the last congress ever held by the
Communist International, and it was also one of the C.I.’s great-
est. At this historic gathering the Comintern forces gave real lead-

406
 THE PEOPLE’S FRONT
ership to the harassed peoples of the world, who faced the immi-
nent danger of fascist butchery or enslavement. The people’s front
policy developed at the seventh Comintern congress was, during
the next decade, to have the most profound consequences upon
the political fate of the peoples of the world.

407
45. The People’s Front in Action
(1935-1939)
During the four years between the seventh congress and the
outbreak of World War II the workers in many countries waged
bitter struggles against the rising tide of fascism and the threat of
war. These fights were mostly fought along the principles and in-
spiration of the people’s front and under the general leadership of
the Comintern. The Second International (L.S.I. and Y.S.I.) re-
mained deaf to appeals of the Comintern and the Y.C.I. for a unit-
ed front against the encroaching fascist-war menace. Most of the
people’s front movements of the period, therefore, were primarily
on the basis of the united front from below.
Manuilsky thus pictures the situation: “The Executive Com-
mittee of the Communist International has proposed uniting for
action ten times in the past five years. What reply did we get from
the reactionary leaders of the Socialist International? They re-
plied that international united action required the preliminary
formation of a united front in the various countries. When the
sections of the Comintern approached the various Social-
Democratic parties, the leaders of these parties replied that it was
first necessary to reach agreement on an international scale.”1
One of the most important things accomplished during these
years was the securing of a certain measure of trade union unity.*
This was done, not in agreement between the Amsterdam Inter-
national and the R.I.L.U., but simply by the latter advising its un-
ion affiliates to make such unity arrangements as they could with
the Socialist-dominated unions. Consequently, with its unions in
the capitalist countries gradually coalescing with Amsterdam un-
ions, the R.I.L.U., after 1935, progressively liquidated itself. It was
dissolved by the end of 1937.2 The Russian unions, however,
20,000,000 strong, remained independent, Amsterdam fearing
their affiliation.
THE NATIONAL ANTI-IMPERIALIST FRONT IN CHINA
The seventh Comintern congress had paid close attention to

* In Czechoslovakia, for example, the trade unions were badly split

on political, national, religious, and craft lines.
408
 THE PEOPLE’S FRONT IN ACTION
the application of the people’s front among the oppressed peo-
ples. Its resolution reads: “In the colonial and semi-colonial coun-
tries, the most important task facing the Communists consists in
working to establish an anti-imperialist people’s front. For this
purpose it is necessary to draw the widest masses into the nation-
al liberation movement against growing exploitation, against cru-
el enslavement, for the driving out of the imperialists, for the in-
dependence of the country; to take an active part in the mass anti-
imperialist movements headed by the national reformists and
strive to bring about joint action with the national-revolutionary
and national-reformist organizations on the basis of a definite
anti-imperialist platform.”3
Dovetailing with Lenin’s famous thesis of the second C.I. con-
gress, this political policy had vital consequences in the colonial
and semi-colonial countries, notably in China. Shortly after the
victorious end of the Long March in Shensi (see Chapter 43) in
May 1936, the Communist Party of China, now headed by Mao
Tse-tung and representing the will of the workers, peasants, and
city middle classes, proposed to Chiang Kai-shek the formation of
a broad national front to resist the Japanese invaders. But
Chiang, the representative of the warlords, big bankers, and pro-
imperialist bourgeoisie, contemptuously rejected this, preferring
to fight, not the Japanese, but the Communists.
On December 12, 1936, however, this autocrat came a crop-
per. At Sian, where he was visiting the headquarters of Chiang
Hsueh-liang, Chiang Kai-shek was seized by patriots. While he
was in jail, Chu Teh, the Red Army chief, saw him and wangled
out of him a tentative agreement for a national front,4 whereupon
he was released. Chiang then backed and filled, trying to avoid
forming such a front, but national pressure was too great. On Sep-
tember 23, 1937, he finally had to sign.
The C.P. of China made major concessions in order to secure
this agreement. The party liquidated the Soviets in the broad are-
as which it controlled, changed the name of the Red Army and
subordinated it to the military council of the Kuomintang gov-
ernment, and temporarily suspended the confiscation of big land-
ed estates. The united action movement was to be based on the
carrying out of Sun Yat Sen’s famous “three principles” of nation-
alism, democracy, and the people’s livelihood. Civil war between
the two forces was to be abandoned. Chiang, for his part, agreed
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
to extend democratic rights to the people, to convene a conference
of national salvation of all anti-Japanese groups, and to wage an
aggressive war against Japan.5
This historic agreement marked the end of the civil war of
1927-37 and the beginning of the war of resistance of 1937-45
against Japan. This war, as we shall see, Chiang systematically
sabotaged, especially in its later phases. All through the war he
saw the Communists as the chief enemy.
The building of the national anti-imperialist front aroused
burning enthusiasm among the Chinese masses. It marked the
Communist Party as the true leader of the nation and showed
Mao Tse-tung as the major Communist leader. It was a stupen-
dous demonstration of the soundness of the people’s front policy
of the seventh congress of the Comintern. It prevented China
from being completely overrun by the Japanese, and it set into
motion a whole chain of forces and events that led straight to the
ultimate victory of the great Chinese Revolution. In neighboring
Japan, despite many proposals by the Communists, the Social-
Democrats rejected an anti-war people’s front.
THE FRENCH PEOPLE’S FRONT GOVERNMENT
The decisions of the seventh Comintern congress also greatly
stimulated the general struggle in France, the home of the peo-
ple’s front. The workers were in a high state of militancy from
their victory over fascism in February 1934 and from their grow-
ing successes against the employers. At the March 1936 congress
of the C.G.T. in Toulouse formal unity was established between
that organization and the C.G.T.U. This further raised the fighting
spirit of the workers.
In the national elections of April 26, 1936, the People’s Front
groupings participated as a bloc. The result was a striking victory
for them. The coalition, based upon the Communist, Socialist, and
Radical parties, won 380 seats, a majority in the National Assem-
bly. The number of Communist seats went up from 10 to 73, and
the Socialists from 101 to 148. The Communist Party doubled its
1932 vote, while the Radicals lost 450,000 votes. The result was
that Leon Blum, Socialist, became Premier of France. The Com-
munist Party did not actually become part of this People’s Front
government (of a sort), but gave it active support, with necessary
criticism.

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 THE PEOPLE’S FRONT IN ACTION
Meanwhile, the workers had launched into a wide series of
sit-down strikes, a tactic used by the Italian workers in 1920. The
bosses had to yield, and the general consequence was the estab-
lishment of union recognition, the 40-hour week, wage increases,
holidays with pay, etc. Thorez relates that, “When the delegates of
the C.G.T. called upon Blum in 1936 in his office in the Hotel
Matignon, he said to them, ‘Good, I shall support these proposed
laws in October.’ Frachon [Communist trade union leader] re-
plied: ‘They must be adopted by Parliament immediately within
forty-eight hours.’ And that is what happened under pressure of
the masses.”6 The government also nationalized the munitions
industry and took the Bank of France under control. During these
struggles the C.G.T. membership jumped from 1,000,000 to
5,000,000 within a year.
Leon Blum (1872-1950), who became the leader of the French
Socialist Party in 1923 upon the death of Marcel Sembat, was a
typical Second International intellectual. A lawyer, he was the son
of a wealthy business man. In the party he was a right-winger, a
revisionist, an imperialist warmonger, a Munichite, and an invet-
erate enemy of the Soviet Union. He was a petty-bourgeois re-
formist, and there was nothing socialist in his makeup. Blum thus
typically reassured the French employers that he would do them
no harm: “I am not Kerensky; after I go Lenin will not assume the
heritage.”7
Under Blum’s leadership the People’s Front government was
soon run into the ground. In February 1937 Blum ordered a
“pause” in the workers’ demands – to “catch our breath” and to
“digest” the reforms of the People’s Front. His policies of devalua-
tion of the franc, and of making concession after concession to the
employers, cut the foundations from beneath the great movement
which had elected him. Blum disgraced the People’s Front alto-
gether by initiating the notorious “non-intervention” policy to-
wards the Spanish civil war. In July 1937 he quit as Premier, even
without a vote of the Chamber prevailing against him. He was
succeeded by the notorious Edward Daladier, head of the Radical-
Socialist Party. In 1938, Blum also had a term of 28 days.
During this people’s front movement the French Communist
Party was led by Maurice Thorez (1900- ), ably seconded by
Jacques Duclos. Thorez, the son of a coal miner and active in the
labor movement since his youth, was elected to the Central Com-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
mittee in 1924 and became general secretary in 1929. By the end
of 1936 the Communist Party’s membership increased to
254,000, “ten times as much as a few years ago,” and the youth
organization, in two years, jumped from 3,000 to 89,000 mem-
bers. The Socialist Party and its youth group also made a substan-
tial growth.8 In the great people’s front struggle the Communist
Party stood forth as the true national leader of the people. One of
its greatest achievements during the whole movement was the
strong bonds it established with the great masses of Catholic
workers with its policy of “the outstretched hand,” a development
full of significance for the future.
THE PEOPLE’S FRONT IN THE AMERICAS
One of the central objectives of the Hitler-Mussolini-Hirohito
fascist axis was to establish control over the vast areas of Latin
America. The peoples there, half-starved and barbarously op-
pressed, could have been ready victims for the fascist demagogues
and their local allies. But the fascists’ aims were frustrated, chiefly
by the powerful anti-fascist, pro-people’s front movements that
played such an important role in these countries during the mid-
dle and later 1930’s. In this broad movement the various Com-
munist parties were the moving spirits.
Among the more important of such movements were the Peo-
ple’s Front in Chile in 1938, which elected President Cerda. In
Brazil the National Liberation Alliance, a united front of the
Communist and Socialist parties, trade unions, peasant organiza-
tions, student bodies, etc., in 1936 conducted a bitter struggle
against the pro-fascist Vargas government. In Argentina, in 1936,
there was also a strong people’s front movement; and from 1933
on the Communist Party of Cuba led a broad, people’s front
movement. The Mexican Revolution, during 1933-40, took a big
spurt ahead under people’s front stimulus, and similar move-
ments displayed themselves in Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua,
Uruguay, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. The general
effect was to block everywhere, except in Argentina, the attempts
of the fascist axis forces to seize these countries. The leaders were
such Communists as Prestes, Codovilla, Roca, Gomez, Viera, etc. 9
The movement superseded the plans of the Social-Democrat Haya
de la Torre, who, especially in Peru and Bolivia, was attempting,
with his Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (A.P.R.A.),

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 THE PEOPLE’S FRONT IN ACTION
to build an “American Marxism,” in which not the proletariat, but
the petty bourgeoisie should play the leading role.10 He is now a
supporter of American imperialism.
The greatest achievement of the whole broad Latin American
united-front movement of those years was the building of the Lat-
in American Confederation of Labor (C.T.A.L.), headed by Vicente
Lombardo Toledano. The C.T.A.L. was organized in Mexico City
in September 1938. It drew into its ranks nearly all the labor un-
ions throughout Latin America and gave a tremendous impetus to
union-building. John L. Lewis was present at its founding con-
gress. During the war the C.T.A.L. reached a membership of some
4,000,000 and was far and away the biggest and best labor feder-
ation ever created in Latin America.
North of the Rio Grande, in the United States, the broad pop-
ular movement of these years, of which Roosevelt was the leading
figure, also had in it pronounced elements of the people’s front
(see chapter 42). It contained in its ranks the great bulk of the
working class, the Negro people, the poorer farmers, and the city
middle classes. A striking feature was the powerful youth move-
ment. The American Youth Congress, among whose leaders was
Gil Green, in the late thirties had about five million affiliates.11
The entire broad mass people’s movement was animated by a
strong anti-fascist, anti-war spirit. The movement, however, was
headed by the liberal bourgeoisie, of whom Roosevelt was the
chief spokesman. The conservative trade union leadership never
discovered enough initiative even to insist upon a coalition status
with Roosevelt, much less to gather the great mass forces, then
politically on foot, into a labor-farmer party. The seventh
Comintern congress stated that such a party would be an Ameri-
can form of the people’s front. The broad mass New Deal move-
ment, however, blocked fascism in the United States.
In the United States and Canada the Communist-led trade un-
ions amalgamated themselves, willy nilly, chiefly with the A.F. of
L. unions. The Trade Union Unity League of the United States,
with some 100,000 members, merged with the A.F. of L. unions
in 1935. In the great organization campaigns of the C.I.O., begin-
ning shortly afterward, the Communists took a very active part
and were admittedly a major factor in the unionization of the
basic, trustified industries.12 The biographer of John L. Lewis
says: “The fact is that the Communist Party made a major contri-
413
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
bution in the organization of the unorganized for the C.I.O.”13
PEOPLE’S FRONT AND CIVIL WAR IN SPAIN
Recovering quickly from the bitter defeat of 1934 (see chapter
43), the Spanish working class in 1935, under Communist stimu-
lus, organized a strong people’s front movement. Making it up
were the Socialist and Communist parties, the General Workers
Union, the Syndicalist organization of Pestana, the Anarchist Na-
tional Confederation of Labor, the petty-bourgeois Republican
Party of Manuel Azana, the Catalonian Party of Escer, the Repub-
lican League of Barrio, the Basque Nationalists, and millions of
party-less peasants.14 The People’s Front thus covered the great
mass of the Spanish people. On February 16, 1936, in the national
elections, the People’s Front administered a sharp defeat to the
reactionary forces led by Gil Robles, winning 253 seats in the Cor-
tes (112 of them for the S.P. and C.P.) against 153 for the right and
65 for the center.15
Although the People’s Front had a majority in the parliament,
the fascist opposition was powerful, controlling the army officers,
the banks, the industries, and large sections of the government
apparatus, and had the all-out support of the Catholic Church.
The Communist Party warned of the grave danger of a fascist re-
volt, and urged necessary measures to smash reaction, especially
by purging the army and the police. But the Azana government
would have none of such drastic measures. Its leaders said,
“Leave the army alone, no politics in the army.”
On July 17 the revolt began in Morocco, led by Franco, Mola,
and other fascist generals. By vigorous action, the counter-
revolution could have been crushed at the start, but the Azana
government and the Social-Democrats vacillated, and the Franco
movement spread. Azana was removed from his post on Septem-
ber 4, and the left Socialist Largo Caballero was installed as Prem-
ier. Two Communists became members of his government. Fran-
tic efforts were begun to create a Republican army and to halt the
advancing fascist forces.
Meanwhile, Hitler and Mussolini, from the outset, poured
men and munitions into Spain to aid Franco. This presented a
basic challenge to the anti-fascists of all countries. With the world
steadily moving towards a great conflict, evidently the winning of
the civil war in Spain by the democratic forces was of fundamen-

414
 THE PEOPLE’S FRONT IN ACTION
tal importance to the whole struggle against fascism and war.
The Communists clearly understood this and reacted accord-
ingly. The Soviet Union proceeded to send airplanes, guns, food,
and military advisors to help the embattled Republican forces,
and in the League of Nations it fought for recognition of the full
belligerent rights of the Spanish Republic. The Comintern pro-
posed to the Second International that a world united front be
established in behalf of Republican Spain. Negotiations were
held, but nothing came of them. The Communist parties all over
Europe and America called upon the workers to volunteer to fight
in Spain.
The International Brigades, thus raised, consisted not only of
Communists, but of left Socialists and other fighters. They
amounted to some 30,000 to 40,000 men. There were contin-
gents from France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria,
Britain, Canada, and the United States. They became a vital sec-
tion of the Republican Army. Even the hostile Borkenau admits
that they prevented an early fall of Madrid.16 They suffered terri-
ble casualties, about 50 percent of them never getting back to
their native lands.
The Second International, as usual, failed to take a fighting
working-class stand for Spain. Although it made declarations fa-
voring the Spanish Republic and demanding that it be accorded
all diplomatic rights, nevertheless its leaders and parties proceed-
ed to sabotage these statements. Blum, the head of the French
People’s Front government, adopted a policy of “neutrality,” of
“non-intervention,” which denied the Spanish Republic the right
to buy arms in France. This became the policy of all the bourgeois
democratic governments. Consequently, while the Franco coun-
ter-revolutionists had a big foreign source of munitions supply,
the Republic was embargoed by its supposed friends. This was a
fatal blow. Social-Democrats in the various West European gov-
ernments went right along with this treacherous appeasement
policy.
Under these hard circumstances, lacking guns, tanks, and
planes, heavily outnumbered by the enemy forces, crippled by
hunger and sickness, and subject to serious internal disruption
from the Trotskyites and Anarchists, the Spanish Republican ar-
my made an heroic but losing fight. The battles of Madrid, Guada-
lajara, Jarama, Teruel, the Ebro, and many others, wrote the
415
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
names of the brave Republican fighters forever in proletarian rev-
olutionary history. But the odds were too great, and after almost
three years of a struggle that inspired the proletarian, anti-fascist
world, Madrid fell on March 28, 1939, and the bitterly fought war
was over. In an orgy of revenge and bestiality, the victorious fas-
cists jailed and slaughtered tens of thousands of their prisoners.
The capitalist governments, including Roosevelt’s, hastened to
recognize the Franco regime.
The Spanish People’s Front had serious internal weaknesses,
and these contributed to the defeat. There were such paralyzing
right elements as Azana and Prieto to contend with, but worse yet
were the “left” Socialists like Caballero, the Anarchists and
Anarcho-syndicalists, and especially the Trotskyites, whose leader
was Andres Nin of the Workers Party of Marxist Unity
(P.O.U.M.). These elements pretended to transform the struggle
into a proletarian revolution, as they confusedly described it;
whereas, as the Communists contended, if the People’s Front was
to avoid a complete break-up and demoralization in the face of
the enemy, it had to continue to base itself upon the elementary
task of beating the fascists. All through the war the “ultra-left”
elements were a constant source of indiscipline, confusion, and
treachery. In March 1937 they tried to create a revolt in Barcelo-
na. Their ranks were permeated with Franco spies and provoca-
teurs. Caballero was ousted in May 1937, as an incompetent and
disrupter, and he was replaced by Juan Negrin, Socialist.
During the war there was much real cooperation established
between the Communists and the Socialists, as against the indis-
cipline and confusion of the Anarchists and Trotskyites. In Cata-
lonia the two parties consolidated, and the Communists pro-
posed, without success, however, that one united party be formed
throughout Spain. The two national youth organizations were, in
fact, amalgamated into the United Socialist Youth; but this body
was later expelled from the Socialist international youth organiza-
tion, unity with the Communists being against the policy of the
Second International.
The real leadership in the Spanish civil war, that which made
of it one of the most glorious struggles in world labor history,
came from the Communists. They alone understood the real role
of a people’s front movement, and it was they, too, who possessed
the requisite organizing ability and resolute fighting spirit. The

416
 THE PEOPLE’S FRONT IN ACTION
two outstanding leaders of the party were Jose Diaz, general sec-
retary, and Dolores Ibarruri (Pasionaria), the famous Asturian
revolutionary fighter.
The splendid fight of the Spanish People’s Front was a great
inspiration to the anti-fascist forces all over the world. But the
loss of the war was a heavy defeat. It exposed again the treacher-
ous appeasement policies of the western bourgeois democracies
and of their faithful ally, the Second International, and it also
stimulated the fascist powers to further aggressions. The defeat of
Republican Spain opened the door for World War II.

417
46. Munich: The Road to War (1935-1939)
Throughout the period between the end of the seventh
Comintern congress in 1935 and the beginning of the second
world war in 1939, the drive of the fascist big powers, Germany,
Japan, and Italy, went ahead at an increasing tempo. The western
capitalist democracies, their bourgeoisies heavily tainted with fas-
cism, instead of checking the dangerous fascist offensive, fed it
with policies of appeasement. The Communist forces, for all their
tireless efforts, could not bring sufficient mass pressure to bear to
stop the aggressive fascists. The U.S.S.R. and the national peo-
ple’s front movements could not line up the western democracies
in a great anti-fascist peace bloc. As for the Second International
parties, which always follow the same basic political policies as
their national bourgeoisie, they tagged along after the respective
capitalist classes through all the windings of their treacherous
appeasement policies.
During the whole period, the capitalist economic system was
stagnant; it did not make the customary recovery after the pro-
found cyclical crisis of 1929-33, but lingered along in what Stalin
called “a depression of a special kind.” In the United States, Great
Britain, France, and other western capitalist countries, huge
masses of workers remained unemployed, the number of jobless
in the United States in these years, despite Roosevelt’s Keynesian
pump-priming, averaging up to 10,000,000. Only in the fascist
countries, because of their feverish war preparations, did the in-
dustries come back again into full production.
THE APPEASEMENT CRIME
Realizing the weakness of the capitalist opposition to their
plans, the fascist powers pushed their aggressions with the ut-
most brazenness. In March 1936 Hitler sent his troops into the
Rhineland. Two months later the Italians captured Addis Ababa,
and the conquest of Ethiopia was completed. On October 24,
1936, Germany and Italy announced a treaty specifically directed
against “communism,” and a month later Japan also signed it; the
notorious “Anti-Comintern Pact” was thus born. Japan continued
its violent irruption into China, and Germany and Italy waged war
against Republican Spain. All during this period Hitler, flouting
the Versailles Treaty, hurriedly built his army. In March 1938 he
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 MUNICH: THE ROAD TO WAR
seized Austria by force, and shortly afterward demanded that
Czechoslovakia cede Sudetenland to Germany. The Vatican gave
its thinly disguised blessing to these fascist depredations.
The non-fascist powers had the physical strength to put a
quick halt to these arrogant aggressions, had they been so dis-
posed. They possessed three times as much population, produced
50 to 100 percent more steel, twice as much electricity, fourteen
times as many automobiles, fifty-five times as much liquid fuel,
nine times as much raw materials for textiles, four times as much
food, and had forty-nine times as great gold reserves.1 But the
bourgeois democratic governments, themselves soaked with fas-
cism, refused to act, instead, making one concession after another
to the insatiable fascist imperialists. The Comintern thus de-
scribed their course of “appeasement”:
“Italian fascism was allowed to attack Ethiopia with impunity.
It not only enslaved Ethiopia, but also hurled itself against Spain.
German fascism was permitted to militarize the Rhineland with-
out hindrance. It made use of this to fall upon Spain. Then it en-
gulfed Austria and crushed Czechoslovakia. The Japanese free-
booters were enabled to seize Manchuria and the Northern prov-
inces of China. With growing insolence, the Japanese militarists
embarked upon a war to enslave the whole of China. Step by step,
the countries of ‘great western democracy’ retreated before the
fascist plunderers. Step by step, the fascist plunderers strength-
ened their positions, increased their aggressions, resorted to new
acts of violence, and at the same time, used all this to draw the
noose tighter around the necks of their own people.”2 Some capi-
talist politicians, such as Churchill, Eden, and Cooper in England,
condemned this folly, and Roosevelt spoke of a “quarantine
against the aggressors” but the United States nonetheless contin-
ued to ship great quantities of scrap iron to Japan.
In the bankrupt League of Nations, the Soviet Union tried to
organize the anti-fascist forces to stop the fascist assaults. It gen-
erally urged that Article 16, the “collective action” clause of the
League Covenant, be applied. During the Ethiopian war, it fought
for the enforcement of the League’s tongue-in-cheek sanctions
against Italy; it demanded the abandonment of the disastrous
“non-intervention” policy towards Republican Spain; it urged a
“collective repulse” of the Japanese invaders in China; it proposed
joint action to halt Hitler’s invasion of Austria; and it took a firm
419
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
stand against Hitler’s demands upon Czechoslovakia. But all this
insistence upon militant struggle fell upon deaf ears. The capital-
ist democratic governments, with their appeasement policies,
were heading irresistibly towards the great debacle of Munich.
THE GROWTH OF SOVIET POWER
Meanwhile, during the past decade, the Soviet Union had
been registering a tremendous growth in its economic and mili-
tary strength and in its internal consolidation – facts which were
soon to have decisive results in the eventual defeat of the world
fascist menace. As we have seen in chapter 41, the first five-year
plan, of 1929-33, had been a tremendous success, vastly increas-
ing the industrial and agricultural output of the U.S.S.R. The se-
cond five-year plan, of 1933-38, fulfilled in four years and three
months, was also a brilliant victory. It raised Soviet industrial
production by 120.6 percent over 1932, and strengthened the
economic system in every respect.3 Since 1913 Russian output had
gone up from 100 to 908 in 1938; whereas that of the United
States, in the same period, had advanced only from 100 to 120.4
The third five-year plan,5 calling for a further industrial produc-
tion increase of 88 percent by 1942, was about three-fourths
completed by June 1941, when the U.S.S.R. became involved in
World War II. The U.S.S.R. had become the most powerful indus-
trial country in Europe. This enormous increase in the industrial
strength of the Soviet Union was to be decisive in the winning of
that great world war.
The spectacular advance of socialism in the U.S.S.R. was fur-
ther dramatized by the adoption in November 1936 of the famous
Stalin Constitution. Under this constitution, among other basic
rights, “All the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed the right to
work, the right to rest and leisure, the right to education, the right
to maintenance in old age and in case of sickness or disability,”
and “Women are accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of
life.” It is far and away the most democratic constitution in the
world.
Vitally important, too, in the increase of Soviet economic-
military-political strength during this pre-war period, was the
complete defeat of the counter-revolutionary Trotsky-Zinoviev-
Bukharin opposition. As we have seen in chapter 39, during 1923-
29 the three groups had been defeated singly and en bloc by the

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 MUNICH: THE ROAD TO WAR
party majority led by Stalin. And defeated with them was their
basic contention that socialism could not be built in one country.
The succeeding years completely confirmed this defeat by the
tremendous socialist successes in the U.S.S.R.
But the defeated opposition leaders refused to accept the par-
ty decision. Surreptitiously, they carried on factional work. In
their desperation and degeneration they engaged in sabotage,
wrecking of industry, and assassination, finally even becoming
agents of Nazi Germany and Japan. Trotsky, who had been ex-
pelled from the Soviet Union in 1929, organized abroad the
“Fourth International” in 1933, which was composed of skeleton
groups in many countries. Among its other counter-revolutionary
activities, it openly advocated the violent overthrow of the Rus-
sian Communist Party leadership and of the Soviet government.
In Spain, China, and elsewhere, Trotskyites were proved to be po-
lice spies.6
The Russian opposition conspiracies and treasons came to a
head in the assassination on December 1, 1934, in Leningrad of S.
M. Kirov, a prominent party leader. This brutal murder led to ex-
tensive investigations, which exposed the wide extent and desper-
ation of the Trotsky-Zinoviev-Bukharin-Tukhachevsky intrigues.
The proven objectives of these elements in their reckless bid for
power were, “to assist foreign military intervention, to prepare the
way for the defeat of the Red Army, to bring about the dismem-
berment of the U.S.S.R., to hand over the Soviet Maritime Region
to the Japanese, Soviet Byelorussia to the Poles, and the Soviet
Ukraine to the Germans, to destroy the gains of the workers and
collective farmers, and to restore capitalist slavery in the
U.S.S.R.”7 These shocking revelations, which were proved to the
hilt, led to several large trials in 1936-37, and to the execution of
Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Tukhachevsky, Rykov, Krestinsky,
Smirnov, Piatakov, and a number of others.8
The elimination of this Nazi-Japanese fifth column in the
U.S.S.R. was a major factor in the winning of World War II. The
Soviet Union had to carry the overwhelming fighting burden of
that war, and if in addition, while fighting for its very life, it had
had also to contend with this internal gang of spies, wreckers, and
counter-revolutionaries, the consequences to the war and to
world civilization might well have been disastrous.

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
THE BETRAYAL AT MUNICH
With the war crisis coming to a boil over Czechoslovakia,
President Roosevelt proposed on September 25, 1938, that Hitler
and the Czechs get together and settle their dispute. Taking ad-
vantage of Roosevelt’s initiative, Hitler called a conference of
Germany, Italy, France, and Great Britain at Munich, with him-
self, Mussolini, Daladier, and Chamberlain in attendance, the
Russians being carefully left out. On September 30, this confer-
ence came forth with an agreement, the substance of which was
the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia to the benefit of Germany.
The capitalist leaders of the world, including Roosevelt, hailed
this criminal sell-out as a great victory for peace. Chamberlain
and Daladier returned home in triumph, loaded with bourgeois
praises for having established “peace in our time.” On October 3
Hitler’s Wehrmacht marched into Sudetenland and grabbed even
more Czech territory. Czechoslovakia was lost. The whole cause of
peace and democracy had received a staggering blow.
The Second International, faithful tool of the world bourgeoi-
sie, also hailed the Munich “peace.” The British Labor Party
shared in the betrayal and characteristically its two party Histo-
ries, of 1946 and 1950, shamefacedly make no mention of Mu-
nich. In France Leon Blum said, “Now we can sleep soundly
again,” and the other French Socialist leaders also accepted Mu-
nich. Vidal says, “Immediately after Chamberlain’s and Daladier’s
conspiracy with Hitler and Mussolini, the Socialist Party of
France declared itself almost unanimously in favor of the fatal
policy of Munich.”9 Only one Socialist voted with the 73 Com-
munists in the French Chamber against it. The Polish and Hun-
garian Socialist parties also shamelessly welcomed Hitler’s an-
nexation of the Sudetenland.10 Only later, the Second Interna-
tional parties, seeing the tragic damage that had been done and
sensing the strong working-class reaction against the Munich
sellout, began to make their customary word (not deed) opposi-
tion to it. In the Far East, the Japanese Socialist Party was ap-
plauding the victories of Japanese imperialism and calling for a
tightening of the Anti-Comintern Pact.11
The Communists in the various countries protested as soon as
the Munich conference was called. Characteristically, in Great
Britain, as Dutt says, “The single voice raised in opposition to that

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 MUNICH: THE ROAD TO WAR
visit was that of William Gallacher, Communist Member of Par-
liament, who shouted, ‘Shame’ and ‘This means war.’ ”12 Com-
munists all over the world took a similar stand against the Mu-
nich treachery. The Communist International, promptly express-
ing this general stand, said: “Czechoslovakia, the last bastion of
democracy in Central Europe, has fallen a victim to an unprece-
dented conspiracy directed by Hitler and Chamberlain against the
freedom and the peace of the nations. The French government
has connived at this conspiracy and committed an act of treachery
unparalleled in history towards the most faithful ally of France.”13
In its manifesto of November 7, 1938, the Comintern categor-
ically condemned the Munich betrayal. While placing the chief
responsibility for the treachery upon the British and French im-
perialists, it pointed out that a united world labor movement
could have defeated them. “This force could have prevented the
Munich agreement, could have rendered impossible the crime
committed against Czechoslovakia and could have driven the un-
bridled fascist robbers far back.” The Comintern proposed in vain
to the Second International the calling of a great world conference
of all workers’ organizations, to organize an international united
front to halt the march of fascism. The manifesto listed ten previ-
ous occasions since 1933 when the Comintern unavailingly pro-
posed international united-front actions with the Second Interna-
tional against advancing fascism. The manifesto also contained a
forecast of Hitler’s war timetable, stating that he would invade the
U.S.S.R. in the autumn of 1941 – it actually took place in June of
that year.14
The basic purpose of the British and French bourgeoisie in
engineering the Munich betrayal was to direct Hitler’s bayonets
away from themselves and against the Soviet Union. Undoubted-
ly, they felt that in the Munich agreement they had finally
achieved their long-desired all-capitalist united front against the
U.S.S.R. – a determination which remains to this day the great
imperialist objective. This explains why, when the Soviet govern-
ment offered, if France agreed, to support Czechoslovakia with
arms – their treaties calling for the defense of that country, it got
no response whatever from the West. Undoubtedly, if the Soviet
Union had gone to war alone against Hitler over Czechoslovakia it
would have had to face not only Germany, but Britain and France
as well, which would have been just what the European imperial-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ists were planning for.
Since the Russian Revolution of November 1917, down to the
present time, the bourgeoisie of the world have dreamed and plot-
ted for an all-out attack against the U.S.S.R. This is the main key
to all their foreign policy. Sometimes this counter-revolutionary
scheming has been active and sometimes passive, but it is always
there. In the period just before World War II the bourgeois hope
for a great capitalist war against the Soviet Union was especially
alive.
As for the Soviet government, it has always followed a reso-
lute peace policy. This was well stated in 1934 by Stalin, and it
remains today the line of the U.S.S.R. Said Stalin: “Our foreign
policy is clear. It is a policy of preserving peace and strengthening
commercial relations with all countries. The U.S.S.R. does not
think of threatening anybody – let alone attacking anybody....
Those who want peace and seek business relations with us will
always have our support. But those who try to attack our country
will receive a crushing repulse to teach them not to poke their pig
snouts into our Soviet garden.”15
THE DRIVE TO WAR
The Munich betrayal, of course, did not satisfy Hitler, but on-
ly whetted his insatiable appetite for more conquests. On March
2, 1939, he marched into Prague, and he was already knee-deep in
demands upon Poland. In August Daladier sought to arrange an-
other Munich at the expense of Poland, but the arrogant Hitler
believed that the time had come for a showdown with the wobbly
capitalist West, and he moved directly towards taking Poland by
force. He rejected Daladier’s proposal. Again, as in the case of
Czechoslovakia, the Soviet government offered, jointly with the
West, to defend Poland by arms. But Great Britain and France,
who were looking in a different direction for allies, would have
none of this, and their fascist puppet, the Polish government, flat-
ly refused the passage of Soviet troops across its territory.
Meanwhile, the Soviet government was bending all efforts to
create the general anti-fascist peace front, which had been its pol-
icy for five years past. Negotiations, presumably to this effect,
went on in Moscow. But Great Britain and France, which were
hoping for a Hitler attack upon the U.S.S.R., wanted no alliance
with that country, which would obligate them to resist such an

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 MUNICH: THE ROAD TO WAR
assault. So they sent minor officials to dabble with the Moscow
conference, and they used every subterfuge to prevent any con-
structive alliance being formed.
After several direct but futile warnings to Britain and France
that it was not going to let them thus play with its most basic na-
tional interests, that “it was not going to pull the chestnuts out of
the fire for them,” the Soviet government entered into negotia-
tions with Germany, and on August 21, 1939, announced the So-
viet-German ten-year non-aggression pact. This pact was in line
with similar treaties that the U.S.S.R. had drawn up with other
neighboring states, France, Czechoslovakia, Mongolia, China, etc.
Great Britain and France, which wanted to keep the U.S.S.R.
under their thumb while they peddled away its fate to Hitler in a
new Munich, cried out that the Soviet-German pact was a betray-
al. Foreign Minister Molotov of the U.S.S.R., however, recited to
them their repeated treacheries against the Soviet Union. He said,
“As the negotiations had shown that the conclusion of a pact of
mutual assistance could not be expected, we could not but explore
other possibilities of insuring peace and eliminating the danger of
war between Germany and the U.S.S.R.”16 Churchill publicly ad-
mitted that the Soviet Union needed the two years of the pact to
prepare for the Nazi invasion which it knew would come.
The oft-repeated charge that the Soviet-German pact helped
Hitler was not true. On this matter, Yakhontoff says: “Its immedi-
ate effect was to crack the fascist bloc. Hitler offended his ally,
Japan. He alienated his secret collaborators, Chamberlain and
Daladier. He lost his financial support among certain bankers.”17
The Soviet-German non-aggression pact has been fully justi-
fied by history. It not only broke up the attempt of the British and
French imperialists to develop an all-out capitalist war against the
U.S.S.R., but it gave that country a breathing space of some 22
months, in which to prepare for the inevitable Nazi attack. During
this period the Soviet Union made tremendous industrial and ar-
mament progress, and this added strength was a very important,
if not a decisive, factor in winning World War II.
Hitler, who had long been developing his war line, marched
against Poland, as he had done against Czechoslovakia and Aus-
tria. Great Britain and France, therefore, declared war on Germa-
ny on September 3, 1939. For all their maneuvering, the British
and French imperialists had succeeded only in getting “the wrong
425
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
kind of a war.” Instead of the Soviet-German war that they had
devoutly hoped and planned for, they found themselves in a war
with Germany. The world had been deceived and betrayed by the
German-French-British-American imperialists into another terri-
ble mass slaughter.

426
47. World War II: The Course of the War
World War II was a product of the general crisis of the world
capitalist system, a devastating explosion of that system’s inner
contradictions, precipitated by the uneven development of the
respective capitalist powers. Concretely, it was a violent imperial-
ist redistribution of the earth. Germany, Japan, and Italy were
mainly responsible for the war, with a large share of the guilt at-
taching also to Great Britain, France, and the United States, be-
cause of their appeasement policies and anti-Soviet line. In the
war there were various clashing elements – the attempts of all the
imperialist powers to destroy the Soviet Union; the efforts of the
two groups of great capitalist states to secure imperialist world
domination, and the resistance of the world democratic masses to
fascist enslavement.
THE IMPERIALIST STAGE OF THE WAR
After the official declaration of war on September 3, 1939,
there set in a period of six months without hostilities, the so-
called “phony war.” Great Britain and France turned not a finger
to help attacked Poland, nor did they move in any way against
Germany. This was because the last thing their reactionary lead-
ers wanted to do was to fight Nazi Germany; their aim was to
transform the “wrong war” into a “right war,” a German-Soviet
war. Meanwhile, on September 5, the United States declared its
“neutrality.” The policy of its ruling class, essentially as in World
War I, was to stand aside from the conflict, to get rich selling mu-
nitions to the western belligerents, and then, when all the fighting
states were weakened by the war, to assert its own decisive power.
Hitler was deaf to the blandishments of the western democra-
cies. He and his Japanese pals were out for world conquest and
they did not want to share the expected loot with British, French,
and American imperialism. Hitler’s schedule, as previously ex-
posed by the Russians, called first for the destruction of the flabby
western powers, then the mobilization of their industries and
man-power, and finally, the grand assault upon the Soviet Union,
with Japan, in the meantime, taking over the Eastern colonial sys-
tems of Britain, Holland, and France. Besides, Hitler was not tak-
ing any chances on a two-front war by assaulting the U.S.S.R.
with an armed Britain and France at his back. So the initial at-
427
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
tack, when Hitler was well ready, was to go against the West. The
fascists’ perspective was entirely unacceptable to British and
French imperialism, which could not accept a position of utter
inferiority to German imperialism in a fascist world. Hence, when
Hitler’s attack upon them came, they had no alternative but to
fight, as they did, in some sort of fashion. Chamberlain represent-
ed the British bourgeoisie, seeking an anti-Soviet bargain with
Hitler; Churchill, who became Prime Minister on May 10, 1940,
represented that bourgeoisie refusing to surrender to Hitler.
These developments – the obvious attempts of British and
French imperialism (with the United States in the background) to
turn Hitler’s guns against the Soviet Union – caused a necessary
shift in Communist policy everywhere. The expectation had been
that if it came to war, the U.S.S.R. would be on the side of the
western democracies, which would have given the war a demo-
cratic content. This had been the sense of Communist policy for
several years past. But the treachery of the western Munichites
had made this course utterly impossible, as we have seen. There-
fore, a policy of non-support had to be adopted. The major ex-
pression of this was the German-Soviet pact of mutual non-
aggression.
In October 1939 the Communist International issued a mani-
festo containing this new policy. It declared: “This war is the con-
tinuation of the many years of imperialist strife in the camp of
capitalism.” It pointed out that England, France, and the United
States held sway over the major economic resources of the world
and that the fascist powers were trying to wrest them away. “Such
is the real meaning of this war, which is an unjust, reactionary,
imperialist war. In this war the blame falls on all the capitalist
governments, and primarily the ruling classes of the belligerent
states. The working class cannot support such a war.” The C.I. put
out as slogans, “No support for the policy of the ruling classes
aimed at continuing and spreading the imperialist slaughter!”
“Demand the immediate cessation of the war!”1 At the same time,
Dimitrov wrote, “It is for the working class to put an end to this
war in its own way, in its own interests, and in the interests of the
entire world of labor, thus creating the conditions for the aboli-
tion of the fundamental causes of imperialist wars.” This revolu-
tionary policy was reiterated in the Comintern May Day manifes-
tos of 1940 and 1941.

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 WORLD WAR II
The Communist parties everywhere in the West followed this
general line, after some hesitation and confusion at the start, as
they reoriented themselves to the new world situation. In China,
where it was a people’s war, the Communist Party was the leader
of the national defense. The western Communist parties demand-
ed the organization of people’s front governments in the respec-
tive countries, the ending of the war, and the establishment of a
democratic peace. The British, French, and other continental
Communist parties demanded radical changes in the govern-
ments as a basis for a successful defense. This new line brought
down upon the heads of the Communists persecutions in the var-
ious capitalist democracies. In France the Party was outlawed, its
parliamentary representatives expelled, 159 party journals sup-
pressed, 317 Communist municipalities dissolved, and large
numbers of party leaders thrown in jail.2 In Japan, the Com-
munist Party, taking an anti-war position, faced barbaric repres-
sion. As for the parties and unions of the Second International, in
accordance with their usual course of taking leadership from the
capitalist class, they obediently followed the policy of their gov-
ernments, Munich, imperialist war, and all.
THE SO VIET-FINNISH WAR
On November 30, 1939, war broke out between fascist Fin-
land and the U.S.S.R. This was caused by systematic Finnish
provocations, by repeated forays across the Soviet border. Lenin-
grad was fully within range of the Finnish heavy fortification
guns. Behind the Finnish depredations were the imperialists of
Great Britain and France, who had long since been using Finland
as an anti-Soviet puppet. They expected that the Finnish War
would provide them with the opportunity to organize their hoped-
for all-out capitalist anti-Soviet war. It was their chance, they
speculated, to turn the “wrong war” against Germany into the
“right war‘” against the U.S.S.R.
During this minor Finnish War a wild anti-Soviet agitation
was carried on in the capitalist democracies; little “Democratic
Finland” became the darling of the capitalist West. Fantastic re-
ports were made regarding imaginary Finnish successes in the
war. President Roosevelt ostentatiously donated $10 million to
Finland. Pro-Finnish “volunteer armies” were raised in Britain,
France, and other countries. The U.S.S.R. was expelled from the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
League of Nations. Open efforts were made to enlist Hitler in the
projected all-capitalist war against the U.S.S.R. The Second In-
ternational parties joined in this anti-Soviet agitation.3
But Hitler had no taste for such a general war. He believed
that Germany, Japan, and Italy would take care of all questions of
world conquest in due season, to the exclusion of British, French,
and American imperialism.
The Red Army ended the Finnish adventure, concluding the
war on March 13, 1940. It had smashed the “impregnable” Man-
nerheim line, thus displaying some of the power that was later to
be fatal to Hitler’s Wehrmacht. The Soviet government worked
out a democratic peace with Finland, and this dangerous inter-
lude passed into history. Later, “democratic” Finland joined Hit-
ler’s side in World War II.
HITLER SMASHES THE WESTERN POWERS
His military preparations completed, and disregarding the in-
gratiating maneuvers of British and French capitalists, in April
1940 Hitler opened his assault against the West by an attack on
Norway. The German Wehrmacht quickly smashed through the
armies of Britain, France, Holland, and Belgium. The fascist-
soaked general staffs and broad officers corps made little re-
sistance; King Leopold of Belgium quit the war outright. By May
28 Hitler had shattered the western armies and driven their rem-
nants into the sea at Dunkirk, France, and had made himself mas-
ter of western Europe. The Communist parties of the West pro-
posed a militant reorganization of the war into a democratic
struggle in defense of their countries, but in vain.
During this period Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, formerly
parts of Russia, first made non-aggression pacts with the U.S.S.R.
and then reaffiliated with her.4 And as the reactionary Polish gov-
ernment fled before Hitler, the Red Army occupied eastern Po-
land up to the so-called Curzon line, territory which the Versailles
Peace Conference had long since declared legitimately Russian.5
With its army destroyed, Great Britain was about to fall, when
the Soviet Union made a sudden move which saved it. The Red
Army occupied the former Russian territory of Bessarabia, then in
the hands of Rumania. This dramatic step forced Hitler at once to
relax his mounting pressure against Great Britain. Mortally afraid
of a two-front war, the Fuehrer was compelled to consolidate

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 WORLD WAR II
himself in the Balkans and to further strengthen his main forces
on the border of the U.S.S.R. Hence, for the next nine months he
was busy conquering Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Greece,
and getting ready to attack the U.S.S.R. Figuring, no doubt, that
after the chore of whipping the Soviet Union was accomplished,
he could easily finish mopping up weakened Great Britain, he
made the fatal mistake, on June 22, 1941, of sending his troops,
170 divisions, across the Soviet borders.6
Meanwhile, in the United States the dominant sections of the
bourgeoisie, fearing the downfall of Great Britain and the rise of a
far more powerful German imperialism, tended more and more
towards active support of the embattled western capitalist pow-
ers. Roosevelt’s slogans were “All Aid Short of War,” and turning
the United States into “The Arsenal of Democracy.” But a very
powerful section of the capitalist class, the most fascized ele-
ments, openly sought to aid Hitler, although looking askance at
the spectacular Japanese victories in Asia. As for the American
people, peace-loving and democratic, while willing to aid Eng-
land, in the vast majority they wanted to keep out of the war.
THE CHANGED CHARACTER OF THE WAR
The entry of the Soviet Union changed fundamentally the
character of the war. This is what made it progressive, democrat-
ic, and anti-fascist. Prior to this time, the war was in the hands of
imperialists, including also western democracies, and was being
directed to further their class interests. Under such circumstanc-
es, the war was not, and could not be, an anti-fascist war. The en-
try of the U.S.S.R. changed all this: it not only conferred upon the
war a definite anti-fascist character, but it also gave the western
democracies their first opportunity to win. Up until that time,
with Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, and Norway virtually
completely knocked out of the war, their chances of victory were
practically nil. The U.S.S.R., which was the real political leader of
the war, gave the war both its democratic content and its possibil-
ity for victory.
From the outset there had been a deep people’s element in the
war, the struggle of the masses against fascist subjugation. This
element finally became dominant, putting the stamp of a just,
people’s war upon World War II, but not until the great demo-
cratic weight of the Soviet Union was thrown into the war scales.
431
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Doubtless it was this process that Stalin had in mind when he
said: “Unlike the first world war, the second world war against the
Axis states from the very outset assumed the character of an anti-
fascist war, a war of liberation, one aim of which was also the res-
toration of democratic liberties. The entry of the Soviet Union in-
to the war against the Axis states could only enhance and indeed
did enhance, the anti-fascist and liberation character of the se-
cond world war.”7 The Second International, of course, did not
recognize the all-importance of the entry of the U.S.S.R., and as
for the Trotskyites, they declared the war to be imperialist
throughout.
No sooner had the Hitler attack upon the U.S.S.R. begun than
Churchill, followed by Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor, accepted the
plan of a war alliance with the Soviet Union, making all due reser-
vations against communism as such. Thus came into existence, in
war form, the general anti-fascist alliance that-the Soviet gov-
ernment had been advocating ever since the middle thirties. The
peace front at that time could have averted the war and checked
fascism in its early stages, but it was, however, cynically rejected.
Only when British, French, and American imperialism had their
backs against the wall, virtually whipped in the war, did they call
upon the Communists to pull them out of their deadly predica-
ment. But the united front was better late than never. The all-out
national and international front against fascism, the line of the
Comintern seventh congress, thus became the general strategy
which won the war, another example of Communist world politi-
cal leadership.
Because of the greater sharpness of the fascist issue presented
by the war, the anti-Axis front at that time, both internationally
and nationally, was broader in scope than the pre-war anti-fascist
front. Thus, on the international scale, it was expressed by the
general anti-fascist alliance finally crystallized in the United Na-
tions, and on the national scale by the united action of all those
classes ready and willing to fight against fascism, including sec-
tions of the bourgeoisie. The national front in the respective coun-
tries ranged from a loose cooperation of these anti-fascist groups
to their joint participation in national governments.
UNFAITHFUL CAPITALIST ALLIES
Although the western capitalist powers officially made an alli-

432
 WORLD WAR II
ance and a joint war front with the U.S.S.R., they never treated
that country as a real ally. Their line was to utilize the U.S.S.R. as
much as they could to smash Germany in the war, but at the same
time to see to it that the Soviet Union was weakened as badly as
possible in the process. Hoover, Truman, and other American re-
actionaries openly said as much at the time. Hoover still boasts of
this shameless treachery.8 Especially after Stalingrad, which
opened up a prospect of victory for the Allies, did this knifing of
the Soviet Union take place. From then on the imperialists espe-
cially had in mind a post-war world run by the Anglo-Americans,
in which Socialist Russia would play only a subordinate role.
These reactionary imperialist considerations stood out like a
mountain in British-American attitudes and war policy towards
the U.S.S.R. Among other things, this was manifested by the con-
cealment of vital much-needed military secrets from the Soviet
Union, among which were radar and certain bomb-sights. Worse
yet, there was the withholding from the Russians of all infor-
mation about the atomic bomb.
Besides, there was the gross discrimination shown in the mat-
ter of lend-lease. All told, the U.S.S.R. was sent only about one-
fourth as much lend-lease materials as Britain got, although the
former did at least ten times more fighting. Reactionaries, for ob-
vious reasons, have grossly exaggerated in general the importance
of American lend-lease supplies to Russia in winning the war. Ac-
tually, the $10-billion worth that was sent – a large portion of
which was sunk en route – amounted to only five percent of the
American total of $210 billion in wartime munitions production.
Besides, as Herbert Hoover said, “she [the U.S.S.R.] had stopped
the Germans even before Lend-Lease had reached her.”9
Gross discrimination against the U.S.S.R. was also shown by
the United States in devoting its main war effort to the defeat of
Japan. Roosevelt insisted time and again that Nazi Germany was
the chief enemy and Europe the main theater of war, but it is nev-
ertheless a fact that, under the pressure of the “Japan first”
crowd, the basic war struggle of the United States was directed
against Japan. The Soviet Union was left to fight and defeat the
main enemy, Germany, virtually alone – save for the help of the
West’s minor military activities, indecisive air-bombing, and in-
adequate lend-lease shipments.
This general situation was emphasized, above all, by the stud-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ied refusal of the United States and Great Britain to open up a
western front in Europe. The U.S.S.R. facing the vast bulk of Hit-
ler’s Wehrmacht and with a great section of its army immobilized
on the Chinese borders, holding Japan at bay, almost desperately
called upon its capitalist “allies” to attack Hitler from the west.
This was the great means needed to win the war swiftly – on May
1, 1942, the Comintern put out the slogan to win the war in
1942.10 But nothing was done by the Anglo-Americans. The west-
ern front was deliberately held up for at least 18 months after it
became possible to launch it. British and American reaction was
definitely responsible for this monstrous crime, which prolonged
the war and cost millions of Russian, American, British, French,
and other lives. Indeed, the western front never was opened until
the Russians, having broken the back of the German Wehrmacht,
were rapidly sweeping ahead and had already entered Poland, a
thousand miles along the way to Berlin. The British and American
imperialists were afraid then that if they did not finally act the
Red Army would occupy all of Europe.
Communists have often charged the western allies with this
treachery, only to meet with indignant denials. But Winston
Churchill has lately proceeded to spill the beans by boasting pub-
licly that in the closing months of the war he issued instructions
to Field Marshal Montgomery, to the effect that in disarming the
Germans he should be prepared to re-arm them, if he deemed it
necessary in order to stop the advancing Red Army.11
The American masses had nothing in common with such
shameful treachery toward our Russian ally. On the contrary, all
through the war they expressed a warm, friendly, and admiring
solidarity with the Soviet people, then carrying through the great-
est military effort in human history. Nor was the liberal Roosevelt
chiefly to blame. Generally he also had a friendly attitude toward
the Russian people, but he was by no means a dictator of Ameri-
can war policy.
THE RUSSIANS SMASH NAZI GERMANY
When Hitler’s armies swept across the Soviet border in June
1941, the bourgeois military experts of the West were unanimous
in prophesying that it would be only a few weeks until Hitler
would crush the U.S.S.R. completely. In fact, Hitler’s “blitz” did
carry him fast and far, to the very gates of Leningrad by Septem-

434
 WORLD WAR II
ber, a city he was never to capture. On October 3, the vainglorious
Hitler blared out to the world that the Soviet Union was crushed
and would never rise again.
But Hitler counted his chickens before they were hatched. He
vastly underestimated the fighting power of the Soviet people,
their Red Army, and their socialist system. The Wehrmacht had
been made to pay a terrible price in its drive across Russia. It was
battered again in its fruitless attempt to take either Moscow or
Leningrad. And in January 1943, its back was broken at Stalin-
grad, the most decisive battle in the history of the world.
Then began, for the Nazis, their terrible 1,500-mile retreat,
with the Red Army slashing them to pieces all the way, while the
United States and Great Britain kept their enormous armies
idling in Britain. For two years the press of the world hailed en-
thusiastically the great victories of the Red Armies (which in these
days of cold war are completely ignored by American war-
mongers), and even the reactionary General MacArthur stated
that, “the hopes of civilization rest upon the worthy banners of the
courageous Red Army.”12 The Communists were wonderful people
while they were saving the world from the criminal follies of the
capitalist system. At long last, on June 6, 1944, after the European
war was basically decided and Hitler licked, the Allies launched
their long-delayed western front, and on April 25, 1945, the Brit-
ish-American and Soviet armies met on the banks of the Elbe, in
Germany. Hitler was indeed kaput.
The war in the Pacific was far more of a coalition war than
that in Europe. The Chinese people, during their many years of
struggle, had done enormous damage to the Japanese war ma-
chine; the great drive of the American navy, army, and air force
was, of course, a disaster to the Japanese armed forces; and the
immobilization of Japan’s Kwantung army all through the war on
the Siberian border, and the final destruction of that army by the
Red Army, was also a major factor in winning the war. On August
14, 1945, Japan unconditionally surrendered. The great world
war, with its 25 million dead and 32 million wounded,* was final-

* Of these casualties, the Russians had 6,115,000 battle deaths and

14,012,000 wounded, or about nine times as many soldier deaths as
Britain and the United States combined.
435
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ly at an end.
During the last days of the Japanese phase of the war a sinis-
ter event took place, of the gravest historical importance. Upon
the express orders of President Truman, atomic bombs were
dropped upon Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9).
This was a monstrous crime, the brutal killing of vast numbers of
non-combatant civilians. The crime was all the more reprehensi-
ble because Japan, already defeated, was at the point of surren-
der. Even more terrible than all this, however, was the notifica-
tion, by the dropping of the bombs, that Wall Street was going to
try to set up its domination of the post-war world on the basis of
this terrible weapon. The bomb was aimed at the Soviet Union
even more than at the Japanese.

436
48. World War II: The Guerilla Forces
Among the most basic factors in winning the second world
war were the guerillas, or semi-irregular armed forces. These
were known variously in Europe and Asia as “the resistance,” as
“partisans,” or simply as “guerillas.” They did much to inspirit the
peoples and to wear down the enemy’s regular troops. They oper-
ated both in occupied and semi-occupied areas.
In November 1870 Engels pointed out the significance and
importance of this type of popular warfare, which was then being
waged by the masses in defeated France against victorious Ger-
many. He remarked that, “From the American War of Independ-
ence to the American Civil War, in Europe as well as in America,
the participation of the population in war has not been the excep-
tion but the rule.” Engels described the savage reprisals made
against guerillas by the Prussians, but he also remarked that, nev-
ertheless, “the English in America, the French under Napoleon in
Spain, the Austrians in 1848 in Italy and Hungary were very soon
compelled to treat popular resistance as perfectly legitimate war-
fare.”1 In World War II, however, the barbaric German, Italian,
and Japanese fascist officers dealt with captured guerillas almost
always as outlaws and bandits.
In no war have guerillas operated upon such a wide, systemat-
ic, and successful basis as in World War II. Their activities ex-
tended from France in the West to China in the East. The guerillas
usually, but not always, worked in organized cooperation with
regular troops. This extensive development of the resistance, gue-
rilla movement indicated the progressive and people’s character
of the war.
Realizing from the outset the fundamental importance of
armed action by the peoples themselves, Stalin, on July 3, 1941,
only eleven days after the German invasion of the U.S.S.R. began,
issued a call for the organization of guerilla forces everywhere. He
said, “In areas occupied by the enemy, guerilla units, mounted and
on foot, must be formed, diversionist groups must be organized to
combat the enemy troops, to foment guerilla warfare everywhere,
to blow up bridges and roads, damage telephone and telegraph
lines, set fire to forests, stores, transports. In the occupied regions
conditions must be made unbearable for the enemy and all his ac-
complices. They must be hounded and annihilated at every step,
437
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
and all their measures frustrated.”2 Eventually, the western bour-
geois military forces also took to cultivating guerilla forces.
Throughout the entire area of the great war the militant gue-
rilla policy, requiring real courage and fortitude, was applied by
the masses of the peoples. In this dangerous work, it is a matter of
historical record that the Communists were nearly everywhere the
fighting leaders. It was a situation that called forth in fullest
measure their natural bravery, strong organization and discipline,
tireless devotion to the cause, and burning hatred of the capitalist
enemy. In organizing the guerilla forces, whether in the cities or
in the country, the wide experience that Communists had with
“underground” political life, in the face of vicious police persecu-
tion, stood them in very good stead.
Generally, the resistance was organized upon a national front
basis, all those willing to fight fascism being eligible. This was one
more application of the basic anti-fascist people’s front tactic
worked out by the seventh congress of the Comintern. Many So-
cial-Democrats and bourgeois elements participated, but charac-
teristically, the general line of their leaders was to dampen down
the militancy of the resistance forces, on the grounds that the
Germans’ savage reprisals would scare off popular support –
which was an illusion. The Communists, on the other hand, were
for a bold fighting policy, without which the whole resistance
movement was almost valueless as a war force, a policy which the
workers and peasant masses supported.
The Comintern and the Communist parties gave a strong lead
to the guerilla movement. Characteristically, the C.I. May Day
manifesto of 1942 declared: “The workers in the Hitler-occupied
countries will affirm their determination to fulfill their proletari-
an and national duty. Every ounce of energy and every bit of skill
will be concentrated by them to disrupt war production and the
transport of military supplies for the malignant foe. By diverse
means, including fires and explosions, they will destroy machin-
ery and equipment working for the invaders.”3 Communist parties
and Communist youth leagues everywhere carried out this policy
vigorously. As for the Second International parties, they mostly
disappeared in the occupied countries. Price says, “On the politi-
cal side, the L.S.I. ceased to function after the collapse of
France.”4
The resistance, or guerilla movement, besides playing a tre-

438
 THE GUERILLA FORCES
mendous role in the military defeat of the fascist Axis powers, also
had much to do with the national revolutions at the end of the war
and with shaping the political situation in the post-war period.
This we shall deal with later.
THE RUSSIAN PARTISANS
The Russian people have a long and rich tradition of guerilla
action by the masses to resist tyrants. During past centuries there
were many peasant uprisings against brutal tsars, and these al-
ways took on the character of guerilla movements. Napoleon, in
his terrible march to and from Moscow in 1812, also got a bitter
and fatal taste of Russian guerillas. And during the revolutionary
civil war of 1918-21, guerilla fighting took place on a wide scale.
Hence, in fighting Hitler’s invasion in 1941, the Soviet people had
many guerilla precedents to guide them.
Stalin’s call for guerilla action and a "scorched earth” policy,
cited above, gave a big impetus all over Europe to such fighting. It
especially stimulated the growth of powerful partisan movements
in the Baltic states and in the Balkans, as well as in the U.S.S.R.
The broad partisan movement in the Soviet Union did not spring
up merely spontaneously. Kournakoff says: “It was organized long
in advance. Everything was prepared – men, women, and young-
sters, their weapons, training, and morale.”5 The guerilla forces
were integrated with the Red Army.
Partisan fighting was also a definite part of Stalin’s great po-
litical-military strategy which won the war and saved the world
from fascism. It was included in the basic “war-in-depth” concept,
which is described by Kournakoff: "We can say that the grand
strategic scheme of the war-in-depth is as follows: the Red Army
fights the war in the front zone; the Guerilla Army spreads it all
over the German rear; the People-in-Arms keep it from spreading
over the Soviet rear.”6
The collective farm system was well-adapted to the develop-
ment of guerilla warfare, each farm becoming a center of patriotic
resistance. The spirit of united action, inherent in the whole Sovi-
et social order, was another strong contributing force to the
mighty guerilla organization. Capitalism could not possibly devel-
op such a solid and rugged defense.
The guerilla bodies, often including regular Red Army de-
tachments which had been cut off from the main forces, actually
439
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
controlled whole stretches of territory behind the German front.
Thus, in 1942 there was such an area of 3,000 square kilometers,
close to Leningrad, “occupied, controlled, and administered” by
guerillas, who sent supplies through the German lines to the be-
leaguered city.7 Similar guerilla-controlled “islands” existed in
many other parts of the country overrun by the Germans.
Guerillas systematically destroyed railroads, roads, bridges,
telegraph and telephone lines, etc. It took whole detachments of
German troops to do repair work, small bodies being wiped out if
they undertook such tasks. Sloan thus pictures how guerillas on
the farms applied the “scorched earth” policy: “The milk-maids
from the collective farm drove their cows through the fields of
growing corn, trampling it down and destroying it. Women cut
the corn with scythes, and tractors were used to crush it into the
ground. A whole beet field was plowed under. Pigs were slaugh-
tered and were hauled over to a nearby Red Army regiment. The
pig-sties, stables, and a cowshed were demolished. The best hors-
es were driven off into the woods for the use of the guerilla fight-
ers, agricultural machinery was smashed, the pond was emptied,
and the local sugar refinery was wrecked.”8
The partisans did an immense amount of damage to the fas-
cist enemy. Minz states that, “In the course of ten months, the
guerillas in the Leningrad area killed nearly 21,000 German pri-
vates and officers and destroyed 117 heavy and light tanks, 25 ar-
mored cars, 91 airplanes, over 100 fuel tanks, and over 2,000 mo-
tor trucks. According to the reports of only 28 units in the Smo-
lensk region, the guerillas killed 15,800 German soldiers, officers,
spies, and traitors, destroyed 27 airplanes, and 34 tanks, and cap-
tured a large quantity of war materiel.”9 It was estimated, too,
that in Byelorussia alone, guerillas killed some 150,000 Ger-
mans.10 Multiply these figures on the many fronts and some idea
may be had of the huge damage done by the guerillas.
The psychological damage caused by guerilla fighters was
hardly less important than their physical destruction. Zachkaroff
says: “Partisans strike such terror into the Nazi hearts that the
enemy is afraid to bivouac for the night within village limits,
spends his nights outside the village, digs in and puts up elaborate
sentry arrangements.”11 A typical letter found on a captured Ger-
man officer reads: “Curse them! I have never experienced any-
thing like it in any way before. I cannot fight against phantoms in

440
 THE GUERILLA FORCES
the forest. As I write this I glance at the setting sun with fear and
trembling. It is better not to think. Night is setting in, and I feel
that out of the darkness shadows are creeping up silently, and icy
horror grips my heart.”12 One of the most famous of the partisan
groups, led by an old man, was called “Grandpa’s Unit.”
“The Germans,” says Minz, “resort to the most ferocious
measures to suppress the guerillas. If they capture a guerilla
fighter in any village, they usually burn the whole village. Often
they take half the inhabitants of a village as hostages and shoot
them in batches. The monstrous reign of terror that rages in the
Soviet districts temporarily occupied by the fascists is unprece-
dented in history.”13 This terror, however, could not break the
iron spirit of the Soviet people, as the wide extent of partisan ac-
tion testified.
Hitler grossly underestimated the strength of all phases of the
Soviet people’s war-in-depth – the unprecedented striking power
of the Red Army, the splendid back-of-the-front organization and
support of the war effort, and the magnificent fighting capacity of
the guerillas. Hitler broke his neck on the solid rock of a social
system which, whether in the field of production, of human free-
dom, or of military action in the field, was incomparably superior
to the rotting capitalist system, of which he was the supremely
characteristic representative.
THE CHINESE GUERILLAS
In no country were the guerillas a more decisive war force
than in People’s China. It was a form of warfare highly adaptable
to the conditions prevailing in that country. Mao Tse-tung says of
it: “What is guerilla warfare? It is, in a backward country, in a big
semi-colonial country, and for a long period of time, the indispen-
sable and therefore the best form of struggle for the people’s
armed forces to overcome the armed enemy and create their own
strongholds.”14 The Chinese people made tremendous use of this
natural weapon, to the dismay of their enemies.
From the time of the treachery of Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, re-
sulting in civil war, the Communist Party was able to keep strong
guerilla forces continuously in the field. In later years these forces
took on immense size and they became a menace that the Japa-
nese invaders and the Chiang reactionaries could not handle. In
1938 Chu Teh, chief military leader of the people’s forces, stated
441
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
that, “There are millions of gallant and hardened Chinese fighters
in the ranks of the guerilla detachments.”15 All through these dec-
ades of bitter warfare, the revolutionary Chinese people, led by
the Communist Party, were able to control large territorial areas
and to keep a regularly organized army in the field. These were
the bases from which the giant guerilla system fanned out. There
were also smaller, but important, anti-Japanese guerilla move-
ments in the Philippines, Burma, Indo-China, Indonesia, and
other Far Eastern countries.
The guerillas were made up chiefly of peasants, and they were
the direct armed expression of the agrarian revolution. There
were also many workers and other elements in these units. Chu
Teh says that, “Chinese people, irrespective of their social stand-
ing, fight in the ranks of the guerilla detachments.” The youth
were of most vital importance in all these heroic formations. In its
guerilla activities, as in so many other phases of the revolution,
the Young Communist League covered itself with glory. Women
and aged men also played very important parts.
The Chinese guerillas were a very important economic and
political as well as a military force. Together with harassing the
enemy, they also helped the local peasants, who were their broth-
ers, friends, and neighbors, to cultivate and harvest the crops;
they worked, too, as effective propagandists, and they took an ac-
tive part in organizing the localities politically. They were general-
ly a great school for the development of revolutionary leadership,
especially among the peasantry.
The guerillas, above all else, were a people’s army. Their
whole effectiveness depended upon their expressing the will of
the broad masses of the people, in China’s case, especially of the
peasantry. The guerilla formations were part of the very structure
of the people’s life. Chen Lin says, “Before billeting their men in
the homes of the local inhabitants, the commanders ask their
consent. If any property is damaged... the owners are compen-
sated in money.... During engagements, the local population help
to transport the wounded and the trophies seized.”16 Such coop-
eration, of the greatest military value, was the very heart of the
guerilla system, and it could not possibly be achieved by foreign
imperialist invaders or national reactionaries.
Far from being scattering groups, the people’s guerillas in
China were well-disciplined and organized. Mao Tse-tung, for ex-

442
 THE GUERILLA FORCES
ample, remarks that, “the guerilla units of the Red Army left be-
hind along the lower Yangtze River were reorganized and named
the New Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army.”17 Out
of these guerilla units were developed regular Red Army for-
mations. Mao thus describes the process in the localities. He calls
for “expanding the people’s armed forces by developing in due
order, first the hsiang Red Guards, then the district Red Guards,
then the county Red Guards, then the local Red Army, and then a
regular Red Army.”18 People’s China was a classical land of gueril-
la action, with these formations growing systematically into a
great, solidly organized revolutionary army.
The regular armies of the Japanese and of Chiang Kai-shek, for
all their far superior military equipment, were unable to cope with
the revolutionary guerillas, who were everywhere behind their
lines. With their high mobility, these forces, arming themselves by
seizing the weapons of the enemy, avoiding major clashes, and
striking unexpectedly at night, did incalculable damage by destroy-
ing small military detachments, wiping out transportation lines,
sabotaging industry, etc. Chu Teh says, “Guerilla war undermines
the fighting spirit of the enemy soldiers; thereby assisting enor-
mously our regular army. In a war of maneuver the guerilla de-
tachments establish the most important conditions for the victory
of the regular army.”19 This was amply demonstrated in China.
During the great Japanese incursion, mainly from 1931 to
1945, these invaders were quite unable to control the broad areas
which they overran with their armies. They managed to hang onto
the railroads and the major population centers, but the vast coun-
try regions were more or less dominated by guerillas. To the Jap-
anese this was a tremendous handicap; it represented a steady
heavy loss of man-power and, even more disastrous, it prevented
the invading armies from living off the country. Chiang, in the
long civil war from 1927 to 1935, had much the same experience. By
the time of the last civil war, however, from 1945 to 1950, the
people’s armies, huge, well-organized and well-armed with
Chiang’s American supplies, were able to capture even the great-
est cities, which they did.
Both Chiang and the Japanese fought the guerillas by extreme
terrorist measures, indiscriminately torturing and executing peas-
ants, and burning their villages. But this frightfulness failed of its
purpose, the revolutionary spirit of the people triumphing over all
443
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
such savage butchery. The enormous spread of the guerilla move-
ment and its decisive importance in the people’s ultimate complete
victory over the Japanese invaders and the Chiang Kai-shek reac-
tionaries, expressed the bravery of countless peasant heroes.
THE PARTISANS IN EASTERN AND MIDDLE EUROPE
In Eastern Europe, where the fighting influence of the Red
Army was particularly strong and the leading role of the Com-
munist parties most developed, the partisan movements were es-
pecially vigorous, extensive, and effective. This included Greece,
Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary,
and the Baltic states. Generally, these movements got under way
very early in the war, and they also became vital forces in the se-
ries of revolutions which accompanied the eventual liberation of
this whole area by the Red Army. They were all actively supported
by the warring Soviet government, and to a lesser extent by the
western capitalist governments.
The resistance movements were formed on a broad national
front basis, with the Communists in every instance giving the lead
in establishing the organizations and in heading the actual
fighting in the field. The Greek resistance movement was typical
in its make-up, including the Agrarian, Socialist, and Communist
parties, the Union of Popular Democracy, the Liberal Youth, the
General Unionist Confederation of Labor, various women’s or-
ganizations, the Pan-Hellenic Organization of Youth, plus a few
Bishops, and even former Monarchists. The Yugoslav organiza-
tion was likewise made up of the Communist, Slovene, Christian-
Socialist, Social Democratic, Peasant, and Croat Peasant parties,
the labor unions, sokols (gymnastic youth groups), and the left
wings of the Serbian Democratic Party and the Serbian Agrarian
Party.20 Wherever there were Trotskyite elements, these played a
disruptive role.
Generally, the programs of the resistance movements were of
the broadest, united-front, anti-fascist character. The Yugoslav
program was typical, proposing: “The liberation of the country
from the occupation forces and the winning of independence and
truly democratic rights and liberties of all the peoples of Yugosla-
via.... All important measures in social life and state organizations
to be decided after the war by representatives truly and freely
elected by the people.... The People’s Liberation movement ac-

444
 THE GUERILLA FORCES
cords full recognition of the national rights to Croatia, Slovenia,
Serbia, as well as the Macedonians and others.”21
The guerilla movements in Eastern Europe did vast damage to
the Axis powers and their Quisling agents. In Bulgaria, for exam-
ple, a police report for the month of June 1944 shows 82 cases of
sabotage and 415 armed attacks by partisan forces.22 In Poland,
Hungary, and Rumania, the guerillas overran large sections of the
country and occupied the attention of many German and Italian
divisions. In Yugoslavia the partisan movement, controlling most
of the country, tied down some 20 German divisions, and the
Greek national movement, which defeated Mussolini’s army and
balked the Wehrmacht, had occupied three-fifths of the country
when the British army entered Greece at the close of the war.
In Czechoslovakia there was much underground activity dur-
ing the war, despite the Nazi terror. This was true also of Austria,
where a broad Freedom Front existed. Even in Germany itself,
there was far more underground anti-Hitler activity carried on
than is generally understood. Allen Dulles, a U.S. government of-
ficial in Europe, reported in 1944: “There exists in Germany a
Communist Central Committee which directs and coordinates
Communist activities in Germany. This Committee has contacts
with the Free Germany Committee in Moscow and receives sup-
port from the Russian government. Its power is greatly enhanced
by the presence of millions of Russian prisoners-of-war and la-
borers.... The drift to the extreme left has assumed stupendous
proportions and steadily gains momentum.”23 In all these coun-
tries, however, right Social-Democratic influence was a strong
deterrent to militant guerilla activity.
THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS IN WESTERN EUROPE
All the countries of Western Europe occupied by fascist forces
had more or less well-developed resistance movements – Norway,
Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Italy, and France. There was
a broad political character to them, and they included Com-
munists, Socialists, Liberals, Catholics, and other groups, espe-
cially the youth. Many opportunist Socialist and bourgeois ele-
ments, with an eye to future political developments, attached
themselves to the resistance movements, and their influence
tended to kill the movement’s militancy. It was generally charac-
teristic that in the actual fighting contingents and in the real gue-
445
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
rilla work the Communists were the leading force. This explains
why the anti-Communist, Borkenau, had to say that in France the
Communists, “finally achieved effective control of most of the mil-
itary forces of the resistance.”24 The allied governments recog-
nized the legitimacy of partisan warfare and they officially en-
couraged it, giving it a certain amount of arms and funds. The
governments-in-exile, located in London, made energetic efforts
to control the resistance movements in their respective countries.
In Italy, for over 20 years, the Communist Party had heroical-
ly fought the fascist regime. During this bitter fight, Antonio
Gramsci, the party’s leader, and many others perished. “Of the
140,000 political prisoners sentenced by Mussolini courts, 85
percent were Communists.”25 The anti-fascist fight was based up-
on close cooperation between the Socialist and Communist par-
ties since their pact of 1934. The struggle was greatly stepped up
with the entry of the U.S.S.R. into World War II. A broad nation-
al, anti-fascist front was established in December, 1942;26 and the
National Committee of Liberation was formed in September,
1943. It comprised the Communist, Socialist, Christian Democrat-
ic, Activist, Liberal, and Labor Democratic parties, and it directed
the expanding underground movement. The Vatican played both
sides: while vigorously supporting the Mussolini regime, it also,
under pressure of the Catholic masses, affiliated its Christian
Democratic Party to the national front.27 In March 1943 the work-
ers in Milan, Turin, and other northern cities, declared a general
strike, which brought out 3,000,000 workers, and on April 24-25
the movement culminated in a general insurrection all over
northern Italy.28 In July of the same year Mussolini was forced to
resign, and on April 28, 1945, at Lake Como, the workers publicly
hanged him and his mistress. In the military defeat of fascist Ita-
ly, the resistance movement was of decisive importance.
In France, with a Communist Party also strong and well-led,
the resistance movement was correspondingly powerful and ag-
gressive. From the outset of the war the underground movement
led strikes (in May 1941, 120,000 miners in the Pas de Calais
struck) and it was active in slowing up and sabotaging the produc-
tion of munitions, and in disrupting all branches of Nazi transpor-
tation and communication. It also paid special attention to dis-
posing of Vichyite traitors. All this activity greatly increased with
the changed character of the war, due to the entry of the Soviet

446
 THE GUERILLA FORCES
Union in June 1941.
The Communists were the initiators of the French resistance
movement. In the grave war crisis they stepped forth as the real
leaders of the French nation. In May 1941 the Communist Party
issued its first call for a national front to fight for national inde-
pendence. In March 1943 thirteen underground groups, including
Communists and De Gaullists, issued a similar call, and in March
1944 there was established the National Council of Resistance
(C.N.R.), which was made up of the Communist, Socialist, Radi-
cal-Socialist, Democratic Alliance, and Republican Federation
parties, the General Confederation of Labor, the Christian labor
unions, various armed partisan groups, and, of course, the youth
organizations. The general program of the C.N.R. proposed “to
deliver our homeland, cooperating closely with the military op-
erations which French and allied armies will undertake.”29
The Communists called for a policy of militant action, for only
this could really injure the Nazis. The De Gaullist and Social-
Democratic leaders, however, who were more interested in con-
trolling politically the resistance movement than in risking their
lives fighting the fascists, played down all militancy, arguing that
it provoked too severe reprisals. Theirs was a wait-and-see policy,
to just organize in expectation that “the day” would arrive some-
time in the vague future. The Nazi reprisals were, indeed, terrible,
the Communist Party alone losing 75,000 in killed during the oc-
cupation. But it was the indomitable spirit of the resistance
movement to carry on in spite of all such terrorism.30
The first open guerilla warfare in France developed in Savoy,
followed soon afterward in the Central Plateau and in the Pyre-
nees. These were the famous “Maquis,” who were organized by
the Francs-Tireurs-Partisans (F.T.P.), led by the Communists. By
the beginning of 1944, there were an estimated 30,000 Maquis in
the field.31 This movement became of vital importance in the en-
tire resistance forces. General Eisenhower declared that the
French resistance movement was worth fifteen divisions of troops
to him, but others said it equalled twice that many. In September
1944 there were 500,000 armed fighters in the resistance.32 The
whole movement, which included large numbers of women, was
oriented towards an anti-fascist overthrow, which is why Watson
could say that in the final clash with the Nazis, “Paris was liberat-
ed mainly by its own resistance forces.”33
447
49. The Role of the Third International
(1919-1943)
On May 22, 1943, the E.C.C.I. made public to the world a
resolution proposing, “To dissolve the Communist International
as the guiding center of the international labor movement, releas-
ing the sections of the Communist International from obligations
ensuing from the constitution and decisions of the congresses of
the Communist International.” The document stated that, “the
Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist Interna-
tional, unable owing to the conditions of world war, to convene a
congress of the Communist International, permits itself to submit
for approval by the sections of the Communist International the
following proposal” (for dissolution). It was signed by the mem-
bers of the E.C.C.I. – Gottwald, Dimitrov, Zhdanov, Kolarov,
Koplenig, Kuusinen, Manuilsky, Marty, Pieck, Thorez, Florin, and
Ercoli, and endorsed by the following representatives of Com-
munist parties: Bianco (Italy), Dolores Ibarruri (Spain), Lehtinen
(Finland), Pauker (Rumania), Rakosi (Hungary). It was adopted
in Moscow, May 15, 1943.1
On June 8, at its final meeting, the Presidium of the Executive
Committee of the Communist International considered the reso-
lutions received from its affiliated sections with regard to the de-
cision of May 15, 1943, proposing the dissolution of the Com-
munist International, and it established:
“That the proposal to dissolve the Communist International
has been approved by the Communist and Workers’ parties of
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada,
Catalonia, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Finland,
France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico,
Poland, Rumania, Soviet Union, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Syria, South Africa, Uruguay, Yugoslavia, and the Young
Communist International (affiliated to the Communist
International as one of its sections).
“That not one of the existing sections of the Communist In-
ternational raised any objections to the proposal of the Presidium.
“In view of the above-mentioned, the Presidium of the Execu-
tive Committee of the Communist International hereby declares:
“1. That the proposal to dissolve the Communist International

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 ROLE OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
has been unanimously approved by all of its existing sections (in-
cluding the most important ones) which were in a position to
make their decision known.
“2. That it considers the Executive Committee of the Com-
munist International, the Presidium and Secretariat of the Execu-
tive Committee, as well as the International Control Commission,
dissolved as of June 10, 1943.
“3. It instructs the committee composed of Dimitroff (chair-
man), M. Ercoli, Dmitri Manuilsky, and Wilhelm Pieck to wind up
the affairs, dissolve the organs, and dispose of the staff and the
property of the Communist International.”
On behalf of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the
Communist International, the decision was signed by G.
Dimitrov, as of June 10, 1943.2
It is to be noted that the dissolution decision also covered the
Young Communist International, its representatives signing the
document for that body as a section of the Comintern.3 The last
issue of the C.I. official journal, The Communist International,
appeared on July 5, 1943.
Communists all over the world realized the necessity of dis-
solving the Comintern; hence there was no opposition to it. They
considered that the suspension of the highly-prized right of inter-
national organization was a real sacrifice that they had to make
for the winning of the great war, and to facilitate the preservation
of peace in the post-war world. Nevertheless, there was much
sadness at the dissolution of their well-beloved international or-
ganization, the bearer of all their best hopes and aspirations.
WHY THE COMINTERN WAS DISSOLVED
The dissolution of the Communist International, in the midst
of the world war, provoked widespread discussion throughout the
world. Generally the opinion of bourgeois journalists and states-
men in the allied countries was that the decision would facilitate
international cooperation to win the war. Many labor leaders be-
lieved, too, that it would contribute to strengthening labor unity.
A sour note was struck by the Nazis, who, with their great stress
upon the “Anti-Comintern Pact,” denounced the whole business
as the work of Roosevelt, a deceit and a maneuver.4 The Trotsky-
ites, who had long since condemned the Communist Internation-
al, nevertheless yelled that its dissolution was a betrayal of world
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
socialism. Many bourgeois elements demanded that the dissolu-
tion of the Comintern be followed by similar action with respect
to the national parties, which the decision in no sense proposed.
Indeed, within a very few months, in the Communist Party of the
United States, the opportunist Browder sought to put this bour-
geois demand into effect by attempting to dissolve that party.
The specific reasons for the dissolution of the Comintern, as
formulated in the original resolution, were that, “long before the
war it had already become increasingly clear that to the extent
that the internal as well as the international situation of individu-
al countries became more complicated, the solution of the prob-
lems of the labor movement of each country through the medium
of some international center would meet with insuperable obsta-
cles;” in short, that “the organizational form as chosen by the
First Congress of the Communist International,” had outlived it-
self, and that "this form even became a hindrance to the further
strengthening of the national workers’ parties.”
In one of his characteristic replies to questions by newspa-
permen, Stalin thus summed up the question for Harold King,
Reuters correspondent:
“The dissolution of the Communist International is proper
because:
“A. It exposes the lie of the Hitlerites to the effect that ‘Mos-
cow’ allegedly intends to intervene in the life of other nations and
to ‘Bolshevize’ them. An end is now being put to this lie.
“B. It exposes the calumny of the adversaries of communism
within the labor movement to the effect that the Communist par-
ties in the various countries are allegedly acting not in the interest
of their people but on orders from the outside. An end is now be-
ing put to this calumny, too.
“C. It facilitates the work of the patriots in the freedom-loving
countries for uniting the progressive forces of their respective
countries, regardless of party or religious faith, into a single camp
of national liberation – for unfolding the struggle against fascism.
“D. It facilitates the work of the patriots of all countries for
uniting all the freedom-loving peoples into a single international
camp for the fight against the menace of world domination by
Hitlerism, thus clearing the way to the future organization of the
companionship of nations based upon their equality.”5
It is significant that the historic decision was taken right at

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 ROLE OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
the most crucial moment of the fight to establish the second front.
This front was very greatly needed for a quick and decisive victo-
ry; but the western reactionaries (who also believed Goebbels’ lies
about the Comintern) were blocking it. Undoubtedly the favorable
impression all over the bourgeois world made by the dissolution
of the Comintern helped very decisively to break this deadly log-
jam. It was only a few months later (in November-December
1943) that there was held the famous Teheran conference, at
which the date for the second front was finally decided.
The growing feeling in Comintern leading circles that the
organization had to be dissolved explains why there was relatively
so little activity by the Comintern during the early war years. The
original proposal for dissolution states that, “The Executive
Committee of the Communist International was guided by these
same considerations when it took note of and approved the
decision of the Communist Party of the United States of America
in November 1940, to leave the ranks of the Communist
International.”*
But the dissolution trend dates back even further than this.
One of the most basic elements tending to render the Comintern
obsolete “in its existing form” was the coming forth actively of the
Soviet Union in the mid-thirties as the world champion of the
peoples. Prior to this time the U.S.S.R. was largely on the defen-
sive, and the Comintern led the world fight. But the burning men-
ace of fascism and war, against which the Soviet Union stepped
forward on the world arena as the basic opponent, gave that coun-
try a world political leadership of the anti-fascist forces. This was
clearly expressed in Manuilsky’s report to the seventh congress
(see chapter 44) when he said that because of the victory of social-
ism in the U.S.S.R. and because of its fight against fascism and
war, “It had become the center of attraction and the rallying point
for all peoples, countries, and even governments which are inter-
ested in the preservation of international peace.” Already there-
fore, on the eve of the seventh congress, at the supreme height of

* This step was made necessary by the passage of the reactionary

Voorhis Act, which virtually outlawed proletarian international
political organization. See Proceedings of Emergency Convention,
C.P., U.S.A., New York, November 16, 1940.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Comintern activity, discussions were had at which it was indicat-
ed that the new, active world role of the Soviet Union, as the great
champion of peace and democracy, tended to render obsolete the
world political leadership of the Communist International.
THE HISTORICAL ROLE OF THE COMINTERN
In estimating the role of the three Internationals, Lenin says:
“The First International laid the foundation of the international
struggle of the proletariat for socialism. The Second International
was the epoch of preparing the ground for the widespread mass
movements in many countries. The Third International has gar-
nered the fruit of the labors of the Second International, casting
off its opportunistic, social chauvinistic, bourgeois and petty-
bourgeois refuse, and has set out to achieve the dictatorship of
the proletariat.”6
The First International, functioning in the revolutionary peri-
od of the capitalist system, laid the basis for the modern labor
movement, both theoretically and organizationally. The Paris
Commune was its great monument. The Second International was
organized at the time of the rapid growth of world capitalism and
imperialism, and it, for the first time, developed the trade unions,
cooperatives, and workers’ parties into mass organizations. It be-
came overwhelmed, however, with opportunism and degenerated
into an instrument of the employers against the working class,
which it remains today. The Third, Communist, International was
the revolutionary organization of the working class, the peasant-
ry, and the oppressed peoples of the world, functioning in the pe-
riod of imperialism, of the general crisis of the international capi-
talist system, and of the beginning of world socialism. It tended to
cleanse the proletarian movement of the poison of class collabora-
tionism and petty-bourgeois reformism and to equip it with the
program, leadership, and organization necessary for it to carry
out its historical socialist mission.
The Communist International, although it was formally orga-
nized in March 1919, had solid roots extending much further back
into labor history. The whole life work of Lenin, 30 years of bril-
liant labor, belongs properly to the history of the Comintern. He
was to the Communist International what Marx was to the First
International, its founder and cultivator. As remarked in chapter
27, the real history of the Comintern therefore goes back at least

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 ROLE OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
to the second congress of the Social-Democratic Labor Party of
Russia, held in London in 1903, when the Bolshevik tendency was
first solidly established, even as the history of the First Interna-
tional which was formed in 1864, actually goes back to the Com-
munist League of 1847.
Three great achievements stand out in the historic work of the
Communist International. The first of these was that it re-
equipped the working class with a body of revolutionary theory.
Properly belonging to the general period of the Third Internation-
al, as defined above, was Lenin’s rehabilitation of Marx’s revolu-
tionary theories, discarded by the Second International, and the
tremendous polemic Lenin waged against the right opportunists.
There was Lenin’s vast enrichment of Marxism with his profound
analysis of imperialism, his presentation of the theory of the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, his fundamental analysis of the na-
tional liberation movement, his development of the alliance of the
proletariat and the peasantry, his unfoldment of revolutionary
strategy and tactics generally in the period of the decay of capital-
ism, his masterful development of the principles of “the party of a
new type,” and his theoretical-practical leadership of the great
Russian Revolution. There was also the basic theoretical work of
Stalin, especially on the national and colonial question and the
building of socialism in one country, based upon Lenin’s theory.
One of the really great achievements of the Comintern, in a gen-
eral sense, was the development of a strong body of Marxist theo-
reticians among the oppressed peoples, the most brilliant exam-
ple being Mao Tse-tung, theoretical-practical leader of the vast
Chinese Revolution and one of the world’s best Marxist-Leninists.
The second elementary achievement of the Comintern was the
strengthening of Communist parties in all the major countries of
the world, called into existence by the intolerable conditions of
capitalism. These organizations, together with the many millions
of developing Marxists in the youth leagues, trade unions, and
other proletarian organizations, are the great international revo-
lutionary force. The C.I. nurtured them, trained them, and taught
them.7 They are the “little leaven that leaventh the whole lump.”
They are an altogether higher type of fighting party for socialism
than was ever produced by the Second International, even in its
best days. They are a growing, expanding power in all parts of the
world. Clear-seeing, resolute, tireless, invincible – the Communist
453
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
parties are indeed the grave-diggers of capitalism and the builders
of the new socialist world.
The third basic accomplishment of the Comintern was the
long series of revolutionary struggles conducted under its banner.
These properly include both the Russian Revolution of 1905 and
the world decisive Russian Revolution of 1917, for these great
struggles had nothing to do with the collaborationist spirit of the
Second International. They include, too, the German, Austrian,
and Hungarian revolutions, the Spanish Civil War, the broad
people’s front movements, the establishment of the People’s De-
mocracies after World War II, the many liberation struggles in the
colonies, and the immense Chinese Revolution, not to mention
thousands of strikes and political battles. Let him who wants to
measure the achievements of the Comintern, in its true Leninist
scope, consider that over one-third of the world is now on a so-
cialist orientation.
The birth of the Third International cannot be dated simply
from March 1919, nor did the proletarian internationalism upon
which it was based die in June 1943. Although organizationally
the Comintern was dissolved at that time, its fighting spirit lives
on, and so do the vast body of Marxists and Communist parties
which it nurtured. The Third International developed a great rev-
olutionary force which will never lose its momentum until the
capitalist system is abolished and the world is brought to social-
ism. The Third International will forever remain enshrined in the
hearts and minds of the working class, peasants and oppressed
peoples of the world. When and under what conditions the Third
International will be succeeded by another International, much
broader in affiliation, and far more powerful politically than any
of the three Internationals which have preceded it, only the future
can answer.

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 PART IV: THE HISTORIC ADVANCE OF SOCIALISM

50. The Aftermath of World War II

World War II, which was an expression of the general crisis of
the world capitalist system, also greatly deepened that crisis. It
intensified all the major internal and external contradictions
which are inexorably undermining the strength of capitalism in
all countries. The war was another great milestone on the road of
the capitalist system to its inevitable doom.
Among the many post-war manifestations of the deepened
character of the capitalist general crisis may be noted the follow-
ing: (a) the growing reliance of the capitalist countries, particular-
ly the United States, upon munitions production, to keep their
industries going in a capitalist world of increasing productive
power and decreasing markets; (b) the splitting of the world mar-
ket into two segments, the socialist and the capitalist, a develop-
ment which Stalin called the most important economic conse-
quence of the war; (c) the sharpening struggle of the capitalist
countries for control of the shrinking capitalist world markets; (d)
the intensification of the unevenness in the development of the
capitalist countries, the most spectacular aspect of which is the
shaky hegemony of the United States over the capitalist world; (e)
the break-down of the colonial system, marked by the outburst of
revolutionary national liberation struggles in many parts of the
colonial and semi-colonial world; (f) the increased tendency of
the capitalist system towards economic crisis, fascism and war,
because of its profoundly weakened condition; and most decisive
(g) the enormous post-war growth of the world democratic and
socialist forces, which basically weaken capitalist domination and
the capitalist system as such.
After World War I the badly shaken capitalist system still pos-
sessed enough vitality so that it could, during the period of 1924-
29, achieve a partial and temporary stabilization; but it has been
unable to do even this after World War II. The basic crisis ele-
ments in the world capitalist situation continue to increase, with
further catastrophes for that system looming in the not distant
future. So far has the capitalist system degenerated and so greatly

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
has its rival system of socialism developed, that the basic world
issue of this period, behind the intense and immediate mass
struggle to prevent another world war, has become that of social-
ism versus capitalism. History is categorically solving this ques-
tion in favor of socialism.
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRATIC AND SOCIALIST FORCES
World War II, even more than the first world war, was fol-
lowed by a tremendous growth of the democratic and socialist
forces throughout the world. It was a just and progressive peo-
ple’s war, and although it was not fought under proletarian revo-
lutionary slogans, it gave birth to powerful revolutionary move-
ments. The toiling masses, in the colonial lands as well as in the
industrial countries, sickened and enraged at the long string of
abuses and exploitations of the capitalist system, all of which were
greatly accentuated by the horrors, oppressions, and butcheries of
the great war, took drastic steps to eradicate them. This was par-
ticularly the case in the colonies and in those countries which had
been dominated by the fascists.
The great post-war strengthening of the world democratic and
socialist forces falls under four general heads: (a) the enormous
increase in the political prestige of the U.S.S.R., because it had
basically won the war against Hitler Germany and had an ex-
tremely rapid rise in its general power, due to its unparalleled
post-war economic recovery and development; (b) the establish-
ment of revolutionary People’s Democracies in Czechoslovakia,
Poland, Yugoslavia,* Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Albania,
and the People’s Democratic Republic of East Germany; (c) the
growth of powerful national liberation movements in China, In-
dia, Indochina, Burma, Korea, Indonesia, Malaya, the Philip-
pines, and various areas in Africa – a vast elemental movement
which reached its climax in the great Chinese Revolution; (d) an
enormous growth of trade unionism all over the world, together
with a huge expansion of the youth, women’s, and other mass
movements.
These great mass struggles and movements, constituting as a
whole an enormous revolt against capitalism, and basically in-

* Later betrayed by Tito.

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 AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II
spired and led according to Marxist-Leninist principles, were
fundamentally indigenous and spontaneous. One and all they
were based upon the specific grievances and program of the re-
spective toiling masses and peoples in general. It is stupid, the
bourgeois allegation that the many revolutions of the period have
been the results of Soviet plots and “infiltration.” But then, the
capitalists are congenitally unable to conceive that conditions un-
der capitalism both cause and justify revolution, and that social-
ism is a superior form of society to capitalism. Stalin swept away
the “Russian-plot” drivel in his interview 14 years ago with Roy
Howard, when he said: “The export of revolution is nonsense....
Every country will make its own revolution if it wants to, and if it
does not want to then there will be no revolution.”1
THE DRIVE OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
FOR WORLD DOMINATION
A second great force operating in the post-war situation on
the basis of the greatly weakened world capitalist system, in this
case profoundly counter-revolutionary, is the drive of American
imperialism for maximum profits and world domination. Ameri-
can monopoly capitalism, which has for over half a century been
the major capitalist power and which enormously increased its
wealth and productive capacity during World War I, is now out to
reduce the rest of the world, socialist as well as capitalist, to its
domination. All its policies, domestic and foreign, are constructed
and geared to the achievement of this supreme imperialist goal.
American monopoly capitalism has long been striving in the
general direction of world rulership. This was already clear in the
aftermath of World War I. But the trend became especially mani-
fest politically and otherwise during and after World War II.
When the great Soviet victory at Stalingrad made it obvious to all
that the Allies were going to win the war, Wall Street’s drive for
world dominion began developing with increasing speed and vig-
or. At first this imperialist push was accompanied by an elaborate
ideological cover-up, to obscure from the world the ultra-
reactionary perspective of one country becoming the master of all
the rest. The power-hungry Wall Street imperialists at that time
spoke “modestly” only of this country’s “moral leadership of the
world.” But appetite grows with eating, and now every protagonist
of American capitalism, from Eisenhower on down, is dinning
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
into the ears of the peoples everywhere just how and why the
United States is the natural economic, political, and military lead-
er of the world. With characteristic hypocrisy, the imperialists tell
the masses that this leading position “has been thrust upon us by
history” and that “we have accepted it unwillingly” and with much
heart-searching as to “our” fitness to perform such a great and
unsought role.
The big cynical-minded monopolists who own and control the
wealth of the United States and who write this country’s basic pol-
icies, whether a Truman or an Eisenhower is in the Presidency,
know that they have not even a ghost of a chance to realize their
program of world conquest short of a great world war. But they
are quite ready to take the supreme gamble even of a devastating
atomic holocaust. There can be no other interpretation of the vio-
lently aggressive policy of United States militarism and war prep-
arations that they have followed ever since the end of World War
I. Characteristically, this cold-blooded war program is veiled by
the most elaborate pretenses of its being the defense of world
peace and democracy.
The United States, under cover of all this blather, is being
pushed on to fight for world domination by a number of powerful
reactionary forces. In a country such as the United States, con-
trolled as it is by finance capital, these forces are decisive in de-
termining its orientation:
First, the United States, as the most powerful of all the capi-
talist countries, is by this fact also the most intensely imperialist.
Turning out about 65 percent of all the industrial production of
the capitalist world, the need of the capitalist United States for
more markets, raw materials, strategic military positions, and
peoples to exploit, is imperative. Consequently, it undertakes to
achieve these goals in the elementary capitalist way, by imperial-
ist aggression, by ruthlessly crashing through all opposition, and
by subjugating all other peoples. Inevitably also, as the most pow-
erful capitalist empire ever created, the United States sets for it-
self the most ambitious imperialist goal ever directly aimed at by
any capitalist state, the complete domination of the world. Even
Hitler never had as an immediate objective such a grandiose per-
spective as that of Wall Street. In his imperialist drives he had to
contemplate a world in which at least Japan and the United States
would be powerful factors, but American imperialism counts on

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 AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II
ruling the world alone.
Second, a key factor in the drive of American imperialism for
world conquest is that the big Wall Street capitalists are undoubt-
edly alarmed at the realization that the world capitalist system is
in danger of falling to pieces and that its basic enemy, world so-
cialism, is growing by leaps and bounds. While they reject the va-
lidity of the Marxist-Leninist concept of the general crisis of capi-
talism, they at least are realistic enough to understand that their
system is now showing startling symptoms of deep trouble. Their
remedy for this situation is for them, with their vast wealth, in-
dustrial and military strength, and technical know-how, to smash
the international socialist forces and to reorganize the bankrupt
capitalist world, with the United States as the future dominating
center and with all the other peoples paying tribute to it.
Third, and very important in impelling American imperialism
onto a path of aggressive war and conquest, is the growing convic-
tion in big capitalist circles that, in the present sick condition of
world capitalism, the only way they can keep their industries in
operation and their own fabulous maximum profits rolling in, is
by a vast production of war munitions and eventually by war it-
self. This is the reactionary end to which the Keynesian policy of
pump-priming has inevitably led.
Immediately after the end of World War II, driven on by the
above forces, the United States launched out upon its program of
world domination. The first major result of this was, by economic
pressure, financial grants and loans, and political intimidation, to
set up a measure of shaky American control over the capitalist
world during the early post-war years. To do this was then not
very difficult, in view of the fact that the United States emerged
from the war enriched, virtually unscathed, and actually strength-
ened; whereas the erstwhile great capitalist empires – Great Brit-
ain, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, etc. – were in various states of
economic war exhaustion, prostration, and devastation, ranging
to complete paralysis.
The American capitalist hegemony was something new in the
world. In the past one or another country – notably Great Britain
in the mid-nineteenth century – has occupied a key, or even deci-
sive, position in the capitalist world economy; but this was the
first time in history that any single country had achieved the role
of becoming virtually the acknowledged boss of all the other capi-
459
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
talist powers. American capitalist hegemony was definitely a
product of the general crisis of capitalism; it could not possibly
have come into existence, even in its wobbly and incomplete
form, except that the other capitalist powers were in a deep state
of crisis. As we shall see later, however, the American capitalist
hegemony has been disastrously weakened by the workings of its
own contradictions.
THE BASIS OF THE COLD WAR
The Soviet Union entered the post-war period with a definite
outlook of living in peace with the capitalist world, and this out-
look continues, in line with the fundamental peace policy inherent
in its socialist system. The co-existence perspective is in no sense
contradictory to the Marxist-Leninist position that the present is
a general period of revolution, with the obsolete capitalist system
gradually being supplanted in the various countries by rising so-
cialism. This conclusion is possible because, recognizing that so-
cialism is primarily the affair of the peoples of the respective
countries, who tend to choose their own system of society, the
U.S.S.R. leaders definitely accept the reality that world society,
over a considerable period ahead, will consist of both capitalist
and socialist elements. Marxist-Leninists are by no means com-
mitted to the theory that socialism can be realized only by a sim-
ultaneous world-wide revolution or as a result of a great war. The
historical fact is that all the countries that have so far embarked
upon the road to socialism have done so, one-by-one, of course,
with the help, protection, and solidarity of the world’s workers
against international counter-revolution.
That the U.S.S.R. follows a policy for a post-war world of
peaceful co-existence with the capitalist states is made clear from
many facts. First, the dissolution of the Communist International
was not only a measure to help win the war but also, as Stalin in-
dicated at the time, for thus “clearing the way to the future organ-
ization of the companionship of nations based upon their equali-
ty.”2 At the historic Teheran conference of Roosevelt, Churchill,
and Stalin in December 1943, Stalin, proceeding on the same
principle, signed the joint agreement, which declared: “We ex-
press our determination that our nations shall work together in
the war and in the peace that will follow.”3 Also, when the United
Nations was formed in San Francisco, in April 1945, the U.S.S.R.

460
 AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II
took an active part and became a member, although it was vastly
outnumbered in votes by the capitalist countries. In accordance
with this peace perspective, the U.S.S.R., contrary to all the lies
spread in this country, immediately upon the end of the war made
drastic reductions in its armed forces.
On this matter Stalin has said: “Demobilization was carried
out in three steps: the first and second steps, in the course of the
year 1945; the third step, from May to September 1946. In addi-
tion, demobilization of the older age-groups of the personnel of
the Soviet Union was carried out in 1946 and 1947. And in the
beginning of 1948 all the remaining old age-groups were demobi-
lized.”4 Meyer adds these details: “The Soviet armed forces which
crushed Hitler’s Wehrmacht were close to 12 million strong. By
October 1946, the Soviets had demobilized 30 age-groups, or
about 83 percent of their wartime forces.... In 1951, France, with
less than one-fifteenth of the Soviet frontier, had 22 soldiers, the
United States, flanked by two oceans, had 18 soldiers, and the
U.S.S.R. 12 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants.”5
So generally were the Communists resolved upon cultivating a
peaceful co-existence with the capitalist states in the post-war
period that this perspective actually gave birth to serious oppor-
tunist illusions in many Communist and Workers’ parties. The
worst expression of this right deviation was expressed by Earl
Browder in the United States. Browder developed a crassly oppor-
tunist interpretation of the Teheran agreement, in which he not
only asserted that the capitalist powers would drop their opposi-
tion to the U.S.S.R. and live in friendly cooperation with that
country, but that also within the capitalist countries, thenceforth,
specifically in the United States, class peace and class collabora-
tion would reign, with the capitalists voluntarily doubling the
workers’ wages, and making other basic concessions.6 Sticking to
this absurd conception of a capitalist utopia, led to Browder’s ex-
pulsion from the Communist Party.7
American imperialism, however, with Great Britain as its jun-
ior partner, had no intention whatever of living in peaceful co-
existence with the U.S.S.R. As we have seen, already during the
war the Wall Street monopolists, with their sights definitely set
upon ruling the post-war world, had not hesitated to betray the
Soviet Union in the face of the common enemy, in the hope that
that country, which they knew would refuse to submit to their
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
domination, would, if weakened in the war, be unable to offer
them successful resistance in the postwar period.
It is a fact, of course, that immediately the war was ended
substantial demobilization of American ground forces took place.
This, however, had nothing to do with any alleged plans of Wall
Street to cultivate friendly relations with the U.S.S.R. It was based
on two other quite different elements: First, the demobilization
movement was precipitated by a huge, irresistible mass demand
that the war being over the armed forces must be reduced – an
expression of the basic anti-militarism of the American people.
Secondly, the movement rested also upon the fact that the Ameri-
can militarists, founding their hopes for world conquest upon
their possession of a supposed atom-bomb monopoly, pinned
their faith on the air force and believed that large land armies
were obsolete – hence their failure to make more active resistance
to the mass demobilization movement.
Historically, it is an indisputable fact that with the cessation
of World War II, the United States militarists began to plot and
plan for a great anti-democratic, anti-socialist war. This course
was facilitated by the death of Roosevelt, April 12, 1945, and the
accession to the Presidency of the bitter Soviet-hater, Truman. He
at once devoted himself energetically to the cultivation of the cold
war, in preparation for a shooting war. The responsibility for the
cold war rests primarily upon Wall Street finance capital, which
has used the United States government as its facile tool. Succeed-
ing chapters will trace the development of this Wall Street-
precipitated cold war, in the light of the three great dynamic forc-
es of the post-war period – the growing decay of world capitalism,
the rapid growth of world socialism, and the drive of American
imperialism for world mastery.
THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL AND THE COLD WAR
The Labor and Socialist International held its last pre-war
general congress in 1933. During the war, with its parties all over
Europe liquidated, it was in virtual hibernation. In their own way,
the individual Socialist parties generally supported the war of the
Allies, but there were also such manifestations as that of the Ger-
man exile, Stampfer, who in New York brazenly advocated an alli-
ance with Hitler, so that all guns could be turned against the Sovi-
et Union.8 The L.S.I. held its reorganizing congress in Frankfurt,

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 AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II
Germany, in July 1951. Its coming together caused no fear what-
ever to the world bourgeoisie.
Meanwhile, the rightwing Socialists everywhere, after the end
of the war, began actively to support the drive of American impe-
rialism against the U.S.S.R. With nothing of socialism left in their
programs except a few radical phrases to fool the workers, they
lined up solidly with the world capitalist attempt to save the capi-
talist system and to halt the growth of world socialism. In turn,
they had followed the lead of Wilson, Roosevelt, and Keynes, so it
was not illogical for them to become the ardent supporters of
Truman and eventually Eisenhower. As they had betrayed the
Russian, German, Austrian, and Hungarian revolutions after
World War I, so they proceeded to betray everywhere the great
socialist upheaval after World War II.
Characteristically, as phrase-making Social-Democrats, they
gave their support to bankrupt capitalism in their own special
way. They invented what they called “the third force,” which was
supposed to stand between the contending U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. in
the cold war. This was only a thin pretext, however; “the third
force” being in reality, an active supporter of American imperial-
ism. In Europe there were many capitalists who, in a spirit of cap-
italist nationalism, showed a reluctance to put on the collar of
Wall Street; but not the Social- Democrats – American capitalism
had no more ardent supporters than they.
An important development in the Second International, how-
ever, was the growth of a strong left wing, especially in the middle
and eastern European countries. This was typified by such men as
Fierlinger in Czechoslovakia and Nenni in Italy. They were not
wavering centrists, but elements genuinely on the way to the left.
They have played a very important role in the post-war revolu-
tionary developments in their respective countries. The Bevan
movement in Great Britain, while animated by strong peace sen-
timents and containing many anti-capitalist elements, is primari-
ly of the centrist type.
The Second International, when it came back into existence in
Frankfurt in 1951, put its stamp of approval upon the pro-
American, anti-Soviet policy that had already been worked out by
the western Socialist parties. Some 33 countries were represented
at the congress, 13 by “Socialists-in-exile.” Dominant in the new
organization was the British Labor Party. Morgan Phillips, one of
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
its leaders, stated the political line of the again-resurrected Se-
cond International when he called United States imperialist poli-
cy “enlightened, progressive, and unselfish,” and declared that the
purpose of the new organization was to unite the “non-Stalinist”
(i.e., capitalist) world against communism. The outstanding “the-
oretical” leaders of the “Socialist International” were such rank
opportunists as Phillips, Leon Blum (France), and Kurt Schu-
macher (West Germany) – the mere mention of whom indicates
to what low political level the Second International had fallen.

464
51. Birth of the People’s Democracies
(1945-1947)
Europe emerged from World War II with the great masses of
the workers and peasants in a revolutionary frame of mind. This
was inevitable after the terrible slaughter and devastation of the
capitalist-generated war. It was another dramatic demonstration
of the effects of the obsolescence of the capitalist system, and the
masses reacted accordingly. But in developing their revolutionary,
anti-capitalist movements after this great war, the workers of Eu-
rope faced a very different situation than they did after the first
world war. The revolutionary outburst in connection with the im-
perialist World War I was directed against the despotic govern-
ments which the workers held responsible for the war and which
were still in office – in Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary and
Turkey. World War II, however, presented quite a different pic-
ture. The great national front of the peoples overthrew by military
action the fascist governments, war-guilty and profoundly hated
by the peoples. Most of the governments which succeeded them
and which the workers later had to fight, had thus been members
of the wartime national front, but had adopted a reactionary
course especially upon the conclusion of the war. These elemen-
tary facts generally determined the course of the workers’ revolu-
tionary strategy both during and after the war.
The Anglo-American imperialists, even early in the war, espe-
cially after Stalingrad gave them a perspective of victory, were
quite aware of the danger of revolution after the Hitler regime
was defeated. Hence they moved systematically to prevent it.
They associated this danger with the tremendous victories and
advance of the Red Army. Fear of the Soviet forces occupying
hitherto capitalist countries was, therefore, what motivated the
Anglo-American invasion of Italy – a drive that was supposed
(but failed) to re-conquer the whole Balkan and South European
areas which, the reactionaries feared, were especially liable to go
revolutionary. This also was the motivating reason causing the
United States and Great Britain, at long last, to launch the delib-
erately delayed western front. They were afraid that if they post-
poned it any further the Red Army might occupy most of Europe
and bring with it general revolution. To halt the revolution, and

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
thus to deny the peoples of Europe the right to set up such gov-
ernments as they saw fit, was the first step in the world-conquest
program of Wall Street.
In this work of counter-revolution the American and British
monopolists had as their most ardent and effective allies, the Vat-
ican and the right Social-Democrats. As a result of their combined
efforts, backed by the military occupation forces, the Anglo-
American imperialists managed to check the revolution in France,
Italy, West Germany, Belgium, Holland, and Franco Spain.
Meanwhile, the Labor Party in Britain, which is Social-
Democratic, held everything solid for capitalism in that country,
and in the Scandinavian countries also, the Social-Democrats
were the guardians of capitalism. In Greece, the British and
Americans cynically shot down the revolution, and in Yugoslavia
they bought up Tito. In Europe, therefore, the victorious revolu-
tion was finally restricted to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary,
Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, and East Germany, involving about
100,000,000 people. With the Soviet Union nearby, these peoples
could not be terrorized or deceived by the western powers into
maintaining the capitalist system.
THE RISE OF THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACIES
The revolutionary countries of middle and eastern Europe, af-
ter being liberated by the Soviet Red Army, all set up what have
become known as “People’s Democracies.” The evolving general
pattern was similar in the several countries. The parties and other
organizations that had been co-operating in the struggle against
Hitlerism, especially those participating in the underground re-
sistance movement, proceeded at the close of the war, and some-
times before, to set up national governments made up of all the
anti-fascist elements. The resultant People’s Democracies were, in
fact, a further application of the anti-fascist front policy outlined
by the seventh congress of the Communist International in 1935.
Earlier forms of this historic policy, as we have seen, were those
outlined in the fourth congress of the Comintern (see Chapter 37),
the pre-war people’s front movements, the great all-anti-fascist
people’s military alliance during the war, and the broad multi-
party wartime underground movements and guerilla formations.
The governments of the People’s Democracies all definitely took
shape in 1944-45 with overthrow of Hitler. They were the revolu-

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 BIRTH OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACIES
tionary continuation of the people’s struggle during the war.
The broad character of the People’s Democracies was illus-
trated by the Czechoslovakian government, which consisted of
two Communist parties (Czech and Slovak), Social-Democratic
Party, Czech National Party, Catholic People’s Party, and the Slo-
vak Democratic Party. In Poland the government bloc consisted of
the Communists, Socialists, Peasants, and Democrats. The Fa-
therland Front in Bulgaria had five parties, and Yugoslavia, Hun-
gary, Rumania, and Albania also had several parties each in the
anti-fascist alliance comprising their governments.
A basic factor in all these situations was that the Socialist and
Communist parties amalgamated, sloughing off their right oppor-
tunists in the process. This was true also in the People’s Demo-
cratic Republic of East Germany. Everywhere the Communists,
leaders of the underground, became the leading party in the new
democratic governments.1 There was also a new strong solidarity
developed between the workers and the peasants. A striking fea-
ture too was the widespread revolt of the intellectuals against cap-
italist domination. And highly significant was the unexampled co-
operation established between Catholic and non-Catholic workers
in Poland (90 percent Catholic), Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and
other strongly Catholic countries, despite the militant opposition
of the Catholic Church.
The Anglo-American imperialists watched with great alarm
the advent of the People’s Democracies. Among their measures to
meet such a contingency, they had prepared an all-around set of
hand-picked puppet governments-in-exile, located in London and
ready to take over their respective countries at the war’s end. But
the various peoples had quite other ideas about all this, and they
elected their own types of government. The imperialists, however,
with active support from the Vatican and Social-Democracy, have
never ceased to this day carrying on intrigues and violent plots, to
balk and defeat the democratic will of these peoples. In Poland,
Hungary, Bulgaria, and Rumania, as the war came to an end, they
organized civil wars in unsuccessful attempts to prevent the es-
tablishment of People’s Democracies; in 1944-1947, they crushed
the Greek People’s Democracy, first with British and finally with
American-equipped military forces; and they managed, with their
money, eventually to subvert the willing Tito in Yugoslavia. And it
was the American ambassador who, in a desperate effort to regain
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
control of Czechoslovakia, caused 17 bourgeois ministers in Feb-
ruary 1948 to resign from the national government, in the hope of
creating a civil war; but the Czech workers, responding swiftly,
defeated this “putsch” and came into decisive control of the Czech
people’s state.2 The Eisenhower-Dulles policy of “liberation” is a
continuation of this civil war program.
THE NEW TYPE OF PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP
The new People’s Democracies adopted many far-reaching
economic measures, aimed immediately at the reparation of the
huge war damages. These policies included the break-up of the
big landed estates (including in some cases the church lands) and
the distribution of the soil to the peasants; the confiscation of all
the lands and industries owned by fascist reactionaries; the na-
tionalization of the major industries and services, including
banks, coal, steel, electric power, railroads, inland transport, sea-
borne shipping, telegraph, telephone and radio; the systematic
cultivation of consumers’ cooperatives, drastic tax reforms, the
establishment of state control over foreign trade, and the progres-
sive development of planned production through two-, three-,
and five-year plans. The People’s Democratic Republic of Germa-
ny also followed this general line.
The People’s Democracies did not set for themselves the im-
mediate goal of socialism, but the basis of their program never-
theless was socialist. It shifted the decisive economic ownership
and controls out of the hands of big land-owners and monopolists
into those of the working class and other democratic forces. The
result was not a “democratic capitalism,” as many believed at the
time, but a transitional regime moving towards socialism.3
This people’s democratic state was a new form of the dictator-
ship of the proletariat. At the outset this fact was not generally
recognized, even in Communist circles, but it became clear with
the growth and evolution of the new regimes. As they strength-
ened their programs, both in policy and enforcement, the bour-
geois elements in the government tended to be eliminated and the
leading role of the working class stood out constantly more clear-
ly. The general political process was that of a steady orientation to
the left – towards a more definite form of the proletarian dicta-
torship and toward a more concretely socialist program. The Peo-
ple’s Democracies constituted, in various respects, “a new road to

468
 BIRTH OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACIES
socialism.”4
The rise of the People’s Democracies taught the Communist
movement many valuable lessons of revolutionary strategy and
tactics, which, as we shall see, were to have important conse-
quences on later Communist policy. Among other things, the
manner of their establishment re-emphasized what Marx had in-
dicated long before, that in situations where bourgeois democratic
processes were strongly present, it would be possible for the
workers to establish socialism relatively peacefully. As mentioned
in earlier chapters, Marx said: “If, for example, the working class
in England and the United States should win a majority in Par-
liament, in Congress, it could legally abolish the laws and institu-
tions which obstruct its development.”5 Lenin demonstrated the
same principle on the eve of the Russian Revolution of November
1917 when, in the existing democratic situation, he proposed “a
peaceful development of the revolution.”6
In drawing lessons from the relatively peaceful establishment
of the People’s Democracies in central and eastern Europe
through the development of parliamentary majorities, the ele-
mentary facts must not be overlooked, however, that during
World War II, through military struggle, the Red Army and the
peoples’ insurrectionary movements, by defeating the Hitler forc-
es, had already broken the backbone of the big capitalists and
landowners, and that the post-war bourgeois governments in the-
se countries were consequently weak and flabby. In Poland, Ru-
mania, and other of these countries, however, the reactionaries
did manage to organize small-scale civil wars, despite the efforts
of the workers to maintain a peaceful development.
THE COALITION GOVERNMENT TN ITALY
From the closing stages of the war the Italian working class
began rapidly to organize its forces. The Communist Party in-
creased from 5,000 members during Mussolini’s terror to
2,300,000 members in 1947 under Palmiro Togliatti’s brilliant
leadership, and it polled 20 percent of the national vote,
4,745,000. The Socialist Party, led by Pietro Nenni, also made a
strong growth. The two parties, in their majority, favored fusion,
and were working together in close cooperation. And the trade
unions, uniting Communist, Socialist and Catholic workers, grew
swiftly into the gigantic General Confederation of Labor, with
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
6,000,000 members, and with the able Communist union leader
Giuseppe Di Vittorio at its head. The Communist Party, which, in
Italy, as everywhere else in Europe, had achieved great prestige in
its heroic struggles during the war, won the hegemony over the
Italian working class and also developed a strong influence
among the peasantry and the Catholic toilers generally.
Upon emerging from the war, the Communists in Italy, as
elsewhere, moved for a coalition government composed of all the
anti-fascist forces. Such a government gradually took shape, after
a fashion. In the election of May 1946 the Communists won 104
seats, the Socialists 115 seats, and the Christian Democratic Party
(Catholic) 207 seats. In the resultant De Gasperi government, the
Communists held four Cabinet posts, with Togliatti as Minister of
State. The Socialists had a similar group in the Cabinet. The gov-
ernment turned its attention to the overwhelming problems of
reconstruction, with the Communists taking the lead in the repa-
ration of the huge war damages. In May of 1946 the Communist-
led referendum knocked out the monarchy and established Italy
as a republic.
But powerful forces were at work to prevent Italy from be-
coming a People’s Democracy, as many countries in Eastern Eu-
rope were doing. The big Italian employers, of course, were vio-
lently opposed to the democratic course of events. The Vatican, as
elsewhere in Europe, was exerting all its strength and prestige to
keep capitalism from collapsing. The right wing Social-
Democrats, actively supported by American and British labor op-
portunists, were naturally opposed to a course that would eventu-
ally abolish Italian capitalism. And dominating the whole scene
were the armed forces of Great Britain and the United States, vio-
lently anti-socialist.
These combined forces of reaction managed to check the
growth of a People’s Democracy in Italy. In 1947 agents of the
British Labor Party and the American Federation of Labor, to-
gether with the Saragat Italian right wing, managed to split the
Italian Socialist Party, swinging 50 seats in Parliament definitely
to De Gasperi. During the same year the United States, which had
been pouring U.N.R.R.A. funds and materials into Italy, made the
De Gasperi government a large loan, with the usual strings to it,
and also in 1947 that government, the expression of the capitalist-
Vatican forces, obediently presented a reactionary agrarian pro-

470
 BIRTH OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACIES
gram which forced the Communist and left Socialist ministers to
resign. Italy had turned its back upon people’s democracy and
embarked into the cold war, a feeble satellite of militant American
imperialism.
THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE
In France, as the war approached its conclusion, the situation
was somewhat as in Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc., in that the An-
glo-American imperialists had a conservative government-in-exile
ready to take over once the hostilities ceased. Located in London,
this was headed by the former fascist, General Charles de Gaulle,
who had distinguished himself from the gang of French militarists
by advocating a defense of the country. Despite his shady political
record, de Gaulle was groomed to be the head of liberated France.
The guerilla fighters, however, had different ideas. As early as Au-
gust 1943, the National Council of Resistance (C.N.R.) issued a
manifesto, which declared, “The C.N.R. claims upon the whole
territory, the rights and responsibilities of trustees and provision-
al organs of national sovereignty.”7
When the Germans were driven out of Paris, de Gaulle and his
provisional government were, however, promptly installed in
power, with the backing of the powerful British and American
armed forces. Paris was freed in August 1944, and in April 1945
the first general election was held (with 3,000,000 French work-
ers still prisoners in Germany). The results showed the Com-
munist Party to be the strongest party in France. De Gaulle at
once moved to disarm the resistance forces, which caused the two
Communists in his Cabinet to resign. In the general elections of
October 1945, the Communists polled 5,696,000 votes, against
4,760,000 for the Socialists, and 4,580,000 for the Catholic par-
ty, the Popular Republican Movement (M.R.P.), giving the C.P.
152 seats, the S.P. 142 seats, and the M.R.P. 141 seats. There were
also a few smaller parties.
The two parties of the working class had an absolute majority
in Parliament. The Communist Party proposed a government
based upon both parties, and their eventual fusion into one or-
ganization. As the leader of the largest party, General Secretary
Thorez of the C.P. was entitled to the premiership. The General
Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.) had grown swiftly to an organiza-
tion of some 5,000,000 members. Although it had two general
471
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
secretaries, Jouhaux and Frachon, the latter, a Communist, repre-
sented by far the bulk of the membership. As Klugmann remarks,
“The position was favorable to lead the French people forward,
continuing the élan and enthusiasm of the Resistance, towards a
new popular democracy and the crippling of the power of the
French trusts.”8
Leon Blum, however, opposed this whole perspective. As a
Social-Democratic defender of the capitalist system, he could not
support any such revolutionary program. As head of the Socialist
Party, he vetoed the question of the amalgamation of the two par-
ties and insisted upon a tri-partite government, including the
M.R.P. Henceforth, his line was to maneuver with the de Gaullists
against the Communists. During his savage course Hitler had
murdered 6,000,000 Jews and many others, but he kept Blum a
prisoner near Paris, comfortably lodged, with two servants, while
he was destroying Semard, Peri, and countless other Communist
fighters. Hitler knew a tool of reaction when he saw one.9
In 1944 the National Council of Resistance adopted unani-
mously a broad plan of nationalization, including “the great mo-
nopolized means of production, the fruits of our common labor,
of the source of power, of the riches of mineral wealth, of insur-
ance companies and banks.”10 Although paying lip service to this
program, de Gaulle had not the slightest intention of carrying it
out. In his coalition government there were five Communists, in-
cluding Maurice Thorez, as Vice-President of the Council. Due to
internal friction in his Cabinet, however, the would-be dictator, de
Gaulle, was forced to resign in January 1946.
Of the four French governments during the next year, three
were headed by Socialists – Felix Gouin, Leon Blum, and Paul
Ramadier, a fact which did precisely nothing to advance the
course of socialism in France. In the November 1946 elections,
the Communist Party, with about 1,000,000 members, increased
its seats to 173, while those of the Socialist Party were reduced to
95 as a result of the latter’s reactionary policies. As in Italy, the
French workers had turned to the Communists for leadership,
and the rapidly growing General Confederation of Labor was
overwhelmingly left in its sentiments and leadership. In January
1947 Blum, like De Gasperi in Italy, got a big loan from the United
States, $250 million, and also orders to oust the Communists
from the government. Therefore, in May 1947 the strike-breaking

472
 BIRTH OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACIES
Socialist Premier, Ramadier, with the aid of the de Gaullists, ex-
pelled the Communists from his Cabinet.
By this action (which was followed by a similar course in Italy,
Norway, Belgium, and Denmark), France was reduced to the sta-
tus of an American satellite, as Italy had been. Blum’s line was to
save capitalism, not to eliminate it. The French S.P. left wing, un-
like that in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, etc., was not strong
enough to shape the party line. Borkenau, the anti-Communist
fanatic, is thus able lyingly to boast that “It is by a hair’s breadth
that France escaped the fate of bureaucracy and Popular Democ-
racy.”11 Blum, the champion of the tricky “third force,” expressed
thus his acceptance of his country’s tutelage to Wall Street mo-
nopoly capital, “For my part, I believe in the true disinterested-
ness of the United States.”12
THE BRITISH LABOR GOVERNMENT
Great Britain did not escape the wave of revolutionary senti-
ment that swept Europe at the close of the world war. But the cap-
italists had a faithful force on guard to protect their interests. In
the Protestant British Isles the Vatican was in no position to help
the bourgeoisie, as it did in France, Italy, Belgium, and Spain; but
that other defender of capitalism, the Social-Democracy, in the
shape of the Labor Party, was able to do the job.
In the British general elections of July 1945 the Labor Party
won a sweeping victory, securing 395 seats out of a total of 640 in
the House of Commons. During the war the Labor Party had been
in a coalition government with the Churchill Tories, but now it
was able to set up a one-party government, the chief figures in
which were the extreme right-wingers, Clement Attlee, Ernest
Bevin, and Herbert Morrison.
The Communist Party, led by Harry Pollitt, polled only a very
small vote, but it exerted a strong influence in the trade unions.
Many prominent trade union leaders were either members or
supporters of the party, which had a broad rank and file follow-
ing. Thus, at a Daily Worker conference in London in June 1947
there were present 829 delegates representing 2,600,000 trade
unionists.13
In the election campaign the Labor Party put forward an
eight-point program, calling for a partial nationalization of indus-
try, improvements in housing, education, social insurance, etc.
473
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
The official spokesmen called this socialism, but lest the workers
expect too much, they added significantly that “Socialism cannot
come overnight, as the product of a week-end revolution.”14 In
supporting the Labor Party, the workers undoubtedly believed
they were voting for socialism. Sharing largely the revolutionary
moods of workers elsewhere in Europe, they wanted to put an end
to the system which, in the 17 years prior to the outbreak of the
war, had kept an average of 14 out of each 100 workers unem-
ployed.15
The Labor Party was in power from July 1945 to October 1951.
During this period, it nationalized the Bank of England, transport,
fuel and power, steel and civil aviation16 – about 20 percent, all
told, of industry. But these industries remained under manage-
ment of the capitalists, Lord Catto continued as head of the Bank
of England, Lord Hyndley presided over the Coal Board, share-
holders were compensated in full with government bonds, and
their dividends were guaranteed by the state.17
Much was made of all this by the right Social-Democratic
leaders, claims being put forth that full employment had been
permanently established and that there had been a basic shift in
the national income in favor of the workers. Crossman thus sums
up the official Labor Party interpretation of what happened under
its regime: “By 1951 Britain had, in all the essentials, ceased to be
a capitalist country.”18
Harry Pollitt, British Communist leader, explodes this non-
sense. He points out that after the British Labor governments
“half the wealth of England and Wales is still owned by one per-
cent of the population.”19 And the Marxist economist Eaton re-
futes in detail the extravagant claims of the British Social-
Democrats. Actually the nationalized industries remained under
capitalist management and brought them in higher profits than
ever. Meanwhile, working class real wages sank. Taking 1938 as
100, wages, by the end of 1951, went up to only 215; whereas prof-
its climbed to 322. “In 1951, the average wage a worker was taking
home bought 7 percent less than in 1947.”20 The much boasted
steady employment was due to the post-war industrial and muni-
tions boom, not to any basic changes made by the Labor Party in
the capitalist system. The only real benefit the workers got out of
the Labor Party regime, says Eaton, was an improved state health
system. What the Labor Party had done in Great Britain was not

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 BIRTH OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACIES
to establish socialism, but to strengthen state monopoly capital-
ism. Actually, all through the Labor Party period, Great Britain
remained in chronic capitalist crisis.
The British Labor Party followed a policy in foreign affairs
identical with that of Churchill. The leading party of the Second
International, it militantly attacked the Soviet Union, was heavily
responsible for the post-war defeat of the democratic forces in
Greece, Italy, Belgium, and France, stood guard over the menaced
colonial system, and followed the political leadership of the Unit-
ed States.
It was a bit difficult for the untamed monopolists of the Unit-
ed States, to whom even the mildest socialist demagogy is revolu-
tionary, to realize that the Labor Party of Great Britain was not
going to introduce socialism, but was in reality a rescue force for
stricken capitalism in Europe. That they soon saw the point, how-
ever, was evidenced by the huge loan of almost $4 billion which
they extended the Labor Government in 1945. This loan was the
American imperialists’ first great step in subordinating England,
as they had done to France and Italy. Meanwhile, they maneu-
vered eventually to bring Churchill back into power, which in 1951
they and the British monopolists were able to do. The Labor Gov-
ernment had served its purpose of cushioning the great shock af-
ter the war, and this done, they cast it aside.
MILITARY REPRESSION IN GERMANY AND JAPAN
At the end of World War II, the capitalist powers, wishing to
avoid the mistakes made after World War I, proceeded to occupy
militarily the defeated countries, especially Germany and Japan.
In these countries, as the sequel showed, their main purposes
were to prevent, by military domination, the outbreak of revolu-
tion, to rescue and preserve the stricken capitalist system, and,
eventually, to re-arm these countries and to bring them into the
general capitalist anti-Soviet coalition which was already contem-
plated during the closing phases of World War II.
If left to itself at the end of the war, Germany undoubtedly
would have established a People’s Democracy on the general pat-
tern of the governments that were being set up in Poland, Czecho-
slovakia, Hungary, and other countries in eastern Europe. Proof
of this was to be seen in eastern Germany, which was occupied by
the Red Army and where the people had a free hand in their revo-
475
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
lutionary aspirations. They promptly established there the Ger-
man Democratic Republic, based upon an amalgamation of the
Communist and Social-Democratic parties, and with a program
akin to the People’s Democracies.
In western Germany, however, occupied as it was by the
American, British, and French armies, the American-bossed forc-
es of reaction managed to stave off the threatening revolution.
While they tolerated the reorganization of the workers’ parties
and trade unions, they were keen to block every manifestation of
working-class militancy. It was only in late 1954 that the workers
in West Germany were having their first post-war major strikes.
The line of the Social-Democratic Party, led first by Schumacher
and then by Ollenhauer, dovetailed with the policy of the capital-
ist military occupation. The Socialists refused all collaboration
with the Communists, supported the program of the Truman Doc-
trine, Marshall Plan, N.A.T.O., and the violent American anti-
Soviet campaign. Only belatedly did they take a stand against the
rearming of Germany. As a consequence of this line, the capitalist
program for the rearming and renazification of West Germany,
under the general aegis of American imperialism, has proceeded
apace.
In Japan the line of the military occupation, which was solely
American, has been basically the same as in West Germany. Semi-
feudal Japan, whose bourgeois revolution of 1868 was only par-
tial, was ripe for the establishment of a People’s Democracy at the
end of World War II. Realizing this, the American authorities,
headed by the petty despot General MacArthur, undertook, suc-
cessfully, to subvert the revolution by the introduction of a whole
series of bourgeois reforms. They “gave” Japan a “democratic”
constitution, reduced the monarchy to a constitutional basis, car-
ried through a limited land reform, and “dissolved” the monster
Zaibatsu industrial, financial, and landowning monopolies.21
All types of workers’ organizations – parties, unions, peasant
bodies, cooperatives, cultural societies, etc. – for the first time in
Japanese history grew rapidly in the post-war period. The Com-
munist Party, led by Tokuda, Nosako, and others, for many years
underground, had heroically fought against the Japanese war-
makers ever since the invasion of China in 1931. It proposed to
work towards the establishment of a People’s Democracy in Ja-
pan. But the Socialist Party, like the Social-Democrats in western

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 BIRTH OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACIES
Europe, would have none of this. They proposed only a mild de-
mocratization of Japan under the over-rule of beneficent Wall
Street. Between May 1947 and February 1948, their leader, Tetsu
Katayama, was Premier of Japan in a bourgeois coalition gov-
ernment.22 The general effect of the Social-Democratic policy was
to stifle the revolutionary energy of the working class and peas-
antry, and thus to enable the capitalists and landlords to grab
again their industries, lands, and political controls.
When MacArthur felt that the situation was again somewhat
in hand for the ruling classes, he opened up his guns against the
left. After arbitrarily calling off a couple of general strikes of gov-
ernment employees, in June 1950 he outlawed the Communist
Party, which had polled 2,984,627 votes, or 9.6 percent of the to-
tal cast in the national elections of a couple of days earlier. This
marked the beginning of a wide purge of left and progressive forc-
es on the McCarthy pattern. Meanwhile, under continued Ameri-
can domination, Japan is being readied for its place in the pro-
jected American war front.

477
52. Expansion of Trade Unions and Other
Mass Organizations
Besides-producing the People’s Democracies of middle and
eastern Europe and strong democratic political movements in
western Europe, the great post-World War II revolutionary wave
brought about an enormous growth of other working class and
people’s organizations, of which the trade unions are the most
elementary. Prior to the war the unions in Hitler-occupied Europe
had been almost completely wiped out. But at the conclusion of
the war they went into a swift resurgence that carried them to far
higher levels of organization than ever before in the history of the
labor movement. By the same token, the post-war upheavals also
brought about a tremendous expansion of trade unionism in the
colonial and semi-colonial areas, particularly in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America.
Among the new unions in these areas, the third Congress of
the World Federation of Trade Unions listed the following: All-
Korea Federation of Labor (1945), All-Indonesia Trade Union
Centre (1946), Congress of Labor Organizations of the Philippines
(1941), Viet-Nam C.G.T. (1946), All Burma Trade Union Congress
(1945), Central Council of Unified Trade Unions of Iran (1943),
Egyptian Trade Union Congress (1946), Trade Union of Workers
of Iran, General Confederation of Unions of Morocco, Nigerian
Trade Union Congress, South African Trades and Labor Council,
Transvaal Council of Non-European Trade Unions.1 In Japan, the
trade union movement leaped from practically nothing in 1945 to
6,533,954 in 1948.2
In this vast trade union movement the workers tremendously
increased their hold in industry by the establishment of their right
to a decisive voice in the setting of their wages and working condi-
tions. A major manifestation of this great sweep of unionization
was its predominantly left and Communist leadership. The new,
essentially Communist, type of post-war trade unionism, was char-
acterized by a number of marked features, among them: (a) it en-
compassed vast masses of workers – women, unskilled, Negroes,
etc. – hitherto virtually untouched by unionism; (b) it spread into
many countries where trade unionism previously had been weak or
even unknown; (c) it broke with traditional craft union conceptions

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 EXPANSION OF TRADE UNIONS
and put the central stress upon industrial unionism; (d) it was
highly political in character and cooperative with all other orga-
nized bodies of the working class; and (e) it was animated by a
powerful sense of class unity, breaking down all political barriers in
the working class and including in its ranks Communists, Social-
ists, Anarcho-syndicalists, Catholics, and others.
FORMATION OF THE WORLD FEDERATION
OF TRADE UNIONS
The World Federation of Trade Unions, the crystallization of
the new, broad trade union movement, was born in 1945. Alt-
hough the pre-war world organization, the International Federa-
tion of Trade Unions, headed by the right Social-Democrats, Cit-
rine and Schevenels, as Lorwin says, “at this time claimed
19,000,000 members in 33 countries, it was little more than a
name and a memory.”3 Already, early in the war, the need for a
new organization was felt. This resulted in the formation of the
Anglo-Soviet Trade Union Committee in December 1941. The A.F.
of L., true to its inveterate red-baiting character, refused to join
this; so in July 1942 the Anglo-American Trade Union Committee
was established. This dualism was the germ of an eventual split in
the ranks of world labor.
Under the growing pressure for a new organization the British
Trades Union Congress, at the instance of the Anglo-Soviet Com-
mittee, called a general labor conference, which eventually took
place in London, February 6, 1945.4 In attendance were 230 dele-
gates of 63 organizations from all over the world, representing
some 60,000,000 workers. The C.I.O. was present but the A.F. of
L. stayed away. At this time the armies of the U.S.A. and the
U.S.S.R. were fighting jointly to smash Hitler, but the reactionar-
ies at the head of the A.F. of L. would not let themselves be “con-
taminated” by contact with the Russian workers.
On September 25, 1945, the world labor congress was held in
Paris. This brought together 185 delegates, representing
66,700,000 workers in 65 national and 86 international organiza-
tions, and coming from 56 countries.5 Again the A.F. of L. osten-
tatiously held aloof, the only important labor organization in the
world to do so. The C.I.O., however, with Sidney Hillman (1887-
1946) heading the delegation, sent 20 representatives. The con-
gress definitely established the W.F.T.U. It set up a General
479
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Council of 71 members. Louis Saillant of France was chosen gen-
eral secretary, and Sir Walter Citrine of Great Britain, chairman.
It also set up an Executive Committee, consisting of nine, includ-
ing, besides Saillant and Citrine, Leon Jouhaux (France), Sidney
Hillman (U.S.A.), V. Kuznetsov (U.S.S.R.), Lombardo Toledano
(Mexico), H. F. Chu (China), Giuseppe Di Vittorio (Italy), and
Evert Kupers (Netherlands). The Preamble stated the purposes of
the organization as follows:6
“(a) To organize and unite the trade unions of the whole
world, irrespective of race, nationality, religion, or political opin-
ion;
“(b) To assist the workers in less developed countries in set-
ting up their trade unions;
“(c) To carry on a struggle for the extermination of all fascist
forms of government and every manifestation of fascism, under
whatever form it operates or by whatever name it may be known;
“(d) To combat war and the causes of war and to work for a
stable peace....
“(e) To represent the interests of world labor in all interna-
tional organizations, resting upon agreements and conventions
concluded between the United Nations;
“(f) To organize the common struggle of trade unions in all
countries for democratic liberties, full employment, improvement
of wages, hours and working conditions, for adequate social in-
surance, and for all other measures furthering the social and eco-
nomic well-being of the workers; and
“(g) To plan and organize the education of trade union mem-
bers on the question of international labor unity.”
The W.F.T.U. represented a far greater international trade un-
ion organization numerically than the workers had ever before
been able to create. It not only contained the labor movement of
Europe, including such new contingents as Poland 2,000,000, Yu-
goslavia 800,000, Rumania 1,500,000, Hungary 1,000,000, etc.,
but it also embraced many colonial and semi-colonial countries
where previously the unions were very small, or even non-existent,
including Latin America, Asia, and Africa.7 This greater breadth
numerically also expressed itself politically in the general type of
the program, as in the Preamble. This document, not raising the
question of the ultimate goal of the working class, was purposely
framed so as to make possible the affiliation of all political tenden-

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 EXPANSION OF TRADE UNIONS
cies of workers – Communists, Socialists, Anarcho-syndicalists,
Catholics, etc. It was of the all-anti-fascist front character which
had become the general pattern of progressive labor.
THE STRUGGLE FOR WORLD LABOR UNITY
The organization of the W.F.T.U. was a magnificent achieve-
ment, a true reflection of the post-war fighting spirit of the work-
ers. There were within it, however, many hostile European right-
wing Social-Democratic elements, inveterate enemies of labor
unity, whether in the industrial or the political field. But so great
was the workers’ urge for unity at the close of the war that they
did not dare openly to oppose it in the unions. The leaders even
had to merge the decrepit International Federation of Trade Un-
ions into the W.F.T.U., a consolidation which took place in De-
cember 1945. The A.F. of L., although a member of the I.F.T.U.,
did not attend the dissolution meeting.
However, the A.F. of L. reactionaries, blatant labor imperial-
ists, dared to take a bolder stand against the W.F.T.U. than their
Social- Democratic brothers in Europe. Closely attuned to the pol-
icies of the U.S. State Department, they realized that hostility
against, not cooperation with, the Russians was to be the monop-
olists’ political line of the post-war period. Nor were the A.F. of L.
rank-and-file members militant enough to force the leaders to
abandon this disruptive position. With the young and progressive
C.I.O., however, in which the Communists and other left forces
enjoyed a powerful influence, the situation was very different. The
Murrays, Careys, and other conservative elements had to go
along. They even wrote a favorable report of the C.I.O. labor dele-
gation to the Soviet Union in October 1945.8
From the outset the A.F. of L. leaders brazenly sabotaged the
work of the W.F.T.U., and therewith the interests of the world
proletariat. In January 1946, when the W.F.T.U. demanded of the
United Nations at the first meeting of the General Assembly, that
it, as the spokesman of 65,000,000 workers, be granted a seat in
an advisory capacity in the General Assembly, and that it be a
working member of the Economic and Social Council, the A.F. of
L., with the full backing of the American U.N. delegation, submit-
ted similar demands for itself. The result was that not only the
W.F.T.U. was given consultative rights in the Economic and So-
cial Council, but also the A.F. of L. and a whole group of other or-
481
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ganizations, a decision which weakened the entire proposition.
The A.F. of L. leadership was preparing new splitting activities,
which we shall deal with further along.
THE WORLD YOUTH ORGANIZATION
During the period of the general crisis and decline of capital-
ism, the epoch of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions, the
youth are playing an increasingly vital role in all phases of the la-
bor movement. This is because the ever-sharpening class struggle
demands from the workers and their allies those qualities of im-
agination, daring, courage, strength, endurance, and resolution,
which, above all, are the characteristics of the youth of both sexes.
In the broad, sharp struggle against fascism, the fighting working
youth is imperative, to meet boldly the hoodlum gangs of the fas-
cists. The youth are needed, too, both in the undergrounds and on
the open battlefields, to win the civil and imperialist wars pro-
voked by the imperialists. And when it comes to the building of
socialism by the victorious working class, the energy, initiative,
and working capacity of the youth are indispensable. These basic
lessons have been taught by the struggles of the youth against fas-
cism in France, Germany and Italy; by their valiant participation
in the long and hard-fought civil wars in China, and by their activ-
ity in the building of socialism in the U.S.S.R. and the People’s
Democracies. Never were the youth such a key factor in the
fighting, creative forces of the labor movement as during these
crucial years.
Lenin understood fundamentally this revolutionary role of the
youth,9 and as the Young Communist International grew and
functioned it expressed the new tasks thrown upon the youth of
the world by the breaking down of world capitalism and the rise
of world socialism. The Y.C.I. cultivated international and nation-
al youth organization, a breadth of program, a united-front spirit,
and an intense political militancy that were all quite unknown in
the weak, anemic, skeleton youth organizations of the Second In-
ternational. During the 24 years of life of the Y.C.I., from 1919 to
1943,10 these young men and women fighters proved their indis-
pensability in the people’s front political struggle against fascism,
in fighting through the democratic wars of the period, and in the
building of socialism.
Not unnaturally, therefore, the youth were fully represented

482
 EXPANSION OF TRADE UNIONS
in the widespread revolutionary outburst of the workers and their
allies following World War II. One of the most pronounced as-
pects of the whole situation was the growth of enormous youth
organizations in many countries, the wide expansion of all sorts of
organized youth activities, and the development of an interna-
tional youth movement that dwarfed even the big organizations
set up in former years by the Young Communist International.
The post-war youth movement began to take international
form in Europe through the establishment in London, in 1942, of
the World Youth Council by the representatives of young people
of 29 nations. Its successor, the World Federation of Democratic
Youth, was organized, also in London, in November 1945, by 437
youth delegates and 148 observers, representing 30 million mem-
bers in youth organizations in 63 countries.11 Guy de Boisson was
elected president. By 1947 membership of the W.F.D.Y. had gone
up to 48 million, and by 1953 to 85 million in 88 countries.12
The W.F.D.Y. is a broad united-front movement, comprising
Communists, Socialists, Catholics, workers, peasants, students –
young people of every nation and category. Such an immense
youth organization is largely without precedent in political histo-
ry. During the pre-war fight against Hitlerism two broad youth
congresses were organized, through Communist initiative. The
International Federation of League of Nations Societies called the
first, held in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 1936, representing
32 countries. The second met in Poughkeepsie, New York, in Au-
gust 1938, representing 54 countries. But the post-war W.F.D.Y.
surpasses this by far in numerical strength, breadth of organiza-
tion, and clarity of program. It also possesses great unity, success-
fully resisting the Social-Democratic efforts to split it.
The W.F.D.Y. cultivates all the demands and interests of
youth – education, jobs, sports, political activities, etc. In 1946,
under W.F.D.Y. influence, the World’s Student Congress at Pra-
gue organized the International Union of Students, with some
3,000,000 members. The W.F.D.Y. carries on elaborate activities
among children. Above all, the W.F.D.Y. fights for peace and de-
mocracy. It holds great youth congresses and festivals every three
years, with mass council meetings in between. These broad gath-
erings are upon a gigantic scale utterly unknown to the Social-
Democracy. Its third congress in Bucharest, July 1953, had 1,515
delegates from 106 countries. The W.F.D.Y. established its head-
483
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
quarters in Paris, and it has played a very important part in the
fight for peace during the crucial years of the cold war.
THE WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL
DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION
Like the youth, women also face new political responsibilities
and opportunities in the present period. They confront the dread
danger of fascist subjugation and, on the other hand, the social-
ism of the Soviet Union shows the splendid perspectives that
await womankind when capitalism is abolished. As workers,
women play an immense and growing role in industry and the
labor movement; as home-builders, they are acquiring a new dig-
nity; as citizens, they are a powerful constructive force, and as
fighters for peace, they stand in the very front line.
The tremendous Women’s International Democratic Federa-
tion, headed by Madame Cotton, is the world expression of wom-
an’s new economic, intellectual, and political role. This splendid
organization is the culmination of the work of generations of
dauntless women fighters for freedom – Mary Wollstonecraft,
Theroigne de Mericourt, Lucreda Mott, Harriet Tubman, Louise
Michel, Clara Zetkin, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Alexandra Kollontai,
Mother Jones, Ella Reeve Bloor, Dolores Ibarruri, Anita Whitney,
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and countless others.13
The W.I.D.F. had as forerunners, as we have seen, the prelim-
inary work of the Second International, but especially that of the
Third International. In the pre-war fight against fascism a broad
Women’s World Committee against War and Fascism was also
organized and carried on an active fight against advancing Hitler-
ism. The W.I.D.F., a wide united-front organization containing
working women of every group and every category, was organized
in Paris in November 1945, with 900 delegates present from 42
countries.14 By 1947 the organization reported a membership of
81 million in 44 countries, and at its 1953 congress in Copenha-
gen it had affiliated organizations in 70 countries, “representing
hundreds of millions of women in all parts of the world.”15
The program of the W.I.D.F. covers all the general interests of
the broad working masses, as well as the specific demands of
women. It lays the greatest stress upon the central issue of pre-
serving world peace, and it has been a strong force against the
warmongers during the cold war period.

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 EXPANSION OF TRADE UNIONS
The great post-war women’s movement, as with the youth and
the trade unions, expresses under present-day conditions the
modern progressive policy of the workers and their allies. This is
the broad, all-out, united front against fascism and war, enunciat-
ed by the historic seventh congress of the Communist Interna-
tional in 1935 and since then taken up by immense sections of
humanity fighting for peace and freedom. The Second Interna-
tional, with its reactionary policy of tailing along after warlike
American imperialism, has from the outset looked with hostility
upon these enormous mass movements and has spared no efforts
to disrupt and to split them.
THE EUROPEAN MASS COMMUNIST PARTIES
Of vital importance in the early post-war growth of broad mass
organizations – trade unions, youth, women, etc. – was the expan-
sion of the Communist parties that took place at this time. Some of
this growth we have already indicated in passing. At the British
Empire Communist Conference, held in London early in 1947, a
table of the membership of the world’s Communist parties was pre-
sented, from which the following figures are mainly taken, to indi-
cate the strength at that time of the Communist parties in Europe:
Soviet Union 6,000,000; France 1,000,000; Italy 2,100,000;
Czechoslovakia 1,700,000; Poland 700,000; Bulgaria 450,000;
Yugoslavia 400,000; Rumania 500,000; Hungary 600,000; Bel-
gium 100,000; Spain 60,000; Denmark 60,000; Finland 40,000;
Sweden 50,000; Norway 40,000; and Germany 400,000 in the
West and 1,700,000 (united Communists and Socialists) in the
East. Many of these parties have since greatly grown. This repre-
sented a membership increase for the various parties of from ten to
fifty times over pre-war.16 It dwarfed the weak growth of the Se-
cond International parties in western Europe. It was a basic conse-
quence of the sound leadership given by the Communist parties in
the long and bitter struggle against Hitlerism.
Generally, the voting strength of these Communist parties
ranged from three to ten times their membership. The parties
speedily developed a powerful press. Already in 1947, the Com-
munist Party of France had 14 dailies with 1,500,000 circulation,
among them the famous L’Humanite, with 500,000 readers, as
well as 76 weeklies with some 2,000,000 circulation. The Polish
Workers (Communist) Party had nine dailies with 800,000 read-
485
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ers, and a large number of weeklies and monthlies. The Italian
Communist Party had 14 dailies, chief among them L’Unita, with
500,000 circulation. The Communist Party in Czechoslovakia,
with its leading organ, Rude Pravo, circulating 500,000 copies
per day, had four other dailies, eighteen political weeklies, and
many other papers for women, youth, peasants, children, etc. The
parties in Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, etc.
also had a large and growing press.
The Communist parties were composed predominantly of
proletarians, the Italian Communist Party, characteristically, hav-
ing 53 percent of its membership made up of industrial workers.
The parties also drew into their ranks at the close of the war un-
precedented numbers of women, peasants, and Catholic workers.
And all over Europe, save in the Social-Democratic strongholds of
Scandinavia and the British Isles, the strong turn of intellectuals
of all kinds to the Communist parties was one of the most striking
features of the whole post-war mass upsurge. The Communist
parties were and are of an entirely higher grade than those of the
Second International. Parties of Lenin’s “new type,” they were
proletarian, unified, energetic, and possessed of a revolutionary
spirit and program utterly unknown in the Second International.
They universally had won the respect of the workers and the fear
of the employers.
To sum up the early post-war situation in Europe: The Euro-
pean capitalists, aided by Anglo-American armed forces and fi-
nancial help, and especially with the devoted service of the Vati-
can and the Social-Democracy, had managed to retain control of
western Europe, with, however, only a very precarious hold upon
France and Italy. But generally the position of capitalism in Eu-
rope was very greatly weakened as a result of the post-war revolu-
tionary movement. In the Baltic states and the People’s Democra-
cies of middle and eastern Europe, capitalism had lost control of
another 100,000,000 people and much of the richest territory in
Europe. Besides, in those parts that remained capitalist-
controlled, there was a tremendous growth of the Communist
parties, trade unions, and women, youth, cultural, and other mass
organizations – all of them constituting a vast anti-capitalist
force. Another great blow like this and European capitalism
would be only a memory.

486
53. The Revolution in the Colonial World
(1945-1949)
World War II had as its aftermath a great intensification of
the national liberation movement throughout the world, particu-
larly in Asia. The vast struggle, involving over one-half of the hu-
man race, is tearing away the very foundations of world capital-
ism, the colonial and semi-colonial regimes. This has weakened
the capitalist system even more than the loss of the European
countries to socialism, the splitting of the world market in two,
and the enormous growth of the world trade union and other
mass movements during the post-war period. Lenin has taught us
(see chapter 34) that without colonies capitalism is doomed.
The broad colonial revolution, which still continues to devel-
op, is caused by the attempts of the national capitalists and petty
bourgeoisie in the colonies to break or relax the restrictions
placed upon their growth and development by the foreign imperi-
alists, and beneath this force is the elemental revolt of the work-
ing class and the peasantry against the unbearable conditions of
destitution, oppression, and exploitation enforced upon them by
the imperialists and the big national capitalists and landlords.
Generally, it is a bourgeois democratic revolution, which is in
varying degrees of maturity in the several countries. In China,
however, with the masses definitely on the road to socialism, it
passes beyond the scope of a bourgeois democratic revolution.
The colonial revolutionary development depends, among other
factors, upon the degree of industrialization attained and espe-
cially upon whether or not the working class, with the Communist
Party at its head, has achieved the leadership of the movement.
When the workers lead, as in China, the revolution tends to an
open break with imperialism and the big national capitalists, and
to the establishment of a progressive regime and real national in-
dependence; but where the national capitalists retain the hegem-
ony, as in India, the movement tends to remain within the scope
of bourgeois national reformism, that is, to retain many ties with
the imperialists, to continue the bitter exploitation of the workers
and peasants, and to stop short of real national independence.
Among the many profound effects of the colonial revolution
upon the imperialist countries three are outstanding. First, their

487
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
growing internal crises are thereby all greatly accentuated, espe-
cially in respect to Great Britain, France, and Holland. This is be-
cause of the relative loss of colonial markets and privileges, a vast
curtailment of the areas in which they gain super-profits, the ru-
inous costs of maintaining puppet governments and of the many
colonial wars of this period. Colonialism has largely lost its profit-
ableness to the imperialist powers. Second, the imperialist pow-
ers, in trying to save something from the burning, are generally
being forced, in place of their earlier methods of direct domina-
tion and control, to adopt the specifically American forms of colo-
nialism (see the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and many other
countries of Latin America), where the colonial peoples are per-
mitted a shadow of national independence through puppet gov-
ernments, while the imperialist country retains the substance of
economic, political, and often military, domination. Third, the
breakdown of the world colonial system is causing a greatly
sharpened struggle among the imperialist powers for a larger
share in the dwindling markets of the newly-independent and
semi-independent countries. The villain in this piece is the United
States. All the other imperialist powers are now engaged in des-
perate struggles to keep American imperialism from encroaching
disastrously upon their erstwhile colonial preserves.
The most inveterate and relentless enemy of the colonial revo-
lution is the United States, dominated by Wall Street. Completely
violating its own revolutionary traditions, this country is to be
found everywhere lined up with Great Britain, France, Holland,
Portugal, and other imperialist powers, trying to stamp out or to
shoot down the revolutionary colonial movements and to grab for
itself control over the rebellious peoples.
In the vast colonial revolution now going on the influence of
the Second International naturally is to be found on the side of
beleaguered imperialism. Characteristically, as Dutt says, “All the
colonial development programs of the [British] Labor Govern-
ment were supported and endorsed by the Conservative Party.”1
Generally, as we have seen, the Social-Democrats, in their narrow
concentration upon the skilled labor aristocracy, tended over the
decades to confine their organizations and activities mostly to the
imperialist countries, and it is from this basis mainly that they
cooperate with the imperialists. The relative weakness of the So-
cial-Democracy in the colonial world redounds to the great ad-

488
 REVOLUTION IN THE COLONIAL WORLD
vantage of the struggling colonial peoples, and by the same token,
it is a disaster for the imperialists struggling desperately to main-
tain their dying system of colonial exploitation. It was only in late
1952 that the Socialist parties of Asia held their first conference,
nine of them, mostly small, in Rangoon, Burma. Although them-
selves tailing after the respective capitalist classes, these colonial
parties at once fell foul of the European Socialist parties because
of the latter’s rankly imperialist policies.2
THE CHINESE AND INDIAN REVOLUTIONS
One of the most elementary aspects of the revolutionary situa-
tion in the colonial world is the difference in degree of revolution-
ary maturity achieved by the Chinese and Indian peoples respec-
tively. In a later chapter the Chinese revolution will be dealt with
more fully; here suffice it to indicate that that revolution, which
has shaken the capitalist system of the world from end to end, has
made a complete break with imperialism, has smashed the power
of the big landowners and the national capitalist monopolists, has
established genuine national independence, and has set for itself
a goal of eventual socialism.
India, on the other hand, although split in two when it
achieved formal independence in 1947, retains many ties with the
British empire and specifically with British capitalist interests. It
also still clings in practice to the reactionary and impossible per-
spective of building itself into a strong capitalist regime, despite
Nehru’s assertion that India’s goal is socialism.3 The Indian
Communist Party thus characterizes the situation in India: “The
Nehru government keeps India as part of the British Common-
wealth of Nations, under the British king, in many areas of which
Indians are treated worse than pariahs. Our navy and air force are
under British command. Our army is under the control of British
advisors and experts, our arms are designed and manufactured by
the British. The British continue to own or to exercise control over
our coal mines, our oil deposits and refineries, our jute factories,
many of our engineering plants and concerns. They control our
foreign trade, our banks and our finances. With their capital in-
vestments, which amount to six billion rupees, and through their
administration agencies, they reap millions of rupees in profit,
hold our economy in their murderous vise....”4 Meanwhile, the
peasants have not been given the land, the working masses live in
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
a poverty without equal anywhere else in the world, and harsh
repressive measures are used by the Nehru government against
every militant movement of protest. In 1951 the C.P. reported that
“hundreds of party members were shot or tortured to death in
prisons. The number imprisoned exceeded 25,ooo.”5
The difference in tempo in the development of the Chinese
and Indian revolutions is to be ascribed to a number of basic fac-
tors. As Dutt says, “China was a semi-colony, India a full colony
for two centuries. Imperialism never penetrated China, but was
only established on the coasts with its tentacles extending
through trade into the interior. In India imperialism established
and consolidated a complete administrative structure, controlling
every detail of the life of the country throughout its territory....
Imperialism in relation to India was a single British imperialism.
Imperialism in China was divided: various imperialist powers
sought to partition China between them but were hampered by
their own differences; this gave greater opportunity for the early
advance of the Chinese national struggle.... Under the conditions
of the long-continued imperialist rule in India, a considerable
bourgeoisie and even big bourgeoisie developed with strong roots
within the country and mass influence entirely different from the
compradores in China.... The contrast between the development
of the India National Congress and the Kuomintang was an ex-
pression of the different relations of the character and basis of the
bourgeoisie in the two countries.”6
Dutt also remarks that, “It was not a question of the Chinese
Communists opening a phase of armed struggle after a previous
bourgeois-led passive struggle, but on the contrary, carrying for-
ward the national armed struggle after it had been betrayed by the
Kuomintang leadership.”7 The armed attempt of the Japanese
imperialists to subject China outright also came at a time when
the Chinese national movement was well-developed, a fact which
favored armed struggle, whereas India was subjugated long be-
fore the birth of such a movement, and in World War II the Japa-
nese did not reach India.
Gandhism, that employer-inspired pacifism which paralyzed
the revolutionary initiative of the masses and enabled relatively a
handful of British imperialists to dominate some 350,000,000
Indians, played no role in China. Dutt calls Gandhi, “This Jonah
of revolution; this general of unbroken disasters, who could un-

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leash just enough of the mass movement to drive a successful
bargain for the ‘bourgeoisie,’ and at the same time save India
from revolution.”8
Social-Democracy also played its part in checking the Indian
revolution, mainly from the British end. The British Labor Party,
with the active cooperation of Churchill’s Tories, worked effec-
tively to avert any cleansing revolution in India, and to save all
that could be saved for the British and Indian capitalists. The So-
cialist Party of India, organized in 1934, and of which Nehru was a
member, was not, as such, a decisive factor nationally. In China,
the Social-Democracy was a relatively small force.
Another basic handicap of India was that it lacked the strong
Communist Party and Communist leadership that has character-
ized the Chinese revolution during the past quarter century. Es-
pecially harmful in India, too, was the disruptive work and out-
right betrayal by the renegade Roy in the early, crucial years of
the Communist Party.
THE REVOLUTION IN OTHER ASIAN COUNTRIES
The great colonial revolution in Asia deeply affected not only
China and India, but every other country in this vast area – Indo-
china, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, Ceylon, Korea,
Thailand, and Tibet. In their big drive after Pearl Harbor, the
Japanese overran practically all of these countries, thus spurring
into action powerful national liberation movements, which are
still running their course.
The pre-war situation of these countries was everywhere basi-
cally the same. The whole area, rich in natural resources – tin,
rubber, tungsten, jute, and other valuable commodities, the
source of huge profits for the exploiters – was completely domi-
nated by British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and
American imperialists, with the usual results of destitution, illit-
eracy, disease, and oppression for the broad toiling masses. Dur-
ing the war the advancing Japanese swept away all their imperial-
ist rivals, and everywhere super-imposed their own no less harsh
and brutal system of imperialist exploitation.
This new suppression provoked and stimulated the national
liberation movements in the various countries. Guerilla activities
began on a wide scale. They played havoc with the Japanese forc-
es. As in Europe, these movements were on a national front scale
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
and they were largely led by the Communists. The Communist
parties in these countries, whose founding we have noted in pass-
ing, already had won much prestige because of the many struggles
they had led in the past and also because of the progressive poli-
cies of the Soviet Union towards oppressed peoples. The local So-
cialist parties were tiny and negligible in influence.
The European and American imperialists, aside from many
“collaborators,” fled before the Japanese armies, but they all came
back with the advance of the American armed forces. It was,
therefore, a decisive military-political task of the pro-fascist
American commander in the Pacific, General MacArthur, to see to
it that they were all reinstalled in control, with American limita-
tions. This brought about collisions with the national democratic
forces, and the outbreak of various armed struggles and two ma-
jor wars, in Korea and Indochina. The Asian peoples took serious-
ly the Atlantic Charter, which provides for national self-
determination, but which, Churchill hastily added, did not apply
to the Pacific peoples.
To reconstruct the shattered Asian colonial empires of Great
Britain, France, and Holland, the American imperialists had a
plan, as well as endless arms and munitions for the imperialists.
This plan was to set up puppet, quasi-independent regimes in the
respective countries, with the real economic, political, and mili-
tary power in the hands of the imperialists. This was on the model
of the Philippines, which had enjoyed their “independence” since
1946. This system had two advantages: First, it was the only pos-
sible one for the imperialists, the pre-war primitive type of colo-
nialism having obviously become obsolete; and second, it would
facilitate the economic and political penetration of these rich are-
as by aggressive Yankee imperialism. The British, French, and
Dutch imperialists looked askance at this American-brand of co-
lonialism, but for the most part they have had to adopt it.
This was the general plan for the organization of the “inde-
pendent” governments in the “freed” British colonies of India,
Burma, and Ceylon. It was also the basis upon which the United
States was instrumental in getting the Dutch to recognize the new
government of Indonesia in 1945,9 and in securing the endorse-
ment of the American puppet Bao-Dai in Indochina in 1949 by the
French.10 As the past several years have so amply demonstrated,
this attempt of the United States to force its brand of colonial op-

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pression upon the Asian peoples has served to inflame Asian na-
tional sentiment and to provoke long and bitter wars.
Churchill once made a statement to the effect that he was not
called upon to preside over the dissolution of His Majesty’s em-
pire and the Social-Democrats of the respective imperialist coun-
tries could truly express similar sentiments. For everywhere they
have labored diligently for the reconstruction of the shattered
Asian colonial empires, even at the cost of armed repression of
national liberation movements. The British Labor Party was in
office when British imperialism began its murderous war to sup-
press the independence struggles of the Malayan peoples.11 And
the French and Dutch Socialist parties have servilely supported
every desperate step of their governments to reinstate their impe-
rialist controls in Indonesia and Indochina. The Social-
Democrats, like the renegade Communist Browder, hailed the
American system of colonial oppression as “progressive.”
The United States, as the imperialist gendarme of Asia, has
succeeded in winning the deep hatred of the broad Asian masses,
at which situation the spokesmen for Wall Street moan and com-
plain. Thus William H. Mallory, “authority on Asian affairs,” sadly
comments that, “Americans are not popular in South and South-
east Asia, and what the inhabitants in that wide area take to be
American policy is liked even less.”12
NATIONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA
AND LATIN AMERICA
The African continent, long the heaven of the exploiters and
the hell of the toiling masses, is now aboil from end to end with
national liberation spirit. Only a small portion of Africa was over-
run during the war, hence the national revolution did not develop
as swiftly and sharply there after the war as it did in Asia. But it is
well on its way, nevertheless. Keith Irving, an African specialist,
lets out this cry of imperialist anguish in a Social-Democratic pa-
per, “We in the Western world are faced with the alternatives of a
revolution in our policies or a revolution throughout the Dark
Continent.”13
In North Africa, the row of countries along the Mediterranean
share the great national liberation upheaval that is shaking the
whole poverty-stricken Moslem world, all the way from Morocco
to Pakistan. Many of these Moslem countries, which have partly
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
broken the shackles of colonialism from their erstwhile masters,
mainly British and French, are fighting to achieve a status of real
national independence. But they now have a new enemy, Ameri-
can imperialism, which is striving to implant its own domination
over this entire vast area. These countries also have a powerful
friend, the U.S.S.R. The Communist parties play a considerable
role in many of them, but in most instances they are illegal under
the prevailing undemocratic regimes.
In Middle Africa, the broad areas where the slave-traders of
old stole millions of Negroes to wear themselves out working as
slaves on the plantations of the Americas, the peoples are now
going through a tremendous national awakening. Conditions of
life under imperialist rule are terrible. The land has been stolen
from the people and is in the hands of a tiny minority, mostly
British and Belgian, and wages are only a few cents a day on the
plantations and in the mines. Meyer says that, “In the whole of
Nigeria, with a population of approximately 30,000,000 people,
there are only six secondary schools, 96 hospital beds, and one
doctor for every 133,000 people.... The population of the Belgian
Congo has declined 50 percent since the coming of the European
colonizers.”14 But the masses are now on the move to change all
this. “In Central Africa,” says Meyer, “an African Democratic Un-
ion has arisen, two millions strong. On the Ivory Coast, 800,000
out of a population of less than 2.5 million have joined the move-
ment.”15 Strikes and political movements are taking place all
through the region, of which the famous Mau Mau movement in
Kenya is only one example.
In South Africa the national ferment is no less intense than
elsewhere on the Continent. The near-fascist white government of
the Union of South Africa is striving desperately to keep
8,000,000 Negroes enslaved to a handful of British and Boer big
landlords and industrialists. But this terrorism does not prevent a
swift rise in the national movement, in which the workers are the
leading element. These peoples are on the way to freedom, and
nothing can halt them. The Communist Party is an important fac-
tor in this vital situation.
Dutt thus summarizes the general situation in Africa:
“Throughout Africa, from Morocco in the north to Capetown in
the south, and from French Equatorial Africa, Sierra Leone, the
Gold Coast, and Nigeria on the west, to Kenya, Uganda, and Tan-

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 REVOLUTION IN THE COLONIAL WORLD
ganyika on the east, this period has seen the upsurge of popular
indignation against colonial subjection and the color bar, and
against alien appropriation of the resources of their countries.”16
Latin America has also long been a happy hunting ground of
American imperialism. Since the war, with its former powerful ri-
vals in this field – Britain, Germany, Japan – in chronic crisis, the
United States has been extending its imperialist domination. In
1952 direct American capital investments in Latin America reached
$5.7 billion, or twice the figure of 1943.17 Nearly all of the 20 coun-
tries of Latin America have U.S.-dominated puppets at their head.
Here the specific American type of colonialism prevails, that is, the
countries possess a semblance of independence, but actually they
are dominated by the United States. This system is also being fully
developed in the one old-style American colony, Puerto Rico, which
has now been extended its “independence.” This oppressed country
is a shocking example of American colonialism.
In its efforts to strengthen its colonial hold on Latin America,
the United States has the same two powerful aides that it has in
Europe, the Vatican and Social-Democracy. All the churches in
the capitalist countries, Protestant and Jewish included, of
course, actively support the regime, but none so powerfully as the
Catholic Church, especially in Europe and Latin America. This
church is particularly conscious of the dangerous position of
world capitalism and is sparing no effort to save the system and to
strengthen its own position in the process. That is why, tying its
fortunes to American imperialism, the Vatican is particularly ac-
tive in cultivating Wall Street’s war drive and in furthering fascist
development everywhere.
Social-Democracy plays an important role in Latin America.
While the Socialist parties themselves generally are very weak,
opportunism is strong in the trade unions. But United States im-
perialism gets most of its Social-Democratic help for Latin Ameri-
ca from its own home base, from the A.F. of L. and C.I.O. top
leadership. These elements, thoroughly imperialist, are always at
hand to do whatever Wall Street requires of them in Latin Ameri-
ca. They split the Latin American Confederation of Labor (of
which more anon) and, as a settled course, they support the vari-
ous other economic, political, and military measures used by
Yankee oppressors to tighten their hold upon the Latin American
peoples. In all the Latin American countries there are Communist
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
parties, but 13 of the 20 parties have been illegalized by the local
semi-fascist dictators.
Latin America is a powder keg. The vast masses of the people
live at starvation levels and are a prey to sickness and illiteracy.
Their discontent, unlike that of Asia, did not burst into revolu-
tionary flame at the end of World War II, because Latin America
did not suffer the tragic war devastation and military occupation,
and it lacked the strong national anti-fascist movement that most
of the Asian countries had. Besides, the United States colonial
system in Latin America, with its false slogans of “democracy”
and “national independence,” is much more tricky than the primi-
tive type practiced by British, French, and Dutch imperialists in
Asia. But that working class revolts and national liberation senti-
ment are growing in Latin America needs no further demonstra-
tion than the powerful movements now developing in Brazil and
elsewhere, and especially the democratic anti-imperialist gov-
ernments established recently in British Guiana, British Hondu-
ras, and Guatemala, but brutally overthrown by British and
American imperialism. Latin America will soon be the scene of
broad independence movements against the extreme arrogance
and domination of Yankee imperialism.

496
54. Early Phases of the Cold War
(1947-1950)
The cold war, initiated by American imperialism in its drive
for maximum profits and world conquest, began to take shape, as
we have seen, during the latter years of World War II in the delib-
erate attempt of the United States and Britain to weaken the Sovi-
et Union. Also, as soon as the great war was over, President Tru-
man began more intensive cultivation of imperialist anti-Soviet
hostility. “Within a week of Roosevelt’s funeral,” says Marzani,
“Truman had begun to reverse Roosevelt’s foreign policy”1 of
peaceful co-existence with the U.S.S.R. Such action was to be ex-
pected from a man who during the war had said: “If we see that
Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if we see that
Russia is winning we ought to help Germany....”2 But, of course,
this was the policy of Wall Street and would have been such
whether Roosevelt had lived or not. The complex of cold war poli-
cies that Truman proceeded to develop in behalf of Wall Street,
particularly after 1947, aimed: (a) at destroying the U.S.S.R., (b)
at establishing American hegemony over all capitalist countries,
and (c) ultimately at Wall Street’s establishing its mastery of the
whole world. A third world war was taken for granted in the de-
velopment of this grandiose imperialist perspective.
ATOMIC DIPLOMACY
The Washington warmongers at first believed that in the at-
om-bomb they had an absolute weapon, one that would guarantee
them world dominion. In this conception “conventional” arms
largely lost for them their earlier significance. This explains why
the militarists made so little resistance to the early post-war de-
mand of the American people that the “boys must come home,”
with a consequent substantial slashing of infantry forces. It ex-
plains also the arrogance used towards the U.S.S.R., the get-
tough-with-Russia policy, which had already begun to show itself
in 1945 at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco.
“Brandishing the atomic bomb” thenceforth became the main
means of American “diplomacy” with the Russians.
The question of the control of this fearsome weapon came to
be an international issue immediately after its outrageous use up-

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on helpless Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. With the end in
view of protecting its “monopoly” of the bomb, on June 13, 1946,
the United States presented the “Baruch plan” to the first meeting
of the Atomic Energy Commission of the United Nations. This
plan was carefully designed so that the Russians could not accept
it. As the English expert Blackett says, it “would have put the So-
viet Union in a position where she would have been subservient
(in her nuclear development) to a group of nations dominated by
America.”3 The United States moved aggressively to grab uranium
deposits all over the capitalist world.4
The atomaniacs of Washington figured that they could intim-
idate the Soviet Union with the bomb threat, or if need be, a
shower of A-bombs upon her cities would bring her to book. This
was the “preventive war” theory, then brazenly advocated in the
American press and elsewhere. The possibility of the U.S.S.R.
herself getting the bomb was dismissed as being negligible, a mat-
ter of 5, 10, or 20 years, if ever. This was a typical capitalist un-
derestimation of the technical capacity of socialism.
The Soviet people, however, refused to be browbeaten by the
bomb-brandishers. The Soviet government proposed a sane solu-
tion of the A-bomb problem by the stringent prohibition of its
manufacture or use and the destruction of stockpiles then on
hand – all of which was anathema to Washington, which was bas-
ing its world conquest plans upon the A-bomb “monopoly.”
Meanwhile, the U.S.S.R. in self-defense proceeded to break the
“monopoly” by making atom bombs. By 1947, it had nuclear
weapons,5 but this was not generally known until 1949, when
President Truman made the announcement.6
Although failing to establish Wall Street world dominion, the
atom-bomb nevertheless did perform important services for
American imperialism. Brandishing the bomb helps to maintain
world tension, which facilitates the present enormous American
military build-up, and by preventing any international production
control, the Baruch plan opened the way to the development of
the hydrogen bomb and the present alarmed state of humanity
over this grave menace to civilization.
Eisenhower’s “atoms for peace” program is essentially part of
the protective demagogy built around the use of the atom bomb
for aggressive war. Unlike the U.S.S.R., the United States is only
secondarily interested in the use of atomic energy for peace pur-

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 EARLY PHASES OF THE COLD WAR
poses. Its whole program of world conquest is based upon the
bomb for war aggression.
THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE
On March 12, 1947, President Truman, appearing before a
joint session of Congress, demanded and got a loan of $200 mil-
lion for military assistance to the Greek and Turkish govern-
ments, both of which were fascist dictatorships. This meant espe-
cially the building of a strong army and bases in Turkey for action
against the U.S.S.R. and the taking over of the counter-
revolutionary war against the people of Greece, which bankrupt
Britain was no longer able to handle. It was the beginning of the
notorious Truman Doctrine, which is the self-asserted right of the
United States to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries
to determine what kind of government they may or may not set
up. At the same time, American militarists greatly intensified
their aggressive and warlike policy of surrounding the U.S.S.R.
with air-bases in many countries. The growing imperialist offen-
sive against the socialist and democratic forces of the world had
taken another momentous step forward. The New York Herald-
Tribune of February 15, 1955, says that the United States now has
1,370,000 troops overseas, stationed at 950 bases.
“The Truman Doctrine,” says Perlo, “not only marked the be-
ginning of open American imperialist violence against a European
country, but was the signal for a new stage of intensified political
domination by Washington over western Europe.”7 This step
greatly increased American aggression in the Mediterranean area,
at the expense of the local people and of Great Britain and France.
It was the first phase in the building of an American puppet war
alliance in Europe which later was to become the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization. And it stepped up American economic pene-
tration of western Europe. Bolsover points out that, as the price of
this military aid to Greece, United States corporations took over
control of that country’s communications system, tobacco, air-
lines, water supply, hydro-electric power, and other industries.8
The original gross aggression under the Truman Doctrine was
followed by other arbitrary American interferences in the life of
various European countries. It was only two months after this, as
remarked earlier, that the Communists of France, Italy, and Bel-
gium, were forced out of their respective governments upon
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
American insistence. And in the Italian elections of April 1948
American interference was blatant and arrogant, Washington
even going so far as to send warships to Italian waters and to
threaten armed intervention if the Italian people should dare to
elect a democratic government. The Truman Doctrine got a tre-
mendous setback, however, in Czechoslovakia, when in February
1948 American agents brought about the resignation (see chapter
53) of a big group of ministers from the people’s government,
with the aim of setting up a government without the Communists.
But the scheme back-fired, with a complete defeat of the counter-
revolution and a basic strengthening of the People’s Democracy in
the country.
The United States was arrogantly asserting its developing he-
gemony over capitalist Europe. The fire-eater Churchill, who saw
what was coming, tried by his notorious Fulton, Missouri, speech
of March 5, 1946, to write in Britain as a strong junior partner
(unavailingly as it proved) in the growing drive of American im-
perialism for world mastery. With the guns of the great world war
hardly stilled, Churchill proposed in substance an Anglo-
American military alliance directed against the U.S.S.R. and for
world domination. It was here that Churchill first used the term
“iron curtain,” which he had pilfered from Goebbels’ propaganda
arsenal. Truman, who was present at the Fulton meeting, was ob-
viously pleased at this formal declaration of the “cold war.”
The initiation of the Truman Doctrine and the cold war
caused a big increase in American military activities, which al-
ready were based upon the theory of the inevitability of an anti-
Soviet atomic “preventive” war. The American Secretary of De-
fense at this time, with full charge of the entire armed forces, was
James Forrestal, a violent Soviet-hater, who in the midst of his
war preparations went violently insane and leaped to his death
from a hospital window. An auspicious beginning this, for the cra-
zy policy of attempted world domination, which was then getting
well under way.
Fittingly enough, also, the beginning of the cold war marked
an unprecedented attack in the United States upon the Bill of
Rights and against traditional American democratic freedoms.
Only ten days after his Congressional speech, in which he outlined
the Truman Doctrine, the President issued his first Executive Or-
der (No. 9835), decreeing “loyalty tests” for some 2,000,000 gov-

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ernment workers. This was the beginning of the shameful and
unprecedented campaign of political intimidation and fascist-like
thought-control and witch-hunting, which in the shape of McCar-
thyism was soon to reach such dangerous heights.9
THE MARSHALL PLAN
Two months after the United States government announced
the Truman Doctrine, it took the next major step in the develop-
ment of a foreign policy of aggressive American imperialism. This
was the so-called Marshall Plan, initiated by Secretary of State
George C. Marshall on June 5, 1947, in a speech at Harvard Uni-
versity. In substance, Marshall stated that the United States
would extend “assistance” to Europe, provided that “a number, if
not all European countries, would jointly prepare a program of
‘recovery’ agreeable to the United States.” President Truman later
spoke of a figure of $17 billion in “aid” over a period of four
years.10
As usual with such plans of aggression, the Marshall Plan was
put out to the accompaniment of many fine-sounding phrases of
American generosity and disinterestedness. All that the U.S. gov-
ernment (i.e., Wall Street) wanted to do, it was said, was to put
Europe back on its feet again and to make its people free and
happy. The real purposes of the move, however, were less philan-
thropic. They proposed to rescue bankrupt Europe from develop-
ing socialism, to facilitate American economic penetration of the
European capitalist powers and their colonies, to cultivate Ameri-
can hegemony over the capitalist world, and to arm and organize
the capitalist countries for an eventual all-out military assault up-
on the Soviet Union and the new European people’s democracies.
The Marshall Plan was put through the U.S. Congress on a strong
bi-partisan basis.
To facilitate its conquest of the undeveloped countries, Amer-
ican imperialism also put out what came to be known as “Point
Four.” During his inaugural speech on January 20, 1949, Mr.
Truman proposed to “embark on a bold new program for making
our scientific advance and industrial progress available for the
improvement and growth of undeveloped areas.” This plan, which
has been decorated with the most elaborate trimmings of Ameri-
can “generosity” is, in fact, nothing but an imperialist device for
establishing American influence and controls throughout the co-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
lonial world.
The capitalist rulers of Europe and their Social-Democratic
stooges snapped at the alluring American Marshall Plan bait.
They got together in Paris in July 1947, representing 16 western
European countries, and laid the basis for what became known,
for a while, as the European Recovery Program (E.R.P.), which
was in the hands of such notable Wall Street humanitarians as W.
Averell Harriman, Paul G. Hoffman, James Forrestal, John W.
Snyder, and Robert A. Lovett. The substance of the final agree-
ment, most of it made backstage, was that the countries “benefit-
ting from the American largesse” would submit their currencies to
American control, raise substantial recovery funds themselves,
curtail trade with the socialist world, place the whole European
Recovery Program virtually under American management, com-
bat all steps towards the nationalization of industry in the several
countries, and keep the Communists out of the various national
governments. Thus, American hegemony over the capitalist world
took a long stride ahead.
At this early date Wall Street did not consider it wise to break
outright with the U.S.S.R., in view of the latter’s broad popularity
because of its magnificent war record; hence, ostensibly, that
country too was made eligible for Marshall Plan funds. But when,
at the initial meeting of the European powers to consider the
whole project, Molotov, for the U.S.S.R., “proposed an approach
that would guard the national independence of the receiving
countries against what he declared was an ‘inadmissible in-
fringement upon their sovereignty,’ ” this was cynically rejected
by Britain and France, which had made their agreement before-
hand with the United States. The result was that the Soviet Union
and the People’s Democracies took no further part in the Marshall
Plan business. The Americans had succeeded in driving a wedge
between the European wartime allies and in virtually splitting the
world into two camps.11
Through the Economic Cooperation Administration (E.C.A.),
the Marshall Plan was in effect until December 31, 1951. During
this time it squandered some $12 billions in American funds for
European “recovery.” Whereas the European countries badly
needed machinery and other basic commodities, all sorts of sur-
plus odds and ends were dumped upon their markets. “Since
1945,” says Bolsover, “Britain has received about £900 million

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from the Washington loan and £800 million from the Marshall
Plan – a total of £1,700 million. But under U.S. pressure, Britain
is now spending nearly that amount – £1,490 million in war
preparations every year.” And, “Under the Marshall Plan, 1948-
51, France received 875 milliard francs.... During the same period
the French expenditure on arms was 1,950 milliards.”12 Italy and
other countries similarly went into the hole. Not surprisingly,
therefore, the rate of recovery of the West European capitalist
countries fell far behind that of the Soviet Union and the People’s
Democracies, which had received not a cent of American money.
Living standards for the masses sank all over the capitalist West.
The monster Marshall doles greatly facilitated the building of
American domination over the European capitalist countries. All
over the world the bourgeois politicians, in order to get their paws
into the gigantic American slushpot, proceeded to peddle away
the independence of their countries to Wall Street. This situation
reflected itself in a disgraceful American domination over the
United Nations. Business Week, a Wall Street mouthpiece, cried
exultantly: “The U.S. has commanded bigger and bigger majori-
ties in the U.N. to justify its crusade against Communism.... Basi-
cally, U.N. is a U.S. structure.... The U.S. gets what it pays for.”13
To make assurance doubly sure, however, the United States by-
passed the U.N. with its entire economic political-military set-up
of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.
THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION (N.A.T.O.)
N.A.T.O. was organized in Washington in April 1949, made up
of a dozen western capitalist nations, to which Greece and Turkey
were later added. Its avowed purpose was “to safeguard the free-
dom, economic heritage, and civilization of their peoples, founded
on the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the law.”14
Its real objective, however, was the creation of a militant capitalist
war alliance, directed against the Soviet Union and the People’s
Democracies. The force behind the organization was aggressive
American imperialism, with its program of world conquest.
The foundation of N.A.T.O. marked a new shift and develop-
ment in United States foreign policy. This was caused primarily
by the breaking of the American atom-bomb “monopoly” by the
Soviet Union. Previously, as we have seen, the Wall Street war-
mongers had depended almost completely on the A-bomb in their
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
war plans, but now that Russia had the bomb, a new stress was
laid again upon “conventional” arms. A feverish drive was
launched to build and arm big land forces in western Europe.
Thenceforth, American economic aid was slashed and military aid
was stepped up to about $5 billion per year. The excited arma-
ments race was carried on to the tune of incessant warnings that
Russia was momentarily about to overrun Europe; but why it did
not do so while Europe was “helpless” nobody in the capitalist
camp could explain. The fact that the Soviet Union was complete-
ly devoted to peace, was, of course, ignored or denied by the
warmakers.
The heart of N.A.T.O. was and is a re-militarized Germany,
aimed against the U.S.S.R. and working under American direc-
tion. There are three general phases to the scheme – economic,
political, and military. The economic phase is the so-called Schu-
mann Plan, based upon a consolidation of the coal and steel in-
dustries of western Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Nether-
lands, and Luxembourg. This has been formally ratified, after
much jockeying about. Western Germany is the strongest Euro-
pean element in it, with Wall Street in the background as the
overlord. The United States has previously seen to it that all plans
to nationalize German industry were defeated, and that the
Krupps, Thyssens, and other German monopolists were reinstat-
ed to full control of “their” industries.
The political phase of N.A.T.O. is the setting up of a “United
States of Europe,” in which Germany will be the key power. This
is tied in with N.A.T.O.’s military aspect, which, until it collapsed
in 1954, was the main purpose of the whole organization. The
general plan was to build a united European army of the six most
important western European powers. Of this, Germany, rearmed
and with its old-time Nazi generals in charge, was to be the main
force. All this constituted the so-called European Defense Com-
munity (E.D.C.). General Eisenhower, in December 1951, was
charged with being the general American superintendent of this
whole economic-political- military project.
Bolsover thus sums it all up: “The kind of European Union
now being mooted is certainly not an international federation of
equal peoples; it is the creation of a collection of satellite states
under the control of American capitalism with West German capi-
talism as the future general manager and chief executive.”15 Brit-

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 EARLY PHASES OF THE COLD WAR
ain and France are looking very much askance at the American
build-up of their powerful imperialist rival, Germany, realizing
well that this is being done not only against the U.S.S.R., but as a
strong American counter-weight against themselves. But we shall
return to this question later on.
SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY AND AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
For American imperialism, in its program of economically,
politically, and militarily recruiting the countries of Europe in its
drive against the Soviet Union and for world mastery, it was im-
perative that it should have the support of the Social-Democratic
parties of western Europe. The workers in Europe were in a revo-
lutionary mood following the war and the only possible way that
their sure opposition against American war plans could be con-
fused and broken up was with the assistance of those experienced
misleaders of labor, the right Social-Democrats.
Therefore, American post-war foreign policy had as one of its
main cornerstones a working arrangement with the Social-
Democrats. The first real step in this direction was the nearly $4
billion loan to the British Labor Government as early as 1946, de-
spite the fact that that government was then allegedly introducing a
program of socialism in the British Isles. From then on the British
opportunist laborites were the most ardent organizers for Ameri-
can imperialism in the Socialist parties of Europe. Nor was their
work difficult among the Blums, Jouhaux, Spaaks, Schumachers,
Ollenhauers, Saragats, and other hidebound Social-Democratic
opportunists. The latter were only too anxious to put on the collar
of Wall Street. Decisive in determining their stand on the American
program was that it was aimed to save world capitalism and to at-
tack the Soviet Union. Along with these two ingredients, they were
quite ready to swallow American domination.
In the United States, Wall Street imperialism no less worked
out a post-war collaboration with the Social-Democrats, the main
section of whom are the top leadership of the A.F. of L., C.I.O.,
and the conservative independent trade unions. The basis of this
class collaboration is twofold: First, the big employers are contin-
uing to deal freely with the unions, thus guaranteeing for the time
being the sinecure posts of these reactionary leaders – although
they dealt them, as a reminder, a resounding blow through the
Taft-Hartley Act, which was adopted in 1947, the year also of the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan. Secondly, the trade union
bureaucrats, going along with Wall Street, are getting some of the
crumbs that fall from the imperialists’ table.
The American top union leaders themselves are mainly rabid
imperialists and they are hoping to share bounteously in the
hoped-for American domination of the world. Indeed, they have
already made themselves the dictators of the post-war conserva-
tive trade union forces in Europe and elsewhere in the capitalist
countries. On this general basis, the American Social-Democratic
trade union leadership took up a position of servility to the Tru-
man Wall Street government and later the Eisenhower govern-
ment and faithfully followed their every twist and development in
foreign policy.
The Social-Democrats of Europe and America became the
most ardent peddlers of Wall Street’s imperialist slogans. In their
subservience to American imperialism, they were not to be out-
done by the capitalists themselves. None surpassed them in extol-
ling the “sincerity” and “generosity” of American foreign policy.
They glorified the Marshall Plan, N.A.T.O., Point Four, the Schu-
mann Plan, E.D.C., and the re-arming of West Germany, obscur-
ing the whole aggressive Wall Street program under seductive
slogans of peace and democracy. They did more than thus seek to
confuse the workers with American imperialist propaganda, and,
as we have seen, in France, Italy, and Belgium, to expel the Com-
munists from the government; they also set out to split and de-
moralize the magnificent trade union movement that the workers
had built up during and after World War II.

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55. The Communist Information Bureau
(1947)
The violent intensification of American imperialist aggression
in Europe in 1947, marked by the promulgation of the Truman
Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, inevitably caused grave concern
in working class circles. Naturally, it was the Communists who
stepped forth to give leadership to the world’s workers to repel
this new attack upon international peace and democracy. The
Communist International having been dissolved four years previ-
ously, nine leading European Communist parties came together
in informal conference in Poland, in September 1947, to consider
the dangerous situation. The parties were of Rumania, Hungary,
Yugoslavia, Soviet Union, France, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Italy,
and Poland.1
Zhdanov (1896-1948) made the main report at the Confer-
ence. The resolution adopted clearly outlined the aggressive role
of American imperialism, with its program of world domination
and war. “The Truman-Marshall plan,” it said, “is only a constitu-
ent part, the European section, of the general plan of world ex-
pansionist policy carried out by the United States in all parts of
the world.... The aggressors of yesterday – the capitalist magnates
of Germany and Japan – are being prepared by the United States
for a new role – to become the instrument of the imperialist poli-
cy of the United States in Europe and Asia. Anglo-American ag-
gression has split the world into two camps – “the imperialistic
and anti-democratic camp, which has as a main aim the estab-
lishment of world domination of American imperialism and the
smashing of democracy; and the anti-imperialistic and democrat-
ic camp, which has as a main aim the undermining of imperialism
and the strengthening of democracy and the liquidation of the
remnants of fascism.”2
The resolution also declared that the course of American im-
perialism is resulting in “a further sharpening of the general crisis
of capitalism.” It pointed out that, in view of the strong will for
peace of the peoples of the world, “It is necessary to remember
that between the desire of imperialists to develop a new war and
the possibility of organizing such a war there is a great gap.” The
resolution excoriated the right opportunist Socialists, notably

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
those of England and France, for their support of Anglo-American
expansionism.
Calling upon all the democratic and anti-imperialist forces of
Europe to stand firm in the face of this new war-fascism threat,
the resolution declared that, “it follows that a special task falls
upon the Communist parties. They must take into their hands the
banner of defense of the national independence and sovereignty
of their countries.” It warned, too, that “The main danger to the
working class at present consists in underestimation of its forces
and in overestimation of the imperialist camp.” It declared that if
the forces of peace and democracy will stand firm, “the plans of
the aggressors will suffer complete collapse.”
The conference resolution, deploring the lack of cooperation
among the Communist parties since the dissolution of the
Comintern, set up an Information Bureau to improve this situa-
tion. Headquarters were established in Belgrade, and a weekly
journal was issued, For a Lasting Peace: For a People’s Democ-
racy. It is still published, although no effort has been made to ex-
tend the Information Bureau (Cominform) beyond the original
constituent parties. This did not mean the reconstitution of the
International, but only the setting up of informational contacts.
Many Communist parties throughout the world, keenly feeling
the need of an international organization, wanted to develop the
new Bureau by affiliating with it. Such a trend towards another
strong international, however, would have greatly sharpened cur-
rent world tension, and nothing was done about it. The American
Communist Party, while supporting the Bureau, declared that re-
actionary legislation in the United States made it inadvisable for it
to affiliate.3
The nine-Communist party conference was one of the most
significant meetings in the history of the international labor
movement. It gave a clear warning to the workers of the world of
the dangers of fascism, war, and national enslavement inherent in
the drive of American imperialism to master the world, and it also
provided a clear line as to how to counter and defeat this menac-
ing threat. Wall Street imperialism was not going to be allowed to
subjugate humanity to American big business.
THE TITO BETRAYAL
Overwhelmingly, the Communist movement of the world re-

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sponded to the policy outlined in the 1947 conference of the nine
Communist parties. But not Yugoslavia. Although at the confer-
ence the Yugoslav delegates supported the resolution, it was soon
made clear that the Yugoslav party had no intention of resisting
aggressive American imperialism. This position was developed in
the later heated exchange of letters with the C.P.S.U.4
Late in June 1948 the Cominform met in Bucharest, with the
Yugoslavs not in attendance. The conference unanimously criti-
cized the Yugoslav Communist Party for following a line on home
and foreign policy, “which represents a departure from Marxism-
Leninism.” Among the incorrect policies of the Yugoslav leaders
was singled out a hostile attitude towards the U.S.S.R., including
the worst forms of Trotskyite slander. Numerous anti-Leninist
policies were also pointed out in the domestic sphere, including
failure to differentiate between the various categories of the peas-
antry, basing the party upon the peasantry instead of upon the
working class, liquidating the party into an amorphous people’s
front, development of a narrow bureaucratic regime in the party
and the government, refusal to accept comradely criticism from
brother parties, and otherwise following a leftist, nationalist, and
petty-bourgeois adventurist policy.
“In view of all this,” says the resolution, “the Central Commit-
tee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia has placed itself and the
Yugoslav party outside the family of the fraternal Communist par-
ties, outside the united Communist front, and consequently out-
side the ranks of the Information Bureau.” The Bureau called up-
on the Marxist-Leninist elements within the Yugoslav party “to
compel their present leaders to recognize their mistakes openly
and to rectify them, to break with nationalism, to return to inter-
nationalism; and in every way to consolidate the united socialist
front against imperialism.”
The Tito-Rankovic group in Yugoslavia rejected the position
of the Cominform and, with their firm control of the peasant ar-
my, were able to suppress the Marxist-Leninist opposition inside
the party. They threw as many as 250,000 in jail.5 Their action
was greeted by the capitalist world, and they hastened to sew up
an alliance with the Anglo-American imperialists. Consequently,
in its meeting in Budapest, in November 1949, the Information
Bureau, characterizing Tito’s ideology as “fascist,” declared that
“the Yugoslav Government is in a state of complete dependence
509
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
on foreign imperialist circles and has become a tool of their ag-
gressive policy, which has resulted in the liquidation of the sover-
eignty and independence of the Yugoslav Republic. The Central
Committee of the party and the government of Yugoslavia have
completely joined forces with the imperialist circles against the
entire camp of socialism and democracy, against the Communist
parties of the whole world, and against the People’s Democracies
and the U.S.S.R.”6
Tito became a favorite of the capitalist world, and “Titoism”
was hailed as a new and deadly weapon against international so-
cialism. Tito’s Yugoslavia was taken into the ranks of the Anglo-
American war alliance, and from 1950 to the present time it has
received an estimated $700 million of American money.7 In re-
turn, the Tito forces became violent anti-Soviet elements and also
set about liquidating many steps taken earlier toward socialism in
their country, by denationalizing industries, liquidating the col-
lective farms, and the like. They cynically abandoned the Greek
revolution, which then went down to defeat.
Tito’s defection had far more dangerous implications than
swinging Yugoslavia out of the peace camp. It was nothing short
of an attempt to sever the relations between all the People’s De-
mocracies and the U.S.S.R. and to lead the former into the impe-
rialist camp. This was brought out in the trials of Rajk, Rostov,
and others in Budapest and Sofia in 1949. The Tito plot was
nipped in the bud, however, by the prompt and decisive action of
the Information Bureau. All that Tito could muster in the other
People’s Democracies was a thin scattering of concealed bour-
geois nationalists, who were readily defeated.8 G. Dimitrov played
a key role in this vital fight. Of recent months, Yugoslavia has
shown some tendencies to soften its violent attacks upon the
U.S.S.R., and to normalize its relations with that country.
THE RIGHT SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS SPLIT
THE WORLD TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
The Anglo-American imperialists used the right Social-
Democrats, not only to peddle their imperialist slogans among the
working class and to form part of French, Italian, and other gov-
ernments that would do Wall Street’s bidding; they also employed
them in an effort to cripple the splendid trade unions that
emerged immediately after World War II. These unions were

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powerful barriers in the way of American monopoly capital and
had to be removed. This union-smashing was one of the most dis-
graceful acts in the whole history of the Second International.
In Europe, from 1948 on, the rights concentrated their attack
upon the broad labor federations in Germany, France, and Italy,
which were developing policies of democracy, peace, and the
workers’ general welfare. The chief American disrupters were
such men as Irving Brown (A.F. of L.) and James B. Carey
(C.I.O.), who lavishly spent millions of dollars directly under U.S.
State Department supervision. As a result, with the support of the
employers, the governments, the Socialist parties, and the Catho-
lic Church, they succeeded in developing minor break-away
movements in all three of these countries, shamelessly betraying
several major strike movements in the process. The German labor
movement was badly split, but in Italy and France the two federa-
tions emerged solid from the struggle. Today the Italian left-led
C.G.T. contains about 90 per cent of all the organized workers in
Italy, and that of France some 80 percent.
In the United States the union-wreckers, at the same time,
paid special attention to crippling the then progressive Congress
of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.). In the building of this
6,000,000-strong federation, Communist and other left and pro-
gressive forces had played a big part, and their voices remained
powerful in the leadership. But Murray, Reuther, Carey, and other
conservatives, aided by all the forces of reaction, succeeded in
splitting the organization in 1949, when they arbitrarily expelled
eleven progressive unions with some 900,000 members, because
they refused to endorse the Marshall Plan and the rest of the war
program of American imperialism. The forces of American capi-
talism enthusiastically hailed this treachery and called Murray
and company great patriots, but the C.I.O. has never recovered
from the blow.9
Meanwhile, the Social-Democratic union splitters also turned
their attention towards wrecking the Latin American Confedera-
tion of Labor (C.T.A.L.), the finest organization ever produced by
the workers in this immense territory of semi-colonies. In this
shameful work, the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O., erstwhile bitter ene-
mies, worked hand-in-hand, again under direction of the U.S.
State Department. Their aim was to force Wall Street’s war line
upon Latin America. In 1948, in Lima, Peru, they succeeded in
511
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
tinkering together the Inter-American Confederation of Workers
(C.I.T.), mostly based on the A.F. of L., C.I.O., and scattered
groupings of Latin American strike-breakers. This organization,
quickly discredited, was reorganized in Mexico City in 1951, into
the Inter-American Regional Workers’ Organization (O.I.R.T.)
The O.I.R.T. is dominated from top to bottom by United States
imperialist labor agents. All this disruptive work has done grave
injury to the workers of Latin America, and made much easier the
path of oppressive American imperialism in the area. The
C.T.A.L., nevertheless, although weakened by the splits, remains
the strongest labor organization in Latin America.
The main union-smashing task of the Social-Democrats, how-
ever, was their attempt to destroy the powerful World Federation
of Trade Unions. Here again, the leading union-wreckers were
Americans, known agents of the government. American imperial-
ism, as a first condition for the subjugation of Europe to its war
program, had to remove the militant and progressive W.F.T.U.
from its path. The C.I.O. undertook to do this major job of union-
smashing, with the A.F. of L., which was not affiliated to the
W.F.T.U., helping from the outside. The chief union-smashing
agent of the C.I.O., A.F. of L., and State Department, was James
B. Carey, secretary-treasurer of the C.I.O. This is the man who, at
a reactionary New York meeting, stated: “In the last war we joined
with the Communists to fight the fascists; in another war we will
join with the fascists to defeat the Communists.”10
As in the cases of the C.I.O., the C.T.A.L. and the labor federa-
tions in Germany, France, and Italy, Carey raised the question of
endorsement of the Marshall Plan as the splitting issue. With the
active help of the leadership of the British Trades Union Con-
gress, he demanded in April 1948 that the W.F.T.U. come out in
favor of Wall Street’s Marshall Plan. The W.F.T.U., instead, to
preserve world labor unity, decided to leave the matter to the re-
spective national union centers to resolve for themselves. This
action, of course, did not satisfy Carey and his co-conspirators,
who had orders to wreck the W.F.T.U. at whatever cost. Hence, on
January 1, 1949, at the W.F.T.U. Executive Committee, then
meeting in Paris, they arrogantly demanded that the W.F.T.U.
“suspend its operations for a year,” a move clearly designed to kill
the organization. This proposal was rejected; whereupon the
C.I.O., British, and Dutch union delegates walked out. The split

512
 THE COMMUNIST INFORMATION BUREAU
was thus made an accomplished fact, and the Social-Democrats
had added another act of deepest treachery to their long list of
labor betrayals. Carey, Deakin, and the others who struck this
body blow at world labor, were hailed as real labor statesmen by
the capitalist world.11
The Social-Democratic labor splitters, financed by the U.S.
government and aided actively by all the other Marshall Plan Eu-
ropean governments, then proceeded to launch a new world labor
organization. This was done in London in November 1949, when
there was formed the International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions (I.C.F.T.U.), with J. H. Oldenbroek as general secretary.
This organization, bossed (with some difficulty) from top to bot-
tom by American labor imperialists, has since followed the gen-
eral line of the U.S. State Department in the latter’s efforts to de-
velop a general war against the Soviet Union. The extremest
forms of labor disruption, violent denunciation, and strike-
breaking are its accepted weapons against the W.F.T.U. and other
militant unions everywhere. The I.C.F.T.U. now claims 54 million
members. But its actual membership is far less – at its 1953 con-
gress in Stockholm, the voting strength shown was for 39 million
members.12 Over half of its membership is located in the United
States and Great Britain. The Catholic unions, which also tended
to separate themselves from the main stream of labor – in their
International Confederation of Christian Trade Unions – have
small organizations in fourteen countries, with a total of about
two million members.13
Meanwhile, the W.F.T.U. has proceeded along its course,
functioning and growing vigorously. The Wall Street-inspired at-
tempt to destroy it failed dismally. At its second congress, Milan
1949, after the split, it reported 72 million, and at its third con-
gress, Vienna, October 1953, the total number of workers repre-
sented, as reported by its general secretary, Louis Saillant, was 88
million, of whom eight million – although with delegates present
– were not actually affiliated. Thus, as things now stand, the
W.F.T.U. is at least twice as large numerically as the I.C.F.T.U. Its
general policy is one of cooperation with all other labor organiza-
tions for a class struggle policy.
The above developments go to demonstrate the very im-
portant reality that the decisive leadership of the world trade un-
ion movement, which for many decades during the life of the Se-
513
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
cond International had been definitely in the hands of the right
Social-Democrats, has, since the period of World War II, passed
to the Communists and other left forces. Significant in the world
line-up of organized labor are the facts that the I.C.F.T.U. has its
main stronghold in the United States and Great Britain, countries
where imperialism is still strong and the labor aristocracy contin-
ues to play a big role; whereas the strength of the W.F.T.U. lies in
the Socialist nations, in the colonial and semi-colonial lands, and
in those capitalist countries that are feeling most sharply the ef-
fects of the ever-deepening general crisis of world capitalism. The
basic course of the world labor situation tends increasingly to
shift the center of trade union leadership irresistibly to the left.
THE IDEOLOGICAL DECAY OF WORLD SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY
In this and previous chapters it has been pointed out how the
parties of the Second International in the post-World War II peri-
od attached themselves to the war chariots of American imperial-
ism and became Wall Street’s most reliable collaborators. As we
have seen, this led them to such anti-working class depths as the
shameless propagation of imperialist war slogans among the
masses, the breaking of strikes, the splitting of unions, and the
management of governments in the interest of their national
bourgeoisie and the Wall Street would-be world conquerors. Their
ideology, once professedly Marxist, underwent during this period
a corresponding further decay.
Now as always, the right-wing Social Democrats are what
Lenin called them many years ago, “the agents of the bourgeoisie
in the ranks of the workers.” Their special job is to make bour-
geois policies palatable to the workers, or to sections of them, by
dolling them up in labor and socialist phraseology. As Kuusinen
says, “It would be impossible for the Social-Democratic reformists
successfully to do their job as servants of the bourgeoisie, if they
did not at the same time take care to retain the confidence of the
workers who still follow them. That is why they use the flag of so-
cialism.”14 But today the Second International parties have be-
come so saturated with the bourgeois spirit that their pretense of
socialism is growing thinner and thinner. In the United States the
Social-Democrats have long since abandoned even a pretense of
socialism, and have become the most open and noisy defenders of
capitalism.

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 THE COMMUNIST INFORMATION BUREAU
This bourgeois decay affects not only the Socialist parties in
the imperialist nations, but also in the colonial and semi-colonial
world, where generally they play a lesser role. Thus, in India,
where the bourgeoisie are in deadly fear of the developing prole-
tarian revolution, the Social-Democrats, as their faithful servants,
are busily amalgamating “Marxism” with paralyzing Gandhism.
They are preaching a “revolution of love,” glorifying petty hand
production, and opposing every form of militant struggle by the
working class, all of which perfectly suits the big British and Indi-
an capitalists.15
The right Social-Democrats have everywhere unceremonious-
ly thrown aside the whole system of Marxian economics. They
have become ardent advocates of bourgeois Keynesism, with its
conceptions of a “managed capitalist economy” and “progressive
capitalism.” The class struggle, another foundation of Marxism,
has gone the same way. Today the right Social-Democrats are not
to be outdone by even the most blatant defenders of capitalism in
their denial of class struggle and their advocacy of class collabora-
tion. Dialectical materialism has also been rejected, piecemeal
and in general. Nowadays, the Second International parties are
the hospitable hosts to every form of bourgeois obscurantism.
Their old-time professions of internationalism, too, have given
place to the crassest nationalism and imperialism. Revolution is,
of course, also a thing of the past; and the Laborite, Mr. Cross-
man, informs us that, “Capitalism is undergoing a metamorphosis
into a quite different system.”16
A generation ago Kautsky, Bernstein, Bukharin, and others
within and close to Social-Democracy, were talking about an “or-
ganized capitalism” and “super-imperialism” which would put an
end to the violent internal contradictions of the capitalist system.
Now their successors are trying to realize these hare-brained reac-
tionary theories by supporting American imperialism, with its
program of world domination. Aggressive American imperialist
war policy, they universally hail as progressive.
Social-Democracy all over the world, turning its back alto-
gether upon the brilliant theoretical work of Marx and Engels, is
tending, like the veriest bourgeois pragmatists, to ignore theory
altogether. Characteristically, in the West German Socialist Party
there does not now exist a precise and authentic statement of “so-
cialist” ideology, but only a program of action adopted by a party
515
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
convention in 1952. Its late leader, Kurt Schumacher, told us that
Marxism is only one of the ways to approach socialism.17 These
are but a few of the innumerable signs of the bourgeoisification of
the Social-Democratic parties everywhere.
Since the end of World War II, the right Social-Democrats
have, from time to time, headed most of the governments of west-
ern Europe – Great Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Norway,
Denmark, Sweden and Austria – as well as in Japan, but this has
not advanced the cause of socialism one whit. These Socialist-led
governments have in fact been only caretaker administrations
until the times were propitious for the capitalists themselves once
more to take charge directly. Such governments are a hindrance
to the workers in winning their way towards socialism. The Se-
cond International, a tool of the imperialists and warmongers, is
not only an obstacle to the workers’ securing socialism, but also to
the achievement of their most urgent practical needs – the de-
fense of their living standards, the protection of their national in-
dependence, and the guarding of world peace and democracy.

516
56. Victory of the Chinese Revolution
(1950)
The history of the Communist Party in the Chinese Revolution
is one of virtually continuous armed struggle from 1924 to 1950.
In 1926 Stalin pointed out that necessarily the Chinese Revolution
had to be fought through by military means, and so it has turned
out in reality.1 The great Chinese revolutionary wars fall under
four general heads: (a) the war of the Kuomintang (K.M.T.) and
C.P. united front against the reactionary war lords, 1924-27; (b)
the war of the people’s forces led by the C.P. against K.M.T. reac-
tion, 1927- 36; (c) the patriotic war of the K.M.T. and C.P. forces
against Japanese aggression, 1936-45, and (d) the war of the peo-
ple’s forces against the K.M.T. and American imperialism, 1946-
50, which culminated in a world-shaking victory for the people
and the establishment of the Chinese People’s Republic.
Previously (see especially Chapters 39, 43, 45, and 47), we
have traced the course of the earlier three of these wars. In the
first war, 1924-27, we have seen that the Communist Party loyally
went along with the Kuomintang until Chiang, believing he could
take over China for the industrialists, bankers, big landlords, and
imperialists, turned upon the Communists with an incredible sav-
agery. We have also seen the long, heroic struggle of the Chinese
people during the war of 1927-36, against Chiang Kai-shek and
the Japanese, most of it waged while the Japanese were invading
the country and with Chiang constantly refusing to make a united
front with the people’s forces against the common enemy, until
after the famous Sian kidnapping incident. Finally, we have re-
viewed the national resistance war against the Japanese during
1936-45, with Chiang fighting against the people’s forces more
than he did against the Japanese. It now remains for us to trace
the course of the civil war of 1946-50, precipitated by Chiang and
in which he met his downfall at the hands of the Chinese people.
CHIANG LAUNCHES THE CIVIL WAR
Upon the conclusion of the victorious war against the Japa-
nese imperialists, the Chinese Communist Party, on August 25,
1945, issued a declaration outlining plans for a united front peo-
ple’s democracy in China. To this purpose Mao Tse-tung went to

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Chungking and conferred for more than a month with Chiang.
Agreements were made to safeguard internal peace, but Chiang
signed them only for the purpose of winning public support. He
had not the slightest intention of carrying them out,2 and he pro-
ceeded at once to violate them by attacking the People’s Libera-
tion Army.
Chiang had behind him American imperialism. The would-be
world conquerors in Wall Street and Washington, already actively
embarked upon their program of aggressive expansionism, were
paying close attention to the great, hoped-for prize of China.
Chiang was their willing puppet. With American support and in
violation of the agreement he had just signed, Chiang began to
seize those large parts of China previously held by the Japanese.
In taking over various of the big cities of northern China he had
the active help of U.S. warships, transports, and airplanes, which
moved his soldiers and supplies. Meanwhile, he attacked the
troops led by the Communists, with the result that many armed
clashes developed.
At this juncture the Communists took the initiative in calling
for a truce, on January 10, 1946. A conference was assembled,
with all groups represented. The United States sent as its repre-
sentative, General George C. Marshall, to replace Patrick J. Hur-
ley, in the role of “mediator.” In his instructions to Marshall, Sec-
retary of State Byrnes said, “We believe as we have long believed
and constantly demonstrated that the government of Generalis-
simo Chiang Kai-shek affords the most satisfactory base for a de-
veloping democracy.”3 The Communist-led People’s Liberation
Army was much too powerful, however, to be summarily brushed
aside, as President Truman would have liked, so maneuvers had
to be made. Consequently, an agreement was worked out for the
calling of a National Assembly under Chiang’s control. Marshall
used his influence to cut down Communist representation in the
Assembly and to reduce the role of the People’s Liberation Army
in the proposed new national military set-up. The Communists
refused to walk into this trap.
Meanwhile Chiang proceeded at once to violate all their
agreements by militarily seizing as much as he could of the for-
merly Japanese-occupied territory. Like the Korean Syngman
Rhee of later years, he understood that his military aggression
would have the support of American imperialism, whose aim,

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 VICTORY OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
above all, was to prevent the formation of a genuine people’s re-
gime in China. During 1946, therefore, upon Chiang’s initiative,
the civil war got under way. On January 7, 1947, Marshall left
China (to return later for a short time in April), criticizing Chiang
(for the record’s sake), but falsely placing the main responsibility
upon the Communists for the outbreak of the civil war.
THE VICTORY OF THE PEOPLE
Superficially, Chiang seemed to have much the better of the
situation and he glowed with optimism.4 His army was fully
equipped with the very best American armaments, including a big
fleet of airplanes (of which the Communists had almost none),
and his army was two-and-a-half times as large as the People’s
Liberation Army. Chiang also occupied by far the largest part of
China, including most of the main railroads and the big cities, and
he had the backing of American imperialism. (All told, up till
then, the United States had given $6 billion to Chiang and zero to
People’s China.) But Chiang lacked one vital element, the support
of the Chinese people. They were thoroughly disillusioned by the
rotten graft with which his government was saturated, and with
the corrupt landlords, usurers, and monopolists who controlled it.
They hated Chiang for his treasonous failure to fight the Japa-
nese, and they rightly blamed him for starting this latest civil war.
Hence, workers, peasants, students, middle class and many
smaller capitalists increasingly swung their vast support to Mao
Tse-tung and the People’s Liberation cause.
Full-scale fighting got under way in July 1946. Against
Chiang’s vastly heavier forces, the People’s Liberation Army, fol-
lowing Mao’s approved strategy and tactics, withdrew from many
larger cities and concentrated, with success, upon inner lines. As
Chu Teh says, “By the time the war was eight months old, over
700,000 of Chiang Kai-shek’s bandit forces had been wiped out....
During the first year, over 1,000,000 Kuomintang troops were
annihilated, whereas the People’s Liberation Army grew in
strength from 1,300,000 to 2,000,000.”5 In July 1947 Mao’s forc-
es took the offensive, and during the next year they won many
important victories. The morale of the Kuomintang troops sank
and large bodies surrendered, with their brand-new American
equipment.
During the period from September 1948 to January 1949 the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
People’s Liberation Army delivered three powerful offensives
against the Kuomintang’s forces, putting 1,540,000 out of action.
Great Chinese cities fell one after another before the people’s
armed forces – Tientsin, Peking, Nanking, Shanghai, and others.6
With the fall of Nanking, Chiang’s capital, the K.M.T. regime was
basically defeated. By June 1950 the rest of the country was
mopped up, and Chiang and the remnants of his forces were driv-
en to the island of Taiwan (Formosa), where they still remain, liv-
ing upon American handouts. The great Chinese Revolution, fore-
seen by Lenin and Stalin and supported by the Third Internation-
al, had won.
The four-year civil war, one of the greatest ever fought, resulted
in a glorious victory for the people. The latter’s armies roared
across China, sweeping before them all the trash of feudalism and
imperialism. During the fierce struggle the People’s Liberation Ar-
my destroyed or captured 8,700,000 of Chiang’s troops, won over
some 1,700,000 more, and seized from Chiang 50,000 pieces of
artillery, 300,000 machine guns, 1,000 tanks, 20,000 motor vehi-
cles, and many other kinds of military equipment, nearly all Ameri-
can-made.7 The 25 years of war in China were at an end. The forces
of Chinese reaction and American imperialism were wrecked, as
had been those of Japanese imperialism. The vast Chinese nation
had broken the fetters that had so long enslaved it and was now
embarked upon the road the goal of which is socialism.
With the oldest contemporary civilization in the world, China
is an immense country. It has 4,300,000 square miles of territory,
or one-sixth more than the United States. Its population, rapidly
growing, amounts to some 600,000,000, the largest in the world
and about one-fourth of all humanity. It is a country rich in agri-
cultural and industrial resources, having vast stretches of fertile
land and large deposits of tungsten, copper, nickel, magnesium,
aluminum, zinc, and other minerals. China has coal deposits of
400 billion tons; it is especially rich in iron ore; its oil deposits far
exceed those of Iran, and in its water-power facilities it is superior
to the United States and second only to the U.S.S.R.8 China was a
very great prize indeed for the imperialist looters and exploiters
to fight for.
The capitalist world, especially the big industrial barons in the
United States, stood amazed and aghast at the epic people’s victo-
ry developing in China. But, in view of the elemental trend of the

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 VICTORY OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
people to the new People’s Republic, they were utterly unable to
change the course of events. All they could give Chiang was fur-
ther weapons, and he already had more of these than he could
use. What Chiang needed was not munitions, but the confidence
of the Chinese people, which he had long since forfeited. But if the
world’s capitalists were shocked at what was taking place in Chi-
na, the revolutionary and progressive workers of the world hailed
it with rejoicing. The loss of China by revolution was a fundamen-
tal and irretrievable disaster to the world capitalist system.
On October 1, 1949, the Central People’s Government of Chi-
na was proclaimed, with Mao Tse-tung as Chairman and Chou
En-lai as Premier. On this same day, the Soviet Union diplomati-
cally recognized People’s China and extended it a hearty welcome
to the free peoples of the world. With a wary eye to Hong Kong
and its other colonies in the Far East, Great Britain recognized the
new regime on January 5, 1950. As for the United States, it was
profoundly shocked by the whole turn of events and felt itself to
be hardly less defeated than was the Kuomintang itself. Therefore,
inasmuch as it had arrogated to itself the autocratic right to de-
cide what kind of governments all other peoples may have, the
United States refused recognition to People’s China. It also op-
posed the admission of the new regime into the United Nations.
No sooner was People’s China established by the overwhelming
will of the great Chinese people than the Wall Street monopoly
capitalists, hoping frantically to turn back the wheels of history,
began to unfold a policy of hatred towards it, and they are plan-
ning for an eventual war against that country to undo the great
Revolution.
THE CHINESE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY
Mao thus characterizes the great Chinese Revolution: “The
historical process of the Chinese Revolution must be divided into
two stages: first the democratic revolution and then the socialist
revolution – two revolutionary processes quite different in char-
acter.... Before [the Russian Revolution of November 1917], the
Chinese bourgeois democratic revolution belonged to the category
of the old bourgeois democratic revolution of the world, and was a
part of it. Since then, the Chinese bourgeois democratic revolu-
tion has changed its character and belongs to the category of the
new bourgeois democratic revolution. As far as the revolutionary
521
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
front is concerned, it is a part of the world proletarian Socialist
revolution.”9 The old-type revolution was led by the bourgeoisie;
the new type by the proletariat. Mao defines the new regime as “a
dictatorship of the people’s democracy based on an alliance of the
workers and peasants and led by the working class (through the
Communist Party).”10 He also says, “The working class must lead
the dictatorship of the people’s democracy, for only the working
class is the most far-sighted, just, unselfish and consistently revo-
lutionary class.”11 And Chen Po-ta adds, “It was precisely the lead-
ership of the proletariat and the alliance of the working class and
the peasantry brought about by it which made possible... the vic-
tory of the revolution against imperialism, feudalism, and bu-
reaucratic capitalism.”12 Mao justifies the new regime thus: “In a
certain historical period, the Soviet-style Republic cannot be fit-
tingly practiced in colonial and semi-colonial countries, the na-
tional policy of which, therefore, must be of a third type – that of
the New Democracy.”13
The new People’s Democracy is genuinely democratic. Mao
thus outlines it: “The democratic system must be realized among
the people, granting them freedom of speech, assembly, and or-
ganization. The right to vote is granted only to the people and not
to the reactionaries. These two aspects, namely, democracy for
the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, represent the
dictatorship of the people’s democracy.” And Mao adds, “At the
present stage in China the people are the working class, the class
of the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and national bourgeoi-
sie.”14 There is obviously a close political kinship between the
People’s Democracy in China and the People’s Democracies of
eastern Europe.
The basic legislative body in China during the five years pend-
ing the holding of a broad national Congress was the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Conference. This was officially de-
scribed as follows: “The Chinese People’s Political Consultative
Conference (C.P.P.C.C.) was an organization of the democratic
united front of the entire Chinese people. It embraced the repre-
sentatives of the working class, the peasantry, the revolutionary
armymen, the intellectuals, the petty bourgeoisie, the national
bourgeoisie, national minorities, the overseas Chinese, and other
patriotic, democratic personages.” Ten political groups went to
make it up. The leading party in this preliminary government was

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 VICTORY OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
the Communist Party, which in 1952 had some 6,000,000 mem-
bers.15 There were other parties and great mass organizations be-
hind it – the trade unions with 10,000,000 members, the youth
with 8,000,000, large women’s organizations, etc. It was the
C.P.P.C.C. organized in 1949, which proclaimed the People’s Re-
public of China.
The People’s Republic of China adopted its national constitu-
tion at a great congress in September 1954 in Peking. The consti-
tution proclaims the new government as “a people’s democratic
state, led by the working class and based on the alliance of work-
ers and peasants.” The constitution proclaims socialism as its
goal. It states that, “The period from the founding of the People’s
Republic to the attainment of a socialist society is one of transi-
tion. The central task of the state during this transition period is
to bring about, step-by-step, the socialist industrialization of the
country and to accomplish, gradually the socialist transformation
of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce.”
The economy now existing is of four types: 1. State ownership,
ownership by the whole people; 2. cooperative ownership; that is,
collective ownership by the working classes; 3. ownership by indi-
vidual working people, and 4. capitalist ownership. The whole
national economy is based on planned production.
The government guarantees full social rights and liberties to
the people. Women are the equal of men in every sphere, econom-
ic, political, and social. The various nationalities making up the
Chinese people are all upon an equal basis. The government, na-
tionally, has but one chamber, which meets annually in the Con-
gress. The interim leading bodies are the Standing Committee
(Cabinet) and the State Council. The Chairman of the Republic is
Mao Tse-tung, the Vice- Chairman is Chu Teh, and the Premier is
Chou En-lai.16
New China’s objective, as Mao says, is “to develop from an
agrarian country into an industrial country and to pass from a
New Democracy to a socialist and communist society, in order to
abolish classes and to bring about world communism.”17 This
does not mean, however, that the land has been collectivized and
all industry nationalized; this will take time. Land collectivization
will depend upon a considerably higher degree of industrializa-
tion than yet exists. It is officially estimated that land collectiviza-
tion will be “basically achieved” in 1958.18 While industrialization
523
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
by the state is proceeding, certain forms of capitalism will be tol-
erated and encouraged (much as under the N.E.P. in early Soviet
Russia). The industries of the imperialists, the compradors (their
agents), and bureaucratic capitalists (monopolists), have been
nationalized.
With the workers and their allies in firm control of all the key
sectors of the national economy,19 as well as of the state power,
they can permit a certain growth of capitalism, as an addition to
the decisive industrialization carried on by the government. As
Mao says, “Our present policy is to restrict capitalism but not to
destroy it.” The new constitution specifies these restrictions and
declares that, “The state forbids capitalism to endanger the public
interest, disturb the social economic order, or undermine the na-
tional economic plan by any kind of illegal activity.” But this ele-
ment of national capitalism is only temporary, as the country pro-
ceeds to industrialize itself. Mao points out that the petty bour-
geoisie and the national capitalists, as proved by history, cannot
possibly lead the Revolution. As he also warns, “The people have
in their hands a strong state apparatus, and they do not fear a re-
volt on the part of the national bourgeoisie.”20 During the later
years of the great Chinese Revolution the belief spread in Ameri-
can bourgeois circles that the Chinese Communists were not real-
ly revolutionary, that they and the movement they were leading
were only of an agrarian reform character. But this was nonsense,
a form of bourgeois self-deception in the face of this elemental
movement of the powerful Chinese people. From the outset the
Chinese Communists, cleansing their party of all renegades and
deviators, have drawn their inspiration and understanding from
the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, and they very plain-
ly said this all along. They are especially lavish in their apprecia-
tion of Stalin, who for many years was a close advisor on the Chi-
nese Revolution. And of Lenin, Shih Chek says: “It is with the
warmest love and deepest admiration that the Chinese people...
honor this brilliant leader of all progressive mankind, their own
best friend and teacher – V. I. Lenin.”21 And in presenting the
constitution to the Congress, Liu Shao-chi, General Secretary of
the Communist Party, declared, “The road our country will take,
as laid down in our Draft Constitution, is the road that the Soviet
Union has traversed.”
The Chinese also have always worked in close cooperation

524
 VICTORY OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
with the other Communist parties of the world, especially during
the period of the Third International. In his great article, so often
quoted here, Mao thus expresses the powerful spirit of interna-
tionalism of the Chinese Revolution in the policy of the new gov-
ernment: “Unity in the common struggle with the countries of the
world which regard us as an equal nation, and with the peoples of
all countries. This means alliance with the U.S.S.R. and with the
People’s Democracies in Europe, and alliance with the proletariat
and the masses of the people of the other countries to form an
international united front.’’22
The laying of the economic basis for socialism is now proceed-
ing very rapidly in People’s China. This is because the Chinese are
being greatly helped economically by the Russians. Thus, at the
first National People’s Congress in Peking, Mao declared, “We
must strive to learn from Soviet Russia, in the constitution of our
country, economically and culturally, to make China a superior
state.”23 The Soviet Union militarily is also a great protector of
People’s China from the imperialists.
THE ROLE OF MAO TSE-TUNG
The great leader of the Chinese Revolution possesses many of
the qualities of leadership that characterized Marx, Engels, Lenin,
and Stalin. A man of resolution, initiative, and boundless energy,
Mao is a brilliant theoretician, an exceptional organizer, and a
very powerful leader of the masses in open struggle. These were
the qualities that enabled this creative Marxist genius, in the face
of prodigious difficulties, to lead the more than half a billion of
the Chinese people to decisive victory.
Mao’s theoretical work ranges over a vast scope. It sums up to
an adaptation of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism to the
specific conditions prevailing in China, a monumental task which
he has done with profound skill and thoroughness. The basis of
this work was a Marxist evaluation of the character, over the
years, of the developing Chinese Revolution – his differentiation
of the new-type bourgeois democratic revolution from the old
type, and the establishment of its relationship to the socialist rev-
olution, constitute major contributions to the general body of
Marxist theory. Mao also paid close attention to the Marxist anal-
ysis of class forces in China and the relation to each other of dem-
ocratic forces in united-front movements, his work in this respect
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
being one of the classics of Communist political writing.24 Classi-
cal, too, are Mao’s writings on military strategy and tactics, in the
situation of a guerilla army gradually growing into a mass military
force and carrying on the struggle in the face of a vastly stronger
enemy.25 Splendid also is Mao’s development theoretically of the
leading role of the small Chinese proletariat especially in the
midst of the vast sea of peasants. Another of Mao’s many theoret-
ical achievements was his skilled utilization of the three principles
of Sun Yat Sen,* which are widely popular among the masses, as
part of the minimum program of the Communist Party,26 thus
taking over the democratic traditions of the famous Chinese
bourgeois revolutionist. Brilliant also were his innumerable po-
lemics with every sort of deviator and enemy. Mao’s theoretical
work extended not only into the fields of economics, politics, and
military strategy, but also into literature, and philosophy. His
work On Contradiction27 is a comprehensive, profound and popu-
lar exposition of the Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge.
Mao is also a splendid mass organizer and administrator. He
is not one merely to throw out broad slogans; he also knows how
to go to the masses and organize them to realize these slogans.
His works are filled with consideration of the most detailed ques-
tions of organizational work, in the building of the Communist
Party, the people’s army, the trade unions, and all other organiza-
tions of the people. And it is all written in the simplest of lan-
guage. A classical example of this is his work On the Rectification
of Incorrect Ideas in the Party,28 dealing with such errors as “the
purely military viewpoint, extreme democratization, non-
organizational viewpoint, absolute equalitarianism, subjectivism,
adventurism, etc.” Mao himself, born in 1893 of a poor peasant
family in a village of Hunan, has had a hard life as a worker, sol-
dier, student, and political leader. He is, indeed, a true son of the
Chinese people, living their lives, knowing their thoughts and
needs, and speaking their political language.
In the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, all of

* Originally these three principles were: “Nationalism, Democracy,

and the People’s Welfare,” but later Sun reinterpreted them to
provide for alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communists,
and assistance to the peasants and workers.
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 VICTORY OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
whom were fighters as well as great thinkers and organizers, Mao
is also a superlatively good general, whether in the economic or
political struggle or on the field of military battle. Along with Chu
Teh and other leaders, Mao made the “Long March”; he was a
noted guerilla fighter as well as tactician, and he took personal
part in innumerable military campaigns. Mao’s greatest political
achievements have been in the sphere of the direct leadership of
vast masses of the people in direct struggle against oppressors of
every type.
When the Chinese people won the leadership of their country,
there were very many elements in the capitalist world who said
with final assurance: “Well, maybe it is not so bad after all; China
is a vast, impossible chaos, and the Communists will break their
necks trying to organize and govern it.” But this was only wishful
thinking, typical capitalist underestimation of the revolutionary
abilities of the Chinese Communists, and especially of their great
leader, Mao Tse-tung. Now such remarks are rarely heard. Al-
ready, the Chinese Communists, with Mao at their head, have
clearly demonstrated that they can organize and lead forward
their huge people. This adds just one more to the many “impossi-
bilities” that they have accomplished in their epic struggle for
freedom.

527
57. Wall St. Wants War: The World Wants
Peace
During the post-war period the central struggle taking place
in the world is the effort of American imperialism to organize a
third world war, and the counter struggle of the peoples of the
world, mainly led by the Communists, to maintain peace. This
world fight is being won by the peoples.
In the years following the end of World War II American im-
perialism, stepping up the cold war on all fronts, has, as we have
seen earlier, steadily developed its drive for maximum profits, for
war, and for world conquest. In Europe by the end of the 1940’s
the United States, pouring out its billions and deeply penetrating
the economies of the capitalist countries, had patched together
the half-wrecked capitalist system of Europe into the wobbly
N.A.T.O.-E.D.C. war alliance, and by means of Marshall Plan
doles and its domination of Latin American puppet governments,
had set up what appeared to be a firm control over the United Na-
tions. Like robots, large numbers of delegates in the U.N. voted
the American capitalist master’s wishes.
Increasingly, Wall Street turned its attention to Asia, always
sought as a rich imperialist prize and now the scene of very dan-
gerous colonial revolts. The United States, it is true, had actively
intervened from the outset in the various post-war revolutionary
wars in Burma, Indonesia, Malaya, Indochina, and the Philip-
pines against the peoples and for the former imperialist masters,
but its interest in Asia was enormously intensified by the shocking
loss of China. This major disaster had to be retrieved at all costs.
The first fruit of Wall Street’s new ultra-aggressive Asian policy
was the war in Korea.
THE KOREAN WAR
The war in Korea, begun on June 25, 1950, was designed to be
the initial step in the reconquest of China and the establishment
of American domination of Asia, the first general phase of a third
world war. It has been established that the war was started by the
Syngman Rhee clique in South Korea. The war had been long in
preparation under the supervision of General MacArthur, U.S.
military despot in Japan. The South Korean leaders openly boast-

528
 WALL ST. WANTS WAR
ed that they could wipe out the ill-armed North Korean forces in
the matter of a few days. John Foster Dulles, now Secretary of
State, but then a special agent of the Truman Administration,
pulled the trigger for the war. He conducted conferences with
South Korean leaders, including a front-line trench visit, and on
June 18, only a week before the war began, he declared publicly
that “the United States was prepared to give all the moral and ma-
terial aid that South Korea needed in its fight against Com-
munism.”1 The first reports of the war that came to Tokyo clearly
stated that the South Koreans had begun it – an interpretation,
however, which was quickly discarded.2 In 1953 the South Korean
Representative to the United Nations nonchalantly conceded on a
television broadcast that, “We started the war.”3
Things turned out radically different in Korea than the Wall
Street warmakers had planned. The South Koreans, although
equipped with the best American arms, had no will to fight, and
the North Koreans drove them back pell mell. In a panic, Presi-
dent Truman on June 27, even without consulting Congress, au-
tocratically ordered American forces into the war. The United Na-
tions speedily gave this aggression its blessing and took responsi-
bility for the American war. Truman displayed his chauvinistic
contempt for the Asian peoples by calling his Korean military
campaign merely “a police action.” The superior weight of Ameri-
can troops tended to overwhelm the little North Korean army,
and when MacArthur went storming North, obviously with China
as his goal, this brought in the Chinese volunteers, in October
1950, who drove back MacArthur helter-skelter. To break the mil-
itary stalemate that later developed, both Truman and MacArthur
wanted to use the A-bomb. Truman, who had cold-bloodedly or-
dered the atomic bomb dropped upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
wanted to repeat this outrage upon the crowded Chinese cities.
This was clear from his statements at the time. Inasmuch as Peo-
ple’s China has a mutual security pact with the Soviet Union, the
Truman-Mac-Arthur proposal was tantamount to launching a
third world war. But the world outcry against the Truman-
MacArthur proposal was so great that the President had to give it
up, there being danger otherwise that N.A.T.O. would fly to piec-
es. The removal of General MacArthur from his command in Ja-
pan was chiefly because of the menace that this firebrand would
drop the bomb simply upon his own initiative.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Meanwhile, American reactionaries made hay on the basis of
the Korean war. President Truman declared a “national emergen-
cy,” government war appropriations leaped from $18.5 billion in
1950 to $53 billion in 1953, the developing economic crisis was
liquidated by the flood of war orders, profits soared from 100 to
1,000 percent in the war industries, a feverish building of the
armed forces was launched, peace-time conscription was intro-
duced, and air bases were multiplied all over the world, until now
about 950 encircle the Soviet Union. With a vengeance, monopoly
capital reaped maximum profits. The wildest war hysteria was
cultivated, witch-hunts were organized on all fronts, the Com-
munist Party and many trade unions and other progressive organ-
izations were proscribed and large numbers of their leaders jailed,
the people were intimidated by new and menacing forms of
thought-control, McCarthyism flourished like a bay tree, and the
country moved rapidly and dangerously towards fascism.
In November 1952 General Eisenhower was elected President
on the basis of his peace demagogy, for the American people, like
all others, are opposed to war. But no sooner was he in office than
he, like Truman, as a loyal servant of Wall Street, took up the lat-
ter’s war program where it was left off. Except that Eisenhower
attempted to apply it even more aggressively. He and his Secre-
tary of State launched the so-called “liberation” policy, which is
the Truman Doctrine under another name. It aims to launch civil
and colonial wars in the countries opposing Wall Street. Eisen-
hower and Dulles promulgated, too, their theory of “instant mas-
sive retaliation,” which claimed for the President the right to
launch a major war at will, without consulting Congress or the
people. The Eisenhower Administration also tried desperately to
continue and expand the Korean war, threatening to A-bomb
Chinese cities and to inject Chiang Kai-shek’s Formosan army
into the struggle. But the world demand for peace in Korea was so
overwhelming that the Eisenhower government was not able to
defy it and it had to sign the armistice, on July 27, 1953, which it
had so long sabotaged in the negotiations. This was a disastrous
blow to the whole world imperialist program of Wall Street.
Thus the horrible Korean war was halted. It had cost the
United States 142,175 casualties4 (the real figure was vastly high-
er), not to mention the huge human losses of the Korean, Chinese,
and other peoples. It utterly devastated the whole country. In no

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 WALL ST. WANTS WAR
modern war was there more savage brutality shown, the U.N.
(U.S.A.) forces using germ warfare, slaughtering unarmed prison-
ers, indiscriminately bombing unfortified cities, and constantly
threatening to use the atomic bomb.
THE WAR IN INDOCHINA
Stopping the Korean war was a basic setback for the Wall
Street warmakers, and accordingly their stock-market took a
nose-dive. It was not long, however, until Dulles and his war
partners found another opening which they believed would give
them a chance to develop their much-wanted third world war,
under conditions that would leave them at least some of their pre-
sent allies to help make the fight. This was the war in Indochina,
where ever since 1946 the French imperialists had been trying in
vain to shoot down the liberation revolution of the people led by
Ho Chi Minh and to win control again over this very rich country.
The Communist Party of Indochina was formed in 1930 under
the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. It led the guerilla fight against the
Japanese invaders in World War II. Ho Chi Minh became Presi-
dent of the Democratic Republic, formed at the end of the war.
The war against France began when the French imperialists tried
to take over again after the Japanese had been defeated. Up to
1954, the war cost the French an estimated 250,000 casualties, of
which they admit some 40 percent.5
The United States, which considers itself to be the leader (i.e.,
ruler) of the world, moved sharply into the Indochina war, with-
out even asking the consent of the United Nations, sending mon-
ey, planes, tanks, and military advisors to aid French imperialism.
By the beginning of 1954, the United States was paying 78 percent
of the financial expense of this deadly war which, altogether, cost
this country three billion dollars.6 The Eisenhower-Dulles line
was to intensify and to spread the war,7 meanwhile superseding
French influence in the whole area.
The establishment of a cease-fire in Indochina, on July 20,
1954, in spite of the undisguised efforts of the United States to
continue the war, was another crucial defeat for American foreign
policy. The Eisenhower government was exposed to the peoples of
the world as following an aggressive war line, and its imperialist
leadership over the capitalist world was shaken to its foundations
by its futile attempt to force Great Britain and France into a great
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Asian war for which they had no taste.
Undeterred by their defeats in Korea and Indo-China, howev-
er, the American imperialists are outdoing themselves in trying to
provoke an Asian (and hopefully, a world) war over Formosa.
In desperation at their growing loss of Asia, American imperi-
alists have set up a South East Asian alliance, S.E.A.T.O., which is
a sort of N.A.T.O. war front in that continent. But so bankrupt has
their international influence become and so determined is the
growing revolt of the peoples that so far they have been able to
recruit into S.E.A.T.O. only imperialist-dominated Asian coun-
tries. China, India, Indochina, Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon, etc.,
representing the overwhelming majority of these huge popula-
tions, remain hostile to the bare-faced imperialist plan. Their
people’s central slogan is “Asia for the Asians,” a conception
which spells disaster to the western imperialists.
THE HYDROGEN BOMB
Meanwhile, a tremendous event had happened, the appear-
ance of the hydrogen bomb in the hands of the reckless American
militarists. This caused a wide shift in American strategy. The
N.A.T.O. had proven essentially a failure, with many of its com-
ponent countries showing a marked reluctance to carry out Wall
Street’s plan for an all-out attack upon the socialist world, much
along the line of the fascist anti-Comintern pact of Hitler’s time.
With the new and dreadful bomb at their disposal, however, the
reactionaries dominating the United States government believed
that they had the means that would provide them with world
domination. At once, the H-bomb became the center of Pentagon
war preparations and also of State Department diplomacy, with
Dulles sending repeated H-bomb threats to the Soviet Union and
People’s China. The aim became to build the Indochina war into
an H-bomb war.
The Wall Street imperialists had at last got hold of a weapon
with which they could kill several million people simultaneously,
could wipe out the world’s greatest cities with one blast, and, as
some fanatics declared, even destroy the human race or the planet
itself. And they have given the most positive indication that they
are quite resolved upon using the H-bomb, even as they did the A-
bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With sadistic lust, they revel in
the statistics of the perspective of mass slaughter and widespread

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 WALL ST. WANTS WAR
destruction.
But there are two flies in the ointment of the would-be users
of the terrible hydrogen bomb. The first of these is the fierce pro-
test from the peoples all over the world against the H-bomb, no-
tably upon the occasion of the bomb tests at Bikini in March of
1954. This mass outcry has weakened the N.A.T.O. and renders
vastly more difficult the manufacture and use of the H-bomb. But
still worse for the Wall Street warmongers is the fact that the So-
viet Union also has invented the H-bomb and is reportedly even
farther advanced in its development than the United States. On
August 20, 1953, the U.S.S.R. exploded an H-bomb, and on
March 12, 1954, Premier Malenkov warned the Washington bomb
brandishers against the terrible disaster of an H-bomb war.8 The
loss of the H-bomb monopoly, like that of the A-bomb, constitut-
ed another catastrophe for American foreign policy. But the wild
atomaniacs in Washington go ahead nevertheless with their at-
tempts to build up the world situation for the launching of an A-
and H-bomb war.
THE COLLAPSE OF THE E.D.C.
One of the serious defeats suffered by American imperialism
during the post-war period, after the Chinese revolution of 1949,
was the breakdown of the European Defense Community (E.D.C.)
in August 1954. The E.D.C. was the military phase of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.), the major expression of
the U.S. effort to mobilize the nations of western Europe on the
basis of a re-armed Germany for an eventual all-out capitalist at-
tack upon the U.S.S.R. and the People’s Democracies of eastern
Europe. It collapsed when the French National Assembly refused
to ratify this attempt to organize the armed forces of Germany,
France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg into a unified
anti-Soviet army under American control. The reasons for the
E.D.C. debacle were the vast mass peace pressure in France and
the antagonisms among the respective imperialist powers, chief of
which were the conflict in policy between Great Britain and the
United States and the acute hostility between French and German
imperialism.
Following the collapse of E.D.C., the capitalist statesmen
scurried about like ants in a panic, finally cooking up the Paris
Agreement of October 23, 1954. The heart of this agreement, as of
533
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
E.D.C., is the re-armament of Germany, in total violation of the
Potsdam treaty. Great Britain increased its continental commit-
ments, which made the new agreement possible. West Germany,
tongue-in-cheek agreed to limit its troops to twelve divisions, and
not to produce atomic, bacteriological, or chemical weapons. This
war pact could not have been formulated without the active sup-
port of the Social-Democrats, particularly of Great Britain and
France. The new set-up will face many obstacles in its aim of a
militant anti-Soviet war alliance, although it nevertheless consti-
tutes a serious war danger. The pact’s fibre is weakened by the
same forces which eventually brought down E.D.C. in a crash –
internal capitalist contradictions and the pressures of the great
world peace forces. This is why the United States, disillusioned by
its untrustworthy “allies” – Great Britain, France, and Italy –
tends more and more to rely for its war alliance upon such “relia-
ble” countries as West Germany, Japan, Pakistan, Turkey, Spain,
Greece, the Philippines, and certain Latin American countries, all
of them on the American dole. As this is written, the fight still
goes on over the re-armament and re-nazification of Germany.
THE FIGHT FOR WORLD PEACE
While the big monopolists of the United States, with their
cold war and through their agents – Eisenhower, Truman, Dulles,
Acheson, et al. – have gone ahead furiously preparing for a third
world war, the peace-loving peoples of the world have been no
less active in striving to prevent them from carrying out their de-
structive purposes. Never has the world seen such a tremendous
peace movement as that carried on in the past several years by the
socialist sector of the world and by the peace-loving masses in the
capitalist countries.
The first phase of this great peace struggle was the building up
of a powerful military defense by the U.S.S.R., People’s China, and
the European People’s Democracies, which now, in the face of the
rearming of Western Germany, is becoming a defensive military
alliance.9 Although Socialist countries are inherently peace-loving,
they have no alternative than to defend themselves in a war-crazed
capitalist world, while carrying out a diplomacy based on peace, the
banning of atomic bombs, and general disarmament. This military
readiness is what has so far balked the imperialist warmongers of
the West. The capitalist war firebrands learned in World War II to

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 WALL ST. WANTS WAR
have a wholesome respect for the fighting qualities of Socialist peo-
ples, a respect which was greatly enhanced by their recent experi-
ence in Korea and Indochina. Especially decisive so far in main-
taining world peace has been the breaking of the American A- and
H-bomb monopoly by the Soviet Union. Had this not been done,
undoubtedly by this time the world would have been plunged into a
devastating war. Those who A-bombed Japanese cities would not
have hesitated to bomb Russian cities, if they could have done so
without atomic retaliation.
The second phase of the people’s great fight for peace during
the cold war years is the vast peace work carried on all over the
world by various progressive-led mass organizations. Among the-
se are the World Federation of Trade Unions, the World Federa-
tion of Democratic Youth, the Women’s International Democratic
Federation, the Communist parties, and a host of other mass or-
ganizations and individuals. These huge movements, with tens of
thousands of groups in virtually all countries, are carrying on an
immense peace propaganda. Finally, there is the powerful World
Council of Peace, which unites all the peace forces of the entire
world in periodic great congresses and in continuous struggle for
peace.10
The First World Peace Congress was held in April 1949 simul-
taneously in Paris and Prague; the Second Congress took place in
Warsaw in March 1950, and the Third Congress in Vienna in De-
cember 1952. These were enormous meetings. The first congress
assembled delegates representing some 600 million people from
72 countries; the second was even larger, and the third had 1,859
delegates from 85 countries representing at least 700 million. The
chairman of this vast movement is Frederic Joliot-Curie, the emi-
nent French scientist and Nobel Prize Winner, and the general
secretary is Jean Lafitte.
The World Peace Council has held other interim world con-
ferences, as well as broad national conferences in the respective
countries. It has also convened enormous regional conferences in
Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. The conference of the Asian
and Pacific Regions, held in October 1952, brought together 367
delegates from 37 countries. The delegations to the conferences
and peace congresses come from every walk of life, from the capi-
talist as well as from the socialist countries. Thus, of the 1,817 del-
egates to the Vienna Peace Congress, 1,019 were from the capital-
535
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ist world, including British 157, Italian 198, and French 176. The
British delegation contained 50 Labor M.P.’s, 93 trade union offi-
cials, and 10 clergymen.11 There was also an American delegation.
This vast peace movement fights generally and in the respec-
tive countries for peace and against every feature of the program
of the warmongers, for whom Wall Street is the world headquar-
ters. The Council fights to ban the A- and H-bombs, to slash the
various nations’ war budgets, against the re-arming of West Ger-
many and Japan, for the development of East-West trade, against
chemical and biological warfare, for military disarmament, for the
national independence of the various countries against American
domination, for the development of the United Nations as a genu-
ine peace organization instead of an American war alliance, etc.
The Council has carried on a tremendous world-wide campaign to
end the Korean and Indochina wars.
Two especially gigantic peace campaigns of the World Peace
Council were the Stockholm mass petition, put out on March 19,
1950, for the unconditional prohibition of atomic weapons, which
amassed about 500 million signatures; and the February 1951 ap-
peal of the Council for a Five-Power Peace Pact, which secured
some 610 million signatures.12 These unprecedented mass cam-
paigns aroused tremendous enthusiasm in the various countries.
In the U.S.S.R. almost every adult person signed, in the capitalist
countries scores of millions attached their names, and in People’s
China, 224 million signed the Stockholm petition and 344 million
signatures were collected in three months for the petition for the
Five-Power-Peace-Pact.13
The gigantic World Peace Council movement is having an
enormous effect in cultivating the mass peace sentiment which is
now so pronounced in every country of the globe, and which is
wreaking havoc with American war plans. It was a basic factor in
preventing the use of the A-bomb in China, in slowing the re-
armament of western Germany and Japan, and especially in forc-
ing the Washington warmongers to allow the Korean and Indo-
china wars to be brought to a halt. The World Peace Council,
along with the sturdy diplomatic peace stand of the U.S.S.R., Peo-
ple’s China, and the European People’s Democracies, is helping to
teach the Wall Street war incendiaries that it is one thing to plot a
war and quite another to bring it to pass.
Incidentally, these vast democratic forces, including the great

536
 WALL ST. WANTS WAR
liberation movements in Asia, by their incisive condemnation of
the Jim Crow system in the United States, have been a decisive
force in compelling the American Negro-baiters to make certain
concessions, to attempt to smooth over this monstrous outrage,
including a soft-pedal on lynching, the desegregation of the
armed forces, and the desegregation of the public schools. Even
arrogant Wall Street imperialism (which tries to appear in a garb
of democracy) has been compelled to back up on Jim Crow in the
face of almost universal world condemnation.
In this critical moment of world history, with the world men-
aced by a devastating atomic war, characteristically it is the
Communists, in first line the U.S.S.R., who come forward with
real peace leadership for the harassed world’s peoples. They are
militant initiators and supporters of the great peace movement all
over the world, a movement which is unique for its militant spirit,
clarity of program, and immensity of size. This situation is in ac-
cord with the basic fact that the Communists are now the leading
progressive force in the world. Just as characteristically, too, the
bankrupt right Social-Democracy is opposing the World Peace
Council and is servilely supporting the war line of the Wall Street
imperialists. Champions of capitalism, these lackeys unhesitating-
ly follow the leaders of world capitalism in their desperate efforts
to save that obsolete and bankrupt system. This is why the Ameri-
can top trade union leaders so ardently supported the Korean and
Indochina wars, why the French Socialist Party backed the French
government’s vain attempt to drown the Indochina revolution in
blood, and why the right-wing Laborites in England tail along af-
ter every crook and turn in the war policy of the Tory Churchill.
The right Social-Democrats, traitors to the working class and so-
cialism, are the most blatant of warmongers.
A THIRD WORLD WAR IS NOT INEVITABLE
Although world tension is very high, it can be diminished.
Wall Street’s insane policy is being defeated in many parts of the
world. A third world war can be avoided, despite the American
imperialist striving to the contrary. The world’s peace-loving
masses can prevent the Eisenhower-Dulles forces of American
imperialism from launching an atomic world war if they will but
exert their strength. They halted the Korean war; they blocked
Wall Street’s attempt to develop the Indochina war into a general
537
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
atomic war on the eve of the Geneva Conference of May 1954, 14
and the collapse of the European Defense Community at Brussels
was primarily the result of their peace pressure. They can also
halt Wall Street’s projected third world war. But only by great
mass pressure can they prevent war, for Wall Street has firmly
resolved upon organizing such a war if it can.
The cumulative effects of all the defeats suffered by U.S. im-
perialist foreign policy during the past couple of years have badly
shattered Wall Street’s master strategy of achieving world domi-
nation through a great anti-Soviet war. Under the double pressure
of rising mass peace sentiment all over the world and the sharp-
ening up of antagonisms among the capitalist powers, the all-
capitalist alliance with which Wall Street hoped to carry out its
war plans, is groggy and tottering. Despite their growing defeats,
however, the Wall Street imperialists have not abandoned their
projected war program. In a tense world situation, where every
war is a potential world war, American imperialism remains a se-
rious menace to the peace of the world.
It has long been clear to Communists that war is inevitable so
long as imperialism lasts. That is to say, imperialism is an invet-
erate breeder of wars. But this does not mean that every period of
international tension must inevitably end in war, or that a great
third world war is now inescapable. On the contrary, the world’s
peoples, if they so decide, as Stalin has pointed out, can prevent
any individual war, even the war that Wall Street is now trying so
feverishly to organize. But Stalin also made it clear that, “To elim-
inate the inevitability of war, it is necessary to abolish imperial-
ism.”15
Communists maintain not only that a world war can be pre-
vented, but also that socialist and capitalist countries can and
must live peacefully in the world together (see Chapter 50). Lenin,
Stalin, and Malenkov have all laid the greatest emphasis upon
these conclusions, as the very basis of Soviet peace policy. This
perspective is anathema, however, in American capitalist circles,
where the decision has been made that war is unavoidable and
that socialism and capitalism cannot live in one world. And any
one who dares to argue to the contrary is promptly labelled a sub-
versive.
In stressing the need and practicability of socialist-capitalist
coexistence the Communists, true to their role as the progressive

538
 WALL ST. WANTS WAR
political force in the world of this period, are giving all humanity
the guidance necessary to avoid a measureless disaster. The alter-
native to peaceful co-existence is wholesale mass slaughter on a
scale never before approached even by blood-soaked capitalism,
with its successive world butcheries for imperialist conquest.
THE DEATH OF STALIN
On March 5, 1953, in his 74th year, Joseph V. Stalin died as
the result of a stroke suffered during his sleep a few days before.
This ended over half a century of revolutionary struggle on the
part of one of the greatest fighters ever produced by the world’s
working class. His death was a tremendous loss to the Soviet peo-
ple and to the international movement for peace and freedom.
Stalin, as we have seen above, was a major theoretician. Per-
haps his greatest theoretical work was on the national question,
on which he was the world’s leading expert. His epic ideological
battle with the Trotsky-Zinoviev-Bukharin wreckers also consti-
tutes a Marxist classic. And just on the eve of his death he gave a
last example of his profound capacity as an economist by working
out the basic economic: laws of capitalism and socialism, in his
last work, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.
Stalin was also a magnificent organizer. His building of the
Communist Party, the Soviets, and other immense mass organiza-
tions of the Soviet people was a real masterwork. His leadership
of the party in the mobilization of the people for the driving
through of the successive five-year plans, with their building of
industry and collectivization of farming, was organizational work
beyond compare.
Stalin, too, was a militant fighting leader of the masses. His
whole life was one long relentless battle against the enemies of
socialism, both within and outside the party. He was a tower of
strength as a military commander in the civil war of 1918-20, and
in leading the Soviet people to victory over the Hitler barbarians
in 1941-45 he displayed a peerless fighting spirit and outstanding
military genius. During the cold war, the arrogant capitalist
imperialists also came to dread the indomitable spirit and
brilliant diplomacy of Stalin. He was indeed a man of steel, as his
name signified.
At Stalin’s funeral, Malenkov said of this brilliant and coura-
geous leader: “Comrade Stalin, the great thinker of our epoch,
539
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
creatively developed the teaching of Marxism-Leninism in the
new historical conditions. The name of Stalin rightly stands
alongside the names of the greatest men in human history –
Marx, Engels, Lenin.”16

540
58. The General Crisis of World Capitalism
Decay and decline are characteristic of the world capitalist
system in its present and final stage of imperialism, due to the
working of its internal and external contradictions. Once progres-
sive in laying the foundations of industry, the world capitalist sys-
tem has now become obsolete and reactionary; it is in process of
disintegration and is marching toward its death – at the hands of
the revolutionary proletariat and its allies. The world is moving
rapidly from capitalism to socialism.
The fatal flaw in the capitalist system lies in the fact that
whereas modern production is fundamentally a social process,
under capitalism the great industries and national resources are
privately owned. This causes chaotic production, leading to over-
production and to periodic economic crises. It also leads to an
uneven rate of development in the capitalist countries, which, un-
der imperialism, is a basic cause of war. Capitalism is founded
upon intensive exploitation, political subjugation, and widespread
destitution of the workers. Inevitably the capitalist system gener-
ates conflicts between workers and employers, between big mo-
nopolists and small capitalists, between farmers and industrial-
ists, between imperialist states and colonial peoples, between the
imperialist powers themselves, and between the world forces of
socialism and of world capitalism.
With the development of the imperialist phase of capitalism
and the intensified drive for maximum profits, all these contradic-
tions and antagonisms inevitably grow deeper and broader. They
also produce recurring major social explosions, such as world im-
perialist wars, devastating world economic crises, fascism and the
breakdown of capitalist democracy, and proletarian and colonial
revolutions. The current major manifestation of these capitalist
explosions is the cold war, with its dangerous threat of becoming
a great third world war. All these conflicts sum up to the general
crisis of the world capitalist system, a crisis which constantly
tends to deepen and to become more catastrophic. The supreme
manifestation of the general capitalist crisis is the growth of a
powerful world-wide Communist and labor movement and the
loss by the capitalist system, through revolution, of one-third of
the world to the camp of socialism.

541
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
CAPITALISM CANNOT AUTOMATICALLY RECOVER
The capitalist system, by the working of its inner economic
laws, cannot recover from its general crisis. This is basically be-
cause all the factors that have contributed towards developing the
general crisis continue still in effect and in more marked degree.
Thus, there remains the chronic tendency, now accentuated, to
over-production, through narrowing of the markets and intensi-
fied exploitation of the workers. The present so-called boom in
the capitalist countries is highly artificial, being based upon the
repairing of the war’s damages and upon mass arms production.
The uneven development of capitalism in the various coun-
tries, a breeder of imperialist war, is also now worse than ever
with the lopsided industrial expansion of the United States. And
so, too, is the world capitalist struggle for markets; the famished
and crisis-stricken industrial countries are now entering upon a
dog-eat-dog battle for markets and sources of supplies of raw ma-
terials. This struggle must grow ever more intense. Such projects
as the Schumann Plan and the European defense scheme will in-
crease, not diminish capitalist competition.
The loss of a big section of the world by capitalism through
socialist revolution is a fatal weakness of world capitalism for a
generation past. Now it is far greater than before, with one-third
of the world gone anti-capitalist. And the imperialist powers, es-
pecially the United States, also make this situation far worse for
themselves by placing an economic embargo against the socialist
countries, thus cutting off their nose to spite their face.
The break-up of the colonial system, now more advanced than
ever, is also an irreparable disaster to world capitalism. Not only
does this mean the loss of many preferred markets in these coun-
tries to the imperialist powers, but also that the new societies, too,
are beginning to appear on the world markets as competitors to
the older monopolized lands. Those who think that world capital-
ism will have a basic renaissance through great growth of the cap-
italist system in the erstwhile colonial and semi-colonial countries
of Asia, Africa, etc., are in for disappointment. These countries
cannot become industrialized (imperialist) capitalist nations un-
der conditions of the deepening crisis of that world system. This is
primarily because they face a stultifying, strangling competition
from the older, imperialist powers, above all, from the United

542
 GENERAL CRISIS OF CAPITALISM
States. Consequently, the only practical perspective of national
independence and a rounded-out industrial system for them is to
begin to orient towards socialism, as China is now doing. Capital-
ism, which is dying of old age and senility in its birthplace, west-
ern Europe and the United States, can never have its youth re-
newed in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
THE FUTILITY OF KEYNESISM
The bulk of the bourgeois economists, following the lead of
the late Sir John Maynard Keynes of Great Britain, have learned
that the old-time bourgeois conception that capitalism is an infal-
lible system, self-regulating and bound ever-upward on a progres-
sive scale of development is a delusion. While rejecting the scien-
tific Marxist theories of value and surplus value, Keynes under-
stood that Say’s law, the erstwhile capitalist gospel to the effect
that capitalist production automatically produces a sufficiency of
customers to purchase this production – i.e., that production and
consumption inevitably balance each other – is a fraud. Keynes
argued instead that because of the tendency, especially under
monopoly conditions, towards a big accumulation of uninvested
capital, there tends inevitably to develop a shortage of markets,
which causes overproduction and joblessness. This condition, if
uncorrected, said Keynes, could lead to increasingly devastating
economic crisis, gigantic unemployment, ruinous imperialist
wars, and eventual socialist revolution.1
To overcome this basic flaw in the capitalist system, as he saw
it, Keynes proposed to stimulate the investment of capital by gov-
ernment intervention through a variety of means – by manipulat-
ing the interest rate, prices, and taxes, by the initiation of public
works, etc. Keynes contended that thus full employment would be
maintained, and cyclical economic crises either abolished or
greatly minimized. The ultimate effect, he declared, would be to
cure the general crisis of capitalism. It was a theory of “progres-
sive capitalism,” “managed economy,” and the “welfare state.”2
The basic error in Keynesism is that, dealing primarily with
the question of consumption, it leaves untouched the basic rela-
tionships in capitalist production which are the fundamental
cause of mass unemployment and economic crises. Keynesism
cannot abolish the “gap between production and consumption.”
As the British economist, Eaton says, “If the gap is to be filled by
543
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
public expenditure by the state, again the gap reappears, because
production remains production for profit.... What it gives with
one hand, it takes away with the other.... In a system of which
profit is the motive power, there must always be the profit gap.
This is the ‘gap’ which is the root source of crisis.”3 Contrary to
Keynes, mass unemployment can be finally abolished only by the
abolition of capitalism itself, as demonstrated by the experience
of the Soviet Union.
Strongly anti-Marxist, Keynesism is the bourgeois economics
of the period of the general crisis of world capitalism. Most bour-
geois economists, while rejecting the name of Keynes and also
many of his specific proposals, accept his main idea, the heart of
his system, that is, the necessity in this period of deepening capi-
talist crisis for the government to intervene in industry in order to
stimulate production and to prevent a huge mass unemployment
that could become revolutionary. Although usually dressed up in
radical phrases, Keynesism is basically an expression of monopoly
capital. Eaton says, “Keynesian theory is in harmony with the
dominant interest of monopoly capital.”4 And the Soviet econo-
mist Bliumin states that, “All discussions among bourgeois econ-
omists during the recent period have revolved primarily around
the works of Keynes.”5
In their economic policies all the big capitalist powers, nota-
bly the United States, follow the general principles of Keynes.
President Eisenhower, for example, characteristically declared,
“Never again shall we allow a depression in the United States.”
The United Nations also reflects the policies of Keynesism charac-
teristic of this period. Capitalists, as Marx pointed out long ago,
always move to have a reserve army of unemployed. But they
dread the revolutionary consequences of such mass unemploy-
ment as that of 1929-33.6 Hence Keynesism is their policy.
The Social-Democracy of the world has also adopted
Keynesism as its basic system of economics. For them Keynes has
definitely supplanted Marx. Right opportunism has long held to
the conception of a capitalism that is automatically growing into
socialism. Keynesism, with its illusions about “progressive capi-
talism,” fits right into the opportunism of Social-Democracy.
Keynesism is fundamentally reactionary. It develops in two
general variants: First, there are those Keynesians, direct
spokesmen of monopoly capital, who in order to prevent or min-

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 GENERAL CRISIS OF CAPITALISM
imize economic crises would subsidize the corporations directly,
on the grounds that this stimulates the whole economic system.
This is what Secretary Wilson meant with his famous statement
that “What is good for General Motors is good for the United
States.” This, the program of Eisenhower and all other represent-
atives of monopoly capital, is the infamous Hoover “trickle down”
policy. In this period, it manifests itself basically by an enormous,
maximum profits production of war materials, which dovetails
perfectly with the aggressive world conquest program of Ameri-
can imperialism. It is quite possible, too, for such Keynesian
statesmen as Eisenhower to launch big programs of road- build-
ing, flood control, etc., but all organized strictly upon the maxi-
mum profits-trickle down basis. The other, the petty-bourgeois
variant of Keynesism, while advocating the strengthening of the
purchasing power of the workers through improved wages, social
insurance, tax reduction, etc., in reality joins militantly with the
monopolists in supporting the wholesale munitions production
program, as the chief means of keeping industry going through
government intervention. Often, the Social-Democrats even out-
shout the monopolists for government war orders. War prepara-
tion, with all its deadly dangers, is the basic expression of
Keynesism, both in its “reactionary” and “reformist” variants.
Keynesism is not a “managed economy,” as its proponents
claim. Its dabbling with the tax and interest rates to influence
production, and its system of government stimulation of industry
through war orders, in no basic sense alter the fundamentally an-
archistic and chaotic character of capitalism. Planned or “man-
aged” production is impossible under capitalism. Keynesism can-
not cure the cyclical crisis, as we have seen from Roosevelt’s futile
“pump-priming” during 1933-1939. Indeed, instead of curing cy-
clical economic crises, Keynesism, with its desperate program of
war production, must in the long run make the cyclical crises and
the general crisis of capitalism far worse. That capitalism has not
been made crisis-proof by Keynesian measures, which only give
industry a temporary shot-in-the-arm, is amply demonstrated by
the increasing signs now of economic crisis throughout the capi-
talist world, including the United States. Munitions-making, es-
pecially on its present gigantic scale, is fundamentally wasteful
and tends ultimately to undermine and weaken the whole capital-
ist economy.
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
Keynesism also is not the “welfare state,” as asserted. The
basic objective of the present capitalist government policy, as Sta-
lin points out, is not to advance the welfare of the people, but to
wring the maximum profits from the producers for the monopo-
lists. He says: “Monopoly capitalism demands not any sort of
profit, but precisely the maximum profit. That will be the basic
economic law of modern capitalism. The main features and re-
quirements of the basic economic law of modern capitalism might
be formulated roughly in this way: the securing of the maximum
capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverish-
ment of the majority of the population of the given country,
through the enslavement and systematic robbery of the peoples of
other countries, especially backward countries, and, lastly,
through wars and militarization of the national economy, which
are utilized for the obtaining of the highest profits.”7 Keynesism
does not and cannot repeal this basic law of monopoly capitalism.
By the same token, Keynesism does not represent the intro-
duction of a “progressive capitalism.” It is a reactionary expres-
sion of the capitalist system in decay. Keynesism, a product of the
general crisis of the world capitalist system, cannot cure that cri-
sis, but must still further deepen it.
AMERICAN HEGEMONY NO SOLUTION
In Chapter 50 we have outlined the drive of American imperi-
alism for world domination and also the inner compulsions be-
hind this drive. We indicated, too, that the United States, in this
imperialist push, established a certain shaky hegemony over the
capitalist world and that its central aims were to solidify this he-
gemony and to extend it over the entire world, socialist as well as
capitalist. Behind this determination to establish American domi-
nation, among its basic motivations, was a deadly fear of the mo-
nopolists for the safety of the world capitalist system and a con-
viction that only the United States, with its great wealth and in-
dustrial efficiency, can save it by taking it all over.
As remarked earlier, the American capitalist hegemony to the
extent that it now exists, is economic, political, and military. The
United States, with its tremendous production apparatus, now far
outweighs economically any other capitalist government and it is
able in considerable measure to enforce its economic policies up-
on them. American arrogance economically is fully matched in its

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 GENERAL CRISIS OF CAPITALISM
political dealings with the capitalist countries, not only in the
scandalous way the United States has dominated the proceedings
of the United Nations, but also in the arbitrary manner by which
it dictates the policy of individual nations – even of big imperialist
powers. Pollitt says of his country, “Britain’s naval, air, and land
forces continue to be controlled by American generals and admi-
rals. American politicians insult Britain every day and lay down
the law as to what Britain’s policy shall be at home and abroad.”8
American economic and political domination has made the fight
for national independence a living issue in every capitalist country
in the world, not excepting Great Britain, West Germany, Japan,
France and Italy. The immense world-wide military machine of
the United States is not only directed against the socialist lands,
but it also serves to intimidate the capitalist world. Between June
1941 and June 1953, the United States has provided gross foreign
aid, without repayment provisions, of $94,558 millions,9 yet to-
day it is the most hated country in the world.
What the great monopolists of Wall Street are driving at is the
creation of an American-dominated world, in which the bulk of
decisive basic industry would be situated in the United States,
where Washington would be the capital of the world, and where
the overwhelming military power of this country would reduce all
other countries to the position of mere satellites. It would be an
American-fascist world. Hitler’s ideologists expressed brazenly
such reactionary dreams; the Wall Street pro-fascists, more cun-
ning, say little about them openly, but they have made further
progress in this general direction than Hitler ever did. “The sun
never sets on the U. S. flag,” cries Wall Street. “Today troops fly it
in 49 nations abroad.”10
There are three basic reasons why this fantastic dream of “the
American Century” is unrealizable. First, the United States itself
is a capitalist country; hence despite its present seeming great
strength, it is subject to the laws of capitalism and of the world
decline of that system. In view of its increasing internal and ex-
ternal contradictions, the United States will not be able to pre-
serve its own capitalist system, much less save that of the world.
The current theories of “American exceptionalism,” to the effect
that capitalism in this country is inherently different and funda-
mentally stronger than that of other countries are nonsense. Capi-
talism in the United States is basically the same as in all other
547
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
countries; historical conditions have, however, for the time being,
favored it more, but the general crisis of capitalism is wiping out
this long-continued advantage.
Second, the other capitalist nations cannot and will not indef-
initely submit to American domination. As Stalin pointed out
shortly before his death, referring particularly to West Germany
and Japan, “These countries are now languishing in misery under
the jackboot of American imperialism. Their industry and agricul-
ture, their trade, their foreign and home policies, and their whole
life are fettered by the American occupation ‘regime.’ Yet only
yesterday these countries were great imperialist powers and were
shaking the foundations of the domination of Britain, the U.S.A.
and France in Europe and Asia. To think that these countries will
not try to get on their feet again, will not try to smash U.S. domi-
nation and force their way to independent development, is to be-
lieve in miracles.”11 Stalin emphasizes the danger of wars among
these powers. At this writing, as we shall see further along, signs
are multiplying, bearing out Stalin’s analysis of growing capitalist
resistance to American domination over the capitalist world.
American capitalist hegemony, what there is of it, is itself a prod-
uct of the general capitalist crisis and it can only operate further
to sharpen and deepen that crisis.
Third, American imperialist world domination is impossible
because of the opposition of the socialist countries and the revolu-
tionary working class of the world. The U.S.S.R., People’s China,
and the European People’s Democracies are immune to the Amer-
ican economic penetration that has wrought such havoc in the
capitalist world; they are also not to be dominated by the political
pressures that have enslaved so many capitalist countries, and
they cannot be intimidated by H-bomb diplomacy. By the same
token, the workers’ anti-capitalist movement is constantly grow-
ing throughout the capitalist world. The international socialist
movement, led by the Communist parties, is an irresistible barrier
to American imperialist domination of the world.
THE INSANITY OF IMPERIALIST WAR
For dozens of centuries the ruling classes, to further their own
greedy ends, have not hesitated to butcher the common people by
the millions in their endless wars. Since capitalism has come up-
on the world scene this organized slaughter of the people for the

548
 GENERAL CRISIS OF CAPITALISM
benefit of the exploiters has become more widespread and more
awful than ever before. The great holocausts of World War I and
World War II, products of the capitalist system, are utterly with-
out parallel for bloodshed in the whole course of human history.
In order to try to solve the insoluble problems of the general
crisis of the world capitalist system, American imperialism, with
its allies and camp-followers, is getting ready once more to grasp
at the hoary weapon of war. There can be no other rational inter-
pretation of the complex of aggressive policies now being applied
by the arrogant monopoly capitalists who control the United
States and shape its program. These anti-social elements – para-
sites – are planning to send the millions of youth to die in masses,
so that their own blood profits of capitalist exploitation may be
increased and their rights to rob and repress the people secured
and expanded.
But these warmongers will not find war to be the convenient
instrument for their class purposes that it once was. The world’s
working class and its allies will no longer tolerate this savagery.
After World War I they made capitalism pay for that monstrous
crime by smashing it throughout one-sixth of the earth, Russia;
after World War II, they wiped out capitalism from another sixth
of the earth, and no doubt, after a third world war, if monopoly
capital succeeds in forcing a war, they would finish off the system
altogether.
Already signals are flying all over the world indicating that a
third world war would encounter the strongest mass opposition.
Thorez and Togliatti have declared that their peoples would not
fight against the socialist world – France and Italy would be of no
help to the United States in case of a war. The same will be large-
ly, if not wholly, the case also with Great Britain and other im-
portant industrial countries. And the help Wall Street would get
from the colonial world would be negligible. The opposition of the
peoples to the Korean and Indochinese wars was only a foretaste
of the tremendous resistance they would make to an atomic world
war.
If the Wall Street warmongers succeed in launching the third
world war for which they are striving so hard, the United States
will have to fight the war virtually alone, with a most unwilling
American people in the rear. The United States, even if it had the
backing of the whole capitalist world, which it cannot possibly get,
549
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
could not militarily defeat the socialist world. Hitler, with the en-
tire industrial system and man-power of Europe behind him,
went to complete disaster when he attacked the Soviet Union.
And since then, while capitalism has grown very much weaker,
the forces of socialism have trebled and quadrupled their
strength. Wall Street could not possibly overthrow socialism by a
third world war; instead it would devastate humanity and destroy
what is left of the world capitalist system.
Replying to repeated insane threats by President Eisenhower
and Secretary Dulles that they would atom-bomb the U.S.S.R. and
People’s China unless they bend the knee to Wall Street, the Sovi-
et Premier made it very clear that such an attack would be repaid
in kind. He said: “If the aggressive circles, banking on the atomic
weapon, should resort to madness and should want to test the
strength of the Soviet Union, there can be no doubt that the ag-
gressor would be crushed by the same weapon.”12
But this dread perspective of a terrible hydrogen devastation,
with certain disaster for them in the end, is not enough of itself to
stay the hands of the reactionary and increasingly pro-fascist Wall
Street warmongers now controlling the powerful United States. In
their growing desperation they have decided upon war, and only
the restraining power of the people can defeat their plans. The
people can check the warmakers within the framework of capital-
ism, but the United States will never be safe from the danger of
fascism and a murderous atomic war until the people drive the
agents of big capital out of power, establish a truly democratic
government of the workers, Negro people, farmers, and other
democratic elements, and reorient the country upon a genuine
policy of peace and socialism.
The capitalist system, in this country as well as elsewhere,
faces a blank wall as its future. It cannot pull itself out of its deep-
ening world crisis by the normal operation of its inner laws;
Keynesian blood transfusions cannot rescue it; American hegem-
ony can only deepen the crisis; and a third world war would be
fatal. The capitalist system is historically doomed. “All roads lead
to communism.”

550
59. Inevitability of World Socialism
The basic reason why socialism is inevitable, why in fact it is
now rapidly supplanting world capitalism, is because capitalism
cannot solve the needs of the people, whereas socialism can and
does. Capitalism has proved incapable of extending industrializa-
tion throughout the world, without which higher standards of liv-
ing are impossible. Its industrialization is confined almost exclu-
sively to a small minority of the peoples, and the great masses in
the world have yet to learn the advantages even of steam and elec-
tricity. By the same token, capitalism cannot utilize for peace the
great atomic power resources of uranium, which are 25 times as
great as the resources of coal and 100 times as great as those of oil
and gas.1
Capitalism cannot feed the people. Today the great bulk of
humanity remains at the poverty level, including the masses in
the industrial countries. Capitalism likewise cannot free the peo-
ple. It enslaves the vast colonial peoples, in its home countries it
reduces the working masses to the domination of a comparative
handful of exploiters, and in this period of its decay it confronts
the world with the dread threat of fascism. Capitalism also cannot
bring peace to the world. Capitalism cannot educate the people;
after two to three centuries of capitalism half the people of the
world are still illiterate. Its whole existence has been marked by a
series of the most terrible wars in human history, and now, in its
war madness, it is actually dreaming of wiping out civilization and
the human race.
Socialism will end all these and the other evils that capitalism
inflicts upon mankind. It will industrialize not a few favored
countries, but every country; it will, by abolishing capitalist ex-
ploitation, eliminate mass starvation and bring well-being to all;
it will forever do away with tyranny and establish genuine free-
dom and democracy; and it will finally put an end to war and es-
tablish a reign of peace worthy of civilized beings.
Socialism has a scientific economic system. In fundamental
contrast to the crisis stricken countries of the capitalist world, the
nations of the socialist world, with sound economies, are march-
ing ahead at an unprecedented pace, industrializing themselves
and improving the living standards of their peoples. This is be-
cause – with political power in the hands of the workers and their
551
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
allies, with the industries and natural resources owned and con-
trolled by the nation, with human exploitation abolished, with
production planned and carried on for the benefit of the people
and not merely for a comparative handful of exploiters – they
have eliminated all the inner contradictions such as cyclical cri-
ses, mass unemployment, and struggles over markets, that are
wrecking the world capitalist system.
Socialism has been compelled to demonstrate its economic
superiority over capitalism under peculiarly severe conditions.
This is because, on account of specific conditions, the socialist
and peoples’ democratic regimes of the world have been estab-
lished in countries that were relatively undeveloped industrially.
Capitalism was both unable and unwilling to industrialize these
countries, but socialism is accomplishing this brilliantly. This is
an historical achievement of the greatest magnitude.
The fact that it has had to build its industrial bases from the
ground up and at a great speed has been a serious handicap to
socialism in raising the living standards of its peoples, all the
more so because of the warlike attitude of capitalism towards the
new regimes. This has resulted in the socialist areas being ravaged
by war, and it has forced the socialist governments to maintain
huge and wasteful military establishments. These are a burden to
the people and are fundamentally alien to socialism, which is a
regime of peace. Costly military forces have also required the
maintenance of strong, disciplined governments, which have hin-
dered the process of the “withering away of the state,” which is
inherent in socialism. Despite these burdens imposed by reac-
tionary and dying capitalism, the new socialist regimes have made
swift economic headway.
The socialist lands have utterly shattered all the bourgeois ar-
guments that have been made to show the “impossibility” of so-
cialism – contentions that the working class could not lead the
nation, that under socialism there would be no incentive for pro-
duction, that the workers could not build or operate modern in-
dustry, that the peasants would never accept socialism, that the
people would not defend the U.S.S.R. against armed attack, etc.
They have shown that in all these respects, as well as in many
others, socialist states are far more effective and viable than capi-
talist regimes.

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 INEVITABILITY OF SOCIALISM
A RECORD OF UNPRECEDENTED ECONOMIC PROGRESS
The history of the socialist industrialization of the Soviet Un-
ion is one of the greatest epics in the life of mankind. The young
Soviet Republic took over an industrial and agricultural system
that was weak, primitive, and wrecked by years of imperialist and
civil war. It had to be rebuilt completely on pioneer socialist lines,
creating a whole new army of technicians as it went along. And all
this was done in the face of a violently hostile world capitalism.
This enmity came to deadly expression in World War II, when
half the industries of the U.S.S.R. were wiped out in that capital-
ist-generated war. Nevertheless, triumphing over all these mon-
strous difficulties, the Soviet people have already made their
country into a great industrial nation, which before long will be
industrially the first in the world. This growth has, of course,
enormously increased the military strength of the country in the
face of aggressive-war-minded American imperialism.
The Soviet Union is now producing 21 times more steel, 19
times more coal, and 45 times more power than was produced in
1924-25.2 So swift is the tempo of Russian industrial development
that not only has all the terrible property damage done by the war
been repaired, but in 1953, the third year of the fifth five-year
plan, the U.S.S.R. was producing 70 percent more oil than in
1940, 100 percent more coal, 100 percent more steel, 280 percent
more electric power, and 380 percent more machinery.3 The 1954
national budget is more than three times larger than the budget
revenue of the pre-war year 1940.4 “Industrial production in
1954,” says Soviet Deputy Premier, M. Z. Saburov, “is 63 percent
higher than in 1950, and in the two current years 74,000,000 ad-
ditional acres (equal to the total sown area of France and Italy)
will be brought under cultivation.”5 A bourgeois commentator
makes this characteristic remark of Soviet industrialization: “Sta-
lin set Russia’s goal as only 60 million tons of oil by 1960; the
sights have now been lifted to 70 million by 1955.”6
Soviet industrialization has produced various projects larger
than anything ever done by capitalism. Among them are great
power developments on the Volga, Amu Darya, Dnieper, and Don
rivers. “The scale of the new power and irrigation developments
has no parallel in history.”7 The Kuibishev and Stalingrad power
stations outstrip anything in the world, including the biggest sta-

553
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
tions in the United States. At this time a number of vast projects
are also going on to revolutionize agriculture.
The following is the general table of the percentage growth of
capitalist and Soviet industrial output over the years 1929-1951:8
1 9 2 9 1 9 3 9 1943 1 946 1947 1 9 4 8 1 9 4 9 1950 1 95 1
U.S.S.R. 100 552 573 4 6 6 571 7 2 1 8 7 0 1 0 8 2 1 2 66
U.SA. 100 99 2 1 7 155 1 7 0 175 1 6 0 1 8 2 2 0 0
Britain 100 123 – 112 121 135 1 4 4 157 1 6 0
France 100 80 – 63 74 85 92 92 1 0 4
I t a ly 100 108 – 72 93 97 1 0 3 118 134

People’s China, with its people’s democracy, planned econo-

my, and capable Communist leadership, is also industrializing
itself at a very rapid rate. Wu Teng-hsi says, “The tempo of indus-
trialization of China in her first five-year plan will know no paral-
lel. The industrial levels which the capitalist countries of the West
took thirty to fifty years to reach will be attained by China in five-
years’ time.”9 The whole country is pushing ahead with the build-
ing of basic industries, nine new railroads are in construction,
vast irrigation projects are under way, and China’s great rivers are
gradually being brought under flood control. “State-owned indus-
try,” says Wang Hua, “is expanding by leaps and bounds. The to-
tal value of its output in 1950 was 52 per cent above the 1949 fig-
ure. In 1951, it grew by 59 percent over 1950, and in 1952, it was
45 percent more than in 1951.”10
A basic advantage which the Chinese have over the Russians
in their early stages of industrialization is that they now have the
benefit of the latter’s long experience and their close technical
cooperation. Tseng Wen-ching reports that, “The Soviet govern-
ment has agreed to assist China in the construction of 141 big pro-
jects, including iron and steel plants, non-ferrous metallurgical
enterprises, coal mines, oil refineries, machine-building plants,
automobile and tractor plants, and power stations. With the com-
pletion of these enterprises, China will have her own heavy indus-
try, and a firm foundation for her industrialization.”11 Within a
very few years the miracle will be accomplished of making “back-
ward” China into a powerful industrial nation.
In the European People’s Democracies a characteristic rapid
rate of industrialization also obtains. In Poland, hitherto largely
undeveloped industrially, great advances have been made. Since

554
 INEVITABILITY OF SOCIALISM
the end of the war, “From a backward agrarian country in the
past, an agricultural raw materials appendage to the imperialist
states, Poland has been transformed into an industrial socialist
state with a big and ever-growing economic potential.... Industrial
output in 1953 was 3.6 times the 1938 level – calculating per capi-
ta of the population, it was 4.8 times greater.”12 “Germany has
never known such a tempo of industrialization,”13 as is now going
on in the German People’s Republic. In Bulgaria, at the end of
1952, the rate of industrial production was over four times greater
than in 1938.14 In Rumania, “In 1953, the volume of industrial
production will be about 2.5 times greater than in 1938, and 3.5
times greater than in 1948.”15 Comparable increases in production
are being registered in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Albania. In
1951 in the People’s Democracies industrial output increased over
1950 as follows: Poland 24 percent, Czechoslovakia 14.9 percent,
Hungary 30 percent, Rumania 28.7 percent, Bulgaria 19 percent,
and Albania 47.1 percent. All these countries are in close econom-
ic cooperation with each other, and they have many advantageous
mutual trade agreements.
SOCIALISM SOLVES THE PEOPLE’S PROBLEMS
As stated by Stalin, “The essential features and requirements
of the basic law of socialism might be formulated roughly in this
way: the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly
rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society
through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist pro-
duction on the basis of higher techniques.”16 The whole history of
the Soviet Union, as well as that of the new People’s Democracies
of Europe and China, completely confirms the verity of this law,
which is in flat contradiction to the basic law of modern monopo-
ly capital, as also stated by Stalin – to squeeze maximum profits
from the exploited.
Under socialism and people’s democracy the toilers have
achieved vast advances in their living standards, despite the gigan-
tic efforts that have been required to build their basic industries
and to construct powerful armed forces to ward off the attacks of
militant monopolist imperialism. Unemployment has been com-
pletely abolished among them. At this time – with the capitalist
world in war fever and with real wages being slashed and the social
services drastically curtailed – in the Soviet Union wage rates ad-
555
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
vance, one price reduction follows another, and health, education,
and social insurance appropriations are climbing.17
The introduction of socialism in the United States, Great Brit-
ain, Germany, France, Japan, and other industrialized countries
would bring about a steep rise in the living standards of the work-
ers. This is because it would end the intense exploitation of the
toilers now prevailing in these countries. About one-half of the
product of the American workers, now at least $180 billion a year,
finds its way into the hands of the parasitic classes through the
devious capitalist channels of interest, rent, and profit. In the
United States, for example, in 1953, the du Pont company made a
profit of $6,315 upon each of its 91,260 workers.18 Other corpora-
tions made similar fabulous profits.
In the capitalist world, particularly in the United States, de-
mocracy is also being rapidly undermined and the fascist danger is
now real and menacing; but in the socialist regimes democracy is
constantly strengthened and is altogether on a higher plane. Be-
sides the rights of free speech, free assembly, and the like, the
masses there have the guaranteed rights to work, to leisure, to edu-
cation, to social insurance. Women and youth have rights and op-
portunities to a degree unheard of in the capitalist countries.
Equality prevails among the various peoples making up the nation,
anti-Semitism is a crime, McCarthyism is unthinkable, and such a
disgrace as the American Jim Crow system is utterly impossible.
In the field of culture there is likewise a general retrogression
throughout the capitalist world, above all in the United States,
with its cultural mess of pragmatism, psychoanalysis, neo-
Malthusianism, and other systems of superstition and obscu-
rantism, with its swamp of “comic” books, oceans of sex, crime
and horror stories, printed and on the radio and television.19 Ex-
pressive of this cultural decadence are the enormous increases of
juvenile delinquency, crime, gambling, and insanity – all indica-
tions of the thoroughly sick capitalist system. For example, “One
of every ten New Yorkers can expect to spend some part of his life
in a state mental institute.”20 In the socialist lands, however, there
is nothing of all this mental, physical, and cultural rot. The several
countries with a socialist program are making tremendous strides
in wiping out illiteracy, in the development of culture, and in the
elimination of crime and insanity. Their whole life is being devel-
oped upon a progressive, scientific, and humane basis.

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 INEVITABILITY OF SOCIALISM
Higher education, for example, is proceeding at a swift rate in
the countries of socialism. The U.S.S.R. in 1953 turned out
50,000 engineers as against 20,000 in the U.S.A. There are twice
as many students of scientific courses in Soviet universities as
there are in similar schools in this country. The U.S.S.R. also has
3,700 secondary technical schools, with 1,600,000 students; in
contrast to 1,000 of such schools, with 50,000 students, in the
United States. China, with 250,000 students of higher learning
(150,000 in engineering courses) is also making tremendous
strides. And the People’s Democracies of eastern Europe, with
266 institutions of higher learning and 401,000 students, are
away ahead of the capitalist nations of western Europe.21
Socialism wipes out the robbery of the workers and the peas-
ants by the abolition of capitalists and landlords. By the very na-
ture of its system, socialism also destroys imperialism, the basis
of colonialism. The U.S.S.R., People’s China, and the European
People’s Democracies are, along with the colonial peoples them-
selves, the great organized force in the world making for the elim-
ination of every form of colonialism and semi-colonialism and for
the establishment of self-determination of all peoples. By the
same token, the nations now living under socialist regimes or ap-
proaching that status are also the inveterate enemies of war. The
central political struggle now going on in the world is the resolute
fight of the socialist peoples and their working class and other
allies in the colonies and the capitalist countries to do away with
war, in the face of an insane American imperialism which sees in
war its great hope for survival and world mastery.
In its period of general crisis and decay, capitalism is under-
mining the very fibre of the human race. The system is sick and is
breeding neurotic and psychotic people. Socialism, on the other
hand, is advancing the people to new and higher levels of mental,
moral and physical well-being. The seventh congress of the Com-
munist International thus described the new socialist citizen: “On
the basis of the new attitude toward work and society that is gain-
ing firm hold, a new mode of life is being created, the conscious-
ness and psychology of people are being remoulded, new genera-
tions, healthy, able-bodied and of universal development, are
coming into being. From the very midst of the people, organizers,
leaders, inventors, bold explorers of the uncharted elements of
the Arctic, heroic conquerors of the stratosphere, the air and the
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
depths of the sea, of the summits of the mountains and the bowels
of the earth, are coming forth in vast numbers. Millions of work-
ing people are storming and mastering the once inaccessible cita-
dels of technique, science, and art. The U.S.S.R. is becoming a
country of new people, full of purpose, buoyancy, and the joy of
living, surmounting all difficulties, performing great feats.”22
As socialism grows into communism, and the U.S.S.R. is now
on the verge of doing this, the peoples will increasingly undertake
new tasks, impossible under capitalism, in raising humanity to
new levels of development and achievement. This trend is already
to be seen in socialism’s abolition of human exploitation, in its
fight against intellectual superstition and obscurantism of every
sort, in its current tremendous struggle to abolish war, and in
many of its gigantic projects revolutionizing the production of
food and industrial goods. But once the outworn capitalist system,
now befouling the life of humanity, is done away with, then vast
plans of human betterment, now hardly dreamed of, will be un-
dertaken as matters of course. These will include such as the gen-
eral application of atomic energy, the elimination of the great de-
serts of the earth, the restoration of the despoiled forests of many
countries, the conservation and development of the national re-
sources of the earth, the scientific regulation of the size and dis-
position of population, the sociological up-breeding of the human
species, and a host of other achievements, all impossible under
the narrow-minded, dog-eat-dog system of capitalism.
Socialism is inevitable because in every phase of social life it is
incomparably superior to capitalism. This is why one-third of
humanity has irresistibly taken the road to socialism, and the rest
will not be long in following suit. The great social trend of our
times, expressed in the will and basic interests of the overwhelm-
ing mass of workers, peasants, and other useful producers of all
countries, is from capitalism to socialism. Nor can Wall Street,
with all its wealth, industrial power, bayonets, Social-Democratic
agents, and Vatican allies, reverse this historic current.
Ever since the Russian Revolution of 1917 the capitalists of
the world have carried on a tremendous lying campaign to ob-
scure from the masses of their peoples the true achievements of
socialism. And it must be admitted that they have largely suc-
ceeded. They have been aided by the fact that socialism has had to
advance in the face of monumental difficulties – forced upon it by

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 INEVITABILITY OF SOCIALISM
decadent capitalism – including civil war, imperialist war, devas-
tated countries, the need to create a new socialist economy from
the ground up, and the maintenance of heavy burdens of military
armaments. Now, however, socialism is making such gigantic
strides in production, in raising mass living standards, in devel-
oping culture, and in defending world peace, that the great reality
of socialism is shattering the tremendous web of anti-socialist lies
that have been built up over the years. This increasingly powerful
example of socialism-in-action is bound to have far-reaching pro-
gressive effects during the coming period in all the capitalist
countries of the world.
THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM
Decaying though it is, the capitalist system will not automati-
cally collapse; the exploiters will use every desperate effort to keep
in existence their means of robbing the working masses. Capitalism
can be abolished only by the conscious political action of the work-
ing class and its allies, led by the Communist Party. Marx and Len-
in made all this very clear decades ago, and the proletarian revolu-
tions that have since taken place in Russia, eastern Europe, and
China have demonstrated the correctness of this foresight.
The working class is the great peace force in the world and it
always tries to accomplish the advance to socialism by the most
peaceful means possible. In chapters 28, 51, and 56, we have seen
the workings of this peace-striving in the revolutions in Russia,
eastern Europe, and China. In all these instances it was the ruling
classes that precipitated such violence as took place. It is an axiom
of working-class experience that the ruling classes, when facing a
rising revolutionary movement even when this is proceeding along
peaceful and legal lines, always guts its established democratic pro-
cedure and grasps at every violent means to repress the workers.
Nevertheless, especially since the famous seventh congress of
the Comintern in 1935, the Communist parties in many countries
have recognized the increased possibility of their establishing so-
cialism in a peaceful way. This is in line with the seventh congress’
“new tactical orientation” (see Chapter 44), the policy of the peo-
ple’s front. By the development of a broad united front of workers,
farmers, national minorities, professionals, small business ele-
ments, etc., making up a vast majority of the population, it be-
comes possible in certain cases, to hold in check the inevitable capi-
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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
talist domestic violence, and, in spite of it, to elect a progressive
people’s government. Such a government, to put its program into
effect in conditions of the deepening general capitalist crisis, would
find it necessary to orient either by the regrouping of its forces or
by new elections, in the general direction of a people’s democracy
and socialism.23 The government would have to be prepared to re-
strain and defeat capitalist violence as it proceeded to demobilize
capitalism in its economic and political strongholds.
In the industrialized capitalist countries, where there prevails
bourgeois democracy, the Communist parties have programs based
upon this conception. Thus, the Italian Communist Party seeks to
achieve “through the medium of the election of a government”
measures “which we unhesitatingly recognize as the road to social-
ism.”24 The French Communist Party fights for a popular front that
will begin to march to socialism, the first step being the election of
a broad people’s government. The British Communist Party de-
clares “that the people of Britain can transform capitalist democra-
cy into a real People’s Democracy, transforming parliament, the
product of Britain’s historic struggle for democracy, into the demo-
cratic instrument of the will of the vast majority of her people.”25
The Canadian Labor-Progressive Party has a similar program,26
and likewise the party in Australia. It is the general Communist
political line in the major capitalist countries.
The Communist Party of the United States also “advocates a
peaceful path to socialism in the U.S.... It declares that socialism
will come into existence in the United States only when the ma-
jority of the American people decide to establish it.”27 The whole-
sale prosecution of Communists in the United States upon the
allegation that the Communist Party advocates the forceful over-
throw of the U.S. government, is a lie and a frame-up, no matter
how often it is reiterated by crooked prosecutors, intimidated ju-
ries, and reactionary courts. Actually the American Communist
Party, as the Communists in many other countries, strives for the
legal election of a democratic, eventually a people’s front govern-
ment, as above indicated. This, however, has not prevented the
party from being outlawed, in August 1954.
The people’s front policy becomes feasible in the various
countries upon the basis of three general considerations: (a) the
great weakening of the capitalist system, nationally and interna-
tionally, through the workings of the general crisis of capitalism;

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 INEVITABILITY OF SOCIALISM
(b) the enormous increase in strength of the democratic forces in
the respective countries and on a world scale; and (c) the burning
issues raised by the growing capitalist crisis – economic break-
down, fascism, national enslavement, and war – which are so ur-
gent as to make realizable the creation of a broad people’s front
government embracing the great bulk of the nation. This makes
possible, if democratic procedures can be maintained, the election
of a people’s government that can move towards socialism.
In all the above-cited national examples of people’s front poli-
cy, the assumption is that the forces of democracy must and will
restrain and defeat the forces of reaction in the latter’s attempts,
by violence, to balk the democratic will of the majority of the peo-
ple. That the capitalists, when they feel their rule threatened, will
have recourse to violence to save themselves at the expense of the
people’s freedom and well-being is characteristically illustrated by
the situation in Italy. There capitalism is reeking with rottenness,
and the forces of democracy, led by the powerful Communist Par-
ty, are rapidly coming to the fore. But the capitalists, who control
the government, army, and police, are resolved not to surrender
up these controls even in the face of a democratic mandate of the
people to do so. In 1948, when it looked as though the forces of
democracy might carry the Italian elections, the ruling class, fully
backed by the United States, was all ready to launch a fascist-like
counter-revolution. They are definitely of the same mind today, as
reported by Walter Lippmann.28 And Lippmann comments, mat-
ter-of-factly, “If the Italian democratic parties have really decided
not to surrender the state, they have in principle taken the right
decision.” It will be the great task of the Communist Party and its
democratic allies to make the majority will of the people prevail,
in spite of the attempts of the ruling class to flout and defeat it.
The present rising wave of reaction and fascism in various capi-
talist countries, a product of the war drive and the deepening gen-
eral crisis of capitalism, adds increasing threats of violence against
the Communist efforts for a peaceful advance to socialism. Espe-
cially is this true of the United States, where fascism, particularly
McCarthyism, which is a main American brand of fascism, has
made dangerous inroads upon democratic liberties. In their drive
for war the warmongers are slashing away the Bill of Rights, un-
dermining the trade union movement, and, together with trying to
make impossible the regular election of an anti-monopoly, anti-
561
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
imperialist people’s government, they are seeking to prevent any
effective defense of the workers’ immediate or ultimate interests.
Arrogantly, the Wall Street warmongers are also now attempt-
ing to deny every oppressed people in the world the right of revo-
lution, by the exercise of which right all the major capitalist na-
tions, including the United States, originally established them-
selves. When a people anywhere in the world moves to free itself
from imperialism and monopolist exploitation, Washington
promptly outlaws this action as subversive and proceeds by vio-
lence to try to suppress it. This was the significance of the Ameri-
can intervention in the Greek civil war, its interference in the Ital-
ian elections of 1948, its arbitrary participation in the Korean civil
war, its systematic efforts to overthrow the Chinese People’s Re-
public, its attempts to create civil wars in eastern Germany,
Czechoslovakia, etc., its efforts to strangle independence in Puer-
to Rico, its arbitrary attempt to stifle the national liberation
struggles in Indochina and elsewhere, its recent strangulation of
the people’s government of Guatemala, and its present interven-
tion in Formosa.
But this King Canute-like effort of American imperialists to
exorcise colonial and socialist revolutions is bound to fail. It may
temporarily succeed here and there, as in western Europe, in
damming back the revolutionary forces, but when the sweep inev-
itably comes it will be all the more powerful and complete. Peo-
ples cannot be denied the right of revolution by the fiat of Wall
Street monopolists and other would-be world rulers.
The world pressure for socialism grows ever more intense.
This comes from two main sources, from the breaking down of
the capitalist system, with all its harrowing exploitation and op-
pression in the various countries, and from the attractive influ-
ence of the demonstrated success of socialism as exemplified by
the U.S.S.R., People’s China and the European People’s Democra-
cies. Capitalism cannot possibly reverse this basic historic trend.
Its attempt by violence to prevent countries from advancing to
people’s democracy and socialism, merely adds an additional task
for the great world socialist movement led by the Communist par-
ties. The mass movement, as it fights for the preservation of world
peace, will also have to guarantee to all peoples the right to estab-
lish such progressive forms of government as they see fit, regard-
less of the reactionary will of Wall Street.

562
60. The Historical Advance of Socialism
(1848-1954)
Let us now take a look back over the ground we have trav-
ersed in the preceding chapters and consider the historical pro-
cess as a whole. During the one century that we have been dealing
with, the social development has been swift and revolutionary.
From the vast human panorama two decisive central facts stand
forth: first, the spread, maturing, and decay of the capitalist sys-
tem, and second, the tremendous advance of the world’s working
class towards socialism.
THE RISE AND DECLINE OF CAPITALISM
A century ago capitalism, which had been passing through the
industrial revolution, was strong and vigorous, and was entering
upon several decades of rapid growth and extension over the
earth. Industry thus was still largely in the handicraft stage, or in
small factory units. Capitalism was throwing off the fetters of feu-
dalism, the broad European revolution of 1848 being fundamen-
tally anti-feudal. The future great capitalist states, for the most
part, were consolidating themselves, to the accompaniment of
many national wars. The young labor movement, weak in organi-
zation and uncertain in program, was just coming into existence.
Science was strong and vigorous, and most of its outstanding
leaders, as part of the general capitalist struggle against feudal-
ism, were carrying on a strong battle against religious superstition
and clerical domination. This was capitalism in its early, healthy,
progressive, competitive stage.
Capitalism, rapidly transforming its industries into great
plants and expanding transportation and communications sys-
tems, in the 1880’s began to enter into its second fundamental
stage, monopoly and imperialism. In accordance with the law of
the uneven development of the capitalist system, the United
States, Germany, and eventually Japan, shot ahead industrially
and successfully challenged the pioneer industrial country, Great
Britain. The labor movement also grew rapidly and spread to
many countries, and its fight became more powerful and clear-
sighted. The great imperialist states, in growing collision with
each other, ravenously proceeded to seize as colonies the remain-

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 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
ing, less developed sections of the earth, especially in Asia and
Africa – an imperialist process which was completed about 1900.
This ever-sharpening competition among the capitalist powers
culminated in the devastating world war of 1914-18. The workers
achieved the epoch-making Russian Revolution of 1917.
These developments introduced the final stage of world impe-
rialism, its period of general crisis and decay. First manifesting it-
self at the time of World War I, this crisis has increased in tempo
ever since. As we have seen in the previous chapters, the period has
been marked by a tempestuous sharpening of all the inner contra-
dictions of the capitalist system. The workers have delivered sever-
al heavy revolutionary blows against the capitalist ruling classes,
and the rebellious peoples in the colonial countries have just about
wrecked the colonial system, one of the foundation pillars of world
capitalism. Cyclical economic crises, once relatively minor national
disturbances, have now become great international holocausts. The
irreconcilable rivalries of the imperialist powers culminated in the
great World War II, which was catastrophic to the capitalist system
in general. And the working of the law of the uneven development
of capitalism has finally produced the unhealthy and destructive
situation of one great power, the United States, more or less domi-
nating all the rest. In this period of general capitalist decline, bour-
geois democracy tends into ultra-reactionary fascism, bourgeois
culture has degenerated into the cultivation of every form of obscu-
rantism, bourgeois economics has become mere capitalist propa-
ganda, and decaying bourgeois science in general accepts as a basic
proposition the nonsensical principle of a harmony between sci-
ence and religion.
All this sums up to a great sharpening of the general crisis of
world capitalism. It is the period of irretrievable decay in every
capitalist fibre. The industries of the major capitalist countries
have been concentrated into the hands of a relatively few monop-
olists. While still capable of some spurts of national growth the
system is essentially turning in upon itself and losing its character
as a world regime. The world has been split into two great econo-
mies: one, the socialist sector, healthy and growing; the other, the
capitalist sector, cancerous and shrinking. The fundamental sick-
ness of the capitalist economy was made basically clear in the un-
precedented world economic crisis of 1929-33. Since then the
capitalist system has been operating precariously, largely upon

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 HISTORICAL ADVANCE OF SOCIALISM
the artificial stimulation of war, the repairing of war’s damages,
and the preparations for a new world war.
There are those who attempt to separate the American econ-
omy from the general decay of capitalism, holding that it some-
how is a different type of system. But this American
exceptionalism is sheer nonsense. The economy of the United
States is capitalist, basically the same as that in Great Britain,
West Germany, Japan and other declining capitalist countries. Its
industries are capitalist-owned;1 its workers are exploited and
robbed, and it has all the other elementary features of capitalism.
The main reason the United States has so far escaped the marked
economic and political decline characteristic of the capitalist sys-
tem as a whole is the temporary advantage of its geographic posi-
tion, which enabled it to avoid the devastation of the two world
wars. Cannibal-like, it has been able to profit from the disasters of
the rest of the capitalist system. But American capitalism never-
theless is no less subject to the laws of the growth and decline of
capitalism, and it is also involved in the general crisis of the capi-
talist system. Indeed, one of the most decisive expressions of this
general crisis is precisely the insane resolve of American monopo-
ly capital to try to solve its own increasing problems and those of
the capitalist system as a whole by a third world war.
THE ADVANCE OF THE WORKING CLASS
Whereas the course of the capitalist system as a whole during
the period of 1848-1954, has been in a sort of arc – that is, a time
of rise, growth, and decline; for the working class the graph is of a
rising inclined plane – a time of growth and ever-increasing
strength. The historical meaning of this sharp contrast is clear –
the rule of the capitalists is passing and declining, while that of
the working class is in the ascendancy and is moving towards be-
coming universal. This worker advance, however, is not uniform,
but goes into occasional revolutionary leaps.
At the time our study begins, a little over a century ago, the
modern working class was just being born, and also the labor
movement, with its trade unions, cooperatives, and political par-
ties. The handicraftsmen were being transformed into real wage
workers as the factory system grew and expanded. The workers
were making their first sustained efforts in western Europe and
the United States at establishing a working-class philosophy, to-
565
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
gether with the organization and tactics necessary to carry it out.
The period of the First International (1864-1876) was one of
tremendous importance in the life and growth of the world labor
movement. It was then that the workers, under the leadership of
the great Marx and Engels, laid the basis of the world revolution-
ary program; they strengthened the trade union and political
movement and spread it far into eastern Europe; they got their
first elementary experiences in international solidarity, when they
waged the glorious struggle of the Paris Commune.
The period when the Second International (1889-1914) rated
as the organization of world labor also marked many advances. It
was an epoch of expanding mass working-class organization in all
spheres – trade union, cooperative, political. The movement also
began to spread into many new areas of eastern Europe, Asia,
Australia, and Latin America. This was also the time of the devel-
opment of world imperialism, when the corruption of the skilled
aristocracy and the right Social-Democracy undermined the pro-
gram and crippled the militancy of the working class. This degen-
erative trend culminated in the tragic failure of the International
to fight against the first world war of 1914-18.
The period of the Third International (1919-1943) was that of
the developing general crisis of world capitalism; it was also a
time of growing proletarian and colonial revolutions. Under the
leadership first of Lenin and then of Stalin, the labor movement
developed its program and expanded to practically every country
on the globe. The great Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 ex-
pressed the revolutionary tone of the entire period. After World
War I there immediately followed the German and Hungarian
revolutions and the whole series of colonial revolutions in China,
Turkey, Persia, and various other countries. There were the great
struggle against fascism, the tremendous building of socialism in
the U.S.S.R., the heroic waging of World War II to smashing vic-
tory over fascism, and the decisive role of the Communists in all
these struggles.
The post-war years, from 1945 on, after the dissolution of the
Comintern, are years in which the world’s workers have carried
on in the tradition and with the leaders, programs, and parties
created by the Third International; the labor movement has made
spectacular progress. The workers’ basic organizations have expe-
rienced a tremendous growth. The world trade union movement,

566
 HISTORICAL ADVANCE OF SOCIALISM
all tendencies, has mounted to the stupendous figure of at least
125 million. The cooperative movement in 1946, before the Chi-
nese Revolution and the European People’s Democracies, which
greatly spread that movement, had at least 143 million members.2
And as we have seen, the workers’ political parties, and youth,
women, and peace movements have reached figures that were
hardly dreamed of during the days of the First, Second, and even
the Third International.
During the later war years and the period of the cold war the
working class and its allies have won one great basic victory after
another over the declining, rotting capitalist system. Chief of the-
se successes were the revolutions in Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia,
Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Rumania, Bul-
garia, Albania, and especially the Chinese Revolution. With the
numerous national liberation movements and anti-imperialist
revolutions, the peoples of Asia – especially in China, India, Indo-
china, Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, Korea, Ceylon, etc. – have dealt
smashing blows to the long-established, oppressive, and reaction-
ary colonial system. It all mounts up to the great historical fact
that 900,000,000 people, over one-third of the world’s popula-
tion, have definitely embarked upon the road to socialism.
The speed of the world revolutionary process is now fast and
is ever becoming faster. Fifty years ago the trade union movement
of the world was still relatively weak and scattered, but now it is
an immense organization covering all parts of the globe. At the
turn of the century the national liberation movement in the colo-
nies also was young and feeble, and the imperialists shot down
“native” revolts at will; but now the colonial revolution, grown
mighty, is shaking the whole capitalist system. At that time, too,
the socialist movement, save in a few European countries, was
small and weak, and predominantly in the hands of opportunist
careerists; but now it has grown powerful, it is led by resolute
fighters, and it is able to measure its strength successfully with
that of capitalism as a whole. Fifty years ago world capitalism was
still strong, but now, it is senile and obviously on the way to obliv-
ion.3
It has indeed been a century of tremendous progress for the
working class, the peasantry, and the oppressed peoples of the
earth. The capitalist system, during this period, has lived through
its great period of growth and expansion and is rapidly on the de-
567
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
cline; the splendid new sun of socialism is now well up over the
world political horizon. The new order is swiftly replacing the old,
and the tempo of this process can only increase. The tens of thou-
sands of heroic strikes and political struggles waged by the work-
ers during the past hundred years have not only served to protect
them partially from the barbarous exploitation of capitalism, but
they have also served basically to weaken the underpinning of
that system. Above all they have created the working-class con-
sciousness and organization that is putting an end to capitalism.
The great progress of the toilers of the earth since the foundation
period of the First International will undoubtedly be far eclipsed
by the advance during the next decades.
THE HISTORICAL JUSTIFICATION OF MARXISM
During the past century of the advancing, revolutionary work-
ing class, its decisive leadership, in the fields both of theory and of
actual struggle, has come from the Marxists, and specifically during
the past half-century from the Marxist-Leninists. These fighters
have not only foreseen the general course of economic and political
evolution, but have led the workers successfully through the com-
plex events of all these years. The soundness of Marxism has been
brilliantly demonstrated by this century of stormy history.
Marxism has a tremendous and constantly growing body of
theory, but the student who wants to know what has happened
economically and politically during the past century of struggle
and the proletariat’s role in it, can find it forecast in outline in two
small books, Marx’s and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto of
1848, and Lenin’s State and Revolution of 1917. In their famous
work, Marx and Engels laid the foundations of scientific socialism
and outlined the future of society (which they greatly elaborated
upon in the next decades), and Lenin in his book (along with his
many other writings) applied the principles of Marxism to the pe-
riod of imperialism and proletarian revolution.
Ever since the appearance of The Communist Manifesto the
principles of Marxism have been under incessant attack from the
open bourgeois enemies and from opportunists within labor’s
ranks. Marxism has also had to stand the severe test of life itself
in the tremendously complex developments of society during this
long period. But Marxism has emerged victoriously from all these
attacks and tests. As the core of its all-embracing revolutionary

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 HISTORICAL ADVANCE OF SOCIALISM
philosophy, it explains to the workers just what is taking place in
the world, gives them practical leadership in the current defense
of their class interests, points the way to the socialist goal to
which they must strive, and carries on the actual building of the
socialist world.
Anti-Marxist elements have left no important element of
Marxism unassailed. They have attempted, in vain, to refute sci-
entific philosophical materialism and Marxist dialectics; they
have stormed against the materialist conception of history, but far
from overthrowing Marxism, their own history writing has be-
come marked by an abandonment of the concept of causation, of
progress – in fact, it is an attempted liquidation of history.4 They
have broken their lances in futile battle against the Marxist doc-
trine of the class struggle, while myriads of strikes and other man-
ifestations of the class struggle raged beneath their noses; and
they have especially attacked the Marxist conception of the state
as the “Executive Committee of the bourgeoisie” under capitalism
and as the dictatorship of the proletariat under socialism – two
propositions that have been completely borne out, both under
capitalism and in the new socialist regimes which are now so rap-
idly growing in the world.
But the heaviest enemy theoretical attacks have been directed
against Marx’s economics, above all, against his revolutionary
conception of surplus value, and particularly its implications of
the relative and absolute impoverishment of the working class,
and of the polarization of wealth in the hands of the capitalist
class. This is the basic Marxist conclusion that the operation of
capitalism inevitably tends to create a small minority of increas-
ingly wealthy capitalists at one end of the social scale and a vast
mass of increasingly impoverished workers at the other end. Eve-
ry bourgeois economist and every Social-Democratic opportunist,
from Bernstein on down, has warred against this fundamental
and revolutionary conception. The burden of the enemy counter-
argument is the nonsense that capitalism produces a steady im-
provement in the lot of the masses and that, therefore, socialism
is both unnecessary and impossible.
The complete answer to the bourgeois lie that capitalism im-
proves the lot of the toiling masses is to be found in the terrible
conditions of hunger, poverty, and disease now to be found in the
colonial and semi-colonial areas of the world – the worst victims
569
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
of capitalism, of imperialist super-exploitation. That they are be-
coming increasingly aware of the cause of their growing destitu-
tion and misery is signified by their growing rebellion.
In the industrial countries also the benefits of the great strides
capitalism has made in industrial techniques and in the volume of
production flow overwhelmingly into the hands of the capitalists
and the upper middle classes, to the detriment of the workers.
The vast masses of the workers, the peasants, and lower middle
classes live at bare subsistence levels or below. While a small sec-
tion of skilled workers have benefited considerably, the great ma-
jority of the working class has not. Kuczynski says of the British
worker, who has the “highest” living standards in Europe: “The
British worker today, although enjoying a higher cultural stand-
ard, and occupying a more comfortable (although not necessarily
healthier) home, actually lives on a lower nutritional standard
than did his forefathers of 200 years ago.”5 In France low living
standards of the workers have long prevailed, and similar condi-
tions exist all over capitalist Europe.
In a futile attempt to prove their point that capitalism pro-
gressively improves the conditions of the toiling masses, the
bourgeois apologists and soothsayers, as their last refuge, always
refer to the United States. This country, of course, having so far
been able, cannibal-like, to exploit the growing crisis of capital-
ism, does not yet exhibit the vast sea of poverty characteristic of
the other capitalist countries, but the trend towards such a situa-
tion is definite.
The United States is the classical land of great monopolies,
which dominate the whole economic and political system. About
three percent owns a majority of it. In 1950 the total United States
national income was $239 billion, of which the top one-fifth of the
population received $111 billion (46 percent); whereas the bottom
one-fifth received only $10 billion (4 percent). The Heller budget,
for a family of four, calls for an expenditure of $5,405 in most cit-
ies, but this is beyond the reach of more than two-thirds of all the
families.6 Negro families receive per family only about one-half as
much as whites do.
What is happening to the working class in the United States
has been graphically illustrated by the Labor Research Associa-
tion. Considering all major factors –employment, output per
worker, nominal wages and salaries, average annual earnings, and

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 HISTORICAL ADVANCE OF SOCIALISM
the index of prices – the L.R.A. shows that the position of the fac-
tory worker in the United States has deteriorated from point 100
in 1939 to 78.8 in 1952.7 The U.S. Government publication, The
Workers’ Story, which extravagantly claims that American real
wages have doubled in the past 40 years, nevertheless has to ad-
mit the fact that production per worker has tripled during the
same period.8 Meanwhile, American corporate profits before tax-
es have been shooting up, from 65.9 in 1939 to 404.4 in 1952.9 In
1951 the steel corporations made four times more profit per steel
worker than in 1946.
During the period of the rise of imperialism in Great Britain,
Germany, France, Japan, and the United States, there was a con-
siderable increase in real wages, mainly among the skilled catego-
ries of workers; but with the onset of the general crisis of capital-
ism this trend has been reversed. J. Duclos states that in France,
“compared with 1937, real wages per hour have decreased by 45
percent.”10 Similar conditions prevail elsewhere in capitalist Eu-
rope, and the workers’ conditions in the United States are also
deteriorating. As the capitalist warmongers develop their insane
drive towards war, living conditions for the toiling masses will get
worse. In the period of the deepening general crisis of capitalism,
workers’ living standards increasingly fall. This general situation
further emphasizes the correctness of Marxism on this elemen-
tary point of absolute mass impoverishment.
THE GROWTH OF COMMUNIST WORLD INFLUENCE
One of the basic developments of this general period, espe-
cially during the past 40 years, has been the rise of the Com-
munists to the leading position in the world’s labor movement.
Since the days of the Communist League in 1848 the Marxists
have waged an endless war against the various sects and deviators
that have developed during the life of the labor movement, in-
cluding utopian socialists, Proudhonists, Blanquists, Lassalleans,
Bakuninists, Anarcho-syndicalists, Bernstein Revisionists, oppor-
tunist trade unionists and cooperators, Guild Socialists, Trotsky-
ites, Bukharinites, Titoites, etc. Marxism has won out over all the-
se alien trends. Its final, strongest, and most stubborn foe is right
Social-Democracy. But the Marxists, now Marxist-Leninists, have
also basically defeated this group, whose record is a miserable
story of betrayal of the working class.
571
 HISTORY OF THE THREE INTERNATIONALS
This left victory is evident from a comparison of the strength
of Communism and right Social-Democracy on a world scale.
Morgan Phillips, chairman of the Socialist (Second) International,
generously credits that organization with having “37 parties with
a total membership of nearly 10 million and voting strength of 60
million.” He puts the world Socialist youth organization at
380,000, but gives no figures as to the number of women in the
Second International.11
The world Communist movement, however, far overtops these
statistics of international Social-Democracy. A recent U.S. Senate
study of world communism lists some 75 Communist parties, with
a total of 24,320,697 members (a big underestimation), located in
practically every country on earth.12 The voting strength of the
Communist movement in general also is at least four or five times
that of the right Social-Democrats. The left-led trade unions of the
world, too, outnumber the right-led unions by at least two to one.
And the left-led united-front youth and women movements, run-
ning into scores of millions, utterly dwarf the Social-Democratic
organizations in these fields. And Social-Democracy has no move-
ment at all to compare with the immense left-led world peace
movement. Of course, the Communists, in the scope of their deci-
sive political victories, far surpass the right Social-Democracy – a
dozen countries, comprising one-third of the people and territory
of the world, now having Communist leadership, while the right
Social-Democracy at this time leads no important nation. The
whole trend of world developments goes to increase the disparity
between the two movements. As the movement for socialism
grows, Communist influence also expands; as capitalism dies, its
faithful servant, right Social-Democracy, expires with it.
The tremendous growth of Communist strength in the world
means that for the first time since the days of the First Interna-
tional the voice of the working class and of the oppressed peoples
of the world is being heard effectively. The world situation has
already escaped the control of the erstwhile capitalist masters,
and no longer can they do as they wish in international affairs.
They now confront increasingly the unbreakable strength of the
world’s toiling masses. Capitalism is doomed and socialism is
marching on to universal victory – this is the great lesson of the
past century.

572
 APPENDIX
World Congresses and Important Conferences of the Internationals
THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL (International Workingmen’s
Association)
London 1864 (Conf.), Geneva 1866, Lausanne 1867, Brussels
1868, Basle 1869, The Hague 1872, Philadelphia 1876
(dissolved), Geneva 1877.
THE ANARCHIST INTERNATIONAL (International Workingmen’s
Association)
St. Imier 1872, Geneva 1873, Brussels 1874, Berne 1876, Verviers
1877, London 1881 (expired).
INTERIM SOCIALIST AND LABOR CONGRESSES
Ghent 1877, Chur 1881, Paris 1883, 1886, London 1888.
THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL
Paris 1889, Brussels 1891, Zurich 1893, London 1896, Paris
1900, Amsterdam 1904, Stuttgart 1907, Copenhagen 1910, Basle
1912 (Conf.) (Suspended during World War I).
LABOR CONFERENCES DURING WORLD WAR I
Copenhagen 1915 (Neutral Powers), Vienna 1915 (Central
Powers), London 1915, 1917, 1918 (Allied Powers), Zimmerwald
1915 – Kienthal 1916 – Stockholm 1917 (International left wing).
THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL (Third International)
Moscow 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1924, 1928, 1935 (dissolved
1943).
THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL (Revived as the Labor and
Socialist International)
Berne 1919 (Conf.), Amsterdam 1919, Vienna 1921 (2½
International), Berlin 1922 (Conf. of the Three Internationals),
Hamburg 1923 (unity of 2nd and 2½ Internationals), Marseilles
1925, Brussels 1928, Vienna 1931, Paris 1933 (Conf.). (Suspended
during the Hitler period.) Frankfurt 1951 (revived as the Socialist
International), Milan 1952.
CONFERENCES OF COMMUNIST INFORMATION BUREAU
Warsaw 1947, Bucharest 1948, Budapest 1949.

573
 REFERENCES
Chapter 1: General Economic and Political Background
1 Encyclopedia Britannica, v. 12, p. 304, New York, 1950
2 Witt Bowden, The Industrial Revolution, p. 217, New York, 1928
3 Theodore Rothstein, From Chartism to Labourism, p. 9, New York,
1929
4 G. D. H. Cole and Raymond Postgate, The British Common People
(1748-1938), p. 156, New York, 1939
5 Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United
States, v. 1, pp. 101-115, New York, 1947
6 Rothstein, From Chartism to Labourism, p. 107
7 Ibid., p. 123
8 Cited by Frederick Engels, Germany, Revolution and Counter-
Revolution, p. 123, New York, 1933
9 Thomas Skidmore, The Rights of Man to Property, New York, 1829
10 Rothstein, From Chartism to Labourism, p. 140
11 Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, p. 36, New York, 1935
12 Morris Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States, pp. 48-
131, New York, 1903
Chapter 2: Scientific Socialism
1 Karl Marx, Selected Essays, New York, 1927
2 Engels, The Fourteenth of March, 1883, New York, 1933
3 R. Palme Dutt, Marxism After Fifty Years, p. 2, London, 1933
4 Cited by G. Obichkin, Soviet Literature, 4, p. 131, Moscow, 1953
5 V. I. Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, p. 7, New York, 1935
6 Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, pp. 20-21, New York, 1941
7 Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, p. 10
8 Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, p. 12
9 Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, p. 11
10 Marx, Critique of Political Economy, pp. 11-12, Chicago, 1904
11 Marx, Engels, V. I. Lenin, J. V. Stalin, On the Theory of Marxism,
p. 12, New York, 1948
12 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 9, New York,
1948
13 Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, p. 13
14 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 57, New York,
1942.
15 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 19
16 Marx, Engel, Lenin, Stalin, On the Theory of Marxism, p. 21

574
17 Ibid., p. 22
18 Franz Mehring, Karl Marx, p. 398, New York, 1935
19 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 11
20 Marx, Briefe an Bebel, Liebknecht, Kautsky und Andere, Moscow,
1933
21 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 43
22 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 87
23 D. Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, p. 77, New York,
1927
24 Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, p. 53
25 Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, p. 34
Chapter 3: The Revolution of 1848
1 Marx, The Class Struggles in France (1848-50), pp. 56, 58, New
York
2 See Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, New York
3 Engels, Germany, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 40
4 Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, p. 87
5 Encyclopedia Britannica, v. 10, p. 293.
6 Cited by L. Perchik, Karl Marx, pp. 30-31, New York, 1934
7 Marx, The Class Struggles in France, p. 16
8 Engels, Germany, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 52
9 Cited by Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, p. 96
10 M. Beer, The History of British Socialism, v. 2, p. 221, London,
1929
11 Beatrice and Sidney Webb, The History of Trade Unionism, p. 181,
New York, 1920
12 Cited by A. Czobel, C. Kahn, Karl Marx as Labor Defender, p. 21,
New York
Chapter 4: Founding of the First International (1864)
1 Lewis L. Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 17, Washington,
D. C., 1929
2 Rothstein, From Chartism to Labourism, p. 131
3 G. M. Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 21, New York,
1928
4 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 23
5 Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, v. 2, p. 24, New
York, 1939
6 Marx and Engels, The Civil War in the United States, pp. 47-48,
New York, 1937

575
7 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, pp. 32-33
8 Founding of the First International, p. 4, New York, 1937
9 Ibid., p. 7
10 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 162
11 P. Dengel, The Communist International, p. 983, September, 1939
12 Founding of the First International, pp. 27-44.
Chapter 5: Trade Unionism, Proudhon,
Lassalle, and Bakunin
1 Marx and Engels, Letters to Americans, 1848-1895, p. 90, New
York, 1953
2 Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, p. 30
3 Rothstein, From Chartism to Labourism, p. 195
4 Samuel Bernstein, Science and Society, New York, Summer, 1954
5 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 19
6 Ibid., p. 250
7 Marx, Letters to Dr. Kugelmann, p. 28, New York, 1934
8 Maurice Dobb, Marx as an Economist, p. 16, New York, 1945
9 Marx, Value, Price and Profit, p. 62, New York, 1935
10 Ibid., p. 61
11 A. Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p. 34, New York, 1935
12 Ibid., p. 33
13 Bernstein, Science and Society, Summer, 1954
Chapter 6: Consolidation: The Geneva Congress (1866)
1 R. W. Postgate, The Workers International, p. 26, London, 1920
2 M. Zorky, The Communist International, Nov. 5, 1934
3 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 59
4 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, pp. 214-215
5 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 52
6 Marx and Engels, The Civil War in the United States, p. 282
7 Marx and Engels, Letters to Americans, pp. 66, 65
8 Ibid., p. 72
9 Ibid., p. 65
10 Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v. 1, p. 317
11 Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p. 112
12 Ibid., p. 16
13 Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v. 1, p. 363
14 Mehring, Karl Marx, p. 378
15 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 82
16 Mehring, Karl Marx, p. 380

576
 Chapter 7: Consolidation: The Geneva Congress (1866)
1 Cited by Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p. 125
2 Postgate, The Workers International, p. 31
3 Ibid., p. 32
4 Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v. 1, p. 378
5 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 122
6 Ibid., pp. 125-126
7 Ibid., p. 101
8 Ibid., p. 123
9 Gustav Jaeckh, Die Internationale, p. 44, Leipzig, 1904
10 Edmond Villetard, History of the International, pp. 182-209, New
Haven, 1874
11 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 46
12 Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p. 72
13 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 119
14 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 44
15 John R. Commons, History of American Industrial Society, v. 9,
p. 337, Cleveland, 1910
16 Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v. 1, pp. 413-414
Chapter 8: Bakuninism: The Basle Congress (1869)
1 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 148
2 Villetard, History of the International, p. 126
3 Bernstein, Science and Society, Spring, 1951
4 Commons, History of American Industrial Society, v. 9, p. 339
5 Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v. 1, p. 412
6 Proceedings of the Colored National Labor Convention, December
1869, Washington, D. C., 1870
7 Wilhelm Liebknecht, Ueber die politische Stellung der
Sozialdemokratie, p. 14, Berlin, 1893
8 Mehring, Karl Marx, pp. 421-425
9 Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, p. 182
10 Stekloff, History of the First International, pp. 154-155
11 Mehring, Karl Marx, p. 436
12 Marx and Engels, Letters to Americana, pp. 90-91
13 Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p. 182
14 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 144
15 T. A. Jackson, Ireland: Her Own, New York, 1947
16 Jaeckh, Die Internationale, p. 65
17 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 265
18 Marx and Engels, Letters to Americans, p. 79

577
19 Ibid., pp. 77-79
20 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 5, p. 285, New York, 1943
Chapter 9: The Paris Commune (1871)
1 Marx, The Civil War in France, p. 26, New York, 1940
2 Ibid., p. 24
3 Bernstein, Science and Society, Spring, 1951
4 See Marx, The Civil War in France
5 P. O. Lissagaray, Histoire de la Commune de 1871, p. 85, Paris,
1929
6 Ibid., pp. 95-107
7 Marx, The Civil War in France, p. 54
8 Encyclopedia Britannica, v. 3, p. 700
9 Marx, The Civil War in France, p. 60
10 Marx, Letters to Dr. Kugelmann, p. 123
11 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 306
12 W. P. Fettridge, The Paris Commune, p. 150, New York, 1871
13 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 309
14 Lenin, The Paris Commune, p. 22, New York, 1934
15 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 194
16 Jaeckh, Die Internationale, p. 130
17 Fettridge, The Paris Commune, pp. 512-515
18 Bernstein, Science and Society, Spring 1951
19 Jaeckh, Die Internationale, p. 133
20 Lissagaray, Histoire de la Commune de 1871
21 Tom Bell, Communist Review, March, 1930
22 Bernstein, Science and Society, p. 134, Spring, 1951
23 Lenin, The Paris Commune, p. 18
24 Marx, The Civil War in France, p. 92
25 Lenin, The Paris Commune, p. 58
26 Marx, The Civil War in France, p. 57
27 Ibid., p. 61
28 Lenin, The Paris Commune, pp. 17, 61
29 Marx, The Civil War in France, pp. 43, 48
30 Ibid., p. 22
31 Lenin, The Paris Commune, p. 21
Chapter 10: The Split at the Hague Congress (1872)
1 Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p. 130
2 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 52 n
3 The Communist International, March 14, 1933
4 Postgate, The Workers International, p. 114
578
5 Jaeckh, Die Internationale, pp. 168, 173
6 Stekloff, History of the First International, pp. 211-212
7 Postgate, The Workers International, p. 79
8 The Hague Congress Proceedings
9 Marx, Letters to Dr. Kugelmann, p. 104
10 Stekloff, History of the First International, pp. 235-236
11 Ibid., pp. 236-237
12 H. Schlueter, Die Internationale in Amerika, p. 137, New York,
1880
13 Marx y Engels, Sobre el Anarquismo, Moscow, 1941
14 Stekloff, History of the First International, pp. 239-242
15 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, pp. 164-165
16 Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, p. 198
Chapter 11: The Anarchist International (1872-1877)
1 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 258
2 Ibid., pp. 258-260
3 Jaeckh, Die Internationale, p. 204
4 Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v. 1, p. 495
5 John R. Commons, History of Labor in the United States, v. 2, pp.
290-300, New York, 1918
6 H. Gannes and T. Repard, Spain in Revolt, p. 209, New York, 1936
7 Marx y Engels, Sobre el Anarquismo
8 Mehring, Karl Marx, p. 582
9 Peter Kropotkin, The State: Its Historic Role, p. 37, London, 1908
10 Joseph Stalin, Works, v. 1, p 299, Moscow, 1952
11 Program of the Communist International, p. 75, New York, 1929
12 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 304
Chapter 12: First International
in the U.S.A. (1872-1876)
1 Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v. 1, p. 413
2 Commons, History of the American Industrial Society, v. 9, p. 352
3 Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor, v. 1, p. 60, New
York, 1925
4 Commons, History of Labor in the United States, v. 2, pp. 210-213
5 Schlueter, Die Internationale in Amerika, p. 167
6 Alma Lutz, Created Equal, p. 211, New York, 1940
7 Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States, p. 185
8 Schlueter, Die Internationale in Amerika, p. 295
9 Commons, History of Labor in the United States, v. 2, p. 233

579
10 Proceedings in Schlueter, Die Internationale in Amerika, pp. 356-
361
11 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 285
Chapter 13: Role of the First International (1864-1876)
1 Jaeckh, Die Internationale, p. 218
2 Marx and Engels, Letters to Americans, p. 285
3 The Communist International, p. 661, Oct. 20, 1934
4 Ibid.
5 Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, pp. 206-207
Chapter 14: Period Between the Internationals
(1876-1889)
1 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, p. 5, New
York, 1939
2 Gustav Mayer, Frederick Engels, p. 246, New York, 1936
3 August Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 289, Berlin, 1953
4 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 337
5 Engels, Herr Duehring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Duehring),
New York, 1939
6 Mehring, Karl Marx, p. 533
7 Dutt, Marxism After Fifty Years, p. 11
8 Stekloff, History of the First International, p. 366
9 Engels, The Fourteenth of March, 1883, pp. 20-21
10 Ibid., pp. 11-13
Chapter 15: Founding of the Second International (1899)
1 J. Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 13, New
York, 1932
2 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 70
3 Alexander Trachtenberg, History of May Day, New York, 1947
4 A. I. Mikoyan, Speech in Berlin, April 1, 1954
5 Rothstein, From Chartism to Labourism, p. 255
6 Mayer, Frederick Engels, p. 268
7 Edward R. Pease, History of the Fabian Society, New York, 1916
8 Preface to 1908 edition, Fabian Essays
9 Cited by Dutt in The Communist International, March 14, 1933
10 Labor Party Conference, 1923
11 Robert Michels, Political Parties, p. 270, New York, 1915
Chapter 16: Brussels, Zurich, and London (1891-1896)
1 W. Pieck, Reden und Aufsatze, p. 316, Berlin, 1948
580
2 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 29
3 M. Kritsky, L’Évolution du Syndicalisme en France, p. 237, Paris,
1908
4 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 456
5 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 26
6 William H. Crook, The General Strike, p. 58, Chapel Hill, 1931
7 Cited by Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 28
8 Labour Monthly, London, Aug. 1932
9 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 33
10 See Pieck, Reden und Aufsatze, p. 318
11 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 485
12 Marx, The Class Struggles in France, p. 24
13 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 350
14 Ibid., p. 412
15 Ibid., p. 439
16 Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, p. 220
Chapter 17: International Trade Unionism
1 Lozovsky, Marx and the Trade Unions, p. 104
2 Cole, Postgate, The British Common People, p. 531
3 American Federation of Labor History Encyclopedia Reference
Book, p. 63, Washington, D. C., 1919
4 Beer, The History of British Socialism, v. 2, p. 320
5 Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, p. 108
6 Karl Zwing, Die Geschichte der Deutschen freien Gewerkschaften,
p. 26, Jena, 1922
7 Lenin, Collected Works, v. 23, pp. 503-518, New York, 1945
8 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 11, p. 740
9 Georges Lefranc, Histoire du Mouvement Syndical Français, p.
174, Paris, 1937
10 Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, Paris, 1915
11 Lefranc, Histoire du Mouvement Syndical Français, pp. 256-257
12 Paul Umbreit, 25 Jahre Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbewegung
1890-1915, p. 133. Berlin, 1915
13 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 98
14 Ibid., p. 100
15 Ibid., p. 101
16 Zwing, Die Geschichte der Deutschen freien Gewerkschaften, p.
119

581
 Chapter 18: Imperialism and Millerand: Paris (1900)
1 Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, p. 20, New
York, 1939
2 Ibid., p. 89
3 J. Moody, The Truth About the Trusts, p. 477, New York, 1904
4 John Eaton, Political Economy, p. 147, New York, 1949
5 Cited by Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, p. 78
6 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 160
7 Eaton, Political Economy, p. 151
8 Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, p. 96
9 Ibid., pp. 96-97
10 H. Marks, The Journal of Modern History, Sept. 1939
11 Cited by Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 44
12 Ibid., p. 50
13 Ibid., p. 51
14 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, pp. 83-88
Chapter 19: Bernstein Revisionism: Amsterdam (1904)
1 Edward Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, p. xiv, New York, 1909
2 Ibid., p. 144
3 Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution, p. 25, Paris, 1937
4 Ibid., pp. 3, 8
5 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 54
6 The Communist International, Feb. 1, 1932
7 Ira Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912, p. 133,
New York, 1952
8 Cited, Ibid., p. 132
9 Robert Hunter, Socialists at Work, p. 318, New York, 1908
10 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 54
11 Daniel De Leon, Flashlights of the Amsterdam Congress, pp. 152-
153, New York, 1906
Chapter 20: Lenin: The Party of a New Type
1 Joseph Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, p. 80, New York, 1939
2 History of the C.P.S.U., pp. 3-53
3 Ibid., p. 10
4 Ibid., pp. 18-19
5 Ibid., p. 21
6 Ibid., p. 41
7 O. H. Gankin and H. H. Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War,
pp. 34, 42, Stanford, 1940

582
8 P. Kerzhentsev, Life of Lenin, p. 82, New York, 1939
Chapter 21: The Russian Revolution of 1905
1 History of the C.P.S.U., pp. 54-96
2 Lenin, The Revolution of 1905, pp. 42-43, New York, 1934
3 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 60
4 Lenin, The Revolution of 1905, p. 54
5 History of the C.P.S.U., pp. 64-65
6 Ibid., p. 76
7 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 3, p. 145
8 Crook, The General Strike, p. 171
9 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 95
10 Ibid., pp. 93, 94
11 Stalin, Works, v. 3, p. 252
12 Rosa Luxemburg, Massenstreik: Partei und Gewerkschaften,
Leipzig, 1919
13 Lenin, The Revolution of 1905, p. 58
14 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 72
15 Ibid., p. 77
16 H. Farwig, Der Kampf um die Gewerkschaften, pp. 179-181,
Moscow, 1929
17 Michels, Political Parties, p. 270
Chapter 22: Colonialism and War: Stuttgart (1907)
1 Cole, Postgate, The British Common People, p. 377
2 Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement, p. 95
3 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 88
4 Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, p. 51
5 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, pp. 94-103
6 Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, p. 55
7 Ibid., pp. 56, 60
8 Ibid., p. 59
9 De Leon, Flashlights from the Amsterdam Congress, p. 159
10 William English Walling, Progressivism and After, Appendix,
New York, 1914
11 Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912, p. 278
Chapter 23: The Copenhagen Congress (1910)
1 Crook, The General Strike, pp. 182-183
2 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 109
3 Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, p. 50, New York, 1942

583
4 Lenin, On Cooperation, p. 5, Moscow, 1951
5 Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, p. 78
6 Karl Kautsky, The Road to Power, pp. 56, 55, Chicago, 1909
7 Karl Legien, Sisyphusarbeit oder positive Erfolge, p. 3, Berlin, 1910
8 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 4, p. 334
Chapter 24: Thickening War Clouds: Basle (1912)
1 Text in Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, p.
81
2 Ibid., p. 79
3 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 113
4 Harry Laidler, Socialism in Thought and Action, pp. 261-264, New
York, 1920
5 William English Walling, The Socialists and the War, p. 90, New
York, 1915
6 Lewis L. Lorwin, The International Labor Movement, p. 28, New
York, 1953
7 Cole, Postgate, The British Common People, p. 531
8 Lenin, Collected Works, v. 18, p. 240, New York, 1930
9 Donald D. Egbert and Stow Persons, editors, Socialism in
American Life, v. 1, p. 65, Princeton, 1952
10 Zwing, Die Geschichte der Deutschen freien Gewerkschaften, pp.
119-120
11 Laidler, Socialism in Thought and Action, p. 192
12 The Communist International, Jan. 1934
13 Zwing, Die Geschichte der Deutschen freien Gewerkschaften, p.
87
14 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 10, p. 5
15 A. Martynov, The Communist International, Feb. 1 and Feb. 15,
1932
16 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 142
17 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 123
18 Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, p. 71
19 J. Stalin, L. M. Kaganovich, P. Postyshev, Questions Concerning
the History of Bolshevism, Moscow, 1932
20 A. Martynov, The Communist International, Feb. 1, 1932
Chapter 25: The Great Betrayal: World War I
1 Nemo, From the First World War to the Second, pp. 9-12, New
York, 1934
2 Eaton, Political Economy, p. 135
3 Victor Perlo, American Imperialism, p. 25, New York, 1951
584
4 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 161
5 Lenin, Collected Works, v. 18, p. 229
6 Farwig, Der Kampf um die Gewerkschaften, pp. 208-210
7 Walling, The Socialists and the War, p. 125
8 Farwig, Der Kampf um die Gewerkschaften, p. 219
9 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 128
10 Walling, The Socialists and the War, p. 243
11 Ibid., p. 240
12 Ibid., pp. 229, 226
13 Ibid., p. 231
14 Lenin, Collected Works, v. 18, p. 61
15 Ibid., p. 228
Chapter 26: Role of the Second International (1899-1914)
1 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 165
2 Lenin, Collected Works, v. 18, pp. 80-81
3 Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, p. 88
4 Lenin, Collected Works, v. 18, p. 89
Chapter 27: The Zimmerwald Movement (1915-1917)
1 Lenin, Collected Works, v. 18, pp. 78, 80, 81, 82
2 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 142
3 Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, pp. 286-
302
4 Ibid., p. 321
5 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 146
6 Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, pp. 333-
334
7 Ibid., p. 369
8 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 166
9 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 5, p. 306
10 Desmond Ryan, James Connolly, p. 5, Dublin, 1924
11 Lenin, Collected Works, v. 18, pp. 392-393
12 Ibid., p. 400
13 Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, pp. 93-94
14 Lenin, Collected Works, v. 18, p. 403
Chapter 28: The Russian Bourgeois Revolution
(March 1917)
1 History of the C.P.S.U., pp. 175-176
2 Lenin, Letters From Afar, p. 10, New York, 1932

585
3 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 178
4 Ibid., p. 177
5 Edward H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, v. 2, p. 24, New York,
1952
6 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 158
7 Stalin, The Road to Power, p. 35, New York, 1937
8 Lenin, Letters From Afar, p. 26
9 Lenin, The April Conference, New York, 1932
10 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 184
11 The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (1903-1953) New York, 1953
12 Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, v. 1, pp. 79-84
13 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 185
14 Ibid., p. 195
15 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 160
16 Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, pp. 681-
682
Chapter 29: The Russian Proletarian Revolution
(November 1917)
1 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 202
2 Lenin and Stalin, The Russian Revolution, pp. 139-140, New York,
1938
3 Lenin, State and Revolution, p. 101, New York, 1932
4 Lenin, On the Eve of October, pp. 5-25, New York, 1932
5 History of the C.P.S.U., pp. 205-206
6 Ibid., p. 208
7 John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, New York, 1934
8 Fiftieth Anniversary of the C.P.S.U., p. 17
9 Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and Renegade Kautsky, p. 51,
New York, 1934
10 A. Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevism, p. 110, London, 1934
11 A. Martynov, The Communist International, Feb. 1, 1932
12 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 228
13 Foreign Relations of the United States (1943), v. 3, pp. 590-591
14 Frederick L. Schumann, American Policy Towards Russia Since
1917, pp. 136-137, New York, 1928
Chapter 30: The Soviet System
1 Stalin, The October Revolution, p. 156, New York, 1934
2 Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, Articles 3, 6, 12, Washington, D. C., 1945
586
3 See Eugene Varga, Two Systems, New York, 1939
4 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 7, pp. 265-350
5 History of the C.P.S.U., pp. 286-288
6 G. M. Malenkov, On the Threshold of Communism, New York, 1952
7 Constitution of the U.S.S.R., Article 1
8 See Fiftieth Anniversary of the C.P.S.U.
9 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism, v. 1, pp. 433, 436,
449, New York, 1936
10 Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, p. 367
11 History of the C.P.S.U., pp. 311, 315, 318
12 Cited by Webbs, Soviet Communism, v. 2, p. 704
Chapter 31: The German and Hungarian
Revolutions (1918-1919)
1 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 178
2 William Z. Foster, The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921, pp. 11-15,
Chicago, 1921
3 Laidler, Socialism in Thought and Action, p. 371
4 Franz Borkenau, World Communism, pp. 134ff, New York, 1937
Chapter 32: Formation of the Third International (1919)
1 The Communist International, June 1920
2 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 185
3 Ibid., p. 186
4 R. Palme Dutt, The Two Internationals, p. 15, London, 1920
5 Laidler, Socialism in Thought and Action, p. 353
6 Dutt, The Two Internationals, pp. 23-24
7 Ibid., pp. 25-26
8 Lenin, The Foundation of the Communist International, p. 5, New
York, 1934
9 Dutt, The Two Internationals, pp. 68-85 10 Ibid., p. 27
Chapter 33: Revolutionary Perspective:
Second Congress (1920)
1 E. M. House, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, v. 4, p. 405
2 Dutt, The Two Internationals, p. 36
3 Alexander Trachtenberg, ed., American Labor Year Book, 1921-
1922, p. 390
4 Programme of the Young Communist International, London, 1929
5 T. Motyleva, Youth in the World War, p. 15
6 A. Alfonin, A Short History of the Young Communist League,

587
 Moscow, 1934
7 Lenin Speaks to the Youth, New York, 1936
8 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 10, p. 192
9 Ibid., p. 196
10 The Communist International, June 5, 1934
11 Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder, p. 38,
New York, 1940
12 Theses and Statutes, Second Congress of the Third International,
pp. 26-32, Moscow, 1920
13 William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United
States, pp. 179-180, New York, 1952
14 E. Hass, The S.L.P. and the Internationals, p. 141, New York, 1949
15 Trachtenberg, ed., American Labor Year Book, 1921-1922, p. 390
Chapter 34: The Comintern and the Colonial World
1 Theses and Statutes of the Third (Communist) International, pp.
66-75. Second Congress, July-August 1920
2 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 10, p. 239
3 Encyclopedia Britannica, v. 10, p. 525
4 Marx on China, 1853-1860, London, 1951
5 R. Palme Dutt, India Today, pp. 80-93, London, 1949
6 Marx, Selected Works, v. 2, p. 662, New York, 1933
7 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 10, p. 244
8 Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, p. 112
9 Ibid., pp. 92-93
10 Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, v. 3, pp. 260-268
11 R. Swearinger and Paul Langer, Red, Flag in Japan, pp. 4-12
12 People's China, July 1, 1954, Peking
13 William Z. Foster, Outline Political History of the Americas, pp.
377-385, New York, 1951
Chapter 35: Revolutionary Struggles:
Third Congress (1920)
1 Lefranc, Histoire du Mouvement Syndical Français, pp. 304-318
2 Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, pp.
198-201
3 Crook, The General Strike, pp. 233-282
4 Georgio Candeloro, II Movimento Sindacale in Italia, pp. 109-112,
Rome, 1950
5 Foster, The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921, pp. 32-49
6 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 213
7 Theses and Resolutions, Third World Congress of the Communist
588
 International, New York, 1921
8 Trachtenberg, ed., American Labor Year Book, 1921-1922, pp. 382-
387
9 Theses and Resolutions, p. 6
10 Cited by Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, v. 3, p. 385
11 Theses and Resolutions, p. 19
12 Pieck, Reden und Aufsatze, p. 316
13 Bebel, Aus Meinem Leben, p. 290
14 New York Times, March 9, 1954
15 Clara Zetkin, Lenin on the Woman Question, New York, 1934
Chapter 36: Red International of Labor Unions (1920)
1 Lorwin, The International Labor Movement, p. 54
2 Ibid., pp. 61-62
3 A. Lozovsky, The Role of the Trade Unions in the Russian
Revolution, p. 8
4 Trachtenberg, ed., American Labor Year Book, 1921-1922, pp. 223-
227
5 John Steuben, Labor in Wartime, pp. 122-123, New York, 1940
6 Lorwin, The International Labor Movement, p. 59
7 Trachtenberg, ed., American Labor Year Book, 1921-1922, p. 227
8 See The Labor Herald, 1923 editions
9 Resolutions and Decisions, First World Congress of the Red
International of Labor Unions, p. 11, Chicago, 1921
10 Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book 1, p. 212, New York,
1931
11 Resolutions and Decisions, p. 59
12 Lefranc, Histoire du Mouvement Syndical Français, pp. 329-333
13 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 250
14 A. Lozovsky, Problems of Strike Strategy, New York, 1929
15 Resolutions and Decisions, Second World Congress of the Red
International of Labor Unions, p. 9, Chicago, 1922
16 Bulletin of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International,
No. 27, p. 10, Moscow, 1922
17 Ibid., No. 19, p. 30
18 Foster, Outline Political History of the Americas, p. 521
Chapter 37: United Front: Fourth Congress (1922)
1 American Labor Year Book, 1925, p. 280
2 The Communist International, April 1939
3 Bulletin of the Fourth Congress of the C. I., No. 33, p. 6

589
4 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 216
5 Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, v. 3, pp. 408-412
6 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 10, pp. 301-305
7 Borkenau, World Communism, p. 234
8 Bulletin of the Fourth Congress of the C. I., No. 16, p. 2
9 Ibid., No. 32, p. 10
10 Ibid., p. 11
11 Ibid., p. 2
12 Ibid., No. 33, p. 13
13 Ibid., p. 15
14 Ibid., No. 32, p. 2
Chapter 38: Partial Stabilization: Fifth Congress (1924)
1 Fifth Congress of the Communist International (Abridged Report),
p. 8, London, 1924
2 Stalin, Lenin, pp. 29, 31, New York, 1934
3 Lorwin, The International Labor Movement, p. 75
4 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 236
5 International Press Correspondence, April, May, June 1925
6 Fifth Congress of the C. I. (Abridged Report), p. 45
7 Ibid., p. 27
8 A. Lozovsky, The World Trade Union Movement, p. 115, Chicago,
1924
9 Fifth Congress of the C. I. (Abridged Report), p. 82
10 The Communist International, July-Aug. 1924
Chapter 39: Class Collaboration and
Class Struggle (1924-1928)
1 R. Palme Dutt, World Politics, 1918-1936, p. 27, New York, 1936
2 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, pp. 250-251
3 Robert W. Dunn, The Americanization of Labor, New York, 1927;
William Z. Foster, From Bryan to Stalin, New York, 1937
4 K. T. Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford, New York, 1948
5 Jacob Walcher, Ford oder Marx, Berlin, 1925
6 Dutt, World Politics, p. 67
7 Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International, p. 254
8 What is Rationalization? p. 65, London, 1928
9 Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism, p. 315
10 Fifteen Years of the Communist International, New York, 1934
11 Crook, The General Strike, p. 435
12 Cited in J. H. Dolsen, The Awakening of China, p. 162, Chicago,
1926
590
13 Hu Chiao-Mu, Thirty Years of the Communist Party of China, p.
14, Peking, 1952
14 Lenin, Selected Works, v. 10, p. 237
15 Conrad Brand, Benjamin Schwartz, John K. Fairbank, A
Documentary History of Chinese Communism, pp. 77-123,
Cambridge, 1952
16 History of the C.P.S.U., pp. 265-299
17 Stalin, Works, v. 6, pp. 383-384
18 Stalin, Leninism, v. 2, p. 127, New York
Chapter 40: C. I. Program: Sixth Congress (1928)
1 Program of the Communist International, p. 15, New York, 1936
2 Ibid., p. 22
3 Ibid., p. 16
4 Ibid., p. 24
5 Ibid., p. 28
6 Ibid., pp. 30-31
7 Ibid., pp. 37-39
8 International Press Correspondence, Nov. 23, 1928
9 Ibid., Nov. 28, 1928
10 Ibid., Dec. 12, 1928
11 Ibid., Oct. 4, 1928
12 Ibid., Nov. 21, 1928
13 The Communist International Between the Fifth and Sixth World
Congresses, p. 30, Moscow, 1928
Chapter 41: Great Economic Crisis (1929-1933)
1 Dutt, World Politics, 1918-1936, p, 71
2 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 300
3 Soule, Efron, and Ness, Latin America in the Future World, p. 108,
New York, 1945
4 Labor Research Association, Trends in American Capitalism, p.
98, New York, 1948
5 International Press Correspondence, Aug. 15, 1935
6 Varga, Two Systems, p. 41
7 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 318
8 Ibid., p. 319
9 Varga, Two Systems, p. 15
10 Edward H. Carr, The Soviet Impact on the Western World, pp. vii,
21, New York, 1947
11 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 295

591
12 Lorwin, The International Labor Movement, p. 167
13 Capitalist Stabilization Has Ended, p. 8, New York, 1932
14 Lorwin, The International Labor Movement, p. 148
15 Fifteen Years of the Communist International, p. 34
16 International Press Correspondence, Aug. 16, 1929
Chapter 42: Hitler’s Fascism and Roosevelt’s New Deal
1 R. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, pp. 123-132, New
York, 1935
2 Franz L. Neumann, Behemoth, p. 31, New York, 1942
3 D. Z. Manuilsky, The Work of the Seventh Congress, p. 20, New
York, 1936
4 H. Barbusse, Do You Know Thaelmann?, New York, 1934
5 W. Bredel, Ernst Thaelmann, Berlin, 1950
6 F. Hecker, What Is Happening in Germany, Berlin, 1945
7 Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, p. 129
8 Ibid., p. 130
9 International Press Correspondence, April 13, 1933
10 Ibid., Jan. 5, 1934
11 William Ebenstein, The Nazi State, p. 298, New York, 1943
12 Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, pp.
293-294
13 J. M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and
Money, New York, 1935
Chapter 43: Growing Struggle Against Fascism
and War (1933-1935)
1 Dutt, World Politics, 1918-1936, p. 158.
2 The Communist International, June 1935
3 Ibid., Feb. 1936
4 Ibid., March 1, 1932
5 E. S. Colbert, The Left Wing in Japanese Politics, p. 51
6 Brand, Schwartz, Fairbank, A Documentary History of Chinese
Communism
7 Mao Tse-tung, On the Tactics of Fighting Japanese Imperialism, p.
21, Peking, 1953
8 Harry Gannes, When China Unites, pp. 189 ff., New York, 1937
9 Hewlett Johnson, China’s New Creative Age, pp. 156-160, New
York, 1953
10 Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, pp. 253-254
11 Maurice Thorez, The People's Front in France, p. 59, New York,
1935
592
12 The Communist, Feb. 1936
13 Lefranc, Histoire du Mouvement Syndical Français, pp. 395-401
14 Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, p. 143
15 Alexander Schonau, Civil War in Austria, p. 25, London, 1934
16 International Press Correspondence, Feb. 9, Feb. 23, 1935
17 Manuilsky, The Work of the Seventh Congress, p. 49
18 Cited by Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, pp. 144-145
19 International Press Correspondence, Oct. 19, 1935
20 See G. Dimitrov, Sofia, 1948; W. Pieck, Communist International,
Jan. 1937
Chapter 44: People’s Front: Seventh Congress (1935)
1 Full report, International Press Correspondence, Nos. 32-67, 1935
2 Georgi Dimitrov, The United Front, p. 11, New York, 1938
3 Ibid., p. 26
4 Ibid., p. 20
5 Ibid., p. 12
6 Ibid., pp. 13, 14
7 Resolutions of the Seventh Congress of the Communist
International, pp. 55- 56, New York, 1935
8 Ibid., p. 48
9 Ibid., p. 41
10 Dimitrov, The United Front, pp. 30-31
11 Ibid., p. 39
12 Ibid., p. 74
13 Resolutions of the Seventh Congress, pp. 31-32
14 Dimitrov, The United Front, p. 88
15 Manuilsky, The Work of the Seventh Congress, p. 42
16 Ibid., p. 10
17 Wilhelm Pieck, Freedom, Peace and Bread, p. 67, New York, 1935
18 Manuilsky, The Work of the Seventh Congress, p. 54
19 International Press Correspondence, Aug. 19, 1935
Chapter 45: People’s Front in Action (1935-1939)
1 D. Z. Manuilsky, The World Communist Movement, p. 29, New
York, 1939
2 Stalin, Works, v. 6, p. 434
3 Resolutions of the Seventh Congress, p. 35
4 H. Seton-Watson, From Lenin to Malenkov, p. 191, New York, 1953
5 The Communist International, Dec. 1937
6 Ibid., Feb. 1940

593
7 Ibid.
8 Maurice Thorez, The Communist International, May 1936
9 Foster, Outline Political History of the Americas, pp. 419-421
10 The Labour Monthly, Dec. 1926
11 Gil Green, Young Communists and the Unity of the Youth, New
York, 1935
12 Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, pp.
345-355
13 Saul Alinsky, John L. Lewis, p. 153, New York, 1949
14 Ercoli, The Communist, Dec. 1936
15 The Communist International, Nov. 1936
16 Borkenau, World Communism, p. 408
Chapter 46: Munich: Road to War (1935-1939)
1 Manuilsky, The World Communist Movement, pp. 32-33
2 Manifesto of the Communist International, Nov. 7, 1938
3 The Communist International, Special Number, v. 14, p. 659, 1939
4 Ibid., p. 528
5 Ibid., p. 624
6 The Communist International, Jan. 1939
7 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 347
8 A. Y. Vishinsky, Trotskyism in the Service of Fascism Against
Socialism and Peace, New York, 1936
9 The Communist International, Feb. 1939
10 Ibid., Dec. 1938
11 A. Roth, Dilemma in Japan, p. 213
12 Letter from R. Palme Dutt, Oct. 6, 1953
13 The Communist International, Oct. 1938
14 Georgi Dimitrov, After Munich, pp. 12, 16, 27-30, New York, 1939
15 Stalin, Selected Writings, p. 313, New York, 1942
16 V. M. Molotov, The Meaning of the Soviet-German Non-
Aggression Pact, pp. 6-7, New York, 1939
17 V. A. Yakhontoff, U.S.S.R. Foreign Policy, p. 217, New York, 1945
Chapter 47: World War II: Course of the War
1 The Communist International, Nov. 1939
2 Wilhelm Pieck, International Solidarity, p. 27, New York, 1941
3 Letter from R. Palme Dutt, Oct. 6, 1953
4 Yakhontoff, U.S.S.R. Foreign Policy, p. 219
5 D. N. Pritt, The Search for Peace, p. 14, New York, 1952
6 K. E. Voroshilov, Stalin and the Armed Forces of the U.S.S.R., p.
93, Moscow, 1951
594
7 Stalin, For Peaceful Coexistence, p. 8, New York, 1951
8 New York Times, Aug. 11, 1954
9 Ibid., Feb. 10, 1951
10 World News and Views, London, May 2, 1942
11 Associated Press dispatch, Nov. 23, 1954
12 Ibid., Feb. 23, 1942
Chapter 48: World War II: The Guerilla Forces
1 World News and Views, April 10, 1943
2 Stalin, The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, p. 15, New
York, 1945
3 World News and Views, May 2, 1942
4 John Price, The International Labor Movement, p. 216, London,
1945
5 Sergei N. Kournakoff, Russia’s Fighting Forces, p. 205, New York,
1942
6 Ibid., pp. 206-207
7 Ibid., p. 206
8 Pat Sloan, Russia Resists, p. 72, London, 1942
9 J. Minz, The Red Army, p. 155, New York, 1943
10 American-Russian Institute, The U.S.S.R. at War, p. 6
11 Lucien Zachkaroff, The Voice of Fighting Russia, p. 206, New
York, 1942
12 Minz, The Red Army, p. 147
13 Ibid., p. 156
14 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, v. 3, pp. 60-61, New York, 1955
15 Chu Teh, The Communist International, March 1939
16 Chen Lin, China's Fight for National Liberation, p. 25, New York,
1938
17 Mao Tse-tung, The Fight for a New China, p. 16, New York, 1945
18 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, v. 1, p. 117, New York, 1954
19 Chu Teh, The Communist International, March 1939
20 Maxine Levi, The Communists and the Liberation of Europe, pp.
11, 17, New York, 1945
21 Ibid., p. 12
22 The Struggle of the Bulgarian People Against Fascism, Sofia,
1946
23 A. W. Dulles, Germany's Underground, p. 137, New York, 1947
24 Franz Borkenau, European Communism, p. 441, New York, 1953
25 Levi, The Communists and the Liberation of Europe, pp. 36-37
26 The Communist, Sept. 1943

595
27 L. H. Lehmann, Vatican Policy in the Second World War, New
York, 1945
28 L. Longo, Sulla Via della Insurrezione Nazionale, Rome, 1954; P.
Secchia, I Comunisti e L’ Insurrezione, Rome, 1954
29 Levi, The Communists and the Liberation of Europe, p. 28
30 Fernand Grenier, Francs-Tireurs and Guerrillas of France,
London, 1947
31 Watson, From Lenin to Malenkov, p. 221
32 Pierre Montaubuan, Cahiers du Communisme, Paris, July 1950
33 Watson, From Lenin to Malenkov, p. 221
Chapter 49: Role of the Third International
(1919-1943)
1 The Communist, July 1943
2 Ibid.
3 The Brief Political Dictionary, pp. 449-450, Moscow, 1953
4 James S. Allen, Daily Worker, May 26, 1943
5 The Communist, July 1943
6 Lenin, The Foundation of the Communist International, p. 28
7 A. Bittelman, The Communist, March 1934; Foster, History of the
Communist Party of the United States
Chapter 50: The Aftermath of World War II
1 The Stalin-Howard Interview, p. 7, New York, 1936
2 The Communist, July 1943
3 Ibid., Jan. 1944
4 Pravda, Feb. 17, 1951
5 H. D. Meyer, The Last Illusion, p. 301, New York, 1953
6 Earl Browder, Teheran: Our Path in War and Peace, New York,
1944
7 Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, pp.
422-438; James Duclos, The Communist, July 1945
8 Einheit, Berlin, April 1953
Chapter 51: Birth of the People’s Democracies (1945-1947)
1 William Z. Foster, The New Europe, pp. 19-22, New York, 1947
2 Wilfred G. Burchett, Peoples’ Democracies, Melbourne, 1951
3 James S. Allen, Political Affairs, New York, May 1948
4 William Z. Foster, In Defense of the Communist Party and the
Indicted Leaders, p. 51, New York 1949
5 Marx, Briefe an Bebel, Liebknecht, Kautsky und Andere, pp. 516-
517
596
6 History of the C.P.S.U., p. 186
7 L’Humanite, Paris, Aug. 13, 1943
8 The Labour Monthly, Dec. 1947
9 Cahiers du Communisme, Sept. 1948
10 Ibid., Feb. 1945
11 Borkenau, European Communism, p. 315
12 The Labour Monthly, Aug. 1947
13 Martin Ebon, World Communism Today, p. 220, New York, 1948
14 Let Us Face the Future, London
15 Harry Pollitt, Looking Ahead, p. 8, London, 1947
16 John Eaton, Economics of Peace and War, p. 70, New York, 1953
17 Ibid., p. 27
18 C. A. R. Crossman, New Fabian Essays, p. 42, New York, 1952
19 H. Pollitt, The Challenge to Labour, p. 5
20 Eaton, Economics of Peace and War, p. 84
21 R. Dangerfield, The New Japan
22 Colbert, The Left Wing in Japanese Politics, pp. 211-219
Chapter 52: Expansion of Trade Unions
and Other Mass Organizations
1 World Federation of Trade Unions, Third World Congress, Vienna,
Oct. 10- 21, 1953
2 Colbert, The Left Wing in Japanese Politics, p. 132
3 Lorwin, The International Labor Movement, p. 205
4 Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book *j, p. 198, New York,
1945
5 Labor Fact Book 8, pp. 190-193, New York, 1947
6 Lorwin, The International Labor Movement, p. 215
7 Pollitt, Looking Ahead, p. 17
8 Report of the C.I.O. Delegation to the Soviet Union, New York,
1945
9 Lenin Speaks to the Youth, New York, 1936
10 Arvid Vretling, Youth in the Class Struggle, Moscow, 1923
11 The Activity of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, 1945-
1949, Paris, 1949
12 New Times, Moscow, July 22, 1953
13 Sasha Small, Heroines, New York
14 Foster, The New Europe, pp. 73-76
15 Soviet Woman, Moscow, July-Aug. 1953
16 Foster, The New Europe, pp. 34-42

597
 Chapter 53: The Revolution in the Colonial World
(1945-1949)
1 R. Palme Dutt, The Crisis of Britain and the British Empire, p. 239,
New York, 1953
2 The New Leader, New York, Feb. 9, 1953
3 New York Daily News, Nov. 10, 1954
4 For a Lasting Peace, Bucharest, Aug. 31, 1951
5 Ibid., Oct. 19, 1951
6 Letter from R. Palme Dutt, Oct. 22, 1953
7 Ibid.
8 Dutt, India Today, p. 334
9 W. H. Mallory, US. News and World Report, Jan. 8, 1954
10 Hoang Nguyen, U.S. Aggressive Activities Against Viet-Nam, p.
10, Peking, 1950
11 Harry Pollitt, Malaya, London, 1952
12 Mallory, U.S. News and World Report, Jan. 8, 1954
13 The New Leader, Nov. 23, 1953
14 Meyer, The Last Illusion, pp. 97-98
15 Ibid., p. 111
16 Dutt, The Crisis of Britain and the British Empire, p. 122
17 New York Times, Oct. 18, 1953
Chapter 54: Early Phases of the Cold War (1947-1950)
1 Carl Marzani, We Can Be Friends, p. 185, New York, 1952
2 Political Affairs, Aug. 1948, cited from New York Times
3 P. M. S. Blackett, Fear, War and the Bomb, p. 159, New York, 1949
4 James S. Allen, Atomic Imperialism, pp. 193-202, New York, 1952
5 James S. Allen, Atomic Energy and Society, p. 8, New York, 1949
6 New York Times, Sept. 23, 1949
7 Perlo, American Imperialism, p. 139
8 Philip Bolsover, America Over Britain, p. 48, New York, 1953
9 Albert E. Kahn, High Treason, pp. 266-277, New York, 1950
10 James S. Allen, Marshall Plan: Recovery or War?, New York,
1948
11 Ibid., pp. 14-20
12 Bolsover, America Over Britain, pp. 40, 43
13 Business Week, Oct. 22, 1949
14 Information Please Almanac, 1954, p. 345
15 Bolsover, America Over Britain, p. 34

598
 Chapter 55: Communist Information Bureau (1947)
1 Political Affairs, Nov., 1947
2 Ibid., p. 1090; Dec. 1947
3 Ibid.
4 Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Soviet-Yugoslav
Dispute, London, 1948
5 New Times, Jan. 27, 1952
6 Resolutions of Meeting of the Information Bureau of Communist
Parties, Nov. 1949
7 New York Times, Oct. 25, 1954
8 Derek Kartun, Tito's Plot Against Europe, New York, 1950; Wilbert
G. Burchett, People's Democracies, Melbourne, 1951
9 Foster, History of the Communist Party of the United States, pp.
491-494
10 New York Herald Tribune, Jan. 29, 1950
11 Free Trade Unions Remain in the W.F.T.U., Paris, 1949
12 George Morris, The Worker, July 22, 1953
13 Lorwin, The International Labor Movement, p. 327
14 O. Kuusinen, The Right-Wing Social Democrats Today, p. 10,
Moscow, 1950
15 Ajoy Kumar Ghosh, The New Ideology of “Democratic Socialism”,
Bombay, 1954
16 Crossman, New Fabian Essays, p. 35
17 New York Times, Dec. 13, 1953
Chapter 56: Victory of the Chinese Revolution (1950)
1 Chen Po-ta, Stalin and the Chinese Revolution, Peking, 1950
2 Hu Chiao-mu, Thirty Years of the Communist Party of China, p.
69
3 U. S. Department of State, United States Relations With China,
1944_1949
4 Chiang Kai-shek, China's Destiny, New York, 1947
5 Chu Teh, People's China, Aug. 16, 1952
6 Brandt, Schwartz, Fairbank, A Documentary History of Chinese
Communism
7 Chu Teh, For a Lasting Peace, June 29, 1951
8 Sun Ching-chih, People’s China, Aug. 16, 1953
9 Mao Tse-tung, China's New Democracy, pp. 11-16
10 Mao Tse-tung, On People's Democratic Rule, p. 12
11 Ibid., p. 11
12 Chen Po-ta, Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution, p. 28

599
13 Mao Tse-tung, China's New Democracy, p. 26
14 Mao Tse-tung, For a Lasting Peace, July 15, 1949
15 A Guide to New China, pp. 7, 47-62, Peking, 1953
16 For text see For a Lasting Peace, Sept. 24, 1954
17 Mao Tse-tung, For a Lasting Peace, July 15, 1949
18 New York Times, Nov. 2, 1954
19 Wang Hua, People's China, Jan. 16, 1954
20 For a Lasting Peace, July 19, 1949
21 Shih Chek, People's China, Feb. 1, 1954
22 For a Lasting Peace, July 19, 1949
23 New York Times, Sept. 16, 1954
24 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, v. 1, p. 13
25 M. Mitin, For a Lasting Peace, Jan. 8, 1954
26 Mao Tse-tung, The Fight for a New China, pp. 37-39
27 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, v. 2, New York, 1954
28 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, v. 1, pp. 105-115
Chapter 57: Wall St. Wants War: World Wants Peace
1 Cited in Meyer, The Last Illusion, p. 135
2 I. F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War, p. 45, New
York, 1952
3 Lester Rodney, Daily Worker, Oct. 21, 1953
4 Associated Press Dispatch, April 14, 1954
5 Joseph Starobin, Eye Witness in Indo-China, p. 71, New York, 1954
6 New Republic, April 5, 1954
7 Ajoy Kumar Goshal, New World Review, New York, Oct. 1953
8 New York Herald Tribune, March 13, 1954
9 Associated Press Dispatch, Dec. 1, 1954
10 New York Times, Jan. 14, 1953
11 News, Moscow, Jan. 1953
12 Labour Monthly, Sept. 1952
13 A Guide to New China, p. 107
14 J. and S. Alsop, New York Herald Tribune, May 10, 1954
15 Joseph Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., p.
30, New York, 1952
16 G. Malenkov, The Stalin Heritage, p. 2, New York, 1953
Chapter 58: The General Crisis of Capitalism
1 Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Money and Interest
2 James S. Allen and Doxey A. Wilkerson, eds., The Economic Crisis
and the Cold War, New York, 1949
3 John Eaton, Marx Against Keynes, p. 91, London, 1951; also
600
 Celeste Strack, Political Affairs, May 1948
4 Eaton, Marx Against Keynes, p. 72
5 I. G. Bliuman, Political Affairs, July 1948
6 United Nations Department of Economic Affairs, Maintenance of
Full Employment, New York, 1949
7 Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism, p. 32
8 Pollitt, The Challenge to Labour, p. 15
9 Labor Research Association, Memorandum, April 1954
10 U.S. News and World Report, July 1953
11 Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism, pp. 28-29
12 New York Herald Tribune, April 27, 1954
Chapter 59: The Inevitability of World Socialism
1 U.S. News and World Report, June 25, 1954. See Allen, Atomic
Energy and Society, chapter 1
2 Report to Supreme Soviet, August 8, 1953
3 Current Digest of the Soviet Press, March 17, 1954
4 G. M. Malenkov, Speech in the Supreme Soviet, April 26, 1954
5 New York Times, Nov. 7, 1954
6 T. H. White, The Reporter, May 26, 1953
7 V. A. Kovda, Great Construction Works of Communism, p. 5,
Moscow, 1953
8 Malenkov, On the Threshold of Communism, p. 7
9 People's China, Oct. 1, 1953
10 Ibid., Jan. 16, 1954
11 Ibid., March 1, 1954
12 For a Lasting Peace, March 19, 1954
13 Ibid., April 23, 1954
14 Ibid., March 5, 1954
15 Gh. Ghengiu-Dej, Ninth Anniversary of the Liberation of Our
Homeland, p. 7
16 Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism, p. 33
17 Malenkov, On the Threshold of Communism, p. 61
18 Labor Research Association, Daily Worker, March 25, 1954
19 Herbert Aptheker, Laureates of Imperialism, New York, 1954
20 New York Times, May 6, 1954
21 Ibid., Nov. 7, 1954
22 Proceedings of Seventh Congress of the C.I., 1935, pp. 599-600
23 For a full discussion of this policy see, Brief for E. G. Flynn et al,
U. S. Court of Appeals, Oct. term, 1953
24 R. Togliatti, For a Lasting Peace, April 24, 1953

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25 The British Road to Socialism, p. 14
26 Tim Buck, Thirty Years, 1922-1952, pp. 221-223, Toronto, 1952
27 Communist Party of the United States, The American Way, p. 20,
New York, 1954
28 New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 21, 1954
Chapter 60: Historical Advance of Socialism
(1848-1954)
1 James S. Allen, Who Owns America, New York, 1946; Anna
Rochester, Rulers of America, New York, 1936
2 J. P. Warbasse, Cooperative Democracy, p. 78, New York, 1947
3 William Z. Foster, The Twilight of World Capitalism, New York,
1949
4 Aptheker, Laureates of Imperialism
5 Jurgen Kuczynski, Labor Conditions in Great Britain, p. 22, New
York, 1946
6 Labor Research Association, Daily Worker, May 13, 1954
7 Labor Research Association, Economic Notes, Nov. 1953
8 U.S. Department of Labor, The Worker’s Story, p. 21, 1953
9 Based on Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book 12, New
York, 1955
10 For a Lasting Peace, May 1, 1953
11 Morgan Phillips, The Socialist International, pp. 10, 12, London,
1953
12 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Security Affairs, Strength of the
International Communist Movement, Oct. 15, 1953.

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