(1) The revolution of 25. X. (7. XI.) 1917 in Russia carried out the dictatorship of the proletariat, which began, with the support of the poorest peasantry or semi-proletariat, to build the foundations of communist society. The growth of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all advanced countries, the ubiquitous appearance and development of the Soviet form of this movement, i.e., one that is directly aimed at the realization of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally, the beginning and course of development of the revolution in Austria-Hungary and Germany in particular, all this has visibly shown that the era of world-wide proletarian, communist revolution has begun.

(2) A correct understanding of the causes, significance and aims of this revolution requires clarification of the essence of capitalism and the inevitability of its development towards communism, through imperialism and imperialist wars, which hasten the collapse of capitalism.

(3) The nature of capitalism and bourgeois society, which still dominates in the majority of civilized countries and whose development inevitably leads to the world-wide communist revolution of the proletariat, was correctly characterized (apart from the inaccurate name of the party as Social-Democratic) by our old programme in the following propositions:

(4) “The main feature of such society is commodity production on the basis of capitalist relations of production, under which the most important and significant part of the means of production and circulation of commodities belongs to a numerically small class of persons, while the vast majority of the population consists of proletarians and semi-proletarians, who by their economic situation are forced constantly or periodically to sell their labour-power, i.e., to hire themselves out to capitalists, and by their labour create the income of the upper classes of society.

(5) The domain of capitalist relations of production expands more and more as the constant improvement of technology, increasing the economic importance of large enterprises, leads to the displacement of small independent producers, transforming part of them into proletarians, narrowing the role of the rest in social-economic life and in places putting them in a more or less complete, more or less overt, more or less severe dependence on capital.

(6) The same technical progress also makes it possible for entrepreneurs to employ female and child labour on an ever-increasing scale in the process of production and circulation of commodities. And since, on the other hand, it leads to a relative reduction in the entrepreneurs’ need for living labour of workers, the demand for labour-power necessarily lags behind its supply, as a result of which the dependence of wage-labour on capital increases and the level of its exploitation rises.

(7) This state of affairs within bourgeois countries and the ever-intensifying mutual rivalry among them on the world market make the sale of commodities, produced in constantly increasing quantities, more and more difficult. Overproduction, manifesting itself in more or less acute industrial crises, followed by more or less protracted periods of industrial stagnation, is an inevitable consequence of the development of productive forces in bourgeois society. Crises and periods of industrial stagnation, in their turn, further ruin the small producers, further increase the dependence of wage-labour on capital, and still more rapidly lead to a relative and sometimes absolute deterioration of the condition of the working class.

(8) Thus, the improvement of technology, signifying increased productivity of labour and growth of social wealth, in bourgeois society brings about a growth of social inequality, an increase in the distance between propertied and propertyless, and a growth of insecurity of existence, unemployment and various kinds of privation for ever broader strata of the toiling masses.

(9) But as all these contradictions inherent in bourgeois society grow and develop, so also grows the discontent of the toiling and exploited mass with the existing order of things, grows the number and cohesion of the proletarians and sharpens their struggle against their exploiters. At the same time, the improvement of technology, concentrating the means of production and circulation and socializing the labour process in capitalist enterprises, creates ever more rapidly the material possibility of replacing capitalist relations of production by communist ones, i.e., of that social revolution which is the ultimate goal of all the activity of the international communist party, as the conscious expression of the class movement of the proletariat.

(10) By replacing private property in the means of production and circulation by social property and introducing a planned organization of the social-productive process to ensure the well-being and all-round development of all members of society, the social revolution of the proletariat will abolish the division of society into classes and thereby liberate all oppressed humanity, for it will put an end to all forms of exploitation of one part of society by another.

(11) An indispensable condition of this social revolution is the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the conquest by the proletariat of such political power as will allow it to suppress all resistance of the exploiters. Setting itself the task of making the proletariat capable of fulfilling its great historical mission, the international communist party organizes it into an independent political party, standing in opposition to all bourgeois parties, guides all manifestations of its class struggle, exposes before it the irreconcilable opposition of the interests of exploiters to the interests of the exploited, and explains to it the historical significance and necessary conditions of the impending social revolution. At the same time, it reveals to the rest of the toiling and exploited mass the hopelessness of their position in capitalist society and the necessity of a social revolution in the interests of their own liberation from the yoke of capital. The party of the working class, the communist party, calls into its ranks all strata of the toiling and exploited population, insofar as they adopt the standpoint of the proletariat.”

(12) The process of concentration and centralization of capital, destroying free competition, led at the beginning of the 20th century to the creation of powerful monopolistic associations of capitalists – syndicates, cartels, trusts – which acquired decisive importance in the whole of economic life, to the merging of bank capital with the enormously concentrated industrial capital, to the intensified export of capital to foreign countries, to the beginning of the economic division of the world, already partitioned territorially among the richest countries, trusts embracing ever wider groups of capitalist powers. This epoch of finance capital, an epoch of unprecedentedly fierce struggle between capitalist states, is the epoch of imperialism.

(13) From this inevitably flow imperialist wars, wars for markets, spheres for the investment of capital, raw materials and cheap labour-power, i.e., for world domination and for the strangulation of small and weak nations. Such precisely was the first great imperialist war of 1914–1918.

(14) And the extraordinarily high stage of development of world capitalism in general; and the replacement of free competition by state-monopoly capitalism; and the preparation by banks, as well as by capitalists’ associations, of an apparatus for the social regulation of the process of production and distribution of products; and, in connection with the growth of capitalist monopolies, the growth of high prices and the yoke of syndicates over the working class, its enslavement to the imperialist state, the gigantic difficulty of the economic and political struggle of the proletariat; and the horrors, distress, ruin engendered by the imperialist war – all this makes the now-attained stage of development of capitalism the era of proletarian, communist revolution.

This era has begun.

(15) Only a proletarian, communist revolution can lead humanity out of the impasse created by imperialism and imperialist wars. Whatever may be the difficulties of the revolution and its possible temporary setbacks or waves of counter-revolution, the final victory of the proletariat is inevitable.

(16) The victory of the world proletarian revolution requires the fullest confidence, the closest fraternal alliance and the greatest possible unity of revolutionary action of the working class in the advanced countries. These conditions are unrealizable without a resolute principled break and merciless struggle against that bourgeois distortion of socialism which has triumphed in the upper circles of the official “Social-Democratic” and “Socialist” parties.

(17) Such distortion is, on the one hand, the current of opportunism and social-chauvinism, socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds, the concealment of the defence of the predatory interests of “one’s own” national bourgeoisie under the false slogan of “defence of the fatherland” in general, and especially during the imperialist war of 1914–1918. This current has been created by the fact that the advanced capitalist states, plundering colonial and weak peoples, enabled the bourgeoisie to bribe, with fragments of the superprofits obtained by this plunder, the upper stratum of the proletariat, to secure for them a tolerable petty-bourgeois existence in peacetime and to take the leaders of this layer into their service. The opportunists and social-chauvinists, being servants of the bourgeoisie, are direct class enemies of the proletariat, especially now when, in alliance with the capitalists, they are suppressing the revolutionary movement of the proletariat by armed force both in their own and in foreign countries.

(18) On the other hand, a bourgeois distortion of socialism is the “Centre” current, observed equally in all capitalist countries, which vacillates between social-chauvinists and communists, defending unity with the former and attempting to revive the bankrupt Second International. The only leader of the proletariat’s struggle for its emancipation is the new, Third, Communist International, actually founded by the formation of communist parties out of genuinely proletarian elements of the former socialist parties in a number of countries, especially in Germany, and winning ever more sympathy among the masses of the proletariat of all countries. This International not only in its name returns to Marxism, but also by its entire ideological-political content and by all its actions realizes the revolutionary teaching of Marx, cleansed of bourgeois-opportunist distortions.

*Pravda* No. 43, February 25, 1919.

Printed according to a typewritten copy corrected by V. I. Lenin.