LETTER TO THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE COMINTERN
Up to July 19, 1920
It is further necessary for the Second Congress of the Third International to write theses on the international economic and political situation.
Could we not entrust a preliminary draft to Lapinsky or to someone else, with something like the following approximate plan for these theses:

1.
The division of the entire earth (both in the sense of the spheres of influence of banking and finance capital, and in the sense of international syndicates and cartels, as well as in the sense of the seizure of colonies and semi-colonies) is the basic fact of imperialism, the economics of the 20th century.
2. From this follow inevitably imperialist wars in general, and in particular the first imperialist war of 1914–1918.
3. Results of this war:
a) a decrease in the number of world-powerful states, an increase in the number of weak, plundered, divided, dependent ones; b) a gigantic exacerbation of all capitalist contradictions, both within all capitalist countries and between countries; c) in particular, an exacerbation, on a world scale, of both poles of capitalism:
an increase in the luxury of a negligible number of magnates of capital; an increase in want, poverty, ruin, hunger, unemployment, extreme insecurity of existence; d) the strengthening of militarism, the intensification and acceleration of preparations for new imperialist wars, economically inevitable; an increase in the number of wars throughout the world, and, moreover, wars that are especially revolutionary; e) the complete collapse of the League of Nations, the exposure of its lie; the collapse of “Wilsonianism”. The collapse of bourgeois democracy.
4. An explanation, the most concise, based on a characterisation (cf. Comrade P. Levi’s report of April 14, 1920) of:
England and America
France
Japan the remaining, neutral countries of Europe and America the defeated countries (Russia and Germany chiefly)
the colonies the semi-colonies (Persia, Turkey, China).
5. Raw materials—their depletion
industry—its enfeeblement (fuel, etc.)
currency—its collapse. Debts. Depreciation of money.
The “dislocation”, the disintegration of the entire system of world economy.
6. The sum total = a world revolutionary crisis. The communist movement and Soviet power.