V. I. Lenin

The Second Congress Of

The Communist
International [1]

July 19-August 7, 1920

1. Report On The International Situation And The Fundamental Tasks Of The Communist International, July 19

2. Speech On The Role Of The Communist Party, July 23

3. Report Of The Commission On The National And Colonial Questions, July 26

4. Speech On The Terms Of Admission Into The Communist International July 30

5. Speech On Parliamentarianism, August 2

6. Speech On Affiliation To The British Labour Party, August 6.

Endnotes

1

Report On The International Situation
And The Fundamental Tasks Of
The Communist International
July 19

( An ovation breaks out. All present rise to their feet and applaud. The speaker tries to begin, but the applause and cries in all languages continue. The ovation does not abate .)
Comrades, the theses on the questions of the fundamental tasks
of the Communist International have been published in all
languages and contain nothing that is materially new (particularly to the Russian comrades). That is because, in a
considerable measure, they extend several of the main features
of our revolutionary experience and the lessons of our revolutionary movement to a number of Western countries, to
Western Europe. My report will therefore deal at greater length,
if in brief outline, with the first part of my subject, namely,
the international situation.

Imperialism’s economic relations constitute the core of
the entire international situation as it now exists. Throughout
the twentieth century, this new, highest and final stage of
capitalism has fully taken shape. Of course, you all know that the
enormous dimensions that capital has reached are the most
characteristic and essential feature of imperialism. The place of
free competition has been taken by huge monopolies. An insignificant number of capitalists have, in some cases, been able
to concentrate in their hands entire branches of industry; these
have passed into the hands of combines, cartels, syndicates and
trusts, not infrequently of an international nature. Thus, entire
branches of industry, not only in single countries, but all over
the world, have been taken over by monopolists in the field of
finance, property rights, and partly of production. This has
formed the basis for the unprecedented domination exercised by an
insignificant number of very big banks, financial tycoons,
financial magnates who have, in fact, transformed even the freest
republics into financial monarchies. Before the war this was
publicly recognised by such far from revolutionary writers as, for
example, Lysis in France.

This domination by a handful of capitalists achieved full
development when the whole world had been partitioned, not only in
the sense that the various sources of raw materials and means of
production had been seized by the biggest capitalists, but also in
the sense that the preliminary partition of the colonies had been
completed. Some forty years ago, the population of the colonies
stood at somewhat over 250,000,000, who were subordinated to six
capitalist powers. Before the war of 1914, the population of the
colonies was estimated at about 600,000,000, and if we add
countries like Persia, Turkey, and China, which were already
semi-colonies, we shall get, in round figures, a population of a
thousand million people oppressed through colonial dependence by
the richest, most civilised and freest countries. And you know
that, apart from direct political and juridical dependence,
colonial dependence presumes a number of relations of financial
and economic dependence, a number of wars, which were not regarded
as wars because very often they amounted to sheer massacres, when
European and American imperialist troops, armed with the most
up-to-date weapons of destruction, slaughtered the unarmed and
defenceless inhabitants of colonial countries.

The first imperialist war of 1914-18 was the inevitable outcome
of this partition of the whole world, of this domination by the
capitalist monopolies, of this great power wielded by an
insignificant number of very big banks—two, three, four or
five in each country. This war was waged for the repartitioning of
the whole world. It was waged in order to decide which of the
small groups of the biggest states—the British or the
German—was to obtain the opportunity and the right to rob,
strangle and exploit the whole world. You know that the war
settled this question in favour of the British group. And, as a
result of this war, all capitalist contradictions have become
immeasurably more acute. At a single stroke the war relegated
about 250,000,000 of the world’s inhabitants to what is
equivalent to colonial status, viz., Russia, whose population can
be taken at about 130,000,000, and Austria-Hungary, Germany and
Bulgaria, with a total population of not less than
120,000,000. That means 250,000,000 people living in countries, of
which some, like Germany, are among the most advanced, most
enlightened, most cultured, and on a level with modern technical
progress. By means of the Treaty of Versailles, the war imposed
such terms upon these countries that advanced peoples have been
reduced to a state of colonial dependence, poverty, starvation,
ruin, and loss of rights: this treaty binds them for many
generations, placing them in conditions that no civilised nation
has ever lived in. The following is the post-war picture of the
world: at least 1 , 250 million people are at once brought under the colonial yoke, exploited by a brutal
capitalism, which once boasted of its love for peace, and ha~ some
right to do so some fifty years ago, when the world was not yet
partitioned, the monopolies did not as yet rule, and capitalism
could still develop in a relatively peaceful way, without
tremendous military conflicts.

Today, after this “peaceful” period, we see a monstrous intensification of oppression, the reversion to a
colonial and military oppression that is far worse than
before. The Treaty of Versailles has placed Germany and the other
defeated countries in a position that makes their economic
existence physically impossible, deprives them of all rights, and
humiliates them.

How many nations are the beneficiaries? To answer this question
we must recall that the population of the United States—the
only full beneficiary from the war, a country which, from a heavy
debtor, has become a general creditor—is no more than
100,000,000. The population of Japan—which gained a great
deal by keeping out of the European-American conflict and by
seizing the enormous Asian continent—is 50,000,000. The
population of Britain, which next to the above-mentioned countries
gained most, is about 50,000,000. If we add the neutral countries
with their very small populations, countries which were enriched
by the war, we shall get, in round figures, some 250,000,000
people.

Thus you get the broad outlines of the picture of the world as
it appeared after the imperialist war. In the oppressed
colonies—countries which are being dismembered, such as
Persia, Turkey and China, and in countries that were defeated and
have been relegated to the position of colonies—there are
1,250 million inhabitants. Not more than 250,000,000 inhabit
countries that have retained their old positions, but have become
economically dependent upon America, and all of which, during the
war, were militarily dependent, once the war involved the whole
world and did not permit a single state to remain really
neutral. And, finally, we have not more than 250,000 000
inhabitants in countries whose top stratum, the capitaiists alone,
benefited from the partition of the world. We thus get a total of
about 1,750 million comprising the entire population of the
world. I would like to remind you of this picture of the world,
for all the basic contradictions of capitalism, of imperialism,
which are leading up to revolution, all the basic contradictions
in the working-class movement that have led up to the furious
struggle against the Second International, facts our chairman has
referred to, are all connected with this partitioning of the
world’s population.

Of course, these figures give the economic picture of the world
only approximately, in broad outline. And, comrades, it is naturaI
that, with the population of the world divided in this way,
exploitation by finance capital, the capitalist monopolies, has
increased many times over.

Not only have the colonial and the defeated countries been
reduced to a state of dependence; within each victor state the
contradictions have grown more acute; all the capitalist
contradictions have become aggravated. I shall illustrate this
briefly with a few examples.

Let us take the national debts. We know that the debts of the
principal European states increased no less than sevenfold in the period between 1914 and 1920. I shall
quote another economic source, one of particular significance—Keynes, the British diplomat and author of
The Economic Consequenices of the Peace , who, on instructions from his government, took part in the Versailles
peace negotiations, observed them on the spot from thc purely
bourgeois point of view, studied the subject in detail, step by
step, and took part in the conferences as an economist. He has
arrived at conclusions which are more weighty, more striking and
more instructive than any a Communist revolutionary could draw,
because they are the conclusions of a well-known bourgeois and
implacable enemy of Bolshevism, which he, like the British
philistine he is, imagines as something monstrous, ferocious, and
bestial. Keynes has reached the conclusion that after the Peace of
Versailles, Europe and the whole world are heading for bankruptcy. He has resigned, and thrown his book in the
government’s face with the words: “What you are doing is madness”. I shall quote his figures, which can be summed
up as follows.

What are the debtor-creditor relations that have developed
between the principal powers? I shall convert pounds sterling into
gold rubles, at a rate of ten gold rubles to one pound. Here is
what we get: the United States has assets amounting to 19,000
million, its liabilities are nil. Before the war it was in
Britain’s debt. In his report on April 14, 1920, to the last
congress of the Communist Party of Germany, Comrade Levi very
correctly pointed out that there are now only two powers in the
world that can act independently, viz., Britain and
America. America alone is absolutely independent financially. Before the war she was a debtor; she is now a
creditor only. All the other powers in the world are debtors. Britain has been reduced to a position in which her
assets total 17,000 million, and her liabilities 8,000 million. She is already half-way to becoming a debtor
nation. Moreover, her assets include about 6,000 million owed to
her by Russia. Included in the debt are military supplies received
by Russia during the war. When Krasin, as representative of the
Russian Soviet Government, recently had occasion to discuss with
Lloyd George the subject of debt agreements, he made it plain to
the scientists and politicians, to the British Government’s
leaders, that they were labouring under a strange delusion if they
were counting on getting these debts repaid. The British diplomat
Keynes has already laid this delusion bare.

Of course, it is not only or even not at all a question of the
Russian revolutionary government having no wish to pay the
debts. No government would pay, because these debts are usurious
interest on a sum that has been paid twenty times over, and the
selfsame bourgeois Keynes, who does not in the least sympathise
with the Russian revolutionary movement, says: “It is clear
that these debts cannot be taken into account.”

In regard to France, Keynes quotes the following figures: her
assets amount to 3,500 million, and her liabilities to 10,500
million! And this is a country which the French themselves called
the world’s money-lender, because her “savings” were enormous; the proceeds of colonial and financial
pillage—a gigantic capital—enabled her to grant thousands upon thousands of millions in loans, particularly to
Russia. These loans brought in an enormous revenue. Notwithstanding this and notwithstanding victory, France
has been reduced to debtor status.

A bourgeois American source, quoted by Comrade Braun, a
Communist, in his book Who Must Pay the War Debts?
(Leipzig, 1920), estimates the ratio of debts to national wealth
as follows: in the victor countries, Britain and Francc, the ratio
of debts to aggregate national wealth is over 50 per cent; in
Italy the percentage is between 60 and 70, and in Russia 90. As
you know, however, these debts do not disturb us, because we
followed Keynes’s excellent advice just a little before his
book appeared—we annulled all our debts. ( Stormy applause .)

In this, however, Keynes reveals the usual crankiness of the
philistine: while advising that all debts should be annulled, he
goes on to say that, of course, France only stands to gain by it,
that, of course, Britain will not lose very much, as nothing can
be got out of Russia in any case; America will lose a fair amount,
but Keynes counts on American “generosity”! On this point our views differ from those of Keynes and other
petty-bourgeois pacifists. We think that to get the debts annulled
they will have to wait for something else to happen, and will have
to try working in a direction other than counting on the
“generosity” of the capitalists.

These few figures go to show that the imperialist war has
created an impossible situation for the victor powers as
well. This is further shown by the enormous disparity between
wages and price rises. On March 8 of this year, the Supreme
Economic Council, an institution charged with protecting the
bourgeois system throughout the world from the mounting
revolution, adopted a resolution which ended with an appeal for
order, industry and thrift, provided, of course, the workers
remain the slaves of capital. This Supreme Economic Council, organ
of the Entente and of the capitalists of the whole world,
presented the following summary.

In the United States of America food prices have risen, on the
average, by 120 per cent, whereas wages have increased only by 100
per cent. In Britain, food prices have gone up by 170 per cent,
and wages 130 per cent; in France, food prices—300 per cent,. and wages 200 per cent; in Japan—food prices 130 per
cent, and wages 60 per cent (I have analysed Comrade Braun’s
figures in his pamphlet and those of the Supreme Economic Council
as published in The Times of March 10, 1920).

In such circumstances, the workers’ mounting resentment,
the growth of a revolutionary temper and ideas, and the increase
in spontaneous mass strikes are obviously inevitable, since the
position of the workers is becoming intolerable. The workers’ own experience is convincing them that the
capitalists have become prodigiously enriched by the war and are
placing the burden of war costs and debts upon the workers’
shoulders. We recently learnt by cable that America wants to
deport another 500 Communists to Russia so as to get rid of
“dangerous agitators”.

Even if America deports to our country, not 500 but 500,000
Russian, American, Japanese and French “agitators” that will make no difference, because there will still be the
disparity between prices and wages, which they can do nothing
about. The reason why they can do nothing about it is because
private property is most strictly safeguarded, is “sacred” there. That should not be forgotten, because
it is only in Russia that the exploiters’ private property
has been abolished. The capitalists can do nothing about the gap
between prices and wages, and the workers cannot live on their
previous wages. The old methods are useless against this
calamity. Nothing can be achieved by isolated strikes, the
parliamentary struggle, or the vote, because “private property is sacred”, and the capitalists have accumulated
such debts that the whole world is in bondage to a handful of
men. Meanwhile the workers’ living conditions are becoming
more and more unbearable. There is no other way out but to abolish
the exploiters’ “private property”.

In his pamphlet Britain and the World Revolution , valuable extracts from which were published by our Bulletin of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of
February 1920, Comrade Lapinsky points out that in Britain coal
export prices have doubled as against those anticipated by
official industrial circles.

In Lancashire things have gone so far that shares are at a
premium of 400 per cent. Bank profits are at least 40-50 per
cent. It should, moreover, be noted that, in determining bank
profits, all bank officials are able to conceal the lion’s
share of profits by calling them, not profits but bonuses,
commissions, etc. So here, too, indisputable economic facts prove
that the wealth of a tiny handful of people has grown prodigiously
and that their luxury beggars description, while the poverty of
the working class is steadily growing. We must particularly note
the further circumstance brought out very clearly by Comrade Levi
in the report I have just referred to, namely, the change in the
value of money. Money has everywhere depreciated as a result of
the debts, the issue of paper currency, etc. The same bourgeois
source I have already mentioned, namely, the statement of the
Supreme Economic Council of March 8, 1920, has calculated that in
Britain the depreciation in the value of currency as against the
dollar is approximately one-third, in France and Italy two-thirds,
and in Germany as much as 96 per cent.

This fact shows that the “mechanism” of the world capitalist economy is falling apart. The trade relations on which
the acquisition of raw materials and the sale of commodities hinge
under capitalism cannot go on; they cannot continue to be based on
the subordination of a number of countries to a single country—the reason being the change in the value of
money. No wealthy country can exist or trade unless it sells its
goods and obtains raw materials.

Thus we have a situation in which America, a wealthy country
that all countries are subordinate to, cannot buy or sell. And the
selfsame Keynes who went through the entire gamut of the
Versailles negotiations has been compelled to acknowledge this
impossibility despite his unyielding determination to defend
capitalism, and all his hatred of Bolshevism. Incidentally, I do
not think any communist manifesto, or one that is revolutionary in
general, could compare in forcefulness with those pages in
Keynes’s book which depict Wilson and “Wilsonism” in action. Wilson was the idol of
philistines and pacifists like Keynes and a number of heroes of
the Second International (and even of the “Two-and-a-Half” International [2] ), who
exalted the “Fourteen Points” and even wrote “learned” books about the “roots “ of
Wilson ’s policy; they hoped that Wilson would save “social peace”, reconcile exploiters and exploited,
and bring about social reforms. Keynes showed vividly how Wilson
was made a fool of, and all these illusions were shattered at the
first impact with the practical, mercantile and huckster policy of
capital as personified by Clemenceau and Lloyd George. The masses
of the workers now see more clearly than ever, from their own
experience—and the learned pedants could see it just by
reading Keynes’s book—that the “roots” of
Wilson’s policy lay in sanctimonious piffle, petty-bourgeois
phrase-mongering, and an utter inability to understand the class
struggle.

In consequence of all this, two conditions, two fundamental
situations, have inevitably and naturally emerged. On the one
hand, the impoverishment of the masses has grown incredibly,
primarily among 1,250 million people, i.e., 70 per cent of the
world’s population. These are the colonial and dependent
countries whose inhabitants possess no legal rights, countries
“mandated” to the brigands of finance. Besides, the enslavement of the defeated countries has been sanctioned by the
Treaty of Versailles and by existing secret treaties regarding
Russia, whose validity, it is true, is sometimes about as real as
that of the scraps of paper stating that we owe so many thousands
of millions. For the first time in world history, we see robbery,
slavery, dependence, poverty and starvation imposed upon 1,250
million people by a legal act.

On the other hand, the workers in each of the creditor countries have found themselves in conditions that are
intolerable. The war has led to an unprecedented aggravation of
all capitalist contradictions, this being the origin of the
intense revolutionary ferment that is ever growing. During the war
people were put under military discipline, hurled into the ranks
of death, or threatened with immediate wartime punishment. Because
of the war conditions people could not see the economic
realities. Writers, poets, the clergy, the whole press were
engaged in nothing but glorifying the war. Now that the war has
ended, the exposures have begun: German imperialism with its Peace
of Brest-Litovsk has been laid bare; the Treaty of Versailles,
which was to have been a victory for imperialism but proved its
defeat, has been exposed. Incidentally, the example of Keynes
shows that in Europe and America tens and hundreds of thousands of
petty-bourgeois, intellectuals, and simply more or less literate
and educated people, have had to follow the road taken by Keynes,
who resigned and threw in the face of the government a book
exposing it. Keynes has shown what is taking place and will take
place in the minds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of
people when they realise that all the speeches about a “war
for liberty”, etc., were sheer deception, and that as a
result only a handful of people were enriched, while the others
were ruined and reduced to slavery. Is it not a fact that the
bourgeois Keynes declares that, to survive and save the British
economy, the British must secure the resumption of free commercial
intercourse between Germany and Russia? How can this be achieved?
By cancelling all debts, as Keynes proposes. This is an idea that
has been arrived at not only by Keynes, the learned economist;
millions of people are or will be getting the same idea. And
millions of people hear bourgeois economists declare that there is
no way out except annulling the debts; therefore “damn the
Bolsheviks” (who have annulled the debts), and let us appeal
to America’s “generosity”! I think that, on behalf of the Congress of the Communist International, we should
send a message of thanks to these economists, who have been
agitating for Bolshevism.

If, on the one hand, the economic position of the masses has
become intolerable, and, on the other hand, the disintegration
described by Keynes has set in and is growing among the negligible
minority of all-powerful victor countries, then we are in the
presence of the maturing of the two conditions for the world
revolution.

We now have before us a somewhat more complete picture of the
whole world. We know what dependence upon a handful of rich men
means to 1,250 million people who have been placed in intolerable
conditions of existence. On the other hand, when the peoples were
presented with the League of Nations Covenant, declaring that the
League had put an end to war and would henceforth not permit
anyone to break the peace, and when this Covenant, the last hope
of working people all over the world, came into force, it proved
to be a victory of the first order for us. Before it came into
force, people used to say that it was impossible not to impose
special conditions on a country like Germany, but when the
Covenant was drawn up, everything would come out all right. Yet,
when the Covenant was published, the bitterest opponents of
Bolshevism were obliged to repudiate it. When the Covenant came
into operation, it appeared that a small group of the richest
countries, the “Big Four"—in the persons of
Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando and Wilson—had been put on
the job of creating the new relations! When the machinery of the
Covenant was put into operation, this led to a complete
breakdown.

We saw this in the case of the wars against Russia. Weak,
ruined and crushed, Russia, a most backward country, fought
against all the nations, against a league of the rich and powerful
states that dominate the world, and emerged victorious. We could
not put up a force that was anything like the equal of theirs, and
yet we proved the victors. Why was that? Because there was not a
jot of unity among them, because each power worked against the
other. France wanted Russia to pay her debts and become a
formidable force against Germany; Britain wanted to partition
Russia, and attempted to seize the Baku oilfields and conclude a
treaty with the border states of Russia. Among the official
British documents there is a Paper which scrupulously enumerates
all the states (fourteen in all) which some six months ago, in
December 1919, pledged themselves to take Moscow and
Petrograd. Britain based her policy on these states, to whom she
granted loans running into millions. All these calculations have
now misfired, and all the loans are unrecoverable.

Such is the situation created by the League of Nations. Every
day of this Covenant’s existence provides the best propaganda for Bolshevism, since the most powerful adherents of
the capitalist “order” are revealing that, on every question, they put spokes in one another’s wheels. Furious
wrangling over the partitioning of Turkey, Persia, Mesopotamia and
China is going on between Japan, Britain, America and France. The
bourgeois press in these countries is full of the bitterest
attacks and the angriest statements against their “colleagues” for trying to snatch the booty from under
their noses. We see complete discord at the top, among this
handful, this very small number of extremely rich countries. There
are 1,250 million people who find it impossible to live in the
conditions of servitude which “advanced” and civilised capitalism wishes to impose on them: after all, these represent 70
per cent of the world’s population. This handful of the
richest states—Britain, America and Japan (though Japan was
able to plunder the Eastern, the Asian countries, she cannot
constitute an independent financial and military force without
support from another country)—these two or three countries
are unable to organise economic relations, and are directing their
policies toward disrupting policies of their colleagues and
partners in the League of Nations. Hence the world crisis; it is
these economic roots of the crisis that provide the chief reason
of the brilliant successes the Communist International is
achieving.

Comrades, we have now come to the question of the revolutionary
crisis as the basis of our revolutionary action. And here we must
first of all note two widespread errors. On the one hand,
bourgeois economists depict this crisis simply as “unrest”, to use the elegant expression of the
British. On the other hand, revolutionaries sometimes try to prove
that the crisis is absolutely insoluble.

This is a mistake. There is no such thing as an absolutely
hopeless situation. The bourgeoisie are behaving like barefaced
plunderers who have lost their heads; they are committing folly
after folly, thus aggravating the situation and hastening their
doom. All that is true. But nobody can “prove” that it is absolutely impossible for them to pacify a minority of the
exploited with some petty concessions, and suppress some movement
or uprising of some section of the oppressed and exploited. To try
to “prove” in advance that there is “absolutely” no way out of the situation would be
sheer pedantry, or playing with concepts and catchwords. Practice
alone can serve as real “proof” in this and similar questions. All over the world, the bourgeois system is
experiencing a tremendous revolutionary crisis. The revolutionary
parties must now “prove” in practice that they have sufficient understanding and organisation, contact with the
exploited masses, and determination and skill to utilise this
crisis for a successful, a victorious revolution.

It is mainly to prepare this “proof” that we have gathered at this Congress of the Communist International.

To illustrate to what extent opportunism still prevails among
parties that wish to affiliate to the Third International, and how
far the work of some parties is removed from preparing the
revolutionary class to utilise the revolution ary crisis, I shall
quote the leader of the British Independent Labour Party, Ramsay
MacDonald. In his book, Parliament and Revolution , which
deals with the basic problems that are now engaging our attention,
MacDonald describes the state of affairs in what is something like
a bourgeois pacifist spirit. He admits that there is a revolutionary crisis and that revolutionary sentiments are
growing, that the sympathies of the workers are with the Soviets
and the dictatorship of the proletariat (note that this refers to
Britain) and that the dictatorship of the proletariat is better
than the present dictatorship of the British bourgeoisie.

But MacDonald remains a thorough-paced bourgeois pacifist and
compromiser, a petty bourgeois who dreams of a government that
stands above classes. Like all bourgeois liars, sophists and
pedants, MacDonald recognises the class struggle merely as a
“descriptive fact”. He ignores the experience of
Kerensky, the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries of
Russia, the similar experience of Hungary, Germany, etc., in
regard to creating a “democratic” government allegedly standing above classes. MacDonald lulls his party and those
workers who have the misfortune to regard this bourgeois as a
socialist, this philistine as a leader, with the words: “We
know that all this [i.e., the revolutionary crisis, the
revolutionary ferment] will pass . . . settle down.” The
war, he says, inevitably provoked the crisis, but after the war it
will all “settle down”, even if not at once!

That is what has been written by a man who is leader of a party
that wants to affiliate to the Third International. This is a
revelation—the more valuable for its rare outspokenness—of what is no less frequently to be seen in
the top ranks of the French Socialist Party and the German
Independent Social-Democratic Party, namely, not merely an
inability, but also an unwillingness to take advantage, in a
revolutionary sense, of the revolutionary crisis, or, in other
words, both an inability and an unwillingness to really prepare
the party and the class in revolutionary fashion for the
dictatorship of the proletariat.

That is the main evil in very many parties which are now
leaving the Second International. This is precisely why, in the
theses I have submitted to the present Congress, I have dwelt most
of all on the tasks connected with preparations for the
dictatorship of the proletariat, and have given as concrete and
exact a definition of them as possible.

Here is another example. A new book against Bolshevism was
recently published. An unusually large number of books of this,
kind are now coming out in Europe and America; the more
anti-Bolshevik books are brought out, the more strong ly and
rapidly mass sympathy for Bolshevism grows. I am referring to Otto
Bauer’s Bolshevism or Social-Democracy? This book clearly demonstrates to the Germans the essence of Menshevism,
whose shameful role in the Russian revolution is understood well
enough by the workers of all countries. Otto Bauer has produced a
thoroughgoing Menshevik pamphlet, although he has concealed his
own sympathy with Menshevism. In Europe and America, however, more
precise information should now be disseminated about what
Menshevism actually is, for it is a generic term for all allegedly
socialist, Social-Democratic and other trends that are hostile to
Bolshevism. It would be dull writing if we Russians were to
explain to Europeans what Menshevism is. Otto Bauer has shown that
in his book, and we thank in advance the bourgeois and opportunist
publishers who will publish it and translate it into various
languages. Bauer’s book will be a useful if peculiar supplement to the textbooks on communism. Take any paragraph, any
argument in Otto Bauer’s book and indicate the Menshevism in
it, where the roots lie of views that lead up to the actions of
the traitors to socialism, of the friends of Kerensky, Scheidemann, etc.—this is a question that could be very
usefully and successfully set in “examinations” designed to test whether communism has been properly
assimilated. If you cannot answer this question, you are not yet a
Communist, and should not join the Communist
Party. ( Applause .)

Otto Bauer has excellently expressed in a single sentence the
essence of the views of world opportunism; for this, if we could
do as we please in Vienna, we would put up a monument to him in
his lifetime. The use of force in the class struggle in modern
democracies, Otto Bauer says, would be “violence exercised
against the social factors of force”.

You may think that this sounds queer and unintelligible. It is
an example of what Marxism has been reduced to, of the kind of
banality and defence of the exploiters to which the most
revolutionary theory can be reduced. A German variety of
philistinism is required, and you get the “theory” that the “social factors of force” are: number; the
degree of organisation; the place held in the process of
production and distribution; activity and education. If a rural
agricultural labourer or an urban working man practices
revolutionary violence against a landowner or a capitalist, that
is no dictatorship of the proletarlat, no violence against the
exploiters and the oppressors of the people. Oh, no! This is
“violence against the social factors of force”.

Perhaps my example sounds something like a jest. However, such
is the nature of present-day opportunism that its struggle against
Bolshevism becomes a jest. The task of involving the working
class, all its thinking elements, in the struggle hetween
international Menshevism (the MacDonalds, Otto Bauers and Co.) and
Bolshevism is highly useful and very urgent to Europe and
America.

Here we must ask: how is the persistence of such trends in
Europe to be explained? Why is this opportunism stronger in
Western Europe than in our country? It is because the culture of
the advanced countries has been, and still is, the result of their
being able to live at the expense of a thousand million oppressed
people. It is because the capitalists of these countries obtain a
great deal more in this way than they could obtain as profits by
plundering the workers in their own countries.

Before the war, it was calculated that the three richest
countries—Britain, France and Germany—got between eight and ten thousand million francs a year from the export of
capital alone, apart from other sources.

It goes without saying that, out of this tidy sum, at least
five hundred millions can be spent as a sop to the labour leaders
and the labour aristocracy, i.e., on all sorts of bribes. The
whole thing boils down to nothing but bribery. It is done in a
thousand different ways: by increasing cultural facilities in the
largest centres, by creating educational institutions, and by
providing co-operative, trade union and parliamentary leaders with
thousands of cushy jobs. This is done wherever present-day
civilised capitalist relations exist. It is these thousands of
millions in super-profits that form the economic basis of
opportunism in the working-class movement. In America, Britain and
France we see a far greater persistence of the opportunist
leaders, of the upper crust of the working class, the labour
aristocracy; they offer stronger resistance to the Communist
movement. That is why we must be prepared to find it harder for
the European and American workers’ parties to get rid of
this disease than was the case in our country. We know that
enormous successes have been achieved in the treatment of this
disease since the Third International was formed, but we have not
yet finished the job; the purg- ing of the workers’ parties,
the revolutionary parties of the proletariat all over the world,
of bourgeois influences, of the opportunists in their ranks, is
very far from complete.

I shall not dwell on the concrete manner in which we must do
that; that is dealt with in my published theses. My task consists
in indicating the deep economic roots of this phenomenon. The
disease is a protracted one; the cure takes longer than the
optimists hoped it-would. Opportunism is our principal enemy. Opportunism in the upper ranks of the working-class
movement is bourgeois socialism, not proletarian socialism. It has
been shown in practice that working-class activists who follow the
opportunist trend are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the
bourgeois themselves. Without their leadership of the workers, the
bourgeoisie could not remain in power. This has been proved, not
only by the history of the Kerensky regime in Russia; it has also
been proved by the democratic republic in Germany under its
Social-Democratic government, as well as by Albert Thomas’s
attitude towards his bourgeois government. It has been proved by
similar experience in Britain and the United States. This is where
our principal enemy is, an enemy we must overcome. We must leave
this Congress firmly resolved to carry on this struggle to the
very end, in all parties. That is our main task.

Compared with this task, the rectification of the errors of the
“Left” trend in communism will be an easy one. In a number of countries anti-parliamentarianism is to be seen, which
has not been so much introduced by people of petty-bourgeois
origin as fostered by certain advanced contingents of the
proletariat out of hatred for the old parliamentarianism, out of a
legitimate, proper and necessary hatred for the conduct of members
of parliament in Britain, France, Italy, in all lands. Directives
must be issued by the Communist International and the comrades
must be made more familiar with the experience of Russia, with the
significance of a genuinely proletarian political party. Our work
will consist in accomplishing this task. The fight against these
errors in the proletarian movement, against these shortcomings,
will be a thousand times easier than fighting against those
bourgeois who, in the guise of reformists, belong to the old
parties of the Second International and conduct the whole of their
work in a bourgeois, not proletarian, spirit.

Comrades, in conclusion I shall deal with one other aspect of
the subject. Our comrade, the chairman, has said that our Congress
merits the title of a World Congress. I think he is right,
particularly because we have here quite a number of representatives of the revolutionary movement in the colonial and
backward countries. This is only a small beginning, but the
important thing is that a beginning has been made. At this
Congress we see taking place a union between revolutionary
proletarians of the capitalist, advanced countries, and the
revolutionary masses of those countries where there is no or
hardly any proletariat, i.e., the oppressed masses of colonial,
Eastern countries. It is on ourselves that the consolidation of
unity depends, and I am sure we shall achieve it. World
imperialism shall fall when the revolutionary onslaught of the
exploited and oppressed workers in each country, overcoming
resistance from petty-bourgeois elements and the influence of the
small upper crust of labour aristocrats, merges with the
revolutionary onslaught of hundreds of millions of people who have
hitherto stood beyond the pale of history, and have been regarded
merely as the object of history.

The imperialist war has helped the revolution: from the
colonies, the backward countries, and the isolation they lived in,
the bourgeoisie levied soldiers for this imperialist war. The
British bourgeoisie impressed on the soldiers from India that it
was the duty of the Indian peasants to defend Great Britain
against Germany; the French bourgeoisie impressed on soldiers from
the French colonies that it was their duty to defend France. They
taught them the use of arms, a very useful thing, for which we
might express our deep gratitude to the bourgeoisie—express
our gratitude on behalf of all the Russian workers and peasants,
and particularly on behalf of all the Russian Red Army. The
imperialist war has drawn the dependent peoples into world
history. And one of the most important tasks now confronting us is
to consider how the foundation-stone of the organisation of the
Soviet movement Can be laid in the non-capitalist countries. Soviets are possible there; they will not be
workers’ Soviets, but peasants’ Soviets, or Soviets of working people.

Much work will have to be done; errors will be inevitable; many
difficulties will be encountered along this road. It is the
fundamental task of the Second Congress to elaborate or indicate
the practical principles that will enable the work, till now
carried on in an unorganised fashion among hundreds of millions of
people, to be carried on in an organised, coherent and systematic
fashion.

Now, a year or a little more after the First Congress of the
Communist International, we have emerged victors over the Second
International; it is not only among the workers of the civilised
countries that the ideas of the Soviets have spread; it is not
only to them that they have become known and intelligible. The
warkers of all lands are ridiculing the wiseacres, not a few of
whom call themselves socialists and argue in a learned or almost
learned manner about the Soviet “system”, as the
German systematists are fond of calling it, or the Soviet
“idea” as the British Guild Socialists [3] call it. Not infrequently, these arguments about the Soviet
“system” or “idea” becloud the workers’ eyes and their minds. However, the workers are
brushing this pedantic rubbish aside and are taking up the weapon
provided by the Soviets. A recognition of the role and significance of the Soviets has now also spread to the lands of
the East.

The groundwork has been laid for the Soviet movement all over
the East, all over Asia, among all the colonial peoples.

The proposition that the exploited must rise up against the
exploiters and establish their Soviets is not a very complex
one. After our experience, after two and a half years of the
existence of the Soviet Republic in Russia, and after the First
Congress of the Third International, this idea is becoming
accessible to hundreds of millions of people oppressed by the
exploiters all over the world. We in Russia are often obliged to
compromise, to bide our time, since we are weaker than the
international imperialists, yet we know that we are defending the
interests of this mass of a thousand and a quarter million
people. For the time being, we are hampered by barriers,
prejudices and ignorance which are receding into the past with
every passing hour; but we are more and more becoming representatives and genuine defenders of this 70 per cent of the
world’s population, this mass of working and exploited people. It is with pride that we can say: at the First Congress we
were in fact merely propagandists; we were only spreading the
fundamental ideas among tbe world’s proletariat; we only
issued the call for struggle; we were merely asking where the
people were who were capable of taking this path. Today the
advanced proletariat is everywhere with us. A proletarian army
exists everywhere, although sometimes it is poorly organised and
needs reorganising. If our comrades in all lands help us now to
organise a united army, no shortcomings will prevent us from
accomplishing our task. That task is the world proletarian
revolution, the creation of a world Soviet republic. ( Prolonged applause .)

2

Speech On The Role Of The Communist Party
July 23

Comrades, I would like to make a few remarks concerning the
speeches of Comrades Tanner and McLaine. Tanner says that he
stands for the dictatorship of the proletariat, but he does not
see the dictatorship of the proletariat quite in the way we do. He
says that by the dictatorship of the proletariat we actualiy mean
the dictatorship of the organised and class-conscious minority of
the proletariat.

True enough, in the era of capitalism, when the masses of the
workers are subjected to constant exploitation and cannot develop
their human capacities, the most characteristic feature of
working-class political parties is that they can involve only a
minority of their class. A political party can comprise only a
minority of a class, in the same way as the really class-conscious
workers in any capitalist society constitute only a minority of
all workers. We are therefore obliged to recognise that it is only
this class-conscious minority that can direct and lead the broad
masses of the workers. And if Comrade Tanner says that he is
opposed to parties, but at the same time is in favour of a
minority that represents the best organised and most revolutionary
workers showing the way to the entire proletariat, then I say that
there is really no difference between us. What is this organised
minority? If this minority is really class-conscious, if it is
able to lead the masses, if it is able to reply to every question
that appears on the order of the day, then it is a party in
reality. But if comrades like Tanner, to whom we pay special heed
as representatives of a mass movement—which cannot, without
a certain exaggeration, be said of the representatives of the
British Socialist Party—if these comrades are in favour of
there being a minority that will fight resolutely for the
dictatorship of the proletariat and will educate the masses of the
workers along these lines, then this minority is in reality
nothing but a party. Comrade Tanner says that this minority should
organise and lead the entire mass of workers. If Comrade Tanner
and the other comrades of the Shop Stewards’ group and the
Industrial Workers of the World accept this—and we see from
the daily talks we have had with them that they do accept
it—if they approve the idea that the class-conscious
Communist minority of the working class leads the proletariat,
then they must also agree that this is exactly the meaning of all
our resolutions. In that case the only difference between us lies
in their avoidance of the word “party” because there exists among the British comrades a certain mistrust of political
parties. They can conceive of political parties only in the image
of the parties of Gompers and Henderson, [4] parties of
parliamentary smart dealers and traitors to the working class. But
if, by parliamentarianism, they mean what exists in Britain and
America today, then we too are opposed to such parliamentarianism
and to such political parties. What we want is new and different
parties. We want parties that will be in constant and real contact
with the masses and will be able to lead those masses.

I now come to the third question I want to touch upon in
connection with Comrade McLaine ’s speech. He is in favour
of the British Communist Party affiliating to the Labour Party. I
have already expressed my opinion on this score in my theses on
affiliation to the Third International. [5] In my pamphlet I left
the question open. [6] However, after discussing the matter
with a number of comrades, I have come to the conclusion that the
decision to remain within the Labour Party is the only correct
tactic. But here is Comrade Tanner, who declares, “Don’t be too dogmatic.” I consider his remark
quite out of place here. Comrade Ramsay says: “Please let us
British Communists decide this question for ourselves.” What
would the International be like if every little group were to come
along and say: “Some of us are in favour of this thing and
some are against; leave it to us to decide the matter for
ourselves"? What then would be the use of having an International,
a congress, and all this discussion? Comrade McLaine spoke only of
the role of a political party. But the same applies to the trade
unions and to parliamentarianism. It is quite true that a larger
section of the finest revolutionaries are against affiliation to
the Labour Party because they are opposed to parliamentarianism as
a means of struggle. Perhaps it would be best to refer this
question to a commission, where it should be discussed and
studied, and then decided at this very Congress of the Communist
International. We cannot agree that it concerns only the British
Communists. We must say, in general, which are the correct
tactics.

I will now deal with some of Comrade McLaine’s arguments
concerning the question of the British Labour Party. We must say
frankly that the Party of Communists can join the Labour Party
only on condition that it preserves full freedom of criticism and
is able to conduct its own policy. This is of supreme importance. When, in this connection Comrade Serrati speaks of
class collaboration, I affirm that this will not be class
collaboration. When the Italian comrades tolerate, in their party,
opportunists like Turati and Co., i.e., bourgeois elements, that
is indeed class collaboration. In this instance, however, with
regard to the British Labour Party, it is simply a matter of
collaboration between the advanced minority of the British workers
and their vast majority. Members of the Labour Party are all
members of trade unions. It has a very unusual structure, to be
found in no other country. It is an organisation that embraces
four million workers out of the six or seven million organised in
trade unions. They are not asked to state what their political
opinions are. Let Comrade Serrati prove to me that anyone there
will prevent us from exercising our right of criticism. Only by
proving that, will you prove Comrade McLaine wrong. The British
Socialist Party can quite freely call Henderson a traitor and yet
remain in the Labour Party. Here we have collaboration between the
vanguard of the working class and the rearguard, the backward
workers. This collaboration is so important to the entire movement
that we categorically insist on the British Communists serving as
a link between the Party, that is, the minority of the working
class, and the rest of the workers. If the minority is unable to
lead the masses and establish close links with them, then it is
not a party, and is worthless in general, even if it calls itself
a party or the National Shop Stewards’ Committee—as far as I know, the Shop Stewards’ Committees in Britain have
a National Committee, a central body, and that is a step towards a
party. Consequently, until it is refuted that the British Labour
Party consists of proletarians, this is co-operation between the
vanguard of the working class and the backward workers; if this
co-operation is not carried on systematically, the Communist Party
will be worthless and there can be no question of the dictatorship
of the proletariat at all. If our Italian comrades cannot produce
more convincing arguments, we shall have to definitely settle the
question later here, on the basis of what we know—and we
shall come to the conclusion that affiliation is the correct
tactic.

Comrades Tanner and Ramsay tell us that the majority of British
Communists will not accept affiliation. But must we always agree
with the majority? Not at all. If they have not yet understood
which are the correct tactics, then perhaps it would be better to
wait. Even the parallel existence for a time of two parties would
be better than refusing to reply to the question as to which
tactics are correct. Of course, acting on the experience of all
Congress delegates and on the arguments that have been brought
forward here, you will not insist on passing a resolution here and
now, calling for the immediate formation of a single Communist
Party in each country. That is impossible. But we can frankly
express our opinion, and give directives. We must study in a
special commission the question raised by the British delegation
and then we shall say: affiliation to the Labour Party is the
correct tactic. If the majority is against it, we must organise a
separate minority. That will be of educational value. If the
masses of the British workers still believe in the old tactics, we
shall verify our conclusions at the next congress. We cannot,
however, say that this question concerns Britain alone—that
would mean copying the worst habits of the Second
International. We must express our opinion frankly. If the British
Communists do not reach agreement, and if a mass party is not
formed, a split is inevitable one way or another. [6b]

3

Report Of The Commission On The National and The Colonial Questions

Comrades, I shall confine myself to a brief introduction, after
which Comrade Maring, who has been secretary to our commission,
will give you a detailed account of the changes we have made in
the theses. He will be followed by Comrade Roy, who has formulated
the supplementary theses. Our commission have unanimously adopted
both the preliminary theses, as amended, and the supplementary
theses. We have thus reached complete unanimity on all major
issues. I shall now make a few brief remarks.

First, what is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is
the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike
the Second International and bourgeois democracy, we emphasise
this distinction. In this age of imperialism, it is particularly
important for the proletariat and the Communist International to
establish the concrete economic facts and to proceed from concrete
realities, not from abstract postulates, in all colonial and
national problems.

The characteristic feature of imperialism consists in the whole
world, as we now see, being divided into a large number of
oppressed nations and an insignificant number of oppressor
nations, the latter possessing colossal wealth and powerful armed
forces. The vast majority of the world’s population, over a
thousand million, perhaps even 1,250 million people, if we take
the total population of the world as 1,750 million, in other
words, about 70 per cent of the world’s population, belong
to the oppressed nations, which are either in a state of direct
colonial dependence or are semi-colonies, as, for example, Persia,
Turkey and China, or else, conquered by some big imperialist
power, have become greatly dependent on that power by virtue of
peace treaties. This idea of distinction, of dividing the nations
into oppressor and oppressed, runs through the theses, not only
the first theses published earlier over my signature, but also
those submitted by Comrade Roy. The latter were framed chiefly
from the standpoint of the situation in India and other big Asian
countries oppressed by Britain. Herein lies their great importance
to us.

The second basic idea in our theses is that, in the present
world situation following the imperialist war, reciprocal
relations between peoples and the world political system as a
whole are determined by the struggle waged by a small group of
imperialist nations against the Soviet movement and the Soviet
states headed by Soviet Russia. Unless we bear that in mind, we
shall not be able to pose a single national or colonial problem
correctly, even if it concerns a most outlying part of the
world. The Communist parties, in civilised and backward countries
alike, can pose and solve political problems correctly only if
they make this postulate their starting-point.

Third, I should like especially to emphasise the question of
the bourgeois-democratic movement in backward countries. This is a
question that has given rise to certain differences. We have
discussed whether it would be right or wrong, in principle and in
theory, to state that the Communist International and the
Communist parties must support the bourgeois-democratic movement
in backward countries. As a result of our discussion, we have
arrived at the unanimous decision to speak of the national-revolutionary movement rather than of the
“bourgeois-democratic” movement. It is beyond doubt that any national movement can only be a bourgeois-democratic
movement, since the overwhelming mass of the population in the
backward countries consist of peasants who represent bourgeois-capitalist relationships. It would be utopian to believe
that proletarian parties in these backward countries, if indeed
they can emerge in them, can pursue communist tactics and a
communist policy, without establishing definite relations with the
peasant movement and without giving it effective support. However,
the objections have been raised that, if we speak of the
bourgeois-democratic movement, we shall be obliterating all
distinctions between the reformist and the revolutionary
movements. Yet that distinction has been very clearly revealed of
late in the backward and colonial countries, since the imperialist
bourgeoisie is doing everything in its power to implant a
reformist movement among the oppressed nations too. There has been
a certain rapprochement between the bourgeoisie of the exploiting countries and that of the colonies, so that very
often—perhaps even in most cases—the bourgeoisie of the oppressed countries, while it does support the national
movement, is in full accord with the imperialist bourgeoisie,
i.e., joins forces with it against all revolutionary movements and
revolutionary classes. This was irrefutably proved in the
commission, and we decided that the only correct attitude was to
take this distinction into account and, in nearly all cases,
substitute the term “national-revolutionary” for the term “bourgeois-democratic”. The significance of this
change is that we, as Communists, should and will support
bourgeois-liberation movements in the colonies only when they are
genuinely revolutionary, and when their exponents do not hinder
our work of educating and organising in a revolutionary spirit the
peasantry and the masses of the exploited. If these conditions do
not exist, the Communists in these countries must combat the
reformist bourgeoisie, to whom the heroes of the Second
International also belong. Reformist parties already exist in the
colonial countries, and in some cases their spokesmen call
themselves Social-Democrats and socialists. The distinction I have
referred to has been made in all the theses with the result, I
think, that our view is now formulated much more precisely.

Next, I would like to make a remark on the subject of peasants’ Soviets. The Russian Communists’ practical
activities in the former tsarist colonies, in such backward
countries as Turkestan, etc., have confronted us with the question
of how to apply the communist tactics and policy in pre-capitalist
conditions. The preponderance of pre-capitalist relationships is
still the main determining feature in these countries, so that
there can be no question of a purely proletarian movement in
them. There is practically no industrial proletariat in these
cotmtries. Nevertheless, we have assumed, we must assume, the role
of leader even there. Experience has shown us that tremendous
difficulties have to be surmounted in these countries. However,
the practical results of our work have also shown that despite
these difficulties we are in a position to inspire in the masses
an urge for independent political thinking and independent
political action, even where a proletariat is practically
non-existent. This work has been more difficult for us than it
will be for comrades in the West-European countries, because in
Russia the proletariat is engrossed in the work of state
administration. It will reaaily be understood that peasants living
in conditions of semi-feudal dependence can easily assimilate and
give effect to the idea of Soviet organisation. It is also clear
that the oppressed masses, those who are exploited, not only by
merchant capital but also by the feudalists, and by a state based
on feudalism, can apply this weapon, this type of organisation, in
their conditions too. The idea of Soviet organisation is a simple
one, and is applicable, not only to proletarian, but also to
peasant feudal and semi-feudal relations. Our experience in this
respect is not as yet very considerable. However, the debate in
the commission, in which several representatives from colonial
countries participated, demonstrated convincingly that the
Communist International’s theses should point out that peasants’ Soviets, Soviets of the exploited, are a weapon
which can be employed, not only in capitalist countries but also
in countries with pre-capitalist relations, and that it is the
absolute duty of Communist parties and of elements prepared to
form Communist parties, everywhere to conduct propaganda in favour
of peasants’ Soviets or of working people’s Soviets, this to include backward and colonial countries. Wherever
conditions permit, they should at once make attempts to set up
Soviets the working people.

This opens up a very interesting and very important field for
our practical work. So far our joint experience in this respect
has not been extensive, but more and more data will gradually
accumulate. It is unquestionable that the proletariat of the
advanced countries can and should give help to the working masses
of the backward countries, and that the backward countries can
emerge from their present stage of development when the victorious
proletariat of the Soviet Republics extends a helping hand to
these masses and is in a position to give them support.

There was quite a lively debate on this question in the
commission, not only in connection with the theses I signed, but
still more in connection with Comrade Roy’s theses, which he
will defend here, and certain amendments to which were unanimously
adopted.

The question was posed as follows: are we to consider as
correct the assertion that the capitalist stage of economic
development is inevitable for backward nations now on the road to
emancipation and among whom a certain advance towards progress is
to be seen since the war? We replied in the negative. If the
victorious revolutionary proletariat conducts systematic
propaganda among them, and the Soviet governments come to their
aid with all the means at their disposal—in that event it
will be mistaken to assume that the backward peoples must
inevitably go through the capitalist stage of development. Not
only should we create independent contingents of fighters and
party organisations in the colonies and the backward countries,
not only at once launch propaganda for the organisation of
peasants’ Soviets and strive to adapt them to the pre-capitalist conditions, but the Communist International should
advance the proposition, with the appropriate theoretical
grounding, that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced
countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system
and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without
having to pass through the capitalist stage.

The necessary means for this cannot be indicated in advance. These will be prompted by practical experience. It has,
however, been definitely established that the idea of the Soviets
is understood by the mass of the working people in even the most
remote nations, that the Soviets should be adapted to the
conditions of a pre-capitalist social system, and that the
Communist parties should immediately begin work in this direction
in all parts of the world.

I would also like to emphasise the importance of revolutionary
work by the Communist parties, not only in their own, but also in
the colonial countries, and particularly among the troops employed
by the exploiting nations to keep the colonial peoples in
subjection.

Comrade Quelch of the British Socialist Party spoke of this in
our commission. He said that the rank-and-file British worker
would consider it treasonable to help the enslaved nations in
their uprisings against British rule. True, the jingoist and
chauvinist-minded labour aristocrats of Britain and America
present a very great danger to socialism, and are a bulwark of the
Second International. Here we are confronted with the greatest
treachery on the part of leaders and workers belonging to this
bourgeois International. The colonial question has been discussed
in the Second International as well. [7] The Basle Manifesto [8] is quite clear on this point, too. The
parties of the Second International have pledged themselves to
revolutionary action, but they have given no sign of genuine
revolutionary work or of assistance to the exploited and dependent
nations in their revolt against the oppressor nations. This, I
think, applies also to most of the parties that have withdrawn
from the Second International and wish to join the Third
International. We must proclaim this publicly for all to hear, and
it is irrefutable. We shall see if any attempt is made to deny
it.

All these considerations have formed the basis of our resolutions, which undoubtedly are too lengthy but will
nevertheless, I am sure, prove of use and will promote the
development and organisation of genuine revolutionary work in
connection with the national and the colonial questions. And that
is our principal task.

4

Speech On The Terms Of Admission
Into The Communist International
July
30 [9]

Comrades, Serrati has said that we have not yet invented a
sincerometer—meaning by this French neologism an instrument for measuring sincerity. No such instrument has been
invented yet. We have no need of one. But we do already have an
instrument for defining trends. Comrade Serrati’s error,
which I shall deal with later, consists in his having failed to
use this instrument, which has been known for a long time.

I would like to say only a few words about Comrade Crispien. I
am very sorry that he is not present. ( Dittmann :
“He is ill.”) I am very sorry to hear it. His speech is a most important document, and expresses explicitly the
political line of the Right wing of the Independent
Social-Democratic Party. I shall speak, not of personal
circumstances or individual cases but only of the ideas clearly
expressed in Crispien’s speech. I think I shall be able to
prove that the entire speech was thoroughly in the Kautskian
spirit, and that Comrade Crispien shares the Kautskian views on
the dictatorship of the proletariat. Replying to a rejoinder,
Crispien said: “Dictatorship is nothing new, it was already
mentioned in the Erfurt Programme.” [10] The Erfurt Programme
says nothing about the dictatorship of the proletariat, and
history has proved that this was not due to chance. When in
1902-03, we were drawing up our Party’s first programme, we
always had before us the example of the Erfurt Programme;
Plekhanov, that very Plekhanov who rightly said at the time,
“Either Bernstein will bury Social-Democracy, or
Social-Democracy will bury Bernstein”, laid special emphasis
on the fact that the Erfurt Programme’s failure to mention
the dictatorship of the proletariat was erroneous from the
standpoint of theory and, in practice was a cowardly concession to
the opportunists. The dictatorship of the proletariat has been in
our programme since 1903. [11]

When Comrade Crispien now says that the dictatorship of the
proletariat is nothing new, and goes on to say: “We have
always stood for the conquest of political power”, he is
evading the gist of the matter. Conquest of political power is
recognised, but not dictatorship. All the socialist literature—not only German, but French and British as
well—shows that the leaders of the opportunist parties, for
instance, MacDonald in Britain, stand for the conquest of
political power. They are, in all conscience, sincere socialists,
but they are against the dictatorship of the proletariat! Since we
have a good revolutionary party worthy of the name of Communist,
it should conduct propaganda for the dictatorship of the
proletariat, as distinct from the old conception of the Second
International. This has been glossed over and obscured by Comrade
Crispien, which is the fundamental error common to all of
Kautsky’s adherents.

“We are leaders elected by the masses, “ Comrade
Crispien continues. This is a formal and erroneous point of view,
since a struggle of trends was clearly to be seen at the latest
Party congress of the German Independents. There is no need to
seek for a sincerometer and to wax humorous on the subject, as
Comrade Serrati does, in order to establish the simple fact that a
struggle of trends must and does exist: one trend is that of the
revolutionary workers who have just joined us and are opposed to
the labour aristocracy; the other is that of the labour
aristocracy, which in all civilised countries is headed by the old
leaders. Does Crispien belong to the trend of the old leaders and
the labour aristocracy, or to that of the new revolutionary masses
of workers, who are opposed to the labour aristocracy? That is a
question Comrade Crispien has failed to clarify.

In what kind of tone does Comrade Crispien speak of the split?
He has said that the split was a bitter necessity, and deplored
the matter at length. That is quite in the Kautskian spirit. Who
did they break away from? Wasit not from Scheidemann? Of course,
it was. Crispien has said: “We have split away.” In the first place, this was done too late. Since we are on the
subject, that has to be said. Second, the Independents should not
deplore this, but should say: “The international working
class is still under the sway of the labour aristocracy and the
opportunists.” Such is the position both in France and in
Great Britain. Comrade Crispien does not regard the split like a
Communist, but quite in the spirit of Kautsky, who is supposed to
have no influence. Then Crispien went on to speak of high
wages. The position in Germany, he said, is that the workers are
quite well off compared with the workers in Russia or in general,
in the East of Europe. A revolution, as he sees it, can be made
only if it does not worsen the workers’ conditions “too much”. Is it permissible, in a Communist Party,
to speak in a tone like this, I ask? This is the language of
counter-revolution. The standard of living in Russia is
undoubtedly lower than in Germany, and when we established the
dictatorship, this led to the workers beginning to go more hungry
and to their conditions becoming even worse. The workers’
victory cannot be achieved without sacrifices, without a temporary
deterioration of their conditions. We must tell the workers the
very opposite of what Crispien has said. If, in desiring to
prepare the workers for the dictatorship, one tells them that
their conditions will not be worsened “too much”, one is losing sight of the main thing, namely, that it was by helping
their “own” bourgeoisie to conquer and strangle the whole world by imperialist methods, with the aim of thereby
ensuring better pay for themselves, that the labour aristocracy
developed. If the German workers now want to work for the
revolution they must make sacrifices, and not be afraid to do
so.

In the general and world-historical sense, it is true that in a
backward country like China, the coolie cannot bring about a
proletarian revolution; however, to tell the workers in the
handful of rich countries where life is easier, thanks to
imperialist pillage, that they must be afraid of “too great” impoverishment, is counter-revolutionary. It is the
reverse that they should be told. The labour aristocracy that is
afraid of sacrifices, afraid of “too great” impoverishment during the revolutionary struggle, cannot belong to the
Party. Otherwise the dictatorship is impossible, especially in
West-European countries.

What does Crispien say about terror and coercion? He has said
that these are two different things. Perhaps such a distinction is
possible in a manual of sociology, but it cannot be made in
political practice, especially in the conditions of Germany. We
are forced to resort to coercion and terror against people who
behave like the German officers did when they murdered Liebknecht
and Rosa Luxemburg, or against people like Stinnes and Krupp, who
buy up the press. Of course, there is no need to proclaim in
advance that we shall positively resort to terror but if the
German officers and the Kappists remain the same as they now are
and if Krupp and Stinnes remain the same as they now are, the
employment of terror will be inevitable. Not only Kautsky, but
Ledebour and Crispien as well, speak of coercion and terror in a
wholly counter revolutionary spirit. A party that makes shift with
such ideas cannot participate in the dictatorship. That is self
evident.

Then there is the agrarian question. Here Crispien has got very
worked up and tried to impute a petty-bourgeois spirit to us: to
do anything for the small peasant at the expense of the big
landowner is alleged to be petty-bourgeois action. He says the
landed proprietors should be dispossessed and their land handed
over to co-operative associations. This is a pedantic viewpoint. Even in highly developed countries, including Germany,
there are a sufficient number of latifundia, landed estates that
are cultivated by semi-feudal, not large-scale capitalist,
methods. Part of such land may be cut off and turned over to the
small peasants, without injury to farming. Large-scale farming can
be preserved, and yet the small peasants can be provided with
something of considerable importance to them. No thought is given
to this, unfortunately, but in practice that has to be done, for
otherwise you will fall into error. This has been borne out, for
example, in a book by Varga (former People’s Commissar for
the National Economy in the Hungarian Soviet Republic), who writes
that the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship hardly
changed anything in the Hun-garian countryside, that the
day-labourers saw no changes, and the small peasants got
nothing. There are large latifundia in Hungary, and a semi-feudal
economy is conducted in large areas. Sections of large estates can
and must always be found, part of which can be turned over to the
small peasants, perhaps not as their property, but on lease, so
that even the smallest peasant may get some part of the
confiscated estates. Otherwise, the small peasant will see no
difference between the old order and the dictatorship of the
Soviets. If the proletarian state authority does not act in this
way, it will be unable to retain power.

Although Crispien did say: “You cannot deny that we have
our revolutionary convictions”, I shall reply that I do deny
them. I do not say that you would not like to act in revolutionary
manner, but I do say that you are unable to reason in a
revolutionary fashion. I am willing to wager that if we chose any
commission of educated people, and gave them a dozen
Kautsky’s books and then Crispien’s speech, the commission would say: “The whole speech is thoroughly
Kautskian, is imbued through and through with Kautsky’s
views.” The entire method of Crispien’s argumentation is fundamentally Kautskian, yet Crispien comes along and says,
“Kautsky no longer has any influence whatever in our party.” No influence, perhaps, on the revolutionary workers
who have joined recently. However, it must be accepted as
absolutely proved that Kautsky has had and still has an enormous
influence on Crispien, on his entire line of thought, all his
ideas. This is manifest in his speech. That is why, without
inventing any sincerometers, any instruments for measuring
sincerity, we can say that Crispien’s orientation is not
that of the Communist International. In saying this, we are
defining the orientation of the entire Communist
International.

Comrades Wijnkoop and Munzenberg have expressed dissatisfaction
with the fact that we have invited the Independent Socialist Party
and are holding talks with its representatives. I think they are
wrong. When Kautsky attacks us and brings out books against us, we
polemise with him as our class enemy. But when the Independent
Social-Democratic Party, which has expanded as a result of an
influx of revolutionary workers, comes here for negoti- ations, we
must talk to its representatives, since they are a section of the
revolutionary workers. We cannot reach an immediate agreement with
the German Independents, or with the French and the British,
regarding the International. In every speech he delivers, Comrade
Wijnkoop reveals that he shares almost all the errors of Comrade
Pannekoek. Wijnkoop has stated that he does not share
Pannekoek’s views; but his speeches prove the reverse. Herein lies the main error of this “Left”
group, but this, in general, is an error of a proletarian movement
that is developing. The speeches of Comrades Crispien and Dittmann
are imbued with a bourgeois spirit which will not help us prepare
for the dictatorship of the proletariat. When Comrades Wijnkoop
and Muinzenberg go still further on the subject of the Independent
Social-Democratic Party, we are not in agreement with them.

Of course, we have no instrument for measuring sincerity, as
Serrati has put it, for testing a man’s conscience; we quite
agree that the matter is not one of forming an opinion of people,
but of appraising a situation. I am sorry to say that although
Serrati did speak he said nothing new. His was the sort of speech
we used to hear in the Second International as well.

Serrati was wrong in saying: “In France the situation is
not revolutionary; in Germany it is revolutionary; in Italy it is
revolutionary.”

Even if the situation is non-revolutionary, the Second
International is in error and carries a heavy responsibility if it
is really unwilling to organise revolutionary propaganda and
agitation, since, as has been proved by the entire history of the
Bolshevik Party, revolutionary propaganda can and should be
conducted even in a situation that is not revolutionary. The
difference between the socialists and the Communists consists in
the former refusing to act in the way we act in any situation,
i.e., conduct revolutionary work.

Serrati merely repeats what Crispien has said. We do not mean
to say that Turati should be expelled on such and such a
date. That question has already been touched upon by the Executive
Committee, and Serrati has said to us: “Not expulsions, but
a Party purge.” We must simply tellthe Italian comrades that
it is the line of L’Ordine Nuovo members that corresponds to the line of the Communist International, and not
that of the present majority of the Socialist Party’s leaders and their parliamentary group. They claim that they want
to defend the proletariat against the reactionaries. Chernov, the
Mensheviks and many others in Russia are also “defending” the proletariat against the reactionaries,
but that is not sufficient reason for accepting them into our
midst.

That is why we must say to the Italian comrades and all parties
that have a Right wing: this reformist tendency has nothing in
common with communism.

We ask our Italian comrades to call a congress and have our
theses and resolutions submitted to it. I am sure that the Italian
workers will want to remain in the Communist International.

5

Speech On Parliamentarianism
August 2

Comrade Bordige seems to have wanted to defend the Italian
Marxists’ point of view here, yet he has failed to reply to
any of the arguments advanced by other Marxists in favour of
parliamentary action.

Comrade Bordiga has admitted that historical experience is not
created artificially. He has just told us that the struggle must
be carried into another sphere. Is he not aware that every
revolutionary crisis has been attended by a parliamentary crisis?
True, he has said that the struggle must be carried into another
sphere, into the Soviets. Bordiga, however, has himself admitted
that Soviets cannot be created artificially. The example of Russia
shows that Soviets can be organised either during a revolution or
on the eve of a revolution. Even in the Kerensky period, the
Soviets (which were Menshevik Soviets) were organised in such a
way that they could not possibly constitute a proletarian
government. Parliament is a product of historical development, and
we cannot eliminate it until we are strong enough to disperse the
bourgeois parliament. It is only as a member of the bourgeois
parliament that one can, in the given historical conditions, wage
a struggle against bourgeois society and parliamentarianism. The
same weapon as the bourgeoisie employs in the struggle must also
be used by the proletariat, of course, with entirely different
aims. You cannot assert that that is not the case, and if you want
to challenge it, you will have thereby to erase the experience of
all revolutionary developments in the world.

You have said that the trade unions are also opportunist, that
they, too, constitute a danger. On the other hand, however, you
have said that an exception must be made in the case of trade
unions, because they are workers’ organisations. But that is
true only up to a certain point. There are very backward elements
in the trade unions too: a section of the proletarianised petty
bourgeoisie, the backward workers, and the small peasants. All
these elements really think that their interests are represented
in parliament. This idea must be combated by work within
parliament and by citing the facts, so as to show the masses the
truth. Theory will have no effect on the backward masses; they
need practical experience.

This was to be seen in the case of Russia too. We were obliged
to convene the Constituent Assembly even after the victory of the
proletariat, so as to prove to the backward proletarians that they
had nothing to gain from that Assembly. To bring home the
difference between the two, we had to concretely contrapose the
Soviets and the Constituent Assembly and to show the Soviets as
the only solution.

Comrade Souchy, a revolutionary syndicalist, advocated the same
theory, but he had no logic on his side. He said that he was not a
Marxist, so everything can be readily understood. But you, Comrade
Bordiga, assert that you are a Marxist, so we must expect more
logic from you. You must know how parliament can be smashed. If
you can do it by an armed uprising in all countries, well and
good. You are aware that we in Russia proved our determination to
destroy the bourgeois parliament, not only in theory, but in
practice as well. You, however, have lost sight of the fact that
this is impossible without fairly long preparations, and that in
most countries it is as yet impossible to destroy parliament at
one stroke. We are obliged to carry on a struggle within
parliament for the destruction of parliament. For the conditions
determining the political line of all classes in modern society
you substitute your revolutionary determination; that is why you
forget that to destroy the bourgeois parliament in Russia we were
first obliged to convene the Constituent Assembly, even after our
victory. You say: “It is a fact that the Russian revolution
is a case that is not in accord with conditions in Western
Europe”, but you have not produced a single weighty argument
to prove that to us. We went through a period of bourgeois
democracy. We went through it rapidly at a time when we had to
agitate for elections to the Constituent Assembly. Later, when the
working class was able to seize power, the peasants still believed
in the necessity of a bourgeois parliament.

Taking account of these backward elements, we had to proclaim
the elections and show the masses, by example and by facts, that
the Constituent Assembly, which was elected at a time of dire and
universal need, did not express the aspirations and demands of the
exploited classes. In this way the conflict between Soviet and
bourgeois government became quite clear, not only to us, the
vanguard of the working class, but also to the vast majority of
the peasantry, to the petty office employees, the petty
bourgeoisie, etc. In all capitalist countries there are backward
elements in the working class who are convinced that parliament is
the true representative of the people and do not see the
unscrupulous methods employed there. You say that parliament is an
instrument with the aid of which the bourgeoisie deceive the
masses. But this argument should be turned against you, and it
does turn against your theses. How will you reveal the true
character of parliament to the really backward masses, who are
deceived by the bourgeoisie? How will you expose the various
parliamentary manoeuvres, or the positions of the various parties,
if you are not in parliament, if you remain outside parliament? If
you are Marxists, you must admit that, in capitalist society,
there is a close link between the relations of classes and the
relations of parties. How, I repeat, will you show all this if you
are not members of parliament, and if you renounce parliamentary
action? The history of the Russian revolution has clearly shown
that the masses of the working class, the peasantry, and petty
office employees could not have been convinced by any arguments,
unless their own experience had convinced them.

It has been claimed here that it is a waste of time to participate in the parliamentary struggle. Can one conceive of any
other institution in which all classes are as interested as they
are in parliament? This cannot be created artificially. If all
classes are drawn into the parliamentary struggle, it is because
the class interests and conaicts are reflected in parliament. If
it were possible everywhere and immediately to bring about, let us
say, a decisive general strike so as to overthrow capitalism at a
single stroke, the revolution would have already taken place in a
number of countries. But we must reckon with the facts, and
parliament is a scene of the class struggle. Comrade Bordiga and
those who share his views must tell the masses the truth. Germany
provides the best example that a Communist group in parliament is
possible. That is why you should have frankly said to the masses:
“We are too weak to create a party with a strong organisation.” That would be the truth that ought to be
told. But if you confessed your weakness to the masses, they would
become your opponents, not your supporters; they would become
supporters of parliamentarianism.

If you say: “Fellow workers, we are so weak that we cannot form a party disciplined enough to compel its members of
parliament to submit to it”, the workers would abandon you,
for they would ask themselves: “How can we set up a dictatorship of the proletariat with such weaklings?”

You are very naïve if you think that the intelligentsia,
the middle class, and the petty bourgeoisie will turn Communist
the day the proletariat is victorious.

If you do not harbour this illusion, you should begin right
away to prepare the proletariat to pursue its own line. You will
find no exceptions to this rule in any branch of state affairs. On
the day following the revolution, you will everywhere find
advocates of opportunism who call themselves-Communists, i.e.,
petty bourgeois who refuse to recognise the discipline of the
Communist Party or of the proletarian state. Unless you prepare
the workers for the creation of a really disciplined party, which
will compel its members to submit to its discipline, you will
never prepare for the dictatorship of the proletariat. I think
that this accounts for your unwillingness to admit that the
repudiation of parliamentary action by a great many of the new
Communist parties stems from their weakness. I am convinced that
the vast majority of the really revolutionary workers will follow
us and speak up against your anti-parliamentary theses.

6

Speech On Affiliation To The British Labour

Party [12]
August 6

Comrades, Comrade Gallacher began his speech by expressing
regret at our having been compelled to listen here for the
hundredth and the thousandth time to sentences that Comrade
McLaine and other British comrades have reiterated a thousand
times in speeches, newspapers and magazines. I think there is no
need for regret. The old International used the method of
referring such questions for decision to the individual parties in
the countries concerned. That was a grave error. We may not be
fully familiar with the conditions in one country or another, but
in this case we are dealing with the principles underlying a
Communist Party’s tactics. That is very important and, in
the name of the Third International, we must herewith clearly
state the communist point of view.

First of all, I should like to mention a slight inaccuracy on
the part of Comrade McLaine, which cannot be agreed to. He called
the Labour Party the political organisation of the trade union
movement, and later repeated the statement when he said that the
Labour Party is “the political expression of the workers
organised in trade unions”. I have met the same view several
times in the paper of the British Socialist Party. It is
erroneous, and is partly the cause of the opposition, fully
justified in some measure, coming from the British revolutionary
workers. Indeed, the concepts “political department of the
trade unions “ or “political expression” of the trade union movement, are erroneous. Of course, most of the Labour
Party’s members are workingmen. However, whether or not a
party is really a political party of the workers does not depend
solely upon a membership of workers but also upon the men that
lead it, and the content of its actions and its political
tactics. Only this latter determines whether we really have before
us a political party of the proletariat. Regarded from this, the
only correct, point of view, the Labour Party is a thoroughly
bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led
by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who
act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation
of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the
workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns.

We have also heard another point of view, defended by Comrade
Sylvia Pankhurst and Comrade Gallacher, who have voiced their
opinion in the matter. What was the substance of the speeches
delivered by Gallacher and many of his friends? They have told us
that they are insufficiently linked with the masses. But take the
instance of the British Socialist Party, they went on. It is still
less linked with the masses and it is a very weak party. Comrade
Gallacher has told us here how he and his comrades have organised,
and done so really splendidly, the revolutionary movement in
Glasgow, in Scotland, how in their wartime tactics they manoeuvred
skillfully, how they gave able support to the petty-bourgeois
pacifists Ramsay MacDonald and Snowden when they came to Glasgow,
and used this support to organise a mass movement against the
war.

It is our aim to integrate this new and excellent revolutionary
movement—represented here by Comrade Gallacher and his friends—into a Communist Party with genuinely communist,
i.e., Marxist tactics. That is our task today. On the one hand,
the British Socialist Party is too weak and incapable of properly
carrying on agitation among the masses; on the other hand, we have
the younger revolutionary elements so well represented here by
Comrade Gallacher, who, although in touch with the masses, are not
a political party, and in this sense are even weaker than the
British Socialist Party and are totally unable to organise their
political work. Under these circumstances, we must express our
frank opinion on the correct tactics. When, in speaking of the
British Socialist Party, Comrade Gallacher said that it is
“hopelessly reformist”, he was undoubtedly exaggerating. But the general tenor and content of all the
resolutions we have adopted here show with absolute clarity that we demand a
change, in this spirit, in the tactics of the British Socialist
Party; the only correct tactics of Gallacher’s friends will
consist in their joining the Communist Party without delay, so as
to modify its tactics in the spirit of the resolutions adopted
here. If you have so many supporters that you are able to organise
mass meetings in Glasgow, it will not be difficult for you to
bring more than ten thousand new members into the Party. The
latest Conference of the British Socialist Party, held in London
three or four days ago, decided to assume the name of the
Communist Party and introduced into its programme a clause
providing for participation in parliamentary elections and
affiliation to the Labour Party. Ten thousand organised members
were represented at the Conference. It will therefore not be at
all difficult for the Scottish comrades to bring into this
“Communist Party of Great Britain” more than ten thousand revolutionary workers who are better versed in the art of
working among the masses, and thus to modify the old tactics of
the British Socialist Party in the sense of better agitation and
more revolutionary action. In the commission, Comrade Sylvia
Pankhurst pointed out several times that Britain needed
“Lefts”. I, of course, replied that this was absolutely true, but that one must not overdo this
“Leftism”. Furthermore she said that they were better pioneers, but for the moment were rather noisy. I do not take this
in a bad sense, but rather in a good one, namely, that they are
better able to carry on revolutionary agitation. We do and should
value this. We expressed this in all our resolutions, for we
always emphasise that we can consider a party to be a workers’ party only when it is really linked up with the
masses and fights against the old and quite corrupt leaders,
against both the Right-wing chauvinists and those who, like the
Right Independents in Germany, take up an intermediate position. We have asserted and reiterated this a dozen times and
more in all our resolutions, which means that we demand a
transformation of the old party, in the sense of bringing it
closer to the masses.

Sylvia Pankhurst also asked: “Is it possible for a
Communist Party to join another political party which still belongs
to the Second International?” She replied that it was not. It should, however, be borne in mind that the British Labour
Party is in a very special position: it is a highly original type
of party, or rather, it is not at all a party in the ordinary
sense of the word. It is made up of members of all trade unions,
and has a membership of about four million, and allows sufficient
freedom to all affiliated political parties. It thus includes a
vast number of British workers who follow the lead of the worst
bourgeois elements, the social-traitors, who are even worse than
Scheidemann, Noske and similar people. At the same time, however,
the Labour Party has let the British Socialist Party into its
ranks, permitting it to have its own press organs, in which
members of the selfsame Labour Party can freely and openly declare
that the party leaders are social-traitors. Comrade McLaine has
cited quotations from such statements by the British Socialist
Party. I, too, can certify that I have seen in The Call ,
organ of the British Socialist Party, statements that the Labour
Party leaders are social-patriots and social-traitors. This shows
that a party affiliated to the Labour Party is able, not only to
severely criticise but openly and specifically to mention the old
leaders by name, and call them social-traitors. This is a very
original situation: a party which unites enormous masses of
workers, so that it might seem a political party, is nevertheless
obliged to grant its members complete latitude. Comrade McLaine
has told us here that, at the Labour Party Conference, the British
Scheidemanns were obliged to openly raise the question of
affiliation to the Third International, and that all party
branches and sections were obliged to discuss the matter. In such
circumstances, it would be a mistake not to join this party.

In a private talk, Comrade Pankhurst said to me: “If we
are real revolutionaries and join the Labour Party, these
gentlemen will expel us.” But that would not be bad at all. Our resolution says that we favour affiliation insofar as the
Labour Party permits sufficient freedom of criticism. On that
point we are absolutely consistent. Comrade McLaine has emphasised
that the conditions now prevailing in Britain are such that,
should it so desire, a political party may remain a revolutionary
workers’ party even if it is connected with a special kind
of labour organisation of four million members, which is half
trade union and half political and is headed by bourgeois
leaders. In such circumstances it would be highly erroneous for
the best revolutionary elements not to do everything possible to
remain in such a party. Let the Thomases and other social-traitors, whom you have called by that name, expel
you. That will have an excellent effect upon the mass of the
British workers.

The comrades have emphasised that the labour aristocracy is
stronger in Britain than in any other country. That is true. After
all, the labour aristocracy has existed in Britain, not for
decades but for centuries. The British bourgeoisie, which has had
far more experience—democratic experience—than that of any other country, has been able to buy workers over and to create
among them a sizable stratum, greater than in any other country,
but one that is not so great compared with the masses of the
workers. This stratum is thoroughly imbued with bourgeois
prejudices and pursues a definitely bourgeois reformist policy. In
Ireland, for instance, there are two hundred thousand British
soldiers who are applying ferocious terror methods to suppress the
Irish. The British Socialists are not conducting any revolutionary
propaganda among these soldiers, though our resolutions clearly
state that we can accept into the Communist International only
those British parties that conduct genuinely revolutionary
propaganda among the British workers and soldiers. I emphasise
that we have heard no objections to this either here or in the
commissions.

Comrades Gallacher and Sylvia Pankhurst cannot deny that. They
cannot refute the fact that, in the ranks of the Labour Party, the
British Socialist Party enjoys sufficient freedom to write that
certain leaders of the Labour Party are traitors; that these old
leaders represent the interests of the bourgeoisie; that they are
agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement. They
cannot deny all this because it is the absolute truth. When
Communists enjoy such freedom it is their duty to join the Labour
Party if they take due account of the experience of revolutionaries in all countries, not only of the Russian
revolution (for here we are not at a Russian congress but at one
that is international). Comrade Gallacher has said ironically that
in the present instance we are under the influence of the British
Socialist Party. That is not true; it is the experience of all
revolutions in all countries that has convinced us. We think that
we must say that to the masses. The British Communist Party must
retain the freedom necessary to expose and criticise the betrayers
of the working class, who are much more powerful in Britain than
in any other country. That is readily understandable. Comrade
Gallacher is wrong in asserting that by advocating affiliation to
the Labour Party we shall repel the best elements among the
British workers. We must test this by experience. We are convinced
that all the resolutions and decisions that will be adopted by our
Congress will be published in all British revolutionary socialist
newspapers and that all the branches and sections will be able to
discuss them. The entire content of our resolutions shows with
crystal clarity that we are representatives of working-class
revolutionary tactics in all countries and that our aim is to
fight against the old reformism and opportunism. The events reveal
that our tactics are indeed defeating the old reformism. In that
case the finest revolutionary elements in the working class, who
are dissatisfied with the slow progress being made—and progress in Britain will perhaps be slower than in other
countries—will all come over to us. Progress is slow because
the British bourgeoisie are in a position to create better
conditions for the labour aristocracy and thereby to retard the
revolutionary movement in Britain. That is why the British
comrades should strive, not only to revolutionise the masses—they are doing that splendidly (as Comrade Gallacher
has shown), but must at the same time strive to create a real
working-class political party. Comrade Gallacher and Comrade
Sylvia Pankhurst, who have both spoken here, do not as yet belong
to a revolutionary Communist Party. That excellent proletarian
organisation, the Shop Stewards’ movement, has not yet joined a political party. If you organise politically you will
find that our tactics are based on a correct understanding of
political developments in the past decades, and that a real
revolutionary party can be created only when it absorbs the best
elements of the revolutionary class and uses every opportunity to
fight the reactionary leaders, wherever they show themselves.

If the British Communist Party starts by acting in a revolutionary manner in the Labour Party, and if the Hendersons
are obliged to expel this Party, that will be a great victory for
the communist and revolutionary working class movement in
Britain.

Endnotes

[1]
The Second Congress of the Communist International met from July 19 to August 7, 1920. The opening session was held in
Petrograd and the subsequent sessions in Moscow. It was attended
by over 200 delegates who represented workers ’ organisations of 37 countries. Apart from delegates representing
the Communist parties and organisations of 31 countries, there
were delegates from the Independent Social-Democratic Party of
Germany, the Socialist parties of Italy and France, Industrial
Workers of the World (Australia, Britain and Ireland), the
National Confederation of Labour of Spain and other organisations.

Lenin directed all the preparatory work before the Congress. At its first session he made a report on the
international situation and the fundamental tasks of the Communist
International. Throughout the Congress, in his reports and
speeches, Lenin fought uncompromisingly against the opportunist
Centrist parties, who were attempting to penetrate into the Third
International, and levelled sharp criticism at the anarcho-syndicalist trends and “Left” sectarianism of
a number of communist organisations. Lenin took part in the work
of various commissions and delivered reports and speeches on the
international situation and the fundamental tasks of the Communist
International, the national and the colonial questions, the
agrarian question and the terms of admission into the Communist
International. Lenin’s theses on the fundamental tasks of
the Second Congress of the Communist International, the national
and the colonial questions, the agrarian question and the terms of
admission into the Communist International were endorsed as
Congress decisions.

The Second Congress laid the foundations of the programme, organisational principles, strategy and tactics of
the Communist International; —Editor .

[2]
This international organisation was being set up at the time by
the Centrist socialist parties and groups which had left the
Second International under pressure from the revolutionary
masses. The International Union of the Socialist Parties, as the
new organisation was officially called was formed at a conference in Vienna in February 1921 and; was also known as the
Two-and-a-Half or Vienna International. Professing opposition to
the Second International, the leaders of the Two-and-a-Half
International actually pursued the same opportunist and
splitting policy on the most important questions of the
proletarian movement and tried to make the new organisation a
counter-balance to the growing innuence of the Communists among
the workers. Lenin wrote, “The gentlemen of the
Two-and-a-Half International pose as revolutionaries; but in
every serious situation they prove to be counter-revolutionaries
because they shrink from the violent destruction of the old
state machine; they have no faith in the forces of the working
class”

In May 1923 the Second International and the
Two-and-a-Half International united to form the so-called Labour
and Socialist International; —Editor .

[3]
Guild socialists —a reformist trend in the British trade unions which arose before the First World War. They denied
the class character of the state and sowed illusions among thc
workers that it was possible to get rid of exploitation without
the class struggle, by establishing, on the basis of the existing
trade unions, special associations of producers, so-called guilds
whose federation was to take over industrial management. In this
way the guild socialists hoped to build socialism.

After the October Socialist Revolution the
Guild socialists stepped up their propaganda, contraposing the
“theory” of guild socialism to the ideas of the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the 1920s
guild socialism lost all its influence on the British workers; —Editor .

[4]
The reference is to the American Federation of Labor and the
British Labour Party.

The American Federation of Labor was formed in 1881, on the guild principle. In the main it organised
the labour aristocracy. The reformist A.F.L. Ieaders denied the
principles of socialism and the class struggle, preached
“class co-operationn and championed the capitalist system. They followed a splitting policy in the international
working-class movement, giving active support to the aggressive
policy of the U.S. imperialists. In 1955 the A.F.L. merged with
the C.I.O; —Editor .

[5]
See pp. 198-99 in this volume; —Editor .

[6]
See p. 89 in this volume; —Editor .

[6b] Issue No. 5 of the Bulletin of The Sccond Congress of the Communist International gave the concluding
sentences of this speech as follows:

“We must express our opinion frankly, whatever it may be. If the British Communists do not reach agreement on the
question of the organisation of the mass movement, and if a
split takes place in this issue, then better a split than
rejection of the organisation of the mass movement. It is better
to rise to definite and sufficiently clear tactics and ideology
than to go on remaining in the previous chaos.” —Editor .

[7]
The commission on the national and the colonial questions, formed by
the Second Congress of the Communist International included
representatives of the Communist parties of Russia, Bulgaria, France,
Holland, Germany, Hungary, the U.S.A., India, Persia, China, Korea
and Britain. The work of the commission was guided by Lenin, whose
theses on the national and the colonial questions were discussed at
the fourth and fifth sessions of the Congress, and were adopted on
July 28; —Editor .

[8]
The Basle Manifesto was adopted by the Extraordinary
International Socialist Congress held in Basle on November
24-25, 1912. It gave a warning against the imminent world
imperialist war, whose predatory aims it unmasked, and called
upon the workers of all countries to wage a determined fight for
peace and “to pit against the might of capitalist imperialism the international solidarity of the
proletariat”. The Manifesto denounced the expansionist policy of the imperialist countries and urged socialists to
fight against all oppression of small nations and manifestations
of chauvinism.

[9]
The terms of admission into the Communist International were
first discussed by a commission appointed by the Congress. The
commission included representatives of the Communist parties of
Russia, Germany, Bulgaria, the U.S.A., Hungary, Austria,
Holland, the Irish I.W.W., the Left wing of the Socialist Party
of Switzerland and the French Communist group. In its work the
commission proceeded from Lenin’s theses “ The Terms of Admission into the Communist International ”. Lenin also worked on the
commission. The terms of admission into the Communist
International were discussed at three Congress sessions, July 29
and 30, and were adopted on August
6; —Editor .

[10]
Lenin is referring to the German Social-Democratic Party’s
programme which was adopted at its congress in Erfurt in October
1891. This programme marked an advance over the Gotha Programme
of 1875, since it was based on the Marsist thesis that the
capitalist mode of production was doomed and would be inevitably
replaced by the socialist mode of production; it stressed the
need for the working class to wage a political struggle and
defined the party’s role as leader in that struggle, but
it too made serious concessions to opportunism. Engels gave a
profound criticism of the draft of the programme in his work
“ Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Programmentwurfes 1891 ” (see Marx/Engels, Werke , Dietz Verlag,
Berlin, 1963, Bd. 22, S. 225-40). In fact, Engels criticised the
opportunism of the entire Second International. However, in
working out the final version of the programme, the German
Social-Democratic leaders concealed Engels’s criticism from the Party rank and file and disregarded his most important
remarks. According to Lenin, the fact that the Erfurt Programme
made no mention of the dictatorship of the proletafiat was the
main defect in the programme, and a cowardly concession to
opportunism; —Editor .

[11]
See KPSS v rezolutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdov, konfercntsii i plenumov TsK ( The C.P.S.U. in the Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses , Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee ), Part I, 1954,
p. 39; —Editor .

[12]
The question of the Communist Party’s affiliation to the
Labour Party was dealt with during the discussion on
Lenin’s theses on the fundamental tasks of the Communist
International, at the closing session of the Congress on August
6. Following Lenin’s speech the majority (58 votes against
24, with 2 abstentions) approved affiliation. The Labour
leaders, however, refused to grant membership to the Communist
Party. ; —Editor .