The Communist Workers’ International

Our objective in founding the KAI, the programme of which contains the conditions for the victory of the proletariat, is to put quite clearly the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat which, during the Russian and German revolutions, appeared under a totally new light, quite unlike before.

The best way we can demonstrate this is by showing the world the forces of our opponents, the opponents of the revolution, and those of the proletariat itself. It is from this comparison that the truth of the programme will emerge and, thus, equally the need for the KAI.

§ 1. The Enemies of the World Revolution: Russia

The real countries for the proletarian revolution are England, Germany and part of the eastern USA.

These countries are truly proletarian. But, as before with the Paris Commune, history has again given rise to a revolution elsewhere: in Russia.

And, as before in France, the revolution in Russia has demonstrated what it cannot be in proletarian countries. A small number of characteristics, but all of the greatest importance, have been an example (just as the Commune was) for the proletarian revolution in England, Germany, and the USA (and in other countries that make the revolution after them), but most of the characteristics are of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, i.e. solely capitalist.

The Russian revolution has become a new and powerful source of light for the world proletariat due to its double character: a partly proletarian, partly democratic-capitalist revolution. For, insofar as the revolution was proletarian, it showed the world proletariat the road to victory. Insofar as it was democratic-capitalist, it confronted it with new and enormous adversaries. For much of the world is in the same State as Russia. In this area, that is, nearly all Asia, South America, parts of Central and North America, and Africa, there lives a proletariat arising in a peasant milieu. Revolution threatens in several places. Workers and peasants would take part in this revolution.

The Russian revolution, located geographically equidistant between East America, West Europe, and Central Europe, on the one hand, and Asia on the other, throws its light simultaneously in two directions. To the West it shows the proletariat how to make the proletarian revolution: feebly, but with the greatest importance. To the East it shows the rising peasantry who are liberating themselves and want to achieve capitalism, how they are to do this with the aid and illusions of the workers, how they can undertake their bourgeois or peasant-capitalist revolution with the aid of the proletariat¹.

For clear action and the conditions of victory for the KAI, we must always stand apart from the Russian revolution because of this double light that it throws over the world revolution.

We begin with the clarification of the double character of the Russian revolution, and now in detail. We have already done this, but only in general. We had later deduced the strength of our new adversaries in Russia, Asia etc. … with decadent European capitalism that struggles for life, in order to show thus the truth of the KAI principles.

When a worker thinks of Russia and its revolution, he must always bear in mind this single statistic: the Russian population is 8% industrial proletarian and 80% peasant. The proletarians want communism, the peasants want land division and private property. The proletariat wants a communist revolution, the peasants a bourgeois one. When the peasants are 80% of the population and the proletariat only 8%, the revolution will be mainly bourgeois.

The proletariat was by far the most radical and resolute class and, among the proletariat, the Bolsheviks were the most conscious organization and the most resolute: they led the revolution and to victory. The peasants only submitted to the leadership of the proletariat on the condition that they would become private owners, i.e. that the revolution would be mainly bourgeois. On their side, the proletariat could not, even if it had wished, lead a partially communist revolution and oppose this condition for, without the peasants’ support, they could not make a revolution at all.

We are the bitterest opponents, as the KAPs of all countries have always been, of the conception of the Mensheviks, Kautskyites, Independents, pacifists etc., that the Russians should have stopped at the bourgeois revolution. This conception is not merely chicken-hearted idiocy, for it would have meant the victory of the reaction and the return of monarchy, but the main fact is that it would oppose itself to the proletariat which saw the path leading to world revolution and victory was necessarily and correctly by this path. The German and world revolution were and are possible only on this condition.

This is why the Bolsheviks’ errors are not to be found in the democratic-bourgeois methods that they were forced to take because of the pressure of the peasantry. It is to be found in the programme and in the action that they dictated to the proletariat of Europe and America, and by which they tried to cover up the path to world revolution and to make the reconstruction of world capitalism possible. By that they have shown and demonstrated that their goal is not Russian communism, but the construction of a bourgeois-democratic republic. By that they have shown and demonstrated that they have followed the peasantry and that they have placed the peasant-capitalist revolution above the proletarian revolution. By that they have shown and demonstrated that they no longer belong to the proletariat, but bourgeois-capitalist Russian democracy.

As soon as the workers understand these truths which have been hidden from them, we shall then show in detail which of these measures taken by the Bolsheviks had a proletarian character and those of a bourgeois-democratic character. It is well enough known that one must broadly distinguish two periods among the measures taken by the Bolsheviks: those from October 1917 to February 1921 (uprising in Kronstadt and Petrograd) and those of the so-called new course after February 1921. We shall see that the measures taken in both periods were largely bourgeois.

Let we look at the measures of the first period.

The main characteristics of the economic policy were nationalization of industry, commerce, and transport, state monopoly in food products and most important raw materials, forced-labour, state regulation of co-operatives, free supplies for workers, employees, and citizens in food and essentials, the principle of free provisioning by the state. All these measures were purely proletarian-communist.

The foundation of workers’ soviets was also proletarian-communist.

But the creation of peasant soviets was bourgeois-capitalist for it was certain that the peasants would struggle for private ownership and against communism.

A truly proletarian revolution as in Germany or England would never give the peasants political rights before they had shown themselves to be really communist.

The division of large estates and land in general was bourgeois. And in fact the division transformed peasants, i.e. nearly all the population of Russia, into enemies of communism. And not only the rich and middle peasants, but also the small, tiny, even landless, peasants.

The whole of the peasantry became the enemy of socialist collectivization of agriculture by taking possession of the land.

A really proletarian revolution would never allow such a land division. On the contrary, it would bring all large estates into the communist economy.

The seizure of land would make the gulf between the industrial urban proletariat and the rest of the population unbridgeable. This is shown by the peasant boycott of the towns and its refusal to supply food to the proletariat. This division could only be overcome, from the beginning, by the middle capitalists, i.e. with concessions to the peasantry who had capitalist sentiments. The Bolsheviks were condemned to capitalism from the start because of the land division, unless world revolution came to their aid. The evolution exemplified by Kronstadt showed this.

The doctrine of national self-determination that the Bolsheviks proclaimed and so detached Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, the Ukraine, and the Caucuses from Russia, thus causing the collapse of the proletarian revolution in most of these countries, was bourgeois-capitalist. Because, just as they used this doctrine as they felt weak in that, if they did not free these states, Tsarism could not be destroyed, therefore, and we think that this is more probable, they already wanted a national Russian state. These two, the doubting of the power of communism and nationalism, were totally inspired by the peasantry.

The enrollment of the proletariat in the army was a proletarian-communist measure.

But the admission of peasants was bourgeois-capitalist, for these peasants will show (and did show) that they were the enemies of communism, not only economically, but also from a military stand-point.

Undoubtedly the peasantry will fight the counter-revolution as long as its private possession of land is threatened. And the peasants resisted Yudenitch, Koltchak, Wrangel etc.. Undoubtedly the Bolsheviks could maintain an alliance of peasants and proletarians in the army because of the better food, quarters etc.. But would they still fight for the Bolsheviks once their private possession was assured and the counter-revolution of the large landowners was no longer to be feared? No, the peasants would most certainly not do that.

In this respect, the Polish campaign of 1920 by the Bolsheviks posed a very interesting question. Why did the Russian army suddenly begin to retreat? When the KAPD representative, the author of these lines, posed the question at the ECCI Plenum in Moscow in November 1920, Trotsky and Karski gave no clear reply. Confusion resulted. One said that it was due to the failure of the civil service, the other said that it was due to the military command. We now think that they did not want to give an honest answer and that the real answer was that the Russian peasants did not wish to go further in the attack on European capitalism.

It is that the mass of the Russian peasantry no longer wants war against European capitalism as soon as their property is secured against foreign intervention. And the peasants are the majority of the Russian army. One cannot rely on their aid for a revolution in Europe.

Never could a really proletarian revolution enroll the peasants in the army for armies must be absolutely communist. The Brest-Litovsk peace was bourgeois, i.e. capitalist-democratic. A really proletarian revolution would remain hostile to all capitalist forces and would await and support the rise of the proletarian forces.

Enfranchising workers was proletarian-communist. Enfranchising peasants and other active capitalists was bourgeois. A proletarian-communist revolution in Germany and England would not enfranchise these elements before they had shown that they were communist.

The repression of the independence and autonomy of action of the proletariat was equally bourgeois-capitalist. The workers and their organizations did not gain the direction at control of industry, transport, and commerce.

The leaders’ bureaucratism and despotism was also bourgeois-capitalist.

Corruption was also bourgeois-capitalist.

But in conjunction with these three last points, what above all was bourgeois-capitalist and to the greatest extent and from the start was the party dictatorship of the Bolsheviks by which they hoped to lead the revolution to victory and to found communism. It is in this party dictatorship, or, because it necessarily turns into this, in the dictatorship of leaders, that the substance of the bourgeois-capitalist revolution is to be found, which is the best proof that the Russian revolution was largely bourgeois-capitalist and not communist. All this despite its origins.

The party dictatorship was bourgeois-capitalist in origin because it resulted from the power of the peasantry, the non-proletarian class. A party dictatorship could take on and lead the Russian peasant class. A proletarian class dictatorship could not. For a proletarian class dictatorship will always tend towards pure communism. If it has governmental power, the proletariat will not satisfy itself with less. But the excessive strength and number of the peasantry held up the realization of pure communism. Thus the proletariat as a class could not exercise the dictatorship. Only a party could do so! The Bolshevik party! Exactly because it did not introduce pure communism, but conceded to the peasantry, private property, and capital. That the proletarian class could never do. Its doctrine is and always will be, we are nothing, let us be everything.

The Bolshevik party achieved dictatorship by the strength and support of the peasantry, and this party dictatorship was necessarily partly, in the larger part, capitalist, because of the peasants’ power.

It dominated the proletariat and was not its representative but its despot. Certainly the only possible one and, given the conditions, perhaps the best, but nonetheless its despot. It dictated concessions to the proletariat that it had made and the advantages granted to the peasantry. It could not be otherwise in a country dominated by agriculture.

The Bolshevik dictatorship was necessarily bourgeois-capitalist because it originated in the power of the peasantry. It was also so in its activity and goal. We believe that Rosa Luxemburg described as well as we can the essence of the party dictatorship and its influence on the revolution, before her death. She said:

A few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of their leaders and to approve the proposed resolutions unanimously – at the bottom, then, a clique affair – a dictatorship, certainly, not the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense.

Perfect, dictatorship! … But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a minority that leads in the name of the class, that is that it must be a faithful and progressive emanation of the active participation of the masses, it must submit constantly to their direct influence, be submitted to the control of public opinion as a whole, to proceed from the growing political education of the popular masses.

The KAP and KAI spoke these words, if one reads throughout proletariat for public opinion, masses and people. However, Rosa Luxemburg had not understood that all this could not be applied to Russia, that a class dictatorship was impossible there for the reason that the proletariat was too weak and the peasantry too strong.

Besides, she did not see as she died too soon, that the Bolsheviks’ party dictatorship was not only founded on the power of the peasants, but they had and must use the peasants strength for the bourgeois revolution in Russia. And, in fact, they increasingly used their party dictatorship for the peasantry, i.e. private capitalist property, and against the proletariat, i.e; communism. Given the production and class relationships, this dictatorship could not be a class dictatorship, but had to be a party one. And it is exactly because of these relationships that the party dictatorship would become bourgeois-capitalist.

Party dictatorship is a typical indicator of the bourgeois revolution, of a revolution whose foundation is private property, of a revolution by which one class defeats the other while remaining on the basis of private property. The rising class uses and tricks the classes that it dominates all the time. A bourgeois revolution is always of the minority against the majority.

The proletarian revolution which must be really communist, can only be that of a majority over a minority. Thus it can only take place in a truly proletarian country, or, at least partly so. But as the revolution arises from this majority, no party dictatorship, no using and tricking of the masses by the party and its dictatorship, is viable, instead a class dictatorship is needed. When a party dictatorship existed in Russia, it was the most certain index of the bourgeois-capitalist nature of the revolution. We shall show later that the class dictatorship is the sole dictatorship possible for the proletariat for even more important reasons.

We are neglecting for the moment the fact that the Bolsheviks showed their bourgeois-democratic, i.e. capitalist, character equally in the first period by their influence on the proletariat of other countries and particularly on the Third International. We shall return to this question after studying the second period. We have therefore established that even in their first revolutionary, so-called communist, stage, the Bolsheviks showed their capitalist character by the creation of peasant soviets, by land division, by the doctrine of national self-determination, by the enrollment of peasants in the army, by enfranchising peasants, and finally by the dictatorship of the party. Now we shall deal with the second period, after February 1921.

The RSFSR had thus founded communism and the peasants had founded their democratic-capitalist republic. The two classes, the proletariat and peasantry, had accomplished their historical tasks so well, both directed by the Bolshevik party, that in February 1921, the revolt in the fortress of Kronstadt broke out on the battleships and in Petrograd. And communism was extinguished with the slightest breath. Its foundation disappeared in an instant. One must say that the rising was very weak in relation to the huge empire. Equally one must remark that the peasants were neither organized as a class nor were not. But the small action of a group of peasants (it is said that most of the crews of the battleships were composed of peasants’ sons) was enough. The Bolshevik party essentially represented the innumerable millions of people who wanted land, and a small group from these millions showed a desire for something more than land. The party gave in, and the proletariat, the origin of the party, had finished with communism. The proletariat was put to the service of the peasantry, to aid it and raise it up, and it had to work under the leadership of its party which was henceforth, and became increasingly more so, the representative of the peasantry and the capitalism and no longer that of the proletariat and communism.

Now we shall cite the most important changes, without pre-occupying ourselves with the chronology which is of no interest here because we only want to show the passage to capitalism. The reader muses that behind all these changes hides the peasantry. It did not struggle so much as a mass, it was not even organized, it only intervened locally, but, because of its large numbers and confused masses, it instantaneously transformed in a moment of elemental force the whole of the Bolshevik party into its instrument and forced it (men like Lenin) to stand over and against the class hostile to the peasantry and the origin of the Bolshevik party.

We can give examples from the bourgeois revolution where the representative of a class was compelled to rise against itself by the power of other classes. But in these cases the two or several classes were always based on the same principle, e.g. owners and financiers. Such a struggle was therefore very small. In Russia by comparison, the representatives of a completely new world, the communist world, confronted the capitalist world, but they, however, struggled against their own class. What they wanted was precisely the establishment of capitalism.

With the smallest breath, all that was communist disappeared. Industry was partially denationalized, the complete state monopoly in important foods and raw materials was lifted, state regulation of co-ops was ended, free internal trade was reintroduced, the principle of free state distribution to workers, employees etc. was abolished and the wages system re-introduced.

While communism was disappearing into the background, an increasingly powerful capitalism took over the front of the stage. Let us recall its main achievements, but now in detail so that the proletarians will see how the workers of West Europe will not allow themselves to be duped any longer, but they will see how they are the only ones with the ability and the need to install communism, and not the workers of the peasant states.

Capitalist property returns! We assume that this resulted from the Decree of the RSFSR dated May 27th. 1921 published in Izvestia on June 18th. and appearing in the French paper Journal des Debats in French translation by one of the Russian delegates to the Hague Congress.

This decree particularly determines that the right to run industry and commerce is granted to all citizens. This right includes and is founded on:

1: The right to-own real estate, including the right to sell these estates and the right to lease land where the estate is located.

2: The right to sign contracts with the local authorities and to build on urban and rural land with property rights for 49 years.

3: Property rights on movable goods, meaning factories and workshops, industrial and commercial enterprises and the instruments of means of production, agricultural and industrial products, for financiers.

4: The right to mortgage property or to lend money.

5: Rights to inventions, authorships, trade marks etc..

6: The right to written or legal succession for the family and children for a total value of 10,000 Gold Roubles.

Then all kinds of rights over bilateral contracts etc. etc..

Private land-ownership has evidently reappeared. The law projected for May 15th. established that all land belonged to the republic, this is true under the guise of state socialism, the law positively guarantees full and complete possession for peasants. Because the law established that a peasant could not lose the right to farm the land except under three conditions: 1) if he ceased to farm it himself, 2) for criminal reasons, 3) if the state expropriated the land etc.. There were also several severe limitations in some cases concerning personal acquisition, but the Soviet Republic for the most part continued Stolypin’s (minister under the last Tsar) policy.

Again one finds two important provisions in the law. The first gave the peasants the right to farm the soil for one (exceptionally two) years. The second, and more important, ended the interdiction on hiring workers. This was only allowed when all, the members of the peasant family able to work did so.

The application of the law concerning farming and the hiring of labour was abandoned to the peasant municipalities, i.e. the soviet state gives complete freedom to peasants on these important points among others. Agriculture is thus progressively changed (naturally this does not happen quickly, given the situation in Russia, but more rapidly than one may think, due to the fair harvests) to become the foundation of the capitalist state. Farmers and owners appeared, an agricultural proletariat formed. It created an internal market at the base of large scale industry as well as a reservoir of productive forces without possessions that industry, commerce, capitalism could exploit. In brief, Russia took the path that all capitalist states took, from the peasantry (if the European revolution did not quickly come to their aid), but, in this particular case, under the leadership of noted communists and a small formerly communist, bureaucratic party.

The proletariat has become, even in the peasant countries, such an important factor, its development was so great, that it took over (or rather, its leaders, its party took over) the establishment of capitalism (where it was weak). Against itself!

The Bolshevik party, then still communist, sought to base itself on the landless peasants and the village poor at the beginning of 1918. Today it supports the landed peasants, it creates farmers and landless workers, in brief, it builds capitalism.

Industry was transfered from full communist state possession, regulation, and control, to another condition. Petty industry has already become completely free, large scale industry, partly so. Besides, some of the most important branches have passed over to trusts co-operating with the state, the so-called mixed enterprises, where the workers work, as everywhere, for wages.

These industries already have considerable independence, even regarding the state, particularly in commerce. Evidently their managers and even government officials are searching for new ways to make money. Competition between other activities and state enterprises arose. This process is developing in industry.

Internal trade is free. One can buy and sell anything in Russia. Large and small capitalists appeared in town and country.

Capitalism began with trade in peasant countries, the capitals so created then created industry and banking or, where they already existed, extended them.

External trade is still apparently in the hands of the state, but that is merely an appearance.

The huge Russian confederation of co-ops, the Tsentrosujuz, has already won the right to external trade with some limitations that do not mean very much. The Tsentrosujuz, spreading over the whole country, especially with the peasants, were always and still are completely capitalist and bourgeois institutions. In reality they trade along purely capitalist lines. But the trusts, the large industrial societies, are also gaining more and more autonomy in external trade. Certainly they still need the foreign trade department’s consent to their business, but who could refuse something to these powerful companies in which the government is represented and which are partially state funded? Krassin gave a long list of these commercial enterprises to the representatives of the big states at the Hague.

Finally, the Russian government is prepared to make large concessions to major foreign capitalists and in fact lent Krupp 4 million hectares for foreign agricultural enterprise. Without mentioning oil, forestry, and mineral concessions etc..

Local finance was separated from state finance! Where that leads to with with the peasantry, one can quite clearly envisage!!

Taxes were re-introduced, even indirect taxes, e.g. on tobacco, coffee, matches, soap, petrol, sugar, salt, beer, and textiles.

Finally, a state bank was run in a new manner, as the intermediary in internal and external business. It accepted and paid internal and external costs. As Sokolnikov explained at the Hague, the instrument was available to private individuals, private enterprises, and mixed enterprises. Thus the volume of banking business greatly and constantly increased in the Russian market.

At the May (1922) session of the financial department, state bank director Aron Sheinman spoke on the Russian state bank after which the financial section called for private banks.

Stock exchanges were re-opened in the large towns. An army of entrepreneurs, businessmen, bankers, agents, and brokers of all kinds, speculators, stock dealers, merchants, held again what little they were allowed by a type of state capitalism. More, a middle class, shop owners, small industrialists, intellectuals, small office and business employees, in fact the entire universe of vampires living off the proletariat, rose again from the flanks of the huge army of private owners, the peasantry.

The new army of the bourgeoisie arose in the towns too, so in the country a largely new army of the peasantry arose as well.

Between them, the proletariat, small in number and, despite appearances, very weak.

The new urban bourgeoisie and the peasants wanted to enrich themselves, each alone.

The army was mainly peasants’ sons…

The whole world awaited only the freeing of foreign trade for all citizens and peasants. As we have seen, it was already partially free for co-ops, trusts, and in other cases, the most important and powerful. Truly, it would not be long before all foreign trade was free again. Then all capitalism’s links will be in place and the whole proletariat in chains. Is there really a great difference between the birth of capitalism in the peasant states of the preceding centuries (or even in America, Australia, and South Africa, for instance, in the 19th. century) and its birth in Russia? Certainly relations were different. There were free peasants in the colonies, here they have left despotism and so, in part, medieval relations. But now, are not all the Russian peasants free? No, the difference between the birth of capitalism here and there is minimal. This is despite the fact that capitalism is being created without the capitalists themselves and is arising either from the peasantry or foreigners, and that today it is establishing itself thanks to the proletariat or more and nearer the truth, thanks to the party with a proletarian origin.

Poor Russian workers! You never had, even before Kronstadt, any direction or control, however small, over the state. Neither you nor your organizations. All that was held by a bureaucratic party and a dozen leaders. But you had something, some rights, and capitalism had gone from the towns.

And now? You, your class, has neither industry nor trade. It never had the soil. It no longer has the markets for food or the most important raw materials. Universal compulsory labour no longer exists. The state no longer gives you anything free. Capitalists and capitalist societies are there again, again there is wage struggle and unemployment. There is wage-labour again and once more you are a wage slave. There is even compulsory arbitration.

It is true that there is still a little state capitalism and that the state leaders are the old honoured leaders of the Communist Party. That is true…

But think! What use is your work? What use is the surplus-value that you daily create? It belongs to the capitalists. Firstly it belongs to the peasantry. It is used by the soviet state’s government for the peasantry, to develop it economically so that a capitalist Russia is created by the growing peasant economy.

Communism in Russia is an appearance in decline, capitalism is the growing reality.

So it has been shown that a considerable new army and a capitalist state that one can only compare with the USA as to its size and huge raw material wealth has been established under the Bolsheviks and is on its way to rising against the world proletariat.

Russia, capitalist Russia, has become a new and powerful enemy of the world proletariat, of the world revolution.

§ 2. Asia

Relationships are, or are approaching, those in Russia over much of the world. As we noted, we are not speaking of Africa, Australia, and South America, but of Asia where there are very big countries where conditions are approaching those in Russia.

In the main Asian countries, i.e. India, Dutch East Indies, and China, there are huge masses of small peasants who are oppressed by native or foreign forces, or by both together. The population of these countries numbers 700 to 800 million people, mostly small peasants. The struggle against native and foreign governments’ misrule is advancing in all these countries. The revolution approaches. A rapidly growing proletariat, however, lives in these countries, growing both numerically and in class consciousness, standing apart from the rest of the population by the clarity of its objectives, decision, and organization. It is not impossible that this proletariat will lead in the revolution, or share it with other classes.

But given that the proletariat, large scale industry and modern capital are far less powerful there than in Russia, the revolution will certainly establish a nationalistic capitalist state, even more certainly than in Russia. It will be the same in Asiatic Turkey, Persia, Arabia, Afghanistan, etc., where there are no modern proletarians (outside the few ports).

When Russia was forced to introduce capitalism despite its heroic and far sighted proletariat, the issue was also settled for the Asian countries undergoing their revolutions.

In all Awakening Asia (in Siberia the situation is identical to that in Russia and in Japan capitalism already dominates) huge capitalist states hostile to the proletariat are in formation.

Russia, which has transformed itself into a capitalist state, a nationalist state competing with West Europe and with America, precede this Asian capitalist evolution and supports it. This evolution was greatly accelerated by the world war and the Russian revolution. It now covers all Asia and drags after it a huge part of the world.

All Asia which is awakening is the new enemy of the world proletariat and of the revolution.

§ 3. The Third International in Europe

Let us now turn to the West to see how Russian communism and capitalism shed their light there too.

Russia has appeared to the rest of Europe fully in conformity with its character, the character of its half-communist, half-capitalist revolution. That was easy to do.

In fact it is due to the huge importance of what it accomplished that the European workers watch and obey the Bolshevik party. All the Third International follows Russia.

From the start European workers were called on to perform a partly-proletarian, partly bourgeois-capitalist revolution, just as in Russia.

And that is exactly why the West European workers of the Third International follow Russia, even though their own countries should be strongly proletarian. Instead of a purely proletarian tactic, they follow an impure and party bourgeois one.

It is equally impossible for a proletarian-bourgeois revolution to call on other countries to perform a purely communist revolution. For, so doing, they would be neglecting the bourgeois part, thus themselves.

Russia and the Third International appealed for revolution, civil war, the formation of workers’ and soldiers’ councils and a red army.

But at the same time they did not dare call for what the European revolution needed, firstly, the German revolution. They dared not support the really fundamental measures for the European and German revolutions.

The Russian revolution and the Bolsheviks dared not do it from the start, because the demands themselves would have shown immediately that they did not represent a real proletarian revolution.

Russia and the Third International did not support immediately the struggle against the trade unions as a basic struggle for workers’ and soldiers’ councils, for a civil war, a red army, in brief, for the revolution, the struggle for the destruction of trade unions. A true, fully proletarian revolution (e.g. in England and Germany) would do so.

It would immediately set up factory organizations to replace the trade unions, for only the former can struggle and form the basis of communism. As Russia and the Third International let the trade unions survive, they show themselves to be capitalist and that they neither wish nor dare eradicate European capitalism.

They do not demand an end to parliamentarianism in the revolution, but leave the European workers who have never fought alone (and so submitted to capitalism before and during the war) with the illusion that the revolution can be made in parliament or by leaders.

A really proletarian revolution (e.g. in England, Germany, and the USA) will end parliamentarianism as soon as the revolution comes. Parliament is an arm of the bourgeoisie, the soviet and the factory organization with the workers’ council is the proletariat’s arm that it will not establish alongside but against parliament as soon as the revolution enters with a bang. Because Russia does not dare, it again shows that it is largely capitalist, its true objective being, conscious or unconscious, given its class relations, is not the West European revolution but Russian capitalism.

They did not support the end to party dictatorship in West Europe. They could show their bourgeois character no better than by this. It is exactly that, submission to party slavery, that was the infection and fall of social democracy and the proletariat it had enslaved.

The dictatorship of the party over the masses was necessary in the pre-war period before the revolution. It is no longer so during the revolution. Then the proletariat in its factory organizations and parties as a whole, as one organization, will decide. The trade unions and old parties with their leaders are too weak faced with the power of West European and North American capitalism, still an enormous power in its crisis and, because it is in mortal danger, more enormous, perhaps, than ever before. Only the new organizations, the KAP and the Union, can beat capitalism now. That is why they must amalgamate. Thus it can no longer be a question of party dictatorship.

The real proletarian revolution will arrive and strengthen from its party and Unionen, composed of factory organizations, and will transform both into one united for struggle. Because the Bolsheviks did not understand or desire this conception, because they supported and tried to gain a party or leaders’ dictatorship, as in Russia (a dozen leaders, as Rosa Luxemburg said, dominate a flock of party sheep which is called to action at the desired moment and, by their intermediary, the great mass of the class which is stupid and does not think) by this purely bourgeois and capitalist method, they have shown here, in West Europe, that their own revolution did not have a really proletarian nature, but was mainly capitalist. Consequently the Third International in following Russia showed the same character.

And again, more than that, by this decision, more so than any other, they have led the proletariat here in Europe not to revolution but to defeat. This principle of party or leaders’ dictatorship, i.e. of individuals or small numbers who dominate a stupid crowd, has equally thrown the German proletariat into the abyss. The real proletarian revolution, as in Germany, England, and North America, could only be made by a stupid mass led by knowledgeable leaders.

Fortunately history takes care of the masses becoming conscious and their own master. And insofar as they are not sufficiently so, they will be defeated, despite leaders.

It has to think and act for itself, history concerning itself with this. It had made our enemies, the West European and North American capitalists, so powerful that the proletarian class must think and act for itself to defeat them. The proletariat (i.e. the class), proletarians in person and together, must overcome the capitalist class in thought and action in order to overcome this capitalist class, still strong in its hour of death.

But the very fact that the Bolsheviks and the Third International expect a party dictatorship here as in Russia shows most clearly that what they basically want, consciously or unconsciously, is not the destruction, but the reconstruction of European and Russian capitalism.

The Russians expect all that of the European workers, not as communists, representatives of the Russian proletariat, but as those of the Russian peasantry, rising Russian capitalism.

And the Bolsheviks are to do this exactly through the wretched Third International. This, and its stupid leaders, who have no more understanding than an ass of the real conditions of struggle in West Europe and the differences with Russia where the real motivating forces are of a capitalist nature, became an instrument of the Russians. And the large masses turned to the Russians and the Third International. The West European proletariat is so powerless, so unable to think independently, that it sides with Russia and the Russian Third International (thus with capitalism) in its revolution, which must however become the basis for the world revolution.

But it was so even from the start, before the Kronstadt revolt. Even in 1917-19, when the Third International was formed, these false principles of the European revolution penetrated Europe, thanks to Moscow.

Otherwise, as the Russian revolution was still going fairly well in its proletarian part, the European workers were already completely infected (and for so many years) by the capitalist principle of the party dictatorship, parliamentarianism, and trade union organization, and they were totally destroyed for the revolution.

Even the Third International proletarians are thus the revolution’s enemies.

§ 4. The proletarians of Asia

The European workers led by the Third International are not alone in being the enemies of the world revolution. It is now the same for the Asian workers.

Even in that part of the world where, as we have stated, the revolution has to mature, in many places in the main countries, India, Dutch East Indies and China, even there the Russian tactic and that of the Third International have changed the proletariat into the enemies of the revolution and into the friends of capitalism.

The Third International, guided by Russia, began by propagating the communist revolution in the ports, factories and on the railways of Dutch and British India, as in West Europe.

But after having strongly invited the proletariat to very adventurous actions for a very short period, actions even against the nationalists, i.e. the rising Chinese and Indian capitalists, they soon, almost immediately, renounced this tactic and persuaded the proletariat to join the nationalist-capitalist movement in a united front.

Instead of beginning with a new tactic for the workers to learn there, with factory organizations, industrial unions and a completely distinct position for the proletariat in each economic and political struggle, they dissolved the proletarian spirit into the nationalist one, thus submitting the proletariat to rising national capitalism.

Do we need to repeat that all this proved the capitalist character of the Russian revolution and the Third International?

The capitalist part of the Russian revolution (by far the more important) started trade with capitalist Asia, thus ending the autonomy of the proletariat revolution. Fusion with the national capitalist Asian movement and submission to it.

The communist (!) workers in China joined the democratic and nationalist movement of Sun Yat-Sen, i.e. submitted to it, the latter being by far the more powerful.

The communists (!) in the Dutch East Indies, who were then independent of the nationalist movement (the Sarikat-Islam), the two having broken all links, rejoined them, i.e. submitted to them, the nationalists being far more powerful.

In British India, an analogous tactic was adopted.

After the Third International had preached communism alone, it now called on workers and peasants (!) to struggle against England, against Indian feudalism and against the rich. The slogan was now Freedom for the Indian people, thus a national-democratic republic, as in Russia².

One could perhaps say that it is the historic duty of the revolutionary workers to destroy feudalism and foreign domination, replacing them with bourgeois democracy. Even Marx prescribed this tactic in the Communist Manifesto. One must firstly say that, if it were so, it must not happen to fool the workers. In Dutch and British India, China too, they fool the workers of the Third International by letting them believe that the revolution will be communist when, in fact, they were only being forced to perform the bourgeois-democratic revolution! Just as in Russia, where they fooled the workers with a sham communism when capitalism was being established, just as in Europe, America, Africa, Australia, where they were forced to rebuild capitalism in the guise of communism, in the East they forced the workers to attack Indian feudalism, attack Mandarin rule and foreign rule, under a false communist banner.

But secondly the communists’ tactic is not the same as when the Communist Manifesto was written. The tactic dispenses with areas where Marx was superseded by evolution. Otherwise the proletarian revolution would still be impossible and one should have to bring bourgeois democracy to Europe. The essential thing, an alliance even with democratic parties, imposed itself. Now capitalism has entered its final stage of trusts, domination by finance capitalism, and imperialism. A capitalist world crisis has appeared and the proletarian revolution is possible in several countries. The proletariat now immediately has to separate itself from the bourgeoisie and take up completely independent positions.

Even in the countries where the bourgeois-capitalist revolution again appears as provisionally possible, as in China or India. For when communism is established in several countries, an authentically proletarian communism, not like that in Russia, it will so attract workers of all countries that it will grow so rapidly in strength and will quickly gain ground even in countries where it is now impossible, and it will win the whole world. This in why the workers of all countries must now prepare for their own struggle against their masters, also keeping their opinions completely distinct from those of the bourgeois-democratic and nationalist revolutions³.

At the present stage of capitalism they can also make a revolutionary alliance with their West European brothers and those in America, as they are nearest to victory, to have them come to their aid and to install communism in their countries equally rapidly.

The tactic of the Third International was and is in opposition to this in Asia. As in Russia, they ally with the peasantry and democratic parties that want a national revolution. As in Russia and West Europe it builds capitalism in Asia.

When Lenin was still a revolutionary communist, he habitually said that the West European marxists did not want an uprising in Asia as it would end West European affluence. He even made this remark to me once. I did not reply then as I did not know that it was Lenin’s real position. Now I shall reply to him. I have always, before, long before, even imperialism, recommended that, as there are no proletarian revolutionary movements in India, one must do everything to create one and one must then, when there is one, support it by propaganda and action. One can still find this position in many texts I wrote and signed and, what is more significant, I supported it in all parties I belonged to and which were also able to put it into practice.

But now I add that it was not possible before the war when it was not really a question of revolution in India or Asia, that a proletarian movement must, even in this revolution, take a place quite apart from the nationalist movement and must never submit to it nor change its programme or tactic for it.

Lenin and the Third International have inspired the proletarians of India and China to form an alliance with Asian nationalist capitalism and now I reply to Lenin: never have we supported capitalism in Europe, now we preach revolt against European capitalism to the Indians. But you, you support rising Asian capitalism, thus you preach the subordination of the Asian proletariat to this nationalism and capitalism.

And this is no wonder! Because capitalist, peasant Russia must want a capitalist Asia and the Third International has applied this tactic of Russia.

It has transformed the proletarians of India and China into enemies of the revolution. And if one now thinks that China, Dutch and British India form the largest part of the Asian population, that Siberia also follows Moscow’s tactic, one can calmly state that even the Asian proletariat has become an enemy of the world revolution.

§ 5. The world proletariat

And if one considers now that the world proletariat, i.e. that of Europe, America, Australia, Africa and Asia is led by the Second and Third Internationals, and that the former (which we have not shown) as well as the latter (which we have shown) is counter-revolutionary, one can quietly affirm that the proletariat of the whole world is now hostile to communism.

§ 6. All the classes of all the capitalist states

Once more all the classes of all the capitalist states are the revolution’s foes.

And also the Third International and Moscow have deceived the proletariat.

In fact Moscow and the Third International have again propagated several false principles which pushed the proletarians of Europe and North America towards a completely false tactic and considerably strengthened capitalism.

They use above all ideas pursued by Lenin (see his opinions of Asquith and Lloyd George in his Left-wing Communism) on the class divisions and the bourgeois parties in the capitalist states, divisions that the communists could use, divisions between monarchists and republicans, democrats and reactionaries, etc.. None of this was at all true, all the bourgeois parties (including social-democracy, the independents, the Labour Party etc.) in all countries at all times formed an absolute compact united front against communism. On the contrary, the rise of this tactic put the proletariat at fault during the Kapp putsch and Rathenau’s assassination. It came out for the republic and against the monarchy instead of equating the two and fighting both.

Communism is in absolute opposition to capitalism, in both spirit and substance, principle and practice. In the revolution leading from capitalism to communism there are no economic and political actions where they can be in agreement. For using the division between bourgeois parties means joining one of them and forming an alliance. And, as the contradictions are also irreconcilable with this one too, such a tactic leads to the most terrible defeats and even to the complete corruption of the communist party when the bourgeois parties turn against the communists at the decisive moment.

The well known faith in the capacity of the peasants and the middle classes also belongs to these false principles. Russia has depended on this faith in Europe and based its tactics on it. Despite the very grave situation in many European countries, one cannot see these elements being won to the communist-revolutionary cause anymore. That is why the true revolutionaries know that a revolutionary tactic which must prepare the beginning and the course of the world revolution, must not depend on these classes, even though fractions of them will join the proletariat at the end when its victory is certain.

And this tactic of alliance with the peasant-bourgeois parties also proves the peasant-capitalist nature of the Russian revolution. It was accepted by the European workers only because they were again equally bourgeois.

The Russians, as bourgeois revolutionaries, wanted compromise in West Europe for fear of the really proletarian elements. They recommended compromises to the communists instead of a truly proletarian revolution.

But that is not at all proletarian! A truly proletarian revolution counts on itself and will fight the democrats, social-democrats, monarchists, reactionaries, and republicans.

Consequently liberals and conservatives, democrats, social-democrats, monarchists, reactionaries and republicans are all equally its enemies.

§ 7. All the states of the capitalist world

And what is true for all the classes of the capitalist states is also true for these states themselves. According to Russia and the Third International, communists must also take part in the divisions between bourgeois states.

For years the Third International’s publications echoed the threat of a new war between these states. Moscow’s proclamations always contain this language. And a new revolution will break out following this war! One will then restore the courage of the proletariat with the old fanfare on the power of the proletariat and the old insult (but sounding false and artificial) of the enemies. A real revolutionary would not take part in that. For the truth is that the capitalist states, i.e. England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the USA are passing from the first to the last stage of the crisis leading to war, that they are all together opposed to communism and that, if the revolution comes, they will end with war’s confusion to deal with communism.

The proletariat, the really revolutionary proletariat, acts wisely when it decides on its tactics for the united front of capitalism, despite all the disagreements among its sections. In answer one can say that capitalism is united and communism cannot compromise with one of its parties.

But even this compromise tactic with the bourgeois states (because the hope of division between them leads to this) originates in the Russian bourgeois revolution. This necessarily leads to compromises and alliances with Germany or Britain, with Turkey or the Asian states that are awakening to national capitalism, because national capitalism has to be restored in Russia. But a really proletarian revolution will make no alliances with the bourgeois states. This alliance, as well as the alliance with bourgeois parties, will always end in defeat⁴. This revolution will ally only with revolutionary proletarians in other countries.

This whole policy, based on the division between bourgeois states, is only grandiose in appearance, in reality it represents habitual reformism. But now on a world scale and not nationally as before. It is no less vulgar than the other.

Truly, all capitalist states are uniformly hostile to communism. Together they will attack all countries where communism is victorious as they attacked Russia when it was still partially communist.

§ 8. Once again on Russia and the Third International

We are returning to the subject of Russia to understand more clearly this force opposing the world revolution, but which tries to appear to favour it. Because now it is the most infamous opponent of the world revolution and the most dangerous. Precisely because it tries to appear to cherish it.

The Kronstadt revolt broke out. Russia had to return to full capitalism. One could say that, subjectively, the whole revolution vanished, its foundations, measures and preparation, from the side of Russia and the Third International.

Russia signed contracts with states and private individuals and has gone over to capitalist reconstruction thanks to trusts, mixed enterprises, concessions, recognition of industrial property rights, commerce, and agriculture too, the re-establishment of the wages system etc., and, as we have seen, recognition of the capitalist principle of revolution, to realize the power of the peasantry, of the middle classes, of capitalism in general, on a very large scale. Communism totally disappeared, all that was left was the very small goal of state capitalism – consumption. And now Europe must follow! There too communism must disappear. That is to say that only the communist phrases and teachings for the proletariat remain, otherwise it could revolt against Russia. That could not be allowed since Russia wanted to receive as much foreign aid as possible for capitalist reconstruction. Communist phrases remained, therefore, but the action was absolutely capitalist. Capitalist Russia could no longer support a revolution in Germany or England because it would mean the decline of this country already so exhausted regarding capitalism. So, finished with the revolution in Europe!

All this is what, then, began this terrible deception of the European and world proletariat, this dialogue with a double meaning which talks simultaneously of the overthrow and the reconstruction of capitalism, which advocates overthrow and reforms, which simultaneously says that reforms are impossible but makes the revolution impossible by the programme of reforms. It is thus that the game of programmes and compromises will begin: legal factory councils, control over production, accounting of material values, workers’ government etc., which are impossible in so far as these reforms can only be achieved through revolution, but Russia and the Third International praise them as measures preceding the revolution. One searches for safeguards in these slogans for the appearance of the revolution, but in fact, by this deception, they want to build capitalism and stop the revolution. And finally one assembles the means of castrating the revolution in one principle: the united front of the proletariat. Unity, from the Noskes, Scheidemanns and Hilferdings to the Communist Party. The talk is revolutionary, for a united front is certainly needed for the revolution; but only the communist united front. The action is capitalist, for capitalism needs a united counter-revolutionary front, from the social-democrats to the communists. This slogan surpasses in its duplicity all that has yet happened in the workers’ movement. It is the rigorous emanation of the Russian capitalist revolution in its double sense.

And the Third International takes up this shibboleth! And the Communist Party of Germany, where the revolution is a constant threat, adopts it!

This shibboleth; the unity of workers who do not want the some thing, who are mostly still totally dependent on capitalist ideology; is the purest and most authentic capitalist method to lead the unarmed proletariat out before machine guns, before which it would not be really united, and to a massacre of such a character that the Commune massacre, the Finnish and Hungarian revolutions would be child’s play by comparison. Such a united front, uniting the social-democrats and communists, would in fact guarantee the proletariat’s defeat. The social-democrats would drop the communists as soon as fighting was needed, and a general proletarian massacre is certain⁵.

This order was the final section of the Moscow tactic. It was the last word of the Russian capitalist revolution. It showed that Russia and the Third International, which wished to build capitalism while calling for revolution and leading the proletariat to destruction by using what it had that was most sacred, are the most important enemies of the world revolution⁶.

§ 9. The Communist Workers’ International

We have shown the effects of the world war and the Russian revolution on the world proletariat and how the Russian revolution projected itself both eastwards and west.

We have seen how Russia, an agricultural and only very slightly industrialized country, this butt-end, this transition between industrial Europe and agricultural Asia, entered capitalism by its own revolution, that it wished to become a first-rate capitalist power and thus it also became the enemy of the world revolution, of the world proletariat. We have seen that it supported the Asian people in their nationalist struggle for capitalist freedom; we have also seen that it propelled the Asian proletarians into this nationalist battle for capitalist freedom, in alliance with the rising capitalism, so for the reconstruction of world capitalism.

We have also seen that Russia also tried to achieve the reconstruction of capitalism in Europe, America, Africa, Australia by means of the Third International, that it recommended a false tactic (false from the point of view of revolution) to the European and world proletariat, always by means of the Third International: support for capitalist trade unions, capitalist parliamentarianism, capitalist dictatorship by party or leaders. The Third International adopted this tactic and thus betrayed the world proletariat, the world revolution.

It is thus that we have seen Russia, this butt-end between East and West, and its creation, the Third International, concur in the East, in Asia, in helping in the creation of a new and huge capitalism; in the West, in Europe and America, and in the other parts of the World, Africa and Australia, to the maintenance and extension of old capitalism.

That thus, in order to define itself by a single clear word, Russia and the Third International introduced a new reformism, world reformism, reformism on a world scale. That the Third International does not differentiate itself from the Second but for the latter’s reformism being national, while the former’s is international.

We have seen that, given that the world proletariat is led on the five continents by the Second and Third Internationals, after the world war and the revolution in Russia, this self-same world proletariat is again today the enemy of the world revolution. We have also seen that all the capitalist classes of all the capitalist states are re-united against the proletarian-communist revolution.

And all the capitalist states and those wishing to become capitalist will be united pel-mel and will be for the end of war and will make common cause the instant that the communist revolution becomes reality.

Finally, we have seen that the Third International and Russia have appealed for a united front with capitalist social-democracy and will therefore throw the proletariat into the abyss and will crown their work of capitalist reconstruction, led by Russia.

Here, traced in bold outline from East to West, so for the world, as it appears in the light of the Russian revolution, the tableau of what the proletariat has become under this influence.

Certainly we see an awful vista. It is thus that a once more formidably powerful capitalism, with its forces multiplied ten-fold by the deadly fright of the struggle for its survival, which unites more and more, nationally and internationally, that the world proletariat is faced across terrible misery that has already pushed many countries towards revolution, and the proletariat has found a leader: Russia, which, because of its production and class relations, is directed towards capitalism and constructs it. It has confidence in this leader for historical reasons. It is its own fault that it was the most tragic situation that a class could encounter in a revolution; to know that it verbally proclaimed the overthrow of capitalism, but really constructs it. A situation with a double meaning that can only lead to slavery and death. A proletariat which has been re-united by this leader and the Third International into organizations and parties that are counter-revolutionary and will betray the proletariat in struggle. They have lied in telling the proletariat that the enemy is very feeble and that the East will come to its aid.

When its adversaries used exceptional organizations for struggle, it did not. It instead wanted to realize a united front of trumpery which united hostile elements.

Its adversaries were compensated by a real united national front against it in all these countries, a front that was fully united. And it will become international as soon as the proletarian revolution appears. The international proletariat will then present itself as a flock of sheep at the butchers.

This is why the KAI calls for the formation of a revolutionary organization against this great enemy, against world capital, Russia, the Third and Second Internationals.

It does not want trade unions but factory organizations, not parliamentary parties but workers’ councils (soviets), not a party but a class dictatorship. For the sign of victory for it is the soviet.

It wishes to change all the proletarians of Europe, America, Asia, Africa, and Australia into conscious communists by means of these new organizations.

It does not wish to compromise with social-democrats or other workers’ parties, which it considers as capitalist enemies.

It does not want to compromise with a capitalist party or state because it knows that they are mortal enemies. It wishes to unite the proletariat for a frontal attack on capitalism, a struggle that the proletariat will be conscious of in its meaning, means and end and so will lead by its full consciousness and autonomous activity.

The KAI wishes to arouse a new spirit in the proletariat, the communist spirit, and so lead the revolution and lead it to victory.