Chapter 2: The Founding Congress

As we have seen, no current of the Italian Socialist Party was present at the founding congress of the Third International. As for the party left, this was certainly because of material obstacles, and not because they disagreed on the need to organize the organ of proletarian emancipation on an international scale.

In May 1918, that is a year before the Moscow conference, the Italian Left had already posed the problem very clearly in an article entitled The Marxist Directives of the New International (L’Avanguardia of May 26, 1918). This article, though heavily distorted by the censor, asserted that it was necessary to reconstitute the proletarian international, excluding the mouldering parties of the Second International, and found the new International on the theoretical and programmatic basis of revolutionary Marxism and the Communist Manifesto. „We are and we remain Marxists in the highest and most all-encompassing sense of the word, holding the modern socialist proletariat to be the continuer of the critical work started by the first Communists founded on the 1847 Manifesto.“

The revisionist distinction between the “maximum” and “minimum” programme is abolished; repeatedly we find the principle of the violent conquest of power reasserted and the anarchist objection against dictatorship of the communist State refuted; there is the demand for a strongly centralised and disciplined party:

„The new international will be a great collective force, perfectly placed within the social field and the historical epoch through which we are passing, the sole purpose being to replace capitalist society with communist society, by means of proletarian class action […] The International will dedicate itself to organizing the forces specifically capable of bringing about the great “step” that humanity will have to take […] The new international will therefore be the world socialist political party, the collective organization of the labouring class for conquering and exercising power, in order to transform the capitalist economy into a collective one. Such a party aspires to a collective and conscious “discipline,” and it will be the proper sphere for the future universal proletarian administration.“

The article concludes as follows:

„The fundamental postulate of the conquest of power is not to be confused with the overestimation of parliamentary action […] The positive foundations on which we must found the new International can be summarized in a final synthesis as follows: doctrine: Marxist interpretation of history and society; program: [violent] conquest and exercise of power to activate the socialization of the means of production; method: intransigent class political action within a collective discipline.“ (L’Avanguardia, May 26, 1918)

If the Italian Left had taken part in the First Congress, there is no doubt that it would have made itself heard on the necessity, first of all, of defining very clearly who was and who wasn’t in the revolutionary camp. This in its turn would have curbed the enthusiasm (based on the Russian revolutionary wave and the all too vague information filtering through from the West) which would lead to the formal constitution of the Third International at a time before real communist parties existed.

As a matter of fact, in the article we have already quoted it was stated that the International shouldn’t „be a shapeless jumble of groups and conflicting methods but a homogeneous union of forces directed towards the one main goal, using precisely established and circumscribed methods […] We can show by various examples, with episodes drawn from the Russian Revolution, and from the life of our own party in Italy, how every deliberation that has led to a ‘restriction’ of the field of socialist tactics has given rise to a considerable re blossoming of the movement.“

Our current decided to opt, then as now, for greater strictures on the criteria of admission to the International and was also of the opinion that only those parties holding to unequivocal communist positions should be admitted to the new International. It therefore found itself expressing reservations about the Bolsheviks’ own formula of the „coalition with the elements of the revolutionary workers’ movement and those who, though not past members of the socialist parties, are now placed completely on the terrain of the proletarian dictatorship in its soviet form, that is with the elements corresponding to syndicalism.“

Even if the Italian Left did not entirely agree, the Bolsheviks’ hopes were certainly not lacking in a firm logical basis: their hope that in the wake of the victorious revolution, elements which weren’t completely Marxist could be integrated in the melting-pot of a new October, and that their influence could be the determining factor against the inauspicious influence of all the Johnny-come-lately communists who had suddenly converted to communism after long careers dedicated to reforms and compromises.

Having said that, by far the most important thing is that the Italian Left had recognized, in all the documents, theses, platforms, and resolutions emerging from the First Congress of the newly born International, the entire heritage of programmatic and tactical positions of revolutionary Marxism common to both the Bolsheviks and the Italian fraction of the extreme Left.

The Daily Sessions

The first day, March 2, 1919, commenced with Lenin’s opening speech, in which he declared that, „Our meeting has great, world-historical significance… the international world revolution is beginning and gaining strength in all countries […] The proletariat is now in a position to make practical use of its dominion.“

A congressional bureau was elected, including Lenin, Eberlein, and Platten, with Klinger as its permanent secretary (German leader of the Russian party). The assembly decided to support the proposal of the German Communists, that it commence sitting as the “International Communist Conference” and so not to formally establish the Third International, as the Central Committee of the Russian party and the Finnish delegates had hoped. Lenin proposed the following agenda:

1. Constitution
2. Reading of reports
3. „Platform of the International Communist Conference“ (speakers: Albert or Eberlein, Bukharin)
4. „Bourgeois Democracy and Proletarian Dictatorship“ (Lenin’s theses)
5. The Berne Conference and the stance towards the socialist currents (Platten and Zinoviev)
6. The international situation and the policy of the Entente
7. Trotski’s „Manifesto of the Communist International“
8. The White terror
9. Election of the bureau

The delegates’ reports were then given: that of Albert (Eberlein) for Germany, Platten for Switzerland, Zinoviev for Russia, Sirola for Finland, Stange for Norway, Reinstein for the USA, Rudnyansky for Hungary, Katscher for Switzerland, Trotski for Russia, and Rutgers for Holland.

On March 3, 1919, the second day, the session began with the report by the Ukrainian comrade Rakovsky (Balkan Revolutionary Federation), followed by a report by Shrypnik (representing the Ukrainian CP), who described the revolutionary situation of the Ukrainian masses. Sadoul, a member of the French Communist group in Russia, commented on the situation in France. Feinberg, in Russia since June 1918, spoke of the situation in England.

Afterwards, the debates began on the “Platform of the International Communist Conference” with Albert and Bukharin as its presenters. This platform aimed to clearly and distinctly express the tasks, goals, and methods of the proletariat. It consisted firstly of a preface which characterized the bourgeoisie, capitalism, and its antagonisms. Then it divided into four parts:

1. The conquest of political power by the proletariat, through the destruction of the bourgeois State apparatus and the creation of the proletarian State apparatus.
2. Democracy and dictatorship: the dictatorship of the proletariat will be a transitory situation preceding the disappearance of classes, bourgeois democracy being no more than disguised dictatorship; by contrast, the soviet system links the masses to the organs of administration.
3. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the socialisation of the means of production.
4. The path to victory; all means, such as the revolutionary use of bourgeois parliamentarism must be subordinated to the war declared on the bourgeois governmental machine. The preliminary conditions for the victorious struggle of the proletariat are the break with the social democrats, of both Right and Center.

The day ended with the report by the Austrian CP’s representative, Gruber, who gave an enthusiastic description of the revolution in central Europe.

March 4, 1919 (third day) saw the continuation of the debate on the platform, which was adopted near-unanimously, with one abstention (that of the Norwegian CP). Lenin then read his twenty-two “Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. This was a denunciation of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy. Thus, thesis nine declared:

The history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has shown us since before the war what the famous “pure democracy” is under capitalism. Marxists have always said that the more evolved “pure” democracy is, and the more tormented, fierce, and openly-declared the class struggle becomes, the more the yoke of capital and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie are revealed in all their “purity” […] even in the most democratic republics, in reality we see the rule of terror and dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which shows itself overtly every time that it seems to the exploiters that capital’s power is spent.

Hence these theses emphasize that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the only defence against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and that there can be no half-measures. But they also show that these dictatorships are fundamentally distinguished by the fact that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the repression of the immense majority of the population, that is the workers, while the dictatorship of the proletariat is the suppression of a tiny majority of the population, that is, the exploiters. The form of the dictatorship is that of the power of the soviets in which the power of the whole State, the whole State apparatus, has for its permanent and only foundation the organization of classes who were oppressed by capitalism, that is the workers and semi-proletarians (peasants who do not exploit the labour of others).

The resolution concerning these theses affirms that the principal tasks of the communist parties, in all countries where soviet power does not exist, consists in:

1. Explaining to the broad masses of the working class the considerable importance of the political and historical need for the new democracy, of proletarian democracy, which must be substituted for bourgeois democracy parliamentarism.
2. Spreading and organizing the soviets among the workers in all branches of industry, among the soldiers and sailors, and among labourers and poor peasants.
3. Creating a solid Communist majority in the soviets.

Next, the proposal for proceeding to the foundation of the Third International was discussed. Since the previous evening, and after Gruber’s description of the revolution in central Europe, the supporters of the immediate proclamation of the Third International had counter attacked. The decision to consider itself as a simple preparatory conference had been taken on the first day, in the absence of many delegates, notably Rakovsky. The latter had insisted the evening before that the vote be taken again. The proposal was put forward by the representatives of the CP of Austria (Gruber), the Swedish Left Social Democratic Party (Grimlund), the Revolutionary Social Democratic Workers’ Federation of the Balkans (Rakovsky), and the Hungarian CP (Rudnyansky). Albert intervened to oppose the proposal, by arguing on the basis that true CPs only existed in a few countries, and that one couldn’t know who would associate themselves with the new international since the parties of the major western countries weren’t represented at the conference. Zinoviev responded by repeating that from the start of the meeting the Russian CP was for the immediate foundation of the Third international, but that the German comrades had insisted on putting off this foundation.

For him, the victorious advance of revolution was worth much more than the formal creation of CPs that the Germans required for the foundation of the Third International. The proposal was adopted unanimously, except for five abstentions including that of the German CP.

The work and discussions were thus conducted by the assembly as a congress of the Communist International. Eberlein declared that after his return to Germany he would strive to convince his comrades, in fact, he would not meet any opposition to the decision taken in Moscow (which ran counter to the mandate he had received from the Center) because the revolutionary upsurge had already changed people’s minds in Germany.

The day ended with the declaration of those who had attended the Zimmerwald conference that, following the dissolution of the Zimmerwald organization, the bureau of the Zimmerwald conference would be asked to send all its documents to the Executive Committee of the Third International (signed by Zinoviev, Rakovsky, Trotski, Lenin, and Platten). The resolution on dissolving the Zimmerwald grouping was adopted unanimously.

On March 5, 1919 (fourth day), the question dealt with was to do with “the Berne Conference and the position to be taken towards the socialist currents”, whose presenters were Platten and Zinoviev. The resolution passed affirmed that the Berne Conference in February 1919 was an attempt to re-animate the corpse of the Second International. The servile attitude of the conference showed that the social patriots had consciously declared themselves in favour of the maintenance of capitalist wage-slavery, and were ready to fool the working class by means of hollow reforms. The C.I. congress saw that the International which the Berne Conference was trying to reconstruct was a yellow, strike-breaker’s international which was, and could only continue to be, an instrument of the bourgeoisie.

Lao Chi-Tao, president of the Central Committee of the Union of Chinese Workers in Russia, then reported on the situation in China. And the day finished on point seven of the agenda: “The international situation and the Entente’s policy”.

On March 6, 1919 (fifth day), Trotski read his “Manifesto of the C.I. to the Proletarians of the World”. This was a magnificent analysis of the class struggle and bourgeois society from the time of the first manifesto. The following is an extract:

„Conscious of the world-historic character of their tasks, advanced workers have striven for an international association since their first steps to organize the socialist movement. The cornerstone was laid in 1864 in London with the founding of the First International. The Franco-Prussian War, out of which Hohenzollern Germany emerged, cut the ground from under the First International while at the same time giving impetus to the development of national workers’ parties. Already in 1889, these parties came together at the Paris Congress and created the organization of the Second International. But in that period, the center of gravity of the workers’ movement remained entirely on national soil, within the framework of the national State, based on national industry, and working within national parliamentarism. Decades of organizational and reform work created a generation of leaders who in their majority verbally acknowledged the programme of social revolution but renounced it in reality and became mired in reformism and in adaptation to the bourgeois State. The opportunist character of the Second International’s leading parties was completely exposed and caused the greatest debacle in world history at the moment when the course of events called for revolutionary methods of struggle by the workers’ parties. If the war of 1870 dealt a blow to the First International by revealing that the power of the united masses did not yet stand behind its revolutionary socialist programs, so too the war of 1914 killed the Second International by revealing that above the solidly welded masses stood parties that had become servile organs of the bourgeois State.

„This does not apply only to the social patriots, who today have openly gone over to the camp of the bourgeoisie and who have become its trusted and preferred agents and the reliable executioners of the working class. It also applies to the amorphous, unstable socialist center, which is now busy trying to revive the Second International, that is, to revive the narrow-mindedness, opportunism, and revolutionary helplessness of its leading elite. Groups such as the Independent Social Democratic of Germany, the current Socialist Party majority in France, the Menshevik group in Russia, the Independent Labour Party in Britain, and others are actually trying to take the place occupied before the war by the old official parties of the Second International, as before, they are coming forward with ideas of compromise and unity and thus are doing everything possible to paralyse the proletariat’s energy, prolong the crisis, and thereby intensify Europe’s suffering. The struggle against the socialist center is a necessary precondition for a successful struggle against imperialism.

„Rejecting the vacillation, lies, and rottenness of the outlived official socialist parties, we Communists, united in the Third International, consider ourselves the direct continuators of the heroic endeavours and martyrdom of a long succession of revolutionary generations, from Babeuf to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

„If the First International foresaw the road that lay ahead and indicated its direction; if the Second International assembled and organized millions of proletarians; then the Third International is the international of open mass action, the international of revolutionary realization, the International of the deed.

„Socialist criticism has sufficiently denounced the bourgeois world order. The task of the international Communist Party is to overthrow this system and construct in its place the socialist order.

„We call upon working men and women of all countries to unite behind the communist banner, under which the first great victories have already been won.

„Workers of the world: in struggle against imperialist barbarism, against monarchy, against the privileged classes, against the bourgeois State and bourgeois property, and against all forms and kinds of social and national oppression – unite! Under the banner of the workers’ councils, of the revolutionary struggle for power and the dictatorship of the proletarian, under the banner of the Third International, proletarians of all countries unite!“

Next came the question of the C.I.’s organization. In order to get under way without slowing down its activity, the congress immediately elected the necessary bodies, the idea being that the statutory constitution of the C.I. be deferred to the next congress on the bureau’s proposal. The leadership of the C.I. was vested in an Executive Committee (E.C.) composed of a representative from each Communist Party of the most important countries. Until the arrival of foreign representatives, the comrades of the country where the E.C. had its base, were entrusted with organizing the work. The E.C. elected a bureau of five people: Lenin, Trotski, Zinoviev, Rakovsky, and Platten.

Finally, Lenin brought the congress to a close with a speech which affirmed that the congress delegates only „had to register what the masses have already won in their revolutionary struggle.“ The little conference of March 1919 had the formidable historical task of raising the standard behind which the working class of the entire world must rally not, as in Paris in 1871, in order to storm heaven, but to storm bourgeois society as a whole.