Chapter 1: The Founding Conference of the Communist International

The First World War, the betrayal of social democracy organized in the Second International, and the revolutionary wave which spread through Europe and the entire world between 1916 and 1923 were the factors that prompted the birth of the great Communist Party, the Communist International; an organization which represented the final historical result of the world proletarian experience. The moment had finally arrived for the practical realization of the watchword outlined by the Paris Commune and clarified by Marx: dictatorship of the proletariat – the one and only way to smash the yoke of bourgeois society on humanity as a whole.

From 1914 onwards, particularly after the March 1919 congress in Moscow, it became clear that the Bolsheviks were expressing a marvellous synthesis of all the experiences and theoretical baggage of the workers’ movement from the 1848 Manifesto onwards. This was due both to their theoretical clarity, and to their position at the head of the Russian revolutionary movement, which would accomplish concretely and physically the dictatorship of the proletariat under the form of the Soviets.

Confusion and infantilism still prevalent amongst the revolutionaries of other countries, who, as often as not, would find themselves bypassed by the revolutionary instinct of the masses in action, and only propelled into action by their gigantic push forward. Only the Italian left (already arisen in Naples before 1914 in response to the evident degeneration of local socialism, immersed in opportunism and brazen electoralism) was gradually compelled, slowly but surely, to carve out a solid theoretical path and clear practice – and arrive at the same positions as the Bolsheviks. It is in fact remarkable to note how the Italian Left, in all its writings from 1914 to 1918, had already clearly stated the same positions and watchwords as the Bolsheviks, and how at the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920, the two currents would again find that total agreement existed as regards theoretical vision, both programmatic and tactical, and in their analysis of the world situation.

Having asserted that we totally agreed with the Russian revolutionaries on the key issues, we certainly don’t intend to gloss over those differences which are caricatured so often by corrupt historians. And of those differences that did exist between us and the Bolsheviks, we will never cease to insist that they were of a secondary character and concerned a low-priority question discussed at the Second Congress, namely the parliamentary question. Both we and the Russian comrades recognized at the time that the issue was not one of principle. The Bolsheviks, like us, were engaged in a vigorous fight against one of the weak points of many „left-wing” revolutionaries – infantilism and theoretical immaturity; anti-parliamentarism on principle was their target as well as ours. We do not however deny that later on, points of disagreement unfortunately multiplied. Our analysis of the damaging effect that the use of electoralism would have on the workers’ movement would however prove correct, as indeed, particularly from 1926 on, our immediate denunciation of the erroneous tactics of the Third Congress of the Communist International would be tragically borne out by the degeneration of this international organization and its destruction by the Stalinist counter-revolution.

The continuation of this work will assume the task of demonstrating how the Italian Left, in conjunction with the Bolsheviks as always, and, united and disciplined with the International, resolutely made its voice heard in the attempt to bar the way to opportunism. Though unable to succeed in this task – with the International degenerating and the Bolsheviks assassinated – it remained, and it remains to this day, even in the present counter-revolutionary desert, the sole inheritor of the experience and the Marxist theoretical knowledge of the international workers’ movement.

Historical Necessity

All the historical events immediately before the First World War, the open betrayal of social democracy, from 1914 onwards, and the deluge of the revolutionary wave in Europe and the rest of the world, all these contributed to show how the foundation of the Communist International had become a matter of historical necessity.

In the ten-year period preceding the First World War, virtually all the socialist parties had adopted positions which travestied the Marxist doctrine and its revolutionary praxis. A long period of relatively peaceful development of capitalism had given rise to the catastrophic theory that Marxism be abandoned for that of an illusory, peaceful, and gradual evolution to socialism. Eventually even the necessity for class-war was denied. From being instruments for overturning the bourgeois regime, the parties of the Second International had become factors in ensuring its stability, and along with proletarian economic organizations the best instruments for capitalism to lead the masses into the imperialist war.

If the war had served to demonstrate the conservative and pro-bourgeois nature of social democracy, it would be the Russian Revolution and the proletarian movements which would completely unmask its function as executioner and gravedigger of proletarian emancipation. Faced with the danger of a proletarian assault, social democracy would unhesitatingly renege on its democratic and pacifist philosophy, becoming (both in coalition and completely „Socialist Governments”) violent and dictatorial in confrontations with the working class and communists.

Whilst it is true that up to the outbreak of the imperialist war, reformists and revolutionaries had been able to coexist in the same party, this was not the case once the social democrats had definitively passed over to the ranks of the bourgeoisie. Now revolutionaries were obliged to accomplish the historical task of breaking with the reformists, and creating new parties, and a new International founded on a strictly revolutionary Marxist basis – precisely to be rid of the disease of social democracy, and to be able to place itself at the head of the mass-movement.

On the day after the official foundation of the International, Lenin explained its place in history in an article entitled The Third International and its Place in History. (Collected Works, L & W, vol. 29)

„The Third International has been founded in a world situation that does not allow prohibitions – petty and miserable devices of the Entente imperialists or of capitalist lackeys like the Scheidemanns in Germany and the Renners in Austria – to prevent news of this International and sympathy for it spreading among the working class of the world. This situation has been brought about by the growth of the proletarian revolution, which is manifestly developing everywhere by leaps and bounds. It has been brought about by the Soviet movement among the working people, which has already achieved such strength as to become really international.

„The First International (1864-72) laid the foundation of an international organization of the workers for the preparation of a revolutionary attack on capital. The Second International (1889-1914) was an international organization of the proletarian movement whose growth proceeded in breadth, at the cost of a temporary drop in the revolutionary level, a temporary strengthening of opportunism, which in the end led to the disgraceful collapse of this International.

„The Third International emerged in 1918, when the long years of struggle against opportunism and social chauvinism, especially during the war, led to the formation of communist parties in several countries. Officially, the Third International was founded in its First Congress, in March 1919, in Moscow. And the most characteristic feature of this International, its mission of fulfilling, of implementing the precepts of Marxism, and of achieving the age-old ideals of socialism, and the working-class movement – this most characteristic feature of the Third International has manifested itself immediately in the fact that the new, third, „International Working Men’s Association” has already begun to develop, to a certain extent, into a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

„The First International laid the foundation of the proletarian, international struggle for socialism. The Second International marked a period in which the soil was prepared for the broad, mass spread of the movement in a number of countries.

„The Third International has gathered the fruits of the work of the Second International, discarded its opportunist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois, and petty-bourgeois dross, and has begun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat. The international union of parties, leading the most revolutionary movement in the whole world, the movement of the proletariat to overthrow the yoke of capital, now has an unprecedented solidity: many Soviet republics embodying, on the international scale, the dictatorship of the proletariat, his victory over capitalism. The universal historical significance of the Third International, the Communist International, is that of having begun to put into practice Marx’s greatest slogan, the slogan that takes stock of the evolution of socialism and the workers’ movement. for a century, the slogan that has been expressed as follows: dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The historical duty incumbent on the Third International was therefore to bring to fruition the watchword launched by Marx after the Paris Commune of 1871: „dictatorship of the proletariat” – the end point of the evolution of the workers’ movement: And, with such an aim, to found the International Party – navigator of the world revolution.

In the text we have already cited, Lenin continually affirms that „following the Paris Commune a second epoch-making step was taken” with „Soviet, or proletarian, democracy” which „for the first time in the world created democracy for the masses” by repressing the „freedom” of the exploiters and their accomplices, since what is bourgeois democracy but freedom for the rich. For Lenin, the Soviets are the new form that the dictatorship of the proletariat must take in the world revolution. On March 5, he wrote an article in Pravda entitled “Won and Recorded” (Collected Works, L & W, Vol 28) which he ended thus:
„The founding of the Third, Communist International heralds the international republic of Soviets, the international victory of communism.”

The Letter of Invitation to the Congress

For the Left of the workers’ movement, the collapse of the Second International and the necessity of separating from opportunism were obvious from August 1914 onward. Nevertheless, there remained profound disagreements over the issue of when the initiative would have to be taken to found the new International. In 1916, the Zimmerwald Left, supporting the rapid foundation of the Third International, remained weak and only gathered a handful of militants around the Bolshevik nucleus. In 1917, the sufferings of the war and the victory of the Russian Revolution would radicalise the situation.

Immediately on his arrival in Petrograd, Lenin made it the first duty of his party to constitute the new International (point seventeen of the “April Theses”), and in January 1918, an „international conference”, grouping mainly Latvians and Scandinavians, took place in Moscow and declared itself in favour of the rapid convocation of „an international socialist congress”. In the ensuing months, the label „social-democratic” would be abandoned by the Bolshevik party, and the Communist Parties of Latvia and Finland are founded. In January 1919, the Communist Party of Germany is born.

The British Labour Party initiative of convoking an international conference at Lausanne – to breathe new life into the Second International – provoked a lively response from the Bolsheviks, and in December they prepared a political document for the convocation of the „International Socialist conference” on the basis of the Bolshevik and Spartacist programmes.

This political document would be completed on December 31, 1918 so as to be handed over to the Spartacist representative who’d arrived in Russia, just before the founding congress of the German Communist Party.

The Bolsheviks in fact held the foundation of the German Communist Party to be a fact of crucial importance, and on January 21, 1919, in his open letter to the workers of Europe and America, Lenin would declare that: „As soon as the Spartacist League gave itself the name Communist Party of Germany, then, the foundation of the Communist International – authentically proletarian, authentically internationalist – became a fact. This foundation has not yet been formally consecrated, but in reality, the Third International exists from now on.”

The definitive document, the Letter of Invitation to the Congress, drafted by Trotski, would be submitted to an international meeting (end of January 1919) where it was approved and signed by representatives of the Russian, Polish (foreign bureau), Hungarian (foreign bureau), Austrian (foreign bureau), Latvian, and Finnish parties, the Revolutionary Social-Democratic Federation of the Balkans, and the American S.L.P.

The provisional date for the international congress was February 15, and the place chosen, Berlin. But, as we know, the meeting eventually took place in Moscow, in March 1919.

The letter of invitation to the congress began as follows:

„The undersigned organizations and parties consider the convocation of the First Congress of the new international to be an urgent necessity. In the course of the war and the revolution, the complete failure of the old social-democratic and socialist parties, together with the Second International, has been demonstrated in striking fashion. The intermediate elements of the old social democracy (called 'center’) have shown their incapacity for effective revolutionary action. But, in addition to this, we are today seeing the delineation of the contours of the true revolutionary international. The very rapid growth of the world revolution, which constantly poses new problems; the danger of the suffocation of this revolution by the alliance of capitalist States against the revolution, under the hypocritical banner of the League of Nations; the attempt of the social-traitor parties to reunite and help their governments and bourgeoisies yet again, in order to betray the working class, after being granted a mutual 'amnesty’; finally, the extremely rich revolutionary experience already acquired, and the world character of the entire revolutionary movement; all these circumstances oblige us to put the question of the convocation of an international congress of the revolutionary proletarian parties on the agenda of the discussion.”

Thereafter, the letter was divided into three parts. The first part concerned the goals and the tactics drawn up on the basis of the programmes of the Spartacist League and the Russian Communist Party: the present period is that of the collapse of the world capitalist system; the tactics of the proletariat consist, at present, in seizing State power by destroying the bourgeois State apparatus and organizing a new apparatus of proletarian power/proletarian dictatorship; the power of the workers’ councils or the workers’ organizations is the concrete form of the proletarian State.

The second part was concerned with the relationship to the “socialist” parties: implacable struggle against the social patriots, break with the Center – which had Kautsky as its theoretician following his attempt to detach the revolutionary elements; the necessity of winning over any group which displayed an evolution towards the revolutionary current. The letter continued with a list of the thirty-nine parties, tendencies and groups invited to the congress.

Finally, the third part dealt with matters of organization, and the question of the party’s name.

The Founding Congress, Moscow, March 2‑6, 1919: The Founding Proclamation

In besieged and starving Russia, only a small group of delegates reached the congress. Thus, the Moscow assembly was not very representative, and it would have been easy to commit errors of judgement as regards the international situation. Fifty-one delegates took part in the various meetings, but many of them were simply Bolshevik militants unaware of the global situation; the same applied to the communist parties of Poland, Latvia, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Byelorussia, Armenia, etc. The same was true of the group of Germans in Russia, and for the representatives of the “communist groups” formed in Russia two years before, since these were in reality foreign sections of the Russian Communist Party: the Czech, Bulgarian, Yugoslavian, French, Chinese, and Korean groups. Only a few really came from abroad, namely Platten and Katscher, the two Swiss delegates, the German Eberlein (pseudonym Albert) the Norwegian Stange, the Swede Grimund and the Frenchman Gilbeaux (who had lived in Switzerland for years). There was no representative from Italy.

On the other hand, the stance taken by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) posed a large problem for the Bolsheviks. Based on the positions of Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches, the Center of this party was opposed to the immediate foundation of the Third International, judging it to be premature in the absence of the truly representative parties of Western Europe and a well-defined platform.

The attitude of the German party was held by the Russian leaders to be of decisive importance, because an international could not be constituted on the basis of one great party such as the Russian Communist Party. The German CP, therefore, came to be regarded as the second foundation stone, and its stance obliged the Bolsheviks to retreat, and to put off the planned proclamation to a later date; this is clearly evidenced by the work, speeches and voting of the first two days of the conference. Yet on the third day, there occurred a sudden turnaround when Rakovsky and others made a proposal calling for the proclamation of the Third International, and therefore, for a return to the voting of the first day.

The intervention of the Austrian delegate Gruber, who arrived on the second day and gave an enthusiastic description of the revolution in central Europe, certainly had a decisive effect. Similarly, Eberlein had affirmed on the first day that a victorious German revolution was imminent (on the same day that Noske dispatched his Freikorps to re-establish order in Berlin!).

For the Bolsheviks, the proclamation of the International whose necessity they had proclaimed for five years, was above all tied to the revolutionary movement and its rhythm of global development. Isolated from the rest of the external world as they were, and equipped only with what scanty information they could gather, yet they would have the magnificent intuition that the hour for the proclamation had struck. They would have to sweep away any trace of reticence in the other delegates, above all those of the German delegate, “to unfurl the communist banner” in order to assemble the revolutionary troops in movement behind a world party!

In the weeks and months which followed, all the revolutionary movements would rally behind the Communist International, and prove that the formidable decision taken by this small conference in March 1919 was correct.