A major late piece by Zinoviev, written for the Comintern’s tenth anniversary, tracing the formation of the Third, Communist, International in the long struggle against war in the Second International.
‘War, Revolution, and the Birth of the Comintern’ by Grigory Zinoviev from Communist International. Vol. 6 No. 9-10. April, 1929.
THAT the birth of the Comintern was largely the result of the world imperialist war can be seen not only from chronological facts. Between the first world imperialist war and the rise of the new workers’ International, which has written on its banner the immediate realisation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is more than a chronological connection: there is a logical connection.
How and why did the Comintern arise from the world war? How and why did the fight against future imperialist wars become the axis of the whole policy of the new International? How and why was the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war able to rally to itself the entire vanguard of the international proletariat and become the chief slogan of the Comintern?
In the formation of each of the three Internationals—the first International of Marx, the Second International of the social-democrats, the Third, Communist International of Lenin—a certain part was played by wars. At all events, problems of foreign politics, which were chiefly connected with the danger of war, played an enormous part in the formation of each of the three Internationals. But in the birth of the Third International, war played an absolutely unique and decisive part.
The First International, as is well known, was founded in 1864; in the early seventies it had practically ceased to exist. What historical events preceded the formation of the First International, and what events brought its existence to a close? Chartism in England; the events of 1848 on the Continent; the European crisis of the fifties; the Italian war of 1859; the Crimean War; the emancipation of the peasantry in Russia; the war of the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein; the Austro-Prussian War; the Franco-Prussian War; and the Paris Commune—these are the most important historical events which prepared the ground for the formation of the First International, and then provided the field for its activities during the following ten years. The doctrine of Marxism was developed and completed in this period. Nevertheless, it did not have an undivided influence on the First International, in spite of the fact that Marx and Engels themselves were at the head of this International.
In one sense, it might be said that Chartism and the events of 1848 were the introduction to the activities of the First International; while the Paris Commune was the concluding chapter of the International—its swan song. Chartism and 1848 were the Overture to the Marx International; its concluding chord was the Paris Commune. Wars and revolutions alternated with each other during the whole of this period.
The Second International was born in 1880, and broke up in 1914, having existed in its original form for just a quarter of a century. At its cradle stood German social-democracy. It played a decisive part in the International for practically the whole of the twenty-five years. The defeat of the Paris Commune and the triumph of world reaction led to the fact that for fifteen years the proletariat had no international organisation of any form. Very slowly and by degrees the ground for the Second International was prepared.
The second half of the seventies, together with the eighties, may be called the “embryonic” period of the Second International, and the twenty-five years of its existence its period of maturity. What historical events fill this “embryonic period” of the Second International and the twenty-five years of its existence as a mature organisation?
The victory of the Third Republic in France; the Bismarck period in Germany; the wars of Serbia and Montenegro against Turkey (1876); the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878); the repressive law against the socialists in Germany; the entry of the British forces into Afghanistan (1879); the war between France and China about Tonquin (1883-1885); the war between Serbia and Bulgaria (1885-1886); the first stage in the development of capitalism in Russia; the war between Russian and Afghanistan (1885): between Japan and China about Korea (1894); the war between Spain and Cuba (1895); the Abyssinian War (1896); the war between Turkey and Greece (1897); the Spanish-American War about Cuba (1898); the Boer War (1899-1900); the war between the European Powers and China, i.e., the Boxer War (1900); the war of England against Tibet (1904); the war of Germany against the Herreros (1904-1905); the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905); the Russian revolution of 1905; the revolutionary movements in Turkey, Persia and China; the war between Italy and Turkey about Tripoli (1911-1912); the war of Serbia and Greece against Bulgaria (1913). The terrifically quick growth of German social-democracy on the lines of parliamentarism and strict legality, and then the events of the Russian revolution of 1905—these are the two factors which laid an indelible stamp on the whole period of the Second International. The first factor in connection with a series of other circumstances gradually led towards the degeneration of the Second International and strengthened its opportunism; the second factor in connection with the gradual removal of the revolutionary centre from the West to the East, tended to a differentiation in the Second International, prepared the revolutionary wing within it, and in this way prepared the breaking up of the Second International and the formation of the Comintern. By the beginning of the nineties, imperialism was completely developed. The series of wars enumerated above had the character of definitely expressed imperialist wars; they were more or less of a local character—they were not yet world wars. The historical position was such that the Second International had either to fight imperialism face to face, or to submit to it and become its tool. Owing to various influences, which are explained elsewhere, the Second International took the second alternative. This made the breaking up of the Second International inevitable.
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Looking back on the course of events, it is quite obvious that the Russian revolution of 1905 acted as the first big stimulus to the breaking up of the Second International. The important ideological fights at the Jena Congress of the German social-democratic party were entirely concerned with the Russian revolution of 1905, and had an enormous importance for the whole of the Second International. In 1907, at the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International, the left wing began to consolidate itself under the leadership of Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. The dividing line was the question of the attitude of the working class to the war, i.e., to the imminent world imperialist war, the chief features of which were already foretold in 1907.
Even Lenin, however, the most clear-sighted leader of the left wing, did not dream at that time of a complete and direct splitting up of the Second International. Everybody’s mind was entirely filled with the idea of working-class unity. The admiration for the Second International and its chief party, the German social-democratic party, was so great, that at that time nobody could dream of its splitting up. Lenin put this question only during the world imperialist war, when the fall of its chief parties, above all, of the German social-democratic party, was made apparent. Until then Lenin had worked first as a member of the Second International, and then, from 1904-1914, as a member of its highest organ, the so-called International Socialist Bureau.
Of course, it cannot be said that the position of the Bolsheviks in the Second International was in any way satisfactory. Already in 1904 (at the Amsterdam Congress), the Bolsheviks had been received into the Second International as “rebels,” “sectarians”—in a word, as “enfants terribles.” After the second congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (1903), the Mensheviks and especially their patriarch, P.B. Axelrod, who had the most important connections in the Second International, began to call Lenin a “semi-anarchist,” a “plotter,” a “follower of Nechaev,” and so on.
The Bolsheviks, for the first time, sent a special delegation of their own to the International Congress at Amsterdam (1904), in addition to the delegation where the Mensheviks were in the majority. Lenin did not go to Amsterdam himself. The Bolsheviks had the greatest majority. Lenin did not go to Amsterdam himself. The Bolsheviks had the greatest difficulty in obtaining permission to attend the Congress, and even then they had no vote.
At that time Bebel, the recognised leader of the German social-democratic party and the entire Second International, sent a letter to the Bolsheviks in which he invited them to place their “quarrel” with the Mensheviks before a court of arbitration to be nominated by the German social-democrats. All the sympathy of the leaders of the Second International was on the side of the Mensheviks. Even Rosa Luxemburg, who did not at first realise what the real difference was between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, took the side of the latter in many questions after 1903. The differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were understood, even by such people as Bebel, to be a simple fight between little groups of émigrés, a fight which had no special fundamental basis. Naturally Lenin, in a polite manner, declined the German social-democratic proposal for an inquiry by a court of arbitration. Such enormously important questions, as had to be decided by the revolution of 1905, and then by the revolution of 1917, could not, of course, be decided by any court of arbitration.
After the events of 1905, after the extremely important struggles of 1905-1906, when the tactics of the Bolsheviks took the lead, after the Mensheviks, with the defeat of the revolution of 1905, had begun to turn very energetically to the right-then some of the leaders of the Second International began to listen to the voice of the Bolsheviks, and even supported them in part. Rosa Luxemburg and the Polish social-democratic party which she led, tended, in 1905-1906, to the side of the Bolsheviks. In some fundamental questions–in the estimation of the counter-revolutionism of the Russian bourgeoisie, in the question of the relationship between the proletariat and the peasantry, in the question of the character of the Russian revolution–Kautsky himself supported the Bolsheviks (Rosa Luxemburg at that time had a very big influence on Kautsky, especially in questions of the Russian revolution, in which Kautsky recognised her authority).
Lenin was at the head of the Russian delegation at the Stuttgart Congress in 1907; for at the London Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party which had taken place a few weeks before, the Bolsheviks, supported by the Polish and Lettish social-democrats, had received the majority, though by a very slight margin. In the question of the neutrality of the trade unions, the Bolsheviks received full satisfaction at Stuttgart; for the Second International declared against neutrality. Matters were worse with the question of the struggle against war. The famous amendment of Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg was carried, but in a weakened form.
“I remember that a long conversation between Bebel and us preceded the final edition of this amendment. The first edition spoke much more directly of revolutionary agitation and revolutionary actions. We showed it to Bebel: he answered, “I cannot accept it, for then our party organisations would be dissolved by law, and we are not yet prepared for that while there is no serious cause.” After many consultations with lawyers, and many alterations in the text which would nevertheless express the same ideas legally, the final formula was found, and to this Bebel gave his consent.” This is what Lenin wrote in a note to an article by the writer of these lines (“Against the Current,” third edition, p. 494.)
The joined forces of the Russian Marxists and the German “orthodoxists” (their leader was Kautsky) were able to repel the attacks of the right, which was trying to impose its completely reformist point of view on the colonial question. Nevertheless, nearly half of the votes at Stuttgart supported the frank attitude of the social-chauvinists.
In 1908-1910 there was a certain rapprochement between Plekhanov and the Bolsheviks, and this, to a certain extent, strengthened the position of the Bolsheviks in the Second Inter- national, where the authority of Plekhanov stood high. At the international Congress at Copenhagen (1910) the Bolsheviks, together with Plekhanov, had the majority in the Russian delegation. Lenin and Plekhanov made endeavours to consolidate the left wing in the Second International into a more organised body. In Copenhagen Lenin took the initiative in calling together two conferences, at which the Russians, the French (Guesd- ists), a few Germans, Belgians (de Brouckère), Bulgarians (Blagoev), and Poles, were present. Nearly all the “Europeans,” however, invited to these conferences, showed great timidity, and no serious results were obtained. Indeed, the Copenhagen Congress itself was not very interesting. The internationalists gained a victory in the discussion on the inadmissibility of the division of trade unions on the basis of nationality (the famous dispute of the centralists and nationalists of Austria-Hungary). But worthless resolutions, against which Lenin fought, were passed on co-operation. (See Lenin’s Works, Vol. XI, Part 2, page 99.)
Lenin was not present at the Bâle Congress (1912), which was entirely concerned with the war danger. The resolutions passed at Bâle were on the whole satisfactory. Only the Bolsheviks, however, ever fought seriously for the Bâle manifesto against war. The Bâle Congress was the last before the beginning of the imperialist war.
Lenin attended the meetings of the International Socialist Bureau regularly, and took part in all the important discussions. His speech, for instance, on the question of admit- ting the British Labour Party into the Second International can be read in the collection of his works (Vol. XI, Part I). Generally Lenin was in the minority. At that time three people were all-powerful in the International Socialist Bureau–Bebel, Jaurès and Victor Adler. But even these leaders listened with respect to Lenin’s voice.
The fight between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in Russia was naturally reflected in the Second International. The weaker the Mensheviks became and the stronger the Bolsheviks, the more the Mensheviks turned to the leaders of the Second International, asking them for help against Lenin. Their favourite accusation against Lenin was that of sectarianism. By 1908 the Mensheviks were openly degenerating into liquidation. When, in 1907, Lenin emigrated a second time, he found a staff of Mensheviks under the leadership of P. Axelrod and Martov. Soon the Mensheviks succeeded in raising a campaign against the Bolsheviks in nearly the whole of the International press. From 1910 the hostility of the leaders of the Second International became more or less open. The International Socialist Bureau more and more frequently interfered in the fight between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; whenever possible, it came to the aid of the latter. This continued right up to 1914. The International Socialist Bureau supported the Menshevik liquidators against Lenin at their conference in August, 1912. In 1914 Vandervelde, as President of the International Socialist Bureau, went to Russia hoping to force the Bolsheviks to weaken in their fight against the Mensheviks. And finally, not very long before the commencement of the world war the International Socialist Bureau, at Brussels, summoned several conferences of all the so-called “currents” in the Russian Party, with the object of leaving the Bolsheviks in the minority, and so forcing them to submit to the Mensheviks. Even Rosa Luxemburg made the mistake of supporting the Second International in this question.
It is useless to try and guess what would have happened if there had been no world war whether the Bolsheviks would have remained for long within the Second International, or whether, owing to the fight over the “Russian” question, they would have had to break with the Second International. However that may be, the Second International became more persistent and more systematic in its support of the Mensheviks. There is nothing surprising in that. Just as the task of the Communist International is to support international Bolshevism against Menshevism so the task of the Second International, when opportunism became the ruling factor in it, was to support the Russian Mensheviks against the Russian Bolsheviks. It is quite possible, and even probable, that in 1914 the Second International might have delivered an ultimatum to the Bolsheviks. It is possible that in that case the Bolsheviks might not have rid themselves of the interference of Vandervelde and Co. as easily as they were able to reject Bebel’s arbitration suggestion in 1904-1905, in 1905 they were saved by the revolution. In 1914 the opportunists in the Second International were quite capable of insisting on obedience to their own terms. The Bolsheviks could certainly not submit in this question, for this would simply have meant surrendering to the Mensheviks. This was quite out of the question. But just at that time the world war broke out. On the 4th August, 1914, the German social-democratic leaders voted for war credits. The leaders of the French Socialist Party did exactly the same thing. The fire that had been smouldering for years suddenly blazed up. The end of the Second International became a fact. Then, and only then, did Lenin raise the question of smashing up the Second International.
“The Second International has died, vanquished by opportunism. Down with opportunism! Long live the Third International, purified from all deserters and opportunists! The Third International is the organisation of the proletariat to bring revolutionary pressure on the capitalist States; to wage civil war against the bourgeoisie of all countries for seizing political power; to bring about the victory of socialism.” So wrote Lenin in his article, “The Position and Problems of the Socialist International,” on the 1st November, 1914.
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The years 1905-1914 may be considered the embryonic period of the Third International. The first Russian revolution was bound to have sown the seeds for a real proletarian fighting International.
The defeat of the first Russian revolution and the victory of reaction the world over simply retarded the growth of these seeds. They were not lost, however; they shot up ten years later. 1905 in Russia; the revolutionary events, connected with the 1905 revolution, in China, Turkey and Persia; various local imperialist wars, which were a preface to the first world imperialist war; this war and its consequences; in particular, the sharpening of the national question, and the first spasmodic efforts of the colonial and semi-colonial countries to rise against their oppressors; the victory of the bourgeois revolution in Russia in March, 1917, and the victory of the great proletarian revolution in November, 1917; the fall of the monarchies in Germany and Austria- Hungary, accompanied by the first important proletarian revolutionary movements in Central Europe; the revolutionary events in Finland, Hungary, Italy, Turkey and the Balkans; the civil war which followed the proletarian revolution in Russia; the European imperialist blockade of the proletarian revolution; and the victorious fight of the proletarian revolution against this blockade these are the events which brought about the birth of the Communist International.
The most important of all these gigantic events were (1) the world imperialist war, and (2) the victory of the proletarian revolution in Russia. The doctrine of Marx, brilliantly continued by Lenin, lit the way for the proletarian vanguard in these bloody, but great, days. The Marxian teaching about war, in particular, became the doctrine of the Communist International.
“The masses of Europe and America are not illiterate, and they cannot look upon war in the old way. They ask: ‘Why were 10 million people killed and 20 million wounded?’ When the masses put this question they are bound to turn to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Communist International is strong because it is based on the lessons of the world imperialist war. In every country the experience of millions of people shows that the Comintern has taken the right standpoint, and its attraction now is a hundred times deeper and wider than before.” (Speech by Lenin on the anniversary of the Comintern, 6th March, 1920.)
Ten millions killed and 20 millions wounded–this is what it cost the proletariat to build the Comintern. The birth of the Comintern after the world war was inevitable, even if there had been no victorious Russian revolution. Without this victory the Comintern might have remained a comparatively small embryonic organisation for some years, an organisation of part of the proletarian vanguard. The victory of the Russian revolution gave the Comintern an enormous mass basis immediately, “a hundred times deeper and wider” than it would have been without the victory of the November revolution. It gave the Comintern the basis of a proletarian State; it gave it an immediate gigantic authority; it put it immediately in the centre of world politics.
At the moment when the imperialist war “turned” into a civil war, all that was best in the Second International “turned” into the Third International. Not long before the world war, the most important leaders of the Second International openly said that the proletariat would reply to an imperialist war with a world revolution. Bebel, in a well-known speech during the Moroccan conflict said: “Behind the great world war stands the great world revolution. For the bourgeoisie the twilight of the gods is approaching. The funeral dirge for the bourgeois State and bourgeois social order can already be heard.” And Otto Bauer in his “National Question” (1908) said the following: “There is no doubt that the approaching imperialist world war will bring in its train the revolution. Unquestionably, the imperialist world catastrophe will be the beginning of the socialist world revolution.”
Otto Bauer was not mistaken. The world imperialist war did indeed bring about the beginning of the world socialist revolution, but when the historical hour struck Otto Bauer, and nearly all the other leaders of the Second International, joined the counter-revolutionary army, and not the revolutionary army. The leaders of the Second International were right when they predicted that behind the great world war stood the great world revolution. They promised that at the head of this world revolution would stand the Second International. But as this promise was not fulfilled, as the Second International “went bankrupt,” it was obvious that history must produce another organisation which would fulfil this role. In the midst of the world war and the first proletarian revolution, the workers built a new International. This International took upon itself the historical mission which Otto Bauer and Co. had sworn to carry out.
The first statutes of the Comintern, which were drawn up with Lenin’s collaboration, and were accepted at the Second All-World Congress of the Comintern, said, “Remember the imperialist war! This is what the Comintern says first of all to every worker, wherever he lives and whatever language he speaks. Remember that, thanks to the existence of capitalist society, a small group of capitalists were able to force the workers of many countries to murder each other during four long years. Remember that the bourgeois war brought terrible famine and poverty into Europe and the whole world. Remember that, unless capitalism is overthrown, repetitions of such murderous wars are not only possible, they are inevitable.”
The First, and even the Second, Internationals were also built out of wars and big emancipation movements, and their activities were carried out whilst these wars and movements were continuing. Yet how much wider was the historical background which characterised the period when the Second International appeared on the world stage. The First International compares with the Third as the Paris Commune, which lasted a few weeks, compares with the dictatorship of the proletariat of the U.S.S.R., which has lasted over eleven years already. The Second International compares with the Third International as the local wars of the seventies and nineties compare with the world war of 1914-1918, as the German social-democratic party compares with the Bolshevik Party of Lenin.
“The Communist International, founded in March, 1915, in Moscow, the capital of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic,” the statutes say. “Solemnly declared before the whole world that it undertook to continue and complete the great movement begun by the first International Workingmen’s Association. The imperialist war has more than ever bound together the lives of the workers in one country with the lives of the workers in all countries. The imperialist war has once again confirmed what was written in the statutes of the First International: ‘The emancipation of the workers is not a local or a national problem, it is an international problem.’”
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Both the First and the Second Internationals considered that one of their chief tasks was the fight against Tsarist Russia. Marx and Engels, even at the very beginning of their political life, saw a sworn enemy in Russian Tsardom; an enemy who stood in the way of any progress and proved one of the most important obstacles to the proletarian revolution. This point of view explains their attitude towards the events of 1848 and their leadership in the First International. The Second International inherited this tradition from the First International, and at first was quite sincere about it. But when the world imperialist war broke out, the leaders of the decaying Second International did with the slogan: “Against Russian Tsarism” exactly what they did with a whole series of revolutionary slogans; they used it to mask their own treachery and to camouflage their desertion over to the side of “their own” bourgeoisie. The most important party in the Second International, the German social-democratic party, gave as its reason for its betrayal of the working class during the world war that, in supporting Wilhelm II, they were fighting Russian Tsarism.
The chief party of the Third International—we are speaking of the Bolshevik Party—entered history as a real plebeian anti-Tsarist Party, a Party that really overthrew and uprooted the Tsarist monarchy, and then “overthrew the Russian bourgeoisie.” It entered history as the first Party to pronounce and carry out the declaration that a revolutionary class in a reactionary war must desire the overthrow of its own government. The Third International was born at a happier moment than the two preceding Internationals, Tsarist absolutism, which for years had played the part of an international gendarme with regard to the world revolution, was wiped off the face of the earth. The Comintern, in its first statute, was enabled to write the following proud words: “The Communist International whole-heartedly and unconditionally supports the victories of the great proletarian revolution in Russia—the first victorious socialist revolution in the history of the world. It calls on the proletarians of all countries to imitate this example. The Communist International undertakes to support with all its strength every Soviet State, whenever it may spring up.”
The hegemony in the international working-class movement belonged first to England, and then to France; during the period of the Second International it was in the hands of the German social-democrats. With the formation of the Comintern, which grew out of the world war and the Russian revolution, the hegemony of the international working-class movement passed over to Russia.
“It thus happened,” wrote Lenin, “that the hegemony in the revolutionary proletarian International went over for a time—for a short time, of course— to the Russians; just as in different periods of the nineteenth century it belonged to the English, then to the French, and then to the Germans.
Whilst the great bourgeois revolution was taking place in France, and was making great historical changes in the whole continent of Europe, England, where capitalism was much more highly developed than in France, stood at the head of the counter-revolutionary coalition. The English working-class movement at that time was in many ways a brilliant forerunner of Marxism.
When the first mass and politically organised proletarian revolutionary movement, Chartism, was taking place in England, on the Continent weak bourgeois revolutions were taking place, whilst in France the first great civil war between proletariat and bourgeoisie broke out. The bourgeoisie, in different ways and separately, smashed up each national proletarian movement.
The strength of the French proletariat seemed to be exhausted after the two heroic and historically important insurrections of the workers against the bourgeoisie in 1848 and 1871. The hegemony in the International of the working-class movement passed over to Germany in the seventies, when Germany was economically more backward than England and France. And when Germany caught up these two countries economically, i.e., in the second decade of the twentieth century, then at the head of the model Marxist working-class party of Germany, appeared a group of shameless scoundrels—the dirtiest scoundrels who ever sold themselves to capitalism, from Scheidemann and Noske to David and Legien, the most despicable hangmen in the service of the monarchy and the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.” (Lenin, “The Third International and Its Place in History,” Vol. VII pp. 183-184.)
Those who, like Brandler and Thalheimer to-day, consider that the supremacy of the C.P.S.U. in the Comintern is a “misfortune,” who only want to talk with the Russian Communists as a “power with a power,” or a “State with a State,” have forgotten Lenin’s words. The first victorious proletarian revolution must not for a moment forget its international duties. And the international proletarian revolutionary cannot feel as a “yoke” the lead given by the victorious proletarian revolution in the International.
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The world imperialist war brought a load of misfortune in its train, but it also brought the beginning of the world civil war and the socialist revolution immeasurably nearer, and thus
brought humanity nearer to its emancipation from the shame and yoke of capitalism.
Marx wrote: “Only at a period when there will no longer be classes and class antagonisms will social evolutions cease to be political revolutions. Until then, on the eve of every complete change in the social order the last word in social science will be war or death, bloody struggle or annihilation–such is the inevitable question.”
Until 1914 all the official leaders of the Second International shared, or pretended to share, these views of Marx. We have already quoted the declarations of Otto Bauer and Bebel. The chief theorist of the Second International, K. Kautsky, has written pages to explain these same truths. Even in his works, “The Social Revolution,” “The Road to Power,” etc., Kautsky, very convincingly and irrefutably, showed the connection between war and revolution. But when the Russian proletarian revolution did come, in direct connection with the world imperialist war, Kautsky refused to “accept” this revolution, and declared it to be “unlawful.”
“Economic thought and economic understanding,” Kautsky began to moan, “have gone clean out of the heads of all classes. The long war has taught the masses of the proletariat to scorn economic conditions and to believe in the all-mighty power of violence.” Lenin poked fun at Kautsky for these two “little points” of our “greatly-learned” man. “We expected,” writes Kautsky, “that the revolution would come as a product of proletarian class war; and this revolution came as a result of the military downfall of the ruling systems in Russia and Germany.” “In other words, this wise man expected a peaceful revolution. Mr. Kautsky has got so muddled up that he has forgotten what he wrote before, when he was a Marxist; he wrote that, in all probability, a war would be the cause of the revolution.” (Lenin.)
Leninism, as the guide in the international working-class movement, is particularly concerned with problems of war. Lenin continued the work of Marx in all branches of economics, politics, and science. But in no subject, perhaps, does this role of Lenin, as the direct follower of Marx, appear so clearly of war, his attitude to it, and in the problems as in the question of war; in his explanation of the tactics of the world proletariat during a war, etc.
In one of his letters to Engels, Marx writes, “Where is our theory that the organisation of labour depends on the means of production more clearly proved than in the human–Marx gave the name “slaughter industry” of “human-slaughter industry” to that industry which deals with the murder of human beings, i.e., war. The works of Marx and Engels on war alone are sufficient to show how great were the services of these founders of scientific Communism.
The problems of war play an important part in Leninism, which is Marxism. When Lenin had to consider war only from the theoretical and historical philosophical standpoint he kept entirely to the spirit and letter of the teachings of Marx and Engels; for example, against Lassalle. But in 1904-1905, when he was already the recognised leader of the Bolsheviks, he had independently to consider the question of a new concrete war in a new concrete historical situation–we are speaking of the Russo-Japanese War. And the very first important work of Lenin during this period (“The Fall of Port Arthur”) is so remarkable that, looking back, we can say that nearly all that Lenin said about war and the proletarian revolution during the world imperialist war, he put into this article. Anyone who reads the article, “The Fall of Port Arthur,” will agree that it is the work of a genius. Every word in this article is of the highest importance even now. Lenin wrote the following in 1905, remember!–on the fall of Port Arthur:
“Even though it took no part in the war, the European bourgeoisie feels humiliated and depressed. This catastrophe implies a gigantic acceleration in the development of world capitalism, and the course of history; and the bourgeoisie knows, from bitter experience, that such an acceleration implies the acceleration of the social revolution of the proletariat. The Western European bourgeoisie felt so peaceful in the stagnant atmosphere under the wing of the ‘powerful empire’ when all of a sudden some ‘secret youthful’ power dared to disturb this atmosphere and smash down the shelter.
“Yes, the bourgeoisie of Europe has something to fear, and the proletariat may rejoice. This catastrophe of our worst enemy does not only imply the approach of freedom in Russia, it is the sign of a new revolutionary wave of the European proletariat.
“Progressive Asia has struck an irreparable blow at reactionary and backward Europe.” (Vol. VI, p. 35.)
This quotation is the “embryo” of practically the whole of Lenin’s future attitude towards war and the world revolution.
Is this not amazing?
A large number of bourgeois governments for tactical reasons openly sympathised with the victory of Japan over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. The part played by the “friend” of Nicholas Romanov, Wilhelm II, in this business was nothing if not equivocal. The usual noise in the newspapers went on about the fall of Port Arthur, and every bourgeois Power and group of Powers looked on this event from its own particular diplomatic point of view. And Lenin–the only man in the whole world–was able to understand what the alarm of the European bourgeoisie signified; of the bourgeoisie that felt “humiliated and crushed” as a result of the first blow struck by progressive Asia (capitalistically-progressive Asia), against reactionary Europe. Yet this was at a time when Europe and America were “model bourgeois States” and the foundation of the world bourgeoisie seemed as firm as a rock! In the fall of Port Arthur–the stronghold of the Far East–Lenin was able to see the imminent fall of Russian Tsarism and the acceleration of the course of history towards the proletarian social revolution.
In this article Lenin crossed swords for the first time with national reformism in the war question. And here again, as we shall see, we have the “embryo” of Lenin’s future attitude towards social-chauvinism and social-reformism.
Such brilliant articles by Lenin as “The Fall of Port Arthur” ideologically prepared the future Communist International. The part played by the Bolshevik Party in 1905, and Lenin’s monumental theoretical works. from 1905-1917 ideologically prepared the Communist International.
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The First International was born during the struggle between Marxism and whole series of other doctrines in the working-class movement that stood on quite a different theoretical basis.
Marxism did not strengthen its position immediately by any means. Marxism, during the first half-century of its existence (beginning with the forties), was fighting against theories that were fundamentally hostile to it. In the first half of the forties Marx and Engels fought the radical Young Hegelians, whose standpoint was that of philosophical idealism. At the end of the forties began the struggle against Proudhonism, i.e., a struggle over economic doctrines. The fifties saw the end of this struggle; the criticism of parties and doctrines that sprang up in the stormy year of 1848. In the sixties the battle was removed from the field of theory into a field that stood nearer to the direct working-class movement: the expulsion of Bakuninism from the International. At the beginning of the seventies the Proudhonist Mühlberger made his appearance in Germany, and at the end of the seventies the positivist Dühring. But neither of these had any influence on the proletariat. All other theorists of the working-class movement were henceforth vanquished by Marxism.
This is the “calendar” of events which Lenin gave in his work, “Marxism and Revisionism.”
The Third International, the Lenin International, sprang up at a time of a great crisis of socialism. This crisis grew up at a time (this is the characteristic feature of this crisis) of an almost universal recognition (in words) of Marxism in the international working-class movement. By the nineties of last century the victory of Marxism in its essential points was complete; at the end of the nineties, immediately after the death of Engels, a sharp struggle within Marxism began; revisionism sprang up and gradually took the lead in the Second International; by 1914 it had degenerated into social patriotism.
The very formation of the Communist International implied a fight for Marxism. At the same time the formation of the Comintern implied the universal triumph of Leninism, i.e., revolutionary Marxism in the epoch of reaction and imperialism.
It was the world imperialist war that sharpened and pitilessly revealed the crisis of socialism, which had been ripening within the Second International during the peaceful organic period of 1889-1914. It was, therefore no coincidence that the revolutionary Marxist, or Leninist, which is the same thing, attitude towards the war was the decisive factor in the birth of the Comintern.
The crisis brought on by the world imperialist war was so great that it not only broke up the socialist camp: it broke up the anarchist and syndicalist camps as well. The attitude towards the imperialist war, towards patriotic defence during the war, towards the question of revolutionary struggle against the war–this was the natural dividing line that sprang up in the whole of the working class movement with the beginning of the imperialist war. That is why Lenin, when he was founding the Communist International on the basis of organised Communist Parties, invited into the ranks of the Comintern those anarchists who had spoken against “patriotism” in the imperialist war, and were ready to wage revolutionary war against it, he invited such groups as the “Industrial Workers of the World” (a syndicalist group), and the Shop Stewards’ Committee in England, and so on; as long as these groups kept in touch with the mass working-class movement and were sincerely prepared to support the struggle against the war.
But the basis of the Comintern was homogeneous enough from the very beginning of its existence. Its foundation was the iron Bolshevik Party which has always been true to Marx and Lenin. From the very beginning Leninism was its ideological basis. The historical conditions at the time of the formation of the Comintern were such that Leninism always had a much more firm and unmixed influence on it than Marxism had in the First International of Marx.
The Communist International was built in the fire of the imperialist war. Zimmerwald and Kienthal were but steps in the preparation for the Comintern; they were not very important steps either. The Russian revolution and then the revolutionary events in Germany in 1918-19, were the decisive factors. The Communist International came into being when the transformation in a sixth part of the globe of the imperialist war into a civil war, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, became facts.
The Bolsheviks all the world over consider that new imperialist wars, more bloody and more reactionary than the Great War of 1914-18, are inevitable, unless the proletariat rises before, and a victorious proletarian revolution in the most important countries averts it. “The first Bolshevik revolution,” says Lenin, saved the first hundred millions from the fire of the world imperialist war and the horrors of the imperialist butchery. The greatest “ambition” of world Bolshevism is to save humanity from further world butcheries, i.e., to prevent the bourgeoisie from being able ever again to throw humanity into new imperialist wars.” If the Comintern always succeeds in acting in the spirit of Marx and Lenin, and if it always has the support of the great masses of the world proletariat then, perhaps, just as imperialism will be about to set light to a new imperialist war, we shall be able to stay its hand. Who will say that this is impossible? And if Bolshevism is successful in this, how superb will the general “balance” be! One victorious revolution will avert a great imperialist war, and will straight away recover all the “expenses” of the proletarian revolution all over the world: the expenses” in human beings and material riches. These are the dreams of the “barbarian”–Bolsheviks, the “dictator” Communists. That is why they have the right to expect all honest members of the world proletariat to give their wholehearted support to the U.S.S.R., the defender of peace, and to the Comintern, the collective organiser of the proletarian revolution, one of the chief tasks of which is to prevent further wars. The Communist International was born in the world imperialist war in order to be able, through the proletarian revolution, to prevent new imperialist wars. This is not a paradox; it is the living dialectics of history, it is Marxism-Leninism in action.
But, of course, the Comintern must be prepared for a worse alternative. New proletarian revolutions are possible without new wars. But new imperialist wars will not be possible without new proletarian revolutions.
The bourgeoisie of the world knows that it is playing with fire. Therefore it will not risk having new wars at once: it will carefully prepare for them. The Comintern must keep a careful watch on every movement of the hands of the bourgeoisie, and be prepared for the imperialists to be successful in starting a new war.
There is no doubt that imperialism is leading humanity into a new cycle of wars. Lenin considered it very probable that the Soviet Union might have to go through a second cycle of wars, in which, once again, the fate of the Soviet Power would be decided. The Second International as represented by its official leaders will certainly be on the side of the bourgeoisie. In the first of these stormy events the Comintern will have, once again, to prove that it is a proletarian International. The proletarian dictatorship in the U.S.S.R. and the whole Comintern must show the whole world that they will do everything to prevent a new imperialist war; and if, in spite of this, it will break out, that they will do everything to overthrow the capitalist class. The Communist International was born in the World War; and its fate will be decided once again in a new war.
The ECCI published the magazine ‘Communist International’ edited by Zinoviev and Karl Radek from 1919 until 1926 irregularly in German, French, Russian, and English. Restarting in 1927 until 1934. Unlike, Inprecorr, CI contained long-form articles by the leading figures of the International as well as proceedings, statements, and notices of the Comintern. No complete run of Communist International is available in English. Both were largely published outside of Soviet territory, with Communist International printed in London, to facilitate distribution and both were major contributors to the Communist press in the U.S. Communist International and Inprecorr are an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.
PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/ci/vol-6/v06-n09-n10-apr-1929-CI-riaz-orig.pdf
