Invitation to the First World Congress¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter is the text of the formal invitation, issued on 24 January 1919, to convene the founding congress of a new revolutionary International. Its core argument is that the objective conditions of the epoch—the collapse of world capitalism and the accelerating pace of world revolution—demand the immediate creation of a unified, centralised fighting organisation to replace the bankrupt Second International. The document is not a theoretical treatise but a political act: a call to arms and a statement of the platform upon which the new International must be built.
The invitation makes several key claims. First, it declares that the era of capitalist disintegration has arrived, and that the only alternative to the destruction of European civilisation is the seizure of state power by the proletariat. This seizure is defined not as a parliamentary victory but as the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus and its replacement with a new proletarian apparatus of power: the dictatorship of the proletariat, concretely embodied in the system of soviets. The text explicitly counterposes this to “false bourgeois democracy,” which it denounces as a hypocritical form of rule by the financial oligarchy. The immediate economic tasks of this dictatorship are laid out in detail: nationalisation of large-scale industry and banks, confiscation of landed estates, monopoly of wholesale trade, and the introduction of workers’ management. Complete disarmament of the bourgeoisie and arming of the proletariat are presented as essential for defence and for assisting other national sections of the revolution.
The chapter draws heavily on the experience of the Russian Revolution and the programme of the German Spartacus League, which are cited as the twin foundations of the platform. It situates itself in the immediate aftermath of the First World War and the revolutionary wave it unleashed, explicitly referencing the danger of a counter-revolutionary alliance of capitalist states under the “hypocritical banner of the ‘League of Nations’.”
The polemical thrust is sharp and unambiguous. The old socialist and social-democratic parties are dismissed as “completely bankrupt.” The so-called ‘centre,’ led theoretically by Kautsky, is condemned as incapable of positive revolutionary action and “at times totally treacherous.” The only permissible attitude toward the open social-chauvinists is “ceaseless struggle.” Toward the centre, the tactic is to split away the revolutionary elements while ruthlessly exposing the leaders, with organisational separation deemed “absolutely necessary.” Conversely, the invitation calls for a bloc with revolutionary syndicalist elements and any proletarian groups moving in the revolutionary direction, regardless of prior party affiliation. The document concludes by proposing the name “Communist International,” arguing that Marx and Engels had already found “social-democrat” theoretically incorrect and that the collapse of the Second International makes the break imperative. The signatories include Lenin, Trotsky, and representatives of communist parties from across Europe and America, presenting the new International as an already-existing reality awaiting formal consolidation.