On the Coming Congress of the Comintern¶
Core Argument¶
The Third International is not a mere arithmetic sum of national parties but a unified, independent organisation with precise revolutionary aims. Joining it demands subordination to a common leadership and the undertaking of fighting tasks, not the fulfilment of international etiquette. The Second International’s reciprocal relations among national parties were a shabby counterpart of bourgeois diplomacy, replaced by militarism during war. The International can only be created if its ranks are accessible to bodies genuinely permeated with proletarian revolt, requiring constant purging of false ideas and their bearers. Every organisation entering acquires the right to actively influence the theory and practice of other sections.
The French Socialist Party, unlike the German Independents who broke with their Scheidemanns, retains its chauvinist leaders—Thomas, Renaudel, Varenne, Sembat—in responsible posts. Led by Longuetists, it plays a counter-revolutionary role, instilling the idea that current economic disorder is unfavourable for working-class rule, thus imposing passive, dilatory tactics. Its departure from the Second International was a manoeuvre to deceive workers, not a renunciation of its methods. In France, rapprochement between the former majority and the Longuetist minority has eliminated serious ideological struggle, making admission more dangerous than for the German Independents.
A continued ‘denial’ of politics and the state by French syndicalism would capitulate to bourgeois politics. It is not enough to deny the state; it must be conquered to be surmounted. The struggle for the conquest of the state apparatus is revolutionary politics. The initiating minority placed above the mass unions by syndicalist theory cannot remain formless. If correctly organised, bound by internal discipline, and armed with correct doctrine, it becomes the Communist Party, standing above the syndicates and directing all their work. Syndicates grouping workers by industry cannot become organs of proletarian revolutionary rule; only the Soviets, embracing workers by district across all industries, can serve this purpose.
Hence the iron necessity of creating a French Communist Party that absorbs the revolutionary wing of the Socialist Party and the revolutionary detachment of syndicalism. The party must have its own independent, rigidly centralised apparatus, separate from both the Socialist Party and the CGT. French Communism’s current position as an internal opposition within both organisations makes it a non-independent factor, a negative supplement, depriving it of fighting power and direct ties with the masses. It must emerge from this preparatory stage by immediately building the centralised Communist Party and establishing daily newspapers in chief centres as organs of direct revolutionary agitation and political leadership, not abstract propaganda. Creating this combat party is a life-and-death question for the French proletariat’s revolutionary movement.