Manifesto of the Second World Congress¶
Core Argument¶
The Versailles settlement, far from establishing a new equilibrium, shattered the old European balance by eliminating Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany as independent world factors, reducing them to objects of plunder. The Entente's colonial programme now aims at overthrowing the Russian workers' republic, seizing its raw materials, and subjugating German labour under armed overseers. Among the victors, France has become slavishly dependent on England and America, playing the role of a larger Belgium; Italy cannot realise its imperialist ambitions; Japan stands on the verge of revolutionary crisis. Only Great Britain and the United States remain genuine world powers, locked in a ferocious rivalry—over oil and global dominance—that prepares a new world conflict. The League of Nations, intended as a world monopoly corporation for American capital, was converted by England into a diplomatic chancellery. American imperialism, beaten back in its first offensive, now prepares a rival league and a navy to surpass Britain's within three to five years.
Capitalism, the manifesto argues, is in terminal decline, with no possibility of economic restoration. The war destroyed the automatic discipline of wage labour; only social revolution can restore productivity by guaranteeing workers that their labour will improve their own welfare. Rising living costs constitute the main revolutionary ferment, while bourgeois relief payments are fraudulent, borrowing from the future to defer catastrophe. The United States cannot rescue Europe—its own raw materials are depleted, its industry narrowed by war, and its proletariat entering a revolutionary phase. The fuel and raw material question is international and solvable only through planned socialist production, requiring cancellation of state debts, overthrow of world plutocracy, and replacement of the Entente's Supreme Economic Council with a Supreme Economic Soviet of the world proletariat.
Soviet Russia, despite being the most backward country, has demonstrated communism's vast potentialities. It built a formidable Red Army, proving its superiority against both bourgeois-monarchist forces and imperialist-backed 'democracies'. Economically, it survived by seizing the means of exploitation, instituting planned economy, and waging a ruthless fight against speculation. State concentration of industry enables standardisation and socialisation of technology, removing obstacles to progress. Soviet Russia's struggle has merged with the struggle against world capitalism; a Soviet Germany united with Soviet Russia would have exceeded all capitalist states combined. The Communist International has proclaimed Soviet Russia's cause its own—the world proletariat will not sheathe its sword until Soviet Russia is a link in the World Federation of Soviet Republics.
The International rejects the charge that Communist intransigence provokes counter-revolution; revolution is an irreconcilable class struggle ending only in victory for one side. It demands leaders of mortal hatred toward bourgeois society, ready to lead an insurgent army. The International is the world party of proletarian uprising and dictatorship, with no aims separate from the working class, rejecting sectarian panaceas while refusing to sanctify or reject any form of organisation or struggle.