Theses on the International Situation and the Tasks of the Comintern¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter presents a comprehensive Marxist analysis of the global conjuncture following the First World War, arguing that capitalism has entered a period of irreversible decay, making proletarian revolution not merely possible but historically necessary. The core argument is that the post-war revolutionary wave, despite its unprecedented amplitude—encompassing the overthrow of tsarism, factory occupations in Italy, and uprisings in Germany and Britain—failed to overthrow capitalism due to the elemental and insufficiently led character of the first phase. The partial defeats of 1920-21 (the Warsaw offensive, the Italian movement, the German March action) marked the end of this initial period and the beginning of a bourgeois counter-offensive.
The war fundamentally restructured the world economy, destroying Europe’s productive apparatus while boosting the United States and Japan, shifting the centre of world economy to America. The 1919-20 post-war boom is exposed as no genuine regeneration but an artificial prolongation of war conditions, built on fictitious capital, currency depreciation and speculation. The ensuing 1920 crisis is not a normal cyclical downturn but a deeper reaction to this fictitious prosperity. Europe’s productive forces have been declining for seven years, with England moving backwards industrially, France, Belgium and Italy irreparably ruined, and Germany being auctioned off, its workers reduced to the coolies of Europe. The United States, now the world’s creditor and leading exporter, cannot operate its super-developed apparatus at full capacity for lack of outlets, while Japan’s hothouse development proved inadequate. Colonial countries developed native industries, creating further difficulties for Europe. There is no restoration of stable equilibrium: Europe declines, the world market is disorganised, currencies are depreciated, and Soviet Russia’s exclusion deepens the disruption.
The war accelerated social differentiation: proletarianisation of intermediate classes and concentration of property in tiny cliques have made monstrous progress. Currency depreciation has redistributed national income against the working class and fixed-income groups, dispelling all hopes of peaceful democratic development. The class struggle will be intense and convulsive. A split between urban and rural bourgeoisie impairs the bourgeois state, while poor peasants are becoming proletarianised. Government and private employees have seen their position worsen more sharply than the proletariat, making them a potentially revolutionary factor. Capitalist Europe has lost its dominant world economic position, on which its class equilibrium rested. In the United States, concentration and class contradictions have reached their peak on a basis of feverish enrichment; the period of upswing will be followed by an extraordinary upswing of revolutionary struggle. Emigration from Europe to America and Australia is being blocked, shutting off this safety valve. In the Orient, vigorous capitalist development has created new social foundations for revolutionary struggle, with the young colonial proletariat, leading the peasant masses, an integral part of the world revolution.
The labour bureaucracy remains formally dominant in most countries, its ranks swollen and tightly knit, tied to the capitalist state. Below it sit better-situated workers who support the bureaucracy, followed by older skilled workers attached to traditional organisations. Millions of war-veteran workers are prepared to use weapons against the class enemy given serious preparation and firm leadership. New workers, especially women, bring both petty-bourgeois prejudices and impatient aspirations. Young workers are most receptive to communism. The unemployed, largely declassed, menace bourgeois order. The war worsened the working class’s position overall, though some groups prospered. The crisis has driven wage cuts and unemployment to unprecedented levels. Instability of living conditions is a key factor of revolutionary development.
The Comintern does not fix a date for revolution; it exploits the situation created by capitalism’s disrupted equilibrium. The difference with Social Democrats is that they help restore bourgeois equilibrium, while Communists aim to overthrow the bourgeois state. In Germany and Italy, Social Democratic and trade union leadership returned power to the bourgeoisie or failed to press revolutionary advantage. The revolutionary struggle is currently slowed, but capitalism’s curve moves downwards through temporary upswings, while revolution’s curve moves upwards through fluctuations. The Communist Party must lead defensive struggles, extend and deepen them, and transform them into decisive political struggles for the dictatorship of the proletariat.