Comintern: Encyclopedia II - Comintern - Origins of the Communist International

Comintern - Origins of the Communist International

The origins of the Communist International are to be found in the split in the workers' movement that surfaced in 1914 with the beginning of the First World War, although divisions between revolutionary and reformist minded elements had been developing for some considerable time. For example, as far back as 1899, reformist or right wing elements in the socialist movement had supported the entry of French socialist Millerand into the government of the day. On the other hand, revolutionary or left wing elements were fiercely opposed to this development. Also of importance was the literary controversy over the publication of Eduard Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism, which espoused a reformist path to socialism and received powerful criticism from, among others, Karl Kautsky and the young Rosa Luxemburg.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 had the effect of radicalising many socialist parties, as did a number of General Strikes in pursuit of universal suffrage in Western European countries. At this point the Second or Socialist International appeared to be a united body that was growing at every election and in every advanced country. Karl Kautsky, aptly dubbed the Pope of Marxism, was at his most radical as the editor of the highly influential Die Neue Zeit (New Times), the theoretical journal of the massive Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) which was the flagship of the International.

However, by 1910, divisions were appearing in the left of Social Democracy (as the Marxists who dominated the International described themselves), and left-wing thinkers such as Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutch theoretician Anton Pannekoek were becoming ever more critical of Kautsky. From this point onwards then it is possible to speak of there being a reformist right, a centre and a revolutionary left within the International. Interestingly, from the point of view of later events, both the Menshevik and Bolshevik wings of the Russian Social Democracy were counted amongst the revolutionary left wing. The quarreling groups of emigres were not held in high regard by the leaders of the International and were unknown to the general public.

World War I was to prove the issue which finally and irrevocably separated the revolutionary and reformist wings of the workers movement. Despite massive majorities voting in favor of resolutions that stated the Socialist International would call upon the international working class to resist war should it be declared, within hours of the declaration of war almost all the socialist parties of the combatant states had announced their support for their own countries - the only exceptions being the socialist parties of the Balkans, Russia and tiny minorities in other countries. The socialist parties of the neutral countries for the most part continued to argue for neutrality and against total opposition to the war.

As before the war, the divisions within the socialist movement were between a revolutionary left, a reformist right and a centre which wavered between the two opposite poles. Amongst the most vociferous opponents of the war was Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik faction of Russian socialists who, observing the collapse of the Socialist International, declared that a new Third International had now to be constructed to take its place. It was Lenin who condemned reformist socialists as Social-Chauvinists (socialist in their words but chauvinist in their deeds) as well as much of the centre, which often opposed the war but refused to break party discipline and therefore voted war credits, as social-pacifists. This latter term was aimed in particular at Ramsay MacDonald (leader of the Independent Labour Party in Britain) who did in fact oppose the war on grounds of pacifism but did nothing to resist it.

Following Lenin's advice, the Russian Bolsheviks, who adopted the name "Communists", officially split from the Socialist International and founded the Third International - the Comintern.

A central policy of the Comintern was that Communist parties should be established across the world to aid the international proletarian revolution. They also shared the idea of democratic centralism, which essentially boils down to the principle that all revolutions must be based on "grass roots" efforts, but Comintern could intervene as neccessary. The Comintern Electronic Archives cites the organization as "The General Staff of the world revolution". [1]

The following parties and movements were invited to the First Congress of the Communist International:

• Spartacus League (Germany)
• The Communist Party (Bolshevik) Russia
• The Communist Party of German Austria
• The Hungarian Communist Workers' Party
• The Finnish CP
• The Polish Communist Workers' Party
• The Communist Party of Estonia
• The Latvian CP
• The Lithuanian CP
• The Belarusian CP
• The Ukrainian CP
• The revolutionary elements of the Czech social democracy
• The Bulgarian Social-Democratic Party (Tesnjaki)
• The Romanian SDP
• The Left-wing of the Serbian SDP
• The Social Democratic Left Party of Sweden
• The Norwegian Labour Party
• For Denmark, the Klassenkampen group
• The Communist Party of Holland
• The revolutionary elements of the Belgian Workers Party
• The groups and organisations within the French socialist and syndicalist movements
• The social-democratic Left of Switzerland
• the Italian Socialist Party
• The revolutionary elements of the Spanish SP
• The revolutionary elements of the Portuguese SP
• The British socialist parties (particularly the current represented by MacLean)
• The Socialist Labour Party (Britain)
• Industrial Workers of the World (Britain)
• The revolutionary elements of the workers' organisations of Ireland
• The revolutionary elements among the shop stewards (Britain)
• The Socialist Labor Party of the United States
• The Left elements of the Socialist Party of America (the tendency represented by Debs and the League for Socialist Propaganda)
• IWW (United States)
• IWW (Australia)
• Workers' International Industrial Union (America)
• The Socialist groups of Tokyo and Yokohama (Japan, represented by Comrade Katayama)
• The Socialist Youth International (represented by Willi Münzenberg)

For a party to join the Comintern, it had to accept the Twenty-one Conditions, which were intended to delimit revolutionary communists from the reformist and centrist forces which sought to join the Comintern in the wake of the success of the Russian revolution.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origins of the Communist International", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki