Communism vs. Social-Patriotism

quote of the issue

We reprint below excerpts from the “21 Conditions” for the admission of parties into the Third (Communist) International (CI), adopted by the CI’s Second Congress in 1920. At the onset of World War I, the overwhelming majority of the leaders of the Second International went over to the side of their “own” bourgeoisies. This provoked sharp opposition from a small minority who held true to revolutionary internationalism—most significantly Lenin’s Bolsheviks, who called for the building of a new international. Growing working-class opposition to the war and the inspiration of the October 1917 Russian Revolution sparked proletarian upheavals across Europe. Under the pressure of workers who looked to the leadership of the Communist International, various social-democratic and centrist formations like the Independent Social Democratic Party in Germany, the French Socialist Party and the Italian Socialist Party sought admission to the CI. The “21 Conditions” were aimed at winning the genuine revolutionaries within these parties while excluding not only the open social-patriots but also the centrists who masked their treachery with Marxist-sounding rhetoric.

The Communist International is now frequently approached by parties and groups that only recently belonged to the Second International and now want to join the Communist International, although they have not in fact become communist. The Second International has been definitively smashed. The intermediate parties and the groups of the Center, seeing that the Second International has no prospects at all, try to lean on the Communist International, which is becoming ever stronger. However, they hope to preserve enough “autonomy” to continue their former opportunist or “centrist” policies....

6. Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International is duty-bound to expose not only overt social patriotism but also the duplicity and hypocrisy of social pacifism; to explain systematically to the workers that without the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, no international courts of arbitration, no treaties of any kind curtailing arms production, no manner of “democratic” renovation of the League of Nations will be able to prevent new imperialist wars.

7. Parties wishing to belong to the Communist International are duty-bound to recognize the need for a complete break with reformism and the policies of the Center and must conduct propaganda for this among the broadest layers of the party membership. Without this, no consistent communist policy is possible.

The Communist International demands unconditionally and as an ultimatum that this break be carried out at the earliest possible date. The Communist International cannot accept that notorious opportunists as, for example, Turati, Modigliani, Kautsky, Hilferding, Hillquit, Longuet, and MacDonald should have the right to consider themselves members of the Communist International. That could lead only to the Communist International coming to resemble in large measure the ruined Second International.

8. In countries whose bourgeoisies possess colonies and oppress other nations, it is necessary that the parties have an especially clear and well-defined position on the question of colonies and oppressed nations. Every party wishing to belong to the Communist International is obligated to expose the tricks of “its own” imperialists in the colonies, to support every liberation movement in the colonies not only in words but in deeds, to demand that the imperialists of its country be driven out of these colonies, to instill in the hearts of the workers of its country a truly fraternal attitude toward the laboring people in the colonies and toward the oppressed nations, and to conduct systematic agitation among its country’s troops against all oppression of colonial peoples.

—“Theses on the Conditions for Admission,” August 1920; reprinted in Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress, 1920 (Pathfinder, 1991)