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The Communist International and Britain

In 1919, as a wave of working-class struggle swept Europe after the end of the First World War, Lenin’s Bolshevik party founded the Communist International. The Second (Socialist) International was dead as a revolutionary force. Most of its parties had supported their own imperialist ruling classes in the war and helped to lead the proletariat to slaughter. Elements such as British socialist Sylvia Pankhurst abhorred the chauvinism of the Second International, but also rejected the use of parliamentary tactics aimed at splitting the Labour Party. Lenin’s 1920 polemic “Left-Wing” Communism — An Infantile Disorder sought to win over such elements to pursuing every method of struggle to advance socialist revolution internationally.

In Great Britain, further, the work of propaganda, agitation and organisation among the armed forces and among the oppressed and underprivileged nationalities in their “own” state (Ireland, the colonies) must also be tackled in a new fashion (one that is not socialist, but communist; not reformist, but revolutionary). That is because, in the era of imperialism in general and especially today after a war that was a sore trial to the peoples and has quickly opened their eyes to the truth (i.e., the fact that tens of millions were killed and maimed for the sole purpose of deciding whether the British or the German robbers should plunder the largest number of countries), all these spheres of social life are heavily charged with inflammable material and are creating numerous causes of conflicts, crises and an intensification of the class struggle. We do not and cannot know which spark — of the innumerable sparks that are flying about in all countries as a result of the world economic and political crisis — will kindle the conflagration, in the sense of raising up the masses; we must, therefore, with our new and communist principles, set to work to stir up all and sundry, even the oldest, mustiest and seemingly hopeless spheres, for otherwise we shall not be able to cope with our tasks, shall not be comprehensively prepared, shall not be in possession of all the weapons and shall not prepare ourselves either to gain victory over the bourgeoisie (which arranged all aspects of social life — and has now disarranged them — in its bourgeois fashion), or to bring about the impending communist reorganisation of every sphere of life, following that victory.

— VI Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism — An Infantile Disorder (1920), Collected Works, Volume 31