Comintern: Revolutionary Internationalism in Lenin's Time

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2 CONTENTS Introduction............................................................................................................ 3 Socialism’s Great Divide........................................................................................ 4 From Zimmerwald to Moscow............................................................................... 5 Building Revolutionary Parties.............................................................................. 7 Colonized Peoples Take the Lead........................................................................... 8 Reaching Out to the Peasantry............................................................................... 9 For Women’s Liberation....................................................................................... 10 For Class Struggle Trade Unions.......................................................................... 12 Initiatives for Unity in Struggle............................................................................ 13 From Lenin To Stalin............................................................................................ 14 Cover: “Comrade Lenin Sweeps the World Clean.” A Soviet poster from 1920. ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Riddell, co-editor of Socialist Voice, has been a leading figure in the the socialist movement in North America and Europe since the 1960s. He is the editor of The Communist International in Lenin’s Time, a groundbreaking six-volume anthology of documents, speeches, manifestos and commentary, published by Pathfinder Press between 1984 and 1993. These articles were first published in Socialist Worker (www.socialistworker.co.uk) in the summer and autumn of 2007, They are reproduced here with permission. Copyright 2008 by Socialist Voice www.socialistvoice.ca Published by South Branch Publications Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-897578-01-8 Socialist Voice Marxist Perspectives for the 21st Century A forum for discussion of today’s struggles of the workers and oppressed from the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism, based in Canada but international in scope. All Socialist Voice articles, as well as a selection of important documents from international movements for socialism and liberation, are available on our website, www.socialistvoice.ca For a free email subscription send a blank email to Socialist-Voice-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Socialist Voice is also available through an RSS feed at feeds.feedburner.com/SocialistVoice
Introduction The first years of the 21st century have seen coordinated worldwide actions and international collaboration by progressive movements on a scale not seen for many decades. Massive actions against capitalist globalization in 1999-2001, the rise of the World Social Forum, coordinated protests by tens of millions against the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003, and world days of action to protect the environment have all testified to awareness that the great problems before us can be resolved only on a world scale. Meanwhile, the stubborn resistance to imperialist wars in the Middle East and the rise of popular struggles in Latin America have thrown the U.S. empire onto the defensive. The government of Venezuela, together with Cuba, has built an international alliance for sovereignty and against neo-liberalism, called the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has pointed to the need for progressive and anti-capitalist movements to unite in international association. Such recent initiatives continue the tradition of the workers’ movement since the mid-19th century. The Communist League (1847-1852), whose leaders included Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, published a world program, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, which still serves as the foundation of revolutionary socialism and concludes with the words, “Working people of all countries, unite!” Marx and Engels were among the central leaders of the International Working Men’s Association (1864-1876). Engels took part in the formation in 1889 of the Socialist (Second) International, which came to include mass socialist parties in most of the main developed capitalist states. A conservative wing developed within the Second International, which led to its collapse at the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The International’s most authoritative parties abandoned the interests of working people in order to rally behind their respective imperialist rulers in prosecuting the war effort. The conflict in the Second International is described in the first article of this collection, “Socialism’s Great Divide” (page 2). Amid the wreckage of the Second International, revolutionary opponents of the imperialist war organized in the Zimmerwald Movement, named for the town in Switzerland where they met in 3
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Page 31 and 32: Sources and Further Reading The res

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