Proletarians and Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite!

The strategic slogan of the proletarian revolution and the national liberation movement formulated by the Executive Committee of the Communist International [Comintern] in 1920 for the magazine The Eastern Nation published by the Communist International.

This strategic slogan was formulated by the Executive Committee under the new historical conditions of the stage of imperialism of the development of capitalism, based on Lenin’s theory on the relationship between the liberation movements of the oppressed nations and the revolutionary movements of the proletariat.

Lenin argued that in the era of imperialism the world had been divided into two camps, the camp of the insignificant minority of advanced countries who owns finance capital and exploits the vast majority of the world’s population, and the camp of the exploited and oppressed peoples of the colonies and dependent countries; that the colonies and dependent countries oppressed and exploited by finance capital are the greatest reserve and the most important source of power for imperialism; that the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle carried out by the oppressed peoples of the dependent and colonial countries is their only way out of oppression and exploitation, and that this movement cannot but cause a crisis of capitalism throughout the world and cannot but deal a heavy blow to the imperialist world system; that the interests of the proletarian movement in the developed countries and the national liberation movement in the colonies demand that these two revolutionary movements be combined into a common front against the common enemy, against imperialism; without the establishment of a common revolutionary front, the working class in the developed countries cannot win and the oppressed peoples cannot be liberated from the yoke of imperialism.

These views of Lenin changed the traditional, mainly Second International opportunist, view of the relationship between the proletarian revolutionary movement and the national liberation movement. Previously, the national question was usually seen as a separate, isolated issue, as unrelated to the general question of overthrowing the rule of capital, overthrowing imperialism, and achieving proletarian revolution. It was argued that the European proletariat could win without forming an alliance with the colonial liberation movements, and that the national colonial question could be solved away from the avenue of proletarian revolution. Whereas Lenin argued that the national question can be solved only in connection with the proletarian revolution, and that the proletarian revolution must form a revolutionary alliance with the anti-imperialist liberation movements in the colonies and dependent countries in order to achieve victory; and that the national question is part of the general problem of the proletarian revolution. Therefore, it is necessary to unite the proletarians and the various oppressed nationalities with each other, to achieve the organic combination of the two revolutionary forces of the workers’ movement and the national liberation movement, and to transform the dependent and colonial countries from the reserve army of imperialism into the reserve army of the proletariat, into the allies of the proletariat. The proletariat must then resolutely and actively support the national liberation movements of the oppressed nations.

Of course, this does not mean that the proletariat should support every kind of national movement everywhere and every time. Sometimes the national movements of individual oppressed nations can conflict with the interests of the development of the proletarian movement, and this is certainly not much assistance to speak of. But the vast majority of national movements are revolutionary in nature. In the case of imperialist oppression, the revolutionary character of a national movement does not necessarily depend at all on whether the movement has proletarian elements in it, whether it has a revolutionary or common program, whether it has a democratic basis, but on whether it is revolutionary in an objective sense. The problem should be seen on a world scale and from the perspective of the struggle against imperialism.

The slogan “Proletarians and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!” has a broader scope than “Proletarians of the world, unite!”, thus it expands the content of proletarian internationalism and becomes a fundamental strategic idea in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. Later, in the 1960s, the Communist Party of China put forward the strategic slogan of “Proletarians, oppressed nations and peoples of the world, unite!”. It further expanded the content of proletarian internationalism and became a battle banner of all revolutionary forces in the world against imperialism, colonialism and hegemonism.