The Third International and Its Place in History

This is Lenin’s short article on the historical status of the Communist International, which was written on April 15, 1919. It was published in May in the first issue of the journal Communist International. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 36 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

The establishment of the Soviet Union in November 1917 caused panic and hatred among the imperialist forces. The Soviet power was in a difficult situation with both internal rebellion and external armed interference. The “Entente” imperialists tried to strangle the new Soviet regime in its infancy or isolate it from the capitalist world. The Third International led by Lenin was established in Moscow in March 1919. Although it was strongly attacked by “Entente” imperialists and other capitalist powers, the French newspaper The Times (Le Temps) still revealed the news of it. The imperialists could not stop the rapidly developing proletarian revolution, which enabled the proletariat around the world to understand the Third International. The Soviet movement has developed into a real international movement.

Lenin clarified the Third International’s status in history, the prospects, feasibility and the imbalanced state of the newly emerged Soviet power, and the characteristics of bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy. This article can be divided into four parts. The Third International actually emerged in 1918, when the long years of struggle against opportunism and social-chauvinism, especially during the war, led to the formation of Communist Parties in a number of countries. Officially, the Third International was founded at its First Congress, in March , in Moscow. And the most characteristic feature of this International, its mission of fulfilling, of implementing the precepts of Marxism, and of achieving the age-old ideals of socialism and the working-class movement—this most characteristic feature of the Third International has manifested itself directly in the fact that the new, third, “International Working Men’s Association” has already begun to develop, to a certain extent, into a union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The international alliance of the parties which were leading the most revolutionary movement in the world, the movement of the proletariat for the overthrow of the yoke of capital, now rest on an unprecedentedly firm base, in the shape of several Soviet republics, which were implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat and were the embodiment of victory over capitalism on an international scale. The epoch-making significance of the Communist International lied in its having begun to give effect to Marx’s cardinal slogan, the slogan which summed up the centuries-old development of socialism and the working-class movement, the slogan which was expressed in the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This prevision and this theory of a genius were becoming a reality. A new era in the world history had begun. Mankind was emancipated from the last form of slavery: capitalism, or the wage slavery. By emancipating himself from capitalism, man was for the first time advancing to real freedom.

He analyzed the possibility and unbalanced nature of establishing a Soviet republic under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Firstly, Lenin reiterated his theory of “victory of socialism in a single country”. It was the contradiction between Russia’s backwardness and its “leap” to the highest form of Soviet democracy, i.e., proletarian democracy, that led to the establishment a Soviet republic and the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the first time in history. This contradiction was one of the reasons why the role of the Soviets was particularly difficult or slow to be understood in Western Europe. Lenin pointed out that the soviets were an instrument of proletarian struggle and a form of proletarian state, and that the “leaders” of the opportunists continued to worship the bourgeois democracy called “general democracy”. The establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat brought out primarily the “contradiction” between the backwardness of Russia and her “leap” over bourgeois democracy. It would have been surprising if history would grant us the establishment of a new form of democracy without a number of contradictions. Secondly, it is not likely that the transition of the different capitalist countries to the dictatorship of the proletariat will take place in an identical or harmoniously proportionate way. There never has been and never would happen an even, harmonious, or proportionate development in the capitalist world; and the development process of each capitalist country can never be balanced. World history was inevitably leading towards the dictatorship of the proletariat but was doing so by paths that were anything but smooth, simple and straight.

Lenin described the peculiarities of the establishment of the Soviets and the proletarian revolution in Russia. He pointed out that it was relatively easy for the Russians to start the great proletarian revolution, but it was more difficult to continue it until it achieved the final victory, i.e., the complete organization of socialist society. There were many reasons why it was easier to start the Revolution in Russia.

Firstly, because the unusual—for twentieth-century Europe—political backwardness of the tsarist monarchy gave unusual strength to the revolutionary onslaught of the masses. Secondly, Russia’s backwardness merged in a peculiar way the proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie with the peasant revolution against the landowners. Thirdly, the 1905 revolution contributed enormously to the political education of the worker and peasant masses, because it familiarised their vanguard with “the last word” of socialism in the West and also because of the revolutionary action of the masses. Fourthly, Russia’s geographical conditions permitted her to hold out longer than other countries could have done against the superior military strength of the capitalist, advanced countries. Fifthly, the specific attitude of the proletariat towards the peasantry facilitated the transition from the bourgeois revolution to the socialist revolution, made it easier for the urban proletarians to influence the semi-proletarian, poorer sections of the rural working people. Sixthly, long schooling in strike action and the experience of the European mass working-class movement facilitated the emergence—in a profound and rapidly intensifying revolutionary situation—of such a unique form of proletarian revolutionary organisation as the Soviets.

When clarifying the difference between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy, Lenin criticized the peacefully combining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat by the opportunists. Lenin clearly analyzed the class essence of bourgeois democracy.

Firstly, bourgeois democracy is a machine for capital to suppress the working people, an instrument of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the political rule of capital; secondly, bourgeois democracy is hypocritical. The bourgeois democratic republic promised and proclaimed majority rule, but it could never put this into effect as long as private ownership of the land and other means of production existed. “Freedom” in the bourgeois-democratic republic was actually freedom for the rich.

Lenin added: The proletarians and working peasants could and should have utilized it for the purpose of preparing their forces to overthrow capital, to overcome bourgeois democracy, but in fact the working masses were, as a general rule, unable to enjoy democracy under capitalism. Lenin expounded that the Soviet or proletarian democracy for the first time in the world created democracy for the masses of people, for the working people, for the factory workers and small peasants. Never yet had the world seen political power wielded by the majority of the population, power actually wielded by this majority, as it was in the case of Soviet rule. It suppressed the “freedom” of the exploiters and their accomplices; it deprives them of “freedom” to exploit, “freedom” to batten on starvation, “freedom” to fight for the restoration of the rule of capital, “freedom” to collude with the foreign bourgeoisie against the workers and peasants of their own nation. Lenin criticized the absurd argument that the bourgeois democracy and the proletarian democracy could be reconciled. He pointed out that in capitalist society, at every acute moment, in every serious class conflict, there can only be: either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat.