Monday, 21 July 2025

Theses on Tactics and Strategy – and the lessons of March 1921 in Germany

In this post, I have summarised the “Theses on Tactics and Strategy” agreed by the Third Comintern Congress, particularly emphasising the discussions at the Congress on the lessons of the defeated 1921 'March Action' in Germany.

Posters from the 1921 March Action 

These Theses on Tactics, drafted by the Russian delegation, but finalised in consultation with the German delegation in particular, were introduced by Radek. They can be read in full online but, in brief summary only, these are some of the key points raised within them:

  • To emphasise, drawing on the ‘World Perspectives’ previously presented by Trotsky to the Congress, that tactics and strategy needed to recognise that world capitalism had manged to weather the immediate post-war storm. However, there was no prospect of it securing a sustained period of stability and that workers’ struggles would therefore again intensify.
  • That the key task of the International was to “gain decisive influence over the majority of the working class”, adding that “The Communist International does not aim to form small Communist sects seeking to exert influence on the working masses through propaganda and agitation. Rather, from the earliest days after its formation, it has clearly and unambiguously pursued the goal of taking part in the struggles of the working masses, leading these struggles in a Communist direction, and, through the struggle, forming large, tested, mass revolutionary Communist parties”.
  • That “the Communist International is on the road to forming mass Communist parties, but it is far from having gone far enough”. (The theses went on to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of its sections in a number of key countries).
  • That “the Communist parties have to advance demands whose achievement meets an immediate, urgent need of the working class, and fight for these demands regardless of whether they are compatible with the capitalist profit system” [an approach later developed in more depth by Trotsky in his “Transitional Programme”].
  • After listing the threat from organised strikebreaking and fascist bands in a number of countries, that “Communists are obliged to rally the best and most active forces in the factories and trade unions to create their own workers’ contingents and defence organisations in order to resist the Fascists and deter the ‘gilded youth’ of the bourgeoisie from harassing strikers”.
  • Further, that “acts of individual terror may represent symptoms of revolutionary indignation that must be defended against the lynch justice of the bourgeoisie and its Social Democratic lackeys. However, they are in no way conducive to raising the proletariat’s level of organisation and readiness for struggle, because they awaken in the masses the illusion that the heroic deeds of individuals can replace the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat”. [see, for example, the actions led by individuals like Max Hoeltz below]

However, perhaps the key point that the Theses sought to draw out, and address, was – although with wording that could also satisfy some of the ‘left’ pressure to highlight the need for ‘offensive’ struggle when appropriate  – was the danger of sections of the International impatiently trying to artificially accelerate the tempo of events without having first prepared and won broad support for proposed actions amongst the working-class as a whole.

The Theses made clear:

  • That, yes, mass Communist Parties “must do everything necessary to bring the working masses into a struggle for their interests” although “the struggle’s goals must grow out of the specific situation and be comprehensible to the masses”. They are also “obligated to broaden every defensive struggle of any depth and breadth into an attack on capitalist society … to do everything possible, when conditions are appropriate, to lead the working masses directly into this struggle”.
  • However, “taking the offensive depends, first, on an intensification of struggles, both nationally and internationally, within the bourgeois camp itself. When struggles within the bourgeois camp have grown to proportions that make it possible that the working class will be facing divided enemy forces, the party has to seize the initiative, in order, after careful political and – if possible – organisational preparation, to lead the masses into struggle”.
  • Further, “the second condition for offensive attacks on a broad scale is an intensive ferment in the decisive sectors of the working class that provides grounds for hope that the class will be ready to struggle against the capitalist government in unified fashion. When the movement is growing, the slogans of the struggle should become more comprehensive. Similarly, if the movement is receding, the Communist leadership of the struggle has the duty of leading the masses out of the struggle in as orderly and unified a fashion as possible”.
  • And critically, “whether the Communist Party is on the defensive or the offensive depends on the specific circumstances” but that, in the ‘March Action’ in Germany, “the party made a number of errors. The most serious of these was that it did not clearly stress the defensive character of the struggle. Instead, its call for an offensive was utilised by the unscrupulous enemies of the proletariat to denounce the VKPD to the proletariat for instigating a putsch.”

It is this latter point that I will concentrate on in the rest of this post, particularly looking at the debates around the ‘March events’ of 1921 in Germany.

France – why the French Communists were not in a position to propose resisting the ‘call-up’

Before focusing on Germany, it’s worth noting another example of mistaken tactics highlighted in the Theses – this time by some of the French Communists. The Theses warned how “impatient and politically inexperienced revolutionary forces attempt to apply extreme methods - more appropriate to a decisive revolutionary proletarian uprising – to individual issues and tasks, such as the proposal to appeal to conscripts in the army’s class of 1919 to resist the military call-up. If put into practice, such methods set back for a long time genuine revolutionary preparation of the proletariat for winning power”.

A debate on the “call-up” issue had taken place just prior to the World Congress, at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI). Laporte, from the French Young Communists, had argued that the French party should be calling on youth to resist conscription orders into the French army. Trotsky, backed up by Lenin, had pointed out why this would be a mistake, in opposition to the ‘leftist’ Béla Kun from Hungary, who had backed Laporte’s position.

In his speech to the ECCI in reply to Laporte, Trotsky pointed out that a Party could only make such a call when it was confident that it was in a position to back-up youth who would otherwise be executed for their refusal – and that would have to mean being ready to take revolutionary action to take on the French state. But that was not – yet – the situation in France.

 The proposed action is to refuse to obey the military call-up. In other words, an action that is permissible for a proletarian party only when the working class is on the verge of revolution. Only under those conditions can the conscripts called up into the army defy this order. This would have been justified, politically and historically, only in circumstances where the entire class to which the party belongs was drawn into a decisive revolutionary movement.

It is not enough to have intense revolutionary feelings. Clear-headed revolutionary thinking is needed. … you say that when the president of France issued the decree for mobilisation, the time had come to tell the workers to make the revolution. It’s up to you to demonstrate that to us, to show us that when the president signed the decree mobilising the class of 1919, the moment had come for social revolution in France – a moment determined by the entire economic and political situation, by the state of mind of the working class, by the party’s capacities and state of organisation …

… What would have happened if the party had actually acted on your appeal …  the bravest ones would be executed, and the others would obey the decree – isn’t that true? And what would be the result? For the party, the result would be completely disastrous, because it would be shown by this action to be a part of purely verbal demagogy, because – at a critical moment, when it does not have the capacity to make the revolution – it turned to the youth. And in so doing, it indicated to the capitalist state who were the bravest among these youth, saying, ‘Kill them.’

However, Trotsky adds that he understood the frustrations of the young comrades like Laporte, with their genuine determination to bring about a revolution, at a French party leadership that didn’t always show that determination, particularly in challenging the ‘anti-political’ syndicalist tendencies within the French trade unions. However, “the comrades making criticisms [like Laporte], while imbued with a desire to make the revolution, have not gained a full understanding of the conditions that make it possible”.

Lenin also intervened in the ECCI debate in a sharp reply to Béla Kun where he stated that, “I have come here in order to protest the speech by Comrade Béla Kun in which he attacked Comrade Trotsky instead of defending him, as he was obligated to do if he was a real Marxist”.

Germany – learning lessons from the March Action of 1921

However, the chief example of the dangers of impatiently trying to force events had been the ‘March Action’ of the German Communists (the VKPD) in March 1921 in response to a deliberately provocative mobilisation of armed police into one of its strongholds.

The events had ended in a serious defeat which was already leading to in a collapse in the membership of the German party. With these events having taken place just three months before the Third Congress, and in such an important section of the International, differences over the tactics and strategy that had been employed were understandably to the fore in the Congress debate.

The wording of the Theses had been drafted in consultation with the German and other delegations, in an attempt to get an agreed Congress position in response to this setback. However, it was clear that while most Congress delegates recognised that the tactics that the VKPD had adopted had been in error, some delegates, for example from the German and Italian delegations, supported the actions that had been taken.

Trotsky explained in his contribution how the Theses had been drawn up: “We conducted lengthy, exhaustive, and at times impassioned negotiations and discussions over the theses, including with members of the German delegation. Various proposals were made, including by the German delegation, in a process of mutual concessions. Our theses are the result of this rather laborious process. I do not claim that these theses were approved by every party, group, and tendency, but I do say that from our point of view, the theses were viewed as a compromise in the sense of a modification to the left. I will take up later just what this term ‘left’ signifies. For now, I want only to stress emphatically that we view the theses as the limit of the concessions to the [minority] current represented here”.

He also stressed that, while some personal clashes were inevitable in such an impassioned debate, the focus had to be on the political conclusions – and, not just for German comrades, but for every section of the International to discuss and take on board because, “the German party is the first in what we, from our Russian geographical point of view, regard as Western Europe that has developed into an independent, firmly defined, large party and has, for the first time, led a major independent action. And because the new, very new Italian party and the larger French organisation that is also very new as a Communist Party confront conditions that are very similar in this respect, I believe that every delegation, and especially those I have mentioned, have a great deal to learn from this question”.

What had happened in March 1921?

A document agreed by the Fourth International in 1936 summarised the background to the events of March 1921 – and the position taken on it by the Third Congress – as follows:

Opportunist centrism, which did not lead the masses but wanted to be led by them, found its complement in ultra-radicalism, which instead of winning the masses from within by cooperation in their organisations, their struggles, and experiences, put an ultimatum to them from outside. These ultra-lefts declared themselves against participation in parliamentary elections, for leaving the mass trade unions and forming “pure” revolutionary unions, and for isolated action of the vanguard. These tendencies led in Germany to the formation of the KAPD (Communist Workers’ Party of Germany) in 1920.

But even the official Communist Party of Germany had not been able to rid itself of adventuristic tendencies. This was shown, above all, in the course of the March events when the party, instead of confining itself to defensive tactics against the provocative challenge of the Social Democrats in the government, led the isolated vanguard to an armed offensive and suffered shipwreck.

But the greatest danger was that now a whole school of theorists had established itself in the party who transformed the tactics of March into a principle (Thalheimer, Froelich, Maslow, Koenen, etc.) The Third Congress condemned ultra-left adventures and issued the slogan, “To the masses,” recognising that the first great post-war wave (1917-1920) was now ebbing, and that a breathing space had occurred which it was necessary to utilise by preparing better and more thoroughly for the coming struggles”.

To explain the actual events in more detail, I have drawn on Pierre Broué’s comprehensive study of the German Revolution, alongside the personal notes that Trotsky made at the time which provide another useful resource.

The events need to be placed in the context of the convulsive situation in Germany after the World War and the defeated German Revolution of 1918-19.  The capitalists had become more confident that they could push back the potentially mighty German workers’ movement but then saw how an attempted right-wing coup – the “Kapp Putsch” of March 1920 – had been defeated by a mass general strike.

While workers’ discontent remained high, by 1921, Trotsky’s notes commented that “a certain relative equilibrium seems to have been established. The apparatus of the bourgeois state has acquired a certain self-confidence”, while, at the same time, “the apparatus of Social-Democracy and the trade unions have regained a relative stability and have once again become the principal factor of passivity and conservatism in the working masses”.

In this situation, Trotsky notes, with the more ‘advanced’ sections of the workers being held back by their leaders, it was the less historically organised, more ‘backward’ layers of the class that were quickest to display their anger, for example the unemployed and the miners of Saxony.

The mining area of Mansfeld had seen ongoing clashes taking place ever since the Kapp putsch. As well as strikes, action had included armed raids, with the ‘Robin Hood’ style guerilla actions led by Max Hoeltz gaining popularity. 

(Hoeltz had left the KPD for the KAPD [see Trotsky above] – a party who were still invited to attend the Third Comintern Congress as a sympathising section, but whose ultra-leftism had been criticised by Lenin in his "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder”. Following Hoeltz’s arrest after the March Action, the Third Comintern Congress passed a motion recognising him as a “brave fighter” but also as one who “did not act wisely”).

In mid-March 1921, Hörsing, the Social Democrat security chief, decided to send in police forces to occupy the Mansfeld area to ‘restore order’. As Broué puts it, the official explanation of Hörsing’s measure was that it was to put a stop to the rise in crimes ranging from theft to sabotage and attacks on the security staff in factories. However, there was no doubt that Hörsing’s real aim was to disarm the workers – who had kept their weapons after the Kapp Putsch – and, at the same time, to break up a Communist stronghold”.

A thousand police moved in on March 19th. The German Communists (VKPD) called on workers to mount armed resistance, and, by March 21st, for the sporadic strikes that had broken out in response to the police occupation to be turned into a complete general strike. But the strikers found themselves in a minority and the general strike did not materialise.

As Trotsky’s notes put it, “Hörsing’s police offensive … was by all accounts not understood by the masses as the beginning of a campaign by the counter-revolution against the proletariat as a whole … and the analysis of Hörsing’s action made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party (irrespective of whether this analysis was at the given moment correct) was not able to be assimilated by the masses as the decisive motivation for action as a consequence of the absence of solid facts as also as a consequence of the extreme brevity of preparatory agitation”.

The VKPD and KAPD sought to organise protest actions across the rest of Germany, including a joint demonstration in Berlin, but that had been poorly supported. On March 24th, they called for a nationwide general strike, which they tried to enforce through mobilising sympathetic workers and the unemployed to picket factory gates. Perhaps a few hundred thousand stopped work but, again, overall, the call was a failure.

To show how far the VKPD had misjudged the mood of the organised workers, Broué gives the example of Wilhelm Sült, a VKPD union steward who had led a strike in Berlin’s power stations in the previous year, backed by an overwhelming vote of 1800 to just 60 against. However, now Sült failed to win backing for action. At the end of the March Action, Sült was arrested then shot supposedly ‘while trying to escape’ from the police headquarters. His fellow trade unionists massed for a demonstration at his funeral – yet had not been willing to strike alongside him.

With the mass of the workers failing to respond to calls for action, Hoeltz and another KAPD sympathiser, Karl Plättner, led armed urban guerilla attacks across occupied Saxony instead. But those rash tactics alarmed even some of the KAPD’s most loyal supporters – such as the workers occupying the giant Leuna factory in Halle. In the end, they were one of the last groups of workers to hold out, surrendering under bombardment on 29 March. Eventually, the VKPD ‘Zentrale’ (Central Committee), had to recognise what had long since been the reality, and, on April 1st, withdrew its call for a ‘general strike’.

Broué records some of the facts resulting from these mistaken tactics – within a few weeks, the VKPD had lost around 200,000 members, i.e. around half of its membership; its newspapers were banned and members arrested; by June, already 400 trade unionists had been sentenced to 1,500 years of hard labour, 4 to death; thousands of strikers were dismissed and blacklisted.

Communists under arrest at the end of the March Action

Had the ‘March Action’ been supported by the Communist International?

To what extent some of the Comintern’s Executive Committee [ECCI] members had encouraged the mistaken tactics of the VKPD in calling the ‘March Action’ is a subject of debate.

Trotsky’s notes recorded the earlier growth in support for the German Communists, support which, with the right tactics and strategy, could have given the German Communists a significant influence. It noted that, “since the bloody battles of 1919 the working class has gone through a molecular process of internal re-grouping whereby its whole accumulated experience has found its most finished external expression in the creation of the Communist Party with a membership of almost half a million”.

This mass party had come about from the fusion of the majority of the USPD ‘Independents’ – whose 1920 Congress in Halle had voted to accept the “21 conditions” of membership set out by the Second Comintern Congress – with the smaller existing German Communist Party (KPD), to form the Unified Communist Party – the VKPD.

But Lenin and Trotsky recognised that, even with that sizeable membership, the German Communists still needed to win the mass of the working-class towards a revolutionary position. That was why the Third Congress resolution on Organisation had welcomed the “united front” approach adopted by the VKPD in the “Open Letter” that it had issued to other parties and trade unions at the start of 1921, proposing a joint struggle on wages and the attacks of the employers. These Theses on Tactics also referred to the Open Letter “as a model of a starting point for campaigns”.

However, Broué and others suggest that others within the ECCI - namely Zinoviev, Bukharin and Radek - had, to a lesser or greater degree, been encouraging the VKPD leadership to ‘take the offensive’, a position which had then led to the disastrous strategy adopted by the VKPD during the March Action.

A memoir from Paul Frölich, part of the German delegation to this Third World Congress, recalled – accurately or otherwise –  that “the mood in leading Russian circles was very depressed … . The civil war had left in its wake scarcely anything but ruins. The war with Poland had led to defeat. The Kronstadt uprising had been a glaring alarm signal. The New Economic Policy (NEP) had been introduced … There was a very strong fear among the Bolsheviks that after the October Revolution, they might now be the pioneers of a capitalist Russia. They yearned for relief from the proletariat of the West”.

What’s clear is that Bela Kun, sent by the ECCI to work with the German party, had a poor record for taking mistaken positions, not least in the course of the Hungarian Revolution itself in 1919. His arrival in Germany certainly helped divert the VKPD from the previous patient ‘united front’ approach of the ‘Open Letter’ to the impatient strategy of ‘taking the offensive’.

However, Frölich stressed that Kun had managed to win support for the VKPD to take to an offensive policy because the German leadership itself also felt this was a correct assessment: “We should guard against the conclusion that the March Action was undertaken either directly or indirectly at the command of the ECCI. At this time, the ECCI had a great moral authority … but they did not yet have in their hands the means of pressure to enforce their directivesWe would not have acted — or failed to act — because of a command from them”.

The pre-Congress discussion

Lenin and Trotsky clearly also shared some concerns about the positions taken by some members of the ECCI. Broué gives an account by Trotsky of a pre-Congress discussion at the Russian Party’s Political Bureau where he and Lenin successfully blocked together on the content of the draft texts: “Vladimir Ilyich said at that time: ‘Well, we are forming a new faction.’ During further negotiations as to the text of the resolutions to be introduced, I served as the representative of the Lenin faction whilst Radek represented the Zinoviev faction. . . . Moreover, comrade Zinoviev rather categorically accused Radek at that time of ‘betraying’ his faction in those negotiations; that is, of making presumably too great concessions”.

Broué also recounts the shock the German delegation received when arriving in Moscow for the Third Congress and realising quite how angry Lenin was with them for making such mistakes. No doubt Lenin had gauged that he needed to ‘go in hard’ to make sure his concerns were understood. He quotes from a memoir from Fritz Heckert saying that Lenin told them that “the provocation [by Hörsing] was as clear as day. And, instead of mobilising the masses of workers for defensive aims, in order to repel the attacks of the bourgeoisie and in that way to prove that you have right on your side, you invented your ‘theory of the offensive’, an absurd theory which offers to the police and every reactionary the chance to depict you as the ones who took the initiative in aggression, against which they could pose as the ones defending the people”.

Paul Levi

Broué adds that Lenin and Trotsky also explained to their allies in the German delegation – like Clara Zetkin – that the final text would have to have some degree of compromise to avoid a more serious division. One of those compromises would be for the Congress to confirm the expulsion of Paul Levi, previously one of the KPD leaders and key architect of the ‘Open Letter’ approach. While his opposition to ‘putschism’ might have been correct, Levi had turned his criticisms into a written public attack on the Party and the International following the ‘March Action’.

Broué quotes from Zetkin’s memoirs that Lenin had explained that “He [Levi] did not criticise, but was one-sided, exaggerated, even malicious … He lacks the spirit of solidarity with the party. And it is that which has made the rank and file comrades so angry, and made them deaf and blind to the great deal of truth in Levi’s criticism, particularly to his correct political principles … and so a feeling arose – it also extended to non-German comrades – in which the dispute concerning the pamphlet, and concerning Levi himself, became the sole subject of this contention, instead of the false theory and the bad practice of the ‘offensive theory’ and the ‘leftists’. They have to thank Paul Levi that up to the present they have come out so well, much too well. Paul Levi is his own worst enemy”.

Trotsky also made clear he shared the collective position reached on Levi’s expulsion. In the ‘personal notes’ referred to earlier, Trotsky emphasised that, even though a series of errors had been made by the VKPD leadership, the March Action had, above all, also exposed the treachery of the Social Democrats in attacking the workers’ movement. He added that “if after some unsuccessful economic strike in which the state with its police, press and yellow trade unions assisted the capitalists against the workers – if after such an unsuccessful strike one of the trade union leaders launched a campaign against that trade union accusing it of every deadly sin instead of condemning the yellow leaders, the police, the bourgeoisie and so on, the behaviour of such a … leader would be equivalent to the behaviour of comrade Levi”.

In an article in Pravda in 1922, Trotsky added that “By virtue of his egocentric attitude, Levi had invested his struggle against the crude theoretical and practical mistakes connected with the March events with a character so pernicious that nothing was left for the slanderers among the Independents [the USPD, political opponents of the KPD] to do except to support him and chime in with him. Levi opposed himself not only to the March mistakes but also to the German party and the workers who had committed these mistakes. In his fright lest the party train suffer a wreck in rounding a dangerous curve, Levi fell, because of fear and malice, into such a frenzy and devised such a “tactic” of salvation as sent him flying out of the window and down the embankment. The train, on the other hand, although heavily shaken and damaged, rounded the curve without being derailed. …

... Thereupon Levi decided that the Communist International was unworthy of its name unless it forced the German Communist Party to accept Levi once again as its leader. Levi’s letter to the congress was written in exactly that spirit. There was nothing left for us to do except shrug our shoulders. An individual who talks so heatedly about Moscow’s dictatorial rule, demanded that Moscow by a formal decision impose him upon the Communist Party out of whose ranks he had propelled himself with such remarkable energy”.

What did the agreed Theses say about these ‘March Events’ ?

So, a great deal of energy, effort and discussion were required to produce what, alongside the general line of the Theses as a whole - were, in the end, just four paragraphs under the heading “the Lessons of the March Action”. Knowing the context, it’s easier to appreciate the careful balance that was struck in the final agreed text:

  1. It makes clear that the ultimate responsibility for the situation lay with the government: “The March Action was forced on the VKPD by the government’s attack on the proletariat of Central Germany”.
  2. However, it also makes clear that errors were made – particularly from those who wanted to insist that “the offensive” was always the correct method of struggle: In this, the VKPD’s first great struggle since its foundation, the party made a number of errors. The most serious of these was that it did not clearly stress the defensive character of the struggle. Instead, its call for an offensive was utilised by the unscrupulous enemies of the proletariat – the bourgeoisie, the SPD, and the USPD – to denounce the VKPD to the proletariat for instigating a putsch. This error was compounded by a number of party members who contended that, under present conditions, the offensive represented the VKPD’s main method of struggle. The party opposed this error in its newspapers and through its chair, Comrade Brandler”.
  3. The final text still described the March Action as a ‘step forward’ - a wording used previously by Radek and Zinoviev in pre-Congress discussion – in the sense that the VKPD had led hundreds of thousands of workers in struggle  – but now had to learn from the experience: The Third Congress of the Communist International considers that the March Action was a step forward. The March Action was a heroic struggle by hundreds of thousands of proletarians against the bourgeoisie. And by courageously taking the lead in the defence of the workers of Central Germany, the VKPD showed that it is the party of Germany’s revolutionary proletariat. The congress believes that the VKPD will be all the more successful in carrying out mass actions if, in the future, it better adapts its slogans for the struggle to actual conditions, studies these conditions closely, and carries out the actions in unified fashion”.
  4. And finally, it approved, and explained, Levi’s expulsion for breach of party discipline: “In order to carefully weigh the possibilities for struggle, the VKPD needs to take into account the facts and considerations that point to the difficulties of a proposed action and work out carefully how they may be countered. But once the party leadership has decided on an action, all comrades must abide by the party’s decisions and carry out this action. Criticism of an action should be voiced only after it has concluded, and then only within the party structures and in its newspapers, and after taking into consideration the party’s situation in relationship to the class enemy. Since Levi disregarded these self-evident requirements of party discipline and conditions for criticism of the party, the congress approves his expulsion from the party and considers any political collaboration with him by members of the Communist International to be impermissible”.

Speeches during the Debate

Of course, as with any compromise, there would inevitably have been delegates, from either side of the debate, that might not have been happy with it, particularly as it included a clear criticism of the “theory of the offensive” which some sections erroneously still really agreed with. 

Zetkin, in her contribution, made her opinion clear that “a large part of the responsibility for the way in which the March Action was handled” lay with the “representative of the Executive” – in other words, calling out Bela Kun without actually naming him.

However, even sharper contributions became inevitable when the German delegation said they would be backing amendments from the Italian and Austrian sections to the agreed draft – clearly stepping back from the compromise position that had been agreed upon.

According to Broué, the German delegate Heckert attacked Lenin and defended the March Action. Appel, on behalf of the KAPD, also launched an attack on the supposedly “opportunist” ‘Open Letter’ of the VKPD. The Italian Terracini attacked Trotsky and argued that, just because a revolutionary party was small, that didn’t prevent it from successfully leading a revolution, giving the example of the Bolshevik Party in 1917 as evidence!

Lenin, in reply, said bluntly that “If the Congress is not going to wage a vigorous offensive against such errors, against such "Leftist" stupidities, the whole movement is doomed”. He defended the ‘Open Letter’ as “a model political step. This is stated in our theses and we must certainly stand by it. It is a model because it is the first act of a practical method of winning over the majority of the working class. In Europe, where almost all the proletarians are organised, we must win the majority of the working class and anyone who fails to understand this is lost to the communist movement.”

Lenin took up Terracini’s points about the size of the Bolsheviks by saying that he “has understood very little of the Russian revolution. In Russia, we were a small party, but we had with us in addition the majority of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country. Do you have anything of the sort? We had with us almost half the army, which then numbered at least ten million men. Do you really have the majority of the army behind you? Show me such a country! If these views of Comrade Terracini are shared by three other delegations, then something is wrong in the International! Then we must say: ‘Stop! There must be a decisive fight! Otherwise, the Communist International is lost’.”

In Trotsky’s contribution, he made clear that, when the Theses said the March Action was a “step forward”, in Trotsky’s view this was because “the Communist Party was no longer an opposition inside the USPD or a Communist propaganda group but a solid, unified, independent, centralised party, and that it is capable of intervening independently in the proletarian struggle, which occurred for the first time in the March Action. … But the congress must tell German workers that it was an error, and that the party’s attempt to play a leading role in a great mass movement was unsuccessful. We must establish that this attempt was unsuccessful, in the sense that if there should be a repetition, this excellent party really could be destroyed”.

In answer to those like Terracini who had defended “the theory of an offensive struggle”, Lenin had made clear that, of course, a revolutionary party ought, in a general sense, be ready to go on the offensive. But Trotsky took up the issue more sharply, saying that “this celebrated philosophy of the offensive, which is completely non-Marxist, has arisen from the following curious outlook: ‘A wall of passivity is gradually rising, which is ruining the movement. So let us advance, and break through this wall!’ …  I believe that in struggling against the so-called Left, we do not at all feel that we are to the right of these ‘Lefts.’ We see no party to the left of us, because we are the International, the Communist, Marxist International, the most revolutionary party possible. That means we are a party that is capable of utilising all situations and all possibilities, not only to conduct struggles but also to achieve victories. That is our true goal. It is sometimes forgotten that we learn the art of strategy, precisely and soberly estimate the enemy’s power, and analyse the situation, rather than rushing into battle to break the wall of passivity or, in the words of another comrade, ‘to activate the party’.”

Trotsky also took up the attacks on the International for being supposedly one where the centre gives orders and, if you don’t obey them, you get expelled – as Levi, for one, was loudly alleging. On the contrary, “it would of course be absurd for the Executive to adopt this tactical philosophy of intensifying struggles through more or less artificial mass actions, sending off orders to this country and that. Quite the contrary. We have now grown strong and thus face the responsibility of leading the mass movement as an independent, centralised party. This places on us the responsibility to analyse the situation in every country quite precisely, with a cool eye, and then – when it is possible and necessary – attack with passionate determination. That is exactly what our proposed theses say”.

But he also stressed that debating where errors may have been made wasn’t about attacking individuals, even if emotions had sometimes run high in the debate. “If everyone could form an opinion on their own, then we would have no need for an International. Our task lies precisely in perceiving a danger even if it is very small, expressing it clearly, drawing attention to it – even, if you will, exaggerating it. For me or you to exaggerate a danger – delivering a warning in a loud voice – is no great problem. But the opposite danger, that of missing such an error, allowing it to grow to the point where it collides against a provocation, leading us into a perilous adventure – that is a great danger indeed. That explains the passion with which many comrades have spoken on this issue”.

In good part thanks to Lenin and Trotsky’s determined intervention, the Congress concluded in voting unanimously in support of the agreed wording on the March Action.

What should the German Communists have done instead in March?

To answer this question, it’s worth looking at a speech that Trotsky gave to a July 1921 meeting of the Moscow Party, recorded as “A School of Revolutionary Strategy”. In this speech, Trotsky notes that “The offensive was in reality launched by the Social-Democratic policeman Hörsing. This should have been utilised in order to unite all the workers for defence, for self-protection, even if, to begin with, a very modest resistance”. Only then, on judging the response to that initial agitation, could a judgement have been made as whether to issue a call for a general strike and perhaps then to move from the ‘defensive’ to the ‘offensive’. 

Alternatively, “should the conditions and the moods of the masses fail to correspond with the more resolute slogans, then it is necessary to sound a retreat, and to fall back to previously prepared positions in as orderly a manner as possible. Therewith we have gained this, that we proved our ability to probe the working masses, we strengthened their internal ties and, what is most important, we have raised the party’s authority for giving wise leadership under all circumstances”.

Before calling on other workers to come to their support, “the party had a chance to rally the workers of Berlin, Dresden and Munich to the aid of the workers of Central Germany – and this could perhaps have been accomplished in the space of a few days, provided there was no leaping over the events, and the masses were led forward systematically and firmly … 

... In the initial stages this support might have assumed varied forms, until the party found itself in a position to issue a generalised slogan of action. The task of agitation consisted in raising the masses to their feet, focusing their attention upon the events in Central Germany, smashing politically the resistance of the labour bureaucracy and thus assuring a genuinely general character of the strike action as a possible base for the further development of the revolutionary struggle”.

No doubt with Bela Kun in mind, Trotsky drew an interesting comparison between the experience of the Russian Bolsheviks and the Hungarian Communists where “circumstances [in Hungary] unfolded in such a way that the Communists gained power almost without any revolutionary struggle. Thereby the questions of revolutionary strategy in the epoch of the struggle for power were naturally reduced to a minimum. … It is not at all accidental that certain prominent Hungarian Comrades, who have rendered big services to the international, reveal a tendency to simplify in the extreme the tactical questions facing the proletariat in a revolutionary epoch; and to replace tactics with a slogan of waging an offensive. … Only a traitor could deny the need of a revolutionary offensive; but only a simpleton would reduce all of revolutionary strategy to an offensive”.

In summary, Trotsky emphasised that the “cold-bloodedly executed” strategy of the leading clique of the German bourgeoisie was clearly to provoke into action and pick-off isolated sections of the working class  – so as to inflict a defeat and then imprison or murder its best activists.  Under these conditions, what is required is “not merely enthusiasm but cool calculation, lucid appraisal, serious preparation” instead of being told that “it is our duty to pursue only the strategy of the offensive, i.e., attack under all conditions because, you see, we have entered the epoch of revolution. This is approximately the same thing as an army commander’s saying: ‘Since we are at war, it is therefore our duty to assume the offensive everywhere and at all times.’”

A final word – to the youth

Trotsky had concluded his speech in the World Congress debate by addressing the understandable impatience of youth who feel that the older generation are being too cautious; “He thinks that I am older, while he is younger. I already have some grey hairs, while he is more determined. He considers it to be a matter of temperament and says, ‘You are too cautious.’ Then I say to myself that the greatest danger lies in the fact that certain comrades do not understand the nature of danger. He is politically inexperienced in a revolutionary sense. ... He thinks we are moving to the right. No, that is not the case … It is a big, complex world, and it is quite a task to figure things out”.

In July, he addressed some of the best of the youth directly at the Second Congress of the Communist Youth International, giving a speech on “The Balance Sheet of the Third Congress” in the knowledge that there would be similar ‘leftist’ tendencies present.

In his speech, he sounded a warning which is worth reflecting on in the conditions facing us today, a century later:

One must not delude himself that a class which is historically bankrupt in the economic sense loses instantaneously and, as it were, automatically the instruments of its rule. No, on the contrary, historical experience teaches us that whenever a ruling class, which has held power in its hands for centuries, comes face to face with the danger of losing power, its instinct for power becomes sensitive in the extreme; and it is precisely during the epoch of economic decline of the social order, which had been established under the rule of this class, that the ruling class reveals utmost energy and greatest strategical sagacity in maintaining its political position”.

Many of us imagined the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie much simpler than it actually is, and as reality has now proved to us. … But all the efforts of the bourgeoisie, all the energies expended by it in maintaining class equilibrium, manifest themselves invariably at the expense of the economic soil on which the bourgeoisie rests, at the expense of its economic base.

“The bourgeoisie and the working class are thus located on a soil which renders our victory inescapable – not in the astronomical sense of course, not inescapable like the setting or rising of the sun, but inescapable in the historical sense, in the sense that unless we gain victory all society and all human culture is doomed. History teaches us this. It was thus that the ancient Roman civilization perished. The class of slave-owners proved incapable of leading toward further development. It became transformed into an absolutely parasitic and decomposing class. There was no other class to supersede it and the ancient civilization perished”.

As warriors of revolution, we are convinced – and the objective facts corroborate us – that we as the working class, that we as the Communist International, will not only save our civilization, the centuries-old product of hundreds of generations, but will raise it to much higher levels of development. However, from the standpoint of pure theory, the possibility is not excluded that the bourgeoisie, armed with its state apparatus and its entire accumulated experience, may continue to fight the revolution until it has drained modern civilization of every atom of every atom of its vitality, until it has plunged modern mankind into a state of collapse and decay for a long time to come”.

But to avoid such an outcome, Trotsky explained, again referring back to the 'March days' in Germany:

A decisive battle requires a corresponding preparation. … Preparation for us means the creation of such conditions as would secure us the sympathy of the broadest masses. We cannot under any conditions renounce this factor. The idea of replacing the will of the masses by the resoluteness of the so-called vanguard is absolutely impermissible and non-Marxist. Through the consciousness and the will of the vanguard it is possible to exert influence over the masses, it is possible to gain their confidence, but it is impossible to replace the masses by this vanguard. And for this reason, the Third Congress has placed before all the parties, as the most important and unpostponable task, the demand that the majority of the toiling people be attracted to our side”.

In the March days – and I say this quite openly – we did not have behind us one-fifth or even one-sixth of the working class and we suffered a defeat … But if we were to say today in accordance with the foregoing theory of offensive: only a new offensive can remedy the situation, what do we stand to gain thereby? We shall then have behind us no longer one-sixth of the working class but only that section of the former one-sixth which has remained fit for combat. … Under these conditions we would suffer an even greater and much more dangerous defeat. No, Comrades, after such a defeat we must retreat. In what sense? In the simplest sense. We must say to the working class: Yes, Comrades, on the basis of facts we have become convinced that in this struggle we had only one-sixth of the workers behind us. But we must number at least four-sixths, or two-thirds, in order to seriously think of victory; and to this end we must develop and safeguard those mental, spiritual, material and organisational forces which are our bonds with the class ...

From the standpoint of offensive struggle this signifies a strategic retreat for the sake of preparation. It is absolutely unimportant whether one calls this going leftist or going rightist. It all depends on what one means by these words. If by leftism is understood a formal readiness to move forward at any moment and to apply the sharpest forms of struggle, then this, of course, signifies a rightward trend. But if the words “left party” or “left tendencies” are understood in a more profound historical sense, in a dynamic sense, in the sense of a movement which sets itself the greatest task of the epoch and fulfils it through the best means, then this will constitute a step forward in the direction of the left, revolutionary tendency”.

Thursday, 17 July 2025

Party Organisation – The Third Comintern Congress Resolution

The “Theses on the Organisational Structure of the Communist Parties” - the organisation resolution agreed by the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1921 – is perhaps overlooked in comparison to other more ‘political’ resolutions discussed at the Congress. However of course, without party organisation, even the best ‘politics’ becomes just theory that cannot be applied in practice. That’s why this resolution - particularly its emphasis on involving every member in the activity of the Party - is still worth looking at again, a century later. 

A full online version of the resolution – although I have in part selected quotes from an alternative translation used in a 1983 Pluto Press printed publication – can be found here: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/3rd-congress/riddell-translations/Communist-Party-organization.htm

I. General Principles

The opening section of the resolution set out some 'general principles'. It stressed that there can never be one perfect structure for any Party, as methods may have to adapt to fit particular circumstances. However, “despite all peculiarities, there is a similarity in the conditions of proletarian class struggle in different countries and in different phases of the proletarian revolution, and this … provides a common foundation for the organisation of Communist parties in each country”.

It stressed that every political action, and every Party, needs good leadership and so “our basic organisational task is thus to form, organise, and train an active Communist Party with competent leading bodies, as the competent leadership of the revolutionary proletarian movement”. But importantly, it also stressed that a key part of successful leadership was to develop and maintain “close ties with the proletarian masses. Without such ties, the leaders of the masses will not lead them but at best only follow along after”.

II. On democratic centralism

The resolution went on to stress the importance of organising in a disciplined manner, i.e. through ‘democratic centralism’. However, the resolution was careful to explain what such centralisation entailed – and what it must not entail too: “Democratic centralism in a Communist Party should be a true synthesis and fusion of centralism and proletarian democracy. This fusion can be achieved only on the foundation of constant and common activity and struggle of the entire party … Centralisation does not mean formal, mechanical centralisation but the centralisation of Communist activity, that is, the formation of a leadership that is strong and effective and at the same time flexible”.

In other words, genuine democratic centralism is far from a mechanical centralisation where power and authority rest in the hands of a party bureaucracy, and the rest of the membership is expected to act as passive followers. A successful vibrant Party is built on the ongoing interaction between the elected leadership and the wider membership of each Party body, a leadership “developing and maintaining living ties and interrelationships both within the party, between its leading bodies and the rank and file of the membership, and also between the party and the masses of proletarians outside its ranks”.

For a revolutionary party to succeed, it can neither be organised in a top-down bureaucratic manner, nor – as the opposite side of the same coin – in a disorganised ‘anarchist’ fashion where ‘anything goes’ and there is no clear central direction to Party activity and campaigns. “For centralisation not to remain a dead letter but to be carried out in practice, it must be implemented in such a way that the members perceive it as an objectively required strengthening and broadening of their overall work and capacity to struggle. Otherwise, the masses will perceive it as a bureaucratisation of the party, which can give rise to opposition to any centralisation, any leadership, any strict discipline”. 

III. On Communists' Obligation to be Active

This third section of the resolution stressed the importance of as many Communist Party members as possible being involved in the day-to-day activity of the Party, which “should be a working school of revolutionary Marxism”. A Party can have the best programme in the world, but “if there is no Communist activity, and if the passivity of most members in party work remains unchallenged, the party is not carrying out even the minimum of what it has promised the proletariat by adopting a Communist programme”. 

It emphasised that “besides commitment to Communist ideas, membership of the Communist Party obviously involves formal admission …, regular payment of membership dues, a subscription to the party newspaper, and so on. But the most important condition of membership is that members participate on a day-to-day basis in the work of the Party”.

But how does the resolution suggest that a Party can best encourage each member to take part in the work of the Party? By dividing out the work and giving each member a role, as part of a team of other Party comrades, where they can best contribute and carry out Party activity: “Each Party member should belong to a smaller working group: a committee, commission, board, group, fraction, or cell. This is the only way that party work can be correctly allocated, carried out and supervised”.

It described “the art of Communist organisation” in two ways. Firstly, involving “everything and everyone in the proletarian class struggle, effectively dividing Party work among Party members, and organising members to draw the broader masses of the proletariat into the revolutionary movement”. Secondly, to build and maintain a leadership position in the workers’ movement, not by imposing itself on the movement but “by the authority it derives from its great energy, ability, experience and flexibility”.

It stressed the importance of every member attending local Party branch meetings. However, for those meetings to be successful, a smaller group of comrades – a branch committee – needed to prepare for them in advance. But similarly, all interventions into workers’ meetings, demonstrations and actions needed to be prepared for by a smaller group of assigned comrades that could carry out the detailed preparation that cannot be carried out by a larger body. “Unless all members are divided among a large number of working groups and participate daily in the work of the Party, even the most militant efforts to further the class struggle will lead nowhere”. 

It suggested that these smaller groups be formed for different arenas of party activity: door-to-door agitation, internal education, newspaper circulation, literature sales, communications, etc., as well as to intervene in the women’s movement, the unemployed, different workplaces, trade unions and so on, perhaps also developing or intervening in “a more broadly based opposition formation” – in other words, into what me might now describe as trade union ‘Broad Lefts’.

But the resolution also stressed that organising comrades into these “small working groups” required “great patience, tact and energy” and that “results cannot be achieved overnight”. Simply allocating members into groups without careful prior discussion and consideration would “be worse than not starting at all”. 

The resolution recommended that this reorganisation of party work was essential – but, to succeed, had to proceed “one step at a time”. Local branches should consolidate a few areas of work first, rather than setting up too many different groups all at once. 

It advised that the party leadership first “hold a detailed preliminary discussion with those Party members who, as well as being committed and sincere Communists, are also good organisers and have a good knowledge of the general situation in the workers' movement in the country's main centres; on the basis of its findings the leading Party body can work out in detail the basic principles of the new method of work. Next, the instructors, organisers or organising commissions should prepare the plan of work at the local level, elect the first group leaders and launch the campaign. Then the organisations, working groups, cells and individual members must be given specific tasks to perform that are clearly appropriate, useful and within their capabilities. If necessary, the Party should give a practical demonstration of how to tackle the job. In this case it is important to focus attention on the mistakes which are particularly to be avoided”.

The other essential factor identified in the resolution for making sure this approach to party organisation succeeded was the supporting and guiding role of the party leadership at all levels. They “must not merely ensure that all comrades are busy; it must assist them and lead their work systematically and expertly”. 

It also called for working groups, party branches and committees to get into the habit of regularly reporting on the work they are carrying out to the leading body immediately above it - and for individual members to also be reporting to the working group that they belong to. Reports should usually be verbal, although sometimes in writing. Those reports should also not just be received but discussed, in order to help develop and guide future activity.

Finally, this section of the resolution also pointed to a weakness in political education, which it suggested was often superficial, with many rank-and-file members having little knowledge of neither the Party programme, nor the resolutions agreed by the Communist International. It resolved that this needed to be tackled through regular and systematic discussion throughout the Party organisations, including its working groups.

IV. On propaganda and agitation

The section of the resolution on propaganda and agitation discussed the importance of intervening in the movement with carefully worked out slogans and demands, and absolutely not to just “preach only the general principles of Communism”. Interventions at trade union meetings and conferences, at demonstrations and meetings – whether ones called by the Party itself or by other parties – should all be carefully prepared for in advance.

The resolution made clear that “Communists must take part in all the day-to-day struggles and all the movements of the working class, and defend the workers in every clash with the capitalists over the length of the working day, wages, conditions of work, etc. The Communists must … assist them to formulate precise and practical demands; foster class solidarity and the awareness of their common interests and common cause as members of a national working class, which forms in its turn part of the world proletarian army … Only by leading the working masses in the day-to-day struggle against the attacks of capitalism can the Communist Party become the vanguard of the working class, learning in practice how to lead the proletariat”.

It stated that the Party should take every opportunity to expose the failings of the Social Democratic and other petty-bourgeois trade-union leaders – “when the opportunity arises, these leaders should be put in a position where they have to show their true nature: then a vigorous attack can be launched against them.” 

The next section of the resolution gave, as an example, the ‘Open Letter’ issued by the Unified Communist Party of Germany (VKPD) to other parties and the trade unions, proposing a joint struggle on wages and the attacks of the employers. “The party demanded that they tell the proletariat publicly whether they were willing to commit their supposedly powerful organisations to a struggle together with the Communist Party for very modest demands to counter the evident impoverishment of the proletariat”.

As well as participation in trade union and political struggles, attention was drawn to the importance of both ‘street agitation’ as well as door-to-door campaigning. In countries where there were national minorities, the resolution also agreed that “special attention is needed to agitation and propaganda in the proletarian layers of these minorities”, conducted in the languages of those national minorities.

The resolution raised points about propaganda directed at the ranks of the armed forces that still retain their validity today: “Rank-and-file soldiers in the army must be made aware of the class antagonisms expressed in the shabby treatment they receive and officers’ material privileges. In addition, it must be explained to soldiers how their whole future is linked to that of the exploited classes. In periods of increasing revolutionary ferment, agitation for the election by soldiers and sailors of all those in command and for the formation of soldiers’ councils can be very effective in undermining the pillars of capitalist class rule”.

V. Organising political struggles

This section of the resolution emphasised the importance of intervening energetically into strikes and significant political struggles. The Party should use the roots it had laid down to “hold meetings in the main centres where political organising or a strike movement is under way. At such meetings, party speakers should advance Communist slogans showing how participants can surmount the difficulties of their struggle”. If it wasn’t possible to organise its own meeting, then Party members should organise to speak – either from the platform or from the floor – at meetings organised by the movement.

The resolution added that, where there was strong support at a meeting for the Party’s position, the opportunity should be taken to propose “well-written and well-motivated motions and resolutions. If they are adopted, efforts should be made to pass the same or similar resolutions in every meeting on this issue in that city or region, or at least to win substantial minority support for them”. 

A small but important additional point indicated the way the Congress envisaged members constantly reviewing and learning from every intervention: “After each meeting of this sort, the working groups involved in preparing and conducting it should meet briefly, not only to prepare a report for the leading party committee, but also to draw out the lessons of this experience for future work”. Reports should also be provided for inclusion in the party press.

The resolution discussed the use of posters and leaflets, handing them out at factory gates or other places where workers can be reached, such as train stations. It also discussed the organisation of demonstrations, turning in particular to the workplaces to build them, and with careful preparation of both the slogans to be raised and the stewarding of marches. It also stressed that where a Party launches a significant initiative – such as the VKPD’s ‘Open Letter’, it needed to have first been carefully prepared for amongst party branches and caucuses, backed up thoroughly in the party press, with regular reports from the localities, as well as being highlighted by the Party’s elected representatives in Parliament and on local councils. Where such a campaign had brought workers around the Party, then that should be built upon, by winning support in trade union meetings and strike meetings for the Party’s position, building Broad Lefts and seeking to win a new leadership. The Party should work to bring together individual movements and strike struggles into a unified national campaign. “The party’s main task is to highlight what the different struggles have in common, so that, where necessary, a political programme of united action can be proposed”.

But, learning from setbacks - for example the defeat of the 1920 factory occupations in Italy and the 1921 lockout of the miners in Britain - the resolution stressed that Communist Parties had to have a careful feel of the mood of the class, especially those organised in the key workplaces:  “A close relationship of trust linking the leading functionaries and party workers to the shop stewards is the best guarantee that mass political actions will not be launched prematurely and that they assume dimensions appropriate to the conditions and the party’s current influence”.

VI. On the party press

An important section of the resolution focused on the need to improve the quality of the Communist Party press.

Here are some of the notable points raised in the resolution:

Our newspaper has the task of gathering useful experiences from the activity of all party members and presenting them to party comrades as guidance for ongoing correction and improvement of Communist methods of work. …. In this way, the party press and each of its components will be the best organiser of our revolutionary work”.

A party newspaper … must be a proletarian organisation of struggle, a working collective of revolutionary workers, including all who write regularly for, typeset, print, administer, distribute, and sell the paper, those who gather local material for it and discuss and prepare this material in the cells, and those active in its distribution”.

Each Communist acquires a close relationship with his newspaper by making sacrifices for it and working for it. The paper is his daily weapon, which must be steeled and sharpened anew each day in order to be usable”. 

It is not enough to be an active recruiter and agitator for the newspaper. One must also be a helpful collaborator. Factory fractions and cells need to report as quickly as possible everything that is socially and economically notable, from on-the-job accidents to factory assemblies, from mistreatment of an apprentice to the company’s official report. The trade-union fractions must convey all important decisions and measures taken by the committees and secretariats of their union federation. Goings-on at meetings and in the streets often enable an observant party worker to note details of social significance. These can be reported in the newspaper to indicate close ties to the daily needs of those indifferent to politics. The editorial committee must handle with great care and affection these reports coming from the lives of workers and their organisations”. 

Immediately after every significant strike movement or lockout in which the newspaper has energetically defended the interests of the workers in struggle, person-to-person subscription work should be started up among the former strikers. Factory and trade-union fractions in the industrial sector involved in the strike should seek subscriptions among their contacts, using lists and subscription forms … In the same way, whenever an election campaign has aroused the interest of the masses, working groups should carry out systematic door-to-door work in the proletarian districts”.

The working group building the newspaper should also be active at every public meeting or large rally of workers, circulating its subscription forms at the start, during the breaks, and after the wrap-up. The trade-union fractions must do this in meetings of their union, as must the cells and factory fractions at factory-wide meetings”.

VII. Concerning the party’s overall structure

This section of the resolution contained advice on how to organise party branches and structures so that they corresponded to the key proletarian centres and communication links rather than any formal geographical plan. It suggested that “efforts should be made to equip every large city that is a centre of economic, political, or communications activity with a network of connections into the surrounding hinterland and the economic or political region linked to it”.  

District committees “should elect full-time organisers, who are to be confirmed by the party central leadership”. The committee should be “constantly reinforced by activists from the membership in the district capital, in order to maintain a close contact between this committee, which gives political leadership to the entire district, and the broad membership in the main centre”. As also proposed in Section III above, it also stressed that “members of a local party unit [branch] should be divided up, for the purposes of daily party work, in different working groups”. 

In deciding on a slate for the Party’s central leadership body [National Committee], the resolution recommended that “it is important to take account of the different regions in the country, if possible. That will help provide a thorough grasp of the political situation as a whole and give a vivid image of the party, its level of understanding, and its capacities”.  For similar reasons, it also recommended that the National Committee be inclusive of comrades with minority points of view, to ensure that any differences were being openly discussed as they developed rather than leaving them to build-up with the risk of resentment and splits. However, for the Party to be run confidently and clearly, it advised that the smaller Executive Committee, responsible for day-to-day political and organisational leadership, should be unified in outlook. 

It stressed that “representatives … of the central leadership have the right to attend all meetings … so that it is able to address district and local leaderships not only through political and organisational circulars but through direct verbal instructions and information”, but, at the same time, “every party unit and committee and every single member has the right to express their wishes and make proposals, comments, and complaints at any time directly to the party central leadership or the International”.

However, even when there might be disagreements, the resolution stressed that the Party needed to operate in a disciplined way, according to democratic centralism. It emphasised that any such disagreements could hopefully be resolved in advance of any action by making sure that “the broadest possible range of members should be involved in considering and deciding every question. The party and its leading bodies have the responsibility of deciding whether and to what extent questions raised by individual comrades should be discussed publicly (newspapers, lectures, pamphlets). Even when some members consider a decision of the party or its leadership to be wrong, they must bear in mind in their public activity that the worst breach of discipline and the worst mistake in struggle is to disrupt the unity of the common front”.

VIII. On combining legal and illegal work

This final section of the resolution stressed that every section of the International must be organised in a way that allowed it to quickly adjust to changes of conditions, not least having to suddenly work in conditions of illegality – which was a threat, given the international political situation, that needed to be taken more seriously than some sections had been doing. “Carefully structured distribution of legal leaflets, publications, and letters can serve in large measure as a vehicle for setting up an apparatus for secret communications, including a courier service, a secret postal service, safe houses, secret transportation, and the like”.

At the same time, parties that were working ‘underground’ had to be live to the opportunities to intervene more openly, for example in the still legalised workers’ movement, when they arose, whilst taking obvious care to protect its structures, membership records and so on from discovery, knowing that “the bourgeoisie will seek to infiltrate the underground organisation with spies and provocateurs … Extended legal revolutionary work is the best way to test who is sufficiently reliable, courageous, conscientious, energetic, skilled, and punctual to be entrusted with important tasks of underground work appropriate to their abilities”.

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It's worth noting that Lenin, reflecting later on these Theses at the following Fourth Congress, questioned whether they had been drawn up a little inflexibly, based on Russian conditions that might not transfer so easily elsewhere. However, an overview of the Congresses of the Comintern, agreed by the First International Conference of the Fourth International in 1936, still spoke favourably of them: "in spite of being too mechanical, “too Russian” (Lenin, at the Fourth Congress), [they] give many valuable suggestions, particularly regarding the connection between legal and illegal work, the necessity of a quick switchover from one to the other method of work, the organization of the press, the creation of factory cells, etc."

Saturday, 5 July 2025

"Work amongst Women" - from the Third Congress of the Comintern

The Second Congress of the Communist International had agreed that the Executive Committee of the International, (the ECCI) should - alongside the ‘Women's section of the International’ also agreed at that Congress - develop policy on work amongst women.

Clara Zetkin (left) with Rosa Luxemburg, 1910 

Clara Zetkin, who had been elected the International Secretary of the Women's Section, alongside others like Kollontai and Krupskaya, took the lead on carrying out what had been agreed. A first women’s conference of the International had been held in the summer of 1920, and the second was held to coincide with the Third Congress of the whole International, taking place in Moscow in 1921.

As a result of these discussions, three resolutions were tabled at the Third Congress, on 8 July 1921:

1) On Strengthening International Contact and on the Tasks of the Comintern's International Secretariat on Work among Women;

2) On Forms and Methods of Communist Work among Women;

3) Theses on Methods and Forms of Work among Communist Party Women.

I have summarised these three resolutions below, summaries which can hopefully be of benefit to comrades leading this key area of revolutionary work today.

On Strengthening International Contact and on the Tasks of the Comintern's International Secretariat on Work among Women

This resolution informed Congress of the proposals made at the “Second International Conference of Communist women”, which were then agreed by the Congress:

In summary, these were:

1 For all individual national Communist Parties to appoint leading women comrades as ‘international correspondents’;

2 For these correspondents to seek to regularly inform the Secretariat of the ECCI, ultimately responsible for all the work of the International;

3 For national parties to make available to the appointed correspondents all their technical and other resources, and for the correspondents to make wide use of them;

4 For the International Women's Secretariat (IWS), based in Moscow like the ECCI, to organise regular meetings for correspondents twice a year - more frequently if necessary.

5 For the IWS to maintain close ties with both the ECCI, to whom it is accountable, and with the appointed correspondents, and pay The particular attention to: “1) the activity of departments for work among proletarian women in the Communist Parties where insufficient work is being carried out and the basic principles and positions of the III International are being disregarded, 2) giving the women's Communist movement of all countries a single direction and 3) organising working women' campaigns on an international scale that can draw the revolutionary movement of the whole proletariat into the struggle for its dictatorship”.

A further three points (6/7/8) proposed that the ECCI and IWS set up of a “West European auxiliary-technical body” to prepare resolutions in line with the decisions of the IWS and ECCI, and then to ensure that they were carried out.

On Forms and Methods of Communist Work among Women

This resolution also informed Congress of the political declaration agreed at the ‘Second International Conference of Communist women', as also then endorsed by the Congress.

Again in summary, the resolution stressed that:

Successful revolutionary struggle “can only be achieved If the broadest masses of working women are consciously and resolutely involved”.

Similarly, “in countries such as Soviet Russia where the proletariat has already won state power and, by introducing the Soviet system, has established the dictatorship”, the struggle to oppose counter-revolution and to organise a new society “cannot be carried out unless the broad masses of working women are absolutely and unshakably convinced that the struggle for and building up of a new society concerns them as well”.

All Communist Parties must take seriously the decision of the Conference - to agitate, engage and organise the “broad masses of working women” in revolutionary struggle and in Communist ideas, and “to draw these women into the Communist Party, thereby deepening and developing their will and ability to be active and to fight”.

That every Party must organise sections for work amongst women to carry out these aims that “carry out all their work under the leadership of the Party, but their forms and methods of work have to be sufficiently flexible to adapt themselves to the specificities of the position of women in the family and in society. The work of these departments is described in detail in the theses passed by the conference [see below]”. 

The resolution noted that the sections/departments had a dual task - both “to inspire in the female proletarian masses a high level of class consciousness and a firm commitment to engage in the revolutionary class struggle, the struggle of all humiliated and oppressed people against the bourgeoisie, and the struggle for communism”, and, “after the victory of the proletarian revolution, to involve them in a conscious and dedicated way in the joint work needed to build a Communist society”.

It also instructed Parties and their ‘departments’ to remember that “their job involves more than just verbal and written agitation and propaganda. Their main concern is to carry out agitation through action - the most effective method at their disposal - and, in all the capitalist countries, to encourage working women to take an active part in all the actions and struggles of the revolutionary proletariat, in strikes, street demonstrations and armed uprisings, while in Soviet countries they must give working women an active part to play in all spheres of Communist construction”.

Theses on Methods and Forms of Work among Communist Party Women

These more detailed theses expanded on the points in the two briefer resolutions summarised above.

Basic Principles

This opening section of the Theses sets out a succinct summary of the position of revolutionary Marxism - a summary well worth re-reading and re-discussing today.

It started by clearly stating that all the Parties of the Third International “need to increase work amongst the female proletariat, educating the broad mass of working women in Communist ideas and drawing them into the struggle for Soviet power, for the construction of the Soviet workers' republic”. 

It restated the general political analysis of the International, including that: “the sharp decline in living standards of the working people, the inability of the bourgeoisie to restore production, the rise of speculation, the disintegration of production, unemployment, price fluctuations and the gap between prices and wages, lead everywhere to the inevitable sharpening of the class struggle. This struggle decides who and which system is to lead, administer and organise production - either a small group of bourgeois or the working class basing itself on the principles of Communism”.

It explained how events in the Soviet Union had proved in practice the importance of involving working and peasant women in the struggle - with women playing such a vital role in the civil war, combating desertion and sabotage, for example.

On the other hand, as the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution had shown, the resolution it also raised the particular danger to the movement posed by “the masses of passive working women who are outside the movement - the housewives, office workers and peasant women who are still under the influence of the bourgeois world-view, the church and tradition, and have no links with the great liberation movement for communism. Women that stand outside this movement are inevitably a stronghold of bourgeois ideas and a target for counter revolutionary propaganda, both in the West and in the East”.

The resolution therefore proposed, again in line with the earlier resolutions, that Communist Parties organise “special apparatuses inside the Party … establishing special methods of approaching women, with the aim of liberating them from the influence of the bourgeois world-view or the influence of the compromising parties, and of educating them to be resolute fighters for Communism and consequently for the full development of women”.

The section of the resolution also stressed the importance to the whole working class of the “active, conscious and determined participation” of women in the struggle, and in the organisations of the class. It restated the point made in the previous resolution, that “the Third Congress of the Communist International maintains that without the active participation of the broad masses of the female proletariat and the semi-proletarian women, the proletariat can neither seize power nor realise communism”.

But it also raised an important corollary for all women fighting against their oppression, namely that “without Communist Party support for all the projects leading to the liberation of women, the recognition of women's rights as equal human beings and their real emancipation cannot in practice be won”.

The resolution explained this point more fully a few paragraphs later in this section. Given that these points continued to be central to debates around ‘socialist feminism’ today, I have quoted them almost in full here:

“The Third Congress of the Communist International … points out to the working women of the whole that their liberation from centuries of enslavement, lack of rights and inequality is possible only through the victory of Communism, and that the bourgeois women's movement is completely incapable of guaranteeing women that which Communism gives. So long as the power of capital and private property exists, the liberation of woman from dependence on a husband can go no further than the right to dispose of her own property and her own wage and decide on equal terms with her husband the future of her children.

The most radical feminist demand - the extension of the suffrage to women in the framework of bourgeois parliamentarianism - does not solve the question of real equality for women, especially those of the propertyless classes. The experience of working women in all those capitalist countries in which, over recent years, the bourgeoisie has introduced formal equality of the sexes makes this clear. The vote does not destroy the prime cause of women's enslavement in the family and society. Some bourgeois states have substituted civil marriage for indissoluble marriage. But as long as the proletarian woman remains economically dependent upon the capitalist boss and her husband, the breadwinner, and in the absence of comprehensive measures to protect motherhood and childhood and provide socialised child-care and education, this cannot equalise the position of women in marriage or solve the problem of relationships between the sexes.

The real equality of women, as opposed to formal and superficial equality, will be achieved only under Communism, when women and all the other members of the labouring class will become co-owners of the means of production and distribution and will take part in administering them, and women will share on an equal footing with all the members of the labour society the duty to work; in other words, it will be achieved by overthrowing the capitalist system of production and exploitation which is based on the exploitation of human labour, and by organizing a Communist economy.

Only Communism creates conditions whereby the conflict between the natural function of woman - maternity - and her social obligations, which hinder her creative work for the collective, will disappear and the harmonious and many sided development of a healthy and balanced personality, firmly and closely in tune with the life and goals of the labour-collective, will be completed. All women who fight for the emancipation of woman and the recognition of her rights must have as their aim the creation of a Communist society.

But Communism is also the final aim of the proletariat as a whole and therefore, in the interests of both sides, the two struggles must be fought as 'a single and indivisible' struggle”.

Based on this class analysis, the resolution stressed, therefore, “the basic position of revolutionary Marxism that there is no 'special' women's question, nor should there be a special women's movement” in the sense that “any alliance between working women and bourgeois feminism or support for the vacillating or clearly right-wing tactics of the social compromisers and opportunists will lead to the weakening of the forces of the proletariat, thereby delaying the great hour of the full emancipation of women. A Communist society will be won not by the united efforts of women of different classes, but by the united struggle of all the exploited”.

The Theses added that “at its highest stage, the struggle of women against their dual oppression (by capitalism and by their own domestic family dependence) must take on an international character, developing into a struggle … by the proletariat of both sexes for their dictatorship and for the Soviet system”.

The Theses also called on women workers “in factories, offices and fields” to show their support for the Communist International, remembering the serious and detailed approach it had always taken towards the question of women’s oppression, ensuring that resolutions addressing the need to draw women into the struggle for socialism were present from its very first Congress agenda onwards. In contrast, “women must remember that the Second International has never tried to set up any kind of organisation to further the struggle for the liberation of women”. [An international gathering of women socialists had been held in Berne in 1915, but organised under the independent initiative of the women themselves - including Zetkin, not by the Second International]

Methods and Forms of Work among Women

This section of the Theses set out a series of points for all Communist Parties to follow, quoted, largely in full, below. It might be useful to discuss what parts of the language used, forms of oppression highlighted and methods proposed perhaps need amending to be fully applicable for today, and/or whether the points outlined still generally retain their validity:

“Women must be included in all the militant class organisations - the Party, the trade unions, the co-operatives, Soviets of factory representatives etc., with equal rights and equal responsibilities”.

“The importance must be recognised of drawing women into all of the active struggle of the proletariat (including the military defence of the proletariat) and of constructing in all areas the foundations of a new society and organising production and everyday life on Communist lines”.

“The maternal function must be recognised as a social function and the appropriate measures to defend and protect women as child-bearers must be taken or fought for”.

“Congress … is firmly opposed to any kind of separate women's associations in the Parties and trade unions or special women's organisations, but it accepts that special methods of work among women are necessary and that every Communist Party should set up a special apparatus for this work. In adopting this position, the Congress takes into consideration the following:

a) the oppression women suffer in everyday life, not only in the bourgeois-capitalist countries, but in countries with a Soviet structure, in transition from capitalism to communism; 

b) the great passivity and political backwardness of the female masses, which is to be explained by the fact that for centuries women have been excluded from social life and enslaved in the family;

c) the special function - childbirth - which nature assigns to women, and the specificities connected with this function, call for the greater protection of their energies and health in the interests of the whole collective”.

The resolution then set out five different tasks that the “special apparatus for conducting work among women” that each Communist Party was instructed to develop. “This apparatus must consist of departments or commissions for work among women, attached to every Party committee at all levels, from the CC of the Party right down to the urban, district or local Party committee”. The tasks were: 

“1 to educate women in Communist ideas and draw them into the ranks of the Party;

2 to fight the prejudices against women held by the mass of the male proletariat, and increase the awareness of working men and women that they have common interests;

3 to strengthen the will of working women by drawing them into all forms and types of civil conflict, encouraging women in the bourgeois countries to participate in the struggle against capitalist exploitation, in mass action against the high cost of living, against the housing shortage, unemployment and around other social problems, and women in the Soviet republics to take part in the formation of the Communist personality and the Communist way of life;

4 to put on the Party's agenda and to include in legislative proposals questions directly concerning the emancipation of women, confirming their liberation, defending their interests as child-bearers;

5 to conduct a well-planned struggle against the power of tradition, bourgeois customs and religious ideas, clearing the way for healthier and more harmonious relations between the sexes, guaranteeing the physical and moral vitality of working people”.

The resolution added some additional points about how the work of the departments or commissions should be led and organised. It stressed that “all local, regional and central organisations should have one woman comrade responsible for organising propaganda among women’ and that “in the modern epoch the trade unions, production unions and co-operatives must serve as the basis for Party work among women”.

It concluded with stressing the balance required to ensure that “work amongst women must be informed by an understanding of the unity of the Party movement and organisation, but at the same time show independent initiative and, proceeding independently from other Party commissions or sections, work towards the rapid and full emancipation of women”.

Party Work among Women in the Soviet Countries

This section of the resolution stressed the need to continue to prioritise drawing more women into the Party and work of constructing the new society in the Soviet republics themselves.

Amongst other points, it called for more women to be involved in the bodies administering workers' control of production, in factory delegate meetings, and elected to the Soviets and their executive committees. It also stressed the importance of improving technical education for women.

It called on the departments to help develop “the entire network of social institutions” in order to “help emancipate women's everyday lives, turning the slave of the home and family into a free member of the working class - the class which is its own boss and the creator of new forms of living”. The resolution highlighted “communal dining rooms, laundries, repair shops, institutions of social welfare, house-communes etc”, as the kind of network which could “transform everyday life along new, Communist lines and relieve women of the difficulties of the transitional period”. 

As a key strategy for reaching out beyond the ranks of the Party to wider layers of both working and peasant women, the resolution proposed that departments organise women's delegate meetings, with representatives elected from local factories and offices, but also via elections for peasant and ‘housewife’ delegates as well. 

Giving a useful glimpse into the wider attempts to forge a new workers' democracy, the resolution stressed that the elected delegates “must report on their activity to their shops or to their residential area meetings” and be “elected for a period of three months”. 

They should also be encouraged to become ‘delegate-practitioners’ - i.e. given paid release from other duties to allow them to be involved in workers’ control and administration bodies. 

These kind of initiatives - both in encouraging workers' democracy in general and the emancipation of women in particular - were sadly to be soon crushed by the coming Stalinist counter-revolution.

In Bourgeois-Capitalist Countries

This section of the resolution linked the general threats facing the whole working-class under capitalist crisis, detailed in other Congress resolutions, to the specific threats that crisis imposed on women workers, including the fall in demand for their labour, which also increased the numbers turning to prostitution, the high cost of living and the critical shortage of housing.

Again, the resolution re-emphasised the consequent need to recruit more women into the Party, and to bring them onto its leading bodies - and those of the unions and co-operatives - as well “on equal terms with men”, countering “any attempts to isolate or separate off working women”.

It stressed the need for involving working women - including office workers and peasant women - in campaigns for “equal pay for equal work” and for “free and universal vocational education which would help women workers increase their skills”.

In the Economically Backward Countries (The East)

The next section of the resolution highlighted the particular need to campaign for women to have equal rights within the Party and workers' organisations as a whole, and to “fight all prejudices and all religious and secular customs that oppress women” in “countries where industry is underdeveloped”, including Soviet republics as well as capitalist nations.  

The Party and its departments should carry out its agitation on these issues amongst men, as well as women, and “take the principles of women's equality into the spheres of child education, family relations and public life”. Above all, it should seek support “from the broad layer of women exploited by capital, i.e., who work in the cottage industries and on the rice and cotton plantations” … drawing those plantation workers “into unions alongside the men”.

In terms of culture and education (a key interest for Krupskaya and some of the other leading women Bolsheviks), the resolution stayed that “in the Soviet countries of the East, the raising of the general cultural level of the population is the best method of overcoming backwardness and religious prejudices. The departments must encourage the development of schools for adults that are open to women. In the bourgeois countries the commissions must wage a direct struggle against the bourgeois influence in the schools”.

It also recommended that departments “organise clubs for working women” that “must be cultural centres and experimental model institutions that show how women can work towards their emancipation through self-activity (the organization of crêches, nurseries, literacy schools clubs, etc.)”. It added that mobile clubs should be organised to work amongst nomadic peoples.

It added that, in Soviet republics, the departments also had a role in “convincing working women by practical example that the domestic economy and the previous family form block their emancipation, while social labour liberates them”. They must also ensure that “the legislation which recognises the equal rights of women with men and defends the interests of women is observed among the Eastern peoples” and “encourage women to work as judges and juries in national courts of law”.

Finally, it stressed that a careful path needed to be struck, “avoiding tactless and crude attacks on religious beliefs or national traditions, the departments or commissions working among the women of the East must still struggle against nationalism and the power of religion over people's minds”.

Methods of Agitation and Propaganda

This section of the theses stressed that the guiding principle of work among women needed to be ‘agitation and propaganda through action’ … “above all encouraging working women to self-activity, dispelling the doubts they have about their own abilities and drawing them into practical work in the sphere of construction or struggle”.

It then added a phrase that could also be applied in many other fields of work too: “Firstly, practice and action, that lead to an understanding of Communist ideals and theoretical principles; and secondly, theory, that leads to practice and action - these are the methods of work the Communist Parties and their working women's departments must employ in approaching the mass of women”.

What should that ‘practice and action’ consist of? In the Soviet countries, it answered, it meant bringing women “into all branches of Soviet construction, ranging from the army and the police through to those which directly emancipate women by their organisation of communal eating, a network of institutions of social education, the protection of motherhood, etc”. 

In the capitalist countries, “propaganda by deed means above all encouraging working women to participate in strikes, demonstrations and any type of struggle which strengthens and deepens their revolutionary will and consciousness”. 

The resolution emphasised the importance of having dedicated women's organisers in the Party union caucuses and restarted the usefulness of holding the delegate meetings previously mentioned, as well as public meetings, meetings at individual workplaces and ‘house-to-house agitation’. 

On the latter strategy, it stressed that it should be aimed at developing a close-knit network, rather than just random ‘door-knocking’: “The Communist women doing this work must each be responsible for no more than ten households, they must make visits at least once a week to do agitation among housewives, and call more frequently when the Communist Party is conducting a campaign or is preparing any kind of action”. 

It also pointed out the importance of written material aimed specifically at working women, including having dedicated pages in the Party and trade union press.

Finally, “in order to strengthen comradeship between working women and working men”, it expressed a preference for encouraging more women to attend general Party courses and discussions, rather than ones “especially for working women” which “should be organised only where they are really necessary and expedient”. However, it added that “general Party schools must without fail include a course on the methods of work among women”.

The Structure of the Departments

This section of the resolution made a number of specific organisational points, including restating the point made earlier that departments/commissions of work among women should be “attached to every Party committee, at local and regional Party level and at CC level” although their size and the allocation of full-time workers to them was a decision for individual sections.

It also stressed that, to maintain a clear unified approach, the leader of each local department should also be a member of the local Party committee, or at least an observer to it with full voting rights on all matters concerning the work of the department. 

The tasks of the central Party department were also described in some detail, including producing a regular journal for working women, calling at least an annual meeting of representatives from all local district departments, organising national speaking tours, and an annual International Working Women's Day.

On International Work

Very finally, the theses sets out that “the International women's Secretariat of the Communist International leads the women's work of the Communist Parties at the international level”.

There is certainly still a host of ideas and approaches within these resolutions worth discussing and applying - as considered applicable - by revolutionaries today. 

Clara Zetkin's speech to the Congress can be read here, and the text of resolutions here.

See also this article from Socialism Today on the Communist Women’s Movement