The Fourth Comintern Congress (1922) - the last genuinely communist Congress

 1922 - the last genuinely communist Congress

The Fourth Congress of the Communist (Third) International opened in Petrograd in November 1922. It met for most of its sessions in Moscow, attended by 408 delegates, of whom 343 had a full vote. These represented 58 Communist organisations from various countries, along with delegations from various other non-affiliated organisations. 

The rally in Red Square, 7 November 1922.

On the fifth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, a mass rally welcoming the Congress was held in Moscow's Red Square.Trotsky gave the main platform speech, which was greeted with 'thunderous cheers'. Looking back in 1936 at this Fourth Congress, a document written for the First International Conference of the Fourth International, where the genuine forces of Marxism - Trotsky and his supporters - were now gathered, noted that:

"The Third Congress [had] 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 utilize by preparing better and more thoroughly for the coming struggles ... The Fourth Congress  reaffirmed the lessons of the Third Congress and dealt with them more thoroughly and concretely [and] was able to look back on tremendous organisational results. In the course of three years [since the First Congress in 1919], in all continents and in practically all countries, sections had been created, and apart from this, the Red International of Trade Unions and the Young Communist International had been built up. The Communist parties in a number of countries were at that time leading mighty revolutionary mass actions."

However, this proved to be the last genuinely communist congress of the Third International. By the time that the Fifth Congress was held, in 1924, Stalinist reaction had taken its hold. 

The 'New Economic Policy' (which the Congress agreed had been necessarily applied to the Soviet economy as discussed in a separate post) had always risked a strengthening of the wealthier 'kulak' peasant layer and the speculators and middlemen, the so-called 'NEP-men'. In turn, and especially with the loss of so many of the experienced working-class cadres needed to provide the check of genuine workers' democracy, owing to the civil war, there was a growing danger of control being handed over to an unchecked party officialdom and state bureaucracy, a danger that Lenin had warned of before he died in January 1924. But the NEP was not the key factor in the rise of Stalinism. That was the ongoing isolation of the embattled workers' state following the defeat of the 1923 German revolution. 

The defeat of the German revolution signalled the point where the necessary risks inherent in the NEP became ones that could not be kept in check. As the 1936 document quoted above put it in summary, its defeat "weakened the positions of the international proletariat and of its vanguard" while, at the same time, "acted to strengthen the tendencies of the Soviet bureaucracy to become an independent force. This accounts for the fact that the Fifth World Congress of the Comintern signifies above all the subjection of the Comintern to the yoke of the Russian bureaucracy. The Comintern itself became bureaucratised and was brought into complete dependence on the bureaucratic centre in Moscow. The theory of 'socialism in one country,' advanced by Stalin, the head of the bureaucracy, in the autumn of 1924 in glaring contradiction to the entire theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism, became for the newly formed social layers (bureaucracy, kulaks, specialists etc.) the ideological expression of their nationally-limited interests". 

Applying the Decisions of the Fourth Congress today

However, the records of the Fourth (1922) Congress remain principled guidance for genuine revolutionaries to re-read and apply today. 

On this blog, I have attempted to faithfully but concisely summarise the main debates and decisions under the following headings (click to open each post):

1) The NEP and the Transition to a Socialist Economy

2) The Rise of Fascism in Italy

3) The Colonial Revolution

4) The United Front

5) Building the International

October 10th 2025

The Fourth Comintern Congress - Building the International

This final post on the decisions reached by the Fourth (1922) Congress of the Communist International, seeks to summarise - in brief - the key points from a range of resolutions looking at different aspects of strengthening its sections, specifically work amongst Trade Unions, Youth, Women, Black workers and on Education and Agitation.

Trade Unions

The Congress resolution on trade unions noted that, globally, unions had lost membership and strength thanks to the ferocity of the capitalist offensive - and the inability of the reformist trade union leaderships to resist it.

Rather than accept losing control of the leaderships of national federations, the leaders of the reformist 'Amsterdam' trade union international were resorting to expulsions and splits. Anarcho-syndicalist federations had also resorted to similar action against Communist trade unionists too. This was being done in the name of keeping unions 'neutral' from party politics - but, in practice, that meant allying themselves with the existing order, rather than a political struggle to change it.

In response, Communist workers had to organise firm caucuses within their unions, and seek to work in alliance with the most revolutionary workers in other currents, such as the syndicalists. Rather than allowing the reformists to retain their damaging control by driving the best forces out of the unions, the Communists must fight expulsions and oppose splits in the trade union movement, fighting for readmission where expulsions have been enforced. They should call for the fusion of parallel trade union confederations in countries such as Spain, France and Czechoslovakia. This should be done around a concrete programme of demands and action for each branch of industry.

Youth

The Congress resolution on youth referred back to the previous Congress resolutions seeking to build mass organisations of worker youth, based primarily on political struggle. 

In general, that work had not yet succeeded in building such a mass base. In part this was owing to the pressures of the capitalist offensive that particularly weighed down on young workers, and also from the lack of support for young workers by the trade union bureaucracy. The Communist parties needed to campaign for the workers' movement to take up the defence of young workers, including in opposition to the growing militarism. That should include working to build Communist youth groups within workplaces and trade union branches, and in schools as well. 

Within the Party itself, the education of youth needed careful and systematic attention, helping to organise schools and courses and making sure youth were writing for party publications, including features on the lives and struggles of worker youth.

Zetkin and other delegates at the International Women's Congress, 1921

Women

The Fourth Congress resolution focussed on the work being carried out by the International Communist Women’s Secretariat. Their work had helped to build international connections between Communist women in different sections and to set up women's organisations within them.

"In the countries still under bourgeois class rule, the first priority of systematic Communist work among women producers and proletarians has been the struggle to defend the bare essentials of life against capitalist exploitation, the struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish a proletarian dictatorship. In the Soviet states, by contrast, the main emphasis has been the effort to draw worker and peasant women into all arenas of the economy and social life for construction of the proletarian state, and their schooling to carry out the resulting tasks". 

Clara Zetkin, in charge of the Secretariat's work, spoke to emphasise that: "What we conventionally term the Communist Women’s Movement is not at all an independent movement of women and has nothing in common with any women’s rights currents. It signifies methodical Communist work among women for a double goal. First, with respect to women who already embrace the idea of communism, to integrate them ideologically and organisationally into the different national sections of the Communist International and to make them into active and conscious collaborators in and contributors to the entire life and work of these sections. In addition, with regard to women not yet imbued with Communist ideas, it involves winning them and drawing them into all the actions and struggles of the proletariat".

However, the Congress resolution again had to state its criticism of some sections for the lack of attention they had placed on this area of work and stressed the need for these omissions to be corrected. In her speech, Zetkin drew attention to some specific examples and pointed to how work could be improved.

Black Workers

The Fourth Congress resolution pointed to imperialism's attempts to fully colonise and exploit the continent of Africa. But the struggles against imperialism were awakening a 'racial consciousness' amongst millions of Black  people, not only in Africa but also in the United States: "The history of Blacks in the United States has prepared them to play an important role in the liberation struggle of the entire African race. Three hundred years ago, the American Blacks were torn from their native soil, transported on slave ships under the most indescribably cruel conditions, and sold into slavery ... The Blacks were not docile slaves. Their history tells of rebellions, revolts, and underground techniques of winning freedom. But all their struggles were savagely suppressed". 

The American Civil War, fought "to maintain the industrial supremacy of capitalism in the Northern states ... presented Blacks with the choice between slavery in the South and wage slavery in the North". The 'emancipated' Black workers were then recruited into the American army as supposed 'equals' but returned to the US to face "racial persecution, lynching, murder, deprival of the right to vote, and inequality." The anger against this persecution "combined with the impact of the Blacks’ integration into industry in the North ... assigns to American Blacks, especially in the North, a place in the vanguard of the struggle against oppression in Africa".

The resolution pointed to the common enemy of both Black and white workers  - capitalism and imperialism. It called for the international struggle for emancipation to be based on the struggle against them - linking together the workers of the US with the masses of Africa and Central America and the Caribbean. The Comintern had to promote that international organisation against Black oppression whilst also showing Black workers that workers and peasants from other peoples across the world faced the same outrageous attacks of racial oppression, inequality and exploitation.

The Congress resolved to support Black peoples' struggles against oppression, for equality of wages and political and social rights and for unions to recruit Black workers into their ranks.

Education and Agitation

The Congress resolution proposed that each section should develop an "Education Secretariat" to oversee the education of party members, including central and local Party schools, day and evening classes, with particular attention being paid to youth. It should be supported by an international education section which can assist in publishing materials, for example on understanding the ideas of Marxism. 

The resolution particularly stressed ensuring that "Party members are acquainted with at least the programme of their own Party, the twenty-one conditions for joining the Communist International, and any decisions of the Communist International that particularly concern their own Party" and that organisers are similarly "aware of every major tactical and organisational decision taken by the Congress."

Cadre development would also came from their practical activity, from taking part in agitation in the workplaces, unions, workers' clubs and, sometimes most effectively, in homes - but in fact anywhere where there are workers present. The agitation had to be understandable to workers - starting with the basic demands of workers - "there must be no attempts to force on those listening Communist principles and demands that are incomprehensible to them."

The Party leadership should issue practical advice to help with agitational work, especially when it came to specific campaigns "such as election campaigns, the campaign against high prices and for tax cuts, the movements for industrial soviets and for the unemployed, and other forms of Party activity". It also proposed that a survey be sent to all members to find out how often they carried out Party work and agitational activity.

The Fourth Comintern Congress - The United Front

The ‘Theses on Comintern Tactics’ agreed by the Fourth Congress centred on the need - in the current economic and political conjuncture - to apply the ‘united front tactic’ that had been set out in earlier 'Theses' agreed by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) at the end of 1921 as a method “designed to give Communist agitation a base in the unified mass activity of the proletariat”.

The Fourth Congress Theses summed up the ‘united front tactic’ as “simply an initiative whereby the Communists propose to join with all workers belonging to other parties and groups and all unaligned workers in a common struggle to defend the immediate, basic interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie. Every action, for even the most trivial everyday demand, can lead to revolutionary awareness and revolutionary education; it is the experience of struggle that will convince workers of the inevitability of revolution and the historic importance of Communism”.

Trotsky speaking at the Fourth Congress

1921 ECCI Theses on the United Front

The 1921 ECCI Theses had noted that, alongside growing respect for the Communist Party amongst the most militant workers, “the new layers of politically inexperienced workers just coming into activity long to achieve the unification of all the workers’ parties and even of all the workers’ organisations in general, hoping in this way to strengthen opposition to the capitalist offensive”. They still harboured illusions of an easier road than revolution and so supported the reformist ‘socialist’ parties but wanted to see them fighting together alongside the Communists. “To that extent, this mood is progressive”, recognising that, through the experience of serious mass action, these workers will begin to learn “that reformism is an illusion and that compromise is fatal”.

The ECCI Theses pointed out that the leaders of those ‘socialist’ parties and internationals also preach unity – but in words only. In reality, they were “bringing splits, confusion and organised sabotage to the struggle of the working masses.” While, “for the inexperienced sections of workers just becoming politically aware, the slogan of the united front is a genuine expression of their very real desire to rally the forces of the oppressed class against the capitalist attack”, for these reformist leaders it represents “a new attempt to deceive the workers and a new way of drawing them onto the old path of class collaboration.”

Whilst fully recognising the different interests for which the slogan could therefore be applied, the ECCI concluded that, in order to build on the Third Congress slogan of ‘To the Masses’ - to extend its influence amongst the wider working class and to involve it in struggle - the situation required “the Communist Parties and the Communist International as a whole support the slogan of a united workers’ front and take the initiative on this question into their own hands”.

How the tactic should be applied concretely depended on the particular conditions in each country. For example, the ECCI recommended that:

In Germany, the slogan of a united workers’ front, plus raising the possibility of supporting a “united workers’ government” would help “the Party can group around itself all the anarchist and syndicalist elements standing aside from the mass struggle.”

In France, where most of the politically organised workers already supported the CP, the tactic should be applied a little differently, but, while knowing that the reformist trade union leaders will be seeking to betray workers’ struggles, “the revolutionary elements of the French working class must still approach the reformists before the start of every mass strike, revolutionary demonstration or any other spontaneous mass action, asking them to support the workers' initiative, and must systematically expose the reformists when they refuse to support the revolutionary struggle of the workers”. However, the ECCI cautioned that, in doing so, the CP must not give up its political independence and should not participate in an electoral ‘left-bloc’ with the reformists.

In Britain, the CP had been seeking to become a Labour Party affiliated organisation, but the reformist Labour leaders had denied it. Britain was “an exception … since unusual conditions have made the Labour Party in Britain a kind of general workers’ association for the whole country”. Therefore the ECCI called on the British Communists to “launch a vigorous campaign for their admittance to the Labour Party … to extend their influence to the rank-and-file of the working masses, using the slogan of a united revolutionary front against the capitalists”.

The advice on Sweden – where a reformist socialist had been elected prime Minister but needed Communist support to secure his majority - is instructive for how a small bloc of genuinely socialist MPs might need to act today. The ECCI advised that “the Communist fraction in the Swedish parliament may, in certain circumstances, agree to support the Menshevik ministry of Branting, as was correctly done by the German Communists in some of the provincial governments of Germany….  However, this certainly does not imply that the Swedish Communists should limit their independence in the slightest, or avoid exposing the character of the Menshevik government”.

Indeed, the Theses concluded by stressing that any agreement for a united front with reformist workers’ parties must absolutely always be based on “the absolute autonomy and complete independence of every Communist Party entering into any agreement … and its freedom to present its own views and its criticisms of those who oppose the Communists”. It gave a reminder of how the Bolsheviks had often made agreements with the Mensheviks, in part from the pressure from the workers for ‘unity’, putting forward the slogan for “unity from below”.  

But the ECCI recognised that in some sections of the International, centrist ideas still had a significant influence and that “there may be tendencies which amount to the dissolution of the Communist Parties and groups into a formless united bloc”. Other, more genuine forces might also be pushed in that direction as a reaction to some of the equally mistaken ultra-left attitudes also present in some of the sections. However, the correct application of the united from tactic could help internally consolidate the Communist Parties “both by re-educating through experience impatient or sectarian Left elements and by ridding the Parties of reformist ballast”. It also stressed that the united workers’ front must also embrace anarchist and syndicalist workers as well as those from reformist ‘socialist’ political parties and unions federations.

1922 Fourth Congress Resolution

Th 1922 Congress resolution (the ‘Theses on Comintern Tactics’)  restressed the points from the ECCI Theses – which were attached as an appendix to it.

It emphasised that, against the overall picture of capitalist decline, tactics had to also take into account ‘conjunctural fluctuations’ such as the limited industrial revival then being experienced in the global capitalist economy, but one being made at the expense of the working class through a worsening of pay, conditions and rights. But those attacks were forcing ever new layers of workers into struggle and making it harder for the trade-union bureaucrats to collaborate with the employers. The united front tactic would, of course, help the Communists to expose such treachery, including the attempts by the ‘Amsterdam International’ trade union leaders to attempt to expel Communists and split the union movement.

The rise of fascism, most notably in Italy, also required the Communist Parties to “be at the head of the working class in the fight against the fascist gangs … extremely active in setting up united fronts on the question and must make use of illegal methods of organisation”.

The resolution stressed that “the Communist International requires that all Communist Parties and groups adhere strictly to the united front tactic, because in the present period it is the only way of guiding Communists in the right direction, towards winning the majority of workers. … At present the reformists need a split, while the Communists are interested in uniting all the forces of the working class against capital”.

However, repeating the warning in the ECCI Theses, the resolution also stressed that “Any attempt by the Second International to interpret the united front as an organisational fusion of all the ‘workers’ parties’ must of course be categorically repudiated” and that the Communist Parties must retain complete freedom of action. “In the same way the united front tactic has nothing to do with the so-called ‘electoral combinations’ of leaders in pursuit of one or another parliamentary aim”.

The resolution stressed that the united front tactic shouldn’t just be agitational but organisational too, building “organisational footholds among the working masses themselves (factory committees, supervisory commissions … action committees, etc). ... ‘from below’”. Every serious Communist Party needed to have strong ‘cells’ in the key workplaces and ensure that those workplaces had factory committees/workers’ councils.

The resolution also discussed the appropriateness of raising the associated demand of “a workers’ government (or a workers’ and peasants’ government)”. This would be particularly important in counties where the crisis means that the workers’ parties could, indeed, find themselves in a majority. It stressed that, as opposed to the reformists’ attempts to call for a coalition with bourgeois parties, “Communists propose a united front involving all workers, and a coalition of all workers’ parties around economic and political issues, which will fight and finally overthrow bourgeois power”. 

Such a workers’ government would inevitably be born out of struggle but, even if brought to power through a parliamentary majority, would “from its very first days come up against extremely strong resistance from the bourgeoisie.” It would need, as its basic tasks, to organise against counter-revolution, including arming the workers to ensure its defeat (one of the lessons of Chile 1973 …), and to ensure “control over production, shift the main burden of taxation onto the propertied classes.” 

“In certain circumstances, Communists must declare themselves ready to form a workers’ government with non-Communist workers’ parties and workers’ organisations. However, they should do so only if there are guarantees that the workers’ government will conduct a real struggle against the bourgeoisie of the kind already outlined”. It would also require the Communist Party insisting that it had an unconditional right to independent agitation and being certain that its parliamentary representatives were under full control of the Party as a whole.

It warned that Communists have to remember that “every bourgeois government is simultaneously a capitalist government, but not every workers’ government is a truly proletarian, socialist government”. Nevertheless a ‘liberal’ workers’ government – perhaps along the lines of a Labour Party government coming to power in Britain (as it did in 1924) - would still be an “important starting-point”. Where, with the proviso of the guarantees laid out above, Communists give support to a non-Communist workers’ government, “the Communists will still openly declare to the masses that the workers’ government can be neither won nor maintained without a revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie”.

Dealing with Differences

The final section of the Fourth Congress resolution noted that the ‘united front tactic wasn’t an ‘optional’ policy for individual sections to choose whether to adopt but, as one of the tactical decisions taken by the Congress and ECCI, would become one of the ‘twenty-one conditions’ of membership of the International. 

In practice, many of the sections of the International had leaderships that didn’t fully take on board the tactical decisions and guidance being put forward by the World Congresses and some of the Fourth Congress resolutions noted specific examples of differences and gave guidance on how to proceed where sections were split over the correct tactics to follow.

For example, the Spanish, Italian and French parties had all voted in opposition to the ‘united front tactic’ at an extended meeting of the ECCI to concretize how the strategy should be applied, held at the start of 1922. In practice, as noted by the resolution on the Communist Party of Spain, the Spanish section had applied the tactic successfully in intervening in strike struggles, a tactic that now needed to be applied consistently in seeking to win the support of the best anarcho-syndicalist workers, and campaign for the unity of the Spanish trade union movement.

The differences amongst the various factions of the Communist Party of France were more significant. They were over far more than just the ‘united front’ but also far more than can be adequately covered in this post.

Just to give one example of the issues, Trotsky’s December 1922 ‘Report on the Fourth Congress’ explains why the Congress resolution on France insisted that “that nine-tenths of the candidates for all electoral posts … be selected from among workers and peasants directly from the workbench or the plough”.  But that was necessary to redirect the Party “in a country where entire legions of intellectuals, lawyers, careerists flock to the gates of various parties whenever they sniff the scent of a mandate, and all the more so a prospect of power”. The Congress also had to instruct the Party to expel any member who continued to be a member of the Freemasons!

A more detailed analysis of this ‘Party crisis’, and the decisions reached by the ECCI to try and resolve it, are outlined in several articles by Trotsky, written both before and after the Fourth Congress (see Volume Two of ‘The First Five Years of the Communist International’), and in the resolutions at the Congress itself.

The Fourth Comintern Congress - The Colonial Revolution

Theses on the ‘Eastern Question’ – The Colonial Revolution

The Fourth Congress also spent time discussing its work in those parts of the world where the masses were still living in feudal or semi-feudal conditions – conditions which still have not been eliminated today – i.e. where the 'tasks of the capitalist-democratic revolution' were still to be completed. 

These tasks had been carried out by the rising capitalist class most clearly in England in the 17th century and France in the 18th century. They included the elimination of feudal relations in the land, unification of the country and the solution of the national question – which for these later developing nations required challenging imperialist domination. It also meant the introduction of bourgeois democracy: the right to vote, the election of a democratic parliament, a free press, and trade union rights for the working class. But, as Trotsky’s theory of the ‘permanent revolution’ explained, the national bourgeois, tied to the landowners and foreign imperialists, could not be relied on to carry through these tasks – instead the working-class would need to take the lead.

Building on the Policy agreed at the Second Congress

The Second Congress of the Comintern had agreed the “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions”, drafted by Lenin, based on such a Marxist analysis of the colonial revolution. It had included, amongst other points, this important guidance:

“The Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. 

The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form.

The more backward the country, the stronger is the hold of … petty-bourgeois prejudices, i.e., to national egoism and national narrow-mindedness. These prejudices are bound to die out very slowly, for they can disappear only after imperialism and capitalism have disappeared in the advanced countries, and after the entire foundation of the backward countries' economic life has radically changed. It is therefore the duty of the class-conscious communist proletariat of all countries to regard with particular caution and attention the survivals of national sentiments in the countries and among nationalities which have been oppressed the longest; it is equally necessary to make certain concessions with a view to more rapidly overcoming this distrust and these prejudices.

It is particularly important to bear in mind … the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, and mullahs, etc."

1. The rise of the revolutionary movement in the East 

The Fourth Congress returned to this ‘national and colonial question’, starting by emphasising how the grip of the imperialist powers had been weakened in the post-war situation, and so the struggle against imperialist oppression had intensified.

The resolution discussed at the Congress – the 'Theses on the Eastern Question' – gave the struggle for Turkish national independence as an example. This movement (under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) had forced back the efforts of imperialism to partition Turkey through the Sèvres Treaty. It was also promoting a secular struggle rather than one dominated by Islamism. Other national revolutionary movements were highlighted - in India, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, China, and Korea. The Theses also pointed to increasing capitalist development in Japan, along with the growth of independent working-class struggle.

A Japanese postcard supporting the Otaru dockworkers' strike, 1927

The Theses stressed that the growth of the workers’ movement, including the beginnings of new Communist Parties in most of these countries, “signify a shift in the social basis of the revolutionary movement in the colonies … its leadership is thus no longer automatically held by feudal forces and the national bourgeoisie”.

Showing some similarities with the global situation a hundred years later, the Theses commented on the “growing rivalry between the different imperialist groupings” but that this had also given more room for the weak capitalist classes in the colonial and semi-colonial countries to carve out their position in the global market, against the interests of the main imperialist powers “whose very essence is to take advantage of the variation in the level of development of productive forces in different arenas of the world economy to achieve monopoly super-profits”.

2. The conditions of struggle

The Theses went on to point to “the diversity of the national revolutionary movements against imperialism, reflecting the different stages of transition from feudal and feudal-patriarchal conditions to capitalism.” It described how in those countries still largely ruled by a feudal elite, imperialism was able to base its domination on establishing a rule through the local aristocracy, military governors and landowners. It could exploit rivalry between different leaders and tribes, religious differences, and antagonisms between town and country to divide opposition to its rule.

In recognising the diversity of social forces that might come to the fore in different countries, arising out of the diversity of historical conditions, “the Communist International supports every national revolutionary movement against imperialism. However, it does not ignore the fact that the oppressed masses can be led to victory only by a consistent revolutionary line aimed at drawing the broadest masses into active struggle and an unconditional break with all those who seek conciliation with imperialism in order to maintain their own class rule”. 

3. The agrarian question

The main ‘bourgeois-democratic’ task to be resolved in most of these countries was to solve the ‘agrarian question’ where peasants were left in abject poverty, ruined by taxes, rent and famine, and with little local industry to absorb the rural poor in a way that had taken place in the first capitalist nations to develop. “Only the agrarian revolution, which adopts the aim of expropriating large landholdings, can set the mighty peasant masses in motion. It is destined to have a decisive influence in the struggle against imperialism”.

But the demands for land redistribution would expose “the close links of the native bourgeoisie with the feudal and feudal-bourgeois great landowners, on whom they are ideologically and politically dependent. All revolutionary forces must utilise this vacillation to reveal the irresolution of bourgeois leaders of the nationalist movements.” A bold agrarian programme therefore had to be a key part of the demands of revolutionary parties in ‘the East’ [see below].

4. The workers’ movement in the East

The Theses emphasised that an important gain from the growth of capitalism in these countries was the development of working-class organisation, both through trade unions and political parties too. 

At first, trade union organisation can be spurred on by the bourgeois intelligentsia, using the emerging working class as a support for their nationalist struggle. Sometimes, some of these leaders even couch their limited capitalist-nationalist aspirations with a ‘communist’ colouration – the Kuomintang (KMT) party in China being given as an example. Yet, as noted in a later paragraph, these bourgeois nationalists would only be too ready to strike a deal with one of the contending imperialist powers where  “under cover of formal independence, it leaves the country in its previous status of a semi-colonial buffer state in the service of world imperialism.” (Stalin clearly ‘forgot’ these timely warnings about the KMT when shipwrecking the Chinese revolution a few years later).

The fact that, even if only as embryonic formations, Communist Parties were being formed, also stood in contrast to the other ‘Socialist’ Internationals who “have so far failed to find supporters in a single one of the ‘backward’ countries, precisely because they are playing merely the role of ‘servants’ of European-American imperialism.”

5. The general tasks of Communist parties in the East

The Theses stressed that the ‘workers of the East’ needed to ally themselves with the workers of the ‘west’ in order to prepare “an international federation of Soviet republics” where the support from the developed counties can help these less developed countries undergo “the least painful transition from primitive conditions of existence to the advanced culture of communism, which is destined to replace capitalist production and distribution in the entire world economy.”

As explained by Trotsky’s theory of ‘permanent revolution’, the Theses explained that, “Initially, the native bourgeois intelligentsia forms the vanguard of the colonial revolutionary movements. But as the proletarian and semi-proletarian peasant masses are drawn into these movements, and to the degree that the social interests of these lower layers come to the fore, the big-bourgeois and agrarian bourgeois forces begin to turn away from the movement.”

It explained that the Communist parties of the colonial and semi-colonial countries therefore had a double task. Firstly “to fight for the most radical possible resolution of the tasks of a bourgeois-democratic revolution” but also “to organise the worker and peasant masses in struggle for their particular class interests.” They should fight to transform workers associations into organs of mass struggle, and particularly “to organise the numerous agricultural day workers and apprentices, both men and women, on the basis of defence of their immediate interests”.

6. The anti-imperialist united front

The Congress as a whole had been emphasising that the slogan of the ‘united front’, in order to prepare and gather together working class forces, and to expose the shortcomings of their reformist leaders, during a period when the immediate struggle for power had been temporarily postponed. These Theses emphasised that this tactic applied in the ‘East’ as well as the ‘west’: “Just as the slogan of proletarian united front in the West contributes to exposing Social Democratic betrayal of proletarian interests, so too the slogan of anti-imperialist united front serves to expose the vacillation of different bourgeois nationalist currents.”

Re-emphasising a point made in the resolution agreed at the Second Congress, these Fourth Congress Theses stressed that “the workers’ movement in the colonial and semi-colonial countries must strive above all to achieve the role of an independent revolutionary force in the overall anti-imperialist front”. Only on the basis of its own political independence within the united front could it make temporary agreements with the bourgeois forces, making its demands clear for an ‘independent democratic republic’, and for women’s rights for example, certainly at a stage when a demand for a soviet programme for socialist change might seem too in advance of the struggle. However, the need for the workers and peasants to build an alliance with the workers of the west and with the Soviet republic must be emphasised as the only way that the colonial revolution can succeed in really meeting the aspirations of the masses.

It was also important to raise democratic demands that provided the organisational freedoms needed for workers to fight for their class interests including trade union and workers’ rights, restriction of child labour, and women’s rights. The Theses noted that “even in independent Turkey, the working class enjoys no freedom of association, a telling indication of the bourgeois nationalists’ attitude to the proletariat”.

7. The tasks of the proletariat in countries of the Pacific

While this Congress was taking place in 1922, and ‘Pearl Harbor’ was still two decades away, the Theses already noted that imperialist rivalry – between Japan and the USA but also involving the other capitalist powers with interests in the region - “has now become so acute that unless international revolution intervenes, a new world war focused in the Pacific is inevitable”.

In order to cut across attempts to set one group of workers against another, a division that would also be used to stoke up support for war, the Theses took up the question of migrant and Black labour, being used to undercut workers’ wages and organisation in, for example, Australia and the United States. The Theses called on Communist Parties in the countries affected to meet together to hammer out a detailed programme but that they “must wage a vigorous campaign against laws that restrict immigration” - which some workers had been demanding – “and explain to the proletarian masses of these countries that they too will suffer harm because of the race hatred stirred up by these laws”. 

It added that the capitalists were also opposed to such anti-immigration laws for their own interests - driving down the wages of white workers. That’s why it emphasised that “there is only one way to successfully counter the capitalists’ intention to go over to the offensive: the immigrant workers must be admitted into the existing trade unions of white workers. At the same time, the demand must be raised that the wages of Black workers be brought up to same level as white workers’ pay. Such a step by the Communist parties will expose the capitalists’ intentions and also demonstrate clearly to the Black workers that the international proletariat does not harbour any racial prejudice”.

8. The tasks of the metropolitan parties toward the colonies 

The Theses concluded by stressing the importance of the workers’ movement in the main capitalist nations supporting the colonial revolution revolutionary movements, not least in its own interests, as well as those of the colonial masses.

It warned how French imperialism would try and use its colonial workers “as a reserve army of counterrevolution” while British and American imperialism was using a small slice of the super-profits made from its colonial exploitation to buy off the tops of the workers’ movement.  

The Communist Parties based around European workers living in the colonial countries had to resist "quasi-socialist colonialist tendencies" – such as attempts to build separate ‘European Communist’ organisations (Algeria is mentioned – and this danger was to become a very real one in the 1950s when the Stalinised French CP leadership opposed the struggle for independence there). Instead, the Communist Parties needed to win support amongst the local working class through demands for workers’ rights and for equal pay and protections with that of European workers.

The Theses concluded by urging Communist Parties in the stronger capitalist nations to financially support those in the poorer colonial nations to produce material and newspapers in local languages – and also material aimed at the occupying troops, exposing the predatory policy of the governments that had sent them there.

The Agrarian Action Programme

A further resolution agreed by the Fourth Congress - building on the 'Theses on the Agrarian Question' agreed by the Second Congress - set out updated guidance on the demands that Communist Parties for winning over the rural masses. The key points were as follows:

1. The only way to free the mass of poor peasants and rural workers from their exploited conditions is through a socialist revolution that will "confiscate without compensation the holdings of the great landowners, including all their means of production, and place them at the disposal of working people", through land seizures that will be carried out by those rural masses themselves as part of the revolutionary movement. 

2. But, to succeed, the revolutionary movement must not only win over the poor peasants but also at least win the neutrality of the middle peasants, winning them away from the influence of the richest peasants and large landowners. That can only be done through action, with the Communist Parties leading struggles. In countries where there are agricultural wage workers, this later will be a key factor in building those struggles, around demands for "raising its real wages, improvements in all working, living, and cultural conditions; full freedom of assembly, association, and for the trade union movement; freedom to strike; freedom of the press". This could include demands such as accident insurance, the eight-hour day (averaged over the year), education etc - in line with the demands and gains of the urban working class.

3. Recognising the way the peasants are exploited by speculators buying their products cheaply and then selling them at much higher prices, and by industrial capitalists who keep the price of industrial goods high, "we therefore struggle for the poor peasants to be supplied with the means of production (artificial fertiliser, machines, etc.) at cheap prices. The factory councils in industry should cooperate in this by controlling prices". Other demands should include the lowering of taxes on the poor peasants and opposition to private monopolies on transport.

4. However, the heaviest exploitation for most peasants comes from their lack of land, forcing them to work for the large landowners at starvation wages, or to rent or buy land from them at extortionate prices. "The Communist Party therefore struggles for the confiscation of this property, including all equipment and possessions, and for handing it over to those who really work it". The resolution adds an important rider that this should be "without compensation, but not touching the land of working peasants. It also frees them from all requisitions, rents, mortgages, feudal restrictions".

But, until this can be achieved, the immediate demands should be for:

a. Share-croppers to reduce the share that has to be given to the owner;

b. Lower rents for poor tenant farmers - including organising agricultural workers to refuse to work on fields confiscated by landowners where rent has not been paid - and Communists must fight to strengthen rural workers' trade union organisation;

c. Distribution of sufficient land and livestock to allow the peasants to make a living, instead of being forced by their meagre scraps of land to work for the large landowners and rich peasants for starvation wages.

5. The resolution notes that bourgeois land reform is always carried out on the basis of compensation for the previous owners and/or high rents, putting the poorer peasants further into debt, while the wage workers end up losing work that they had previously on the big estates. That's why the Communist Parties must stand for confiscation without compensation of the large landowners.

6. "The workers themselves will decide how the land confiscated from the large landowners will be worked". However, referring back to what was included in the theses of the Second Congress, the resolution recognised that:

a. In the advanced capitalist countries, the existing large-scale farming enterprises should not be broken up but maintained as nationalised Soviet enterprises. This would not only protect the interests of the agricultural wage workers but also better allow planning for the supplies required to meet the needs of urban workers too.

b. However, where feudal relations had still been in existence, it might be necessary to divide some of the great estates to provide land for the poor peasants, ensuring their support for the revolution. Communists must also be active in the poor peasants' cooperative organisations to overcome any attempts to divide them from the rural and urban proletariat.

The Fourth Comintern Congress: The rise of fascism in Italy.

Making the working class pay for the post-war crisis

One of the main resolutions agreed at the Fourth Congress was that on the "Versailles Treaty", the treaty that had been enforced on defeated Germany by what the resolution describes as the "four great bandit states ... left as victors on the battlefield: the United States, Britain, France, and Japan". The resolution explained how this treaty, along with similar ones imposed on the other defeated nations "represent an attempt to consolidate, politically and economically, the world domination of these four victorious powers, by subjecting the rest of the world to their colonial exploitation."

However, the resolution explained that, four years on from the 1919 treaty, the imperialist powers had failed to construct the stable capitalist equilibrium that they had hoped for. Their attempts to crush the young workers' state in Soviet Russia had been repulsed. The different powers were divided amongst themselves, with the United States seeking to impose its worldwide dominance. The resolution went through the crises facing France, Britain and Germany in particular, and pointed out how, already, "the great powers, along with the vassal states, are arming for a new war".

But, it concluded, one thing still united the contending capitalist classes - the determination that the working class should pay the price. This was the background against which the Communist International needed to intervene in the developing struggles of the working class and the oppressed masses.

In Italy, however, the failure to intervene with the correct revolutionary program and strategy had already cost the working-class dearly.

Factory Occupation, Turin, September 1920

Mussolini comes to power in Italy

In October 1922, Benito Mussolini had been appointed as the Italian Prime Minister, continuing the rise of reaction that was to culminate in fascist rule in Italy. Looking back at the history of the Comintern in 1936, the Fourth International explained that this “defeat of the Italian proletariat in 1922 was not a defeat of the strategical and tactical methods of the Leninist Comintern, but of those of Italian Maximalism (Serrati) against which the Comintern since the Second World Congress had been continuously carrying on a hard struggle, without, however, being able to avert the catastrophe".

At that Second World Congress, in the summer of 1920, the political weaknesses of the new Italian affiliate of the Communist International, the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI), were already apparent. Bordiga, one of the PSI delegates had argued for an ultra-left position, opposing Communist Parties being involved in parliamentary activity. Lenin had taken up this false position, explaining that “a part of the proletarian petty bourgeoisie, the backward workers and small peasants, all these elements really think that their interests are represented in parliament, and one must combat that through work in parliament and teach the masses the truth through facts. The backward masses cannot be taught by theory, they need experiences”. Serrati, however, had spoken in the debate to say that he supported the agreed Comintern policy on ‘revolutionary parliamentarianism’ but, tellingly, added the rider that in applying the policy in Italy, the “given conditions must be taken into account”. In reality, that was a get-out clause for failing to follow a genuinely revolutionary policy.

Bordiga’s ultra-left stance was a reaction to the ‘minimalist’ right-wing of the PSI, led by Turati and Treves, who – as explained in this longer Socialism Today article on ‘Italy 1920’ – were tied to electoral activity and reformism. As it says, “Gramsci explained that the whole of the PSI had joined the Communist Third International but without really understanding what it was doing”. Apart from the group around Bordiga, the majority of the PSI leadership were in its ‘maximalist’ wing, led by Serrati, so called because they stood for the ‘maximum programme’ of socialist revolution. However, in reality, they were a ‘centrist’ trend, revolutionary in words, but not in actions.

When, at the 1921 PSI Congress, Serrati and the PSI leadership refused to fully endorse the ‘twenty-one conditions’ for Comintern membership set down at the Second Congress, the left split away to form the Italian Communist Party. Gramsci had the clearest programme and ideas but had not fought to build an organised current in support of his ideas so was left isolated, and Bordiga’s ultra-left tendency dominated.

Going back to the events that preceded that split, the Socialism Today article explains how, in the 1919 elections, the PSI had become the largest party in the Italian parliament, receiving a third of the popular vote. By 1920, it had over 200,000 members. Then, in September 1920, a mass movement of factory occupations broke out in Italy. In Turin, factory councils were creating organs of dual power, mirroring the soviets of the Russian revolution.  This was the high point of the ‘Biennio Rosso’ – the two ‘red years’ of workers’ struggle. The PSI issued slogans but gave no clear direction to the struggle, no concrete plans to form an alternative workers’ government nor to organise an insurrection to take power from the capitalists. The opportunity was lost and the movement defeated.

Trotsky, looking back at events in Italy at a speech given in Moscow in the lead up to the Fourth Congress, explained how “among the Italian workers, as workers of a country that had suffered most cruelly from the war, and as a young proletariat without the superiorities of an older proletariat but also without the latter’s negative features – conservatism, old traditions, etc. – within this proletariat the ideas and methods of the Russian Revolution met with the most powerful response. The Socialist Party of Italy, however, did not clearly take into account the full content of these concepts and these slogans.”

Trotsky continued: “In September 1920, the working class of Italy had, in effect, gained control of the state, of society, of factories, plants and enterprises… In essence the working class had already conquered or virtually conquered". But the crucial element, revolutionary leadership, had been lacking: “a party was lacking, which would, resting upon the insurrectionary working class, have engaged in an open struggle with the bourgeoisie for those remnants of material forces still in the latter’s hands, destroying these forces, seizing power and thus consummating the victory of the working class … and so the working class found itself hurled back. The party split into segments, the proletariat was smashed; and since then, throughout 1921 and 1922 we have been witnessing the most frightful political retreat of the working class in Italy under the blows of consolidated bourgeois and petty-bourgeois gangs, known as the Fascists”.Trotsky adds that “fascism is the revenge, the vengeance exacted by the bourgeoisie for the dread it had experienced during the 1920 September days” but also that the defeat in Italy acts as a warning as to the necessity of workers building a party that is ready and able to guide its class to victory..

At the Fourth Congress itself, a resolution was passed in line with the points made by Trotsky above. Its key points were:

“The occupation of the factories by the Italian workers in the autumn of 1920 was a decisive moment in the course of the class struggle in Italy. The Italian workers were pressing instinctively toward resolving the crisis in a revolutionary fashion. The absence of a revolutionary workers’ party, however, determined the fate of the working class, sealed its defeat in this moment, and prepared the ground for fascism’s present victory. ...

Nowhere has the historical role of the Communist party for world revolution been more graphically portrayed than in Italy, where the lack of such a party changed the course of history to the benefit of the bourgeoisie. ...

Three sad but instructive lessons of the Italian developments must be taken to heart by all class-conscious workers around the world: (1) Reformism is the enemy. (2) The vacillation and hesitation of the centrists is a mortal danger to the workers’ party. (3) The presence of a united and self-confident Communist party is the first precondition for victory in proletarian struggle”.

The rise of fascism had now become a grave danger. Indeed, a German edition of Fourth Congress resolutions contained an additional paragraph that spelt out that: “It would be extremely dangerous to cherish any illusions regarding the character of fascism and its possible development. We must reckon with the possibility that the revolutionary workers’ movement in Italy will lose for a time the possibility of functioning legally. Times may be approaching that will bring a trial by fire for every revolutionary workers’ organisation and every individual revolutionary”.

Bordiga’s ultra-leftism had meant that he opposed the ‘united front’ tactic that was so essential to resist the fascist threat. But the agreed Fourth Congress resolution called (particularly now that the Socialist Party had belatedly expelled its reformist wing and declared for affiliation to the Communist International) for “the immediate unification of the Communist Party with the Socialist Party of Italy [as the] ‘United Communist Party of Italy’ on the basis that “the Twenty-One Conditions will be applied”.

Revolution Delayed

Trotsky gave a report on the Fourth Congress to a meeting of party delegates to the Soviet Congress at the end of December 1922.

Firstly, he warned that the capitalists support for Mussolini showed just how quickly the bourgeois were prepared to do away with ‘democracy’ when under threat: “when the proletariat frightened the bourgeoisie to death but proved unable, owing to the treachery of its own party, to deal it the death blow, the bourgeoisie set in motion all of its most active elements, headed by Mussolini, a renegade from socialism and the proletariat. A private party army was mobilized and it was equipped from one end of the country to the other with funds allegedly drawn from mysterious sources but which come principally from governmental resources, partly from the secret Italian funds, and to a considerable measure from French subsidies to Mussolini.

Under the aegis of democracy the storm-troop organisation of the counter-revolution was organized and in the course of two years it conducted assaults upon workers’ districts and threw a ring of its troops around Rome. The bourgeoisie hesitated because it was not sure that Mussolini was capable of coping with the situation. But when Mussolini proved his ability, they all bowed before him”.

But Trotsky also warned the Party members that “the European revolution will not perhaps strike tomorrow. Weeks and months will pass, maybe several years, and we shall still remain the only workers’-peasants’ state in the world. In Italy Mussolini has triumphed. Are we guaranteed against the victory of German Mussolinis in Germany? Not at all. And it is wholly possible that a much more reactionary ministry than Poincaré’s will come to power in France … This will be the prologue to the European revolution, provided we are able to maintain ourselves, provided the soviet state remains standing, and, consequently, provided above all that our party is able to maintain itself to the end ….

Therefore, we must draw closer to our mass reserves. More youth around our party and within it … with the transfer of experience from the old to the new generation … we shall stand firm in our knowledge that the soviet frontier is the trench beyond which the counter-revolution cannot pass. This trench is manned by us, by the vanguard of soviet Russia, by the Communist Party, and we shall preserve this trench inviolate and impregnable until that day when the European revolution arrives, and over the whole of Europe there shall wave the banner of the soviet republic of the United States of Europe, the threshold to the World Socialist Republic”.

But while Trotsky was seeking to regenerate the Party through a new generation of young cadres, the bureaucracy was seeking to take it over for its own interests ….

The Fourth Comintern Congress: the NEP and the Transition to a Socialist Economy

The records of the Fourth (1922) Congress remain principled guidance for genuine revolutionaries to re-read and apply today. In particular, the discussions - around and during the Congress - about the economic transition from a revolutionary overturn of capitalism to a fully planned economy are definitely of relevance for future events in the twenty-first century.

The Soviet Economy and the 'New Economic Policy'

The 1936 document on the 'Evolution of the Comintern', produced for the Fourth International, described how the "NEP (New Economic Policy) of the Soviet Union, following on 'War Communism,' which had to be introduced under the pitiless pressure of circumstances, supplied the immensely important experience of necessary tactical retreats even after the winning of power, an experience which most probably will have its validity not only for backward Russia, but also for more advanced countries". 

In the same year, Trotsky had written his analysis of the rise of Stalinism, 'Revolution Betrayed'. In that book, he commented that 'War Communism' had been based on "utopian hopes" of being able to "continue on a planned, organised and state-wide scale to replace trade by the distribution of products" (quoting from the agreed Bolshevik policy of March 1919). However, he adds that "the theoretical mistake of the ruling party remains inexplicable, however, only if you leave out of account the fact that all calculations at that time were based on the hope of an early victory of the revolution in the West. It was considered self-evident that the victorious German proletariat would supply Soviet Russia, on credit against future food and raw materials, not only with machines and articles of manufacture, but also with tens of thousands of highly skilled workers, engineers and organizers".

Trotsky continues that "Lenin explained the necessity of restoring the market by the existence in the country of millions of isolated peasant enterprises, unaccustomed to define their economic relations with the outside world except through trade. ... A planned economy cannot rest merely on intellectual data. The play of supply and demand remains for a long period a necessary material basis and indispensable corrective".

1921 - Peasants selling their produce in urban markets under the NEP

Lenin speaks to the Congress

And, returning to 1922, it was Lenin, who had been too unwell to attend the opening sessions of the Fourth Congress, who, in a short speech on 13 November, explained to delegates why the NEP - in short, granting "the peasants freedom to trade" - had been introduced. He explained how, as the Civil War was drawing to a victorious conclusion at the start of 1921, it was clear that there was rising discontent amongst the peasants, and some workers too, because of the economic pressures on them, which included severe famine in some rural areas. 

Lenin explained how the party leadership had recognised that "in our economic offensive we had run too far ahead ... we had not provided ourselves with adequate resources ... the direct transition to purely socialist forms, to purely socialist distribution, was beyond our available strength, and that if we were unable to effect a retreat so as to confine ourselves to easier tasks, we would face disaster". 

He pointed to the successes that the NEP had already achieved - the rouble had begun to stabilise, and light industry had started to revive, with a consequent improvement in workers' conditions. Above all, the policy had succeeded in not only reversing the famine but in the state now receiving significant stocks of grain as 'tax in kind' "without employing any measures of coercion". Heavy industry, however, was another matter. Lenin pointed out that, under capitalism, development of plant and factories would only be done through significant loans - loans unavailable to Soviet Russia. Instead, a budget was being put aside to provide the state subsidies that were required.

Lenin concluded by explaining that "the most important thing for us was to lay the economic foundation for socialist economy. We could not do it directly. We had to do it in a roundabout way". However, he also hinted at the dangers of having a state bureaucracy that was not really under workers' control: "We now have a vast army of government employees, but lack sufficiently educated forces to exercise real control over them. In practice it often happens that here at the top, where we exercise political power, the machine functions somehow; but down below government employees have arbitrary control and they often exercise it in such a way as to counteract our measures".  Sadly, through the international defeats that left the workers' state in continuing isolation, that bureaucracy was only to grow in strength.

Trotsky gives the main report on the NEP

The following day, Trotsky gave the main report on the NEP to the Congress. Firstly, he explained the reasons for what might appear as a "zigzag course" of economic policy. Firstly because 'War Communism' had been driven by "what was politically necessary and unavoidable [which] did not always run parallel to what was economically expedient". In order to defeat the counter-revolution, "the bourgeoisie was not expropriated gradually, in systematic fashion, at a pace corresponding to our capacity to organise and make good use of their property". Instead, the workers' state "had expropriated far more than we were capable of utilising. ... We faced the necessity of somehow organising this large and rather chaotic inheritance. The civil war still raged, and organisation of the economy was subject to the demands of the military-economic requirements of civil war. That is how war communism was born".

Trotsky stresses that a fully planned socialist economy has to be able to correctly "allocate productive resources and labour power among the different branches of the national economy" and that, "under capitalism, productive forces are allocated according to the laws of the free market, competition, supply and demand".  After taking power, "we take over the capitalists’ methods and material apparatus of production, the organisation of the economy, the allocation of production and productive forces". It is only over time that the workers' state can start to dispense with these market methods and allocate resources through economic planning alone. "To allocate and organise these forces in socialist fashion requires methods that the victorious proletariat – even in the most developed countries – will need years and perhaps decades to develop".

Yes, Trotsky acknowledges, the NEP brings with it the danger of a growth in private capital over state capital, and that the "speculators, go-betweens, and lessees are genuine capitalists". But the strength of 'state capital', the enterprises fully owned and operated by the state, plus the state control of land and transport, far outweighed the strength of 'private capital'. "The workers’ state has greater advantages; it holds the trumps".

Trotsky points out that main risk would be if world capitalism was able to intervene and use its purchasing power to pull that balance in the direction of private capital. But he explains that "there are always two parties to a purchase: the one that buys and the one that sells. Power is in the hands of the workers’ state. A monopoly exists in the most important industries and in foreign trade. This monopoly is therefore for us a matter of principle. It is our defence against a capitalism that wants to buy out our incipient socialism!"

Trotsky adds that "we must and can confidently say that if concessions to capitalist methods on the one hand and the capitalist world on the other continue to develop, accumulate, deepen, compound, and multiply, eventually we could come to a point where the foundations would have suffered such changes that the superstructure of the workers’ state would necessarily collapse. But that is simply the dialectical character of this situation. For the superstructure, once created, itself becomes a factor influencing the foundation, which for its part gains a firm footing in the superstructure. And secondly, we are not talking here about eternity, but about a defined historical period, until the appearance on stage of the great Western reserves, destined to become the vanguard".

Of course, those 'Western reserves' - of the revolution in Germany and elsewhere never did appear on the stage. That's why, in 'Revolution Betrayed' in 1936, Trotsky wrote that "two opposite tendencies are growing up out of the depth of the Soviet regime. To the extent that, in contrast to a decaying capitalism, it develops the productive forces, it is preparing the economic basis of socialism. To the extent that, for the benefit of an upper stratum, it carries to more and more extreme expression bourgeois norms of distribution, it is preparing a capitalist restoration". Eventually, as we know, such a restoration did take place. However, that was certainly not destined in the development of the NEP, a policy required, in Lenin's words, "to lay the economic foundation for socialist economy".

State Capitalism?

In his speech, Lenin used the phrase 'state capitalism' as shorthand for the NEP - a description used by some to describe the nature of Stalinism. However, even then Lenin heavily qualified this by saying that "I have already said that our state capitalism differs from state capitalism in the literal sense of the term in that our proletarian state not only owns the land, but also all the vital branches of industry". 

But Trotsky makes clear in his speech that "in my own opinion this term [i.e. state capitalism] is neither exact nor happy. Comrade Lenin has already underscored in his report the need of enclosing this term in quotation marks, that is, of using it with the greatest caution. This is a very important injunction because not everybody is cautious enough". 

Why was Trotsky unhappy with the term? "For a very obvious reason. In using this term it is impermissible to ignore the class character of the state  ... Today in Russia the power is in the hands of the working class. The most important industries are in the hands of the workers’ state. No class exploitation exists here, and consequently, neither does capitalism exist although its forms still persist. The industry of the workers’ state is a socialist industry in its tendencies of development, but in order to develop, it utilizes methods which were invented by capitalist economy and which we have far from outlived as yet. Under a genuine state capitalism, that is, under bourgeois rule, the growth of state capitalism signifies the enrichment of the bourgeois state, its growing power over the working class. In our country, the growth of soviet state industry signifies the growth of socialism itself, a direct strengthening of the power of the proletariat".

Trotsky returned to this point in 'Revolution Betrayed'. He wrote, "we often seek salvation from unfamiliar phenomena in familiar terms. An attempt has been made to conceal the enigma of the Soviet regime by calling it 'state capitalism'. This term has the advantage that nobody knows exactly what it means" (!) Trotsky explains that the term 'state capitalism' can be applied "when a bourgeois state takes direct charge of the means of transport or of industrial enterprises". But what does not occur - as had happened in Soviet Russia, was "the expropriation of the class of capitalists".

He also explains why it was wrong, therefore, to describe the Soviet bureaucracy as a class of 'state capitalists'.  No, the source of its power and income was the state property, not private capital, stocks and bonds. It was a parasitic caste, not a capitalist class. He added that the "Soviet Union is a contradictory society halfway between capitalism and socialism" and that "to define the Soviet regime as transitional, or intermediate, means to abandon such finished social categories as capitalism (and therewith “state capitalism”) and also socialism. But besides being completely inadequate in itself, such a definition is capable of producing the mistaken idea that from the present Soviet regime only a transition to socialism is possible. In reality a backslide to capitalism is wholly possible". And Trotsky was right.

Theses presented to the Fourth Congress

In concluding the discussion, the Congress received a summary report by Trotsky drawing up a balance-sheet of this necessary 'tactical retreat'. Here are the key points:

1) Thanks to the lead given by its revolutionary working-class, Russia had become "the first country to enter the path of socialist development", despite its general economic and cultural backwardness. The fledgling soviet republic had been surrounded since birth by hostile capitalist powers without other successful revolutions coming to its aid.

2) These conditions had "tended to convert the petty bourgeoisie into a reservoir for the landlord-bourgeois counter-revolution. Under these conditions the resistance of the landlords and the bourgeoisie could be broken, and the Soviet power maintained, by no other means than the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the exploiting upper layers in the villages." This had meant that the new workers' state had taken under its control "all the industrial enterprises down to the very smallest ones". Many of these had already been distorted by the demand for war production and now often also lacked the managers and specialists who had fled to the side of the counter-revolution. 

3) This rapidly centralised but shattered economy was the basis of the initial phase of 'War Communism', which, in order to feed the cities and the army under civil war conditions, amounted to "the régime of a beleaguered fortress". The Theses point out that to fight their own war, the Tsarist state had already replaced 'free trade' in grain by a monopoly. The workers’ state, had to operate in the same way, on the basis of compulsory confiscation of the peasant grain surpluses and a crude distribution through uniform state rations. At the same time the best that could be extracted from the ruined factories was obtained through a very basic unified plan. "This “communism” was rightly called War Communism not only because it replaced economic methods by military ones but also because it served military purposes above all others. It was not a question of assuring a systematic development of economic life under the prevailing conditions but of securing the indispensable food supply for the army at the fronts and of preventing the working class from dying out altogether". 

4) The 'New Economic Policy' had meant shifting "from the methods of War Communism to the methods of the market. The compulsory collections of grain surpluses have been replaced by taxes in kind, enabling the peasantry to freely sell its surpluses on the market; monetary circulation has been restored and a number of measures taken to stabilize the currency; the principles of commercial calculation have been reintroduced into the state-owned enterprises and the wages again made dependent on skill and output of workers; a number of small and medium industrial enterprises have been leased to private business. The gist of the New Economic Policy lies in the revival of the market, of its methods and of its institutions."

5) The use of market methods inevitably meant that there would be a competition between private capital and state capital. However, as long as its expansion into industry was resisted, at first this competition would be mainly "in the sphere of trade only" with, based on rough and ready estimates, "about 30 per cent of the total trade turnover falls to private capital, with the remaining 70 per cent consisting of sums owned by the state organizations and the co-operatives closely connected with the state". However, all land, industrial enterprises (although with some smaller ones now being leased to private owners), the railways and foreign trade were in the hands of the workers' state. So, in the struggle for the goods produced for the market by the peasantry, "the proletariat has mighty advantages on its side: the country’s most highly developed productive forces and the state power. On the side of the bourgeoisie lies the advantage of greater proficiency and to a certain extent of connections with foreign capital, particularly that of the White Guard émigrés".

6) Trotsky's theses were clear that this "political retreat on the economic front became absolutely unavoidable as soon as it became finally established that soviet Russia was confronted with the task of building her economy with her own organisational and technical forces and resources during the indefinite period required to prepare the European proletariat for the conquest of power". But, in fact, this transitional policy was one which the Soviet government "would doubtless have pursued in 1918-19 had not the implacable demands of the civil war obliged it to expropriate the bourgeoisie at one blow, to destroy the bourgeois economic apparatus and to replace the latter hastily by the apparatus of War Communism".

7) The NEP was far from being a 'capitulation' to capitalism as claimed by some of the opponents of the workers' state. "In reality, however, the development of soviet Russia proceeds not from socialism to capitalism but from capitalism – temporarily pressed to the wall by the methods of so-called War Communism – to socialism". "There is no ground whatever for assuming that state accumulation will proceed more slowly than private capitalist accumulation and that private capital will thus be likely to emerge from the struggle as the victor".

8) The NEP was already having a positive effect on the economy, encouraging the peasantry to produce grain and other foodstuffs, and assisting light industry in particular in the first place. Heavy industry and transport were key areas for the workers' state to concentrate on and develop through centralised state control. A planned economy was being built while also, at this stage, using the market - "the elemental interplay of supply and demand ... as the basic form of distribution of goods and regulation of production ... so that by basing itself on the market, the state may aid in eliminating the market as quickly as possible. The quicker that state industries could provide products to meet the needs of the peasantry, the quicker this transition could be achieved. In particular, "the socialist principle can gain complete victory in agriculture only through the electrification of agriculture which will put a salutary end to the barbaric disjunction of peasant production".

8) Trotsky's theses emphasises that there will inevitably be a lengthy period of transition during which elements of market methods will need to be utilised. "All workers’ states will, in a greater or lesser degree, have to pass through this stage, on the road from capitalism to socialism  ... The speed with which the workers’ state traverses this stage ... will depend, separate and apart from the military and political situation, upon the level of organisation and culture and the conditions of the productive forces existing when the workers’ state comes into power. It is absolutely clear that the higher both of these levels are, all the more rapidly will the workers’ state accomplish the transition to socialist economy and from this to complete Communism".