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."
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