The Third World Congress of the Communist International met in July 1921 at a time when, as the ‘Theses on the International Situation’ drafted by Trotsky put it, “the mighty wave” of revolutionary movements after the war - not just in Russia but also in Germany and Hungary, alongside mass strikes in countries like France, Britain, the USA and Czechoslovakia - had, despite its scope and intensity, failed “in overthrowing world capitalism, not even European capitalism”.
Since the previous Second Congress, the Red Army had also been driven back from Poland, and the Italian (September 1920) and German (March 1921) workers had suffered defeats. Faced with these facts, the Theses set out updated world perspectives and tasks for the International.
Written at a time of growing inter-capitalist tensions - with the imposition of tariffs and the threat of further wars, despite all the evidence of the human and economic cost of the First World War - these Theses are particularly worth thinking over in relation to the world situation in 2025.
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| Trotsky and others at the 3rd Congress |
I The Crux of the Question
Given events, and the way that the international bourgeoisie seemed to have successfully weathered the post-war storms and were now going back on the offensive, Trotsky's Theses opened by asking four important questions for consideration by the Congress and the workers’ movement as a whole:
“To what extent do these new political interrelations between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat correspond to the more profound interrelationship of forces between these two contending camps? Is it true that the bourgeoisie is about to restore the social equilibrium which had been upset by the war? Are there grounds for assuming that the epoch of political paroxysms and class battles is being superseded by a new and prolonged epoch of restoration and capitalist growth? Doesn't this necessitate a revision of programme or tactics on the part of the Communist International?”
II The War, Speculative Prosperity, the Crisis and the Countries of Europe
To answer these questions, Trotsky started at the place where world perspectives must always be based - with the world economy.
The Theses started by reminding Congress that the two decades before the First World War had been “a period of exceptionally powerful capitalist growth” with strong lengthy upswings and only brief, shallow, downswings. “In general, the curve sloped sharply upwards; the capitalist nations were growing rich”.
The consequent growth of the world market had been starting to reach its limits but a world war, with its wholesale destruction of productive forces, could have created the basis for a further upswing. However, the war lasted far longer than any of the capitalists had bargained for.
As the Theses again reminded delegates, “as a result the war not only caused the economic destruction of 'surplus' productive forces, but also weakened, shattered and undermined the fundamental productive apparatus of Europe. At the same time it contributed to the mighty capitalist development of the United States and to the feverish rise of Japan. The centre of gravity of the world economy has shifted from Europe to America”.
World capitalism had been rightly concerned about whether the period immediately after the end of the war, before they had had an opportunity to redress the economic damage it had caused, could be dangerous for them. All of the countries that had been in turmoil as a result of the war had, indeed, been gripped by big working-class struggles.
However, the Theses explained that the bourgeoisie had succeeded in creating an economic upswing by 1919-20, absorbing most of the demobilised troops into the factories and being able to raise wages sufficiently to at least “create the mirage of economic gains”. This was the economic basis for the return of confidence amongst the capitalist class.
However, the Theses pointed out that, “The revival of 1919-20 was not, however, at bottom the beginning of the postwar regeneration of capitalist economy, but a mere prolongation of the artificial state of industry and commerce which had been created by the war”.
It went on to explain this ‘artificial state’ as follows: “The war created virtually unlimited markets for the basic branches of industry, completely secure against competition. This reliable and insatiable customer was ever in want of goods. The production of the means of production was replaced by the production of the means of destruction. Primary necessities were devoured at ever-higher prices by millions of individuals engaged not in production but in destruction. This process meant ruin. But by virtue of the monstrous capitalist economy this ruin assumed the guise and form of enrichment. The state floated loan after loan, one issue of paper money followed upon another and the state budgets which used to carry millions began carrying billions. Machines and equipment became worn out and were left unrepaired. The land was poorly cultivated. Capital construction work in the cities and on the communications system was discontinued. Meanwhile the number of government bonds, bills of credit, treasury issues, and notes kept growing incessantly. Fictitious capital swelled in proportion as productive capital kept being destroyed. The credit system became transformed from a means of circulating commodities into a means of mobilising national wealth, including that still to be created by future generations, for war purposes”.
Fearing the potential for revolutionary consequences, the bourgeois continued with the same financial policies after the war “namely: new currency issues, new loans, regulation of prices of primary necessities, guarantee of profits, subsidies for grain and other forms of government subsidies for salaries and wages, plus military censorship and military dictatorship … At the same time, the cessation of hostilities … brought to the fore the demand for all sorts of commodities, from all parts of the globe. The war left huge stocks of unsold products. Enormous sums of money were left concentrated in the hands of dealers and speculators who invested them wherever the greatest profits offered at the moment. Hence the feverish commercial boom, accompanied by an unprecedented rise of prices and fantastic dividends, while none of the basic branches of industry anywhere in Europe approached the pre-war level”.
So, in reality, the bourgeois - the banking and industrial trusts and the government that acted in their interests - had simply bought themselves some time. However, they had done so at the cost of creating yet further sources of instability - fictitious capital, depreciation of currency and speculation. By 1920 - starting in Japan, then the US, then Europe and the capitalist world as a whole - the bubble had started to burst.
So, the Theses stressed that: “the crisis of 1920 - and this is the key to the understanding of the world situation! [Trotsky's emphasis, not mine!] - is not a periodic stage of the 'normal' industrial cycle but a more profound reaction consequent on the fictitious prosperity during the war and the next two post-war years, a prosperity based on ruination and exhaustion”. It added that, instead of an upward curve of industrial development, “during the last seven years, Europe’s productive forces have not been rising but falling abruptly”.
However , for now, “the dislocation of the very foundations of the economy has still to make itself felt throughout the entire superstructure”. But the perspective for the next period had to be one where the curve of European economic development would be downwards, with only short-lived speculative upswings but longer and deeper downswings, “a crisis of under-production”.
The Theses went on to analyse the specific situation in some of the key countries of Europe:
Britain - then both the strongest European economy and the one least damaged by war - had made some commercial gains from its military victory but, industrially, it had fallen backwards, with its coal industry in particular being in a parlous state. Both Britain’s productivity of labour and national income were still far below pre-war levels.
France, Belgium and Italy had been seriously damaged by the war. French state debts and military expenditure had grown to unsupportable levels and the loss of workers from war deaths and injuries were undermining economic recovery.
In Germany, production continued to fall, along with workers' living standards, while inflation was soaring. “German exports as well as the entire economic life of Germany are at the mercy of a gang of Entente speculators, especially Parisian speculators”.
III The United States, Japan, Soviet Russia and the Colonial Countries
The Theses then pointed out that, in many ways, the development of the United States during the war had been the complete opposite of developments in Europe. It had benefited from military production without its own productive forces risking any war damage, and even the indirect damage to transport links and agricultural exports was far more limited than in Europe. At the same time, it had taken advantage of the inability of Europe to compete with it in other areas of production, such as oil, shipbuilding, cars, and coal.
The strengthened position of the US was explained in the following paragraph: “Today most of the countries of Europe are dependent on America not only for their oil and grain, but also for their coal. While prior to the war America's exports consisted chiefly of agricultural products and raw materials … her main export at present consists of manufactured goods (60 percent of her export trade). While America before the war was a debtor country, she is today the world's creditor. Approximately one half of the world's gold reserves are concentrated in the United States and the gold continues to flow in. The leading role on the world money markets has passed from the pound sterling to the dollar”.
However, the Theses pointed out that even American capitalism, although initially benefiting from the lack of European competitors during the war, was now threatened by that same weakness of the European economies. Having developed so rapidly as an export economy, it could no longer find enough buyers of its goods overseas.
Japan was facing an even more difficult situation, this becoming the first of the capitalist nations to face economic crisis in 1920. Its lack of competitors during wartime had allowed it to capture new markets but now, with renewed competition, its less developed industry was being squeezed out of those markets.
Similarly, it added, countries previously largely reliant on the export of raw materials, such as Canada, Australia, China, India, Egypt and in South America, had seized the chance to develop their industrial base - providing new competitors for European capitalism in particular - but also now being threatened by the weakness of the global market.
Therefore, the Theses concluded, there was no prospect of global economic stability for capitalism. “The world market is disorganised, Europe needs American products, but has nothing to offer in return. Europe suffers from anaemia, America, from plethora”.
It went on to explain that “the gold standard has been overthrown. The depreciated currencies of European countries (reaching in some cases 99 per cent) present almost insurmountable obstacles to the world exchange of commodities. The incessant, sharp fluctuations of the rate of exchange have converted capitalist economy into an orgy of speculation. America, in her turn, defends herself against artificially cheap European exports (dumping) by raising her tariffs” Then, as now, their international capitalist competitors were raising their own tariffs in turn, further disrupting world markets. That disruption was made worse by the capitalists political decision to “exclude Soviet Russia from the world market - as a consumer of manufactured goods and as a supplier of raw materials”.
The Theses went on to explain how the years of Civil War and imperialist intervention to attempt to crush Soviet Russia had further weakened it's already weak industrial base. Faced with this onslaught, “it was entirely out of the question during the three years of incessant civil war for this exhausted and utterly ruined country to organise a number of new branches of industry, yet without these the old branches faced certain ruin through the wear and tear of their basic inventory. In addition to this, hundreds of thousands of the best proletarian elements, comprising a large number of the most highly skilled workers, had to be drawn into the Red Army”.
However, it also pointed out that “under these historical conditions, surrounded by the iron ring of blockade, carrying on incessant warfare, suffering from the terrible heritage of ruin - no other regime could have maintained the country's economic life and created a centralised administration”.
Having, at great cost, won through against the odds, only now “with the establishment of sounder transitional forms for relations between the city and the country, has the Soviet power received the opportunity to exercise a gradual, unwavering, centralised direction of the country’s economic revival” [The redirection of the Soviet economy from the period of ‘War Communism’ to that of the ‘New Economic Policy’ is explained elsewhere].
IV The Aggravation of Social Contradictions
This section of the Theses started by explaining how the growing crisis was sharpening the division of wealth between rich and poor, especially in Europe. Some of the previously more privileged middle class layers, such as state employees who were now being hit by government cuts, had been pushed into the ranks of the working class. At the same time, a tiny rich elite were amassing stupendous levels of wealth (again, sounds familiar?!).
Some of this retrogressive redistribution of wealth had arisen from the soaring prices caused by the depreciation of European countries as they attempted to cheapen their exports. The political effects of this widening social divide could only be further fierce class struggles.
The resolution added that social contradictions were also being aggravated in the countryside. Rising prices for agricultural goods had brought new wealth to the villages, but mainly to the rich peasants and big landowners, which had also led to increasing tensions between the rural and urban sections of the capitalist class.
It stressed that the widening class divide in the US, unlike Europe, was taking place in the context of a growing economy, although one beset with sharp fluctuations owing to the wider instability of the world market. This would “impart to the class struggle on American soil an extremely intense and revolutionary character”.
It added that emigration of workers and peasants “has always served as a safety valve to the capitalist regime in Europe” but that “at the present time America and Australia are putting ever-greater obstacles in the way of émigrés from Europe”.
Finally, this section of the Theses pointed out the possibilities of revolutionary struggles developing in both China and India, where the rapid development of capitalism had created a fresh working-class, alongside the remains of feudal bondage, as had developed in Russia prior to its Revolutions. Their national bourgeoisies were also so closely tied to foreign capital that they were also unwilling to lead a serious struggle to overthrow imperialist domination, leaving the “young colonial proletariat” with the responsibility of putting itself at the head of the movement.
It concluded that “the revolutionary peoples' movement in India and in other colonies is today as much an integral part of the world revolution of the toilers as is the uprising of the proletariat in the capitalist countries of the old and the new worlds”.
V International Relations
The Theses opened by pointing out how the results of world war had thrown back the attempts - inevitably unsuccessful ones under capitalism - to overcome the barriers to global development created by the existence of individual nation states, thus further worsening the crises facing the global economy:
“International relations, as they have emerged from the war and from the Versailles Peace, are rendering the situation even more hopeless. While imperialism was engendered by the needs of the productive forces to eradicate the framework of nation-states and to convert Europe and the rest of the world into one economic territory, the result of the dog-fight between the hostile imperialist powers was to pile up in Central and Eastern Europe a whole number of new boundaries, new custom barriers and new armies. In the state-economic sense, Europe has been thrown back to medievalism. The soil which has been exhausted and ruined is now being called upon to sustain an army one and a half times as large as that of 1914”.
The French capitalists were trying to improve their dire situation by crippling Germany through debt repayments and by hoping to grab hold of its coal and heavy industry in the Saar, Ruhr and Upper Silesia. [France did in fact occupy the Ruhr in January 1923].
“But these efforts run counter to the interests of Britain. The latter's task is to keep German coal away from French ore, the coupling of which is one of the most indispensable conditions for the regeneration of Europe”.
The Theses went on to explain that the British Empire had, for now, survived intact, even expanding its reach further than ever before, despite Britain’s actual economic decline. It had succeeded in defeating German capitalism, despite its outdated technology and organisation in comparison to the more recently developed German capitalism. “But in the shape of the United States, which has already economically subjected both Americas, there has now risen a triumphant rival, even more menacing than Germany”.
It commented that, “thanks to its superior organisation and technology, the productivity of labour in U.S. industry is far above that of England. Within the territories of the United States 65 to 70 per cent of the world's petroleum is being produced, upon which depends the car industry, tractor production, the navy and the air fleet” .
The US had broken Britain’s monopoly over coal, similarly with undersea cables, and had now almost caught up in the size of its merchant navy and would soon overtake Britain in terms of its military naval fleet.
“In the field of industry Great Britain has gone over to the defensive, and under the pretext of combating 'unwholesome' German competition is now arming herself with protectionist measures against the United States …. The situation is such that either Britain will be automatically pushed back and, despite her victory over Germany, become a second-rate power or she will be constrained in the near future to stake in mortal combat with the United States her entire power gained in former years”. As it turned out, the first option proved correct!
The Theses also foresaw the growing “antagonism between Japan and the United States, temporarily veiled by their joint participation in the war against Germany… As a result of the war Japan has come closer to American shores, taking possession of islands in the Pacific which are of great strategic importance”. But, beyond that, it also foresaw in these growing global antagonisms that “the last great war was - in its origin, its immediate causes and in its principal participants - a European war” but would now be seen “as a European prelude to a genuine world war which is to solve the question of who will exercise the rule of imperialist autocracy”.
But, the Theses added, there was now a new element to world relations, and that was the existence of the Russian Soviet Federation and the Third International. However, as it warned, “the conclusion of peace treaties and trade agreements by certain capitalist countries [eg Britain] with Soviet Russia does not at all mean that the world bourgeoisie has renounced the idea of destroying the Soviet Republic. We have here only a change - perhaps a temporary one - of forms and methods of struggle … It is absolutely self-evident that the more protracted the world proletarian revolutionary movement is in its character, the more inevitably will the bourgeoisie be impelled by the contradictions of the world economic and political situation to engage in another bloody denouement on a world scale”.
This section of the Theses concluded with a comment that is worth thinking over in 2025 too. “Despite the fact that the experience of the last war has furnished fearsome proof that 'war is a miscalculation’ - a truth which exhausts all of bourgeois and socialist pacifism - the process of economic, political, ideological and technical preparation for a new war is going on at full speed throughout the capitalist world”. In other words, the ‘logic’ of capitalist competition and imperialist rivalry meant that the threat of “illogical” conflict, with consequences that risked damaging all capitalist rivals, nevertheless remained then, as it does today, a very real one.
VI The Working Class After the War
The Theses then asked a key question - what did these perspectives mean for the working class, or, as it posed sharply, for capitalism to stabilise itself, “will the working class be willing to make, under the new and incomparably more difficult conditions … than those ruling before the war, those sacrifices which are indispensable for the stable conditions necessary for its own slavery to be re-established?”
It explained that the European capitalists needed to restore the productive forces destroyed during the war - but that would require imposing even longer hours and lower wages on the working-class. And, despite the pleas of their treacherous leaders, the European workers were quite rightly not willing for capitalism to restore its profits at their expense.
No, the working class were demanding “a higher standard of living, which is in direct contradiction to the objective possibilities of the capitalist system. Hence the interminable strikes and uprisings; hence the impossibility of the economic reconstruction of Europe”.
It added that a whole number of European states - it lists Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and the Balkans etc. - needed to “declare themselves bankrupt”, refusing to continue to pay off their debts and making deep state expenditure cuts, in order to stabilise their plummeting currencies. It would also mean preventing imports of consumer goods and further attacking workers' wages and conditions in order to reduce the cost of production of their exports - if, of course, they could succeed in imposing those attacks on their respective proletariats.
In short, this wasn't a question that could be decided by mere economics but only by the class struggle: “The question of whether capitalism can be revived becomes in consequence a question which involves the struggle between living forces: the contending classes and their parties. If, of the two main classes in society - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - one of them, the latter, renounces the revolutionary struggle, then the former, the bourgeoisie, would undeniably in the final analysis establish a new capitalist equilibrium - one based on material and spiritual degeneration by means of new crises, new wars, progressive pauperisation of entire countries and the steady dying out of millions of toilers”.
This was a perspective, that laid out at least in broad terms, the defeats of workers’ struggles and the economic turmoil of the inter-war years, and - although not foreseen here specifically - the rise of fascism. However, as things stood in 1921, the Congress resolution drew a more optimistic perspective - that “the present state of the world proletariat furnishes the least justification for a prognosis of this kind”.
That's not to say that the Theses weren't alert to the damaging influence that the reformist politicians and conservative trade union leaders retained over many organised workers. But they argued that the war had changed both the outlook and composition of the workforce - now younger, with more women and unskilled workers.
Whilst there were still many layers of the working-class not yet ready to break with their treacherous leaders, “millions of young men and women” have brought into the workplaces “their impatient aspirations for better conditions of life … who have grown up amid the tempests of war and revolution are the most receptive to the ideas of Communism and are burning with the desire to act’.
The Theses also noted “the gigantic army of unemployed, for the most part declassed and semi-declassed elements, whose ebbs and flows illustrate most strikingly the process of capitalist economic disintegration.”
It explained that “the instability of living conditions, which mirrors the universal instability of national and world economic conditions, is today one of the most important factors of revolutionary development”, but also that the differing moods amongst the various diverse layers meant that there had not been a unified or simultaneous movement of the masses. Instead, the pace of struggle had ebbed and flowed.
However, it felt that, “the overwhelming majority of the proletarian masses is being rapidly welded together by the shattering of old illusions, by the terrible uncertainty of existence, by the autocratic domination of the trusts by the bandit methods of the militarised state. This multimillion headed mass is seeking a firm and lucid leadership, a clear-cut programme of action, and thus creates the premises for the decisive role which the closely welded and centralised Communist Party is destined to play”.
In retrospect, was that an overly optimistic perspective? Given the global crisis which the Theses correctly predicted - rather than any period of sustained capitalist recovery - I don't think it was. However, as the final section of these Theses was to also emphasise, how events were to develop would also depend on whether such a clear leadership would be built to play the role required of it.
VII Perspectives and Tasks
The final section opens with an honest assessment: “The war did not directly terminate in the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie has with some justification recorded this fact as a major victory for itself”.
But it then adds that “only petty-bourgeois blockheads can construe the bankruptcy of the programme of the Communist International from the fact that the European proletariat did not overthrow the bourgeoisie during the war or immediately after it. That the Communist International bases its policy on the proletarian revolution does not at all mean either dogmatically fixing any definite date for the revolution or issuing any pledges to bring it about mechanically at a set time”.
It continues with quotes that still ring true today - if in the context of later struggles of the working masses around the globe:
“The revolution was and remains a struggle of living forces waged upon given historical foundations. … The differences between the Communist International and the Social Democrats of both groups do not arise from our alleged attempt to force the revolution on a fixed date whereas they are opposed to utopianism and putschism; the difference lies in this, that the Social Democrats obstruct the actual development of the revolution by rendering, whether as members of the administration or as members of the opposition, all possible assistance in restoring the equilibrium of the bourgeois state, whereas the Communists are exploiting every means, every method, every possibility for the purpose of overthrowing and abolishing the bourgeois state through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat”.
“In the course of the two and a half years that have elapsed since the war, the proletariat of various countries has exhibited so much energy, such readiness for struggle, such a spirit of self-sacrifice as would have more than sufficed to bring victory to the revolution, provided there had been at the head of the working class an International Communist Party strong, centralised and ready for action. But during the war and immediately thereafter, by force of historic circumstances, there stood at the head of the European proletariat the organisation of the Second International which has become and which remains an invaluable political weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie”.
As the most pointed example, the Theses restated the lessons of Germany - at the end of 1918 and at the beginning of 1919 - when “the power was actually in the hands of the working class. The Social Democrats - the majority faction, the Independents, and the trade unions alike - used their whole apparatus and all their traditional influence for the purpose of returning this power into the hands of the bourgeoisie”.
And it added that since then, in Italy, it had been “only thanks to the petty-bourgeois impotence of the Socialist Party, to the treacherous policy of its parliamentary fraction, to the cowardly opportunism of the trade union organisations, that the bourgeoisie found itself enabled to repair its apparatus, to mobilise its ‘White Guards’ and to assume the offensive against the proletariat.”
In Britain too, “the mighty strike movement in Britain was shattered again and again during the last year by the ruthless application of military force, which intimidated the trade-union leaders. Had these leaders remained faithful to the cause of the working class, the machinery of the trade unions despite all of its defects could have been used for revolutionary battles. The recent crisis of the Triple Alliance [when the transport and rail unions failed to take action in solidarity with the locked out miners] furnished the possibility of a revolutionary collision with the bourgeoisie but this was frustrated by the conservatism, cowardice and treachery of the trade-union leaders”.
The Theses added a phrase that might only too well still apply in future, unless genuine ‘Broad Lefts’ succeed in transforming the trade unions in Britain: “Were the machinery of the British trade unions to develop today half the amount of energy in the interests of socialism it has been expending in the interests of capitalism, the English proletariat could conquer power with a minimum of sacrifice and could start a systematic reconstruction of the country's economic system”. And, as the Theses also added, “the same applies in a greater or lesser degree to all other capitalist countries”.
Once again, the Theses made clear that Lenin, Trotsky and the leadership of the Communist International weren’t blind to reality: “It is absolutely incontestable that on a world scale the open revolutionary struggle of the proletariat for power is at present passing through a stoppage, a slowing down in tempo”.
However, the Theses also made clear that this was inevitable following the failure to win a rapid revolutionary victory, to follow on from the Russian Revolution, when capitalism was at its most vulnerable immediately after the war - not least in Germany: “It was impossible to expect that the revolutionary offensive after the war … would go on developing uninterruptedly along an upward curve. … If the offensive of the proletariat is not crowned by victory, the bourgeoisie seizes the very first opportunity for a counter-offensive. … But it remains equally incontestable that in our epoch the curve of capitalist development as a whole is constantly moving - [if also] through temporary upswings - downwards; while the curve of the revolution - through all its fluctuations - is constantly moving upwards”.
So what was the fundamental task of the Communist Parties during this pause in revolutionary struggle? To conclude from the perspectives outlined that “workers will be driven again and again to engage in strikes and to rise in revolt. Under this oppression and pressure, in the course of these battles, the will of the masses to abolish the capitalist system will grow and become tempered” and so for the Party “to lead the present defensive struggles of the proletariat, to extend their scope, to deepen them, to unify them, and in harmony with the march of events, to transform them into decisive political struggles for the ultimate goal”.
It also noted that, even if the perspective proved incorrect, and capitalism did succeed in creating for itself a “period of prosperity” [as it did in the special global conditions after World War Two] this would inevitably only be temporary, remembering that “so long as capitalism exists, cyclical oscillations are inevitable”.
The final paragraph stressed the following: “Whether the revolutionary movement develops in the next period at a swift or slow tempo, the Communist Party must in either case remain the party of action. It stands at the head of the struggling masses; it firmly and clearly formulates its fighting slogans, exposing and sweeping aside all the equivocal slogans of the Social Democracy, which are always based on compromise and conciliationism”.
It concluded - using a military analogy - that “whatever the shifts in the course of the struggle, the Communist Party always strives to consolidate organisationally new bases of support, trains the masses in active manoeuvering, arms them with new methods and practices designed for direct and open clashes with the enemy forces. Utilising every breathing spell in order to assimilate the experience of the preceding phase of the struggle, the Communist Party seeks to deepen and extend the class conflicts, to co-ordinate them nationally and internationally by unity of goal and unity of practical action, and, in this way, at the head of the proletariat, shatter all resistance on the road to its dictatorship and the socialist revolution”.
As we know, the actual course of events in the century since these perspectives were written has turned out to be one where the tempo of struggle has extended over a far longer period than anyone at that 1921 Congress would have expected.
Capitalism - at the expense of both the world’s working class and poor, and indeed the global environment too - has managed to maintain its domination of the world. But the advice above retains its relevance for revolutionary parties today.
Note: A full online copy of the Theses (with a slightly different translation) can be found here.
The introductory speech from Trotsky can be found here, which ends with these paragraphs:
"To sum up, the situation now, at the time of the Third Congress, is not what it was during the First and Second Congresses. Then we mapped out the broad perspectives and the general line, saying that this line, this direction will enable you to win the proletariat and the world. Is that still true? Absolutely! In this broad sense it is completely correct. However, we did not predict the ups and downs along this line, and we are noticing them now. We notice them through our defeats and disappointments and the great sacrifices and also through our erroneous actions, which took place in all countries, including major errors here in Russia. Only now do we see and feel that we are not so extremely close to the final goal, the winning of power, the world revolution. At that time, in 1919, we thought it was a matter of months, and now we say it is perhaps a matter of years. We cannot say precisely, but we know all the better that development is headed in this direction, and that during this period we have become much stronger around the world.
We do not yet have the majority of the world proletariat on our side. However, we have a much greater portion than was the case one or two years ago. Analysing this situation tactically – an important task of this congress – we must conclude that the struggle will perhaps be prolonged and perhaps will not stride forward as feverishly as one might wish; the struggle will be difficult, demanding many sacrifices. Accumulated experience has made us more astute. We will be able to manoeuvre in and through this struggle. We will know how to apply not only the mathematical line, but also how to utilise the changing situation for a purely revolutionary line. We will also know how to manoeuvre during the decay of the capitalist class, always with the goal of bringing the working-class forces together for social revolution. In my view, both our successes and our failures have shown that the difference between ourselves and the Social Democrats and Independents does not consist in the fact that we said we will make the revolution in 1919 and they responded that it will come only later. That was not the difference. The difference is that, in every situation, the Social Democrats and Independents support the bourgeoisie against the revolution, whereas we are ready and will remain ready to utilise every situation, whatever form it takes, for the revolutionary offensive and for the conquest of political power".
Trotsky's reply to the debate can be read here too.
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