“The great difficulty which confronts International Socialism, however, is the division of the movement into two camps as a result of the Russian Revolution of November 1918. Bolshevism tried to establish, not only over Russia, but over every other country in the world, the method of seizing political power by armed force, holding that power by the same means and changing the whole economic structure of society by decree and suppression. Since its first success in Russia, it has somewhat modified its position, and at the present moment in this country, it is informing its adherents that those who decry political methods are traitors to the cause of Communism, but that political action should be used solely to prove the abortiveness of the institutions which are to be captured. Obviously, such a compromise with the unclean thing is bound to defeat itself and will only make candidates who pursue such a policy ridiculous in the eyes of electors. It is political and revolutionary futility of the simplest kind. We do not wish, however, to argue out the matter. The policy may be more suitable to some countries than it is to ours, but obviously every Socialist who has any international instinct at all will see that an International based upon Moscow principles can never represent more than the smallest and least influential fraction of the Socialist movement in the various countries. The Second International has, therefore, rejected Bolshevism as the basis of its existence.
“Moreover, the attempts made by Moscow to control national organizations not only in general Socialist policy, but in the details of their own national work, must prevent every such organization with any self-respect and any sense of national freedom from putting itself under such a yoke.”
The following statement as to the foundation upon which a Socialist International should be constituted is also important:
“There must be no doubt as to the basis upon which a Socialist International has to be built. It must secure to each Socialist group freedom to work in accordance with its own means towards its Socialist goal; there must be common determination to bring Socialism about; it must be prepared to give international support to all national strivings for liberty and self-government in ways determined by the nations themselves; it must in no way reject (as is now being attempted in some quarters) but unequivocally support the democratic method as that proper to the countries that have already gone through their political revolutions, and that have been put in possession of the political weapon by reason of the insurrectionary movements of their proletariat in days gone by.”
The Third or Moscow International
The Second International may accordingly be now regarded as re-established, if not re-created, and the interesting speculation is the extent to which it will secure the allegiance of Socialist parties throughout the world as against the appeals of the Third International or Moscow “Red” International. This latter deserves a short description. In January 1919, just before the meeting of the Berne Conference, and shortly after the Peace Conference at Paris had commenced, a wireless invitation to the first Communist International Congress at Moscow was sent out in the name of the Russian Communist Party, which was the name adopted by the Russian Bolsheviks or Majority Social Democrats after the Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks desired to distinguish themselves clearly from Socialist or “social democratic” parties which, in various belligerent countries, had supported their respective Governments. They took the name from the Communist League for which Marx and Engels drew up the famous Communist manifesto which they were commissioned to draw up in November 1847, at the Congress of Communists in London. Lenin, in his book, the State and Revolution, draws special attention to the term “communist” as being more scientifically correct than the term “social democrat” and endeavours to prove his point by quotations from the manifesto. Following the lead of Moscow the various revolutionary Socialist parties throughout the world have discarded their Socialist appellations and called themselves Communists. One ought, therefore, to realize that the term “Communism” has now taken on a new and different meaning from its earlier significance. To-day Communism means the principles of Marxian revolutionary Socialism and a scheme of social and industrial organization constructed on those principles which are peculiar to the Bolshevik regime in Soviet Russia. In his admirable little book, the Two Internationals, which deals with the complex subject most clearly and with very full documentation, Mr. R. Palme Dutt very properly says that “care must be taken to distinguish this sense of Communism from the sense in which it has been more generally used in this country, namely, (1) the Communist Anarchism of Kropotkin, (2) the conception of the abolition of all personal property, (3) decentralization under a system of loosely associated local communes. Communism corresponds rather to what is often referred to as ‘scientific socialism,’ only with a special emphasis on its revolutionary aspect.”
The First Communist International Congress was held at Moscow in March 1919. It is called the Third International or Communist International; its constitution will be found in the Labour International Handbook, 1921, page 190. Shortly stated its purposes are the overthrow of capitalism, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the International Soviet Republic; the complete abolition of classes and the realization of revolutionary Socialism. Twenty-one conditions of membership, together with instructions for its members, are laid down, some of which are peculiarly illuminating as to Communist principles. Condition 3 says that “the class-struggle in almost every country of Europe and America is reaching the threshold of civil war. Under such circumstances the Communist can have no confidence in bourgeois laws. They should create everywhere a parallel illegal machinery which at the decisive moment will do its duty by the party and in every way possible assist the revolution. In every country where, in consequence of martial law or other exceptional laws, the Communists are unable to carry on their work lawfully, a combination of legal and illegal work is absolutely necessary.”
The Communist Party of Great Britain is affiliated to the Third International, but the Independent Labour Party of this country, although it seceded from the Second International, refused to join the Third International, and published a scathing criticism of Bolshevism or Communism which appeared in the Labour Leader of December 18, 1919. The Independent Labour Party is affiliated to yet another International, the body known as the Vienna International or the “Two and a Half.”
I have set out these details in order to show the nature and the extent of the home and international socialistic programme which the Labour Party has pledged itself, if given the opportunity, to carry into operation.