Ebook: Workers against the monolith: The Communist parties since 1943

The founding of the Third (Communist) International in March 1919 marks the high point of the working class movement in the twentieth century. The establishment of a workers' state in Russia in 1917 had been an encouragement and inspiration to socialists and militant workers throughout the world. The old organizations of the working class had collapsed shamefully with the outbreak of war in 1914; now a new generation of revolutionary fighters was rising from the ashes. Strikes, mutinies and insurrections swept across Europe. Tendencies aligned on the Russian Revolution grew up in both the social democratic parties and the syndicalist organizations. The Russian example seemed to have broken down the barriers that had divided the labour movement before 1914. The issues that had previously separated syndicalists and social democrats seemed less important than the possibility of smashing capitalism once and for all. Even anarchists were prepared to accept Bolshevik discipline for a few intoxicating years. The new International, and the constituent Parties that were founded in the following years, were necessarily democratic centralist in form. In a period when mass struggles were taking place throughout Europe, each country was intimately affected by events in every other. Only a highly centralized International could meet the needs of the time. But the International was also authentically democratic. The main strategic issues facing the movement - work in the trade unions, participation in Parliament, relations with the social democratic and centrist organizations, the anti-imperialist struggle in the underdeveloped countries - were not issues to which a simple answer was available. They had to be resolved by debate and experience - experience drawn from the life of mass parties with real roots among workers.