Creation of the Comintern

Author: Linda DeLaine
Website: RL Online
Department:
Page: 1   ( 3) pages

Summary: In 1919, after two failed Socialist Internationals, Lenin decided that there was a need for a new organization to bring solidarity among the working class; the Communist International was born.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations. In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer. Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels The Communist Manifesto

In 1919, after two failed Socialist Internationals, Lenin decided that there was a need for a new organization to bring solidarity among the working class. Enter the Comintern; short for Communist International, designed to oversee the world wide workers' revolution against the establishment.

Being a devout separatist, Lenin now saw the need for a unified revolution with neighboring nations in Western Europe. The primary problem was that most of the communist sympathizers in Europe wanted a new international, but not one run by the Bolsheviks. Rosa Luxemburg was most probably Lenin's greatest obstacle. It was clear that she intended to put down any moves made by Lenin to establish the new Comintern.

Rosa was born in 1871 to a Jewish family in Russia dominated Poland. She moved to Zurich in 1889 where she studied and received her doctorate in law in 1898. While studying in Zurich, Rosa became active in the international socialist movement, meeting and coming to disagree with men such as Georgy Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod, both members of the Russian social democratic movement. Rosa, also, found no agreement with the Polish Socialist Party because they were in favor of Polish independence. She, and others who agreed with her, founded the Polish Social Democratic Party which later became the Polish Communist Party.

Rosa strongly disagreed with the concepts of nationalism and independence. She saw these as the tools used by the bourgeoisie to oppress and control the masses. Instead, her ideal was one of socialist internationalism which clashed dramatically with Lenin's mandate for national self-determination.

Luxemburg had believed that the world revolution of workers would originate in Germany. In 1905, she realized that the spark had been lit in Russia. In 1906, she wrote her thesis on the need for revolutionary mass action, Massenstreik, Partei und Gewerkschaften (The Mass Strike, the Political Party, and the Trade Unions). In a nutshell, Rosa's thesis called for a unified mass strike on the part of workers in both the West and Russia. This was the only way to achieve a socialist victory over the oppressive upper class. Rosa insisted that highly structured parties or revolutionary groups were a waste, that solidarity among the people would come automatically as a result of a common struggle. On this, she and Lenin disagreed.

Rosa instigated many violent demonstrations in Berlin. She attempted to restrict the affect of the Bolshevik activities in Russia on the newly formed German Communist Party. Believing strongly in the unified power of international workers and soldiers groups, Rosa was heavily critical of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in her publication The Russian Revolution, for their focus on national self determination. As strange as it may sound, Rosa was a believer in democracy and was determined to prevent Lenin from forming the Comintern, which she saw as dictatorial.

Rosa and her followers opposed Russia's signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. This treaty was an attempt to stop German aggression. Lenin believed that the treaty was necessary to keep Germany from pressing into Ukraine and Russia. He reasoned that Germany would be defeated from within by its own workers revolution. Rosa was disappointed at Russia entering into such a treaty with Germany. In her paper, The Russian Tragedy, she explains that treaty only introduced a new chapter in the war. The Treaty left Russia vulnerable. Luxemburg wrote, The overall result of this unrestricted and unlimited German power over Russia was naturally an enormous strengthening of German imperialism both internally and externally, and thereby of course a heightening of the white-hot resistance and war-readiness of the Entente powers, i.e. prolongation and intensification of the world war. And indeed there is more: Russia’s defenselessness, as revealed by the progressive German occupation, must naturally tempt the Entente and Japan to instigate a counter-action on Russian territory in order to combat Germany’s huge predominance and at the same time to satisfy their imperialist appetites at the expense of the defenseless colossus. Now the north and east of European Russia, as well as the whole of Siberia, are cut off, and the Bolsheviks are isolated form their last sources of essential supplies. The end result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is thus to encircle, starve out and strangle the Russian revolution from all sides.

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The First Five Years of the Communist International
Leon Trotsky

Paperback, 374pp.
Pathfinder Press
October 1997