The Programme of the Communist International. Comintern Sixth Congress 1929

http://www.marxists.org/history/inte...ress/index.htm

I will read this in parts and make responses here for others to respond to.

If anyone wants to join me, that would be fine.

I will start next week.

The 1929 programme was one of the bigger reasons I warmed to ML in the first place. But I'll wait for the discussion to start

Well jookyle, I think it's important to look at things within the greater context of the Soviet Union as a whole. The Comintern produced that document, and it's chief role was the propagation of revolutionary rhetoric and continuing revolutionary pretensions. You need to take into account the actual actions taken by the Soviet state.. if you compare the statements of the Comintern with say the Narkomindel, it makes for quite the contrast. Still, it makes for a pleasant read compared with the Trotskyist bleatings for a common cause with social-democrats, those guardians of capital who so effectively preserved the rule of capital during the first revolutionary wave.

The growth of the productive forces of world economy thus leads to the further internationalisation of economic life and simultaneously leads to a struggle for a redistribution of the world, already divided up among the biggest finance capital States, to a change in and sharpening of the forms of this struggle and to the older method of bringing down prices being superseded to an increasing degree by the method of direct force (boycott, high protection, tariff wars, wars proper, etc.). Consequently, the monopolist form of capitalism is inevitably accompanied by imperialist wars, which, by the area they embrace and the destructiveness of their technique, have no parallel in world history.

Well, this is at the end of section 2 or part 1 (there really was no discussion points prior to this, just rhetoric) but I would like to discuss the bolded section. I do not really agree with it. I agree that the monopolist form of capitalism is accompanied by imperialism, but I do not agree that it's destructiveness unparalleled by history. For example, the genocide and complete destruction of the native american populations from colonialists, etc. took place not in the time of monopolist capitalism, yet the "destructiveness" could be easily matched to that of imperialism.

However, this fundamental revolutionary tendency is temporarily paralysed by the fact that certain sections of the European, North American and Japanese proletariat are bribed by the imperialist bourgeoisie, and by the treachery of the national bourgeoisie in the semi-colonial and colonial countries who are scared by the revolutionary mass movement. The bourgeoisie in imperialist countries, able to secure additional surplus profits from the position it holds in the world market (more developed technique, export of capital to countries with a higher rate of profit, etc.), and from the proceeds of its plunder of the colonies and semi-colonies-was able to raise the wages of its “own” workers out of these surplus profits, thus giving these workers an interest in the development of “home” capitalism, in the plunder of the colonies and in being loyal to the imperialist State.

I have seen some people here argue against this, but I do believe it is essentially correct and makes organizing in a developed country much harder. This isn't to say that the proletariat in a developed country don't suffer from deep poverty, etc. (I know this growing up in a generally poor and working-class neighborhood, also the fact that 2009 showed the largest increase in poverty in the US in the past 50 years, etc.).

So, I am done with section 1 and there really wasn't anything but rhetoric that most communists, no matter what they label themselves, would agree with. I hope the rest of this is much better than what I have just read.

Wow, I really like the anti-Social-Democratic things I am reading in section 2 of chapter 2.

The principal function of social democracy at the present time is to disrupt the essential militant unity of the proletariat in its struggle against imperialism. In splitting and disrupting the united front of the proletarian struggle against capital, social democracy serves as the mainstay of imperialism in the working class. International social democracy of all shades; the Second International and its trade union branch, the Amsterdam Federation of Trade Unions, have thus become the last reserve of bourgeois society and its most reliable pillar of support.

I really like this. Like Ghost Bebel said, it's a breath of fresh air from Trotskyists arguing for a united front with social democrats.

The Fascist system is a system of direct dictatorship, ideologically marked by the “national idea” and by representation of the “professions” (in reality, representation of the various groups of the ruling class). It is a system that resorts to a peculiar form of social demagogy (anti-semitism, occasional sorties against usurers’ capital and gestures of impatience with the parliamentary “talking shop”) in order to utilise the discontent of the petty bourgeois, the intellectuals and other strata of society, and to corruption-the creation of a compact and well paid hierarchy of Fascist units, a party apparatus and a bureaucracy. At the same time, Fascism strives to permeate the working class by recruiting the most backward strata of workers to its ranks-by playing upon their discontent, by taking advantage of the inaction of social democracy, etc. The principal aim of Fascism is to destroy the revolutionary labour vanguard, i.e., the Communist Sections and leading units of the proletariat. The combination of social democracy, corruption and active white terror, in conjunction with extreme imperialist aggression in the sphere of foreign politics, are the characteristic features of Fascism. In periods of acute crisis for the bourgeoisie, Fascism resorts to anti-capitalist phraseology, but, after it has established itself at the helm of State, it casts aside its anti-capitalist prattle and discloses itself as a terrorist dictatorship of big capital.

What does everyone think about this definition of fascism? I generally agree with it.

The class struggle, which hitherto was conducted in circumstances when the proletariat was not in possession of State power, is now being conducted on an enormous and really world scale; the working class of the world has now its own State-the one and only fatherland of the international proletariat. The existence of the Soviet Union and the influence it exercises upon the toiling and oppressed masses all over the world is in itself a most striking expression of the profound crisis of the world capitalist system and of the expansion and intensification of the class struggle to a degree hitherto without parallel in history.

Well, I would possibly argue that in 1929 this was somewhat true, but, as most of us agree, eventually the revolution in the Soviet Union degenerated and there was no "dictatorship of the proletariat." The struggle between the two eventually became the Soviet Union's ruling class challenging the hegemony of the Western ruling class and vice versa.

The “peaceful” struggle for oil, rubber, cotton, coal and metals and for a redistribution of markets and spheres for the export of capital is inexorably leading to another world war, the destructiveness of which will increase proportionately to the progress achieved in the furiously developing technique of war.

This was written in 1929, after the first world war, and is spot on correct in it's prediction.

Chapter 3 really didn't have any discussion points. The only thing I disagree with is the description of the lower stage of communism, which I believe is actually the dotp.