Communist International. All the initiated by the proto-Stalinists and completed by the Stalinists and post-Stalinists is needed to bring one to forget that the Communist International's & RESULTS main task was precisely not to 'teach everybody the experiences of the AND PROSPECTS revolution'- although those were very precious - but rather to work out a correct strategy for the class struggle taking place in the main countries the world. You cannot read the resolutions, manifestos of the first four congresses of the Communist International without immediately grasping this basic point. programmatic questions' and debates around 'precise strategies and tactics' first four congresses of the Communist International were over-saturated with way, if not even more than at con- of discussion, in the same gresses of the Fourth International
For, as opposed to small groups like
Fourth International, 'genuine Marxist parties' cannot grow just as a result of elsewhere or for They can only grow as a function of the results they obtain in the class struggle in their country. Far from programmatic, strategic and tactical of the name are talking here of real debates and semantic or scholastic quarrels) involve precisely the problems of the mass class struggle: organisation, provision of defeats and chances of victory. Everywhere where the impact of the Russian Revolution, the advice of the Communist the intervention of its representatives International and inside the young communist parties, favoured, due to a correct strategy disastrous effect, despite all had a influence and prestige of the the Russian Revolution. Just to take up examples: In Germany the three Communist International's intervention Communist Party's (KDP) adventurist encouraging the German
Action' resulted in the latter's loss of half its membership '1921 March absolute majority of its workers' cadre, 200,000 members • including - in the space of a few months, notwithstanding the prestige the prestige of the Russian Revolution did not prevent the CP remaining an insignificant little group and the immense majority of the working- class vanguard being active between
LEON
TROTSKY list, that already makes up principal imperialist the Russian Revolution did believed in by the decisive effect
Even in France
Percy and Lorimer.
and Italy where it had been decisive
CPs stayed became quickly a minority inside the proletariat due to errors committed in the class struggle.
It is true that the German CP was recover thanks to greater identification with the Russian
Revolution than it had displayed in
Identifying with the Cuban, Nicara-
Vietnamese revolutions is recomposition tactics, the and the organised workers' movement in the precise sense made clear above, contributed to the emergence of powerful Marxist parties. Everythey where they had an opposite even in the period of Lenin where effect,
Trotsky (we are not saying by and and fault of Lenin the
1919 and 1936 in the National Federation of Labor (CNT) and the Social Democratic left. It was the same in political radicalisation was harnessed syndicalism and the labour left throughout the the United States and Japan to the formation of inciting the
Marxist parties' in the big majority countries of the important of the world. It is useful and indispensable for recruiting young and enthusiastic the building up for revolutionaries,
We are nucleus.
initial revolutionary
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