Communism; Industrial Workers of the World; Socialism
Needless to say, this movement was helped on by the various
communications received from the Lenine dictatorship, and notably by the
call for an international communist congress to meet at Moscow in March,
1919. The text of this call began to appear in the American radical
publications in late March and April, and is here reproduced from "The
One Big Union Monthly" for the latter month:
"First Section
"AIMS AND TACTICS
"In our estimation, the acceptance of the following principles
shall serve as a working program for the International:
"1. The actual period is the period of the dissolution and collapse
of the whole capitalist system;
"2. The first task of the proletariat consists to-day of the
immediate seizure of government power by the proletariat;
"3. This new governmental apparatus must incorporate the
dictatorship of the working class, and in some places, also, that
of the poorer peasantry, together with hired farm labor, this
dictatorship constituting the instrument of the systematic
overthrow of the exploiting classes;
"4. The dictatorship of the proletariat shall complete the
immediate expropriation of Capitalism and the suppression of
private property in the means of production, which includes, under
Socialism, the suppression of private property and its transfer to
a proletarian state under the Socialist administration of the
working class, the abolition of capitalist agricultural production,
the nationalization of the great business firms and financial
trusts;
"5. In order to insure the Social Revolution, the disarming of the
bourgeoisie and its agents, and the general arming of the
proletariat, is a prime necessity.
"Second Section
"ATTITUDE REGARDING SOCIALIST PARTIES
"7. The fundamental condition of the struggle is the mass action of
the proletariat, developing into open armed attack on the
governmental powers of Capitalism;
"8. The old International has broken into three principal groups:
the avowed social-patriots, who, during the entire duration of the
imperialistic war between the years 1914 and 1918, have supported
their own bourgeoisie; the minority Socialists of the 'Center,'
represented by leaders of the type of Karl Kautsky, and who
constitute a group composed of ever-hesitating elements, unable to
settle on any determined direction and who up to date have always
acted as traitors; and the Revolutionary Left Wing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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