Chapter XVI
The "Third International"

In every part of the country we find that the International Revolutionaries desire to control and direct Labour unrest and discontent. They have a general contempt for the intelligence of the masses, and assume that they will never go in the right direction without their guidance. This contempt for public opinion is fully expressed by Mr. G. D. H. Cole in his book, The World of Labour, P. 34:

"For if there can be greater dishonesty in envisaging the problem, a greater refusal to face the facts, than that which the aspiring politician has to learn, it is assuredly to be found in the narrowness, egoism, and intellectual indolence that characterize the great British public. If the industrial revolution has turned the worker into a mere producing machine, it has quite equally turned the public into a mass of mere consumers, with consciences always in their pockets and brains nowhere or directed to anything rather than the social question. In this country, at least, it is useless to invoke public opinion, because it is selfish, unenlightened, and vindictive."

How this direction of the workers towards revolution is to be secured is explained in the Call of May 20, 1920, in an article on "Communist Organization." The Call is the official organ of the British Socialist Party (London), and Tchicherin, Litvinov, Fineberg, and other members of the Soviet Government were active members of the B.S.P. when living in London. Karl Radek, Clara Zetkin (German Spartacists), N. Osinsky, and many other Jewish revolutionaries of the Continent are frequent contributors to it. The party is affiliated to the Third International, and the letter from Lenin to the British Workers, brought by Messrs. Shaw and Turner, was directed to the B.S.P., and contained a covering letter on behalf of Lenin, signed by Marcel Rosenberg.

The article referred to outlines the methods to be adopted by the revolutionaries to prepare the Labour movement for the coming revolution. The writer describes the working-class organizations as in the main "like rudderless craft in conflicting currents." The mission of the Communist is to supply the rudder.

"During the stormy period of transition from Capitalism to Socialism, we shall require new machinery of government and production. May it not be that we can use the Trade Unions as our machinery of production, and the Co-operative movement as the framework of our machinery of distribution?

"We need a revolutionary Communist group in every Trade Union branch, in every local Labour Party, on every committee of management of a Co-operative Society; responsible directly to the branch of the Party in that locality, guiding the mass of the workers into the Communist path, preparing for the day when the existing machinery of society is no longer adequate to carry out the desires of the people.

"By these means the existing working-class organizations can be made to serve the purpose of the revolutionary proletariat. Each branch of the Party should co-ordinate the activities of these organizations in its area and render periodical reports to Party headquarters. Headquarters would thus become the real nerve-centre of Communist propaganda. By this means, in a short time it would be possible to ensure the election of Communists to all executive and organizing posts in the Trade Unions and the Labour Party.

"At the same time, recruiting should be proceeded with from the point of view of attracting to our Party the flower of the proletariat. If a young man of promise is elected as branch secretary or shop-steward in a Trade Union, he should become the objective of intensive personal propaganda to convert him to our ideals. By thus supplying the bulk of the acknowledged leaders of the working class, it would follow that the lead of the Communist Party would be instinctively followed in a time of crisis.

Wherever workers meet to discuss wages or the conditions of existence, there should be found a group of comrades ready to help them in their immediate aims, and at the same time point to the root cause of all their grievances and suffering in order to make them realize that only with the overthrow of Capitalism can their conditions be permanently bettered. . . .

"It is at least certain, however, that only by becoming the leaders and guiding force of such organizations as exist today can the Communist and the revolutionary tomorrow hope to carry with them the mass of the proletariat.

"Close up the ranks, comrades!"

In the same issue is an article by Otto Maschl, reproduced from Le Bulletin Communiste y on the function of Workers' Councils, in which he describes them as "revolutionary ante-chambers." "They are the touchstones, which constantly excite the hatred of the bourgeoisie, even if they are not at all inspired with revolutionary sentiments. For they are the most suitable instruments for keeping alive the class war."

The aims of these organizers of revolution are revealed in an article by Clara Zetkin, specially written for the Call of April 29, 1920. This writer is a Jewess, and has taken the place of Rosa Luxembourg as a leader of the German Communists. In this, article she describes the progress the International Revolutionaries are now making.

"Over Italy roar the thunders of the coming storm; in Prance there is sheet-lightning; storms rage through the proud Empire of Great Britain. In England and Scotland growing masses of workers unite round the Socialist, the Communist, flag. Ireland, Egypt, and India are in revolt. The wage slaves in the United States muster for the class struggle; their strikes become greater and greater in extent, more important, and take a revolutionary character. The international situation, in consequence of the diplomatic squabbling among the Allied Powers for the booty of the world war, is rich in conflicts, pregnant with future wars. Here, too, the economic basis of Capitalist order, class antagonism, and class struggles, grow in intensity and bitterness. Prom beneath the volcanic depths of Society rises Socialism, Communism."

She goes on to call not for resolutions but for mass action.

"Now the battle between workers and bourgeois is no longer one for reforms in the Capitalist order, its aim is to overthrow, to subdue this order. Capitalism or Socialism and Communism is the battlecry. No resolutions on paper must be the aim, but the living, powerful action of the working masses."

She concludes by appealing to the British workers to rally "to the red banner of the Third International," and sends them greetings from the Communists of "Germany in revolution."

In the Socialist, the organ of the Socialist Labour Party (Glasgow), which is affiliated to the Third International and provides nearly all the strike leaders on the Clyde, there appeared on April 22, 1920, a statement from the Communist Bureau at Amsterdam urging the workers in Great Britain to strike on May Day. The appeal is signed by H. Roland Hoist. In the course of this statement it is declared that "a real peace" with the Soviet Republic of Russia "is impossible under Capitalism." "A real peace for Russia means the victory of the World Revolution, and nothing less." He advises other countries to strive towards Soviet Republics.

"This inspiring aim we must always have in mind in all our deeds, in all our actions. We must fill our heads with revolutionary thoughts, we must be willing to destroy the weapons of our enemies.

. . . All this we can only achieve in a constant fight with our exploiters, by giving this fight a general revolutionary character. It means a complete break with bourgeois civilization, bourgeois morals, bourgeois supremacy. It means Labour as the basic principle of social and moral life.

. . . The outward fagade of the bourgeois state of society still exists, but it may fall to pieces at any moment, although a long and severe struggle will doubtless be necessary, as much to finally crush the bourgeoisie as to affect in the mass of the people the moral and intellectual transformation that will make them able to institute the Communist Commonwealth, and render them fit to live in it.

We may be convinced that any little thing, an indifferent circumstance, may now at any moment, by causing the countless elements of the new revolutionary consciousness floating all over the world to unite into a new body and manifest themselves with unexpected force, be the instigator of renewed strife and promiseful upheaval. . . . The times for the passing of Capitalism are ripe, and any dead calm may be the foreboder of new social storms unexpectedly rising."

"Prompted by these considerations," the Amsterdam Bureau urges the workers' organizations to be prepared for action and to strike on May Day 1920, "in favour of Soviet Russia."

The Executive of the Amsterdam Sub-Bureau of the Third International is one of the chief foreign influences that affect our revolutionary societies. The manifestoes of this Bureau are signed by D. J. Wynkoop, Henrietta Roland Hoist, and G. J. Rutgers. In the B.S.P. organ, the Call of April 1, 1920, there is a long manifesto from this Bureau entitled "German Revolution: An Appeal to the British, French, and Belgian Proletariat." After condemning the Allies for their treatment of Germany, it bursts into exhortations.

"Workers of the Entente! Loudly proclaim your solidarity with the German revolution! Compel your Governments to withdraw the troops from the occupied territory. Railwaymen! Refuse to allow the transport of any troops or any arms or munitions to Germany. All of you answer any attempt on the part of your Governments to strangle the German revolution by extending and intensifying your own revolutionary activity."

The writers of this manifesto compliment the British Proletariat on the magnificent meetings of the "Hands off Russia" Committee, and they state that the revolutions in various countries are part of one revolution, the Social Revolution. The "fate of the European Revolution depends on you," they write, and conclude with "Hurrah for the Communist Revolution in Germany! Hurrah for the World Revolution, the Universal Soviet Republic!"

In an article by Dr. Hermann Gorter written for Data (February, 1920), the "organ of the Socialist Information and Research Bureau" (Scotland), he specially appeals to the British workers to lead the European Revolution—the English proletariat "must place itself at the head of the proletariat in Western Europe" "The fate of the world revolution, the fate of humanity, lies in the hands of the English workers."

Among the supporters of this Bolshevist campaign against the British Empire is Mr. E. D. Morel, of the notorious Union of Democratic Control. Writing in Foreign Affairs, the organ of the U.D.C., for June, 1920, Mr. Morel discusses "The Why and the Wherefore of the War against Russia." The British attack on the Bolsheviks is, according to Mr. Morel, inspired by fear of the result of a strong Socialist State in Russia.

"The advent of a great Socialist State in Europe is a solvent of Empire. Empire—the dominion over many nationally conscious peoples by a single alien people—and Socialism are irreconcilable factors. They are mutually destructive. The Imperialists who presently govern the British Empire and who contemplate the consequences of the triumphant emergence of a great Socialist State in the geographical position of Russia—half European, half Asiatic—are not thinking in terms of Britain when they seek to prevent such a consummation. They are thinking in terms of the British Empire."

After stating that British capital has nothing "to fear from the growth to adolescence of a Russian Socialist State," because Lenin is willing to give us trading concessions if we will make peace with him, he says: "But British Imperialism has everything to fear from the survival of Soviet Russia."

"The heart of the British Empire beats in Asia—I speak, not of the Commonwealth, but of the Empire. . . . The Russian mind knows how to read the Asiatic mind. Picture Russia a Socialist State, freed from her external foes, flanked by a series of racially alien or politically allied—sometimes both—lesser States, not in Europe only but in Asia, States enjoying full autonomy, permeated with Socialist ideals and precepts and practices radiating from a centre where education and science have been elevated into fine arts, where the treasures of knowledge, the accumulated learning of the ages are thrown open to all, made accessible to the humblest citizen. Picture Russia thus— then look at India, Persia, Afghanistan, Burma, under present conditions. Need you ask why British Imperialism shrinks at the prospect and fears; fears unutterably as it scans the future?"

Mr. Morel goes on to declare that British Imperialism is today more unyielding and intolerant in consequence of the "very magnitude of its successes in the war," which have intoxicated it. "It has become a militarist Imperialism as it never was before." Lenin and Trotsky have discredited Western diplomacy, and "the dangers to be apprehended from the future are so enormous for the existing Order that the Russian wreckers of the occult power which rules the people's lives must be broken." Morel therefore concludes that British Imperialism is fighting the Bolsheviks because it "knows its very existence is at stake."

These statements from Morel resemble those of Trotsky and Radek on attacking the British Empire in Asia.

The "Elders of Zion" used "anarchy as a means to an end." This view is supported by the manifesto of the Executive Committee of the Third International, published in the Call of April 22, 1920, and signed by G. Zinoviev. This manifesto states that the revolutionary forces in France, America, England, and Germany are growing, and:

"Anarcho-Socialist bodies and those individuals who till now claimed to be orthodox anarchists, mix themselves up with the others in the general current. The Executive Committee of the Third International welcomes this most cordially."

After explaining how Syndicalists and Anarchists, being opposed to Parliaments, may help on the world revolution, the Committee declare that "the bourgeois State, its Kings, Presidents, Parliaments, Constituent Assemblies, etc., are our deadly enemies and must be crushed."

They point out that it is possible at times to further the revolution in a country by participating in political action, and they instance Liebknecht in Germany and Hoglund in Sweden. The latter, "utilizing Parliament, precipitated the collapse of Parliamentism. Nobody has ever done more than he in Sweden for the Revolution."

The same again in Bulgaria, where the Communists also used the pulpit of Parliament for the propagation of the ideas of the Communist Revolution. These revolutionaries are to enter Parliament with the intention of getting "into closest touch with its machinery, and then put spokes in its wheels."

Conditions in England, France, and America are not yet ripe for the overthrow of the State. In these countries "there have been very few individuals who could be said to resemble the Russian Bolsheviks or the German Spartacists." So the Committee at Moscow advise that:

"If such elements (Bolsheviks and Spartacists) increase in numbers and strength, everything may get changed. At first it is necessary: (1) The centre of gravity of the struggle must be outside of Parliaments (strikes, revolts, insurrections, etc.); (2) the struggle inside the Parliaments must be closely connected with the struggle outside; (3) the representatives must take part in general organization work; (4) the representatives must act by directions of the Central Committee and be responsible to it; (5) they must not conform to the Parliamentary manners and customs."

The manifesto concludes with the following interesting instructions:

"We have to state again that the most vital part of the struggle must be outside of Parliament — on the street. It is clear that the most effective weapons of the workers against Capitalism are: The strike, the revolt, armed insurrection. Comrades have to keep in mind the following: Organization of the Party, instalment of the Party groups in the Trade Unions, leadership of the masses, etc. Parliamentary activities and participation in elections must be used only as a secondary measure—no more."

This manifesto also appeared in the Socialist (Glasgow) and other Bolshevist papers in this country. The National Council of Shop Stewards' and Workers' Committees, a body affiliated to the Moscow International, is carrying out these Moscow Instructions on the industrial side.

Confirmation of the anti-Christian nature of the Jewish secret organizations described earlier in this book is found in an article in the Call of April 1, 1920. An article entitled "Man has Arisen!" by John Bryan, describing the new "light in the East"—Bolshevism—says:

"The pagan world could not have been worse than this world of Christianity. Only it had no bishops to preach from the pulpits the Easter lie, and to administer 'opium* to the masses, as the Bolshevik inscription on one of Moscow's church gates boldly puts it."

". . .a new light has arisen in the East, and not a will o' the wisp, a light that reveals the truth, and shows the road, that inspires hope and confidence, that warms and encourages, that adds to the strength of the body and the soul . . . Russia led by the Bolsheviks, Russia guided by the transcendent genius of Lenin, and assisted by a host of workers with Trotsky, the incomparable organizer, at their head—this Russia has been the saviour of the world, its redeemer from cynicism, scepticism, and demoralization which had been gnawing at its very vitals, threatening destruction and death."

For this part Russia has been "crucified by the capitalist Powers," and she is bleeding from every pore.

"But, unlike Christ, she did not weep bloody tears out of pity for herself when making up her mind rather to be crucified than to betray the trust which history had placed in her hands; nor is she likely to die on the cross before she accomplishes her mission . . . she lives, and gives life, and, soon, she will descend from the cross and cry out to the world: 'Man has risen!'"

In the study of the revolutionary movement in this country, it is important to note how it is guided by the writings of foreign revolutionaries, mainly Jews. The following are only a few of the more prominent and frequent foreign contributors to the Bolshevist Press in Great Britain, whose books and articles are largely circulated in this country in connection with the Marxian economic classes, and for the purpose of revolutionary propaganda. The works of Marx and Engels are, of course, textbooks in all classes run by the Labour College Movement and by the Bolshevist Societies.

The articles of Lenin and Trotsky are published regularly in the Call, the Socialist, the Workers' Dreadnought, the Worker, and other Bolshevist papers. Bela Kun is also another frequent contributor to British Bolshevism, and he writes to the current issue of the Workers' Dreadnought suggesting that the "Hands off Russia" Committee "should be used for Bolshevist ends in the home movement." Dr. Hermann Gorter also writes regularly for papers in London and Glasgow, and his book, The World Revolution, published by the Socialist Information and Research Bureau (Glasgow), is on sale at most revolutionary meetings in London and the provinces.

The following may be mentioned as International Revolutionary leaders who contribute to the movement in this country: N. Hoglund, of Sweden; Lucien Deslinieres, of France; N. Bucharin, of Moscow, author of the Programme of the World Revolution; Clara Zetkin, Jewess and leader of the German Communist Party; M. I. Kalinin, chairman of All-Russian Central Executive of Committee of Soviets; Karl Radek, of Moscow; Sadoul, Souvarine, Shumiatzki, I. Marchlevski (Karski), Alexandre Kolontay, Russian Soviet Commissary for Social Welfare.