Text - II : NATIONAL AND COLONIAL QUESTIONS IN THE COMINTERN
Extracts From Second Congress Documents
1
Excerpts from
Lenin’s Theses On National And Colonial Questions[1]
4. ... the entire policy of the Communist International on the national and colonial question must be based primarily on bringing together the proletariat and working classes of all nations and countries for the common revolutionary struggle for the over-throw of the landowners and the bourgeoisie. For only such united action will ensure victory over capitalism, without which it is impossible to abolish national oppression and inequality of rights.
5. The world political situation has now placed the proletarian dictatorship on the order of the day, and all events hi world politics are necessarily concentrated on one central point, the struggle of the world bourgeoisie against the Russian Soviet Republic, which is rallying round itself both the Soviet movements among the advanced workers in all countries, and all the national liberation movements in the colonies and among oppressed people, convinced by bitter experience that there is no salvation for them except in union with the revolutionary proletariat and in the victory of the Soviet power over world
imperialism.
6. At the present time, therefore, we should not restrict ourselves to a mere recognition or declaration of the need to bring the working people of various countries closer together; our policy must be to bring into being a close alliance of all national and colonial liberation movements with Soviet Russia; the forms taken by this alliance will be determined by the stage of development reached by the communist movement among the proletariat of each country or by the revolutionary liberation movement in the undeveloped countries and among the backward nationalities. ...
11. In regard to the more backward states and nations, primarily feudal or patriarchal or patriarchal-peasant in character, the following considerations must be kept specially in mind :
(a) All communist parties must support by action the revolutionary liberation movements in these countries. The form which this support shall take should be discussed with the communist party of the country in question, if there is one. This obligation refers in the first place to the active support of the workers in that country on which the backward nation is financially, or as a colony, dependent.
(b) It is essential to struggle against the reactionary and medieval influence of the priesthood, the Christian missions, and similar elements. ...
(d) It is particularly important to support the peasant movement in the backward countries against the landlords and all forms and survivals of feudalism. Above all, efforts must be made to give the peasant movement as revolutionary a character as possible, organising the peasants and all the exploited wherever possible in Soviets, and thus establish as close a tie as possible between the West European communist proletariat and the revolutionary peasant movement in the East, in the colonies and backward countries.
(e) A resolute struggle must be waged against the attempt to clothe the revolutionary liberation movements in the backward countries which are not genuinely communist in communist colours. The Communist International has the duty of supporting the revolutionary movement in the colonies and backward countries only with the object of rallying the constituent elements of the future proletarian parties — which will be truly communist and not only in name — in all the backward countries and educating them to a consciousness of their special task, namely, that of fighting against the bourgeois-democratic trend in their own nation. The Communist International should collaborate provisionally with the revolutionary movement of the colonies and backward countries, and even form an alliance with it, but it must not amalgamate with it; it must unconditionally maintain the independence of the proletarian movement, even if it is only in an embryonic stage.
(f) It is essential constantly to expose and to explain to the widest masses of the working people everywhere, and particularly in the backward countries, the deception practised by the imperialist powers with the help of the privileged classes in the oppressed countries in creating ostensibly politically independent states which are in reality completely dependent on them economically, financially, and militarily. ...
12. The centuries-old enslavement of the colonial and weak peoples by the great imperialist powers has left behind among the working masses of the enslaved countries not only feelings of bitterness but also feelings of distrust of the oppressing nations as a whole, including the proletariat of these nations. The despicable treachery to socialism committed by the majority of the official leaders of that proletariat in the years 1914-19, when the social-patriots concealed behind the slogan of “defence of the fatherland”, the defence of the “right” of “their” bourgeoisie to enslave the colonies and plunder the financially dependent countries — such treachery could only strengthen that quite natural distrust. Since this distrust and national prejudice can only be eradicated after the destruction of imperialism in the advanced countries and after the radical transformation of the entire foundations of economic life in the backward countries, the removal of these prejudices can proceed only very slowly. From this it follows that it is the duty of the class-conscious communist proletariat of all countries to be especially cautious and particularly attentive to the national feelings, in themselves out of date, in countries and peoples that have been long enslaved; it is also their duty to make concessions in order to remove this distrust and prejudice the more quickly. Unless the proletariat, and all the working masses of all countries and nations of the entire world themselves strive towards alliance, and unite as one, the victory over capitalism cannot be pursued to a completely successful end.
Note:
1. The full text is available in G Adhikari, Vol. I. We have used that version and added our own emphases.
2
Excerpts from
Roy’s Supplementary Colonial Theses[1]
1. To determine more especially the relation of CI to the revolutionary movements in the countries dominated by capitalistic imperialism, for instance China and India, is one of the most important questions before the Second Congress of the Third International. ...
2. One of the main sources from which[2] European capitalism draws its chief strength is to be found in the colonial possessions and dependencies. ... England, the stronghold of imperialism, has been suffering from overproduction since more than a century ago. But for the extensive colonial possessions acquired for the sale of her surplus products and as a source of raw materials for her ever growing industries, the capitalistic structure of England would have been crushed under its own weight long ago ...
3. Superprofit gained in the colonies is the mainstay of the modern capitalism — and so long as the latter is not deprived of this source of superprofit, it will not be easy for the European working class to overthrow the capitalist order ...
4. The breaking up of the colonial empire, together with the proletarian revolution in the home country, will overthrow the capitalist system in Europe[3]...
6. Foreign imperialism, imposed on the eastern peoples, prevented them from developing socially and economically side by side with their fellows in Europe and America. Owing to the imperialist policy of preventing industrial development in the colonies, a proletarian class, in the strict sense of the word, could not come into existence here until recently. The indigenous craft industries were destroyed to make room for the products of the centralised industries in the imperialistic countries — consequently a majority of the population was driven to the land to produce foodgrains and raw materials for export to foreign lands. On the other hand, there followed a rapid concentration of land in the hands of the big landowners, of financial capitalists and the state, thus creating a huge landless peasantry ...
Foreign domination has obstructed the free development of the social forces, therefore its overthrow is the first step towards a revolution in the colonies. So to help overthrow the foreign rule in the colonies is not to endorse the nationalist aspirations of the native bourgeoisie, but to open the way to the smothered proletariat there.
7.[4] There are to be found in the dependent countries two distinct movements which every day grow further apart from each other. One is the bourgeois democratic nationalist movement, with a programme of political independence under the bourgeois order, and the other is the mass action of the poor and ignorant peasants and workers for their liberation from all sorts of exploitation. The former endeavours to control the latter, and often succeeds to a certain extent, but the CI and the parties affected must struggle against such control and help to develop class consciousness in the working masses of the colonies[5]. For the overthrow of foreign capitalism which is the first step toward revolution in the colonies the cooperation of the bourgeois nationalist revolutionary elements is6 useful.
But the foremost and necessary task is the formation of communist parties which will organise the peasants and workers and lead them to the revolution and to the establishment of Soviet republics. Thus the masses in the backward countries may reach communism, not through capitalistic development, but led by the class conscious proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries[7].
8. The real strength of the liberation movements in the colonies is no longer confined to the narrow circle of bourgeois democratic nationalists. In most of the colonies there already exist organised revolutionary parties which strive to be in close connection with the working masses[8]. The relation of CI with the revolutionary movement in the colonies should be realised through the medium of these parties or groups, because they are the vanguard of the working class in their respective countries. They are not[9] very large today, but they reflect the aspirations of the masses and the latter will follow them to the revolution. The communist parties of the different imperialistic countries must work in conjunction with these proletarian parties of the colonies and, through them, give all moral and material support to the revolutionary movement in general.
9.[10] The revolution in the colonies is not going to be a communist revolution in its first stage. But if from the outset the leadership is in the hands of a communist vanguard, the revolutionary masses will not be led astray, but may go ahead through the successive periods of development of revolutionary experience. Indeed, it would be extremely erroneous[11] in many of the oriental countries to try to solve[12] the agrarian problem according to pure communist principles. In its first stages, the revolution in the colonies must be carried on with a programme which will include many petty bourgeois reform clauses, such as division of land, etc. But from this it does not follow at all that the leadership of the revolution will have to be surrendered to the bourgeois democrats. On the contrary, the proletarian parties must carry on vigorous and systematic propaganda of the Soviet idea and organise the peasants’ and workers’ Soviets as soon as possible. These Soviets will work in cooperation with the Soviet republics in the advanced capitalistic countries for the ultimate overthrow of the capitalist order throughout the world[13].
Lastly, the original draft contained two more paragraphs as follows:
10. The bourgeois national democrats in the colonies strive for the establishment of a free national state, whereas the masses of workers and poor peasants are revolting, even though in many cases unconsciously, against the system which permits such brutal exploitation. Consequently, in the colonies, we have two contradictory forces; they cannot develop together. To support the colonial bourgeois democratic movements would amount to helping the growth of the national spirit which will surely obstruct the awakening of class consciousness in the masses; whereas to encourage and support the revolutionary mass action through the medium of a communist party of the proletarians will bring the real revolutionary forces to action which will not only overthrow the foreign imperialism, but lead progressively to the development of Soviet power, thus preventing the rise of a native capitalism in place of the vanquished foreign capitalism, to further oppress and exploit the people.
11. To initiate at as early a stage as possible the class struggle in the colonies means to awaken the people to the danger of a transplanted European capitalism which, overthrown in Europe, may seek refuge in Asia, and to defeat such an eventuality before its beginning.
MN Roy
India.
Notes:
1. These extracts are from the full text given in G Adhikari, Vol. I, where Roy’s original draft (before amendments by Lenin and the Colonial Commission) is also given in full. We have indicated some major differences between the adopted text and the original draft by way of italicising the relevant portions and of numbered notes at the end of this document. This will help clarify Roy's original position, the political correctives introduced by Lenin and the Colonial Commission and thus throw light on the content of the Lenin-Roy debate.
2. Roy’s original draft reads here: The fountainhead from which
3. Here the original draft reads : Without the breaking up of the colonial empire, the overthrow of the capitalist system in Europe does not appear possible.
4. In the original draft, this paragraph started with a few sentences which have been deleted in the final version : The revolutionary movements in the colonies are essentially an economic struggle. The bourgeois-democratic nationalist movements are limited to the small middle class which does not reflect the aspirations of the masses. Without the active support of the masses, the national freedom of the colonies will never be attained. But in many countries, especially in India, the masses are not with the bourgeois nationalist leaders — they are moving towards revolution independently of the bourgeois nationalist movement.
5. In Roy’s draft, in place of the italicised clause we find : but it would be a mistake to assume that the bourgeois nationalist movement expresses the sentiments and aspirations of the general population.
6. Roy had written : may be
7. In place of this paragraph, the original draft had : But the Communist International must not find in them the media through which the revolutionary movement in the colonies should be helped. The mass movements in the colonies are growing independently of the nationalist movements. The masses distrust the political leaders who always lead them astray and prevent them from revolutionary action.
8. Roy had written : socialist or communist parties, in close relation to the mass movement.
9. The original draft reads : may not be
10. In the original draft this paragraph begins with a pair of sentences that are deleted in the final version : The supposition that, owing to the economic and industrial backwardness, the peoples in the colonies are bound to go through the stages of bourgeois democracy is wrong. The events and conditions in many of the colonies do not corroborate such a supposition. It is true that
11. In the original: very difficult
12. In the original: to solve
13. These two sentences were not there in the original.
3
Report Of Comrade Roy (India)[1]
“Since the 1880s, the nationalist movement in India has begun to assume more or less definite forms and has found its expression in the National Congress.
“In the course of its development this movement has embraced broad circles of the student, youth and the middle classes, but the call of nationalists to fight for India’s independence has not struck a response among the masses.
“The masses of India are not infected by the national spirit. They are interested solely in questions of a socio-economic nature. The condition of India's population is extremely grave.
“Ever since British capitalism entrenched itself in India, 80 per cent of the country's population who draw their subsistence from agriculture have lost their property and turned into agricultural labourers. These millions of people are beggars. Though they till the soil they starve because everything produced by their labour is shipped abroad. These tens of millions of people are absolutely not interested in bourgeois nationalist slogans; only one slogan can interest them — land to the tiller of the soil.
“As compared with the rural proletariat the industrial proletariat of India is small. Altogether there are up to 5 million workers in India. The trade union movement is swiftly spreading among these workers. The strike movement has strongly developed among the working class of India in recent years. The first important strike occurred in 1906. It involved railwaymen and assumed the nature of a real uprising.
“India has elements for the creation of a strong communist party. But the revolutionary movement in India, in as much as the broad masses are concerned, has nothing in common with the national liberation movement.
“Proceeding from this analysis, Comrade Roy arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary to delete from the 11th thesis (of Lenin's preliminary draft) on the national question the paragraph about the need for all the communist parties to help bourgeois democratic liberation movement in eastern countries. The Communist International should help solely to create and develop the communist movement in India, and the Communist Party of India must concern itself only with organising the broad masses to fight for their class interests.
“Comrade Roy defended the idea that the fate of the revolutionary movement in Europe entirely depended on the course of the revolution in East ...”
“Comrade Quelch of the British Communist Party replied to Comrade Roy. Comrade Quelch proved that communists must help any movement against imperialism. So far the national liberation movement in India perhaps did not enjoy the sympathies of the broad masses, but this did not mean that it would not enjoy it in the immediate future. ...
“Comrade Lenin also challenged Roy’s viewpoint. ‘In Russia we supported the liberal liberation movement during the attack on Tsar-ism. Communists of India must support the bourgeois democratic movement without merging with it. Comrade Roy went too far, alleging that the fate of the West depended solely on the degree of development and strength of the revolutionary movement in the eastern countries. Though India had 5 million proletarians and 37 million landless peasants, Indian communists so far had not succeeded in founding a communist party in the country and for this reason alone the views of comrade Roy were largely unsubstantiated.’ ” ...
Note:
1. Cited by G Adhikari (Vol. I, pp 161-63) from an article by A Reznikov in Kommunlst, the theoretical organ of CPSU.
4
Excerpts from
Report Of The Commission On The National And Colonial Question[1]
... Our commission have unanimously adopted both the preliminary theses, as amended, and the supplementary theses. We have thus reached complete unanimity on all major issues. I shall now make a few brief remarks.
First, what is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations. Unlike the Second International and bourgeois democracy, we emphasise this distinction......
... This idea of distinction, of dividing the nations into oppressor and oppressed, runs through the theses, not only the first theses published earlier over my signature, but also those submitted by Comrade Roy. The latter were framed chiefly from the standpoint of the situation in India and other big Asian countries oppressed by Britain. Herein lies their great importance to us.
The second basic idea in our theses is that, in the present world situation following the imperialist war, reciprocal relations between peoples and the world political system as a whole are determined by the struggle waged by a small group of imperialist nations against the Soviet movement and the Soviet states headed by Soviet Russia. ...
Third, I should like especially to emphasise the question of the bourgeois-democratic movement in backward countries. This is a question that has given rise to certain differences. We have discussed whether it would be right or wrong, in principle and in theory, to state that the Communist International and the communist parties must support the bourgeois-democratic movement in backward countries. As a result of our discussion, we have arrived at the unanimous decision to speak of the national-revolutionary movement rather than of the "bourgeois-democratic" movement. It is beyond doubt that any national movement can only be a bourgeois-democratic movement, since the overwhelming mass of the population in the backward countries consists of peasants who represent bourgeois-capitalist relationships. It would be Utopian to believe that proletarian parties in these backward countries, if indeed they can emerge in them, can pursue communist tactics and a communist policy, without establishing definite relations with the peasant movement and without giving it effective support. However, the objections have been raised that, if we speak of the bourgeois-democratic movement we shall be obliterating all distinctions between the reformist and the revolutionary movements. Yet that distinction has been very clearly revealed of late in the backward and colonial countries, since the imperialist bourgeoisie is doing everything in its power to implant a reformist movement among the oppressed nations too. There has been a certain rapprochement between the — bourgeoisie of the exploiting countries and that of the colonies, so that very often — perhaps even in most cases — the bourgeoisie of the oppressed countries, while it does support the national movement, is in foil accord with the imperialist bourgeoisie, i.e., joins forces with it against all revolutionary movements and revolutionary classes. This was irrefutably proved in the commission, and we decided that the only correct attitude was to take this distinction into account and, in nearly all cases, substitute the term “national-revolutionary” for the terms “bourgeois-democratic”. The significance of this change is that we, as communists, should and will support bourgeois-liberation movements in-the colonies only when they are genuinely revolutionary and when their exponents do not hinder our work of educating and organising in a revolutionary spirit the peasantry and the masses of the exploited. If these conditions do not exist, the communists in these countries must combat the reformist bourgeoisie, to whom the heroes of the Second International also belong. Reformist parties already exist in the colonial countries, and in some cases their spokesmen call themselves Social-Democrats and socialists. The distinction I have referred to has been made in all the theses with the result, I think, that our view is now formulated much more precisely.
... the debate in the commission, in which several representatives from colonial countries participated, demonstrated convincingly that the Communist International’s theses should point out that peasants’ Soviets, Soviets of the exploited, are a weapon which can be employed, not only in capitalist countries but also in countries with pre-capitalist relations, and that it is the absolute duty of communist parties and of elements prepared to form communist parties, everywhere to conduct propaganda in favour of peasants’ Soviets or of working people’s Soviets, this to include backward and colonial countries. ...
There was quite a lively debate on this question in the commission, not only in connection with the theses I signed, but still more in connection with Comrade Roy's theses, which he will defend here, and certain amendments to which were unanimously adopted.
The question was posed as follows : are we to consider as correct the assertion that the capitalist stage of economic development is inevitable for backward nations now on the road to emancipation and among whom a certain advance towards progress is to be seen since the war? We replied in the negative. If the victorious revolutionary proletariat conducts systematic propaganda among them, and the Soviet governments come to their aid with all the means at their disposal — in that event it will be mistaken to assume that the backward peoples must inevitably go through the capitalist stage of development. Not only should we create independent contingents of fighters and party organisations in the colonies and the backward countries, not only at once launch propaganda for the organisation of peasants’ Soviets and strive to adapt them to the pre-capitalist conditions, but the Communist International should advance the proposition, with the appropriate theoretical grounding, that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.
Note:
1. Source : Lenin, CW, Vol. 31. pp 240-44
5
Excerpts from
Roy’s Speech Defending His Supplementary Theses And Discussion On It[1]
Certain of the alterations which the commission has made in my theses have been accepted by me. ... I am most pleased that I have the opportunity for the first time to take part in the serious discussion of the colonial question at the congress of the revolutionary proletariat. Until the present time, the European parties did not pay sufficient attention to this question; they were too busy with their own affairs and ignored the colonial question. ... Until lately there were in the colonies only bourgeois national revolutionary movements, whose only aim it has been to replace the foreign exploiters in order to be able to do the exploiting themselves.
During the war and immediately after it great changes have taken place in India. While formerly English capitalism had always hindered the development of Indian industry, of late it has changed that policy. The growth of industry in* British India has gone on at such a pace as can hardly be imagined here in Europe. Taking into consideration that during recent times the industrial proletariat of British India has increased by 15 per cent and that the capital employed in British Indian industry has risen 2000 per cent, one gets an idea of the rapid development of the capitalist system in British India. The same also applies to Egypt, the Dutch Indies and China.
At the same time a new movement among the exploited masses has started in India, which has spread rapidly and found expression in a gigantic strike movement. This mass movement is not controlled by the revolutionary nationalists, but is developing independently in spite of the fact that the nationalists are endeavouring to make use of it for their own purposes. This movement of the masses is of a revolutionary character, although it cannot be said that the workers and peasants constituting it are class conscious. But they are nevertheless revolutionary. This is evident by their daily activity. This state of the revolutionary movement of the masses opens a new field of activity for the Communist International, and it is only a question of finding the proper methods for gathering the fruits of that activity ...
Serrati : ... In the theses proposed to the congress on the national and colonial questions by Comrade Roy and Lenin, I find not only some contradictions but also a grave danger for the communist proletariat of the advanced countries, for the proletariat which should be constantly opposed to every class compromise especially in the pre-revolutionary period. ... The movement for national liberation can be revolutionary only when the working class maintains its own class lines.
The class struggle in the so-called backward countries can be carried on only when the proletariat preserves its independence of the exploiters, even of those bourgeois democrats calling themselves revolutionary nationalists.
Only by means of a proletarian revolution and through the Soviet regime can the subject nations obtain their freedom. This cannot be done by temporary alliances of the communists with the bourgeois parties called nationalist revolutionists.
These alliances only demoralise the class consciousness of the proletariat, especially in the countries where the proletariat has not been tempered in the struggle against capitalism. ...
Note:
1. See G Adhikari, Vol. I. Pp 190-193.
6
Extract From A Third Congress Document
Excerpts from
Theses On World Situation And The Tasks Of The Communist International[1]
... The vigorous development of capitalism in the East, particularly in India and China, has created new social bases there for the revolutionary struggle. The bourgeoisie of these countries tightened their bonds with foreign capital, and so became an important instrument of its rule. Their struggle against foreign imperialism, the struggle of a very weak rival, is essentially half-hearted and feeble in character. The growth of the indigenous proletariat paralyses the national revolutionary tendencies of the capitalist bourgeoisie, but at the same time the vast peasant masses are finding revolutionary leaders in the person of the conscious communist vanguard. The combination of military oppression by foreign bourgeoisie, and the survival of feudal servitude creates favourable conditions for the young proletariat of the colonies to develop rapidly and to take its place at the head of the revolutionary peasant movement. The popular revolutionary movement in India and in other colonies has now become an integral part of the world revolution as the uprising of the proletariat in the capitalist countries of the Old and New World.
Note:
1. Cited by G Adhikari (Vol. I, pp 265-66) from Communist International, 1919-43, Documents, Vol. 1, by Jane Degras; Oxford University Press, London, 1936, p 234.
7
Extracts From Fourth Congress Documents
Excerpts from
Theses On The Eastern Question
I. The growth of the revolutionary movement in the East
... Since that time (the Second Comintern Congress — Ed.) the struggle against imperialist oppression in the colonies and semi-colonial countries has become considerably more acute as a consequence of the deepening post-war political and economic crises of imperialism.
Evidence of this is served by: (1) the collapse of the Sevres Treaty on the partition of Turkey and the possibility of the complete restoration of the national and political independence of the latter; (2) the stormy growth of a national-revolutionary movement in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Morocco, China and Korea; (3) the hopeless internal crisis of Japanese imperialism giving rise to the rapid growth of elements of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in the country and the transition by the Japanese proletariat to independent class struggle; (4) the awakening of the labour movement in all countries of the East and the formation of communist parties almost in all parts of the East.
The facts enumerated above indicate a change in the social basis of the revolutionary movement in the colonies. This change leads to the anti-imperialist-struggle becoming more acute; this struggle is no longer being led exclusively by the feudal classes and the national bourgeoisie which is preparing to compromise with imperialism.
The imperialist war of 1914-18 and the prolonged crisis which followed it, particularly in Europe, have weakened the power of the great powers over the colonies. On the other hand, these same circumstances are narrowing the economic bases and spheres of influence of world capitalism, have rendered imperialist rivalry for the colonies more acute and in this way have disturbed the equilibrium of the whole world imperialist system (the fight for oil, Anglo-French conflict in Asia Minor, the Japanese-American rivalry for the domination of the Pacific Ocean, etc.).
It is precisely this weakening of imperialist pressure in the colonies, together with the increasing rivalry between various imperialist groups, that has facilitated the development of native capitalism in the colonies and semi-colonial countries which are outgrowing the narrow framework of the domination of the imperialist great powers. Hitherto the capitalists of the great powers in maintaining their monopoly rights to secure superprofits from trade, industry and the taxation of backward countries have striven to isolate these from world economic intercourse. The demand for national and economic independence put forward by the national movements in the colonies serves to express the needs of bourgeois development in these countries. The growth of native productive forces in these colonies, therefore, causes an irreconcilable antagonism of interests between them and world imperialism, for the essence of imperialism consists in using the varying levels of development of productive forces in various parts of the economic world for the purpose of extracting monopoly superprofits.
II. Conditions of the struggle
... To the extent that capitalism in the colonial countries arises and develops from feudal bases in hybrid, imperfect and intermediary forms, which give predominance above all to merchant capitalism, the rise of bourgeois democracy from feudal-bureaucratic and feudal-agrarian elements proceeds often by devious and protracted paths. This represents the chief obstacle for successful mass struggles against imperialist oppression as the foreign imperialists in all the backward countries convert the feudal (and partly also the semi-feudal semi-bourgeois) upper classes of native society into agents of their domination. ...
For that reason the dominant classes in the colonies and the semi-colonial countries are incapable and unwilling to lead the struggle against imperialism in so far as this struggle tends to become a revolutionary mass movement. Only where the feudal-patriarchal system has not decayed to such an extent as to completely separate the native aristocracy from the mass of the people, as among the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, can those upper classes take up the active leadership of the struggle against imperialist violence (Mesopotamia, Morocco, Mongolia). ...
This main task common to all national revolutionary movements is to bring about national unity and achieve political independence. The real and consistent solution of this depends on the extent to which the national movement in any particular country is capable of attracting to itself the toiling masses and break off all connections with the reactionary feudal elements and include in its programme the social demands of the masses ...
III. Agrarian question
In the majority of countries in the East (India, Persia, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia) the agrarian question is of primary importance in the struggle for emancipation from the domination of the despotism of the great powers. ... While in the advanced countries prior to the war, industrial crises served as regulators of social production, this function in the colonies is performed by famine. Vitally interested in securing the greatest profits with the least expenditure of capital, imperialism strives all it can to maintain in the backward countries the feudal usurious form of exploiting labour power. In some countries like India, it assumes the monopoly rights of the native feudal state to the land and converts the land tribute into feudal dues and the zamindars and talukdars into its agents. ...
Only the agrarian revolution aiming at the expropriation of the large landowners can rouse the vast peasant masses destined to have a decisive influence in the struggles against imperialism. The fear of agrarian watchwords on the part of the bourgeois nationalists (India, Persia, Egypt) is evidence of the close ties existing between the native bourgeoisie with the large feudal and feudal-bourgeois land-owners and their ideological and political dependence upon the latter. The hesitation and wavering of this class must be used by the revolutionary elements for systematic criticism and exposure of the lack of resolution of the bourgeois leaders of the national movement. It is precisely this lack of resolution that hinders the organisation of the toiling masses as is proved by the bankruptcy of the tactics of non-cooperation in India. ...
... the revolutionary parties in all Eastern countries must define their agrarian programme which should demand the complete abolition of feudalism and its survivals expressed in the forms of large landownership and tax farming. In order that the peasant masses may be drawn into active participation in the struggle for national liberation, it is necessary to proclaim the radical reform on the basis of landownership. It is necessary also to compel the bourgeois nationalist parties to the greatest extent possible to adopt this revolutionary agrarian programme.
IV. The labour movement in the East
The young labour movement in the East is a product of the development of native capitalism during the last few years. ... In the first stages, these movements do not extend beyond the limits of the “common national” interests of bourgeois democracy (strikes against imperialist bureaucracy and administration in China and India). Frequently, as was already shown at the Second Congress of the Comintern, representatives of bourgeois nationalism exploiting the moral and political authority of Soviet Russia, and playing to the class instincts of the workers, clothed their bourgeois democratic strivings in “socialist” and “communist” forms, in order by these means, sometimes unconsciously, to divert the embryonic proletarian organisations from the direct tasks of class organisations. ...
... In spite of this, the trade union and political movement of the working class in the backward countries has made considerable progress in recent years. The formation of independent proletarian class parties in almost all the eastern countries is a remarkable fact, although the overwhelming majority of these parties must still undergo considerable internal reorganisation in order to free themselves from amateurity, sectarianism and other defects. ...
V. The general tasks of the communist parties in the East
While the bourgeois nationalists regard the labour movement merely from the point of view of its importance as a means for securing victory for themselves, the international proletariat regards the young labour movement of the East from the point of view of its revolutionary future ...
The objective tasks of colonial revolutions exceed the limit of bourgeois democracy by the very fact that a decisive victory is incompatible with the domination of world imperialism. While the native bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligentsia are the pioneers of colonial revolutionary movements, with the entry of proletarian and semi-proletarian peasant masses into these movements, however, the rich bourgeoisie and bourgeois landlords begin to leave it as the social interests of the masses assume prominence. The young proletariat of the colonies is still confronted by a prolonged struggle over a whole historical epoch, a struggle against imperialist exploitation and against its own ruling classes ...
The struggle to secure influence over the peasant masses should prepare the native proletariat for the role of political leadership. Only after having accomplished this preparatory work on its own training and-that of the social classes closely allied to itself will it be possible to advance against bourgeois democracy which, amidst the conditions of the backward East, bears a more hypocritical character than the West.
The refusal of the communists in the colonies to participate against imperialist oppression on the pretext of alleged “defence” of independent class interests is opportunism of the worst kind calculated only to discredit the proletarian revolution in the East. No less harmful must be recognised the attempt to isolate oneself from the immediate and everyday interests of the working class for the sake of “national unity” or “civil peace” with bourgeois democracy. The communist and working class parties in the colonies and semi-colonial countries are confronted by a two-fold task: on the one hand to fight for the most radical solutions of the problems of bourgeois democratic revolution, directed to the conquest of political independence, and on the other to organise the workers and peasants to fight for their special class interests and to take advantage of the antagonism existing in the nationalist bourgeois democratic camp. In putting forward special demands, these parties stimulate and release revolutionary energy which finds no outlet in bourgeois liberal demands ...
The communist parties in the colonies and semi-colonial countries in the East, which are still in a more or less embryonic stage, must take part in every movement that gives them access to the masses. At the same time, however, they must conduct an energetic campaign against the patriarchal and craft prejudices and bourgeois influences in the labour unions, in order to protect these embryonic organisations from reformist tendencies and in order to convert them into mass fighting organisations. They must exert all their efforts to organise the numerous agricultural labourers and artisans of both sexes on the basis of defending their immediate everyday interests.
VI. The united anti-imperialist front
While in the West amidst the conditions of the transition period, which is a period of organised accumulation of strength, the watchword of the united labour front was put forward, in the colonial East it is at present necessary to put forward the watchword of a united anti-imperialist front ...
The labour movement in the colonies and semi-colonial countries must first of all secure for itself the positions of an independent factor in the common anti-imperialist front. Only on the basis of the recognition of this independence and the maintenance of complete independence is a temporary agreement with bourgeois democracy permissible and necessary. The proletariat must support and put forward partial demands such as independent democratic republic, abolition of all feudal rights and privileges, and enfranchisement of women, etc. in view of the fact that the present correlation of forces does not permit it to carry out its Soviet programme ...
Source: Inprecor, Vol. II, Nb. 118, 30 December 1922
8
Excerpts from
Report On The Eastern Question
By Roy (India)
The countries in the East can be divided into three categories. First, those countries which are nearing to most highly developed capitalism. Countries where not only the import of capital from the metropolis has developed industry, but a native capitalism has grown, leading to the rise of a bourgeoisie with a developed class consciousness, and its counterpart, the proletariat, which is also developing its class consciousness, and is engaged in an economic struggle which is gradually coming into its political stage. Second, those countries in which capitalist development has taken place but is still at the lower level, and in which feudalism is still the backbone of society. Then we have the third grade, where primitive conditions still prevail, where feudal-patriarchalism is the social order. ...
The task before us today in this Fourth Congress is to elaborate those fundamental principles that were laid down by the Second Congress of the Communist International. ...
With this in view all the eastern delegations present at this Congress in cooperation with the Eastern Section of the Communist International have prepared theses which have been submitted to the Congress. In these theses the general situation in the East has been laid down and the development in the movement since the Second Congress has been pointed out and the general line which should determine the development of the movement in those countries has also been formulated ...
We find today that the elements which were active participants in those (national revolutionary — Ed.) movements two years ago are gradually leaving them if they have not already left them. For example, in the countries which are more developed capitalistically, the upper level of the bourgeoisie, that is that part of the bourgeoisie which has already what may be called a stake in the country, which has a large amount of capital invested, and which has built up an industry, is finding that today it is more convenient for its development to have imperialist protection. Because, when the great social upheaval that took place at the end of the war developed into its revolutionary sweep it was not only the foreign imperialists but the native bourgeoisie as well who were terrified by its possibilities. The bourgeoisie in none of those countries is developed enough as yet to have the confidence of being able to take the place of foreign imperialism and to preserve law and order after the overthrow of imperialism ... the industrial development of the bourgeoisie needs peace and order which was given to most of these countries by foreign imperialists. The threat to this peace and order, the possibility of disturbance and revolutionary upheaval, has made it more convenient for the native bourgeoisie to compromise with the imperial overlord ...
In order to maintain its hold in those countries imperialism must look for some local help, must have some social basis, must have the support of one or other of the classes of native society. Today it has found it necessary to repudiate the old methods of imperialist exploitation and it has given the native bourgeoisie or a certain part of the native bourgeoisie certain concessions in the political or economic sphere. These concessions have reconciled the native bourgeoisie temporally, but they have opened a bigger vision before it. They have permitted a test of economic development and brought into existence a capitalist rivalry, because in so far as industry grows in the colonial countries it undermines the basis of the monopoly of imperial capital.
Therefore, the temporary compromise between native and imperial bourgeoisie cannot be everlasting. In this compromise we can find the development of future conflict. …
... The bourgeoisie becomes a revolutionary factor when it raises the standard of revolt against backward, antiquated forms of society — that is, when the struggle is fundamentally against the feudal order, the bourgeoisie leading the people. Then the bourgeoisie is the vanguard of the revolution.
But this cannot be said of the new bourgeoisie in the eastern countries, or most of them. Although the bourgeoisie is leading the struggle there, it is at the same time not leading it against feudalism. ... it is a struggle of the weak and suppressed and undeveloped bourgeoisie against a stronger and more developed bourgeoisie. Instead of being a class war it is an internecine war, so to say, and as such contains the elements of compromise ...
And this is the fundamental issue of the thing that we have to find out — How the native bourgeoisie and the native upper class, whose interest conflicts with imperialism or whose economic development is obstructed by imperial domination, can be encouraged and helped to undertake a fight ? ... they will go to a certain extent and then they try to stop the revolution. We have already seen this in practical experience in almost all the countries ...
The bourgeoisie was divided into two parts — the upper layer, which was developed industrially and owning big industrial and commercial interests interlinked with imperial capital, found it dangerous for their extension, and therefore went over to the imperialists thus constituting itself a positive obstruction to the revolutionary nationalist movement. The other section with its weak social background did not have the determination, the courage, to put itself at the head of this big revolutionary movement to lead it forward, and the movement consequently, betrayed and misled by these elements, has come to its present period of depression ...
Therefore we find the necessity of these communist parties, which at the present moment cannot be called more than nuclei, are destined to play a big role in so far as they will assume the leadership of the national revolutionary struggle when it is deserted and betrayed by the bourgeoisie. ...
These parties are historically destined for and socially capable of this task because they are based on the objectively most revolutionary factor, viz., the peasants and workers — the factor which has no interest in common with imperialism and whose social position and economic conditions cannot be improved in any way so long as these countries are under capitalist imperialism ...
During the war imperialism, particularly British imperialism, found it necessary to slacken its monopoly rights over the economic and industrial life of the backward colonial countries. So, a country like India, which was maintained as an agricultural reserve, as a source of raw material for British industries for more than 150 years, was allowed sufficient industrial development during the war. The dislocation of the capitalist equilibrium in Europe forces imperialism to look out for new markets by which the equilibrium of world capitalism can be re-established. They are trying to find this in the colonial countries by developing industrially countries like India and China: they are trying to find the solution of the problem that way. Depending on the resources in the colonial countries, imperialism tries to carry its offensive against the European proletariat to a crushing victory.
We must not lose sight of this tendency. We may argue this way : Well, this cannot be done because imperialism means that colonial countries should be left in a backward state economically so that the goods manufactured in the metropolitan countries can be sold there. Yes, but that is a very mechanical way of looking on these things. We must not forget that if the coat tail of the Chinaman is lengthened by a few inches the textile production of the world will have to be doubled. By industrial development the standard of living of 400 million Chinese can be raised and thus the textile production of the world doubled Industrial development of China does not necessarily mean the contraction of production in the home countries. These countries when they are industrially developing must have machinery, etc. which they cannot produce by themselves, and so while perhaps in certain kind of goods the colonial market can be limited and reduced, yet so far as machinery is concerned they must be extended. ...
So, you see the readjustment of imperial capital with the native capital in the colonial and semi-colonial countries will play a big part in the wide scheme of capitalist offensive. ...
Side by side with the united labour front in the western countries we must organise the united anti-imperialist front in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The object of this anti-imperialist united front is to organise all the available revolutionary forces in a big united front against imperialism. The organisation of this front, the experience of the last two years has shown us, could not be realised under the leadership of the bourgeois parties. So we have to develop our parties in these countries in order to take the lead in the organisation ot this front. ... the campaign of the united anti-imperialist front in the colonial countries [will] liberate the leadership of the movement from the timid and hesitating bourgeoisie and bring the masses more actively in the forefront, through the most revolutionary social elements which constitute the basis of the movement, thereby securing the final victory.
Source: Inprecor, Vol. II, No. 116.
Extracts From Fifth Congress Documents
9
Excerpts from
The Resolution On The Report Of The ECCI
17. On the nationality question the executive had ample cause to remind many sections, for which this question is of the utmost importance, of their inadequate execution of the decisions of the Second Congress. One of the basic principles of Leninism, requiring resolute and constant advocacy by communists of the right of national self-determination (secession and the formation of an independent state), has not yet been applied by all sections of the CI as it should be.
18. In addition to winning the support of the peasant masses and of the oppressed national minorities, the Comintern has to win the revolutionary movements of liberation, among the colonial peoples and all Eastern peoples, as allies of the revolutionary proletariat of the capitalist countries. This requires not only the further development of direct links between the Executive and the national liberation movements of the East, but also closer contacts between the sections in the imperialist countries and the colonies of those countries, and above all an unceasing and relentless struggle in every country against the imperialist colonial policy of the bourgeoisie. In this respect communist work everywhere is still very weak.
Source : The Communist International, 1919-43, Documents — Ed. by Jane Degras, Vol. II, Oxford University Press, p 106.
10
Excerpts from
National Question In The Communist International
(We reproduce a part of the debate on the national and colonial question as discussed in the recent Fifth World Congress. A complete report will be published as soon as it is available, below we give excerpts from the report of MN Roy who was called on to open the debate and who, together with Manuilsky, was the principal reporter on the subject in this year’s congress — Editor.)[1]
... I must first point out that in the resolution on the report of the executive there is a clause which does not correspond with the theses passed by the Second Congress.
My amendment was rejected on the ground that it was not in accord with these same theses, but I want to prove that it is the resolution which does not correspond with the theses, and which is totally mistaken when considered in the light of the events that have taken place since the Second Congress. The resolution says, that in order to win over the people of colonial and semi-colonial countries, there must be a “further development of the direct contact of the executive with the national movement for emancipation,” It is true that we must always have a connection with these national movements, but it seems to have been overlooked that these connections have not always been successful. To quote again from the theses of the Second Congress : “All communist parties must give active support to the revolutionary movement of liberation, their form of support to be determined by a study of existing conditions.”[2] For instance, a movement which might have had a revolutionary significance in 1920 is not in the same position in 1924. Classes which might have been allies of the revolutionary proletariat in 1920 will not be allies in 1924. Here is the danger of a rigid formula and the cause of our inefficiency, futility and lamentable lack of any activity in this sphere. If we are to improve we must rectify this fundamental error. ...
As Marxists we know that in the colonial countries capitalism is not well-developed (and it is mere romanticism to speak of a revolutionary proletariat there). But there are masses of peasants and the importance of the revolutionary movement is there. The united front must be extended beyond capitalist countries to the peasants in exploited countries. ... The theses of the Second Congress also stated that it was the duty of the International to support the revolutionary movement in the colonies and in backward countries for the exclusive purpose of uniting the various units of the future proletarian parties and educating them to the consciousness of their specific tasks, that is to the tasks of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic tendencies within their respective nationalities.
If this is our task, then we must have direct connection with the masses but the resolution says, that we must have a direct connection with the national-liberation movement. These include all sorts of classes and aims. We shall never progress if we stand by this vague formula, our failure hitherto has been due to [this] theoretical confusion.
What practical result has our connection with the national-liberation movement had hitherto ? None, except in one or two cases where a nationalist state government has had friendly relations with the Soviet state. But we are not talking of such relations but of the revolutionary movement and the connection between the east and west. To understand this, we must analyse the social composition of all the different classes in all these different countries, and then lay down a general law. ...
It is necessary to clear up a misunderstanding on one point before going further. It is not true to say that I am in favour of self-determination of the toiling masses and not self-determination of nationalities. ...
... All classes have a right to it. But we must analyse social conditions in order to understand what class is going to play the most important part in obtaining it. The Communist International must support national-liberation movement, but for practical purposes it must find out what class is leading them, and must have its direct contacts with that class.
Manuilsky said that in the last year there had been a great revival of the national movement in British India. As matter of fact last year was a period of the worst depression in the nationalist movement there. In 1920 and 1921 this movement led by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders struck terror into the hearts of British imperialists but that period is now past. It is misleading to suggest otherwise or to quote the Bombay strike as a proof of the power of the nationalist movement.
What was the Bombay strike? In any other country it would have been considered as of the first revolutionary importance, but because it happens in a colonial country no one knows anything about it. 150,000 men and 30,000 women struck for three months against Indian and British capitalist imperialism — it was a true revolutionary movement, and had nothing whatever to do with the national movement. Its origin lies in the conflict between Indian and British capitalistic interests in the textile trade. During the war and afterwards, under pressure from the government which desired peace, some small wage increases were given to the workers. When the owners tried to take this away, the workers refused to accept their conditions. In came the nationalist leaders — petty-bourgeois humanitarians, radicals and Fabians who still lead the trade unions — and told the workers to accept the starvation wage offered for the sake of national interest. If they did not, Lancashire cotton would come in and undersell Indian cotton. But for the first time in history the Indian workers repudiated their leaders and went on with the fight. Yet this is quoted to illustrate the recrudescence of nationalism. …
Manuilsky also quoted the struggle of the peasants. But these are signs of decomposition in the national movement the form of which — the united front against foreign domination — is dead. The struggle of the peasantry is the class struggle of the exploited peasantry against Indian landlords. It is parallel to the struggle of the Indian town workers against Indian capitalists. Thus the national movement is split. In 1920-21 the revolting peasantry and proletariat were led by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois who, however, failed to understand the significance of the revolutionary forces they have called into action. Now this nationalist movement is split by a class struggle. With which class are we to have our “direct contacts” ?
The petty-bourgeois are still linked in thought with feudalism and landlordism and are separated from the masses, but if we organise the peasantry and the workers they will force the pace for the petty-bourgeois who are now ready to compromise with imperialism for the sake of peace and money. If they find that by fighting for more they gain support from the masses in their fight, they will grow bolder and less inclined to compromise. No foreign country can dominate another unless it first wins over a section of the people. This imperialism has always done, choosing sometimes one class and sometimes another. In India, where national capitalism is growing rapidly, the national bourgeoisie has been won over to support the empire and has even demanded in a recent manifesto that military power and foreign relations should remain in the hands of the British government. Why military power? Because the Indian bourgeoisie knows better than any one else that the discontent of the masses is economic and not nationalistic, and the exploiting class in India demands protection from the exploited. Indian capitalism is running straight into the arms of the British imperialism and the same tendency will soon be seen in other countries.
... The direct contact of the Comintern must he with the social class which is most revolutionary, and the separate condition of each country must be analysed from this point of view. Every section of the International must be given its special task, in order that national sections may not be reproached again with negligence which has not been their fault.
Notes:
1, This editorial note is by Vanguard, Vol. 5, No. 2, 15 August 1924, from which we reproduce these extracts from an article by MN Roy.
2. Para 11 (a) of the said theses actually reads : “should be discussed with the communist party in question, if there is one.” - Ed.
11
More From Roy’s Speech On The National Question
In some of the colonies native capitalism has developed quite significantly. It is true that following this development, the conflict between the native and foreign bourgeoisie has sharpened. But the question has another aspect. The class contradiction in the native society too has sharpened. This leads to unrest among the masses. Following the War, this primitive expression of class contradiction, together with unrest, constitutes the foundation of an acute nationalist movement. Earlier, the nationalist movement centred around the intellectuals and the petty bourgeoisie. After the War, this has spread all over the country. The bourgeoisie placed itself at the peak of this discontent, without grasping its class-character. By utilising the forces of this mass-insurrection, it however put forward the demands of its own class. But imperialism immediately made it a point to split the national front by giving concessions through colonial capital. The present crisis of world capitalism has made it possible for imperialism to pursue this new policy. In Egypt as well as India, this policy has had remarkable success. The bourgeois leaders have turned against the participation of the masses in the movement. They withdrew support to revolutionary mass-action and went back to the old method of constitutional opposition. Consequently, the nationalist movement has collapsed even in India, where it had gained tremendous strength. In India there exists a developed bourgeoisie and the capitalism there is far more developed than in any other colonial country. Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie has put forward the programme of freeing itself from the Empire. In reality, it does not have any such programme. The nationalist bourgeoisie pleads for Dominion Status. Why? Because the new economic policy of imperialism leads to industrialisation of colonies. This is exactly what the nationalist bourgeoisie today demands. As soon as its political rights are conceded, it gets itself reconciled with imperialism fully.
Source:
Cited by Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta in Comintern, India And The Colonial Question, 1920-37, KP Bagchi & Co., (Calcutta, 1980). Sri Datta Gupta has taken this extract from Minutes of the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, published from Hamburg in German.
12
Excerpts from
Concluding Speech Of Manuilsky On The National Question
Some deviations were recorded by the commission. Roy at the Second Congress exaggerated the social movement in the colonies to the detriment of the national movement. He thinks that the year 1922 was characterised by the decomposition of the national movement. We have nevertheless witnessed the success of this movement in Turkey and in Egypt. He goes so far as to say that the national movement has lost its character of the united front of all classes of an oppressed country, the new period was beginning in which the class struggle is being transported into the colonies.
Let us grant that in India there has been relative development of the class struggle. But to generalise this to all the colonies would mean to lose sense of reality. During last year in Tunis and Algier we had altogether no more than 8 strikes, involving 800 workers!
Roy wants to dissociate himself from the old error of Bukharin who recognises only the right of self-determination for the working class and not for the nationalities. In reality, he falls into a similar error, and even in an aggravated form because it is a question of the backward countries. He admits for instance that in Central Africa the national movement has not even started. Under these conditions, how could he maintain that the first stage of the struggle was terminated and that we were now entering upon a period similar to that of the European countries where class struggle exists.
In regard to the colonial question Roy reflects the nihilism of Rosa Luxemburg. The truth is that a just proportion should be looked for between the social movement and national movement. Can the right of self-determination be in contradiction to the interest of the revolution? Had Roy put the question in this manner, one could discuss with him.
Source: Inprecor, 12 August 1924
Extracts From Documents Of the Fifth Plenum And From Stalin’s Speech (1925)
13
Excerpts from
Resolution Of The Fifth Plenum Adopted On 6 April, 1925
In India the reports of the delegates show that the movement is now in the process of transition, finding new forms and tactics to correspond with the real basic revolutionary nationalism in India. The old Gandhi movement of nonviolence and noncooperation has col lapsed and was followed by the Swaraj Party with its policy of parliamentary obstruction. This party has come to the point of collapse and is now tending to decompose into small centre groups between the big bourgeois parties on the one side and the revolutionary mass movement on the other. The masses of India are discontented with swarajist programme of self- government. They are demanding separation from the British government.
The commission proposes the following policy for India : “The commission is of the opinion that it is now necessary for the communists to continue work in the National Congress and in the left wing of the Swaraj Party. All nationalist organisations should be formed into a mass revolutionary party and an all-India anti-imperialist bloc. The slogan of the people’s party having for the main points in its programme separation from the empire, a democratic republic, universal suffrage and the abolition of feudalism — slogans put forward and popularised by the Indian communists — is correct.”
In its resolution, the commission instructs Indian communists to direct their efforts towards securing the leadership over the masses of the peasantry and to facilitate and encourage the organisation and amalgamation of trade unions and to take over the leadership of all their struggles.
Source: Bolshevising the Communist International — a report on the Fifth Plenum published by Communist Party of Great Britain, (Lon-don,1925); pp 135-36
14
Excerpts from
Political Tasks Of The University Of The Peoples Of The East[1]
Somewhat different is the situation of affairs in a country like Hindustan. Here we find not only that the native bourgeoisie is severed into a revolutionary fraction and a compromising or reformist fraction, but, in addition, that on all important issues the reformist fraction has already rallied to the side of imperialism. This section of the native bourgeoisie dreads revolution more than it hates imperialism, it is more concerned about its money-bags than about the interests of the fatherland; it is the wealthiest and most influential class in the national community, and it has wholeheartedly thrown in its lot with the irreconcilable enemies of the revolution, has made common cause with the imperialists against the workers and peasants of its native land. The revolution cannot be victorious unless this alliance is broken. If we are to break it, we must concentrate our attack upon the reformist section of the native bourgeoisie, must expose its treachery, must withdraw the toiling masses from its influence, and must systematically prepare the way for the leadership of the proletariat. In other words, the proletariat of such lands as Hindustan must be trained to become the leader in the movement for national emancipation, whilst the bourgeoisie and its spokesmen must gradually be dislodged from the leadership. The aim therefore, must be to create a revolutionary, anti-imperialist coalition, and to ensure that, within this coalition, the role of leader shall be played by the proletariat. The coalition may (there are alternative possibilities) take the form of a single, united party of workers and peasants voicing a joint programme. But the advanced communist elements will need to insist upon the independence of the communist party in such lands, for the proletariat cannot be prepared for its last as leader, nor can the proletarian leadership be realised, by any other than the communist party. Yet the communist party may, nay must openly cooperate with the revolutionary section of the native bourgeoisie, if it is to succeed in isolating the compromising and reformis section, and in rallying the masses of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie to the fight against imperialism.
To sum up. The immediate tasks confronting the revolutionary movement in colonial and vassal lands where capitalism is well developed are as follows:
- (1) To win over the best elements among the workers to the cause of communism and to form independent communist parties.
- (2) To set up a nationalist and revolutionary coalition of workers, peasants and revolutionary intellectuals, as a counterpoise to the coalition of the great bourgeoisie with the imperialists.
- (3) To guarantee that the leadership of the revolutionary coalition shall be in the hands of the proletariat.
- (4) To free the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie from the influence of the reformist native bourgeoisie.
- (5) To secure the linking up of the national-liberationist movement with the proletarian movement of advanced countries.
Source: Leninism by Joseph Stalin, Vol. 1; Modern Books (London, 1928); pp 279-80.
Note:
1. This is the title of a lengthy speech delivered by Stalin at the University of the Peoples of the East (Moscow) on 18 May, 1925.
Extracts From Documents of The Sixth Congress
15
Excerpts from
The Revolutionary Movement In The Colonies
Report of Comrade Kuusinen
I. Preliminary remarks
Dear Comrades, I do not want you to consider my report on the subject of today’s session, the revolutionary movement in the colonies and semi-colonies, as a coherent report on the whole subject, but only as a supplement and concrete illustration of what is said on this subject in the draft theses. As you know, I do not possess the necessary knowledge to deal with the whole subject. Moreover, I have endeavoured to explain to you in the draft theses some parts, especially the tactical parts, even in greater detail than it will be necessary in the final theses, in order to make my main argument clear to you. But I think that one should — and I consider it my duty — endeavour also in my report to give this a more concrete form, or at least to illustrate it. ...
II. India — the classical colonial country
I assume that many comrades in our parties and perhaps even a good many comrades here at our Congress are not much better informed about Indian conditions than I was a few weeks ago when the executive instructed me to report on this question. Therefore I will give with your permission, a few general facts concerning conditions in India, with the help of which I hope to bring India a little nearer to our parties. Relatively much has already been said about China. China has been popularised. But very little is known about India.
What is India? Is it a rich or a poor country? A petty-bourgeois German writer who visited India lately, Bernhard Kellermann, has said that India is a beggar. This is a wrong description, but a far more wrong description is that of the imperialists who say that India is a wealthy and well-developed country. Somewhere in Capital Marx reproduced a saying by a bourgeois economist that land is rich where the people is poor. In this sense India is truly rich. ... One gets a lopsided picture if one takes only the absolute figures about Indian export: what India has achieved in regard to various branches of production, that India occupies first place in the world in the production of rice and jute, second place in the production of cane-sugar, tea and cotton, and third place in the production of wheat, or if one hears about the truly rapid rate of the industrial development in India during the last decade. All this can give a semblance of truth to the assertion that India is one of the greatest industrial countries in the world. Everyone knows, for instance, that the International Labour Office of the League of Nations has “recognized” India as one of the 8 leading industrial countries of the world.
But this is not in keeping with the actual situation. If one was to carry this logic a little further, one would come to utterly absurd conclusions. The yearly military expenditure in India, including indirect military expenditure, is twice as high as that of imperialist Japan. India exports even capital to other countries. On the strength of this one might assert with a certain amount of justification that India is on the way to becoming an imperialist country. This is approximately how the situation is represented in the official reports of the British imperialists. ... This is of course only an imperialist lie. ...
The industrial development of India and the British colonial policy
... As I have already said, the industrial development of India has progressed rapidly in the last 20 years. But if even several communist comrades have been induced, on the strength of this fact, to assume that British policy is following an entirely new course in regard to the industrial development in India, I must say that they have gone too far. A semblance of this was possible in the boom years 1921-23. Actually, no change has taken place in the course of the British colonial policy. Some of these comrades went even to the length of holding out the prospect of a decolonisation of India by British imperialism. This was a dangerous term. The comrades who have represented and partly still represent this — in my opinion — false theory are comrades who otherwise deal very seriously with the problems of our movement — comrades Palme Dutt, Roy and Rathbone. A certain relic of this wrong conception made its appearance even in comrade Rajani’s speech in the discussion on the first item of the agenda. I consider it my duty to elucidate this question. If it were really true that British imperialism has adopted the course of the industrialisation of India which leads to its decolonisation, we would have to revise our entire conception of the character of the imperialist colonial policy. I think that facts show that this is not the case.
The decolonisation theory
I will give you a few quotations from the works of these comrades. Comrade Palme Dutt writes as follows in his book Modem India :
- “In the 19th century India was the most important outlet for the British manufacturers. In the 20th century India became rapidly industrialised under the control of British capital; by means of a colossal and irresponsible bureaucratic apparatus and owing to a semi-slave position of the workers, this capital has more profitable investment possibilities than at home.”
Another quotation:
- “The industrialisation of India under British control — at present India is recognised officially as one of the eight leading industrial countries of the world — means that as the situation gets worse in Britain, British capital exercises its power over the cheap labour power in India and establishes here enterprises which, by their competition are to reduce wages in Britain.”
(Retranslated from the German)
In his theses at the II Congress, comrade Roy represented utterly different views. In these theses, which had been perused by Lenin, comrade Roy wrote at that time :
- “Foreign imperialism which has been forced on the Eastern peoples has no doubt impeded their social and economic development and has deprived them of the possibility of reaching the stage of development which has been reached in Europe and America. Owing to the imperialist policy which endeavours to retard industrial development in the colonies the native proletariat has, in fact, begun only lately to exist.”
But comrade Roy holds different views now. In the draft resolution of October 1927 on the Indian question, comrade Roy makes the following statement:
- “The new imperialist policy implies a gradual ‘decolonisation’ of India which, must be allowed to take its course so that India might develop from a ‘Dependency’ into a ‘Dominion’. The Indian bourgeoisie, instead of being kept down as a powerful rival, will be conceded participation in the economic development of the country under the hegemony of imperialism. From a backward agrarian colonial possession India will become a modern industrial country — ‘a member of the British Commonwealth of free nations’. India is in a state of ‘decolonisation’ in as far as the policy forced on the British imperialism through the capitalist post-war crisis has done away with the obsolete forms and methods of colonial exploitation in favour of new forms and new methods.”
The description in comrade Roy’s draft resolution goes on in the same strain. But I must point out to the comrades that comrade Roy has probably an inkling of the consequences of this theory. He says:
- “This change in the economic sphere has also political consequences. The inevitable process of gradual decolonisation is fraught with the embryo of the dissolution of the empire. In fact, the new policy adopted for the consolidation of the empire, a policy which wants to ward off the danger of an immediate collapse, shows that the foundations of the empire have been shaken. Imperialism is a powerful demonstration of capitalist prosperity. In the present period of capitalist decline its basis is undermined.”
Thus comrade Roy sees that the decolonisation policy of British imperialism would lead to the weakening and dissolution of the British empire. But he nevertheless believes that British imperialism is determined to pursue this policy. I will give you now a quotation from comrade Rathbone’s article “The Industrialisation of India” where he uses a new argument:
- “... In the war period British finance capital recognised the mistake which was made by preventing the industrial development of the colonies, for the latter were unable to supply the mother country with munitions during the war. ... This was one of the main reasons for the industrialisation of the colonies.”
(All quotations retranslated from the German)
Now comrades, it is certainly very nice for the mother country if its colonies supply it during the war with munitions for war purposes. But if British imperialism should industrialise India for the purpose of getting munitions from it during the war, the danger will certainly arise that during the coming war these colonies might use these munitions first of all for the acceleration of their decolonisation. Engineering works, even if they be big, such as Tata in India, can be after all restricted in every possible way and controlled by British imperialism so as to prevent it becoming a danger. A few railway workshops, etc., can also be controlled, but comrades, the existence of a few such enterprises does not yet mean the industrialisation of India. Industrialisation means the transformation of an agrarian into an industrial country, it means general, thorough, industrial development, above all development of the production of means of production, of the engineering industry. This is not a question if any industrial development has taken place in India — this has certainly been the case — it is rather a question if it is the policy of British imperialism to industrialise India.
What do the facts show ?
It is true that after the war British imperialism has made a few more or less important economic concessions in favour of the industrial development in India. The most important among them were the 15 per cent protective tariffs for the cotton industry. But what is the explanation of these concessions? ... Mutinies in the army, a big peasant insurrection in the Punjab, development of the national movement of the bourgeoisie, for the first time, unification of the Moslem League with the Indian National Congress. Then there was also Japanese competition on the Indian market and partly also the competition of the United States, — both endeavoured to make use of the war period for the consolidation of their position on the Indian market. There was also the Khilafat movement, the Gandhi movement, etc. All this combined placed the British government before the alternative : either to lose India as a colony or to make certain concessions for the pacification of the Indian bourgeoisie and to take measures for protection against foreign competition. The necessity to do this dictated at that time to the British imperialism the economic concessions (raising the protective tariffs for the textile industry to 15 per cent) and also the constitutional reform of 1919. The objective consequence of the facilities for industrial production in India was an acceleration of industrial development. These concessions were in themselves small enough ... But even these small concessions are being gradually reduced all along the line...
... In the last years preceding the war the export of British capital to India amounted approximately to 13-16 million pound sterling per annum; then as I already said, the export of capital was very small in the first years after the war; in 1921-23 it rose to 25-30 and even 36 million pound sterling per annum; i.e., a fifth or a quarter of the entire export of British capital to India. After that the export of British [capital] to India fell again to 2 and subsequently to 3 million, and in the last year (1927) it amounted only to 0.8 million pound sterling — a very small sum. ... If one takes the trouble to investigate for what purposes the capital exported from Great Britain to India in the exceptional years, 1921-23, was invested one sees that most of it was certainly not invested for productive purposes, and by no means for industry. Of the whole amount (94,400,000 pound sterling) 70,000,000 pound sterling went to government loans. One can say that 10 per cent at the utmost of the British export capital was invested in India in industry during and after the war ...
If one considers the growth of capital, of the foreign joint stock companies (mainly British) in India, in the period between 1913-24, one must say that it was very considerable (452 million pound sterling, i.e., an almost treble increase), but most of these investments of capital went not to industry, but above all to banks, insurance and trading companies (405 million pound sterling). On the other hand, a much greater share of the increased capital of joint stock companies registered in India, in which probably more Indian than British capital is invested, went to industry : out of 1900 million rupees over one thousand million.
After the war native capital has gained ground in India in various spheres where prior to the war British capital had almost a monopoly (the jute industry and tea plantations). ... It is but natural that British imperialism is not inclined to be a passive spectator of this trend of development. Thus we witness lately various counter-measures on its part against the industrialisation tendencies of India. I draw your attention for instance to the currency policy of the British government, to the artificial rise of the rate of the rupee to 1/6 d. (instead of 1/4 d.), which in practice means a premium of 12.5 per cent for import. This means in fact that the existing protective tariffs lose a great deal of their value. ...
Comrades, I of course do not mean to assert that we are face to face with a complete throttling of industrial development in India by the British imperialists. Even if it wanted to try this, it would not be possible. The industrial development of India will continue, although probably very slowly. But the further it gets the more it comes into conflict with the most important colonial interests of British imperialism. ...
The question of the extension of the internal market
Comrade Roy says that the Indian bourgeoisie will be granted “participation” in the economic power together with the British imperialists. There is no doubt that efforts are made towards a compromise between them. ... Various agreements between them are quite possible in certain spheres, but they will be provisional and partial. Such an agreement has been, for instance, effected between the Lancashire and Bombay cotton manufacturers : the latter are to produce only the coarser and the former only the finer qualities.
But is this kind of thing possible all along the line? Certainly not. Comrades, it would be perhaps possible only in one case: if the internal market in India were to extend at a rapid rate. In such a case exploitation by the Indian bourgeoisie and also by British imperialism could for a time develop in India parallel and to a certain extent without friction. ... But facts show that the internal Indian market is not extending ...
Potentially, the Indian peasantry constitutes a powerful factor of the internal market, but in reality its purchasing capacity is infinitesimal owing to the three-fold exploitation under which it is groaning. By British imperialism and its tax collectors, by the landlords and by trade and usurious capital. As pointed out by comrade Bukharin when dealing with the first item on the agenda, industry in India is unable to absorb the mass of the pauperised peasants, and instead of proletarianisation we witness there an ever-increasing process of pauperisation in the rural district ...
Why does the Indian bourgeoisie raise a hue and cry ?
It is no wonder that in the face of this situation the Indian bourgeoisie is sounding the alarm. Pressure from below makes the bourgeoisie indulge in oppositional gestures. ... The hue and cry of the Indian bourgeoisie is a sign that something serious and important is maturing behind it.
There is an economic crisis at present almost in all the spheres of production in India, and by no means for lack of capital, for there is an abundance of capital in India. With the help of the British imperialists, the Indian capitalists endeavour to get rid of their superabundance of capital. They buy up state bonds and shares (but much more bonds than shares of industrial companies), they deposit their money in savings banks, they export capital to Brazil as recommended by the British chancellor of the exchequer in India, they purchase enormous quantities of gold and silver as treasure, etc. Why is not most of this Indian capital invested in industry ? Because the British colonial system is an enormous obstacle to the industrialisation of India. For this reason most of the engineering works established after the war have gone into liquidation in the last few years. ...
National reformism
That the national bourgeoisie is raising a hue and cry is quite true. But it is important to understand the political character of the Indian bourgeoisie, its national reformist policy. …
Of course, in this connection one must not forget that the objective conditions of the national-revolutionary movement do not depend on the subjective will of the bourgeoisie. The national bourgeoisie is, of course, also aiming at unlimited rule; it wants, so to speak, to achieve power like a thief. However its opposition has in the present epoch a certain objective importance for the unchaining of the mass movement. More important still is a correct understanding of the importance which bourgeois leadership still has in India owing to the national-reformist deterioration of the mass movement. For the time being its importance is far greater in India than in China. One cannot simply deny the fact that the national-reformist parties have the greatest influence over the masses in India, not so much among the workers but certainly among the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry. To undermine this influence, to overcome it, to get away the masses from the national reformists and the treacherous bourgeois opposition, such is our most important immediate task. ...
Through what forces will the real liberation of India be achieved ?
The liberation of India is a mission for which history has destined the Indian proletariat and peasantry. The Communist Party of India is to play the leading role in this struggle, and its foremost task in the preparation of this liberation struggle is — to disperse any illusion in regard to decolonisation through imperialism, to expose and combat any illusions of this kind spread by the responsivists, Swarajists and others before the eyes of the masses. In this manner it will be able to do justice to its present task. ...
Immediate tasks of the communist movement in India
In my draft theses I pointed out the special difficulties of Party construction in India. The Labour and Peasant Parties which exist there are not parties which can constitute the basis of our communist parties. Lenin’s theses at the Second Congress contain the following important direction:
“It is essential to carry on an energetic struggle against any attempt to give a communist label to the not really communist revolutionary liberation movement in the backward countries.”
This danger of giving a communist label to parties which are in reality not communist parties at all, would exist if we wanted to replace in India the construction of an independent communist party by any labour and peasant parties. Modestly and yet perseveringly, must we begin in India with work in trade unions and during strikes, with the education of Party workers. ...
The Indian workers have not yet been able to do such a simple thing as establishing a labour newspaper. One should really have their labour organs in three to four vernaculars. All that Lenin has said about the importance of a revolutionary newspaper as collective agitator, propagandist and organiser, applies particularly to such countries as India.
Source: Inprecor, 4 October, 1928
16
Excerpts from
The Theses On The Revolutionary Movement In Colonial And Semi-Colonial Countries
I. Introduction
1. The sixth congress of the Communist International declares that the theses on the national and colonial question drawn up by Lenin and adopted at the second congress still have full validity, and should serve as a guiding line for the further work of the communist parties. Since the time of the second congress the significance of the colonies and semi-colonies, as factors of crisis in the imperialist world system, has become much more topical. ...
2. ... The insurrection in Shanghai in April 1927 raised the question of the hegemony of the proletariat in the national-revolutionary movement, and finally pushed the native bourgeoisie into the camp of reaction, provoking the counter-revolutionary coup d’etat of Chiang Kai-shek.
The independent activity of the workers in the struggle for power, and above all the growth of the peasant movement, into agrarian revolution, also impelled the Wuhan Government, which had been established under the leadership of the petty-bourgeois wing of the Kuomintang, to go over to the camp of counter-revolution. The revolutionary wave, however, was already beginning to ebb. ... Its last powerful onslaught was the insurrection of the heroic Canton proletariat which under the slogan of Soviets attempted to link up the agrarian revolution with the overthrow of the Kuomintang and the establishment of the dictatorship of the workers and peasants.
3. In India, the policy of British imperialism, which retarded the development of native industry, evoked great dissatisfaction among the Indian bourgeoisie. Their class consolidation, replacing the former division into religious sects and castes ... confronted British imperialism with a national united front. Fear of the revolutionary movement during the war compelled British imperialism to make concessions to the native bourgeoisie, as shown, in the economic sphere, in higher duties on imported goods, and, in the political sphere, in insignificant parliamentary reforms introduced in 1919.
Nevertheless a strong ferment, expressed in a series of revolutionary outbreaks against British imperialism, was produced among the Indian masses as a result of the ruinous consequences of the imperialist war (famine and epidemics, 1918), the catastrophic deterioration of the position of wide sections of the working population, the influence of the Russian October revolution and of a series of insurrections in other colonial countries (as for example the struggle of the Turkish people for independence).
This first great anti-imperialist movement in India (1919-22) ended with the betrayal by the Indian bourgeoisie of the cause of national revolution. The chief reason for this was the fear of the growing wave of peasant risings, and of the strikes against native employers.
The collapse of the national-revolutionary movement and the gradual decline of bourgeois nationalism enabled British imperialism once more to revert to its policy of hindering India’s industrial development. Recent British measures in India show that the objective contradiction between British colonial monopoly and the tendencies towards independent Indian economic development are becoming more accentuated from year to year and are leading to a new deep revolutionary crisis. ...
II. The characteristic features of colonial economy and of imperialist colonial policy
9. The recent history of the colonies can only be understood if it is looked upon as an organic part of the development of capitalist world economy as a whole. ...
10. It is necessary to distinguish between those colonies which have served the capitalist countries as colonising regions for their surplus population, and which in this way have become extensions of the capitalist system (Australia, Canada, etc.), and those which are exploited by the imperialists primarily as markets for their commodities, as sources of raw material, and as spheres for capital investment. ...
Colonies of the first type became Dominions, that is, members of the given imperialist system with equal or nearly equal rights ...
11. ... In its function as colonial exploiter, the ruling imperialism is related to the colonial country primarily as a parasite, sucking the blood from its economic organisms. The fact that this parasite, in comparison to its victim, represents a highly developed civilization makes it a so much more powerful and dangerous exploiter, but this does not alter the parasitic character of its functions.
Capitalist exploitation in every imperialist country has proceeded by developing productive forces. The specific colonial forms of capitalist exploitation, however, whether operated by the British, French, or any other bourgeoisie, in the final analysis hinder the development of the productive forces of the colonies. The only construction undertaken (railways, harbours, etc.) is what is indispensable for military control of the country, for guaranteeing the uninterrupted operation of the taxation machine, and for the commercial needs of the imperialist country. ...
12. Since, however, colonial exploitation presupposes some encouragement of colonial production, this is directed on such lines and promoted only in such a degree as correspond to the interests of the metropolis, and, in particular, to the interests of the preservation of its colonial monopoly. Part of the peasantry, for example, may be encouraged to turn from grain cultivation to the production of cotton, sugar, or rubber (Sudan, Cuba, Java, Egypt), but this is done in such a way that it not only does not promote the independent economic development of the colonial country, but, on the contrary, reinforces its dependence on the imperialist metropolis. ...
Real industrialisation of the colonial country, in particular the building up of a flourishing engineering industry which would promote the independent development of its productive forces, is not encouraged but, on the contrary, is hindered by the metropolis. This is the essence of its function of colonial enslavement: the colonial country is compelled to sacrifice the interests of its independent development and to play the part of an economic (agrarian raw material) appendage to foreign capitalism. ...
13. Since the overwhelming mass of the colonial population is connected with the land and lives in the countryside, the plundering character of the exploitation of the peasantry by imperialism and its allies (the class of landowners, merchants, and money-lenders) acquires special significance. Because of imperialist intervention (imposition of taxes, import of industrial products from the metropolis, etc.), the drawing of the village into a money and commodity economy is accompanied by the pauperisation of the peasantry, the destruction of village handicraft industry, etc., and proceeds much more rapidly than was the case in the leading capitalist countries. On the other hand, the retarded industrial development puts narrow limits to the process of proletarianisation.
This enormous disproportion between the rapid rate of destruction of the old forms of economy and the slow development of the new has given rise in China, India, Indonesia, Egypt, etc., to an extreme ‘land hunger’, to agrarian overpopulation, rack-renting, and extreme fragmentation of the land cultivated by the peasantry. ...
The pitiful attempts to introduce agrarian reforms without damaging the colonial regime are intended to facilitate the gradual conversion of the semi-feudal landowner into a capitalist landlord, and in certain cases to create a thin stratum of kulak peasants. In practice, this only leads to greater pauperisation of the overwhelming majority of the peasants, which in its turn paralyses the development of the home market. It is on the basis of these contradictory economic processes that the most important social forces of the colonial movements are developing.
14. ... The export of capital to the colonies accelerates the development of capitalist relations there. The part which is invested in production does to some extent accelerate industrial development; but this is not done in ways which promote independence; the intention is rather to strengthen the dependence of the colonial economy on the finance-capital of the imperialist country. ...
15. The entire economic policy of imperialism towards the colonies is determined by its anxiety to preserve and increase their dependence, to intensify their exploitation and, as far as possible, to impede their independent development. Only under the pressure of special circumstances may the bourgeoisie of the imperialist States find themselves compelled to encourage the development of large-scale industry in the colonies. ...
All the twaddle of the imperialists and their lackeys about the policy of decolonisation being pursued by the imperialist powers, about encouraging the 'free development of the colonies’ is nothing but an imperialist lie. It is of the utmost importance for communists in the imperialist and the colonial countries to expose these lies.
III. On communist strategy and tactics in China, India, and similar colonial countries
16. As in all colonies and semi-colonies, so also in China and India the development of productive forces and the socialisation of labour stand at a comparatively low level. This circumstance, together with foreign domination and the presence of strong survivals of feudalism and pre-capitalist relations, determine the character of the next stage of the revolution in these countries. The revolutionary movement there is at the stage of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, i.e., the stage when the pre-requisites for proletarian dictatorship and socialist revolution are being prepared. Corresponding to this, the general basic tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the colonies and semi-colonies may be laid down as follows :
- (a) A shifting in the relationship of forces in favour of the proletariat; emancipation of the country from the yoke of imperialism (nationalisation of foreign concessions, railways, banks, etc.) and the establishment of national unity where this has not yet been attained; overthrow of the power of the exploiting classes at whose back imperialism stands; organisation of Soviets of workers and peasants and of a Red Army; establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry; consolidation of the hegemony of the proletariat;
- (b) The carrying through of the agrarian revolution; freeing the peasants from all pre-capitalist and colonial forms of exploitation and bondage; nationalisation of the land; radical measures for alleviating the position of the peasantry with the object of establishing the closest possible economic and political union between town and country;
- (c) Parallel with the further development of industry, transport, etc., and with the corresponding growth of the proletariat, the extension of trade unions, strengthening of the communist party and its conquest of a solid leading position among the working masses, the eight-hour working day. ...
18. The national bourgeoisie in these colonial countries do not adopt a uniform attitude to imperialism. One part, more especially the commercial bourgeoisie, directly serves the interests of imperialist capital (the so-called compradore bourgeoisie). In general, they maintain, more or less consistently, an anti-national, imperialist point of view, directed against the whole nationalist movement, as do the feudal allies of imperialism and the more highly paid native officials. The other parts of the native bourgeoisie, especially those representing the interests of native industry, support the national movement; this tendency, vacillating and inclined to compromise, may be called national reformism. ...
In order to strengthen its position in relation to imperialism, bourgeois nationalism in these colonies tries to win the support of the petty-bourgeoisie, of the peasantry, and in part also of the working class. Since it has little prospect of success among the workers (once they have become politically awake), it becomes the more important for it to obtain support from the peasantry.
Here precisely is the weakest point of the colonial bourgeoisie. The unbearable exploitation of the colonial peasantry can only be ended by the agrarian revolution. The bourgeoisie of China, India, and Egypt are by their immediate interests so closely bound up with landlordism, usury capital, and the exploitation of the peasant masses in general, that they oppose not only the agrarian revolution but also every decisive agrarian reform. They fear, and not without reason, that even the open formulation of the agrarian question will stimulate and accelerate the revolutionary ferment in the peasant masses. Thus, the reformist bourgeoisie cannot bring themslves to approach practically this urgent question. ...
19. An incorrect appraisal of the national-reformist tendency of the bourgeoisie in these colonial countries may give rise to serious errors in the strategy and tactics of the communist parties concerned. ...
20. The petty-bourgeoisie in the colonial and semi-colonial countries play a very important role. They consist of various strata, which in different stages of the national-revolutionary movement play very diverse roles. ...
The petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, the students, and others are very frequently the most determined representatives not only of the specific interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, but also of the general objective interests of the entire national bourgeoisie. ... In general, they cannot represent peasant interests, for the social strata from which they come are connected with landlordism. The advance of the revolutionary wave may drive them into the labour movement, into which they carry their hesitating and irresolute petty-bourgeois ideology. Only a few of them in the course of the struggle are able to break with their own class and rise to an understanding of the tasks of the class struggle of the proletariat, and to become active defenders of proletarian interests. Frequently the petty-bourgeois intellectuals give to their ideology a socialist or even communist colour. In the struggle against imperialism they have played, and in such countries as India and Egypt still play, a revolutionary role. The mass movement may draw them in, but may also push them into the camp of extreme reaction, or encourage the spread of Utopian reactionary tendencies in their ranks. ...
The peasantry, as well as the proletariat and as its ally, is a driving force of the revolution. ...
The process of class differentiation among the peasants in the colonies and semi-colonies where feudal and pre-capitalist survivals are widespread proceeds at a comparatively slow rate. Nevertheless, market relationships in these countries have developed to such a degree that the peasants are no longer a homogeneous mass as to their class. In the villages of China and India, particularly in certain parts of these countries, it is already possible to find exploiting elements, originally peasants, who exploit the peasants and village labourers through usury, trade, employment of hired labour, the sale or leasing of land, the lending of cattle or agricultural implements, etc., etc. ...
21. ... The greater part of the colonial proletariat comes from the pauperised village, with which the worker retains his connection even when engaged in industry. In the majority of colonies (with the exception of some large industrial towns such as Shanghai, Bombay, Calcutta, etc.) we find, as a general rule, only the first generation of a proletariat engaged in large-scale production. The rest is made up of ruined artisans driven from the decaying handicrafts, which are widespread even in the most advanced colonies. The ruined artisan, the small property-owner, carries with him into the working class the narrow craft sentiments and ideology through which national-reformist influence can penetrate the colonial labour movement. ...
22. ... At first the interests of the struggle for their class rule compel the most important bourgeois parties in India and Egypt (Swarajists, Wafdists) to demonstrate their opposition to the ruling imperialist-feudal bloc. Although this opposition is not revolutionary, but reformist and opportunist, this does not mean that it has no special significance. The national bourgeoisie are not significant as a force in the struggle against imperialism. Nevertheless, this bourgeois-reformist opposition has a real and specific significance for the development of the revolutionary movement — and this in both a negative and a positive sense — in so far as it has any mass influence at all.
What is important about it is that it obstructs and retards the development of the revolutionary movement, in so far as it secures a following among the working masses and holds them back from the revolutionary struggle. On the other hand, bourgeois opposition to the ruling imperialist-feudal bloc, even if it does not go very far, can accelerate the political awakening of the broad working masses; open conflicts between the national-reformist bourgeoisie and imperialism, although of little significance in themselves, may, under certain conditions, indirectly serve as the starting-point of great revolutionary mass actions.
It is true the reformist bourgeoisie try to check any such outcome to their oppositional activities, and in one way or another to prevent it in advance. But wherever the objective conditions exist for a deep political crisis, the activities of the national-reformist opposition, even their insignificant conflicts with imperialism which have virtually no connection with revolution, may acquire serious importance.
Communists must learn how to utilise each and every conflict, to expand such conflicts and to broaden their significance, to link them with the agitation for revolutionary slogans, to spread the news of these conflicts among the masses, to arouse these masses to independent, open manifestations in support of their own demands, etc.
23. The correct tactics in the struggle against such parties as the Swarajists and Wafdists during this stage consist in the successful exposure of their real national-reformist character. These parties have more than once betrayed the national-liberation struggle, but they have not yet finally passed over, like the Kuomintang, to the counter-revolutionary camp. There is no doubt that they will do this later on, but at present they are particularly dangerous precisely because their real physiognomy has not yet been exposed in the eyes of the masses. ... If the communists do not succeed at this stage in shaking the faith of the masses in the bourgeois national-reformist leadership of the national movement, then in the next advance of the revolutionary wave this leadership will represent an enormous danger for the revolution. ... It is necessary to expose the half-heartedness and vacillation of these leaders in the national struggle, their bargainings and attempts to reach a compromise with British imperialism, their previous capitulations and counter-revolutionary advances, their reactionary resistance to the class demands of the proletariat and peasantry, their empty nationalist phraseology, their dissemination of harmful illusions about the peaceful decolonisation of the country and their sabotage of the application of revolutionary methods in the national struggle for liberation.
The formation of any kind of bloc between the communist party and the national-reformist opposition must be rejected; this does not exclude temporary agreements and the co-ordination of activities in particular anti-imperialist actions, provided that the activities of the bourgeois opposition can be utilised to develop the mass movement, and that these agreements do not in any way restrict communist freedom of agitation among the masses and their organisations. Of course, in this work the communists must at the same time carry on the most relentless ideological and political struggle against bourgeois nationalism and against the slightest signs of its influence inside the labour movement. ...
24. An incorrect understanding of the basic character of the party of the big national bourgeoisie gives rise to the danger of an incorrect appraisal of the character and role of the petty-bourgeois parties. The development of these parties, as a general rule, follows a course from the national-revolutionary to the national-reformist position. Even such movements as Sun Yatsenism in China, Gandhism in India, Sarekat Islam in Indonesia, were originally in their ideology radical petty-bourgeois movements which, however, were later converted by service to the big bourgeoisie into bourgeois national-reformist movements. Since then, in India, Egypt, and Indonesia, a radical wing has again arisen among the petty-bourgeois groups (e.g., the Republican Party, Watanists, Sarekat Rakjat), which stand for a more or less consistent national-revolutionary point of view. In such a country as India, the rise of some such radical petty-bourgeois parties and groups is possible. ...
It is absolutely essential that the communist parties in these countries should from the very outset demarcate themselves in the most clear-cut fashion both politically and organisationally, from all petty-bourgeois groups and parties. In so far as the needs of the revolutionary struggle demand it, temporary co-operation is permissible, and in certain circumstances even a temporary alliance between the communist party and the national-revolutionary movement, provided that the latter is a genuine revolutionary movement, that it genuinely struggles against the ruling power, and that its representatives do not hamper the communists in their work of revolutionary education among the peasants and the working masses. In all such co-operation, however, it is essential to take the most careful precautions against its degenerating into a fusion of the communist movement with the petty-bourgeois-revolutionary movement. ...
IV. The immediate tasks of the communists
28. ... The communist parties in the colonial and semi-colonial countries must make every effort to create a cadre of party functionaries from the ranks of the working class itself, utilising intellectuals in the party as directors and lecturers for propagandist circles and legal and illegal party schools, to train the advanced workers as agitators, propagandists, organisers, and leaders permeated by the spirit of Leninism. The communist parties in the colonial countries must also become genuinely communist parties in their social composition. While drawing into their ranks the best elements of the revolutionary intelligentsia, becoming steeled in the daily struggle and in great revolutionary battles, the communist parties must give their chief attention to strengthening the party organisation in the factories and mines, among transport workers, and among the semi-slaves in the plantations. ...
29. ... Communists must conduct revolutionary propaganda in reactionary trade unions' with mass working-class membership. In those countries where circumstance dictate the need to establish separate revolutionary trade unions (because the reactionary trade union leadership hinders the organisation of the unorganised workers, acts in opposition to the most elementary demands of trade union democracy, and converts the trade unions into strike-breaking organisations), the leadership of the RILU must be consulted. Special attention need to be given to the intrigues of the Amsterdam International in the colonial countries (China, India, North Africa) and to the exposure of its reactionary character before the masses. ...
30. Where peasant organisations exist — regardless of their character, as long as they are real mass organisations — the communist party must take steps to penetrate into these organisations. One of the most urgent tasks of the party is to present the agrarian question correctly to the working class, explaining the importance and decisive role of the agrarian revolution, and making members of the party familiar with methods of agitation, propaganda, and organisational work among the peasantry. ... Communists must everywhere attempt to give a revolutionary character to the existing peasant movement. They must also organise new revolutionary peasant unions and peasant committees, and maintain regular contact with them. ...
Special workers’ and peasants’ parties, however revolutionary their character may be at particular periods, may all too easily change into ordinary petty-bourgeois parties; hence it is not advisable to organise such parties. The communist party should never build its organisation on the basis of a fusion of two classes; as little should it make use of this basis, characteristic of petty-bourgeois groups, in its task of organising other parties. ...
34. The basic tasks of the Indian communists consist in the struggle against British imperialism for the emancipation of the country, the destruction of all survivals of feudalism, the agrarian revolution, and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in the form of a Soviet republic. These tasks can be successfully carried out only if a powerful communist party is created, able to place itself at the head of the broad masses of the working class, the peasantry, and all the toilers, and to lead them in armed insurrection against the feudal-imperialist bloc. ...
The union of all communist groups and individual communists -scattered throughout the country into a single, independent and centralised party is the first task of Indian communists. While rejecting the principle of building the party on a two-class basis, communists must utilise the connections of the existing workers’ and peasants’ parties with the- labouring masses to strengthen their own party, bearing in mind that the hegemony of the proletariat cannot be realised without the existence of a consolidated steadfast communist party, armed with the theory of Marxism. ...
The communists must unmask the national-reformism of the Indian National Congress and, in opposition to all the talk of the Swarajists, Gandhists, etc., about passive resistance, advance the irreconcilable slogan of armed struggle for the emancipation of the country and the expulsion of the imperialists.
In relation to the peasantry and peasant organisations the Indian communists are faced first and foremost with the task of informing the peasant masses about the general demands of the party on the agrarian question, for which purpose the party must work out an agrarian programme of action. Through workers connected with the village, as well as directly, the communists must stimulate the struggle of the peasantry for partial demands, and in the process of the struggle organise peasant unions. It is essential to make sure that the newly created peasant organisations do not fall under the influence of exploiting strata in the village. ...
It must be remembered that in no circumstances can communists relinquish their right to open criticism of the opportunist and reformist tactics of the leadership of those mass organisations in which they work.
Source: Communist International 1919-1943 Documents, Vol. II, Edited by Jane Degras, Oxford University Press (London, 1936), pp 526-48.
17
The Industrial Development Of India Deepens Its Contradictions With British Imperialism
Concluding Speech of Comrade Kuusinen
While trade capital is fast developing in a colony, the counter-forces against the subjugating imperialism are still very weak. The tendency toward economic independence obtains a greater force only where native industry is developing. The effort toward independence grows parallel with the industrial development of the country. However, this process of industrialisation in these countries goes on against great difficulties, because the pressure of the imperialist colonial monopoly resists the tendencies toward industrialisation. In spite of this, in such great colonial countries as India, the industrial development forges ahead, even if it proceeds with very great difficulty, and at a very retarded pace. I am not at all asserting that British imperialism is in a position to stop this advance. No. On the contrary, I conclude from the fact that this development makes headway despite everything, the deepening of the revolutionary contradictions between imperialist England and India. This is the question put in the draft theses. As against this, the formulation of comrade Bennett and others, “industrialisation of the colonies under the control of imperialism”, is an impossibility. This is somewhat similar as if we would say “the growth of independence of the labour movement under the control of the bourgeoisie.” These are two conceptions that cannot be brought into agreement. First of all, the development of the heavy industry and the machine industry in the colonies is being checked by imperialist monopoly. I requested a few comrades to draw up a list, on the basis of the official government reports, of all the legislative measures that have been taken in regard to India after the world war and which have any significance, so that we can see quite concretely how English imperialism hinders or promotes the industrialisation of India.
This list gives us the following picture :
A. Measures favouring the industrial development of India.
1. The 3 per cent assessment on the cotton consumption of the Indian textile mills was abolished (as a result of a textile workers’ strike).
2. The tariffs of the lower qualities of textile products were raised from 11 per cent to 16 per cent (England does not import textile goods of low quality to India, so this measure was directed against the fast growing Japanese import).
B. Measures to hinder the industrial development of the country.
1. In the year of 1920 : A law on the Imperial bank by which the bank is forbidden to give credit to industrial undertakings.
2. In the year of 1922 : railway construction plans with a capital expenditure of 1500 million rupees. The Indian bourgeoisie demands the orders for the Indian metallurgical industries. The orders were given to an English concern, since the English offer was pretty near 50 per cent cheaper.
3. In the year of 1923 : orders for 3132 railway cars given to England.
4. In the years of 1926-27 :
- a) the export duty fixed at 12 percent in the year of 1919, on leather and skins (for the purpose of creating a leather industry) has been reduced to 3 per cent (thus raw material will be exported).
- b) The rupee exchange has been set at 1.6, even though all the industries were against it and demanded an exchange at 1.4.
- c) Instead of increasing the tariff duty on iron and steel, as demanded by the Indian bourgeoisie, preferential tariffs were fixed for British iron and steel goods.
- d) The increase in the coal tariff demanded by the Indian bourgeoisie was rejected in order that the South African coal industry should be protected and promoted (South Africa imports to India).
- e) Capital is being exported from India to Brazil and the minister of finance approves of it.
- f) More order given away to England.
- g) Duties on automobiles tyres were lowered.
- h) The Royal commission on agriculture carries on its work in a sense that Indian capital (and the wealth after mobilisation) be directed to agriculture.
Here we see two rather insignificant measures regarding which one could say that by them the industrialisation of India has been promoted; all of the remaining measures aim directly at retarding the process of industrialisation. I have stated already in my report, what the temporary circumstances were that forced the English government, during the war and in the first years following the war, to grant the respective concessions.
Comrade Losovsky took exception to the expression used in the draft theses which describes the colonies as the “agrarian hinterland” of imperialism, and instead proposed the expression of “raw material hinterland”. I cannot see, in this, an important difference. We, of course, do not mean by the expression “agrarian” agriculture alone, but use it in its wider sense, as Marx also used it, by the inclusion of primary production.
Source: Inprecor, 21 November 1928
18
Excerpts from
Theses Of The Agitprop Of The ECCI
I. Historic significance of the Sixth Congress
The Sixth Congress met at the time of the opening of a new period. Behind it lies the period of a certain peaceful
co-habitation of the imperialist powers; that of a certain peaceful co-habitation of the capitalist world and the USSR; that of some partial struggles between labour and capital in the imperialist countries; that of the first wave of colonial revolutions. Before it lies the new period, the period of sharp and bitter imperialist antagonisms, that of the imminent war danger between the imperialist giants : America and England; the period of particularly acute tension in the struggle between capitalism and the USSR; that of the completion of preparations for a war against the USSR; the period of the maturing of decisive class battles in a number of the leading countries (Germany, etc.); that of the rapid fusion of reformism with fascism; that of the decisive clash between reformism and communism over the leadership of the majority of the working class; the period of the deepening of the antagonism between the colonies and imperialism and the maturing of a new and still mightier wave of colonial revolutions. ...
IV. The colonial question
... 25. Since the time of the Second Congress, when in the Theses of Comrade Lenin the fundamental and strategical directions were given upon the colonial question, there have occurred considerable changes and a tremendous fund of experiences has been accumulated.
First of all, during these years the proletariat has entered upon the arena of the class struggle in the colonies, having become in a number of colonial countries the fundamental revolutionary force which is leading considerable elements of the peasantry in the revolutionary struggle.
Secondly, during these years a number of colonial insurrections and movements have occurred, e.g., the agrarian riots in India, the insurrection in Indonesia, the national wars in Morocco, Syria, Nicaragua, etc.
Thirdly, during these years the great Chinese revolution has developed which has aroused tens of millions of workers and peasants to the struggle and has bestirred all the oppressed peoples.
Fourthly, during these years the “South American” problem has matured, the national revolutionary movement has begun in the semi-colonial countries of South America.
26. The Second Congress gave a general analysis of the colonial question. The Sixth Congress has supplemented it by a study of the tactical problems in regard to the individual colonial countries and groups. ...
Summing up the results of recent years and surveying the present situation, the Congress observed that Lenin's prediction about the unfoldment of the colonial revolutions has been fully borne out.
In China (where the first wave of the revolution aroused the proletariat and the peasantry of a number of provinces to take part in the struggle) although the bloc of the imperialists, the feudal elements and the bourgeoisie has been temporarily triumphant, there are still isolated fights going on even today. The general situation may be characterised as “the period of the preparation of the mass forces for a new rise of the revolution” (Para 27, The Political Theses).
In India we see the revival of the national-revolutionary movement, a revival which bids fair to develop eventually into a veritable workers’ and peasants’ revolution.
27. Both in China and in India there can be observed two tendencies as regards solving the colonial and agrarian question : the bourgeoisie considers it to be its historic task to create a bourgeois state by means of reform and compromise with imperialism and the feudal elements (at the same time, as properly pointed out by the representative of the Indian Communist Party, Comrade Sikander, it is not averse to “utilising the workers and peasants as cannon-fodder”). ...
28. The Congress has given a clear-cut analysis of the role of imperialism in the colonies. In connection with the discussion upon this question number of comrades in their speeches criticised the assertion that India and other colonial countries constitute a “world village”, that the colonial countries constitute a sort of “agrarian appendage” of the imperialist industrial countries. The comrades who criticised these views pointed out that, for instance, in India there is industrialisation going on, albeit under the control of British imperialism, and that imperialism has the tendency to shift the centre of production to the colonies.
The logical development of such assertions is to lead up to the theory of “decolonization”. But to recognise the “decolonization” and industrialisation of the colonies would essentially mean to give up Lenin’s thesis concerning the nature of colonial exploitation. To be sure, there is a certain industrial development going on in the colonies. But this industrial development does not yet signify industrialisation. The industrialisation of a country means the development of the production of the means of production (machinery, etc.) in that country, whereas imperialism allows in the colonies only the development of small manufacturing industries engaged in the conversion of agricultural produce. It deliberately hinders the development of the production of the means of production ... it checks progress by the whole of Its policy of supporting the survivals of feudalism in the village and by the innumerable taxes which ruin the already impoverished peasantry.
The road of independence and self-reliance for the colonies leads across the revolution of the workers and peasants which establishes the democratic dictatorship — the layer of industrialisation and the non-capitalist development of the country, and by the further merging of the democratic into the socialist revolution. Industrialisation of the present colonies is possible only along the path of their non-capitalist development.
29. The second big problem confronting the Congress was the question of the attitude towards the bourgeoisie. It was necessary to sum up the lessons of the Chinese revolution and to map out the tactics of the communist party in the forthcoming Indian revolution. In the political theses the basic advices were given to the Indian comrades. What are the peculiar features of the class struggle in India, particularly the struggle for hegemony between the Indian bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the national-revolutionary movement, which distinguishes India, for instance, from the China of prior to 1927? These peculiar features may be described as follows : the Indian bourgeoisie as a class is no doubt mere consolidated economically and politically, and more mature than was the Chinese bourgeoisie; whereas the proletariat, although more numerous than in China, is politically still under the influence of bourgeois nationalism.
A section of the Indian bourgeoisie — and the most influential one — has already taken to the path of compromise with British imperialism; another section (the Swarajists), as pointed out in the Political Theses of the Congress, is “substantially looking for an understanding with imperialism at the expense of the toilers”. All the tendencies of the Indian bourgeoisie have already betrayed the agrarian revolution of the peasantry in the past, and in the future they are only likely to play a counter-revolutionary role.
“The combination of the communist elements and groups into a strong communist party, the combination of the proletarian masses in the trade unions, the systematic struggle within the latter with a view to the complete exposure and expulsion of the social-treacherous leaders from all the tradeunion organisations is the most indispensable task of the working class in India, and the indispensable condition for the revolutionary mass struggle for the independence of India” (Para 28 of the Political Theses). Such is the first task of the Indian Communist Party. The struggle for the proletarian hegemony in the national struggle against imperialism and the remnants of feudalism, such is the second task of the Indian Communist Party as the vanguard of the proletariat, because “only under the leadership of the proletariat will the bloc of the workers, peasants and the revolutionary portion of the intelligentsia be in a position to smash the bloc of the imperialists, landlords and the compromising bourgeoisie, to unfold the agrarian revolution and to break through the imperialist front itt India.” (Para 28 of the Political Theses.)
Hence it is clear — and this was pointed out by comrade Stalin, already in 1925, in his address on the political tasks of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East — that in order to smash this bloc it will be necessary “to concentrate our fire against the compromising national bourgeoisie, expose its treachery and emancipate the toiling masses from under its influence.” (cf. Questions of Leninism, p 265.) Such is the general tactical line of the Indian Communist Party. ...
Source: Inprecor, 16 November 1928.
19
Excerpts from
On The Indian Question In The Sixth World Congress
- M N Roy
The polemic against the so-called theory of “de-colonisation” casts a shadow of unreality over the otherwise high class discussion of the Indian question in the Sixth World Congress. Therefore it is necessary to begin with a few remarks about this theory: more correctly, about the scare-crow of this so-called theory.
I do not propose to answer the polemics of comrade Kuusinen and others. It will not be possible to correct the inaccuracies of facts cited in comrade Kuusinen’s report within the limits of an article. If necessary I will be prepared to do so in a future occasion. For the present it is sufficient to observe that comrade Kuusinen was not well advised as regards facts. It is not the picture of the India of 1928, but of a quarter of a century ago that he drew before the congress. This he was bound to do because of his admitted “lack of the necessary knowledge of the entire subject” ... The very passages quoted by comrade Kuusinen to condemn me as an apologist of imperialism, prove that I do not hold the opinion that British imperialism will lead the Indian people by the hand to freedom. What I pointed out is that owing to the decay of capitalism in the metropolis, imperialism is obliged to find means and methods of exploiting India more intensively, and is thereby creating a situation which weakens its very foundation. Comrade Kuusinen asks: if it is so, why is British imperialism doing such a thing? This is a very simple way of looking at the situation. It is trying to understand the operation of capitalism (in its highest stage of imperialism) separated from its inner contradictions. In the light of such simple logic Marx also becomes ridiculous by virtue of having said that capitalism creates its own grave-digger in the form of the proletariat. If capitalist mode of production lays down the conditions for socialism why did the bourgeoisie introduce it in society? These apparent contradictions are explained by Marxian dialectics. To have a correct appreciation of the situation it is necessary to distinguish between the subjective and objective forces operating upon it. British imperialism does not wish to lose an iota of its power in India. This is the subjective factor which has very great significance; but it alone is not decisive. The objective factor, that is, what, in the given situation, is possible for the British bourgeoisie to do to maintain their domination in India and the effects of what they do, react upon the subjective force. ...
As is evident from the very passages quoted by comrade Kuusinen, I used the term “de-colonisation” (within inverted commas, because it is not my creation) in the sense that imperialist power is undermined in India creating conditions for its successful revolutionary overthrow. India is a colony of the classical type. She will never cease to be a colony until the British power is overthrown by revolutionary means. No compromise (however far-reaching) between the Indian bourgeoisie and the British imperialists will give real freedom to the Indian people. These are all truism. But it is also true that India of today is not the India of a quarter of a century ago. ... To recognise the fact that, simultaneously in spite of and with the satiation of imperialism, India now travels on a path of economic development closed to her previously, is not a violation of Marxist and Leninist conception of the nature of imperialism. On the contrary, such developments are not foreign to this nature. Indeed Lenin did presage such developments in the colonies towards the latest stages of imperialist domination. In showing the ever-growing parasitic character of imperialism he approvingly quoted the following from Schulze-Gaevernit's book : “Europe will shift the burden of physical toil first agricultural and mining, then of heavy industry — on the black races and will remain itself at leisure in the occupation of bondholder, thus paving the way for the economic and later, the political emancipation of the coloured races.” (Imperialism) ...
Obviously, the crux of the question is the internal condition of British capitalism. This was hardly touched in the discussion of the Indian question in the Congress. Colonial politics suitable to the interests of British capitalism before the war, cannot meet the situation in which British capitalism finds itself as result of the war. Modern empires are built on capital exported from the metropolis. Britain’s ability to export capital depends primarily on the conditions of her industries at home. Therefore, an analysis of the economic situation in Britain should be the starting point of a serious discussion of the Indian question.
Capital is exported from a country when it is “over developed”, that is, when all the accumulated surplus cannot be invested there at sufficient profit. Investment in countries where capital is scarce, price of land relatively small, wages are low and raw materials are cheap, brings higher profits (Lenin, Imperialism). How is the position of Britain today as regards export of capital ? ...
... Britain produces much less than she could produce. This forced limitation of production has been caused by shrinkage of market as result of the war and growth of industries in other countries. Since the conclusion of the war the total volume of British exports has never exceeded 80 per cent of the pre-war level. In contrast to this the British export trade expanded uninterruptedly during the period between 1880 and 1913. And it was in this period of trade prosperity that the empire was built up and consolidated. An expanding export of manufactured goods (and by far the largest portion of Britain's export has always been manufactured goods) was the main channel for the export of capital which, in its turn, founded and cemented the empire. Therefore, a decline of the export trade is bound to affect the solidity of the empire, unless some other means were found to counteract the weakness resulting there from. ... The point here at issue is that changed conditions in the metropolis render the continuation of the old methods of colonial exploitation disadvantageous, and force upon the imperialist bourgeoisie a new policy irrespective of what they would rather prefer. On the question of the ultimate consequence of this policy, my contention is and has been that the new policy will create conditions which will facilitate the disruption of the empire. To deduce from this clearly Marxist contention that I am of the opinion that the British bourgeoisie will willingly “de-colonise” India is simply absurd. What I said ... is that what undermines imperialist monopoly and absolutism, inevitably operates as a “de-colonising” force as far as India is concerned. ...
Although the determining factor is the dynamics of the situation, and it has been proved that the dynamics of the situation tend unmistakably and unwaveringly towards industrialisation, the case might be still further strengthened by giving some facts about the actual growth of the leading industries. Figures about the growth of the production of iron and steel, the basis of modern industry, have already been given. Interpreted in relative terms those figures indicate that the production of pig-iron increased by 163 per cent between 1922 (when the protection was introduced) and 1926 in contrast with the growth of 67 per cent during the years 1913 to 1922 — the period of excessive war-production; and steel production in the latter period grew by 200 per cent as compared to 170 per cent in the preceding period. In the end of 1926 the British board of trade journal foresaw continued increase in the production of steel in India and observed that the consumption of the steel produced would require erection of new industrial plant. So, the beginning of the production of the means of production in India is in view. In 1927, the rate of protection to the iron and steel industry was again increased, obviously to accelerate the process of its growth. In addition to the considerably increased production in the country, structural steel imported in 1928 was 64 per cent more than in 1913. The value of the modern means of production (machinery, mill-works, railway-plants, electric-prime-movers, etc.), as distinct from the means of transportation, as railway materials, in 1924 was four times as much as in 1913; after a slight downward curb in the following year, it regained the level in 1926 and exceeded it in the last year.
Further, the iron-ore extracted in 1926 was three times as much as in 1919, and most of them were subjected to manufacturing process inside the country. Indian mills now produce finished cloth more than double of what they did in 1913. India's export of finished textile materials increased simultaneously with the decrease in half-manufactured goods, namely yarns. This shows that the cotton industry has grown not only in expansion, but, what is much more important, in its internal composition. It is no longer an auxiliary to the industrial system in the imperialist metropolis supplying semi-finished raw materials. It has become an independent productive factor, self-sufficient and competitive. Manufacture of tin-plates is not a basic industry. But its growth in India graphically illustrates the trend of new economic policy of imperialism. The production of this industry has increased more than four times since 1923 when it received the shelter of the tariff wall. A further increase of not quite a 100 percent, and the level of present consumption in the country will be reached. Now, the manufacture of tin-plate requires very highly skilled labour, which is not available in India. Nevertheless, by the adoption of the American method of mass production, as against the old British system of production with skilled labour, the industry in India has developed with amazing rapidity. The disparity in the wage-cost in Britain and India is so great that the Indian industry is expected to enter the world market with a very high competitive power even without protection after three years. The protection to this industry in India was granted in the teeth of strenuous opposition from the Welsh Tin-Plate Manufacture’s Association which controls the industry throughout Great Britain. But the influence of the British Petroleum Trust was decisive. The tin-plate industry in India now serves as the connecting link between the British Petroleum Trust and the Indian iron and steel producers, Tata and Co.
Indeed, compared with the vast expanse and population of India, the absolute significance of these figures is not very great, India still remains overwhelmingly an agricultural country. The historic significance of these figures is that they indicate the tendency. ...
The theory that colonies can serve the interests of imperialism only and exclusively as source of raw-material is the corroboration of Kautsky’s definition of imperialism as the annexation of agricultural territories by advanced capitalist countries, a definition severely criticised by Lenin. So long as mercantilist and industrial capital remains the dominating factor in the metropolis, economic backwardness of the colonies corresponds to the interest of imperialism. But the situation ceases to be so, as a rule, with the rise of finance capital. And as modern imperialism coincides with the rise of finance capital,
it is not possible to assert that colonies must necessarily always remain in an industrially backward state as source of raw material production. The growth of the parasitic character of finance capital and the decay of production in the metropolis render industrial development of the colonies not only possible, but necessary for the existence of imperialism. ...
The “de-colonising” effect of the new policy touches only the bourgeoisie. The masses of India will remain in the state of colonial slavery even after the process of “de-colonisation” culminates in the grant of dominion status. But parallel to the economic concessions made to Indian capitalism, there has been a transformation in the political position of the Indian bourgeoisie, and still further transformation is going to take place in the near future. It is still an open question how near to their covered dominion status will the Indian bourgeoisie arrive in consequence of the constitutional tug-of-war at present in play. But there is no doubt that the result will be a further advance towards the goal. ...
In his report, comrade Kuusinen purposely did not touch the self-governing colonies like Canada, Australia, South Africa, etc. because, in his opinion, they are practically independent capitalist countries. If the self-governing colonies are not to be reckoned as colonies proper, then it is but logical to infer that in proportion as India approaches the status of a self-governing colony, she undergoes a process of “de-colonisation”, in limited sense, as far as the bourgeoisie are concerned. Now let us chronicle some facts illustrating the success [succession? —Ed.] of political right, even some power, to the Indian bourgeoisie since the war. ...
So, the immediate perspective of the present situation in India is the grant of further political rights to the bourgeoisie. Only in the light of this perspective, it becomes “inconceivable that the Indian bourgeoisie will play a revolutionary role for any length of time”. A gradual advance of the Indian bourgeoisie from the state of absolute colonial oppression to self-government within the British empire is taking place. Therefore, it is not necessary for them to travel the risky path of revolution. In other words, progressive “de-colonisation” of their economic and political status makes the Indian bourgeoisie averse to revolution, and in the near future, when “de-colonisation” of their class has gone further, it will make them positively counter-revolutionary. Transfer of some political power to the colonial bourgeoisie does not weaken imperialism; because the native bourgeoisie wield this power, not to further develop the struggle against imperialism, but to suppress the revolutionary movement. This has been demonstrated by the experience in other colonial countries.
“De-colonisation” of the Indian bourgeoisie, thus, is not an “illusion”. It is a fact which is the key to the situation. By estimating the situation in the light of this fact can we establish what comrade Kuusinen very correctly said in his report:
“The mission of freeing India has been conferred by history on the Indian workers and peasants.” The worker and peasant masses cannot be mobilised to undertake their historic mission consciously only on the slogan — “the sahib is a robber”.
They must know that the native bourgeoisie are the accomplices of the foreign sahib, and therefore, will never carry on a revolutionary fight for national liberation. “The sahib will never decolonise India” of the workers and peasants; but nor will the Indian bourgeoisie lead the people to national freedom. And this must be courageously told and clearly demonstrated to make the workers and peasants conscious of their historic mission. Comrade Kuusinen or any other comrade will search in vain to detect me ever spreading the illusion among the workers and peasants that “the sahib will decolonize” them. On the contrary what comrade Kuusinen today says about the historic mission of the Indian workers and peasants, I began propagating years ago when not a few leading comrades entertained illusions about the role of the nationalist bourgeoisie.
Finally, I am completely in agreement with comrade Kuusinen’s opinion about the immediate task and organisational problems of the Communist Party of India. This agreement reveals the unreality of the row raised on the theory of “de-colonisation”. A deep divergence in the appreciation of the situation must lead to equally great difference in determining our task in the given situation. The conclusions drawn by comrade Kuusinen can be correct when the situation indicates a transformation in the relation between imperialism and the native bourgeoisie; in other words, when there is a process of “de-colonisation” as far as the bourgeoisie are concerned. Should comrade Kuusinen or any other comrade challenge the correctness of the analysis of the situation as given above, he could not logically draw the conclusions as regards our tasks, as he did. Looking at the matter dispassionately comrade Kuusinen will admit that I have not committed such a crime as he sought to depict in his report.
Source: Meerut Record, p 1007 (6)
Extracts From Documents Of The Seventh Congress
20
From Resolution On Fascism, Working-Class Unity And The Tasks Of The Comintern
V. The Anti-Imperialist People’s Front in the colonial countries
In the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the most important task facing the communists consists in working to establish an anti-imperialist people’s front. For this purpose it is necessary to draw the widest masses into the national liberation movement against growing imperialist exploitation, against cruel enslavement, for the driving out of the imperialists, for the independence of the country; to take an active part in the mass anti-imperialist movements headed by the national reformists and strive to bring about joint action with the national-revolutionary and national-reformist organisations on the basis of a definite anti-imperialist platform. ...
In the interests of its own struggle for emancipation, the proletariat of the imperialist countries must give its unstinted support to the liberation struggle of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples against the imperialist pirates.
Source: Communist International 1919-1943. Documents, edited by Jane Degras, Vol. III, p 376
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From Wang Ming’s Speech
“The Revolutionary Movement in Colonial Countries”
“Our comrades in India have suffered for a long time from ‘left’ sectarian errors : they did not participate in all the mass demonstrations organised by the National Congress. ... The Indian communists until very recently were to a considerable extent isolated from the mass of the people, from the mass anti-imperialist struggle ... for a long time the small scattered groups of communists could not become a united mass all-India CP. ... It was only recently that the all-India CP, which has already taken shape the (reference perhaps is to the setting up of a provisional CC in December 1934), began to rid itself of its sectarian errors and made the first steps towards the creation of an anti-imperialist united front. Nevertheless our young Indian comrades, having taken this road, showed a great lack of understanding of the UF tactics. This may be borne out even by the fact that our Indian comrades in attempting to establish a united anti-imperialist front with the National Congress in December last year put before the latter such demands as ‘the establishment of an Indian workers’ and peasants’ soviet republic’ ‘confiscation of all lands belonging to the zamindars without compensation’ ‘a general strike as the only effective programme of action’, etc. Such demands on the part of our Indian comrades can serve as an example of how not to carry on the tactics of the anti-imperialist united front. True, the Indian communists somewhat corrected their line later on and achieved, on the one hand, the unification of the revolutionary and reformist trade unions and on the other hand an agreement with the so-called congress-socialists for a struggle against the new slavish constitution. ...
“Both within and without the National Congress the Indian communists must consolidate all the genuine anti-imperialist forces of the country, broadening and leading the struggle of the masses against the imperialist oppressors.
“The Indian communists must formulate a programme of popular demands which could serve as a platform for a broad anti-imperialist united front ... this programme for struggle in the immediate future should include approximately the following demands : (1) against the slavish constitution, (2) for the immediate liberation of all political prisoners, (3) for the abolition of all extraordinary laws etc., (4) against the lowering of wages, the lengthening of working day and discharge of workers, (5) against burdensome taxes, high land rents and against confiscation of peasants’ lands for nonpayment of debts and obligations, and (6) for the establishment of democratic rights.”
Source: Guidelines of the History of the Communist Party of India (CPI Publication), pp 44-45