173 years ago, the Communist Party presented its programme to the world in the form of a manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The development of communism followed difficult paths, along with storms of upswing, it knew periods of decline, along with successes and cruel defeats. The communists, representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of different countries of Europe, America and Asia, who gathered in Soviet Moscow in 1919, felt and recognized themselves as the successors and leaders of the cause, whose programme was announced 173 years ago. Their task was to generalize the revolutionary experience of the working class, to unite the efforts of all the revolutionary parties of the world proletariat and thereby facilitate and accelerate the victory of the communist revolution throughout the world....If the complete submission of state power to finance capital led mankind to an imperialist slaughter, then through this slaughter finance capital completely militarized not only the state, but also itself and is no longer able to perform its basic economic functions otherwise than by means of iron and blood.
... The nationalization of economic life, against which capitalist liberalism so protested, has become an accomplished fact. There is no turning back from this fact - not only to free competition, but also to the domination of trusts, syndicates and other economic octopuses. The only question is who will further be the bearer of state-controlled production: the imperialist state or the state of the victorious proletariat.
In other words: will the entire working mankind become a serf tributary to the victorious world clique, which, under the firm of the League of Peoples, with the help of an "international" army and an "international" fleet, will plunder and strangle some, feed others, everywhere imposing fetters on the proletariat - with a single aim to maintain your own dominance? Or will the working class of Europe and the advanced countries of other parts of the world take possession of a disorganized, destroyed economy in order to ensure its revival on socialist principles?
... Only a proletarian revolution can provide small peoples with the possibility of free existence, which will free the productive forces of all countries from the clutches of closed national states, uniting the peoples in the closest economic cooperation on the basis of a common economic plan, and will enable the weakest and smallest people to freely and independently manage their affairs. national culture without any damage to the united and centralized European and world economy ...
... The working class of those countries where historical development gave it this opportunity, used the regime of political democracy to organize itself against capital. The same will continue to happen in those countries where the conditions for a workers' revolution are not ripe. But the broad intermediate masses, not only in the villages, but also in the cities, are held far behind by capitalism, lagging behind historical development for entire epochs ...
... In the realm of destruction, where not only the means of production and transport, but also the institutions of political democracy are heaps of bloody debris, the proletariat is forced to create its own apparatus, which serves primarily to preserve the internal connection of the working class itself and provide the possibility of its revolutionary interference in the further development of mankind. This apparatus is advice.
... In all countries where the working people live a conscious life, soviets of workers 'and peasants' deputies are being built and will continue to be built. Strengthening the soviets, raising their authority, opposing them to the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie — such is now the most important task of the class-conscious and honest workers of all countries. Through councils, the working class is able to save itself from the corruption that infernal pangs of war, hunger, violence by the possessors and the betrayal of the former bring into its midst.
Through the Soviets, the working class can most surely and most easily come to power in all those countries where the Soviets will concentrate the majority of the working people around them.
...There would be no civil war if the cliques of exploiters, which brought humanity to the brink of destruction, did not resist every step of the working people forward, did not organize conspiracies and murders, and did not call for armed assistance from outside to retain or restore their predatory privileges.
... The civil war is being imposed on the working class by its mortal enemies. Without renouncing itself, its future, which is the future of all mankind, the working class cannot but respond to blow with blow...
Sweeping away the half-heartedness, lies and decay of the outdated official socialist parties, we communists united in the Third International recognize ourselves as direct successors of the heroic efforts and martyrdom of a long line of revolutionary generations from Babeuf to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
If the First International anticipated future development and charted its paths, if the Second International gathered and organized a million proletarians, then the Third International is the International of open mass action, revolutionary implementation.
... We call on workers and women workers of all countries to unite under the communist banner, which is already the banner of the first great victories.
Workers of all countries! In the struggle against imperialist barbarism, against the monarchy, the privileged estates, against the bourgeois state and bourgeois property, against all types and forms of class or national oppression — unite!
Under the banner of the workers' councils, the revolutionary struggle for power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, under the banner of the Third International, the proletarians of all countries unite!
"Pravda" N 52,
March 7, 1919
