Page:Eden Paul and Cedar Paul - Communism (1921).pdf/16

 (6) The distinctive doctrine of the Third International is its advocacy of direct action on the part of the revolutionary proletariat.

The manifesto, and the subsequent activities of the Third International, above all the issue of a further manifesto (The Capitalist World and The Communist International) and of the he Theses and Statutes adopted by the Second Congress of the Third International at Moscow in August, 1920, have driven a wedge everywhere between the communists and the socialists or social democrats. Were the Soviet Republic adopting its name in 1921 instead of in 1917, it would almost certainly call itself the Russian Communist Federative Soviet Republic, for the name Socialist begins to carry with it a flavour of reaction. The issue is joined between communism and imperialism. Whoever is not on he side of the communists is, consciously or unconsciously, fighting on the side of capitalist imperialism. In great crises there is no place for moderates. Now, if ever, is justified the extremist's cry; he who is not for me is against me. Believing this, the communists are quite unconcerned at the accusation that their propaganda exercises a disintegrating influence. The disintegration is deliberately planned, for they wish to know their friends from their foes. Nationally disintegrating, through the touchstone of the unqualified acceptance of the principles of revolutionary communism, the policy of the extremists is internationally integrating, as the events of the last two years have amply shown. Everywhere the cleavage between the communists and the socialists, between the ergatocrats and the democrats, is becoming wider; the communists form more efficient nuclei in their respective lands; they unite more effectively under the red banner of the Third International. Nor is this union confined to the political field. Industrially, the communists are unifying their forces in the Red Trade Union International. It remains only to from an International for Independent Working-Class Education, a Red Proletcult International. Then communists will be ready for a combined forward movement along all three lines of advance.

In addition to the tactic of the class war and the belief in the imminence and the necessity of the world revolution, the insistence of the proletariat and the advocacy of a political and industrial system based upon soviets or occupational groups, are the most distinctive features of the new communism.

"The dictatorship of the proletariat," wrote Lenin in the summer of 1917, "is the organisation of the advance-guard of the oppressed as the ruling class, for the purpose of crushing the oppressors." The word "advance-guard" must be noted. The dictatorship will not be exercised here, any more than it has been