Page:Resolutions and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).djvu/42

 out of all the tactical decisions of the world congresses and of the Executive, as the organ of the Comintern, in the period intervening between the world congress. The Congress instructs the Executive to demand and watch over the fulfilment of the tactical decisions by all the parties.

Only the well-defined revolutionary tactics of the Comintern can guarantee a speedy victory of the international proletarian revolution.

Adopted by the E.C. in December, 1921, and to be added to the Resolution on Tactics passed by the Fourth Congress.

The New International Position.

1. The international Labour movement at the present time is passing through a peculiar transitional stage, which confronts the Communist International as a whole and also its constituent sections with new and important tactical problems. The fundamental characteristics of this stage are as follows: There is a heightening of the world economic crisis. Unemployment is increasing. In almost every country international capital has passed over to a systematic attack against the workers, expressing itself first of all in the cynically frank endeavours on the part of the capitalists to reduce wages and lower the whole standard of life of the workers. The bankruptcy of the Versailles peace is becoming increasingly evident to the widest masses. The inevitability of a new imperialist war, or even of several such wars, unless the international proletariat overthrows the capitalist structure, has become evident. This is eloquently confirmed by the proceedings at Washington.

The Move to the Left.

2. Under the pressure of reality the revival of reformist illusions, which, after being nearly overcome owing to the first complexion of events, had developed among a considerable section of the workers, has now begun to give way to a very different spirit. The "democratic" and reformist illusions of certain of the workers (partly the most privileged workers, and partly the most backward and least politically experienced), which arose anew after the cessation of the imperialist butchery, have faded before having had time to bloom. The course and the outcome of the further "labours" of the Washington Conference will deliver a still greater blow to these illusions. If half a year ago it was still possible to speak with some degree of truth of a kind of general move to the right on the part of the working masses in Europe and America, then at the present time, on the contrary, it is possible to affirm unconditionally the beginning of a move to the left.