Page:Resolutions and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).djvu/50

 strong impulse to unity, which the diplomatic leaders of Russian Menshevism tried to utilise for their own ends, much in the same way as the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals are now doing. The Russian Bolsheviks did not answer that impulse to unity by the refusal of any and every kind of United Front. On the contrary, they countered the diplomatic game of the Mensheviks with the slogan "Unity from Below!"—i.e., unity of the working mass itself in the practical struggle of the workers' demands against capitalism. Experience proved that this was the only correct reply, and as a result of these tactics, the expression of which varied according to the special conditions of the time and the place, an enormous number of the best Menshevik workers were won over to the Communist side.

International Unity.

20. In issuing the watchword of the united working-class front and permitting agreements of separate sections of the Communist International with parties and groups of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals, the Communist International cannot naturally refuse to contract similar agreements on the international scale. The Executive Committee of the Communist International made a proposal to the Amsterdam International in connection with Famine Relief in Russia. It repeated the proposal in connection with the persecution of the workers under the White Terror in Spain and Jugo-Slavia. The Communist International is now making new proposals to the three other bodies in connection with the first results of the Washington Conference, which has shown: that the working class is threatened by a new imperialist slaughter. The leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals have shown, up to now, by their behaviour that when it comes to a question of practical action they in fact reject their own watchword of unity. In all such cases it is the duty of the Communist International as a whole, and of its constituent sections in particular to expose to the masses the hypocrisy of these reformist leaders who prefer unity with the bourgeoisie to unity with the revolutionary workers, and who remain, for instance, a part of the International Labour Office of the League of Nations, instead of organising the struggle against the imperialism of Washington, and so on. But the refusal of the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals to accept one or other of our practical suggestions will not cause us to give up the policy indicated, which is deeply rooted among the masses, and which we must persistently and: systematically develop. Whenever our adversaries refuse to support any proposition for a united stand, the masses must be made to realise this, and thus learn who is actually responsible for destroying the workers' united front. Should our adversaries agree to the proposals, it will be our duty to inten-