Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/61

 tionalism and pacifism, constitute a habitual occurrence not only among the parties of the Second International but among those who have left it, and even frequently among such who now call themselves Communists. The struggle against this evil, against the more deeprooted petty bourgeois-national prejudices, becomes of paramount importance the more pressing the necessity becomes to transform the dictatorship of the proletariat from a national basis (i. e., in one country only, not capabIe of exercising an influence over world politics) into an international one, a dictatorship of the proletariat of at least several advanced countries, capable of exercising a decisive influence over world politics. Petty bourgeois nationalism declares that internationalism is a recognition of the equality of the rights of nations and nothing else, preserving (without mentioning the purely verbal nature of such a declaration) intact all national egoism; whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, the subordination of the interests of the proletarian struggle in one country to the interests of such struggle on a world scale secondly, the capacity and readiness on the part of a nation realising a victory over the bourgeoisie to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capitalism.

Thus in the countries of the capitalist order, without labour parties representing ready the advance guard of the proletariat, the struggle against the opportunist and bourgeois-pacifist perversions of the idea and policy of internationalism, is the first and most important duty.

11. In respect to the more backward countries and nations with prevailing feudal or patriarchal and patriarchal-peasant relations, it is necessary to bear in mind especially:

(a) The necessity for all Communist parties to render assistance to the bourgeois-democratic liberation movement in such countries; especially this duty falls to the lot of the workers of such countries upon which the backward nation depends, colonially or financially;