With the outbreak in 1914 of World War I—the first world war between the imperialist powers—the Socialist (Second) International, which over the decades had adopted a strategy of seeking to reform, not overthrow, capitalism, showed it had abandoned a working-class course. In country after country, its member parties supported their respective bourgeoisies in the imperialist war. In October 1917 the Bolshevik party led by V.I. Lenin in Russia, having broken with these opportunist forces, led workers and farmers to take power and then carry out the first socialist revolution in the world. On the basis of that victory and other revolutionary upsurges worldwide, the Bolsheviks initiated the founding of an international, revolutionary working-class organization—the Communist (Third) International, or Comintern—in 1919.

In the excerpt below Trotsky responds to inquiries about membership in the Communist International from the French Socialist Party, one of the first sections of the Second International to cross the class line in 1914 in supporting “its” imperialist ruling class in the war.

“Adherence to the International is not a matter of fulfilling international etiquette but of undertaking revolutionary fighting tasks,” Trotsky explained. He went on to describe the role of the French Socialist Party as counterrevolutionary and its leaders as “servants of the imperialist war.” Their aim in seeking to join the Third International, he warned, is “a maneuver with the object of further deceiving the toiling masses.”

Copyright ©1945, 1972 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.
 

These questions are approximately as follows:

1. Do you recognize as heretofore that it is the duty of a socialist party to advocate national defense with regard to the bourgeois state? Do you consider it permissible to support the French bourgeois republic directly or indirectly in those military clashes with other states which might arise? Do you consider it permissible to vote for war credits either at the present time or in the event of a new world war? Do you reject categorically the treacherous slogan of national defense? Yes or no?

2. Do you consider it permissible for Socialists to participate in a bourgeois government either in peace time or in war? Do you consider it permissible for a Socialist fraction in parliament to support a bourgeois government directly or indirectly? Do you consider it possible to any longer tolerate in the ranks of your party scoundrels who sell their political services to the capitalist government, or to capitalist organizations and the capitalist press, either in the capacity of responsible agents for the thievish League of Nations (Albert Thomas), or as editors of the bourgeois press (A. Varenne), or as attorneys and parliamentary defenders of capitalist interests (Paul Boncour¹), etc., etc.? Yes or no?

3. In view of the thievish and predatory violence done by French imperialism to a number of weak peoples, especially the backward colonial peoples of Africa and Asia, do you consider it your duty to conduct an irreconcilable struggle against the French bourgeoisie, against its parliament and its army in questions of world spoliation? Do you assume the obligation of supporting, by all available means, this struggle wherever it arises, and—above all—in the form of an open uprising of the oppressed colonial peoples against French imperialism? Yes or no?

4. Do you consider it necessary to immediately launch a systematic and ruthless struggle against official French syndicalism which has entirely oriented itself toward economic conciliationism, class collaboration, patriotism, etc., and which is systematically replacing the struggle for revolutionary expropriation of the capitalists through the proletarian dictatorship by a program of nationalizing railways and mines under the capitalist state? Do you consider it the duty of the Socialist Party—hand in hand with Loriot, Monatte, Rosmer,² and others—to initiate an energetic campaign among the working masses in favor of purging the French trade union movement of Jouhaux, Dumoulin, Merrheim³ and other betrayers of the working class? Yes or no?

5. Do you believe it possible to tolerate in the ranks of the Socialist Party disseminators of passivity who paralyze and drain the revolutionary will of the workers by instilling in them the idea that the “present moment” is unfavorable for their dictatorship? Or, on the contrary, do you consider it your duty to unmask before the working masses that piece of deception according to which the “present moment,” as interpreted by agents of the bourgeoisie, always remains suitable only for the rule of the bourgeoisie? This was so on the day before yesterday—because Europe was then living through a period of mighty industrial boom, which tended to decrease the number of those dissatisfied; it was so yesterday—because the issue was that of national defense; it is so today—because it is necessary to heal the wounds suffered through the heroic feats of national defense; and it will be so on the morrow—because the restorationist work of the bourgeoisie will lead to the provocation of a new war, and together with it will also arise the duty of national defense. Do you consider it the duty of the Socialist Party immediately to undertake a genuine ideological and organizational preparation for a revolutionary assault against bourgeois society, with the object of winning state power as quickly as possible? Yes or no?

¹ Albert Thomas, French right-wing Socialist Party leader, member of coalition war cabinet, 1914-18. Alexandre Varenne, prominent French Socialist who supported the war. Paul Boncour, typical representative of French intellectual and parliamentary “socialism.”

² Leaders of the pre-war socialist and syndicalist movements in France who were won to the Communist International.

³ Prominent trade union figures from the French anarcho-syndicalist movement.  
 
 
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