March 2019 marks the centenary of the foundation of the Third, Communist International, one of the high points of the international revolutionary wave which swept the globe at the end of the First World War. We will be producing a new article to celebrate and analyse this historic event, but in the meantime we are drawing readers' attention to what we wrote in 1989, 70 years after the formation of the CI; this is an article which retains its relevance today.