100 years since the foundation of the Communist International

International Communist Current Public Meeting

100 years since the foundation of the Communist International

Saturday March 9, 2019, 2pm-6pm

May Day Rooms

88 Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 1DH

Nearest tube: St Pauls

“The CI's foundation awakes unpleasant memories for the whole capitalist class and its zealous servants. In particular, it reminds them of their fright at the end of World War I, faced with the mounting and apparently unavoidable tide of the international revolutionary wave: the victorious proletarian revolution in Russia in October 1917; mutinies in the trenches; the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm and the hurried sig­nature of an armistice in the face of mutinies and the revolt of the working masses in Germany; then the insurrection of German workers; the creation along Russian lines of republics of workers' councils in Bavaria and Hungary; the beginning of strikes among the working masses in Britain and Italy; mutinies in the fleet and army in France, as well as among some British military units refusing to intervene against Soviet Russia ....” (‘1919: foundation of the Communist International’, International Review 57).

The Communist International was formed in order to provide a clear political orientation to this massive upsurge of the class struggle, to point the way to the world-wide conquest of power by the working class. At this point in history, it was a very different organisation from what it later became with the isolation, degeneration and defeat of the revolution in Russia – a simple agency for the foreign policy of a Russian state in the process of integrating itself into the global imperialist system. Revolutionaries today must therefore recognise that the history of the CI is a vital part of their own history. But we are also faced with the task of understanding the weaknesses and failures of the International in order to construct the future world party on the clearest possible programmatic and organisational principles.

The ICC will outline its approach to this question, with the emphasis on developing a wide-ranging and in-depth discussion among everyone who attends.