The Comintern

lnternationalism is the bedrock of socialism, not for any sentimental reasons, but because capitalism has created a world economy which can be transformed only on a world scale. Anything else is utopian. The Third lnternational, child of the Rıussian workers' revolution of October 1917, was no optional extra. it was an essential part of that
revolution, essential if it was ta survive, essential if there was ta be movement towards socialism elsewhere in the world. It set out what workers had learned from the revolution, a vital, living guide far future generations who would seek the road to socialism.
Conversely, the events ten years later that turned the Comintern, as it had come ta be known, into a tool of Stalin's foreign policy, were part of the stranging of workers' power inside Russia by a new bureaucratic ruling class.
This book looks at the history of the Comintern from its founding conference in 1919 to its dissolution by Stalin in 1943, seeking out the political conclusions-positive and negative-needed by those who would build socialism in the world today.