The Third International

The Third International, also known as the Communist International, was born out of the revolutionary opposition to the first World War. Small and isolated at first, this opposition held its first conference in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, in September 1915. The Zimmerwald movement rallied increasing support as the horror of the war hit home.

Opposition to the war took on a mass character as a result of the two revolutions in Russia in 1917. The October revolution, which brought the Bolsheviks to power and led to the withdrawal of Russia from the war, especially raised the standard of working class internationalism and inspired workers everywhere to join the revolt.

By January 1918, mass strikes, with munitions workers to the fore, spread across Austria, Poland, Hungary and Germany. Workers' and soldiers' councils sprang up throughout Germany, the Kaiser abdicated and fled and power literally fell into the hands of the workers' councils with the German Social Democrats at their head. Unfortunately, the Social Democrats were led by the same treacherous leaders as had supported the war.

Under Friedrich Ebert, Philip Scheidemann and Gustav Noske, the Provisional Government provoked the inexperienced revolutionary vanguard workers of Berlin into an armed uprising in January 1919. They then crushed it with the aid of the protofascist Freikorps militia, who murdered Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the two foremost revolutionary leaders in Germany. Reformists and revolutionaries now...

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