The question of ‘when’

When analysing the thinking of the Third International regarding world revolution, at least two facts are worth emphasizing. The first is that it is generally hard to know when Communists are speaking of ‘revolution’ as a theoretical issue and when as an active process. If less frequent, such an attitude is not completely absent among Latin American members of the Comintern. The second is the lack of a clear, unambiguous revolutionary proposal related to the extra-European world. The Comintern never produced as detailed a picture of the so-called democratic-bourgeois revolution as it did for the Socialist one. This is due perhaps to the fact that at the very moment of its foundation, the International already had the concrete example of a Socialist revolution to offer its followers. The primary intention of the Russian and European Communists in founding the Third International was to promote a Socialist revolution in Europe; to speak of the colonial world and of a democratic-bourgeois revolution was something of an afterthought. But there was perhaps another reason which was not dictated by a particular historical circumstance, but which is inherent in Marxism as well as Leninism. Roughly, it is that this stance was due to a perhaps exaggerated over-confidence in the strength of the proletariat and a corresponding distrust of the peasantry.

Another difficulty in catching the differences in the Communist language between revolution as a hope and revolution as a fact lies perhaps in the question of time and perspective.