THE CONDITIONS OF STRUGGLE

Comintern 

November 1922

The backwardness of the colonies is expressed in that variety of national revolutionary movements against imperialism which reflects the different stages of transition from feudal and feudal-patriarchal relations to capitalism. This variety gives a special stamp to the ideology of this movement. To the extent that capitalism in the colonial countries arises on feudal foundations, and develops in distorted and incomplete transitional forms, which give commercial capital predominance, the differentiation of bourgeois democracy from the feudal-bureaucratic and feudal agrarian elements frequently proceeds in a devious and protracted manner. This represents the chief obstacle to a successful mass struggle against imperialist oppression, for in all backward countries alien imperialism makes the feudal (and in part also semifeudal, semi-bourgeois) upper class of native society into an instrument for the exercise of its rule (the military governors —Tuchuns—in China, the native aristocracy and the land-tax farmers— —zemindars and talukdars—in India, the feudal bureaucracy and aristocracy in Persia, the more or less capitalist plantation owners in Egypt, etc.). 

That is why the ruling classes among the colonial and semi-colonial peoples are unable and unwilling to lead the struggle against imperialism in so far as that struggle assumes the form of a revolutionary mass movement. Only where feudalpatriarchal relations are not sufficiently disintegrated to separate the indigenous aristocracy completely from the masses—as, for example, among nomads and seminomads—can the representatives of these upper strata come forward as active leaders in the struggle against imperialist oppression (Mesopotamia, Mongolia). 

In Moslem countries the national movement at first finds its ideology in the religio-political watchwords of pan-Islam, and this enables the officials and diplomats of the great Powers to exploit the prejudices and ignorance of the broad masses in the struggle against this movement (English imperialism's game with panIslamism and pan-Arabism, English plans to transfer the Khalifate to India, French imperialism's playing on its 'Moslem sympathies'). But to the extent that the national liberation movements grow and expand, the religio-political watchwords of panIslam are increasingly replaced by concrete political demands. The struggle recently waged in Turkey to deprive the Khalifate of temporal power confirms this.

The chief task which is common to all national revolutionary movements is to bring about national unity and achieve political independence. The real and logically consistent solution of this question depends on the extent to which such a national movement is able to break with the reactionary feudal elements and to win over the broad working masses to its cause, and in its programme to give expression to the social demands of these masses. 

Taking full cognizance of the fact that those who represent the national will to State independence may, because of the variety of historical circumstances, be themselves of the most varied kind, the Communist International supports every national revolutionary movement against imperialism. At the same time it does not forget that only a consistent revolutionary policy, designed to draw the broadest masses into active struggle, and a complete break with all adherents of reconciliation with imperialism for the sake of their own class domination, can lead the oppressed masses to victory. The bond between the indigenous bourgeoisie and the feudal-reactionary elements enables the imperialists to exploit to the full feudal anarchy, the rivalry between different leaders and races the antagonism between village and town, the struggle between castes and religious sects, in order to disorganize the national movement (see China Persia, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia)