Opportunism has had an undisputed stranglehold on the labor movement for several decades since the overthrow of the USSR. A “United States of Europe” has been erected, just as Lenin warned. A new American empire has taken up the flag of the Third Reich, just as Foster warned. As a result of imperialism getting closer to its death, the entire movement for labor and socialism now battles over the question of the path forward after bourgeois Russia populated by the former Soviet peoples, with the memory of the Soviet Union still fresh in their hearts and minds and the sacrifices endured during the Great Patriot war, have once again taken up arms against Hitlerism.

History of Opportunism in the Second International “Defense of the Fatherland”

Owing to the history of the development of the labor movement and revolution before both WWI and WWII there is a defining characteristic of parties in revolutionary periods. Contradictions between opportunist trends and Bolshevism are intensified, lines are clarified, and opportunist forces which had grown during peace time now try to smother revolution. The entire movement becomes engulfed in bitter conflict over the path forward for the class. Today we see nothing different. Thus, there is a direct connection between the at-present fractured Communist movement and the victory gained by opportunism in the west. As a consequence this requires revolutionaries to educate the working class on the importance of the conflict, its causes, and finish the split started by opportunists who will try by hook or crook to ally with the bourgeoisie.

But why, one might ask, do these opportunists who speak in Communist ways try to fight against revolution? Do they not speak of revolution themselves? Do they not follow Lenin and organize themselves into Communist parties? So how can there be “opportunist” Communist parties? How can opportunism have captured so many? And how are we sure who the real opportunists are today?

Remember that the parties of the Second International right up to the start of WWI had considered the looming war to be one of imperialist plunder. They understood that there was no progressive or just characteristic to the war at all, and the war was purely to divide markets. In 1912 the Ninth Congress of the Second International passed the Basle Manifesto which in words took a revolutionary stand against the coming imperialist war. Many socialists in Europe at the time could not see through the phrase mongering of the Second International leadership. After its passage Lenin remarked, “They have given us a large promissory note; let us see how they will meet it.”

The Basle Manifesto only passed because of the general anti-war atmosphere among the workers who had put pressure on their opportunist leaderships to adopt an anti-war position. The founder and most influential party of the Second International, the German Social-Democratic party, had shortly after passing the Basle Manifesto held a party congress in 1913 where it upheld Germany’s colonies. This clearly indicates that while the parties of the Second International were forced to adopt an anti-war position on the outside, they had every intention to support the war. The words of the Second International in the Basle Manifesto would not translate into deeds.

On July 28, 1914, Austria attacked Serbia. On August 3^rd the German Social-Democratic party voted 78 to 14 in the Reichstag in support of joining the war saying that Russia was soon to invade Germany and then declaring “in the hour of danger we shall not desert the fatherland.” The other European parties adopted the same justification and carried out the same line in their respective countries. The opportunists in the Second International had carried out the greatest betrayal to the working class in history at that time. They disguised their betrayal in a thin veil of “Marxism” saying that the German nation-state was threatened, that they must defend their workers against the invaders, and that Germany was the country with the most advanced Social-Democracy in Europe and necessitated defense. Of course, the parties in the Entente countries had their own social-chauvinism and raised the defense of their own countries to be paramount. Thus, these parties all fell into collaboration with the imperialists to wage an unjust war.

The German Social-Democratic party as the most influential party in the Second International played a large role in influencing other parties to follow suit in this greatest betrayal. It signified the ideological and political collapse of the Second International. The war had nothing in common with the interests of the working class. It was an unjust and reactionary war to loot and plunder.

The opportunists in the Second International cited the writings of Marx and Engels who had supported the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 where Germany was liberated from the oppression of Napoleon III who had kept Germany in a state of feudal decentralization. This act made the war a progressive one on Prussia’s part by allowing the growth of the bourgeoisie, and therefore the proletariat, in Germany. Yet nothing about the conditions of WWI would lend itself to being compared to a struggle for national liberation. The leaders of the German Social-Democratic party grasped at straws trying to justify the involvement of the German proletariat in a war of plunder.

Karl Kautsky, who was the most prominent Marxist of the time and member of the German Social-Democratic party, said: “The Situation is different with the great solidly-based national countries. Their independence is certainly not threatened but apparently their integrity is not threatened either.” This may appear to be an argument against supporting the war, but he then follows this with, “But from this follows also the further duty of the Social-Democracy of every country to regard the war exclusively as a defensive war, to set up as its goal only protection from the enemy, not his ‘punishment’ or diminishment”. Thus in order to consider the war “just” Kautsky considered it “defensive” and the duty of German socialists to “defend the fatherland”.

The Basis of Opportunism

In Lenin’s work “The Collapse of the Second International” he says in chapter I,

“If we would formulate the question in a scientific fashion, i.e., from the standpoint of class relations in modern society, we will have to state that most of the Social Democratic parties, and at their head the German Party first and foremost—the biggest and most influential party in the Second International—have taken sides with their General Staffs, their governments, and their bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. This is an event of historic importance, one that calls for a most comprehensive analysis.”[1]

This comprehensive analysis Lenin mentions is that the betrayal of the socialist parties in the Second International stems from the economic basis, and significance, of the ideologically and materially influenced labor movement within Europe by the bourgeoisie. This is possible through super-profit derived bribes given to parts of the working class who are outside of industrial production and primarily engaged in what the English economist J. A. Hobson—in 1902 reflecting on the emergence of imperialism—saw as the inevitable predominance of “personal or minor industrial services” and the “final stages of production” within imperialist countries.

But the roots of opportunism in the labor movement were first expressed in the colonial and industrial monopoly maintained by Great Britain from 1848 to 1892. The analysis of this period comes best from Frederick Engels who remarked that the skilled tradesmen of his time had become “an aristocracy among the working-class.” Conditions in Great Britain as a result of its industrial monopoly had produced a stratum of the working class who had become “comfortable” and in good relations with the capitalist class. So much so that Engels considered this section of the working class to have become “bourgeois” in its outlook. In other words, this bought off section of the working class had become perverted and itself perverted the labor movement and turned it social-chauvinist.

This perversion of the labor movement is substantiated economically by the conditions of imperialism. Here we do not speak of chance mistakes in tactics. Opportunism is adapting the labor movement to the interests of the bourgeoisie. There is an economic basis to this corruption of the labor movement which introduces bourgeois ideology. And there are two main forms in which this corruption presents itself. Firstly it manifests as those who enjoy a privileged position among the working class and seek to maintain that position, i.e., the AFL-CIO “Higher Strategy of Labor”. Secondly, those in the privileged stratum who as a result of pressure from monopoly have been cast down into the ranks of the lower stratum of the working class but bring with them the interests of the bourgeoisie in left-disguise regardless of intentions.

This privileged stratum of the working class both ideologically and materially influenced by the bourgeoisie did not remain a solely English phenomenon. The loss of Great Britain’s industrial monopoly and the emergence of imperialism among several European countries meant that this privileged stratum of the working class had become a condition of all countries with monopoly capital. The establishment of this privileged strata of workers in all the advanced capitalist countries is why in nearly all socialist parties within the Second International following the most influential and whose leadership was populated primarily by these “comfortable workers” went to the defense of their respective “Fatherlands” when the division of the world market could no longer proceed under peaceful politics and threatened the “comfortable” conditions of the social-chauvinists.

Certainly, today it is a fact of life that manufacturing in the advanced capitalist countries is no longer what it once was. Services are the predominant industries in all imperialist countries. Hobson was quite correct in that regard. A large portion of workers in the imperialist countries only facilitate the realization of commodities. This means that merchant capital has become predominant in the circulation of commodities. The bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries have become parasites on the oppressed countries of the world, which they have forced to surrender a greater share of the surplus-value of commodities produced to create super-profits for the imperialists.

In the rest of the labor movement, the domination of opportunism over the most advanced sections of the working class is a result of the industrial restructuring of the advanced capitalist countries. The party’s loss of a firm footing in the industrial centers is why the Central Committee of the PCUSA stated in its Industrial Concentration Strategy and Plan that, “the restructuring of the basic industries in the United States [as well as Europe] meant the decline and deterioration of the old industrial sector of the working class.” The decline of what we might call “blue collar” factory work today has had a corresponding decline in the proportion of party members who came from the lower strata of the working class and the domination of the privileged upper strata – what we call petty-bourgeois radicals today.

This is not unique to the conditions of the US, but one that affects all Communist parties in the advanced capitalist countries. The incessant, seemingly overwhelming problem of opportunism, left or right, is simply part and parcel of the conditions of building a Communist party in the belly of the beast. Meaning this restructuring, i.e., decimation of the organized industrial sectors of the economy, reflected itself in the party. 

It is an important question to ask why the Communist Party of Germany failed to utilize the revolutionary situation. The Comintern considered the failure due to the lack of connection with workers in the factories, but why was this the case? Lenin’s answer to this question in “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder calls attention to a few factors in the German CP. For one, the German party adopted very childish notions of purity, going as far as to refuse to do any party work in “reactionary unions.” Thus the party had willingly cut itself off from sections of the workers leaving these workers under the influence of traitors and the bourgeoisie.

Secondly, Lenin says,

“In Germany, as in other European countries, people had become too accustomed to legality, to the free and proper election of ‘leaders’ at regular party congresses, to the convenient method of testing the class composition of parties through parliamentary elections, mass meetings, the press, the sentiments of the trade unions and other associations, etc. When, instead of this customary procedure, it became necessary, because of the stormy development of the revolution and the development of the civil war, to pass quickly from legality to illegality, to combine the two, and to adopt the ‘inconvenient’ and ‘undemocratic’ methods of singling out, or forming, or preserving “groups of leaders”—people lost their heads and began to think up some supernatural nonsense. Probably, the Dutch Tribunists who had the misfortune to be born in a small country where traditions and conditions of legality were particularly privileged and particularly stable, and who had never witnessed the changeover from legality to illegality, became confused, lost their heads, and helped to create these absurd inventions.”[2]

Since the German Communist Party had in part separated itself from the labor movement and did not have the experience to navigate the revolutionary situation, it failed to become a leader of the workers. How could it be that a Communist party is separated from the workers? Because the German Communist Party, like most Communist Parties of the west, were organized outside of the labor movement. Being outside of the daily struggle of workers was not the case for the Bolsheviks where out of the labor movement grew the Russian Social Democratic Party and then finally the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Some Reflections On The Issue Of Industrial Structuring

The history of how Communist Parties were developed in the advanced capitalist countries offers potential insight into why the CPUSA had such an issue dealing with the decline of organized industrial sectors. In 1931 the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted several factors which retarded the growth of Communist parties in the imperialist countries. I will quote the pertinent observations,

“The illegal condition of the Bolshevik Party prompted it to establish Party groups in the factories, where it was easier and more convenient to work. The Party structure of the Bolsheviks thus began with the factories, and this yielded excellent results both during the years of the reaction, after the February revolution, and particularly during the October Revolution of 1917, the civil war and the great construction of Socialism. During the reaction following upon 1908, when in places the local party committees and the party leadership (the C.C.) were broken up, there still remained in the factories and mills a certain base, small party cells which continued the work. After the February Revolution, when the elections to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies were held, the factories and mills also served as the basis for the elections. It is noteworthy that the elections to the municipal and district councils and the Constituent Assembly, which were based not upon occupational but upon territorial principles, were also carried out by the Bolshevik Party very successfully after the February and October Revolutions, despite the fact that the party had no territorial organizations [emphasis mine – ed.], and its agitation was concentrated in the factories and barracks. The cells and the district and city committees conducted the election campaign without creating special territorial organizations for the purpose. During all periods the lower party organizations of the Bolsheviks existed at the place of work rather than at the place of residence.

Abroad the situation was entirely different. There elections were not held in the factories but in the election districts, in the places where the voters lived. The main task pursued by the Socialist Parties was to gain electoral victories, to fight by means of the ballot, and the Party organization was therefore built along residential lines, which made it easier to organize the Party members for the election campaign in the respective election districts.

[T]he organizations of the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries were built without permanent organizational connections with the factories. […]

That the absence of Party organizations in the factories strongly affects the work of the Communist Parties is shown by such an example, for instance, as that of Germany, in 1923, when the Party failed to utilize the revolutionary situation for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, this being due not only to the absence of a truly revolutionary leadership, but also to the absence of extensive and firm connections with the workers in the factories.”[3]

Most Communist Parties in the west were born from Socialist Parties who had no connection to the labor movement. Their primary source of membership came from cells that followed the same geographical-political party structure as bourgeois parties, i.e., city, county, state lines. As a result, the proportional share of cells within the party that are based in the factories are numerically outnumbered by geo-political cells which unify workers who are disconnected from large-scale production within the party. In other words, geo-political organization can be a boon to the white-collar city-petty bourgeoisie and corrupted workers within the party. 

As the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted above, in the illegal period of the Bolshevik Party they were a closed party and only admitted small numbers of candidates. Primarily due to oppression by the Tsar, trustworthiness was one of the main factors used to evaluate candidates. The core cadre of the party became steeled in experience and capable of teaching. When the party became legal after the 1905 Revolution it became a mass party and accepted many new members. Lenin remarked in Party Organization and Party Literature in 1905 that “We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements.”

As well, Lenin in 1916 in his article “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” very clearly outlines the importance of where the party focuses and draws its strength,

“Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the ‘defenders of the fatherland’ in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.”[4]

If we have a broader reflection on the experience of the Bolsheviks we find that at very few points in their history did they ever accept a mass of new membership into their ranks and that they had from the beginning been based chiefly on the factories. The issue of petty-bourgeois radicalism had scarcely been a problem within their ranks until periods of the intensification of the revolutionary situation in Russia. Later in 1920 in Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Lenin remarks that the Bolsheviks at this point were now very apprehensive in allowing the party to grow too quickly during the October Revolution because of the fact that “careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably strive to attach themselves to the ruling party.”[5] This development signified a greater danger of the penetration of corrupting elements at that point in time.

The dangerous combination of petty bourgeois radicalism with a mass party structure is why the consequence of the policies adopted and implemented by the 7^th Congress of the Comintern in the pursuit of the Popular Front, which sought to bring together the broad masses and all progressive people against fascism, resulted in western parties which were ill-equipped to defend themselves from the sudden and large influence of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Western parties had not chiefly based themselves upon the factories, i.e., upon the lowest paid and unbribed sections of the working class. History has proven that all the western parties were unable to digest the “inconsistent elements” as they transitioned into mass parties. It is historical fact that only in the eastern European countries did the Popular Front result in the formation of Socialist Republics since this is where the parties were chiefly situated in the factories rather than along geo-political lines . Thus these parties could withstand allowing a certain portion of the higher stratum of the working class and petty bourgeois to enter the party.

In the 2021 issue of The Communist the General Secretary Angelo D’Angelo and I wrote that,

“What many call Browderism was in reality then a global right-opportunist phenomena which stemmed from imperialism and its effect on the policies of the international Communist movement during the war. Browderism is only how it manifested under the conditions of the US. This also explains why all the advanced capitalist countries fell victim to their own national variants of Browderism. Nevertheless, in essence, it can be said to have arisen in part out of an upward swing in conditions, a lull in the growth of the movement and from political immaturity. As well as the social composition of the parties in the advanced capitalist countries. Plainly, from opportunism.”[6]

It is evident from the experiences of the Bolsheviks and our own parties in the advanced capitalist countries that the predominance of cells organized along geo-political lines is a carryover from the Socialist Party, and that it can be self-defeating by allowing petty-bourgeois radicals to suffocate Bolshevism within the party. It is inevitable then that issues of daily conflict and splits occur over matters immaterial to the long-term goals of the Communist Party. This also means a greater chance for individuals (careerists and charlatans) who do not come from the lower-strata of the working class to rise to leadership positions within the party since the work of the party (i.e. its cells) is detached from struggle within large enterprises.

Marx was a thousand times correct to say that socialism is birth marked with characteristics of capitalism. It is also true to say that western Communist parties are birth marked with the characteristics of their former socialist parties. However, addressing the predominance of the geo-political method of organizing is only a small part of the struggle against opportunism within our party. It is through the geo-political organization of cells that renegades and opportunists are able to more easily gain leadership positions only to corrupt entire sections of the party. Primarily due to the fact that there are fewer workers connected to shops with thousands of other workers and because the work of the geo-political cells are not focused on the immediate needs of any one workplace. The work of these cells mainly revolves around periodical agitation in public places; in other words, no leading role in the labor movement or direct connection to it.

Yet, the struggle against opportunism does not end with fixing the method of cell organization. The struggle against opportunism within the CPSU is evidence that even in parties where shop cells are predominant that opportunism finds other ways to sap at the strength of the party. It is evident though that in today’s world all Communist parties have been affected by industrial restructuring. The industrial basis of western Communist parties has become weakened, and the opportunity for petty-bourgeois radicals to steal leadership of the parties has grown. It is not a coincidence then that like never before Communist parties have reached an impasse over very basic questions of socialist construction or the history and legacy of the Comintern.

Industrial Concentration is the foremost task of any Communist Party, but it is obvious that this policy has not been carried out by the parties of the world who refuse to see the truth of what the war in Ukraine represents. There is no central world leadership to teach its importance. In the vacuum left by the CPSU, many parties have become aimless and have decayed into complacency over the years of industrial restructuring.

The CPUSA in 1949 as a matter of its party education instilled upon all party members that:

“The policy of concentration is not a policy for a special group of comrades, nor a special sphere of work which is carried alongside of other tasks. There must be no counterposing of industrial concentration as ‘one specific activity’ to other mass activities. Winning the workers in the big shops and working class communities is a political task (the struggle for the political policies of the party – which embrace both economic and political issues). Industrial concentration must be the heart and core of the work of all party organizations and all party leaders.”[7]

By regaining a foothold in the big shops the party will secure the social composition of the party as decidedly working class and offer an advantage to the party in its struggle against opportunism within the Communist movement.

The Ultra-Left and Ukraine

Grave issues within the international Communist movement have meant a major difference of perspective about support and non-support for the current Russian military offensive. To understand the current situation it is important to understand the class character of war in the modern age. The historical features of war have changed owing to the development of society and capitalism to its highest stage. By contrast during the period starting from around 1776 with the American Revolution and ending with the Paris Commune in 1871, the major wars and civil wars at this time were bourgeois-progressive and often had a national-liberation characteristic.

All honest socialists participated in the overthrow of feudalism. Most notable among them was Karl Marx who constantly gave guidance and clarity to the character of the US Civil War through the First International, the International Workingmen’s Association. Marx saw clearly that it was a progressive war which could overthrow the feudal Bourbon-Landlords of the South and end chattel slavery. By overthrowing the slave masters in the South the conditions for socialism, which was impossible beforehand, now existed.

Such a war to overthrow the backwards aristocracy was instrumental in allowing capitalism to develop, which was a progressive step, but capitalism most of all concentrates capital and industry. Today, US capitalism has reached its highest stage—imperialism. All the major industries are concentrated into the hands of billionaire associations, and all the major capitalist nations have divided the world amongst themselves. When “peaceful” diplomacy fails to satisfy its re-division, war and violence is waged. Making war in the age of imperialism is the result of fierce competition over markets. This means peace between capitalist countries can only be transitory, and peaceful diplomacy among them only stalls the impending outbreak of war which represents the continuation of capitalist diplomacy in a violent form. As well, the war will bring many changes to Russia which will develop further as a capitalist nation should it defeat NATO and Ukraine.

As analyzed in the PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference, the US is in a fierce competition with Russia and China for markets to export the highly industrialized commodities produced in the US. When Trump tried to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, it was explicitly done in order to offer Europe “Freedom” gas and oil, but at a higher cost than the EU was able to secure from Russia.

Immediately upon Russia committing to conflict in Ukraine, Germany indefinitely suspended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and the EU and US ceased importing Russian oil and natural gas. As much as 40% of EU energy was imported from Russia. The US had tried to capture this market by attempts to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia under Trump “peacefully”. Such a market is extremely important, which is why the US since 2014 had cultivated fascism and knowingly egged on NATO membership in Ukraine in order to get control over the energy markets of the EU and force Russia into a military response and subsequently isolate them from energy markets.

However, this maneuvering by the US has heavy costs. The PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference analyzed the situation in Europe and noted that a divide between the EU and US was growing. This still remains largely true, even with Germany forgoing trade with Russia to its detriment. As the crisis of capitalism deepens it strains the ability of the US to maintain its alliances in NATO, meaning there is a weakening unity among members given the heavy handedness of the US forcing the EU into subpar deals. Shortly before the conference last year, China had signed the “largest trade deal in history” with the EU to the exclusion of the US.

Forcing EU NATO members to accept greater costs, and have less of a share of global profits in order to pad the pockets of US imperialists will result in worsening diplomacy between the US and EU. Even as Germany once more does the bidding of the US, Germany has signed a historic military spending bill, as much as 10x its previous military spending after being forced to suspend Nord Stream 2 bringing their total spending to an astounding €100 billion[8]. Germany and the EU have begun to lose confidence in the ability of the US to protect their profits, with the US under Trump even outright trying to strong-arm the EU into paying more for NATO[9]. In order for the EU to finally shake off US control, it will require a historic build-up of military forces.

However, there is also a more serious implication of a growing schism in global capitalism trending toward the build-up of these military forces around the world for an impending global conflict which can bring humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation. This time is far more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis since Russia is no longer socialist and therefore is not guided by the same Communist morality.

As in 1914, all the American and European capitalists paint this war as one for the “freedom of nations.” In actuality, the capitalists egg on and cultivate this war for the oppression of nations, to fortify existing colonies, and to prolong capitalist rule. Though at the same time, as during WWII, the scourge of fascism walks the earth (cultivated by the US and NATO) giving an impetus to the growth of the grossest reaction the world over, and renders social revolution under such conditions as existing in Ukraine impossible. There can be no socialist revolution while the working class is kept under the thumb of fascism. Thus the defeat of fascism in the Ukraine is both essential and progressive.

This is why the PCUSA affirms its position that, because Russia has made it clear that its ambitions for the war serve to resolve the mounting crisis in Russia itself, that the ousting of the Bandera fascists and defense of the DPR and LPR can be used as a justification for a war of conquest, i.e. reclaiming the “common motherland” of the Tsarist Empire. Until the point when the actions of Russian capital move toward conquest, the PCUSA stands with all anti-fascist people in support of the Donbass and support the war against the Bandera fascists in Kiev. In our own country, we must remember that the American workers have no interest in waging a war for plunder, that it is forced upon them. The American workers are mentally ruined and physically worn out not only as a result of the growing intensification of their exploitation under US capitalism, but from decades of predatory wars, epidemics, and the acute suppression of their organization by a mass of labor misleaders. It is the  duty of all communists in the US during these times to build resistance against our country’s engagement in the cultivation of punitive fascist wars to re-divide the world market.

[1] Lenin, V.I., “The Collapse of the Second International” in Collected Works, Vol. 21; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974, pp. 207-208.

[2] Lenin, V.I., “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, pp. 32-33.

[3] Piatnitsky, O., The Bolshevization of the Communist Parties By Eradicating The Social-Democratic Traditions; Workers Library Publishers: New York, 1932,  p. 15-17.

[4] Lenin, V.I., “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” in Collected Works, Vol. 23; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974a, p. 120.

[5] Lenin, Op. Cit., 2022, p. 42.

[6] Dirte, Timothy, “Opportunism and the Collapse of the Third International” in The Communist, Vol. 1, 2021, p. 52.

[7] Study Course on The Communist Party, The Working Class, and Industrial Concentration: Outline and Guide for Schools, Classes, Study Groups; The National Education Depart of the Communist Party USA: New York, 1949, p. 18.

[8] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-hike-defense-spending-scholz-says-further-policy-shift-2022-02-27/

[9] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nato-trump/trump-says-nato-countries-burden-sharing-improving-wants-more-idUSKCN1RE23P