Third Period

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This article is about the communist ideological concept. For the third period of ice hockey, see ice hockey. For third period of chemical elements, see Period 3 element.
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The Third Period is an ideological concept adopted by the Communist International (Comintern) at its Sixth World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928. It set policy until reversed when the Nazis took over Germany in 1933.[1]

The Comintern's theory was based on its economic and political analysis of world

vanguard parties
, the Comintern believed.

Communist policies during the Third Period were marked by pronounced hostility to

dual unions under communist party
control rather than continuation of the previous policy of attempting to radicalize existing unions by "boring from within."

The rise of the

Seventh World Congress of the Comintern
in 1935.

Political and theoretic basis

Although the term “Third Period” is closely associated with Stalin, it was first coined by

Taylorism as well as longer shifts and wage-cuts, driving wages down and unemployment up. The consequent lowering of living standards amongst the working class would lead to the intensification of class struggles and greater support for communism.[3]
: 395–6 

These periodic distinctions were important to the Comintern's work because they entailed different tactics on the part of communist parties outside the USSR. The “Second Period” was characterised by the “united front” policy (1923–28) within which communist parties strove to work together with social democratic parties to defend the wages, jobs and rights of working-class people and build the political basis for the future dictatorship of the proletariat.[4] The Third Period, in contrast, saw a sharp turn against these tactics in favour of “class against class” (1928–34);[5] here communist parties actively rejected collaboration with social democrats, attacking them as “social fascists”[6] or, in Stalin's own formulation, “the moderate wing of fascism”.[3]: 402 [7]

Impact on the USSR

In December 1927, the

Kulaks) because of deregulation
of prices for grain.

These events were leading to growing economic and political instability. The towns were being threatened with a "chronic danger of famine" in 1928-1929.

collectivization in agriculture and democratisation of the Party. Threatened by the growing power and revolt from the countryside led by the Kulaks and the strengthening bourgeoisie, the Fifteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party passed resolutions that supported for some of the planks of the Opposition's platform, and on paper, the Congress' views appeared very left, politically.[9]
However, the Left Opposition was expelled.

The new policies of industrialisation and

Collectivisation in the USSR, Holodomor
.)

Impact on communist parties outside the USSR

In the West, the

crisis of capitalism was coming to a head with the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, and the Communist International's Sixth Congress viewed capitalism as entering a final death agony, its "third period of existence" where the first had been capitalism during its rise prior to World War I, and the second was the short period after the crushing of the post-World War I revolutions
when capitalism seemed again to have stabilised.

The formal institution of the Third Period occurred at the 9th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (E.C.C.I.) in February 1928. This helped in dovetailing the "Left" of the All-Union Communist party with that of the Comintern itself.

To the Comintern, a decisive and final

Germany, and elsewhere.[citation needed
]

Although shortcomings and crippling ideological vacillations brought this Period to an end, the tone of the "Third Period" resonated powerfully with the mood of many militant workers of the time, especially following the

Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing crises of the 1930s. In many countries, including the United States, local Communist Parties' membership and influence grew as a result of the "Third Period" policies.[14]

"Social fascism"

One notable development in this period was that Communists organized the unemployed into a political force, despite their distance from the

Social Democrats were targeted by Communist polemics, in which they were dubbed "social fascists
."

Trotskyists have blamed Stalin's line for the rise of Nazism because it precluded unity between the German communists with the German Social Democrats. Hitler's rise to power, consequently, was also a reason for the abandonment of the policy in favor of the Popular Front strategy because Germany became the biggest security threat to the Soviet Union.

North America

Historians of the left have debated the contribution made by Communist activism in North America during the Third Period. Some authors like Robin D. G. Kelley and John Manley have penned local histories that portray Communist Party members as effective activists, heroic in many cases because their revolutionary zeal helped them confront extremely adverse circumstances. Despite the shadow of Stalinism, in this perspective, the important positive contributions Communist organizers made in working class history should not be discounted.

Critics of this perspective argue that these histories gloss over or ignore both the horrors of Stalinism and also the devastating consequences of the Third Period inasmuch as it facilitated the rise of Hitler and alienated the working class writ large from the left because of its sectarianism and adventurism.[15]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Kevin McDermott, "Stalin and the Comintern during the 'Third Period', 1928-33." European history quarterly 25.3 (1995): 409-429.
  2. doi:10.1093/tcbh/11.4.353
    .
  3. ^
    S2CID 144906375
    .
  4. ^ Stalin, J.V. "The International Situation and the Tasks of the Communist Parties". marxists.org. Pravda. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
  5. doi:10.1111/wusa.12277
    . Retrieved 24 March 2019.
  6. S2CID 146848013
    .
  7. ^ Stalin, J.V. "Concerning the International Situation". marxists.org. Bolshevik. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
  8. ^ Deutscher, Isaac, Stalin, p. 322, Penguin, (1966)
  9. ^ Stalin's proposals were set out in "Questions of Socialist Construction in the U.S.S.R", 1928. Leon Trotsky's version is set out in "A Sharp Turn: “The Five Year Plan in Four Years” and “Complete Collectivization”" in The Revolution Betrayed 1936
  10. ^ Deutscher, Isaac, Stalin, pp. 296ff, Penguin, (1966)
  11. ^ Deutscher, Isaac, Stalin, p324, Penguin, (1966)
  12. ^ Hildermeier, Die Sowjetunion, p. 38 f.
  13. ISBN 0-19-505180-7
    .
  14. ^ This section is adopted in part from a public domain article by David Walters for the Marxists Internet Archive's Encyclopedia of Marxism.
  15. S2CID 142809743
    .

Further reading
  • Kevin McDermott, "Stalin and the Comintern during the 'Third Period', 1928-33." European history quarterly 25.3 (1995): 409-429.
  • Matthew Worley (ed.), In Search of Revolution: International Communist Parties in the Third Period. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004.

See also

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