Page:Resolutions and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).djvu/67

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rights and prejudices, and the enfranchisement of women, etc., in view of the fact that the present correlation of forces does not permit it to carry out its Soviet programme. At the same time, it must strive to put forward such demands as will assist in establishing the closest possible contact between the peasantry and semi-proletarian masses and the labour movement. To explain to the masses of the toilers the necessity for an alliance with the international proletariat and the Soviet Republics 1s one of the most important tasks of the tactics of the Anti-Imperialist Front. The colonial revolution can be victorious and defend its gains only in conjunction with the proletarian revolution in the advanced countries.

The danger of an agreement being arrived at between the bourgeois nationalists and one or several of the rival imperialist powers in the semi-colonial countries (China, Persia), or in countries striving to secure political independence by exploiting the rivalry between the imperialists (Turkey), is greater than in the colonies. Such an agreement would signify an irrational division of power between the native ruling classes and the imperialists, and, under the cloak of a formal independence, will leave the country in the same position of a buffer semi-colonial state subordinate to world imperialism.

Recognising the permissibility and inevitability of partial and temporary compromises for the purpose of securing a respite in the revolutionary struggle against imperialism, the working class must, however, irreconcilably resist every attempt at avowed or tacit division of power between the imperialists and the native ruling classes, aiming at the preservation by the latter of their class privileges. The demand for a close alliance between the proletariat and Soviet Republics serves as the banner of the United Anti-Imperialist Front. Simultaneously with the advocacy of this demand, a most determined struggle must be conducted for a most democratic political regime, in order to undermine the power of the most politically and socially reactionary elements and preserve the freedom of organisation for the toilers in their struggle for their class interests (the demand for democratic republics, agrarian reforms, reforms of taxation, the basis of wide self-government, labour legislation, the protection of child labour, (the protection of mothers and infants, etc.), Even in independent Turkey the working class does not enjoy the freedom of organisation, and this may serve as a typical example of the attitude of the bourgeois nationalists towards the proletariat.

VII. The Tasks of the Proletariat on the Pacific Coast.

The necessity for the establishment of an Anti-Imperialist Front is dictated also by the constant growth of imperialist rivalry. This rivalry has assumed to-day such acute forms that a fresh world war, the arena of which will be the Pacific Ocean, is inevitable unless an international revolution forestalls it.

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