Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/15

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some changes, and that gradually a single type of workers' organisation will be formed. The Communist Party, however, will become absorbed in the working class only when Communism ceases to be the object of struggle, and the whole working class shall be Communists.

12. The Second Congress of the Communist International must not only serve to affirm the historical mission of the Communist Party in general, but it must indicate to the international proletariat, in rough draft, what kind of a Communist Party is needed.

13. The Communist International assumes that especially during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Communist Party should be organised on the basis of a severe proletarian centralism. In order to direct the working class successfully during the long, stubborn civil war, the Communist Party must establish the strictest military discipline within its own ranks. The experience of the Russian Communist Party in its successful leadership of the civil war of the working class during three years, has proved that the victory of the workers is impossible without a severe discipline, a perfected centralisation and the fullest confidence of all the organisations of the party in the leading organ of the party.

14. The Communist Party should be based on the principle of democratic centralisation. The chief principle of the latter is the elective