Source: Published in Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922 (https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/897-to-the-masses), pp. 289-290.
Translation: Translations by John Riddell
HTML Markup: David Walters & Andy Blunden for the Marxists Internet Archive, 2018
Copyright: John Riddell, 2017. Republished here with permission.
The Fourth World Congress of the Communist International fully approves the political work of the Executive Committee of the Communist International [ECCI], which during fifteen long months of activity has carried out the decisions of the Third Congress correctly and in accordance with specific political conditions.
In particular, the Fourth Congress approves the united front tactic as formulated by the ECCI in its theses of December 1921 and in other ECCI documents on this question.
The Fourth Congress approves the position taken by the ECCI regarding the crisis of the Communist Party of France, developments in the Italian workers’ movement, and in the Communist parties of Norway and Czechoslovakia. Purely practical and detailed matters concerning these parties will be taken up in the special commissions, whose decisions will be reviewed by the congress.
As regards events that took place in individual parties, the Fourth Congress recalls and confirms that in the periods between world congresses the ECCI is the highest body of the Communist movement as a whole, and that the Executive Committee’s decisions are binding on all affiliated parties. From this it follows that to violate the Executive Committee’s decisions, with the excuse that the matter is to be appealed to the next congress, is a clear breach of discipline. For the Communist International to permit such conduct would amount to totally nullifying the International’s regular and unified activity.
As for the doubts expressed in the Communist Party of France regarding the interpretation of Clause 9 of the statutes, the Fourth Congress declares that this paragraph gives the ECCI the unconditional right to expel individuals and entire groups that in its opinion are hostile to communism from the International and thus also from its national sections.
It goes without saying that the Executive Committee is compelled to utilise Clause 9 of the Statutes in cases where the leading bodies of the national party in question do not display the necessary energy and vigilance in protecting the party from non-Communist elements.
The Fourth Congress of the Communist International reaffirms again the Twenty-One Conditions drawn up by the Second Congress and instructs the incoming Executive Committee to stringently enforce these conditions. In the coming period the Executive Committee must be more than ever an international proletarian organisation that ruthlessly combats all opportunism, an organisation based on the principle of strictest democratic centralism.