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Reflections on the Origins of the 'Third Period': Bukharin, the Comintern, and the Political Economy of Weimar Germany

The Sixth Congress of the Communist International met in Moscow in the summer of 1928. In his opening presentation, Nikolai Bukharin depicted a capitalist world entering a new period of crisis. He noted signs of great economic progress - significant technological advances, the growing concentration of production, a general increase in national incomes. But alongside these advances existed high levels of structural unemployment, an intensified exploitation of labour, growing interpenetration of state and economic power, and increasingly uneven levels of development among nations. All these indicated an accentuation of the internal contradictions of the system. The crisis phase into which capitalism was now entering was fundamental and not merely cyclical.1 The tactical conclusions that the Comintern drew from this analysis are well-known. A new period of capitalist crisis - the 'third period' in Comintern parlance - was creating a new revolutionary upsurge. All forms of working-class struggles had to be elevated into assaults on the existing system, and all forms of collaboration with the organs of the capitalist system had to be opposed. This necessitated, in particular, an intensified struggle against social democracy, 'in view of its new, completely bourgeois and actively imperialistic ideology'. Coalitions with the reformist unions and social democratic parties were inadmissible; only united fronts 'from below' were on the agenda for the Comintern parties. The term 'social fascism' soon moved to the forefront of communist vocabulary.2 The policy enunciated by the Sixth Congress has long been associated with Stalin. With a few exceptions, notably a surprisingly