Is Communism Spreading?

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THE last decade has witnessed the appearance of a new political formation -- the Third or Communist International. Born of the Russian revolution, it unites under its banner all the political parties which call themselves communist and aim at the establishment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" by forcible methods. In all questions of policy, even those involving merely local tactical problems, they follow instructions from Moscow, the capital of the Revolution.

Immediately after the war it was generally believed, at least in bourgeois circles, that the working class all over the world was going to smash the framework of the old socialist parties and join en masse the Third International, substituting the methods of Bolshevism for those of a socialistic democracy. This is exactly what did not happen. In the advanced countries of Europe, after a considerable initial success, the communists met with the strong resistance of the well-organized social-democratic parties. Their efforts to capture the Orient were doomed to disappointment. In both North and South America their political influence is negligible. The question whether they now are gaining or losing ground is one in which the friends and enemies of socialism are equally interested. To this question I shall attempt to give an answer, limiting my investigation, however, to those countries with which I am in a degree familiar, that is, the countries of Europe.

At first sight the task seems relatively easy. To aid us in measuring communist gains and losses we have reasonably complete data, under three main heads: the membership of the parties; the strength of the communist labor organizations; and the number of votes obtained by their candidates at elections...