The Complexities of Proletarian Internationalism: Mexican Communism and the Communist Party of Mexico, 1919-1943
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Date
2018-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
The formation of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia represented a turning point in the history of socialism. With a successful workers' revolution in Russia, the time appeared ripe for revolution across Europe and the world. In the same year, a small group of Mexican radicals took steps to form the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) and affiliate with the Comintern. With the Mexican Revolution consolidating into a stable government, the newly formed PCM tried to develop Marxist theory and practice to transform Mexican society along socialist lines. The rise of Stalinism in the Soviet Union altered the revolutionary Marxism which motivated the Comintern and the PCM from a tool for working-class self-emancipation into a dogmatic and contradictory set of axioms to justify the Soviet Union and its foreign policy. The Comintern with its democratic essence lost, ultimately transformed into a bureaucratic transmission belt for the Soviets. Using the foundational Marxist concept of Proletarian Internationalism as a lens, this thesis analyzes the development and ultimate degeneration of the Mexican Communist Party and the Communist International.
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Keywords
Mexican Communist Party, Proletarian Internationalism, Communist International, Marxism, Socialism