ABSTRACT
The analysis of imperialism had strategic implications for international socialism. One of the more fruitful theoretical developments of the period of the Second International was the effort to understand capitalist systems in the context of the more complex economic and political structures so characteristic of late nineteenth-century imperialism. In 1919 the Bolsheviks had organized the Third International as a “communist” alternative to the “socialist” Second International. The change of direction adopted by the Third International in 1928 was connected with the change of direction within the Soviet Union. The change in direction within the international movement was motivated by similar considerations. As early as January 1927-before the break with the Kuomintang, before the change of direction of the Third International, and contrary to the working-class base recommended by communist theory-Mao Tse-tung extolled the potential for Chinese communism of a peasant-based revolutionary movement.
