M. Turov

Little Profit

(Summer 1964)


From International Socialism (1st series), No.17, Summer 1964, p.32.
Thanks to Ted Crawford & the late Will Fancy.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.


Comintern and World Revolution. 1928-1943
Kermit E. McKenzie
Columbia University Press, 48s.

This is a very disappointing book, yielding little profit from much research. Based largely on an analysis of the Programme of the Comintern adopted at its 6th Congress (1928) it belabours the points of the programme in the abstract, with hardly any historical or social interpretation of the strategy and tactics of the Comintern. It quite often falls into sterile pedantry. Thus, for instance, when arguing that the Comintern Programme failed to define clearly what is an ‘advanced industry country,’ McKenzie asks: ‘What percentage of its production should be industrial, as against agricultural? To what degree should heavy industry exist? What level of development should have been attained by the so-called tertiary sector of the economy, i.e., those occupations devoted to distribution, transport, etc.?’ Who on earth needs exact statistical criteria for the definition by the Comintern Programme of US and Western European countries as ‘advanced industrial countries’?


Last updated on 10 April 2010