V. I.

Lenin

In Pravda No. 63, on

July 12, [1] we told the reader about the general strike in Zurich on June 29 (July 12,
new style). It may be recalled that the strike was decided in defiance of the leaders of political organisations. The meeting of 425
representatives of all the workers’ organisations of Zurich, which declared
for the strike, greeted the statement of the printers, who were against the
strike, with shouts of “Shame! ”

By now the press has published data exposing that opportunism.

It appears that the political leaders of the Swiss workers in their
opportunism have gone so far as direct betrayal of the Party . It
is this scathing but justified phrase that the best organs of the Swiss and
German working-class press use in describing the conduct of the
Social-Democratic members of the Zurich Magistracy (Town Council). The
Zurich Town Council, defending the capitalists , prohibited strike
picketing (and then the workers decided to protest by a one-day general
strike).

There are nine members on the Zurich Magistracy, including four
Social-Democrats—Erismann, Pfl¨ger, Fogelsanger and Kl\"oti.

And now it has become known that the prohibition of picketing was
decided on by the Town Council unanimously , that is to say,
Erismann and his three Social-Democratic colleagues voted for
it!!! The Zurich Cantonal Government had insisted that the Town Council should prohibit all picketing,
but the four sapient minnows, [2] that is, Zurich Social-Democrats, made a
“ compromise ” proposal to prohibit picketing only in the area of
the two mechanical shops where work had been stopped.

Of course, it was just this partial prohibition of picketing that the
bourgeoisie was demanding, and the “Social-Democrats’” (?!)
proposal was adopted by the bourgeois majority of the Town Council!

What is more, the Zurich Town Council recently published an account of
the events occasioned by the general strike. The capitalists declared a
three-day lock-out by way of revenge. The Zurich Town Council decided
unanimously , with all its four Social-Democratic members
participating, that it was necessary to call in troops to
reinforce the police in maintaining public order.

Nor is that all. The bourgeois Town Council of Zurich furiously
attacked, by a series of repressive measures, those manual and office
workers in the town’s establishments who had joined in the strike. It
sacked 13 workers and imposed disciplinary punishments (demotion, pay cuts)
on another 116. These decisions of the Town Council were likewise adopted
unanimously , with Erismann and his two colleagues participating.

The conduct of Erismann and Co. can only be described as betrayal of
the Party.

It is not surprising that the anarcho-syndicalists enjoy a certain
success in Switzerland, since it falls to them to criticise before the
workers a socialist party which tolerates such opportunist traitors in its
ranks. The reason why the treachery of Erismann and Co. is of major
international significance is that it shows us clearly from what quarter and in what manner the working-class movement is
threatened with internal corruption.

Erismann and Co. are by no means common deserters to the enemy camp;
they are simply peaceful petty bourgeois, opportunists who are accustomed
to parliamentary “vermicelli” and who have succumbed to constitutional
democratic illusions. The moment the class struggle took a sharp turn, all
illusions about constitutional “order” and a “democratic republic” were
dispelled at once, and our philistines holding the office of Social-Democratic members of the Town Council lost their
heads and slid into the marsh.

Class-conscious workers can see from this sad example the consequences
which the spread of opportunism in a workers’ party is bound to
have.

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Notes:
[1]
See pp. 160–62 of this volume.— Ed .

[2]
The sapient minnow personifies the craven philistine in
M. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy-tale of that name.