V. I.

Lenin

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

This paper has already reported the remarkable act of spinelessness on the part of Gustavo Herve. This smart
journalist and agitator, a man without socialist training
or socialist education, went over (from the ranks of the
professors) to the workers’ party, with all the habits and
practices of a bourgeois intellectual. He began as an opportunist. Then he swung over to the “extreme Left”, and
for a long time preached semi-anarchist ideas, “terrifying”
the bourgeoisie with noisy outcries in an anti-militarist
spirit.

Lately he has tended to turn away from the anarchists and to make his way back to the party, and towards
recognition of the parliamentary struggle and of educational
and organisational work. But there again, this intellectual
smarty wobbled, and swung back to the opportunists. Being
an impressionist, too much swayed by the last impression
and prone to spineless vacillation, he has been so “scared”
by the present reactionary wave of chauvinism, nationalism and imperialism in France that he has begun
preaching a return to the “bloc” policy, i.e., an alliance with the
bourgeois Radicals. In order to save the Republic in France
it is essential, he asserts, to have a bloc with the Radicals;
otherwise the reactionaries in France will once again restore the monarchy or the Empire!

It is hardly necessary to say that, apart from extreme opportunists, the French Socialists ridicule the spineless
Herve, and energetically protest against the bloc. Recently
one of the organs of the workers’ party published in the

South of France carried a number of statements by leading
Socialists against the bloc .

It is the Socialists who began and are carrying on the campaign against reaction, these leading workers rightly
say; it is the Socialists who campaigned among the masses
with their protest against the law for a return to three
years’ military service (i.e., a return to the reactionary,
barrack-room and absolutely undemocratic army). It is the Socialists who are working for a proletarian bloc , i.e.,
the alliance of socialist workers and syndicalist workers. Among the Radicals and “Radical-Socialists” (a
petty-bourgeois party resembling our Narodniks) only a tiny
section supports this truly democratic campaign of the
Socialists, and then with many waverings.

Why then have a bloc? Alliance with those who waver will weaken the pressure of the masses and increase the
vacillation! Meanwhile, the Socialists have never refused
to support the Radicals to the extent that they oppose the
reactionaries.

Here, for example, are Messrs. Charles Dumont and
Alfred Masse, true-blue “Radical-Socialists”, writes one
Socialist, who are backing the three-year service law in the
expectation of securing a ministerial post. Here is
Clemenceau “himself”, the leader of the Radicals, carrying on
a campaign for this law. Here is another prominent leader
of the Radicals, Leon Bourgeois, who has also declared in favour of the law. Lastly, in the Military Commission
of the Chamber of Deputies, the law was adopted by 17 votes to 4, the latter exclusively socialist.

How can there be a bloc, then, with this shameless bourgeois party of Radicals and “Radical-Socialists”? Only
by agitating against it among the masses can the French
Socialists detach all democratic elements from that party,
thereby obliging some part of it to go left, towards democracy. Being completely dependent on the masses at the
elections (since France, of course, has universal suffrage
and parliamentary government), many Radicals will think
again and again before finally voting for a reactionary law
well known to be unpopular among the masses.

The only serious support for democracy and the Republic
in France (as everywhere else) is the masses, the masses of workers and with them also the small peasants, and not
the parliamentary politicians, buffoons, careerists and
adventurers of the bourgeois parties, who declare themselves
“Radical-Socialists” one day, only to sell out democracy
and country the next day (for the sake of some ministerial
job or profitable deal, in the form of some concession or
post in a millionaire syndicate, etc.)—(as the French bourgeois sold France to Bismarck in 1871, out of fear of the
Paris workers’ uprising against wage-slavery).

The French Socialists, who are fighting the idea of a bloc and are extending their socialist work and agitation
among the masses, deserve the warmest greetings.