V. I. Lenin

Greetings To

Italian, French and German Communists

Scant indeed is the news we get from abroad. The blockade by the imperialist beasts is in full swing; the violence
of the biggest world powers is turned against us in the hope of
restoring the rule of the exploiters. And all this bestial fury of
the Russian and world capitalists is cloaked, needless to say, in
phrases about the lofty significance of “democracy”!
The exploiter camp is true to itself; it depicts bourgeois
democracy as “democracy” in general. And all the philistines and petty bourgeois, down to Friodrich Adler, Karl
Kautsky and the majority of the leaders of the Independent (that
is, independent of the revolutionary proletariat but dependent on
petty-bourgeois prejudices) Social-Democratic Party of Germany,
join in the chorus.

But the more infrequently we in Russia receive news from
abroad, the greater the joy with which we follow the gigantic,
universal advance of communism among the workers in all the
countries of the world, the successful severance of the masses
from the corrupt and treacherous leaders who, from Scheidernanu to
Kautsky, have gone over to the bourgeoisie.

All that we know of the Italian Party is that its Congress has
resolved by a huge majority to affiliate to the Third
International and to adopt the programme, of the dictatorship of
the proletariat. Thus, the Italian Socialist Party has, in
practice, aligned itself with communism, though to our regret it
still retains its old name. Warm greetings to the Italian workers
and their party!

All that we know of France is that in Paris alone there are
already two communist newspapers: L’Internattonale edited by Raymond Péricat, arid Le Titre censure edited
by Georges Anquetil. A number of proletarian organisations have
already affiliated to the Third International. The sympathies of
the workers are undoubtedly on the side of communism and Soviet
power.

Of the German Communists we know only that communist newspapers
are published in a number of towns. Many bear the name Die Rote Fahne . The Berlin Rote Fahne, an illegal
publication, is battling heroically against the Scheidemanmis and
Noskes, the butchers who play flunkey to the bourgeoisie in deeds,
just as the Independents do in words and in their “ideological” (petty-bourgeois ideological)
propaganda.

The heroic struggle of Die Rote Fahne, the Berlin communist paper, evokes whole-hearted admiration. At last we see
in Germany honest and sincere socialists, who, despite all
persecution, despite the foul murder of their best leaders, have
remained firm and unbending! At last we see in Germany communist
workers who are waging a heroic struggle that really deserves to
be called “revolutionary”! At last there has emerged from the very midst of the proletarian masses in Germany a force
for which the words “proletarian revolution” have become a truth!

Greetings to the German Communists!

The Scheidemanns and Kautskys, the Henners and Friedrich
Adlers, great as the difference between these gentlemen in the
sense of personal integrity may probably be, have in equal measure
proved to be petty bourgeois, most shameful traitors to and
betrayers of socialism, supporters of the bourgeoisie. For in 1912
all of them took part in drafting and signing the Basle Manifesto “on the approaching imperialist war, all of
them spoke then about ”proletarian revolution”, and all of them proved in practice to be
petty-bourgeois democrats, knights of philistine-republican,
bourgeois-democratic illusions, accomplices of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.

The savage persecution to which the German Communists have been
subjected has strengthened them. If at the moment they are
somewhat disunited, this testifies to the breadth and mass
character of their movement, to time vigour with which communism
is growing out of the very midst of the masses of workers. It is
inevitable that a movement so ruthlessly persecuted by the
counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and their Scheideniann-Noske
henchmen and forced to organise illegally should be disunited.

And it is natural, too, that a movement which is growing so
rapidly and experiencing such desperate persecution should give
rise to rather sharp differences. There is nothing terrible in
that; it is a matter of growing pains.

Let the Scheidemanns and Kautskys gloat in their Vorwarts
and Freiheit about the differences among the Communists. There is nothing left
for these heroes of rotten philistinism but to cover up their
rottenness by pointing to the Communists. But if we take the real
state of affairs we realise that only the blind can now fail to
see the truth. And the truth is that the followers of Scheidemann
and Kautsky have shamelessly betrayed the proletarian revolution in Germany, broken faith with it and have, in fact, sided with the counterrevolutionary
bourgeoisie. Heinrich Laufenberg in his excellent pamphlet,
From the First Revolution to the Second, demonstrated this and proved it with remarkable force, vividness, clarity and
conviction. The differences among the followers of Scheidemann and
Kautsky are differences within disintegrating, dying parties of
which there remain only leaders without masses, generals without
armies. The masses are abandoning the Scheidemanns and going over
to the Kautskys, being attracted by their Left wing (this is borne
out by any report of a mass meeting), and this Left wing
combines—in unprincipled and cowardly fashion-the old prejudices of the petty bourgeoisie about parliamentary democracy
with communist recognition of the proletarian revolution, the
dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power.

Under mass pressure, the rotten leaders of the Independents
acknowledge all this in words, but in deeds they remain
petty-bourgeois democrats, “socialists” of the type of
Louis Blanc and the other dolts of 1848 who were so mercilessly
ridiculed and branded by Marx.

Here we have differences that are really irreconcilable. There
can be no peace, no joint work, between the proletarian
revolutionaries and the philistines, who, like those of 1848,
worship at the shrine of bourgeois “democracy” without understanding its bourgeois nature. Haase and Kautsky, Friedrich Adler and Otto Bauer can twist and squirm as much s they like, use up reams
of paper and make endless speeches, but they cannot get away from
the fact that in practice they absolutely fail to understand the dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power,
that in practice they are petty-bourgeois democrats, “socialists” of the Louis Blanc and Ledru-Rollill
type, that in practice they are, at best, puppets in the
hands of the bourgeoisie, and, at worst, direct hirelings of the
bourgeoisie.

The Independents, the Kautskyites and the Austrian
Social-Democrats seem to be united parties; actually, on
the basic, chief and most essential issue, most of their party
members do not agree with the leaders. The party member ship will wage a proletarian revolutionary struggle
for Soviet power the very moment a new crisis sets in, and the
“leaders” will act as counter-revolutionaries as they do now. To sit between two stools is not a difficult matter in
words; Hilferding in Germany and Friedrich Adler in Austria are
giving a model display of this noble art.

But people who try to reconcile the irreconcilable will prove
to be mere soap-bubbles in the heat of the revolutionary
struggle. This was demonstrated by all the “socialist” heroes of 1848, by their Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary
kindred in Russia in 1917-19, and is being demonstrated by all the
knights of the Borne, or yellow, Second International.

The differences among the Communists are of another kind. Only
those who do not want to cannot see the fundamental distinction. The differences among the Communists are differences
between representatives of a mass movement that has grown with
incredible rapidity; and time Communists have a single, common,
granite-like foundation-recognition of the proletarian revolution
and of the struggle against bourgeois-democratic illusions and
bourgeois-democratic parliatnentarism, and recognition of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power.

On such a basis differences are nothing to worry about they represent growing pains, not senile decay. Bolshevism, too,
has experienced differences of this kind more than once, as well
as minor breakaways caused by such differences, but at the
decisive moment, at the moment of taking power and establishing
time Soviet Republic, Bolshevism was united; it drew to itself all
that was best in the trends of socialist thought akin to it and
rallied round itself the entire vanguard of the proletariat and the overwhelming majority of the working people.

And so it will be with the German Communists, too.

The followers of Sclieidemann and Kautsky still talk about
“democracy” in general, they still live in the ideas of 1848, they are Marxists in words, Louis Blancs in deeds. They
prattle about the “majority” and believe that equality of ballot-papers signifies equality of exploited and exploiter, of
worker and capitalist, of poor and rich, of the hungry and the
satiated.

The Scheidernanns and the Kautskys would have us believe that
the kind-hearted, honest, noble, peace-loving capitalists have
never used the force of wealth, the force of money, the power of
capita], the oppression of bureaucracy and military dictatorship,
but have decided matters truly “by majority”!

The Scheidemanns and the Kautskys (partly from hypocrisy,
partly from extreme stupidity, instilled by decades of reformist
activity) prettily bourgeois democracy, bourgeois parliamentarism and the bourgeois republic, so as to make it
appear that the capitalists decide affairs of state by the will of
the majority, and not by the will of capital, not by means of
deception and oppression and the violence of the rich against the
poor.

The Scheidemanns and Kautskys are ready to “recognise” the proletarian revolution, but only with
the proviso that first, while the force, power, oppression and
privileges of capital and wealth are retained, the majority of the people shall vote (with the voting supervised by
the bourgeois apparatus of state power) ”for revolution”! It is difficult to imagine the extent of
the philistine stupidity displayed in these views, or the extent
of the philistine gullibility (Vertrauensduslei) in the
capitalists, in the bourgeoisie, in the generals, and in the
bourgeois apparatus of state power.

Actually, it is precisely the bourgeoisie that has always
played the hypocrite by characterising formal equality as
“democracy”, and in practice using force against the poor, the working people, the small peasants and the workers, by
employing countless means of deception, oppression, etc. The
imperialist war (that the Scbeidemanns and the Kautskys painted in
shamelessly bright colours) has made this plain to millions of
people. Proletarian dictatorship is the sole means of defending the working people against the oppression of capital, the violence of bourgeois military dictatorship, and imperialist war. Proletarian dictatorship is the sole step to equality
and democracy in practice, not on paper, but in life, not
in political phrase-mongering, but in economic reality.

Having failed to understand this, the Scheidemanus and the
Kaniskys proved to he contemptible traitors to socialism and
defenders of the ideas of the bourgeoisie.

* * *

The Kautskyite (or Independent) party is dying. It is bound to
die and disintegrate soon as a result of the differences between
its predominantly revolutionary membership and its counter-revolutionary “leaders”.

The Communist Party, experiencing exactly the same (essentially
the same) differences as were experienced by Bolshevism, will grow
stronger and become as hard as steel.

The differences among the German Communists boil down, so far
as I can judge, to the question of “utilising the legal
possibilities” (as the Bolsheviks used to say in the 1910-13
period), of utilising the bourgeois parliament, the reactionary
trade unions, the law on works’ councils (Bet riebsratge setz), bodies that have been hamstrung by the Scheidemanns
and Kautskys; it is a question of whether to participate in such
bodies or boycott them.

We Russian Bolsheviks experienced quite similar differences in
1906 and in the 1910-12 period. And for us it is clear that with
many of the young German Communists it is simply a case of a lack
of revolutionary experience. Had they experienced a couple of
bourgeois revolutions (1905 and 1917), they would not he
advocating the boycott so unconditionalnor fall from time to time
into the mistakes of syndicalism.

This is a matter of growing pains; the movement is developing
in fine style and as it grows they will pass. And these obvious
mistakes must be combated openly; the differences Must not be
exaggerated since it must be clear to everyone that in the near
future the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat, for
Soviet power, will wipe out the greater part of them.

Both from the standpoint of Marxist theory and the experience
of three revolutions (1905, February 1917 and October 1917) I
regard refusal to participate in a bourgeois parliament, in a
reactionary (Legien, Gompers, etc..) trade union, in an
ultra-reactionary workers’ council hamstrung by the
Scheidemanns, etc., as an undoubted mistake.

At times, in individual eases, in individual countries, the
boycott is correct, as, for example, was the Bolshevik boycott of
the tsarist Duma in 1905. But the selfsame Bolsheviks took part in
the much more reactionary and downright counter-revolutionary Duma
of 1907. The Bolsheviks contested the elections to the bourgeois
Constituent Assembly in 1917, and in 1918 we dispersed it, to the
horror of the philistine democrats, the Kautskys and other such
renegades from socialism. We worked in the ultra-reactionary,
purely Menshevik, trade unions which (in their counter-revolutionary nature) yielded nothing to the Legien
unions—the foulest and most reactionary trade unions in
Germany. Even now, two years after the conquest of state power, we
have not yet finished fighting the remnants of the Menslievik
(i.e., the Scheidemann, Kautsky, G ompers, etc.) trade unions—so long is the process! So strong in some places and
in some trades is the influence of petty-bourgeois ideas!

At one time we were in a minority in the Soviets, the trade
unions and the co-operatives. By persistent effort and long
struggle—both before and after the conquest of political power—we won a majority, first in all
workers’ organisations, then in non-worker and, finally,
even in small-peasant organisations.

Only scoundrels or simpletons can think that the proletariat
must first win a majority in elections carried out under the yoke of the bourgeoisie, under the yoke of wage-slavery, and must then win power. This is the height of stupidity or hypocrisy; it is substituting elections, under the old system and with the old power, for class struggle and revolution.

The proletariat wages its class struggle and does not wait for
elections to begin a strike, although for the complete success of
a strike it is necessary to have the sympathy of the majority of
the working people (and, it follows, of the majority of the
population); the proletariat wages its class struggle and
overthrows the bourgeoisie without waiting for any preliminary
elections (supervised by the bourgeoisie and carried out under its
yoke); and the proletariat is perfectly well aware that for the
success of its revolution, for the successful overthrow of the
bourgeoisie, it is absolutely necessary to have the sympathy of the majority of the working people (and, it follows,
of the majority of the population).

The parliamentary cretins and latter-day Louis Blancs “insist” absolutely on elections, on elections that
are most certainly supervised by the bourgeoisie, to ascertain
whether they have the sympathy of the majority of the working
people. But this is the attitude of pedants, of living corpses, or
of cunning tricksters.

Real life and the history of actual revolutions show that quite
often the “sympathy of the majority of the working people” cannot be demonstrated by any elections (to say
nothing of elections supervised by the exploiters, with
’equality” of exploiters and exploited!). Quite often the “sympathy of the majority of the working people”
is demonstrated not by elections at all, but by the growth of one of the parties, or by its increased representation
in the Soviets, or by the success of a strike which for some
reason has acquired enormous significance, or by successes won in
civil war, etc., etc.

The history of our revolution has shown, for example, that
sympathy for the dictatorship of the proletariat on the part of
the majority of the working people in the boundless expanses of
the Urals and Siberia was ascertained not by means of elections,
but by the experience of a year of the tsarist general
Kolchak’s rule in that area. Incidentally, Kolchak’s rule also began with a “coalition” of the Scheidemann
and Kautsky crowd (in Russian they are called Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries, supporters of the Constituent
Assembly), just as in Germany at the moment the Haases and
Scheidemanns, through their “coalition”, are paving the way to power for von Goltz or Ludendorif and covering up this
power and making it look decent. In parenthesis it should be said
that the Haase-Scheidemanmi coalition in the government has ended,
but the political coalition of these betrayers of socialism
remains. Proof: Kautsky’s books, Stampfer’s articles in Vorwärts, the articles by the Kautskys and the
Scheidemanns about their “unification”, and so on.

The proletarian revolution is impossible without the sympathy
and support of the overwhelming majority of the working people for
their vanguard—the proletariat. But this sympathy and this
support are not forthcoming immediately and are not decided by
elections. They are won in the course of long, arduous and stern class struggle. The class struggle waged by the
proletariat for the sympathy and support of the majority
of the working people does not end with the conquest of political
power by the proletariat. After the conquest of power this struggle continues, but in other forms. In
the Russian revolution the circumstances were exceptionally
favourable for the proletariat (in its struggle for its
dictatorship), since the proletarian revolution took place at a
time when all the people were under arms and when the peasantry as
a whole, disgusted by the “Kautskyite” policy of the social-traitors, the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries,
wanted the overthrow of the rule of the landowners.

But even in Russia, where things were exceptionally favourable
at the moment of the proletarian revolution, where a most
remarkable unity of the entire proletariat, the entire army and
the entire peasantry was achieved at once—even in Russia,
the proletariat, exercising its dictatorship, had to struggle for
months and years to win the sympathy and support of the majority
of the working people. After two years this struggle has
practically, but still not completely, ended in favour of the
proletariat. In two years we have won the full sympathy and
support of the overwhelming majority of the workers and labouring
peasants of Great Russia, including the Urals and Siberia, but as
yet we have not won the full support and sympathy of the majority
of the working peasants (as distinct from the peasant exploiters)
of the Ukraine. We could he (but shall not be) crushed by
the military might of the Entente, but inside Russia we
now have such sound sympathy, and from such an enormous
majority of the working people, that our state is the most
democratic state the world has ever seen.

One has only to give some thought to this complex, difficult
and long history of proletarian struggle for powera struggle rich
in the extraordinary variety of forms and in the unusual abundance
of sharp changes, turns and switches from one form to another—to see clearly the error of those who would
“forbid” participation in bonrgeois parliaments, reactionary trade unions, tsarist or Scheidemann Shop Stewards
Committees or works’ councils, and so on and so forth. This
error is due to the lack of revolutionary experience among quite
sincere, convinced and valiant workingclass revolutionaries. Consequently, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
wore a thousand times right in January 1919 when they realised
this mistake, pointed it out, but nevertheless chose to remain
with the proletarian revolutionaries, mistaken though they were on
a minor question, rather than side with the traitors to socialism,
the Scheidemanns and the Kautskys, who made no mistake on the
question of participating in bourgeois parliaments, but had ceased
to be socialists and had become philistine democrats and
accomplices of the bourgeoisie.

A mistake, however, remains a mistake and it is necessary to
criticise it and fight for its rectification.

The fight against the traitors to socialism, the Scheidemanns
and the Kautskys, must be waged mercilessly, but not on the issue
of for or against participation in bourgeois parliaments,
reactionary trade unions, etc. This would be an obvious mistake,
and a bigger mistake still would be to retreat from the ideas of
Marxism and its practical line (a strong, centralised political
party) to the ideas and practice of syndicalism. It is necessary
to work for the Party’s participation in bourgeois parliaments, in reactionary trade unions and in
“works’ councils” that have been mutilated and castrated in Scheidemann fashion, for the Party to be wherever
workers are to be found, wherever it is possible to talk to
workers, to influence the working masses. Legal and illegal work
must at all costs be combined, the illegal Party, through its
workers’ organisations, must exercise systematic, constant and strict control over legal activity. This is no easy
matter, but the proletarian revolution, generally speaking, knows
nothing and can know nothing of “easy” tasks or aeasy” means of struggle.

This difficult task must be carried out at all costs. The Scheideinann and Kautsky gang differ from us
not only (and not chiefly) because they do not recognise the armed
uprising and we do. The chief and radical difference is that in
all spheres of work (in bourgeois parliaments, trade unions,
cooperatives, journalistic work, etc.) they pursue an inconsistent, opportunist policy, even a policy of downright
treachery and betrayal.

Fight against the social-traitors, against reformism and
opportunism—this political line can and must be followed
without exception in all spheres of our struggle. And then we
shall win the working masses. And the vanguard of the. proletariat, the Marxist centralised political party together
with the working masses will take the people along the true road
to the triumph of proletarian dictatorship, to proletarian instead
of bourgeois democracy, to the Soviet Republic, to the socialist
system.

In the space of a few months the Third International has won a
number of glorious, unprecedented victories. The speed of its
growth is astonishing. Particular mistakes and growing pains give
no grounds for alarm. By criticising them directly and openly, we
shall ensure that the working masses of all cultured countries,
educated in the spirit of Marxism, quickly rid themselves of the
betrayers of socialism, the Scheidemanns and Kautskys of all
nations (for these traitors are to be found in all nations).

The victory of communism is inevitable. Communism will triumph.

N. Lenin

October 10, 1919